Wafula trudged home that evening, his boots caked in mud and his mind swimming with confusion. The day had been a whirlwind of success and suspicion. He couldn't shake the feeling that his newfound abilities were too good to be true. A cheat code? A magical system? He had read about these things in the wuxia novels he devoured during his downtime, but this was real life and not some fantastical tale of cultivation and mystical powers.
By the time he reached his tiny one-room apartment in the bustling outskirts of Nairobi, his mind was spiraling. He tossed his helmet onto the rickety table and sank into his creaky chair, staring at his reflection in the cracked mirror on the wall.
"Wafula, you're losing it," he muttered to himself. "First, you fall off a ladder, then you wake up fixing pipes like a pro, and now you think you have magical powers? What next? Flying swords?"
But he couldn't ignore what had happened. The white void, the holographic version of himself, the perfect solutions as it was too vivid to be a figment of his imagination.
He needed proof.
Wafula's eyes scanned the room until they landed on his old television set, a relic from the early 2000s. It had stopped working months ago, and he'd never bothered to repair it. If this mysterious ability was real, surely it could help him fix the TV.
He dragged the dusty television to the middle of the room, grabbed a screwdriver from under the bed, and pried it open. The insides looked like a maze of wires and circuit boards completely incomprehensible to him.
"Alright, magic brain," Wafula said, tapping his temple. "Show me the way."
He closed his eyes, willing himself back into the white void. He focused on the TV, imagining it coming apart piece by piece and fixing itself. But nothing happened.
He opened one eye and peeked. The TV was still there, its innards sprawled out like a disemboweled animal.
"Maybe I'm not concentrating hard enough," he muttered.
He shut his eyes tighter, clenching his fists as he tried to summon the glowing version of himself. Minutes passed. Then hours. Still, nothing.
Finally, Wafula slammed the screwdriver onto the floor, his frustration boiling over. "What was that earlier, then? A dream? A hallucination? Some pre-death epiphany?"
The more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed that his experience on the construction site had been a fluke or a burst of adrenaline or some subconscious revelation triggered by the fall. After all, he wasn't dead.
But that didn't explain the vividness of the white void or how he had known exactly what to do with the pipe.
Determined to prove himself wrong, Wafula spent the next few hours dismantling random objects in his apartment. He opened his radio, took apart his fan, and even considered tampering with his gas cooker before thinking better of it. But every attempt ended the same way: with Wafula staring at a pile of parts and no clue how to put them back together.
By midnight, his room looked like a junkyard. The TV remained broken, the fan was now missing a blade, and the radio was beyond saving. Wafula slumped onto his bed, defeated.
"This is madness," he whispered to the ceiling. "I'm going mad."
He closed his eyes, hoping sleep would offer some reprieve from his spiraling thoughts. But sleep eluded him. His mind was a raging storm, replaying the events of the day over and over.
Hours passed, and Wafula found himself staring at the faint outline of the window as dawn crept in. His body was exhausted, but his mind refused to rest. He sat up, rubbing his temples.
"Alright," he said aloud, "if this is some kind of system, then maybe it only works under certain conditions. Maybe I have to be in danger, like before. Or maybe…"
He paused, realizing how ridiculous he sounded. He was treating his life like a wuxia novel, expecting a magical explanation for something he didn't understand. But the alternative that it had all been a figment of his imagination was equally unsettling.
Wafula decided he needed to approach this logically. He grabbed a notebook from under his bed, one he usually used for jotting down grocery lists and phone numbers. Flipping to a blank page, he wrote:
The White Void Experiment
Conditions
It happened after a fall.
I was fixing a pipe.
I was under pressure to perform.
Hypotheses
The white void only activates during moments of high stress or danger.
It might be related to specific tasks, like construction work.
It could have been a hallucination caused by the fall.
Questions
Why me?
Is this ability permanent?
Can I control it?
Wafula stared at the list, tapping the pen against his chin. He felt like a scientist studying an alien species or a fool chasing a delusion.
As the sun rose higher, Wafula decided to take a walk. The clutter in his room was suffocating, and he needed fresh air to clear his head. He wandered through the chaotic streets of Nairobi, the city already alive with the sound of matatus honking and vendors shouting.
He found himself at a small park near the construction site. Sitting on a bench, he watched as children played on the swings and joggers passed by. For the first time in hours, his mind felt calm.
"Maybe I'm overthinking this," he said to himself. "I should just focus on the job and forget about magical systems."
But deep down, Wafula knew he couldn't let it go. Whatever had happened to him wasn't normal, and he needed answers.
As he sat there, a faint memory surfaced, something his late grandmother used to say.
"Sometimes, blessings come disguised as burdens. Don't dismiss them too quickly."
Wafula smiled bitterly. "If this is a blessing, it's the weirdest one I've ever seen."
He stood up, dusted off his pants, and made his way back to the construction site. If the system or whatever it was was real, he would figure it out eventually. For now, he had a job to do, broken TV or not.