(This article was originally published in Antipodean Sci Fi Issue 271 in April 2021. You can read a digital version of the original story here at the Antipodean Sci Fi Archives here: https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/tep/10063)
It was one of those days.
One of those days where I’d woken up angry without
reason. I rolled out of bed with a belligerent cloud swirling about my
head as I stumbled through my day, seeking amusement or distraction from my
stress. Had I the courage to be honest with myself, it was me I was angry
with. I was frustrated at having risen so late, and for expending so many
wasted hours upon my couch, staring blankly at various screens as I beseeched
them for stimulation.
Though a tired truism of a sentiment, I was easily ensnared by the technological marvels that constitute modern life. Inconceivable to our antecedents, such devices stood ready to sate any human appetite no matter how banal or pornographic. Now the hour was late, and my morning had evaporated into a hazy afternoon, making me feel worse. One lazy indulgence compounded by another.
So, craving at least the pretence of productivity, I did
what I had always done when feeling restless — I went for a run. Donning
worn trainers and an old t-shirt, I left the house and began my laboured
shuffle through the unremarkable streets of my neighbourhood. The
topography was hilly, ordinary streets winding through tiny peaks and
troughs. My body moved with difficulty, ungracefully, as though through
water — a punishment for habitual inactivity. But it moved nonetheless,
and for that I was grateful. I ran past some old ladies on an amiable
ramble and past a gaggle of absent-minded dog walkers. A fellow runner —
a shirtless Adonis — sped past me with relative ease and soon disappeared into
the distance.
Still, I persisted, as my lungs burned and groaned under the
strain. Undeterred, I proceeded without destination, past the well-to-do
houses sporting high fences and fancy security systems. The sight of them
set my mind musing on the notion of urban separation as a light sprinkle of
rain moistened my face. Turning from a trickle into a shower, the
precipitation soaked through my clothes and underwear endowing the
uncomfortable sensation of being both sweaty and wet.
Exhausted, I clumsily came to a halt in front of a house
atop a hill and locked eyes with a cream-coloured greyhound. His graceful
countenance offered me a doleful stare through the bars of a corrugated iron
fence. I watched him, for a moment, his patient breathing evident in the
gentle rise and fall of his ribcage as I felt my own heart pounding like a
jackhammer in my chest.
My anxious demons exercised and exorcised, I limped home in
unspectacular fashion, dropping down upon my front step to cool down as I
always would before entering the house. The brief shower I’d traversed
was now concluded, leaving small pools and patches of water upon my
driveway. As my heart rate settled, I lamented my poor fitness and stared
vacantly at a potted plant by my front door. I’d placed it there, years
ago. Unremarkable in every respect, its few droopy leaves were a
testament to floral mediocrity. Upon the leading edge of one of the
leaves I spied a single raindrop — a remnant from before — dangling
precariously, only seconds from falling.
As my eyes focused on the raindrop, I noticed with simple
pleasure how the daylight shimmered through the small quantity of water, a tiny
iridescent display one-tenth the size of a fingernail. As I examined the
drop more closely, I was able to discern an image — the face of a newborn baby,
scrunched up and tiny. Before I could question the veracity of my vision,
the image had changed and the baby had become a boy who soon became a
man. Like a life on fast forward, the man in the raindrop raced through
his days and years as I witnessed them all. The peaks and troughs of his
trajectory through existence — exciting, mundane, revelatory and
boring.
Caught up in my act of curious voyeurism, I couldn’t help
but notice the little man looked a lot like me. As I savoured my wonder, he
clutched his chest in pain, and collapsed without fanfare. The awful
occurrence was random, and arrived without warning. Before the man could
summon help, the drop of water finally fell from its precarious position and
splattered onto the floor, exterminating the man inside. Startled, I
inhaled sharply at the sudden finality of it all. Just like that, it was
over.
Sharp pangs of grief pierced my chest as I remembered the
man and his life, lost to me, yet still speaking quietly in my thoughts.
In that moment, I conjured the faces of the dead and remembered strange words
spoken to me in my sleep. He’d always be there as a reminder of my
mortality and the ticking clock embedded in my brain.
In a single drop of rain I had seen the futility of my
illusions that life was long, and that each one of us was somehow significant,
special. A repudiation of all my self-importance in a simple act of
nature. I sat there, in my running shoes, humbled and terrified by the
display, feeling suddenly fragile. Transient. As the fear fermented
in my stomach, I knew I’d witnessed something extraordinary. To think it
happened on such an ordinary day.
I replayed all the ungrateful moments when I’d wished my life was somewhere else, had wished that I was someone else. What a fool I’d been. The man in the raindrop would be with me like an albatross, even when I was petulant or lost in a wretched mood. Even when I wasted my life. I wiped wetness from my cheeks, mistaking it for rainwater but instead found tears as I fathomed the enormity of my revelation. The very nature of what we are.
What we are is nothing at all.
