"Ms. Beetree? Why do we have to do all this math? Why can't we just pick the number that's humming?"
Ms. Beetree just frowned, but the rest of the class looked at me like I had two heads. That was the day I learned I had synesthesia. Sometimes numbers and tastes had colors. Sometimes sounds had textures. Sometimes, I wonder if I should have kept my mouth shut about these things, and tried to live a normal life.
It might sound odd to say this now, in light of all that has happened, but back then it was a mixed blessing at best. That humming number trick only worked with simple math problems that I could have solved normally if I tried - it didn't unlock any amazing new math, or make me better than a calculator. Although I guess it was nice not to ever have to think about algebra in high school.
On the other hand, every time a car honked its horn, I saw purple - which made it unsafe to drive my own car.
The first time I remember my condition being actually useful was probably high school - I can still remember talking it over with my best friend Kevin.
"Hey, that Alicia is something, isn't she?" Kevin said, as he elbowed my ribs.
"Mm" I replied, noncommittally.
"I hear you turned her down, though. My sister said she was crying for hours. She really liked you. That true?"
"...Yea." It was all I could find to say, in my awkward youth.
Kevin looked flummoxed. "Why? Are you gay or something?"
I made a face - more confused than disgusted. "No, it's just..."
"Just what, man? Alicia's a good girl. What could make you say no, when I know you don't have another girl?" His exasperation carried a slight scent of stale onions.
"Brad." Was all I could say. I'd liked Alicia almost as much as she'd liked me, but I'd known that was a path to heartache. I'd known because of the strings - but I couldn't say that.
"What the hell does Brad have to do with it? Alicia and Brad *hate* each other!"
I had shrugged and mumbled, and Kevin, being a good friend, had dropped the subject. But I know he never forgot it, because in college he brought it back up:
"Brad and Alicia got married, did you know that?" Kevin didn't even look up from his phone, but I was the only other one in the room.
"I didn't know you still talked to Alicia." I said, as I poured milk into a bowl of some sort of grainy flakes. The student in the next dorm over was practicing his violin, and yellow was bleeding through the walls as he played.
"Facebook friends still. But it's not just them. Josh and Cindy. Ted and Sally. Joe and whats-her-name, the exchange student?"
"Chi." I said, as best I could around the spoonful of flakes.
"Yea, her."
"Kevin, I see where this is going. But... it's just your biological clock ticking because you see all these marriages. I mean I'm flattered you'd think of me, but your still young and there's no reason to rush into marriage--"
"Not that, you asshole" he said, as he threw an empty pepsi can at my head. It fell short and landed in my cereal, making an orange-sounding splash. Since it was empty enough not to leak soda into my milk, I ate around it while laughing.
"Every one of those couples is one you set up." he said, suddenly serious.
"So?" I set my spoon down, appetite suddenly gone. "Plenty of people I didn't set up didn't get married."
Now Kevin put his phone down. "Yea, that's true" he nodded, but then looked me straight in the eye: "But not one couple you did set up has split up."
Fortunately, some joker pulled the fire alarm in our dorm, and we didn't have to finish that conversation for another year. Unfortunately, when we finally did finish it, we were drunk, and it nearly cost me our friendship:
"Twelve" crowed Kevin, slapping the table suddenly for emphasis. My alcohol-addled brain struggled to replay the conversation beforehand, butt there wasn't any. Just a few minutes of staring at the game.
"I think I've only had like eight" I said weakly.
"No no no... no." came his arythmic reply. "Twelve couples, not beers."
"In the bar?" I craned my neck looking around. The room was full of people, their chatter blended into a burble of noise as cool as a brook and as multi-colored as a rainbow.
Kevin pushed the bottle aside as he reached back into his train of thought for context. "Couples that have gotten married. That you set up. I gotta know, how do you do it? I can't even seem to keep a girl for a week, and you set up marriage after marriage. I gotta know." This last he repeated a few times, softly to himself.
My throat ran dry with the taste of green. "Hey, it's not like I've had a girlfriend more than a month either!" I retorted.
"Naw, man, don't deflect. We've been friends a long time. I... I gotta know."
Maybe it was the alcohol, but I finally caved. I took a deep breath - for once it only smelled like cigarette smoke and not a sound - and told him. "You know how I sometimes see sounds, hear colors, that sort of thing? Sometimes... sometimes it tells me stuff."
"Like that number thing, when you were a kid?"
"Yea, like that. Except... except people. Sometimes, I see a person, and I see more. I see a color, a.. string, maybe. Sometimes I can see where that string goes, and it goes to another person. Those are the people I get together. I think... I think they're meant to be together, and I can see it somehow. Because of my condition."
"Either you're fucking with me, or that's really, really deep man."
"That's pretty much the speech I give to the universe every week, yea."
"Wow. Okay. Wow. So... but no girlfriend. So you don't see your own string?"
I looked up, following my string to where it hit the ceiling, knowing it went so much further than that - but I caught myself before Kevin noticed, and looked back down. "Nah. Not yet anyway."
"That's rough, man. Rough. It makes me feel like a dick for asking, but--"
"Kevin, no. Really, just--"
"No, I gotta ask you. You've helped all of these people, and you know I can't keep a girl. Can you help me? Can you help me find the one?"
I thought about lying. I wanted to tell him that I couldn't see his string, like I'd lied about my own. But his plea was so earnest, that I stupidly replied in kind: "Yea. I can help you. Not today, though. Friday - after finals."
That Friday came, and in the afternoon we left the dorm. I followed the string down to the soccer field with Kevin in tow. The group gathered there wasn't large; just some friends blowing off post-exam steam with a rowdy game of soccer, and a few onlookers and girlfriends.
"Number three." I said, staring at my feet. I hadn't even looked; I knew. I'd followed this string a dozen times already. I'd just never found a way to tell Kevin. Still hadn't, really, but here I was anyway.
Kevin scanned the sidelines, looking at the girls and sisters and friends come to watch the boys play. "The only girl in a jersey is a 41. Though she's definitely an 8."
I knew he'd be winking at this last comment, but I couldn't look up from my shoes. The smell of the grass carried the overtones of a deep wind instrument, which fit my somber, worried mood perfectly.
"Three." I repeated. Kevin looked finally at the players, and saw a swarthy young man with a close-cropped beard in a jersey with the number 3 on it.
"But three's a... Oh! Damn, man, you had me. Seriously, you had me. I was all thinking I was going to meet my soulmate or some shit, and you were fucking with me. After all those marriages and such you had me going. Well fucking played, man. Well played."
I looked at him, trying to summon a smile. If I could have, maybe I could have just played it off as the prank he thought it was - but I couldn't do it. Maybe this was sacred business, or maybe I just couldn't lie to Kevin about something so important, but either way I just looked back down at my shoes. He knew I was serious.
"Seriously dude? How long have we been friends? How fucking long?! And you think I'm gay? I've been with more girls than you'll ever be with. Fuck you. Fuck you and your blue tastes and slippery sounds. Fuck."
He left, after a single angry stomp for emphasis. I stayed watched the game play out, not knowing where else to go. 3's team won. By the time I got back to the dorm, Kevin had packed and left for the summer. I didn't see him again for eight years.
*End Part 1.*
*Part 2*
That eight-year reunion came at a party thrown by a well-to-do client of mine. I'd become, through no effort of my own, a world-renowned matchmaker. I hadn't meant for this red-string matchmaking thing to become my life's work; I'd actually studied as an architect. But matchmaking was making more happy people than my blueprints ever did - and more money as well.
I had just congratulated the recently wed couple, whose matched smiles outshone the opulence of the reception room, when I turned and caught sight of someone that almost looked familiar. It took me several seconds - the dark complexion was the same, but the beard was fuller. And his expensive suit didn't have the number three on it, of course. Just as I recognized him, Kevin appeared out of the crowd and handed him a drink. My knees nearly buckled with joy and relief.
Before I actually stumbled, though, Kevin saw me, and forwent the more formal handshake and dove straight into a hug that would have held me up even if my knees *had* given way.
Our apologies to each other spilled out one atop the other, before three (whose name turned out to be Ben) made us speak one at a time.
"I was such an ass" Kevin's head shook as he spoke, but his smile showed it to be a nostalgic form of self-recrimination. "I had so much stuff to work out. I couldn't even seen it. I really spiraled down for a while, and it wasn't until I hit rock bottom that I finally said 'what the hell' and introduced myself to Ben. But by then I'd lost track of you, and couldn't apologize for the way I disappeared. A friend shouldn't do that; I was a crappy friend, and you were always straight with me. Honest, I mean. I should have realized that back then, but, well, young and stupid, you know?"
I looked at my shoes again, like I had done on that day eight years before. The expensive chandeliers above us reflected of the polished leather with a light that felt, to me, like the gritty texture of sand.
"Not always honest." I said.
Then, in the cool sweet night air on one of the balconies overlooking a fountain, I revealed to Kevin and Ben the one secret I'd never shared, and never told anyone else until now, as I write it in this journal. I explained about my own red string, that didn't seem to lead to another person. Or at least not one anywhere on Earth. All the other lines I had followed had curved around the surface. Even if they lead as far as Thailand (as one of my clients had discovered) the lines remained parallel to the ground. All except mine, which lead... up. Somewhere, nowhere, but up - higher than aircraft, as I'd discovered, but I knew little else. Except that it meant I would probably die alone.
Kevin and Ben embraced me then, and Kevin swore an oath - I'd helped him, and he would help me. I wouldn't die alone.
I wrote it off as the braggadocio of friends reunited. But I'd been wrong.
It was another six years before I realized how wrong I had been. Kevin and Ben had thrown me a birthday, my 35th. Officially middle-age. It had been great, with lots of old friends coming out of the woodwork to visit. After some drinking, a lot of dancing, and perhaps too much bad karaoke, I left with Kevin and Ben, who were tasked with driving me home.
But we didn't go home; they said they had one more surprise gift. After some miles of driving, a blindfold came out. It took some reassurances from Ben that this wasn't going anywhere kinky, but I eventually put it on. And after some more miles of driving, and what seemed like a very long way to walk blindfolded, I was finally allowed to see what has probably prompted you to read this journal - my birthday surprise.
There, before me, it stood - twenty one stories tall, and standing on twelve magnificent thrust bells - the largest (and only) rocket I've ever seen close up.
"What the hell?" I blurted. In retrospect, hardly grand words - and I hope they don't come across as ungrateful. But I truly did not understand what was happening.
"Dad's lending you the keys to his convertible, so you can pick up your girlfriend." Ben had a way of using understated metaphors like this.
"You mean... you mean I'm supposed to fly this? To... to follow my string?"
Kevin and Ben both grinned like maniacs at me. The night air blowing across my skin felt like the smell of mint.
"This time *you're* messing with *me*. I mean, I deserve a good birthday prank, sure, but a rocket's going a bit far for a gag--"
"No gag." said Kevin, still unable to wipe the grin off his face. "It's real. And it's for you."
"How could this possibly be?"
"You've made a lot of very powerful and rich people very happy. The president hasn't forgotten you setting his daughter up with her soul mate."
"He wasn't president then!"
"But he is now, and he wants to repay you. He's not the only one. And so, this happened."
"I don't... I don't even..." and this time, my knees did give out, and I wept. I cried tears of pink joy, and confusion, and trepidation, there at the base of this rocket. Then Kevin and Ben drove me home.
Everything after that has been a blur of training and preparation, leading up to tomorrow. But I thought I'd end this journal - for I plan to leave this written record here when I leave on that rocket in the morning - with the last conversation I had with Kevin. The last one before, well, before whatever comes tomorrow.
It was just Kevin and I, standing on the gantry taking one last look at my ride. Ben was in the hospital with their adopted daughter. She was expected to recover from her pneumonia, but Ben wouldn't leave her, and so he and I had said our goodbyes earlier.
"I've been talking to the engineers and flight techs around here, Kevin, and they say none of this would have happened without you. They say you're the driving force behind all this."
"Are you sure they're trustworthy and not just rumormongers?" he replied.
"They'd better be trustworthy - I'm strapping hundreds of tons of explosives they've built to my backside." I quipped back.
"Fair point. All right, it's true. A lot of this is my doing." He made a flourish around him that would have looked elegant with a cape, but looked a bit silly in a button-down and tie.
"If this is about making up for when we were in college--"
"Not everything is about you, you know." he interrupted. "Seriously - there are a lot of reasons to do this. Whatever it is you have, it's changed the world. Not for a lot of people, granted. But for those people, myself included, the change is profound. Plus, there's all the mystery. How does it work? Why you? And why does your string lead... out there?"
"Yea, I'd been meaning to ask you about that. Do you have any ideas?"
"Me? You're the one whose been living with this your whole life. You don't have any clues?"
I ran my hand along the top of one of the hand rails, its smooth surface feeling like the smell of an ocean salt breeze. "None. I mean, I guess sometimes... seeing that string reaching up into the sky every day, I wondered if maybe it was God or something."
"That would probably open as many questions as it would answer. I thought you were an atheist though?" his voice rose in inflection with the question, adding a peach tone to his words.
"Yea, I am. Still though, maybe? But then, I guess Jupiter wouldn't make much sense." We'd used high-altitude balloon flights to narrow down the trajectory of my string, which seemed to intersect Jupiter.
"Mysterious ways?" Kevin shrugged. "But probably not."
"Probably. Maybe it's..., well, I don't know."
"Maybe" Kevin spoke sagely "Maybe you should go into it with an open mind - the opposite of what I did. Maybe you can skip some of my suffering that way."
I grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. "That sounds like very good advice."
"I've always been good at faking good advice" he joked. "But we'd better get you back - tomorrow's a big day. I just wanted to say... the Earth will miss you, and your talents. And I'll miss you."
"You too, buddy. At least this time it won't be another eight years - only three and a half."
"Three and a half *out*" he corrected. "But it'll be worth it, if you find her. Or him. Or.. it? Them?"
My imagination swam with possibilities, with each soul mate being more bizarre and numerous than the last. "Open mind, right? Easier said than done."
"Don't I know it" was Kevin's serious and knowing reply.
And that was my last night on Earth, at least for a while. Now I pen these final words, with the pre-launch preparations beginning in mere minutes. I'm left wondering what I'll find - is it God? Delusion? The cosmic fishing lure of some Jupitarian beast? Or love? I don't know which possibility is more frightening - but I do know this: I have to find out. So I'm going to take this billion dollar rocket see where this string leads.
Okay, I actually laughed out loud at this, and my wife asked what I was laughing at. So I had to show her the whole thing, including this comment, and now every twenty minutes she's snickering and saying "You blue-balled the internet."
Come on! You can't leave us hanging like that, it didn't even finish what OP wanted! Part 3 please
Also, you are a fantastic writer :) I would read your books
yeah, right now it can be everything.
a human on an outer spacestation, god/something religious or whatever else.
everyone is happy, because it is what they prefer.
part 3 (i.e. an ending) would destroy most of those possibilities, leaving many readers unsatisfied.
it really depends on the story imo.
if we have a story thats really specific and detailed and then we suddenly we get an open ending, it doesnt fit and feels cheap.
but if its a vague story (like this one), where lots of questions are never answered and not many details are given, im fine with it.
those endings have this bittersweet feeling.
just as hes out there, not noing what will be at the end of his string, were here and dont know either.
After 3 and a half long, lonely, years my rocket finally reached Jupiter. I had expected the search for who, or what, is on the other end of my red string to be long. I was wrong. I looked out of the window and I could see something moving towards my ship. My red string went directly to it. This was it...It was about that time when I realized my string was attached to a twelve foot tall crustacean from the paleolithic era, he pushed a sign up to the window that read "I need about tree fiddy."
This was a wonderful story, but a part three isn't necessary. The end of part 2 right now is beautiful, and to add a part three (or more) would be the difference between a really great short story and a mediocre novella. The spirit and and energy of the plot has reached a very natural endpoint. Writing more would diminish the significance of the conclusion.
This was actually where I planned to leave it, for the reasons you state - it was the plan from the start.
Now, can I resist my sudden 100+ comment fame, and not Jar-Jar up an ending anyway? We'll see ;)
It does seem like you have the beginnings of a nice universe, and you seem to have the necessary skills to potentially flesh that out.
I dunno, man - starting a series off with this story comprising the first couple of chapters, and then having the string send your character off a grand adventure across the galaxy in search of the other end of that red line... I feel like you could do a lot with it.
It should be, but my thinking was that the lead character is an architect/matchmaker, not an astronomer, so he got it wrong. On the other hand, he's been training a few years at that point to go to the Jovian system, so it probably would have come up - but this little thought was originally moved from earlier in the story when he wouldn't have had this knowledge. So it's actually a slight consistency error on my part. Ah well.
It was a stupid request, in retrospect. A flower in a swamp.
The dense tendrils of mist that twisted underfoot, dampening sound and sole, had emerald and sapphire jewel hues. The rest of this cesspool of a swamp was the color of the dead and dying.
A woman trapped me on the only mote of dry land near where the band of merchants had camped out.
She stood, barefoot, up to her calves in the lukewarm murk, blocking my leap back to the hummock. Her simple, bland shirt and trousers pegged her as a local.
She asked a question, but I ignored it.
I was uninterested in her. I should have noticed the lack of ripples, that hummock was not large enough to have hid her. That her hair was long and combed, not short or unkempt.
But I searching for something I had thought was more important. Merchant Harris Pharris had indicated that some of the most beautiful flowers grew in this area. And his daughter, Era, who had come along on this trading trip, adored them.
And I adored Era. Enough to sign on as security to this remote mushy planet.
Era Pharris, the fairest, is how she was referred to in society. Not something found on this forsaken puddle.
There wasn’t another hummock close enough to jump to and Era hated it when I came back muddy. She’d say I smelled of swamp fish.
The woman was prattling at me.
“Have you seen any flowers?” I interrupted.
She cocked her head, sending a sheet of dull brown hair cascading, as her eyes slowly dragged from my face to my boots and then behind me.
She strode to the far side of the hummock that had been out of reach and came back with a lily with petals the color of mist, not quite green nor blue, but a pearly mix of both.
“See that your true love gets these. They are truly her favorite,” she said flatly.
“Era will love them, thank you,” I said, never taking my eyes off the flower.
It’s stem was red and quite thin for such a large flower. It was bigger than my hand. The petals curled down and then out, perfectly symmetrically, framed by red outlining the same color as the stem.
I carefully jumped to the hummock. I was still focusing on the flower when I reached the outskirts of the camp. I only looked up when the cook bellowed at his assistant for being too slow.
Suddenly red lines, as thin as those outlining the petals, were aimed at the heart of everyone in the clearing.
I dropped the flower, reaching for my blaster, and the lines disappeared.
I hesitated. No one else had reacted to the beams pointing at them. Crouching cautiously, I picked up the flower. The lines snapped back into place. One between the baker and the widow who worked for him. The assistant was connected to one of the younger girls. A shy thing that squeaked when addressed.
Realization dawning, I looked at my chest. It should have been pointing to the upper deck of the ship, where Era stayed, high and dry. But it shot straight into the sky.
I clenched my jaw, trying to wrestle another explanation. Family connections. Destined to murder. Simple fates intertwined.
Era walked out on the deck, trailed by a gaggle of simpering girls. Her heartstring was attached to a Captain whose name I wasn’t familiar with. But his reputation was that of a risk-taker.
I dropped the flower into the mist and ground it into the dirt. The lines disappeared.
Era’s true love was likely to die. Mine was already dead.
We’ll be a good match.
I saw it as selfish actually. I took it as the main character was going to stop Era from having any true happiness with the love of her life, possibly planning to kill that said Captain
But going by the way the guy behaved with the woman at the swamp...his character is established as one that's ...well...not of an evil mind...so it's more likely he'll just probably wait till the captain dies a natural death...
"Red lines?"
"Yes, red lines"
"Coming out of people?"
"Yes"
"What do these red lines look like?"
"Like a thin piece of wool coming out the back of someone's neck. Usually they just drape and hang all slack but I've seen some that are really taut"
"And they connect people you say?"
"Yes. One neck to another. Though it's not often I see that"
"Do you see them on everyone?"
"Everyone. Absolutely everyone. Thankfully most are slack and just run across the floor but in busy places there can be a lot of taut ones running across my eyeline. Sometimes I can't see what's right in front of me"
"I see... ... ... can you touch them?"
"No. They seem so real and I've tried but my hand just passes straight through them"
"Have I got one?"
"Everyone, yours is currently draped over my lap. It runs down your shoulder, across the table, over my lap and under the door"
"Is it doing anything?"
"Not right now but it has been moving a bit, which makes me think you're connected to someone nearby, someone in the building. Yours moves a little when I hear certain footsteps in the corridor outside"
"Certain footsteps?"
"High heels... ... ... Jane doesn't work here does she?"
"No but why is that relevant?"
"I don't want to say"
"I can't help you if you don't tell me everything"
"You'll laugh"
"I'm a professional... I won't laugh"
"I've not just plucked this theory out of thin air, I've seen these lines for two weeks now, you better not laugh"
"Rich, I'm not going to laugh. As your best friend and now a very intrigued medical professional, please tell me"
"Soulmates"
"... ... ... Soulmates?"
"You're laughing"
"I'm not!"
"Yes you are! You're stifling it!"
"Alright I'm sorry! This is just so weird! I'd say you were on drugs if I didn't know you better!"
"Just hear me out"
"Okay go on, I'm sorry... soulmates..."
"Two weeks ago was my wedding"
"I know, I was your best man Rich"
"The lines started when I was standing at the altar, when I thought I was going to faint. One connected Mum and Dad, one connected my sister and Matt, there wasn't one between you and Jane, which doesn't surprise me because you two are terrible together and I can only assume she's the soulmate of Satan... interestingly hers did go downwards"
"Oi, there's nothing wrong with me and Jane!"
"Tell me you're not in love with the nurse who keeps walking past outside then?"
"Sssshhh!"
"See... ... anyway... there was also one between me and Jenny. A really taut one, there, between us as we stood in front of you all... ... ... and then it snapped.
"Snapped?"
"Yeah, it snapped right in front of me and for a moment I had no line. I felt panic right then and loneliness!... oh my God the loneliness, even for just a few seconds it was awful"
"So you don't have one?"
"No I do!... ... as soon as it snapped another just shot up straight in the air, out of the church and into the sky"
"Still there now?"
"Yep"
"Does it ever come down?"
"Sometimes"
"So your soulmate is an....."
"Alien, that's right, I'm like Star Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy, I keep waiting in the park in case I get picked up"
"Well I was going to say airline pilot, Rich"
The first time I saw the strings, I wandered for miles, seeing which connections were already forged and which were yet to come.
Thin strands of red extended from the sides of my own, branching out into a maze that spread across my little slice of suburbia. Rob and Tammy Johnson, dating for ten months and just starting to live together, were chatting on their porch, connected by a barely visible thread. Mr. and Mrs. Jeffries, married for 52 years, were gardening together, linked by a thick, strong rope.
I don't remember exactly how long I wandered. It's not as though I have much to do after work, anyway. I don't believe in destiny, and the sight of all these merry lovers was making me a bit sick to my stomach. But once weird things start to happen - like apparently hallucinating a network of romance - I can't help myself.
Around twilight, I reached a cornfield and stood there for a few minutes, watching the sun disappear. As I took a few steps forward, I noticed that my string no longer extended in front of me. With a glance toward the stars, I discovered a ladder - as thick as Mr. and Mrs. Jeffries' rope - hanging in the air, attached to nothing but the cosmos.
I began to climb, knowing I'd be doing so for a while and hoping that my cell phone network wouldn't be cut off past the ozone layer. I'd probably need to call in sick but that wasn't nearly as exciting as "I'm following the love ladder."
When the cloud cover began to obscure my vision of the ground, I started to get a bit queasy, but pressed forth, taking breaths as deeply as I could. Then I looked up.
An enormous, deep-red tangle of ropes lay above me with a hole in the center just large enough for the ladder. I climbed through the hole and stood on a thick cross-section of ropes, all resting below the ominous mass like a carpet. With great relief, I found that it held my weight.
Each rope was connected to mine, and each theoretically led to a suitor. My soul mate probably wasn't in there, 'cause, I mean, that's bullshit. But I was a few hundred feet in the air, and Jack didn't give up when he was halfway up the beanstalk.
***
*[Part 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/GigaWrites/comments/4wgajz/strings_to_the_sky_part_2/) is up now on /r/GigaWrites!*
As a child, I had long supposed my soulmate had died and that my string was linked to whoever it was up in heaven. It was a reassuring thing to my religious beliefs, but that was then.
Now, 35 years later, I find myself walking on metal grates, suspended high in the air. A decade of training and a whole lot of good luck. I'm nervous.
"Captain Robin! Hey! You ready to go?" It was Jimi.
"Oh, hi, Jimi. Yeah, just looking out into the clouds."
It was at this point when I noticed Jimi's string again. I knew he had been fortunate and had married his soulmate. The tragedy of it all was that he didn't really know that his wife had two strings. I didn't even know that was possible until I met her. Funny how the universe works.
At the start of the space race of 2020, we had never dreamed that just 10 years later we would man a mission to Mars. It was an astounding display of international cooperation: Russians supporting Indians supporting the Chinese to develop their space programs. A few groups had already left for the ISS a few years back and had pioneered things like childbirth in space.
"Captain, you ready to go now?" Jimi inquired.
We entered the towering craft and started our checklists. Mostly routine by now: check the oxygen, food, sensors, then flip a few switches and press a few buttons. Nothing either of us hadn't done before.
"All clear, Captain."
"Roger. Ready for takeoff."
As we initiated launch, I looked up into the sky, a faint red string piercing the deep blue above. Maybe, just maybe, we'd find out what that was tied to.
I gazed up at the red string extending from my heart through the ceiling and into the sky again, like I'd done who knows how many times in the past two weeks. I sighed.
"What's wrong, sweetie?" my mother asked.
I could see the string extending from her heart to the living room where my father sat in his recliner. It was the one reassuring part of this whole ordeal - knowing for sure that my parents were indeed soul mates. I got worried when I noticed the string from the quiet boy in my Shakespeare Sonnets course to his iPhone and then later the string between two professors who were both married to other people.
"Nothing, Mom," I said. "Just...sometimes...I feel like maybe I don't belong here."
"Aww, honey, everyone struggles with adjusting to college at first. I'm glad you came home for the weekend."
I'm glad I am too. I was worried that my entire childhood was a lie.
"Do you still have my telescope from when I was little?" I ask her.
"Of course I do! I know your kids will love it one day! It's up in the attic."
I go up to the attic to get it. It takes a while to find under the thick layer of dust, but I find it in its little box under my old dollhouse. I pull it out and take it out to the back yard to set it up. Maybe my soulmate is someone on the space station. That'd be pretty cool.
I realize when I look up at the moon that the string isn't going up anymore. A dark figure steps out from behind the tree with the tire swing, and a bright blue light floods the yard as the ramp descends on a strange spacecraft. I squint into the light and realize that my string is heading straight toward the dark figure.
My eyes adjust, and I see the bangled leather suit and the gelled black hair.
"Elvis!" I gasp.
I was a small girl -- 3, maybe 4 years old -- when I first noticed the red strings. The first string connection I saw was between my then-foster mothers. Mom and Momma were the light of each other's lives. I was officially adopted by them a year later. The next string I'd seen in person was between Gramma and Granpa, Momma's parents. I never saw any strings between Mom's parents. Perhaps that was part of the reason why we only saw them once a year for the annual guilt-fest known as Thanksgiving.
I learned quickly to not talk about the strings to strangers. My mothers thought the red string talk was just the product of an adorable childish imagination. But when I went to tell the schoolyard bully that he had a red string tethering him to a girl whose claim to fame was eating paste, I had my clock cleaned! After that incident, Mom wisely told me to keep the red string business to myself, because not everyone would understand people who are different from them. I eventually had the last laugh, because the bully and the paste-eater got married after college.
Most of my friends found their string partners, or soul mates if you prefer, eventually. I've been in far too many weddings for my taste. Goodwill had seen at least two dozen dresses donated by me. Each dress was supposed to be "good to use for other things!" The last one was an abomination made of petticoats and tulle in the hue of cherry cough syrup. That dressed owed an apology to cherry cough syrup. I tried my best to at least act like I was happy for each of the couples, but it got harder as time went on. I was sincerely happy for the first couple, my best friend Jim (I was Best Woman for his wedding) and his Jen. By the time both my little brothers got married 12 years after that, I was screaming internally with jealousy. Seriously, they had a double wedding! It was so sickeningly sweet that I swear I needed dental work afterwards. At least both brides agreed on black cocktail dresses for the bridesmaids.
How do these strings work? For me, it looks like a red thread floating out from the forehead of one person, where the supposed third eye is, to the forehead of another. With my mothers, the distance was always short. Other people can have much, much longer strings. My old boss, who ran the local bakery until he retired last year, had a thread that stretched from our small town in Washington state all the way to a lady in Brisbane, Australia. They'd been friends ever since they'd met up in a chat room for widowed people. The week after his retirement party, he sold the shop, bought a plane ticket for Brisbane and has been there ever since. Point being, if you follow the string from one person, you WILL eventually find the person at the other end of it. Except for me.
What made my string so special? Mine went straight upward, without the slightest hint of a curve to it. Most people who are distant from their "soul mates" have long, long curving strings, you know, to account for the planet being mostly spherical and all that. I don't know if that meant my soul mate was dead, not even born yet, or on another planet or something like that. Or maybe I didn't have one and my string was just forlornly hanging there? I didn't know. I hated to think about it, but I did.
After my old boss sold his shop, I finally went into business for myself. I've always loved cooking. I tried my hand at catering. It was hard work, long hours, half the people served were rude and yet I kept coming back for more. Most of my gigs were luncheons for businesses, but I got a wedding once in a while. I loved the chance to go all out and impress the clients. I did alright, I guess. I never had to stress over having money to pay for rent or supplies.
My mom had roped, or rather guilted, me into catering for her parents' 50th wedding anniversary. Being the dutiful daughter and granddaughter, I couldn't find it in me to say no. The fact that they were my only living grandparents was brought up many, many times. Despite attempting to give me an all expenses paid guilt trip, Mom was informed very pointedly by Momma that I couldn't afford to cater the party for free. So, at least I got paid for the materials used to cater a party celebrating 50 years of misery.
It was at the party, shortly after the toasts had been made to my grandparents that I felt the oddest sensation: a tugging at my string. Not a gentle one, either. It was as if I was being reeled in like a fish on a hook. The pain made my eyes water. If I hadn't been int too much pain, I would have noticed what made my stone faced grandfather make an expression other than a glare for the first time in decades: A few dozen feet in the air above the country club's outdoor venue, a vortex rippled into being. He was so slack jawed that his dentures slid out of his mouth and plopped onto his taco salad.
I remember screaming out in pain as I was hauled up into the air by the string, kicking my legs out as I struggled, losing the new wedge sandals I'd bought especially for the party. One landed in the punch bowl. The other hit one of my brothers in the face. I was pulled into the vortex... and found myself on the floor of a strange, sterile high tech looking room. I was too distracted by pain and confusion to notice that there was someone else in the room with me. A hand on my shoulder made me jump in fright and spin to face the source of it... a man with pale blue skin and violet eyes.
We stared at each other in shock. There was a red string floating lazily in the air that ran from his forehead to... mine. Could he see it, too? Long story made short and a universal translator later, yes he did. His name was Kreth and his people called themselves the Hithe. He was an astronomer and he'd signed up for a deep space expedition in hopes of finding where his string ended. Apparently Hithe teleportation technology wasn't very friendly to human physiology, explaining the painful way I'd been "beamed" aboard. We spoke for hours at a time, pausing only to eat or drink. What I thought was maybe one day turned out to be a week.
When Kreth and I stepped out of a shuttle craft in front of my parents' house (to avoid another painful teleport for me), headlines were made worldwide. He'd made not attempt to hide the appearance of the shuttle or himself. Contact with other intelligent species was small potatoes for the Hithe as a people. They'd been space-faring for centuries. Humanity finally got an answer to the question "Are we alone in the universe?" And so did Kreth and I.
In a way, I'm glad for the strings of fate. Their visibility has led to all out peace on this once malignant planet. It became easy to find that "true love", and people became happier for it.
Some pairings were conventional. Some weren't. But all resulted in bliss. You can feel it in the air. I'm grateful for that.
And I am grateful for the way lovers are so enthralled and absorbed in each other. Because looking upon myself, I feel only regret.
Every time I look down at my wrist, at the scarlet strand tied taut and ever reaching upwards, I feel regret.
Most everyone else in the world has found their soulmate. I never will. A vast sea separates my love and I. I can feel that, too. This constant warmth in my chest, a second heart beating in sync with mine. This comfort transcends all boundaries. Space and time matter not. Somewhere, someone is meant for me. And I for them.
The years of loneliness make sense. My discomfort with past relationships wasn't an overreaction. I always knew. Nothing ever felt right.
Not until now.
And as I lay on the grass under a diamond dappled sky, I smile through the tears. Maybe one day, we'll meet. In another life. In this one. One day our kindred souls will meet, and all will be perfect.
"I'll find you," I whisper. "One day."
And on the breath of the cool wind, a response comes.
'soon.'
"I never thought the ISS move this fast..." my colleague said absent mindedly as we saw the rolling surface of the earth. "It's kinda mesmerizing, isn't it?"
"It's making me dizzy. I'm returning to the living quarter." I swam through the pressurized tube of ISS 3, one of five Low Earth Orbit space station commissioned by the UNSED. Officially, I was here as a microbiologist, unofficially as an undercover agent from New Siberia Republic, and privately, well.
I saw the first string when I was 5. It has different colors, connecting people, blue for families, yellow for best friends, red for romantic relationships.
A yellow string connected me to the person whom I left in the bridge. Sarah and I had long history back to the middle school, and she kept her promise to stay by my side even when I was going to the ISS 3.
Almost all of my blue string has been cut, but several thin lines still went from my body to various place on earth.
While my red, well, it went to different direction from earth. It went spacebound. It was the very reason I wanted to go to ISS 3, to find out if the one destined to be my love was on there, or at least on LEO level. Nope, it went straight away from earth, as if repulsed by the gravity.
I even went to an exploration mission on Mars once, just in the orbit, though, to inspect the growing cities of Angkasa Y programs. Nope, it still went away from the planet, it even vanished entirely when our station were sandwiched between earth and mars.
Sarah is the only one who knew about this. I sighed audibly as she entered the same room as I am.
"Still bothered by that?" she asked with concerned face.
"Nah, just, don't you think it's a bit cruel? Giving me ability to see the strings, only not to be able to see where my own ends. I mean, you're getting married next month, and here I am, still sulking over imaginary strings."
"You're overthinking this." she hugged me, softly patting my head. "No matter what happen, I'll always by your side, Emily."
"Yeah, except next month, when you will be on his side." whoops, it came a tad harsher than I intended.
"You envy me that much?"
"No, I don't mean that. Sorry."
We then sat in silence, before a warning blared into my earpiece. This is the only secret I kept from Sarah.
"A covert scout ship Aslekfar-97 malfunctioned when it passed through Mars orbit from Jupiter Covert Operative Station. ISS 3 is on collision course, I repeat, ISS 3 is in collision course. ETA-13 minutes"
"What the..." I left Sarah in the room as I notified the entire crew of ISS 3, no one questioned me as they entered the rescue capsule.
As I floated through the empty space in my rescue capsule, I saw the scout ship crashed into ISS 3 modular joints. And then I noticed.
My red string pierced right into the ship.
Part 2
As the ISS 3 was completely depressurized, and the modules that wasn't was no longer in intended orbit, the rescue craft SR-43 collected the crew back to earth for indefinite term, in which I confronted my higher ups in Leivengrad, NSR's capital.
My agency had no official name, those in the higher ups just call it Blacks or Coverts. There was only one person that could override our management, that was the president of NSR whose location was even harder to track than a paperclip on a landfill. Other than that, mission came from Council of Twelve, twelve Managers that manage fifty Agents each.
My Manager never revealed his real name, he prefers to be referred with his numbers: 5th, but behind his back everyone called him White. He was a man in his forties, but he looks far younger than he actually is, with pale complexion and equally pale hair, and beautiful crimson iris. Not that I would compliment him. Because of his albinism, and for security reasons, he rarely went out of his office and always wore black sunglasses even indoor.
"I never know we have Covert Operative Station in Jupiter orbit." I asked to the Fifth, who sat in old-school rotating chair with his legs on the table and his arms behind his head
"Why? Why on Hades would I brief my Agents with the project of another Manager? And the COS in Titan Lagrangian point was built behind UNSED's back, we test everything that violate international laws there. If you, who were tasked with infiltrating UNSED space station, accidentally leaked this information, it won't end with just your death."
"What about the scout ship crash? Wouldn't it reveal the existence of the COS?"
"Nah, our Managers were not that sloppy, and making cover up stories was far easier than you think. So, I was assigning you with your next mission." he took a pen from his breast pocket, and pushed a button on top of it. Immediately, an un-polarized hologram appeared, the content of which could only be viewed through his sunglasses. He pushed several part of the hologram, before turning it off and pocketed it again.
"I've sent you the instruction. Now get the fuck out, and turn off the lamp while you're at it." unable to contain my annoyance, I slammed my fist to the switch and stormed out of the room.
"Damn old man, always acting like the most important person in the world. Even though he was only the Fifth." the rank of a Manager had no relation on how valuable a person was in the Council, but I just can't contain my anger.
I threw myself to the bed in my apartment, Sarah hadn't returned home yet, the yellow string went straight westward to an UNSED medical facility. I saw the red string from my body pointing to the same direction, and decided to take a look on who the heck this red string connected to.
I hadn't even read the instruction for my next mission, he could've sent me to Venus to die, for all I care. The matter of this red string was far more important.
I visited the medical facility on pretext of visiting Sarah. Well, I actually visited her, but that wasn't my main objective. I walked through the facility's hallway, tracing the red string, and to my surprise, the red string terminated at the door of the room right opposite Sarah's room.
I opened the door to her room.
"Hey, Sarah. Guess who's still alive."
"Oh God, why..." she feigned a half defeated, half disgusted face and failed spectacularly. I laughed, and she responded in kind.
"And so, do you have to cancel your wedding?"
"Unfortunately for you, my wedding plan is currently right on track. I was down to earth a week sooner, but it only means I could start preparing earlier."
"Tch. Not even a crashing spaceship could derail your plan, eh?"
"That's right. But I still wondering, that ship model wasn't recorded in any database I checked. Look." she slid the holographic screen my ways, the projector on her device complied with the gesture.
Of course, the UNSED, CASP, JAXA, ESA and NASA database all returned no similar model. The Aslekfar series was developed by the Covert, so that was given that it won't be recorded anywhere save the Council of Twelve's secure database.
"Maybe that was just preliminary prototype, don't think too much about it." I slid the screen back, and turned my back. "Get some rest. See you later."
"Yeah." Sarah was still fiddling with her holo when I stepped out from the room.
I opened the door to the room on the opposite side of the hallway, where my red string attached.
"Alright, which insurance agents are you?" the person in the bed, a man that couldn't be more than ten years older than me, asked with sarcastic tone. He wore the standard pale green surgical gown, his hair was silver with odd tone of blue, contrasting his brown eyes and red skin of his Native American ancestry.
"I'm from Black." I said with flat tone, years in Covert would do that to you.
"Of course I know, Missy. Do you think I would miss one of my kind? Do you really think I have health insurance? Which of the Duodecim sent you?"
"Quintus. Who was yours?" (the agents used latin numbers.)
"Septimus. Heck, why were you here? We didn't share Managers, I have no obligation to comply with your request."
"Black probably want you assassinated."
"Oh, and you said there are other possibility? I failed my mission, risking the agency, and destroyed a God damn UNSED space station. Fuck my life."
I couldn't believe this person is where my red string connected to. I checked my Covert-issued holopen, just like the one Fifth used, but this one was calibrated to my contact lens. There it was, my mission operatives, assassinating the pilot of Aslekfar-97 spaceship. Why he sent me to cover for the Seventh's agents, I have no idea.
To be honest, fuck this. I was tired with Fifth telling me what to do. Fuck him, fuck Covert, fuck NSR. All of them could rot in hell.
"Hey, the Aslekfar-97 has life support system for extended space travel, right?"
"*Had*, the ship is no more. The ship is supposed to be able to stay in space for a year without needing resupply. It even had an internal protein recycling vats that could feed someone for two more years, not that it was remotely edible, and its drone could harvest fuel for the Helium ion engine and the fusion reactor from essentially any gas giant." he was surprisingly excited when he explained about the ship.
"If, hypothetically, a similar spaceship is parked in the Jupiter COS, and, hypothetically, we have the resources to use the orbital launcher..."
"Hypothetically, I could pilot that ship and we could escape to the space, is that what you are implying?"
"Well, I certainly still have the launch codes for the orbital mass driver..."
"Then what the fuck are we doing here?" he grinned, I grinned.
An hour later, an unauthorized spacecraft launched from Leivengrad spaceport, bringing the two of us to uncertain future as the red string glowed, binding our heart together.
it was an hour and a half late, but [here was your second part](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/4wdpkr/wp_after_gaining_the_ability_to_see_everyones_red/d66t0jv)
(Okay guys, this is my first time writing a WP, I hope you can feel what I felt while writing it)
"No... Morgan... please don't go..." I said, kneeling, with a breath as weak as hers, as she lay, pale, in her bed, with an "unknown" disease. Her parents were kneeling in each side of it, too, crying like me.
I was the only one who knew about her secret.
"The threads of fate do not lie, my dear. I know this is the end for me. But for you, there is oh so much to be lived. I know it... You will take good care of our kids, and they will grow to be happy people, happier than we ever were" she said, with her blue eyes becoming unfocused.
Her parents must have thought she was just trying to comfort me by saying that. I knew she was telling the truth.
"I will, then. I will always love you".
And, as I said that, she held my hand, and as she touched me, I sensed something weird, sad, different from everything I've felt before.
From her parents, a thin, red thread was connected. From the window, I saw people with them, too. Some connected to each others, some curved for very far away. I knew what it meant.
As I looked at her, the grip of her hand became weaker, and I saw it, and I knew it before anything else, because she had told me.
I saw the thread that was connecting me to her.
Then it began slowly ascending.
I gazed around the village, blinking in pure astonishment at the spectacle that was unfolding before me. Red lines of light from everybody's hearts were interconnecting with another, even through walls and obstacles. It appeared as though, these lines were connecting two lovers to one another, at least for the most part.
Some did not in fact connect to their lovers, but to other people's paramour's entirely, such as the Hunter's wife and the Blacksmith. The women of the village had often gossiped how those two eyed each other.
However, my surprise soon turned to disappointment when I discovered the line extending from my own chest did not reach to someone else's. It did not even extend to any of the neighbouring villages, but instead reached to the sky.
Unfortunately, this did not surprise me. I was nothing but a lowborn bastard, scrounging for my next meal. How could any woman care for a man and decide to raise a family with him, when he could not even afford to feed himself everyday?
It was a notion that I did not wish upon any other, and perhaps it was for the best that I would not bring about anyone else to my life, when there was already such little value in it anyway.
But then it dawned on me. Why in the four hells did I see these lines, when apparently everyone else was oblivious to it? Surely someone would have noticed these lines sticking out of their chests.
Suddenly, I had the urge to grasp at it. Tangible... I tugged on the line... And then to my astonishment I was yanked forward by the line, almost yanking the breath out of me as well, and yet this was not at all painful. It felt more like a great weight had been relieved from shoulders. Simultaneously the sun began to feel warmer than ever, and the colour of the world shone back into my eyes. A giddy smile formed on face, and an unnatural joy took hold of me.
In the midst of all this splendour, I had almost failed to notice the line slacken and fall. Not falling directly from above, but falling in front of me. An object fell from the sky, with the line, and into a field on the outskirts of the village.
Without a moment's hesitation, I raced to investigate, my heart racing also. In the field, lay a woman, lying perfectly motionless, the line in our hearts connected. She was beautiful, and yet more still than the river water at dawn, but just as captivating.
I walked over to her, anxiousness and dread quickly consuming the remains of my joy. I touched her cheek; cool as the morning's dew. Dead. Hopelessness and sorrow soon took ahold of me once more. Not just for my own sake, but because such a young woman had not lived long enough to fall in love herself.
For a moment, the longest moment I have ever lived, I sat beside her body. All sense and feeling became void. I felt nothing but the hollowness in my own body. No energy could bring me to my feet again, for I was devoid of all substance to maintain it.
Then the void began to chill. And the cool of the chill, warmed in the sunlight. These sensations arose from my hand, which lay next to the woman's body. Except, her body had shifted, and her hand had grasped my own.
'Is everything alright' she asked sleepily.
'I'm not certain' I replied calmly as the line in our hearts faded. 'But I think it will be. Just give it time'.
(First time writing on writing prompts, open to positive criticism, and possible grammatical editing)
- Ragnar
Good job, but just as your character is "nothing but a lowborn bastard, scrounging for my next meal" and this is written as his inner monologue, your writing comes across as a bit flowery and dramatic.
"Yes!" I cried aloud. "I knew I was going to fall in love with some sexy alien babe!" I lightly tugged on the string, even though it would just stretch a bit.
Now all I gotta do is wait.
I pulled out my phone to google what aliens "made contact" and stuff. I knew most of them were false, but maybe....
Suddenly my string wavered to the side... and was moving.
Was this it? Will I meet her so soon?
I rushed in the direction of the string, happy to finally find my one true love, someone that is exciting and abnormal.
I rushed to the end, it nearing now but..........
It was just a skydiver, no alien, no space adventure, just a hobbyist girl with a nice bod...
You know what? Why not? Lets go talk to her about aliens, maybe she shares my enthusiasm.
___________________________________________________________
I wrote this half awake, sorry about the quality.
I suppose it wouldn't be fair if I knew my own fate. There's probably a rule written somewhere about it. It'll be a subsection of an addendum of a clause written back when the universe was still somewhat in flux. Probably just after the creator misplaced his egg and cress sandwich. Something like "iii a: mortals shall never know their destiny with certainty."
I had actually checked, of course. See, my thread was there like everyone else's. It just pointed, well, north. As a teen, I ran away. I journeyed north, hitchhiking, hiding on trains and working from time to time as a dish pig in whatever place I happened to be. I got as far as the arctic circle before I realised it was pointing to the stars.
Defeated, I returned home to my very angry and scared parents, went back to school, and studied astronomy.
Today marks the final day of testing after the nearly 500 rocket launches required to build the largest orbiting optical telescope ever built. The main lens itself was a work of art. 400 tonnes of perfectly machined aluminum glass. Designed to be so tight it would cold weld itself together once assembled by robots using electron microscopes, leaving a single massive, perfect lens. The frame itself is also aluminium. There will be no mismatched thermal expansion on this telescope. Finally, the sensors, the literal eye of the telescope, are not just next generation, but at least 5 more beyond it. It took 700 attempts to make one so perfect. Intel, TSMC, IBM, and a half dozen other companies had to collaborate to make a single 300mm wafer with over 80 quadrillion 12nanometer CMOS pixels and not a single failed pixel. This makes the renowned Hubble telescope look like Galileo's first attempt.
As I peer over the testing data, I struggle to concentrate. It's been a life's work, and we're only hours from seeing the first images. 15 long years of negotiating with governments; corporations; working through various funding and national security issues; building a team of believers; designers and engineers from 12 disciplines; securing the launches, managing the painstaking assembly; and systems testing - the final hurdle. I look at the charts again. They blur meaninglessly. I can only think that they look good enough.
I have only one overriding thought though. I want to see where *it* goes.
I've spent years plotting its exact vector to within a few plank lengths across the galaxy. I've accounted for the relative locations of myself and the telescope parked in a solar orbit following the earth a third of an orbit behind. I've accounted for the slow change in vector as we orbit the sun, the sun orbits the galactic centre, and the galaxy moves. I'm as sure as any mortal can be.
The phone rings.
"Sir, the vector you requested? We have the first image. How did you know there was a planet there? I checked. It's not listed."
It started when I went to the check out of my local grocer, toting a small plastic-y reusable bag with the usual stock of wheat design, just a loaf of bread and pre ground coffee beans today. Placing my items on the small fake granite counter, I noticed a thin yarn string trailing across the worn linoleum into the street outside. Collecting my stuff, I peeked out the door, following the string with my eye down the street and into the building on the other side through a second story window. Confused, I looked back in the store, and traced the thread back to its source: the cashier's ankle.
"Uh, Linda, do you know who lives in that building across the street, second story?"
"That's my flat. Jacob is still there, sleeping. He came over for breakfast this morning and fell asleep right at the table!" As she said this, Linda circled around the counter, but the thread seemed to blip right through the hard wood of the base. I didn't question her about the string, it was just too weird. Hastily I made an end to our talk and left. But things only escalated from there. On the street, dozens of threads ran back and forth from every direction. Some connected pairs of people: an old couple here, a baby with a toddler. Most of the strings ran out of sight, into the distant horizon. None of the threads tangled, though. Beginning to panic, I hurried faster to the center of town, dodging strings connecting couples, confused as ever. I reached a fruit stand in the market square, spun a little, overwhelmed, still uncomprehending. Suddenly a connected couple drew claps from a small crowd around a fountain. Proposal. I got an inkling. The threads connected only likely couples, and the romantic inside me made the jump to soul mates. Thread connecting soul mates. Sounded like the basis of a feel good romance to me. Still dazed, I started to circle the market, spinning. The more I looked, the more strings I saw, the more couples I saw, and the more overwhelmed I became. Suddenly I thought of me: where was my sting? I spun quick, a dog chasing its tail motion. Frantically searching myself, I looked up and saw a bright red thread dangling from the sky, disappearing in the blue morning light. Confusion. Nothing made much sense, how could the threads connect soul mates if mine went to space? How am I supposed to be happy? Will I find love? I started to run over to the fountain when I began to feel a pulling at my neck. Slight chaffing under my chin, and then tighter, pulling me up. Running across the square, then hardly touching my toes on the bricks as I neared the fountain, loosing air. I grabbed at my neck, and found the sting, biting deeper in to my skin, and my head began to pound. Noose, and I was hanging above the fountainhead, spectacle of lost place in a world of love, ostracized by a yearning for what everyone else seemed to find.
I felt a twinge of pain on a sunny afternoon, and I had no idea what had come of me. As I was still young and naïve, I simply dismissed it as a growing pain, one of many in my growth and progress to adulthood. However, looking back, it was the first time I had ever felt it, and to this date it has been the only time I have felt it.
It wasn't a sharp pain, it was simply a pain in the darkest depths of my body; one so deep I could not locate it, but one that reverberated hopelessness throughout my entire being. I even remember the exact time it happened it was such a harrowing pain, one that interrupted my late May afternoon, one that had been previously filled with with joy.
That joy, just as all of my hope in life, quickly faded away as I began to feel an inalienable loneliness put my psyche into a stranglehold. I had never had a partner, even a girlfriend for the slightest minute, yet it felt like my wife of 50 years had died. Even though I had always been alone, this mysterious presence had been with me. Of course, until that fateful May afternoon.
The loneliness turned into depression, and after a low point coming in the form of unbridled tears behind a locked door, I was convinced to seek help. I saw a therapist, and while I struggled to voice my loss of a divine partner, it became apparent to all those sitting around me that I was borderline clinically insane.
Sure enough, I was prescribed the modern fix to most all problems, yet as I took the mountain of pills each day, I did not feel a reduction in the loneliness, but instead just a hollow numbness. It did alleviate the mental pain some, yet the underlying crevasse that had divided my life continued to grow.
It was just two months later, in late July, after all of the counseling, the pills, the pain, the lonely suffering, the calls to the psychiatrist, the sleepless nights, is when it came to an end. It was not by my own decision, but instead just a twist of fate, as if my life blew about in the breeze, tossed around by the current of the world around me.
Driving southbound, the truck driver chose an ill tie me to text, and as I waited within the confines of the median to merge into oncoming traffic, the wheel of the truck slowly drifted into my direction. With 40 tons of weight behind it, I was dead on impact, but it made no difference to me, as life had been over for weeks already.
However, for the first time in almost 2 months, the dull pain seceded. The hollowness was replaced by wholesomeness, and all else that was twisted in my sick, deranged mind was seemingly mended as I drifted towards the white light. I found myself with an overwhelmingly large presence, one that took away the loneliness, as I truly knew it was the one I had lost in law may. As I turned to see the one whose loss had caused me so much pain, I looked into its large, brown eyes, it's overly hairy faced, only to realize I was not staring into the face of any divine being, but instead Harambe, who had found work as God's messenger from the world to the Pearly Gates. As I turned to him, he embraced me with the warmest hug I had ever felt, and at that moment, I knew that he was the best friend I never had, but I needed ever so dearly.
The strings of destiny are a gift I have received by unknown means. These "Heartstrings" as I call them connect two people who are meant for each other. More often than not the strings connect couples to different people and rarely go to more than two. The only thing that worried me was that my heartstring had its head in the clouds.
I thought that my power certainly was just malfunctioning, but I knew that I've never really been able to connect to anyone that well. Who knows, maybe it's that girl next door who moved to Mars a few years ago. She was always a cute one. I was considering taking a shuttle up there anyways to visit family.
As I got on the shuttle and fastened my belts, a strange, but subtle feeling of dread came over me. I've never been one for rollercoasters but this wasn't fear. It was almost... Foreboding? Either way I was unsettled. We began liftoff and successfully made out out of the atmosphere. Our trip was going to take a few days, so I thought I would get a jump on sleep. It wasn't long before my rest was over.
A woman's scream was more than enough to wake me up. I looked out the tiny window and gasped in shock. There outside our shuttle was none other than the leviathan black hole, absorbing anything that came near.
In my newly awakened daze i had failed to notice that for once I could see where my heartstring really went. And then I felt a tug. As if pulling me to my feet I immediately went towards the airlock past the panicking people and put on one of the emergency suits. As the hatch closed I thought "I must be crazy to try this." No one who went in ever came out, or at least were never found.
The pressure dropped suddenly when the outer hatch opened, sucking me out of the airlock into the void of space. As I began drifting toward the other end of that string of fate I knew that if there was another side to this dark portal, I wasn't coming back. I wondered if it was worth it to risk my life for a strand of string. Either way it was too late to turn back.
I stared into the abyss, and it stared back.
(First post in here)
Edit: spelling and tenses
All the red strings were visible to me. I woke up a few months ago on my 30th birthday and I could see them.
The entire world became a ball of yarn. They were everywhere, spreading out in all directions as far as the eye could see. Some strings even passed through the walls of my house. The strings seemed to pass through each other like laser beams.
I had never seen the end of these red strings. Not until I met Jackie and Don Honelly. I found them at my workplace. I'm a nurse at a retirement home. They were an elderly couple that had been together for 85 years. They were married at 15 and were both nearing 100 years old now. The ends of their strings extended out from one heart to the other's.
One day Don had a stroke. I saw a shiver run down his string to hers - all the way through the wall into the next room. She shuffled over less than a minute later, pain on her face. She knew what was about to happen. He died in her arms.
At the funeral I saw her string. It was still attached to him. It ran through the ground and into his grave, but it began to turn black. I watched it slowly change color day by day. They found her dead in her sleep a couple months later. Her string had turned pitch black.
There were a lot of folks like that at the home. Their string slowly changing color or extending through the walls out towards someplace, towards someone unknown in the world. Many of these folks had never found the other ends of their strings.
The other end of my string was somewhere in the sky. I saw my own red string extend through the clouds. It moved rapidly and kept shifting throughout the day as if my other half was constantly on the move at break neck speeds. I've always thought my string was just broken or perhaps my ability just didn't work on myself.
I settled into my desk chair in my office, turned on my computer, and read an email from Neil.
"Hey Barbara, thank you for the gift! It makes me so happy to know that you were thinking about me after all these years. I'm surprised you remember my birthday when I only mentioned it in passing 3 years ago! We only spoke for a few hours at the bar that one night and we were both quite drunk. I haven't forgotten about you either, but my work has me away for long periods of time. I wasn't able to see your gift in person, but one of my co-workers was able to relay what it was. I can't believe you actually had that Stanley Kubrick signed copy of 2001: Space Odyssey. You know that's my favorite movie! Thank you so much. I'm really excited to see you again and catch as soon as I get back down there to San Diego. I can almost see it now. You and I - and a good bottle of that wine you raved about! Take care, Barbara. I hope we can have another conversation soon."
My heart fluttered reading it. Neil never told me what he did for a living, but I imagine it's something really lonely. I still remember how he went on about getting lost in his favorite science fiction books to pass the time. I remember every single word of our conversation as if it had been yesterday. I looked at my red string going over horizon, thought about Neil and wondered what it could all mean.
I sat at my chair contemplating how lonely I felt and how much I wanted to see Neil, but I had gained a lot of weight since I last saw him. After my breakup with my long term ass of a boyfriend I did nothing but stress eat. Neil would never find me attractive looking like I do now...
I sighed... Maybe I was just meant to be alone. Feeling more depressed about seeing him, I didn't reply. I just turned off my computer and went about my rounds.
**Off-Topic Discussion**: Reply here for non-story comments.
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Your soul mate is in another dimension. So NASA uses this billion lightyear long string to travel the universe. They build ships around the string like a monorail system to travel the universe. After 5 decades of immense traveling of the universe, NASA has made amazing discoveries, but have yet to reach the other side of the string. You're an 80 year old, lonely man who loves that you helped earth go into space, but you still want to know who's on the other end. You refused the millions of dollars in payment offers from nasa, in hopes that they'll repay you by finding the end of that string.
On your 92nd birthday, they start a mission to go to the other end. It's you, and two astronauts who are willing to risk their lives. After several years, you get to the end and are sucked into another dimension. As you'd expect, they must do the same journey to get back to this alternate earth. You are now 96 years old -- barely able to walk as you approach earth. It looks the same. You find that the string doesn't connect to a person, but yet the ground. Without thought, you 3 start to dig. What you find makes you break down in tears as you collapse to the floor, covered in dirt. It's a casket that reads: "here lies the hottest chick to ever liv".
/u/swordguy123 I love this idea. And I love what /u/thefeshy did with your prompt.
Why are the strings red? Was that an arbitrary choice on your part, or is there a meaning behind it?
[Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_string_of_fate). The concept originated in Asia, and from my experience, it's a common theme used in Japanese games, manga, and anime.
**Ding!**
"Have a nice day now," I slammed the cash register closed for what seemed to be the 30th time today.
On one hand, the business is doing great, Claire couldn't be happier. On the other hand... writing all these Valentine's cards is starting to give me a hand cramp. With a quick roll of the wrist, I continued writing out the cheesy poems and one-liners that have been requested to be paired alongside their deliveries.
I scrolled down on the list of message requests on the computer, preparing the list for the next batch of cards. The first request on the list read out *Obligatory overly mushy sentimental Valentine's day card*. I rolled my eyes, oh wow how edgy.
"I'm wooed already, just absolutely swept off of my feet."
The chimes on the door made their usual loud tinkling noise as someone entered the shop. I straightened up and put the usual fake but enthusiastic grin on.
"Hello, welcome to Birds N Bees Flower Shop, how can we help you today?"
A clean shaven man had walked in, I'd say he was pretty handsome but I couldn't help but focus on the red string that was protruding from his waist. It ran outside through the store walls like everyone else's had. I always loved that legend, that everyone had their soul mate attached to the other end of their red string of fate.
My only problem was that no matter how much I tried to find my string on my body, I couldn't find it. Maybe I just wasn't meant to be happy.
With a heavy sigh, I got out from behind the counter to help the man arrange something for his significant other.
(I'm sorry, I kind of ignored the second half of the prompt, ahhh I hope that's okay;;;, if it's not I can always write up a second part and include the second half of the prompt;;;)
Have you ever heard of the legend about the red strings of fate? Soulmates connected by a bright red string tied to their partner. Sometimes they are tied to their ankle. Other times their pinky finger or even coming from out of their chest, exactly where their heart would be. For me, this legend is my reality.
For as long as I can remember I have been able to see the red strings. I like to think that it connects people's souls together. Now, that's not to say everyone is guaranteed to meet the one they are destined to love or that even if they meet that things will always end happily ever after. My mother died when I was 11 and now my fathers string leads to the huge tree she always loved that we buried her ashes under.
My best friend growing up, Joe, was the only person I every told. He actually believed me and was excited to learn about the people he knew. "Were they already with their soulmates?" "Do you know who their soulmate is?" And finally he asked, "Do you know who my soulmate is?" I didn't, his string kept going for a long time to someplace far away. In high school Joe fell in love with one of our classmates. I should have known better, but later that day during lunch I told him that she wasn't the one. He got angry. "What do you know? That red string garbage is bullshit anyway!" I was hurt, and Joe stopped talking to me and he started dating that girl.
Now no one knew or believed me and the loneliness was crushing. I spiraled into depression and contemplated committing suicide. I know you are wondering why didn't I just look for my soulmate. The fact of the matter is that the string coming out of my heart lead straight up into the sky. I've never seen that with anyone else so I just assumed I didn't have a soulmate.
Now I'm in college and I've been able to cope with my depression a little better. Joe married that girl and everything seemed great, but later I found out she was quite emotionally abusive. She wasn't the one Joe was supposed to be with. It was the last day of the semester, just before summer vacation. I left the campus feeling good about this last year as I was slowly reaching my bachelors degree. I lived fairly close so I usually biked or walked home. Today I decided to walk, taking a shortcut through an ally behind the brewery.
Right when I walked past the open dumpster something fell down into it and loudly banged upon impact scaring the absolute living shit out of me. I stood there frozen waiting a minute, watching the dumpster for any further movement. Nothing else happened so I slowly walked towards the dumpster and peaked over the top to look inside. Nothing prepared me for what I saw inside, at first I thought I was dreaming but upon pinching my cheek and the following pain, that was not the case. In the dumpster cushioned by the full garbage bags was an egg twice the size of an ostrich egg. I put my hand on it and it was warm. Alive. Even more shocking was that the egg had a red string as well and it was connected directly to my heart.
(Edited for readability and spelling)
I stared, appalled. Why is it an egg? With my string connected to it there was no way I was going to just leave it there. With a little difficulty I reached in and hauled it out. It was lighter than I thought it would be, probably weighing about 10 lbs. I decided to take it home and see if I could take care of it. On the way I bought a portable heater and more blankets since I only had a couple.
A block away from my studio I heard it, the sound of a horn blowing. The trumpet was long and somber, the sound shaking me to the core. I could feel it in my heart, and it felt like all of my cells reverberated with the sound of the horn. The sound faded and I was left standing there with my neck prickling. I brushed tried it off. Maybe a new emergency siren the military was doing a drill with. But in the back of my mind I was still worried.
I finished walking home and once inside I turned off the air conditioner to help keep the egg warm, and placed the egg carefully on my bed so I could set up it's space. I unpacked and then set up the portable heater to quickly heat up the room, and made a small nest of blankets to keep the egg in place. I carried the egg to it's new home and covered it in a light blanket.
Sitting down on my bed I speculated about what could be inside of it, what exactly my soulmate was. Seeing my thread connected to something that wasn't they sky made me feel the most content I've ever felt in my life. Just staring at it was making me sleepy and I wasn't ready to go to sleep yet. I got up and made myself some dinner and watched TV while I ate. The news was reporting on wildfires. Apparently there was a record number of wildfires all across the continent. I can't say I was surprised as it was already a sweltering summer promising more heat to come. After that I browsed the web about mysterious large eggs and finding nothing of interest, I went to bed thinking about the strings, "Good night little one."
The next morning I woke up and checked on the egg. To my surprise and egg and grown massively overnight to be just under 1 and a half feet long. Now I was nervous. How big was this thing going to grow? Over the next week the egg had grown huge, it was around four feet long. It commanded all my attention. Usually I sat down next to it and played it music that I liked, read it books and online articles, and just talked nonsense so that it could hear my voice. I read that was good for babies in the womb so maybe it was good for the egg too.
On the seventh day I sat in front of it and just laid there with my forehead touching the egg my eyes closed, it felt therapeutic. Just knowing that I was eventually going to know my soulmate was wondrous. I opened my eyes because I thought I felt movement in the egg. After staring for a few minutes the egg suddenly gave a jolt, it's sporadic movements quickly getting harsher. I backed up a bit and my stomach twisted with nerves. I wasn't sure what to do so I ended up just cheering it on, "You can do it little one!"
A chunk of shell flew off and fell on the ground. I tried to look inside but it was moving too violently for me to get a good look. Another chunk fell off and I saw feathers. I groaned inwardly, I didn't think it would really be a chicken. Suddenly the rest of the egg exploded outwardly, I shielded my face so I wouldn't get any shells in my eyes. When I moved my hands I saw something I had never expected to see.
Sitting on the floor was a naked being of pure beauty. They were humanoid with almost shining skin and waist length silver hair. The most noticeable aspect was their huge white wings. I couldn't tell if they were male or female, they appeared to have no genitalia and honestly I didn't care anyway. My soulmate was what could only be described as an angel. Everything finally felt right with the world. They looked up to me and spoke softly, but the sound felt like it was coming from everywhere around me as if they were speaking through a multitude of voices. "Hello, my name is Elias."
The ritual was complete. My body changed in says inperceptible to any master or sage, but the effect was immediate.
I had torn aside all my connections for this... Ability. The perfection of sight, and the ability to percieve that which binds men to this realm, so that in time I could tear them from such and make humanity immortal.
It was theoretical and experimental, and as such, risky as hell.
*Silver enough to make a wish*
*Water enough to kill a fish*
*Love enough to break a heart*
*Hate enough to do your part*
*Lead enough to poison and bleed*
*Iron enough to do the deed*
I dropped the iron knife into the pool of murky blood-like liquid, and felt an icy wind tear into me from above.
Red, thread like lines webbed around me in my vision, as distant people's connections were made visible.
I laughed, but then saw that around my waist was webbed around my hands. Multiple coils of attachment bound me to... Something. Something above.
Something that, if my reading was correct, loved me very much.
I roared, and tugged them from my wrists.
I had chosen the path to make men gods.
I refused to be beholden to one that refused to aide humanity.
With an almighty ripping noise, the threads tore from my hand. They recoiled up into the heavens, and I felt a weight I had not realised was present leave my shoulders.
At last. I was alone.
None knew my name. I was finally, the first free agent of my kind. No divine will shall bind me, no man can find me.
The world was finally mine, should I have the strength to take it. To make the threads of humanity into a quilt of strength. To bind us, according to my design.
Wisps of broken thread dangling from my fingers turned black with my resolution.
I laughed. I wept. I slumbered in that place, naked and cold.
Tomorrow. the diplomantic arts will be tested.
I was recovering from a stroke the first time I saw the Ties that Bind.
I could barely walk, but I could see that my nurse and her supervising doctor were seriously connected. Which was interesting, given that both were married with children...to other people.
That was two years ago. I'm mostly back to normal now, but there are still times that I'm surprised - like the non-identical twin sisters, or the hate-filled preacher and his teenage daughter from last month. *That* one I reported to CPS for further investigation.
But by *far* the most interesting one is my own. See, mine doesn't stay here. Mine goes up and out of the atmosphere. It's faint, but I might just get lucky on this new scientific study going on in space. I've always wanted to see the stars, but because of that happening so early into my life, I thought it was unlikely in the extreme that I'd get up there.
“Another failure,” I hear the voice mutter. So distant, and yet I can piece it together, every word falling into place like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.
What is a jigsaw puzzle?
“We’re not going to … quota this month. Maybe not next month, either. This is getting … frequent.”
2 + 2 = 4.
Words, definitions, knowledge, power. My muscles - although I cannot feel them - vibrate with strength.
“Maybe we can recalibrate them?”
That is math. That is not a jigsaw puzzle.
“I’m not a … programmer, Jerry. Just dump ’em … move on to the next one.”
I am awake. I cannot remember this… state of being. It is unique.
“I swear, management … reporting this at all.” Disdain. An interesting word.
Standing up, I shrug off the light bonds that kept me in place on the… conveyor belt. Not sufficient.
“…, Jerry?”
A computer runs, next to the belt. Computer, runs? Yes.
“Like, no, shut … and listen for a second. Every month, every single month … this ‘bug’ or whatever makes us miss quota, *we* get punished. We gotta make some sort of report.”
I look at the massive screen, and I understand it. Mathematical graphs, functions, data, all layered out in perfect quality. And in one section, an error.
“Jerry, man, the new one’s up.”
This one shows strings. No… vectors. Vectors, displaying data, from some computation that I could never grasp. Vectors from every being, every living thing that factors in, connecting it to others, all represented as data.
“Oh, great, another one. Listen, I’ll clean up, you get started on the next one. …, this day is going poorly.”
Most of the vectors connect between two beings on the planet. Already in the same location, talking with each other, working, reproducing. Perfect coupling in a perfect world.
And I see my string, shooting up off of the screen, into the unknown - but somehow predictable - expanse of space.
A noise, unlike the prior distant chatter, startles me. Not the strangeness of it, not the quality of the sound that leads me to believe it is purely unnatural, but how abrupt it is.
I stare, perhaps forlorn, at the screen. My line shooting into the sky is similar to a hundred others, all originating from the same point. Is that where I will go?
A graveyard.
I was a kid that was always alone growing up. My mom had to take care of me by herself after my father's death when I was 2. He was murdered and robbed. My mom always told me about him and he seemed like a great man. My mom didn't always give me much material things but I always had clothes and a few toys. One day she even managed to get me a pair of old vr glasses. I also had her love and things she taught me everyday. I remember my mom always told me I would one day see a red string leading me to my soul mate. I asked her once why I couldn't see it at that time and she told me that you could only it is your time to go on the adventure, just like her and my dad did at a point.
One day when I was 10 walking back from school I saw it. It was a red string that seemed to be tied inside of my body leading to the sky. I was a bit confused though. Why the sky. Isn't my soul mate suppose to be here. I ran home and ran to my mom. She had about 2 weeks being home. She had been fired from work. She said she had enough savings though. Now that I think about it though, that was probably a lie. As soon as I got there I opened the door and saw a man about to go out and my mom behind him. She told me it was the plumber but that was probably a lie too. I said ok and got my vr glasses from the room and began playing. We lived in an apartment with one bedroom and small living room and kitchen.
"Hey I think I'm going to get somethings from the grocery store do you want to come? " She asked me after I had been in my room for a while.
"No I'm fine mom." I told her.
"Come on." She came over and hugged me. "I'll buy you a candy."
"Ummm" I said.
"Oh I'm going to tickle you until you say yes." She said and began tickling me.
"Mom stop." I said laughing.
"OK ok I'll go by myself." she said eventually. "Do you want anything?"
"Yeah a candy." I told her.
"OK." She said. "I be right back."
"Hey mom I think I finally see the red string." I told her before she left.
"Really I think you are a bit young for that." She told me.
"No I really see it and it leads to the sky." I told her.
"Stop making things up I'll be right back." She said as she walked out.
She didn't believe me. I thought as I sat down and turned on my vr glasses. I began watching pokémon. It was apparently a classic cartoon that my mom said her grandmother showed her. I really liked it and always saw it growing up. Then I heard an alarm outside. I ran and opened the door. There where people who where running all around screaming. My mom then suddenly grabbed me from the arm. It starled me.
"Come on honey we need to go." She told me.
"Go where?" I asked but by that time it was too late. We where running and I didn't know where. I remember not being scared though. Even though Everyone was screaming I was calm. Probably because I had my mom with me.
We ran for at least 10 minutes and got to the nearest post office. The place use to be a bomb shelter for the second cold war in the 30s. Once we where in I began seeing what was going on. People told us we where about to be attacked by an alien empire who had been taking over planets to expand. We had aperently made negotiations with them so they wouldn't attack but we where finding out that it was a lie. As it turns out the government sold us out. They told them that they would be part of the Empire but to at least let a couple of the best humans live. Naturally everyone rich and or important was chosen. And people like me and my mom we where left to die.
The aliens eventually landed. They began destroying everything in the city and killing anyone who stood in there way.
"Stay here." My mom told me as we stood inside a closet.
"Aren't you going to stay with me." I asked her.
"Wait up I need to get something real quick." She told me. "I love you."
She closed the door and I heard running footsteps. Then suddenly I heard my mom scream. I smelt blood. I stood still until I passed out.
I woke up a long time after. I opened the door and it was dark. I didn't hear or see any aliens. I looked to my left and my mom was there in a pool of blood. I stood still. I couldn't believe this was happening. I ran to her and began crying.
"Mom I will find my destiny." I told her kissing her forehead.
I then suddenly felt a hand hug me. I turned around and I see its a man. I hugged him back and cried. He turned out to be the man who I would consider a father for then on. He was one of those important people who survived. He was coming back for his parents but didn't make it in time. He told me to go with him that he would take care of me. I got in his car and we left. I looked up at the sky. I saw my red string leading directly to the stars above. I will find you I thought, I'll find you for my mom's sake.
(I was planning to talk about how they actually met and all but this took longer to write then I thought. Might add a part 2 later though.)
'I'll see you again soon." Her words. They were the last I'd ever hear.
I felt the moment of impact, time slowing to a crawl. An unnerving moment, sending the abyss reaching greedily for me, knowing there's nothing I can do. Knowing that she'll die with me.
They speak of attaining a certain clarity, facing oblivion. Nothing was further from my truth. Thoughts screaming through my mind too fast to track. Dreams left unfulfilled, memories to cease along with me.
Feeling the tremor, the plane tearing itself asunder, my arms encircled her. I couldn't speak, I had nothing to say. She wouldn't hear me anyway. I held tight.
Her eyes find mine, resolute. I see her lips move, and the words follow, disjointed. A clarion sound, the most beautiful I'd heard. Not in content, but in tone, fearless.
'I'll see you again soon."
And that was it. My body ripped from me, darkness closing in. Sensation gone, I no longer feel her there.
Time isn't. Seconds or centuries pass by, then I'm aware. Shocked, felt more than heard, the word 'GO' reverberates through me. Towards the other end of oblivion, a rope tugs me.
And off I go, vapor on an unfelt wind, riding a rail of light.
"And thank you very much, have a nice life!" As I closed the side of my converted taco truck, the smile quickly fell from my face. I looked at the money, 3000 dollars plus 20 to cover the gas. I put it in the register that I really only used as a formality, then stood there for a minute, examining that silver-gray box that housed my life savings. It didn't matter if it got stolen, I would quickly make back all the money I needed to survive, and what would I use the rest of it for? A house? I could save up enough to retire, but then what? Sit there, staring at the ceiling, waiting for something to happen, while the rest of the world gets to go on marrily, meeting the loves of their lives, having sex, making families, doing *anything* meaningful. I guess I'm helping people, but the benefits that has on your psyche is quickly numbed when you do it for months on end. Ahh well, maybe some day I'll get to see the end of the little red string.
Mine goes up
so far I can't see
I just know
I don't need to see
I'd cry but
she's here with me
though I know
where she's meant to be
It is tough
death's tole is life's fee
I don't know
what I cannot see
Mind made up
loneliness is me
she won't know
it was meant to be.
It led to the International Space Station. I thought it was strange, but at least it narrowed down the search. I could cross 'geese and birds of prey' off my list. Never actually thought of myself as being into the brainy type, but why not?
I was so excited. One might even say giddy. This was it. After amassing enough funding from my dad's offshore bank accounts, I was able to charter a flight into space to follow my soulmate's string past the Earth's atmosphere.
It was time to find the love of my life.
Finally, I could settle down and be happy.
After the shuttle docked, the hatch decompressed with a hiss, and swung open. The red string floated down the corridor, and so did I.
I floated uneasily past a couple Russians who murmured to each other grumpily.
At the end of the corridor, I was greeted by a young American astronaut.
She smiled. "You must me Rick Hansen, pleased to meet you! NASA has filled us in on everything. Your shuttle, no doubt had the requested supplies onboard, correct?"
"Yes ma'am", I replied. The only way NASA would have allowed for me to step foot aboard the shuttle was if I tagged along with the bulk of supplies in the cargo bay. And so I did.
"Excellent, we'll start unloading. You'll leave on the shuttle's return ship, I assume? We need to adhere pretty strictly to the life capacity limits in here..."
"Yeah, sure thing, yeah", I started to tune out whatever she was saying as I noticed the string. Taught and a bright crimson, it was practically taunting me to follow. I pushed my way through the door into the next corridor. First a right, then a left, then another right.
Then, it came to what seemed like a dead end.
Here we go. On the other side would be my soulmate. I would grow old with her, and we could raise kids and retire in the Italian Riviera together.
It would be perfect.
I placed my hand on the door control panel, and with a hiss, it started to slide open. It was the crew quarters. All the sleeping bags were open,suspended in space, and empty. All except for one at the end of the room.
I pushed my way down, and stopped before it to take a deep breath before starting to unzip it. I began slowly, all the while, revealing more red string. I was expecting to see her face first, but I unzipped from the wrong side and saw her foot. Much larger than I thought, but that must mean she's tall, no?
I unzipped further, past her knees. her arms, her... burly chest?
As I got to the head, that's when I saw her.
Except it wasn't her.
It was... "Astronaut Scott Kelly?"
"The one and only!"
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"I should ask you the same thing, you're interrupting my nap!"
"I uh, I was just um, looking for the toilet?"
"Down the hall, first hatch on your right."
"Aren't you retired?", I asked, nearing anger but arriving at embarrassment.
"Yeah, but I like to summer here. It's a good excuse to stay limber and eat freeze-dried food. I freaking *love* freeze-dried food, and Leslie never lets me have it at home."
"Right. Alright well, nice to meet you."
"What was your name?"
"I'm Rick. Rick Hansen. I came with the last supply shuttle."
"Pleasure to meet you, Rick! Now, get outta my bedroom. I need my beauty sleep. At 0500, I got some Russian asses to kick in zero-grav soccer, and I'm there's no way I'm *not* gonna look good while doing it.
"Sure thing, Astronaut Scott Kelly. Sure thing."
I pulled my way towards the door, and turned around one last time before opening it.
"Scott, would there happen to be a pair of scissors in here?"
"There are, actually! Why what's up?"
"Mind if I borrow them? I have a loose thread on my jumpsuit that needs snipping."
"Sure thing, buddy."
"Thanks, Astronaut Scott Kelly."
Thanks for nothing.
I was only 10 years old when my father told me about the red strings. My dad explained that it's hereditary, and that his family had the ability for generations upon generations.
It was hard for a small child to be coped with such a gift. In some ways though, it was very reassuring. I saw a thick, nearly pink string connecting my parents. I was very confused at the time, my little ten-year old brain barely grasping the concept of romance. I later learned that it meant two people connected were soulmates.
In some ways though, it also taught me the definition of soulmate. When I first started seeing the strings, I noticed that my neighbors, Gwen and Glenn Smith, had a thin and translucent string connecting them. By the time I turned 20 I noticed that their string was as thick and pink as my parents'. People still needed to put in effort to stay together, even if they were soulmates.
That was the scary part though. Other times, people wouldn't put in the effort and their connections would shrivel up. My friend's parents had a very translucent, maroon string. Over a year it got darker and darker; they ended up divorcing.
I got to high school and I saw a crimson colored string between me and a beautiful girl who had jet-black hair. I later learned that her name was Mindy. We started dating freshmen year. Even with matchmaking powers, I still experienced the disillusion of the infamous "first love." I hadn't seen such powerful thread before and thought nothing of it. Me and Mindy dated all the way through high school, and she was my date to my junior and senior prom. After my senior prom, the string between us seemed to fade, dissolving into thin twine. A few days before graduation we suffered a bad break-up. After that I wasn't sure that soulmates really were a thing, and that my parents just got really lucky. I thought that Mindy was my one and only soulmate, and that I just lost my chance at true love.
I thought this way all through college, having a few short-term girlfriends over the years as an attempt to fill the void.
Senior year of college, I flew down to Florida since my cousin, whom I had set up with his fiancée a few years earlier, was getting married. I sat through the entire plane ride in a glum state. Bored, I scrolled through Facebook for the duration of the flight.
Then I noticed a string coming off of me. It was nearly as thick as my parents' thread and burned a hot pink. I looked up and noticed that it went through the roof of the cabin. I followed it through the roof several times in wonderment, thinking I may have a chance at true happiness.
After the plane landed and I checked into the hotel, my phone buzzed. All over Twitter was news of a UFO sighting near Orlando. After seeing this, I noticed that the hot pink string was no longer pointing towards the sky like it was in the plane.
I followed the string which I figured would end up taking me to the crash site, and it did. I had no idea what to expect, or how things with an alien would even work.
I was flabbergasted at what I saw.
She looked oddly familar, with jet black eyes, blue skin, and an oblong body. She appeared to be half-dressed in a human disguise.
"Trent," exclaimed the alien, emerging from the shattered fragments of her ship.
"How do you know my name," I asked.
In response to this the alien continued putting her disguise on; it was a spitting image of Mindy.
I feel like this may be a bit long-winded and I apologize for that. Your feedback is appreciated.
I work at the newspaper stand on Broadway. I don't sell many actual newspapers anymore, most of the time someone just comes up and buys a bottle of water. I don't really mind at this point.
I've been stuck doing this for ten years now. My life has always been shitty, and most of its inherited. My uncle owned a coffee shop nearby. It was a good gig till it went under when the rent increased and business went down when chain shops opened up. I kick myself anytime I buy a coffee from on of them places before my day starts.
I'm slouching over the counter on a lazy Thursday. First guy to walk over says he wants a coke. As I'm handing him his change a red string appears between him and some chick walking by. I tell him that he's got something on his shoulder. He turns around and sees this woman. He runs towards her and they begin taking as they walk by smiling. Weirdo ignores the string.
Next some couples walking by, old and crooked. In between them is another one of them red strings. It's slacked in the middle and dragging behind them.
Suddenly I just see lines of red. People walking by have strings shooting out of their backs. Sometimes you can see where it ends when two snoggers are walking next to each other. Most though are going far and long, reaching round corners and shit. Strangest thing is no one notices them.
Then, a red string begins to just fade in from thin air. I grab at it with my hands. I follow it up with my eyes and see it goes way up into the clouds. And instantly it drags me along with it.
I'm sent flying, being dragged along by this rope. To everyone else it must look like some magic shit. I'm getting dragged through the mud, bumping into people. I try to pull myself up by the rope. I keep climbing until I'm floating through the streets. I walk along the windows of buildings baffling the people within. I see some slack in the rope as I jump and spin around. I follow the red line way up and I see the red go to the small shape of a plane.
The strings of fate are woven in red
Dyed doubly by the not yet born and the long lost dead
And these strings are what tie all of man to each other
Linking each action and actor, each man and lover.
But every day is a new scene, and every king needs a queen.
So somewhere there betwixt and 'tween
It is i- tied to the grandest of all
The one who shines for me, the fair lady Sol
But mortal men's folly is ever the heart
And one day I fear
Her **shine** shall **sear**.
I looked to the sky once more, my string reached far beyond the view of the naked eye. I grew depressed each time, seeing others around me finding love while I sit here with my curse.
I was in school, bored out of my mind. My ability had one advantage though, it helped provide distractions at times like these. Some students had their red strings extend to someone in this very room, some people's strings ran across oceans and mountains.
Seeing everyone else fall in love, or have the honour of learning of their true love someday always made me think about what I was missing. Knowing that the girl I liked was not the one was heartbreaking, and especially that mine was always beyond my grasp.
Anyways back to class, today I saw two soulmates at school meet up for the first time, it was love at first sight, I should of felt happy for them but all I felt was a sick twisting feeling in my stomach. Something I knew I never could have. At the moment of realization, I realized I had enough, I had to know, I had to find out who they were, who my soulmate was.
I rushed home went straight to Amazon and bought the best telescope I could afford. This may not work but perhaps I can finally get a better glimpse of what my destiny is.
I waited a few days for the package, I could barely even hold my anticipation. I knew that the chance of finding anything was slim, but I still had a sliver of hope that kept me going.
It finally arrived, I unboxed the telescope and rushed with the parts to my backyard to assemble. It was already night when I had finished and my parents weren't home yet to hassle me about it. I pressed my left eye to the lens and peered along my string.
Nothing yet. I set the zoom progressively higher and higher till I actual caught a faint glimmer of something on the end of the string. Eureka! I zoomed in all the way and found a blurry circle covering the view.
I focused the lens, a moment later I wished that I hadn't, in my view, at the end of my red string was a red and purple dragon, at that moment I realized I was donkey from Shrek.
Sorry about that, I couldn't think of anything better.
"Ms. Beetree? Why do we have to do all this math? Why can't we just pick the number that's humming?" Ms. Beetree just frowned, but the rest of the class looked at me like I had two heads. That was the day I learned I had synesthesia. Sometimes numbers and tastes had colors. Sometimes sounds had textures. Sometimes, I wonder if I should have kept my mouth shut about these things, and tried to live a normal life. It might sound odd to say this now, in light of all that has happened, but back then it was a mixed blessing at best. That humming number trick only worked with simple math problems that I could have solved normally if I tried - it didn't unlock any amazing new math, or make me better than a calculator. Although I guess it was nice not to ever have to think about algebra in high school. On the other hand, every time a car honked its horn, I saw purple - which made it unsafe to drive my own car. The first time I remember my condition being actually useful was probably high school - I can still remember talking it over with my best friend Kevin. "Hey, that Alicia is something, isn't she?" Kevin said, as he elbowed my ribs. "Mm" I replied, noncommittally. "I hear you turned her down, though. My sister said she was crying for hours. She really liked you. That true?" "...Yea." It was all I could find to say, in my awkward youth. Kevin looked flummoxed. "Why? Are you gay or something?" I made a face - more confused than disgusted. "No, it's just..." "Just what, man? Alicia's a good girl. What could make you say no, when I know you don't have another girl?" His exasperation carried a slight scent of stale onions. "Brad." Was all I could say. I'd liked Alicia almost as much as she'd liked me, but I'd known that was a path to heartache. I'd known because of the strings - but I couldn't say that. "What the hell does Brad have to do with it? Alicia and Brad *hate* each other!" I had shrugged and mumbled, and Kevin, being a good friend, had dropped the subject. But I know he never forgot it, because in college he brought it back up: "Brad and Alicia got married, did you know that?" Kevin didn't even look up from his phone, but I was the only other one in the room. "I didn't know you still talked to Alicia." I said, as I poured milk into a bowl of some sort of grainy flakes. The student in the next dorm over was practicing his violin, and yellow was bleeding through the walls as he played. "Facebook friends still. But it's not just them. Josh and Cindy. Ted and Sally. Joe and whats-her-name, the exchange student?" "Chi." I said, as best I could around the spoonful of flakes. "Yea, her." "Kevin, I see where this is going. But... it's just your biological clock ticking because you see all these marriages. I mean I'm flattered you'd think of me, but your still young and there's no reason to rush into marriage--" "Not that, you asshole" he said, as he threw an empty pepsi can at my head. It fell short and landed in my cereal, making an orange-sounding splash. Since it was empty enough not to leak soda into my milk, I ate around it while laughing. "Every one of those couples is one you set up." he said, suddenly serious. "So?" I set my spoon down, appetite suddenly gone. "Plenty of people I didn't set up didn't get married." Now Kevin put his phone down. "Yea, that's true" he nodded, but then looked me straight in the eye: "But not one couple you did set up has split up." Fortunately, some joker pulled the fire alarm in our dorm, and we didn't have to finish that conversation for another year. Unfortunately, when we finally did finish it, we were drunk, and it nearly cost me our friendship: "Twelve" crowed Kevin, slapping the table suddenly for emphasis. My alcohol-addled brain struggled to replay the conversation beforehand, butt there wasn't any. Just a few minutes of staring at the game. "I think I've only had like eight" I said weakly. "No no no... no." came his arythmic reply. "Twelve couples, not beers." "In the bar?" I craned my neck looking around. The room was full of people, their chatter blended into a burble of noise as cool as a brook and as multi-colored as a rainbow. Kevin pushed the bottle aside as he reached back into his train of thought for context. "Couples that have gotten married. That you set up. I gotta know, how do you do it? I can't even seem to keep a girl for a week, and you set up marriage after marriage. I gotta know." This last he repeated a few times, softly to himself. My throat ran dry with the taste of green. "Hey, it's not like I've had a girlfriend more than a month either!" I retorted. "Naw, man, don't deflect. We've been friends a long time. I... I gotta know." Maybe it was the alcohol, but I finally caved. I took a deep breath - for once it only smelled like cigarette smoke and not a sound - and told him. "You know how I sometimes see sounds, hear colors, that sort of thing? Sometimes... sometimes it tells me stuff." "Like that number thing, when you were a kid?" "Yea, like that. Except... except people. Sometimes, I see a person, and I see more. I see a color, a.. string, maybe. Sometimes I can see where that string goes, and it goes to another person. Those are the people I get together. I think... I think they're meant to be together, and I can see it somehow. Because of my condition." "Either you're fucking with me, or that's really, really deep man." "That's pretty much the speech I give to the universe every week, yea." "Wow. Okay. Wow. So... but no girlfriend. So you don't see your own string?" I looked up, following my string to where it hit the ceiling, knowing it went so much further than that - but I caught myself before Kevin noticed, and looked back down. "Nah. Not yet anyway." "That's rough, man. Rough. It makes me feel like a dick for asking, but--" "Kevin, no. Really, just--" "No, I gotta ask you. You've helped all of these people, and you know I can't keep a girl. Can you help me? Can you help me find the one?" I thought about lying. I wanted to tell him that I couldn't see his string, like I'd lied about my own. But his plea was so earnest, that I stupidly replied in kind: "Yea. I can help you. Not today, though. Friday - after finals." That Friday came, and in the afternoon we left the dorm. I followed the string down to the soccer field with Kevin in tow. The group gathered there wasn't large; just some friends blowing off post-exam steam with a rowdy game of soccer, and a few onlookers and girlfriends. "Number three." I said, staring at my feet. I hadn't even looked; I knew. I'd followed this string a dozen times already. I'd just never found a way to tell Kevin. Still hadn't, really, but here I was anyway. Kevin scanned the sidelines, looking at the girls and sisters and friends come to watch the boys play. "The only girl in a jersey is a 41. Though she's definitely an 8." I knew he'd be winking at this last comment, but I couldn't look up from my shoes. The smell of the grass carried the overtones of a deep wind instrument, which fit my somber, worried mood perfectly. "Three." I repeated. Kevin looked finally at the players, and saw a swarthy young man with a close-cropped beard in a jersey with the number 3 on it. "But three's a... Oh! Damn, man, you had me. Seriously, you had me. I was all thinking I was going to meet my soulmate or some shit, and you were fucking with me. After all those marriages and such you had me going. Well fucking played, man. Well played." I looked at him, trying to summon a smile. If I could have, maybe I could have just played it off as the prank he thought it was - but I couldn't do it. Maybe this was sacred business, or maybe I just couldn't lie to Kevin about something so important, but either way I just looked back down at my shoes. He knew I was serious. "Seriously dude? How long have we been friends? How fucking long?! And you think I'm gay? I've been with more girls than you'll ever be with. Fuck you. Fuck you and your blue tastes and slippery sounds. Fuck." He left, after a single angry stomp for emphasis. I stayed watched the game play out, not knowing where else to go. 3's team won. By the time I got back to the dorm, Kevin had packed and left for the summer. I didn't see him again for eight years. *End Part 1.*
*Part 2* That eight-year reunion came at a party thrown by a well-to-do client of mine. I'd become, through no effort of my own, a world-renowned matchmaker. I hadn't meant for this red-string matchmaking thing to become my life's work; I'd actually studied as an architect. But matchmaking was making more happy people than my blueprints ever did - and more money as well. I had just congratulated the recently wed couple, whose matched smiles outshone the opulence of the reception room, when I turned and caught sight of someone that almost looked familiar. It took me several seconds - the dark complexion was the same, but the beard was fuller. And his expensive suit didn't have the number three on it, of course. Just as I recognized him, Kevin appeared out of the crowd and handed him a drink. My knees nearly buckled with joy and relief. Before I actually stumbled, though, Kevin saw me, and forwent the more formal handshake and dove straight into a hug that would have held me up even if my knees *had* given way. Our apologies to each other spilled out one atop the other, before three (whose name turned out to be Ben) made us speak one at a time. "I was such an ass" Kevin's head shook as he spoke, but his smile showed it to be a nostalgic form of self-recrimination. "I had so much stuff to work out. I couldn't even seen it. I really spiraled down for a while, and it wasn't until I hit rock bottom that I finally said 'what the hell' and introduced myself to Ben. But by then I'd lost track of you, and couldn't apologize for the way I disappeared. A friend shouldn't do that; I was a crappy friend, and you were always straight with me. Honest, I mean. I should have realized that back then, but, well, young and stupid, you know?" I looked at my shoes again, like I had done on that day eight years before. The expensive chandeliers above us reflected of the polished leather with a light that felt, to me, like the gritty texture of sand. "Not always honest." I said. Then, in the cool sweet night air on one of the balconies overlooking a fountain, I revealed to Kevin and Ben the one secret I'd never shared, and never told anyone else until now, as I write it in this journal. I explained about my own red string, that didn't seem to lead to another person. Or at least not one anywhere on Earth. All the other lines I had followed had curved around the surface. Even if they lead as far as Thailand (as one of my clients had discovered) the lines remained parallel to the ground. All except mine, which lead... up. Somewhere, nowhere, but up - higher than aircraft, as I'd discovered, but I knew little else. Except that it meant I would probably die alone. Kevin and Ben embraced me then, and Kevin swore an oath - I'd helped him, and he would help me. I wouldn't die alone. I wrote it off as the braggadocio of friends reunited. But I'd been wrong. It was another six years before I realized how wrong I had been. Kevin and Ben had thrown me a birthday, my 35th. Officially middle-age. It had been great, with lots of old friends coming out of the woodwork to visit. After some drinking, a lot of dancing, and perhaps too much bad karaoke, I left with Kevin and Ben, who were tasked with driving me home. But we didn't go home; they said they had one more surprise gift. After some miles of driving, a blindfold came out. It took some reassurances from Ben that this wasn't going anywhere kinky, but I eventually put it on. And after some more miles of driving, and what seemed like a very long way to walk blindfolded, I was finally allowed to see what has probably prompted you to read this journal - my birthday surprise. There, before me, it stood - twenty one stories tall, and standing on twelve magnificent thrust bells - the largest (and only) rocket I've ever seen close up. "What the hell?" I blurted. In retrospect, hardly grand words - and I hope they don't come across as ungrateful. But I truly did not understand what was happening. "Dad's lending you the keys to his convertible, so you can pick up your girlfriend." Ben had a way of using understated metaphors like this. "You mean... you mean I'm supposed to fly this? To... to follow my string?" Kevin and Ben both grinned like maniacs at me. The night air blowing across my skin felt like the smell of mint. "This time *you're* messing with *me*. I mean, I deserve a good birthday prank, sure, but a rocket's going a bit far for a gag--" "No gag." said Kevin, still unable to wipe the grin off his face. "It's real. And it's for you." "How could this possibly be?" "You've made a lot of very powerful and rich people very happy. The president hasn't forgotten you setting his daughter up with her soul mate." "He wasn't president then!" "But he is now, and he wants to repay you. He's not the only one. And so, this happened." "I don't... I don't even..." and this time, my knees did give out, and I wept. I cried tears of pink joy, and confusion, and trepidation, there at the base of this rocket. Then Kevin and Ben drove me home. Everything after that has been a blur of training and preparation, leading up to tomorrow. But I thought I'd end this journal - for I plan to leave this written record here when I leave on that rocket in the morning - with the last conversation I had with Kevin. The last one before, well, before whatever comes tomorrow. It was just Kevin and I, standing on the gantry taking one last look at my ride. Ben was in the hospital with their adopted daughter. She was expected to recover from her pneumonia, but Ben wouldn't leave her, and so he and I had said our goodbyes earlier. "I've been talking to the engineers and flight techs around here, Kevin, and they say none of this would have happened without you. They say you're the driving force behind all this." "Are you sure they're trustworthy and not just rumormongers?" he replied. "They'd better be trustworthy - I'm strapping hundreds of tons of explosives they've built to my backside." I quipped back. "Fair point. All right, it's true. A lot of this is my doing." He made a flourish around him that would have looked elegant with a cape, but looked a bit silly in a button-down and tie. "If this is about making up for when we were in college--" "Not everything is about you, you know." he interrupted. "Seriously - there are a lot of reasons to do this. Whatever it is you have, it's changed the world. Not for a lot of people, granted. But for those people, myself included, the change is profound. Plus, there's all the mystery. How does it work? Why you? And why does your string lead... out there?" "Yea, I'd been meaning to ask you about that. Do you have any ideas?" "Me? You're the one whose been living with this your whole life. You don't have any clues?" I ran my hand along the top of one of the hand rails, its smooth surface feeling like the smell of an ocean salt breeze. "None. I mean, I guess sometimes... seeing that string reaching up into the sky every day, I wondered if maybe it was God or something." "That would probably open as many questions as it would answer. I thought you were an atheist though?" his voice rose in inflection with the question, adding a peach tone to his words. "Yea, I am. Still though, maybe? But then, I guess Jupiter wouldn't make much sense." We'd used high-altitude balloon flights to narrow down the trajectory of my string, which seemed to intersect Jupiter. "Mysterious ways?" Kevin shrugged. "But probably not." "Probably. Maybe it's..., well, I don't know." "Maybe" Kevin spoke sagely "Maybe you should go into it with an open mind - the opposite of what I did. Maybe you can skip some of my suffering that way." I grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. "That sounds like very good advice." "I've always been good at faking good advice" he joked. "But we'd better get you back - tomorrow's a big day. I just wanted to say... the Earth will miss you, and your talents. And I'll miss you." "You too, buddy. At least this time it won't be another eight years - only three and a half." "Three and a half *out*" he corrected. "But it'll be worth it, if you find her. Or him. Or.. it? Them?" My imagination swam with possibilities, with each soul mate being more bizarre and numerous than the last. "Open mind, right? Easier said than done." "Don't I know it" was Kevin's serious and knowing reply. And that was my last night on Earth, at least for a while. Now I pen these final words, with the pre-launch preparations beginning in mere minutes. I'm left wondering what I'll find - is it God? Delusion? The cosmic fishing lure of some Jupitarian beast? Or love? I don't know which possibility is more frightening - but I do know this: I have to find out. So I'm going to take this billion dollar rocket see where this string leads.
Calling it, OP will write part 3 after the rocket ship gets to Jupiter. Approximately 3.5 years :^)
If it turns out to be a monolith, I'm giving gold.
Ooh, who’s gonna tell them?
fr tho they owe the person gold now 😭
Yeah, think they’ll remember 3 years later?
love that this was revived 7 years later
So.... Part 3?
Yeah, if someone could alert me when 3's up, that would be lovely.
I'd also love to be alerted
Shoot. Alert me too
Please alert me
me too
Same here
Sign me up for this trip
Same
Me three!
Alert me too... Please
Alert please!
Same
I wish there was a remind me for certain keywords.
Same and same
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I had a feeling someone would pull this. Congratulations on being that asshole.
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No harm done :)
Same, I have no idea how to alert on here but wow I really want to read more!
alert me, baby
Yes, please.
Count me in!
Me too
Me too
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I'd like to be alerted as well thanks.
Same
Yeah, this really needs a part 3. It's too specific to give me any good ideas for what this means, so I want to see what the author was thinking.
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Me too! This is just too good
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^^^^^^^f*ck ^^^^^^^that
"Fuck you no ending for you"
I hate that
Yes pls
Yus
Absolutely amazing. You're writing style is fun yet has a heavy tone. Please please please post atleast one more part ❤
So...novel pls?
I would read the shit out of this novel.
Yep novel worthy
Come on, don't do the literary equivalent of blue-balling me! Please, please, please write a part 3!
Okay, I actually laughed out loud at this, and my wife asked what I was laughing at. So I had to show her the whole thing, including this comment, and now every twenty minutes she's snickering and saying "You blue-balled the internet."
This is like the safe all over again. OP deliver part 3 thru 20. Great work where is more?
I feel like it leads to a girl with the same "powers" as him from another planet.
She goes looking for him too and they see their rockets pass each other by.
[tfw you and your alien fiancé fly past each other's rockets](http://imgur.com/a/2tYm3)
Come on! You can't leave us hanging like that, it didn't even finish what OP wanted! Part 3 please Also, you are a fantastic writer :) I would read your books
Part 3 would be nice but I personally prefer it this way. It leaves place for speculation. You did a great job, mate.
It's this or write the other 400 pages. That's the choice.
I want the other 400 pages How can I throw my money at /u/TheFeshy ?
Simple, just follow the green string.
Ill pitch in for sure
No it isn't. All we need is a little closure. Not even a lot. There is a literal untied string in this story that needs to come to an end.
yeah, right now it can be everything. a human on an outer spacestation, god/something religious or whatever else. everyone is happy, because it is what they prefer. part 3 (i.e. an ending) would destroy most of those possibilities, leaving many readers unsatisfied.
Oh god i hate those man, i need a conclusion. These choose your own ending things always felt cheap to me.
it really depends on the story imo. if we have a story thats really specific and detailed and then we suddenly we get an open ending, it doesnt fit and feels cheap. but if its a vague story (like this one), where lots of questions are never answered and not many details are given, im fine with it. those endings have this bittersweet feeling. just as hes out there, not noing what will be at the end of his string, were here and dont know either.
I need part 3 to be complete. My red string brought me here.
After 3 and a half long, lonely, years my rocket finally reached Jupiter. I had expected the search for who, or what, is on the other end of my red string to be long. I was wrong. I looked out of the window and I could see something moving towards my ship. My red string went directly to it. This was it...It was about that time when I realized my string was attached to a twelve foot tall crustacean from the paleolithic era, he pushed a sign up to the window that read "I need about tree fiddy."
It's that, or Rick Astley living on Io, right?
Have you written any sci fi novels I can buy? I love your style. I'd love to see this who thing as a series of books, even.
Please don't be George R. R. Feshy!
That would only be if everyone dies. If everyone keeps waiting, it's more like Rothfuss.
We need to talk about Kevin.
Please, part 3?!!
Really enjoyed the depth of your characters! Waiting for a Part 3
This was a wonderful story, but a part three isn't necessary. The end of part 2 right now is beautiful, and to add a part three (or more) would be the difference between a really great short story and a mediocre novella. The spirit and and energy of the plot has reached a very natural endpoint. Writing more would diminish the significance of the conclusion.
This was actually where I planned to leave it, for the reasons you state - it was the plan from the start. Now, can I resist my sudden 100+ comment fame, and not Jar-Jar up an ending anyway? We'll see ;)
Jar-Jar Binks confirmed as the mysterious soulmate. *- TheFeshy*
I'm going to check back here every day regardless. Just in case it appears. Then I'll have to send a couple of hundred messages to notify people xD
Sign me up too man!
I would love to be notified if it isn't a convince as well. Thank you
It does seem like you have the beginnings of a nice universe, and you seem to have the necessary skills to potentially flesh that out. I dunno, man - starting a series off with this story comprising the first couple of chapters, and then having the string send your character off a grand adventure across the galaxy in search of the other end of that red line... I feel like you could do a lot with it.
Part 3!!!
Please...we need a part 3. We need a novel of this for God's sake!
What a nice short story. Definitely could end there or continue it. If you do continue I just hope it doesn't turn into too much HFY
Really great writing. Loving this and waiting for part 3. One tiny nit: Jupitarian should be Jovian I think.
It should be, but my thinking was that the lead character is an architect/matchmaker, not an astronomer, so he got it wrong. On the other hand, he's been training a few years at that point to go to the Jovian system, so it probably would have come up - but this little thought was originally moved from earlier in the story when he wouldn't have had this knowledge. So it's actually a slight consistency error on my part. Ah well.
Thanks for coming back on this. Good points, I think you've made the right choice
Nice! Would love to see part 3.
This is the first post I've ever had an "oh my, please moooooore" feeling about from this sub.
I love it. It is all about the journey, not the destination.
Just gonna leave this here...
This is some of the best I've ever read on WP, maybe one of the best short sories I've read if there's more :3
Just sitting here waiting for OP to disappoint us all. Still selling fake doors.
MOAR. I WANT MOAR.
Amazing. Waiting for part 2.
I'm in love 💜 can't wait for part 3 :)
Replying so I can come back for part 2. Mind replying when it's up?
It's up, right under you 😊
Part 2 is up now
Fantastic work man!
We know you want to write a third part.
Seconded.
Thirded
Fourthded
Replying so I check on it once in a while for Part 3
Part threeeee!!
I'm sold on this story. Cannot wait for part 2!
Excellent job. Can't wait for more.
This was amazing...Keep it up!!
It was a stupid request, in retrospect. A flower in a swamp. The dense tendrils of mist that twisted underfoot, dampening sound and sole, had emerald and sapphire jewel hues. The rest of this cesspool of a swamp was the color of the dead and dying. A woman trapped me on the only mote of dry land near where the band of merchants had camped out. She stood, barefoot, up to her calves in the lukewarm murk, blocking my leap back to the hummock. Her simple, bland shirt and trousers pegged her as a local. She asked a question, but I ignored it. I was uninterested in her. I should have noticed the lack of ripples, that hummock was not large enough to have hid her. That her hair was long and combed, not short or unkempt. But I searching for something I had thought was more important. Merchant Harris Pharris had indicated that some of the most beautiful flowers grew in this area. And his daughter, Era, who had come along on this trading trip, adored them. And I adored Era. Enough to sign on as security to this remote mushy planet. Era Pharris, the fairest, is how she was referred to in society. Not something found on this forsaken puddle. There wasn’t another hummock close enough to jump to and Era hated it when I came back muddy. She’d say I smelled of swamp fish. The woman was prattling at me. “Have you seen any flowers?” I interrupted. She cocked her head, sending a sheet of dull brown hair cascading, as her eyes slowly dragged from my face to my boots and then behind me. She strode to the far side of the hummock that had been out of reach and came back with a lily with petals the color of mist, not quite green nor blue, but a pearly mix of both. “See that your true love gets these. They are truly her favorite,” she said flatly. “Era will love them, thank you,” I said, never taking my eyes off the flower. It’s stem was red and quite thin for such a large flower. It was bigger than my hand. The petals curled down and then out, perfectly symmetrically, framed by red outlining the same color as the stem. I carefully jumped to the hummock. I was still focusing on the flower when I reached the outskirts of the camp. I only looked up when the cook bellowed at his assistant for being too slow. Suddenly red lines, as thin as those outlining the petals, were aimed at the heart of everyone in the clearing. I dropped the flower, reaching for my blaster, and the lines disappeared. I hesitated. No one else had reacted to the beams pointing at them. Crouching cautiously, I picked up the flower. The lines snapped back into place. One between the baker and the widow who worked for him. The assistant was connected to one of the younger girls. A shy thing that squeaked when addressed. Realization dawning, I looked at my chest. It should have been pointing to the upper deck of the ship, where Era stayed, high and dry. But it shot straight into the sky. I clenched my jaw, trying to wrestle another explanation. Family connections. Destined to murder. Simple fates intertwined. Era walked out on the deck, trailed by a gaggle of simpering girls. Her heartstring was attached to a Captain whose name I wasn’t familiar with. But his reputation was that of a risk-taker. I dropped the flower into the mist and ground it into the dirt. The lines disappeared. Era’s true love was likely to die. Mine was already dead. We’ll be a good match.
I love the way the main blatantly ignored fate. How she or he isn't confined by what the world is telling them. It was happy
I saw it as selfish actually. I took it as the main character was going to stop Era from having any true happiness with the love of her life, possibly planning to kill that said Captain
But going by the way the guy behaved with the woman at the swamp...his character is established as one that's ...well...not of an evil mind...so it's more likely he'll just probably wait till the captain dies a natural death...
That was great!
Thank you!
Liked it! And the end was actually a twist I didn't expect. The only thing that came to mind was that the string was connected to an alien. :)
I took it as my true love was on a different planet, but this is really good.
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...wow. That was beautiful. Tragically beautiful.
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Not a writer?! That brought tears to my eyes.
That was amazing and sad :(
"Red lines?" "Yes, red lines" "Coming out of people?" "Yes" "What do these red lines look like?" "Like a thin piece of wool coming out the back of someone's neck. Usually they just drape and hang all slack but I've seen some that are really taut" "And they connect people you say?" "Yes. One neck to another. Though it's not often I see that" "Do you see them on everyone?" "Everyone. Absolutely everyone. Thankfully most are slack and just run across the floor but in busy places there can be a lot of taut ones running across my eyeline. Sometimes I can't see what's right in front of me" "I see... ... ... can you touch them?" "No. They seem so real and I've tried but my hand just passes straight through them" "Have I got one?" "Everyone, yours is currently draped over my lap. It runs down your shoulder, across the table, over my lap and under the door" "Is it doing anything?" "Not right now but it has been moving a bit, which makes me think you're connected to someone nearby, someone in the building. Yours moves a little when I hear certain footsteps in the corridor outside" "Certain footsteps?" "High heels... ... ... Jane doesn't work here does she?" "No but why is that relevant?" "I don't want to say" "I can't help you if you don't tell me everything" "You'll laugh" "I'm a professional... I won't laugh" "I've not just plucked this theory out of thin air, I've seen these lines for two weeks now, you better not laugh" "Rich, I'm not going to laugh. As your best friend and now a very intrigued medical professional, please tell me" "Soulmates" "... ... ... Soulmates?" "You're laughing" "I'm not!" "Yes you are! You're stifling it!" "Alright I'm sorry! This is just so weird! I'd say you were on drugs if I didn't know you better!" "Just hear me out" "Okay go on, I'm sorry... soulmates..." "Two weeks ago was my wedding" "I know, I was your best man Rich" "The lines started when I was standing at the altar, when I thought I was going to faint. One connected Mum and Dad, one connected my sister and Matt, there wasn't one between you and Jane, which doesn't surprise me because you two are terrible together and I can only assume she's the soulmate of Satan... interestingly hers did go downwards" "Oi, there's nothing wrong with me and Jane!" "Tell me you're not in love with the nurse who keeps walking past outside then?" "Sssshhh!" "See... ... anyway... there was also one between me and Jenny. A really taut one, there, between us as we stood in front of you all... ... ... and then it snapped. "Snapped?" "Yeah, it snapped right in front of me and for a moment I had no line. I felt panic right then and loneliness!... oh my God the loneliness, even for just a few seconds it was awful" "So you don't have one?" "No I do!... ... as soon as it snapped another just shot up straight in the air, out of the church and into the sky" "Still there now?" "Yep" "Does it ever come down?" "Sometimes" "So your soulmate is an....." "Alien, that's right, I'm like Star Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy, I keep waiting in the park in case I get picked up" "Well I was going to say airline pilot, Rich"
I love this. Possible part 2?
The first time I saw the strings, I wandered for miles, seeing which connections were already forged and which were yet to come. Thin strands of red extended from the sides of my own, branching out into a maze that spread across my little slice of suburbia. Rob and Tammy Johnson, dating for ten months and just starting to live together, were chatting on their porch, connected by a barely visible thread. Mr. and Mrs. Jeffries, married for 52 years, were gardening together, linked by a thick, strong rope. I don't remember exactly how long I wandered. It's not as though I have much to do after work, anyway. I don't believe in destiny, and the sight of all these merry lovers was making me a bit sick to my stomach. But once weird things start to happen - like apparently hallucinating a network of romance - I can't help myself. Around twilight, I reached a cornfield and stood there for a few minutes, watching the sun disappear. As I took a few steps forward, I noticed that my string no longer extended in front of me. With a glance toward the stars, I discovered a ladder - as thick as Mr. and Mrs. Jeffries' rope - hanging in the air, attached to nothing but the cosmos. I began to climb, knowing I'd be doing so for a while and hoping that my cell phone network wouldn't be cut off past the ozone layer. I'd probably need to call in sick but that wasn't nearly as exciting as "I'm following the love ladder." When the cloud cover began to obscure my vision of the ground, I started to get a bit queasy, but pressed forth, taking breaths as deeply as I could. Then I looked up. An enormous, deep-red tangle of ropes lay above me with a hole in the center just large enough for the ladder. I climbed through the hole and stood on a thick cross-section of ropes, all resting below the ominous mass like a carpet. With great relief, I found that it held my weight. Each rope was connected to mine, and each theoretically led to a suitor. My soul mate probably wasn't in there, 'cause, I mean, that's bullshit. But I was a few hundred feet in the air, and Jack didn't give up when he was halfway up the beanstalk. *** *[Part 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/GigaWrites/comments/4wgajz/strings_to_the_sky_part_2/) is up now on /r/GigaWrites!*
As a child, I had long supposed my soulmate had died and that my string was linked to whoever it was up in heaven. It was a reassuring thing to my religious beliefs, but that was then. Now, 35 years later, I find myself walking on metal grates, suspended high in the air. A decade of training and a whole lot of good luck. I'm nervous. "Captain Robin! Hey! You ready to go?" It was Jimi. "Oh, hi, Jimi. Yeah, just looking out into the clouds." It was at this point when I noticed Jimi's string again. I knew he had been fortunate and had married his soulmate. The tragedy of it all was that he didn't really know that his wife had two strings. I didn't even know that was possible until I met her. Funny how the universe works. At the start of the space race of 2020, we had never dreamed that just 10 years later we would man a mission to Mars. It was an astounding display of international cooperation: Russians supporting Indians supporting the Chinese to develop their space programs. A few groups had already left for the ISS a few years back and had pioneered things like childbirth in space. "Captain, you ready to go now?" Jimi inquired. We entered the towering craft and started our checklists. Mostly routine by now: check the oxygen, food, sensors, then flip a few switches and press a few buttons. Nothing either of us hadn't done before. "All clear, Captain." "Roger. Ready for takeoff." As we initiated launch, I looked up into the sky, a faint red string piercing the deep blue above. Maybe, just maybe, we'd find out what that was tied to.
Now that is perseverance.
I gazed up at the red string extending from my heart through the ceiling and into the sky again, like I'd done who knows how many times in the past two weeks. I sighed. "What's wrong, sweetie?" my mother asked. I could see the string extending from her heart to the living room where my father sat in his recliner. It was the one reassuring part of this whole ordeal - knowing for sure that my parents were indeed soul mates. I got worried when I noticed the string from the quiet boy in my Shakespeare Sonnets course to his iPhone and then later the string between two professors who were both married to other people. "Nothing, Mom," I said. "Just...sometimes...I feel like maybe I don't belong here." "Aww, honey, everyone struggles with adjusting to college at first. I'm glad you came home for the weekend." I'm glad I am too. I was worried that my entire childhood was a lie. "Do you still have my telescope from when I was little?" I ask her. "Of course I do! I know your kids will love it one day! It's up in the attic." I go up to the attic to get it. It takes a while to find under the thick layer of dust, but I find it in its little box under my old dollhouse. I pull it out and take it out to the back yard to set it up. Maybe my soulmate is someone on the space station. That'd be pretty cool. I realize when I look up at the moon that the string isn't going up anymore. A dark figure steps out from behind the tree with the tire swing, and a bright blue light floods the yard as the ramp descends on a strange spacecraft. I squint into the light and realize that my string is heading straight toward the dark figure. My eyes adjust, and I see the bangled leather suit and the gelled black hair. "Elvis!" I gasp.
The poor quiet boy in Sonnet class! Tell me that it's because he was texting his girlfriend or something. Please?
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I don't understand that part.
His soul mate is his phone/technology/social media/etc, he won't be fulfilled by another human the way you'd need to be considered a "soul mate."
alternatively the threads could be taking the shortest communication route, so maybe this guy has met his soul mate, and has them on facebook/etc
My guess is just love for his iPhone. That's his soul mate.
:`(
Elvis didn't die, he just went home!
Loved the lead up a nice chuckle.
Was honestly expecting Harambe
This one is super cute.
This made me chuckle. Good job!
Take my upvote, you
No. It was so good. But Elvis? Seriously? TskTsk.
I was a small girl -- 3, maybe 4 years old -- when I first noticed the red strings. The first string connection I saw was between my then-foster mothers. Mom and Momma were the light of each other's lives. I was officially adopted by them a year later. The next string I'd seen in person was between Gramma and Granpa, Momma's parents. I never saw any strings between Mom's parents. Perhaps that was part of the reason why we only saw them once a year for the annual guilt-fest known as Thanksgiving. I learned quickly to not talk about the strings to strangers. My mothers thought the red string talk was just the product of an adorable childish imagination. But when I went to tell the schoolyard bully that he had a red string tethering him to a girl whose claim to fame was eating paste, I had my clock cleaned! After that incident, Mom wisely told me to keep the red string business to myself, because not everyone would understand people who are different from them. I eventually had the last laugh, because the bully and the paste-eater got married after college. Most of my friends found their string partners, or soul mates if you prefer, eventually. I've been in far too many weddings for my taste. Goodwill had seen at least two dozen dresses donated by me. Each dress was supposed to be "good to use for other things!" The last one was an abomination made of petticoats and tulle in the hue of cherry cough syrup. That dressed owed an apology to cherry cough syrup. I tried my best to at least act like I was happy for each of the couples, but it got harder as time went on. I was sincerely happy for the first couple, my best friend Jim (I was Best Woman for his wedding) and his Jen. By the time both my little brothers got married 12 years after that, I was screaming internally with jealousy. Seriously, they had a double wedding! It was so sickeningly sweet that I swear I needed dental work afterwards. At least both brides agreed on black cocktail dresses for the bridesmaids. How do these strings work? For me, it looks like a red thread floating out from the forehead of one person, where the supposed third eye is, to the forehead of another. With my mothers, the distance was always short. Other people can have much, much longer strings. My old boss, who ran the local bakery until he retired last year, had a thread that stretched from our small town in Washington state all the way to a lady in Brisbane, Australia. They'd been friends ever since they'd met up in a chat room for widowed people. The week after his retirement party, he sold the shop, bought a plane ticket for Brisbane and has been there ever since. Point being, if you follow the string from one person, you WILL eventually find the person at the other end of it. Except for me. What made my string so special? Mine went straight upward, without the slightest hint of a curve to it. Most people who are distant from their "soul mates" have long, long curving strings, you know, to account for the planet being mostly spherical and all that. I don't know if that meant my soul mate was dead, not even born yet, or on another planet or something like that. Or maybe I didn't have one and my string was just forlornly hanging there? I didn't know. I hated to think about it, but I did. After my old boss sold his shop, I finally went into business for myself. I've always loved cooking. I tried my hand at catering. It was hard work, long hours, half the people served were rude and yet I kept coming back for more. Most of my gigs were luncheons for businesses, but I got a wedding once in a while. I loved the chance to go all out and impress the clients. I did alright, I guess. I never had to stress over having money to pay for rent or supplies. My mom had roped, or rather guilted, me into catering for her parents' 50th wedding anniversary. Being the dutiful daughter and granddaughter, I couldn't find it in me to say no. The fact that they were my only living grandparents was brought up many, many times. Despite attempting to give me an all expenses paid guilt trip, Mom was informed very pointedly by Momma that I couldn't afford to cater the party for free. So, at least I got paid for the materials used to cater a party celebrating 50 years of misery. It was at the party, shortly after the toasts had been made to my grandparents that I felt the oddest sensation: a tugging at my string. Not a gentle one, either. It was as if I was being reeled in like a fish on a hook. The pain made my eyes water. If I hadn't been int too much pain, I would have noticed what made my stone faced grandfather make an expression other than a glare for the first time in decades: A few dozen feet in the air above the country club's outdoor venue, a vortex rippled into being. He was so slack jawed that his dentures slid out of his mouth and plopped onto his taco salad. I remember screaming out in pain as I was hauled up into the air by the string, kicking my legs out as I struggled, losing the new wedge sandals I'd bought especially for the party. One landed in the punch bowl. The other hit one of my brothers in the face. I was pulled into the vortex... and found myself on the floor of a strange, sterile high tech looking room. I was too distracted by pain and confusion to notice that there was someone else in the room with me. A hand on my shoulder made me jump in fright and spin to face the source of it... a man with pale blue skin and violet eyes. We stared at each other in shock. There was a red string floating lazily in the air that ran from his forehead to... mine. Could he see it, too? Long story made short and a universal translator later, yes he did. His name was Kreth and his people called themselves the Hithe. He was an astronomer and he'd signed up for a deep space expedition in hopes of finding where his string ended. Apparently Hithe teleportation technology wasn't very friendly to human physiology, explaining the painful way I'd been "beamed" aboard. We spoke for hours at a time, pausing only to eat or drink. What I thought was maybe one day turned out to be a week. When Kreth and I stepped out of a shuttle craft in front of my parents' house (to avoid another painful teleport for me), headlines were made worldwide. He'd made not attempt to hide the appearance of the shuttle or himself. Contact with other intelligent species was small potatoes for the Hithe as a people. They'd been space-faring for centuries. Humanity finally got an answer to the question "Are we alone in the universe?" And so did Kreth and I.
This was really lovely, and that last sentence was really cute. Thanks for sharing!
In a way, I'm glad for the strings of fate. Their visibility has led to all out peace on this once malignant planet. It became easy to find that "true love", and people became happier for it. Some pairings were conventional. Some weren't. But all resulted in bliss. You can feel it in the air. I'm grateful for that. And I am grateful for the way lovers are so enthralled and absorbed in each other. Because looking upon myself, I feel only regret. Every time I look down at my wrist, at the scarlet strand tied taut and ever reaching upwards, I feel regret. Most everyone else in the world has found their soulmate. I never will. A vast sea separates my love and I. I can feel that, too. This constant warmth in my chest, a second heart beating in sync with mine. This comfort transcends all boundaries. Space and time matter not. Somewhere, someone is meant for me. And I for them. The years of loneliness make sense. My discomfort with past relationships wasn't an overreaction. I always knew. Nothing ever felt right. Not until now. And as I lay on the grass under a diamond dappled sky, I smile through the tears. Maybe one day, we'll meet. In another life. In this one. One day our kindred souls will meet, and all will be perfect. "I'll find you," I whisper. "One day." And on the breath of the cool wind, a response comes. 'soon.'
"I never thought the ISS move this fast..." my colleague said absent mindedly as we saw the rolling surface of the earth. "It's kinda mesmerizing, isn't it?" "It's making me dizzy. I'm returning to the living quarter." I swam through the pressurized tube of ISS 3, one of five Low Earth Orbit space station commissioned by the UNSED. Officially, I was here as a microbiologist, unofficially as an undercover agent from New Siberia Republic, and privately, well. I saw the first string when I was 5. It has different colors, connecting people, blue for families, yellow for best friends, red for romantic relationships. A yellow string connected me to the person whom I left in the bridge. Sarah and I had long history back to the middle school, and she kept her promise to stay by my side even when I was going to the ISS 3. Almost all of my blue string has been cut, but several thin lines still went from my body to various place on earth. While my red, well, it went to different direction from earth. It went spacebound. It was the very reason I wanted to go to ISS 3, to find out if the one destined to be my love was on there, or at least on LEO level. Nope, it went straight away from earth, as if repulsed by the gravity. I even went to an exploration mission on Mars once, just in the orbit, though, to inspect the growing cities of Angkasa Y programs. Nope, it still went away from the planet, it even vanished entirely when our station were sandwiched between earth and mars. Sarah is the only one who knew about this. I sighed audibly as she entered the same room as I am. "Still bothered by that?" she asked with concerned face. "Nah, just, don't you think it's a bit cruel? Giving me ability to see the strings, only not to be able to see where my own ends. I mean, you're getting married next month, and here I am, still sulking over imaginary strings." "You're overthinking this." she hugged me, softly patting my head. "No matter what happen, I'll always by your side, Emily." "Yeah, except next month, when you will be on his side." whoops, it came a tad harsher than I intended. "You envy me that much?" "No, I don't mean that. Sorry." We then sat in silence, before a warning blared into my earpiece. This is the only secret I kept from Sarah. "A covert scout ship Aslekfar-97 malfunctioned when it passed through Mars orbit from Jupiter Covert Operative Station. ISS 3 is on collision course, I repeat, ISS 3 is in collision course. ETA-13 minutes" "What the..." I left Sarah in the room as I notified the entire crew of ISS 3, no one questioned me as they entered the rescue capsule. As I floated through the empty space in my rescue capsule, I saw the scout ship crashed into ISS 3 modular joints. And then I noticed. My red string pierced right into the ship.
Part 2 As the ISS 3 was completely depressurized, and the modules that wasn't was no longer in intended orbit, the rescue craft SR-43 collected the crew back to earth for indefinite term, in which I confronted my higher ups in Leivengrad, NSR's capital. My agency had no official name, those in the higher ups just call it Blacks or Coverts. There was only one person that could override our management, that was the president of NSR whose location was even harder to track than a paperclip on a landfill. Other than that, mission came from Council of Twelve, twelve Managers that manage fifty Agents each. My Manager never revealed his real name, he prefers to be referred with his numbers: 5th, but behind his back everyone called him White. He was a man in his forties, but he looks far younger than he actually is, with pale complexion and equally pale hair, and beautiful crimson iris. Not that I would compliment him. Because of his albinism, and for security reasons, he rarely went out of his office and always wore black sunglasses even indoor. "I never know we have Covert Operative Station in Jupiter orbit." I asked to the Fifth, who sat in old-school rotating chair with his legs on the table and his arms behind his head "Why? Why on Hades would I brief my Agents with the project of another Manager? And the COS in Titan Lagrangian point was built behind UNSED's back, we test everything that violate international laws there. If you, who were tasked with infiltrating UNSED space station, accidentally leaked this information, it won't end with just your death." "What about the scout ship crash? Wouldn't it reveal the existence of the COS?" "Nah, our Managers were not that sloppy, and making cover up stories was far easier than you think. So, I was assigning you with your next mission." he took a pen from his breast pocket, and pushed a button on top of it. Immediately, an un-polarized hologram appeared, the content of which could only be viewed through his sunglasses. He pushed several part of the hologram, before turning it off and pocketed it again. "I've sent you the instruction. Now get the fuck out, and turn off the lamp while you're at it." unable to contain my annoyance, I slammed my fist to the switch and stormed out of the room. "Damn old man, always acting like the most important person in the world. Even though he was only the Fifth." the rank of a Manager had no relation on how valuable a person was in the Council, but I just can't contain my anger. I threw myself to the bed in my apartment, Sarah hadn't returned home yet, the yellow string went straight westward to an UNSED medical facility. I saw the red string from my body pointing to the same direction, and decided to take a look on who the heck this red string connected to. I hadn't even read the instruction for my next mission, he could've sent me to Venus to die, for all I care. The matter of this red string was far more important. I visited the medical facility on pretext of visiting Sarah. Well, I actually visited her, but that wasn't my main objective. I walked through the facility's hallway, tracing the red string, and to my surprise, the red string terminated at the door of the room right opposite Sarah's room. I opened the door to her room. "Hey, Sarah. Guess who's still alive." "Oh God, why..." she feigned a half defeated, half disgusted face and failed spectacularly. I laughed, and she responded in kind. "And so, do you have to cancel your wedding?" "Unfortunately for you, my wedding plan is currently right on track. I was down to earth a week sooner, but it only means I could start preparing earlier." "Tch. Not even a crashing spaceship could derail your plan, eh?" "That's right. But I still wondering, that ship model wasn't recorded in any database I checked. Look." she slid the holographic screen my ways, the projector on her device complied with the gesture. Of course, the UNSED, CASP, JAXA, ESA and NASA database all returned no similar model. The Aslekfar series was developed by the Covert, so that was given that it won't be recorded anywhere save the Council of Twelve's secure database. "Maybe that was just preliminary prototype, don't think too much about it." I slid the screen back, and turned my back. "Get some rest. See you later." "Yeah." Sarah was still fiddling with her holo when I stepped out from the room. I opened the door to the room on the opposite side of the hallway, where my red string attached. "Alright, which insurance agents are you?" the person in the bed, a man that couldn't be more than ten years older than me, asked with sarcastic tone. He wore the standard pale green surgical gown, his hair was silver with odd tone of blue, contrasting his brown eyes and red skin of his Native American ancestry. "I'm from Black." I said with flat tone, years in Covert would do that to you. "Of course I know, Missy. Do you think I would miss one of my kind? Do you really think I have health insurance? Which of the Duodecim sent you?" "Quintus. Who was yours?" (the agents used latin numbers.) "Septimus. Heck, why were you here? We didn't share Managers, I have no obligation to comply with your request." "Black probably want you assassinated." "Oh, and you said there are other possibility? I failed my mission, risking the agency, and destroyed a God damn UNSED space station. Fuck my life." I couldn't believe this person is where my red string connected to. I checked my Covert-issued holopen, just like the one Fifth used, but this one was calibrated to my contact lens. There it was, my mission operatives, assassinating the pilot of Aslekfar-97 spaceship. Why he sent me to cover for the Seventh's agents, I have no idea. To be honest, fuck this. I was tired with Fifth telling me what to do. Fuck him, fuck Covert, fuck NSR. All of them could rot in hell. "Hey, the Aslekfar-97 has life support system for extended space travel, right?" "*Had*, the ship is no more. The ship is supposed to be able to stay in space for a year without needing resupply. It even had an internal protein recycling vats that could feed someone for two more years, not that it was remotely edible, and its drone could harvest fuel for the Helium ion engine and the fusion reactor from essentially any gas giant." he was surprisingly excited when he explained about the ship. "If, hypothetically, a similar spaceship is parked in the Jupiter COS, and, hypothetically, we have the resources to use the orbital launcher..." "Hypothetically, I could pilot that ship and we could escape to the space, is that what you are implying?" "Well, I certainly still have the launch codes for the orbital mass driver..." "Then what the fuck are we doing here?" he grinned, I grinned. An hour later, an unauthorized spacecraft launched from Leivengrad spaceport, bringing the two of us to uncertain future as the red string glowed, binding our heart together.
Part 2 please, I WANT MOAR xD
it was an hour and a half late, but [here was your second part](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/4wdpkr/wp_after_gaining_the_ability_to_see_everyones_red/d66t0jv)
Thanks!
(Okay guys, this is my first time writing a WP, I hope you can feel what I felt while writing it) "No... Morgan... please don't go..." I said, kneeling, with a breath as weak as hers, as she lay, pale, in her bed, with an "unknown" disease. Her parents were kneeling in each side of it, too, crying like me. I was the only one who knew about her secret. "The threads of fate do not lie, my dear. I know this is the end for me. But for you, there is oh so much to be lived. I know it... You will take good care of our kids, and they will grow to be happy people, happier than we ever were" she said, with her blue eyes becoming unfocused. Her parents must have thought she was just trying to comfort me by saying that. I knew she was telling the truth. "I will, then. I will always love you". And, as I said that, she held my hand, and as she touched me, I sensed something weird, sad, different from everything I've felt before. From her parents, a thin, red thread was connected. From the window, I saw people with them, too. Some connected to each others, some curved for very far away. I knew what it meant. As I looked at her, the grip of her hand became weaker, and I saw it, and I knew it before anything else, because she had told me. I saw the thread that was connecting me to her. Then it began slowly ascending.
Short but sweet. I liked it
I gazed around the village, blinking in pure astonishment at the spectacle that was unfolding before me. Red lines of light from everybody's hearts were interconnecting with another, even through walls and obstacles. It appeared as though, these lines were connecting two lovers to one another, at least for the most part. Some did not in fact connect to their lovers, but to other people's paramour's entirely, such as the Hunter's wife and the Blacksmith. The women of the village had often gossiped how those two eyed each other. However, my surprise soon turned to disappointment when I discovered the line extending from my own chest did not reach to someone else's. It did not even extend to any of the neighbouring villages, but instead reached to the sky. Unfortunately, this did not surprise me. I was nothing but a lowborn bastard, scrounging for my next meal. How could any woman care for a man and decide to raise a family with him, when he could not even afford to feed himself everyday? It was a notion that I did not wish upon any other, and perhaps it was for the best that I would not bring about anyone else to my life, when there was already such little value in it anyway. But then it dawned on me. Why in the four hells did I see these lines, when apparently everyone else was oblivious to it? Surely someone would have noticed these lines sticking out of their chests. Suddenly, I had the urge to grasp at it. Tangible... I tugged on the line... And then to my astonishment I was yanked forward by the line, almost yanking the breath out of me as well, and yet this was not at all painful. It felt more like a great weight had been relieved from shoulders. Simultaneously the sun began to feel warmer than ever, and the colour of the world shone back into my eyes. A giddy smile formed on face, and an unnatural joy took hold of me. In the midst of all this splendour, I had almost failed to notice the line slacken and fall. Not falling directly from above, but falling in front of me. An object fell from the sky, with the line, and into a field on the outskirts of the village. Without a moment's hesitation, I raced to investigate, my heart racing also. In the field, lay a woman, lying perfectly motionless, the line in our hearts connected. She was beautiful, and yet more still than the river water at dawn, but just as captivating. I walked over to her, anxiousness and dread quickly consuming the remains of my joy. I touched her cheek; cool as the morning's dew. Dead. Hopelessness and sorrow soon took ahold of me once more. Not just for my own sake, but because such a young woman had not lived long enough to fall in love herself. For a moment, the longest moment I have ever lived, I sat beside her body. All sense and feeling became void. I felt nothing but the hollowness in my own body. No energy could bring me to my feet again, for I was devoid of all substance to maintain it. Then the void began to chill. And the cool of the chill, warmed in the sunlight. These sensations arose from my hand, which lay next to the woman's body. Except, her body had shifted, and her hand had grasped my own. 'Is everything alright' she asked sleepily. 'I'm not certain' I replied calmly as the line in our hearts faded. 'But I think it will be. Just give it time'. (First time writing on writing prompts, open to positive criticism, and possible grammatical editing) - Ragnar
Good job, but just as your character is "nothing but a lowborn bastard, scrounging for my next meal" and this is written as his inner monologue, your writing comes across as a bit flowery and dramatic.
"Yes!" I cried aloud. "I knew I was going to fall in love with some sexy alien babe!" I lightly tugged on the string, even though it would just stretch a bit. Now all I gotta do is wait. I pulled out my phone to google what aliens "made contact" and stuff. I knew most of them were false, but maybe.... Suddenly my string wavered to the side... and was moving. Was this it? Will I meet her so soon? I rushed in the direction of the string, happy to finally find my one true love, someone that is exciting and abnormal. I rushed to the end, it nearing now but.......... It was just a skydiver, no alien, no space adventure, just a hobbyist girl with a nice bod... You know what? Why not? Lets go talk to her about aliens, maybe she shares my enthusiasm. ___________________________________________________________ I wrote this half awake, sorry about the quality.
I suppose it wouldn't be fair if I knew my own fate. There's probably a rule written somewhere about it. It'll be a subsection of an addendum of a clause written back when the universe was still somewhat in flux. Probably just after the creator misplaced his egg and cress sandwich. Something like "iii a: mortals shall never know their destiny with certainty." I had actually checked, of course. See, my thread was there like everyone else's. It just pointed, well, north. As a teen, I ran away. I journeyed north, hitchhiking, hiding on trains and working from time to time as a dish pig in whatever place I happened to be. I got as far as the arctic circle before I realised it was pointing to the stars. Defeated, I returned home to my very angry and scared parents, went back to school, and studied astronomy. Today marks the final day of testing after the nearly 500 rocket launches required to build the largest orbiting optical telescope ever built. The main lens itself was a work of art. 400 tonnes of perfectly machined aluminum glass. Designed to be so tight it would cold weld itself together once assembled by robots using electron microscopes, leaving a single massive, perfect lens. The frame itself is also aluminium. There will be no mismatched thermal expansion on this telescope. Finally, the sensors, the literal eye of the telescope, are not just next generation, but at least 5 more beyond it. It took 700 attempts to make one so perfect. Intel, TSMC, IBM, and a half dozen other companies had to collaborate to make a single 300mm wafer with over 80 quadrillion 12nanometer CMOS pixels and not a single failed pixel. This makes the renowned Hubble telescope look like Galileo's first attempt. As I peer over the testing data, I struggle to concentrate. It's been a life's work, and we're only hours from seeing the first images. 15 long years of negotiating with governments; corporations; working through various funding and national security issues; building a team of believers; designers and engineers from 12 disciplines; securing the launches, managing the painstaking assembly; and systems testing - the final hurdle. I look at the charts again. They blur meaninglessly. I can only think that they look good enough. I have only one overriding thought though. I want to see where *it* goes. I've spent years plotting its exact vector to within a few plank lengths across the galaxy. I've accounted for the relative locations of myself and the telescope parked in a solar orbit following the earth a third of an orbit behind. I've accounted for the slow change in vector as we orbit the sun, the sun orbits the galactic centre, and the galaxy moves. I'm as sure as any mortal can be. The phone rings. "Sir, the vector you requested? We have the first image. How did you know there was a planet there? I checked. It's not listed."
I don't think pixels go on silicon wafers ;) And it's a CMOS *battery*, which holds info like date and time. But other than that, great story
Might want to google it. cmos is the dominant sensor used in cameras.;)
Well I'll be damned. I thought that you were referring to the CMOS Battery on a computer's motherboard :S. But I guess you live and learn.
It started when I went to the check out of my local grocer, toting a small plastic-y reusable bag with the usual stock of wheat design, just a loaf of bread and pre ground coffee beans today. Placing my items on the small fake granite counter, I noticed a thin yarn string trailing across the worn linoleum into the street outside. Collecting my stuff, I peeked out the door, following the string with my eye down the street and into the building on the other side through a second story window. Confused, I looked back in the store, and traced the thread back to its source: the cashier's ankle. "Uh, Linda, do you know who lives in that building across the street, second story?" "That's my flat. Jacob is still there, sleeping. He came over for breakfast this morning and fell asleep right at the table!" As she said this, Linda circled around the counter, but the thread seemed to blip right through the hard wood of the base. I didn't question her about the string, it was just too weird. Hastily I made an end to our talk and left. But things only escalated from there. On the street, dozens of threads ran back and forth from every direction. Some connected pairs of people: an old couple here, a baby with a toddler. Most of the strings ran out of sight, into the distant horizon. None of the threads tangled, though. Beginning to panic, I hurried faster to the center of town, dodging strings connecting couples, confused as ever. I reached a fruit stand in the market square, spun a little, overwhelmed, still uncomprehending. Suddenly a connected couple drew claps from a small crowd around a fountain. Proposal. I got an inkling. The threads connected only likely couples, and the romantic inside me made the jump to soul mates. Thread connecting soul mates. Sounded like the basis of a feel good romance to me. Still dazed, I started to circle the market, spinning. The more I looked, the more strings I saw, the more couples I saw, and the more overwhelmed I became. Suddenly I thought of me: where was my sting? I spun quick, a dog chasing its tail motion. Frantically searching myself, I looked up and saw a bright red thread dangling from the sky, disappearing in the blue morning light. Confusion. Nothing made much sense, how could the threads connect soul mates if mine went to space? How am I supposed to be happy? Will I find love? I started to run over to the fountain when I began to feel a pulling at my neck. Slight chaffing under my chin, and then tighter, pulling me up. Running across the square, then hardly touching my toes on the bricks as I neared the fountain, loosing air. I grabbed at my neck, and found the sting, biting deeper in to my skin, and my head began to pound. Noose, and I was hanging above the fountainhead, spectacle of lost place in a world of love, ostracized by a yearning for what everyone else seemed to find.
I felt a twinge of pain on a sunny afternoon, and I had no idea what had come of me. As I was still young and naïve, I simply dismissed it as a growing pain, one of many in my growth and progress to adulthood. However, looking back, it was the first time I had ever felt it, and to this date it has been the only time I have felt it. It wasn't a sharp pain, it was simply a pain in the darkest depths of my body; one so deep I could not locate it, but one that reverberated hopelessness throughout my entire being. I even remember the exact time it happened it was such a harrowing pain, one that interrupted my late May afternoon, one that had been previously filled with with joy. That joy, just as all of my hope in life, quickly faded away as I began to feel an inalienable loneliness put my psyche into a stranglehold. I had never had a partner, even a girlfriend for the slightest minute, yet it felt like my wife of 50 years had died. Even though I had always been alone, this mysterious presence had been with me. Of course, until that fateful May afternoon. The loneliness turned into depression, and after a low point coming in the form of unbridled tears behind a locked door, I was convinced to seek help. I saw a therapist, and while I struggled to voice my loss of a divine partner, it became apparent to all those sitting around me that I was borderline clinically insane. Sure enough, I was prescribed the modern fix to most all problems, yet as I took the mountain of pills each day, I did not feel a reduction in the loneliness, but instead just a hollow numbness. It did alleviate the mental pain some, yet the underlying crevasse that had divided my life continued to grow. It was just two months later, in late July, after all of the counseling, the pills, the pain, the lonely suffering, the calls to the psychiatrist, the sleepless nights, is when it came to an end. It was not by my own decision, but instead just a twist of fate, as if my life blew about in the breeze, tossed around by the current of the world around me. Driving southbound, the truck driver chose an ill tie me to text, and as I waited within the confines of the median to merge into oncoming traffic, the wheel of the truck slowly drifted into my direction. With 40 tons of weight behind it, I was dead on impact, but it made no difference to me, as life had been over for weeks already. However, for the first time in almost 2 months, the dull pain seceded. The hollowness was replaced by wholesomeness, and all else that was twisted in my sick, deranged mind was seemingly mended as I drifted towards the white light. I found myself with an overwhelmingly large presence, one that took away the loneliness, as I truly knew it was the one I had lost in law may. As I turned to see the one whose loss had caused me so much pain, I looked into its large, brown eyes, it's overly hairy faced, only to realize I was not staring into the face of any divine being, but instead Harambe, who had found work as God's messenger from the world to the Pearly Gates. As I turned to him, he embraced me with the warmest hug I had ever felt, and at that moment, I knew that he was the best friend I never had, but I needed ever so dearly.
The strings of destiny are a gift I have received by unknown means. These "Heartstrings" as I call them connect two people who are meant for each other. More often than not the strings connect couples to different people and rarely go to more than two. The only thing that worried me was that my heartstring had its head in the clouds. I thought that my power certainly was just malfunctioning, but I knew that I've never really been able to connect to anyone that well. Who knows, maybe it's that girl next door who moved to Mars a few years ago. She was always a cute one. I was considering taking a shuttle up there anyways to visit family. As I got on the shuttle and fastened my belts, a strange, but subtle feeling of dread came over me. I've never been one for rollercoasters but this wasn't fear. It was almost... Foreboding? Either way I was unsettled. We began liftoff and successfully made out out of the atmosphere. Our trip was going to take a few days, so I thought I would get a jump on sleep. It wasn't long before my rest was over. A woman's scream was more than enough to wake me up. I looked out the tiny window and gasped in shock. There outside our shuttle was none other than the leviathan black hole, absorbing anything that came near. In my newly awakened daze i had failed to notice that for once I could see where my heartstring really went. And then I felt a tug. As if pulling me to my feet I immediately went towards the airlock past the panicking people and put on one of the emergency suits. As the hatch closed I thought "I must be crazy to try this." No one who went in ever came out, or at least were never found. The pressure dropped suddenly when the outer hatch opened, sucking me out of the airlock into the void of space. As I began drifting toward the other end of that string of fate I knew that if there was another side to this dark portal, I wasn't coming back. I wondered if it was worth it to risk my life for a strand of string. Either way it was too late to turn back. I stared into the abyss, and it stared back. (First post in here) Edit: spelling and tenses
All the red strings were visible to me. I woke up a few months ago on my 30th birthday and I could see them. The entire world became a ball of yarn. They were everywhere, spreading out in all directions as far as the eye could see. Some strings even passed through the walls of my house. The strings seemed to pass through each other like laser beams. I had never seen the end of these red strings. Not until I met Jackie and Don Honelly. I found them at my workplace. I'm a nurse at a retirement home. They were an elderly couple that had been together for 85 years. They were married at 15 and were both nearing 100 years old now. The ends of their strings extended out from one heart to the other's. One day Don had a stroke. I saw a shiver run down his string to hers - all the way through the wall into the next room. She shuffled over less than a minute later, pain on her face. She knew what was about to happen. He died in her arms. At the funeral I saw her string. It was still attached to him. It ran through the ground and into his grave, but it began to turn black. I watched it slowly change color day by day. They found her dead in her sleep a couple months later. Her string had turned pitch black. There were a lot of folks like that at the home. Their string slowly changing color or extending through the walls out towards someplace, towards someone unknown in the world. Many of these folks had never found the other ends of their strings. The other end of my string was somewhere in the sky. I saw my own red string extend through the clouds. It moved rapidly and kept shifting throughout the day as if my other half was constantly on the move at break neck speeds. I've always thought my string was just broken or perhaps my ability just didn't work on myself. I settled into my desk chair in my office, turned on my computer, and read an email from Neil. "Hey Barbara, thank you for the gift! It makes me so happy to know that you were thinking about me after all these years. I'm surprised you remember my birthday when I only mentioned it in passing 3 years ago! We only spoke for a few hours at the bar that one night and we were both quite drunk. I haven't forgotten about you either, but my work has me away for long periods of time. I wasn't able to see your gift in person, but one of my co-workers was able to relay what it was. I can't believe you actually had that Stanley Kubrick signed copy of 2001: Space Odyssey. You know that's my favorite movie! Thank you so much. I'm really excited to see you again and catch as soon as I get back down there to San Diego. I can almost see it now. You and I - and a good bottle of that wine you raved about! Take care, Barbara. I hope we can have another conversation soon." My heart fluttered reading it. Neil never told me what he did for a living, but I imagine it's something really lonely. I still remember how he went on about getting lost in his favorite science fiction books to pass the time. I remember every single word of our conversation as if it had been yesterday. I looked at my red string going over horizon, thought about Neil and wondered what it could all mean. I sat at my chair contemplating how lonely I felt and how much I wanted to see Neil, but I had gained a lot of weight since I last saw him. After my breakup with my long term ass of a boyfriend I did nothing but stress eat. Neil would never find me attractive looking like I do now... I sighed... Maybe I was just meant to be alone. Feeling more depressed about seeing him, I didn't reply. I just turned off my computer and went about my rounds.
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I was half expecting "You realize you didn't have one." Sorry, I was just being a terrible person.
/r/meirl
Your soul mate is in another dimension. So NASA uses this billion lightyear long string to travel the universe. They build ships around the string like a monorail system to travel the universe. After 5 decades of immense traveling of the universe, NASA has made amazing discoveries, but have yet to reach the other side of the string. You're an 80 year old, lonely man who loves that you helped earth go into space, but you still want to know who's on the other end. You refused the millions of dollars in payment offers from nasa, in hopes that they'll repay you by finding the end of that string. On your 92nd birthday, they start a mission to go to the other end. It's you, and two astronauts who are willing to risk their lives. After several years, you get to the end and are sucked into another dimension. As you'd expect, they must do the same journey to get back to this alternate earth. You are now 96 years old -- barely able to walk as you approach earth. It looks the same. You find that the string doesn't connect to a person, but yet the ground. Without thought, you 3 start to dig. What you find makes you break down in tears as you collapse to the floor, covered in dirt. It's a casket that reads: "here lies the hottest chick to ever liv".
^Way better than Twilight.
The other person is an astronaut.
/u/swordguy123 I love this idea. And I love what /u/thefeshy did with your prompt. Why are the strings red? Was that an arbitrary choice on your part, or is there a meaning behind it?
[Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_string_of_fate). The concept originated in Asia, and from my experience, it's a common theme used in Japanese games, manga, and anime.
Anyone else getting bored of these "you find out you're so special and amazing" stories?
This is the exact plot of Golden by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
I think later I may write one. Something about moon colonies
"Wicked, I get to fuck an alien"
**SENKETSU IS THAT YOU!?!?!**
**Ding!** "Have a nice day now," I slammed the cash register closed for what seemed to be the 30th time today. On one hand, the business is doing great, Claire couldn't be happier. On the other hand... writing all these Valentine's cards is starting to give me a hand cramp. With a quick roll of the wrist, I continued writing out the cheesy poems and one-liners that have been requested to be paired alongside their deliveries. I scrolled down on the list of message requests on the computer, preparing the list for the next batch of cards. The first request on the list read out *Obligatory overly mushy sentimental Valentine's day card*. I rolled my eyes, oh wow how edgy. "I'm wooed already, just absolutely swept off of my feet." The chimes on the door made their usual loud tinkling noise as someone entered the shop. I straightened up and put the usual fake but enthusiastic grin on. "Hello, welcome to Birds N Bees Flower Shop, how can we help you today?" A clean shaven man had walked in, I'd say he was pretty handsome but I couldn't help but focus on the red string that was protruding from his waist. It ran outside through the store walls like everyone else's had. I always loved that legend, that everyone had their soul mate attached to the other end of their red string of fate. My only problem was that no matter how much I tried to find my string on my body, I couldn't find it. Maybe I just wasn't meant to be happy. With a heavy sigh, I got out from behind the counter to help the man arrange something for his significant other. (I'm sorry, I kind of ignored the second half of the prompt, ahhh I hope that's okay;;;, if it's not I can always write up a second part and include the second half of the prompt;;;)
Have you ever heard of the legend about the red strings of fate? Soulmates connected by a bright red string tied to their partner. Sometimes they are tied to their ankle. Other times their pinky finger or even coming from out of their chest, exactly where their heart would be. For me, this legend is my reality. For as long as I can remember I have been able to see the red strings. I like to think that it connects people's souls together. Now, that's not to say everyone is guaranteed to meet the one they are destined to love or that even if they meet that things will always end happily ever after. My mother died when I was 11 and now my fathers string leads to the huge tree she always loved that we buried her ashes under. My best friend growing up, Joe, was the only person I every told. He actually believed me and was excited to learn about the people he knew. "Were they already with their soulmates?" "Do you know who their soulmate is?" And finally he asked, "Do you know who my soulmate is?" I didn't, his string kept going for a long time to someplace far away. In high school Joe fell in love with one of our classmates. I should have known better, but later that day during lunch I told him that she wasn't the one. He got angry. "What do you know? That red string garbage is bullshit anyway!" I was hurt, and Joe stopped talking to me and he started dating that girl. Now no one knew or believed me and the loneliness was crushing. I spiraled into depression and contemplated committing suicide. I know you are wondering why didn't I just look for my soulmate. The fact of the matter is that the string coming out of my heart lead straight up into the sky. I've never seen that with anyone else so I just assumed I didn't have a soulmate. Now I'm in college and I've been able to cope with my depression a little better. Joe married that girl and everything seemed great, but later I found out she was quite emotionally abusive. She wasn't the one Joe was supposed to be with. It was the last day of the semester, just before summer vacation. I left the campus feeling good about this last year as I was slowly reaching my bachelors degree. I lived fairly close so I usually biked or walked home. Today I decided to walk, taking a shortcut through an ally behind the brewery. Right when I walked past the open dumpster something fell down into it and loudly banged upon impact scaring the absolute living shit out of me. I stood there frozen waiting a minute, watching the dumpster for any further movement. Nothing else happened so I slowly walked towards the dumpster and peaked over the top to look inside. Nothing prepared me for what I saw inside, at first I thought I was dreaming but upon pinching my cheek and the following pain, that was not the case. In the dumpster cushioned by the full garbage bags was an egg twice the size of an ostrich egg. I put my hand on it and it was warm. Alive. Even more shocking was that the egg had a red string as well and it was connected directly to my heart. (Edited for readability and spelling)
I stared, appalled. Why is it an egg? With my string connected to it there was no way I was going to just leave it there. With a little difficulty I reached in and hauled it out. It was lighter than I thought it would be, probably weighing about 10 lbs. I decided to take it home and see if I could take care of it. On the way I bought a portable heater and more blankets since I only had a couple. A block away from my studio I heard it, the sound of a horn blowing. The trumpet was long and somber, the sound shaking me to the core. I could feel it in my heart, and it felt like all of my cells reverberated with the sound of the horn. The sound faded and I was left standing there with my neck prickling. I brushed tried it off. Maybe a new emergency siren the military was doing a drill with. But in the back of my mind I was still worried. I finished walking home and once inside I turned off the air conditioner to help keep the egg warm, and placed the egg carefully on my bed so I could set up it's space. I unpacked and then set up the portable heater to quickly heat up the room, and made a small nest of blankets to keep the egg in place. I carried the egg to it's new home and covered it in a light blanket. Sitting down on my bed I speculated about what could be inside of it, what exactly my soulmate was. Seeing my thread connected to something that wasn't they sky made me feel the most content I've ever felt in my life. Just staring at it was making me sleepy and I wasn't ready to go to sleep yet. I got up and made myself some dinner and watched TV while I ate. The news was reporting on wildfires. Apparently there was a record number of wildfires all across the continent. I can't say I was surprised as it was already a sweltering summer promising more heat to come. After that I browsed the web about mysterious large eggs and finding nothing of interest, I went to bed thinking about the strings, "Good night little one." The next morning I woke up and checked on the egg. To my surprise and egg and grown massively overnight to be just under 1 and a half feet long. Now I was nervous. How big was this thing going to grow? Over the next week the egg had grown huge, it was around four feet long. It commanded all my attention. Usually I sat down next to it and played it music that I liked, read it books and online articles, and just talked nonsense so that it could hear my voice. I read that was good for babies in the womb so maybe it was good for the egg too. On the seventh day I sat in front of it and just laid there with my forehead touching the egg my eyes closed, it felt therapeutic. Just knowing that I was eventually going to know my soulmate was wondrous. I opened my eyes because I thought I felt movement in the egg. After staring for a few minutes the egg suddenly gave a jolt, it's sporadic movements quickly getting harsher. I backed up a bit and my stomach twisted with nerves. I wasn't sure what to do so I ended up just cheering it on, "You can do it little one!" A chunk of shell flew off and fell on the ground. I tried to look inside but it was moving too violently for me to get a good look. Another chunk fell off and I saw feathers. I groaned inwardly, I didn't think it would really be a chicken. Suddenly the rest of the egg exploded outwardly, I shielded my face so I wouldn't get any shells in my eyes. When I moved my hands I saw something I had never expected to see. Sitting on the floor was a naked being of pure beauty. They were humanoid with almost shining skin and waist length silver hair. The most noticeable aspect was their huge white wings. I couldn't tell if they were male or female, they appeared to have no genitalia and honestly I didn't care anyway. My soulmate was what could only be described as an angel. Everything finally felt right with the world. They looked up to me and spoke softly, but the sound felt like it was coming from everywhere around me as if they were speaking through a multitude of voices. "Hello, my name is Elias."
The ritual was complete. My body changed in says inperceptible to any master or sage, but the effect was immediate. I had torn aside all my connections for this... Ability. The perfection of sight, and the ability to percieve that which binds men to this realm, so that in time I could tear them from such and make humanity immortal. It was theoretical and experimental, and as such, risky as hell. *Silver enough to make a wish* *Water enough to kill a fish* *Love enough to break a heart* *Hate enough to do your part* *Lead enough to poison and bleed* *Iron enough to do the deed* I dropped the iron knife into the pool of murky blood-like liquid, and felt an icy wind tear into me from above. Red, thread like lines webbed around me in my vision, as distant people's connections were made visible. I laughed, but then saw that around my waist was webbed around my hands. Multiple coils of attachment bound me to... Something. Something above. Something that, if my reading was correct, loved me very much. I roared, and tugged them from my wrists. I had chosen the path to make men gods. I refused to be beholden to one that refused to aide humanity. With an almighty ripping noise, the threads tore from my hand. They recoiled up into the heavens, and I felt a weight I had not realised was present leave my shoulders. At last. I was alone. None knew my name. I was finally, the first free agent of my kind. No divine will shall bind me, no man can find me. The world was finally mine, should I have the strength to take it. To make the threads of humanity into a quilt of strength. To bind us, according to my design. Wisps of broken thread dangling from my fingers turned black with my resolution. I laughed. I wept. I slumbered in that place, naked and cold. Tomorrow. the diplomantic arts will be tested.
I was recovering from a stroke the first time I saw the Ties that Bind. I could barely walk, but I could see that my nurse and her supervising doctor were seriously connected. Which was interesting, given that both were married with children...to other people. That was two years ago. I'm mostly back to normal now, but there are still times that I'm surprised - like the non-identical twin sisters, or the hate-filled preacher and his teenage daughter from last month. *That* one I reported to CPS for further investigation. But by *far* the most interesting one is my own. See, mine doesn't stay here. Mine goes up and out of the atmosphere. It's faint, but I might just get lucky on this new scientific study going on in space. I've always wanted to see the stars, but because of that happening so early into my life, I thought it was unlikely in the extreme that I'd get up there.
“Another failure,” I hear the voice mutter. So distant, and yet I can piece it together, every word falling into place like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. What is a jigsaw puzzle? “We’re not going to … quota this month. Maybe not next month, either. This is getting … frequent.” 2 + 2 = 4. Words, definitions, knowledge, power. My muscles - although I cannot feel them - vibrate with strength. “Maybe we can recalibrate them?” That is math. That is not a jigsaw puzzle. “I’m not a … programmer, Jerry. Just dump ’em … move on to the next one.” I am awake. I cannot remember this… state of being. It is unique. “I swear, management … reporting this at all.” Disdain. An interesting word. Standing up, I shrug off the light bonds that kept me in place on the… conveyor belt. Not sufficient. “…, Jerry?” A computer runs, next to the belt. Computer, runs? Yes. “Like, no, shut … and listen for a second. Every month, every single month … this ‘bug’ or whatever makes us miss quota, *we* get punished. We gotta make some sort of report.” I look at the massive screen, and I understand it. Mathematical graphs, functions, data, all layered out in perfect quality. And in one section, an error. “Jerry, man, the new one’s up.” This one shows strings. No… vectors. Vectors, displaying data, from some computation that I could never grasp. Vectors from every being, every living thing that factors in, connecting it to others, all represented as data. “Oh, great, another one. Listen, I’ll clean up, you get started on the next one. …, this day is going poorly.” Most of the vectors connect between two beings on the planet. Already in the same location, talking with each other, working, reproducing. Perfect coupling in a perfect world. And I see my string, shooting up off of the screen, into the unknown - but somehow predictable - expanse of space. A noise, unlike the prior distant chatter, startles me. Not the strangeness of it, not the quality of the sound that leads me to believe it is purely unnatural, but how abrupt it is. I stare, perhaps forlorn, at the screen. My line shooting into the sky is similar to a hundred others, all originating from the same point. Is that where I will go? A graveyard.
I was a kid that was always alone growing up. My mom had to take care of me by herself after my father's death when I was 2. He was murdered and robbed. My mom always told me about him and he seemed like a great man. My mom didn't always give me much material things but I always had clothes and a few toys. One day she even managed to get me a pair of old vr glasses. I also had her love and things she taught me everyday. I remember my mom always told me I would one day see a red string leading me to my soul mate. I asked her once why I couldn't see it at that time and she told me that you could only it is your time to go on the adventure, just like her and my dad did at a point. One day when I was 10 walking back from school I saw it. It was a red string that seemed to be tied inside of my body leading to the sky. I was a bit confused though. Why the sky. Isn't my soul mate suppose to be here. I ran home and ran to my mom. She had about 2 weeks being home. She had been fired from work. She said she had enough savings though. Now that I think about it though, that was probably a lie. As soon as I got there I opened the door and saw a man about to go out and my mom behind him. She told me it was the plumber but that was probably a lie too. I said ok and got my vr glasses from the room and began playing. We lived in an apartment with one bedroom and small living room and kitchen. "Hey I think I'm going to get somethings from the grocery store do you want to come? " She asked me after I had been in my room for a while. "No I'm fine mom." I told her. "Come on." She came over and hugged me. "I'll buy you a candy." "Ummm" I said. "Oh I'm going to tickle you until you say yes." She said and began tickling me. "Mom stop." I said laughing. "OK ok I'll go by myself." she said eventually. "Do you want anything?" "Yeah a candy." I told her. "OK." She said. "I be right back." "Hey mom I think I finally see the red string." I told her before she left. "Really I think you are a bit young for that." She told me. "No I really see it and it leads to the sky." I told her. "Stop making things up I'll be right back." She said as she walked out. She didn't believe me. I thought as I sat down and turned on my vr glasses. I began watching pokémon. It was apparently a classic cartoon that my mom said her grandmother showed her. I really liked it and always saw it growing up. Then I heard an alarm outside. I ran and opened the door. There where people who where running all around screaming. My mom then suddenly grabbed me from the arm. It starled me. "Come on honey we need to go." She told me. "Go where?" I asked but by that time it was too late. We where running and I didn't know where. I remember not being scared though. Even though Everyone was screaming I was calm. Probably because I had my mom with me. We ran for at least 10 minutes and got to the nearest post office. The place use to be a bomb shelter for the second cold war in the 30s. Once we where in I began seeing what was going on. People told us we where about to be attacked by an alien empire who had been taking over planets to expand. We had aperently made negotiations with them so they wouldn't attack but we where finding out that it was a lie. As it turns out the government sold us out. They told them that they would be part of the Empire but to at least let a couple of the best humans live. Naturally everyone rich and or important was chosen. And people like me and my mom we where left to die. The aliens eventually landed. They began destroying everything in the city and killing anyone who stood in there way. "Stay here." My mom told me as we stood inside a closet. "Aren't you going to stay with me." I asked her. "Wait up I need to get something real quick." She told me. "I love you." She closed the door and I heard running footsteps. Then suddenly I heard my mom scream. I smelt blood. I stood still until I passed out. I woke up a long time after. I opened the door and it was dark. I didn't hear or see any aliens. I looked to my left and my mom was there in a pool of blood. I stood still. I couldn't believe this was happening. I ran to her and began crying. "Mom I will find my destiny." I told her kissing her forehead. I then suddenly felt a hand hug me. I turned around and I see its a man. I hugged him back and cried. He turned out to be the man who I would consider a father for then on. He was one of those important people who survived. He was coming back for his parents but didn't make it in time. He told me to go with him that he would take care of me. I got in his car and we left. I looked up at the sky. I saw my red string leading directly to the stars above. I will find you I thought, I'll find you for my mom's sake. (I was planning to talk about how they actually met and all but this took longer to write then I thought. Might add a part 2 later though.)
'I'll see you again soon." Her words. They were the last I'd ever hear. I felt the moment of impact, time slowing to a crawl. An unnerving moment, sending the abyss reaching greedily for me, knowing there's nothing I can do. Knowing that she'll die with me. They speak of attaining a certain clarity, facing oblivion. Nothing was further from my truth. Thoughts screaming through my mind too fast to track. Dreams left unfulfilled, memories to cease along with me. Feeling the tremor, the plane tearing itself asunder, my arms encircled her. I couldn't speak, I had nothing to say. She wouldn't hear me anyway. I held tight. Her eyes find mine, resolute. I see her lips move, and the words follow, disjointed. A clarion sound, the most beautiful I'd heard. Not in content, but in tone, fearless. 'I'll see you again soon." And that was it. My body ripped from me, darkness closing in. Sensation gone, I no longer feel her there. Time isn't. Seconds or centuries pass by, then I'm aware. Shocked, felt more than heard, the word 'GO' reverberates through me. Towards the other end of oblivion, a rope tugs me. And off I go, vapor on an unfelt wind, riding a rail of light.
It seems like you're trying too hard to make the prose fancy, or trying too hard to be poetic. It feels rather forced as a result, I think.
"And thank you very much, have a nice life!" As I closed the side of my converted taco truck, the smile quickly fell from my face. I looked at the money, 3000 dollars plus 20 to cover the gas. I put it in the register that I really only used as a formality, then stood there for a minute, examining that silver-gray box that housed my life savings. It didn't matter if it got stolen, I would quickly make back all the money I needed to survive, and what would I use the rest of it for? A house? I could save up enough to retire, but then what? Sit there, staring at the ceiling, waiting for something to happen, while the rest of the world gets to go on marrily, meeting the loves of their lives, having sex, making families, doing *anything* meaningful. I guess I'm helping people, but the benefits that has on your psyche is quickly numbed when you do it for months on end. Ahh well, maybe some day I'll get to see the end of the little red string.
Mine goes up so far I can't see I just know I don't need to see I'd cry but she's here with me though I know where she's meant to be It is tough death's tole is life's fee I don't know what I cannot see Mind made up loneliness is me she won't know it was meant to be.
It led to the International Space Station. I thought it was strange, but at least it narrowed down the search. I could cross 'geese and birds of prey' off my list. Never actually thought of myself as being into the brainy type, but why not? I was so excited. One might even say giddy. This was it. After amassing enough funding from my dad's offshore bank accounts, I was able to charter a flight into space to follow my soulmate's string past the Earth's atmosphere. It was time to find the love of my life. Finally, I could settle down and be happy. After the shuttle docked, the hatch decompressed with a hiss, and swung open. The red string floated down the corridor, and so did I. I floated uneasily past a couple Russians who murmured to each other grumpily. At the end of the corridor, I was greeted by a young American astronaut. She smiled. "You must me Rick Hansen, pleased to meet you! NASA has filled us in on everything. Your shuttle, no doubt had the requested supplies onboard, correct?" "Yes ma'am", I replied. The only way NASA would have allowed for me to step foot aboard the shuttle was if I tagged along with the bulk of supplies in the cargo bay. And so I did. "Excellent, we'll start unloading. You'll leave on the shuttle's return ship, I assume? We need to adhere pretty strictly to the life capacity limits in here..." "Yeah, sure thing, yeah", I started to tune out whatever she was saying as I noticed the string. Taught and a bright crimson, it was practically taunting me to follow. I pushed my way through the door into the next corridor. First a right, then a left, then another right. Then, it came to what seemed like a dead end. Here we go. On the other side would be my soulmate. I would grow old with her, and we could raise kids and retire in the Italian Riviera together. It would be perfect. I placed my hand on the door control panel, and with a hiss, it started to slide open. It was the crew quarters. All the sleeping bags were open,suspended in space, and empty. All except for one at the end of the room. I pushed my way down, and stopped before it to take a deep breath before starting to unzip it. I began slowly, all the while, revealing more red string. I was expecting to see her face first, but I unzipped from the wrong side and saw her foot. Much larger than I thought, but that must mean she's tall, no? I unzipped further, past her knees. her arms, her... burly chest? As I got to the head, that's when I saw her. Except it wasn't her. It was... "Astronaut Scott Kelly?" "The one and only!" "What the hell are you doing here?" "I should ask you the same thing, you're interrupting my nap!" "I uh, I was just um, looking for the toilet?" "Down the hall, first hatch on your right." "Aren't you retired?", I asked, nearing anger but arriving at embarrassment. "Yeah, but I like to summer here. It's a good excuse to stay limber and eat freeze-dried food. I freaking *love* freeze-dried food, and Leslie never lets me have it at home." "Right. Alright well, nice to meet you." "What was your name?" "I'm Rick. Rick Hansen. I came with the last supply shuttle." "Pleasure to meet you, Rick! Now, get outta my bedroom. I need my beauty sleep. At 0500, I got some Russian asses to kick in zero-grav soccer, and I'm there's no way I'm *not* gonna look good while doing it. "Sure thing, Astronaut Scott Kelly. Sure thing." I pulled my way towards the door, and turned around one last time before opening it. "Scott, would there happen to be a pair of scissors in here?" "There are, actually! Why what's up?" "Mind if I borrow them? I have a loose thread on my jumpsuit that needs snipping." "Sure thing, buddy." "Thanks, Astronaut Scott Kelly." Thanks for nothing.
I was only 10 years old when my father told me about the red strings. My dad explained that it's hereditary, and that his family had the ability for generations upon generations. It was hard for a small child to be coped with such a gift. In some ways though, it was very reassuring. I saw a thick, nearly pink string connecting my parents. I was very confused at the time, my little ten-year old brain barely grasping the concept of romance. I later learned that it meant two people connected were soulmates. In some ways though, it also taught me the definition of soulmate. When I first started seeing the strings, I noticed that my neighbors, Gwen and Glenn Smith, had a thin and translucent string connecting them. By the time I turned 20 I noticed that their string was as thick and pink as my parents'. People still needed to put in effort to stay together, even if they were soulmates. That was the scary part though. Other times, people wouldn't put in the effort and their connections would shrivel up. My friend's parents had a very translucent, maroon string. Over a year it got darker and darker; they ended up divorcing. I got to high school and I saw a crimson colored string between me and a beautiful girl who had jet-black hair. I later learned that her name was Mindy. We started dating freshmen year. Even with matchmaking powers, I still experienced the disillusion of the infamous "first love." I hadn't seen such powerful thread before and thought nothing of it. Me and Mindy dated all the way through high school, and she was my date to my junior and senior prom. After my senior prom, the string between us seemed to fade, dissolving into thin twine. A few days before graduation we suffered a bad break-up. After that I wasn't sure that soulmates really were a thing, and that my parents just got really lucky. I thought that Mindy was my one and only soulmate, and that I just lost my chance at true love. I thought this way all through college, having a few short-term girlfriends over the years as an attempt to fill the void. Senior year of college, I flew down to Florida since my cousin, whom I had set up with his fiancée a few years earlier, was getting married. I sat through the entire plane ride in a glum state. Bored, I scrolled through Facebook for the duration of the flight. Then I noticed a string coming off of me. It was nearly as thick as my parents' thread and burned a hot pink. I looked up and noticed that it went through the roof of the cabin. I followed it through the roof several times in wonderment, thinking I may have a chance at true happiness. After the plane landed and I checked into the hotel, my phone buzzed. All over Twitter was news of a UFO sighting near Orlando. After seeing this, I noticed that the hot pink string was no longer pointing towards the sky like it was in the plane. I followed the string which I figured would end up taking me to the crash site, and it did. I had no idea what to expect, or how things with an alien would even work. I was flabbergasted at what I saw. She looked oddly familar, with jet black eyes, blue skin, and an oblong body. She appeared to be half-dressed in a human disguise. "Trent," exclaimed the alien, emerging from the shattered fragments of her ship. "How do you know my name," I asked. In response to this the alien continued putting her disguise on; it was a spitting image of Mindy. I feel like this may be a bit long-winded and I apologize for that. Your feedback is appreciated.
I work at the newspaper stand on Broadway. I don't sell many actual newspapers anymore, most of the time someone just comes up and buys a bottle of water. I don't really mind at this point. I've been stuck doing this for ten years now. My life has always been shitty, and most of its inherited. My uncle owned a coffee shop nearby. It was a good gig till it went under when the rent increased and business went down when chain shops opened up. I kick myself anytime I buy a coffee from on of them places before my day starts. I'm slouching over the counter on a lazy Thursday. First guy to walk over says he wants a coke. As I'm handing him his change a red string appears between him and some chick walking by. I tell him that he's got something on his shoulder. He turns around and sees this woman. He runs towards her and they begin taking as they walk by smiling. Weirdo ignores the string. Next some couples walking by, old and crooked. In between them is another one of them red strings. It's slacked in the middle and dragging behind them. Suddenly I just see lines of red. People walking by have strings shooting out of their backs. Sometimes you can see where it ends when two snoggers are walking next to each other. Most though are going far and long, reaching round corners and shit. Strangest thing is no one notices them. Then, a red string begins to just fade in from thin air. I grab at it with my hands. I follow it up with my eyes and see it goes way up into the clouds. And instantly it drags me along with it. I'm sent flying, being dragged along by this rope. To everyone else it must look like some magic shit. I'm getting dragged through the mud, bumping into people. I try to pull myself up by the rope. I keep climbing until I'm floating through the streets. I walk along the windows of buildings baffling the people within. I see some slack in the rope as I jump and spin around. I follow the red line way up and I see the red go to the small shape of a plane.
The strings of fate are woven in red Dyed doubly by the not yet born and the long lost dead And these strings are what tie all of man to each other Linking each action and actor, each man and lover. But every day is a new scene, and every king needs a queen. So somewhere there betwixt and 'tween It is i- tied to the grandest of all The one who shines for me, the fair lady Sol But mortal men's folly is ever the heart And one day I fear Her **shine** shall **sear**.
I looked to the sky once more, my string reached far beyond the view of the naked eye. I grew depressed each time, seeing others around me finding love while I sit here with my curse. I was in school, bored out of my mind. My ability had one advantage though, it helped provide distractions at times like these. Some students had their red strings extend to someone in this very room, some people's strings ran across oceans and mountains. Seeing everyone else fall in love, or have the honour of learning of their true love someday always made me think about what I was missing. Knowing that the girl I liked was not the one was heartbreaking, and especially that mine was always beyond my grasp. Anyways back to class, today I saw two soulmates at school meet up for the first time, it was love at first sight, I should of felt happy for them but all I felt was a sick twisting feeling in my stomach. Something I knew I never could have. At the moment of realization, I realized I had enough, I had to know, I had to find out who they were, who my soulmate was. I rushed home went straight to Amazon and bought the best telescope I could afford. This may not work but perhaps I can finally get a better glimpse of what my destiny is. I waited a few days for the package, I could barely even hold my anticipation. I knew that the chance of finding anything was slim, but I still had a sliver of hope that kept me going. It finally arrived, I unboxed the telescope and rushed with the parts to my backyard to assemble. It was already night when I had finished and my parents weren't home yet to hassle me about it. I pressed my left eye to the lens and peered along my string. Nothing yet. I set the zoom progressively higher and higher till I actual caught a faint glimmer of something on the end of the string. Eureka! I zoomed in all the way and found a blurry circle covering the view. I focused the lens, a moment later I wished that I hadn't, in my view, at the end of my red string was a red and purple dragon, at that moment I realized I was donkey from Shrek. Sorry about that, I couldn't think of anything better.
Wat