The story ends with: "The drop was so precipitous that I saw in just a few short seconds I would go abruptly vertical, vanishing briskly down a long dark well.

The story ends with: "The drop was so precipitous that I saw in just a few short seconds I would go abruptly vertical, vanishing briskly down a long dark well. It was the point of no return, a water park in 2019. And for reasons I struggled to explain, I desperately missed my family. Look how far the fathoms have taken us. Look how far we’ve strayed." Sounds like a roundabout way of saying he chickened out of riding the biggest slide in the park after seeing the drop. But I have no idea what those last 2 sentences mean.