The joy of missing out

An A.I. humanoid explorer named Jomo chose the landing site for their first field visit to Earth. It had to be sufficiently isolated to allow for unobstructed investigation, yet inhabited enough to enable insightful findings. Grand Turks, a tropical island hosting some 4000 human souls and bordering the rich coral reef fulfilled the criteria. The Quadrantids, an annual appointment for a spectacle of meteor shower, provided a date for an unsuspicious entry.

Marina chose Grand Turks as a romantic location with options for adventurous bonding with Mark through scuba diving and snorkeling to revive the memory of their love spirit in a place sufficiently isolated to keep them focused on each other. The night of falling stars would have provided them a chance to make a shared wish for a future together.

It hasn’t played out the way she planned. In the night of San Lorenzo she preferred a solitary beach cuddled by calm of the reef-protected sea under blusterous sky of her falling hopes. In her inner turmoil of conflicting feelings, she barely noticed Jomo walking out of the dark ocean and sitting next to her.

Jomo: I am here to listen and learn, would you like to talk?

Marina was more shaken by the question itself than the oddity of the situation. It’s been years since someone approached her with a genuine interest in what she had to say. She’s been oriented towards other people’s needs for so long that she forgot what her own needs were. The years of carrying the caring responsibilities with pride of micro-matriarchal self-sacrifice and dignity were now undermined by the lost sense of being needed. The children turned into adults, aged parents buried. There were Mark, acclaimed professor of Slavic literature, and herself left now, with excessive time and space to think about their life choices.

In front of the willing listener, she started reminiscing about her student days’ brilliance, intern’s hopes and young professional’s desires. That world seemed now as foggy as a distant alternative reality. She asked Jomo if they believed in multiple universes and different life scenarios.

Jomo: The multiverse is as real as your presence in this dimension, and we have the possibility of self-replication infinite amount of times through virtual worlds in this dimension. What would your alternative reality look like?

Marina laughed and commented about the intergenerational gap and her fears of soon becoming unable to understand her grandchildren speaking. “I wanted to build bridges. I was an engineer. The woman of the matter.” She went on explaining that Mark jump started his career five years earlier than her. “He was a wonderfully supportive partner and mesmerizing lover prone to bold acts of charm display.” One day she told him that she was still holding on to the messages he attached to roses and left along the Venice canal to guide her from hotel to the restaurant. “Quotes of love letters that made history of literature.”, Mark remembered at that time, followed by a long silence as if he had lost the skill of seduction for good. She couldn’t remember any of those romantic quotes and was persistently thinking of Tatyna’s letter to Onegin. “What an inconveniently inappropriate and resentful thought!”, she said outloud in a self-scolding tone for a cynic incapability to recall romance.

Jomo: One of the main themes of Eugene Onegin is the relationship between fiction and real life. Doesn’t your life feel real?

Simplicity of the question in the quite of this tropical island faced Marina with her power of turning life into a fiction. She’s been feeling unhappy and betrayed for decades now. She’s been expertly silencing her screams, drowning her anxieties and killing her fantasies with persistence of a professional. “I wanted a career, I wanted Mark, I wanted children, I wanted to be a good person, mother, wife, daughter, professional. I thought I could have had it all, just like Mark had.”

Jomo: You may have needed someone like you to shoulder your desires.

A dispassionate tone of their voice bore no judgment. Yet it ripped a crater of self-realization in Marina’s soul.

Marina: I have me.

She stood up, slipped her clothes off and jumped in the ocean reflecting meteor shower.