They’re still there in the morning. They’ve been spinning in the dark, a look of apathy on their face as one rotation follows another. The alarm had been ringing for the past thirty minutes, twenty-nine of which I’ve spent hoping the sound would go away.
It did not.
Nor did she.
She idly glances up back at me, the same stunning blue eyes seeming to peer at my soul. Her legs are pulled back to hug her chest and she stares at nothing. Some quiet instinct tells me that she didn’t sleep.
A reasonable person reacts when they meet the unknown. A logical reaction in the back of the mind tells me that I should be afraid. Or at least surprised. But I’m not. Whoever this person was, I felt that they belonged there. It was not surprising to see them, despite the fact that I had never seen such a face before. Beautiful without being sexual. Serene yet with a pulse of underlying playfulness.
I note the clothing. A long-sleeved white polo, mostly hidden by a pair of black khakis. A strip of white fabric hangs from her neck, tied like a strange ribbon. No shoes, just bare feet. Not particularly tall, but shorter than myself. Although I had no doubts that I would los when it came to a fight.
Why wasn’t I afraid? I knew what fear was. Fear was turning the page of an exam and seeing a horde of unknown symbols. Fear is watching the time ticking down towards a certain moment. It’s mind-numbing, action-draining, soul-breaking. Yet there’s no such reaction. No fear. And most people scared me.
I yawn.
Pushing myself out of bed, I push aside a pile of haphazardly cast-aside notebooks and pull on semi-old clothing. I glance back, and they are staring at me. I look back at myself, the locked door, then them. Concern pulses for a moment before I telepathically swipe it away.
“Yeah, whatever,” I mutter, turning around.
There’s no reply as I shimmy out of unwashed clothes into new semi-washed clothes. Somehow, I knew I never stopped being watched. The two bright eyes emotionlessly looked into my soul. The urgency and discomfort never came.
But time ticks onward. I was going to be about three minutes late, even if I ran. A question would only lead to another. It was pointless.
I walk out the door.
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The last dregs of winter are slowly petering out in the University of Echo City. The air is cold, though the mind wanders. I know the path to class well enough.
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She’s there, already seated in class in the back corner. I try not to stare as I take an empty seat in the back at random. The math professor barely glances my way, already deep into the day’s lecture. The class size is small, no more than two dozen, but I had been late long enough.
She raises her hand and asks a question.
I can’t make out the words.
The professor erases something, laughs a personal ‘ah, right’, then continues onward. Why was making a mistake funny? If anything, it should be everyone else laughing. Did laughing by one-self make a situation suddenly apologetic? But that wasn’t the case. Laughing at an accidental murder did not resolve the situation. If anything, it inflamed it.
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But making a typo? It was a harmless thing.
There would be a scale then. A correlation between when laughing was tolerable and the severity of the situation.
Dropping a handful of paper clips by accident would be considered harmless. A nuisance, sure, but definitely harmless. And the harm was radially cast outward towards the surrounding environment, who could either accept or deny the harm through assisting the individual who dropped said paper clips.
Something else.
An accidental scratch. Falling over was a relatively common occurrence. There was a non-zero chance of infection, leading to greater harms, but that was relatively small. It was acceptable to laugh about it. And, unlike the paper clips, the majority of the harm would be inwardly expressed. Those around do not lose anything, unless they choose to come to your assistance. Then, all that is lost is time.
I note another axis. There are degrees to which harm is dealt and to whom from one person’s actions. The dropped paper clips are harm that is dealt to a larger group of people. In addition to yourself, those around you also have to beware of the paper clip hazard. The scratch however only causes harm to yourself. The assistance from others, the willingness to take one’s own harm for the sake of another was purely optional. Laughing allows you to subdue the tension of the situation, and evoke a sense of pity from others. A social obligation to assist is created. Laughter is inversely suddenly acceptable.
Class ends.
I barely think about it as I walk out.
I continue to think about harms. No, not harm. Accidents. It must always be accidents in which laughter, in the hopes of using whimsy to lighten a situation is used. You can’t intentionally drop a pile of paper clips and expect others to help you. Or perhaps they might, taking in your laughter to loosen tension, but the likelihood of assistance is far lower.
Breaking an arm can be responded to with laughter. It would lower tensions, to some degree. It is socially acceptable.
Breaking someone else’s arm is not acceptable to be accompanied by laughter.
Suicide is not a laughing matter, you are dead. Although actions of similar severity, even if you could physically laugh would not be something to laugh about.
The death of another is most certainly not a laughing matter, especially if you are it’s cause.
I wonder why I am able to be the judge of whether something is socially acceptable. I suppose it is instinct. How I would learn it is a question for another time. My goal is to organize these social laws, not question why they exist.
I begin ordering a series of criteria over breakfast-lunch, the sound of light chinese rap murmuring in my ears to drown out the social needs for conversation.
1. It must be accidental.
2. Harm must be primarily dealt to oneself.
3. Harm must not be critical.
4. Harm must not be immediately threatening. Laughter is distracting.
She appears and takes a seat across from me, taking a quick glance at the air pods in my ears before beginning to eat. Her plate mirrors my own: Overcooked vegetables. Undercooked rice. Chicken marinated for not long enough.
After a second, I finish writing down my list and focus on her.
“Not bad,” she says around a bite of food, “Although, a person could make an intentional scenario appear accidental to evoke assistance from others. This would break your first rule.”
I notice the smoothness of her voice.
I cock my head, “A person can also pretend that they are in greater pain than reality and accompany it by laughter to evoke the same sympathy.”
“True.”
“Then at some point, there must be a bar made between acting and reality.”
“Laughter is an excellent act.”
I write:
1. Laughter is a manipulative mechanism used to reduce the emotional severity of a situation. It is very effective and has become a social reaction. Any prior rule can be twisted with a sufficiently competent actor and a gullible actor.
She nods in agreement.
Without a sound, she stands and leaves, taking the finished food with her without saying ‘goodbye’.
I would probably see her later today.
“See you later,” I say to the empty air.