The Unnoticeables by Robert Brockway

Author:Robert Brockway
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Humorous, Horror, Fiction
ISBN: 9781466869301
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2015-07-07T23:40:45.446000+00:00

FOURTEEN

Unnamed. Unknown.

I see a man on television, a politician on some local access channel, and I know just by looking at him that he is secretly homosexual and ashamed of it. This is the root cause for much of his behavior: his enjoyment of anal sex and the subsequent shame. It has been the inspiration for a few one-night stands, more than a handful of crying fits, various acts of contrition, several attempts to cover up the indiscretions; all told, he has spent 36,902 hours of his life pursuing various activities and modes of thought that were a direct reaction to his unwillingness to acknowledge his enjoyment of anal sex.

The politician is a living being. He requires energy to function. Those hours he spent actively denying a part of himself were all fueled by calories: enough calories to feed the nation of Namibia for a day; enough caloric energy to augment the magnetic field of Mars for sixteen crucial seconds, thus diverting an asteroid that would otherwise turn a small mountain into a crater. That small mountain endured for 64.3 million years. For the next 23 years, 7 months, 6 days, 4 hours, and 35 seconds, this politician can continue chastising himself for finding pleasure where he does—or I can reach in there and simplify all the decisions influenced by this one petty sexual need, and use that same energy to save part of cosmic history.

Wouldn’t he want that, if he knew? Wouldn’t he rather his life be used in that fashion?

It makes sense.

It terrifies me that it makes sense.

It terrifies me that I can’t conceive of a reason not to apply the politician’s solution right now and save the Martian mountain E. Mareotis Tholus. The smell of wood chips; a man’s embrace from behind, pressing him into a soft pillow; the tangy sting of poison ivy being burned; his father reading two passages from Waterless Mountain.

That is the politician’s solution. The catalyst that would reduce him to pure energy.

Incorrect.

I see now that the politician’s solution cannot be complete. It will not be perfect. It will reduce his inefficient humanity, but certain base parts of his being are too cluttered. The code is clumsy. I can remove the redundancy, but I cannot rewrite the shoddy programming. There will be a remainder to the politician’s problem. It is not like this with most: Most can be reduced completely, shunted away in neat pulses of transmitted energy.

The politician’s remainders will not be unique or special. The remainders of all imperfect problems—all human beings too messed up inside to be perfectly solved—are always identical. They are physical manifestations of the core motivations of every living creature in history.

Consumption and creation.

Creation is accomplished through birth or cell division. Progenation.

Consumption is accomplished through digestion. The act of consuming energy and using it to fuel the vital needs of the host.

The by-products of an imperfect problem, what will be left over if I solve the politician, consists of two split entities: a creator and a consumer. What I used to call an “Empty One” and a “tar man.

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