I'm going to try to push new boundaries with this story. Just so everyone knows ahead of time, this is not meant to be a happy story. I've been feeling really down all year and me writing all these happy happy highschool drama stories haven't been helping me much, so I need to write something that's a little more like the way I actually feel.
I do not own Code Lyoko or any of the caracters- No shit huh?
On a large enough time line, everyones survival rate drops to zero. Scary thought isn't it. We live our lives oblivious to that fact that when we walk by someone on the street, that just might be the last time you ever see that person again. Death is the only thing every human has in common. When, where and how is the only variable. Car crash, cancer, food poisoning, freak weather, suicide, the list goes on and on. You read it in the newspaper, see on the news, death.
"Car crash kills five people, injured ten."
"Flood deaths are in the dozens."
"This years Darwin Award goes to..."
"Her body was never recovered."
If preserving human life is playing god, we're all god. You pull a man out from in front of a bus, you give cpr to someone in need, you remove the tumor from someones liver. They say god created us in his own image, then aren't we all god. It doesn't have to be something fancy, or intricate. Just a spur of the moment, values of life, or sometimes as simple as picking up the phone.
The tape recorder played throughout the room. That days lecture playing over and over again. Rewind, fast forward, pause, write something down. Ulrich wrote down notes to study from then pressed play again.
'...which is why the debate between nurture versus nature is so two sided. They once put a baby monkey in a room with little food, and a nice soft, comfy monkey stuffed animal acting as a mother. They put another monkey in a room with plenty of food, but this mother was hard and cold. Guess which monkey survived?'
Ulrich pressed pause and wrote down the bare minimum he could use to still understand that. Play.
'The monkey with less food survived. As living creatures, we need affection, contact with others to survive. Children who were raised in isolation either die, or turn out to be feral. Whether they were fed or not is little to do with what became of them. When a baby is born, it will usually stop crying when placed to its mothers chest. It's knows its mother, and it feels safe.'
Pause, write down notes. Play listen carefully, pause, write more stuff down. And finally, stop the recorder.
Ulrich placed his pencil down and rubbed his eyes after a long night of notes. It was his final semester of college before he was off of his fathers payroll. Three more months of grades. Three more months of late nights with a tape recorder.
The apartment was cold this time of year, and Ulrich shivered as he turned off the lamp that was lighting his bedroom. He walked out of the room and into the living room that was simply furnished with a couch, chair, coffee table and a television showing static.
Opening the fridge he pulled out the last bottle of beer from the case and walked across the apartment to the balcony with the view of brick buildings. Next to the door on the counter was a half smoked pack of cigarettes, so he grabbed those and the lighter and stepped onto the balcony.
It was colder outside, but not by much. The only difference was the wind that stabbed at Ulrich's face as he lit up. The orange flame made his face glow as he cupped his hands to protect it from the breeze. The lighter went out and Ulrich inhaled the first of a series of breaths till he eventually tossed the butt off of the balcony to the sidewalk below where no one was walking. His face was glowing again and so was the tip of the next cigarette.
Life doesn't care about plans. According to some people everything is planned ahead of time by someone we will never meet. It's an excuse to fail, if you lose, it wasn't your fault. It's his fault, the one who wrote down the plan to begin with. Phase one, make said person lose their job, phase two, help his wife pack her suitcase and walk away with the kids and later the house, phase three, sell him shotgun shells so he can blow his head off.
The people who think things are planned for some reason always take credit for their own accomplishments. I succeed, I did it on my own. Even though they said it was already planned. You had help, no one does anything on their own.
Ulrich felt like he had no control over his life. He didn't like school, but still put up with it. His father said this, and Ulrich did that for him. Ulrich wasn't smart enough to make his own decisions, not mature enough to do what he wanted to do. He wanted to play soccer, but a gpa was more important. He wanted to keep practicing martial arts, but he had to take more classes or his father would cut him off. Like a puppet help up by its strings.
No time for friends, no time for family, all about school. Nothing was more important. And yet, Ulrich didn't feel that way. He stood on the balcony every night with a cig, hoping the screws holding up the balcony would let go of the wall. Hoping a breeze would be strong enough to blow him clear off. And yet, light breeze, strong screws. One cig after the next, falling from the balcony, Ulrich wanting to race them to the concrete, five floors down.
The cold wasn't getting to Ulrich, but he still left the balcony and closed the sliding door shut behind him. The heater wasn't working, and the apartment was freezing. He could see his breath hanging in the air. His father wouldn't pay for it, and Ulrich would be better off getting a heater. Without a heater he'd get sick, and if he did that he'd miss school, fail, and failure isn't acceptable. He needed a part time job.
"Mr. Stern, what makes you think you can help people?" The man in the black suit asked. He was a manager at a phone company that issued out numbers to people. Area codes, eight hundred numbers, company names that decode creatively, that sort of thing.
"I'm a little screwed up myself," Ulrich said as he sat in the mans office and pulled out a cigarette, "Mind if I smoke." The manager pulled out a ashtray from his desk and slid it across the table to Ulrich.
"You're not happy?" The man asked.
"Not sure what happy is to be honest. Not sure if I've ever been happy. I've been in love, not the same thing. If love was happiness, people wouldn't say love kills," Ulrich said as she sat in the chair in jeans a black t shirt. He would be answering a phone, not talking to people face to face. Image wasn't exactly part of the job.
"Love huh, name?" The manager asked as Ulrich found his light in his back pocket and lit the cigarette.
"Yumi, tenth grade. Four years ago, haven't seen her since, lost contact. I know what it's like to feel like shit. More than enough to relate to these people calling with a shotgun under their chin, or a pistol to their temple. I can tell them, a break up isn't the end. I'm alive aren't I. Life can get worse, but it can get better. And that possibility of better is more than enough motivation to make me take two aspirin for the head ache, instead of ten for the heart ache."
The manager shrugged then opened lifted up sheets of paper to look at Ulrich's application.
"Full time student at the university, quit the soccer team sophomore year. Didn't fit your schedule?" The manager asked.
"Didn't fit my fathers schedule for me. It was either, make time for school, or make time for a job when you're forced to drop out," Ulrich said and the manager looked at him for a second then back at the application.
"Quite frankly, you're the only person to apply for this position. You're working for a bachelors in sociology, and your straight A's in that course qualifies you. The hotline has been down for awhile, and we've had to forward the calls to another hotline. It's Christmas, busy season, a lot of stress, a lot of pissed off teenagers. Think you can handle the threats?" The manager asked.
"Yes I can," Ulrich said then dabbed the cigarette in the ashtray and looked up at the manager. The both stood up and shook hands.
"Come in at six at night every Saturday and Sunday," The manager said and Ulrich nodded, picked up his backpack and walked out of the office. The manager sat down again and picked up a stamper and dabbed it into the ink. He slammed it down on Ulrich's application.
'Ulrich Stern, desired position, Suicide Hotline operator,' all covered by a big green accepted.
Chapter one is up, been awhile since I wrote a chapter one. Anyway, R & R like you always do.