by Zoё Richards

 

My name’s Geminga, and I think I’m going crazy.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I just seem so out of control.  One moment everything’s so perfect and I’m growing and life is just, wonderful.  The universe is shiny and actually feels like home.   And I am fine because I’m not alone but then, something.  Even the littlest thing.  A tiny wave of solar wind brushes by me and I lose it.  And I mean really, fucking lose it.  I can hear them again.  The Chinese astronomers.  Look at that fattie out there.  It’s massive!  And, oh my god, it’s so dense.  I think it’s the densest thing known to man!  I can’t stand it.  They don’t even understand me, or think of what it would be like.  They make me so angry and then…I start to collapse, and get ungodly hot.  I try to reason, and chant the Daimoku to calm myself, but then I collapse again and it just gets worse.  Worse and worse until nothing can help me. 

I know I have a problem.  And I know if I don’t do anything about it I’ll destroy myself.  I’ll become a black hole, slowly sucking everything and everyone.   I need to believe in community again, go back to my roots.  Oh, to be young white dwarf again!  Spinning around at a leisurely five hundred rotations a second, having real friends that I was with all the time.  If only they could know.  If only everyone understood, how hard it really is to be a neutron star.

 

 

 

 

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            I make people’s minds trip.  Hard.  I am string theory.  Elegant and flexible, and most defiantly possible.  String like chords of particles hooked together, vibrating at a resonant frequency.  I can tell you the truth about the world, but I’m not sure you’d listen. 

            There are twenty six degrees of freedom in the universe.  Twenty six dimensions all made up entirely of strings.  There are particles called tachyons that move faster than light and are constantly producing tiny sonic booms that define the interactions between elementary particles.  There are D-Branes, and parallel universes, and worm holes.  There are places untouched by the spacetime continuum.  There are an infinite number of possibilities still unconsidered, unnoticed. 

            For a human to understand me, said human must first understand something very true about their own life: it is meaningless.  You are infinitesimally small and weak.  The universe is too wide for you to ever fathom.  You have seen nothing.  This is not a particularly important truth about the universe, but it has proven to be almost impossibly difficult to overcome. 

            For those who are capable of understanding me, I can yield a unified and complete description of the structure of our universe.  A theory of everything.  Unfortunately for all the scientists, the only man to ever fully understand me was the Buddha, who knew better, and kept his mouth tightly in a smile. 

           

 

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I am the center of the earth, and I am god damn underappreciated.  Hardly anyone even knows about me, let alone cares.  I create plate tectonics, and fucking the earth’s magnetism.  That’s right, without me you wouldn’t have your romantic little northern lights to fondle one another beneath now would you? I am motherfucking solid Iron at 10,000°F!   But somehow everyday I see people straight up forget my existence. I deflect waves that destroy whole cities and still I get nothing.  Damn Mike Meyers and the catchy way he says Magma.  You know that without me sailors wouldn’t have a chance in hell, but still they pray to Jesus.  Christ!  What do I have to do to get a little acknowledgement?  Maybe I’m being a little unfair; there was once a person who understood me named H.P Lovecraft. But he was a science fiction writer, so no one listened.

            I think about self destructing sometimes, and what the earth would do without me.  I read this book from the library that said the moment the core lost even 10 meters radially, all large animals would spontaneously die, and bacteria would take over.  I like that, and I like being called the core.    

            Someday, after the earth’s atmosphere has given up, and the crust is being blown to pieces, and magma is spilling into the universe and rapidly cooling to make millions and millions of tiny stars, I will be here, spinning faster than ever.  I will be what is left over, what generations of foreign beings to come will examine.  And what will they find?  If only scientists now would come to their senses and laser scratch a description of Einstein’s theory of relativity on my surface.  Now all they’ll find is a scribbled H.P. ♥’s Oscar Wilde.  Ha!  You’re all fated to go down in history as part of a homosexual species.  Serves you right, you thankless bastards.

 

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Some people call me Ichirochan, after the 172 pound lefty who plays for the Mariners.  They say I will make millions too, when I’m old enough, of course.  I’m eleven; exactly 64 years younger than the emperor.  People say he gives me good luck. 

Sometimes people give me presents so I will like them and play for them.  The name for that is bribe, and Mom says they are wrong.  Dad thinks they are okay though.  I got a bicycle once, from a coach in Norway named Thom.  

I would like to play for the Atlanta Braves, because my cousin is there making designs on shoes.  His name is Hiroki, and when he still lived in Tokyo, he would take me with him on his motorcycle to the fish market.  I asked him if there was a fish market where he was living now, and he said that in America, people buy everything. 

I’m scared that my secret will get found out.  That I will get and hurt they’ll do tests in the hospital and see.  My life has been too good, and I know that soon my good karma will run out and I’ll be poor and have to live alone in the mountains. 

I eat grass from underneath my shoes in the closet.  It tastes like metal, clean, and strong.  No one knows it’s there; I hide it.  I found it the day I made four home runs and a grand slam.  Ever since then I don’t play without it.  I can’t.  Dad would kill me if he found out.  Once I saw him find some of it growing under the stairs and burned it up.  I don’t want to be burned, so when he asked my why I’ve been getting really wild lately I said “maybe it’s because I don’t sleep very well anymore.”  He says it’s just hormones, but I know he’s wrong.  I asked mom what you call someone that needs something.  She said addict.  Someone is addicted to something.  I am addicted to grass, and I’m scared that soon I won’t be able to play.  I get sick without it and have to eat more and more.  I think no one would call me Ichiro if they knew.    

The other day the grass started to grow out of my closet in the night, and when the sun rose it was at my dresser.  I covered it up, but the next morning it was at the foot of my bed.  It knows I’m bad, and it’s coming for me.