the impossible

My colleagues are men of science. They are men who know how the world works, who have an intuitive grasp of all of its laws and impossibilities. Me, I don't believe in the impossible. I just believe in irony.

A girl brought a device in today that was impossible. She was there when I arrived, and my colleagues were trying to figure it out. Some insisted it must have been some sort of a trick. Some were, more generously, attempting to explain away the impossibility--which is to say: it wasn't a trick, we were merely deceived. She seemed to find their explanations unsatisfactory. It wasn't a trick. We weren't wrong about it. It was just a thing that couldn't be.

Eventually I asked if I could have a look. My colleagues do not respect me because I do not see the world as they believe that it is--I see it as poetry and beauty and magic, as stupid events and senseless narratives all run together. But they had quite given up. I inspected it for a while, then set it down on the table. I told them it wasn't impossible.

My colleagues demanded clarification. I turned the device on, and it worked. "You see? It's working. Clearly they did something right."