It's a day like any other; you're walking down the sidewalk with your best friend Katush, when suddenly --
Something happens. Or at least you think something... happened?
[[What happened?]]
"I'm fine", you tell her, smiling and then looking away.
You're telling the truth. Aren't you?
Suddenly you're not so sure. You're not sure at all.
You're not fine.
You're scared.
And now you know what you're doing: you're lying to Katush, to your best friend, because you have something to hide.
Something that you are determined to keep to yourself.
Maybe so much so, that you should get away from Katush, and fast.
[[Get away from her]]
[[Lie to her]]
[[Try to share it with her]]
"Something's wrong", you tell her.
But what is wrong? You search inside yourself. You feel OK.
But somehow, you know you're not OK.
There's something new inside you. Not really some //thing//, though. More like... you suddenly realize... some //one//.
Someone is inside you. A life. An energy. You aren't just you anymore.
"I'm..." you start to say. But it feels wrong.
"We", you try again. And somehow, it feels right.
Katush looks alarmed. "Which one is it?!" she asks, her voice tight. "I, or we?"
You let out a breath. Maybe you're being silly. You're still you.
You answer Katush:
[[I]]
[[We]]
"I'm still me, Katush," you assure her. "I just feel some kind of new energy inside me."
"A new energy?" she repeats back. "What does that even mean?"
You pause for a moment. "I don't know how I know this..." you begin. "But it means... this!"
And before you know why you're doing it, or //how// you're doing it, you are pointing your hand up to the sky, and willing for something to be sent upwards.
Willing, wanting, knowing... //expressing//... this thing to come out, to //shoot// out:
[[Fire]]
[[Lightning]]
[[Ice]]
[[Sparks]]
"We are both inside me", you say, and you can't believe your own words.
"What?" Katush replies.
"We. I'm still here, Katush," you explain. "But now there's... well, there's someone else here too."
You shudder as you consider the words that are forming on your lips: "Someone else who is very, very old. Ancient, even."
Katush just stares at you, the beginnings of fear appearing in her eyes.
"Someone," you continue, "who is very powerful."
And suddenly, you worry for Katush. This Other, inside you, is a danger to her.
[[Get away from her]]
Fire erupts out of your outstretched hand. It feels glorious, marvelous, freeing.
But then you realize that you can't stop it.
You can't turn it off.
Its flames grow. Its fury grows.
Things around you start to explode from the heat. In seconds, you realize Katush is dead.
Seconds later, your brain seems to boil from the realization of what you have wrought. It is shutting down...
[[Explode in fury]]
[[See what else has been destroyed]]
Out of your outstretched hand comes...
A tiny crackle of static electricity.
You stare, not believing your eyes. And then you feel inside you for the presence, the Other.
It's not there.
In the days and weeks following, you begin to doubt yourself. Weren't you probably just imagining things?
And soon you forget all about it.
Until you get older.
[[What happens when you get older]]
You send out ice, and it freezes the vehicle nearby, stopping it completely.
Then it breaks in half, and you realize the ice hasn't just frozen it.
It has frozen //everything//. And //everyone//.
Your hatred of the voice inside you, the Other, is bottomless.
[[Explode in fury]]
Sparks erupt from your hand, covering a large area around you.
Katush shrieks as sparks burn holes in her jacket and hat.
"Katush!" you shout, "I'm sorry!"
She looks at you, wondering if you are still the person--her best friend--that you were until just a minute ago.
Why doesn't she trust you? Suddenly you feel rage boiling inside. She doesn't appreciate your power. Your infinite power!
[[Explode in fury]]
[[Apologize to Katush]]
"Come close," you beckon to Katush.
She steps forward, unsure. "Why?" she asks you.
You aren't sure what to answer.
[[Tell her your secret]]
[[Say nothing]]
[[Tell her to get away from you]]
It was as if the world blinked for a moment. No, not the world... more like... the universe. Life. Everything.
It turned off and then on. For the tiniest possible moment, but it did.
And in that time, something changed inside you. Something like --
"Hey, are you OK?" Katush has turned to you suddenly and noticed the look on your face.
You're not quite sure what to say:
[["I'm fine"]]
[["Something's wrong"]]
"The truth is," you say, not quite knowing what words are going to come out of your mouth, "I'm not the person I was just a minute ago."
She just stares, fear all over her face.
"Who are you, then?" she asks. And then looking at your hand, which you are flexing compulsively, she whispers, "What can you do?"
"This," you say, and point your hand to show her what you now know it can create:
[[Fire]]
[[Ice]]
[[Sparks]]
[[Lightning]]
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"GET AWAY FROM ME!" you shout suddenly, shoving her so hard that she slams against a fence and crumples to the ground, the wind knocked out of her.
Her eyes search you, as if to beg you to explain. How could you hurt her?
But you have no time to apologize.
[[Get away from her]]
"I'm sorry," you tell her, backing away. "I have to go."
You stumble backwards into the street, turning around too late to realize you're stepping into the path of a truck!
A voice inside you seems to scream. It wants to act.
[[Jump out of the way]]
[[Let the truck hit you]]
[[Do the thing the voice is screaming to do]]
You jump out of the way of the truck, and it barely misses you.
"Oh," Katush says, softly. And that's when you realize what's happened: you've jumped 10 feet, maybe 20 feet high, and grabbed a tree branch overhead.
You drop to the ground, as if a drop that far is nothing.
"Katush," you say, pleading. "I can explain."
But a voice inside you warns that it is not for her to know.
[[Tell her your secret]]
[[Lie to her]]
You stand as still as a statue as the truck barrels towards you, its brakes screeching.
[[Your last seconds]]
You give yourself over to the voice. You don't so much as //listen// to it, as //become// it.
And that turns out to mean becoming something you never could have imagined.
Your arms reach out, forming fists, and circles of crackling green energy explode out of them, making the truck shake and spark, and its driver scream in pain.
His screams are horrible, and your instinct is to stop. But the truck is still bearing down on you, and you feel afraid for your life!
[[Stop the blasts]]
[[Blast even harder]]
"I don't know what came over me," you say with a laugh.
Katush pauses. "OK," she begins. "You really had me freaked out for a minute there."
[[Apologize to Katush]]
The whole city has been destroyed.
And so, you realize, as the ground begins to shake violently and the sky burns with the heat of a thousand suns, so has the world.
[[You float]]
It is only after centuries of drifting in space, finding yourself immortal, that you finally forgive.
You forgive the Other inside you.
You forgive yourself.
And finally, long after you stopped keeping track of the passing millenia, you become what you truly are.
And so begins the real story.
THE END
Every day, as the voice inside you, the Other whom you share your body with, tries to struggle to the surface, you push it deeper. It seems to drown inside you, in a way that leaves you cold.
So cold.
Frozen.
Things you touch began to be chilled, surprising others. Soon people avoid you, and then you become a news story.
And then the military comes, to stop you.
[[Let them stop you]]
Stop them with your power of [[Ice]]
A missile is soaring your way, its rocket tearing a sound in the sky. You stand perfectly still, feeling true peace for the first time since you can remember.
[[Your last seconds]]
The few seconds it takes to reach you are enough for you to say goodbye, in your head, to those you love.
The voice inside fills with rage. It knows the choice you're making. And at the last moment, the energy inside you explodes out of you...
...and into the mind of a stranger, the new host of the Other.
THE END
As you get older, you realize you aren't ageing. Your friends get old and eventually die, but you don't. Decades go by, then centuries. Soon a millenium will go by in what seems like the blink of an eye.
You find yourself in space, not even having to breathe, with the dim memory that thousands of years ago, you jumped into space from Earth. Of course, at this point you can't even remember what Earth looked like, or if it was just a dream.
[[An eternity passes]]
"I'm sorry," you tell Katush. "I really am. It's all going to be normal now."
But you know better than to believe that yourself.
[[What you become]]
The next days, weeks and months are difficult ones. Those you once loved wouldn't understand what you are, or what you are becoming.
All you know, with a sense of guilt that weighs on you, is that you must leave this world.
Or do you? You could just be the person you used to be, couldn't you? You could bury this Other being deep inside, where it would never come out. Or you could push this corrupt world away and leap to freedom.
[[Step gently from Earth to space]]
[[Bury the Other deep inside]]
[[Leap into the sky violently]]
The only thing to do is to burn.
And so you burn.
[[Burn the other]]
[[Burn infinitely]]
And then there is nothing but space and emptiness.
Until you say, "Let there be light."
And you, and the universe, are reborn.
THE END
Surrounded by the debris of a pulverized Earth, you float away, past the moon that is now adrift like you, past the asteroid belt, past the bright points of light that you know are the planets of the solar system.
Into the endless cold of space.
[[An eternity passes]]
You gather all of your will and push for the voice inside you, the Other, to stop. It takes everything you've got.
But you finally succeed: the blasts stop. Only a split second has passed, though it felt like an eternity.
[[You're in control now]]
You double down on the blast shooting out from you -- triple down, quadruple down. The intensity and heat of the power is breathtaking...
...and destructive. You are completely pulverizing the truck -- and its driver.
In a moment, smoke, flames, and a horrible, terrifying smell are all that remains of the truck.
But not just the truck has been destroyed, you realize with horror.
Also the cars around you.
Also Katush.
[[Shut it out of your mind]]
[[See what else has been destroyed]]
"NO!" you scream -- not at anyone else, just at yourself.
You seize the awareness of the pain you've caused: Katush's face before it vanished in the piercing stream of radiation; the screams still reaching your ears, that are being abruptly silenced; the howling sound in your ears that is your blood, under so much pressure it seems to be boiling out of your eyes and nose.
You seize all this and just bury it.
You *bury* it. Deep. Deep.
[[Deeper.->Deep]]
[[Leap into the sky violently]]
You know that the mind that you once had, the honest and decent and caring one, has been deleted and erased. In its place is only an exploding horror.
Your one urge, a desire you sense as if at the other end of a mile-long corridor, is to bring others into your state of mind. They must know. They must feel it to.
[[You go insane]]
You focus your energy inward, on the Other. And it begins to scream a scream you could never describe in words. It would be fascinating, if you didn't feel so deep a sense of horror and sickness.
Your mind struggles to keep up with the dawning sense of horror.
Push it down [[Deep]]
[[Back away]]
The world burns. The universe burns.
But that's not enough. The Other isn't burning.
So you burn harder. You burn all the atoms. You burn harder. You burn all the light. The universe expands faster and faster, an infinite source of energy pouring out of you with incomprehensible intensity.
You burn harder.
Things that cannot be described with words start to burn. The fabric of space and time burn. Reality burns.
Finally, the Other burns.
[[And then]]
You fear for what you are becoming. For what the Other has done to you.
There's only one choice left.
[[Step gently from Earth to space]]
You push upwards, and float above the buildings, the streets, the country, and finally, the Earth.
You float, saying goodbye to the life you lived, the people you loved.
You'll never know love again. Never know the smile of another person, the warmth of a breeze.
Space is lonely and cold. And though for the first million years you go past (and sometimes through) suns and nebulae, these decay and grow cool as the universe chills and finally stops, its final photons gone and its light extinguished.
[[And then]]
You can feel your mind and entire self wrapping around the Other inside you. You know now how to harness its power, to use it as a fuel for your actions.
The rest of your life is spent doing good works for others: repairing impossibly damaged dams, fueling pollution-free energy from inside you, speaking out for justice, stopping wars.
Not everyone always agrees with you. Some even call you a dictator, and ask why you get to decide things for the rest of the world.
It isn't easy, but as you gain experience over the decades, and then the centuries, never ageing, you learn to balance your power with the power of others.
And while there is still pain on Earth, you become the foundation of its survival, health, and prosperity. Cooperation and coalition among peoples become easier, since they do not fear armaggedon while under your watch.
But [[you have a secret]].
And all this time, no one knows your secret: that every day, every single day for more than a million years, you are pushing with all your might to control the Other and keep it from unleashing its blind, destructive power.
You are the rock upon which humanity's first million years are built. And yet, you are forever alone with your secret.
THE END
In the coming years, you glimpse reality only distantly, in scattered images, some so frightening that you descend further into yourself. You know, on some level, that you are at times in a prison cell, at times floating in space, at times weeping and ranting and raving.
But you, and you alone, know how much worse it would be if you let the Other take over. Your madness is the world's safety.
THE END.
You leap into the sky, so hard and so fast that you knock the Earth out of its orbit.
As the Earth drifts towards Mars, an Ice Age takes over the planet, and as all life dies, every last bond of civilization disintegrates into an unfathomable violence and misery.
Meanwhile, you soar through space.
[[An eternity passes]]