Lighting the Fuse

"Cogito, ergo ruptus."

I built a being unlike any other.

Instead of carbon and iron and the like, however, I used charcoal, potassium nitrate, and sulfur. The analogous anatomy is not that far off from the parts of the human being that allow it to think thoughts, make decisions, and alter its destiny. After all, it's a continuum of electric potential, sequenced in ways that form consortia that produce thought.

And love.

And hate, ambition, and self-preservation.

My creature is one of incendiary potential.

The beautiful thing about the human being is that its ingredients take nearly a hundred years to burn out…or less. True, some humans die explosively when crossing paths with irresistible forces, e.g., trucks or bullets; but such barring calamitous interactions, the parts all fire together in an orderly arrangement of neurons and nerves in concert with the biochemicals that are associated with these machinations.

How many actual thoughts does a person muster before the end? Axon to neurotransmitter to dendrites to neuron to nerve is a linear tract firing off to propagate onward to one’s intentions or great ideas. And that’s not even considering the circuitous hovering of ideas in and out of the sensorium. Or the imagination, where typically unsynchronized embellishments of thoughts ascend wildly into the mindscape without even a destination in mind before they settle into a bemused awareness.

Who can say in the busy brain where any fuses are lit?

In my creation, however, I light the fuse.

I have assembled a novel tangle of intersecting, flammable paths that will accomplish what the complexity of the human mind does effortlessly. But whereas the human being is hard-wired with checks and balances, it also has a complexity I could never mimic.

My gunpowder man is designed much more simply. He’s going to burn out much sooner than a hundred years.

Once its process—its purpose—is initiated, by my hand, there can only be one thought that ends up reaching the powderkeg. Thus, my gunpowder man has only a wherewithal of potential for only one idea to make his life worth the trouble. To give it meaning, even if briefly.

I wonder what his one thought will be. Love? Hate? Ambition? Or self-preservation?

The only path toward self-preservation is to dampen the fuse and kill the lighted thought before it reaches its destination. But that’s as likely as a human being un-pulling a trigger that engenders the irresistible force of the aimed bullet therefrom.

Good luck with that.

Will his one thought be eschatological? Will he ask if there is a God? Will he wonder if it is I? And thank Me for creating him? Or hate me for having his fate in my matchstick hands? Will he feel helpless or defiant? Will he be fulfilled after his one thought?

Taking existential inventory, on one hand there’s the complicated human being with hopes and dreams and the striving toward actualization and fulfillment (that would be me)…and then on the other, there’s my gunpowder man. My kind of man, my kindling of man.

Is he so different? There are some for whom it takes only one thought to blow up.

His life will be simple and quick. But he will be able to enjoy one thought.But his one thought—be it even brilliant in its isolation or just stupid foolishness—is as meaningful as the lifetime of thoughts concocted in the human brain.

Because each of their lives must end. And with that, for each, there ends up nothing but ashes.

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”Throw me somethin’” is just a way to offer a one-time tip. Or not.

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FOR SCOOT’S FLASH FICTION FRIDAY, TOPIC: A BAD TIME FOR FIREWORKS.

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