Chris IV

“How many of us are like us?” I ask.

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 can 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.

“Both?”

“Two others in Seattle. 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, I can feel the same thing although that’s not what you actually feel is it?”

“No.”

“No, you can see what’s beyond and know where things are supposed to go. It’s special, 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 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 observe gives me a headache. The chemical compounds it’s made off of shouldn’t be possible. At best you can make it but It’ll only be stable enough for a microsecond before it renders itself useless and toxic. I’m not going to lie, how it’s able to be stable intrigues me but I’m better off not looking into it.

“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.

In an instant I see. I see everything. It’s like a massive psychotic break where I’m reliving my past. I’m once again a child, 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 small age. 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.

Then I met Cody. He was just some random kid in the playground. He was the first one who didn’t treat me weirdly because I was weird. He just wanted to play and went along with anything I said. He’s the one who showed me I wanted a regular childhood. So that’s what I did.

It was never the same as anyone else. 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 instinctually walked towards the path my parents and all the professors and doctors wanted me to. Towards the end of middle school, I began researching philosophy 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 free will and develop models to measure the theories. It all becomes a conspiracy so I delved into psychology and physics but the more and more I delve 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.

It’s the only way I could cope. It’s the only way I could crawl myself into reality.

But it only awoke whatever this power is in me. Ever since then, the pull tells me whether or not something should happen. It tells me where things are heading.

But I lost my mind and I didn’t know if it was real.

It wasn’t real until it told me Elizabeth wasn’t supposed to die. It wasn’t real until I saw her outside grabbing the gun from her car. It wasn’t real until it was screaming at me to stop her.

But I didn’t.

“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 help you escape.”