A memory comes back to me. A baby on a swing, laughing. I open my eyes, the scene of pure bliss etched in my head.

The park. I know where it is. I don’t know how; I just do. Kicking off my blankets, I stand up and leave the house once again. One left, one right, straight.

Like everywhere else, the park is deserted. Why I expected anything different, I can’t say. I suppose my memory, or rather fragment of a memory, led me to believe otherwise. I stare at the swing.

Almost as if my thought controls this world, a figure of white numbers appears and then morphs to become a child, the child in my memory. It doesn’t move, however. It’s like time is frozen, the swing stopped mid-swing. I sigh.

The scene does not change. Just in case, I jog back to the house and back out to here. Neither the baby’s position nor the swing has moved.

Then I realize that they are defying the laws of physics. The branches of trees nearby are swaying in a wind that does not seem to touch me or my clothes. Theoretically, the swings should also be moving under the wind, but they stay completely still. I smirk. The god who made this world sure did one horrible job.

A swing falls to the ground in the corner of my vision. I jump, frightened at the sudden movement. Taking a closer look, I see the chain was elongated and now moves with the wind. It is as if this world is responding to me.

Excited, I start jumping up and down and flapping my arms. If this world is responding to me, wouldn’t that make me like that guy in that trilogy about technology and hooking up to machines...what was his name...Neo? So if someone shot me, I could change the trajectory of a bullet, or I could warp the world around one point, or I could fly, or I could… There are endless possibilities. I try flying; it seems like the safest, most reasonable choice to try.

I keep jumping until my body weighs down on me and I can no longer jump. Despite a ton of things defying physics and the random happenstances that seemed to have occurred in response to my thoughts, it seems that I myself cannot change the law. Shame.

Then again, I’m not the creator, or even a god, in this world. I am merely the only living human.

Again, I sigh. This one fragment is the only memory i have. Is it possible something happened to make my memories scrambled and now my brain is working to unscramble them? That would explain why this random image came back to me. What would have caused this to happen, thought? I wonder and wonder as I walk down streets I have walked millions of times before.

Millions of times? I live here. Or rather, I’ve lived here. I know this place, I know this neighborhood, I know this town. I know the province, the state, the country, the continent. The world. I know these things, and yet, I don’t know anything.

Subatomic particles make atoms make molecules make substances and solids. But who or what found out all of this? Was the cathode ray tube just a mistake by someone?

All living things are made of matter. There are laws of physics, of chemistry, of biology. The names of these laws I cannot figure out, but I know they exist. And no one is here to tell me otherwise or prove the facts.

No one.

I scream in frustration. The kid on the swing smiles back at me, seeming to laugh at my existence, At the fact that I know nothing.

I can’t take this anymore.