almost jumped, and then froze. Beatrice shrieked and ran out of the dining room, straight into the living room. Pleased with myself, I strolled into the living room with Robert close behind.
“Surprise!” My friends popped out from their couch. “Happy Birthday!”
Oh, right. Didn’t I mention? That day had been my fifteenth birthday.
Beatrice walked up to me, laughing, “You gave us a heart attack! How did you get in so quietly?” I just shrugged, then turned to Robert.
“Don’t worry, your shout was nice and manly.”
“I’m sure it was,” he grumbled.
My friends, Sam, Blake, Tony, James, and Cory were laughing so hard that James and Sam were actually crying. They had heard my adopted parents’ shouts and found it utterly hilarious. I reminded them that if I had chosen to pop up next to them instead, they’d have done the same thing. They dismissed the thought and wished me a happy birthday, handing me presents.
It was a good party. Beatrice and Robert had moved around the furniture in the living room in a fashion so that my friends and I could set up our computers and laptops. For my birthday, they had bought me a paintball gun and reserved a day at a local paintball place, so after everyone had set up their laptops, Robert gave us a lift.
It was awesome! To be fair, I think I had an unfair advantage, because I had my own store bought paintball gun, but everyone had fun regardless. We started with over 4,000 paintballs, but they run out faster than you would think they would. But still, by the time we ran out and got picked up by Robert, it was already six-thirty. At home, instead of eating the stereotypical pizza, we had homemade tacos courtesy of Beatrice. At seven, we started playing on our computers.
On August 8th, 2015, at precisely 7:43, exactly fifteen years after my birth, my life turned upside down.
Lucas’s digital journal 8/14/15
So, the airplane ride kinda sucked.
The projected flight was about twenty-four hours, and the ride was good for… oh, half an hour? I had just started settling into the provided inflight movies when my brain exploded.
Well, not really. But it hurt a lot, okay? >.<
It was a searing pain, but it was definitely coming from the inside of my head. Which sucked. You know how if you’re hurt on the outside, by reflex, your hand will go up to wherever you’ve been wounded? If nothing else, that contact will provide mental comfort. But the problem with interior pain is that even putting your hands to about where it hurts doesn’t provide even the tiniest comfort, even mentally.
My dad was sitting beside me, holding me, asking me what was wrong. I can’t remember much except that my vision tunneled, and the last thing I saw was a plane attendant picking me up.
Unidentified
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[ - - Collecting DNA sample - - ]
[ - - Processing - - ]
[ - - Processing - - ]
[ - - Sample sequenced - - ]
[ - - Species identified: Number 14 - - ]
[ - - Capabilities analyzed, rerouting cerebral energy - - ]
[ - - Directing destruction and replacement of cells - - ]
[ - - Processing - - ]
[ - - Processing - - ]
[ - - Processing - - ]
[ - - Processing - - ]
[ - - Processing - - ]
[ - - Processing - - ]
[ - - Runtime Error detected - - ]
[ - - shutting down - - ]
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Hunter
Do you ever get a feeling of detachment from the world, even for just a second? It feels like you’re watching a movie which has been cleverly angled to portray a first person view. All sound is muffled, and your vision begins to lose its focus. Then, suddenly, everything comes back into view, and you feel more alive than ever before.
Now, imagine that, except instead of sound being muffled and your vision losing its focus, you actually stop hearing and stop seeing. Not only that, you lose all of your senses, including smell and touch. Then, in a flood of information, your brain processes all sounds, and all sights.
If you can imagine that, then you’ll get a pretty accurate idea of what happened to me. Blake had just pulled off an insane play, and we all cheered because it had won us the game. In the midst of our celebration, I suddenly couldn’t see or hear anything. Panic seized my heart, and I shouted out. I’d lost my sense of direction, and had started falling to the floor. But then, like a computer booting up, my senses came back to me one-by-one, in the space of milliseconds. But each sense was a such a novelty to me that it felt as though the pause between each recovery spanned hours.
First, I realized I was falling. Unfortunately, without sight or hearing, I could not do anything about it. I felt hopeless, knowing that I was falling yet unable to see, let alone do anything about it. Sight came to me next. Although my eyes had been open the entire time, I could finally see again. Yet, there was something different about what I saw. Everything was sharp. I could focus in on individual things. I had never needed glasses, but I felt like I’d just put on some miracle lenses. My eyes darted all around my visual scope, taking in everything. I could see Blake and James in the middle of throwing down their headsets, looking urgent. No one else had even noticed yet. There was something graceful about seeing this situation, however horrifying, in such clarity.
