Terminal Boredom: Stories

Men are an offshoot of humanity as well, but they’re a deviant strain. They’re freaks.

I’m an introvert and introverts need companions.

Like most people these days, I don’t overthink things. I’ll go along with whatever. No firm beliefs, no hang-ups. Just a lack of self-confidence tangled up in fatalistic resignation. Whatever the situation, nothing ever reaches me on an emotional level. Nothing’s important. Because I won’t let it be. I operate on mood alone. No regrets, no looking back. Before me, the world stretches out flat, smooth and featureless. Gentle and inconstant.

Don't worry. The world won't stop spinning. It'll keep going, even if you don't want it to. On and on, until you're absolutely sick of it.

Syzygy? Androgyny? I'm no man and I'm no woman. Who needs gender anyway? I just want to get out of this place, to be on my own.

Life might merely be a momentary bolt of lightning in the dark, after which the self melts into the infinite darkness.

I no longer care about happiness or unhappiness. I just hope the scenery's pretty, wherever I am.

Even in this day and age, we still revere truth. But at the same time, we devote ourselves to the task of erasing the distinction between truth and fiction.

There was no way anyone could live in a world like this with a fully functioning mind. You only found yourself feeling angry from morning until night. If she ended up joining some kind of political movement as a result, her mother and father would be upset. Using drugs, she told herself, was her way of being a good daughter.

I had always assumed HE was doing an impression of a moron, but sometimes I wonder if HE isn’t simply stupid.

Time passes, the planet has its many histories, and things decline. That’s all there is to it.

And having four kids? Giving birth to them naturally? What is she, an animal?

The kind of men you see in the movies would be hard to handle in real life, though – they’re so fixated on their own masculinity. And sometimes that male pride, that proper behaviour, it all starts to seem ridiculous. If they could just get over themselves, then everything might be a whole lot simpler.

My favourite thing is to be by myself. I can’t take drugs, I don’t smoke and I can barely drink, but I still know how to pass the time.

Even when she clung to him like this, she felt that the largest part of him was off wandering through some unknown territory all alone. Even in her arms, he was always able to liberate himself from her, to make himself free. She envied him that. Sol was an alien.

Whenever she got that way, I couldn’t help but feel like I was just some human-shaped receptacle, there to receive her emotional excreta.

Though men were adults they were children, seemingly complex but as simple as could be; they were utterly unmanageable creatures.

While I fielded her questions, I had to ask myself: What was it about her that was turning me into a man? Got to be all that femininity. She’s acting like such a woman (as society defines the role, anyway) that I have to play the man just to keep the balance. What if I ran into a boy? Could I even play the part of a woman?

I’m a sucker for trends. I don’t have much in the way of agency. I always want to try whatever’s popular.

I alone (well, probably not) know the great secret of this existence, and I’ll have to live out the rest of my life keeping it at all costs. Right now, I have no intention of sacrificing my life for some underground resistance movement. But who knows, it might come to that someday. Shuddering, I turned back to my diary. Someday, surely someday … something will happen. Still shuddering, I finished the entry.

The only Terrans around on Meele were the piratical mine-raiders, hiding behind their Scientific Investigation Commission accreditation, and tourists who were hot on far-flung destinations. Terrans didn't have the best reputation over there, thanks to their tendancy to dig everything and anything up.

In the waking world, I obsess over the superficial. I devote myself to the acme of emptiness. And that devotion infiltrates my dreams, the world of my unconscious. Covered in thick plastic – that’s how I’ve made myself. Over years and years. The sadistic act of self-creation.

I answered without thinking. For me, a conversation’s just a series of reactions, reflex responses. I’ve got a habit of saying whatever the other person wants to hear. I’m a real people-pleaser. I know it’s probably not a good thing, but I accept myself – devil-may-care attitude and all.

Hang on. That doesn’t seem right. I’m pretty sure if I was locked up in a place like that for my whole life and never allowed to leave, I’d end up apathetic too.

When we first met, Reiko still had something of a wrecked beauty. Now, not even those ruins remained.

Unfettered spaces scare me. I’m not used to scenes that aren’t in a frame. Looking at a picture inside a border always calms me down, whether it’s an ultravista or the real thing. It’s probably from all the TV.

I rolled my eyes. We were similar, that’s all it ever was. Two years ago I’d been happy about it. Not only did we have the same sign and the same blood type, but we were even the same height and weight. Now I’m an inch taller, though.

And my diet is horrific. I suppose I hate fresh fruit and veg because my mum was always telling me to get my five-a-day in. She’d always be saying, ‘It’s good for your looks. Ugly girls need all the help they can get!’ So, three pieces of stale cake it is – straight in my gob.