I never merely accepted my mediocrity. I owned it. If I was doomed to be Salieri rather than Mozart, I would at least make most of it and be the best average person anyone had ever met.  My name would never make it far beyond my lifetime, but while I was here I wanted to give to world all that I could. So, I spent a good deal of my free time volunteering. One of the most interesting opportunities I had was my work in a soup kitchen. I generally served on the same days, so I came to know some of the people who frequented the place. Most of them were kind but almost all were lonely, so I often stayed after my shift ended just talking with people. There was one man in particular who caught my attention.
He probably wasn’t older than fifty, but his face looked aged, through sun damage and stress. He always wore the same large coat, even when it was far too hot for it, and he never talked to anyone. On the first day I saw him, he examined me with a sort of profound curiosity, like he’d encountered something he’d never seen before. He stared at me for a good five seconds before moving down the line to receive a soggy scoop of green beans. At first I wondered if I’d forgotten to put on deodorant, but I soon forgot about the incident.
That was, until I started to see him everywhere. At first, I thought it was just a coincidence. I saw him walking past the café I worked at, then past my apartment, even when I wasn’t in town he always seemed to be lurking around. I saw him at my other volunteer jobs; he came into the animal shelter when I was taking care of the dogs, sat beside me on park benches. He never hurt me, or even talked to me, but I still felt wary of him. I tried to talk to him, but every time he’d either ignore me or walk away.
I changed my shifts at the soup kitchen to get away from him, and it granted me a day without seeing him but he wordlessly showed up again. I considered screaming at him, demanding to know why he’d been following me, but I knew I’d be written off as delusional, and anyways I doubted he’d cave and tell me. So, I ignored him. He didn’t seem to have any malicious intentions; I figured the best thing was to not get myself worked up over it and just move on.
Life went on and after a few months I hardly noticed him. One night he sat beside me on the park bench while I waited for the bus. I scooted my bag closer to me, not looking at him. Even when I didn’t see him, I could still tell he was there; he had a strange presence about him that changed the ambience of wherever he frequented. I’m not sure what came over me, but I decided to try one more time. “I don’t know who you are, but why are you following me?” It wasn’t anything new, I’d tried the same line before, but to my surprise this time he turned and looked at me. He opened his mouth and I expected an answer, but all that came out was a disembodied scream that suddenly made me feel light headed and sick to my stomach.
I passed out, apparently, and when I woke up I was in a bright room. It looked somewhat familiar but I couldn’t place where I’d seen it before. Nothing about it was human, and I felt that I couldn’t fully absorb the features of the room before my eyes started burning. I tried to get up, but I felt like all of my limbs were made of lead. I stared up at the ceiling, which seemed infinitely far away, my eyes pained by the bright light that seemed to have no source. It felt like hours passed, and I felt an eerie sense of calm. Even though I didn’t know where I was I felt numb to emotion. “Is this what death feels like?” I asked myself, my voice seeming to echo around in my head.

Eventually, I heard something; it alternated from being deafeningly loud to being so quiet that I couldn’t hear it. At first I thought it was footsteps, but the pattern was too irregular. Then I saw him. It wasn’t the way he’d been in the past, his face was completely changed, and it lacked any symmetry or defining human features. It was like watching static, but I could still tell who it was. We didn’t talk but I understood. It was the ultimate act of selflessness that I had to do, to give up my body. I didn’t really understand, but I had no doubts about the truth of what it told me. I  could be used to fix the decaying universe. I was elated, even though I doubted I would be remembered, all I had ever wanted was to make a positive change somewhere, and I could finally do it. I didn’t feel a thing, it was as if my consciousness had floated out of my body and I had become some sort of of an abstraction, my soul stitched into the universe.