Excerpt: Everything Is Fine Until It Isn't

Let’s get one thing straight, right off the top: I’m not a bad guy.
I mean, it’s not like I spend all my spare time helping little old ladies across the street, or building houses for kittens with AIDS in Africa, but, to be fair, I haven’t murdered anybody—except for those guys in Gears of War, but they had it coming.
But I hold doors for people. I say “please” and “thank you.” I try to make sure I don’t have bad breath. I wash my hands. I don’t kick puppies or give small children candy with razor blades in it. In the great scheme of things, I think I’m pretty much a wash.
I tell you this because there are going to be some parts of this story where you think to yourself: “Wow, Charlie Stokes is kind of a jerk, isn’t he?” I’ve done things I’m not proud of, but then again, I’m guessing maybe you have too.
Basically, I’m a lot like you.
So while you may be tempted to judge my actions harshly, I encourage you to give them a nice long think-through before you decide what kind of person I am. Because, chances are, that’s the kind of person you are too.

Everybody’s got their own system for understanding how the world works. Some people believe in God, some people believe there’s no God, and some people believe in something else entirely.
I’m in the third category. I guess you could say that the kind of things I believe put me squarely on the side of a “higher power,” albeit one probably not recognized by most major religions.
But, like I said, everybody’s got a system for understanding meaning. Take the constellations, for example. Bunch of dots in the sky, right? But that didn’t stop the ancient Greeks from trying to connect those dots into a picture that made sense in their head. And not just a picture, but a story. After all, what the heck is a hunter doing up there with a crab, a lion, and a dude with a belt anyway?
In Africa, they have those Just So stories that Kipling wrote down. People weren’t satisfied observing that the elephant had a trunk, or the giraffe had a long neck, they wanted to know why. Nowadays, people who want to explain those things turn to evolution. But at the root of that is still a desire for meaning.
Science is really just its own search for meaning, isn’t it? It just uses different tools than the church. Even the idea that the universe of random is a search for meaning inside a lack of meaning. Because if the universe is equally unfair to everyone, then there’s no point whining about it, is there?
Everybody wants meaning in their life, in some form or another. Since I don’t believe in God, and—if I’m being strictly honest with you—I came within about two steps of failing my way out of high school bio, the way I understand the world is through stories.
I’m in good company, too, if you consider those ancient Greeks with their constellations and the Africans who wanted to know why the crocodile had such sharp teeth. A story is an easily definable concept, after all, and it’s one we’re all familiar with from the moment that our parents tell us that first bedtime story. There’s some comforting about knowing that there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end to anything.
As you get older, you begin to recognize the repeated plots and tropes, and you begin to even be able to predict them at times. We can even understand stories when critical parts are missing, in the same way that the human brain can still parse words when the first and last letters are intact, even if those in between are all jumbled up, or the way that we can still pick out music even when digital compression removes certain frequencies. Remarkable thing, the human brain.
Anyway, stories. I blame the fact that I started reading books at a tender age, spurred on by my parents: Mom was a teacher, my Dad a computer scientist with a fondness for science fiction. To me, it was only natural that I was the hero of my very own story, living my adventures in accordance with those rules that the narrative structure laid down.
And for the most part, it worked out. Because that’s the way things go for most people. You tick along pleasantly enough, dealing with the minor dramas and crises that arise in your life, but you usually come out on top, right? And everything’s fine.
Until it isn’t.