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<05/02/2012 - ??:?? | Location Unknown>

From the very moment I asked Lumina to be by my side forever, I knew there would always be a price to pay for our covenant. So long as I reside on Earth, the tradeoff of knowing her is steep, and as long as I remain in Georgia, the separation which fractures our hearts and cripples our states of mind becomes absolute. Once the end of May rolls around, our second summer will start; our inclement torture will begin. I've always wondered how much worse the second summer would be, but I've also had some hope that I could armor myself with the friends I'd make along the way.

What a fool I was! People like me don't ever succeed in making friends. People with secrets as grand as mine aren't allowed to demo the social aspects of life I've long yearned for. Those are the rules set in motion by nature, the nature of humans. Countless times have I tried to merge interest with others, to mingle with those I felt worthy of learning everything, or to buy the attention and interest of any I silently cried out to!

If I wanted to build a bridge of straws between myself and someone else, despite all my struggles, I was more than capable, proving the possibility time and time again. If I desired a bond stronger than straws, a connection deeper than shallow words or emotional facades, I would require myself to impart all I knew about our worlds in the process. Every time I try, fate launches me back out of the civilized world, floating adrift in a pointless, lifeless void.

At some point, I must have believed that I would prevail in perseverance regardless of my historical luck, that at least one human in this world would understand, or even desire to understand how I live in two worlds at once. I wanted to believe that I would one day be accepted as I am, for what I already know, for all that I try to do. Knowing I've wasted my efforts, my head held low in shame, my soul out of fire, out of breath to sing again.

In the final days of spring, heading home in the final moments of middle school, I dragged my feet beyond the isle of the bus, knowing this would be the last time I get off. This would be the last time I get to see anybody I knew, anybody I tried to care for. This would be the last time I would have the chance of any intelligent conversation, before being left all alone in a scorching, burning planetary oven.

I tried thinking back on all of my middle school experiences, to find the point where I screwed up, to identify the mistakes that I made leading me to such isolation. I could find nothing to return. Through no fault of my own, all of my experiences between everybody else were only as important as random white noise. What was the point of school? What was the point of all those encounters I had with so many people my age, when it led to loneliness in the end?

As I jumped from the final ramp of the bus's door, I embraced this sickening entropy, swallowing my world in a deep darkness. I should have known before that I could never make friends with other humans with the knowledge that I had. With nothing left to look forward to, with nothing left to occupy my mind, I would spend the whole long summer hanging out with no one, speaking to nobody, interacting only with myself as if stranded on a deserted island. The summer winds have carried away the possibility of spending any further time with Lumina; they shall only return in the winter, and I shall emerge, broken, damaged, and injured in horrifying ways I dared not imagine.

If anyone out there can feel the tears of my heart crying out, please help me!

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<03/28/2012 - 06:43 | 1010 Link Street, Marietta, GA, USA>

Without warning, I inhaled so strongly to awaken to a world so familiar yet mysterious; this world, this planet, this personal space of mine. I knew immediately upon waking that I was having some kind of dream, and I effortlessly remembered every single detail of each moment...

Unlike all other dreams however, I felt a terrifying sense of urgency and realism behind the curtain. The dream took place a few months from now, forwarded all the way into the initial summer I would be suffering through later. What I saw seemed to be set in stone; what I felt was a strong declaration which I had no power over, the truth of my life, the truth of my future played out before me like a short movie.

It was as if I were still on that bus, my heart slowly breaking to the pressure of social failure brought down on me from the storm I navigate every day. Why does that moment feel so strong right now, when it isn't destined until much later on? This dream is not a dream; I'm confident of this, yet without reason or explanation. Does this mean my impossible guesses were right all along? Am I really going to wind up sad and alone for the upcoming summer?

I'd rather not think about it right now. Better to just forget about it and go to school.

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<03/28/2012 - 10:34 | Saffrin Middle School (Gym), Austell, GA, USA>

Though everything seemed normal and usual today, nothing I could try managed to erase what I saw from my thoughts. The more I pushed away the idea, the more fuel I gave to its fruition. It didn't take long for Lumina to notice the change in my ordinary attitude while I passively walked around the gym.

"You sure you don't want to talk about it?"

"Talk about what?" I had to play innocent this time. If Lumina catches a glimpse of the ideas in my head, she'll never shut up about them.

"I can tell there's something on your mind. You're too distracted from me to hide it. You can talk to me about anything Reed."

"I wish that were true with everybody else too. If only I could talk to some other human about everything, maybe I won't be so lonely when the next summer hits us."

"Oh..."

Yeah, I knew she wouldn't want to talk about the summer. It will be a long moment of telepathic silence that neither of us can do anything about, a forced separation, temporary yet devastating. "I just can't seem to get my head around this stuff today. If I don't manage to make any new friend before the summer arrives, I don't even want to think about how horrible I'm going to feel then."

"You want to try again with Banarus?"

"Nah, screw that moron. I already know nothing will come of it."

"How can you know if you don't try?"

Cornered at last, the true topic of today floated to the surface once more. I actually do want to talk to Lumina about what I've been noticing, but only for the reason of putting an end to the chaos. "Trust me Lumina; I just know... I have to ask you something."

"... Okay. Go ahead."

The Altiri must know something about this phenomena. After all this time, I thought I put the lid on a clairvoyant ability trying to run out of control. Too much has been happening lately to convince me that these three instances have been a coincidence. "Is it possible for humans to see into the future before events actually unfold?"

My question held Lumina silent for far longer than what made either of us uncomfortable. I grew more nervous when she took as long as she did to think about it only to herself, and I'm sure she began feeling anxious about the reason I had to ask. "You've already done it before with clairvoyance. Using future–sight clairvoyance, you can see up to 18 hours into the future, potentially changing events to come if you cared to. But not just anybody can do it either."

"Eighteen hours? Why only that long?"

"Well, we're not so sure about the specifics of that rule. The only real reference of information our Scryers have on this is you."

"Oh..." That's right. I forgot that nobody else managed to even touch clairvoyance. Still, that eighteen hour rule can't be real, since I'm starting to see much further ahead than that.

"Wh— What do you mean?"

Oops! I must not have hidden my own thoughts well enough... Great, now the cat really is out of the bag. Lumina won't leave me alone with the subject anymore until I spill all the beans. "Fine, I'll tell you. I think I'm starting to have more visions of the future, but it's not like it was before. They play out in my dreams, and they forward through time a lot further, most of the time anyway."

"Are you serious?! You're having psychic visions in your sleep?"

"Spare me the dramatic effect Lumina. I'm still not entirely sure if they are, but I'm getting a bit freaked out by some of the details."

"Wait a second. That can't be true Reed. I mean, for everything we don't know, our Scryers are absolutely certain that it's physically impossible to project significant amounts of psionic waves during sleep. It's the reason we can't stay connected when you have to rest, or why people can't use powers while unconscious."

"Are you sure?"

"Hm... I have to be. After all, it was one of the discoveries that Herios made back when psionic theory was still so young. It doesn't matter if you're purged or special; psionic waves cannot be projected beyond passive levels during sleep. That's a scientifically proven fact."

I sighed, calming my entire body down where it stood. "You have no idea how relieved I am to hear that."

"Yes. Any clair-abilities would be rendered useless during a person's sleep cycle. Premonitions on the other hand are not my specialty."

"Premonitions?" I thought the two were the same thing.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"Yeah. Some people believe it might be possible for someone to see into the future by means of their own dream state, pertaining mostly to humans of course."

"But, you just told me that wasn't possible. I don't understand."

"Clairvoyance and premonitions are two different abilities by definition. Clairvoyance is a well-known proven ability. Premonitions are up for debate since they can be hard to prove, yet alone find presenting in anybody."

"So then, I really could be having visions of the future?"

"I don't know. If premonitions really do exist, they don't rely on psionic energy transmissions to function. It would be an entirely different process, one that we are unaware of. There's a lot of crossover mystery between this subject and Astral Projection."

I wasn't sure if Lumina was curiously running down random possibilities she wanted to believe in, or simply yanking my chain, and I certainly had no idea what she meant by astral projection. I first needed to understand what a premonition was by her definition. "Okay then. What exactly is a premonition, other than seeing into the future in sleep?"

"It has many similarities, but it's not all the same. It's thought that premonitions could show the future of any place in the entire universe at any particular time frame. In this instance, the 18 hour constraint is removed. Of course, the future shown should still have something to do with the ability user, but then this is all still theoretical."

"Has any Altiri Scryer ever confirmed the existence of the premonition ability?"

"No, they haven't." Lumina sounded pretty sure on that one, leading me to believe I was simply losing my mind. "The problem with searching for some of this data has to do with the fact that we cannot read the minds of humans who we have not directly purged. Even then, nobody can see inside the dreams of another person. So if a self-proclaimed premonitionist wanted merit to his or her ability, they would have to predict something happening before it actually does, and it would have to be impossibly significant with external factors removed."

I folded my arms in dismay, trying to stay quiet so that I could drop the subject entirely. All the thoughts I had about the entire conception of the timeline were being scattered apart and thrown around like a puzzle in the wind. All this time, I thought that God set it so that time was intransitive, that nothing or anything in the universe could ever change the events that would be. If the past could somehow be altered or warped, then existence itself could be a lie for any person affected by the change. Of those who could see all of time and space, all of what would be and yet to come, what happens if the future changes? Who dies from altered existence in the process? Who benefits and suffers from those changes? What would God have to say about a person who could rewrite the very foundation of events put forth by the creator?

"Are you having such dreams?"

"I can't be sure." Of this much, I wasn't lying. I didn't want to enable Lumina any further, but since I can't get this stuff off my mind, I have no choice but to bounce the ideas off of her. "I've only had three of them so far, and I still question how accurate they really were."

"Tell me about them."

She sure doesn't waste any time. "Okay... The very first one played out recently. I had this weird dream. In it, I went to the outlet mall with my family, as well as someone from this very same school."

"Really? Who?"

"Veronica," I answered. Saying it again only made the moment feel much more impossible. I'm so close to having nobody as a friend, yet I came close to hanging out with someone at a place I've always wanted to head back to. "We took Veronica to the mall with us, and spent the whole day together having fun. I was planning on going to the outlet mall for a while now."

"And did that actually happen outside the dream?"

"No. No, everything was different. You see, I saw the calendar date of the day it was supposed to happen in the dream, so I marked the same calendar date in real life after I realized it. Since it was almost a month away, I kind of forgot about it during that month. The thing is, in order to make that moment come true, I was going to have to ask Veronica to head out to the mall with me, and continue begging my parents to go too."

"Okay. So then it could have just been a dream."

"I never did have the guts to ask Veronica in person. I don't know why my dream made it out that way, but I just didn't. I was too awkward to even try, plus some elements of it bothered me, because I didn't want Veronica to think I was trying to ask her out on a date. Anyway, the point is, I never asked her to come with us. By the time I forgot all about it, that day came anyway. My parents, mom and Peterson, drove off to go to the outlet mall, together, leaving me completely behind like I was being punished. Not only did Veronica not go, but I was left out as well. When that happened, I bumped into that wall calendar I mentioned, and the very same day was the one I circled nearly a month before."

"Amazing! You mean you actually predicted the day they were supposed to go to the outlet mall a month in advance? Did they tell you when they planned to go?"

"No. They kept seesawing on whether they would go at all. Besides, I wanted to go too, so I wasn't happy about the whole thing."

"I'm sorry. But hey, maybe it was just a coincidence. It would be easier with that much time in advance to accidentally change the future if it were a premonition, but I don't think this proves you saw the future either."

"Yeah, well there's also exhibit B."

"Huh?"

"I'm talking about that moment where I almost told Malica Ridge about us. Remember? You were there in the gym that day with me."

"Yeah, what about it?"

"On the very same morning of that day, I had a dream of the same moment, of telling Malica about us. At first, all I thought was that my mind wanted to simulate how that might go, but something about the entire situation was too strange for me."

"Which was?"

"Malica Ridge doesn't have gym class with me. Yeah, she sneaks in from time to time, but it's actually rare when she does it at all. I had no prior knowledge that she would poke her nose into my class that day, but she did, and before she did, I had a dream outlining exactly the same detail."

"Hm..."

She doesn't sound too sure either, but I'd rather this all be coincidence myself. "My dream also predicted a UAD attack on the same day, and sure enough, I was at least at risk of one by the time I was into gym class. Ridge never took it well when I told her in the dream, so I wasn't willing to try it again in real life. And since I had prior hint and warning of a UAD flare up, I made sure I had extra to do later that day."

"It could still be random though."

"I would like to agree with you, but then I have to address the one I had this morning."

"Hold on a second. If the only way these moments present to you are in dreams, how can you tell the difference that it might be a premonition?"

"I was getting to that. I don't understand how or why, but every time I wake up with one, there's this lingering, powerful certainty that what I dreamt was going to happen. It's like my mind somehow knows I saw into the future and is sure of it, even without the proof. I can't explain why."

"What happens in the third premonition?"

"It looks like it takes place a few months from now, at the very end of my school going into the second summer... I've never seen myself look so sad and depressed before. I knew the culprit was my total lack of social life. By the end of school, I'll have no friends. And because you won't be reachable, I'll be devastated."

"That sounds like it would be likely even without a future glimpse, but let's say we try to change it anyway? I don't want you to be alone this summer. You deserve to have at least one friend."

"The words I tell myself all the time, yet here I stand, totally friendless."

"If you ask me, it's too soon to tell if these dreams are actually premonitions."

"I'm glad you're being sensible today. You have no idea how scared I was that you would jump to the conclusion with such excitement."

"I wouldn't have done that. I like a bit of science with my discoveries. Besides, I already got the impression that you're not fond of the idea of seeing into the future."

I feel like I'm doing something horrible every time my mind trips off the current moment of the timeline, assuming that's somehow possible. People always think how wonderful it would be if they could see the future, years on ahead, but would that really be something to celebrate? Say it were possible; there would have to be some kind of price for it. What if seeing into the future triggers some kind of world ending paradox?

I get the sentiment though. Some part of me does want the ability, to peek far ahead and discover whether all my efforts will mean anything in the end. How horrible would it be not to know? What if my brilliant plan to move out of Georgia and into a better state, to live a better life with Lumina has some kind of problem? What if I never get what I want despite my never-ending best effort? I feel like I'd at least want to know if failure were imminent, so that I wouldn't be wasting my time. I don't really know. Is ignorance bliss in this situation? "It rubs me the wrong way, I'll say that much. I always thought the alteration of time itself was impossible. What of all the paradoxes it might cause? Would God really build a system so prone to devastation?"

"I know nothing about how time works myself. I don't think time travel exists, and of course, seeing forward isn't exactly the same thing... You know I'm no believer of the church, right?"

"Yeah, you told me that already." I don't blame her either. Of all the crazy versus of the Bible I've read, not a single one of them mentions anything about aliens, about the Altiri even. Why would an Altiri believe in a sacred text if they are not part of that divine destiny? If you ask me, I'm beginning to wonder if everything in that book is nothing but a lie. It was written by human hands after all, and I certainly don't buy the idea that their pens and ears were guided by the word and grace of God. It's entirely possible that there is no God, but I'm just not too sure anymore.

"Regardless of what you think about it, I wouldn't worry too much about whether you really had premonitions or not. Just focus on you. Make sure you're doing all the right things. That's what should be important."

"Look at you, lecturing me on what I should do."

"I only do that when I'm right."

"Oh? And I thought you were always right."

"Now you're catching on." She sure does love to drive that point home. I'm having a harder time trying to trip her up in some way.

Every time I ask Lumina for any kind of advice, no matter the subject, she never turns out to be wrong. Often, she'll just run the numbers and give me a probability matrix of what is most and least likely to happen given special circumstances, but they play out in her odds every single time... I'm going to play the lottery and use her intuition to see what happens. "I'm with you Lumina. But I'm only going to give this friendship search the effort it deserves to have. You and I only have little time remaining before the summer."

"I know... You'll be okay, right?"

"I'll get to be with you again when the next winter comes, so that is what I have to remind myself of to get through it."

"It's all I needed to hear."

"Still, I can't believe I'll be in high school soon. So much has happened to me in the past three years... And yet, I can't help but feel like I've been cheated out of some of my time somehow. I know I'm not the coolest person or the most popular guy around, but I should have been able to have at least one human friend by now. The people I used to hang out with keep drifting away from me, as if on purpose."

"Then all of them are crazy," Lumina concluded. "Don't pay attention to how any of these people behave. If you ask me, you're the coolest guy I know Reed. Plus, after everything we've been through, I'm not sure any other human around here could have handled the idea of hanging out with an alien."

"I never understood what the big deal of it was, even though I almost fell into the same mentality back then. I mean, it's weird, it's strange, and it's cool all at the same time. But regardless of all that, all of you Altiri are people too. It doesn't matter what world, place, or time we come from. Quite frankly, I don't give a crap that you're on the far side of the universe either, because I still got to know you. Lumina? You're the coolest girl I know, and I'll always love you no matter what."

"Awh! I love you too Reed... I sure know how to pick 'em."

"You and I got together under normally impossible circumstances. It may only be one miracle, but it's the best miracle I could ever ask for. If anything had been different, if anything had been altered even in the slightest, it's possible we wouldn't even know each other... Blows my firkin mind!"

"No kidding. My risky purge was totally worth it, and it found me a husband."

"Ah, you know, the things we do for love..." Regardless of what the future holds for us, what matters most is what we do with our time. I don't care what I see anymore. I'll carve out my own path for the two of us. If anybody gets in our way, they go down. If any prophecy should warn me to stop, I'll rewrite the laws of time, changing that future until I have what I want. For Lumina, I'll do anything! Our happiness and love are too important to be gummed up by the imagination of failure.