Orion:
“-so as we can see here, the compressive resistance of this steel when manufactured into this mesh can withstand this amount of pressure-” my professor gestured to a hard to read number on the blackboard. Does that say 1600 or 1800? I thought as I squinted. I can’t see. After a few more moments of straining my eyes, I confirmed it was 1600 and resumed listening to the lecture barely managing to take notes and understand parts of the content.
“-before permanent deformation. If it were to be replaced with a thicker mesh, or some thicker internal support structure, that number could be driven much higher, but this kind of mesh provides an excellent ratio for cost and weight to strength, due to the way-”
I felt my attention slipping away from the lecture at hand, even though I knew better than to let it happen. It was too hard to keep up and I knew I’d need to go back over my notes from previous classes anyways because I was only getting parts of what he was saying. The lesson was just flying through my cranial cavity, whispering, “something something, material strength, something something.” This is so much worse than I’d feared. Being forced to do math in order to build things.
Growing up, I’d always been an engineer type, building and fixing devices here and there. It got me a bit of extra spending money and was the passion that pushed me pursue a career in mechanical engineering. However, the kind of ‘engineering’ I did before was more about ingenuity than anything else. Figuring out where something was broken and putting it back together better than it was originally was far easier and more fun.
Those skills were good enough to get me here on a partial scholarship, letting me come out here to the east coast, but the work was pushing far beyond my introductory skills. Despite that, I still loved engineering and was grateful I could pursue it here in college even though I didn’t enjoy every class.
Especially when I had a headache like this. Ow. It was a bad one, it felt like something was drilling holes in my retina. Rubbing my eyes hard I tried to pay attention but couldn’t focus on the boring lecture through the growing pain. I sunk lower into my seat, hanging my head back for a moment before just giving up. Whatever. I’ll just have to ask someone for their notes later. I’m going back to my dorm. I gave a tired groan as a quietly got my things together, shutting my laptop with a gentle click before sliding it into my bag and shouldering it. While this was a higher-level class, several of the engineering majors needed to take it so the class size was large enough that as long as I was quiet no one would notice or care if I left early.
I walked out of the lecture hall quickly, trying to get back to my dorm so I could grab some ibuprofen or something to dull the pain. It was a seven- or eight-minute walk back to normal, and despite my quick pace eating up the distance I only made it about halfway before I was forced to halt. I don’t normally get migraines like this, ughh. I squeezed my eyes shut and massaged them with the palms of my hands, but the pain kept ramping up and I eventually just gave up and stumbled over to an empty bench to rest. I sat there for a moment, groaning softly, and continued to struggle with the discomfort. This fucking sucks. Worst headache I’ve had.
“Headache?” I felt a tap on my shoulder, and turned and opened an eye to see a woman standing beside me.
“Yeah.” I replied, “Had to leave a lecture early ‘cause I couldn’t focus.”
She gave a small hum of sympathy before extending her hand, proffering a small bottle of advil. “Here, take some. I don’t have anything to drink though.”
I nodded and half-smiled, wincing as I did it. “Thanks, I appreciate it.” I grabbed the pills out of the bottle and popped them in my mouth before tossing it back to her.
She caught it easily and shrugged. “It’s no problem. I also had to leave my class early to grab some for myself, but my headache cleared quickly.”
“Lucky you.”
“I suppose I am,” she extended a hand, “My name is Maria Caldwell. What’s yours?”
I cracked an eye open again, actually looking at her, but ignored the hand. She was tall-ish? A bit taller than me, standing at probably five foot nine. She had long dark brown hair and was almost certainly rich as well, rocking a black button-up shirt in some soft flowy fabric, a dark green dress, and some branded bag I didn’t recognize. She stood with the casual formality and rigidity that felt vaguely military, but her relaxed demeanor signaled this was probably someone used to being respected and listened to. I’m not shaking her hand. Why is she even talking to me? Can’t she tell I’m in pain here? “I’m Orion. Uh- Maxwell. I’m Orion Maxwell.” I sucked in a short breath, wincing, “Look, I really appreciate the headache meds, but I don’t think I’m in the best headspace to be great conversation at the moment, so unless you need something right now, I’d love if you could leave me be.”
She paused, considering for an instant before nodding. “I can wait. The thing I need you for can only happen once your headache has cleared up.”
Really? “Okay, sure. Whatever. Just give me a minute. Sit down or something too.” With my eyes closed, I heard her sit down, and we waited for my headache to go away. This is really weird. Why is she here bothering me? This- you know what? “Actually, why don’t you just tell me what you need now and save us some trouble?”
“I would if I could. I sincerely need to talk to you about certain things that will truly only make sense once your headache is gone.”
I opened my eyes at her just enough to level a frustrated glare. “Are you kidding me right now? You pranking me? Is there a camera nearby? Look, just go, please. I can’t deal with this right now.”
“I’m not messing with you, but I understand how you could come to that conclusion. Please, take this.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a business card. “When your mind clears, I think you’ll understand why I’m reaching out, and when you decide to do so you can contact me with the information on the card. I’m looking forward to working with you in the near future.”
I grabbed the business card out of her hand, looking at it. It was made of some glossy black material, with a professional-looking image of her in a suit next to her contact information, with a stylized typographic logo covering the entire right half.
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Is that real gold leaf on that thing? Wait… she’s a Caldwell? Fuck off. What could someone that rich want from me? I’ll just play along so they leave me alone. “Uhhh- Okay. Sounds good?”
“Wonderful, I look forward to hearing from you soon.” With that parting remark, she turned calmly and walked away.
Huh. I sat confused as my head continued to throb. This situation was outside of my wheelhouse entirely. A random encounter with an ‘heiress,’ who gives me a gold-embossed business card, asking me to call her once my headache goes away sounds more like a vivid hallucination then something that could actually happen. To hell with it. I’m gonna go sleep this off. This’ll all make sense when I wake up again. I began the walk back to my dorm in ever increasing amounts of pain. It was nearly unbearable, like I was touching a red-hot stove with the backs of my eyeballs and the pain only seemed to radiate out from there. When I finally stumbled into my empty dorm, I collapsed onto my bed with my shoes still on.
I let my limbs flop bonelessly down around me, reveling in the ever so slight reprieve of the familiar softness. After a few moments of sitting there, eyes closed, I rolled over and pressed them hard into the mattress beneath. I sat like that for several minutes as the pain got steadily worse, until it was wringing genuine whimpers out of me. I continued groaning into the sheets as the pressure crested some agonizing peak before abruptly vanishing.
I paused my writhing, confused. It ended just like that? Rolling over onto my back and sitting up, I opened my eyes again, only for my confusion to grow further. All around the room I saw lights. Lights like little fairies or fireflies flitted and flickered freely throughout the room, casting none of their ethereal technicolor glow onto nearby surfaces. Ocean blues, vibrant greens, brooding violets, neon yellows, and a dozen other hues filled the space, but what drew my attention more than anything else was the way their paths sometimes took them on impossible courses, including through solid objects. “Am I seeing things?” I whispered aloud, before mentally answering my own question. Yes, obviously I’ve just suffered something painful, and am hallucinating. It’s the only rational conclusion.
I glanced down, reaching into my pockets to call an ambulance only to freeze once again at the sight of my arms. They were covered in that same unnatural but faint glow that I saw around the room. The color surrounding me was a blend of a deep sunset red and the glaring yellow of molten metal. As I watched, a mote of light in that beautiful shade peeled off my right arm and began to float through the air.
I absentmindedly swiped my arm through it, trying to catch it. It sank partway into my arm, before bouncing away from across the room. Driven by some unknown instinct I followed it, reaching out to pull it back into myself. I grabbed hold of it and squeezed, trying to keep hold of it, but it slipped out from between my fingers and through the wall, leaving me behind. With that failure, I turned to the other motes of light and tried to grab onto them. As I looked around, I noticed that there were definitely far more motes in my color, and a blue that I could only describe as a deep violet mixed with the glassy sea blue of a still Mediterranean. That color reminds me of Ellis, actually. I sped up, trying harder to grab at some of the other colors but they all refused to merge, melding partially with my colored aura before slipping away. I felt my awareness of the surroundings fade as I focused, willing the motes to stay put but the lights continued dancing around, mocking me.
With a growl, I stood up before freezing. What am I doing? Have I been drugged or something? I have more control than normally. I sat back down on my bed to think for a moment, going over the places I’d been, trying to figure out when my symptoms started, or when I could’ve been exposed to something dangerous or hallucinogenic. I’d been moving between classes all morning, and if there was something in any of them it’d have to be aerosolized which I’m sure someone else would’ve noticed. No, the only memorable thing was this headache and-why did the Caldwell girl approach me when she noticed I had one? She even said we’d have to talk after it cleared, and that she had one earlier. Does she know something about what’s going on?
I dug my hands back into my pockets, and pulled out the same card she gave me earlier. Now that my head was clearer, I took a good look at the card. It was made from glossy black material that looked weirdly like Kevlar fabric and was far heftier than it had any right to be. It weighed easily as much as a half-dozen credit cards stacked on top of each other. I moved to dial the number on the card but stopped before calling it.
I know literally nothing about this person. For all I know this could be some kind of convoluted drug-test frame-job. Unlikely, but this whole situation is unlikely. Stop. Think. I need to see what I can learn. I guess I should see if there’s anything about her online then. I walked back over to my bag that I had dropped just a few minutes before and pulled out my laptop, flipping it open and opening my browser. I entered ‘Maria Caldwell’ into the search bar but nothing of value popped up. The only things that appeared were a couple general awards she’d won for her academic achievements, and the fact that she was the daughter of John Caldwell, a billionaire who made their fortune in large scale international shipping and precision manufacturing. But that was literally all there was. There was no social media accounts, privated or otherwise, no pictures, articles, scandals, nothing.
I sat back with a sigh. There wasn’t much I could find about her, but that was probably intentional. If I was a rich and famous parent I’d try to keep my kids out of the spotlight too, and it seemed that the Caldwells valued their privacy enough to keep private information private. Which means I’m going into this knowing basically nothing about her. I mean, I know she’s rich, smart, and could somehow tell that something was happening with me when she walked by me. Could she see this glowing stuff too? Or was she just looking for people with symptoms of a headache? I looked down at my hands, and their comforting aura. Did something about my glow give me away? I think I need to figure out what’s going on, and the only lead I have is this girl’s phone number. “Seems I don’t have much of a choice,” I muttered aloud.
I pulled out my phone once again and dialed. It only rang twice before it was picked up. “Hello, this is Maria speaking. Who is this?”
“It’s Orion. The guy with the headache from earlier?”
“Ah, perfect. Would I be right to assume you’ve been seeing things??”
After a moment’s consideration, I responded, “Yes, I have been. And since you seem to know something about what’s going on, I figured my best chance of learning was talkin’ with you.”
“That’s completely understandable. Unfortunately, at the moment I only know a bit more about what’s happening than you do. I’ll tell you what is currently known freely, provided you agree to share any discoveries you make in turn. People everywhere are scrambling to figure out what’s going on, especially if the implications are as grand as they could be.”
“…Okay?” I said slowly, confused. I wasn’t exactly prepared for a jump into an information trade offer like that, especially because I still wasn’t convinced I wasn’t just loopy. “I think I can agree to that?”
“Perfect, one moment please.” she said as I heard the faint sound of a keyboard through the phone. “I’d prefer to converse face to face, as it will almost certainly be easier for our next steps. Do you have a preference as to where we meet?”
It took me a moment to process the fact she asked me a question. She spoke quickly, and I was still distracted by her offer and my situation. She had a cadence that spoke of intelligence and confidence but the quick speed of a debater trying to finish giving a whole speech that was just a bit too long but just couldn’t be shortened. “No, I don’t think so. Somewhere on campus would probably be easiest though, as I don’t have a car or anything.”
“That’s fine. Would meeting in the Commons work for you?”
“Sure, that’d work. Wanna meet there in 15?”
“That sounds fine. I’ll see you there soon,” and she hung up immediately. She really doesn’t like to waste time. With a final shrug, I slipped my phone back into my pocket, before leaving the dorm to back over to the Commons.