3. Gabriel Reynolds

This room needs a breeze.

I need a release.

I need to get the most out of this situation. I have some potential kinetic energy up on the fourteenth floor here. Or – shit, science is silly. Potential gravitational? Which was it? Too stuffy in here to think. This room needs a breeze. I can make the most of that potential here on the fourteenth floor. Not much else potential left. It all went somewhere, somehow. I know the energy just kind of transferred, I know that much about science – never goes away, just gets put somewhere else. Maybe somebody else got that kinetic energy, that happiness for moving forward that got burnt out of me. Is that – no, no, stupid, that’s not how karma works; you don’t swap karma credit with other people while you’re still alive. What I know about karma is that it involves death, and redemption. I can make the most of that potential here on the fourteenth floor.

But… I guess kinetic – gravitational – dammit, whichever, whatever, I just know it involves two places, not one. You make that swift, decisive movement from one place to another – two places, not one. Who’d want something so boring as a one-scene story? Not much else potential, having just one place to go. Cuz you’re already there. Big places to go, all of them nowhere. Big people to see, all of them me. Shit, who am I kidding, some big person I am. Some big place I’ve been living in! Big enough to feel far away, no matter where you go. Big enough to be there no matter what you do.

Hey, that gravity though. There’s potential there. I’ve got so much potential up here. And it’s down there too? Shit, the perfect pair of places for this two-scene tragedy. All that potential. Who knew. But hey, it’s funny though, cuz without that whole second scene, there wouldn’t be this potential in the first one to begin with. That’s funny; I mean I guess that’s how potential energy works? The first part takes its meaning from the second cuz that’s why there can be movement in the first place?

It is stuffy as SHIT in here. This room needs a breeze. Somebody’s gotta open a window, kill two birds with one stone. Or I guess – ha, the bird’ll take care of it himself. Only one bird anyway, sticks and stones and shit all redundant.

Fresh air. Oh my god. That smells impossibly delicious. This is what freedom smells like. This is what potential smells like. I have to… I have to be there. Two birds with one stone, I guess. Or… right, one bird. No stones. No sticks. Dumb bird that never flew before. Never knew how. Well, I don’t care this time. Breeze or no breeze, this bird’s gonna fly.

Easy.

I hope they never close

that window again.

Oughta smell the

potential once

and a while.

Whoops,

this

is

my

stop