Orson: A Paragon Society Novel

by David Delaney

  "It looks worse than it feels," I assured him.

  "I give you an extra order of Garlic Naan."

  I never say no to free food, especially Garlic Naan. I thanked him, paid for the food, and rushed home. I was starving.

  I texted Elyse, asking her to call when she was free; she responded with a row of heart emojis. I ripped into the food. No music, no TV, nothing to distract me, just chewing and swallowing. I finally stopped to let loose a giant belch and sagged back into the couch. Exhausted from eating. Was that possible? I'm pretty sure it was. I surveyed the table in front of me. It looked like a takeout food explosion. I needed to get Aunt Tina's food into the fridge and leaned forward to see what I could consolidate on to one plate.

  Empty . . .

  Except for a maybe a forkful of Chicken Vindaloo, all the containers were empty. I had eaten all of it: enough food for two people and leftovers, because the only thing better than Indian food was Indian food leftovers.

  I jumped when my cell phone rang. It was Elyse.

  "Hey," I said.

  "Hey, yourself."

  "Are you wedding'd out for the night or just taking a breather?"

  "We're still at dinner, sampling the courses that will be served at the reception. I snuck away to the bathroom so I could call."

  "Ooh. Sounds tasty."

  "Poor baby hasn't had dinner yet."

  "Actually," I surveyed the Indian food-pocalypse before me, "this will sound weird, because it is, but I just polished off a full dinner order from Siam Café. And I mean I ate it all. I'm going to have to run back out to get Aunt Tina some food."

  "Really? That's a serious amount of curry. You could OD. Try explaining that to 911."

  It was time to come clean about my exciting day. "Funny you bring up 911. I had a tiny accident at work today."

  "What? An accident that required 911 is not tiny, Orson. What happened? Are you okay? Did you go to the hospital? Why. Didn't. You. Call. Me."

  "Whoa. Calm down. I'm fine. All I did was bruise my arm. Becky made me go to the hospital, just to be safe."

  "Why was 911 called, then?"

  "Well, I sorta passed out."

  "I'm coming over right now."

  She sounded like she might cry. Wow. It was kind of cool that someone other than my aunt would react that way.

  "Elyse. I'm fine. Stay with your family."

  "You passed out, Orson. That's not a thing people do if they're fine."

  "It was the adrenaline. Tony had a similar reaction. He was totally wigged out."

  "Tony? What happened?"

  She made me give her detailed account of the accident, interrupting me to ask clarifying questions. I left out the fact that I had, except for turning green, basically become The Hulk for the duration of the accident.

  "Exactly how big is the bruise?" she asked again.

  "It's larger than your normal run-of-the-mill bruise, but the Doc said that's all it is. I swear. You need to get back to your family. They're probably wondering where you are."

  "All right, but I'm coming over first thing in the morning. I'm serious."

  "Then I have something to look forward too on my day off. Say hi to your mom and sister for me."

  "I will. Call me if anything changes; if you start feeling weird or something. Okay?"

  If I start feeling weird? If she only knew.

  "You got it."

  I hung up and kind of just stared into space for a few minutes. I needed to get my head around everything going on with me. I pulled out my laptop, loaded a new word document, and started typing. My list included the weird peripheral vision flashes and peripheral vision hallucinations — I didn't like using that word, but how else could I describe monster faces? I described the accident in detail. I stared at the empty food cartons on the table and included huge appetite as an item, and I even added the mirror being out of place and my pants not fitting right. When I finished, I re-read my list of – what were they, symptoms? The only things that seemed even remotely related were the flashes and hallucinations.

  I launched Google and searched visual flashes and hallucinations. The results were not cool — terms like Psychosis and Schizophrenia had a much larger return rate than I liked. I book marked a few pages and then ran searches on the list items. An increased appetite could be a tapeworm. Gross.

  It was then that my brain decided to address the eye drop bottle on the towel cabinet incident from the morning. I wasn't tall enough to see the top of the cabinet. What the hell? A thought occurred to me and I set the laptop aside and walked into the kitchen, pulling open the junk drawer. I don't think I've ever been in a kitchen that doesn't have at least one drawer designated for the odds and ends collected through the course of living your life. These drawers all had a combination of batteries, scissors, rubber bands, paper clips, pens, pencils, loose screws, keys to who knows what, and of course the thing I was looking for: a tape measure.

  Obtaining your height with complete accuracy using a tape measure isn't easy. Luckily, I didn't need an exact number: just my current height within a quarter of an inch. I grabbed a pencil and measured out 5 feet 10 inches against the hallway door frame. I then positioned myself against the doorframe and slid the pencil along the top of my head until it touched the frame behind me, making sure I pressed down hard enough to leave a mark. I checked my results.

  Huh.

  I was wrong. Measuring yourself is harder than I thought. I rechecked my initial measurement of 5 feet 10 inches: it was accurate. I repositioned myself with my back to the doorframe, took a few deep breaths, and held it on the last inhale. I did my best to still my body, raised my arm, being careful not to tilt my head, and I re-measured myself. I checked the result: it was in almost the exact spot as the first measurement. This was nuts. I had to be doing something wrong. I re-measured a third time, with the same result. I could keep denying what I was looking at or just accept that my boyhood dream of being six feet tall had somehow come to pass.

  I went back to the computer and searched male growth spurts. These results were much more encouraging than my first search had been. It's rare, but there are documented cases of people in college, between the ages of eighteen and twenty, adding a quarter of an inch to an inch in height. If my measurements were correct, I had added two inches: above the norm, but nothing too out of the norm. Maybe that's why I was suddenly so hungry all the time? My body needed fuel for some delayed growing. I checked the time. Crap. I needed to replace Aunt Tina's dinner. I shelved my laptop and called in the order.

  The drive to and from the restaurant was uneventful. The owner gave me a curious look when I picked up my second dinner order in the space of two hours.

  "Unexpected dinner guests," I assured him.

  As I pulled into my driveway, I noticed Mrs. Giles, one of our neighbors, walking her dog and I waved. She waved back and smiled. As I turned toward the house, I could still see her out of the corner of my eye, and I froze when she began to glow. I kept my eyes forward but watched with my peripheral as she made her way down the sidewalk. A warm golden light shot through with blue sparky streaks emanated from her. I blinked my eyes several times to see if the image would clear. Nope. She was getting close to her house and would soon turn into her yard, where a large tree would block my view of her. I turned my head to stare directly at her back as she walked away from me. The moment I focused my attention on her, the light disappeared; she looked like normal, non-glowy Mrs. Giles.

  I closed the front door and leaned back against it. Well, I was definitely seeing things. Now I needed to know why. Should I tell Aunt Tina? She would just stress, and if it turned out to be nothing, she would have worried for no reason. We had great insurance provided by the Ad Company she worked for; I could do a walk-in to urgent care tomorrow. I was sure seeing visual hallucinations would get me right in to see the doctor.

  I wasn't sure what to do. I needed a distraction, something that would let my subconscious chew on my problem without my logical
brain interfering. It was a trick I had learned in my psych class the previous year. Our brains can be tricky to manage. The intuitive side and the logical side sometimes get into turf wars, affecting our problem solving abilities. The trick was to distract your conscious self by doing something routine: a chore or an activity that you can perform almost on autopilot. Supposedly, this frees up your subconscious to work on the problem without interruption. It doesn't work all the time, but when it does, it's an awesome tool.

  I set Aunt Tina's food in the kitchen, pulled my computer back out, and logged into WoW. I didn't think I could do any serious dungeon raiding, but there's so much more to the game that I knew I could kill an hour or two, no problem.

  For the uninitiated: WoW, or World of Warcraft, isn't just time spent in a make-believe world running around fighting goblins or some other creature. While there is a lot of that, there is also a whole commerce side to the game. I know people who spend the bulk of their time buying and selling virtual goods in the game, amassing huge amounts of gold. There was a guy I used to play with who once cornered the market on a certain kind of gem. It was rare and there were specific steps he took to acquire it, but after a month of "farming" and then selling this gem over and over, he had made something like two million gold. Then his secret got out and the market for this gem collapsed, because everyone was trying to under-bid everyone else.

  Anyway, an hour or two of gaming was exactly what I needed to take my mind off my situation. I logged on and inventoried all the items I would try to sell. I wasn't on for more than ten minutes when Alec logged on. I typed a quick hello and told him I was in the middle of bag maintenance. He responded with a hello and asked me to jump on my headset. He probably wanted help with something.

  "Hey, Alec. What's up?"

  "Orson, did you have an accident at work, mate?"

  Did I have an accident at work? How would he know to ask that? Maybe Elyse had logged on and said something, but I didn't know how that would be possible, with her at dinner.

  "That's kind of specific question. Have you spoken to Elyse?" I asked.

  "Nah, but I have been on YouTube."

  "YouTube? What are you talking about?"

  "You didn't almost have a tractor fall on you at work?"

  "It wasn't a tractor, it was a forklift."

  "I knew it was you. You're famous, mate."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You need to check YouTube and search for superhero versus tractor."

  "What?"

  "Just do it. Trust me."

  I minimized my game window, navigated to YouTube, and typed in superhero versus tractor. A video popped up in the search results, and my stomach dropped. I double clicked the thumbnail, bringing the video full frame. It was footage from a video camera at Costco. My Costco. And there I was, guiding Tony as he maneuvered the forklift. I knew what was going to happen – I had lived it just a few short hours ago – but I was still shocked when I watched myself knock the pallet aside, catch Tony, and jump six feet to the side.

  "Oh wow."

  "That is you, right?" Alec asked.

  "Um, yeah, but it's not what it looks like."

  I checked the view count. No way! How could a video just posted already be up over half a million views?

  "How's the arm? Did you break it? And what's with that jump? Seriously, mate, it's craziest thing I've ever seen."

  "My arm's a little bruised is all."

  Whoever had downloaded the video from the security system had only grabbed the one angle. I tried to remember if there was another camera that covered that aisle. I didn't think there was, but I couldn't be certain. The footage was from a camera in the ceiling, and it was a very wide angle. I took a quick glance at the comments and in between the "OMGs" and the "that's freaking cools" were many posts of "hoax" and the go to "Please, it's total After Effects." So not everyone was buying it as real. I don't know why, but that made me relax a little bit.

  "Alec I gotta log. I'll talk to you later. Ok?"

  "Sure. Don't go lifting any cars now, but if you do, make sure you get it on video."

  "Right."

  I logged out of the game and watched the video several more times. Aside from the obvious reasons of people just can't do those kinds of things, I could see why some people where calling it a hoax. The camera angle was wide enough that a lot was hidden from view. With some rope and enough time, a person could rig the pallet into a controlled fall. And while I was no digital video expert, I've seen cats fighting with light sabers, so I knew the technology existed to make my jump look as realistic as it did.

  This was going to complicate things. I refreshed the page, and the page views jumped another couple hundred. It was going viral. Who was I kidding? It had gone viral. If it kept going, the news media might pick it up. I definitely did not want to be on the news, not when there was a good chance I was sick.

  I looked up at the front door opening. It was Aunt Tina.

  She locked the door behind her, dropped her purse on a chair and smiled at me. "Well, hello, Mr. YouTube. You want to fill me in on your day?" she asked.

  Oh crap.

  CHAPTER 5

  "It's not what you think." I said.

  "Really? And you can read minds now?"

  Yeah, she was really pissed. She was still standing, arms crossed, peering down at me with her angry face. I started to respond, but she cut me off before I could utter a syllable.

  Here we go.

  "I doubt very much that you've become a mind reader in the last ten hours. But if you had acquired that amazing ability, you would know I'm not angry. Well, maybe a just little. What I mostly am is disappointed."

  Not the disappointed speech. I'd been able to avoid this one since I'd been sixteen, and she had caught me sneaking back in from a party I had snuck out of the house to attend. A party where I sampled various kinds of alcohol for the first time to the point of making myself falling down, stupid drunk. There had been no yelling or threats of punishment. She had taken in my drunken state, made sure I hydrated with a ton of water, given me a double dose of aspirin, and sent me to bed. When I regained consciousness, I found her sitting in my room, curled up in an overstuffed chair I used for studying and naps.

  It was obvious she had spent the night in my room watching over me. The look on her face was confusing. She somehow looked relieved and upset at the same time. When she finally spoke, it was in a quiet tone. "How do you feel?"

  "Horrible."

  My mouth tasted like something had crawled in it and died. My body was one gigantic ache. Seriously, my hair hurt.

  "You'll feel a little better after a hot shower. I know your stomach will scream no at even the thought of food, but trust me a nice, mild juice smoothie will help your body recover."

  "Okay."

  Her calm demeanor was freaking me out. She should be angry, yelling, taking away my X-Box, car privileges, and grounding me for life. I had lied, defied a direct "no" to my request to attend the party, snuck out of the house, and returned with a questionable ability to stand up without falling over.

  "I want to say a few things, Orson and I don't want to be interrupted." She waited for me to nod, before continuing, "First, I'm glad you didn't hurt yourself last night. You were ridiculously drunk and could have easily injured yourself. Second, I understand that part of growing up is pushing boundaries, learning to be your own person. That parties and experimenting with drinking are a rite of passage. But I need you to remember that, for many people, that rite of passage can turn into a lifelong addiction."

  She was alluding to her dad, my grandpa Stan, whom I'd never met because he had died from complications from alcoholism.

  "The last thing is this: life is one long series of choices. Almost every day, we make choices that could affect the direction we are heading. Some may seem inconsequential at the time, but then, with hindsight, we can see how important every choice is.

  I'm not mad at you. I'm disappointed with the se
ries of choices you made that has led to this." She gestured around the room, to me with a lulu of a hangover, her sitting in a chair lecturing me. "It's disappointing that the relationship of trust we've built over the years has been damaged."

  "Aunt Tina, I'm sorry."

  She held up her hand and continued, as if I had said nothing, "I will not ground you or punish you in any way. You're sixteen, so punishing you won't teach you anything you don't already know or should know. You will, however, have to work to gain back the level of trust we had. That's the unavoidable consequence of your choices. And that's the concept I want you to grasp and understand — choices always have consequences. That is an absolute universal truth."

  When she was finished, she stood up, left me lying in bed, and went about her day. It killed me, the disappointment I could feel emanating from her like a wave. I would be lying if I said I was a perfect model of obedience from that day on. I was a teenager, after all, but I never again broke a trust with Aunt Tina, or anyone else. I made a promise to myself to never do anything that would cause her that kind of deep disappointment. It was a promise I had kept - until this moment, that is.

  I could see it in how she was standing and I could read it on her face. The disappointment was building, but it was warring with some other emotion — hope, maybe. It was obvious she was struggling with the idea I had been involved in an elaborate hoax to gain some Internet fame or infamy. What could I say? The video was real? I became Superman for a short time this afternoon and, oh, hey I'm also seeing things that could mean brain tumor or schizophrenia? Do I let her be disappointed or do I stress her out about my health? I opened my mouth, not sure what would come out, and then the doorbell rang.

  We both looked up at the clock on the wall. It was just after 9:00pm, and somebody was making a late house call. I started to rise, but Aunt Tina waved me down. She crossed to the front door and opened it, revealing Elyse. My eyes went wide, and I stood up.

  "Elyse?" Aunt Tina said, confused.

  "Hi, Ms. Reid. Sorry for the late hour. I know you've been at work all day. I just needed to pick up some Calculus notes from Orson."