Daemon

on-screen brought about shocking differences in his feelings even regarding similar events.
    He couldn’t guess how many hours had gone by. He felt as though he’d spent a tour of duty on the front lines. His mind was bursting with horrific images, and he was nearing the limit of his endurance for violence. As the hours crept by, the themes kept changing, but slowly, imperceptibly. Previous themes sometimes returned. Families changed to images of faraway places and cultures, then images of poverty, then of wealth, then of weddings, then of funerals. Cars crashing together in intersections – apparently from fixed traffic cameras. A nonstop procession of highway carnage and death. People committing suicide in protest, burning themselves alive. Then people dying in accidents while doing adventurous things like rock climbing or BASE jumping. More shots of adventurous people succeeding – accomplishing great feats. Then people trekking through wild lands, climbing high mountaintops. Then of historical events – from moon landings to Khrushchev blustering. Malcolm X faded into Martin Luther King, Jr.
    Mosely was emotionally and physically exhausted. And still it went on.
    It was like being dragged over an emotional washboard. Mosely wound up feeling virtually every emotion of which humans are capable – not once but hundreds of times. He was long past his breaking point – not that he even noticed he’d passed it.
    The images continued. An unknowable number of hours, and still the images continued. Mosely’s mouth was parched, and he strained to stay alert. The images kept coming.
    But one concept had begun to form in Mosely’s mind. Like a rock slowly revealed as a wind blew away surrounding sand, Mosely was starting to see himself. With all his built-up emotional defenses long since worn away, simple truths had begun to emerge. Even he knew their meaning: he was angry at his wasted life. He felt deep feelings of loss that he had no family as a child, and that he had not provided one for his son – wherever he was now. Also Mosely had a desperatedesire to belong. To matter. To stand for something besides himself. He was the perennial outsider looking in on the fellowship of others.
    The last films were pivotal. Where the earlier ones seemed to break him down to his emotional building blocks, the latter ones seemed to be building him up – filling him with joy as he saw people struggling together. Relying on each other. Sacrificing. Gratitude. Joy. Free men looking toward distant horizons. Horizons that beckoned the adventurous, hinting at danger.
    The people in these films were of all races and ages, but Mosely noticed that they shared some traits in common: they were capable, they were highly motivated, and they acknowledged no limits. Danger was not a deterrent. It was life lived to its maximum. They were truly alive.
    He had almost forgotten the real world existed. He did not know how long he lay there, but when the screens faded to black, it was as though he were cast into an abyss. He panted, struggling to find some reference point. His soul adrift in nothingness.
    From somewhere in the darkness he heard Sobol’s voice. ‘Follow me, and I will help you find what you have lost. I will give your descendants a future. The past no longer exists for you.’
    A light began to rise in the infinite distance.
    ‘You are an exceptional person. I choose to have faith in you.’ The soft light filled his vision.
    Mosely slowly remembered that he existed as a person. He remembered his name. Charles Mosely. He felt different – as though all his sins were washed away.
    Suddenly the crushing weight of exhaustion fell upon him.
    Someone lifted the goggles from his head, revealing the same soft light above him. The big guy was there, nodding slowly. A metallic
chunk
sound echoed in the room, and Mosely’s limbs were suddenly free. Other hands came to ease him up.
    Mosely looked and saw the other orderly in his white coat helping him up into a sitting position. Mosely felt dizzy. Weak.
    The big guy leaned in. ‘We’re going to withdraw the needle. It will just take a second.’
    The other orderly placed a cotton ball over the spot, squeezed, then withdrew the needle. He quickly taped a bandage over it.
    Mosely’s dull eyes noticed his own clothing. He was wearing surgical scrubs with booties. He stared down at his feet, then looked up to face the big guy, who nodded slightly.
    ‘The danger’s