Assignment 2020

CHAPTER ONE

Something was different. He sensed it like proprioceptors warning of a low-hanging tree limb about to be walked into. His task chair felt four millimeters too high as if he had to reach that additional tiny distance to stabilize his feet in order to balance his aching hips. The air was thicker. His coffee more bitter. His thoughts raced around his brain like monkeys on a merry-go-round. 

First order of business, then, is to breathe and relax. He did so with diaphragmatic precision, inhaling through his nose deeply into his belly. Once, twice and a third time because he instantly felt the soothing and calming effects. The wildly painted horses came to a controlled stop and the monkeys, now bored, dismounted and scampered off. 

Ah, where were we? he sighed, slightly embarrassed that he was no longer running at full speed a moment before touching ground. He thought about his youth often, remembering the speed, power and grace that was once the status quo, his calling card, his metabolic norm. Now it took half a pot of his wickedly strong free-trade coffee just to make it to the war room and log on. Maybe that is it, he considered as he mindlessly massaged his arthritic wrists, maybe it is my response to the universe slowing with such relentless consistency, my delayed awareness of the natural changes we all must endure. After all there is a time-space consideration that physics demands we conform to, those two nanoseconds longer that it takes for thumb and index finger to reach the ceramic mug and latch on. Where did they go? What happened to them? Did they get recycled into eternity? He considered the Greek word nano, meaning ‘dwarf’ and its relation to a billionth of a second. Small and fast. 

Something was different. His practice at its most basic involved a focused awareness of the present moment. In this area he was pleased with the results of his dedicated fifty years of effort. Despite the frequent blanks he sometimes drew when asked for quick recall of specific fact, the calming nature of reeling back the present moment from the murky waters of the past or the Class III rapids of the future, satisfied the requirements he considered to be appropriate and mission essential. Appropriate for this situation, his rank, for the assignment, for this unique challenge.

He was, after all, the only person in the world that could do this. 

He hoisted the steaming white mug, the same one he had been using since the mission began, the one shaped like a nuclear reactor, slowly and with acute presence towards his lips, stopping just short to savor the acrid aroma and consider, what, if any, change would meet him in the course of the new day. The new day was, after all, a new year as well. The first day of a new decade. 

He wanted those two nanoseconds back and the clock was running.