Date: 9th of Choiku, Voice:_____, Weather: Overcast
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When Mathis arose, it was still before daybreak. He sat up against the wall and considered going back to sleep on the mattress but something impelled him to refuse. In spiteful fashion, he launched out of his bed and entered his bathroom. When the lights flickered on, his hands quickly covered his face to block the brightness. The slight stretch on his left lat revealed his back was slightly sore from the night before. He ignored it, and slowly began lowering his hands as he got used to the vibrancy.
On his sink lay nothing but two hand soap canisters. One which was certain he’d thrown out a week prior and the other a new brand which didn’t smell all that great but produced foam, which was more important.
He looked ahead in the mirror, clearly seeing all his imperfections. His dark hair was tumultuous, there was acne along his jaw, and his facial structure still remained imperfect. He sighed at the travesty.
Returning to his room, he opened the plastic clothes chest camouflaged among the mountain of books. Sifting through the normal-wear, he finally reached his school uniform. Navy blue slacks, white dress shirt, vest, and blazer. It was a pretentious outfit he hated wearing as he thought it inane to be so formal for an academy.
When he finished dressing himself, he looked in the stand mirror leaning against the wall and felt a subtle pang of dread towards the coming day. He didn’t enjoy the academy. He didn’t enjoy waking up early for it. He didn’t have real friends and he wasn’t the best in his subjects. He was useless to teachers and students alike and no matter how hard he tried, there never seemed to be a change in his social or academic life.
The cynicism started a year before when he’d first joined the academy. It was in the winter season when everybody had already made friends with each other in the summer so the entrance of new talent was met with lukewarm reception. Several people tried acquainting themselves with Mathis in the beginning but all that ensued was tepid conversation about where he was from and what he liked to do on the weekends. People realised he wasn’t a city boy and his weekends were filled with work so they hadn’t anything in common with him.
Mathis himself also tried to keep others at a distance. He’d witnessed several people from the mountains get ridiculed in city-schools including EAI. Stereotypes of idiocy, indolence, and incest plagued the characters of the minority mountain population who attended the academy. The blatant bullying and elitist attitude of the rich city kids irked Mathis and kept him avoidant to getting close with any of them.
However, even amongst the few mountain people, Mathis was not entirely friendly with either. He himself had lived amongst them for years and in a strange sense knew the veracity of the stereotypes better than the city kids. There were also several times mountain kids had attacked Percy’s coffeehouse, destroying the building’s property as well as customers’ cars leading to infuriating lawsuits which stressed Percy and in turn Mathis.
With all this circling his mind, Mathis brushed his nose and solemnly walked out of the cabin.
The ride to EAI usually would take around 45 minutes by car, but since he wasn’t willing to ride with Percy for that long after yesterday, Mathis decided to go by himself.
Alone, it was thirty minutes by bike, fifty minutes by bus, and a ten minute walk to the academy’s campus. He took up his chrome bike leaning against the cabin’s side, and set off.
The life star had just begun to rise, and all its rays seemed dead-set on entering Mathis' eyes as he climbed uphill. He considered shades for a brief moment but forgot whether they actually blocked sunlight that much as he hadn't worn them in years. Along the hill, there were sections of flat land where the line of trees broke off, opening up to a varied collection of shops and cabins where the residents of Pomohei would work and stay. The city itself really was just a mountain road with pockets of civilisation littered around the side. Shops were mainly local distilleries which produced alcohol stronger than necessary, and they were comfortable in business with the dysfunctional population of Pomohei. Most people, native or not, followed a similar schedule no matter how their days were spent.
Work through to the afternoon, drink, pass out, repeat.
Despite the cool air, Mathis’ body began sweating as he continued biking. It was the blazer he wore which insulated his body too well, but he hadn’t a clue where else to put it.
As he arrived at the stop, which was a teal canopy with a wood bench, he got off his bike and walked it behind into the woodland. There was a small hole he’d dug two years prior covered in turquoise leaves to blend in with the ground. He arranged this hollow space as his bike(s) had been stolen several times in years prior. Lifting the bike up by its rims, he dropped it ungracefully into the hole and proceeded to kick some new fallen leaves in until they were level.
Walking back to the stop, he put his hand into his breast pocket to fish out his phone. When he felt nothing but fabric, he closed his eyes and let out a sigh through gritted teeth. He’d forgotten it.
‘Ah well,’ he muttered to himself in self-reproach.
The bus was just about coming up and Mathis squinted to better see the driver from a far. When he realised it was Travis, the portly black man who familiarised himself with regular passengers, he smiled. As the bus slowed to a stop in front of Mathis, the door flew open along with an exuberant greeting.
“Hey! Mathis! How you doin, bud?”
Mathis couldn’t help but chuckle at Travis’ positive energy. “It’s good, it’s good. How ‘bout you?”
Travis moved his head in a figure-eight as he responded cheerfully, “Ah! Same as always. Absolute dogshit. Now come on, settle in already. You’re sweating in the damn winter time.”
Mathis obediently entered and sat himself on the third row, his favourite row for no particular reason apart from he had a particular fancy for the number three. The bus was sparse. At the back were two businessmen in suits and in the middle was a homeless woman with her head down, recovering. At the front of the bus was an analog clock. The time was five and half hours past fourteen, within the transitory period where the denizens of night transportation caught up with the working class bound for the city.
The bus lurched forward, settling on a crude but consistent rhythm. Mathis rested his head against the window, soothing his mind with the bus’ rattle.
The journey was scenic. The lifestar continued to rise and with it the outdoors illumined with natural beauty. The dense forest imperceptibly transitioned to rolling farm hills which were so vast they enveloped one's vision in entirety. At the end of the hills, civilisation picked up, and the people walked around with nothing in their minds, strolling along in the just-cognizant city of Ibanka.
When Mathis' stop came, the weather had taken a turn for the worse. There was a slight drizzle which threatened to turn into a full-blown thunder storm. As the passenger door opened, the two businessmen were quick to exit with briefcases over their heads.
‘Terrans,’ Mathis thought to himself.
As he alighted, he summoned a kan-umbrella whose handle was embedded in his spinal cord. It deflected the rain, but also provided slight luminance to the area around him. Before him was the city of Ibanka, closer to the Violet Sea and more urbanised than Pomohei. Medium-sized chrome buildings surrounded him, filled with advertisements from Rhylean and Terran companies alike. From Rhyles there were several architecture modelling agencies. In these agencies, Kan and Audient users would help to create realistic renditions of concept buildings for prospective investors. The skills involved in that profession were what EAI primarily taught, moulding Rhylean and Terhyls alike to become productive modellers of the economic society.
But Mathis was terrible at it. He’d received consistent C-s on all the exams concerning proportion and materials, which unfortunately left him in B-class for his most proficient and favourite subject: combat. And so off he went to the academy in hopes of improving himself for the future.
He walked through the busy streets catching occasional glances of ephemeral strangers. Several people were using kan-umbrellas, same as him, but some had the canopy floating above their heads not attached to their bodies to block the intensifying rain. Mathis looked for a couple seconds longer at these people in mild awe. He’d been trying to separate his Kan creations from his body for about a year, yet he hadn’t figured out how to properly do it.
Some others didn’t even have a visible canopy above their heads. They simply produced sound waves to deflect the rain above them. These were the Audients who were capable of producing magnificent sound and music from their bodies. It was always interesting to listen to individual Audients, as they each had different styles of sound. Some would summon ambient drones where the rain was deflected in a static pattern. It was based on the presence and absence of certain frequencies. Other Audients would summon rhythms which bounced rain off in predictable oscillations. Mathis was impressed by the Audient class, but didn't think much of their powers as he thought himself not an Audient.
By the time Mathis reached the school gate, the rain was pouring down heavier than ever. The gleaming lustre of EAI’s bold brick buildings were lost in the noisy grey haze.
Mathis crossed the front courtyard among the rest of the students and made consistent pace to the front door until suddenly he was stopped at the steps by a fat woman with crooked teeth.
“Excuse me. Where’s your vest?”
A migraine formed in Mathis’ head as he went through the roster of excuses.
“Sorry Miss. The rain made me forget. I think. I’ll remember to bring it next time.”
The teacher continued to scowl. “You better! Next time you’ll be put in detention!”
Mathis nodded like a hen and continued up the granite steps through the front door up another four stories until he arrived at his year's floor, an exciting and lively atmosphere which depressed him to unspeakable ends. Before he entered his homeroom, he could hear a commotion inside. An Audient was annoying a Laetig with high pitched whistling. The Audient was on the cusp of being decked in the face until the homeroom teacher, Laet. Socrin, sternly told him to sit down. He reacted with a lampooning obsequience, pouting “sowwy” to the student he was harassing as he carelessly crashed into his chair.
Mathis quickly shuffled to his seat and sat in silence for a few moments before looking up at the clock to see when first period was. There was about a half hour until proportions class so Mathis decided to catch up on it. He read through his notes and practised some of the exam-shapes in front of him. When he finished he felt even less confident that he’d make a good showing for the winter exams. He didn’t understand creating proportional kan-apparitions beyond the basic 3-d shapes. Anything more complicated would inevitably begin twisting and warping, the signal for Mathis to quickly close the apparition and sigh in agitation.
After several failed attempts creating something resembling the shape of a guitar, he accidentally let out an audible ‘fuck’ which twisted the heads of several people around him, some annoyed, some amused. Mathis closed up his body in embarrassment and caught the glance of a purple haired girl sitting diagonally from him. A slew of negativity raced through his mind.
‘Oh god that was weird. She thinks I’m a weirdo, a creep. Damn it. She’s kind of cute as wel– shut up you idiot. You have more important things to attend to. You goddamn failure.’
At this point, the boys who sat around Mathis began filing in. They were very good friends who often talked about things Mathis didn’t care about like sports and also other things he was envious about like their weekend conquests. He was sat in an awkward position where his seat acted as a buffer between one of the boys and the rest of them so he’d often be pierced by their loud conversation as if he didn’t exist to hear all of it.
This morning they were talking about one of them sneaking into a fashionable nightclub in Ibanka over the weekend and getting to second-base with a random girl. Mathis kept quiet in the midst of this braggadocious revelation but secretly was in awe that a boy as young as him had already achieved such titanic heights.
‘What kind of magic does this guy have?’ he wondered.
The ‘magic’ was alcohol and a tired mood.
He waited quietly, passively listening to the boastful conversation around him until faint mention of the ‘criminal codex’ arose from an Audient in front of the class.
“Hey guys. The ‘Catch-22’ just got promoted to A-class 9.”
“What was he before?”
“11 I think.”
“Did he actually do anything or were the others lacking?”
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“Let me s- oh it says here he placed a subway car in Tistee under a mass contradiction hypnosis causing them to suffer panic attacks and, what the hell? Erotic possession? The hell is that?”
“Oh I think I read about this. It’s when you get turned on by increasing the complexities in your life. It’s like, masochism or something.”
“Bullshit.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I made it up.”
The conversation on the wanted criminal ‘Catch-22’ was cut short by the sonorous bell, alerting the studious students to walk to first period.
Proportions was arguably Mathis’ worst class as well as the one he tried hardest in. He only felt two feelings towards it. One feeling was akin to Sisyphus, perennially doomed to push a boulder up a mountain only for it to fall at the penultimate step, and the other was a complete denial of the class’ use in real life. Regardless, Mathis pushed on.
He was one of the first people to reach the class. The teacher hadn’t arrived so he sat himself near the back where he always sat and resumed working on the apparitions he’d practised in homeroom. People filed in, the teacher arrived 25 minutes late, and the hour went by unceremoniously and unproductively.
The bell rang again, reverberating through the halls as well as the heads of everyone on campus. The teacher spoke a lacklustre encouragement about the winter exams and the students filed out, unthinking, to their next class.
Materials was on the first floor, close to the field where the seniors trained in creating realistic renditions of architectural models. There was one model in particular, a joint effort between an Audient and Kan, which was a sleek cafe concept where clean rose-wood tables were scattered around marble flooring, each table accompanied with a wooden half-wall. The layout of the walls made the cafe a bit of a maze, but also provided a sense of privacy to whoever was sat at each table.
The Kan, a senior girl with platinum-blonde hair, moved her arms in a controlled manner. She walked inside her creation, critically shaping the layout to her desire. With swipes of her hand, the half-walls were translated and rotated in different locations and angles. At times, she snapped her fingers and the walls were suddenly snapped into a random configuration, starting points tweaking to perfection.
The Audient, a junior boy with long skinny arms, stayed a distance away from the cafe model. He held the audial apparition of a steady ambience consisting of people talking and some type of mellow music in the background. The Kan was arranging the walls so that the sound of people and music would be just right for a potential visitor.
As Mathis walked past, he was impressed by the girl in not only creating such a large and detailed Kan apparition, but also being able to separate it from her body and walk amongst it, flippantly moving large objects around with creative technicality. A youthful motivation sparked in Mathis. Hopefully he’d be able to do something like that in two years when he was a senior.
Materials was a large classroom filled with various, well, materials. Kans were meant to imitate a specific material in their apparitions in not only outward appearance, but also density and feel. The classroom was divided into four sections. Woods, metals, plastics, and synthetics.
Second-year students like Mathis were meant to master woods and metals by the time the year was over, but there were an unusual number of prodigies in Mathis’ class alone. Savi Fea had already mastered plastics so she seldom came to class. John Dea was the same so he spent most of the class flirting with everybody including the teacher. Finally, there was Nelly Holsteim, a creative soul who had begun creating large-scale projects with a mixture of metals and wood and messed around with plastics in her free time. She was also a girl Mathis had grown fond of over the last year simply because she sat next to him and spoke in a friendly manner. She was from a suburban area between Ibanka and Pomohei named Whitelog Springs and seemed different to Mathis as she actually had a fascination with native Rhylean culture as opposed to most city-people’s disdain of it.
To be honest, Mathis himself was not entirely enamoured by the culture but was good at lying that he was just so he had an excuse to talk to her. He’d learnt the bread and butter of myths and legends from his childhood as well as the deeper philosophical meanings from Percy. Whenever Mathis spoke fluently about the subject he didn’t care about, Nelly always seemed supremely interested and attentive to the words that exited him. It was a warm feeling, something he didn’t usually feel when talking to anyone else, not even Percy. It felt like he was useful in some way. Like he was wanted.
But the recent revelation of her connection to Philomel left an irrational stab of betrayal in his heart. He knew it was wrong to think like this. He was just the guy she sat next to in materials, that was it. But the unwelcome suffocation lingered regardless. He wanted to be more to her but didn’t want to lose what they had in the process.
Mathis solidified a block of tungsten in his hand and then let it off into the aether. Again and again he practised this act unfocused as he caught momentary glances of Nelly working beside him in silence, as if he didn’t exist at all.
“Exam season. Not in a talkative mood,” he rationalised.
The hour went by with slight progress. By the end, Mathis was able to summon a cylindrical block of tungsten with one hand, a milestone he’d been working at for the last two weeks.
"And up to the heavens we go..."
One of the detriments of waking up early is if you went to bed late the night before. This fact was beginning to creep into Mathis’ body as, by the time the bell rang, he had already begun to lose control of his head. His feet worked on a mind of their own, his brain didn’t register the people passing him, the direction he was headed, nor the distant BOOM which shook the ground and shocked the school population who had begun frantically running to the outer field.
A shock of adrenaline ran through Mathis as he saw a group of Juniors running towards him. For a split second he thought he was about to be attacked but they ran past him in a hurry. He looked around him and realised everyone was heading to the outer field. The Kan and Audient working on the cafe ceased their apparition and ran closer to the explosion’s source. Two blocks away, there was an office building engulfed in green flames. A large plume of smoke rose steadily into the heavens, almost seeming to add to the receding rain clouds. The field was aflame with commotion.
“HOLY SHIT! THE FUCK WAS THAT?!”
“Terrorists, probably!”
“The hell are terrorists doing here? This town isn’t important!”
“Why the hell are the flames green?”
“Copper sulphate. Or Barium. Either one.”
“Damn. This is crazy. You recording this?”
Mathis simply stared in awe for a few moments before a sweet, painful voice cried out “Phil! Look at that!”
Mathis glanced to his right and briefly saw Nelly latching on to Phil’s vest in fear. A guttural wound opened up in his soul so he quickly turned away and walked closer to the crowd. Teachers and students alike stood paralysed and confused at the sight. Several people tried looking closer to see if they could spot an individual body in the chaos. A couple combat instructors including Kan. Grayson and Aud. Wilhelm leapt over the school gate to save anyone who may still have been alive in the inferno.
By now, the whole school from first-years to seniors, janitors to the head, were congregated on the outer field looking ahead, dumbfounded. A few moments passed before Aud. Bell, the regulator of the school bell, sent a booming message to the heads of everyone there.
“Students. We’ve contacted your parents and notified them of the situation. Please return home. The rest of the day is cancelled.” An audible cheer erupted and quickly died as the students were happy to return home but were still concerned of the strange explosion. Around sixty percent of the students walked in the direction of the bus bay to return home. Mathis blindly followed the rest who went home by themselves.
At the bus stop he usually waited at, the mass funnelled down to about seven people, Mathis included. Usually, four of them who knew each other would talk amongst themselves while the other three were left to their own devices but on this day, one of the three decided to be more social. He had puppy-dog eyes and curly brown hair, a junior Laetig who approached Mathis and attempted to draw him into conversation.
“You’re, uh– David, right?”
Mathis glanced over in slight contempt.
“No. Mathis”
“Oh, sorry. Well. I’m Wamiks.”
He looked in the direction of the school where a faint sliver of the building’s smoke could still be seen rising upwards.
“Hell of a thing happen there, shalise?”
Mathis sparked up as he knew something about the guy.
“You from uh, Dunlop, aye?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“Shalise? That’s regional Rhylean right there.”
Wamiks chuckled in amusement. “Yeah, yeah. You know your stuff. Where you from?”
“I’m, uh, Pomohei.” he said pointing upwards to indicate the town’s latitude.
“Somni! We born from the same mountain blood, brother! Have it here!” He reached out his hand in recognition which Mathis took in repressed agitation. He put on his fake smile from work and responded, “Yeah. Go wrap-squirrels.”
Internally, he wasn’t feeling the brotherly Rhylean love that was offered as his own preconceptions about natives bubbled up.
“Don’t associate me with you hicks. I have nothing in common with you.”
As Mathis felt this inside, Wamiks’ eyes dropped suddenly. He stared at Mathis in slight confusion at first, which eventually turned into deep contempt. “You’re not being honest, are you?” He asked flatly.
Mathis realised he was talking with a Laetig and immediately cut off any lies he may have been projecting. Wamiks confirmed his suspicion and turned away, offended.
The bus arrived, the driver an old woman wearing glasses of a heavy prescription. As Mathis sat down, he still felt slightly annoyed that Wamiks had tried the whole ‘mountain-blood-brother’ gimmick on him, but also felt shameful that he’d offended him. ‘He was just trying to be friends. Damn it.’
As the bus rolled along, Mathis thought of his own loyalties and identity. He knew he didn’t identify with the Rhylean mountain natives his town was filled with as they’d caused him more trouble than anything else. First there was the bike theft. Then there was the vandalisation. Also, there was the irrational exclusion based on the fact he didn't have a 'real' family. Oftentimes when he tried playing with other kids at the town’s playground, they would eventually ask what family he was from and when they received the answer “I don’t have one,” they’d look at him as if he had the plague and avoided him. The playground was often a lonely experience, passively witnessing the other kids have fun and get along. He felt alienated, excluded from joy.
But on the other hand, he wasn’t entirely seduced by the city life either. Firstly, city kids were just as capable of destruction and exclusion, for different reasons. They would sometimes destroy out of a sadistic indulgence, to lord their own wealth and name over the powers meant to regulate regular folk. Mathis had heard horror stories of students from EAI attacking and burning peoples’ houses down and facing zero consequences. He doubted the veracity of these stories but wouldn’t hold it past them if they were proven to be true. There was one aspect Mathis envied, which was the freedom for debauchery. But even that was two-sided. Sure, going out with friends, talking to girls, getting high on Bukou seemed fun, but the debauchery was two-sided. He was disgusted by the egos inflated by it. He’d often hear boys and girls alike talk about the euphoria of weekend conquests and drinking milestones as if they’d swindled a key to heaven from God himself. Something in Mathis was unconvinced by such pride. Perhaps he was too prudent.
As the bus slowed down to his stop, Mathis half-heartedy told himself that there was some other place he would be included in joy, some other people that would enjoy his presence. As soon as he alighted, the introspective thoughts faded away and he was back to routine. There were no incoming cars so he crossed the street to the bus stand he was at just a couple hours prior. He went into the woods and squatted down to the pile of turquoise leaves, reaching in for his bicycle. Hoisting it out, he set off home.
The ride back was easier as it was mostly downhill. Mathis didn’t bother pedalling as gravity gently pushed his bike right to his destination. As he passed the plots of flat land again, he saw the shops had opened already and there were hints of life in business. Mostly there were mothers accompanied by children carrying out necessary errands, but there was also the occasional day-drinker who had already lost their senses and wandered around the parking lot like children in a supermarket.
Within fifteen minutes, Mathis arrived back home at the coffee house. There were a few people inside already and the broken window had been repaired. He glanced inside and saw Percy dutifully carrying out orders with a robust mixture of machine precision and grace. He rode to the back of the coffeehouse and set his bike aside against the back kitchen door. He went through the kitchen and opened the door to the service counter.
Percy was making a heart-shape in coffee with skimmed milk which he quickly set on the order counter. An attractive blonde woman wearing a denim fur coat came to pick it up, smiling seductively at Percy with vibrant red lips. Percy took no notice and returned to the cashier counter to take the next order. Mathis waited for the customer to finish their order and in tandem began preparing an hourglass fog. But as soon as he picked up the hourglass, Percy swiped it away from him and acerbically told him with snakes eyes “I don’t need your help. Go away.”
Mathis obediently nodded and exited the coffeehouse’s back. The lump he’d felt yesterday returned to his throat and he looked around, finding himself at a loss as to what he should do. He was too tired to study again so he decided to return to his cabin.
His stomach grumbled, reminding him he hadn’t had the chance to eat lunch because the explosion had cut school short. He was hesitant to go into the coffeehouse and borrow a quick snack so he decided to push his hunger aside at the moment. Looking around, searching for something to do, he suddenly remembered the Sheifel bridge from yesterday. It was kind of fun last time. Why not visit again?
The bridge was busier at this time. Cars moved to and fro, rattling the rusty structure and vibrating Mathis’ head as he laid down on the walkway. He gazed at the hole he’d made yesterday in the fence, which and felt slightly disappointed at the imperfect circle he'd made.
"Damn terrorists."
As he looked up at the cerulean sky, he felt something strange. He felt himself to be not his body, nor his mind, but something beyond. This moment lasted for a grand total of six seconds before the intrusive thoughts of the day returned. Writhing anxieties possessed him. All manners of self-doubt and humiliation struck upon his every nerve and fibre and his mind was tumultuous, his breathing unsteady. His right ring finger fidgeted aggressively upon the cold walkway and there was no impetus for him to stop.
But his face remained stone solid. Not a single muscle twitched along his boyish face. His eyes were glazed over, blind to what was right in front of him. All he could experience was his own thought and emotion, self-contained in his corporeal vessel.
The bridge exploded in a fiery inferno. Green flames engulfed Mathis’ clothes and body as he plummeted down to his death in the river below. He felt an immutable fear before he crashed into the water, knocking him unconscious and carrying his body unceasingly forwards. The river flowed for several kilometres before joining the Violet Sea, upon which the waves carried Mathis past the wallowing safety line off the edge of Proxima into the world below.