[ WP ] You 're a bomb defuser . Ranked number one , saving thousands of lives . Your trade secret ? You have no idea what you 're doing .

After my first tour, I was pretty messed up. As an EOD tech, you see a lot of things you'd rather not. You feel responsible for a lot of things you'd rather not. The last straw was when I got home and she had cleared out my combat pay and skipped town with my best friend from high school, who spent the war in a cubicle farm making six figures. Why did n't I think of that? 
 
 When I went back, honestly, I did n't give much of a shit. 
 
 So the first time I went outside the wire, I managed to get off by myself, I took off my protective gear, I walked up to an IED, and I just fuckin' grabbed whatever and yanked. The charge on that thing was big enough to take out a truck. My plan was to make it as quick as possible. 
 
 When I opened my eyes I was standing there like a dumbass in my skivvies, disposal gear on the ground next to me, holding a handful of frayed wires. I got chewed out pretty hard for that one. There was a lot of paperwork and a conversation with the chaplain to avoid getting sent to see a shrink. Nobody wants to see a shrink. 
 
 The second time, I kept my gear on so it was less obvious. But I got right up next to a big charge and just yanked those wires. Guess what? 
 
 The next day, I cycled through a magazine of ammo for my M9. I would point the gun at my temple, pull the trigger, cycle the slide, and repeat. I ended up with 15 9mm rounds with 15 perfectly struck primers. All duds. 
 
 I'm reading up on quantum immortality. It's an awful fucking concept that goes like this: Everyone is actually immortal from their own perspective. Universes split and branch off at every opportunity. So if you flip a coin, you create one reality where it landed heads up, and one where it landed tails up. Except if you explode any time the coin lands on heads, you can *only* observe universes where the coin lands on tails, because you ca n't observe universes in which you do n't exist. So for you, the coin always lands on tails. 
 
 I guess there are tens or hundreds or shit, by now, thousands of universes where I went kaboom. I've got so many citations, commendations, and medals that I'm surprised I do n't fall on my face with my dress uniform on. It's ridiculous. 
 
 And with every ceremony, with every cheer, with every aw-shucks conversation with a reporter, all I'm seeing is her face. All I'm hearing is her voice. All I want to hear, just one time, is that deafening roar followed by sweet, sweet silence. 

