The endless
space of a color that only appears to be blue. My eyes wonder aimlessly,
staring at the details of the airplane. To my right, a hibernating man
oblivious to the shouting and screaming of the passengers. The weeping of the
women and children deemed the weaker specimen, file into a mob and exit to the
front of the plane. They will be spared. After all, my friends are extremists
of peace.
I am hurled
onto the ground of the business class, warm from the frantic footsteps of the
terrified people. Everyone remaining is told to “get down!”
They are
not terrorists. They are not hijackers in my head. The familiar looking
comrades simply completing a task crucial to the research I was a part of just yesterday.
This is what they believe in. If speaking my opinion about the science I uncovered
was a crime, then I would be criminal as well: a person without the right of
forgiveness. Instead, I am to be a forgotten marble, buried under the bridge of
the living. Unaware of my tendency to exist.
My
colleagues in search of their own definition of “just” are now looking through
my clothes for an electronic, my baggage for a clue, my seating area for an
answer. The words
that I was to present on to the scientific community are now scattered onto the
ground. Those are not the papers they want. The wingless butterflies fall on
top of a few nameless, faceless victims. But I am not a victim. I am the
target. The reason. The unwanted broken
glass in the bottle of prized marbles.
I feel
like an onlooker until an acquaintance picks me up off the ground.
“I’m
sorry, Stephen.”
My
research and speculations are unwanted. I am a danger. To the lives of the
passengers who have the misfortune of sharing their plane with me. So I stand
up and run. I won’t get far. It’s simply my distraction. Unlike the secret of
the universe, which will spill onto the Earth eventually, the action of
defiance belongs to me. I open the
painted door of the airplane that leads to a space without humans; the air
without breathe. The coldness bites into my eyes shocked open far too wide. I
close my eyes.
The men know
they are after me and silencing my work. They know they must mimic the actions
of a hijacking. They know the value of life. Better than anyone else.
To those
people, I am only a common marble. Just like the marbles I found on the
playground discarded by other children because they were cracked. I hid them in
the center of the jars of puries and water babies and cat’s eyes. Even broken
marbles deserve to belong somewhere.
I hear
the ringing of the trigger and cracking of the finger and the silent whisper of
goodbye. The aqua particles of water await my blood and bones; the moisture
will be my resting place.
I fly.
