The Weight of Knowledge

Please note some sensitive themes may be portrayed in this work, including gore, suicide or self harm, and mental health. Please keep your own safety and health in mind before continuing. Thank you.

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A blinding flash.

My stomach drops and churns.

I drop to all fours and heave, but nothing comes out. My ears are ringing. My mind is foggy. I force myself to breathe through the disorientation. Slowly, my vision clears. A thickly gloved hand emerging from a stiff yellow sleeve is beneath me, supporting my weight. Curiously, I wiggle my fingers. Oh, that’s my hand.

Yelling pierces through the ringing in my ears. I look up.

A fireman is yelling, tugging my shoulder. I notice my clothes match his and I finally see the obvious gear attached to my suit. I’m a fireman?

“Come on, up! Up!” he roars at me, eyes wide but determined. I shake my head and scramble the rest of the way to my feet. “Up! You swore an oath! We ain’t done, ya hear me!? Up!"

He lingers to make sure I’m steady, then runs off. I look around and I can feel the terror mounting at the chaos around me.

People are running around, screaming, covered in dust and blood. First responders are everywhere, helping as many people as quickly as they can. I see them helping men, women, and children in various states of shock and terror. Injuries vary from scrapes to gushing blood. I can see some civilians helping first responders. A few other people are standing or sitting in shock, looking up to the sky. I turn to look and feel my jaw drop.

Two enormous towers, with dull grey concrete and windows shimmering in the light. Their tops could clearly disappear into the clouds on any normal day, they were so tall. History books never described their obscure beauty, the obvious power within their edifice, the feeling of pride and determination built through their very framework.

Those details only make the destruction all the more horrifying. There are fires everywhere; smoke is rising, filling the upper floors like harbingers of death; brick and metal are crumbling like paper all throughout the structures.

A figure comes into view of a window high above the ground, barely seen through the billowing smoke.

It’s a man, in normal business attire for this time. He scrambles onto the edge of the sill, and my breath catches. I remember reading about this, I do, but surely that didn’t actually happen–

He jumped!

I lurch forward, but he’s already disappeared into the smoke below. I continue on, a vague unrealistic hope that he survived in the back of my mind, but a scream redirects me. A woman, blood dripping from her head, runs from the thick smoke in hysterics.

I help the injured woman farther from the wreckage. I run back and find a sobbing child. Back again, I help a bleeding man. Again, a couple covered in dust. Again, a woman with a broken arm.

My mind is numb as I keep going. Injury after injury, hysterical people and people in shock. I guide the living and move on from the dead – I can’t help them. Is this really how this happened? With terror and panic and horror everywhere? Why didn’t anyone see this coming? Why did this happen? Why? Why, why, whywhywhywhy –

“Look out!” A grip jerks me back and we fall. Rebar and concrete shatters a few feet ahead of us. A brief glance shows a balding man, glasses, blood-and-dust caked shirt and torn slacks clutching my sleeve with desperate hands. Another civilian helping us. I nod in thanks.

A wet choking sound pulls our attention to the rubble. A pretty redheaded woman, limbs tangled in the twisted metal, takes her last breath. Blood trickles lazily from her mouth and around the metal protruding from her chest.

A dull thud echoes to my right, and there’s a new body, already dead. I feel more than see a third body land to my left. I look up in horror to see a fourth and fifth jump one after the other.

“Wait, no don’t–” I rush forward, ignoring the knowledge that it’s already too late, that gravity has them in its cruel grasp. I trip and they crunch in front of me.

I feel wetness on my cheeks as I look up at once-proud towers and find unforgiving fire, crumbling stone, twisted metal and crying, screaming, sobbing, whywhywhywhy –

I stay on my knees as the world ends around me. Vaguely, I register the events around me. I hear the anger, the pain, the terror. People scrambling, people falling, people screaming, people breaking.

People dying, dying, dying, d y i n g –

A flash of blinding light.

My stomach drops and churns.

And I’m touching the monolith, a memorial for all those lost so many years ago. The new one that New York’s mayor put in last year that has revolutionary technology imbedded in it. That has given the people of today the opportunity of a lifetime.

To see how it was. To go back in time for just an hour, and experience what is now a far-distant event. One that changed the world.

I collapse in front of it and scream.

I can tell my friends are scrambling around me but all I can hear is the fire crackling and the building crumbling. Their feet stomp as they panic but all I can feel is the ground shaking under the towers collapsing. One grabs my shoulder but all I can feel is the pulling. For a second, I see that anonymous fireman again.

“Come on, up! Up! They need help, are you just gonna sit there and forget your oath!? Up!”

My friends finally settle in front of me, eyes wide and scared, but all I can see are the dead. All the dead people that I had to pass for the living. All the dead that I ignored to reach for one more hand. All the dead that I saw, and all the ones that I didn’t.

A single tear falls down my face. It lingers on my chin before dropping onto my hand.

…Why?