Hollow Sapiens

"My liege, I've done it! HOORAH" Screamed Melvin, barging into the throne room unceremoniously, stumbling over his cape.

Melvin. Besotted, poxy, thrice-damned Melvin. The king had had enough of him. And who the hell still wore capes? He rolled his eyes... It was so 12th century.

"What is the meaning of this?" Asked King Hazelnut, visibly annoyed. He had no time for Melvin's shenanigans.
"My liege, I have invented a mechanical bird! Man shall take to the skies in this invention and we shall explore realms far and wide!"

Typical. Leave it to Melvin to make the most unorthodox crackpot inventions imaginable when he wasn't under adult supervision.

Melvin Whatshisface was an eccentric younger brother to one of Hazelnut's powerful lords; Lord Whatshisface. One day, said lord requested that Melvin be granted any position in the king's retinue, to "honor the family name and strengthen ties between the families". Seeing as they were very close personal friends, the king accepted, but was now beginning to suspect that Whatshisface had more sinister motives to want Melvin as far away from his castle as possible. If it wasn't for their friendship, he would have had Melvin flogged, himself.

For one thing, he was always in his "lab", working on prototypes for inventions no one asked him for. More often than not, he blew up his chamber, and sometimes they found him passed out in a pool of what looked like vomit and smelled like apple pie. Once, they found blue smoke streaming from under his door, and when they walked into the room they found him upside down in a cauldron full of ale screaming "SPRING BREAK WOOOHOOOOOO". The man was insane. Bearing that in mind, you'll understand why the king was skeptical about his revelation.

"CHARLES!" called out Hazelnut.
"Your Majesty!" A burly pikeman kneeled in front of the throne, looking apprehensive. Last time he was asked to handle Melvin, they found him sprawled face-down on Melvin's bed five hours later, wiggling his feet and talking about boys. He still had no idea what Melvin had given him.
"Escort Melvin to his quarters. It appears he has been drinking his urine again." yawned the king.
The Queen cleared her throat.
Charles was just starting to get up when Melvin pushed him. When you're wearing steel armor that weighs 50 kilograms, and a man pushes you, you fall. And when you struggle to get up, you look comically like a cockroach trying to get off its back. As Charles wiggled on the floor trying to grab hold of any edge to hoist himself up, Melvin continued his speech like nothing happened.

"My liege, I beg the honor of escorting you to the courtyard, where my invention is ready for your highness. I assure you, I've already tested it several times, and it is almost as safe as being flung from a catapult. You have my word."
The Queen cleared her throat.

"Melvin, if you pick on Charles again I will have you flung from a catapult and you can tell me how safe it is, then. He is the captain of my guard for God's sake, and if I have to overhear him complaining to William again about how "mean" you are to him, I'll have him flung with you."

"But my liege, the mechanical bird awaits! The sky's the limit! Literally!"
The Queen cleared her throat.
"Is my Queen well, or should I send for the physician?"

Queen Latifah smiled, and said: "I thank you for your kindness, your majesty, but there will be no need for that. Perhaps my liege would like to inspect this contraption for himself? Surely it would be more entertaining than Charles's worm dance"

The king groaned. Of course she'd say that, her last name was also Whatshisface.

"Very well. Charles, I command you to stop wriggling."

Out of the hall, down five flights of stairs, through an entrance hall and out into the courtyard they went. Hazelnut paused at the entrance of the courtyard, taken aback at the strange sight before him. It looked like an immense white tube, with what looked like fixed wings on either side.
"Melvin, where did you find this?"
"During one of my experiments, I tested the hydrodynamical resistance of the coefficient of-" Melvin began, but the king cut him off
"You have no idea how you summoned this, do you?"
"Not even a slight one, my liege" He seemed very proud of the fact.
"How have I not noticed this before?" Asked Hazelnut.
"My liege, I've been leading a huge workforce to flatten a very long patch of land to create a port for this device. I have flown it three times over the past week alone, and its shrieks are loud enough for the devil himself to bang his broomstick on the roof of hell yelling "SOME OF US HAVE WORK IN THE MORNING". I would not presume to give offense but you are not a very attentive king, your grace." Melvin smiled. Hazelnut wanted to punch him.
"And how have you learned to fly it?" He asked, dumbfounded.
"It came with an instruction manual!" Said Melvin with a note of derision, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.
"Does anyone else know about this?" Asked the king.
"Surprisingly not, your grace. The middle ages are a very fun time to have a secret; people thought the shrieks were coming from hungry dragons and no one seems to look twice at the bird. I believe it is invisible to everyone else unless I point it out to them. Hey, don't look at me, that's the crappy story the writer came up with to justify this"
"What writer?"
"Never mind your grace, would you like to ride the bird?"

And so, the king boarded the plane with Melvin, and they took off to parts unknown. The Queen mourned her lost king for years and years, not knowing that he was living far away in the arms of five other hoes, partying all day and night with Melvin and being the old-timey equivalent of a rockstar. True Story.

The Queen blamed herself. He had disappeared the minute she asked him to see Melvin's invention, and she couldn't believe she was the reason he died. The fact that her name was Queen Latifah was no longer funny. Anyway, if she knew where he was, it would make no sense for her to mourn, right? He was alive and well, so what's the point?

Now think of the plane as a metaphor for death, and reread the story because it's funny as hell.

____________________________________________________________________________
Why do we hate death?
Fear of the unknown.

Think about it. If there was a way for you to contact your deceased loved ones, you wouldn't fear death. And why would you? About 3 centuries ago, travelling overseas was equal to a death sentence. You couldn't contact your loved ones, and the distance was so great that families said their goodbyes to their travelling relatives, fully expecting never to be reunited again. Does that mean that those relatives died the minute they boarded the ships? As far as their families were concerned they did, because they would never see them again... and yet they still lived in some remote corner of the planet. Far and unreachable... but alive. I, for one, want to board the ship. It can't be worse than reality. I believe that the dead live on in a place unknown to us, much like the Americas were unknown to the Europeans in the 13th century... We just don't know how to reach them. Yet.

As JK Rowling once said (through Albus Dumbledore's lips): "For the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."

Modern human beings pride themselves on their rationality. We think, evaluate, and make "logical" decisions and judgments. Yet for all our intelligence, we have an irrational fear of the unknown. Death is final. Death is real. Death is a part of life. We don't seem to want to understand that... ignoring a hard truth is easy. We want to believe that we are invincible, untouchable, unyielding... But the fact of the matter is we have a very constricting limit called "death". In fact, it is a testament to sheer human willpower that we have managed to thrive for this long without imploding (well, I wouldn't say "thrive", Egypt is imploding already. But you get the gist). We survive. We build. Our species stares death in the eye every day, roaring its defiance, determined to survive... and this is why death has gone from being our limit to being the ultimate source of our strength. But even though we have left our mark on death, it will win every time. No one beats death, least of all humans, with our insignificant life spans.

We are fragile. We are weak. We are hollow.
We are human.
Embrace it.

Need For Speed: Da2ery

A very narrow opening between the car in front of him and the car to his right... He floored the accelerator, taking a sharp swerve to the right at the last second, barely slipping between them and zooming off.

Ever careless, heedless of his own safety, he never really considered the danger his reckless driving posed to himself and others. He was aware of it, of course, but it always seemed unlikely for something bad to happen to him. Much like we all choose to ignore inconvenient truths and convince ourselves that it would never happen to us, he never really gave it any serious thought. He didn't do it to look cool. He didn't do it to endanger others. No one understood.

He turned up the volume on his iPod.

People underestimate the mood-lifting effects of driving like an idiot. Sure, it's dangerous and you could kill pedestrians and you could crash your car and blah blah BLAH BLAH BLAH but oh GOD the feeling is unrivaled. Going as fast as your car would go without crashing into other cars or breaking the sound barrier is more invigorating than any drug or pill. You reach this moment of clarity where you understand that your life is in your hands... Literally. To live or to die depends on your skills, your judgement and how well you know your car.

He lifted his foot off the accelerator and banked hard to the left, using the car's momentum and centripetal acceleration to carry him past the car in front of him, and then slammed the gas pedal as hard as it would go as soon as he passed it.

Our parents are liars. They made us think we have a choice. The illusion of choice is more cruel than having a predetermined role in life, because as soon as you realize it, your life is never the same. We fool ourselves into believing that we control our destiny, but do we? We are metaphorically given a choice to either swim across the ocean, board a ship, or fly... But no one ever asks us if we want to cross that ocean in the first place. It's always assumed, because it's "the cycle of life". We are born, we go to school, we study hard to go to a good college, we study hard in college to work for a good company and buy a car and a house with a white picket fence. Then we get married, have children, have them go to school to repeat the same cycle, while we slowly age until our lives are over, leaving nothing more than a skid-mark on the highway that is life... if we're lucky.

A radar camera was coming up to his left... He was going too fast. He glanced in his rear view mirror, and there was a car behind him so he couldn't brake as hard as he wanted. He made a sharp turn to the right and slammed on the brakes, barely steadying the steering wheel with both his hands. He barely made it to the speed limit as he screeched past the camera.

Nothing steadied his nerves as much as a dangerous gamble with death. It was up to him. He was in control. No one could tell him what to do. If he were to want to crash into a wall or a truck, he would do it and bear the consequences. The stakes were high, but it was his call. His car. His life. Once he made a decision, he had to live with it. At these speeds, you can't go back. You either speed up and take the opportunity, or you slow down to a speed where you can think. You are committed to your decision. There is no middle ground. To hesitate is to die.

A Nickelback song came on shuffle. It ruined his mood. He clicked "next" on his iPod, and replied to a text message on his phone.

But as much as he loved driving, he also hated it. He hated it because he hated not knowing if today would be the day he finally took it too far, giving a random stranger the chance to deliver the worst news in the world to his family as his car lay crumpled on the side of the road. He could not be trusted with a car, especially when he was in emotional turmoil. It always made him at least thrice as reckless.

He'd always thought driving was a lot like life. We're not all equals. Some people have better cars than others, and hence they have a head-start. Literally. Also, you can let obstacles such as road bumps or traffic rules hold you back... or you can achieve your full potential. In some ways, he found driving to be a better, riskier version of life... Your every decision counts. During those few, adrenaline-charged seconds when you notice a window of opportunity up ahead and you decide to take it, you make your own reality. Rational thinking, logic, emotion... they all take the back seat and instincts take over. You're a fighter pilot, maneuvering your way out of a missile lock... or a hawk, taking a deep dive to snatch a fish from under the waves.

Say what you will, but he felt more alive doing five minutes of that than he did "living" for a few weeks.

Of course, human instincts are not always accurate.

He started gathering speed to overtake a car. As always, his car made that angry rumbling noise as the RPM cranked up and the motor tried to deal with the extra fuel input. He was just about to take a left when he noticed a car behind him on the left, right in his rear view mirror's blind spot. But he was going too fast now, he couldn't brake in time to avoid slamming into the car in front of him. He could either go left or go right. He was getting closer. He had to make an immediate decision. To hesitate is to die. He knew there was a car to his left, and there was no time to look in the side view mirror... so he banked right at 80 MPH, hoping for the best.

There was a car to his right.

__________________________________________________________________________
In the memory of Maged El-Gaweesh.

PS: This post in no way promotes reckless driving. It is purely a work of fiction, meant to portray the speed junkie's point of view. Please drive responsibly... the protagonist dies.

Mirage

There is something oddly comforting about seeing the sea, stretching out before you in all directions, cutting you out from the rest of the world. Floating on a boat made of rotting tree bark and uncertainty, held together with weeds and prayers, you truly begin to grasp the insignificance of life and the futility of our made-up struggles. You see no chance of salvation, no way you can get out of this alive.... but somehow knowing this makes it seem easier to accept.

You are lost at sea.

They never discuss this part in the movies. The traditional lost-at-sea movies usually portray hunger and thirst as your biggest enemy, but it's really your mind that you've got to watch out for. It's easy to forget how destructive one's own thoughts can be when there are no distractions around. Our modern life style has made us so used to having distractions that the prison we've come to fear the most is the prison within. Forget food or water; the physical pain is nothing compared to the havoc your own brain is probably wreaking at this point.

For one thing, you're imprisoned in a wide, open space. You can escape, for there are no bars or chains or gaolers... but where to? The sadistic irony of being able to escape but having nowhere to go is somehow even worse than being tortured in a dungeon. Before long, the calming aspect of the blue waters and the fresh, salty air is lost... to be replaced by an influx of irrational fear where you start thinking of all the possible ways you can still get out of this, much like a mouse would in a mouse trap. But it's OK, you're still calm... you take a deep breath, and start to think of anything else to take your mind off your slow-coming doom.

Well-played, brain.

Guess what? Remember all those repressed feelings and emotions you had locked up? With no one to talk to, they came waltzing back, laughing manically while metaphorically screaming obscenities about your mother. Remember that time your dad told you that he wasn't proud of you? HAHAHA HOW FUNNY WAS THAT? Or the time when your mom asked you for help and you let her down and had to deal with that look of sad disappointment in her eyes? Or that time the girl you thought you loved cheated on you? Ooooooooooh I'd hate to have been in your shoes. Every single repressed memory comes rushing back in HD quality, and you've got nowhere to run... No TV shows to immerse yourself in, no friends to complain to. Nothing.

Trapped inside, you struggle to find anything to busy yourself with, but there's nothing you can do apart from taking a swim around your boat. Your food is almost out, and you've drunk your last gulp of stale water hours ago. You're starting to panic now. You're nowhere near any signs of human civilization, and you haven't seen any boats or airplanes anywhere. You'd read somewhere that seagulls are a sign of land, but all you've seen so far is a flock of migratory birds, flying purposefully overhead in a direction unknown to you. You'd long since given up on trying to use the stars to guide you, because you were not born in the tenth century and therefore don't have the necessary skills to do that. You chuckle at your own wit for a second, and then remember again that you're slowly dying so you start panicking again.

But what's that you see? Is that a tree-top in the distance? That couldn't be an island, could it? Suddenly you get an influx of inexplicable energy, and a renewed sense of purpose. Maybe there's still a chance. Maybe you can still live! The lazy pace at which the boat is drifting is not enough anymore. You lean forward and you paddle with your hands left and right, conserving energy be damned. The harder you paddle, the further the tree seems to get... It's like the least fun game of tag in the world. You stop paddling, and the island seems to stop moving. You start feeling that you're the butt of a cosmic joke, where an all-powerful being of insurmountable power is playing cat and mouse with you. Somehow you're not laughing.

It dawns on you... It's a mirage. It's your Goddamned brain at work again. Your worst enemy.

You lean back and you collapse, exhausted and sweaty... and you can't afford to sweat. The minute you get dehydrated and start drinking seawater, it's over. The sea is as vast as ever, and the land was a lie. You stop panicking, for you've accepted your fate. Seawater is starting to seem like a good idea...

Maybe if you hadn't used up all your energy chasing a shadow, you'd have survived long enough for the passenger ship that would pass in a few hours to save you. What? You don't like the irony of it? Bleak irony's kind of my thing now.

Sometimes when you're lost in a sea of your own thoughts, unable to see land, your mind feels obliged to give you what you seek. But it's not helping you. Sometimes the lesser of two evils is a slow, painful realization rather than temporary relief at the prospect of salvation, followed by a 10,000 foot drop to reality.

Your mind is not always your friend.