Beep beep beep

I couldn't stand to look into those eyes anymore. Mine were filled with tears as my heart crumbled apart. She looked back at me with understanding... and a smile. It crushed me. My heart had never hurt so much. I didn't know if it was a blessing or a curse that I was here in this moment. She was dying... Fading from life. I wasn't sure how long I had been there. The only way to tell the time was to count the chimes from the machine. I couldn't look anywhere else. "Beep. Beep. Beep." Then, even before it happened, I could hear the long steady beep.

They rushed me out and I cried. There was a waiting room, filled with only me. And I cried. Doctors kept trying to talk to me, but I could only gasp to fill my lungs after sobbing so much. They gave up and just watched from afar.

After a few hours, I began to return to my senses. But not exactly. It was like everything was dull. There was a vague sense that something was missing. Like I was colorblind, but in a place that had no colors to begin with. Realizing that she was gone brought on another outpouring of tears. They ran down my face unabated, but I was otherwise composed. It was a weird feeling. Like I could carry on a conversation, but I would have tears just streaming down my cheeks. I wiped my eyes again and again, until finally I had finished. Realizing that I was still in this place drove to insanity. I rushed out of the hospital as fast as I could. When I was in the parking lot, I finally started breathing again and started just walking aimlessly.

I tried to check the time, but my phone was dead. I looked up and noticed for the first time that it was night time. What would I do tomorrow? What would I do tonight? I just realized that I didn't even really know where I was. Did I drive here? Was anyone else even there?

Just doctors. And the machine. I don't think I'll ever be able to handle hearing that sound again.

How to Measure

"Well this is the last place I expected to find you." Jamie stood at the top of the hill looking down at her colleague. The observatory loomed over them, the only shadow on the horizon. Everything else that was visible was made so by the stars.

Alice smirked. She was sitting on a grass-covered outcropping. Below her was a 50 foot fall into the ocean. "How could you ever find me if you don't expect to find me where you are?"

"I think you know what I meant."

"But think about it, if you were anywhere but where I was, how could you expect to find me there?"

"It's more about considering where you would be given your normal patterns." Jamie stepped down to stand next to where Alice was sitting. "You're not exactly the type to bask in the scenery. I think this might be the first time I've ever even seen you outside of a lab."

"I know what you mean," Alice said distantly. "I feel like I've run out of ways to research." She paused to point at a star, "We can calculate the mass of that star there. We know about how much it weighs, what it's made out of, and how much of it is being shot out across the universe and in what form those particles are in. But still, it feels like we're lacking something."

Jamie sighed. "I thought that's what all that research was for. To figure out what we needed to do to figure the rest out."

"All the theoretical physics that we know about means nothing if we can't see it in action. I need to know just what it is that we're missing."

"Do you think you're going to find it by staring into the night sky?"

"How can I expect to find it if I'm not where it is?"

------

Dr. Kraig Moleff stood in the center of a lecture hall addressing a room full of other researchers. "There's a great divide between popular belief and science. Right now, we're all looking into the chemicals and genes and biology that drives us as humans, yet still a greater portion of the world believes in a separate sentience that controls our actions irrespective of the brain. It is something we cannot measure, and just is. But, everything can be measured, we just need to find the right methods. Right now, our primary test subject should be waking up. I've spent years designing our new sensor. It does not respond to chemicals. It does not respond to muscle retractions. It does not respond to neuro-electricity. However, when connected across the heart cavity, it gets readings when a subject experiences certain emotions. With this test, we intend to determine if there is a separate origin point for emotional response."

The room erupted into a cacophony of questions and comments, mostly people completely bewildered at the very concept. A projector screen flickered on, and the room fell silent. "If you'll watch with me, we need to see how our subject responds to fear."

------

Barry woke up in his hospital bed. The anesthesia from the surgery was wearing off slowly. He coughed lightly and felt a tightness in his chest. He rubbed it lightly, not enjoying the soreness. A nurse came in before he even completed the thought. "Good afternoon. You've been asleep for a while. Just under two days. How are you feeling?"

"Fine. I guess. Was I supposed to be a sleep for that long?" He could feel his heartbeat pick up. It sounded abnormal, and the medical field was all about keeping things as close to normal as possible.

"Yep. For your surgery it was very important that you didn't feel anything. The anesthesiologist probably gave you a little extra to be sure. You'll be discharged later today if you're feeling all right." The last part almost sounded like a question, but was just firm enough to sound certain. Almost like the "if" wasn't necessary.

"Yeah, that sounds good. Is my girlfriend here to pick me up?"

The nurse was fiddling with various things in the room, and started writing on the charts. "Yep. She's in the waiting room right now. Do you want me to bring her in?"

"Yes. Please." Barry looked around the room. Too much like a hospital room. A clear plastic bag of his things laid on the chair. A little cart with a tray. A box of gloves hanging from the wall. It was all too sterile for him. Without the clutter of his home he felt out of place.

The nurse left and in less than two minutes, Emily walked in a hesitant smile on her face. "How are you feeling?" she asked meekly.

"I'm great. A little sore, but good."

She sighed a great sigh of relief and stepped up next to the bed. They wheeled him away on a bed two days ago and she hadn't seen him since. The updates she kept getting were short and unfulfilling. The second the nurse left the room, she went back to worrying. The fact that something could happen at any second was with her the entire time, until now.

------

"You do realize that the information we are gathering is based on information from millions of years ago right?" Alice said as she stood up.

Jamie nodded, but in the dark it was a meaningless gesture. "Of course."

"I don't think we'll ever have accurate measurements until we can get close. Even the sun is too far for use to measure properly. The particles that make up the atoms of our body are too far to measure properly. We can measure ourselves, and the things around us, but most things are too far for us to measure." She holds her hand up to the sky. "With my one hand I can block out hundreds of stars, each hundreds of miles wide. It clouds our judgement."

After a long slow breath she said, "You're really serious about this aren't you. But if you think about it, there's even more that we can't measure that's right in front of us, all around us all the time."

Alice looked up to Jamie, entranced by the thought. Was there more to be measured that her co-worker had thought of that she hadn't? "Tell me."

"Measure you curiosity."

------

"Here, there's a spike. For a moment in time, our subject experienced a moment of fear. Or some emotion, maybe hope or something. Our subject was kept alone for 40 hours and just a second after contact with a nurse, there was a spike. It's hardly noticeable on the chart, but it's there. We have people watching and computers watching this chart 24 hours a day. Even the slightest waver will be noted and documented. If we can measure emotion, and the intensity of it, we can determine if there is something other than chemicals and biology at work. We can determine once and for all what we as humans are. And we can measure it."

------

The ride home that night was quiet. Barry was dozing off in the car, and Emily didn't want to disturb him. They were one week away from their one year anniversary. It was on Emily's mind, but Barry had his surgery to focus on. She wasn't sure if he had thought about it as much as she did. Then again, she was certain he never put as much thought into things as she did. Why would this be any different? If only she could tell how much he thought about things and how much those things meant to him, it wouldn't be on her mind all the time. It took most of her teens in therapy to help her cope with the fact that she can't know what people were thinking, and that no one could. For some reason though, she always felt people had a better understanding of those things than she did. Like there was some unwritten way to tell when someone was thinking about someone else. Maybe there was an intensity of feeling that made what you were thinking about transparent. She had never once noticed how someone was feeling on someone's face, but almost everyone she knew had said it to her at least once.

Barry shifted in his seat and Emily's train of thought shifted. "I'm glad you're okay," she said quietly.

"Me too," he mumbled, still half-asleep.

The Raft

"It's still raining." Her soft voice barely made an impact over the constant sound of rain on the roof overhead.

"Of course it's still raining."

"But it has to stop raining some day right?" She was still hopeful. She pulled back the string on the blinds to look outside. It was consistently dark, it made the water look black. A permanent stream of water replaced the roads, and everything that wasn't at least two stories tall disappeared from view. Soon, everyone would need to move up to the third stories to be safe from the flooding.

"It doesn't have to." He hardly even moved. He just watched whatever movies he could find all day long.

"We should make a boat."

"That's stupid."

"If we make a boat, we could find where it's not raining. Come on let's go."

"If there's a place where it's not raining, then it's probably already crowded with people who had the same idea."

She grumbled and paced around the room some more. "I think I'm gonna go outside for a bit."

"Don't go too far."

She slid into a poncho and climbed the stairs to the roof of the house. The sound of the rain blocked out any other noise. It pounded against the roof, splashed into the streams, rattled the windows. The clouds above were so thick if she didn't have a watch she wouldn't know the sun was supposed to be out. The water looked like a flow of oil or ink pouring down the hill. Nobody else was out. Not that she could really see very far in the darkness, but she knew from the silence, from the stillness that no one remotely near her ever came outside. She was either the only one, or the last one.

She stepped back inside and hung the poncho up to dry. "I think we should make a boat, and see where the river takes us."

For the first time in weeks, he looked up at her. "Are you crazy? We could die!"

"What's the difference if we're not even living? We can survive forever, we've proven that. But are we living? What are we doing here?"

He stayed quiet.

"We need to leave, and if you aren't coming with me, I'll go alone."

"We can't leave... This is the only place where we're safe."

"If we can't, then I will. I'll be on the roof, building my boat." She marched back upstairs. The last he ever heard from her was the door shutting, once again blocking out all the sounds of the rain.

The Future of Resident Resi

I don't really have much to write about tonight, but I was thinking of picking one of my previous storyline posts and continuing it. Unfortunately, I can't really pick which one I should do. So I might over the next week or two try posting little continuations of each of them to see which ones work out the best. If any of my followers have any suggestions, I'd be happy to accommodate them by continuing whichever ones show up on in the comments. ^^ So thanks for your support, and expect to see a lot more fiction writing and fewer musings in the future.

The Elephant in the Room

James was smoking on the balcony when Mike got home. Normally, when James went out to his "social events" he was out much later. Mike lit up a cigarette and stood next to him. "Hey, how was the party?"

James' eyes widened as he ran his hand through his hair. "On a scale of one to ten, about how crazy do you think I am?"

Mike laughed at first, but James was serious, so he decided to reply a little more carefully than he normally would. "Uh... I guess like a four or something. You're pretty down to Earth."

James took a deep drag and let out the smoke slowly. "If I said there was an elephant in the room, would you think I was crazy?"

Mike knew that James wasn't drunk. It almost looked like a drink would sober him up. "Do you mean like the expression?"

"No like a literal 10 ton elephant standing in the middle of the ball room that no one even acknowledged. Not metaphorically, not an expression, a giant elephant literally standing there."

Before Mike could even say anything, James continued, "No, not a stuffed elephant, not a picture or sculpture, a living breathing elephant."

This time, Mike took a long breath from his cigarette. "At this party you were at?" James nodded. "Did anyone else say anything about it?"

"Not a word."

"Did you ask anyone about it?"

"I couldn't. I was stunned speechless. There were a lot of people there I respected, my frickin' hero was at that party. I tried to get people to look in that direction, just to see if they were fuckin' with me, but not one reacted to it, even when facing it. Just before I was about to run over there and try to touch it, I left. I couldn't handle it anymore."

"The party's probably still going on, I could go with you."

"No way. If we went, and you didn't notice it, that four would be a 15. I'm happy where I am."

"If you say so." Mike flicked his cigarette off the balcony and walked inside.

Catalyst

The room was perfectly serene, just as he had left it. Slate gray walls, a cherry wood dresser, a four post bed dressed with deep blue bedding, with a young woman resting. Every day, he took great care not to disrupt a single detail while cleaning. Leaving a single imprint from the outside world could corrupt the complete isolation he had worked so hard to preserve. The girl was now 18. For 15 years he had been her caretaker, told never to let the outside world corrupt her. She was a young adult now, but it was still vital she never learn of the outside world. He had finished cleaning, and she started to stir. He smiled, waiting for her to come to.

"Good morning, Catalina."

The girl sat up letting the covers bunch around her. She yawned and rubbed her eyes and looked closely at the mysterious man, the stranger that was always there for her. Everything she ever needed was somehow provided by this man. "Why do you say good morning when you come in sometimes, and good afternoon or evening other times?"

He coughed. Catalina wasn't frequently curious these days. She hadn't been for quite some time. More intriguing was how neat the question was. She very rarely ever spoke. It was a surprise to hear just how good she had become at English by simply listening. "It's how I know what to bring and what to clean. Have you noticed that when I say morning, what I bring is different from when I say afternoon?"

She nodded, once again mimicking actions he typically used. It was clear she didn't intend to say anything.

"Very good. Now eat up."

She nodded again and began eating, watching as he exited the room. She had just finished her last grape when the door opened again. The new stranger came back again. She smiled, always excited to hear what this new man had to say.

"Good morning Catalina. Did I miss anything?"

She shook her head.

He chuckled. "I know, there's never anything to miss. Have you been keeping me a secret?"

She nodded excitedly. "Will you tell me more?"

"Of course, of course. It's why I'm here." He spends the next hour telling her yesterday's news. She was always intrigued by the concept of other people in the world. That they would fight and laugh and play. That they would do things so great for each other, but then do so many awful things. By the end of their hour together he asked, "Wouldn't it be fun if Taylor got that job she wanted, even if it meant that Amy wouldn't get it?"

"I always liked Taylor. I think she should get the job. But what about Amy?"

"Amy will just have to move out again I think."

"Yeah, you're probably right."

They waved goodbye and Catalina's mysterious friend was gone again.

Outside, he lifted a phone to his ear, "Hey Taylor. I think you're gonna get that job. And that girl you hate. She's gonna be out of there soon too."

Yes, it's a Valentine's Day post

Now I know of the like five or six followers of this blog I have, not one of them really cares about Valentine's Day. I figured at the very least I could spare a few minutes to talk about something that rakes in millions in sales every year. As adults, it has a lot of meanings. Raunchy sex, remembering to buy flowers, and raunchy sex. But think back to when you were a kid, and sex wasn't even a thing. Valentine's Day was kind of a purer thing. There were little paper slips that you passed around to all of your friends, and you hoped you could somehow give it to that one special person. Back when I was in school it became mandatory to give to all of your classmates, so it took away that difficulty. You just had to somehow make that one special Valentine card and hope that they realized that it was different from the rest. I mean, the alternative was to actually express your feelings in a direct manner, and we all know that's not gonna happen in third or fourth grade. That energy that builds from handing over the Valentine's card is probably the strongest memory of pure emotion that I have. Nothing was indecent or lewd about it. There was a girl on the other side of the room that made you smile. You placed a card in the little mailbox and that's all there was. No matter how unlikely the pairing, the heartfelt meaning behind that Valentine was pure. I'm 26 now, and thinking back to those days I can't help but feel mislead. I can see the whole of Valentine's Day now and I think, where did it all go? I don't want an entire night of insane sex. I want to see my favorite girl smile. I know I may be in the minority, but still, you can have insane sex any night you want. You can eat a fancy restaurant, any night you want. But Valentine's Day is one day a year, and you should be trying to make your girl smile everyday. It shouldn't be a reminder that you are a couple. It should be a reminder of when you were one person, and she was another, and the only thing that mattered was making each other smile.