June 30, 2009

5. The Clock Ticks

Look. The things a boy like me will do in the hours and days after such events as were described in the last chapter, I think, may not be well-known (and if they are, the following sentences, and perhaps paragraphs, are nearly useless.) The thoughts that frantically fly through his head, the ideas the live for seconds, and the desires that could beat Atlas in arm wrestling ten times in a row...all these and more are less predictable, and yet so predictable, that half of them could keep the current population of the planet busy for eons to merely sort them into alphabetical order.

The amount of happiness Jack experienced in the aforementioned period of time could hardly be explained by anyone, strangely. Such occurrences are more than common, so the fact that few or none knew what was up with him was almost sad.

Jack's time was spent doing large variety of things, from picking petals of daisies while muttering two amazingly dubious statements which one would be stupid to judge at such a period, unless that one happened to be the girl.

When a boy falls in love, even if the name of the girl is one he has hated all his life (I haven't come upon this situation myself, but I am confident that it happens more than an eight-shaped Cheerio comes out of a factory), upon learning it, he accepts it, and continues so, until it is beloved to him. In Jack's case, however, there was no such name yet. He had no idea who she was, and he'd ruled out attempting to find out by means less than respectful, and probably illegal.

Jack found, one of those days, that either his concern for public safety diminished in those times, or his consideration for his own life. As it was, he found himself multiple times inches from death, merely because of his constant and, to his surprise, now annoying daydreams. Showing mere annoyance at coming close to one's demise might seem very inconsiderate of his own safety, not mildly. However, considering the copious bullet wounds he had acquired and healed in his last four years, he was sometimes genuinely tired when he heard the sound of even a .38 caliber gun.

For those of you who wonder, in Jack's head, the idea that he might end up face to face with the girl within the next ten days was frightening. In truth, Jack would be relieved if he knew that the girl would not see him for that time, because he'd rather she didn't know he was interested in her until he wanted her to. Jack currently had no idea when that would be, but had confidence that, if the girl held up in his eyes and ended up being younger than him (especially if it were by mere days, or, better yet, hours), he would probably less frequently avoid even her peripheral vision range like the plague.

Jack found himself back at his apartment, seven and a half days later. Now, when I say, "found himself," I mean his mind was otherwise engaged to a degree at which one is not overly conscious of one's surroundings. Thus, "finding" himself there gave him a fairly large, but now understandably diminished, shock.

Xink seemed to be the only person, or, should I say, robot, that didn't take Jack's change with puzzlement. If one were to be annoyed that a computer program with nearly as much perception of reality as a human could understand the complex inner workings of a sixteen-year-old, I'm sorry to annoy you, but that's what I'm doing. Xink had no doubt whatsoever in her entirely silicone mind what was happening to Jack. The depth or significance of it was fairly vague to her, but she understood that Jack had fallen in love. By what means, or with who, she hadn't the slightest idea.

Unlike humans, Xink had little or no love for rumor or gossip, nor did her programming and engineering allow it. Nevertheless, the events in the days after Jack saw the girl puzzled Xink mildly. She was quite simply curious. In the several years that she had comprehension of her surroundings, Jack, nor anything else, had particularly puzzled her. This time, however, Jack's happiness seemed to kind of confuse him, sometimes. Often, he'd be in seemingly deep thought, absentmindedly spill his orange juice, and more. To her, this was abnormal. She could understand one falling in love, but she couldn't really understand losing half of one's capability to sense. Her worry was, after all was said and done, fairly unnecessary. Jack's attitude would have its ups and downs in the following days, but, despite what happened in the middle, Jack had almost always came out on top, no matter the odds. In truth, though, these were much greater than ever before.


(Ok. Somehow, the Pixel Pt. III ended up right under this post, somehow. Someday, I'll really figure Blogger out. I love it anyway.)


!Noah!

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