2049 First Five Chapters NEW PDF

by 2049 (pdf)

  "Tightrope walker falls into river, house disappears, man crushed by boulder, blah blah blah. It doesn’t mean anything. The news just takes whatever bad thing they find in the world and exploits it by reporting it in the most shocking way possible, that way they get the most money.

  That’s why the news is always bad. People only care about the bad things." My lips tightened into a scowl. Katarina’s fake look of concern turned into an even faker smile.

  "Well," she started, "I didn’t hear about those other three stories you mentioned."

  "It was on TV this morning," I said dismissively. Katarina nodded and switched the conversation topic to poodles. She has an unreasonable obsession with poodles. We kept walking.

  We finally made it to the mall entrance. Three large pillars stood tall in front of a beautiful glass wall. It really is a pretty entrance, too bad it’s ruined by the cesspool of society walking through it. I don’t know why Katarina and my mom decided to go on a Saturday afternoon. The mall is always so crowded and smells like BO and old cheese and meat from the restaurants in the food court. Due to this smell alone, I’ve considered becoming a vegetarian, but then I quickly decided not to because then that would mean that I couldn’t eat bacon.

  "Your mommy and I are going to go shopping now. You know,

  get our quality girl time in," Katarina said in a way unfitting for her age as we stopped next to one of the neon-colored mall map signs, "Here’s twenty dollars. Go get yourself a candy or something nice." She’s annoying as hell, but I have to admit she can be alright at times. I might’ve been a little too old for candy, but I was certainly not too old for twenty dollars.

  "We’ll meet up here at around 5 o’clock. Remember to keep

  your phone on and don’t get into any trouble," my mom said, picking something out of her teeth with her index finger.

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  "Got it Mom."

  "Promise?"

  "Yes!" I said exasperated. I hate it when my mom treats me like I’m a three-year-old, like she’s the responsible one when I was the one who literally just woke her up and made her breakfast like an hour ago.

  "Have a good time you guys!" I said, waving with a fake smile as they walked away into a nearby store.

  Finally, some alone time! If Katarina kept talking, I would have probably lost it. Immediately I headed for my favorite store: Mike’s Parts. Kind of a tacky name, just like what people think about the items that the store sells, but I absolutely love the store. It has loads and loads of cheap parts that I pick up occasionally and use on my projects. They ship in new parts every week, and it’s always fun looking through the stuff that comes in. I used to go to that store with my dad all the time when I was younger. We could spend all afternoon there sometimes.

  Sometimes we wouldn’t even buy anything. We would just look around and talk to each other, lingering and having companionable silences in the dimly lit store for hours on end. God, I miss those times. Back then, it felt like everything was just perfect in my world, and nothing could tear it apart.

  While walking absentmindedly and staring down at the feet of

  the people in front of me, longing for the good old days, a handful of voices that I recognized emerged from the noisy crowd, drawing me out of my trance-like state. They definitely weren’t friendly voices. I looked up, scanning the open mall corridor and my fears were confirmed: a few of my school’s gang members just spotted me, and they were heading right for me at a brisk speed walk. Their brows were furrowed, and I could hear the harmful intent in their voices as they neared me, cracking their knuckles and preparing their fists.

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  3:00 PM January 16th, 2019

  Don’t ask why this group of thugs want to hurt me so badly, it’s a long story. You know what, it’s probably important background

  information, so I’ll tell you anyway.

  Believe it or not, I used to be on relatively good terms with most of the school jocks because I used to tutor them. I didn’t really mind, It’s kind of fun for me and I earn a little bit of money and respect too. So every Sunday, I used to do a group tutoring session for five students, the four jocks, and one girl named Sydney. I had no idea why Sydney even decided to have me tutor her in Algebra, she clearly understood the material, well at least compared to the four jocks. I liked Sydney. She would always stay engaged during my lectures and would always be very polite and raise her hand to ask me questions and stuff like that. She treated me like I was a real, qualified teacher. I guess that’s why I ended up really liking her. I know, it sounds like a pretty stupid reason to fall for a girl for, but up until that time, no one had ever treated me with that amount of respect since my dad died.

  So as my tutoring sessions progressed throughout the year, we

  started getting closer and closer. I started getting distracted from my job as a tutor and basically only gave my attention to her. She was riveted by whatever I explained, whether it was Algebra, Quantum Physics, or the logic behind the Multiverse Theory. As you could imagine, the four jocks, who were threatened by the football team that if they didn’t pull their grades up, would not be allowed to compete in games, were starting to get pissed because I didn’t teach them anything anymore and their grades were dangerously low.

  One Sunday, after making significant progress on my time

  machine the day earlier, I was feeling especially excited about the 24

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  prospect of time travel, so I decided to talk to Sydney about my hypothesis for how time travel works. On a piece of notepaper, I drew a straight line with an arrow pointing to the right.

  "This is a timeline, and the arrow demonstrates that time only flows forward. Now the most popular theory for time travel, and the one you see in all the movies, is that you could build some sort of machine that could take you both forwards and backward along this timeline. So if you wanted to go fifty years into the future or fifty years into the past, you just punch however many years you want into some display on the machine and it would take you there." Sydney looked up from the paper and nodded with her bright eyes in agreement. "We already have scientific evidence that if you are near something with a massive amount of gravity, like a black hole, for example, time will flow slower for you than for everyone else. If an astronaut orbits around the Earth for ten years, and leave his twin back home, when the astronaut comes back down to Earth, he would be about a second younger than his twin, because his twin will have aged faster down on Earth."

  "Oh. Like that movie Interstellar? He comes back from orbiting a black hole and he’s younger than his own daughter right?" she asked, her curiosity visibly building.

  "Exactly. We don’t have any evidence that we can travel back in time yet, but it still might be possible… I hope it’s possible. Anyway, there is an even more wild theory for time travel out there that doesn’t have as much scientific evidence, but it’s equally exciting, if not more," I replied, beginning to gesticulate my arms wildly.

  "Please do tell," she chimed, smiling and scooting her seat closer to mine.

  "It’s called the Multiverse Theory. It says that for every possible new outcome, an entirely new universe is created. Like there could be another universe out there where I might have made the decision today to not come in to tutor. Obviously I would never decide not to come, but I’m just using it as an example," I said, grinning back at her.

  "Interesting. Wouldn’t the number of universes grow

  exponentially though? Over so many years and so many alternate

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  outcomes, there would be an unfathomable number of universes out there!"

  "Absolutely, there would be an infinite amount of universes that house an infinite amount of alternate outcomes. There could be a universe where dinosaurs still exist. There could be a universe where we all live on a colony on Mars. The possibilities are endless! So every time a new outcome is possible, another un
iverse containing that outcome will be added to the bulk. The bulk is basically a four-dimensional space that houses all of the possible branches of the universes. This piece of paper with the timeline on it would be a single universe, and this notebook would be the bulk. So a time machine, according to the Multiverse Theory, would allow us to essentially poke a hole through this top paper in the notebook and travel to any other universe below it."

  "That’s amazing Thomas! Where did you learn all of this?"

  "My dad taught me when I was younger. I just love thinking about this sort of stuff. Anyway, what is even wilder is that in these other universes, the laws of physics might be completely different as well.

  Time might naturally flow slower for alternate universes. So if two universes had the majority of their possible outcomes of events in common, they might be millions of outcomes ahead or behind our

  universe, giving a traveler visiting from the similar universe the impression that they traveled forward or backward in time!"

  I was so enthused by what I was saying and by Sydney’s

  curiosity that I didn’t notice that the jocks sitting at the desk behind us had been calling my name to get my attention for the past ten minutes and that they were getting more and more pissed at me ignoring them.

  Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, a red stapler flew across the room and hit Sydney directly in the face. She screamed out in alarm and I spun around in my chair to see the asshole who threw the stapler.

  "Awe damn dude, I wasn’t aiming for her face," the jock that threw it said while his three friends snickered. After that everything was just a blur of red hot anger. The jock said something along the lines of,

  "Dude, chill out, it was an accident," but I was so angry his words went in one ear and out the other. The next thing I knew, I was 26

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  slamming the jock into the whiteboard, kicking, screaming, punching, and pulling at every bit of skin or face I could find until the board was smeared with his blood. All the anger at the unfairness of life came rushing out of me like a volcano and I just kept screaming, "It’s not fair!

  She didn’t deserve that! It’s not fair!" I guess I was screaming that because it was most definitely not Sydney’s fault, and if anyone deserved to get a stapler thrown at their face, it was me for being self-absorbed and caught up in my own universe. A few moments later, his friends were on top of me and beat the crap out of me. But I didn’t care, the pain from my body was a distraction from the pain that I felt inside.

  After that, I stopped tutoring, which also meant I stopped seeing Sydney. I couldn’t bear to see her again after she saw what I did. She probably thought that I was a monster and never wanted to see my face again. I didn’t even bother listening to the voice messages that she left. I just deleted all of them and tried to erase her from my life. Looking back though, I guess it wasn’t the best idea to completely burn the bridges between us. I was just too naive to understand that maybe the messages that she left weren’t actually just more hate. Maybe they were even an invite to hang out or something, who knows? But it’s too late now, I haven’t seen her for what felt like years at school. I regret my decisions, and if I could, I would invite her back into my life in a heartbeat.

  So… yeah, now you know all that you would want to know

  about why I’m not on good terms with all of the school jocks. Oh, and this group of four jocks just happened to be the four that I used to tutor.

  Now where was I…. Ahh right, I was being chased. I’ll resume my story now.

  I picked up the pace and looked nervously over my shoulder. The Jocks’ beady eyes glared back at me. My speed walk evolved into a run, and I accidentally knocked the shoulder of an older woman. I let out an inaudible ‘sorry’ and continued making my way towards a clearing in the crowd so that I could really book it. I spun around again momentarily to see their black leather jackets with all of their fancy letters from sports flapping as they ran like evil bat wings. As I passed through the crowd of 27

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  people, they all looked up from their phones, rubbernecking to see why I was running. I looked ahead of me to find any possible means of escape.

  There were three of them, so if I tried to squeeze my way into

  the crowd and blend in, one of them would be bound to find me . My eyes darted to the left, just more shops. I looked up and noticed that the next shop coming up was a Macy’s store. I had no time to waste. I took a quick peek back again and they were even closer this time. I could see the rage in their eyes and the sweat starting to bead on their foreheads.

  Without second-guessing myself, I ducked into Macy’s and hoped for the best.

  I burst through the doors and quickly scanned the inside of the store to find a possible hiding spot. I eyed the T-shit aisle, but decided against it. They would definitely be able to see my legs poking out from underneath. My eyes shot to a long rack of pants, but they would be able to find me by just walking around to the other side. Running out of options and time, I desperately started running for the T-shirt aisle, but before I could take a third step, I felt a tight grip seize the back of my shirt, taking the wind from my throat.

  "You’re fast, but not fast enough," the tallest one said with a criminal looking smirk. His eyes were like those of a starving wolf before devouring helpless prey.

  "We told’ ja what was gonna happen if we ever saw ya around."

  "Yeah, we bout ta mess up your face even more." I tried to squirm my way out of his vice-like grip, but he was too strong. The more I struggled, the tighter he would pull on my shirt, choking me even more.

  The tall one drew his fist back and I cringed and braced myself for the sharp impact.

  "Hey!" a low, bellowing voice shouted, causing the jock to freeze before he could pound my face. "Put him down kid!" Reluctantly, he put me down and cynically pretend to brush the dust off my shoulders like I was his old buddy or something, giving me a slightly guilty smirk.

  "Next time you won’t get so lucky," one of the jocks said threateningly while they all walked out of the door and shot me one last

  ‘Im watching you’ kind of looks. As soon as they all disappeared, I let 28

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  out a large sigh of relief and turned to face my savior. He was a tall, well-built African-American security officer who looked perfectly capable and ready to handle the situation if he needed to. He looked like the kind of guy that if you were friends with, you would always feel safe.

  "Thanks," I managed to croak while feeling my neck where my shirt strangled me.

  "Something tells me this isn’t your first time dealing with kids like these," the security guard said, gesturing at my face. Not knowing what to say, I just kind of shrugged and absentmindedly thanked him again quietly.

  "Just stay out of trouble kid," he said and walked away, disappearing out the exit of the store. That was close. Then I started laughing to myself, glad that I avoided yet another face pounding out of sheer luck.

  *

  *

  *

  I pulled out my phone and glanced at the clock. Luckily, running into the jocks didn’t waste too much time. I still had a few hours until I had to meet back up with Katarina and my mom. Finding the right part can take a while, so without waisting anymore time, I continued on my journey to Mike’s Parts.

  It only took me a few minutes until I found the bright green

  doors of the shop and the italicized sign hanging above. As I stepped through the heavy twin doors, the familiar smell of old oily parts and musty shelves greeted me. I looked around, scanning the numerous shelves scattered in an unorganized fashion throughout the dimly lit shop, and let out a sigh of relief. Everything was exactly the way that I left it. You might think that with all the shelves being so disorganized and all, it would be hard for me to find anything, but it’s actually quite the opposite: having everything strewn about actually helps me find just the exact part that I’m trying to find, often be
cause I don’t have the slightest clue of what type of part I’m even looking for. To find parts, I just meander around the seemingly infinite amount of shelves until I see 29

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  something that stands out to me. But today, I was on a mission to find a very specific part. I was on the hunt for a very large Tesla coil.

  I know what you are thinking, ‘why can’t you just go to the front of the store and ask where the damn part is?’ Great question, but sadly, due to the unorganized state of the store, many employees don’t even know where the parts are. And even if they did know where the parts were, the store gets so many new parts every day it would be impossible for anyone to keep track of where they put them. So all the employees of the store have just sorta given up and let you find the parts for yourself while they twiddle their thumbs behind their desks and watch anime or something. Today I got lucky though. To find a specific part, sometimes it could take me hours, but somehow, I found it in about half an hour.

  Once I saw it, I immediately fell in love.

  It stood about five feet tall with a large bulbous top and a sleek cylindrical body. I envisioned it like a knight in shining armor wearing a helmet, sent to save me from this dreaded time in my life and make all of my problems go away. It gleamed in the dimly lit light and reflected a warped image of the bruised features of my face. After worshiping it for quite some time, I finally pried myself away from its magnificent features and glance down at the big orange price tag taped to the bottom of the coil.

  A big $12,000 was plastered on the tag in bolded numbers. I

  stared at the staggering number in disbelief. I blinked hard but the triple zeros still stared back at me. I took out my wallet and sadly looked down at the meager $20 that Katarina gave me. I counted in my head all of the potential money that I had stashed in various places throughout the house and came to the glum realization that I barely had half of what I needed.