Megaphiladelphia, PA - Late August 2067
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Casting of Crowns
Frank Burns Jr would never forget the day that the Coronation began. Following the seven day nausea-inducing hallucinatory nightmare that was the Static, a new waking terror began: the “nodes” that had vanished two months and change prior reappeared, now connected to the head and interconnecting the mind of every single human being on the planet. For one brief instant, there was world peace, a respite for the weary souls and minds of mankind, who had, prior to the Static, just been through global wars and the harrowing Sixty Days of Fire and all the unspeakable horrors therein. Then, as everyone moved on from the first moment of this new reality, everyone on earth could hear the thoughts of everyone else in a great cacophony.
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The nodes, now “Crowns,” were apparently forming a symbiotic relationship with their human counterparts, and attending to the needs of their hosts, they would mute the great torrent of consciousness if one only thought anything to the effect of “I don’t want to hear all this right now.” In that way, with that having been most people’s first thought, the great cacophony of thought was quieted almost as soon as it began. Then with the following thought from most being “wait, can I hear that again for a second?” it began again. People soon learned they could guide their Crowns in the way of which or whose thoughts they would like to receive, and to whom they would like to direct their own thoughts.
Though he would grow to look back on that first day with clarity and even a sort of fondness, having been six years old at the time, Junior found it rather terrifying in the moment. He could hardly understand it at that age, but the sheer horror of the experience would form a core memory and a deep-seated distrust of Coronation altogether. As it were, compared to other children his age, he seemed to have an easier time controlling the thought-transfer process on account of creating a deliberate mental wall between himself and his Crown by the time school started at the end of that terrible summer.
The Summer from Hell —with the war, the Sixty Days of Fire, the Static, and the start of Coronation— came just before Junior started elementary school. His family lived in an outlying neighborhood of the thankfully (mostly) unscathed Megaphiladelphia, and so despite the calamitous times, he and the other children his age were able to begin compulsory education with some sense of normalcy at Megaphiladelphia Unified Schools’ District 17 Elementary School. There is important emphasis on the begin in that concept, however, as the effects of Coronation would prove nightmarish for organization- and order-oriented schoolteachers.
The night before Junior was to begin first grade, he sat at the kitchen table, staring at his new school supplies and feeling a mixture of excitement and nervousness for his day tomorrow. His mother, Loretta, sat across from him, sipping on a cup of iced tea and watching him with a soft smile.
"Are you feeling okay, sweetie?" she asked gently.
Junior nodded, but couldn't quite meet her eyes. "Yeah, I'm just a little nervous about tomorrow, ‘s’all."
Loretta reached across the table and took his hand. "It's okay to be nervous, Junior. Starting school can be scary, but you’re gonna be fine. You’re such a smart and kind kid, and it’s really just like kindergarten last year, except in person and for a few hours longer.”
Junior smiled a little, feeling just a bit more at ease. "Thanks, Mom. I'm just worried about the other kids, y’know? What if I can’t make any friends?"
Loretta squeezed his hand reassuringly. "I'm sure they'll love you, Junior. You're such a friendly and funny guy. Just be yourself and try to meet some new people. Plus, some of the kids from your virtual kindergarten are starting in the same school, so you’ll have some built-in friends from the start."
Junior fidgeted with his fingers, and through his crown, felt his mother sending him calm and love via thought transfer.
"And what about the Crowns? What if I can't control it?"
Loretta frowned slightly, knowing that the new form of the Nodes had been complicating and entangling everything in the disaster-stricken world. She feigned personal assuredness as she answered him, "Well, we'll just have to see how it goes, won't we? Coronation is new for everyone, and I'm sure the teachers will help you if you're having trouble. And if it gets to be too much, you just let me know and we'll figure something out."
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Junior nodded again, feeling grateful for his mother's support. "Okay, Mom. I love you."
"I love you too, baby," Loretta replied, leaning across the table to give him a kiss on the forehead. "Now get some rest. Big day tomorrow!"
Junior smiled and gathered his school supplies into his new backpack, heading off to bed with his nervousness relieved.
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As Junior’s mother dropped him off at school the following day, with a long, tight hug and an “I love you so much sweetie, be on your best behavior, and make friends with the other kids!” she could hardly have realized it would be the last time for months that she would speak to her son truly one-on-one.
Junior walked up the front steps of the school, surrounded by other children in the same public school uniforms, individualized most prominently by the multitude of unique glowing Crowns atop everyone’s heads. Teachers were guiding students towards an auditorium for a welcome ceremony after which they were to be organized into their classes, which would quickly prove to be a difficult task. After the children were all seated, the school principal, a short man with a very red nose, took the stage and began a welcome address.
“Good morning, students and faculty. I am your principal, Mr. Hargrove, and it is my pleasure to welcome you-” he continued speaking, but Junior stopped paying attention as he could feel that someone was trying to thought-transfer with him. He opened his mind to the transfer and heard a fellow student’s voice saying “clown nose! he has a clown nose!”
Junior giggled to himself quietly and looked around to try to see who had sent the comment. In the row ahead of him, a few seats over, he saw a boy turned around and looking his direction. He waved, and in response received another thought “hey! funny right? pass it on!” Junior was hesitant to be spreading jokes around during what felt like a formal event, and his mother had told him to stay on his best behavior, but he figured if nobody was talking over the speaker aloud, it wasn’t really hurting anyone. He looked around him trying to find someone to focus on and send a thought to, but in the end he seemed to have sent a transfer to a whole row of second grade students, many of whom burst out laughing.
One of the second graders sent a reply back to Junior, “that’s what we said when we first saw him last year! his nose is always red as a cherry!” Junior giggled again and then imagined the principal stepping out from behind the podium to reveal a large pair of clown shoes on his feet, and transferred that mental image. He had meant to send it back to whoever had replied to him, but he hadn’t really figured out who it had been and focused on them, so the transfer sort of went into the open, and most of the students received it and started laughing aloud. Most of the teachers seemed to have well closed their minds to aimless transfers but Junior saw one teacher stifle a laugh and saw a couple other older teachers look rather cross all of a sudden.
With his audience devolved into raucous laughter, Principal Hargrove had no choice but to interrupt his speech and attempt to reestablish some order in the auditorium. He tried to do some sort of call and response clapping thing, which the teachers and some of the older students responded to, but the first graders hadn’t been introduced to it yet and the second graders were too far gone into jokes and laughter to heed it. Mr. Hargrove then tried to thought transfer to the audience asking for “calm and quiet, please” but his transfer was either denied or ignored by most of the students.
In the end, the welcome assembly was simply cut short and teachers slowly but surely herded their unruly students away into classrooms, where they hoped to have an easier time handling them in smaller groups. Unfortunately, the students had now realized they could continue communicating via thoughts even across the cinderblock walls and halls of the school, and before long it became clear that this whole first day of school was going to be a wash. Before the day was out, Junior had heard so many jokes that his face hurt from smiling and his sides from laughing, and he had also learned from a fourth grader’s thought transfer PSA that there was a way to thought transfer with the Universal Search Engine and get the top result transferred back to you.
By the time he was headed home for the day, “Important Letter to All Parents and Guardians” in hand, Junior was in a thought-transfer group chat of sorts with several friends from his class, and he was hard-pressed to focus fully on anything the rest of the day, though he tried to at least feign a sense of seriousness as his parents gave him a stern talking to about disrupting school, and the importance of education.
That first day of school was just the beginning of the chaos that would ensue in the early days of Coronation. As people struggled to adjust to this new way of communicating, schools and other institutions found themselves scrambling to figure out how to maintain order and structure in a world where thought-transfers could happen at any moment. It would take weeks, months, and in some settings even years for regulations and augmentative technology to be put in place, but eventually the world would find a way to adapt to this new era of communication and consciousness-sharing.
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