Everyone’s a Pop Rocket

Master Furrow and I walked up the ridge, all the way to its crest, and then looked down into the valley, at the tiny Jungle city below.

He was a huge man—physically quite large—and more than a bit deaf. Couldn’t see very well, either.

“All those people down there, Teresa, they are all are quite self-involved, you know.”

I sighed. I did know. So I said, “Yes, I know, Master.”

“And all of them, each and every one, is like the protagonist in a story, experiencing trials and travails, fortunes and setbacks, each believing that their story has an impact on their world and the worlds of the galaxy.”

D’uh, I thought. That’s called being human.

He looked at me with a sly smile, and I thought for just a moment maybe he’d read my mind, even though he’d never displayed that attainment.

He hadn’t.

Furrow said, “They won’t.”

I was, as all the people below, preoccupied by my own thoughts, and so I didn’t quite know what he meant.

“They won’t what?” I asked.

His brow went up and he looked back at the town. “They won’t make an impact. Not on their world or on anyone else’s. It will be a brief blip of nothing, and then like they’ve never lived at all.”

That’s kina bleak, I thought. “That’s rather bleak, Master,” I said.

“It’s just how it is,” he said. It was a phrase he said a lot.

“No impact at all?” I asked.

He seemed to genuinely consider the question, then amended, “Well … some, I suppose. Like a … what are those firecrackers that shoot off in a spiral once you light them?”

“Bottle rockets?” I asked.

“Pop rockets,” he said, though I’d never heard them called that and it certainly what I had said. “Yeah,” he said, clearly satisfied with his analogy, “they’re like pop rockets. A sizzle, a whistle, a pop …”

Furrow made a popping sound and an accompanying gesture with his enormous hands. Then he continued, “… and then they’re done.”

I frowned.

He looked at me and with both hands said, “But you, Teresa, you’re something else.”

That made me smile, but I was still sad. “Oh, yes? What am I, Master?”

“You, you’re like a geodynamic missile. You’re a quasar. You’re a planet killer.”

I had to admit there was something flattering about it, but it mostly confused me, dunce that I can be.

“I’m not sure what you mean, Master.”

He straightened his back and got even taller. Then he looked at me and said, “It means you have to be very careful where you’re pointed. Because your impact will be huge.”

“You really think so?” I asked, kina like a dumb schoolgirl.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I’m quite certain. You see I encounter a lot of pop rockets, even here in our trade, the Noble Folding of Secrets. But I don’t see many like you.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

Master Furrow grinned in a corny sort of way. “I just do. It’s just how it is.”

I thought on all of this as I was recovering, some twenty-five years later, in what you might think of as ‘today,’ depending on when and how you’re here; and, it occurred to me so I just said it aloud to the empty room: “We’re all pop rockets, Furs. All of us. Every last one.”