advantage of it; but instead, I felt my mounting infuriation get pulled away to somewhere, leaving my anger to starve and my assumptions to break. I was soon looking at the sky again, of my own free will, again only seeing the point of light. Still, some quality of it impressed and held me. Its light was several times stronger than the brightest stars. The clouds shifted again, and it seemed ridiculous to me that something so small and local should block something so huge and universal.
“It’s been there since last night. Cosmologists think it’s the largest event ever witnessed in this galaxy: a nova so large that it effected its entire region of space, its light strong enough to cut through the vacuum and be seen at a distance greater than anything we’ve known… and by the naked eye, at that.”
“That’s amazing,” I said, as if the one standing next to me were a lifelong friend. “It makes you think about how we’re all made of stardust, you know?”
“Does that thought impress you?”
It took a moment for the question to catch up to me. I let my sight fall back to the Earth. “Of course it impresses me. Long after I’m dead and cremated, the stars’ll keep shining. That’s impressive, isn’t it?”
The man looked off as if thinking about a puzzle. “It certainly sounds impressive, but there’s a limit built into the statement. It’s like…” he bent down and picked up a handful of sand, “it’s like saying: ‘Wow, I can hold grains of sand that look just like all the other grains of sand on the beach.’ Does that sound like a life-changer to you, Brandon Dauphin?”
“Well, no. Not when you say it like that.”
He grabbed my slampak from the sand and rose to his feet. “Words have meanings, don’t be afraid to test them by looking through a different vantage point.”
I looked at the slampak in his hand, remembering my guilt and his job. “Well, you’re one to talk about limits, sir. Is it the law now for you to tear down the things I believe in, too? What is the meaning of that no-drink law? Why don’t we test that now?”
“Most people don’t care. They come to the beach and talk about how much they love everything about it, complaining if the temperature is wrong or the waves are too loud or the UV-screen isn’t working just right, then…” he dropped my can back onto the sand, “they leave their garbage all