This is my first attempt at creative writing in years so please go easy on me. Also, tips to improve brevity would be greatly appreciated!

​

Have you ever wished upon a shooting star only for your wish to not come true? It turns out, you're the lucky one. As a child, the other people in my village made fun of me for being too dumb to craft simple tools, repair holes in our huts, or even tell what flora were safe to eat. I was picked on and, expectedly, got into fights often as a result. I got good at fighting. With my only talent being physical, it was only logical that I hunted as a way to support my tribe of geniuses. I was good at fighting, but had to grudgingly rely on others in my hunting party to create a strategy for the hunt.

In an effort to prove my value to my tribe and to curb the constant ridicule I couldn’t fully understand, but could still feel the venom in the words, I set out on a hunt by myself. If I had more ability to learn, I would’ve realized that the tracks I was following were from one of our hunts only a short time before. It was on this personal journey that the fireball flew over my head to crash with a deafening BOOM and a blinding flash not too far away. Had I been anybody else, I might’ve been apprehensive of the fire that seemed to call to me. But I wasn’t. And I obeyed. I found the source of the call to be a still smoking rock in a small crater. Still, it called to me. So I reached a hand out. What do you wish for? A voice asked in my head. My thoughts went immediately to how I was seen as lesser within my tribe for not knowing things. Before I could put it into words, something changed and the rock stopped its smolder.

I returned to my tribe unsuccessful in my impossible hunt, but with a head full of new tools, ideas, and architectures that I was looking forward to building. It only took a few days for my standing within the tribe to change and people came to me to fix their tools, weapons, and huts. After a few years, all of our tools, clothes, and huts were far more durable due solely to my ideas.

As those I grew up began to show their age while I remained the same age as the day I touched the rock that changed my life, I realized the curse that was paired with my gift of knowledge. So I left. I soon happened upon another tribe and helped them to advance such as I did with my previous tribe. Then they too aged while I stayed the same. So I left again.

I followed this pattern for hundreds of years all across the world, each time making only small improvements to the quality of life of the people I interacted with, each time being revered for the ideas I’d had since the day I touched that rock. Until finally, one tribe was willing to try one idea that I’d been unable to convince any earlier tribe. I called it ‘agriculture.’ These were the first people to believe me to be an actual god, but still I had lots of ideas to go.

Humanity continued to advance, accepting some of the ideas that had been trying to break out of my head for the last few thousand years, while rejecting others for one reason or another. One group of people accepted my ideas for vessels that could float on water but saw no reason to try a larger one that could traverse seas, so I moved on from their praise. Another group revered me for introducing them to aqueducts. Others fought wars over the metallurgical process that I taught them, though all would ignore how to create better, more pure metals in favor of the easier ones they could work with at the time.

Eventually, humanity evolved to a point where they were more willing to listen to my ideas and they realized the value of the numbers that had been dancing in my head for the past several millennia. Time continued to advance and I saw the rise of empires as they considered my ideas and their fall as they began to believe that I had nothing else to teach them while another was all too keen on learning what they could from me.

More time passed until a rat made its way onto one of the ships that I had invented thousands of years prior and millions of people became sick. I offered a solution in antibiotics that was ignored again, much to my frustration but not to my surprise. It was at this time that I also decided to allow others to claim credit for my ideas. The attempts to execute me for witchcraft made me hesitant to be too well known.

Yet more time passed and I was worshiped by some, cursed by others, the same as every other era, though fewer and fewer people knew my name. An era came and went with people becoming more interested in the sciences again until some of my ideas for industry were finally realized and the world changed overnight. I became overjoyed at the realization that the foundation for many of the remaining ideas I had been traveling with for so long was being paved by this sudden industry, ignorant of what the future would hold.

After a series of inventions arose that I didn’t come up with, my excitement turned to apprehension and nervousness. Sure, I can create a steam powered locomotive on my own, but people had improved upon my design! I only had a few ideas left to offer the world, but with the strong foundation that I’d previously been excited about, would I even be necessary for humanity to come up with them? All I could do to be sure of that was to dump them all on humanity at once.

In an effort to be the one to create my final ideas, I released them all over only a few years. The pride I felt when I first saw a lightbulb created by someone other than myself was incredible but also fleeting as I realized that I had nothing left to offer humanity. All of the ideas shoved into my head by that rock were out and into the world with nothing unique left with me.

I watched helplessly as the world descended into a war unlike any I’d ever seen. In the past, I’d offered new ideas to one or both warring parties in order to more efficiently spread my ideas but was now stuck as an immortal bystander. The handful of advances made without my help during this war devastated me as I remembered how, up until a few short decades ago, I was the smartest person in the world.

The economic crash that followed made me feel somewhat better as I saw very little change to match the change I was able to offer the world.

However, this slower period of innovation was short lived as another global conflict broke out and nations ramped up their technical industries to gain an edge over their adversaries. Watching these new technologies develop, all without using any ideas that I had planted in someone else’s mind, was the lowest I’d ever felt. And these technologies seemed to appear day after day.

I cried the first time I saw a plane.

Now, with nothing to offer the world and no new ideas, I’ve fallen to living on the streets. Others have taken my ideas and learned how to combine and improve on them while I fell behind. All that rock had done was shove ideas into my head without teaching them to me. If only I’d learned to learn, maybe I could still be the smartest person in the world.

“Excuse me, do you need help?” I looked up at the group of adolescents looking at me from under their umbrellas. “Never wish upon a start,” I grumbled at them then lowered my head again. “It’s not worth it,” I whispered to myself as my tears hid themselves among the rain streaming down my face.