Bobby woke up and became aware of his surroundings. The sun shone through the window of his room, walls decorated by tiny colorful painted dinosaurs, an old brown plush bear with only one eye and the name 'Muffler' next to him, a shelf with all of his books and the sounds of a breakfast from the kitchen. It smelled like coffee and freshly made buns.
Sundays like these were a rarity and thus best savored and turned into beautiful childhood memories. He was still laying in his warm soft bed, fully awake and well rested.
He felt great, better than ever before, but he also remembered a pain beyond what he had believed would be possible to feel. The pain alone was the rock bottom of his life, nothing could possibly be worse than this pain. He felt that death itself would have been a good outcome before feeling that pain. The circumstances under which the pain had happened were blurry and unknown.
Why and how this pain came were mysteries to be uncovered, that much was certain.
Not only that, he also became aware of a completely new sense within him. Like an invisible pair of eyes watching his very being, barely perceptible, but unmistakenly there. Focusing on these eyes, they became more alive, staring back from within his mind. There seemed to be an intelligence behind those eyes, watching him. Under normal circumstances this would creep out Bobby, but he found himself more brave and tougher than ever before. He felt like he would meet any hardship in life with ease after the pain he had been through - the pain that had lasted for what felt like several years. So he met these observing eyes with curiousity and unnatural openness. The eyes were mirroring his attention to them, the intelligence behind the eyes could not speak, there was no mouth, only eyes. Bobby tried to communicate with his thoughts, focusing as strongly as possible on the eyes and thinking 'Hello' at the same time.
What then happened, surprised Bobby immensely. His vision started to swim, colors that had taste and texture appeared, mysterious images moved his body that had started spasming against the soft sounding bed in a multichromatic sound coming from within limbs that he did not possess. Up and down changed into a confusing dizzying blur of memory reminding him of the texture of a wooden table for reasons that his overwhelmed mind could not comprehend, weeks of time compressed into seconds felt like blades stabbing a soul made of remarkably resilient rubber. Random memories came and went, it was a chaos without any sense of order. In a climax of disorientation, everything split into tiny glowing parts on a dark sky, connected by impossibly thin lines made from conceptual connection.
Then normality gradually settled in, colors arranged themselves neatly into a color wheel, letters into words, shapes into things, words towards things, named things towards each other into situations, situations towards feelings, colors towards situations, situations collected together into memories, memories slotted neatly into a timeline, gaps filled out by extrapolations, Bobby became aware of his normal surroundings again. A dumb grin was plastered all over his face as a sense of accomplishment filled his being additionally to the peacefulness of the morning. His entire being still vibrated like an extraordinary wine glass that had been toughened up so much that it did not break from the consequtive hits of a sledgehammer wielded by a bodybuilder.
The initial high, light tone turned deep and heavy, the eyes within his mind were looking at each other, and he could tell as the eyes were his eyes. He had finally realized the eyes to be the relays of the self. Of course Bobby did not know what a relay was, but he understood the concept now. This was revealing that the words of Robert had been a lie, the neural implants were NOT like friends, he continued to be alone in his head, percieving his self as if through two mirrors that mirrored each other in an infinity of selves creating the illusion of multiplicy when there was only one mind viewing itself from an unusual angle.
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So at most Bobby got a strange metapsychological mirror/relay, ultimate lifelasting trauma and high due to biochemical changes in his brain for his twelfth birthday. Was that really all that this new technology had to offer? Quite disappointing if true, a book would have been cheaper, less traumatic and not warping the mind in unnatural ways at all unless Bobby did miss a feature. Searching for the feature might include experiencing nightmarish distortion of perceived reality, thus Bobby decided that was enough trauma for today (even if it was nothing compared to yesterdays trauma, mental wounds that would never heal).
Bobby got dressed, ate without talking to his parents and started drawing a picture with lots of black, grey and a bit of red. A sad amorphous face with red spiral eyes signifying the mind warping pain.
[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/929341392981987389/929342377993314354/unknown.png]
That was him yesterday and it was a pretty good picture. Bobby showed the picture to his mama Laggad and she felt pain in her heart. Bobby nodded wordlessly at her expression and went to his room to tape the picture at the wall. The rest of the day was spent looking at the picture, pondering the mind and pain recently felt. There was no anger yet within, only the shock, disbelief and alienation that the change had wrought. The eyes from within watched, he did not feel alone. It was a new, stronger, more mature, less naive and digitally connected Bobby, he would have to deal with a new life as it could not go on like before, the future was now. Deep within his psyche a new Bobby formed, unbound by past trauma.
This would be the future Bobby, whilst the old Bobby would remain suppressed. It was late evening and Bobby put the picture into the trash so it may never find him again.
At night Bobby dreamt of two eyes that watched his eyes. The eyes came closer and closer until they touched Bobbys eyes. The eyes felt soft and wet, red tears dropped down into his face and Bobby found himself licking the tears off his face.
The tears tasted like coffee and honey, like the sound of metal knifes on buns, like a special sunday morning meant to make beautiful memories out of.
Bobby lived through that sunday several years in that night. He had dealt with his trauma, future teenage insecuries, job search, unemployment, employment, mean coworkers, evil bosses, supportive wife, divorce, death of his parents and major civil unrest in record time of minus 28 years. The downsides were that he now was in midst of the beginnings of his midlife crisis, only to wake up in the body of a twelve year old child as a mentally 40 year old man - it was time to get ready for school. At breakfast he told his parents all about it, but they didn't believe him and got worried that he had been replaced by a 40 year old hacker utilizing this new technology to invade the bodies of young children. Bobby denied all of the allegations, forgave his parents as he had missed them during the dream when they died, and left off to go to school. This left Bill and Laggad in a crisis so they just ignored the problem and went to work, procrastinating on the problem.
On the other hand the beginning of Bobbys midlife crisis had been fully resolved - what a relief. "Ok that was a pretty impressive feature.", Bobby admitted to himself.
If he had dreams like this every night, he would mentally reach an unprecedented age for a human. For 75 bucks that was truly a bargain, the MicroSon already had paid off in that way.
If one thinks of all those living expenses one had to pay in 28 years, the efficiency of the investion really was incredible. He would congratulate that scientist later and then noticed his implants had run out of energy on the way to school. Oh well, how bad could that be?
He would just charge them after (legally obligatory) school and it would be no problem whatsoever.