Little Chicken

I was in my bed when the sky fell. Almost everyone I have ever met remembers where they were when the sky fell. I was in my bed. I lay there and looked up and watched as it slowly sank through my ceiling. It was translucent but I could reach up and feel its almost silk like quality as it slipped through my fingers. It was black, and shimmery and seemed to waft down slowly until it had sunk through the floor of my room.

I think I would have been more shocked, more upset, and above all else more observant of that important matter had I actually believed myself to be awake. Instead I decided that this was far too strange to have actually happened and went back to sleep. It was only later that night when I heard the house surrounded my sirens and people's screams. I ran out of my bed room, which was windowless, and into the living room to see what was going on. It was only once I was around windows that I could see that something was very wrong. There was a strong white light that was shining through every window of the house.

There were houses on fire, there were people screaming and wailing in the street and I was fairly sure that I could see at least one person who was hanging from one of the lampposts. It was the sky that seemed far more important however. No matter what chaos reigned on earth I had always had the idea the sky would last forever, now however it was nothing but a blank shining white. It was as if everything around the earth had been erased, completely cleared of everything.

Now that it has been a couple of years, scientists have been trying to explain everything, though all they really have what people at the time observed. It all happened so quickly that there were no actual scientific observations taken. It was a sad fact but no one even could say what caused the sky, which had been up for so long, had suddenly decided to fall. What they could say was that what we had always thought of as being an endless expanse had in fact been a cloth like cover around our world, that floated around us with a bluish half and a black half. What we had always thought of as clouds and stars had been tares in that fabric of the sky. Now that the sky was gone the background was revealed for what it was, a shining colorless place that we now were forced to accept for how things were.

Adjustments had to be made to our lifestyles, we had never considered things that we were now forced to deal with every day. The lack of day and night was a good example of this, the hours were indistinguishable and it caused huge psychological strain and damage and caused several new mental diseases to be created. In response screens that faked the changes of light quality they had had at one time were created. It was a inadequate way to deal with the problem but it was something.

To be continued...

Rules to Live By II

To be honest at all times had been easy for Rick, it had been in his nature to began with. To be considerate to everyone was more difficult for him. It was so simple to lose his temper a little and find himself wanting to say things that he knew he would regret. If he was to do something like swear to be considerate to everyone he was going to do it all the time and that was where he found himself having trouble. If it was only considerate to some people, or those people who were considerate to him, Rick would have had no difficulties. It was to be considerate to all people all the time that he found himself wishing he had never thought of. There were times in school in particular that he found himself wanting to say things that he knew that while certainly honest, would break his other rule. He gained a reputation for being a quiet kid and he could deal with that what was more upsetting that he couldn't vent.

Quiet, sophisticated, and gentlemanly, that was the reputation that Rick graduated high school with. It didn't get him anywhere and it didn't grant him any happiness but it was a start. It wasn't until he reached the world of adults that his way of life started to net him results. Even in high school though he had discovered that his new personal rules was a good way to attract girls. Girls seemed to like gentlemen but that did not meant that Rick enjoyed dating. One of the things that he discovered was that girls would take advantage of his kindness so he avoided dating in general after the first couple of times.

This led to his final rule, he wasn't going to let himself get taken advantage of. It was difficult to be a nice person without offending people. Still he seemed to manage. It was his final rule, to do what was right for him, to be honest, and to be considerate to others, there seemed to be very little to add to that. Many years later he told all of this to his son and his son stared at him like he was crazy. A few years later though, Rick was humored to find that his son had become a lot more considerate. It was a circle that would continue through the generations and it spread until their clan was almost famous in the country. Doors were open, they gained important positions, and through their philosophies their name would give you friends even if they had never known you yourself.

Rules to Live By

“Make your own rules, if you make your own rules you'll stay right,” the man laughed and leaned back. The only other person in the room was a young man, leaning against the opposite wall, he looked like he was almost asleep but the man knew he was paying attention. “You know what I'm saying Rick?”

“Yeah, don't follow other people's rules,” said the young man in his sleepy voice.

“No, no, you don't get it at all,” said the man. “I'm not telling you to go off a rebel. That won't get you anywhere in this world.”

“So what did you mean?” asked Rick lazily.

“I mean you've got to have your own code you live by.”

“What sort of code?” asked the young man. He still didn't seem very interested by the other man had known him his whole life and knew that was just his way. His nephew had been born looking bored the man suspected.

“What code you live by is up to you, that's what makes it yours,” said the man. Then he stood, patted his nephew on the back and went into the kitchen to say goodbye to his sister, the young man's mother.

The next day the man got onto the army airplane and left for war. He is considered among the many dead of the war, though they never found an actual body. This was the last conversation he had with his nephew, the last words they spoke to one another, which is perhaps the reason the young man thought about them so much. Thinking about them as much as he did he made them his own, they became his words to live by. Don't be a rebel but have a code, one that's all yours.

The young man didn't rush his choices about how to live and he didn't create his list all at once. He thought about each and inspected every one, tasting them and getting their feel. By his second year of high school he had found the first thing he considered to be important enough to put on the list, honesty

It wasn't as if the young man had ever been much of a liar to start with. He had always told the truth so long as the truth wouldn't do him any harm. Like everyone else though when it looked like telling the truth would get him in trouble he would stretch it and manipulate it to his convenience. This only worked for so long. Soon people started to ask questions that Rick would rather not answer and when he would tell them something other then the truth he would discover they had known the truth the whole time and were just testing him. It was these multiple traps that people set for him that had him finally decide it was easier to get yelled at right away then make people more angry and get yelled at later.

This policy of honesty started to transfer over to other things. It soon became honesty in general and it hadn't even been with the intention of finding something to live his life by that he started to live in as much honesty as is possible for a imperfect human. It was only one day that he was once again thinking about his uncle's parting words that the young man discovered that he had a entry in his code of rules already, honesty had become a way of life.

With his first rule quickly came the second, they fed into one another, his second rule caused by his first. Honesty in life is a good thing until you start saying things in a hurtful way, or when it isn't solicited, honest or not. There was a difference between being an honest person and being cruel and Rick started to become unpopular. He was forced to reassess what he had been doing, he was young, and didn't always see things right away but it didn't take long for him to realize that it was bad to say things just because they were what you were thinking. It wasn't any less honest to just say nothing at all.

To be continued...