2116 by Zac Jamison
I taped the paper towel to my arm to stop the blood oozing from my arm. My arm hurts, a throbbing sensation ran throughout the wound. I applied the styptic the nurse gave me after my third visit in three weeks with a bleeding ligament. After the extreme burning sensation disappeared, I dried off and walked to room 2116.
167. The problem number, the page number, and my IQ. I have never been a social person. I don’t like attention or conversation, and I don’t understand social convention. My favorite place is my bedroom where I am currently building a project I like to call Project Continuum. I look down to see my hands are stained with grease and my dark blue dress shirt is full of wrinkles. I started to draw on my empty homework paper when my teacher, Mrs. Dubois interrupts me:
“Ian, can you read off your answer to problem 167?” Mrs. Dubois constantly makes me read my answer to the class because I never do my homework. I don’t need to because I have been doing calculations in my head since I was five.
“Ian? Did you hear me?”
I quickly scanned the problem in the book and calculated the answer in my head in a couple of seconds. We have been working with projectiles and horizontal vector components, things I mastered in the third grade. Finally, I reply: “The projectile will launch from a 660 angle resulting in an initial velocity greater than or equal to 32.28 m/s2, therefore resulting in a horizontal vector component of at least 660 ft.”
I looked up to find my classmates in awe. Every time I am forced to share my unwritten answer my classmates look like they just glanced at Medusa.
“That is correct… again, Ian.” Mrs. Dubois showed a hint of disappointment. Everyone in the class knows that her goal is to stump me on a question.
Mrs. Dubois continued to teach as I faded out the noise of the average classroom, the sounds of the two gossipy senior girls that sit in the corner and think nobody else can hear them, in the other corner sits the football jocks that think they have it made. All in between was chatter. There was never silence in room 2116, until the shadow of a 6’5’’, extremely muscular jock covered the door. I didn’t have to look up to know there was trouble, and trouble there was: Benjamin.
“There you are you son of a bitch!” I sank in my seat and looked at my arm, it was still throbbing and I don’t want a worse injury. I tried to slip out of sight when suddenly I felt two ginormous hands pull on my shirt and throw me against the book shelves in the back of the room.
“You are going to pay!” he screamed. I just stared at him.“Look what you did you little brat” He pointed at his pants, and all I see is burnt holes and stains all over the bottom of his left pant leg.
—-
“Hey, punk, hurry up and set up that lab or I’m going to combine you with the Hydra- chloric acid-stuff.” Benjamin isn’t a very patient person, especially not when I complete his Chemistry lab for him.
“It isn’t Hydrochloric acid, we are using Sodium Hypochlorite.” my response didn’t make him any more patient. He grabbed my shirt and whispered:
“Alright, listen here smartass, you’re going to do this lab for me in silence, I’m going to talk to Hanzey, and when I get my grade it better be a hundred or that hypo shit is going to be in your face.” Intimidation has always been his approach to bullying, and I don’t find it very effective.
“Kapish?” His eyes were bloodshot as he threw me back to my station.
If only I had Ammonia and 30 seconds to bust out of this place.
I just stared at him and began to set up my lab. I poured the NaClO into the water to watch it purify. While my lab partner watched the concentration, I took the mixing pill and put it at the bottom of Benjamin’s container, but instead of mixing I had a better idea: place the mixing stick behind Benjamin’s foot and set the Sodium Hypochlorite on the edge of the table. I turned back to my station and recorded my observations.
Slip, Crash, “Ahhh” Benjamin screamed as the chemical was burning through his clothes.
I couldn’t hold back a little smirk as he ran to the lab shower.
After the water stopped he ran straight for me, grabbed me by the arm, and threw me against the cabinets.
“You little shit!” Mr. Grayson, the chemistry teacher, ran over and pinned Benjamin. My back ached and my arm throbbed. I look down to see a small puddle of blood growing on the floor.
—-
“You embarrassed me in front of my friends, you embarrassed me in front of my team, and worst of all, I am going to get a zero on that lab because Mr. Grayson said that I spilled the hypo shit. And now, you’re going to pay” He took a full swing back and went to punch me until the principal, Mr. Tainer, jumped on his arm and held him back. I let out a huge sigh of relief until the principal yelled,“You two, my office, now.”
I walked to my desk, grabbed my book, and left the room.
I walked as slowly as possible taking my time getting to the office of my death. There was an angry giant, and angry principal, and there’s going to be angry parents on the phone. I don’t understand how so many people have seen Benjamin throw me across the room and scream at me, and yet I am still going to Mr. Tainers office.
“Explain to me what was going through your head, Ian, when you spilled the Sodium Chloride on Benjamin.” Mr. Tainer held a straight face trying to hold back his anger.
“It wasn’t sodium chloride” I just stared at the small brown lamp on Mr. Tainers’ desk.
“I don’t care what it was, it was dangerous and could have resulted in a worse injury!” The red discoloration of his face started to show.
“If it was sodium chloride it wouldn’t have been dangerous, it’s a crystalline solid, so it would have just bounced right off his pant leg,” I give a tiny smirk as Mr. Tainer tried to calm down again. He took a deep breath and said:
“So tell me,” Mr. Tainer continued “What were you thinking?”
I paused for a minute then said:
“I was thinking that if I left the edge of the sodium hypochlorite container two centimeters off the table, and set the mixing stick at a 470 angle, relative to Benjamin’s foot, he would step 26 inches backwards, stepping on the mixing stick, losing his balance, hitting the chemicals at a speed of twelve miles per hour causing them to land on his leg.” I look up from the lamp to see both of them staring in amazement. Then, Benjamin decided to cut in:
“You coulda burned my skin you little rat” He jumped out of his seat, but was immediately cut off by the principal as we sat on either side of him.
“There was a 6% chance of that happening because you hit the chemicals off the desk at an 880 angle, therefore most of the substance would hit your jeans or the floor.” Again, my response just angered him.
“So yer sayin’ there was a chance?!” The principal had him in a lock as Benjamin tried to grab me.
“Possibly. I could also be saying that there is a 94% chance that you wouldn’t have been hit”
“Well, there’s a one hundred percent chance I’m gonna’ smash your face in you little shit,” Benjamin yelled as he lunged towards me only to be restrained by the overly hairy arms of Mr. Tainer. Benjamin sat down. Mr. Tainer turned toward me, noticed my arm, and asked what happened, so I started the whole story of why Benjamin targets me:
“In the second grade, I built a model rocket for the science fair, and just when the judges were a few minutes from interviewing me, Benjamin came over, broke my rocket, and destroyed my grade. To get back at him, I used my friends project on sedimentary rocks, where he used HCl to show the reaction with limestone, and I took his HCl and dropped it into Benjamin’s volcano where the Sodium Bicarbonate from the baking soda reacted with the HCl to create salt at the bottom of his volcano. So when the judges saw that his volcano was filled with salt instead of baking soda, they gave him a D on his project. Whenever he found out who ruined his project, he beat me up, and has continued to do so ever since.”
The principal looked at Benjamin who was filled with rage. His face was as red as a cherry. I turned back and looked at the lamp again as Mr. Tainer talked to Benjamin to get his reasons for hating me:
“That shit always uses un-understandable stuff to get revenge at me, so I use physical pain to get him to go away.”
“And where does he go?” Mr. Tainer was asking a rhetorical question, knowing about all of my nurse visits, but Benjamin isn’t smart enough to know that.
“The nurse. He’s a giant baby and cares about ‘infections’” He made quotation marks with his hands as he said infections sarcastically.
“Is that true, Ian?” I pause and respond:
“No, that’s not true. Today I covered my wound myself, the nurse gave me styptic.”
“Well where do you go, Ian?” The principal looks ready to be done with us. His anger has evolved from anger to annoyed.
“Honestly, I wish I could go far away from here. I wish I wasn’t even in this timeline, this continuum. I wish I was in 2116, then you, Mr. Tainer, would be gone, and you, Benjamin, would be gone, and I could be left alone to do what I want to do.” I grabbed my bag and walked out of the office and towards the school’s exit.
When I arrive at the door I feel a huge wave of confusion. Then suddenly I feel nauseated, losing my vision momentarily. A shrill begins to build in my ear–the pressure in my head begins to build. What’s happening? Is this a seizure? Surely it can’t be I am in the .26 percentile for the age in which seizure and other brain trauma should not exist and not affect adolescents. A wave of light engulfs me and then the shrill is gone.
I immediately begin to contemplate what just happened. Many ideas run through my head. Car crash? No. Nuclear Bomb? No, I’d be dead. Did I die? No, my post mortem neuron-induced hallucination would have ended by now. Then it hit me.
It was a ripple in our timeline. The confusion was a change in history which tells me something either big or small isn’t true any more. The shrill and pressure was b and k mesons reacting, giving off radiation, causing my body to be destroyed in the old time and re-created in the new. As I wait for my vision to come back all I can do is imagine my cartesian coordinates relative to our previous universe.
My vision returns. I smile and realize my calculations were correct.
I open the door to the horizon of 2116. Project Continuum was successful.