SUPERHUMAN NATURE
By
Brandon Overall
AMAZON KINDLE EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Brandon Overall on Amazon Kindle
Superhuman Nature
Copyright © 2013 by Brandon Overall
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*****
SUPERHUMAN NATURE
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CHAPTER 1
The fact is, almost every single person that has ever existed is insignificant. Every life that comes and goes in this world makes no more impact than the tiny ripple of a rain drop hitting the surface of a pond. The ripple dissipates, and the droplet is absorbed into the body of water just like all the others. After a short amount of time, there is no memory of that droplet ever existing. It is no more significant than the ones around it, before it, or after it.
Every once in a while, though, some of us make a bigger splash than others. Sometimes instead of a rain drop falling into a pond, our lives are like a branch falling off of the old willow tree that hangs over the side of the water. The sudden impact is unexpected. The fish scatter, the sound echoes into the distance, and the nearby wildlife seize up to assess if there is a threat. That branch will rest at the bottom in the still sand beneath the surface and, for a while, be visible to those standing on the edge of the water looking in.
For a while is not forever. Eventually, the fish will forget what startled them, the wildlife will realize the noise they heard poses no danger, and even the biggest willow branch will be withered away by nature's slow janitorial process.
The interesting thing about human beings is that none of them want to believe they will be forgotten. They all feel like fate has chosen them to make a difference in the world. They all fancy the idea that future generations will somehow care that they ever existed. This is, of course, a delusion. The vast majority of people will be forgotten shortly after their death.
Immortality is the ultimate fantasy. Through our actions, we seek to immortalize some memory of ourselves in the history books, or in our children. As an insurance plan, we seek to immortalize our souls. We tell ourselves that even after we close our eyes and our heart stops beating, some part of us will live on and be able watch time pass in front of our eyes and still feel like we are a part of something important. This is, of course, another delusion.
Nothing is eternal or immortal. Eventually the last pages of the history books will turn to dust, and the last heir of a family tree will die off without producing a child to pass on their memory. This will all happen in the blink of an eye as far as the grand timeline of the universe is concerned, yet we continue to delude ourselves into thinking that we are somehow special. We tell ourselves that we are somehow different, and that the universe will remember us even when it has forgotten everyone else. We do this because we have no choice. We do this because it is human nature.
Neil Hitchens was not exempt from this delusion. He was convinced that one day he would make a mark on the world that would still be remembered long after he closed his eyes for the last time.
Maybe he didn’t really believe it. Maybe he had just let his mind wander too much while he made the long walk to class on a comfortable spring day during his last semester of college. He had started spending a lot more time thinking about his future, now that the last stressful year of college was coming to a close. Graduation would soon be upon him, and there wasn’t a whole lot he could do to screw it up at that point.
After an entire lifetime of learning, self-discipline, and determination, Neil had finally made it to a huge milestone. There were only a couple of weeks left before the last exam week he would ever have to worry about. His somewhat decent GPA was already set in stone, he had a secure job lined up, and he had the next four years of life planned out for him. There was nothing left to worry about besides such unimportant things as his weekend plans, the meaning of life, and all of those problems that never seem to have a solution, no matter how much he would ponder them.
Neil finally arrived at his classroom, and immediately sobered up out of that almost meditative state that he would get into sometimes when walking or driving for long periods of time. He became aware of his surroundings again and sat down next to his buddy Ross in the third row. Really, everyone in the class was his buddy. After all, Neil had known them for the past four years ever since he was a new Cadet who had no idea what to expect out of ROTC and didn’t know anything about the Army.
Neil decided years ago that the idea of sitting in an office and answering the telephone or doing paperwork wasn’t the way he wanted to spend 40 years of his life. If he was going to make a mark in the world, it wasn’t going to be from working in a cubicle in an air conditioned office building. Finance reports were not the kind of history books that Neil wanted his name to be written down in.
However, there was a major roadblock in Neil’s quest to become a legend. In order to be remembered, you had to be good at something. Neil wasn’t particularly good at anything. He was slightly above average at the things he was best at, and mediocre at everything else. He decided that the one place he could make the biggest difference in the world, with the least amount of natural talent, was the Army. He reasoned that he could kill two birds with one stone by joining ROTC to help pay for college and start his career in the Army as an Officer, rather than as some private scrubbing toilets for years.
He didn’t know much about the Army going in, and he had fallen for the Hollywood stereotype. As it turned out, the life he was signing up for wasn’t that different from the life he was trying to avoid, but he was too green to know that. For now, the fantasy of shooting guns, diving into the mud, calling in air strikes, and military discounts were what he thought the future had in store for him.
At first, Neil thought he made the wrong decision. He wasn’t exactly the type of person that people pictured when they thought of some war hero or grim faced General. He was a skinny computer savvy kid who was slightly below average in height, and never any good at anything involving physical activity. As far as Army life went, ROTC was about as gentle as it got. Neil did PT a few days a week with his classmates and did a few hours of field training here and there. Even that was a struggle to get used to. He wasn’t very good at remembering how to march, or when to say “Sir” or “Ma’am” or “Sergeant”, and he was even worse at keeping up with everyone else during PT.
If there was anything that Neil did have going for him, though, it was commitment – or as Staff Sergeant White liked to call it, being a “slowpoke stubborn assed fool”. If Neil set his mind on something, he would either make it to the end, or go down in flames trying.
After a semester or two of wondering whether or not the Army was the place for him, Neil finally started to get in the rhythm. He was able to balance college life with Army life, find some spare time to lift weights every once in a while, and he even managed to keep a pretty good GPA in pursuit of a pretty challenging degree – Computer Science.
In fact, if you had asked anyone in the ROTC program during Neil’s second year at Michigan State University what they thought of Neil, they mi
ght even have said he was on track to becoming an above average Officer someday if he kept working at it. For Neil, that was a pretty big compliment.
Despite his initial struggle to fit what seemed like 30 hours of life into a 24 hour day, Neil made it through the first three years of college successfully. He was now sitting in one of the final classes he would have as a college student. In a few weeks, Neil would be standing in front of an audience while his Mom and Dad pinned two shoulder boards with a gold bar on his Army Service Uniform, signifying his commissioning as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army.
Graduating college after being in school his entire life was going to be a strange thing for him to get used to. It was going to take a while for him to wrap his head around the idea that he wouldn’t be doing homework or studying for exams anymore, and that someone would actually be paying him money for the 8 hours of work he put in every day, rather than the other way around.
Neil was thinking about this during class when he was suddenly pulled back into reality by the sound of Lieutenant Colonel Steele’s voice.
“What do you think about this, Cadet Hitchens?”
Neil panicked a little bit when he realized that he hadn’t heard a word that anyone in class had been saying for the past 15 minutes. Colonel Steele didn’t get to be the Professor of Military Science over the entire ROTC program by being easy-going. Neil prepared his ass to be chewed out for not paying attention.
“Sorry Sir, what do I think about what?” Neil asked.
“Cadet Norman, please give your battle buddy here a good slap on the head next time he drifts off into la-la land in the middle of my class,” Steele asked with the semblance of a smirk on his lips, “I asked what you think about becoming a new Officer in the Army during a draw-down. The Army will be looking for excuses to weed out as many of your peers as possible over the next few years. We don’t need as many warfighters when there’s no war to fight.” Neil breathed a sigh of relief – he got off easy this time.
“Well, Sir, I guess I would have to say it’s a good thing. That way if a war starts back up in the future our Army will be in the capable hands of the Officers that made the cut, like high-speed future Lieutenant Ross over here.”
Neil pointed to a Cadet in one of the rows in front of him, and the class let out a good chuckle. Cadet Ross was quite the physical specimen, even for the army. He was about as tall as a horse, broad shouldered, but surprisingly fast. He could out-perform every other Soldier Neil had ever met on the PT test, and the rest of the Cadets figured he could beat The Incredible Hulk in arm wrestling as long as he used both hands.
He was also a natural born leader when it came to small unit tactics. People had literally stood in awe watching him barking out commands with ferocity and tactical brilliance during the battle drills the Cadets sometimes did for training. He never hesitated and always managed to make the right call in a chaotic situation. Training would never be quite like the real thing, but it was a good sign when he performed well in a situation that did its best to come close.
His major flaw, though, was that he was about as dumb as a bag of bricks riding the short bus. He barely managed to keep a GPA high enough to stay in ROTC, and his grades were the one thing preventing him from getting assigned to the much sought after Infantry branch once he commissioned.
He caught a lot of shit from his classmates for getting the Quartermaster branch instead. There was just something funny about imagining someone as big as Ross sitting behind a desk trying to hold a phone or a pencil in his oversized hands all day trying to keep track of the number of toilet paper rolls getting dispensed. At the same time, it was a shame, because Ross would have made a fearsome enemy for the insurgents in whichever country America decided would become a Democracy next.
Ross turned around to face Neil and laughed while he threw a pencil at him to get even for his comment. He could probably manage to throw it hard enough to kill a man if he wanted, but thankfully he decided not to this time.
Neil managed to partially pay attention for the rest of the two and a half hours of class, and then made the walk home to his off-campus house about 20 minutes away. It was a pretty peaceful walk along the Red Cedar River and over a small bridge. It started to get a little dark and chilly out now that it was getting late. Neil returned home to find his roommate, Bryan, playing video games downstairs with a plate of something that smelled delicious on the table in front of him.
“Did you save any for me, Mom?” Neil asked.
“Yeah, but don’t eat the whole thing, fatass. Alex will want some too.” Bryan said, without ever taking his eyes off the TV.
Neil wasn’t very hurt by the fatass comment, since he wasn’t a fatass, but nevertheless he made sure to walk especially slow in front of the TV screen on his way to the kitchen to block it for as long as possible.
“Thanks asshole. You made me drop my combo. Next time I make food for you I’m going to jerk off in the alfredo sauce.”
Bryan joked, but there was no anger in his voice. All was fair in love and war, and there was no greater example of love or war than two roommates of drinking age in a college town.
“Great, maybe it won’t taste like shit next time.” Neil said, as he ran up the stairs with a plate of food to reach his bedroom.
He lived on the upper level of their cheap college-town rental home that seemed to shriek in pain every time he walked up the steps.
Neil spent a couple hours surfing the internet on his bedroom computer. He was essentially just trying to waste time until he was tired enough to sleep. Neil missed out on a lot of the night-life of college due to the fact that he had to wake up early for PT on the weekdays. If he had to pick between drinking in a house full of strangers and getting enough sleep, sleep would always win. Neil was not exactly a social animal. He enjoyed the company of some of his close friends, but being good at meeting new people was not a skill that Neil claimed to possess.
The few times Neil has gone to a “college party”, he had vehemently refused all attempts to get him to dance, since he was terrible at it. Neil would just stand in a corner drinking crappy beer and talking with the people he went to the party with until he could think of an excuse to go. The whole thing seemed pretty superficial to him, but he sometimes went along with it to see if it was some sort of acquired taste. After four years, he decided it was not and mostly stopped going.
That didn’t mean that Neil was a social outcast, or that he didn’t enjoy the company of his group of friends. His friends were all pretty smart, despite most people’s first impressions. They would often meet up and talk for hours about politics, economics, religion, and tits while drinking and sitting around a circular table with a single light on overhead. They joked about how they were like businessmen out of the 50s on those nights. Those were the times when Neil felt the most comfortable.
Although Neil wasn’t the most athletic or intelligent person, he often demonstrated a certain unique intuition. He always gave simple answers to complicated questions, and he seemed to have a better understanding of the world than most people his age. He couldn’t solve a Rubik’s cube in 3 seconds or do calculus problems in his head, but those close to Neil often described him as some sort of genius.
His reputation for incredible intuition gave many people the impression that there was some sort of untapped potential rattling about inside of him, just waiting to be realized. Neil vehemently denied it, of course, and insisted that he just took the time to think before speaking.
After a few hours of surfing the internet, eating a delicious meal, and downing a couple of beers, Neil was ready for bed. He shut off the light, plugged his phone in to charge, and climbed into the bed right next to his computer to let sleep take hold. After a long day and a six mile run for PT that morning, it didn’t take long.
CHAPTER 2
Neil was used to having vivid dreams – it seemed to be a gift of his. However, the one he had this night seemed eerily lucid. Neil dreamt that he was si
tting inside of a classroom. It was indistinguishable from the way his body felt during those long hours taking notes and watching PowerPoint slides. He could see the desk and the notepad in front of him. He looked down and saw his hand over the pencil.
LTC Steele was at the front of the class. The room was filled with students, but Neil didn’t recognize any of them. They all had faces and features, but they didn’t look like real people. Neil’s gaze glanced from side to side, occasionally looking at other people in the room or at the pencil and sheet of notes on the desk in front of him.
After a short while, Neil came to the realization that he was actually in control of the person inside the dream. As he moved his head left and right, the view from his dream followed. He raised his hand to examine the pencil and saw it clearly in his view.
There was something unusual that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He had the strange sense of being in control of more than just his body. It seemed that the version of Neil inside the dream was able to manipulate the entire scene laid before him.
The sensation of setting down the pencil was almost natural, but there was something slightly different about it. The pencil that he set down felt just as much a part of him as his own hand.
He commanded the pencil to rise above the desk, just as if he were trying to raise his hand in front of his face. The pencil obeyed, like it was an extension of his own body. He saw the pencil floating in front of his eyes without anything supporting it. It was just hanging there, perfectly still, perfectly under his control. He flipped the pencil sideways, and lowered it down to the piece of paper in front of him and began to write. The pencil did exactly what he told it to.
No, it was better than that. The pencil was not subject to the flaws of his hand’s fine motor skills. It was an obedient slave. His handwriting was perfect. The letters were precise and neat. The pencil was part of Neil now. He could decide what he wanted it to do, and there was no lag or confusion in communication.
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