The Incident

“Well…” she begins. “The party you’re thinking of was your birthday party, the big one seven, the noises you describe were explosions, Mom and Dad hid you in a closet, because the explosion was tearing the roller ring apart and they hoped you’d be safe there, it turns out, obviously, that you were.”

Danny ingested this information with a mixture of confusion and complete understanding warring inside of him, he had seen everything she just said happen, but none of those words made sense in there collective context. “Explosions?” was the only thing he could think to ask at the moment.

“Yes, the roller ring was down the street from an armory, and when the fighting first broke out it was one of the initial targets of the guerrillas.” Once again none of those words made any sense to him in that context, so he tried again.

“Guerrillas?” He asked.

“Yes, not to stray to far from the point of this exercise, but they were liberation groups that formed to fight the oligarchical capitalist regime that was the US government.”

“I’m sorry, FIGHT the government?!?!” he asked increduesly.

“Yes, Danny, but for now lets focus on the party.” she said while patting his hand.

“So, when the explosions occurred you were the only survivor, and while you didn’t appear outwardly hurt, you remained in this coma ever sense, honestly it has baffled every medical professional thats ever spent time on your case. It was why I went into medicine in the fir…” he interrupted suddenly full of passion “You said I was the only survivior?!?!”

“you were” she said

“So you were too cool for my birthday party!?!?!?” he looked at her with the most puppy dog of puppy dog looks, she sat for a single second stunned and then replied “you haven’t changed a bit.” and laughed in a way that felt like it had so many emotions in it that he was actually speechless. Finally when she regained control of herself she continued. “Medically you made no sense, there was not a physical marker that indicated you should be in a coma, and yet…” she trailed off as for the first time Colt popped in with “You shouldn’t be possible.” In a way that felt like he’d been holding it in since birth.

“Good to know” Danny said.

“I’m sorry, that was unprofessional of me.” Colt said

“Well as your uncle I forgive you, as your patient get me your supervisor.”

“She is my supervisor” he nodded down at the clearly annoyed Corinne. “Can we continue now?” she asked them both in a way that meant they were continuing independent of what either of the boys in the room thought.

“What, your very well meaning nephew meant was that every single test hey did indicated that you should be awake. That you were awake in fact, which was the only reason that you have been kept alive this long frankly, the enigma of you. They couldn’t take you off life support cause you didn’t need it, they could have let you go without nutrients but that breaks just about every code we have as doctors. So we just watched you, and as we started to advance as a society again we began to unlock your secrets, but doing so just gave us more questions.”

“Sooooo… what I’m hearing is that I’m super, super, duper… special.” Danny gave her his best shiteating grin, but as he looked at her, all of his confidence disapated.

“This isn’t a joke Daniel, none of it is.”

“I know, but what else can I do about it?”

“I don’t know” she said exasperated.

“Well I'm ready to get into the game as soon as I can.” He said, but as he did he saw the moss make the transition to that familiar cherry blossom, and finished with “When I wake up I really need you to explain why this is necessary.”

This time when he awoke it was just Colt, and that threw him for a second. “What’s happened to Corinne?” Danny asked full of sudden anxiety.

“Oh… nothing, sorry we just thought that for this part you and I could have a one on one. She needs rest, and I thought this would be better.” Colt said

“Ok, Docphew, or Nepoc, you know what, I’ll workshop it later, lets get to it.”

“Cool, well the way that the moss works as we told you before, forms a reciprocal relationship with the patient, and as such, when the moss begins to get a hit of certain stress endorphins, it releases a set of its own which mix with yours to bring your body back to a sleep state, this allows for the body to “get back in shape” without overtaxing it, now as you are a unique case, we want to make sure that we error on the side of caution so we have doubled the moss in your room to allow for almost instantaneous sleep to occur when the endorphin registers with the moss”

“which is what makes it change to that cherry blossom color?”

“Exactly right, now we know that mentally, while you don’t seem impaired any any conversational sense, and mom confirms you don’t seem psychologically different, the only real stumbling block is your physical preparedness. So we are going to test that right now.” Colt says as he lowers the side of the bed and offers his hand to Danny.

“Oh, I’m gonna walk finally?” Danny says as he takes Colt’s hand and swings his feet to the side in a measure of speed neither were expecting, and slamming his feet onto the ground. When this happened the moss became a color of blue Danny had never seen before, and his mind kicked into overdrive.

“What the fucks happening right now?” Danny asked as they worked to get him onto his feet.

“The moss is responding to your efforts to get up by releasing endorphins that will allow for you to be more alert, while also monitoring for over exercion.”

“Fuck me thats some smart moss.” Danny mused

“Smart isn’t exactly the right word, uncle, its more like responsive to, as in it feeds on the one and in order to keep the balance of it’s environment right it releases a counter…”

“Like trees?” Danny asked

“Exactly like trees, thats correct.” Colt says has they both were finally eye to eye, or at least as close as could be expected as Colt, it turned out, cut a pretty imposing figure when face to face, his nephew was at the least 6’3” and every bit of 220, if Danny had to guess.

“How’s the weather up there?” Danny asked his nephew with a grin.

“It will be a lot better when we see how you handle walking.” Colt mused and for the first time Danny truly saw the family resemblance, and was overcome with what he assumed were memories of his father, not fully fleshed out mind you, just still frames, but no less powerful for it. He had already taken two steps when he realized what was happening and saw the Cherry Blossom moss in what looked like a strobe effect. Then he heard Colt say “It’s ok, this was a good start, talk again soon uncle.”

When he awoke next, the room seemed bigger somehow, then he realized that where the window had been, was still a window but now it sat in an almost cubic outgrowth that was to his mind about three feet out from the position of the rest of the wall. Inside this was the rolling table from earlier with what looked like photographs strewn about as if someone was looking though them with out a care for where they landed when they were done. Along side this were two what he could only assume were chairs as they looked more like glass set onto of the other glass in a chair like shape. His heart raced, and he realized that this was the first time he’s woken up alone.

This feeling didn’t have a chance to metastasize into something more emotionally crippling however, as in walked Colt first, then Corinne. They looked happy, wait not happy really, but excited, and this got Danny excited, thinking he could go home, then realizing, what home, then realizing how am I going to pay for all of this, then where am I going to live, how am I going to live, how am I gonna make money, luckily for him Corinne chose this moment to interrupt his intrusive thoughts by saying “Morin Kiddo, you ready to try walking over to this table here and eating breakfast with us? We got a big day ahead and I think you’re really gonna like what we got cooked up for you.”

That was all he needed to hear to shoot his focus back to the present, “Breakfast?” he said confused not about what breakfast was, but what he would even be hungry for, his stomach took that opportunity to remind him that internally he was really starting to get on track by making a noise he’s not sure he’s ever heard before.

“Yea, we got your favorite Biscuits and sausage gravy, extra thick, almost doughy just like you you used to love it.” she said hopefully. That’s when he smelled it for the first time, and realized his stomach had already done so and that was what it was screaming about. Colt walked over to the bed and lowered the side, he looked at his uncle with a twinge of excitement. “Lets see how you can do on your own, I’ll be right here if you need me though. You got this.”

He did not feel like “he had this”, but did realize with a start that he was ready for the first time to leave this bed, and that felt a type of way he wasn’t ready for. Had he really gotten so comfortable in that bed that the idea of getting out never occurred to him, or had he secretly, unconsciously been terrified of what was outside the windows of this hospital and the idea that all of this was real and he was never going to know the world as it had always existed for him. His old life was dead, his old self was dead, what would this new world hold for him, did he want it, did he have a choice?!?!?

While he was turning all of this around in his head, he found he had, in fact, walked without incident to the stable and that the reason those chairs looked like they were part of the glass enclosure is because they were. They sprung from the window as benches like they used to have in fast food restaurants on both sides of the table he sat in his, and Corinne and Colt sat across from him, like his parents used to, and when he realized that the looks on their faces mirrored those of his parents in a flash of memory he began to chuckle. “Whats so funny?” Corinne asked

“You, him, mom, dad, you all were wearing the same face.” Danny said

“They looked at each other confused, so Danny explained it to them, they all had a warm chuckle about it before Danny inhaled the meal before him, before anyone had the chance to tell him to take it slow, and that he was gonna have to start self monitoring his bowels again, he felt a rumble, a rumble that he knew too well, and looked at them with a pained expression, “Wheres the bathroom” he squeaked.

When he returned to the table he had a look that screamed to anyone paying attention, What the fuck was that experience? Corinne laughed kindly and said, “Pretty weird huh?” while Colt looked from one to the other confused. “We’ve always known that we could collect our waste and use it as an energy source, right? The only thing preventing that was Global Capitals stranglehold on energy production and their inability to let it go, as well as the mass medias competency in selling the narratives of Capital” she began as his eyes started to glaze over she shifted gears, “Anyways, that what we do now, everything is recyclable at the point of contact, there is and never really was a need for middle men where energy was concerned, so instead of the toilet as you are used to its a suction and wash system that is much more efficient and clean and self sustaining, as is almost everything we have today.”

Danny took this information in tried to file the Bazillion questions he had in order of importance, but when he opened his mouth all he could get out was, “Y'all collect poop?”

“Well, yeah I guess you could phrase it like that.” Corinne said kindly as always, se looked so much like mom that Danny was having difficulties focusing on the present and was getting those still frame shots of the past that he knew, but had no context for whatsoever.

“Did something trigger, are you remembering?” Colt said this time and you could tell this was the doctor part of him asking so Danny felt that he owed them as much info about it as he could so thats what he did.

When he finished explaining what was happening to him, they looked at each other with a look he couldn’t read. Then they immediately started to gather up the photos on the table and putting them down in front of him like flash cards they used to make in school to study for a test in a group. He was going to ask what the fuck, when the motion of the photos mixed with the content of the photos started to make his head swim, while for the first time he noticed the moss starting to strobe, while the sun for the first time felt hot, like uncomfortably hot, he wanted to rip his cloths off, but the memories were fighting for airtime in his brain and he couldn’t grab a hold of any one of them. Then the strobe stopped, the widows darkened and he felt different, not quite whole, but more Danny than he realized he had felt since he woke up. “What just happened?” He asked

“This is a from of hypnosis therapy that works along with the moss and the suns natural rays to kind of overwhelm the brain into kickstarting in a sense, making connections it wasn’t capable of previous, with the help of the electrical currents found in nature.” Colt said, with not a small bit of what sounded like pride, “As your brain and body get used to all it’s systems operating at full complicity again, it’s important to take things slow which is why we have you on a pretty strict sleep schedule, our biggest fear right now is overloading your systems and causing another self shut down, or whatever happened to you that night of the incident”

“The Incident? Is that what we’re calling it now?”Danny asked, and to this Colt looked confused, and said “that’s what we’ve always called it.” “Of course you have.” said Danny desperate to talk about anything else right in this moment.

“Here catch” Colt said and lobbed a memory reader at him, which he caught thankfully or it might have taken out an eye, “Sorry, mom always used to talk about how much you loved throwing things at people for them to catch as a way to test their reflexes, and so I thought it would be fun.” he said with more than a little regret in his voice.

“Yea, no, yea its cool.” Danny didn’t lie, but he wasn’t completely honest either, and while this was happening Danny was holding the memory rod and the ends started to slowly bulb up at the ends not fully blooming mind you but something is better than nothing where this was concerned.

“that’s good, yea?” Danny said hopefully, “Very good, it shows real progress” Corinne shot back. “How do you feel right now, like overall?” he checked in with himself and found that he felt pretty good his legs were sore from yesterdays excursion (or whenever the fuck that was, he also just realized he has no idea how long it has been between rests). His mind was laser focused on the right now, in a way that frankly startled him, as he has always been a bit of a worrier, and it never took long before the past jumped into his thoughts to remind him of why the future was gonna blow. I guess now that he’s in the future he doesn’t have to worry about it anymore (boy was he wrong).