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<12/06/2012 - 08:31 | Cage High School (Theatre), Austell, GA, USA>

The sinking feeling deep in my gut never left me alone. Ever since I started thinking more about the future I wanted to have with Lumina, something else has been bothering me on the back of my mind. I've long known now what my true purpose in life is, at least the life I'm living here on Earth.

Living happily together with Lumina is more than my ultimate goal; it's my sole purpose of living, the reason I get out of bed every day, awakening to a world so horrendous and ugly. I don't care how weird others would see it; that I want to live in a nice house up North with my alien wife, a woman I can only be with telepathically. With the remaining days I have to live here on Earth, this is how I want to live the rest of my life.

I should have been paying attention to how naive I've been all this time. In order for me to live on my own financially, I would need one hell of a high-wage job, as well as many lucky breaks. More factors threaten to encroach on this future than the abilities and factors I have at my disposal to make it come true. All this time, I've been hyped up about the possibility of that future I saw, premonition 005. Whether the vision I saw was real or not, it's what I want most in this life.

If I ask myself, what is the probability of attaining this status in life, what number would I come up with? Lumina has been teaching me a lot about calculating probability matrixes lately. As I began applying the rules to this scenario, I've come to realize that what I want to hope for, is virtually impossible. I'm desiring something beyond the scope of a miracle, something that will likely never happen to me.

I'm reminded about all the horrible memories Lumina forced me to share about her observations of other people in the world. Not everybody's suffering was caused by other people or heathens; some suffering was brought on by the unexpected economic hardships and mere bad luck that runs into people, destroying futures by mere chance, even though nobody reports or talks about it... It could happen to me too.

I have no reason to think it won't happen to me. Sustaining myself outside of my own family in a state up north won't be easy; I've always known this... But the challenge as I see it now is more impossible than I ever feared before. Simply having faith that everything will work out somehow, believing in a future without the ability to make everything more certain is entirely pointless.

I know what it's like to get my hopes up so high, only to have them be crushed thereafter. Experiencing that more than once does something to me; it changes me bit by bit, preventing me from expecting something wonderful the next time I'm supposed to. This future I want to have with Lumina isn't likely to happen in success, especially when I have no idea how to make it happen in the first place. I've gotten used to the idea of expecting miracles to happen in my life, even though I've only ever known the one miracle of meeting Lumina.

I already know by now that good and bad things do not happen to people who deserve it; fate and karma are nothing more than random games of Bingo with a few lottery tickets attached. Even if I want this future more than anything, even if I'm a good person through to the end, even if I wish for something with all I am, the probability of failure does not change. Wishes do not come true because we want them to. There are no divine miracles of interference in our world. Karma is nonexistent, only a system of fantasy conceived to make ourselves more comfortable about the true nature of our randomness in life, our constant entropic doom.

The future that I want to happen, the place I want to be ten years from now, between myself and Lumina, it just isn't going to happen after all. Maybe I only saw what I wanted to see. Regardless, there are too many barriers in the way of making such a lifestyle successful on my end. I have no luck to give to this certainty of doom. I have no friends in life to help me out where I need it most. Lumina doesn't have the specific intelligence of making it in the world, at least where it applies to me. It's all more likely that I'll be sunk down by dead-end, minimum wage paying jobs, trapped in Georgia by financial hardship, or held down by the increasing severity of my headache disability. What I want to do, I can't do. What I want to believe is only a fantasy rising from my heart; a wish, an idea. My desires contain no sustenance of power. Without knowing what to do for priority number one, that goal might as well not even exist...

This is the reason I'm sitting alone again in Theatre class, with my eyes and face to the floor, tuning out the decrepit world around me. It's cold enough to call Lumina today, but I fail to see the point in that anymore. Each second that ticks by, more time is being wasted away while I rot down here on this horrible planet. My true home isn't here; it's far out there, in a galaxy called Genosis, with a planet called Karnak. I may have been born a human, but I was always meant to become an Altiri. I don't know why I was put here on Earth when my destined soul mate is and always has been Lumina. All that matters now is, when I do perish from this world, Lumina will sense it immediately.

Through some strange ability she calls Biolution, she can psionically sense my death when it happens, even when I'm far away and not connected to her. If I perish from this world, Lumina will sense it, and prepare her team to calibrate and run the transperation machine, a process that will resurrect me in their world, in their biological framework. I can skip to the end anytime I want, put the lid on this world and part from this place which has become my personal prison.

All I could think about was the insanely low probability of my desired wishes coming true, a thought repeating itself on infinite loop, realizing this has drained me of all excitement, of all happiness, and of all hope. I don't agree with holding onto faith when there is no reason to, producing hope when it's all in vain. I've therefore already decided the rest of my fate here on this planet, on ASC414. If I can't have the life that I want to have, then I might as well skip to the end. At some point today or tomorrow, I'm going to pull the trigger on myself, ending my own life and jumping off this pointless existence, whether Lumina would approve or not.

As usual for each school day, I'm mostly being ignored by the students around me. It's hard to hide my obvious depression from everyone else, though I simply get by enough by pretending my visual state is simply the impact of a headache. Whether I respond in earnest or in lies, nobody here bothers to really try to get to know me or talk to me. As a result, I have no friends even after all this time. There's Nae, but she and I are not all that close to begin with. Even Zero and I are still not where I want us to be yet; it's questionable whether we will ever be at such a level. So, if I leave this world, nobody will really miss me anyway. I'm not leaving anybody behind who will care if I'm alive or dead.

So instead of worrying about those aspects, I started thinking more on the lines of how I would go about killing myself. There are a thousand ways to die, and I want the quickest and most painless option possible. Dozens of scenarios and thoughts played through in my head by my new will and control, displaying myself in gory situations of a gruesome and severe death. Given how I felt in the moment, no thought of the visuals bothered me even a little.

I already ruled out the possibility of overdosing quickly. I've heard a lot of teenagers try to take their life this way, but it usually fails, lasts for a long time, and is also quite uncomfortable. With the additional chance of survival, I'm not going to do that.

I thought next about the prospect of jumping off a high building. If I currently ignore the difficulty in reaching a place like this, the only factors to consider are the certainty of instant death and the amount of time it would be painful. The impact at such a height would make death certain, and the detachment of broken limbs should decrease the time of consciousness post impact to nearly zero...

It's not a bad way to go, but I still want to have other options in case that doesn't turn out to be the best way... How else can I kill myself?

While I tried playing out the scenario of shooting myself in the head, some of my other thoughts tried to conflict with my plans. I expected this much; any who plan their own suicide often get these second fighting thoughts trying to bring them back. Of course I'm scared to die; everyone is scared to die at some point. My heart has been pounding so quickly since the last sixty minutes I've spent thinking this way. However, even I know this sensation is all just a biological response to the idea of death. The body and brain has its own fear of death too, separate from our rational understanding of expiration. I won't allow it to control me though. The level of despair I feel is beyond anything I've ever felt before, knowing I'm going to fail what I want to accomplish before I could even try, and it's been with me for several days. I can't live like this anymore, so I won't bother.

I began to focus some more on the factors of death by fatal gun wound, but both this and the idea of jumping off a building reminded me about one of the many rules of successful transperation scanning. If I want to be in Lumina's world, I have to die in such a manner where the damage to my physical body is minimal where it concerns limbs, particularly the head and the brain. There is an alternate scanning method, but it comes with the increased risk of total memory loss after resurrection, on top of never being tested before.

A few more minutes of this went on, going back and forth in my mind to come up with a few flawless ways in which I can get what I want in the next life. Leaving this world was no longer a question for me, rather a certainty. The only thing I cared about now was how I would go about it...

If only life ever went to any of my plans, things would be so much different. Even though I wanted to be left alone to my doom, something odd was happening around me. I already thought that the entire building and the interior of the room was dimmer than I'd normally remember, but all the sudden, the lights above me began to flicker some more, dimming in their luminosity to half of what they once were. The distraction overhead took about all of my attention, since I found it strange that the entire world around me lost so much of its color, its luster, and its bloom, all because the fluorescent lights above wanted to misbehave.

"Hey? What's with the lights being stupid?" I asked Malica Ridge, one of the very few people I knew in this class beyond a simple greeting. I wasn't so tuned out of the world that I let my surroundings be ignored, so it seemed natural for me to suddenly ask her about the situation above us.

However, Ms. Ridge glanced up, then back at me in total confusion. "What are you talking about? You must be seeing things."

"Uh—" I couldn't really make sense of that kind of reaction. Was she just ignoring the dimming lights above us? The strength of those fluorescents was already cut down to about half, so surely somebody else must have noticed... My eyes panned around for similar reactions in the small crowd, but everybody was talking to each other as if nothing ever happened. Am I really the only one who noticed how dim it is today inside the school?

Maybe I'm just being crazy today. I have to get back into focus... How can I kill myself without causing too much pain and damage?

"Wow. You really are being an idiot today."

With a sharp inhale of shock, I jumped to my feet out of my chair, nervously looking around to ensure myself I did not hear what I thought I just heard. No, that wouldn't make sense. I'm not connected to Lumina today, so there's no way she could hear what I'm thinking.

"You can stop freaking out and pay attention to me Reed. Don't worry, I'm here to help."

"What the?" I held my tongue and used my thoughts to project, certain I was hearing a telepathic voice based on the slight echo within us both. I was still freaked out by the sudden appearance of some girl's voice. My eyes must have been deceiving me, since I looked all around me to see nobody even looking at me, until after I began to make a scene for myself. Something's very wrong here. That voice... It's not Lumina's. She sounds a bit different and more annoying.

"Hey! I'm not annoying! Look in the mirror before you call people that, jackass!"

I did my best to remain calm, trying to play off everything as normal since my facial reactions were making me suspicious to everyone around me. I was still so certain this wasn't Lumina, but no matter what, it shouldn't even be possible for me to engage in telepathy with somebody else. "I'm just hearing things... Yeah, it will go away if I just ignore that voice."

"I'm not going away just because you want me to. Reed? Whether you believe me or not, I've come here to help you figure some things out."

It's definitely not something Lumina would say out of the blue. "I know that you're not Lumina, but I don't care either. Leave me alone and stop talking to me."

"Yes, you seem to like having control over all your own thoughts, whether you use them to help yourself, or to destroy yourself. I've sat by long enough watching it all fall apart. Now I'm here, and I'm going to do my best to change this outcome."

"Who are you?" My voice, though telepathic, retained such sternness and warning to the invisible stranger. I wasn't sure if I'd already gone mad, or if I were somehow being punished for something else.

"Sheesh! I know I haven't spoken to you for a really long time Reed, but I'm not happy that you can't recognize my voice at all."

"Quit playing around and answer me, you ghost!"

"Fine." I seemed to have pissed her off, which only made this weirder, proving this mysterious woman had some emotions of her own. All the focus I had before was forced to shift and turn to this intruder of my own thoughts. "I suppose that makes sense, since you can't see me right now. It's all I can manage just to communicate with you in this limited state. You already know my voice and appearance from before; my name being Reba Sound."

Gasping nervously to that familiar name, the goose bumps on my body came out in full, and I felt the unknown chill of fear forcing me shiver until I put my jacket on. My eyes dilated more than I realized, and all my fears began to open back up. "Reba Sound? As in, the same Reba Sound that endlessly tried to kill me in those lucid nightmares I used to have?"

"One and the same," she admitted with no guilt. "Though, I have not shown up here to frighten or hurt you. I've come to help."

"Yeah right! Leave me alone right now, or I'll force you out of my mind!"

"Yeah, I'd like to see you try Reed. You've already forfeited the elements you need to control my essence the moment you decided to ignore the significance of your best self."

"Speaking in riddles and lying to me before you pretend to jab me with another poison blade? I'm not falling for it again Reba Sound... Wait a sec. If you're here right now, then does that mean I'm somehow asleep? I don't feel like I'm dreaming, but... Something's different."

"So then you have noticed?" Reba didn't seem too convinced that I had an understanding on the situation, so she made sure to elaborate to her heart's content. "This isn't like before Reed. You and your consciousness are wide awake in the world before you. You've already realized that my existence outside of your own mind can't possibly be real, since I'm just a fictional character designed by your imagination, meant first to torture you, though now I stand for something else. You're wide awake in the real world. Yet, you've probably noticed the lights and everything else dimming down around you. You hear my voice, even though you can't see me."

"So then, the dim lights are really happening? Why am I the only one who can notice them?"

"Jeese! You don't seem to understand when I'm presenting a riddle to you. How tedious!"

"If you want to waste my time with riddles, then go find someone else to bother!" Man, I can't believe this is happening to me right now. Why her of all people? Why Reba Sound? Even while she isn't being hostile like before, everything about her is super annoying!

"The visual distortion you're seeing is a symptom of the chemical process occurring in your own brain at this moment. You're smart enough to realize that you and I are having a conversation that imitates telepathy, but actually isn't telepathy. It's the same chemical process that few ever experience, the same process allowing me to manifest this way to speak to you directly."

"I don't understand."

"In your previous perspective, I took the form of a psycho-killer haunting you in your dreams. But in another perspective, I'm nothing more than a figment of your imagination, manifested as a department of your own subconscious mind. Speaking physically, I don't actually exist Reed. I manifest as part of you, a reflection of yourself based on your subconscious processing. You're not dreaming, you're hallucinating."

"Ah—" What could I say to something like that? I was still sure I wasn't dreaming, based on how I felt, but if I really was hallucinating, it would be most difficult for me to comprehend. I've only ever hallucinated once in my life, and it was never anything this intense. I mean, I can't see Reba Sound, but I can hear her voice entirely, making this some kind of auditory hallucination. Something else she said also dug straight into me; that she is actually part of me and my own personality. If I am hallucinating, this would actually be true, since Reba Sound isn't a real person.

"I think you understand now. I may not be real to you, but my makeup consists of your own thoughts and feelings, so I am not any less significant just because I'm a ghost of a person."

"How is this even possible? I mean, I'm still me, right? I'm not stumbling my words around, I'm not seeing phantoms, yet I'm hallucinating and still functioning at the same time?"

"This kind of hallucination is one that occurs naturally through specific hormones and brain chemicals activated under most critical circumstances. There are heavier drugs out there that invoke hallucinations, but also withdraw some personal mental control during the same experience, so it's not the same. The only reason this can happen is by connecting the conscious mind with the subconscious mind directly, using the chemistry of your own brain. Right now, your conscious and subconscious mind are directly linked, which isn't the normal way the two sides of the mind communicate. As a result, I convey all the thoughts and desires that you keep pushing back."

So my conscious mind and subconscious mind are linked without even taking drugs? What the hell is happening to me these days? "That's quite insane in itself, but tell me something. You said this only happens under most critical circumstances. What circumstances would warrant my own brain to go crazy and start hallucinating?"

"Do you seriously pretend not to know why this is happening? What do you think could be more serious than thoughts to end your own life?"

With a small huff, I replied, "I can't even kill myself in peace." Seriously, me of all people? I'm pretty sure nobody else I've ever heard of started to hallucinate when trying to hurt themselves, so why me? Why now? And why Reba Sound? It couldn't have been somebody else, somebody less annoying? I swear, I want to punch someone every single time I hear her voice for some reason. She just has that voice that would aggravate anybody who hears it.

"You really think Lumina would approve of this?"

"Whether she approves it or not doesn't matter." I've already thought that far ahead. Lumina will transperate me whether I die now or much later. "Lumina can't do a damn thing to change the outcome of my future. She's stuck up there, forced to always be a passive observer through my eyes. She may want to help and act directly, but she can't. All she can do is watch."

"So then, this is about your future?"

"You're supposed to be me, right? You should already know why I'm doing this. Besides, what's it to you anyway? I thought you wanted me dead all those times before. I'm surprised you aren't egging me on to kill myself some more."

"Reed... I know this isn't going to be easy for you to believe, but I've always been on your side."

"Hah! When was that? Was it on the fourth attempt to slay me dead?" Reba isn't fooling anybody. I can't forget those horrible nightmares, even though I'm glad they stopped so long ago. I learned it's not possible to die in real life if the body dies in a dream while in a lucid state, terrifying as it may sound.

"I acted with reason and purpose. I've always been a reflection of your subconscious mind, even back then. I took on the role of putting you in a state of constant fear, threatening to kill you over and over. I had no other way to express my direct opposition to your way of thinking as it occurred back then."

"What are you talking about? Trying to kill me to save me makes no damn sense."

"At the time, that's all I was able to do. You were getting closer to Lumina in those months. It was before you and her officially started dating, but even then, you treasured Lumina's presence as if it were your whole world. At the same time, you were missing something very important to your survival and your success. You're more stubborn than you realize, so I had to take drastic measures, and try drawing that missing element out from you by means of direct opposition."

"What element are you talking about? Wait, no, I shouldn't be talking to you at all. You're just a hallucination. If I keep speaking to you, it officially makes me crazy."

"You can try all you want, but you won't be able to ignore me so easily. You already know what this missing element is. In your final nightmare I was part of, you finally did what I wanted you to. You stood up to me, even in the fear of losing your life. All that faith and confidence is what I tried to draw out of you. However, even in that moment, I knew it would not last. What I tried to do, what I tried to tell you just wasn't enough. Therefore, as I can be here speaking to you now, I know that directly opposing you is not what I should do this time."

"Maybe I should see the nurse, or maybe I should kill myself now so that you can shut the hell up."

"I've been playing my role as best as I could, trying to show you what you needed to have, but after the nightmares ended, I had no means of communicating with you again; that is, the subconscious part of you would eventually get ignored. Normally, I am that powerless, but now I can do something more. So, I'm here to help you Reed. I'm not going to be mean to you, nor would I want you to die. All I wanted was for you to have the faith you would need to carry on, a faith that you keep throwing away."

"I'm still not listening Reba. Nothing you say can change my mind." It's as I thought. Reba Sound is actually my subconscious mind as a reflection, currently a hallucination. She didn't appear here out of the blue; I brought her here. As soon as I started considering how I would kill myself, this hallucination of my own subconscious mind appeared, with the sole purpose of preserving my life instead. The brain biologically will do anything to fight for survival, even on a mental and psychological level. Though it's not a fail-proof system, my subconscious mind thinks it can try to save me from making some kind of mistake. Amazing as it is however, this moment changes nothing. My chances of the future I need won't change because of something somebody says.

"Well I'm not going to ignore you and leave you alone. That's all you've ever been doing to me, and it's about time you started listening to the deeper parts of yourself."

"I swear, I do not need this." Should I call Lumina after all? If I do call her, will she be able to hear this extra voice in my head as I am now? She'd probably freak out first about the fact that I'm trying to kill myself.

"I must at least try to convince you to live, as much as possible before my time runs out."

"Your time?"

"Yeah," she explained. "This type of hallucination is based on specific brain chemicals that already exist in production to the human body. But like any drug, it has a time limit. After about four hours from now, no matter what I do or fail to do, I'll fade from your experience. The conscious and subconscious mind cannot stay connected like this forever."

"I'm amazed you even know that, since it's not actually something I should know. Even so, this makes it easy for me. If I simply ignore you long enough, I can get back to what I was doing and kill myself anyway."

"Do you really value your life so little?"

"That's not what this is about Reba! Sheesh! I really should not be talking to you right now." Another two seconds later, I was saved by the bell, transitioning us from one class to the next. However, I was certain this hallucination was not about to leave me alone anytime soon.

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<12/06/2012 - 09:00 | Cage High School (Gym), Austell, GA, USA>

Some of what I saw earlier was beginning to make more sense, mainly about the visual changes around me. My hallucination was based on sound only, though the world around me appeared so dark. It was as if only half the available light from the world could enter my eyes all at once, while something drained some of the saturation too, even as I glanced outdoors. It was the strangest visual phenomena I've ever seen before.

Of course, with that said, I couldn't get Reba Sound to shut up. She remained quiet up until the point where the free period of gym class started, and I did my best to ignore her. It was strange to realize that despite totally sounding like another person, Reba Sound was in essence - myself. I never knew the conscious and subconscious could separate like this, though according to her, they're more connected than what's considered normal. Is that really the only line between sanity and insanity, just a bunch of brain chemistry and synapse connections?

"So now that we have more time, tell me more about this desire to kill yourself."

"You're me, so you should know all about it."

"Perhaps I do, but that doesn't mean I understand everything I absorb. I need to hear you say it. I need to hear you tell me why you've decided not to live on Earth anymore when you clearly have so much more to live for."

"God! Do you ever stop talking?!" It's not just her voice that's annoying, but also her constant stubbornness to not leave me alone about it. Why am I suddenly obligated to talk to myself about the reason I want to leave? It isn't right!

"You keep on resisting the truth that you already subscribe to. You do this to me all the time. When I try to convince you to believe in something better, you shut that thought down, yielding instead to a grim reality."

"It's called living in reality, idiot! I know how rare it is to actually have what we want. I know how impossible it was that Lumina and I actually got together and met. I'm forever thankful that it happened, but relying on the wishful thinking of a second miracle isn't how I want to wait out the rest of my life. You should understand already why I hate it here on Earth!"

"It's not so much that you hate Earth, but more specifically the warmth in the state you live in."

"What's the difference? If I can't leave Georgia and live the life I want to, this might as well be my whole world where I'm standing."

"Strange... You never used to yield so heavily to the uncertainty of outcome. You analyze and process probabilities all around you, and you base your decisions on that?"

"What else do you expect me to do? I won't pretend like all is well, ignoring the problems I can do nothing about."

"You have more control over life than you think you do."

"This conversation is over!" I couldn't believe I was getting so visibly frustrated arguing with myself of all people, but I've had enough of her annoying voice and empty words. When I snapped at her, she actually remained silent for a full minute. It gave me time to think about everything again, including thoughts I thought I wasn't going to revisit. All thinks to Reba Sound, I was stuck reaffirming that which I already knew.

I wasn't going to change my mind; that much was made perfectly clear. Even so, as I quickly understood the deep situation I would be in for the next few hours, I wondered to myself how something like this hallucination was possible. Despite what I heard from her, it was still too hard to believe. What the heck is the subconscious mind thinking anyway?

"It isn't always easy to know, is it?"

"I see you're still here." I should have known her silence was temporary... Still, I grew even more curious about the answer. This supposed part of myself seems to know things that I shouldn't possibly know or understand. How far does something like that go? "Reba? Tell me something. Is the subconscious mind a physical matter, or a psychological construct?"

"Both of course."

"How can it be both?" She answered me so easily like it was nothing, but how can she be so sure? How could that part of me know something like that? My biology classes don't go anywhere near this subject matter.

"The brain is organized into many segments that control different aspects of the body including our emotional processing and imaginative thoughts. But despite existing as separate segments, they all interact together to bring us intelligence and consciousness. The psychology of one's own mind is a result of this; even though it isn't a physical construct, it exists all the same because of how the brain is built and how we process information."

"Then what's actually the difference?"

"Detail sorting."

"Detail what?"

"There are many names for this. My role, my entire function has two core processes. The first is information and detail retainment. I'm the part of you that observes all of your surroundings and helps recall them when necessary. Every fine detail about every element of your surroundings is something I carry with me."

"Everything?"

"Priority goes to the reasoning behind your thoughts and your actions, whether you choose to process them yourself or not. You may agree with something while I may contradict and disagree at the same time. For example, in many instances where you have tried and failed to make any meaningful progress talking to other girls around you and making friends, I have disagreed five-hundred and twenty times to the idea that your efforts were maximized with your desires."

"What do you mean by that? Are you trying to tell me I didn't try hard enough? Of course I did! I always do my best."

"Not where it concerns talking to people." Reba was so sure to disagree with me. As upset as I was to hear such a lie, I listened anyway for her understanding on why. "You're quiet, shy, and introverted, and you already are aware of this. Therefore, you make it an apparent goal while trying to talk to people to ignore your own shyness and give it your best effort. In most things you do in life Reed, you are incredibly persistent and patient. But when it comes to the attempts of making new friends or deepening any connection beyond the level of acquaintances, you quickly give up if even the slightest element does not go to your plans or simulations. Or, in instances where things initially go well, but do not continue to build beyond a few days, you give up on maximizing your effort, all because you lose patience. Instead of thinking about it in this manner, you instead ward the situation off as a failed attempt to make friends, or that person's failed attempt to care about you in any capacity."

... Am I speaking to the same person? Surely she must be mad to think I'm not giving it my all when trying to make friends. "But I really do try! People generally don't care about what I have to say when—"

"When you deem your own words to be meaningless? When a single minute of trying hurts your heart so badly, you can't stand to maintain your patience, and therefore give up on that particular person? Nobody is blaming you for not having friends Reed. You want to do more than just talk to others. You want your heart and mind to connect with them as well, similarly to how they connect between you and Lumina. Even though you want additional platonic friendships, you have a grasp on how much effort it would take to get anywhere close. When you try anyway and your expectations are not met, it hurts you so deep inside that you block it out with the excuse that it could never work out to begin with, and your patience with that person crumbles."

"That's not..." I struggled to find any rebuttal. I couldn't believe that the words she was saying resonated with me right now, words I never expected to hear coming from any part of myself.

"The second aspect to this is, you desire conversations that are inherently meaningful, whether it simply be significant to your own core values, or connected to all that you know and understand. You despise small talk, even though there isn't much other way to break the ice to another human. The problem is, what you really want to talk about to other people pertains mostly to what you know about the world, what you learned about the universe, and what you know about Lumina and her people."

"No arguments there." This much I've always known. It's so difficult thinking what I want to say sometimes, constantly contrasting something normal sounding to the truth in my life. I don't want to start out with small talk; I only want to talk to others about what I find interesting, and hear what they think about all of it.

"You've already been pained once before by the consequences of telling another human about the alien world, and it's trained you to be cautious with your words, perhaps too cautious."

"I can't really be friends with another human if they don't know about Lumina."

"Is that really how you feel?"

Even though I couldn't visualize Reba Sound, I knew she was staring daggers at me right now, enforcing that I be truthful with myself. I knew I shouldn't be talking to her at all, but for some reason, this was a conversation I had to accept. "I don't know..." I've always thought that I could only get along with anybody at the deepest level of friendship if I first tell them everything about Lumina and her world. I want other people to hear me, to care about this part of me, because it's who I really am inside. "Lumina is part of my identity. She's not literally me, but so much about her life is a big part of my own. I guess, I think that, if other people who hear about it either don't accept Lumina for who she is, or don't believe she even exists, then I can't be part of that person's life."

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Why?"

"Because it's unforgivable." I answered both of us, realizing something I didn't know before now. Even though I was only talking to myself, I was learning things I should have known already. "I get being surprised. I understand that it's nearly impossible to believe without proof. I get that! But, I... It doesn't change all I've been through. It doesn't change what I personally know. Lumina is real to me, even if she isn't real to somebody else. She's the most important person to me in the world. So, I guess, if somebody has some kind of problem with that, with us, then I wouldn't want to be anywhere near them. Anyone who goes against Lumina and I might as well be an actual enemy."

"Tell me something Reed. I know you've only told one person, and you nearly tried to tell another. In either scenario, do you think you would have portrayed to them the words you've just portrayed to yourself just now?"

"Should I have?" I think I see where she is going with this already. If I had tried with different phrasing, if I somehow made other people aware of how I really felt in all of this, as deep as my heart would possibly go, maybe then I could have a better chance that somebody believes me, even without that proof I can't seem to provide; I would if I knew how.

"You can't be honest with somebody else if you aren't first honest with yourself. Understanding how you feel first is more important than you realize, Reed. I'm not saying some other human will for sure believe you one day, but... Don't you feel a little more confident now that you might be able to convince another knowing this?"

"I don't know." The same standards still apply. Realizing something about myself from before doesn't change the laws of reality. "The reason it's so easy for me to speak to Lumina through my heart is because of our connection. The telepathy shares our emotions together, so we can't possibly hide anything. Other humans around me will never have that kind of perspective with anybody. They'll never even consider in life how it might feel to live life through someone else's eyes, or to directly live the perspective of another. So I don't see it possible."

"The connection you and Lumina have is very deep. However, this is not because of your telepathy."

"I understand you're pretending to be my own personal shrink, but arguing with everything I say isn't how you accomplish anything."

"So then you assume to just know everything?"

"Aren't you me? You're pretending to know things that I don't! It doesn't make sense!" Still does she piss me off! Reba isn't the nicest person I've ever had to talk to, though it's something coming from someone who tried to kill me many times before.

"I know all that you know Reed. But the conscious mind and the subconscious mind are not actively aware of each other through direct means, not by default at least. You have always known what I know. You just don't have access to my knowledge, because direct communication with me is not possible. Of course, there are still ways to convey the information, only if you allow it."

"What ways are you talking about?"

"I'll get to that later. I think it's first important you understand how you and Lumina understand each other so well, when telepathy has nothing to do with it."

"Telepathy is literally our mode of communication," I argued.

"Telepathy is only a mode of communication. It gives you the ability to sense each other's projected thoughts and strong emotions, but telepathy is not a soul translator Reed. It doesn't analyze the information inside someone's heart. The only entity capable of that is yourself, just as Lumina and Lumina alone is the only person capable of reading your heart between the two of you. You listen to her, think about her, and talk to her without any fear or impatience. You put yourself in her shoes each time you think about her, with or without an active connection. Telepathy was only the tool necessary to help you build such a strong bond with her, but you were actually the person to make it happen."

The way I feel about Lumina all the time, I knew it was much more than anything I've ever experienced, much more than the confines of our amazing psionic communication. I was somewhat annoyed, because I knew where it concerned the two of us, Reba Sound was totally correct. As I thought about it some more, it made me question what was actually necessary in comparison for me to really connect and make friends with somebody else. If holding other perspectives is not actually necessary for making new friends, then what is? What element am I missing? "That's all very enlightening, but it doesn't even matter in the end."

"Is making friends really that pointless for you? It matters not that you talk to nobody especially during those long summers, where you and Lumina are forced apart?"

"Listen. The whole friendship thing matters to me. It is important, but it's not the most important thing I need to survive. I don't need to make friends to live the way I want to. All I care about in the end is whether Lumina and I can be happy here. If I can't, then my time spent on Earth is just a waste."

"Considering your age and expected life expectancy of 62, I fail to see how you've concluded you cannot be happy when you have yet the chance to begin an attempt at the future you desire."

"Because it's impossible. What I want to happen won't happen out of wishful thinking, and it won't just happen out of luck either. I've thought about just trying to make it happen with my own two hands, but I wouldn't know the first thing about surviving on my own."

"Will your parents not help you?"

"They don't know what I'm planning. Even if they did know, I'm fully certain they would never put a cent forward to help me reach that goal. If anything, they may try and sabotage my efforts, or kick me out and disown me before I figure out what to do. My family is not on my side, so I have to do this on my own."

"You're truthful right now."

"Right now?" The way she spoke to me, surprised that I was correct about something I already knew was too curious for me to ignore. "Are you... Reba! Are you running some kind of lie detector test on me?"

"What a silly question. Your subconscious mind is by definition a lie detector test, that and more. Nothing about your rationalization is out of touch with realistic assumptions, and I can tell you really don't want to tell them anyway."

It's because I know the truth already. Even if by some miracle my mom and dad don't haul me away to a mental institution, they still won't believe a word I say about Lumina, or won't accept her into my life considering the severe deviations for what they perceive as normal. I don't want that kind of stress. "If you know I'm not lying about that, why assume I'm lying about the improbability of my own future?"

"Because you already know that probability is not a true or false value; it is by definition an uncertainty. Even though you do believe the future you want to be next to impossible, the chances are not zero; I know that you know it's not zero."

"It's close enough anyway. Besides, maybe it would have been easier if I had not seen that stupid premonition about it."

"You mean, the vision of the future twelve years from now as you recalled?"

"Precisely. The fifth premonition that I had revealed to me something I wanted but should not have seen. Due to the rules of an anti-paradox system, seeing into the future alters the real future from what we saw previously the moment we become aware of it, even if the changes are ever so slightly. Ten years creates a powerful unintended butterfly effect."

"Yet now, in this new future you would create, you know not the outcome. You just admitted that you no longer understand what will happen, because the future you saw belongs to a faded memory now."

"Yeah... I don't see your point."

"How do you know that the low probability of such a future is any different than it would be now?"

"I don't, but that doesn't matter. I can't just make the impossible happen because I want to. Look at how Lumina lives her life. She taught me how to assess complex probability, because as I'm learning, she does this for just about everything in her world. Lumina looks at every situation and every detailed factor, including potential margin of error, and she makes her choices knowing every probability per every action. She then acts on the highest, most probable outcome for which she favors."

"I can recall several instances for which this did not happen."

"What?" I understood that my subconscious mind probably remembered things better than normal me would have, but I know my Lumina better than anybody. Everything she does, she sees many numbers before her first. That's just how Lumina is.

"By default, Lumina uses caution in combination with her probability matrix calculations, but only when she has not designated her desire as a top priority. You've said it yourself, how low the probability was that you and Lumina met in the first place. We know Lumina's point of view from the days leading up to the purge, because she told us. When she made her decision to purge you, there were numerous probabilities of unfavorable outcomes swimming all around her. One would have been the possibility of being found out and stopped before she could send you the purge, since the Altiri Queen possesses the ability to snoop into the telepathy of others. Another higher probability was that the purge she sent you would fail. It in fact came very close to failure when that summer rolled around. Lumina knew all along that the chances of a successful purge on you, combined with being free from punishment and severe consequence, combined with the unlikelihood that you would both believe her story and make her a part of your life, were to be essentially zero. Despite that, she made the choice anyway. Do you think she cared about statistics in that crucial moment?"

I figured out where she was going with this near the end of her question, and my breath trembled beside me, my eyes opened anew. I'm sure Lumina doesn't do things like that often, but if it were not for her choices, she and I would have never knew each other. Difficult as it was to for me to draw other conclusions, I was too speechless to respond to Reba right away.

"Of course she didn't care. Lumina wanted you to stay as you are, to never be changed by the harsh world around you. She desired this of you because she loved you then just as she does now. It was what she wanted most in that moment. Despite all the impossibilities around her, despite all warnings she must have given herself, Lumina defied the laws of her society and purged you anyway. She knew it was all likely to fail or blow up in her face, but she did it anyway. You want to know what she had to fall back on when statistics betrayed her?"

"What?"

"Faith." It seemed like Reba was going to say more, but she didn't. She wanted me to understand some significance behind that one word, but I still wasn't getting it yet.

"That's it? No, she didn't just rely on blind faith."

"How do you know that for certain? Did you ask her yourself, hm?"

Upset as I was at Reba for trying to convince me of something so meaningless, I felt some defeat having not asked Lumina about it myself. "So she put all she felt into a wishful, hopeful belief that everything would just work out somehow? I don't trust that logic."

"She did that and more. In the end, Lumina had to rely on faith alone that everything would work out. There's something I've realized about your flawed thoughts as you seem to define what faith really is. Lumina has something that you have lost. It wasn't faith in random chance that she had that night. Lumina had faith in herself, in her own abilities and tough choices. She was never certain things would work out as well as they did, but she just as well performed every action in her power to improve her chances."

"Faith in herself?"

"She wasn't naive. You remember the day you were purged, do you not? August 11, 2009. She told you the reason why she chose that date, a day close to summer, but early for winter. She estimated the time it would have taken for your purge to run a full course of completion, calculated the estimated average temperature per week as time would go on, and she must have thought of many things to say to you when the first connection finally established."

It took me a moment, but I thought back to that first day, way back when I heard Lumina's voice for the first time on November 1, 2010. I recalled how Lumina behaved after I was freaking out; she was desperate to explain everything to me, desperate to let me understand what was going on, so that I would stop assuming I had lost my mind... In fact, it actually worked. I was so captivated by what Lumina said, gradually throughout the day, I became more curious to hear more. Eventually, I wanted to learn more about her, and somehow, believed she wasn't a hallucination herself. "She probably thought of many things to say if I wasn't agreeing with her, but in the end, she simply wanted to hang out with me."

"She was scared too, brave as Lumina was."

"She was scared?" I didn't recall that.

"The very first connection wasn't strong enough to pass through every emotion in every moment, but Lumina was scared while trying to convince you she existed. Despite the dangers lurking around her, what she feared most was feeling alone, her actions made meaningless should you have ignored her for good. She may have hid it from you, but try to understand her point of view better than you did before. It wasn't easy for her with your constant threats of shutting it all down to never see her again. What she wanted most, even after all that time was to be involved in your life. So, everything she said to you on that first day was most important. It's a level of nervousness even you have never experienced before."

I didn't jump to believing Reba Sound, but the way she portrayed Lumina sounds exactly like something she would feel... I really was clueless back then, enough to be the biggest jackass if any of my own choices were different up to this point. "She really felt that way, huh?"

"Even after you were forced to hang up for the first time, Lumina relied entirely on faith, but she did all she could, being herself entirely, going all out just to hopefully become friends with you."

"I didn't know."

"You always knew; you only shut yourself off to her feelings is all. That isn't the bigger picture however. You see, the faith that she had in herself and in you isn't based on wishful thinking. Lumina desired something, and she acted on it too. You desire something as well, do you not?"

"The future that I want is my reason for living. I don't engage in wishful thinking either, which is why I know I have no reason to live."

"So you say... But then what of your actions towards that future?"

"What do you mean?"

"What have you done to make your impossible future more possible? What actions have you taken to raise the current likelihood that it will happen? How exactly have you used your own two hands to construct what you desire most?"

"I..." This isn't fair! I haven't done much, but that's not by choice! "There's nothing I can do!"

"You're wrong."

"I know what I know! My future, that which I desire most, I don't actually know what I'm supposed to do in order to make it there. I don't have a guidebook or a manual on this kind of stuff. Plus, I'm pretty sure most of it involves things I would have to do after high school. So, even if I had a better picture, I can do nothing right now but rot away and waste time. I don't know what else to do."

"It is most unlike you of all people to declare this."

"Is it? Each time I ask Lumina, she can't give me an answer because she doesn't know more than me. I know what I want, but don't know how to get there! How can I ever live happily with her on Earth if I don't know what to do?"

"Most people simply make that up as they go."

"So you're saying I should just show up and wing it? No Reba! I can't do that anymore! I can't keep living, when I already don't believe in the outcome of my own success. What would having faith in myself do if I don't know what to do in the first place?"

"You don't always have to know how to do something in order to accomplish a goal."

"What good is a miracle I can never rely on? Why do you want me to wish and hope for something that is never likely to occur? I've already had miracle syndrome once; I can't go through it again."

"I'm perplexed as to how you've forgotten your very own nature. If you don't want to rely on the random chance of a miracle to carry you forward, then create your own miracle instead."

"Create my own miracle?"

"How can you not see that this is what Lumina did in the first place? No matter which way you look at it, the numbers Lumina was used to carrying around were tossed aside when something important mattered to her. Yet here you are, going on about the impossible miracles that would need to happen. You said you have until the end of high school to find a way, did you not?"

"That's still not a lot of time."

"When you were suddenly inflicted with UAD for the first time, and you ran into the issue of running out of tasks to find, you invented our own tasks instead. When you were faced with the recurring heartbreak of each summer when Lumina could not be with you, even while knowing you would not survive it without damage, you still managed anyway. So divine miracles don't exist, so what? If you want something in life, you have to make it happen. If it takes a miracle, make a miracle. If you don't know how to do that yet, all you have to do is learn how. If nobody can give you any hints or pointers, then you'll have to carve out a new path your own style."

"But I can't do that anymore!" Reba and I were already passionately yelling to each other in our own heads, my frustration rising with each denial I made to come back to this again.

"Why not?!"

"Because I can't do it!" Reba was silent when I announced it, as was I, having not expected to admit the truth out loud. All my life, I've been going by a family motto, but this was the one time I shut myself down while meaning to.

"I see you don't embrace your old family motto. It's such a shame. You used to believe in it." Before Reba repeated that motto, she and I spoke it to ourselves at the same time. "There is no such thing as can't."

I shied my glance back to the floor in defeat. Even if I want to keep embracing that motto, it still doesn't change how much I don't know about my own future. "This isn't like all those other times. What if I fail, Reba? What if I go through so many years of life and still never make it?"

"Are you capable of failure when it means this much to you?"

What a stupid question. "Everyone is capable of failure. Anything could happen while I work to make that dream a reality. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and that would mean I failed."

"If something like that ever happened, and it locked you out of the possibility, I'm sure you would simply kill yourself after it anyway. So if the bus kills you, what does failure matter when it stems from something outside your control?"

"That's what I'm saying. Factors that are not in my control. That's why I can't figure out what to do."

"If you were to spend the rest of your Earth life doing anything else, anything else at all other than working to achieve the future that you want, how would you spend it?"

"I wouldn't. I suppose that's what triggered this hallucination to begin with."

"Don't get smart with me. I asked you, if you were forced to spend your time doing anything else, what would it be?"

"And I told you, I wouldn't! Lumina means everything to me! I live in this world to spend as much time with her as possible. If I'm not working on that, then every minute I spend here is a total waste of time!"

"So then, if you try to accomplish your goals, and in the end, you fail, you consider that a waste of time, even if you and Lumina work together on such a dream?"

"What else could it be? Isn't it better to not try and fail than to waste all that time and fail anyway?"

"What do you consider a waste of time?"

I growled, holding my head in a never-ending frustration born from this abomination of my own mind. "This conversation for one. Just leave me alone. You're trying to make me feel better, and it isn't working."

"Making you feel better is not my role. I asked you a question Reed."

"I don't want to answer."

"What do you consider a waste of time?"

"I don't know right now. Stop pestering me!"

"What do you consider a waste of time?"

"I said I don't know!" Before I could blush realizing my verbal mistake, I felt my blood boiling with rage and annoyance. Reba just wouldn't leave me alone in peace. Now everyone was staring at me in shocked silence, while I kept my head down, pretending not to notice anything different. I'm sure they knew, but it wouldn't matter after today anyway, not if I go through with the suicide plan.

"And there we have it. If you don't know what it means to waste time, why not grant yourself the years you have to find out?"

"Just shuuut uuup!"

"Nobody would ever hold it against you if factors far outside your own control - remove your ability to make that future happen, or if you died before you could get there. But if you're not willing to try your absolute best, then maybe all the time you spend sulking is the real waste of our time."

"Just lay into me more why don't you?"

"I'm not the enemy here. At some point, you stopped believing that you actually had the power to do anything. It didn't start happening this morning, but much longer ago. It's the reason I haunted your dreams, trying to wake you up. I failed; I know that much. If I fail again, I can still take pride in knowing I did all I could. If I knew I was going to fail, and I had to make the choice again in this situation, I would never stop, whether my way to go about it is the same or different."

"I hate you."

"I am you. And you don't hate yourself. The faith that you once had in yourself has been broken. It's something you have to build for yourself as well. It doesn't just exist out of thin air."

"You're asking me to just figure it out and wing it. After all those things you said, that's all it boils down to."

"Any situation is going to appear hopeful or hopeless, depending on how you look at it. If it were anyone other than yourself and Lumina, glancing at your life so far, what you want, and how likely you are to get that result, I'm sure they too would think the situation is hopeless. They all look at the background statistics their subconscious minds make for them, and conclude something impossible. But you're not like them. You and Lumina are both aware of the numbers game, yet you refuse to play the lottery when it betrays you. When that happens, you jump outside the confines of normality and set the future according to your own new rules."

"Give me a break. I'm not God! I can't just change the rules of nature and set my own future like that."

"You were the one who told me God has no stake in our lives or our futures. You invent your own future Reed. The premonition you saw was still based entirely off everything you would have done, out of everything you would have learned along the way, surely with occasional doubts here and there."

"Are you trying to tell me, that those premonitions that I saw, were all meaningless?"

"You sure treated them that way when you gave Maddison and Zero those letters. They never saw the vision that you did, which is why they were so confused. They weren't the ones who needed the message that psychic visions were unreliable. It appears, the one who should have received your letter instead, was yourself."

If that's all true, what the hell did I see in those crazy dreams? Why did I dream of them in the first place? If the premonitions don't matter, and we shape our own futures, then it's literally the equivalent of playing god with ourselves, is it not? How can I decide that I'm in charge of what happens next, when I have no idea the means to slip to that moment of time properly? "It still doesn't change the fact that I know nothing about how to get what I want."

"We're not supposed to know the future with so much certainty. Those were your own words if I recall. You never knew your own future before having your premonition, and due to the future changing, you won't know your own future after having the premonition. If we're to assume you're not going to die in a freak accident in less than twenty years from now, who then is going to stop you from having the life you want when it involves Lumina?"

"I would never dare let someone stand in the way of our future like that." Shortly after declaring that, I stuttered in my own breath, wincing once I realized the irony of my own words.

"Are you sure? If any thug or heathen tries to stop you from moving up north for example, I'm sure you'd go so far as to kill that person if it ever came down to it... But right here and now, the only person standing as a barricade is you."

Too much was flowing through my head for me to respond to her like before. I don't know what revelation was haunting my conscious, but it was all powerful. The first sting of truth was that the premonitions never mattered to begin with, at least not where it concerned what I wanted for myself. In the first premonition I had involving Veronica, I could have invited her to that mall if I really wanted to. In the second, I could have told Malica about Lumina even though I was sure I knew what would happen, or I could have instead tried to phrase it better. I had more choices to make; I could have embraced desired outcomes if I wanted to put forward all the effort. But the captivation of seeing the future itself distracted me, sent me into some kind of trance, becoming much worse when I thought it might hold the key to reaching my own best possible future. I wouldn't doubt their validity. The forth premonition suggested that I was going to die soon without any detail as to why. It was probably referring to today - in this moment. I wasn't predicting I would die in a horrible accident; I instead foresaw that I would end things myself.

However, if the future can be whatever we want it to be, then the premonitions never mattered, as Reba suggested. Is it really possible for me to have top faith in myself for an important priority that I have no idea how to accomplish? It's not the same as faith that things will work themselves out on their own, but faith that I will somehow work things out. Why was I thinking about having any involvement in my self-faith before now? "You mean, I'm the one standing in the way?"

"Before this version of me met you, you were never standing up to begin with. Reed? Nobody else in the entire universe is going to make your future come true. That role is specifically reserved for you. You have to be the one that makes it happen. You have to be the person who drives all of your wishes and desires forward, figuring out more along the way. You can't figure much out if you're dead."

"I... I need some time to think."

"I shall grant you that time, if it's not too long. Just remember something. Sometimes, we are our own worst enemy. Just like you're the only one who can generate your own future, you are also the only one who can destroy it. If you truly devote all efforts to what you want, you know already that nothing else will stand in your way. That's a fact."

I didn't want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but only because I found Reba Sound to be the most annoying vocal apparition I've ever faced. I'll never understand why my mind chose her to play the role of an imaginary therapist. Still, after all she said, it became impossible to argue against her like I did before. Though I'm not sure what all had changed, or what she had done; I felt so different thinking about the entire situation from start to finish. When I imagined my future, it still felt impossible. At the same time, I started imagining a totally different future from my own, this one better and brighter than before, hinted with sadness, yet genuine and believable.

Nothing I want will happen by chance or because I pray for it hard enough. I still tried to wonder, what would happen if I tried to control more around me? What would there even be to control? I knew there had to be something, some way of making all of this happen. "But how in the world could I make something like that happen? I'm just Reed. I'm just some guy."

"You're some guy who accepted impossible circumstances when Lumina came into your life. You're some guy who talks to distant aliens on a regular basis. You're some guy who has additional psionic powers locked away inside your head. You're some guy who has incredible talents and a heart beautiful enough for Lumina to love for eternity. You're a guy who has already made the impossible – possible. I know you still don't understand everything about this planet. You're scared out of your mind while you'll never admit it, but just try to have more faith in your own creative abilities Reed. What is really the worse that can happen, compared to how you were imagining yourself this morning?"

It figures she would say that. Reba Sound is programmed to say all of these things; she's just my subconscious mind freaking out because I came close enough to killing myself already... But does any of that still make what she said false? I don't want to spend years planning for something only to fail in the end. I won't know if I can ever make it happen though, not if I give up right here. Maybe forcing myself to be certain of my future is all I need to do; ignore the numbers, and believe in my future the same way I believe in Lumina. "Maybe Lumina can help me too."

"She is your wife. I can't imagine why you wouldn't ask for her help, even if all she can do is encourage you. It's not nothing."

How could I have forgotten that? Lumina observes everything I do passively, but isn't able to directly act on those surroundings using my own body. As lame as that may sound, I still know that she wants to. Lumina lives for the same reasons I do, to make new moments with each other and spend endless time together, regardless of where or how we do it. I can feel her wish flowing through me each time we're together, through something beyond telepathy. I've already been accomplishing that wish little by little. The future that we want together, it's something I should never give up on. In fact, if I really give it all I've got, I can't fail. Letting Lumina down just isn't possible; it's something I would never-ever allow to happen. And if somebody should try to get in our way, they'll be going down, answering to both of us!

"Reed? I sense something about you has changed." Reba actually sounded worried and nervous about it.

"My future... Is what I want it to be..." Saying as much was so difficult for some reason, but as I tried to, I felt something come alive inside of me, penetrating every nerve of my entire body. I could suddenly open my eyes wider, and the dimness around me totally weakened, though it didn't disappear entirely.

"Go on..."

"In order to have what I want..." I exhaled, as if to let myself feel defeated. In some ways, I have lost a battle I conducted with myself, with Reba actually. I never wanted her to change my mind in the slightest. I never wanted her to succeed in making me feel more alive. I felt so mute and empty moments ago. It wasn't the best feeling in the world, but it was so easy to just give up and stay in that center of gravity. "I have to make things up as I go. No matter how likely it is, failure is not an option for me. I can't give up on something as important as our future. I won't give up on it!"

"Does this mean..."

"I truly do hate you, Reba Sound."

"I am you... Do you really hate yourself?"

"At least a part of me, I suppose. I no longer have it in me to give up, even if I know I'm marching to my doom. It's poetic, but kind of sad."

"Yet you would have it no other way." Both of us were being slightly sarcastic now, though it was too late for me to turn back now.

"What is this I'm feeling right now?" My entire body was tingling; it wasn't painful, but I knew the physical sensations were not normal either. My heart was pounding this fast earlier, but I never felt so alert and active as I did before.

"It's called being alive; not dying."

"So then..." I knew what I was about to say already, but I had to silently confirm it with myself several times in a row, so I could be certain how I feel. "I guess I'm not killing myself, not right now at least."

"Glad to hear it. I knew you were stronger than you gave yourself credit for."

"Yeah, yeah. I guess when you get back to subconscious land, you'll be getting a shiny new medal for saving the world?"

"That is some imagination you have. However, my role here really is complete, if you are serious about not wanting to die anymore."

"I can't make too many promises. I mean, if something happens later, something that for sure makes my goals absolutely impossible, I won't continue living on this planet. For that, I make a promise to myself."

"I pray that day never comes," Reba announced. "Besides, if you do ever sink into a depression this strong again, there is no guarantee I will show up like I did this time. To tell you the truth, I'm fascinated that this happened at all."

"So am I. I mean, people decide to kill themselves all the time, but I don't ever hear anything about a self-activating mental self-defense mechanism like yourself. If everybody else had hallucinations like this before they die, there might be a lot less suicides."

"We are one of a kind. All I've done was given you perspective on what you lost. I cannot directly make you happy."

"Well you are me, and it's not much, but I do feel better because of it... This is weird though. We're not best friends, you know that, right?"

"Maybe if I promise to be more overbearing next time, you won't let yourself fall this low in the future."

Now there's a scary thought. If Reba were a real person in the real world, I know I would never get along with her very well... But all of this is coming from me, deep down in a place I've ignored for far too long. "Lumina is going to be pissed when she finds out what happened to me today."

"I thought being alive was something to celebrate. Plus, how will she know?"

"Because. I tell her everything, and that includes odd moments like today. She'll be mad at me for even considering suicide in the first place, especially given the reason."

"But she'll forgive you, I'm sure."

"Speaking of which, I need you to do the disappearing act while I call her. I can't really have you here when I do."

"I cannot leave at this moment."

"But, why not?!" As racked as I was to admit it, I've just decided not to kill myself. That means Reba's role has ended. She isn't needed anymore! "I already told you I'm no longer thinking about suicide. I can be reprimanded for it later."

"I'm satisfied to hear it. However, that is not the issue for why I cannot leave your connected state of mind."

"Then why?"

"I told you before. My appearance is only possible because of an internal brain chemical, present in all humans, activating under strict circumstances to allow the conscious mind to connect to the subconscious mind. It essentially can be viewed as a type of medication from within."

"Okay...?"

"This specific medication has an effective activation period of four hours. Two of those hours have already passed. The next two will have to pass for the drug to wear off and for me to disappear."

"So then you're forced to be here with me no matter my choice? I swear, the day just gets weirder. All the same, I'm going to call Lumina anyway and explain as best I can."

"You will find yourself unable to project sufficient psionic waves needed for a telepathic link if you try it."

"What?" How would Reba know that?

"The same drug coating your parietal lobe interferes with the synapse activity rate between the back side of your brain and everywhere else, the part responsible for telepathy."

"I've been calling it the Cora Sector of the brain."

"Then I shall use that designation as well."

"So wait, I'm stuck with you and without Lumina for the next two hours? What am I supposed to do until then? I really want to be with Lumina right now."

"Lumina seems to fill lots of holes for you."

"Don't make it sound dirty."

"I don't understand your meaning."

"Never mind..." I guess two hours of a wait isn't all that bad. I'll feel really stupid though if two hours goes by only for Reba to remain with me despite her needing to part. But if she does disappear on cue, it means my subconscious mind somehow knew what was happening and what to do about it, and somehow knows the very duration of this unknown medicine my body made on its own. Why do I have to be such a weirdo?

"I thought you hated being normal."

"Wait, I know!" My body perked up from the idea, from the opportunity I've been given. Now that she isn't interested in trying to save me anymore, I bet I could learn a lot about myself from this ghost. "You're part of my subconscious, right? That means you could know lots of cool things I would be interested in."

"Don't get your hopes too high. I only know what you know and what your body knows."

"That's what I'm saying. Like, why is it possible this can happen to me and nobody else?"

"To start, it is possible this could happen to anybody else, though the chances of successful compounding are very low in most people."

"There must be something different about me then. I mean, I'm human like everybody else, but both my mind and my body aren't entirely in normal parameters, are they?"

"So you've noticed that?"

Her question was practically a confession! What else is different about myself? Do I really have some latent super powers or something? "Tell me everything!"

"On the surface, these differences are subtle, and are to go unnoticed by everyone else, if not misdiagnosed as some other ailment. You are a highly observant person, and I cannot state this lightly. You notice more information about your surroundings and categorize them with more inflow and efficiency than standard parameters should reflect in ordinary people. This happens to include internal observations as well, like how you've learned to estimate your heart rate by passive sensation alone, after discovering your own timed formula, or how your extra-sensitive hearing allows you to sustain more simultaneous frequency dimensions than normal, at the cost of annoyance to louder noises."

I never even thought about those aspects myself. I mean, I knew about them, but I just figured that much was normal. "Am I just more sensitive? I don't know how I would have better hearing than normal."

"The alterations are not all physical either. Your psionic attenuation for sending signals, according to Lumina is not all that deviant from standard. What she hasn't seemed to notice yet, is your attenuation for receiving psionic information."

"I thought they were one and the same."

"They are not. You have the ability to sense slightly more about the world around you than the average person can, using a combination of thought acceleration, emotional attribution, imaginative support, and your developing psionic powers. While not complete, you seem certain sometimes you can sense a world outside this current dimension, though with zero evidence, you dismiss the thought to a moment of out-of-control imagination."

"Am I sensing other dimensions?"

"I cannot be sure."

"Uh..." I guess she doesn't know everything. It's annoying that I can't be sure of that one thing. It would blow my entire mind if I could somehow sense other worlds and confirm it.

"Perhaps what would be more useful to you, is ensuring a depression as deep as yours never happens again, or that you do something about it when it does occur."

"But, you just said you can't guarantee this hallucination will happen again."

"Correct, but it does not need to happen again. I am your subconscious mind Reed. When you ignore important information around you, I retain that information. If I believe you need to become aware of something, I drop subtle hints where I can so that you don't ignore something so critical."

"Like in dreams and stuff? How come you didn't just tell me this in a dream?"

"I attempted to, but your dreams are fairly complex to navigate. Additionally, something has gone wrong with your ability to sustain normal dreams."

"That might be the premonition control center that took control a while ago."

"No. The problem lies elsewhere. You process more information daily than what should be considered normal. That is why, on most nights, you sleep without sustained dreaming. Your brain needs more intense rest during sleep because of how many thoughts occur frequently. Daydreaming as you do prior to sleep does not help the situation. You are still capable of dreaming, but it does not happen often with you, and is therefore an unreliable method for me to drop subtle hints of critical information you choose to ignore."

"Okay... What am I supposed to do about that?"

"You can do nothing about your dream situation, but this is not necessary. Reed? Did you realize, with enough passive practice and self-awareness of your own thoughts, you can communicate with your own subconscious mind?"

"I... I can?" I thought these hallucinations would be impossible after this one ends. She's contradicting herself. Forget that! Can I really just do something so bizarre?

"It is actually something most people can do with the right amount of training and mental preparation. It would not involve anything as intense as this current hallucination, but it would be sufficient enough for you to realize when something is deeply bothering you or where you may have gone wrong."

"Now I don't understand."

"It won't be an easy process to master. If you want to communicate better with yourself in the future, you need to learn to divert some of your thought processes to a subconscious echo. Ask yourself questions if you are unsure about something, and wait for you to feel one way or the other, emotionally. Don't ever try to suppress what you already know; feel what you always know. If something on the back of your mind suddenly bothers you, don't shut it down; embrace it. And if you can't visit the subject then, try to later on. I promise, you are perfectly capable of it."

So that's what she meant. I've heard about this type of thing before, about items the subconscious mind will latch onto, specifically if there are critical elements we know are true but try to deny or ignore. Sometimes, they play out in dreams, but these hints of sensations are also known to us in other ways. Some people describe it as a good or bad feeling in their gut they just can't explain. Some manifest the contradiction when they do something highly impulsive. We passively argue with our own subconscious minds all the time, thinking we know better or hoping for something easier, until it all unfolds on us in a horrible situation like the one I had today. If I understood her right, Reba is saying that we don't have to have an argument anymore. Instead, if I feel a subtle hint like before, I need to embrace that feeling and look deeper into it, deeper into myself. "... I don't know if I understand completely, but I'm going to give it a try later on. If I feel something bothering me, I won't ignore it or push it away."

"And if you feel like you're bottling up trapped feelings inside you?"

"I should let it all explode?"

"You should examine yourself entirely, for the reason why you feel the way you do and when it started."

"It all sounds like you just want me to know myself better, or that you want me to become my own therapist."

"Is that so bad?"

"I guess we'll find out, won't we?" Of all things, I never expected this. I'll have to tell Lumina everything in segments so that she doesn't get lost. I get it though. Reba Sound really is here to help me; she was never against me to begin with. My subconscious mind doesn't know everything either, but it knew more than I gave credit for, enough to give me a second chance at life.

I can't really decide right now if I've made the right choice or the wrong choice. I'm only doing what feels best for me. There might be no logical reason for me to have faith in myself, but then, there's no reason for me not to either. Look where it got Lumina. Our future isn't complete after all. Our story is far from over; I wonder if it will ever really end. If I really can accomplish anything I try with enough faith that I can do it, then I have a job to do, I have a life to live. Will I succeed in the end or not? That isn't something I can know; it's not something I can ever be fully certain about, at least not if I look at the numbers. All I can do is try my very best, with everything and everyone I've got.

I shouldn't have tried to give up on life earlier. At the very least, it wasn't a good enough excuse for me to fall so far. I'm stronger than I thought, much stronger. I have what it takes to build a better future for myself using my own two hands, because giving up is never the answer. I don't care how many years it takes! I will live up north with Lumina. We'll enjoy our time together, make new moments together, and live happily ever after, beyond the plane of time.

There is nothing that I can't do! I'm not going to allow anybody to dissuade me from what I want, even if that somebody turns out to be myself. If it's important enough to die for, it's important enough to live for too. I would rather try my best and fail being happy than to never try at all. I'll take the whole world with me should it block my path, kicking and screaming if I must.

This is it Lumina! This is our story! It has a beginning, but not an ending. We are going to live a happy life together, here on Earth and then on Karnak. We are going to make a great future for ourselves, with me leading the charge to a future I've imagined better than ever before. It will be a future with tears of sadness and tears of joy. It will bring us to our knees, and also lift us to the sky.

I'm ready now. I'm ready to live!