EPT
There was a boy who was born on a rainy December night. As his new parents were driving home with the baby, the rain turned to snow. The baby was covered in blankets, but as he was carried from the car to the house, a little snowflake fell on his nose.
The parents noticed that their boy was quiet, he did not cry or laugh or smile very much. They later discovered that the boy was developmentally slow, or retarded. The doctor reported that he had a case of down syndrome. The boy would not talk or even walk. He did not respond to anything or anyone. All of this gave his parents a great deal of distress.
When he was 4 years old, his parents took him to his first day of preschool. The boy was at least surrounded by those who had similar mental and emotional ailments such as himself, but he refused to let go of his loving mother's hand. At long last, he surrendered and sat lifelessly in a remote corner of the room, motionless and unyielding.
One night, when the boy was sleeping in his bedroom, he noticed a bright light outside his window. He instinctively squeezed his teddy bear ever so closer to his beating chest. Suddenly and unexpectedly, a shadowy figure instantly materialized in front of him. The boy had the compulsion to run out of his room to his parents bedroom, but his limbs seemed to be paralyzed; he felt the urge to scream at the top of his lungs, but when he opened his mouth, no sound came out.
The hooded behemoth figure finally took off his long robes and placed his bony hand on the boy's forehead. The boy could see the large protruding green eyes of the strange creature and, ironically, the sight soothed him. It seemed as if the creature could read the boy's mind, like all his thoughts were effortlessly translated to the creature. Any hesitancy or skepticism was ultimately futile. Gradually the shock and fear of the episode subsided, and the boy began to feel very calm. Panic gave way to a sensation of tranquility consuming his body. Eventually he fell asleep.
The next morning, he awoke to his mother's voice. But unlike most mornings, she was not whispering by his bedside lamp, telling him to brush his teeth and get ready for school. Instead, his parents were yelling and he could hear them hurling vicious insults at each other from what seemed to be the kitchen. The boy went to the bathroom, dressed himself, and was combing his hair in front of his dresser by the time his mother stepped into his room. She appeared to be rubbing away leftover tears from her eyes. But whatever disappointments she had felt earlier that morning gave way to a different kind of emotion, as the boy could see a smile creep across her face. Not the superficial smile that his mom usually had, but a genuine smile.
"Wow, you dressed yourself today!" he heard her say. And the boy smiled back, taken completely by shock how his mother's demeanor had completely changed, never having truly felt loved before. She saw her boy smile for the first time in his life and her smile widened, until she ran towards her boy and kissed him on the cheek. The 4 year old boy, who had never spoken before, who had been diagnosed with severe mental retardation, uttered the following words from his lips: "I'm aware that you and dad are having financial troubles". And with that, he hugged his mom back.
The mother was stunned. She jolted up, amazed at what had happened to her son and, in the process, almost knocked down his bedside lamp. She looked into his eyes for what seemed like an eternity, then she finally mumbled "You can talk...", in between gulps of her own tears and hard to breathe air. Hysterically she wiped off her face as she heard the father coming up the stairs. She told the boy to remain quiet. The father rushed into the room and scolded the mother for taking so long, that the kid was late for school. The father was leaving for work, and decided to drop off his son to school. The son could perceive a distinct coldness between his parents that he had never noticed before. His father had always been a cold distant man but the boy had never been afraid of him. The boy thought to himself, "I have done no wrong, there is no reason my father should be angry with me."
The boy was late for preschool, so his father had to sign his name on the late sheet in the principal's office. The boy's class had gone on a field trip that morning, so the boy quietly sat in a corner of the room once again, like he had in his early days of preschool. He noticed the principal's secretary scribbling something in his notebook. The boy stood up to get a lollipop from the main desk. He could more clearly see what the man was writing now. After contemplating unwrapping the lollipop, the boy felt the compulsion to say something after studying the secretary's note for a few more seconds. The boy looked up at the man with great urgency, and blurted out "The separate but equal provision of private services mandated by state government is constitutional under the equal protection clause." The man suddenly looked up at the boy, and the two were frozen in time for a brief moment, locked into each others' gaze. The secretary, who was studying part time to be a lawyer, was shocked that a preschooler who supposedly had down syndrome could read at all, let alone at least at a middle school level.
The man called his boss, the principal, who was temporarily out of the building. In what seemed to be a matter of minutes, the boy's mother received a phone call from a hysterical woman on the other side who seemed to be having a heart attack, saying how it was a "miracle" that a boy in special education could read at a high level. His mother came to pick him up, and the principal ecstatically told her that they had arranged for her son to enroll in the local middle school as an eighth grader. She could not believe neither her eyes nor ears. The ride home consisted of bewildered laughter and genuine amazement as the mother wanted to know what had transpired exactly in her son. The boy picked up a Rubix cube from the side of the front seat, and effortlessly solved it in a matter of seconds.
When his father came home, the boy was studying the world map in his room with great interest. Partly it was interesting, and partly he had never noticed it before even though it had always hung next to his bed, high up on the wall. The father went into the kitchen and started arguing with his mom again, but this time it wasn't about finances. The boy could hear his father hit his mother. The boy could feel an acute sense of paradox in his existence. He thought to himself how although he had become more intelligent, and he was learning things he never knew before, perhaps there was a lot that he was better off not knowing. Maybe ignorance was bliss after all.
That night, as he was sleeping, the boy could hear something moving in his house. He thought maybe the visitor had come back to see him, but in the darkness he could discern his mother's silhouette. His mom's face was wet with tears, and she kissed him again, and whispered that they had to leave, because she feared for her life. "But even more importantly, I fear for yours" she told him. The pair slipped out of the house, with only moonlight for guidance, and drove away silently. His mom told him that they were going to his grandparents house, and they were now going to live there for a while.
The boy was now being called a prodigy. On his 5th birthday, he had graduated eighth grade. By 7, he had finished high school, taking mostly honors and advanced placement classes, getting straight A's and 5s on all his AP tests, achieving perfect scores on the SAT and some SAT 2 tests. By his 6th birthday, the boy had won numerous national spelling bees, received international attention, and had been accepted into Harvard. In addition, the boy was a talented artist, painting award winning paintings, and an expert on yoga and telekinesis. The boy had become renowned around the world for his knowledge, intellect, and wisdom.
But he was still a boy. And he missed his father. His grandfather had become paralyzed in World War 2 and, although he told great stories, the boy missed being able to go fishing with his dad like other boys his age. In the summer before going to Harvard, the boy quietly laid down on the grass behind his grandparents' house and looked up at the sky and the stars. The boy suddenly remembered something from his past, something that he had tried to bury deep in his memory, along with his father's abuse of his mother and that fateful day he left his old room behind. "We know where you are, George. We will find you when your time comes." The boy quickly became disturbed at the telepathic voice in his head, distinct from his own voice, and, with a fear he had not felt in a long time, went into his room and stared at the ceiling, his bed covers nearly suffocating him until he could no longer bear the heat of his own breath.
In the world of logic and rationality, the boy knew no parallel, but emotionally he was frightened, cold, unresponding. To an outsider, his life was an object deserving of burning envy, but inside his own head he was emotionally and psychologically distant and paranoid.
After only a year at Harvard, and at the ripe old age of 8, the boy had become an international sensation. He had discovered the cure for cancer and developmental disabilities. He had invented new agricultural methods to sustainably feed the ever growing world population. He had reversed the pattern of climate change, and formulated new innovative forms of environmentally friendly energy sources. He devised a way for space shuttles to exceed the speed of light, and without harm to astronauts by implementing antigravity fields around spacecrafts to neutralize g forces. He formed world peace and ended the Muslim and Jewish conflict over Jerusalem. He curbed nuclear proliferation to rogue states. He ended all civil wars in Africa and resolved the threat of global terrorism. He fixed the world economy. He published his autobiography. Everything seemed to be going well for him, as he won Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, and Peace. He became a multi billionaire. He donated most of this money to cure poverty and eased global corruption through his genius.
One night, when the boy was sleeping in his mansion, his servant ushered into his palatial room. The servant looked down at the ground and slowly dropped his head. "Sir, I regretfully announce your mother has passed away from an unknown affliction." And he left as soon as he had come, again leaving the boy in the stillness and silence of the dark. The boy, not even 10, had known amazing fortune and wealth and recognition, but he could never meaningfully connect with people around him. He felt so lonely. He started crying into his pillow. For he was surrounded by company almost all the time, but he lacked true companionship. To anyone else, he had been successful, but he felt himself to be an utmost failure. He cried for help, begged and sobbed through gulps of his own tears.
Suddenly, like a vision, an enormous light emerged from his window. The figure from his childhood appeared again. He put his hand on the boy's forehead again. Then he said, slowly, clearly, and telepathically, "Son, as promised, your time has come..."
The voice continued. "Son, you have done what you have set out to do. You are our brethren, you are our blood. You see, our planet is barren and dry. We have inadvertently eradicated all life, plants, animals, from our own planet. We saw our home planet perish and we could not allow the same fate to befall Earth. 10 years ago, your mother had been chosen out of billions to be our test subject. We artificially impregnated her aboard our ship, but unfortunately she obtained an abortion as she was living with her husband at the time. We attempted again, and finally she succumbed. The hybrid human-alien fetus was genetically engineered to be of superhuman intelligence, possess preternatural abilities, and be psychologically ultrasensitive to the well being of others. But your mother's husband hit her. He hit the fetus while it was inside her belly. Several times. So you came to have certain developmental problems. But we arrived one night to bless you, to give you the talents you were supposed to possess from the night of your birth. That snowflake that touched your nose on the first day, that was a sign we would reach you again sooner or later. And...the husband...the husband knew he was never your true father, that is why he hated you, that is why he hated your mother, he believed she committed the sin of adultery and consequently forced her to abort. Then when it happened again, he reluctantly felt his will beginning to break. He was ashamed to call you his son. Because you are not after all, you are ours."
"...and you and your mother have served our purpose. You two have successfully fulfilled your respective roles in this initial prototypical grand genetic experiment to pave the way for a comprehensive planetary study."
But, the boy thought, he will never see his mother again. The voice heard his thoughts. "You will...if you come with us. Please don't make this difficult. Please...be with your people." And the boy could see the creature's eyes, and it was the same shade of peculiar green as his. He thought why they had killed his mother, but the creature remained silent.
The boy rose. His body was magically lifted from his bed by a strange unknown force. His body passed through the ceiling, and he could see himself move through the floors and walls of his mansion, as if they were not physically there. He saw himself rise until he disappeared into the bosom of the spaceship.
HERE I COME, MOM.
