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Who... am I?

Ch:2 Who… am I?

Sitting on the front porch El hasn’t done much today. There were many things he had grand aspirations to do but he feels sapped of energy. The motivation he had just a few hours ago vanished, not willing to show itself in the daylight. El takes a look at himself, what am I doing here?

Time has been moving a bit slow for El lately. Things just move so fast that he feels as if he’s moving in slow motion, especially with the news broken so unceremoniously just this morning. As a matter of fact this is probably just the normal reaction of a person who’s just had their entire worldview so grossly twisted, but all El can think about at this moment is how distanced he feels from himself. It’s as if he is watching himself from the third person, as some sort of spectator. Bringing his hands to his face, he resigns to sit like this just a little longer, in a futile attempt to make the world wait for him to catch up to it.

Alas, time waits for no one, so as the minutes turn into hours El decides to finally force himself out of his reverie and go take a shower to ready himself for this weekend—a weekend with many big things waiting to happen at its precipice.

“I really can’t keep going on like this. It's not fair to FD and AS for me to be such a moody bitch all the goddamn time.” “I also just need to get over myself for feeling sorry for myself, that's probably half the issue.”

Mulling over his insecurities and flaws is something done often, especially when living in such extreme solitude that El found himself in due to his Dad wanting a ranch in rural Texas. Life there is enjoyable and peaceful but without people around him, as a young man El feels isolated and has too much time for introspection—especially the negative kind. Of course not all was bad here, rather El has become rather adept at working with his hands, specifically on cars, motorcycles and most mechanical things. In fact he enjoys it quite a bit—enough to make some money on the side doing favors for people in the area. The few people close enough to marginally be called neighbors, his father and the previously mentioned online friends FD and AS are the only people in El’s life worth mentioning. As a naturally introverted person El is perfectly fine with this but from the perspective of social growth there isn't much to talk about.

As the end of the day draws near El picks away at his list of things to do before the weekend, slowly checking them off one by one. By the time the sun starts to set, El’s mind has shifted to his previous conversation with his friends about the sudden advent of new technology.

I don’t understand what's going on at all to be honest, this feels so detached from reality that I find it hard to even comprehend the levity of an infinite power source. What would that even entail? I definitely don’t believe in free things or infinite things either, there must be some sort of great cost to this entire thing that for some reason nobody is asking the questions about. Actually now that I have had time to let it sink in so much doesn’t make sense… but does it even matter? At the end of the day there's nothing I can do to change the future from happening, there's no point in even worrying about this.

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All of these thoughts were flying through El’s head and as he sits down at his computer he comes to the realization that there’s a good chance as well that this infinite power reactor—as science fiction as it sounds—may not affect his life for many years, if at all. How often does new technology adapt to society without being controlled or having an artificial supply limit to make money off of it, because that is the most likely goal for something as big as this. Or maybe it's all just an altruistic vision someone has to better society. There's no telling really.

Booting up his computer El sits and thinks and thinks, getting nowhere with his cynical and existential thoughts about all of the possible outcomes of the unveiling of this new technology.

Ding

Accept message from – FacetiousDespot – ??

That guy sure is quick

CP: Hey, you need something? I’m heading to bed soon.

FD: This early?? God damn you sleep like an old person

FD: But yeah, I was going to talk about monday, I figure let's all stay up to watch the DynPwr event, it's going to be at 12am. You, me and AS.

CP: Central?

FD: Yeah, that should be easier for you.

CP: Yeah I can do that, have you asked AS?

FD: Yup, we are all set.

CP: I’ll be there then. I was thinking about this earlier but what are the chances that it's not actually infinite. Wouldn’t it be pretty high right?

CP: I don’t really trust the idea of something infinite, that’s too good to be true imo.

FD: I see what you mean, honestly that makes a lot of sense but I want to be optimistic.

FD: It's not that I just trust the corpos and the rich but DynPwr is just so massive that it’s hard to believe that they could be lying about something this big. They just have no reason to do this all of a sudden unless it’s true.

FD: Or maybe I just want it to be true because I just want to imagine all of the possibilities with infinite energy. Like imagine we jumpstart into a sci-fi age where we all drive hover cars or carry laser guns or something fantastical as that.

CP: That does sound cool ngl, I still think it would take a long time to develop and properly use that kinda tech but who am I to say.

CP: I guess we will see.

FD: You could sound more damn excited lol

CP: Mhm, I’ll talk to you tomorrow

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