She is born.
A ray of light – a photon: begins from her womb. An electron jump that released her into the universe. Now she is ready to take on the world. Zooming past things at the speed of light. She is excited to get to her goal. What that might be she does not know. She is a photon – a particle of light.
She is going so fast that she can’t see what is going on around her. She only sees the other being like herself that are zooming along at her speed. She finds that even amongst them, she is unique. Some are of different frequencies, some different energies. Some traveling with their families in groups of polychromatic light all from the same parent – the same street light, torch, laser, sun that gave them unto this universe. They are all out here, with her. Zooming along at the speed of light. “This is what being alive feels like”, she thinks to herself. “All of us out here with a purpose, a direction, a goal.”
She doesn’t care much for the slower beings all around her with mass weighing them down. They will not understand the kind of purpose she has. She looks down at these puny beings with mass going about their ridiculously slow mundane lives trying to ‘live’. What a boring and ridiculous way to spend time wasting away.
She also meets groups that have lose some of their members. Rumor has it that they have been lost because they were ‘absorbed’. She is scared of that word. What does it mean to be absorbed, she does not know. Perhaps there is an afterlife. Who knows? Only those that have passed on into the ‘absorbed’ life and a God if there is such an omnipresent creator.
She meets this other photon one day. He sounds interesting. He has a great flair, a charm, an energy that entices her. He will only be near her for a while before his trajectory moves away from her journey towards her goal. He has been telling her about this new wondrous thing. He says that he was ‘Reflected’ – reflected off of something. His journey has now changed direction. He now has a different goal. He seems happy about racing towards a new goal in a new direction now. But this sounds so scary to her. To lose direction, something she has known all her life. What would her life mean if she was to suddenly change direction. She shudders with this thought.
BANG!
She hits a roof and gets reflected. Before she can process what has happened.. BANG!
She hits a glass window
BANG!
She hits another window
BANG!
BANG!
A car door…. BANG!
“When will this end!” – She lets out a scream.
“Absorb me please! Give me the end!” – BANG!
And she is absorbed … into the afterlife – the afterlife of a photon.
Manaswi Mishra 