Deus ex machina

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When I sleep, I find my wings. Freedom comes with my dreams. The law of intended consequences says you get what you deserve. The shackles of this tyrannical law bind my every waking moment. But I escape my chains when I close my eyes.

In my dreams, I am a warlord in the dusty Sahara. Brandishing my gleaming AK-47, I run bare-chested into the heat of battle. Bulletproof vests? Bah, who needs those. The one bullet that finds its way towards my chest somehow hits my large golden medallion at such an angle that it ricochets and goes back to kill three of my assailants. An unplugged hand grenade once landed near me. I defused it by swallowing it. It did nothing to me because of my pure heart and my unshakeable resolve.

In my dreams, I rob banks. The vault doors just happen to be open each night I decide to scale in through the mysteriously unlocked windows. Someone usually leaves a bag behind that I use to stuff in as much cash as I can carry. There are CCTV cameras, but fortunately a thunderstorm the night before had damaged the motherboards of the central recording station. I mistakenly left my fingerprints behind, but the police instead nabbed my long lost twin brother who had the very very rare genetic boon of having exactly the same fingerprints as me.

In my dreams, I drink poison without getting hurt. I swam in a pool of hungry piranhas who by sheer happenstance just happened to forget they were predators. I jumped from the Empire State Building and landed on a large mound of cotton wool that had mistakenly been left behind. I cracked a hundred-year old mathematical puzzle using guesswork. I resolved the conflicts in Palestine using the power of friendship. I broke the laws of the state, I broke the laws of logic, I broke the laws of physics, I broke the laws of the very universe itself, and I faced no consequences whatsoever. I was free.

But it's 7 am once again, and reality is cruel. A wrong step and I could twist my ankle. A mosquito bite and I could be bedridden for a week. A careless dash across the main road and I'd end up in the emergency room. I need to obey, I need to be careful. No wrong words, no wrong actions. And if I survive the day and make it back home, then I can close my eyes and fly once again.

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