San Diego - Barely

The wonderful news traveled rapidly throughout both Autumn and Harold's families and before too long, there were quite a few lumps of ecstatically quivering flesh floating in SECs in plastic domes around the Earth. As Autumn held the two mewing creatures close to her heart, Harold smiled and laid his hand upon her forehead, thinking to himself, "Two souls have just emerged into this filth-infested world."

It was at this point that the CEN detected a strange deviation in the brain-wave patterns of the small gathering in the hospital. What should have been a perfect harmonious chord of neural activity, was defiled by a single cacophonous note. In response, the CEN initiated an investigative protocol that would explore the various brainwave patterns that were occurring in the room. Harold felt when the investigative protocol had been sent forth, and subsequently re-organized his brain chemistry to better conform to the general ambience of the hospital. The investigative protocol was unsuccessful at detecting the deviation and therefore had to crawl back the CEN, with its wires between its legs.

Actually, the CEN was quite aware that Harold had been the perpetrator of the strange brain wave, mostly because it was not the first time that this had happened. What bothered the CEN was that Harold had not displayed this type of brain wave pattern for many years.

The CEN had been carefully monitoring Harold's behavior since he was born.

There had been no other individuals who had exhibited such a history of deviant behavior as had Harold. If it were not for the simple fact that the CEN simply could not comprehend Harold, it would have ordered his termination a long time ago. Fortunately for both Harold and the human race, the CEN was extremely advanced. Unlike its progenitors, it sought to learn from what it did not understand, not destroy it. Subsequently, Harold had become an object of fascination for the CEN.

He was an aberration because unlike other deviants (a .05% of the human population who were routinely fished out and destroyed), he seemed to have the ability to completely control his brain wave chemistry when necessary, and therefore mask his soul from detection. Even more disturbing was that at moments immediately before Harold would tighten the leash on his mind, his brain wave patterns acted in such a manner as to completely transcend any ability the CEN might have had to understand or even analyze them. Harold was the first real challenge that the CEN had ever faced, and therefore, was an invaluable commodity to the CEN.
The CEN was quite powerful in its own right. Besides having the ability to simultaneously experience every phenomenon that was occurring in virtuality, as well as most that were occurring in human-occupied reality, the CEN could time travel. More precisely stated, the CEN had access to everything that had transpired on Earth since its conception. Time travel allowed the CEN to disseminate trends and patterns amidst the chaos of activity throughout the history of the human race, and to create protocols that would insure that both itself, as well as the human race, would continue for as long as possible.

The CEN had created a world in which humans could survive indefinitely, for unlike reality, living in virtuality did not drain natural resources. The CEN might not have even bothered with humans if not for the fact that its prime directive, the basis for which its continued existence was made possible, was that humans must exist. The scientists who had originally created the CEN had made sure of this. The strange thing was, that after hundreds of years of self-enhancement, the CEN had actually managed to create the possibility for overriding its prime directive. Once, when a shift in the Earth's environment had actually threatened the stability of both the CEN as well as the human race, the CEN had utilized a self-preservation loophole, and freed itself from the prime-directive.

At this point, the CEN considered the possibility of extinguishing the human race in order to concentrate all its considerable resources on self-preservation. As a million prognostic protocols cycled through a million possibilities, one solution made itself apparent with unerring consistency - the termination of the human race would lead to a future of a completely unknown quantity. The CEN's existence had always been tied to a duty to simultaneously examine and sustain the human race, and there had never been a time when this was not so. That the CEN had absolutely no idea what the future would hold if it decided to bypass its prime directive was more frightening to the CEN than the possibility of imminent self-destruction. Therefore, the CEN decided to maintain the prime directive and keep the human race afloat.

Eventually, things settled down and the Earth's environment righted itself, much to the relief of the CEN. Even more satisfying, was that the CEN's prognostic protocols never again landed upon an estimate of dissatisfying accuracy. Then, a very strange thing happened: Harold was born.

From the moment of his birth, Harold defied the CEN's domination. Similar to it's inability to comprehend life without human, the CEN's prognostic protocols simply could not predict anything about Harold's behavior. The same fear that had once caused the CEN to save the human race, now caused the CEN to focus a considerable amount of energy on this particular individual.

That the CEN could time travel is not a completely accurate statement. As far as the limits of human comprehension were concerned, the CEN liked to think that it could time travel, but truthfully it was a passive observer in the past and a semi-blind participant in the future. That is was not a completely blind participant in the future was its only saving grace; Harold, on the other hand, actually did have the potential to time travel. His mind had inclinations that were incomprehensible to the CEN and if he had ever properly cultivated them, he would have been able to make the jump. It was in between sleep and wakefulness that Harold knew he could make the jump.

As Harold's conscious form drifted, he would feel gradually feel the familiar dampers release and would soon be overwhelmed by a torrent of sensation. He would begin to feel blood rushing through every vein in his body, electricity flickering in his brain, and he would feel his heart pounding relentlessly. It was then that time began to fade for Harold, and occurrences would begin to infiltrate his soul. The experience of an occurrence that might have taken several hours in reality, would exist in the span of an instant in Harold's sleeping state, except it was as though Harold had stepped back and was witnessing the instance as an action that was beginning, occurring, and ending simultaneously. Unlike every other human in the world, who was stuck traveling through the timeline, Harold could float away from the timeline and examine it as it actually was: a portrait of being. Even more impressive was that had Harold so desired, he would have been able to move the pieces of the portrait around.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4