"Good morning son, what did I tell you about sending your feed to the editing software in real-time? Only problems, only problems my son." And so it was. Our hero stood up and cracked his meaty knuckles, leaned forward a little bit and reached for his toes, coming just fourteen inches short as his back cracked. Smoothly, seamlessly, like an American submarine in the Gulf, he torqued left and right, cracking some other stuff. He reached for the ceiling, formed mighty fists and more stuff cracked. He stretched his arms out to the side and briefly rotated them as he began a yawn large enough to end the day here at 4:30 a.m. But his day was only getting started, our hero had awoken, and his son returned to his room.
With a sponge the size of a small stubby brick, he alternated scrubbing. What was more valuable, the carefully-cultivated patina on the all-copper shower walls, or his tropical skin that had endured the pressures of a society that had grown complacent about having him in it? Probably the walls. You could fit an 18" pizza within the shower head's perimeter, and our hero'd have it bigger! On one wall a mirror, on the ceiling - a map of his homeland (interrupted by the shower head's pipe). He swished some hydrogen peroxide in his mouth, and allowed a little to trickle halfway down his esophagus - when, like an economy toilet in reverse...
At our hero's deli, which he owned in another life, he was putting new tape in the register when a little kid placed a Gatorade on the counter between the thick glass covered in lotto tickets and the beef jerky or whatever. The little guy then reached into his pockets, cupped his hands and began lifting his arms up over his head. His hands descended on the counter and he slowly let one hundred and seventy-five pennies cascade onto the immaculately clean surface (underneath which a black Sharpie had scribbled "100" beside "Million Dollars"). As the copper-plated coins fell on top of each other, our hero had a vision of the little guy's future.
Like the beginning of a trailer for a bad movie, the little guy’s silhouette (he was 18) contrasted with the setting sun and heat lines waved tensely in orange and red all around him. A slick black assault rifle bumped up and down against his back. He turned around and mouthed something in a foreign, barbaric tongue. The little guy was great at rolling laterally, springing to his feet, and firing like a stud. He entered a hut and shot someone in the thigh, saying “you won’t be so cheap next time!” (rough translation). The little guy had been on his own since he was eleven, climbing mountains, killing wild animals, enamoring little village girls, stealing from dusty markets, etc. He went into another hut and shot someone in the arm. Their elbow exploded, he said, “you won’t ever know me!” (same). When the little guy wasn’t off shooting people, he would bring girls to the top of a mountain that overlooked the Atlantic Ocean. “Woman, one day I’m going to get out of here altogether” (same). He had a vision of himself with two prosthetic falcon-feather-wings that he had been working on for a while. The little guy ran and jumped off the mountaintop. He glided eternally.
It actually took a while for him to get the hang of it, he took some pretty drastic plunges. Luckily, the mountaintop was about 10,000 feet above sea level – a fortunate buffer. The trick was to let air under the wings so as to glide – no need to keep flapping. See but it actually was eternal, he didn’t get tired, the wings didn’t erode, he didn’t get bored. He’s still up there because he earned it and because there’s always something to see.
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