The Lives of Tao

You made your own bed, and now curse others for putting you there.

Look to your right... It is the path back home. If you choose, you can take it. It is safe, easy, and comfortable. You do not have to work out or fight or do anything else you do not want to... Or you can keep moving forward. I will not lie to you. I cannot predict what may become of you. It will require a lot of training, hard work, study, and danger. But in the very end, you will know strength. I swear it. You might just become someone who will make a difference in the world.

Besides, criminal masterminds are people too. They need groceries and cable like the rest of us.

Roen said, "I can't quit. I have rent, and a cat to support.

Just because I am an alien does not mean I am a Vulcan or some soulless robot.

Should he plead the insanity defense or the alien-told-me-to-do-it defense?

I take that back. Saying you fight like a girl is an insult to girls everywhere.

When someone asked Roen what he did, he'd explain that he typed incoherent commands that performed virtual tasks to create intangible objects.

Reminiscing is when one is thinking about the past. What you are dreaming about never happened. The word for that is fantasizing.

I had my doubts at first. You were an out-of-shape man with low self-esteem and underdeveloped social skills. Now you are an in-shape man with low self-esteem and underdeveloped social skills.

He felt a mixture of fear and excitement, but his main concerns were not dying, making his mentors proud, and not making a fool of himself, in that order of importance.

I'll always wait for you. However long it takes

What happened to me?" he muttered. "I don't look so good. I go from cute and fat to ugly and skinny. Why can't I just have the best of both worlds?

Explain to me how this is fun: thirty minutes in line, thirty dollars to get in, ten minutes to work your way down here, ten more saying hi to people I can tell you barely know, and now fifteen minutes ordering a beer that costs twice what it should. You just lost an hour of your life.

The world spins despite me, not because of me," he muttered. Last week, one of his coworkers died after twenty-five years of service. There was an email and eulogy sent by one of the managers - and then a mad scramble by everyone else to loot his office supplies.

This whole alien-in-his-body was starting to sound better and better. First, he got to hang out with a hot girl, and now he was going to be James Bond.

Since then, he watched the man live his completely stifling life over and over again, one repetitive day at a time. It was so consistent that Roen even complained about the same things at the same times every day.

Tao, I think I love her. She’s hot and a geek.” She is so far out of your league that you are not even playing the same sport.

Really, Roen Tan? Do you actually think pizza makes you hear voices?

So you’re a parasite?” We like to think of it as symbiotic, but we can discuss biology another time.

She was an athletic female, late twenties, a shade under two meters in height, and about fifty kilos.

No one wants to pay for a cure for cancer, but Heaven forbid a man lose his hair or an erection.

Great men are forged, not born.

Do you think the Prophus will reimburse me for gas?” I am glad you have your head in the game. “I’ve been in the car for almost two hours now. There’s only so many ways I can imagine getting killed. Now I want to think of happier thoughts.” Like gas reimbursement? May I remind you that we gave you this car?

You want to change the world? Now is your chance! Go show this bastard what you are made of!

Oh come on. You treat her like a Greek goddess and act like a lap dog around her. It is embarrassing.

Would you rather pay the extra charge or die?

Actually, I wish you were a chef. Then I'd get something out of this relationship.

If I find out that you wasted the best years of my little girl’s life because of your fine-wine-aging process, I’m going to kill you.

After initial greetings were exchanged, Roen turned his attention to getting a drink. Buying drinks from the bar was like playing roulette; sometimes you got lucky, sometimes you didn’t. Patrons leaned against the bar, waving their money and hoping the bartender acknowledged their existence. Only at these places would the words “I know the bartender” have any pull. It took Roen fifteen minutes to get a beer. Explain to me how this is fun: thirty minutes in line, thirty dollars to get in, ten minutes to work your way down here, ten more saying hi to people I can tell you barely know, and now fifteen minutes ordering a beer that costs twice what it should. You just lost an hour of your life. “Why do you think I always swear to never come back?” And yet you still do like an addict. “More like a lemming.