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WHEREIN I AM NOT DEAD AFTER ALL

My Story

This is my story, the Story of Oar. It is a wonderful story. I was in another story once, but it was not so wonderful, as I died in the end. That was very most sad indeed. But it turns out I am not such a one as stays dead forever, especially when I only fell eighty floors to the pavement. I am made of sterner stuff than that.

Actually, I am made of glass: clear, see-through glass. I am therefore extremely beautiful…more beautiful than you, but you should not feel bad about that, because you cannot help being opaque. People who are not beautiful—or strong and clever and wise, as I also am—should take comfort from being ugly and boring, because you will never be Called By Fate to undertake Difficult Adventures. Fate does not invite ugly boring people to save the world; and if you do try to save the world (without being beautiful, strong, clever, or wise), you will soon die pointlessly and how much adventure is there in that?

I do not die in this story. Those of you who have looked at the last page—which is only sensible, because you wish to make sure I do not make a long speech telling what lessons I have learned—those who have looked at the end will know that instead of dying, I win everything. I defeat the bad people, am adored by the good people, and get to say, "I told you so," as freely as I wish.

That is the whole point of being in stories: to have a Happy Ending.

My Technique

When I decided to present my story to opaque persons, I endeavored to learn what chronicling techniques are popular with your kind. My research methods were most diligent…which is to say, I waited for my friend Festina to leave the room, then instructed her computer to show me any documents she had written of a narrative nature.

Therefore, I have discovered that the proper way to write for Earthlings is to divide one's tale into modestly brief sections with titles at the top, such as My Technique. This is certainly an Effective Literary Device, especially when addressing persons with a short attention span. The technique also helps one skim ahead for sections whose titles seem more exciting than the passage one is supposed to read next. Thus one can jump forward to read Facing A Hellish Maw before coming back to Conversing With A Little Man Whose Sole Amusing Quality Is That He Is Colored Orange.

Most importantly, putting many titles into a story makes it easier to find your place if you happen to use your book to smash an irksome buzzing fly, and you hit the fly so hard that pieces of metal and plastic go shooting out of the book mechanism, so then you are forced to put the story chip into a new reader and you cannot remember where you were.

That happens more often than you might expect.

My Resting Place After I Died

When I woke after my eighty-story plunge, I felt most horrible indeed. Many things inside me hurt worse than they had ever hurt before…which is not saying much, because this was the first time I had been seriously injured, but pain is more dreadful when one is unaccustomed to physical suffering. If I took a deep breath, sharp aches erupted all across my ribs, as if a dozen axes were chopping at me. And behold, I did have an ax pressed against my flesh: a beautiful silver one I have always carried as both weapon and woodcutting tool. However, the ax was not attacking me in any way; it simply lay on my chest, as if someone had put it there after I fell.

To be honest, I was glad to have the ax with me—it provided a sense of protection. For a brief moment, I tried to cuddle the blade more snugly to me as if it were a pet or a toy…but the pain of moving my arms made my vision blur with tears. Every muscle felt bruised to a pulp; I wondered what bruised glass looked like, but knew if I lifted my head to see, the agony would be more than I could bear.

Therefore, I just lay where I was. It happened to be a hot pleasant place to lie, with an abundance of soothing light. I am such a one as absorbs many wavelengths outside the visible spectrum. Radio waves, X rays, and gamma particles are like vitamins to me, while infrared and ultraviolet are basic food groups. (I also eat real food, as produced by the synthesizing machines found in every community of my world. But when I am not having Adventures, I can survive quite well on nothing but sunshine, provided I get a little rain as well.)

Where I was lying, I felt a light spray of water from time to time. I opened my mouth and let the drops trickle down my throat. The water tasted slightly of minerals that were probably good for me.

The light and water and minerals indicated I was in a Home for Ancestors. There are many such Homes on my planet Melaquin, though I did not know this before I became a world traveler. These Homes are designed to contain persons with Tired Brains: persons who have lost interest in life and simply want to lie someplace warm. To keep them happy, every town has skyscraping towers where Ancestors can lie all day, getting plenty of light and squirts of enriched water. It is a boring way to spend the time, and I had promised myself I would never get so sad and lonely that I surrendered to languishing numbness…but when one is damaged from falling a long way, it is not so very cowardly to rest for a while in the bright quiet.

So that is what I did.

Clear-Cutting

Now and then, I told myself, "Oar, you must arise, you must find something to do." But there was nothing to do. The Home took care of my physical needs, and beyond that, I could think of no goals I wished to accomplish.

There was a time when my world was full of great people doing great deeds. We had a Thriving Culture, creating lovely music and art and literature—the teaching machines in my home village had taught me all about the splendid achievements of our past. I would gladly recite some of our excellent poetry for you, but it does not translate so very well into Earthling languages and anyway, I confess there are gaps in my grasp of human vocabulary: I have worked hard to memorize your best words, but I cannot be bothered to learn the second-rate ones (which is to say, the ones with no counterparts in my native tongue).

Besides, I have no great ambition to be a poet…or an artist or even musician. In my whole life, I have only embraced one useful occupation—using my ax to cut down trees. I did this because a human Explorer told me that deforestation was how cultured persons tended their planets: clearing land in preparation for constructing farms and roads and cities. I did not know how to construct things, but I was excellent at chopping down timber, so that is what I did.

Copyright © 2001 by James Alan Gardner