Growing Up Alive

It is tough growing up. So much unknown; having to rely on others to learn and live. There are so many dangers lurking around every corner, to a child. Then there’s the good, the fun parts. We all wish we were kids again at some point. Some had it better than others, some worse. Looking back though, we all could have paid more attention, or ate less candy, or did better in school, or talked to that cute girl or boy we liked.

Not Jonah.

To Jonah, your childhood was perfect.

Jonah was an American boy, born in a small county called Claunch in New Mexico. His parents were both doctors, except not the kind you would think.  They were more like scientists than doctors, only by way of education. They worked in a private, government facility out in New Mexico’s desert, deep underground.

When Jonah was born, his father cleared out a room on his wife’s floor of the facility so that he could be closer to them for care, when at work.

His mother would drop him off in his crib, early on, and watch from the double-pane window in her office. They would lock the door, in fear others would intrude. They also went to lengths “child-proofing” the room, and parts of their offices. Once old enough to walk, they would let him use the room to play, and sometimes let him come “to work” with them.

Jonah liked “work”. There were so many discoveries, so many things to do. Everywhere he looked, there was fascination.

He was smart like his father, and wise like his mother; His father would tell him.

At 5 years, Jonah was avid. He just seemed to know things, his parents thought. Of course, they had a hand in his remarkable development. They would teach and test him endlessly it seemed. He could be working out arithmetic on his little notepad or counting with his abacus at random moments he was seen wandering around the labs. He loved math. He enjoyed playing with his blocks as well. This tiny boy would build tremendous towers, over his head and get chairs with books stacked in them to reach higher. These towers would have rooms and corridors, arches and redoubts built all along his table, as if to defend his property.

It was impressive to watch him program the microwave emitter console to cook his meals; cleaning and putting away the dishes.

There was one special thing that Jonah also had about him; he could not speak, at all.

Jonah’s parents knew before he was born. They noticed as they watched him develop through a computer mapping sonogram feed in their living room. They watched as he grew inside the womb “live” on wireless probes attached to his mother, while they collected data and went about their schedules. The only abnormality noted was, he did not develop vocally at all.

 Hence, they would teach him to sign in late infancy, and learned themselves before his birth. Jonah never became much of a “talker” anyway, he rarely signed.

On the day marking the tenth year of Jonah’s short life, everything changed for him, and his parents.

Early in the morning on his birthday, Jonah was late to breakfast. This was the first time he was late for anything it seemed like to his father as he glanced down the hallway from the dining room table. His mother’s feet softly pattered down the hall towards his room. She peered inside his room, opening the door slowly in attempt to spy the matter. He was not there. His bed was made, room untouched and immaculate (as always).

Worry consumed her as she scuttled back towards her husband.

“He is not inside?” He asked before she closed the distance to him.

“No” she stated simply

She walked past the table towards an adjacent doorway and down a few short steps into his playroom.

The play room was tidy. All of the books and toys were in their proper places, and both computers whirring and humming in sleep mode. The floor was spotless and the chairs all empty.

Jonah’s father chewed breakfast quietly, reading the news on his tablet while his mother; increasingly sincere, skimmed the security feeds from a computer in the playroom. There he was, in the night; barely visible, seen lifting his father’s keydex from a drawer by the foyer- Jonah went to “work”.

After her discovery, Jonah’s mother bolted to the dining room to tell her husband that their son had taken his holocraft.

Arriving earlier than usual, the parents sped up to locate the child after explaining the situation to the soldiers on duty at the gate.  They were both trying to emotionally compensate, due to time lost by the over inquisitive guards. They agreed to split up. The doctors both knew that facility very well. Jonah’s mother went straight towards the security wing and father to the labs.

The level-headed mother noticed the holocraft parked in their usual spot in the hanger before gaining the cooperation of both gentlemen, half-asleep at the console in security.  The three of them systematically screened all video footage from the last night and on. The staff was beginning to wonder if he had even come at all. All three sets of eyes were sure no one was seen entering the lab, as they edged closer to the end of advance-able playback. Then, Jonah’s father could be seen going in just minutes before they would be viewing events as they happen, in real-time.

The father was seen dropping to his knees. He was acting strange, as if he were pretending to hold something to his chest. They were unable to see his face from the angle which he stooped on the floor. The two in security said nothing, eyes fixed, as the mother left the room in silence.

There was Jonah; Sprawled in the arms of his father, dead.

A single set of rolling tears melted down her face as she gazed in disbelief. Aiding her husband, they carried their son to the labs interior.

The room was completely silent.

Working together, they rigged an assortment of wires and hoses and affixed them to the boy’s gelid body.  Walking the rolling table full of instruments and their pale child, they placed him in a peculiar chamber. They watched from the window as they compiled data of the boy’s condition. They found he had an unfamiliar deviation in his larynx that was likely the cause of death, as far they could determine. Remorse flooded the bewildered parents, as they realized this was a long developing anomaly of a nature they could have possibly been aware. Using the chamber diagnostic equipment, they found that the growth was still showing signs of activity. The microscopic mass inside the boy had radioactive signatures. Much to their intrigue, the hyperbolic functions of the chamber and boy were eerily similar. The math was perfect, they were sure he was alive- just not in this plane. Their composure had broken in a shrill brief shriek, belted by Jonah’s mother. She continued to sob quietly, hunched over as his father’s gaze seemed to burn a hole in the wall.

The hyperbolic chamber, Jonah’s tomb; was engaged before the determined scientists placed him inside. Neither of the two brilliant minds were aware until sparks began to fly under the control panels. They reacted to the matter, wrenching themselves from their stupor.

The view from the window, at this time, was solid black inside the chamber; the power was interrupted by the surge. The disconcerted parents flung the door hatch to the chamber open and stood agape at the opening.

Jonah was gone.

 Painstakingly, the two would spend the rest of their lives dedicated to matching those fated conditions and reproducing the planar shift that claimed their son. Their positions in the lab were eventually eliminated and their passions gradually waned as sanity left them over time.

Both eventually estranged parents died; in their own laboratories at home several years later, of suicide.

Jonah could hear flushing sounds of chatter and mumbling faintly humming all around him. He felt tired, and cold. His eyelids were heavy. It took great effort on his part to focus and gain consciousness. He was lying on a cold, stainless steel table in the lab, penetrated by hoses and wires. Light was different, he thought. It was like he didn’t need it to see. Sounds were also strange, he noticed. He couldn’t quite understand the whispering all around him or his new “world” at all.

Confused and disoriented, Jonah removed himself from his entanglement on the table and tumbled upon the chilly floor. Much to his surprise and abatement of ignorance, he realized he was completely naked and his skin was vibrant in contrast to his environment; life-like. It seemed everything around him was dull, opaque or sometimes mildly transparent.  He could see fixtures in the chamber, he recognized. They would normally produce light, yet somehow the light was invisible or unnecessary. He was enveloped by fear when his parents were noticed past the doorway, weeping silently.

Their bodies were almost colorless in comparison to his. Straight away he understood that they could not see him and were evidently unaware of his presence. He edged closer, inhibited by his own limbs and their ability to obey his brain. He felt he needed to concentrate exceedingly harder to operate his body. Just as he did as he awoke on the table, it was almost as if to him, he was using a fallow portion of his brain to execute his will.

No manner of interaction was successful.

Jonah’s body could physically pass right through the apparent images of his family.

In his new hollow reality, Jonah stood helpless in front of his parents. All he could do was to think. Re-master his functions and cope with his emotions. Fear was ever clouding his experience as he fondled the apparition of his mother’s hand. To the small, frightened, yet intelligent boy; He was dead and experiencing “after-life”.

How could this be? He thought.

His heart was still beating in his chest; the air still filled his lungs. His environment was tangible, dreary, but “real” feeling; All but for the unfortunate exception of his parents. He could even feel the sensation of hunger, brewing in his abdomen.

His mind wandered as he thought to test his theory.

Slowly regaining his mobility, Jonah walked over to a nearby shelf and shored his grip around a glass beaker and smashed it to the floor, in front of his parents. His mother grew quiet in reality, as his father continued to annotate out loud, but Jonah could not hear his words against the knowledge of his dad’s wavering lips. Both were ostensibly unfazed and also against the boy’s knowledge, the beaker was left untouched in his parent’s dimension of reality.

After his cold, harsh deduction, Jonah was creepily certain of two things: He was alive also, he was not.

Soon, Jonah began to recall blurred and mixed images of his past. He learned quickly and abruptly that he could manifest inside his own memories and “occupy” the past.

He paced carefully around the room as he watched his mother feed him as a toddler, from a highchair in his kitchen. Drifting thought brought him to observe the birthday, where he was given his multi-colored abacus. That, in his fondest memories, was his most prized possession.  He watched as he built with his blocks just weeks before the “incidents”. Then he watched as his only friend at the lab cleaned his belongings in the office with sadness. The janitor slowly removed Jonah’s things, placing them in bags. Witnessing these events, he realized something. He could assimilate his memory of a place to occupy real-time existence. He also imagined the possibility that he was now deaf, in addition to mute.

None of these newfound abilities could curb the foreign feelings of confusion and loss.

He couldn’t be entirely deaf, he pondered; he could definitely hear indistinct murmuring all around him. The sounds were, to him, unmistakable. These were voices he could barely distinguish. Engulfing his awareness, but unable to determine words. He could hear faint screams of terror, vague chanting and soft whispers. He recognized patterns like conversation, commands, and even prayer. They seemed to come from no particular direction, yet they were sounding apart in distance. All in the same, they sounded like they could be particularly originated; a remedy for indirect loneliness, a recipe for insanity.

His quest for answers led him all throughout the lab’s rooms and offices, then eventually outside, inquisitively admiring the ghostly people along the way. There too, was a cat in one particular woman’s office he noticed was staring at him. Its gaze persistently followed him around the room but, was also a specter to him; as was every “life” he had encountered, even the potted plants.

Big swills of fresh air filled his lungs and amazed him as Jonah took in the grounds of the compound. What this observation revealed was a magnificent find.

It was “daylight”. He could stare directly into the gray sun without effect or impairment. The light was void in the wide open spaces but he could see, very well actually, better than he ever remembered. He could see everything so plainly, he imagined. The voices were still chattering in the background, becoming ever clearer themselves. His attentions were directed to a single butterfly fluttering about in the distance. It was too far to clearly make out his obvious distinction; it was alive (in his reality).

Naturally obeying his first instinct, Jonah reached out for the insect of such wondrous variety of color. The butterfly swiftly evaded Jonah’s gentle swipe, then landed on the back of his hand.

It was real, he deduced. It was most certainly unlike any life he had previously evaluated since his fate in the laboratory.

Jonah succumbed to his next instinctual act.

He raised the hand with the butterfly to his face, smelled it and quivered with anticipation as he lifted it to his mouth and began to chew it and swallow. Jonah was elated to feel and taste food. Never did he imagine he would ever find a butterfly so delicious, be inclined to eat it or edible at all. To Jonah, this was monumental. He would make his way past gate and guard invisibly, to continue his journey of education and development.

Jonah existed in this dimension of phenomenal proportions for many years. He was a wanderer. He followed in the footsteps of science, like his parents. He exercised his supernatural abilities constantly, materializing from memory to memory, traveling the earth as a veiled presence.

He came in contact with other sensitive species, in tune with his plane of existence; the sources of the voices and sounds around him. However, he became to realize he was unique. There were no other “spirits”. Only the husks of the living- bound to their realm of perception.

He grew; Jonah grew up in the underworld.

Jonah’s hair grew naturally. He grew taller.  His body changed and was affected by his environment much in the same way it was affecting every life he would observe in the “real world”. His fears and emotions played smaller parts and held less sway in his life the older he became, much as he would naturally again. He would adopt his own fashions, mostly suited to the climate. He also experienced puberty, and would experiment with his body, sitting, watching in women’s dressing rooms or bedrooms. He would compare himself to others and develop socially in this way. He would attempt to shave and cut himself accidently, solidifying his mortality. He did not enjoy this reminder and never chose to shave as he grew older. Jonah became a man, his body solely nourished by the only other apparent life-form; butterflies.

At the end of his days, he stewed endlessly, mumbling thoughts muddled in his brain. He began to lose control of his memories and his transpondance was untrustworthy. If not careful, he would materialize in loops, often hard to shake himself away from. The far off voices became harder to hear. His sight was diminished.

One thing dawned upon his tortured mind as he stalked the corner of the memory of his mother’s phantasmal hand; his last memory of her.

 His purpose, as with any life on this planet; he needed to procreate.

Falling to his knees, old and withered by many years of walking endlessly. His long, white beard folding at the ground. Jonah opened his mouth slowly and wide. His eyes bulged and ligaments tensed all throughout his slim, wrinkled and skeletal physique, causing him to strain. He focused his mind to a point inside his throat. His abnormal larynx convulsed as he vanished instantaneously.

His eyes peeled open as Jonah lost awareness and all recollections of his life. It was dark, he could feel himself being suffocated in liquid when he was pulled and squeezed by his head. The last thing he could distinguish was the intense and blinding light. His mouth was wide but no sound filled the cold room. His arms and legs flailed uncontrollably as his consciousness faded away.

Now forming thought, a quiet infant lay flustered upon a hospital bed, in the arms of an exhausted weeping woman. She looked at him and smiled. The nurse gestured towards the mother’s arms, she looked up at her teary eyed and said:

“It’s a boy”