In Relation To Infinity

“For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.” ― Blaise Pascal

The Questionable Escape

An unkempt boy with unruly hair ran through the forest at a breakneck speed, adrenaline pumping. Some distance behind him, the sounds of his pursuit were beginning to fade away. He knew this forest and had come prepared. They were in suits and uncomfortable shoes. Swiping sweaty hair out of his face, the boy tossed his satchel across a river to the opposite bank before wading in. It was just shallow enough to allow him to dip his head in without risking the current’s whims.

Once he set foot on dry land again, he snatched his satchel and took off once more: zigging, zagging, and backtracking to create false trails. This certainly wasn’t the first time he’d run from a foster home, but it was most definitely his best planned. No one really questions a middle school boy checking out tons of books on survival and nature from the library (especially the fictional ones), and he’d given the adults plenty of endurance and speed tests. No more “Miracle Boy Survives Fire” talk show tours. No more watching helplessly as his things get sold out from under him.

He was his own man just like his father always said, and he was going to make his own life. In the forest. Nothing could possibly go wrong with his plan; he’d been thorough as heck… if he did say so himself.

Adrenaline kept him going, in search of adequate shelter, but it didn’t keep his thoughts quiet and focused. No, left to its own devices, his mind replayed the fire he’d just barely escaped. The sound of his home creaking and crackling. The smell of a bonfire he would probably never enjoy again. His family’s cries. He could swear he’d seen his father among the crowd, but the news only showed him: soot-black and coughing up a storm. And anyway, his father would never leave him.

As his mind ran through the past, he progressed roughly 2 miles of forest, but he’d covered far more than that. Lungs burning and legs wobbly, the boy strained to hear above his own panting breaths. He couldn’t hear even a peep of the shouting, clumsy adults in pursuit of him. Either they’d fallen for one of his false trails, or he’d outpaced them. Perhaps both.

Just as a smug grin spread across his face and he considered slowing down, he found himself on the ground with a bloody, bashed-in nose. At first, because of swimming vision, he didn’t notice the mechanical whirring or the air in front of him distorting like the top of an asphalt hill mid-summer. As a result, he couldn’t help but scramble backwards when the empty space he’d hit suddenly became a doorway.

The interior was mostly comprised of a strange, green metal and flashing yelling buttons. It looked nearly as big as the clearing in which it sat. Everything he’d ever read and watched came back to him at once, urging that he flee this untold adventure, but a different kind of instinct pulled him inside as a mechanical voice spoke, “Oliver Sìdhnall, first of your name, welcome.”