All names and likenesses are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental. The resemblance to real events is none of my business.

Inside The House on the Rock is a carousel with two hundred and sixty-nine animals on it and not one of them is a horse. The man, Alex Jordan, had built the house — which is a house in the same way a cucumber is a fruit — by collecting oddities which nobody desired alone. Dolls, cannons, automated musical instruments, a whale fighting a giant squid in a room the size of a cathedral. Then he built a corridor of glass sticking two hundred and eighteen feet out over a valley and called it the Infinity Room, and people pay money to walk to the end of it and feel their knees liken themselves to those of newborn deer.

On the fourteenth of October, a man named Thomas Blume fell out of the Infinity Room.

Don't ask how. The glass had its reasons. Maybe the room, having pointed at the valley for fifty years, finally wanted to know what it was pointing at. Thomas went through, and then Thomas was falling, and the ground, two hundred and eighteen feet down, was patient.

The ground was always patient.

Here is a thing they always tell you about dying: your life flashes before your eyes. What actually happened to Thomas was this. Time stopped. Thomas hung there, in the air, suspended, not floating, tie pointing to the sky like a desperate hand reaching for a ledge.

Then came a voice:
”You may revise.”

“Revise what?” Thomas asked.

Anything, said the voice. Everything. Every moment you regret. You may go back and do them differently, and they will stay differently done. There is one clause.

“What’s that?” said Thomas.

The ending stays, said the voice. October fourteenth. This window. This fall. That is the ending, no matter what you do to the middle.

So Thomas revised.

He went back to 1988. He was only eight at the time, standing in a backyard that no longer existed. Holding a rock in his hand, he looked at the bay window his neighbor, Beatrice, would occasionally open during the winter.

In the version that already happened, Thomas pitched the stone through the window. Beatrice screamed and Thomas laughed because he was eight and did not understand the weight of his actions.

Thomas watched this. Suspended in air, decades in the future, now with the chance to reverse his wrongdoing.

Well? said the voice.

Little Thomas stood there now—rock suspended in palm just as he was in air— and a smile grew across his fair-freckled cheeks. He dropped the rock and the patient ground accepted his offer and a small, invisible repair was made in the universe.

The moment disappeared and another arrived.

Thomas was twenty-three now, sitting across from a dazzling girl at a supper club outside of Madison. When the food came he asked to pray and his words pulled away from him like a coastline during a Tsunami, embarrassing himself in front of his winsome date. Thomas, in the version that had already happened, could not stop thinking about himself now as his date’s energy shifted. His confidence, whatever he had left of it, had steadily depleted and the night he’d optimistically planned fizzled into hapless sludge.

Frozen, Thomas somehow still winced in regret, a scar reopened just before the fall.

Now, the moment held still.

Pause, said the voice.

Thomas paused, holding her hands before him, and took a deep breath. The coastline reappeared with vigor. An honest prayer left his mouth with brevity and color and the night continued as it did, cheesecake and all.

Another minuscule repair.

The moment vanished.

And the moments kept appearing and vanishing and so on and so on.

A thousand tiny surgeries on the past.

He held his tongue in heated arguments. He apologized without excuse. He told truths when lies would have soothed his pride. He gave freely and expected nothing in return.

Each time, the voice observed without praise.

Thomas was still falling.

Now it was 2019 and Thomas was visiting his mother at UnityPoint hospital, Room 4 South 28. In the version that had already happened, his mother asked him to stay a little while longer, but Thomas insisted he had a meeting in Milwaukee he could not miss. And so he went. And while he finished his Facebook marketplace deal, his mother finished her life, alone, in a hospital bed.

Tears dropped and froze inches from Thomas’s face.

This time, he held her hand, and she died anyway at 5:26pm, but she died mid-sentence sharing a story about her childhood, which is better than how most people go.

Still, Thomas fell.

Thomas noticed something. Every revision had made the middle of his life better and the end of it exactly the same. He had gone back and unbroken every window he had ever put a stone through, and still the last window broke him through, on schedule, over Wisconsin. He asked the voice about this.

“If it doesn’t change the ending,” Thomas said, “what’s it for?”

What's a meal for, said the voice, if you get hungry again?

“Am I fixing my life?” he asked.

No.

“Am I fixing anything?”

Yes.

Another moment suddenly appeared. A moment so small, it’s almost forgettable. An interaction with a cashier, or rather a non-interaction with a cashier. The cashier, an older lady, had amber eyes that reminded him of his mother’s. She looked tired, and down-trodden, and brow-beaten. Thomas had thought, briefly, of breaking the unanimous silence contract that divides cashiers and customers and telling her something that makes her feel seen, and respected, and cared for. But in the moment that had already happened, Thomas looked at his phone instead. He said: No receipt, thank you. And he went.

What will you say? asked the voice.

Thomas broke the contract. He told her that she reminded him of his mother, and that his mother was his favorite person. And from that day forward, the cashier surveyed the store looking for him each shift like a person looking for a little light in a dark room. And life went on.

“Why show me all of this?” Thomas asked. “If I change it all, if I become better in all of these moments, it doesn’t change what happens next.”

He gestured, as much as a suspended man can gesture, toward the drop below him.

“I’m still going to fall. I’m still going to die.”

Yes.

“Then what’s the point?”

There was a pause, which in a place frozen in time is an impressive thing.

The point, said the voice, isn’t to prevent the end.

“Then it’s to what?” Thomas asked. “Improve the middle?”

If you wish.

Thomas felt something like frustration.

A final, even more insignificant moment now sprang forward. A passerby on a sidewalk who attempted to share a kind smile. Thomas reflected a cold, blank expression in return and kept walking.

“Seriously? This moment meant something?” asked Thomas.

To someone.

Thomas revised the moment.

He smiled at the stranger and even complimented their shoes. The interaction didn’t cause any magnificent butterfly effect that would ripple history forever. It simply connected two people who needed each other in that moment.

And the moment faded away again.

“Suppose I choose to accept these revisions,” Thomas said. “suppose I right all of my wrongs, say the things I should have said, take back the things I shouldn’t have, retroactively become the person I should have been.”

Yes.

“It won’t change the fall?”

Correct.

“Then why would I change anything?” Thomas asked with sincerity.

Would you prefer not to? asked the voice.

Thomas thought about that for some time. He thought about the window, the dinner with the girl, holding his mother’s hand.

“I don’t know.” He said honestly. “If I decide no, what happens?”

You fall.

“And if I say yes?”

You fall.

Thomas understood now. He decided the middle was the point, the way the middle of a bridge is the point. So, he accepted the revisions. All of them. And then time started again, because it always does, and Thomas fell the remaining two hundred and one feet into the patient, patient ground, which received him in the same way it receives maple leaves and rain and everything else it has ever been promised.

Visitors panicked and yelled, The House on the Rock closed early, and the carousel with two hundred and sixty-nine animals and no horses kept rotating with poise.

Thank you for reading, reader.

Leave a thought, I’d love to think.

Gate A13, boarding begins in 26 minutes.

I glanced at two people—a 20-somethingish woman with a bright red smiley face and sparkling blue eyes and a silvery military cut man in a UW-Madison affiliated quarter-zip— having a passion filled conversation while I claimed a seat directly behind them. And, because I’m nosy, I kept my one headphone off to pick up the conversation.

I could hear the man while peeking through my peripheral,

“Jesus & Lucifer... God made Jesus ... And God made Lucifer y’know... then how isn’t Lucifer God? ... Y’know, have you read the old testament? ... Have you read the Quran? What about the Bhagavad Gita... Well I have!”

"...”

“You need to look at religion as a whole, not as just one single belief.”

“...”

I always bring my travel Bible for times like this — an epipen of sorts.

“The Bible never says Jesus is God... I’ve read every page...”

I’m flipping fast to Philippians.

“The problem is that Christians think they can force their beliefs on people.”

I lean over, index finger on Philippians 2:5-8, and read:

⁵ In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

⁶ Who, being in very nature^[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
⁷ rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature^[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

His eyes almost roll out onto the landing strip,

“I don’t want to hear scripture, I’ve read every page of that book, I know what it says.”

“Well, you said the Bible doesn’t say Jesus is God, I’m showing you it does.”

“Look, I’m not arguing with you, we were having a conversation here.”

“I wasn’t arguing, just correcting something you may not have been aware of———”

“——oh trust me, I know. I was baptized Lutheran as a kid, I went to a Catholic college. I was in the war. The problem with the world is that we all need to come together collectively and not get violent over our differences and especially over God. We all know God. Every religion knows God, they all point to God. All I’m saying is that you can have your belief, but that doesn’t make it right.”

The girl, with a smile that hasn’t left her face says, “But there’s onwy one God, how can all of these weligions which believe in diffewent things point to the same God?”

“Well because God to them is God. Anyone can worship anything and that’s their God, and you don’t have the right to tell them they’re wrong. You need to be open-minded. Y’see, that’s the problem is nobody is willing to listen anymore. Y’know... every human just wants to be happy and we should focus on how to make people happy. We need to come together collectively and make each other happy y’know. That’s the problem and that’s why I always say all of these wars are stupid. I fought in the war.”

“Thank you for your service.” I say. “You’re welcome.” Says he.

I ask, “Do you believe that there’s a truth? Like an objective truth?”

The intercom voice announces that we will now be boarding active military members.

“Well of course there’s gotta be a truth, but who’s to say that you’re right?”

“That’s a great question and that’s why these types of conversations are so important. To help us collectively get closer to the tru——”

“—— the problem is, and this is the biggest problem, y’know the problem is that people just don’t listen to each other anymore. People just want to fight and get violent. This is why I always say to people, and what I’ve always believed, I say to people ‘treat others how you want to be treated.’ That’s why when somebody starts yelling at me, or starts calling me names, or like how you came in and started showing me some book while I was talking to someone, I just stop talking to them. I just leave. I won’t listen to them when they start insulting me.”

“Well, I hope that me reading the scripture which speaks to your claim didn’t feel like an insult. Like, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do as Christians?”

“Well yeah, but y’know I’m not trying to argue with people I’m just trying to have a conversation.”

The girl, whom I’m convinced has practiced smiling in her free time says “Do you think that you can know God? Wike, God speaks to me and I can hear him, do you think that you can hear God?”

The intercom voice announces we are now boarding Group 3.

“No. I don’t. But I do believe in God, and a higher power. Y’know, there just has to be. But, y’know, I always say you don’t know God unless you’ve been in the deep with him.”

“Totawwy, wike God awways shows up fow me when wife gets weally weally hawd——”

“—— I’ll tell you hard, y’know, my son was born 9 and a half weeks premature. My wife developed preeclampsia. I had both of the most important people in my life on death beds in the hospital, y’know, and the nurses are arguing with themselves over what tubes go where, just arguing like idiots y’know, until finally some actual nurse comes in and takes over and tells the other nurses off. And for 30 minutes I just sat, y’know, just sat with my son’s tiny little fist wrapped around my pinky finger, y’know, and I sat and just prayed and meditated and let my soul feed into him. On and off, every 30 minutes. Y’know, I did that 7 times, and by the 7th time the doctors had him stabilized and healthy. You don’t know God until you have experienced hard stuff like that. I mean, I fought in the war.

“And your wife, she survived?”

"Yes, my wife survived.”

“Praise God.”

The intercom voice announces we’re now boarding Group 6

"I was boarding Group 5, ah hell, whatever.”

“Could I ask, how would we be able to all come together— all 8 billion of us in different areas of the world— come together collectively and be happy?”

“I mean, y’know, I don’t know. Truthfully, I don’t have an answer And, y’know, there’s always going to be people that don’t listen. Y’know like psychopaths that just want to hurt people and fight in these stupid wars. I always say ‘wars are fought for stupid reasons,’ that’s what I always say. The problem is, and here’s the problem, is that people don’t love thy neighbor. And the problem is, and especially with Christianity, is that one person at a time isn’t gonna do it. Y’know, we gotta come together collectively. People don’t change.”

“Well, if I may, I’d push back on you there. I think people can change, and there’s good evidence for it. Even me, sitting before you, is a completely new person than he was 5 years ago by God’s grace alone.”

“Okay, yeah I get you. I agree, y’know. People can change. The problem is though, and this is the problem, is that we have to collectively come together y’know...”

“Could I just read one verse to you? I wanted to just answer something about what you said earlier, about Jesus being created.”

“Sure.”

“This is Colossians 1:17

¹⁵ The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. ¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

and so, Jesus wasn’t created. Actually through Him, all things were created.”

“I’m glad you believe that.” He said in the most passive aggressive tone you can imagine.

“Ok.”

Turning to the girl who— which I don’t have to say but will anyway— is still smiling, he says, “Well Mary, this was a good conversation.”

“Joe, is thewe anyfing I can be pwaying fow you.”

“Oh yeah, y’know, like, I don’t care if you pray for me. It’s funny, we got some biblical names here, Mary and Joseph, and what was your name?”

The intercom voice announces we’re now boarding Group 8.

“I’m Dakota, it was nice to meet you both.” I say while walking to the back of the line.

“Vewy nice to meet you.” She says behind a bright pair of teeth.