Hello. My name is Elliot. Yeah, that’s a pretty white name. An embarrassingly white name. Who in their right mind would name their male child Elliot? Really?! What are you supposed to do, shorten that to Elly? Not cool mom and dad, not cool.

Continuing on though, I consider myself honorable, but I’m most definitely not a good person. I’m 39 years old. I’m about to be middle aged… Let’s be honest, I am middle aged. I’m 178 centimeters tall, so I'm on the taller side but I'm not so tall that it draws significant attention, and I weigh a bit over 100 kilograms, and every year a little bit more of that weight moves from the chest to the mid-section. I used to be a little bit taller, another 4-5 centimeters depending on who was measuring me, and for weight that’s really just a best guess for where I’m at, I don't actually weigh myself with any regularity.

Despite my age I’m still stronger than one would expect based on my frame, and I long ago picked up the habit of moving deliberately, which makes me appear to be slow. You’ll note that I did say I picked this up as a habit, to wit, it’s intentional. I move deliberately so that I present the appearance of being slow. Why? Well, probably because I'm crazy. Allow me to elaborate a bit. You see, answering why I would intentionally move slow isn't as obvious as it could be. Let me take you back a little bit and tell you about who I was, and why I picked this habit up.

Once upon a time I was in excellent physical condition. Whether it was when I was 20 and weighed 63 kilograms, or 30 when I weighed 84 kilograms, I was an excellent physical specimen. At those times I was in the military you see, the Army specifically, and I had the thought process that no matter who you picked I'd be able to beat them in at least 2 out of 3 areas between endurance, strength, and speed. If you were faster than me, I would be a tank which you had no choice but to run from. If you were stronger than me, I’d have greater endurance and speed, and so on.

I didn’t mind that people who specialized their conditioning or who had builds that lent themselves towards a particular form of strength would be better at that thing, but I was determined that I’d be able to run proverbial (and sometimes literal) circles around them in the other areas. And it worked. I was both skilled and talented when it came to hand-to-hand combat, an excellent shot with a rifle (that was 100% effort rather than talent, but I put in the effort to become an expert marksman), and all in all I was completely convinced that I could kill anyone I came across so long as I was careful, as long as I did my research and remained mindful of the circumstances. But then something terrible happened. I got old.

One might say that 30 or even 40 isn’t old. They might, but they would be wrong. While technically even now I should (barely) fall on the earlier half of the statistically normal human lifespan, you can’t go through life pushing yourself through one punishing form of training after another without paying a toll, and the toll I paid for running literal marathons, for engaging in CrossFit and MMA, for practicing dozens of assorted fighting styles, and generally putting myself through recklessly brutal physical conditioning was aches, pains, and sometimes more serious of injuries.

Now that I am old, for instance, I dread the idea of doing a pullup. Why? Because my left arm, at certain angles, will dislocate itself. If you’ve never had a dislocated limb before, I can assure you that while it’s hardly the most painful experience I’ve ever had, it’s not pleasant either. Aside from the initial injury, which left fragments of bone scattered throughout my shoulder and which I could have operated on but doing so would be as likely to see me lose the arm as to reduce the severity of the issue, the biggest issue is that the glenoid, also known as the shoulder socket, isn't complete anymore, so it's pretty easy for my humerus to pop out. So what if I can reset it myself? It still hurts, and without a clear benefit behind doing so I won’t put myself through that.

See, by this point in life “Training” and “Conditioning” are simply too nebulous of concepts to make repeatedly hurting yourself like that worthwhile. Pushing back against that understanding doesn’t do nearly as much to build muscle as it does to wear out tendons and ligaments that are already thin. Similarly, walking around, or for that matter standing mostly still but occasionally shifting my weight, is enough to get my knees sounding off like a bowl of rice krispies. It’s not like they’ll occasionally pop and that’s uncomfortable, it’s constant and accompanies most motions. I'm still mobile, fortunately, but most people don't realize just how often you use your knees until you are given a physical reminder with every step. This too, is less comfortable than it sounds, and goes a long way towards limiting my willingness to engage in unnecessary physical activity.

I stayed in the military longer than most people would, staying in for a decade before I got out and started working on computers for a living. First basic repairs, then system administration, operations, and engineering, before finally sliding into a more comfortable managerial role. The hours are long, but the pay is good, and since I mostly sit at a desk I honestly feel that it’s easy work, it’s just that there's a lot of manufactured stress, and the hours aren't particularly conducive towards a good sleep routine. Which I could really use, because even as we talk, I'm half out of it. Where was I? Oh, yes.

After years sitting behind a desk, and without counterbalancing that inactivity with physical training, I’m naught but a shadow of my former self. A flight of stairs is enough that I have to worry about controlling my breathing. I’m still much stronger than I look: if I intend to hurt someone, I’ll be able to drop a sumo wrestler. I mean that in a literal and specific sense, a double or single leg takedown is a good way to take someone bigger than you down to the ground.

Whether or not I could finish that hypothetical sumo wrestler from that point is debatable, but I could absolutely get him to the ground and cause him some real harm. Beyond strength, I’m also faster than I look. This is where my age and condition starts to show the most, though. I'm faster than I look not because I’m particularly fast, not anymore. At most I’m slightly above average speed and even that is probably as much wishful thinking as fact, I’m just faster than the average couch potato or gen Z layabout. But I might as well be a blur, because even though I’m so greatly inferior to what I once was, I never completely lost the desire to be able to stand at the physical pinnacle, to be some sort of alpha primate, to dominate and destroy those lesser than me.

Obviously there’s no room for acting on instincts like that in a polite society, but even though I can’t explain *why*, I still feel that it’s important that I be able to come out favorably in a battle to the death with anyone around me. So I reduce the impact of having a stomach that's no longer flat and which makes it a bit tricky to see my lower half by moving deliberately. That way, if I need to kill someone, they won’t be able to believe that I can shoot in and take them down at the sort of burst speed I can leverage, after which point I can use my mass to my advantage. There’s no doubt I was more dangerous 10 years ago than I am now, but I’m still orders of magnitude more dangerous than the vast majority of people. I’m just very good at hiding it… Or at least, that’s what I tell myself. I haven’t exactly had much need to put my thought process and assumptions to the test in the last 10 years. And now you know.

I started balding probably 15 years ago. I’m not bald yet, though my hair is clearly and obviously thinning, and it’s apparent at any more than casual observation I probably only have another 10 years or so before I’m sporting the infamous horse shoe hair style, and even though my stomach pokes out now in what I'll generously refer to as a slight beer belly, despite my glaring faults, I’m not actually unattractive. I’m probably right down the middle line of the beauty scale, though only just, and only when compared to other people who are also middle aged. But I’m not a heart throb anymore. That acknowledgement is devastating for my pride and my self-image, because I used to look pretty damn amazing.

I guess it’s ok though. I have a wife and 2 children, and they don’t have the same sense of repulsion towards me that I have towards myself. In fact I think they’re pretty incredible people, so whatever the reasoning they have for liking me is, the sentiment is reciprocated.

So what next? What now? When do I get a challenge? When do I get a purpose? When do I find a reason to live? Is this really all there is to life? To still feel young, but to have every aspect of your body betray you one piece at a time? You do, you know. Your body feels old, but inside, you still feel like yourself. It’s not like there’s some “I’m old” component to whatever it is that makes up our consciousness. Inside, I don’t actually feel like I’m different from when I was 20. I know I am, I just don't feel like I am.

I’m not as motivated to do things as I once was, I don’t have much drive anymore, just a sense of responsibility that keeps me productive even though there's little that I actually want to do. I’m wiser and calmer and more in control of myself than when I was younger. But the most apparent difference between my youth and now is that the body I’m trapped in is quick to remind me of my age every time I do anything. I’m perpetually exhausted doing nothing at all, I could sleep 20 hours a day though I almost never DO sleep more than about 5 hours, I’m constantly struggling with severe depression and a low grade case of anxiety, and I rarely leave the house anymore. Back in the day at least work would take me out of the house regularly, but I've been working remotely for years. But somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, I still feel like the same old me as I’ve always been.

Speaking of feelings; there’s something else I think might be odd. Maybe I’m not the only one, maybe you feel something similar, but always in the back of my brain, I feel like I’m trapped. Not so much that I'm trapped in the wrong body though I wish my body was in better condition, nor in the wrong mind though I wish my brain would be kind enough to generate more of the chemicals responsible for happiness, nor even necessarily in the wrong time, though time is probably the closest I can get myself to understanding the actual feeling that has always plagued me. I feel almost like I’m in the wrong time. I feel like I was meant to be born centuries ago, when I could draw up some plans and build up a catapult to break down a castle wall before rushing in to join a glorious melee. Or that I should be getting on a boat to travel a few months and find a new land. Perhaps I was instead born too early and I should be taking a spaceship to travel to another planet? Perhaps I should be finding a never before seen mountain and building a house on it to enjoy extraordinary other worldly natural views. That I should be… I don’t exactly know. That life should be MORE.

That my life should be MORE than meetings and planning and periodically foraying into the maudlin. That life should be more than reminiscing on past glory and what it’s like to feel powerful, to have a body that’s ready to take on anything under the sun. That life should be more than the natural high you get from accomplishing something difficult, and more than the quiet satisfaction you get from doing something well. I love my kids, and I love my wife, but I don’t love my life. I’m sure that if I ever faced the reality of living in, say, 600 AD, I’d be perfectly miserable. I think it must be something hardwired for me though, to feel disjointed and out of place. To feel as though something about the time or place or conditions or something is just… Not right. That I don’t belong here. I'm acting a part, and I'm doing what's expected of me, but there's a hollowness and a disjointedness that I don't think even my depression fully explains.

I find myself wishing, time and again, that the day I don’t wake up happens sooner rather than later. That I just get to reach the end. I won’t kill myself, never that. That’s the cowards way, and I’m better than that. Too disciplined, too determined, too angry, it doesn’t matter what todays reason is, I’ll not be taking that approach. Suicide is the purview of the weak, I say to myself. But even more than passing in my sleep, I hunger to run up against someone strong enough to kill me despite my absolute best efforts to kill them instead. That’s how I want to go. A fight where I give my absolute best, and am still defeated cleanly by someone who is just better than me. But in this world, in this time, in this body, at this age… That’s not going to happen. Instead I’m going to get older, to need more pills to function at the most basic of levels, to have to regulate my meals and slowly waste away until there’s nothing left of me. I’ll probably die of Alzheimer’s. Why Alzheimer’s? Because it’s the one disease that truly terrifies me.

I’ve seen cancer up close, and horrible mutilations resultant of battlefield injuries, and so on. I’ve seen a lot of horrific things over the years. But even though I would hate to have things like that happen to me, nothing in life scares me as deeply as Alzheimer’s. To be trapped in my own mind, but unable to comprehend the world around me. To look at, say, a fork, and to know that I should know what it is, and that I should know how to use it, but being unable to understand what it is or what its purpose is. To know that yesterday I would’ve known, and that tomorrow maybe I will know again, but that right now I cannot understand what this thing is or what it’s used for. To have people tell me “That’s a fork, you use it to eat, like this,” and to be able to hear their words and understand them individually, but unable to follow and understand the meaning to those words. To watch as they perform some silly movements that seem deliberate, but which also lack purpose even though I know they are providing a live demonstration, to be unable to interpret the world around me.

Alzheimers is terrifying for me, because living with Alzheimers would mean experiences like that fill day after day, year after year, trapped not just in a body that betrayed me, but in a mind that is no longer capable of processing and understanding what’s around it. That terrifies me in a deep and visceral way. I’ve always considered myself intelligent. By most measures I’m technically a genius, with an IQ of 165 I’m only 1 point behind what Stephen Hawking’s IQ supposedly was. IQ tests are hardly a perfect method of measuring intellect, but they are exceptional as a method of estimating a person’s pattern recognition capabilities, and the better you are at recognizing patterns, the more you will realize that almost everything you’ll ever see is part of one pattern or another.

I’m not the most passionate or compassionate fellow in the world, but I’m a pretty smart guy… And as long as I’ve been alive, that has been a core part of my sense of self, the belief that whether or not I know a thing, with enough work I’ll be able to figure it out. I know I said no suicide, but if I’m ever diagnosed with Alzheimer’s? I’m making an exception to my rule. I’m ending things on my terms. But even if I’m right and that miserable fate is what’s in store for me, that particular waking nightmare is many years away. Plenty of time to develop diabetes and coronary heart disease and dozens of other wonderful conditions between now and then. At least I have plenty to look forward to, right?

Such are my thoughts on this night, much like many other nights. My kids are in bed, the wife went to sleep before me, and I’m sitting at my desk performing validations on up time reports for a few different product suites. Not because I have to: The deadline isn't until tomorrow, and this is at most a couple of hours work which I could just as easily wake up a little bit early to complete. I just don’t have anything better to do. I used to think of myself as a gamer, but computer games almost never interest me anymore, and consoles are big enough money sinks that I dropped off buying new consoles a decade or more ago. Television shows and movies bore me to tears because I feel like there’s just so little creativity in their story telling, it usually ends up being entertaining only for the execution of a plot rather than being able to introduce, much less effectively ruminate, on an idea or concept I might find captivating. Even my once greatest passion, reading books, is unable to ignite my heart anymore. I truly am ready for things to end, for my consciousness to be set free and to enter oblivion. I lean back in my office chair and allow my mind to wander back to a random event from my military days.

I was sitting at my computer working on… Something. Who even knows anymore? But I was leaning forward peering intently into the computer screen, when I was distracted by a spot of light in the corner of my vision. Against the crappy aluminum shed that passed for Iraqi construction at the time, there is a hole in the wall. A bullet sized hole. A small stream of bright desert light shines through that small hole, illuminating particles of the same wisps of dirt and dust that exists everywhere else. Seeing dust floating in light is nothing special, I’m sure most people have been entranced by a ray of light and the contents within it at some point or another. This was really only special because it was unexpected and new. It was an extremely surreal moment that locked itself into my brain with perfect clarity, to be occasionally pulled out and recalled, unbidden, for the rest of my life. The bullet hole was new; the light was far too bright and the speed at which it drew my attention, so insistent did it pull my gaze, firmly denied any possibility that it had managed to pass unnoticed up to then.

With a minimal amount of searching, me and the rest of the people in the office at that time were able to locate the hole on the other side of the room where the bullet had continued through. There was no sound of firing, nor any other bullet holes that day. For no reason we could discern, someone had fired a single round through our building from a very long way away. It didn’t kill anyone, it didn’t hurt anyone, not so much as a splinter of wood causing someone a brief moment of discomfort. It simply went from one side of the building to the other, and it was nothing but luck which determined that not only would it not end someone’s life that day, it wouldn’t even damage the furniture.

Why did I think of that now? Probably no reason at all, there rarely needs to be a reason for me to reminisce about the past. These things happen when your mind drifts a bit. I rub my eyes and decide that it’s as good of a time as any to sleep, heading towards the bedroom where I’ll soon join my wife in slumber. As I open the bedroom door, I see a bright light through one of the bedroom windows. It’s coming from the East, which is the same direction as I frequently see shuttles, rockets, and satellites getting launched from the space center, but far brighter than a simple launch would account for. Light travels at about 300 million meters per second when in a void. And that… Is a lot of light.