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The Big Red Button
You wake up in a dark room. The kind of dark where your eyes can't help but adjust a mere moment too late for the picture to provide you with any useful information regarding whatever it is you're actually currently gazing at. That type of delayed vision that one would attribute to maybe being drunk, or maybe the way the picture on a basement television fluctuates sometimes due to inferior signal strength. The type of delay that really gets your psychic motor revving; where you achieve one of the few very brief moments of clarity available to the average human. You know, where you are able to recognize how obviously mechanical and vulnerable you are. Anyway, it's in this type of delayed-moment-after ocular filter that you're able to absorb your surroundings. The air is moist, just a fraction of whatever the standard unit of measurement of moisture is below being classified as damp or wet. If you were just a bit more perceptive than you actually are, you'd probably be able to imagine the beads of water accumulating on the tips of the hairs in your nose with each inhalation you hesitantly and cautiously consume. Instead, you simply acknowledge the stale taste it leaves in the back of your throat, in that ambiguous area that's not quite tasting but significantly and recognizably more evolved than just being a smell. The object currently centered in your sights by means of prolonged, unwavering cranial steadiness is possibly round, definitely circular, and not green. Your best guess is that it's red, but honestly, in this light it could be orange or pink or now they even had to expand the palette to include obscene amounts of unnecessary shades like "sangria sunrise" or "burnt amber". It's definitely not sangria sunrise, for contextual reasons you decide. And it definitely doesn't say anything on it, but it might maybe say something on it, possibly. Probably. It's the type of peculiar and improbable situation that gives you no reason not to accept just one degree of peculiarity further. Like those bears in the circus that ride unicycles. They're already bears riding unicycles, there's no reason they shouldn't be wearing tutus. Yeah, you can make out the words kind of, now. Your hand navigates the cold, oceanic atmosphere only stone or cement can provide a windowless enclosure and is guided gently in for a landing on the objects condensate covered surface. The diameter of your pupils have sufficiently expanded to the point where your confidence in the text at hand is analogous to a 3rd grader, extra cookie in hand, approaching the girl who's been smiling at him from behind a brand new box of crayons all day. Paraplegic on the grand scale, but 8-limbed compared to the kindergartner you were just precious, less moist moments earlier. There's no real reason to obey. You've already opted to probe your surroundings by hand, resulting in little more than an unnoticeable increase in heat (kJ) as a result of friction, and also something crawling on you. There's no reason n o t t o p u s h i t. M a y b e y o u s h o u l d p u s h i t. Your last thoughts before whatever toxic agent in the air abruptly severs your equilibrium have something to do with the notion that if the walls of this prison were suddenly removed, and the uninvited mid-day sun were to humble your eyes you would not alter your decision. You would not obey.
Comments
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 3:20 PM, EvolutionInHand said:
Haha, well thank you for your interpretation. We encounter these buttons all the time, all our lives. Some of them do in fact lead to destruction, so we can never be too sure it's the right thing to do. I suppose that's where your "faith" comes in. I myself am not so much a believer in ancient plans, but as you said, "to each his/her own". So whether we're following the preordained sequence of events or writing them as we go along, good luck with your very own personal button, your personal choice.
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 2:36 PM, brenneman said:
maybe obedience was never the issue.. perhaps the point wasn't made clear enough until now (if, now) to accept that relatively miniscule uncertainty in faith. after all, big, red(ish) buttons are often associated with destruction, and until recently not specifically much else, and even then those have a big "easy" label that's pretty hard to miss like the back of this comment box and apparently wouldn't do much more than clean up my work space in less than a nanosecond.. so why don't you hit the button if you're so sure it's the right thing to do. unless i or someone else beat you to it. for now, the girl behind the box of crayons is secondary to me, and i don't even know if she has a nice ass or personality for that matter.. and stuff like that's important. of course to each his/her own. and if hitting this red button really is of any crucial importance at all, if i wait a little while longer it's safe to say that was part of the ancient plan to begin with. and such is faith. the good kind, anyway. and thank goodness for the opportunity we possess to make those kinds of choices, apart from which we wouldn't be much more than mindless robots and life would pretty much suck.
btw, thanks for the anology (which was incredibly well written to say the least). kind of describes my life right now. in fact, i couldn't have described it better.