Volver a Comenzar [open]
When Luis was 9, he'd collected a small terrarium of insects in a jam jar and successfully kept his miniature ecosystem alive for several months. One day, he found the bugs lying dead at the bottom of the jar and it was nearly impossible to console him.
"Lucho, no puedes controlar la vida," his grandfather had told him. "Sólo Dios puede hacer eso." Humans could never hope to overpower God, and those who tried it usually got what they deserved in the end.
Those words were an uncomfortable cadence in his head as he headed out of contagion for the first time in what felt like a month. Luis had been exhausted before, but rarely did he get like this, feeling more like the walking dead than even he usually did. Having the lives of other people in your hands grew very tiring very quickly, and he longed for the days when all he had to worry about at work were the petri dishes full of paramecium. If they died, things went on as normal. They didn't cause guilt.
But how dare he think like that? He didn't deserve to be spared the guilt of his actions. The past was in the past, but no matter how many times he told himself that, memories were not so easy to lose. Since he'd woken up on this ship, it was all he could do to throw himself at project after project in the hopes he'd eventually find atonement, but now that this particular project was coming down to the wire, he feared the weight of more lives on his shoulders.
Everything was quiet, the kid was peacefully sleeping for the first time in weeks, the computer was chugging along in its simulation to calculate dosage and voltage, and Luis figured it'd be best for everyone (and his own sanity) if he got out of there and tried to get his mind off things.
So he sat on the obs deck, doing shots of Jack Daniels and staring into the Bleed. Luis was determined to continue this activity until he realized the existential absurdity of angsting over his insignificant life, or until he was too plastered to do so at all.
"Lucho, no puedes controlar la vida," his grandfather had told him. "Sólo Dios puede hacer eso." Humans could never hope to overpower God, and those who tried it usually got what they deserved in the end.
Those words were an uncomfortable cadence in his head as he headed out of contagion for the first time in what felt like a month. Luis had been exhausted before, but rarely did he get like this, feeling more like the walking dead than even he usually did. Having the lives of other people in your hands grew very tiring very quickly, and he longed for the days when all he had to worry about at work were the petri dishes full of paramecium. If they died, things went on as normal. They didn't cause guilt.
But how dare he think like that? He didn't deserve to be spared the guilt of his actions. The past was in the past, but no matter how many times he told himself that, memories were not so easy to lose. Since he'd woken up on this ship, it was all he could do to throw himself at project after project in the hopes he'd eventually find atonement, but now that this particular project was coming down to the wire, he feared the weight of more lives on his shoulders.
Everything was quiet, the kid was peacefully sleeping for the first time in weeks, the computer was chugging along in its simulation to calculate dosage and voltage, and Luis figured it'd be best for everyone (and his own sanity) if he got out of there and tried to get his mind off things.
So he sat on the obs deck, doing shots of Jack Daniels and staring into the Bleed. Luis was determined to continue this activity until he realized the existential absurdity of angsting over his insignificant life, or until he was too plastered to do so at all.