Short on Time

Dearest Rachel –

I’m short on time to talk with you today, honey; I’ll be walking with Lars, so I’ll need to come up with something to tell you about in the few hours between now and then, while also making sure I get a workout in and get over to the ‘office.’ Starting the year off in indolence is too good a way to get one used to lethargy; I hardly need to tell you that it’s counterproductive to the rest of my goals for the year.

To be sure, it’s not as if there’s nothing out there to write to you about. The new year started off with a real bang – several unfortunate ones, in fact – with all sorts of other things happening to other people in other places. The problem is, while it looks like these incidents might be related, we just don’t have a lot of information, and it would be foolish of me to comment too much about something I don’t really have the details about. I have more than enough suspicions, but I’m hardly an expert on this sort of thing.

The only thing I can say about it is that at least one of the locations is one we at least have a nodding familiarity with, since we spent half a week in the very area where yesterday’s chaos went down during that last month before the lockdowns, at the beginning of your final year here on this planet. Our hotel emptied out onto Bourbon Street, and we walked the length of it, opposite of Canal (and the Mardi Gras parade route), several times while we were there for that brief time. It’s strange to think of a truck barreling down that street, especially given that there were mounted police and (if I remember correctly) metal bollards at the various intersections when we traversed them. Not sure why they were taken down, but apparently they weren’t up to stop this guy.

For all that your passing came as a shock, what happened there added extra layers of awfulness to what happened to these people. While there is an element of danger to what you were doing (that’s part of its appeal, after all), there would have been no expectations for anything worse than a bad hangover for the celebrants in the street during those wee hours of the morning. What’s more, there is also this pall that – not that they were aware of it, of course – this was deliberate; someone wanted them dead. The tree you ran into held no malice toward you, but the driver of the truck clearly wanted to kill people.

Oh, it’s not that any of them were specific targets, of course; they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, unlike that executive that was gunned down barely a month ago. Although it’s unsettling that his death is still being celebrated by some. But there’s something especially awful about the idea that someone wanted you dead (not caring who you were, necessarily), killed you, and others like him are celebrating that you’re dead (again, not a malice directed towards you, personally, but all of “your kind,” whatever that might mean). Again, that didn’t happen to you, yourself, but to these unfortunate souls lying on the Bourbon Street cobblestones.

Perhaps the only mercy in this situation was how quickly it unfolded; one moment, these folks were dancing in the street, welcoming in the new year, the next, they were being declared dead on the scene, having been flattened to the point where the tire track were the most visible aspect of their person. It took five hours before you were removed from life support; in these cases, there was clearly no need for such measures. Their year – their life – was over, when it had barely begun. All we can hope for at this point is that they wind up with you, but that’s not for me to know, I’m afraid.

In which case, maybe I need to ask if you’ll keep an eye out for them, and check to see if they made it where you are. As far as wishing them luck, though, it’s a little too late; they’re either there or they aren’t.