Meeting Jack

I’m not forgetting the Batman one, but this one inserted itself into my brain this morning and I feel the strong need to write it down before it exits my brain.

That said . . .

Meeting Jack

He was small when his sister was born. He watched the world carefully; even though his world consisted mostly of kneecaps, table legs and floor designs. He remembers the day that his sister was brought home. His father and his uncle were at the house, perfecting the room that his sister would stay in. To his relief, they weren’t talking much, but mostly spent the time handing each other mechanical parts and the tools that were used to put them together. He watched discreetly from the hallway, even though his father thought that he was in his room.

When they did finally get into a conversation longer than three sentences, it was as he had suspected; it was about him.

“Chris,” his uncle said, “how do you know that this one will be okay?”

“Jesus, Brad, you of all people should know what happened the last time! I daresay that there will be no mistakes this go around, considering the mud we dragged that other doctor through. Not only will that man never find another job in the medical field, but he’ll also be paying us out of pocket for the rest of his natural life.”

“Do you honestly believe that he did it on purpose?” Brad answered, incredulity tinging his voice.

“He’s one of those damn neo-evolutionists, Brad. He did it on purpose, trust me. ‘Making the world more diverse for tomorrow’s children. Expanding the neurological barriers.’” He said in a sing-song voice, quoting the slogans he had no doubt heard many times before. “God, what a crock. I want to know how having a kid like Jack is going to do anything more than cost the government some pretty pennies after Sue and I are gone.”

“Speaking of him,” Brad said, “aren’t you worried that he might hurt the baby?”

“I doubt he’ll notice the baby. Besides, we keep a pretty good eye on him. He doesn’t like to move that much. If I just set something shiny in front of him, he’ll stay there the rest of the day.”

He had wandered off then, back to his room and its “shiny things,” as his father had put it. He wasn’t angry at his father’s words, or at his uncle’s words. Anger was too loud for him to think about. It hurt his brain. He tried to avoid it.

Later, after his mother and sister had gotten home, and they had gone back to their respective schedules, except his sister who was fast asleep, he decided to sneak in and see her. They told him that his mother was taking a bath and his father was in there with her, talking to her. That was on the other side of the house. They wouldn’t hear him. They rarely noticed him anyway, except when they wanted to. He felt pain at the memory of their choices in times to notice him. It seemed that they almost purposely chose times when they knew he would be completely invested in something and not want to be disturbed. They didn’t notice of course, but there were times that he wondered.

He walked to her room with his eyes closed. He did better when he didn’t rely on his eyes. His other senses tended to be easier to process. Besides, the light in the hallway was too loud, and much too yellow.

He opened the door softly, taking care not to just crash into the room like his parents often crashed into his, even when they thought they were being quiet. He listened closely to the tumblers move in the door knob as he turned his hand one way and then back. When he was perfectly quiet, he could see them move in his mind. When there were others around, he could only feel them in his palm; a sensation he didn’t like, because it itched.

After closing the door behind him, he crept carefully to her crib, sidestepping the diaper bag easily; its position already memorized from watching his father put it down earlier that evening. He looked at her face, awash in the glow of what he called the Life Dust. She was so tiny and compared to her, he was big. He had heard others talk about older siblings and big brothers and he knew that he had a very important mission laid out for the rest of his life now. He didn’t mind; the Life Dust had told him that it was a very honorable position to find one’s self in.

He had been afraid, initially, when he had started hearing about the coming introduction of his little sister. Newness made him worried, because he was never sure how much it would hurt. It seemed that there was a language to life that everyone was taught, but because of his birth having been tampered with by the doctor, they had arbitrarily decided not to let him into the game. When other people experienced something new, there were generally only one or two reactions felt and shown by those people. He had felt their thoughts via the Life Dust and knew that their feelings were similar to the ones he had, but their reactions were not. He didn’t understand how that worked. How could you feel something and then say something else? And yet, people did it all the time. He had tried doing that, but it hadn’t made a difference, because his parents had still chastised him or looked at him strangely, or treated him with a general disdain that stung his heart with a thousand sharp stingers.

“Look how innocent,” the Life Dust murmured to him about his sister.

<I can’t see>, he said, answering in his mind. He could see the side of her face from his angle on the floor, but not her face full on.

The Life Dust did not respond aurally, but instead it pulled away from the surfaces nearest him, towing its golden sheen with it through the air to wrap around his feet and shoulders. He watched calmly as the floor fell away under his feet as they pulled him upwards into the air next to the top of the crib’s walls. When in range, he reached out his hand and touched her face, ever so lightly, barely stirring the fine layer of Life Dust on her face. He felt no pain in touching her face; her dreams were innocent and free of hatred and anger. He sighed in relief and the comfort that the touch elicited in his fingers. It was a touch that he would relish and remember for many more years.

“You are tired,” the Life Dust sang in golden harmonies to him.

He was. The Life Dust set him careful on his feet and then checked the location of his parents once more before allowing him in the hallway. He saw in his mind’s eye that they were now in their bedroom. Their words were relaxed and easy to listen to. They were talking about his new sister and how beautiful she was. He smiled in agreement. He opened the door as carefully as before and put himself back to bed, which was where his mother had put him an hour ago. He had not argued with her. They did this every night and it gave him comfort to know that some things didn’t change. Those static events in his life were the ones that he trusted in; the ones that he used to learn reliability and constance through; for surely his parents did not understand those terms. They were always answering in new ways, changing their minds, reacting differently just based on seemingly random factors. It didn’t make any sense to him. They never bothered to explain their reasoning.

He opened and closed his fists several times in front of his eyes, clearing his mind of the discomforting thoughts, allowing him to focus back in on his world and of course, the Life Dust. He was nine now. He liked knowing his age; he liked knowing that there was a written schedule to the days of the week and names for the months. His parents had calendars to show them what day it was. He had learned that in school. It hadn’t made sense to him at first for a person to use a calendar, because once he knew the days of the week, he knew where he was, he knew what had happened the day before and he knew what would happen the next day. Sometimes there were upsets, but the Life Dust often would try to forewarn him about it.

When his sister was born, he had thought for some time that she too would see the Life Dust, and for a while she had, just taking it in with all of the other new things around her. But as she got older, she stopped seeing it altogether. There was a period of time where he had been able to talk to her in his head like he did with the Life Dust, and she would respond to him in turn, talking more in images and shared memories than the language that their parents used. However, even that was gone now. Now she was a six year old, off to first grade for the first time.

He remembered the first day of first grade. He had been dropped off by mother, even though the schedule was wrong for that day. They should have gotten up and had bran flakes with grape juice, just like every other Monday, and then gone to the local grocery store for his mother’s weekly shopping. But they had not. In fact, it had started with the bowl of oatmeal that he had sat down to that morning.

His mother smiled at him with full eyes containing gravel, bits of twisted hay and orange jelly, which had automatically alerted him to the danger of the upcoming situation. Usually her eyes were full of mud and cranberry juice in the morning, because as his father had often joked, he had not married a “morning person.” He didn’t understand why someone would only be a person in the mornings and not in the afternoons and evenings too. He had watched his mother closely when his father had said that, only to be reassured at lunchtime when she had continued being a person.

But his first day of first grade had started with eyes that looked at him full of gravel, bits of twisted hay and orange, and he had shrunk backwards, revealing his fear for the change. He tried not to react openly to his parents, because then they always punished him by touching him, by putting their whispering, zippery and buzzing fingers on his arms, or his shoulders, or worse yet, his face. It made him feel as though there were creatures chewing on his skin with razor edged needle thin teeth that simultaneously tickled and also made him want to retch. And that would make him scream if it lasted too long, because he had to react before his brain exploded with the sensations. That of course would make it worse, because the scream was a rebounding sound in his head and outside his body, against the walls, bouncing like a half-deflated ball; hitting every surface with a FLOOP and a FLAP that made his brain think of partially remembered nightmares filled with monsters holding him down and doing as they pleased, regardless of his pleas.

So he had taken a deep breath and tried to smile at his mother, which is something she liked him to do, he had discovered. The Life Dust had shown him how to do it on command. And like always, his smile reassured his mother, and she seemed to swallow the impulse to touch him, to calm him. It was strange that she still needed to touch him even though he had clearly shown her that he did not like it. It was just another example of how his parents were blind.

He had picked up his spoon, trying to ignore the difference in weight that screamed out to him that something was wrong, that something was changed, that something was going to happen and that he better be watching, lest he fall into its trap. He had even gone so far to take a bite, but that had proven to be more than he could handle. He had made it through two changes, but three was too much, especially so early in the day. If that many changes could happen before lunchtime, then what kind of day was he to expect? Would this also be the day that the sun stopped shining and gravity stopped working? He knew about gravity. There was an interactive show on the science channel that his mother allowed him to watch that focused on the workings of the physical world. He had been fascinated by it, and had taken great pleasure in knowing that unbreakable laws governed the world around him. He was happy that down was always down and up was always up. It seemed that was often little else in his life that stayed the same.

He could not swallow the oatmeal. It came to a stop in his rapidly closing throat. He was afraid that he might choke, and if two changes had already happened that morning, then it was possible that he could also choke and just stop breathing altogether, and then what would happen? Even the Life Dust couldn’t tell him, and that terrified him more than anything, since the Life Dust was a part of every object in the world and if it didn’t know, then he wasn’t quite sure what could.

“Better eat up boyo,” he heard somewhere outside his head. Where had that come from? He had been in space and had been looking at the golden Life Dust scattered everywhere around him, and he’d been alone.

The voice spoke again and he tried to look around, but the fear was still clamping down on him, making it hard to breathe, and that was bad, since there was already a spoonful of the stuff in his mouth, catching itself on his tongue and finding its way into the cracks between his teeth in a much more noticeable way than his bran flakes ever did.

“Better get moving with that spoon, Jack,” the voice said again, only this time it was full of hard glittering surfaces and sour fruit. The taste of the sour fruit mixed with the quickly choking oatmeal was too much for him, and he spat it up, onto the table.

He heard his parents jump up, even through the cacophony of their internal reactions ringing in his ears. His mother said, “There there Jack. I guess you’re just a little nervous about the first day of school.” But she had felt something more akin to disgust and anger, leaving him to shrink back in his seat as she approached him, as he felt the burning waves of her anger slosh in her mind and threaten to spill over out on him.

“Fix.” He had croaked out, even though he deplored the sound of his own voice. He tried to tell her that he would fix it, if he could, but all that would come out was that one word.

“You did it boyo,” his father had then grated out beside him. “You can fix it yourself,” and his father had slung a dishrag into his hands; which, besides being too sudden to register, was also a mixture of emotions pulsating from his father and the strangeness in quality of the dishrag. He felt that in his lap with the dishrag he suddenly had access to a physical representation of his parents. Its material was soft, but also rough; while also being firm yet movable. It was a two in one kind of sensation that he did not care for, but he gritted his teeth, dug his fingernails into his palm and used it to quickly wipe the table off. It was the first time he had done something like that, and he felt surprise from both sides of the table.

“I think he heard you Chris.” His mother’s voice had said, now smelling of limp noodles and boiled water.

“Maybe he’s not as stupid as he seems,” his father’s voice had said back.

He didn’t watch the exchange, because he was desperately trying not to scream. He had wiped his hands off on his pants repeatedly instead, trying to get rid of the offensive feel of the two-in-one textured dishrag. Later, when his mother had dropped him off at the first grade setting, it hadn’t taken long or very much of anything to completely send him screaming over the edge, shocking his classmates and teacher as he had banged his head on the floor, trying to make the sensations stop. By this point, everything was so wrong that he half expected his body to lift right off the floor and become stuck on the ceiling somewhere. It wasn’t supposed to work like that, and his skin had been screaming for an hour before he had joined in his voice to the fray.

Now, however, was his sister’s first day in first grade. He doubted that his sister would have any of those problems. Even though his sister was only six years old, she had already become a favorite of the other little boys and girls of the neighborhood. He had watched them play from the vantage point at his second story window in his room and saw them sometimes imitate him. He felt a sense of pride every time he saw her though, because she was his little sister and he was her big brother, and nothing that anyone said would change that.

They had gone to school that day finally, after he had eaten his bran flakes and grape juice, and had put on his brown lace up shoes that he tied himself, and had tied himself for some time. The Life Dust had sung him songs during breakfast to try and relieve his fear about the first day back to school. He was still at the same school and still with the same teacher, but there were new things about each year, and he wasn’t always adept at handling them all together. Luckily, there were enough similarities from the previous two years that he felt he would probably be able to get through the day okay, and besides, his sister was now in the school, and if necessary, he could see her and she would make it be okay.

His teacher greeted him in the same manner she always did. She bowed her greeting to him, not saying anything, which allowed him a chance to see her, but without her eyes, or her voice interfering in the experience. Only when he had bowed in return would she stand back up. He did and after straightening back up, she told him in her slow, even, calm voice that he was to sit where he wanted, as always, and that she was very happy to see him again. The Life Dust told him to smile, and he did, which she returned to him as well. He didn’t see the point in it, but it made other people happy and it didn’t hurt him in any way to perform the act, so he didn’t mind.

He sat at the round table closest to the door, with his back to the wall just like he had for the past two years. He liked the idea that if needed, if there was a fire or something of that nature, he would be able to get out of the door in time not to die. He found his teacher favorable because she did not see what she wanted to see when she looked at him. When he felt her mind, he just found himself echoed back at him; instead of seeing a child that was not there and did not exist, like his parents did, when he did the same trick with them.

For the Life Dust’s part, they reassured him that she was indeed good and spoke as honestly and truly as she could. He had seen it himself too. When she said she would do something, she did, and she remembered what things he really didn’t like and would keep those things down to a minimum. During first grade, when he had been hitting his head on the floor, she had been the one to get him out of there and into a dark quiet place that allowed him to reconnoiter his mind and body. Ever since then, he had been in her class.

Since the sound of his own voice bothered him so much, he didn’t do much talking in her class, but worked with her through an interactive computer system that was often used by the testing officers of the space pilots’ children’s program. He could answer the questions if he didn’t have to write or speak, and he did that via pushing buttons or touching the pictures that most resembled the pictures in his mind. Through this machine, she had tested his intelligence level. She had told him about it while they were doing it, stating that it was important for his parents to understand him better and it also was just the way that they were to go about his schooling while he was in her class.

He had gotten stuck on the words: “while he was in her class,” though, because it seemed that those words were temporary words and not permanent ones. She had told him to ask the Life Dust about life and how permanent and temporary things were in the world. She didn’t entirely understand his Life Dust, but she did know that after he talked something over with the golden dust, he often had a better understanding of something, even though she had not been able to help him. He knew that she thought the Life Dust was just another way of thinking for him, which was somewhat true, but he knew the real truth; he knew that the Life Dust was in everything and everyone, and that only certain people could see it. He also knew that two of those people other than himself were also in his class. He had seen them talking to it, interacting with it, listening to its melodies and had communicated with them himself via the connections along the golden trails through the room.

He was following one of the many golden trails down the hallway, ignoring the bustle and noise that signaled the end of the day for the other kids, and which signaled the reintroduction of chaos back into his life. He was thinking about the beauty of the sound of the speech of the Life Dust. It was melody and liquid 3D pictures all at once. It was the reason that he hated his own voice, because compared to the golden sound of the light filled essence that he heard from Them, his own voice was flat, cold and jagged. But there were still times that he spoke anyway, because sometimes he just had to try and let others know certain things about himself.

He was so lost in his own world that the punch to his head didn’t even register at first. He just knew that the world had moved and he was now on the floor. He shook his head, trying to see if the floor really was the floor, and got kicked again, only this time it was in the ribs. He pushed out a painful breath at the impact of the kick and rolled into a wall. There was a massive wall of color and sound all around him that blocked out most of the pain from the two points of contact on his body.

“There are kids all around you,” the Golden Dust informed him. “One is angry, but We don’t know why as of yet.”

<At me?> He thought in amazement.

The boy who had hit him magically answered by grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling him to his feet, to stare him in the eyes not six inches from his face.

He shook his head again, in an unsuccessful attempt to clear his head which was now swirling through his body and out around him, in violent circles alongside the Life Dust.

“Hey dummy,” the boy nearly screamed in his face, “why don’t you cry for us?”

The boy let go of him, but swung his foot into Jack’s stomach on his way down to the floor.

He didn’t make any sound other than a loud wheezing exhalation from the kick. This was an aberration from his schedule. It wasn’t supposed to be happening. Where was Sarah? Their mother was supposed to meet them here. She always did. Why weren’t they here? He tried to look at his watch, but the other boy grabbed him again before he could look.

“Look at me dummy!” The boy yelled in his face.

He didn’t register anything other than the fact that the boy was yelling at him in a voice dripping with custard and tomato juice and filled with thorns. He didn’t like any of the those things, and he tried to get out of the boy’s grasp, because he could feel pulsating anger pushing through the boy’s fingers, through his shirt and onto his skin, and he needed to get away from it before it contaminated him.

“NO!” He barked out roughly, actually saying what he meant for once. He backed up roughly. He was actually the bigger of the two boys, but he couldn’t tell that from his angle. He didn’t have time to compare the other boy to the familiar landmarks around them, so he couldn’t tell just how big the boy was compared to himself. He knew that Sarah was shorter than he was because she came to his shoulder when they were both standing still and flatfooted.

However, now, they were both off-balance, and they weren’t even with the lines of the bricks on the walls or in line with the vertical lines of the lockers and–.

“DUMMY!” The boy yelled at him, in his ear, and followed the shout with another punch to his sternum, dropping him to his knees.

He didn’t register the hit as much as the shout. It added just one more layer to the already overloaded sensory portion of his brain. The boys around them were still a blur; the boy who had yelled at him was now chanting “Dummy! Dummy!” as the other boys joined in. More boys rushed forwards to hit him and he finally realized that they were all touching him. His skin, which had been shouting for some time now cranked to a new level and he felt that he could even hear the Life Dust screaming in time to the punches and kicks from the other boys. He put his arms over his face and tried to close his eyes and think of Sarah. Sarah would get him out of this.

He could see her. She heard them and was running down the hall towards them.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing to my big brother?” Her shriek notated her message to them all.

There was sudden silence at the entrance of one little girl. It was obvious that none of the boys were willing to hit her. The other boys who had been hitting him now slunk off to the side, away from them.

Upon seeing his freedom, he lurched into an upright position, his sides and head now hurting, but not in comparison with his still keening synapses and wildly freaking body parts. He jittered there while he stood, unsteady and wheezing, tasting blood and not liking it, and still wondering where their mother was.

“What the hell did you do to him?” She raged at them. No one answered. It was with some surprise that they looked on as she turned on her heel and smacked him across the face.

He looked at her with wild eyed surprise; not at her action, but at the hatred in her mind that was all directed at him. He shrunk quickly back from her, finally starting to cry, because that was the worst thing that could have happened on top of all the other wrong stuff that had already occurred.

“You better put the word out boyos,” she said in a perfect imitation of their father. “The only one who gets to hit him is me,” she said with a thumb pointing at her small chest.

“Sar-Sar-Sar,” he stuttered, trying to speak; trying to ask her why and how both at the same time.

“Shut up dummy,” she said, tossing it over her shoulder, not even looking at him.

“Sarah, no, no no can’t, no stop, no Sar, Sar, boys, the, ah lockers and shoulder and Sar, uh why no no no.” He slumped to his knees, really crying now, unable to say anything, because his throat had closed once more on him. He gripped his stomach as his cries became more magnified, echoing back at him harder and harder, until he was screaming over their sensations in his gut.

“And he’ll be going too? Isn’t that some kind of a liability issue?” Brad asked his father while he sat there, spinning a spoon around and around on the table, watching the Life Dust spiral around it; their spirals reminding him of the day that she had hit him. What had happened before that didn’t matter; it only mattered that she had hit him and if she would hit him, then she could hit him again; even though he was 16 now and she was 13 and had never hit him again in all of that time. But before it hadn’t been possible and that had been a law, like gravity, that was set in stone; which was a phrase that his father always used and had actually taken the time to explain, but it was okay, because he liked the image it had wrought in his mind both literally and figuratively. Now it was just a pseudo-law, a fake law that worked sometimes, but not always; like saying that dinner was after lunch, except on Sundays, when dinner was before supper, because there was no lunch.

“Only for him,” his father answered, as if he wasn’t in the room; as if the intelligence tests that his teacher had conducted seven years ago had not revealed that he was extremely bright and capable of understanding most of his environment. His father just ignored that fact, because he had stopped mattering the instance that Sarah had come into being, the start of his father’s chance at having a real family; and no, those weren’t his words, but rather words his father had said to his mother another time while they were talking directly in front of him, as though he were an incompetent child, or a plant.

He kept swirling the spoon because he liked the sound it made, but he turned and looked at the plant sitting in the corner also and watched the glistening of the Life Dust on its leaves for a little bit while his father continued discussing with his uncle why they were sacrificing him and his life in order that Sarah might be given two chances at life, in case her first one went badly.

“So they do a brain transplant or what?” Brad asked his father.

“I’m no scientist Brad. I can’t tell you exactly what happens, although I do know that they wouldn’t transplant the entire brain, only parts.” His father said, talking about the murder of his own son as though it were a weather report.

<As though it were about to rain>, he thought to the Life Dust that swirled around him. They were trying to distract him from the conversation going on around him, but it wasn’t working. He could hear them and his father’s words simultaneously. His eyes and ears could work independently of each other when he wanted them to, usually. The music was beautiful though.

“God, I’d hate to see my beautiful little girl stuck inside of him for the rest of her natural life,” Brad said, purple-gray contempt dripping off of his voice.

“Actually, they are gathering the other kids from his class as back-ups for him as well.” His father answered calmly, now discussing the possible murders of not just his own son, but of other peoples’ sons and daughters as well.

“How’d the military get the rights to those kids?” Brad asked.

He looked at the piano on the other side of the room. His father was taking him to his music therapy group in another thirty minutes, but first his father had to explain the latest to Brad. His father had just instructed him to stay in his sight. He could do that. The room was only 15.4 feet in length. His father’s eyesight wasn’t that bad.

“So they just requisition the kids?” Brad’s voice floated over him as he walked slowly to the piano. He hadn’t known what a piano did until music therapy, until he had heard an instrument that closely mirrored the Life Dust’s own melodic sounds. He knew that you had to press the keys to make it play. Clumsily he pulled the bench out and sat down. He found the pattern of the keys and lack of bright colors relaxing. He breathed out slowly, relaxing as he did so, not even aware of the tension within him.

“Most of those kids don’t have a future anyway. The parents were happy to get rid of them and go live their own lives. Apparently the only one who raised a fuss was the teacher.”

“Well, I understand that. If it was my job, I wouldn’t want to lose my students.”

“Well yeah, but now she has to raise to the challenge of being a teacher of normal kids. I doubt she can make it on in the world when she discovers that life isn’t all about wiping drool and playing games.”

The Life Dust sang to him sweetly. It was a song that he had first heard when he had seen Sarah for the first time. He remembered that feeling. It filled him with warmth and the smell of fresh bread. He pressed a key lightly, and involuntarily smiled at the sound he had created. The Life Dust surrounded his fingers and mapped out his path on the keys, showing him where and how to go.

“Didn’t she try to come up with some dumb story about him being intellectually gifted?” Brad asked.

“I still don’t know what she was trying to pull with that dumb story. I mean what the hell? Even if she was right, what does he have to show for it? A girlfriend? Friends? Popularity? A car? He has nothing. He can’t even bathe himself 100% of the time still.”

He pressed his fingers down together slowly, getting the feel for the keys. He liked the vibrations that he could feel through his fingertips. They felt like warm water and fresh snow all at once. He pressed more keys and then more keys, slowly picking up a tempo that he felt in his heart as well as his head.

His uncle and his father, long skilled at tuning him out, continued to do so. But his mother–his mother and his sister both found themselves walking down their respective hallways and shortly after he first started playing, they both appeared in the room; both wearing identical thoughtful listening faces.

“I’ve heard that tune before,” they both said in unison before looking at each other in amazement.

“What’s that?” His father said, breaking off his conversation with uncle Brad to look at them.

“That tune,” his mother said, turning to her husband.

“What tune? I can’t hear you over the racket that Jack is making on the piano.” His father said crossly.

“Daddy just shut up!” Sarah said contemptuously to her father. He shut up in response and surprise, for she was a daddy’s girl and they almost always got along.

“Jack is playing music by ear,” Sarah said in a whisper to her father.

“He can’t play,” her father said in a low growl.

“Just listen to him then!” His mother hissed at him from where she stood, silently listening in wonder to the tune that had never been played before it started emanating from his fingertips moving in rapid succession like machine cogs, but with the simultaneous delicacy and firmness of raindrops.”

He continued playing, the warmth from his movements and the sound of his creation echoing in his ears and filling him with more joy than he had ever known.

Sarah walked closer to him, finally coming to a stop only 3 feet to the left of him.

“His eyes are closed!” she said in surprise.

“Like that’s a surprise,” their father said sarcastically.

“Daddy, your eyes have been closed his entire life!” His sister hissed at their father.

He did not notice their conversation, but instead just kept playing the music of his soul and of his life. The section of the song that was stormy and full of wild harmonies was his memory of the fight with the boys and how his sister had hit him. This section was followed by a very sad section that made both their mother and his sister’s hearts ache for the message that he sending them. He had felt pain at the hands of others it seemed and that pain had registered in his mind, regardless of what their father said about him. How else could he play this section of the music with such feeling and overwhelming emotional depth?

She sat on the floor, cross legged like a much younger child and just listened to him, overwhelmed at the opportunity to hear inside his mind and his thoughts. Their mother soon came up and joined her on the floor. The two men left the room after they were aware that no one would notice their exit; Brad left somewhat thoughtful, but their father left in something more akin to rage. It was that rage and only that rage that he could feel while he played, everything else was muted out completely. Although he could still feel it, he did not stop, but played through it, showing strength of will against it and against what it meant for him.

Time passed, but no one noticed. His music therapy session for the day was not attended, because he was creating his own music therapy session for himself here and now. The experience was a gift for those who heard it, and when he finally came to a somewhat unfinished ending, the awe and wonder that had been there while he was playing did not disappear, but instead strengthened to a point where his sister and their mother nearly felt choked by the strength of the message.

It was with great relief when he finally turned and looked at them; a genuine relaxed smile on his face.

“Your t-t-t-turn,” he said, with relative ease, while looking softly at his sister.

“Oh no, I couldn’t do anything like that,” she said, flabbergasted at the idea. He just held out his hand in response, towards her. She had rarely touched him during his lifetime, knowing that he did not like physical touch, a fact that their parents still forgot to this day. However, occasionally, he would reach out and take her hand, initiating the contact, and somehow, that seemed to make it okay.

Shyly, she reached out and took his hand, marveling at the warmth of his fingers. Before now, whenever she had grasped his hand, it had always been clammy and cold, but not this time. This time was different. He pulled her up and indicated that she should sit down next to him on the piano bench. She did and continued holding his hand tightly, like they did when they were much younger.

“What do I do?” She asked softly, looking at the piano and then looking back to see the look of great peace on his face.

“Dream.” He said, answering her question and looking surprised at himself for answering it.

“How?” She asked, not at all sure of whether she could do what he was asking her to do.

“Eyes closed.” He instructed and she did as he said.

He laid her hand on the piano and she followed with her other one, laying close by. He released her hand and started playing slowly, single notes here and there in a seemingly random pattern.

She listened and kept her mind clear, waiting for something to happen, but not sure if it actually would.

A strange sensation was happening with her fingertips. They felt warm, like his had, and it was suddenly apparent to her that she knew this song in a more basic sense than she had thought initially. She actually laughed out loud as she played a few notes, adding her own harmonies into the mix of experience. Of course she wouldn’t remember the beginning; she wasn’t there for the beginning!

And yet, that thought was imbecilic. What beginning? What was her brain trying to tell her? She ignored those thoughts, knowing that if she thought them too much, then the melody would leave her and she would only be able to sit here, cold and empty while he played alone.

He had been alone too much, she felt. Part of that was her fault; she had regretted the day that she had hit him; but really, the day hadn’t been good for her either, because all the other kids had wanted to talk about was her special brother and whether she was anything like him. She had defended him all that day, even though she was just six years old, and then to find him in trouble, she had suddenly felt as though she were the older sibling, rather than him. She had thought to herself crazily that if he so wanted to be her younger brother, then he would have to see what it would be like to take her punishments. As soon as she had hit him, she had wanted to take it back, but seeing him crumple like that had just made her turn away, unable to continue watching. None of that situation was right. They were both on the same page, but neither one knew.

They continued playing, but this time it was a much shorter melody, because, as she soon realized, it was her melody and she hadn’t been around all that long.

Finally they stopped playing and he just kept looking at his fingers which continued to rest on the keys. She wanted to reach out and hold his hand again, but she knew he wouldn’t like it.

“I’m sorry.” She said, ignoring the fact that their mother was in the room.

He didn’t make any kind of verbal response, but instead nodded his head up and down quickly, indicating that he had heard. But did he forgive her?

She wouldn’t be able to ever know, she felt.

Suddenly feeling stiff and much older than thirteen, she stood up, stretching. He continued to sit there unmoving and she thought it prudent just to leave there and go to her room. Her mother was already standing, misty eyed now, at the other side of the room. She went to her room and their mother went with her, probably to discuss what had just happened.

He sat, unmoving while she looked at him and while she stood up slowly, a thousand thoughts dancing in his mind, each more impossible to communicate than the last. So he said nothing and had forced her to end their conversation.

<I wanted to tell her what dad has signed me up for>, he thought at long last to the golden dust still hovering around him.

“She’s not stupid.” The Life Dust answered, meaning that she would mostly likely figure it out on her own soon enough.

<No, she’s not.> He agreed once more, thinking of that time in his past with the tang of sweet juice imbedded in the thought; much like the memory he had also of her sweet innocence.

His sweet Sarah had been in training even at that time, in a program designed to produce the best and youngest starship pilots of their generation. Now she had been assigned to her first mission, and she wasn’t alone. Their mother had not come, but their father had, and he too had come, even though he had not been given a choice in the matter.

He looked out into the pinpoints of light that stood as their only visions of the distant planets that lay farther out beyond all that was known. It seemed strange to him that they could not get to those stars any faster than they did, but as always, no one had asked him.

The golden trails that he had followed through the corridors at school were also here in space, winding their ways between the planets, moons and spacedust that seemed to primarily populate the blank darkness between the points of light. The Life Dust was part of this world too, because everywhere out here was remnants and pieces of new and old life. The Life Dust protected what was left and helped that which was new, showing him that there truly was no end to anything, just distant paths stretching out in all directions around them.

He stared at the container walls that sourrounded him. They kept him in a separate place on the bridge of the ship; a place that had its own air and more protections than normal. It had no windows, nor equivalents of windows. They apparently felt that he could not get bored either, because they gave him nothing to do, nothing to work with, nothing on which he could play on. The only amenity they allowed him was the clearness of the walls which allowed him to watch his sister, but not hear her. This did not bother him, for the golden dust that had followed him all his life was still there with him, as well as being draped through the bridge itself; glittering so brightly on some angles that he wondered why they were not blinded by it. As it was, he could not always open his eyes fully because of it.

There was a cot in here and a toilet as well; that he had discovered could be hidden behind a moving wall of some sort. He had seen the other crew members raise their eyebrows and widen their eyes when he had first made the wall work. He did not know why they reacted so strangely. He had always been able to make things work with his hands. After all, objects were much more reliable than people, because their parts always worked the same way, and there were rarely hidden catches within their innards. They did not stop working for seeminly arbitrary reasons; nor did they look one way and act another. No, mechanical devices and objects were much preferable to most other creatures that he had daily contact with.

He had felt the wall carefully, noticing that the colors of the paneling did not line up exactly. The wall hummed with energy and other workings that he could feel gently vibrating beneath his fingertips that was not unlike the feeling that he had experienced when playing the piano. In fact, some of the vibrations were working at the same speeds as the some of the chords and individual notes on the piano. There was music in the wall.

So. They hadn’t removed him from the music after all. It was just that up here, like most other devices, the sensations that guided him through the world were just delivered in a different context.

He had been frightened initially by the move, and for the longest time, he had been paralyzed by it. He had sat and rocked with the tension spilling its way down his arms and legs and face; much resembling the kind of sweating that he had seen athletes do; only shaded instead with tinkling oranges and sharp edged yellows that crashed together aurally in a thinnly sliced mix of cacophony.

He had held onto his sister’s hand whenever given the opportunity, but those were few and far between. He did not like sitting in the clear box for hours on end, even with the music of the walls. He did not like sitting there being stared at by the other crew members. He did not like knowing that they only reason they had brought him along was so he could be used–so his body could be used–as a replacement for Sarah’s, should she be mortally injured.

He touched the mesh floorwork with his fingertips, having already felt it through his boots. The melodies were getting slower, deeper. He felt around outside, using the dust to let him see through the darkness of the walls and the darkness of the unnamed.

There.

He stepped backwards, tripping over his cot and smashing hard to the floor, oblivious to the sounds of laughter emanating from outside the walls of his cage.

Did Sarah know? Was that why they had slowed?

He had to get to her. They had to go back. Right now.

He clambered to his feet. His arm dripped blood from where he had fallen hard against the corner of his cot. His hands were scraped as well, dripping tiny beadworks of art down onto the floor. It was these hands that he put on his wall, at first palm open, but then curling his hand together to beat helplessly on the wall itself.

It hurt his fist to beat it, but not as much as it had hurt his mind to sense the nothingness that resided only a spaceship’s leap away. The silence had shocked him, chilling him through; and even now, his breath was steaming around him, physically reacting to the chill his body was exuding.

Already the tiny droplets of his blood were freezing, crystalizing into the wall, creating cracks that should not have been there, for this wall supposedly could not crack, and he knew that his blood was not supposed to be freezing right before his eyes. There stood the other part of his terror: the knowledge that the physical elements were not working as they should; that his body could suddenly change its method of existing and so rapidly at that. He continued banging his now freezing fist against the wall, adding an awkward form of yodeling calls into the rhythms of it and his wildly pounding heart.

The crew members now looked at him even more strangely, but he could not reason out why. His movements were strange for him, but they had only known him a handful of weeks. He could see their eyes through the wall shining with contempt and some anger, but for the most part, there was only stinking, putrid pity slashing outwards at him in his cage; a man by law, but no more than a creature on display for man.

Perhaps that was why the Life Dust reacted the way it did; or perhaps it merely wanted to get away from the silence, from the hole in utter depths of dark space; either way, he didn’t know why it reacted, just that it did.

He was propelled backwards, landing neatly on his cot and mattress, when the wall shattered via the spiderweb of Life Dust that was laid out upon it. He got off of the cot, but before he had taken more than a step, he twisted sideways on one of the blocks of titanium enforced glass that lay like a thousand crystals before him. Before he landed though, the Life Dust caught him, lifting him up like it had a thousand other times into the air tinged with feathery lightness and clear eyed care.

It flew him through the bridge, not so fast as to blind him, but fast enough to make the necessary headway to successfully exit this place in time. Around him, the crew members had begun to scream, but not because of him. The ultimate dark silence was seeping through the ship, stopping hearts, freezing blood and breaking minds. A high-pitched scream pealed through the air, catching itself on his ears with a thousand rusty barbs that made him moan and move faster, disregarding his need to see, his need to exist in a functional manner.

He was her big brother and he was supposed to take care of her.

The dust did not land him like it had in other times, but held him above the ground ever so slightly, allowing him to move via the merest of whims. His sister was clamped on the ground, a pool of frozen blood steaming beside her; and as he looked at her face, he saw the lines of frozen blood begin expanding behind her face, distorting and ripping her skin open from the inside out.

From farther beyond him, he heard himself say: “No. My turn now.”

He did not notice himself speaking, but he thought it might have been his essence that had spoken, rather than the slow thing that was his mouth.

Grabbing ahold of the life dust lines that spanned around him, he looked quickly through them and selected one single dusty rope that shone with newness or perhaps just disuse.

His sister gave out a bubbly choked off moan as he quickly pulled on it, creating a sliver in space that opened briefly long enough for them to pass through. Using his connections with the dust, he rallied his mind around the whole of the ship, taking every angle and every line into account, along with every internal rhythm and melody. He took all of those factors and he bound them together quickly in a parcel. that would not soon break open, and he flung it as hard as he could through space, back home, backwards and sideways to a time that was not here and was not now.

He sent nothing home with them, except for a manuscript that he laid under the piano bench of a fully completed composition wrought with intricate emotional passages and journeys, unlike anything anyone had ever heard before–well, unlike anything most had ever heard before.

He flung its title on there in quick layout, shining with golden lettering that would never fade, called:

Meeting Jack