Mike felt his hands as cold as the ground under his feet,
they felt dead, like touching an object rather than a part of this own body,
and that was, well… a very scary experience.
His hands reappeared and then they once again disappeared, but nobody
around him was noticing that he heard the voice of a friend of his asking "is
everything alright, but his voice is very distorted. His sight felt really
poor, it had holes in it, literally black holes with a non-clearly defined
border, they actually looked like there were dark spots on it. His whole sight could be compared to a thin
sheet of paper that was pointed at a strong light and because of that it was
possible to look through it, but the paper itself looked old, since it was
yellowish and also brown at its edges, so if its sight would be a piece of
paper, it would also be burned at the edges. Naturally paper even in the clean
spots shows the texture of wood on it and because of that his sight was also
very blurry. The worse part though was the dark spots, that could also be
considered as blind spots. Well, those were bounded with the movement of the
eyes, so the ones that are in the corner of his eyes will always be there, he
will always see them at the corner of his eyes no matter where he looks. He had
many of them in many different parts, but the worse was in the central point,
basically slightly at the left of the point he looks at, so no matter where he
looks, he can't see what he looks completely since his focus point has been
obscured.
His hands after disappearing reappeared, but then they
disappeared again, after a while of them doing this, there were also moments in
which they looked glitched between existence and non-existence, and that was
corroding him from the insight. The pain that one feels, NO, everything that he
feels in general, so all of human emotions can't keep being felt with the
maximum intensity forever, the body adapts to them, and they feel always
lighter, both painful and pleasurable emotion. So, the pain that he was feeling
at the moment was the pain that somebody feels when an imaginable pain keeps
going through his body and so the body is way less able to feel it. But that
reduces all of Mike's ability to perceive the world around him, or maybe it was
the reverse, maybe his lack of perception make him feel all the unimaginable
pain.
Now that he was thinking about it, perceiving poorly the
world around him really can influence heavily his emotions, because perceiving
is the first half of the concept of power for a living being, everything for
him in fact is knowing and doing. One of them though was lacking in lots of
different ways, his touch felt way less real, his sight was what you'd expect
from a movie dated in the 60', his sense of smell was totally nullified since
he couldn't feel any odor around him, maybe because there wasn't anything that
had a strong odor around him but usually he was able to distinguish the odors
of everybody he knew, and to remember it. Everybody for him had a very
different smell that made him feel something different, there was his brother
smell that made him feel at ease, his father's smell that make him feel a
little bit more tense, but he also remembered the odor of the places like the
academy that made him feel a sense of duty or his little den in his room that
transmits to him tranquility. But all of those odors disappeared, and the
everlasting pain made him feel hunted, with no rest and no way our of the
dreadful situation.
Even hearing voices became more difficult since he felt them
as really distorted, he tried to communicate with one of his friends even if he
wasn't in the best of the conditions, but before he could speak his friend
tells him "What's going on, what's wrong?", he was able to understand that Mike
felt horrible because of the look that he had on his face, everybody in the
school was instructed in doing this too, there were so many important subjects,
and they were in order of importance: Psychology, Economy, Physics, Culture
(culture included anything that was entertainment related like literature,
music and much more of all the time, and they also learned how to create
something beautiful, so they learned to play instruments, to sing, to act in a
theater and so on) and then there was history. Mike's school was a special
school, but not only his school but the whole place he used to live in was very
particular. He lived in the underground, in an enormous natural cave under the
New Zeeland, the cave was then artificially transformed into a place completely
undistinguishable from the lands over them. The ceiling of this place was
turned into something that's basically identical to the sky, it was so similar
that nobody could tell the difference, and even it's effect on the subconscious
and over the people's health were the same as the sky over the ground and the
same was for the artificial sun that was built down there.
The level of technology that was reached by humans was
always hidden to most people, but not in the sense that is taught in the school
for commoners, meaning that surely when the phone was invented, the poor people
who neither know of which country they were part of, well they naturally even
when it was a public discovery they didn't know it since they were disconnected
from the rest of the world, but that's not what I mean with hidden. In fact the
thing we call 'smartphone' existed since 1600' the only reason that most humans
didn't know about it, is that the elite wouldn't benefit from them knowing it.
And Mike was part of those elite that could match the concept that most people
have of the 'Illuminati'. But that doesn't mean that the 'illuminati' conjecture
was true, in fact the 'illuminati' are just a myth born between people that
thought that some people from the period of the 'enlightenment' controlled the
world, but that's not true. Those people
chose to live very far from what they considered as the commoners, but that
didn't mean that there were nobody opposing them. They lived for century not
considering the normal humans as people but rather as a specie of animal that
were particularly useful since they also had reason, and they could be manipulated.
All the people of the underground weren't a united
organization, the fact that they lived together in a separated place was for
different reasons, they for example wanted to live a 'normal' life, without
influencing the outside world, since it was populated by the humans that they
used for their own means. And living together was also a way to try to control
each other to contain their neighbors to control completely the planet and to
get advantage of them, or at least to try to do it, also since their social
status was similar they could also create a society, have social relationships
and develop their level of technology faster even faster. Their society though
often, lead to very tense situations since the people's main concern there was
to take advantage of their neighbor. The people over the ground weren't a
problem for them since they were very stupid compared to them and they didn't
have anyway to oppose them even if their 'secret' was revealed, since their
level of technology was prehistorical in comparison. They controlled the rest
of the humans, creating wars, putting them against each other spreading stupid
ideologies or also making them greedy for money, although for normal humans was
possible to get out of this system, by becoming rich, famous, or having a
military importance, it couldn't bother them since most people would never
escape their control. But also the one that 'escaped' could never join them and
would anyway be unaware of what was controlling the world from centuries.
The family of the chosen once were often in competition, and
this competition was the passed on their own children that going to this
academy competed in the name of their family, being part of this everlasting
struggle, since it can never end, it will last in their life until their final
breath. The academy's teaching was based
on a technological level that was very high, and that's what allowed them to
create always unprecedented geniuses. They basically learned about everything,
quite literally, even using machines that connected to their brain would
facilitate the information from entering the brain, the amount of space that
the student had at their disposal was incredible and it matched both educative
purposes and the body's needs, and with the body's needs are comprehended the
biological needs but also the psychological ones. But even being in such a
privileged position, he could not enjoy not even a single moment of his own
existence, and instead he thinks "there are so many, so many fools over there,
but at least they are fool enough to not be able to feel… agj… this pain, if
I'd be a God of the Olympus that looks over the people of the word under me I'd
act as Zeus does and go to have fun between them with some beautiful girls, haa
haa. (he began to laugh but then the pain took over and his laught33er
disappeared in silence)" at this point he felt a little bit of envy and for a
little bit the current Mike and the Mike of the memories, overlapped but it was
just for a little, the amount of time that he needed to make his stupid joke.
The kid in front of asked him how he was doing so he
answers, "I feel like I was in a deadly battle in another planet and then I
fell asleep hypnotized and ended up in one of my old memories", the kid in
front of him makes a contorted expression and says "that's oddly specific Mike,
maybe, maybe it could… nahhh". Ray said this word but he didn't have his
memories with him, maybe his current self overlapped once again or maybe ha
said it because of physical instinctive memory but anyway what happened it's just
that Mike thought "What the hell did I just say? What am I blubbering about?"
since he was very confused, but he eventually acted as nothing happened. Then the kid asks him "do you want to come to
play something with me? Maybe you'll feel better!". Mike said it because he
didn't see anything that looked as a biological problem so he thought that
thinking about something else could only give him some sort of benefit. Mike
answers "waahaow" basically he started to groan like an animal but in the
meantime, he nodded, so his friend didn't ask to himself any kink of weird
question about the situation but instead he started to lead the way. The
building of the school was divided in a lot of places and it looked more like a
town rather than a school, lots of places in fact had no ceiling and some of
them had a 'natural' floor too, at the end of the day it wasn't like they
really needed a closed space, since the weather and the temperature were
decided by them, then there's also to say that around them there's no animal or
any kind of dangerous monster and so because of that buildings, their beauty
and their existence too was basically just for show, it didn't have any kind of
practical use.
The Academy had all kind of things that could be needed,
like places to eat any kind of food, places to rest, places to learn knowledge
and abilities but also a lot of places to have fun. But one of the most
interesting stuffs that was in the school, but not only there but also in the
rest of that underground place was a 'Time slower'. This object is something
that's placed over somebody's head to make his perception of time slow by a
lot, but when they had to sleep it had some very peculiar implications.