3. My name was Muon

I once had a friend. He was always fast ahead of the rest of us. One day, he exclaimed excitedly that he would be going away. "Where?" asked the more slow-witted and brow-knitting ones among his peers. "Anywhere!" he replied with a crazy grin which hinted at an eccentric truth.

He was literally fast ahead of the rest of us. He built me a device so that I could forever see him in motion despite our distance and difference in speed. "Just keep it tracked on me, will you? And I will know that despite it all, I at least have you, my best friend, to keep an eye on me." And so I promised him. What else could I do?

So the day came and he bid us a nonchalant farewell to mask the sadness in his heart. He did not want to leave but yet he was never meant to be with us. Not at our slow and bogged down existence. The kind of existence where we allowed ourselves to be weighed down by worrying tendencies and minute pains. No, he was meant to fast ahead of the rest of us. And so he broke into a stride and before we knew it, he was not in our physical sights anymore. I peered through the device and saw him waving in slow-motion at me. Of course I realize that this was just an optical illusion as the light waves took longer and longer to reach me as he sped further and further away. Now we would always be behind him in the real sense.

And the real sense of it all edged its hard and cold unyielding self upon him. He thought that he had to be beyond it all to be free. But what he found was that the price of being exceptionable was often nothing more than cold and harsh loneliness. And so there was my best friend, fast and all alone. I could tell that he was upset for I could see him crying through the device. His tears crystallized and rolled down his cheeks in ever-slowing shades of emotive grey. Yet the constant in motion wanted to keep him constantly in motion. And to even attempt a stoppage of his course would require an extreme amount of counter-energy. Another vector in the opposite direction with a unthinkable amount of force. Why had he not taken that blatant option up, I pondered. Perhaps he knew that it would literally disrupt his core and he would tumble into non-existence in a colorful fireball that would rupture sadly and slowly like a kaleidoscope of colors before my eyes. But I think that the truth was more simple and foolish than that. He was too proud to try to slow down.