Spirit Animal

I searched for myself on Google and found out to my horror that I was a wanted criminal. Not just any criminal either – I was a galactic criminal, wanted far and wide. Wanted far and wide. Innumerable heavy-duty interstellar law-enforcement agencies were interested in bringing me in. Very serious crews. More than just interested, they were dead set on apprehending me. And even to say that my status was that of a criminal is something of a euphemism – I was simply a person the various agencies wanted firstly to locate and then… Well – I think you’re starting to get the picture. I got the picture anyway. I got the picture fast enough, I can tell you! I got the picture very fast indeed…

 

I Googled my secret word to see if anyone knew it, to see if anyone had found it out, to see if anyone had telepathically extracted it from my mind. The telepathic extractors were out there, of that they could be no doubt. They never grew tired, they never faltered in their efforts. The word wasn’t there though – the extractors had not managed to extract it from my mind. I had taken safeguards of course – lots of them. I had encrypted the word and turned it into a small unremarkable stone of average size and colour. This stone I placed in the middle of a vast stony desert, a vast stony desert the size of continent on a planet the same as a billion other planets in a star system indistinguishable from a trillion similar star systems. No one would ever find my secret word, no one would ever even stand a chance of finding it. Even I would no longer be able to find it – I had permanently erased my own memory and had (into the bargain) become an entirely different person. I had brought about a permanent state of amnesia in myself. No one – including myself, obviously – would ever be able to reverse it. My secret was safe forever, even from myself.

 

I was a wanted man – the most wanted man in the galaxy. Half the police forces in the universe were hot on my trail. Searching, searching, searching. Psychic investigators were investigating to the very best of their ability; telepathic super-snoopers scoured the skies in their tireless, uncannily meticulous search for me. But they would never find me. I was a human being, I was a man like every any other man, and yet I did not exist. I was neither here nor there nor, anywhere else in between. I was nowhere. Only I wasn’t nowhere because I didn’t even exist. I didn’t exist and so of course I wasn’t ‘nowhere’! No one will ever find me now, I laughed delightedly, full to the brim with mischievous glee…

 

 

 

 

 

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