Chris IV

“There's two others like us," I say.

Marina Lightyears. She’s the sole reason I agreed to work with Lyle. She knows things about me, about you. I haven’t talked to you in a while, mostly because I’ve been talking to this white-haired woman. She tells me it’s pointless to poke my head outside the universe, where you are. After all, what good could I do if I knew what was beyond it?

“Here in the state, or in general?” She signs.

Marina only signs to me. I still haven’t asked her how she knew that I could read it but that’s the bottom of my list of questions. I don’t get much time to talk to her while we work. She’s often too busy running the organization. From what I’ve gathered, she handles all the logistics and business side of things. Lyle runs the muscle and everything else. Yet I can feel her heart just isn’t in it.

“The state.”

“Yes. A mother and her adopted daughter. I’ve met them. They’re good people.”

“That’s what I thought. It’s faint but I feel them too. It’s like the pull wants me to make decisions towards them, just like with you.”

“That’s how it works, we're all drawn to each other. We're all special. Did you know we all do something different?”

“No.”

“You can see what’s beyond and know where things are supposed to go. I wish had that.”

Marina, in our limited time, has been helping me understand just who I am. She says all of us who have this mutation are born odd. She calls it the Gift of the Goddess. I’m not one to judge no matter how ridiculous it would seem. At best I can call it the next step in human evolution but any evidence to support it is paper thin. Sometimes I feel like it’s all in my head.

Maybe we’re both nuts.

It’s only once, but I’ve seen her eyes in the dark. They’re unnatural with the mutation maybe being one in a trillion if it’s even possible, to begin with. “I doubt having the eyes of a feline is worse.”

Marina does a silent laugh with her hand over her mouth. “I haven’t shown you?” Marina gets up from her chair and sits on the table where I’ve been working. In the process, she knocks most of the equipment down. I don’t mind, all I’ve been doing is fluff work.

I have no intention of recreating the original Winter. At best I just improve the least toxic version they have here. Lyle expects miracles but even if I tried it would be impossible. The small amount of actual Winter I’ve been given to research gives me a headache. The chemical compounds it’s made off of shouldn’t be stable. The best I can do is make it stable enough for a microsecond before it renders itself useless and toxic. I’m not going to lie, how the original can be stable intrigues me but I’m better off not looking into it. I can't afford to hurt the world like that again, not since Elizabeth's suicide.

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“Close your eyes and whatever you do, under no circumstance do you open them. Understand?”

“Yes.”

When my eyes close, I feel her palm touch my forehead while she grabs hold of my hand with hers

.

In an instant I see. I see everything. It’s like a massive psychotic break where I’m reliving my past.

I'm a child. I'm a kid again, the center of attention. I’m the one who’s supposed to stand out amongst a pool of brilliant and gifted people. My attention was always on me ever since I was young. I’ve been told I was able to have full-blown conversations at two and was able to do complex math at four. My entire life was already decided from that moment, but it was not what I wanted. I didn't want to have the pressure of living up to the expectations set by others. I just wanted to be normal.

Then I met Cody. He was the first one who didn’t treat me differently because I was weird. He just wanted to play and went along with anything I said. He’s the one who showed me I can have a regular childhood. So that’s what I did. I knew where my thread was supposed to go and I ignored it at every turn. I went against my fate. The further I strayed the more I couldn't stop noticing it. I couldn't ignore the itching feeling that I was not real.

By the time elementary was over I was already spending all my free time trying to learn everything as fast as I could. There’s no subject I don’t understand. There’s no problem I can’t solve. Even though I still tried to act normal and have the normal kid experience, that wasn’t my path. I just never realized that the road I chose to walk on led to the same destination. I saw that free will, at least for me, does not exist. I saw something beyond me and that’s when everything fell apart.

It starts out with a question.

How much of it is real?

The more you dive into it the more skepticism sets in and it starts to dilute the simple pleasures in life. I started to question the universe and develop models to measure the theories. It all became a conspiracy so I delved into psychology and physics but the more and more I delved the more I questioned existence. The reality maps started to crumble so I asked hallucinogens, “Who am I? What am I? Am I forever?”

And so the walls come crumbling down.

I found an answer to a question I had never asked.

That’s when I met you, the observer.

God.

I never thought my sanity could harm others until my inaction let Elizabeth die. It wasn’t real until I saw her outside grabbing the gun from her bag. It wasn’t real until it was screaming at me to stop her.

But I didn’t.

-

"Do you know what happens after we die?" She asked me a week before she died.

"Is heaven or hell not enough for you?"

"I'm asking you."

"If you were born inside a prison and lived there your entire life, would you be able to recognize the outside once you're set free?"

"You don't know either, huh? Hey, why do you always wear that ugly green parka all the time?"

"It's comfortable."

"Does it make you feel safe?"

"Yes."

"I met my guardian angel. She told me to find somewhere safe. She told me that everything would be okay. Why couldn't she protect me?

-

“Open your eyes,” a whisper.

When I wake, Marina is adjusting her bangs. “Did you say something?”

She shakes her head and signs, “Did you see?”

“Yeah,” I say with no breath. “What was that?”

“It’s what I can do. It helps me understand people. It helps me help others. Just like how you can help others too.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Of course, you can. What’s it telling you right now?”

“To help you.”

Marina smiles and leans forward. Up close, she looks normal. “That’s not what I felt. Stop being afraid, Chris. Tell me the truth.”

“To save my friends.”