Outspoken and On Fire

The universe has been around much longer than things like greed or hate or love or anything that could have come into play. And yet, these things have popped up in the last few millennia to take an irreversible effect on the universe. The universe has become one of war and territories fought for and won by those from neighboring galaxies that have no use for the planets, seeing as how their species could not survive on the surfaces. This, in a word, is progress. And it started with a world known as Earth. Soon to be known as Earth Incorporated. But this story is not of one that will go into the details of the oligarchy that runs the world. No, instead this story will revolve around a man. A simple man. A complex man with emotions and intelligence and a yearning to know what’s to come, but a simple man all together. His name is Sam Shafer.

Sam was an exceedingly intelligent young man. So much so that he passed with honors from the small university he attended in what was once known as Boston Massachusetts but has since become known as the heart of the Eastern territory. Sam, though he graduated with honors, never actually attended a class unless attendance was vital for his grade, and even then he seldom showed up. School was not something that interested him. In fact most things did not interest him. He understood much of how the world worked from an early age and thus never found and interest in learning what he had figured out for himself. But he stayed in school for the simple fact that he, like most of his friends, had absolutely no idea of what to do with his time and he figured that if he wasn’t doing anything of importance, he might as well do it at school where he could pretend to work on something. This served him in multiple ways. For instance when he would go home for the holiday, Employee break day, he would find himself surrounded by his wealthy parent’s wealthy friends as they asked him what direction he was headed with his life. Now this was something that always disturbed Sam, for he knew that if one were to pick a direction and stick with it for long enough he would travel the circumference of the world and end up back where he started. He figured it would be much more pertinent to one’s life if they were to go in random directions at random times and never see the same thing twice. However, he found that when he would state this simple philosophy of his it would be met with hostility from his parent’s friends as they would say things along the lines of “That’s a child’s way of looking at things”. This of course only confused Sam more, for he wondered who in their right mind would want to see the world in any way other than how a child sees it. But he found comfort in the notion that his parents’ friends were not in their right mind, that in fact they were so far into their wrong mind that they were lost in the jungle of turmoil and greed that they would never find their way back out. And so Sam retired his brilliance while at these parties and simply said that he was still looking for the right direction.

Curiously enough, the right direction was exactly the opposite way the train was heading when it came full speed to greet a man on the tracks that morning where Sam was waiting for the Nine-Thirty to the northern district of the Eastern Territory. The man the train had come into contact with was Jake Fenster, a classmate of Sam, though Sam had not known this until after his university would send out a letter explaining the students absence. That absence would last for over a year due to the record from the injuries sustained by the train tracks. Jake, had the unfortunate fortune the week before of walking home from a late study session to find his girlfriend bent over his desk and being plowed by his psychology professor, who’s test he was in fact studying for. Upon receiving his grade that morning, he found that he had gotten the “A” he worked so hard for. But upon learning that his now ex-girlfriend had received an “A” as well, he felt that his accomplishment was hollow and retired to the subway station in order to bypass any further accomplishments he may have obtained. He Made his way up to the tracks as people all stood around staring into their phones. No one had noticed him taking off his shirt, his pants, his underwear. No one noticed still when he walked up to the edge of the yellow caution line. And finally no one noticed poor Jake jump with his arms stretched out to what he had hoped to be his final day in the territory. The lesson Jake had learned upon jumping onto the tracks is that Hope, is a cruel monster that lures you into it’s cave only to have his brother reality pounce on you from behind. And Reality did just that when Jake landed directly onto the third rail.

“AGGGHHHH. OH GOD IN HEAVEN, LUCIFER BELOW, PLEASE SOMEONE MAKE IT STOP.”

Another lesson that Jake was learning at that moment is that God and the Devil have very busy schedules and to make up for the stress they had accumulated in the past few millennia, were on a vacation together on the tropical planets of a neighboring galaxy a few hundred billion lightyears away and had forgotten to take their phones.

“OH MY GOD, PLEASE. KILL ME. KILL ME!”

Jake’s shouting went on for a good five minutes while the electrical storm that was passing through his body raged on. The only reason people started to notice was not due to the increasingly troublesome screams, but from the smell of the now partially well done Jake. These people on the platform started to rusher once they had smelled burning flesh, And though Jake’s midsection was now melted to the rail, he was thankful that something had gathered these people’s attention. However that thankfulness was gone almost instantly the moment he saw these people taking out their phones and videotaping him to post on their “LifeWire” accounts. At this moment, all that passed through poor Jake’s head was “Oh God”. Which was precisely what was going through Sam’s head at the exact same moment. Though Sam was thinking “Oh God” for an entirely different reason altogether. For Sam was watching the other people on the platform gather around this poor man burning away on the tracks and filming it for no reason other than to show their friends what they had witnessed in their lives. In order to block out the increasingly boring situation Sam had put in his headphones and started listening to “Bankrupt On Selling” by Modest Mouse. This was one of Sam’s favorite songs due to the lack of subtly in the message. Sam had observed that as music had progressed it had gone from blatant messages of love, to subtle messages of the times, to blatant messages of the times, and had progressed into blatant yelling of no messages at all. In fact, Sam had noticed that as the music had progressed so to had the way people went about their lives. Whereas before, men and women would live their lives and keep their secrets, then the next generation had lived their lives and exposed their secrets, and finally the world had entered the next step where the people had watched their lives through phones and yelled whatever was in their head. Sam had noticed that if walked down Avery Street at certain times of the day, he would here loud screams of “NIKE. NIKE. ADIDAS.!” And if he had walked into the Northern District at the same times he would hear “ARMANI SUIT, BROOKS BROTHERS TIE.” It was the idea that being outspoken was something everyone should be at every moment of everyday and now we are left with artists and musicians in a constant struggle of trying to figure out what to do. It’s become so detrimental to their mental stability that schizophrenics have been kicked out onto the streets from mental hospitals because of over population of artists. And the ones that have refrained from taking the short bus to the nut house have been left on the street with the schizophrenics yelling on the top of their lungs their subtle messages. It hasn’t seemed to work for any of them yet, but they’ll keep trying until they lose their voice or they strike it big.

By the time Sam’s song had ended, paramedics had raced down onto the tracks and were scraping up the remains of Jake. They had put the blackened body onto a stretcher and were surprised to find that somehow he was still alive. The men and women on the platform still had their phones out, tracing the man with the phones’ sightline. And finally the Nine-thrity to the Northern district had arrived and Sam had stepped on.