GFP 024: Diffraction

Jaden Wong put pressure on his left foot, lifted the right side of his body up and found the next glass-blind up on the 27th story of Agbar Torre’s west face. He held steady, breathed out loudly, turned slightly and drunk in the vast sea of Barcelona’s salmon tile, red brick and white walls.

The spectacular view sent tremors down Jaden’s spine. Such beauty and magnificence and wonder. Why did I wait so long to travel outside the States?

He thought about Jacqueline Ling, the ex-fiancée he left behind in San Francisco. They had met at Berkeley, lost their virginity to each other, been together and with no one else until a year ago, when Jaden started free-soloing skyscrapers around the world.

Jaden’s heart beat steadily, surely, slowly. He tried to shake off memories of their last week together. Jacqueline’s angry face, seething with indignant betrayal. Jaden imagined his own useless gaping mouth as he tried to explain what he couldn’t.

Life was funny, he thought. One moment you’re settling down with the sweetest girl on the planet talking about becoming old Chinese grandparents handing out red pocket money, and the next moment, you’re hanging on for dear life off Spain’s twelfth tallest building.

Why not the tallest? His buddies had asked. It’s symbolic, he answered. It’s the same one Alain Robert climbed a third and final time in 2029 at age sixty-six before plummeting to his death. Well, that’s not a good sign… his buddies smartly responded. Yeah, Jade replied. It ain’t. No sir. But I’m going to do it anyway.

Jaden clung to the glass façade of Agbar Torre like a four-legged spider, limbs tall and straight with his butt sticking out at the sky saying fuck you, I belong on the side of this tower.

He spied the eighteen spires of Sagrada Família from above, like stalagmites luring him to a spiky death. Jaden scoffed at the thought and threw his Anasazi Velcros up another glass-blind.

One glass-blind after another, up and up, higher and higher. He was nearly at its apex. He couldn’t see, but knew a crowd had gathered below on the corner of Avinguda Diagonal and Carrer Badajoz. The smarter ones would convoke at Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes for a better view of this crazy Asian-American man, former software engineer, now world-renowned daredevil.

The image of Jacqueline’s wry smile from behind her long, silky hair (especially coming out of a shower after sex) slipped into his thoughts again. Dammit, Jacky, why couldn’t you understand? Why couldn’t you see what I saw and spend my last few years with me? We could’ve caught Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at The Liceu after my ascent.

Jaden remembered the moment he knew she was the one. He remembered the mad rush to cash in his vested Facebook stock-options to put a ring on her. He had never felt as alive as the day he proposed to her at Fort Point underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. The exhilaration of it even though he knew she would say yes. His heart racing, the blood pumping.

But then, a few days afterwards, he broke his promise to Jacqueline and visited “whenwillidie.com”. That’s when he discovered the exact date of his death.

Jaden couldn’t help himself. He was about to commit the rest of his life to this one girl. He wanted to know how long they would be together. Even though they had promised each other to never look at it and life their life with all its uncertainties, surprises and trials.

Jaden doesn’t regret looking at it. It was a gift. He looked down at the breathtaking view of Barcelona again and at the past year of his life. He wouldn’t be here if he had not known, if there were no such thing as “whenwillidie.com”

The strange and mysterious website went viral a few years ago. It was hidden behind a proxy registrar using undisclosed servers with rotating IPs. Nobody knew who made it. Attempts to crack it failed. The highest security agencies in the world couldn’t figure out who was behind it. Some thought it was a prank put on by Anonymous, or something bored programmers up on Mountain View cooked up.

It hit up all the online media outlets and everybody stuck their name in there for fun, got their “date of death” and then shared it, tweeted it, posted it.

That was, until they started coming true. That’s when everyone freaked the fuck out.

And as much as America wanted to blame it on terrorists, some hate-group, some weird cult, a serial killer or some anti-this movement or another… “whenwillidie.com” was as equal opportunity as they came.

It didn’t matter what your age, gender, ethnicity, class, profession or religion was. If it said your death date was X, you died on that day. And people still died of disease, accidents and violence at the same rate as pre-“whenwillidie.com”.

The certainty of one’s death date, as expected, changed people. Or perhaps, it brought out what was already bottled up but never expressed.

Some people quit their job, left their families and vanished into the life they’d always dreamt off but was too afraid to leap into. They reconnected with past loves, they travelled, they drank, fucked, took drugs in excess.

Some people nobly recommitted to their families and spouses, choosing to spend their final days with friends they loved. Some were honest about it, some were looking to be martyrs.

Some people, a rare few, who were content with their lives went on as if nothing happened, accepting their fate as just another scheduled event.

Some did everything imaginable to prevent their death. It always inevitably failed. A few others even “tested the system” by committing suicide. Unfortunately, that worked. Suicide seemed to be the only way to game the system. Die earlier than said date.

Finally, there were the willfully ignorant, a good majority actually, like Jaden Wong and Jacqueline Ling. This group of people swore to never check the website, to live their lives as if this website didn’t exist, and expressly told all their friends and family not to check their death dates either.

Jaden, who had never broken a single promise of significance to Jacqueline in all their blissful seven years together, broke this one. He checked. And he discovered he would shuffle off this mortal coil on January 5th, 2033, which gave him about three years to live from the date he checked.

And that’s when Jaden, only twenty-seven, in the prime of his youth, decided to live. He still wanted to marry Jacqueline, even if only for a 1,001 nights (how poetic!), and be with her until his final days.

But he also wanted to climb really tall buildings without any rope, harnesses or buckles.

That’s what made Jacqueline lose it. Not only had he checked that god-awful website, now he wanted to do the most dangerous thing he could possibly think of. Two wrongs, Jacqueline screamed, don’t make a right. What the fuck is wrong with you???

She had threw her engagement ring right into Jaden’s chest and told him to leave and that she never wanted to see him again. And Jaden knew, if he had only waited a few days, he could go back to Jacqueline, comfort her, and convince her to marry him anyway with a few compromises.

But something else clicked inside of Jaden that day. He also realized he wanted to sleep with other girls. (Jacqueline was his first and only). So he packed his bags, emptied his bank account and bought some mountain climbing gear.

He moved up to Sacramento to train with Alex Hannold. Then a few months later, made his first climb up the Transamerica Pyramid. On the rooftop, the SFPD arrested him for criminal damage and wasted police hours. But by that point, it was too late. Jaden was hooked.

The 31st story window Jaden had his right foot on tilted and shifted a little. It was twilight and the building’s software adjusted for the dimming sunlight by moving it’s façade of glass-blinds. This didn’t faze Jaden one bit. In a few hours, the 4,500 diffracting LED lights would flash on, shimmering and undulate like a vertical ocean.

Just a few more stories. The climb was getting easier as Agbar Torre tapered into its glass and steel cupula. In a few more minutes, Jaden would be standing on top of this strange bullet tip protruding from the streets of Barcelona. He will have conquered it and he will stand above it and feel alive, again. ☣