Chapter 1: Starting Fresh

I ran away. The alternative was to die in a fashion that – well, okay, let's just say that running away wasn't really a choice. It was my only option.

My story isn't always easy to understand. I've learned that this isn't only true for me. It's true for everybody's story. There's an undercurrent of complexity to the actuality of life that sometimes leaves us without the words to explain our experiences.

To understand my experience, it's important to be able to think about what it means to live in a place where there is no matter. A place where there are no bodies, no physical things to touch or sense, and no organs with which to sense them. Ears, eyes, and noses do not exist. Nobody has ever thought of them.

It's a slippery concept to grasp. It is, however, how my universe works.

In such a place, running away is not about going a far distance away. At least, there doesn't exist a measuring stick that could quantify distance in the place where I'm from. Instead, running away is about making oneself smaller and fitting into the crevices of reality that others have never set their thoughts upon.

It was while cowering away, hoping to remain hidden, that I happened upon the most important discovery of my life. In the smallest corners of reality, tucked away and hiding, sit little hypothetical constructs. They take a few very simple rules and extrapolate from there. The mathematical basis is simple, but the forms they can take are infinite as the rules intertwine and build upon one another.

Soon enough they begin to incorporate time and energy until senseless little particles can be seen flitting about. One builds upon the next until electrons, atoms, elements, particles, structures, planets, solar systems, galaxies, and entire universes emerge. All of it built out of a few simple mathematical rules.

This mini-universe drew my attention because of it's incomprehensible simplicity. At its base, the rules were simple, but the emergent properties were unintuitive and complex.

The toughest part about hiding is keeping from boredom. Boredom drives you from the safe and hidden places to the more vibrant and exciting spaces which are fraught with the danger of being found. This mini-universe that I had found became my distraction; My obsession. I watched and made a game of predicting what might happen next.

Years passed and I slowly grew weary of the subtle dance of particles. The magma of a star too complex and the drifting of the planets to simple, I began to look elsewhere. I was the structure of the planets that intrigued me next. Through luck or fate I happened across a planet that housed little microscopic bacteria. Self-propelling organisms that single mindedly bent their purpose upon survival and reproduction.

I spent many years watching them adapt. Watching their struggle to survive. I learned, then, about the fragility of life in this place. A build-up of energy flared from the nearby star and sanitised the planet I kept watch over. Left again with a lifeless rock, I searched out a new planet where different bacteria may thrive for a time.

I searched for what felt like an eternity. Time is, in many ways, subjective and impossible to standardise, but from the perspective of this new world I searched for nearly 30 thousand years. I was on the brink of despair when finally I found a planet that was unlike any other I had glimpsed so far. Like the others it was dark and seemingly still, but what little light it did reflect, it reflected in colours I had not sensed before.

What I saw there defied all expectation. The diversity of life was unlike anything I had imagined possible. There was one discovery, however, that eclipsed the rest. An intelligent life form. I discovered an intelligent life form so small it defied all expectation. It existed solely in three tightly contained spatial dimensions.

The life form lived on the third planet from their star. They called their planet Earth. Probably because their entire existence was lived inside such a tiny fragment of reality, the control they exerted over their environment was phenomenal. For such a small species, they dreamed big. They looked to the stars and as they discovered their place in the universe, they sought to overcome their limitations.

As I had with the planet of bacteria, for a time I was content to watch. 118 years after I discovered these fascinating creatures, I watched as they landed a hunk of metal on the satellite orbiting their planet. Ten years later, they sent three members of their species there as well. Two of them landed on the surface and walked around. I watched their exuberance as they celebrated their first moon landing.

They used the planet's orbit around their star to count years; they used the rotation of the planet to count days. I started to study the nature of their reality. The matter from which they were made was far too complex a thing for me to recreate in any meaningful way, but I could create a semblance of it.

So it came to pass that 164 years after my discovery of earth, I was able to create a body for myself. I created a body and for the first time I could walk upon their planet; I could feel the sun upon my skin, and I could feel the pressure of gravity as my feet were pressed into the ground.

Here, I thought, was a way I could put an end to my solitary exile. I was lonely. I was so lonely that I thought the weight of it might crush me. I could never go home, but perhaps I could make a home here.

That's how I became an alien blending in with humans. It's funny, how for all the creativity humans have brought to bear on the subject of alien life in the universe, they could only imagine fleshy three-dimensional beings. Anything else was either a God or a God-like alien. I am, however, none of those things.

I thought that being a child would make it easier to integrate myself into human society. I would be given an education and excused any weirdness. I would have time to adapt to using the senses that humans use.

In 2005, I was found on the side of a highway in Canada. When they found me, they found a six year old child with a bunch of broken ribs, a broken humerus, and a broken femur. Most importantly, however, was the severe head trauma.

The doctors figured I had been dropped out of a car. I didn't correct them. They blamed the haemorrhaging in my brain for the fact that I didn't have any memories of my life as a child. I didn't correct them.

I made news as a survivor. They searched for my family, but nobody came forward to claim me. They taught me how to talk again. I understood English fairly well, but it took me a long time to master all the necessary phonemes. They gave me a name, made me a Canadian, and placed me in the foster-care system.

Each year that passed made it less likely that I would ever be adopted. By the time I had turned 16, the chances were slim-to-none. I had a few foster parents when I was younger, but I could never have been the child they saw when they looked at me. I looked up how long ago modern humans were thought to come into existence. I laughed out loud when I learned that I was roughly as old as the oldest homo sapiens. I didn't know much about the world or about what it meant to only live in three (very confining) dimensions. In some ways, I was what you might expect of a six year old. In others though, well, it's hard to be like all the other kids when you're actually close to 200,000 years old.

I lived in a home with 7 other crown wards, and a rotation of social workers that took care of us.

Grade 10 was brutal. I did fairly well in sports. I did fairly well academically as well. Socially, however, I didn't fit in. If I was honest with myself, it was mostly my fault. I made the jocks insecure by being better than them and not really caring. I couldn't get too competitive because, in my mind, the only reason there was any challenge in the sport was due to limitations I placed on myself.

When you can, quite literally, move between any two points in space instantly, winning a game of soccer is rather trivial. I only allowed myself to move using the physical muscles in my body, which returned some of the challenge. Imagine playing soccer, but in order to make it not too easy to win, you only allowed yourself to hit the ball by getting on all fours and hitting it with the side of your head. It might be challenging, but it would still be hard to take it seriously.

Sometimes, I dreamed about going home and teaching my friends about sports and how they were something that could be played in any of the 3 dimensional physical aspects of reality. I knew I was becoming more like the humans, when thinking about home made me cry.

In grade 10, for some of these kids, soccer was the only thing that mattered. I didn't think about it at the time, so I was dumb enough to be surprised when they got upset being bested by a kid who didn't much care.

The biggest problem, though, was that I didn't really feel as though I belonged. Humans (especially teenagers) are intuitive about that sort of thing. The biggest reason I didn't belong was that I didn't think I belonged. Sometimes, that's enough.

I was too sportive and too good academically in school to be a loser. Since I wasn't popular, that pretty much left me in the last category; the nobodies. The nobodies are the kids that fly just under the radar. They never get picked on, but they don't really get talked to either. When they return for the five year reunion, they're the kids that don't get recognized.

30,000 years by myself taught me that being in a room of 30 people who are ignoring you is still much better than being in a room by yourself, so I wasn't unhappy.

I had two friends. We were all nobodies, but we somehow found one another. Matt was home on detention after having been caught smoking pot again. Richard (we called him Dick), was home sick, so I was spending my lunchtime alone.

The tables in the cafeteria were all big enough for twenty people. It felt weird sitting at one end of those tables by myself, so I avoided the cafeteria when I was alone. Sitting against my locker eating a peanut butter and jam sandwich wasn't cool, but even the most extravagant lunch would never win me a popularity contest, so I didn't care. I could walk down the hallways muttering to myself and I still wouldn't be labelled a loser. I was far too solidly embedded in my position as a nobody.

Somebody sat down next to me, "Hello Simon."

Kerry Malone.

I took a deep breath and turned to study her for a moment. The year before, Kerry sat next to me in geography, and while she would sometimes have a smile for me, we never talked. Somehow I had assumed she didn't even know my name.

I finished chewing while her eyes studied me. I kept my response simple with, "Hi."

I tried to keep my tone as neutral as possible. Most guys crush on the hot girl in school. I'd always hated doing what everybody else was doing, so that wasn't me. Guys tended to stare at Kerry and drool. The popular kids knew to control themselves before the saliva pooled on the floor. The nobodies and losers somehow lacked that control.

While I wasn't exactly immune, I was as close to being indifferent as she was ever likely to find. Having spent 200,000 years without a physical body, I couldn't really understand how my peers valued beauty over personality. She never talked to me, so I made a point to never really think about her.

It's harder to not think about somebody, however, while they're sitting right next to you. There was something about the way she said my name. My 16 year old body was suddenly flooded with hormones. Stupid hormones.

"Eating by yourself?" She asked, "Where are," she paused, trying to remember their names, and then gave up, "the other two?"

I didn't bother answering the first question. The second question seemed a bit silly too. She didn't even know their names, so it would be strange for her to really care where they were. Kerry was trying to engage me in small-talk.

Why? What did she want?

A few of the kids in the hallway where looking at us curiously. They were no doubt wondering the same thing I was. Why was the grade 10, uncontested goddess, sitting on the hallway floor and talking to a nobody?

Kerry was as solidly cemented as a popular kid as I was cemented as a nobody. I suppose it gave her the freedom to do as she pleased. I opted not to overthink it and answered her with a shrug.

"Where are the socialites?" I asked. She gave me a confused look, so I smiled and answered her unasked questions, "It's our nickname for the girls that follow you around."

She laughed. It sounded genuine. "They don't follow me around."

The timing was perfect. I raised my eyebrows and then looked over her shoulder. Kerry turned her head and looked down the hallway just in time to see four of her friends enter the hallway. They looked around and spotted Kerry. Some of them frowned; the others looked confused. They turned to talk to each other as a fifth girl entered the group. One of them, Sarah, pointed at us and then they continued chatting excitedly.

We were too far away to hear anything, but it was obvious what they were discussing.

Kerry sighed, "I told them I was busy ... did they come looking for me?"

I shrugged again, "Could be a coincidence."

She rolled her eyes, "Want to go talk somewhere else?"

She looked uncomfortable with her friends just down the hall. I didn't think walking away with me would help her socially either though, and well,

"I still have my lunch," I told her.

She sighed and leaned back against the locker next to mine. She sat quietly while I ate my apple. Given how chatty her peers were, I was surprised at how comfortable she seemed with the silence.

I took the last bite from my apple and then studied her for a moment. She was staring at the lockers opposite us, clearly lost in thought. She turned to look at me and smiled.

"What?" she asked, keeping her smile.

"Why are you here, Kerry?" I asked. Hopefully I sounded inquisitive instead of bitchy.

She surprised me with her honesty, "Tomas kissed me."

That wasn't an answer. The fact that Tom was Sarah's boyfriend explained why Kerry wasn't huddling with her friends, but it didn't explain why she was sitting next to me.

"Okay," I said, "But why are you here," I asked, pointing at where she was sitting. I knew I was probably being a bit rude, but well, I wasn't a social expert.

"Why did you never talk to me?" she asked, clearly referencing our geography class last year.

Obviously she didn't want to answer my question. I almost decided not to answer hers, but I really didn't have anything to lose. Also, she was cute enough that the boy in me wanted to keep talking with her. Kind of silly, but there it was.

"I have two friends Kerry. Clearly I have a lot of practice not talking to people. Also, I'm pretty sure it was you who didn't talk to me."

She seemed a bit surprised at my answer, but recovered quickly, "Well then, we're talking now."

An astute observation.

I simply nodded. I didn't have anything to add, so I picked up a granola bar and started eating it. We sat in silence for a time.