It was a good party. Beatrice and Robert had moved around the furniture in the living room in a fashion so that my friends and I could set up our computers and laptops. For my birthday, they had bought me a paintball gun and reserved a day at a local paintball place, so after everyone had set up their laptops, Robert gave us a lift.
It was awesome! To be fair, I think I had an unfair advantage, because I had my own store bought paintball gun, but everyone had fun regardless. We started with over 4,000 paintballs, but they run out faster than you would think they would. But still, by the time we ran out and got picked up by Robert, it was already six-thirty. At home, instead of eating the stereotypical pizza, we had homemade tacos courtesy of Beatrice. At seven, we started playing on our computers.
On August 8th, 2015, at precisely 7:43, exactly fifteen years after my birth, my life turned upside down.
Lucas’s digital journal 8/14/15
So, the airplane ride kinda sucked.
The projected flight was about twenty-four hours, and the ride was good for… oh, half an hour? I had just started settling into the provided inflight movies when my brain exploded.
Well, not really. But it hurt a lot, okay? >.<
It was a searing pain, but it was definitely coming from the inside of my head. Which sucked. You know how if you’re hurt on the outside, by reflex, your hand will go up to wherever you’ve been wounded? If nothing else, that contact will provide mental comfort. But the problem with interior pain is that even putting your hands to about where it hurts doesn’t provide even the tiniest comfort, even mentally.
My dad was sitting beside me, holding me, asking me what was wrong. I can’t remember much except that my vision tunneled, and the last thing I saw was a plane attendant picking me up.
Unidentified
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[ - - Collecting DNA sample - - ]
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[ - - Processing - - ]
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[ - - Species identified: Number 14 - - ]
[ - - Capabilities analyzed, rerouting cerebral energy - - ]
[ - - Directing destruction and replacement of cells - - ]
[ - - Processing - - ]
[ - - Processing - - ]
[ - - Processing - - ]
[ - - Processing - - ]
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Hunter
Do you ever get a feeling of detachment from the world, even for just a second? It feels like you’re watching a movie which has been cleverly angled to portray a first person view. All sound is muffled, and your vision begins to lose its focus. Then, suddenly, everything comes back into view, and you feel more alive than ever before.
Now, imagine that, except instead of sound being muffled and your vision losing its focus, you actually stop hearing and stop seeing. Not only that, you lose all of your senses, including smell and touch. Then, in a flood of information, your brain processes all sounds, and all sights.
If you can imagine that, then you’ll get a pretty accurate idea of what happened to me. Blake had just pulled off an insane play, and we all cheered because it had won us the game. In the midst of our celebration, I suddenly couldn’t see or hear anything. Panic seized my heart, and I shouted out. I’d lost my sense of direction, and had started falling to the floor. But then, like a computer booting up, my senses came back to me one-by-one, in the space of milliseconds. But each sense was a such a novelty to me that it felt as though the pause between each recovery spanned hours.
First, I realized I was falling. Unfortunately, without sight or hearing, I could not do anything about it. I felt hopeless, knowing that I was falling yet unable to see, let alone do anything about it. Sight came to me next. Although my eyes had been open the entire time, I could finally see again. Yet, there was something different about what I saw. Everything was sharp. I could focus in on individual things. I had never needed glasses, but I felt like I’d just put on some miracle lenses. My eyes darted all around my visual scope, taking in everything. I could see Blake and James in the middle of throwing down their headsets, looking urgent. No one else had even noticed yet. There was something graceful about seeing this situation, however horrifying, in such clarity. It was like living life in HD after knowing it for fifteen years in 240p.
Hearing came back to me next. In the short span that my brain had to comprehend what was happening, it didn’t even try to understand what I was hearing. It wasn’t necessary. But it didn’t even consider how powerful it would be. I could not only hear the tremble of my friends’ voices as they called out, I could hear the clink of the dishes as Beatrice finished up washing, and the rumble of Robert’s voice as he talked to her. Everything was so loud. It was bearable, but only just. Almost immediately after I regained hearing, I could smell again. Oh, the things I could smell! I could smell the conditioner that each of the other seven people in the house had used. I could smell the tacos that we had eaten half an hour ago. I could smell the garbage in the can outside, almost 10 meters away.
Finally, feeling came to my arms and legs. I could move. With my head about a foot away from the ground, I quickly reached with my arms to brace myself against impact. I ended up in a position that looked like I was planking. I exhaled a huge breath. “Thank God.” I said, and promptly fainted.
Lucas
Digital journal 8/15/15
I woke up in the San Francisco General Hospital. I felt fine, until I opened my eyes. Light flooded into my ocular receptors and my brain started buzzing. It wasn’t as bad as before; it was more of an afterburn. It was still enough for me to close me eyes though.
It wasn’t much help. I was painfully aware of my eyes pressing against my eyelids, something that doesn’t feel very comfortable and can only be relieved, by my knowledge, by opening your eyes and closing them again. But at that moment, opening my eyes again didn’t seem like the most