It was the least fortuitous glass of water that Joseph Schwartz would ever encounter. Not that he knew it at the time of course; one never knows that the axe has been raised in the first place until its hideous momentum has carried the blade too far. Then and only then, and even then only with a small sense of vulnerability and the faint notion of something moving above us, do we ever sense our imminent demise.
It began like most glasses of water do. Some great time ago in a galaxy probably very close to our own the atoms began huddling around one another, convinced that if only they shared themselves enough they could keep the black abyss before them at bay. And that warmth was good, and comfortable, if not peaceful. Closer and closer they drew to one another, convinced like cattle that if they moved away from that dangerous blackness behind them; if they just moved away to a space where they could be closer together, they could be safe. Of course we all know how this ends.
Eventually they came to share their innermost parts with one another, a bond that would quite literally burst forth into glorious day, and all was well for a time. This bonding and sharing and becoming went on for quite some time, until the relationships between the parts became quite unstable. This part would not and could not interact with the other, and so on and so forth until it seemed perhaps that the joining and the struggling and the huddling together might have all been a terrible idea to start with. All the same there could be no return, for no matter how bad things were on the inside, on the outside there was still the terrible abyss, the fear of which had really been the start of the whole enterprise.
Nonetheless, despite the great fear and the certainty that whatever course was best, it was certainly not returning to that primordial chaos, tensions rose. The stress rose and rose and rose, the differences became irreconcilable, and anyone looking in from the outside could’ve seen it coming years ahead of time.
The system broke.
Parts that had once held such close accord with one another, plasmic tufts of oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen and helium, once intimate and warm, were flung out into that great, black abyss from whence they came. They drifted away, floating on the currents of discord into reaches so unfathomably greater than their own size that even we can barely understand, and found themselves all, once more, alone.
Still though, notwithstanding the failure of the previous endeavor, several entities once more seemed to feel almost pulled toward one another, inevitably and indefatigably drawn away from the solitude that was their peace. Thus it came to pass that new endeavors were brought forth, new clusters and opportunities, hopeful and shining examples of just how productive that cooperation could be. And all of these came to pass as failures of one sort or another, as do all things.
As this cycle ebbed and flowed, toward the beginning of a particular endeavor around a particular warm community, a number of entities began to cluster away from the center, thinking it was perhaps a good idea to cooperate, but that whole business of everyone going in on it all at once was just exhausting. Besides, some of these entities, the old and overweight, simply didn’t want to move all those several millions of miles when they felt so comfortable here. These communities ended up being so comfortable that other, lighter elements were convinced to join in as well, though in their youthful spirits they insisted on staying near the fringe of the community where at least they might catch a warm glimpse of the greater project going on nearby. Well this idea really caught on, and soon enough stars all over the place were forming little outposts for their more elderly members and the hangers on that attended them.
So then, around 9.2 billion years after everyone had initially decided that the first arrangement was unacceptable, some strident groups of hydrogen decided to shack up with some tamer, but still energetic oxygen communities and form all kinds of parties and celebrations on the surface of the Earth. For quite some time this remained an energetic if predictable affair, until on one strident morning life happened on the Earth.
Exactly how and why this happened, whether there was any agency in the matter and, if there was, whose, have all been matters of dispute for all of the parties involved ever since. But so far it really hasn’t amounted to all that much, so it hardly seems worth going over here.
Anyway, as it happened and as you all know these dihydrogen-monoxide things were preposterously useful for maintaining life, which was a project life seemed very well set on, and the water at least didn’t mind all that much. This particular group of “waters” had really come from all over, different stars, different systems, and then all over the world. Some of them had been a point of the Indian Ocean once, and had made their way up and back down through the cycle into tap water when a very rude businessman on a flight back from India had unfortuitously drank a bottle of water. They all came from very different places, dying stars and crashing nebulas, India and Oxford and Seattle, but on the morning of October first they had all made their way through the tap and into Joseph Schwartz’ morning cup of water.
With the fuzzy carefulness of a man who would’ve rather stayed in bed, Joseph plopped in a few cubes of ice, poured the water into the cup, and made his way to the computer to see if anyone had done anything drastic overnight. To his disappointed sigh, no one seemed to have taken a strong social media interest in that amazing guitar cover he posted late last night, and it seemed from the general lack of shock that so far the world wasn’t on fire yet. So, unaware of the dreadful consequences of his actions, Joseph reached for the glass, meaning to take a last drink and pop of the door for work. He got his hands around the glass, but as he went to lift it, the condensation from the ice, along with the downtrodden force of gravity, drove the left edge of the glass to simply slip from his fingers. In the half moment afforded him, Joseph tried all that he could to stop his death. Unfortunately, all that he could do to stop his death mostly entailed a kind of pathetic twitch and a childish, loud noise.
The water had spilled, quickly seeping in under the keys and into the laptop, where no sounds were audible, but a sudden flickering and general discombobulation of the screen made it clear that this was not a small matter. The damage was done, the water was spilled, and Joseph Schwartz was a dead man walking.
There should be another chapter of this next Sunday. No promises
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