They will become men who’ve walked on the moon
No doubt they will suffer, some of them. They will have nightmares and mysterious aches. For some of them, anger and resentment will replace their joy. Some of them will have trouble adjusting to the light.
But the ones who are lucky enough to survive twice, they will become astronauts. They will become men who’ve walked on the moon.
They will be men who know true deprivation, who know true fear, who know true darkness. And now, one by one, in that singular instant, they learned true joy, true beauty, true love. They will understand how good a steak really tastes. They will know how lucky we are to be able to turn on a tap and feel hot water coming out of it. They will hear a baby’s crying differently in the night. They will stand in the rain with their faces up rather than down. They will never get mad about being stuck in traffic. They will never try to figure out magic tricks. They will be believers.
Men and men like them won’t just talk about transformation, won’t confuse importance with triviality. They won’t settle for being anything they don’t want to be. Now each one of them can choose to become a giant. He can become a talisman. He can become a hero without having first to become a ghost, but he can become a ghost if that’s what he chooses to be.
Those thirty-three men, trapped for sixty-nine days, have been reborn by their fifteen-minute journeys to the surface.
