The Never Ending Tails
Global Empathy

The lifeof Simon Dice was quite the joke. He was trapped in the persona of an outcastthat was built through years and years of rejection and bullying; he gained thegift of knowing what was going beyond his own mind, and was able to glimpse atthe inner sanctuary of the others’ minds. This unlikely mix leaded Simon to theboarders of sanity.

The giftby itself was overwhelming, and controlling it was never something Simon couldcompletely achieve. What the gift did to him was to drag him through severalstages through which his behavior evolved according to these new parameters.After going through denial, anger and bargaining, Simon entered the fourthstage of Depression.

Thetransition wasn’t really caused by one specific event, but was rather due to anaccumulation of failures in trying to pursue a noble cause. Simon first thoughtthat the gift he received was more important than his pathetic life and wasgoing beyond his own pride and self-esteem. He tried to be impermeable torudeness, insults, and physical pain as well in order to become the voice ofreason, to give people an objective perspective on what was going on in theirmind. But of course, he was reminded all and every time that he wasn’t fit tojudge if people needed to be help or not.

Simon resistedthe urge to stop doing what he was doing for quite a while before effectivelyretiring from the public sphere. The boy was sick and tired of the flow that hecontinuously received for almost a year, and for a whole month, he lockedhimself in a remote place in the surroundings of L.A.

The first days were the hardest as Simon wascontinuously tortured by his flow of thought leaving him awake for days anddays. He couldn’t just let go of all those events that have transfigured hislife. He tried to remember the exact moment everything started to go wrong, buthe couldn’t blame the light by the end. He could only blame himself for notbeing unworthy of this incredible gift.

One facein particular was haunting his memories, Sarah’s face. He was able to actuallyput up with everything else after a moment, to even calm those thoughts and theguilt for some time, but her face was always there; in all her beauty. Hecouldn’t really picture her in details, but the lines of her face weren’tscrambled in his mind, rather radiating in light. He could see the deep blue ofher eyes, like an ocean drowning him and sucking him toward the deep black pitin the middle.

Simoncried and cried in pain until the tears stopped coming down. He thought aboutkilling himself, to end all this madness, and he tried, but each time he failedmiserably. He hated himself more each time, he wasn’t able to control his lifeor to put an end to it. Everything didn’t make sense…

Simon wasdevastated, but by the end of the month, patterns started to appear. Afterlinking everything up, he finally reached a conclusion, his fifth stage:Acceptance. Simon accepted the fact that his gift would never work with him. Hewas an unworthy host for such a power, and decided that he would just ignorethe input, send his attention somewhere else during those emotionalaggressions.

Simon lefthis retrenchment and went back to his regular life. He stopped trying to affectanyone, and didn’t give the empathy any second thought, suppressing hisinvolvement with the messages. Weirdly enough, the emotional feedback gotbetter as a result of his new attitude, even though certain people’s thoughtstayed as hateful and aggressive toward him as they used to be. Simon stayedthe same outcast that he used to be, nothing in the people’s attitude reallychanged that much; however, he felt so much lighter by not concerning himselfabout others’ problems. Everything seemed to be back to normal, but life isnever that simple.

The 20thJuly 1969 started as a strange day for Simon. He was still separating hisjudgment from his empathy, but he noticed a sort of pattern in people’s minds.Everybody was thinking about the moon landing. Apollo XI was orbiting aroundthe moon, and it was scheduled to land on the moon some time during that exactnight.

Simon feltthat people were actually getting out of there little personal bubbles andfeeling more open about others. Simon started laughing, he laughed and laughed forso long. What he tried to accomplish with his gift, this openness toward others,this care, that was exactly what he wanted to make people see, and they weredoing it on their own. Then he got it, Simon finally got it! He knew exactlywhat he had to do.

Simon wentback to the forest he had fled to from the bullies who attacked him on thefaithful day his life shifted. This time however, he wasn’t afraid or escaping;he knew exactly what he had to do. He followed the trail of his memory andafter some searching; he finally found the pit he felt in. As soon as heapproached from it, it started to glow. Taking a moment, he focused histhoughts toward what he wished to accomplish, about the way he wanted his giftto change. Taking a deep breath, he jumped into the Light with a last thought:‘Happy Birthday to me…’

After theintense light, Simon fell in darkness, loosing every link with reality. Followingwhat seemed like centuries, he woke up in his college room just like theother time. He felt the difference, an extension in his abilities that pushed him to the sixth stage of his evolution.

He knewthat he could actually use the gift to achieve something, but he also knew thatdoing so would come at a cost. What he intended to do was at the limit of thisnew extension of his ability; deciding to use it at full potential could berisky. The worst was that he didn’t know what would happen to him, only that hemight never be the same afterward.

Simonglimpsed at the cat shaped clock that his roommate was keeping. The time was7:51 P.M. He remembered that the moon landing was scheduled around that time.He rushed to the old TV and turned it on. The channel was broadcastingsatellite images of the shuttle approaching the moon. Simon couldn’t focus onthe commentary that was describing the approach of the shuttle in such apowerful way. He needed to do it, he had no other choice, and that was theperfect moment.

7:52.Simon closed his eyes, and started feeling the people around him one by one.

7:53. Allthose little lights started to connect. Apollo XI touched the lunar ground.

7:54. Afirst wave of feelings started to run in the network on a very slow paste. Thedoor of the shuttle opened.

7:55.Simon started to feel the flow of emotions and thought in a very strong andchaotic way, surrounding his mind in a sea of foreign thoughts. Armstrong wasdown the ladder of the shuttle.

7:56. Everyonefelt what everyone else felt, a general euphoria where everybody made one;where every human on earth wasn’t alone in her or his mind anymore, but theyall shared the general consciousness through this moment of bliss. Armstrongsat foot on the lunar ground saying those words that would stay in history: “That’sone small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind.”

Ironicallyenough, Armstrong who was at thousands of miles away from the reach of theglobal empathy of Simon was the one to best describe his act, but for Simon,this extensive use of his gift to broadcast the general consciousness was hislast step.

Everybodyfelt the experience in a positive way, and everybody was touched by it, noteven knowing where it came from. Most of them ended up linking it to theeuphoria of the moon landing, ignoring the only person that made it possibleand lost everything in the process: Simon.

Simon feltall the global consciousness in its raw form, 3.6 billion people radiating himwith their thoughts and feelings. As a result the mind of Simon shattered. Hewas still alive for some reason, probably as a side effect of his contact withthe light, but his mind was in a very deep catatonic stage.

8:07. Twowomen in long cloaks and hoods entered the college room of Simon. One of themtold the other:

“So thisis the source of the disturbance. This grotesque male boy; are we really goingto carry him all the way to HQ?”

“He is thekey to our victory sister! He is the error that has been foretold; the one whouses the tunnel of light to access the Symphony after the world was reborn. Hewill be the final element to the rise of the falcons! To the rise of the hiddenfaith of the moon. Our daughters shall suffer no more the cruelty of men afterthat point. The sun will fall as certainly as it has risen; and at that time,the holly crescent will prevail!”

The twowomen didn’t speak anymore. They took a brain damaged Simon, transporting himto some unknown location.