I Once Had Wings

By Tim Cooper

A long time ago, at the boundaries of my memory, I remember that I once had wings. I soared over the open plains, glided through mountain valleys and pulsed my way through the dusky air of cities. I looped and made Immelmann turns and barrel rolls and other aerobatic stunts that could have put any professional to shame. And I did all this over the gray, ground-bolted masses with their lead feet, pig-iron hearts, and stone brains.

The laws of aerodynamics and physics were nothing to me, ans I flaunted them easily. I could speed through the vacuum of space; charge into the hottest novae without even being singed. I discovered and charted countless worlds, treating the local inhabitants to a display of my aerial skills. I could go anywhere, do anything--the past, present, and future were all open to me. Space and time were irrelevant; I had free passsage through the continuum of reality; I was invincible and could do as I pleased.

Then cam the limits, or rather, the limiters. People who claimed to have knowledge and assumed the mantle of wisdom came to me and said that I could not be strong, and so I became weak. They said I could not be fast, and so I became slow. They said I could neither paint nor draw, and so I became inartistic. They said I could neither sing nor play music, and so I became tone-deaf. They said I could not be beautiful, and so I became ugly. When they had taken away nearly everything else that was truly mine, the critics tore away my wings and left me, bleeding and crippled, bolted to the ground like them, with lead feet like them.

Yet they granted me my intelligence--rather, they let me keep it--and so I still remember when I once had wings, and so I kept a hared of their pitiless attacks in my heart until all the soft and weak emotions like love and pity and empathy were burned away, leaving only a scarred and empty shell of pig-iron. Yet my brain remained whole, would not petrify, and so with my lead feet, pig-iron heart, and live brain I look at my ground-bolted peers and hate them--and I look at those in the sky who I was once like, and I hate them as well, for I can dream as they can but cannot realize those dreams--

But my stiff visage turns to a hideous sneer of ironic humor as I realize their fate shall be like mine.