This is an excerpt from my short story Ohgod written in 1994 as a senior at the University of Pittsburgh.
I’d tandem skydived before, twice, and had the unexpected experience of becoming bored while free-falling from 14,200 feet for a mile or so at 120 miles-per-hour. After a terrifying leap into the void, I found myself looking around, bored. I became irritated at my painfully popping ears. I wasn’t able to bring in my hand to plug my nose and blow. I yawned constantly. It didn’t help.
Later, I thought about the momentary times where I’d felt more alive than ever. They were usually when I had experienced a ‘warm fuzzy’ moment, as my former framing carpenter boss called those almost-incidents where you almost died falling off the edge of a roof or something like that. In those times when I pushed the limits of comfort and safety; the first jump out the turboprop’s door, climbing too high, driving too fast, diving too deep for too long–that kind of thing.
And then I thought about the search for ultimate meaning in one’s life. How could you really, really live that ‘super real living’ for more than a few seconds? Men in battle, who have lived through battle with mortal fear, talk about that time as having been the most real time in their lives. Not enjoyable necessarily. Real. And if you didn’t want to fight in a war? What could you do to put yourself in a position where you couldn’t possibly become complacent? What about a suicide with some time to think? Okay. So I wrote this one about a girl jumping into a volcano on Mars. The full-length story has a longer lead-in and a more… developed ending. I plan to have it appear in my upcoming book, Born to Wonder.
Well, I’ve recently returned from several weeks overseas visiting my wife’s family and country. Now, back in the saddle again, I’ll be more of a consistent presence on this site, posting about once a week. –D.W.
Ohgod
It is the largest known shield volcano in the solar system. Its summit caldera, from which the magma last poured, is 70 kilometers across. The volcano rises 27 kilometers from the surface, and was last active 200 million years ago. For reasons not understood, Olympus Mons is surrounded by a cliff that is several kilometers high.
….Below her, an almost solid haze. Aura backed several steps from the edge.
Hyperventilating, her heart pounded in her head and an electric tingling ran over her body in a wave. Light-headed, she took deep breaths behind her face shield. Despite the special coating, the clear oval fogged briefly with each breath. Aura ran.
With her fingers spread wide, her arms reaching forward, she leaped, pushing off with her right toe, the last part of her body to leave.
This is what it was like:
There were no aerodynamics— she was a dropped rock in a low-g vacuum. She had jumped out as far from the edge as she could. Now falling head-first and sideways, out of control, listing, turning over in a slow flip on her back. No glide-plane surfaces to ease her through the Martian air. No conscious thoughts, but a single-minded concentration, Aura stretched out her arms and legs to form an “X” shape, looking down, arching her back. She was assuming the position necessary for a controlled fall.
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One and Only Observer 