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Characters:
Nelson: a shy computer hacker on his last leg of life who takes in the sweet song of life and death.
Hans: Nelson’s assailant, a tough guy who takes a moment of pity.




I

Nelson took his gaze from the television and looked to his right. He gasped and knew his time was up. His three-dimensional viewfield was narrowing down to one thing and one thing only. Staring him down three inches from his face was a nine millimeter baretta handgun. It was clean. The gun had probably been wiped down shortly after its last victim had been smitten mere feet from its presence. The program should never have been downloaded in the first place. He knew it was all his fault of course. Nelson took this last precious moment to reflect upon the last few occurrences of his life.

The man holding the gun (Hans) had a smug look on his face, one eyebrow raised in a curve. He coughed and sighed and it even looked like for a second that he had sympathy for his prey. He asked “Do you have any prayers, hacker?”

Nelson never before abandoned his beliefs and hopes but at this moment he was particularly tired of his own indecision. He spoke, “The only one element holding me back right now is you Hans. We both know that I’m far more valuable then what they are paying you to kill me.”

Hans changed his sorry look to a one of disbelief the instant Nelson said that Nelson was valuable. “You listen here Nelson, I know what the company pays you and it ain’t that much…”

Nelson took a right knee on the floor, his left leg crouched. He could tell his anxiety had hit its peak and he was close to coming back to his senses. “I have company stocks that are probably twice as much as they are offering. We can cash them in tomorrow!”

Hans was angry now. “I can get money from you after you’re dead you know. I own this part of town. You know that. Why would you even mess with me in the first place? You knew I had tight friends. You knew you would barely even make a profit anyways.” Hans was growing tired and impatient. “You have one minute to pray… Then I have to unload a few into your skull. Understand?” Hans took his gun-hand down to his side and crept back a few paces.

Nelson was surely in a tight spot. He closed his eyes and prepared for an eternity in hell. That’s when it hit him. Nelson felt his heart began to race and droplets of sweat form on his forehead. His mind just went faster and faster until finally he caught up with himself. He had flashes in his head from moments all throughout his life. There were times when he was playing in the water-sprinkler on his front lawn as a child of eight. He saw and felt again his first kiss from a girlfriend. Nelson was racing thought-by-thought through his life. It seemed as though he was reliving it all over again. But he knew it was all just a flash of random levels through different times of his cognitive presence on this earth. He saw flashes of pictures of his childhood and adolescence. When he got to the end and saw his parents, smiling and proud of him, he opened his eyes and could not help to not shed a tear.

Nelson saw out of the corner of his vision that Hans was aiming for his head again with the gun. Nelson closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He wished that he could be taken to go back and do it all over again. He wanted on his last breath only to be able to return to make different decisions…



II

Nelson opened his eyes. He was in the same room, but he was no longer kneeling on the floor. His perspective had changed. He was seemingly floating above the room looking down and into it as if he could see through the ceiling. He drew a breath and said, “what the hell just happened to me!?”

A voice responded, “You wanted to go back again?” Nelson was taken aback by this voice however for he didn’t expect to get a response for his rhetorical question. What really hit him was the fact that the voice that responded to him was about 100 decibels louder that he would have expected. The voice was still shaking his hammer, anvil, and stirrup bones. “You have already toured your lifetime on earth twice, and you expect me to send you for another run? You were completely chaotic in your last run.” The voice paused for a second, partly because the speaker had to search through a long file. The voice continued, “You ripped computer code off of three of four major software companies in your city, put it together on a computer you stole, and sold it for ten times its value. That’s a whole bunch of wrong doings. But I let you go, I let you do it, I let you try again to not screw up. And even I admit, you were doing pretty good, with that binary-search-engine and all. I applaud your work and I hope after where you’re going you can return to meet me again.” The voice coughed a few times, then continued, “Do you have any questions?”

Nelson knew his déja vu of late had a purpose. It had been to warn him that he had done all this before. Nelson had a question come to him. “Does everyone have a dying-wish? And do they get their wish?”

The loud voice responded, “Only the good ones get wishes.” The voice became less loud on this last issue. It responded again, “Open your eyes, Nelson…”

Nelson opened his eyes again. He was still above the room he had been in before. On the floor, arms spread wide, was his very own body, slowly oozing blood and brain-fragments. Nelson cried aloud, “No, this should have reversed. I should have one more chance.” With that, Nelson could feel a force tugging him from behind. Slowly his field of vision faded away from the room to above the house, into the sky, and through the stars. Nelson could feel intense warmth. A star was born. He looked around him and saw that the ground looked soft like cotton but could be stood upon.

“Years of praying paid off, I made it to heaven…”

Just then, at the mere mention of this, he could hear what seemed like a thousand voices all going off in his head. They were all screaming tortured cries, all asking him to save them… Earth. Day. Space. Night. Stars. Existence.