Prologue:
Soundtrack:
Beautiful Day (U2)
The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony ground
There's no room
No space to rent in this town
You're out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you're not moving anywhere
You thought you'd found a friend
To take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for grace
It's a beautiful day
Sky falls, you feel like
It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
You're on the road
But you've got no destination
You're in the mud
In the maze of her imagination
You love this town
Even if that doesn't ring true
You've been all over
And it's been all over you
It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
It's a beautiful day
Touch me
Take me to that other place
Teach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case
See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by cloud
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light
And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came out
It was a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
Beautiful day
Touch me
Take me to that other place
Reach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case
What you don't have you don't need it now
What you don't know you can feel it somehow
What you don't have you don't need it now
Don't need it now
Was a beautiful day
The old man sat on a park bench and watched the world pass by.
He watched as the people laughed, cried, dreamed, fought, smiled, sobbed, were born, died, and killed each other in a never-ending cycle. He understood it all,
knew the cycle intimately.
For every action there is an equal and an opposite reaction. Newton was talking about physics when he made that claim, but the man on the bench knew it
worked for life as well.
Tried to convince Newton of the fact as well. Bloody stubborn bastard had refused to see the truth in that statement. Oh well. Sir Isaac was dead and gone
and stuffed in a hole in the ground and he was still here, wasn't he?
But the man was old and his thoughts strayed. What had he been thinking of? Oh yes, the cycle, that never-ending flux where fantasy and reality mixed to form
a new whole, a new reality.
The man could see it: could watch as the pieces slowly twisted in their eternal dance. He knew that they were all coming together once more, the individual
pieces, would twist together and bond to form a complete picture.
This picture formed but once in a thousand lifetimes, when an infinite number of variables combined in one particular fashion.
The odds against such a happening...well, the old man wasn't entirely sure what the odds were, as mathematics had never been his strong point. But it was
certainly a very large number.
But here his thoughts digressed once more. He really did not care about the mathematical probabilities. He just wanted to see the picture.
It would be damned funny when it happened, and he literally wouldn't miss it for the world. Behind what comic masks would ancient friends hide?
The old man (who really wasn't a man at all) rose slowly, yet gracefully, from his seat on the bench, and disappeared into the teeming mass of humanity.
Into New York City.