Most of us resent our own trait of neglecting the future for the sake of impulse, but it is what makes us beautiful.

The idea of the end of the world pervades our collective consciousness thoroughly. As a self-centered species, the concept of individual death is already at the forefront of our thoughts; naturally, this lends itself well to how seriously the concept of large-scale death is taken. The thought of our species ending is tragic to us, and we never stop to take in our culture's meager window of existence the way we take in a compelling novel or a film: There is a beginning, and there is a middle, and there is an end. It's not tragic - rather, it's perfection of the flow of time through existence as creation's art.

Human beings worry that the world will end during their lifetimes. Sometimes they worry about a meteorite striking the Earth and vaporizing us all back into whatever cosmic ether we came from, and sometimes they worry that our governments will flip an array of switches and burn society from the surface of the world in mass atomic fire.

Any concern that nature (nature, of course, including cosmic forces) will intervene in our individual lives is purely self-centered because, as individual beings, we are absolutely nothing. Indeed, as a species, we are nothing, and as a planet, we are nothing. The Universe is vast and complex beyond the ability of a Human mind to comprehend, and its workings do not pay us any mind. We do not exist just because of it, but also in spite of it, which lends our existence an exquisite dichotomy.

Given the exponential expansion of our biomass across the world, we are far more likely to see our own growth kill us than any external force could. Those of us lucky enough to witness the end of Humanity should, perhaps, be grateful for it. Who, after all, enjoys tuning into a movie part of the way through and then turning it off before the climax?

Like a torrent into a funnel

This is not your perfect life, this is not your American Dream, this is your American life. This is your dystopia, a grizzly future world where technology reigns over ever-deepening chaos and society shrinks and grows in unison, medievally bifurcated. They dreamt it, you consider it, you feign an interest in it... you never realize that you're living it.

You find your small miseries in between the near-magic you take for granted, and you focus on them as if they define you. You cope with a heavy heart, never forgetting or ignoring that you are forced to cope, because that's the human condition - at least, it's the human condition as you've been conditioned to interpret it. You recognize that you don't have it so bad compared to the atrocities you're aware of in distant and unfamiliar places, but that doesn't prevent you from suffering from the poisons life throws at you.

Misery finds a way. As long as it's left the slightest opening, it will reach you. Build a levee.

Stubbed thumbs of the cycle

Everyone's hair is short here. They buzz it, all of them. Some of them let it grow out to a few inches before they reap it again, but most just eliminate the crop as soon as it becomes the slightest bit unwieldy. Sometimes it makes it difficult to immediately tell men from women, sometimes it doesn't. I guess that doesn't matter as much in this place.

My fingers hurt from the machine's constant impacts. Each mistake exacerbates the problem. Bruises, clotting, pressure on tender nerves. Wish I could be more dodgy.

I'm peered at through sunken eyes across the till. The sink's breadth offers them an advantage of anonymous movement, an unfair one, but one earned in decades of toil. They judge, an unfair judgment, and one rarely given and never earned.

Leroy's hand... I can sense it here.

From a reign of suffering comes another age

The flower. The symbol of love, adoration, beauty, friendship. Part of the cycle... death begetting life. The murder of one granular instance of plant life on Earth, the portrayal of one person's feelings for another. It is a simple transaction that may not seem balanced - a number of living cells dying for the sake of another being's simple gesture - but in the grand scheme, life is purely balance.

You talk about the tragedies of man and woman, the travesties he and she commit. Injustice, war, pain, death of the sentient. Atrocities committed between people, and between cultures, and between societies. We wage war on one another while our nations do the same, and the past wages war on us through its lessons of sustainability. We wage war on our Earth, as some say - but, to be sure, it wages war back.

Molecular balance is key. Energetic balance is key. The balance in your mind - the scales that tip between joy, pain, hatred, ecstasy - is not key. It is the imbalance that exists in another dimension, the dimension of human thought. Perhaps our race as a whole, in the end, when pooled and averaged, does balance out... but perhaps not.

The flower becomes love, the love becomes life. The flower itself, while dead, continues to offer its gift from beyond the grave in its physical husk. The chain continues, and human life marches along, blissfully unaware of the monstrous gods that act as puppets in our lives as we do in the flower's. We understand them as well as the flower understands us.

My blue is your yellow, but they bleed the same

Sawyer should have more carefully considered the destination of his vacation. This is a beautifully diverse city, but the resultant progressive nature can be retching for someone of his background. He tries to be tolerant, and part of him doesn't understand why the hatred swells, but it's still there, festering, an incurable disease of the soul.

The transit here is wonderful and terrible at the same time. Buses are ubiquitous, running down almost every large street, aside from the more intraversable hills. The schedules can be a bit mish-mash. LED arrival countdowns illuminate some stops with an informative red light, while other stops are little but a bare street corner with a route number stenciled somewhere.

The plastic bus seats are set up to strategically force you into avoiding eye contact with other people. If people didn't keep to themselves so deliberately, this setup might be a very functional social outlet. Instead, there is an impenetrable, yet invisible, wall in front of almost every human face. Most of the humans who attempt to break these walls are, to some degree, mentally ill. Or they're from a place that does things differently. Sawyer quickly realizes that he's from a place that does things differently. Who can say why all these people waste this portion of their lives on iPods, crosswords, and staring off into space at the same passing landmarks they see every working day of their lives?

Despite it lacking in courtesy, Sawyer watches the strangely beautiful, seventeen-year-old lesbian sitting across from him - the one wearing the tattered Muse hoodie and a vintage skeleton key on a worn, neon lanyard around her neck. She made the lanyard in camp nine years ago. The tied key opened every last door in her old childhood home - a home that has not existed for years. It's a nostalgic charm with no practical reason to exist anymore. Her forehead slope is slightly reversed in an oddly intriguing way.

A foreign arm is draped casually around the back of her seat, an inoffensive signal of human intimacy from her companion. This other girl has a curved, red scar on her jawline that she received in a fall during a badminton game in tenth grade, when she lived back in Columbus. She hated the boy who caused the accident for all of three months, until he was killed during a river rafting trip. For no particular purpose, the boy's name is written on a piece of paper that she keeps in her wallet as a memorial.

Sawyer is mentally pawing at his situation the way he would poke at a torn cuticle. Stop upsetting yourself, Sawyer.