Twelve Parsecs to Midnight

Long ago, sometime in the distant future, there lived a shopkeeper named Lin. Lin was a small, wirey man, with small wirey spectacles. He kept a tidy general store on the beach of a large island called Qin. Lin lived in a room above his shop with his beautiful wife, Gwin.

Lin’s shop did very well, and he provided Gwin with every thing her heart desired. Lin was a happy man. He loved his wife and working in his shop. His favorite hobby outside of the store was wandering up and down the beach, searching for trinkets washed ashore.  One day whilst on one of these expeditions, Lin spied something perched upon a large rock jutting out of the water. His curiosity piqued, he waded out into the shallows to get a closer look.

Upon the rock, a dark gray Fedora was perched. In the band of the hat lay a small rolled up note. Lin plucked the note from the hatband and read the following:

To the finder of this hat,

The hat sitting before you, or perhaps already atop your head, is magical. It will grant you wealth beyond imagination. The longer you wear the hat, the more wealth and prestige will be layed at your feet. But this comes at a terrible price. For every hour you wear this hat, the things you love the most will suffer. Woe be unto the greedy man, the perils of wearing the hat grow with each passing hour. If you wear this hat for longer than 3 hours, the thing you love the most will surely be lost forever.

                                Sincerely Yours,

P

Lin, read this note once more, then a third time just to be sure. Lin, a skeptical man by nature, doubted the authenticity of this magic; however, he weighed his risks. “If this really is a magical hat, then if I wear it for a single hour, I will be richer than I ever imagined.”, he thought. “Besides, what’s the worst that will happen in a single hour? A papercut for my Gwin?”, he said, making up his mind. With that, he plopped the hat on his head and headed back to his shop and home.

His shop was in sight within half an hour of walking, and he was more than a bit dissapointed that riches had not rained from the sky. Just as he reached the door of his shop he heard his wife scream and he was knocked onto his back by the door as it burst open. A burly pirate ran out and promptly tripped over Lin’s now prone body. The next person that issued forth from the door stopped short of tripping into the pile of bodies that was Lin and the seafaring plunderer sorely in need of a bath. The man look down at the dazed Lin, and the now quite dead pirate, who upon tripping promptly broke his neck.

The man was none other than the Lord of the Province, who fancied himself a protector of sorts. Thanks to a quick pull up and a brief explanation from the Lord, Lin learned that the Lord had tracked the pirate into Lin’s shop where he was about to have off with Lin’s goods, but not before having his way with Gwin. The Lord chased him out the door before things got too out of hand, but Gwin came out of it with a black eye and a blacker mood.

For being in the right place at the right time, the Lord awarded Lin with more wealth than one man would ever need in a lifetime. Lin could live out the rest of his days in peace and comfort with Gwin. In a perfect world, I would tell you that Lin took off the hat, having seen both the positive and negative consequences of its power. But he did not.

“One black eye isn’t so bad a cost for so great a reward”, Lin muttered quietly to himself. He had forgone telling his wife the true nature of his new hat, and Gwin didn’t ask too many questions, as she found him quite dashing in the hat. The wirey little shopkeep now had wealth, but he was still not content, for he had no power. He couldn’t change the world! He wanted to tidy the world as he tidied his shop. So, for another hour, he left the hat on.

Gwin and Lin strolled down to the water’s edge and had a picnic to celebrate their newfound wealth. Three quarters through the second hour, as they gazed back towards their shop on the rest of the town, archs of fire came leaping from the sky. Lin and Gwin watched as flaming arrows tore through their shop, englufing the home in flames. The two wept at the loss, Lin a bit less, knowing that it was a sign of good things to come.

Soon, a horseman galloped down the village path, rearing up and stopping in front of the still blazing Shop where Lin could only stand and watch his worldly possessions burn. The horseman brought news from the Lord’s Castle. Everyone inside of the castle, including the Lord and his children had been murdered by enemy assassins. The same enemy that had burned half the Province to the ground. As the most successful man in town besides the Lord himself, Lin was asked by the Province council to take up Lordship. Lin smiled. The hat had worked yet again. He had wealth and power.

But now an enemy was at the gates of his land. Half of it already burned to the ground, he either must conceed victory to the attackers from a neighboring Province, or muster up an army to fend off the invaders. He would not give up his new lordship so easily, but there was no army available in his small Province, as it was a land of merchants and farmers.

Lin looked at his wife Gwin, knowing that if he wore the hat another hour he’d be sentencing her to doom. But his power had become too important to him. Besides, he could buy 10 wives with his power and wealth. So Lin, all goodness gone from his heart, let the hat remain upon his head.

A half hour into he third hour, a garrison of horsemen from an allied province to the west arrived after noticing the smoke on a routine patrol along the borders of their land. They reported to Lin and had come to help push back the enemy. Lin scowled because nothing bad had happened to Gwin yet. He dismissed it, assuming she’d soon be killed in battle.

As the garrison rode off to vanquish the enemy, who was far outclassed by the trained warriors, Lin plotted the expansion of his kingdom. He laughed, or he would have if it hadn’t come out as a gurgle. He looked down as blood poured from his neck, and fell into oblivion. An enemy assassin had sought out the new Lord in short order, and made short work of him. The hat fell to the ground and landed in Lin’s pooling blood. It was burned along with his body on a funeral pyre, no one else ever knowing its dark secret.

Lady Gwin was a fair and just ruler who oversaw the greatest and most peaceful expansion of the Province in centuries.

L

As part of my struggle against apathy, I will be attempting to have a short story prepared for publication each Friday. Terrible or tremendous, I will reveal the heart of my creative spark for all to see.

Edgar was perched in his usual spot. He sat high above the sprawling mass of human ingenuity and overpopulation that was Manhattan. He swung his legs back and forth against the edge of the apartment building he called home, a nervous habit he found inescapible even while dangling, unsecured, several hundred feet from certain death. As he stabbed at his can of Ravioli with a fork, the thought did not escape him that he would look very similar to his conveniently packaged lunch should he fall.

Fate, ever pleased with herself, probably found the events she set into motion next quite clever. Edgar felt a bump against his back and a quick rush of wind as he plummeted towards the awaiting sidewalk. As his thoughts of looking like canned ravioli seemed to become a certain reality in a matter of seconds, he had just enough time to think of how most people would call this ironic. Of course, Edgar knew better. This wasn’t ironic at all. It was coincidenta-…

His last thought was cut short as he was caught up in a whirlwind relationship with the sidewalk below. There were bits of raviloi scattered amongst the bits of Edgar, and all of the bits together made the doorman of the building, who just witnessed the laws of gravity being strictly enforced, add more of his own bits to the mess spread out before him.

Fate, peeking over the side of the building giggled over what she had wrought below. This, of course, would not do, thought Chaos, as he approached the edge of the building, walking up to peer over Fate’s shoulder. “Listen F. I appreciate your enthuisiasm, but this is not your job. This is my territory. You see, my name is Chaos. I create Chaos. What you have created below, is Chaos. Don’t you have something more…Fatey to do?” Fate glared up at Chaos, “Isn’t it the fate of all men to die? I am Fate. Edgar died. Just doing my job.”

At this, Chaos tapped his chin and scowled, “Yes, F. That is true. But I’ve reviewed the records set forth by your Superior. Edgar was not fated to become hamburger helper on the sidewalks of Manhattan. He was supposed to die 30 years from now rather unspectacularly from an anuerism.” Fate shrugged, “Edgar’s life made no difference to the world. He simply was. He exsisted as an anomally of creation. His living or dying had no effect on the future of this world. I grow weary of the exsistance of these pointless wastes of flesh. It is a mockery of life.”

Chaos grinned, “But F, that’s not your decision. You have taken a man’s life before his time, violated the sanctity of your exsistance, and tread upon my territory. Every action has an effect somewhere.” Just then, Edgar, much to his own and Fate’s surprise, appeared next to the two battling principalities.

“Fate, I’d like you to meet your replacement.”, bellowed Chaos. Nonchalantly, he plucked a gun from thin air, and shot Fate between the eyes. Her lifeless corpse fell to the ground and vanished. No sparkly lights of puff of smoke accompanied this. She was simply no more.

Chaos looked down at Edgar, his face a held the hint of a smile, and his eyes a dash of pity. “Edgar, your fate was stolen from you. He spoke to Edgar in a calm, even tone as he turned and walked away,”You are now an agent of Fate. Use your powers wisely, and never violate the sanctity of your mission. Your Supervisor will be in touch.” With that, Chaos vanished, and Edgar was left wondering about a lot of things. But mainly, where his Ravioli had gone off to.

I believe that my generation is one of greatness. We did not stand on the shores of a foreign land and give our lives to overthrow a genocidal dictator. We did not fight to put an end to segregation, hosed down and beaten in the streets. We were given these things. They are the products of the hard work of our parents and grandparents. We came into this world a generation blessed with plenty. Opportunity was handed to us.

Some call us lazy. We, this generation of geeks, born in the 80’s, clutching atari and nintendo controllers in our sweaty palms. We were never challenged. We saved the world, one continue at a time. Our greatest challenge became eating Cherry Garcia and grinding undead to 60 at the same time.

But out of the misery of the past, we were blessed with a spark of creativity. A brightness in our eyes, and deep down, a desire that told us we could only change the world if we could just get one peek behind that veil of potential that lingers over us like a ghost. It haunts us, demands us to do more, to become more.

The greatest enemy of my generation is apathy. We possess the inate desire to be something greater than ourselves, to leave a mark, to put our stamp on the world and say, “Here I am. I changed the rules. I made this. I accomplished this.” But instead, we linger. We work our dead end call center jobs, and play our treadmill MMO’s, and buy the latest iJunk to fill in that gap. We try to silence that still, small voice that screams inside of us to do more.

There lies only two choices to deal with this screaming. Ignore it for the rest of your life, until it burns out, like a candle sputtering its last, or take charge. Stand up and fight as if you were being murdered. Apathy is a subtle knife. It kills just as much as cigarettes and cholesterol. But those things can only take your life. Apathy eats at your soul.

In man, there exsists an undeniable need to create. To forge his own path. By resisting this urge, the essence of who you are, and who you could become, rots away slowly. You can’t change the world all at once. But take that first step. If you write, write. If it’s one page a day, write. If you draw, do that. Whatever you do, whatever that tiny voice in your head is screaming at you to do, listen. You will never have the time to do it until you make the time to do it right now. Success or failure lies in your hands.

Without your action, there will never be another Star Wars or Spiderman, or Lord of the Rings. The forefathers of geekdom are getting old, or they’ve lost their way. The few of us that have stood up and defied the storm of apathy aren’t enough to hold back the flood. Take charge, and revolutionize the way our generation is seen.