HOME | DD

Description

Scene from my novel "The Outsider" - www.asstr.org/~caligula97030/o…

When she stepped outside, the chilly air hit her bare legs and a feeling of cold reality hit her soul. She began to feel resentful and morose as she walked past the engineering building and the computer center on the sidewalk that exited the main section of campus. She left the well-lighted sidewalk and plunged into the darkness to cross the playing field that separated the academic buildings from the dorms. The field was empty and silent. The silence was not peaceful to Ruthie; rather it had a sinister and desolate feeling for her. She knew that what she was doing was not safe; because a student had been raped on that same field just a month before, doing exactly what she was doing. She didn't care. If it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen, and my life sucks anyway. When she got to the middle of the field she stopped to stare up at the stars.

Her thoughts wandered as her mood deteriorated. She thought of writers such as C.S. Lewis who romanticized about the stars and created something out of them that was not based on reality. For C.S. Lewis the stars were living beings, something similar to angels. She then thought about astronomer Carl Sagan's speculation that it was the stars that first gave people the idea of supernatural beings, perhaps because ancient humans thought the stars were far-off campfires in the sky.

Her mind shifted to the other science fiction writers that she had read as a teenager, and all those fictitious trips to "other worlds", trips that in real life never would, and never could happen. Perhaps there is other life out there, but if there is, so what? It's not like we're ever gonna get out there; everything's too far away. She thought about all the work-arounds that writers had come up with to cover those vast distances: warp drive, worm-holes, irregularities in space, time travel, but it was all fantasy, just like supernatural beings, alternate worlds, and the afterlife. The cold hard reality was E=mc2 and there never would be anything anyone could do about that. We're stuck here on this planet. We'll never go to any of those other neat worlds, and the best we could ever do might be to get a few astronauts on Mars. That's it. Science fiction and the whole idea of inter-stellar travel was BS, just like angels, ghosts, demons, pixies, whatever. It's all crap. All of it. It doesn't matter. In a few years we'll run out of resources and all starve to death and go extinct. We'll be gone just like the passenger pigeon, and then something else, rats, probably, will take over the planet.

Not that any of that matters, thought Ruthie to herself. The planet eventually will perish, burned up by the sun in a few billion years. Or maybe earlier, because if plate tectonics were to quit, the planet will become frozen and dead, like Mars. She had read an article that plate tectonics already was slowing down. If that speculation was true, the natural processes that maintain the atmosphere were coming to an end and eventually all water and air would freeze and evaporate away. We don't have to wait five billion years, the end of all life is coming a lot sooner.

Ruthie reflected on the futility of her life, the uselessness of her own existence. In a planet that sooner or later was destined for oblivion, and being a particularly unhappy member of a species that was doomed to extinction much sooner than the planet, what was the point? Why bother to study? Why bother to open the coffee shop? Why bother to continue living? Everyone hates me, even that Parking Nazi, even he'll see me for what I am and ditch me. There's no hope, no hope for anything or anyone. It's stupid to stay alive, for what? So I can spend the next 60 years taking shit from everyone? Fuck 'em. I don't want to take shit. I've had it. Fuck it.

Suddenly she took off walking. No longer was she walking towards the dorms, but instead towards the path that exited campus, eventually descended a hill, crossed under Highway 1, and led onto a vegetable field that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. On the other side of the field there was a cliff that fell straight into the Pacific Ocean. A good fifty-foot drop onto rocks that were covered by roaring surf. Her body would get torn up in the waves and they'd never find her. Fuck 'em. Fuck all their insults and their money and all the rest of their shit.

Ruthie ended up not going very far. She never did. She made it to the gate that exited campus, only to find it was locked. Had she really wanted to, she could have scaled the fence or gone through the main exit and then walked around to the trail, but to do all that would have taken more exertion than she was capable of putting forth at that moment. She was not scared of dying, but sheer effort that she would have to put into getting out to that cliff suddenly became overwhelming. Had she already been close to the edge, she might have worked up the courage to jump or fall off, but to actually get out there was too much. Her anger turned into depression, and once she was depressed, inertia took over and she was capable of doing very little.

Depression shrouded the unhappy girl like a thick heavy cloak. She felt weighted down. Slowly she walked back, trying to shake off the numbness just so she could move forward.

Description

Scene from my novel "The Outsider" - www.asstr.org/~caligula97030/o…

When she stepped outside, the chilly air hit her bare legs and a feeling of cold reality hit her soul. She began to feel resentful and morose as she walked past the engineering building and the computer center on the sidewalk that exited the main section of campus. She left the well-lighted sidewalk and plunged into the darkness to cross the playing field that separated the academic buildings from the dorms. The field was empty and silent. The silence was not peaceful to Ruthie; rather it had a sinister and desolate feeling for her. She knew that what she was doing was not safe; because a student had been raped on that same field just a month before, doing exactly what she was doing. She didn't care. If it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen, and my life sucks anyway. When she got to the middle of the field she stopped to stare up at the stars.

Her thoughts wandered as her mood deteriorated. She thought of writers such as C.S. Lewis who romanticized about the stars and created something out of them that was not based on reality. For C.S. Lewis the stars were living beings, something similar to angels. She then thought about astronomer Carl Sagan's speculation that it was the stars that first gave people the idea of supernatural beings, perhaps because ancient humans thought the stars were far-off campfires in the sky.

Her mind shifted to the other science fiction writers that she had read as a teenager, and all those fictitious trips to "other worlds", trips that in real life never would, and never could happen. Perhaps there is other life out there, but if there is, so what? It's not like we're ever gonna get out there; everything's too far away. She thought about all the work-arounds that writers had come up with to cover those vast distances: warp drive, worm-holes, irregularities in space, time travel, but it was all fantasy, just like supernatural beings, alternate worlds, and the afterlife. The cold hard reality was E=mc2 and there never would be anything anyone could do about that. We're stuck here on this planet. We'll never go to any of those other neat worlds, and the best we could ever do might be to get a few astronauts on Mars. That's it. Science fiction and the whole idea of inter-stellar travel was BS, just like angels, ghosts, demons, pixies, whatever. It's all crap. All of it. It doesn't matter. In a few years we'll run out of resources and all starve to death and go extinct. We'll be gone just like the passenger pigeon, and then something else, rats, probably, will take over the planet.

Not that any of that matters, thought Ruthie to herself. The planet eventually will perish, burned up by the sun in a few billion years. Or maybe earlier, because if plate tectonics were to quit, the planet will become frozen and dead, like Mars. She had read an article that plate tectonics already was slowing down. If that speculation was true, the natural processes that maintain the atmosphere were coming to an end and eventually all water and air would freeze and evaporate away. We don't have to wait five billion years, the end of all life is coming a lot sooner.

Ruthie reflected on the futility of her life, the uselessness of her own existence. In a planet that sooner or later was destined for oblivion, and being a particularly unhappy member of a species that was doomed to extinction much sooner than the planet, what was the point? Why bother to study? Why bother to open the coffee shop? Why bother to continue living? Everyone hates me, even that Parking Nazi, even he'll see me for what I am and ditch me. There's no hope, no hope for anything or anyone. It's stupid to stay alive, for what? So I can spend the next 60 years taking shit from everyone? Fuck 'em. I don't want to take shit. I've had it. Fuck it.

Suddenly she took off walking. No longer was she walking towards the dorms, but instead towards the path that exited campus, eventually descended a hill, crossed under Highway 1, and led onto a vegetable field that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. On the other side of the field there was a cliff that fell straight into the Pacific Ocean. A good fifty-foot drop onto rocks that were covered by roaring surf. Her body would get torn up in the waves and they'd never find her. Fuck 'em. Fuck all their insults and their money and all the rest of their shit.

Ruthie ended up not going very far. She never did. She made it to the gate that exited campus, only to find it was locked. Had she really wanted to, she could have scaled the fence or gone through the main exit and then walked around to the trail, but to do all that would have taken more exertion than she was capable of putting forth at that moment. She was not scared of dying, but sheer effort that she would have to put into getting out to that cliff suddenly became overwhelming. Had she already been close to the edge, she might have worked up the courage to jump or fall off, but to actually get out there was too much. Her anger turned into depression, and once she was depressed, inertia took over and she was capable of doing very little.

Depression shrouded the unhappy girl like a thick heavy cloak. She felt weighted down. Slowly she walked back, trying to shake off the numbness just so she could move forward.