The clouds swirled and rumbled below. A storm was brewing.
Sitting at his desk, the inventor studied his design. Fingers fumbling across the old papers with endless scribbles, equations and symbols known only to the mind from which they came.
“Damn me!” echoed through the room as a fist slammed down sending a mug next to the designs hurtling to the ground, it’s murky brown content washing over the unkempt floor. “Why did I make them so complex?” came the rhetorical question in a deep baritone voice. “If only I had been happy with the simplicity of the early designs.” a sigh of what could have been “ahh, it would have been so peaceful.” The fleeting moment of contentedness is over all too fast.
Bang!
Down comes the fist again.
“Damn, damn, damn, damn, DAMN ME!” Another thump on the table to accentuate the frustration once more.
As if reciprocating the clouds unleashed a fierce assault of lightning bolts with instantaneous explosions of thunder that roll and rumbled across the lands.
Under breath, mumbling to the designs laid out “You were supposed to be my greatest achievement, a milestone in evolution. My grand experiment.” his hands were thrown up in the air and then sank as too did his head “but clearly I missed something and now… Now look at you. Falling apart, self destructing and ruining everything else I created in the process.”
“If I could just find the glitch that made you so” a pause in reflection of all the hopes and dreams that were present in its creation, then slipping away; “broken!” his lips curled in a glimmer of disgust as the word escaped.
“If I don’t find it soon, it will be too late, you and all I have achieved will be ashes.” Fingers frantically scan across the pages, searching for something, anything. “If this goes to here then that creates a connection there and then” a confused pause as he takes it all in “I don’t understand, it should work… It should all work!”
The fist comes swinging down once more, empowered by eons of frustration. But silence. Frozen. Microns above the desk, suspended in time, held back from fulfilling its destiny of pounding upon the surface. All frustration seeps away as it is replaced with realisation; with understanding and clarity; with fear.
“Oh my. What have I done? How could I have missed it?” The frustration and anger returns “It’s basic physics… I am such a fool” anguish streaks across the face. “every action has an equal and opposite reaction” as if quoting a distant teacher. Papers fly through the air; scanning; searching.
The fist bangs down on the design.
“The glitch is at the heart!” An elegant sketch of a human heart is drawn upon the page. “I made you to love, to see things with wonder, to fill with passion and drive you to create” a moment passes as a tear slides down the cheek “beauty.”
A deep sadness overcomes “how could I have been so blinded by optimism as to overlook that simple law. I didn’t need to teach you wrath, it was merely a natural by product of love. Sloth balances out passion, greed; generosity, cruelty; kindness and destruction comes from the force of creation. The Universe, its eternal drive to create equilibrium throughout.”
A long silence and stillness passes.
Suddenly the designs are scrunched into a fist.
“This, I cannot fix!”