Seven hundred and eighty-eight million four hundred thousand seconds.
I counted in the darkness as another wave of emotional exhaustion overcame my being.
I have officially counted out twenty-five years.
I would scratch that off my bucket list, but that's a nonexistent bucket I chuckled at my peculiarly heinous fate.
I remember when it all started, or much rather when it ended, although regardless of how it is phrased it is just as convoluted as it is hopeless.
I was born in Sun City, California as beautiful as it is corrupt.
Even coming from a privileged high-class income, with a father who worked as an elected official in the federal government.
I was still exposed to police brutality, looting, and extreme poverty.
It was on the nightly news, and what my mother would always discuss with her friends, some of whom are never to be seen again, due to the increasing crime rate.
Homicides and home invasions spiked two hundred percent in the span of one year.
It was not anywhere where we lived but it is everywhere else.
The central district of Sun City was the divide between haves and have-nots.
Those have-nots were always looking to have something for themselves.
When I was born my father, Otis, was not around and that pretty much became his parenting method throughout my life.
Being Otis the second was only in name.
Between reelections and new positions in the Senate and Congress, family life did not exist unless there was a camera lens within fifty feet of my house.
As I grew my bible-thumping mother started noticing that I had a wide spectrum of interests.
Which would not be out of place if I was not two years old.
From an early age I would hum many of the tunes she would sing to me, not only when she was singing but right after and the following days as well.
I would quickly get over playing with the corner of the couch and the kitchen cabinets and focused on books early.
Most parents would start to push their child into an education earlier on in life but instead, my mother gave me the bible... and only the bible.
She thought that by exposing me to the faith early I would be a devout and pious man in the future if only the poor woman knew.
Not only did she read the bible to me but she also had me read it myself.
I memorized it after the first read and was very wide-eyed at the time.
That was until I waddled myself into my father's office one morning.
Usually, I would never be in that room or even that side of the house but there were seven bedrooms, and only me and my mother every day.
It got quite boring reading the same book although I had no complaints.
I didn't know any better and I was looking for stimulation.
As soon as I leaned my pudgy little body against that door I fell in and when I got up I was able to see the biggest bookshelf I had ever seen in my life.
It was ten feet wide and seven feet tall and for a small boy like me who devoured literature like it was candy, it was the motherload.
I didn't hesitate to maneuver past the desk and over the cable wires that connected the television and computer and grab the first book I could reach at the bottom of the shelf which was coincidental "The History of the Decline of the Roman Empire Vol IV".
Needless to say, it was a lot for a two-year-old moving onto three years of age but from what I could understand from the highlighted quotes this went against everything I learned!
By the time my mother had noticed I was gone, panicked, and commenced to look for and find me I had already read the quote.
"The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful".
My mother did not know I had read this and scolded me for going into the office where they had all these power cords that a child can kill themselves with.
Later on that night, I asked my mother what a philosopher was and her response was "Someone who is very smart and who worked hard to be smart dear".
"Why would you like to be a philosopher?" she had already gotten used to all the random questions that I asked.
I stuck out my chin and said "No Mommy I want to be a magistrate"!
She was taken aback by such a small child saying such a big word and asked me why.
"Because magistrates consider worship useful and we worship a lot!"
My mother was immediately taken aback but did not voice it immediately, she did what all god-fearing women did, she told her husband.
My father worked late and sometimes he even left for weeks to go on campaign trails for himself, or to endorse his constituents.
He had no time for what he believed was a child seeking attention, but he decided to agree to my mother's insistence to send me to church.
I had questions that she could not answer, to keep it consistent with her "values" she needed to take me to worship.
It didn't help that I kept sneaking into my father's office to the point where a lock was placed so that no tantrum would take off.
My first meeting with a priest was not anything special to me but it was life-changing.
The priest himself was also a social worker as we lived only a few miles past the divide of the "have-nots".
It wasn't long before he realized that I had an eidetic memory.
I don't know if it was me quoting Genesis or if it was my questions about Genesis that did the trick, but he quickly went to my mother and explained his suspicions which earned me a one-way ticket to a private tutor.
I was elated.
Six years quickly passed, I am eight years old, and I had read an entire library at this point.
I could never go to the library physically I had a computer at home which I promptly learned to use as soon as I turned four and my tutor Elena explained to me its function.
My relationship with my mother was awkward, to say the least, as she never had much to talk to me about anymore.
She had her views of the world which she gleaned from the bible, I had mine which was interpreted from hundreds of historic novels and autobiographies.
Specifically "The Principa" Written by Isaac Newton.
Although we didn't connect, I still loved her as she was the only other human contact I had besides Elena.
She herself was vetted by my father's office and screened by my mother so although she wanted to teach me certain things, she couldn't and risk losing her source of income.
For a beautiful brunette such as her being sent to the slums would be a death sentence.
I was sheltered but via news reports and online chat groups, I was able to tell that the nation was in a crisis.
Disease has spread throughout all the states and due to its infection coupled with its mortality rate it destroyed the economy.
Local government was being pressured to reopen the businesses that were shut down due to preventive measures, in an attempt to slow down the spread of infection.
The federal government was under the gun because the initial response was too slow and led to a widespread pandemic within the nation.
It spread globally and originated within our nation's national parks, so the United Nations Government blamed our country regardless of if they said it or not, the lack of aid spoke volumes.
A year later my mother died due to this disease.
I also caught it and was bedridden for two months before getting better which at the time was the worst pain in my life.
I found out my mother passed away only after leaving isolation.
My father had already buried her and there was no way for me to visit her grave as the doctors said getting over the virus built no immunity as it was mutating rapidly.
Elena went from being a tutor to a nanny for an angry preteen who was too smart for his own good.
Although I had an attitude and would often times lash out at her I would never set foot outside of the door due to the memory of the pain the virus inflected.
I was thirteen years old, and the pandemic was finally over.
The government was finally distributing vaccines.
My father was still a senator and was now the speaker of the house.
Apparently losing his wife in the pandemic swayed public opinion about him.
He was one step away from the big office and any interaction I had with him he didn't neglect to remind me and tell me to stay in my place.
"One fuck up from you is all it takes to destroy decades worth of work" never mentioning the decades of marriage and parenting he missed out on.
Graduation from mandatory education was a blessing for me as I was studying to become a doctor.
I knew that graduating early at fifteen would give me an advantage that not a lot of people had.
I had Elena at my ceremony with my bags already packed ready to go straight to the airport and to the university where I would spend the next eight years getting my doctorate in medicine.
Elena was always trying to get close to me with presents on my birthday and Christmas.
But I wasn't having it so the small talk to the airport was nonexistent.
I got out, grabbed my things, and head to my destination.
That was the last time I ever spoke to her.
Maybe it was because I lost my mother the only person in my life so early.
I wanted to beat that virus.
I wanted to not just find a vaccine but also find a cure so when I graduated top of my class from the most prestigious medical university in the country it was no surprise that I took an internship at the center of disease control.
Being alone from such a young age I excelled at the tedious side of the job cataloging and tracing known pathogens.
I was relentless.
I logged in more hours than anyone in the lab.
I documented more findings than any intern in the history of the country.
Fortunately, my father couldn't capitalize on my achievements he had a stroke and died before he could run for the presidential office.
I didn't even attend the funeral.
My inheritance was beyond substantial and since my father did not remarry, I got it all lump sum.
I never married or had children.
I had sex and called them a cab in the morning.
It sounds unfeeling but when four-tenths of the population gets wiped out people tend to get religious and that was not what I was willing to commit to.
Many new religions came about but that quote from my childhood always stayed with me.
It was when I was forty years old and working as one of the lead researchers at the CDC that it happened.
That day I was leaving the building as late as ever
I jumped into the car my office provided for me and was driven home by a security detail since the work we did was classified into so many different levels.
I was going over the new cases which resembled the virus that came decades before sprouting up in the eastern continents.
I was staring out of the window when I saw it.
Van lights are rapidly approaching.
It slammed into the side of the drive which I happened to be sitting behind and flipped the black SUV over I don't know how many times.
My legs were gone crushed under the weight of the driver, or what was left of him.
My spine was fractured I knew I was done.
I was unresolved thinking of the cure that I wanted to find thinking of all those hours in the office.
If I knew I would have died tonight I would have never left!
"Get the scientist he is in the back" I heard a gruff voice exclaim.
"Damn it Switzer he's fucking dead!" said a high-pitched female voice that sounded almost childlike my eyes flickered to the source of the sound and were met with footsteps hurriedly retreating.
"Damn, we're going to have to wait for the next one."
"It has to be tonight security will be even tighter if we wait."
I had so many questions 'Who are they? Why are they targeting us? When did they even have time to plan this our exists are random and shifts staggered?'
All these questions burned in my brain as I was losing conciseness.