Taking the Ordinary Out of Extraordinary

It was the last beep he had to hear for the day. The barrier arm for the carpark rose gracefully into the air, as of to salute him as he left the pissant swamp for the day.  Emerging from the concrete tomb of a carpark, lit by the arrogant fluorescent lighting in a single strip on the roof, beating away the sunlight to achieve a Soviet era gulag vibe. Emerging from undercover transformed his car from an ugly caterpillar to a vibrant butterfly, ready for glory. A flick of the finger and the soothing whir of the window winding up, followed by a firm thud closed – sealing him into his glass and metal cocoon for the trip home. 

There was a sound of escaping gas as he headed to the speed limited driveway, beyond where the rest of the world awaited. It was just as sign as the occupant himself started the decompression cycle that would allow him to step from the vehicle in 45 min as a fully formed human, capable of love, conversation and compassion for the people around him.

He moved though the lights and started the drive to the freeway, something that was short on distance but long on time. The cars around him became a part of the tapestry he was woven into: black Saab, Ford SUV, pink Nissan were around him, familiar companions in the maul that regularly formed. They were close, a tight unit ready to move as one, crawling forward towards their goal, one dogged step at a time. He didn’t know the people in the cars, their story or how their days had gone, but they worked together for now on this common goal, refugees from work heading home. He would sometimes imagine who they were and the worlds they were going home to as they peeled off at their respective exits: the pink Nissan to a nice new suburb, the SUV would often follow him most of the way home, exiting one stop before him to a small county town.

With the crawl of the maul came the next step of the decompression – driven by the power of music. Today was a day that would benefit from some 80’s synth pop. It was nice, mindless stuff, with tuneful lyrics that rhymed nicely and even if you couldn’t remember them all, at least you could sing the last word out loud and still have some sort of a harmony. There was something about the construction of his cocoon that meant no matter what he was singing, the harmonies were always good. It was a bit of a contrast to the hit and miss of the acoustics in the real world, where nobody appreciated his warbling.

The drive down the grey ribbon towards the setting sun was not taxing. 6 lanes of traffic, everyone obeying the rules, exiting in the multiverse that is the freeway – so many lives on the same track, parallel physically and in time, but almost never interacting, either by need or by choice.

Time had no meaning here, it was the place where moods were transformed, arguments replayed and won, or the radio was used to let you own personal slice of the world in. It could be hypnotic, bringing you into a trance and preparing you to re-enter humanity.

Lost in his playlist, he suddenly realized that every tail light in front of him was red and he was hurtling towards the stationary rear bumper in front. Every drop of available adrenaline was dumped into his bloodstream, and he was instantly convinced of his impending death. All he could do was press a single pedal and wait.

The darkness was split with both light and pain. Closing his eyes only ameliorated one. He opened them again to see a face, looking concerned but smiling. There were words spoken by the face, but they were just beyond the level of intelligible, a familiar comforting sound but no information was being received, as if he was a baby. Darkness came again, and with it more pain, this time in waves. Time passed erratically, at speeds that seemed linked to the light. When there was light there was pain and urgency, and when it was dark there was relative peace.

The faces changed as did the view as he was moved, but he was rapidly growing tired of the pain. The periods of light were getting less frequent, the faces and the movement less distinct, and the pain was becoming the new normal.

The voices got louder and more urgent, but the light became softer, more inviting as the more he let it in, the more the pain was acceptable. It was clear to him that the more acceptable the pain was, the more those that loved him would also feel, now and in the future. It was as if he was controlling the volume of their pain – now and in the future – by the decisions he was making in this altered state.

He lay there, cared for by the best, as the helicopter came, the medics grew more and more anxious and the cars the normally accompanied him slowed, stared and the person who made their trip home slow, only to speed off, not even to recognise that it was a teammate, a fellow traveller that was on the orange stretcher.

It was an ordinary day, with an ordinary drive home. For the rest of the commuters on the road it was an ordinary crash, causing and ordinary traffic jam.

The next day, there was nothing in the papers, nothing on the news and a nice, easy run in for the 100,000 people who used that road. There was nothing out of the ordinary.

Except for the one person left behind. It was a missed call, a visit from the police and a shock that only grew bigger the more time passed. The man who she shared a universe they had created together was no longer in her solar system, having never return from what should have been a normal 1 day orbit of the city.

She would now be flying solo, no pull of another soul, no laughter out of nowhere, no external source of energy for life. The pain had only just begun for her.

This is what happens when you take ordinary out of extraordinary.