Living life to its fullest

Zanna Annabel died at the young age of 23 years, with her face showing contentment that one wouldn’t expect from someone who just half an year ago was never seen smiling.

During the 2nd year of highschool, Zanna Annabel transferred to our school in the town that was rather remote. Ever since she had transferred , I had never seen her mingle with anyone else. Oh, I seem to have forgotten to introduce myself. I am Corbin Brook, nearly everyone calls me Burb since as long as I can remember, the meaning of which I have yet to find out. I am an average teenage boy that you see everyday. As soon as I joined the high school I entered the light music club with a bunch of my friends.”Hey Burb”. And right now, I am interested in the girl named Zanna. “Burb” . She rarely talks to anyone in the school and goes home straight after the classes end, and sits out on PE lessons. I had heard rumors that she had health problems, but no one knows the truth. This mysteriousness has made me take an interest in her. “Corbin Brook!!!” , the teacher hits me with a chalk piece and glares at me. “Focus on the lesson”, he says.

During the middle of July we finally crossed paths, in a surprising way. “Hey nurse Linda, I’m skipping the class right now, please let me sleep on the bed” I said while opening the door. What I didn’t expect was seeing Zanna in the mid of changing her t-shirt. We both froze up, “Whaaaa!!!” she cried out. To not make the situtation any worse I hurriedly said “I-I-I’m sorry! I didn’t do it on purpose”. “I didn’t see anything” , I said while turning the other way. That wasn’t true, I saw everything, but more surprising than her half-naked figure was something on her chest that caught my eye. After I “walked-ran” away, I didn’t see her for the rest of the day. The next day she called me out and asked me to get somewhere alone , so we went to the rooftop.

“Do you know what LHR is?” she asked me after getting there. I had heard of it, “Yeah, I heard of it. A few years ago, a famous celebrity died because of it. Its pretty well known” I said. “Yeah that is it” she said. She explained “Officially a weak heart muscle makes the heart beat irregular. Its a strange disease that only happens to  one in a million people” she explained. She continued “ Have you heard of this? The number of heartbeats a person will have, is decided when they are born. But a person with this illness has less heartbeats than everyone. ” . She pulled out something similar to a phone and said “This is part of the device plastered on my chest. Here have a look” she said, showing it to me. I had a look at it, the screen had her photo with her name and her heart rate along with a number ‘221,124,041’. “Thats the number of heartbeats I have left” she said. “If you have the personal app and an ID you can see how many heartbeats you have left. While mine may seem like a lot, its only 4-5 years at most” she said looking sad.

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At this point the dialogue was getting harder and harder to make without making it seem forced. This is part that was shown to my father for review, after this I had him look at the whole story idea as written in my CAS diary.

The Two Lives Of Heryn

Standing by the sidewalk, looking at the people around him. Everyday life went by without much happening for Heryn. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the convenient and average life he currently had, but he sometimes wondered where things had gone wrong for him to end up… just so average. After hearing almost everyday during his teen years that he was a master at communicating with people, a genius and incredibly lucky, he still had trouble adjusting to the fact that the most he would be able to amount to in the society was being happy with a select few people he knew. Even if the said society was ridden with problems that were never solved, with the controversy about Global warming, increasing poverty rates and lack of food around the globe.  He certainly was no more genius than the commoners who ended up as inventors simply because of the unique way they thought about things. Although the hardships he had endured to get the status of a government official were almost made up for by the comfortable lifestyle and his loving wife Melanie, sometimes he wondered what he could’ve become had he been able to take the chances that had been near him back then. Although thoughts like these were a slight whisper at first, forgotten like a dream the next day, these days he was getting increasingly paranoid about the way he ended up right now. He was getting increasingly suspicious that his life was supposed to turn out a different way than it was right now, and that someone had been actively working against him in the past for him to have become so mediocre. He could still remember the day the changes started happening, it had begun with the arrival of the first year in high school and a certain person who had all the qualities he could only dream of.

He was the one who was called the greatest mind on earth and he was the one who was known as someone who had only gotten where he was by ripping others off. He was the richest while he had things he simply couldn’t buy. He was someone everyone associated with when one mentioned fame, while he was also the one who no one knew how he really was. He was the one everyone wanted to be associated with, while the ones who were, ostracised him out of fear. The only thing that kept him going was the fact that he still had a few people he could rely on, his wife, kids and a somewhat distant uncle. His wife Evie, the one whom he had named his corporation after, a highschool sweetheart, and his greatest motivation to keep moving forward in a world where fame was something those who lacked craved, and those who had abhorred. His kids, his blood, who he spoiled to every extent just for the little moments of happiness. And his uncle, a man who asked nothing of him yet was an integral part of the family. Yet sometimes he got the feeling he wasn’t welcomed even by them.

He had no goals he wanted to accomplish anymore, if he wanted he could turn the world upside down with the influence he had. If he wanted to solve bigger world problems , he could, although the majority of problems of the past like poverty, starvation and discrimination based on certain characteristics were fixed long ago by the collective effort of humanity. The problem most talked about these days were simply the controversy of popular companies like Evie Corp. , Simulated Lives where one could become what one wanted and the frequent question of future with the AI systems. He was partly responsible for the creation of all three. He was living an extravagant life where he had nothing to challenge himself with and for the heck of it, formed a private research group to investigate any other potential energy sources. The PE was a vague and rare phenomenon which was accidentally discovered while the research group was investigating ways to produce an energy source much more efficient than the one Evie Corp. currently made, but what was instead discovered was an effect where an object would be in a state of “being and not being at the same time”. It caused quite an uproar in the group and would likely do so in the whole world as well if others were to know of it, but knowing that this was funded by him, they went straight to him with the results. What they didn’t know was that he knew that this was the first discovery of time travel in all of humanity, and although he rarely felt any emotions these days, he was a bit hesitant when he wiped the group’s memory with Simulated Lives and kept the results and the equipment he funded for himself. He had managed to create a working time machine with the help of the AI he had installed in his brain, and his last goal in life was done. After a long time in the research lab, creating the time machine, he returned to tell his family of the news as he didn’t keep any secrets from them. What he didn’t expect was the betrayal of his life, the fact that his whole life was a lie he was creating for himself. After hours of contemplation over whether to break off his relations with his only family , live the false life he always had been living , opt for suicide or something else… He still thought back to the days when he started on the path to where he stood… He wanted to fix the mess that his life was. All this just because he had been there at the right time , the right place and become someone everyone envied. This time he would make sure that he was anything but famous, anything but rich, anyone but …. not average. Perhaps there would be happiness, perhaps there would be love… perhaps there would be hope...hope...hope

Epoh. Heryn remembered the moment that person joined the high school, he looked a bit too over his age and too similar to him that everyone started calling Heryn , Epoh Jr. . Once he even spoke with him to confirm if they were related somehow, they were not. He was the most charming person in the whole school, even the town perhaps, as if he knew what to say at the correct time, knew how to read minds or had someone guiding through everything perfectly. Although he was the epitome of perfection he idealized, there were some strange things he did that Heryn had no explanation to. Like the clear displeasure when he met or heard the name of Elvie, who was his high school crush. And the feeling that Epoh was somehow the cause of him and Melanie starting a relationship. And the fact that he seemed to be hiding a great pain and loneliness even while he was the most popular kid in class. And the feeling of being looked at as a ignorant child whenever one talked about science with him.

Epoh looked at his other self near the sidewalk with a slight smile. He had fulfilled his purpose of coming to this timeline. He had made sure that his other self ended up as close to average and boring as he could, and he also made sure his other self never got to meet their high school crush and his previous wife, Evie. He also made sure the uncle that he despised ended up as low as he could, barely scraping by to live ousted by his other family members. Sometimes he wondered if he was too harsh on his other self, but then he remembered the soul-crushing loneliness and betrayal he was met with when he came back home in the original timeline. “Sometimes, I wonder if he is just an idiot with influence. I mean he never even seems to have noticed that we have been having a relationship right under his nose. Anyone with a brain can figure out that those kids are not his but ours” , he was reminded of those words, he heard when listening in to the lovers’ tryst between his uncle and his wife Evie, whenever he thought his other self was suffering through a hardship. Epoh, was the name he took to represent hope for Heryn.

Fool's massacre

A person among the masses. Chatter of people around him, some with a friend, some talking on their phones. A man on the big screen on one of the buildings, talking about something in a hurry, a newsperson perhaps, something about a supernatural phenomenon influencing people to performing irrational behavior, some even going mad. Of course, no one paid it any mind, it was something any person would do on an Aprils' fool day. However, I have nothing to do with it , I only have one destination in mind. I'm beat, tired, perhaps some water would wash away my stress. With that in mind, the destination I'm headed to would be the best place to satisfy myself. A river, in front of me, as if staring at me with its eyes, asking me to get closer. Well then, I'll be coming to sate my thirst       -Jump-

A person among the masses. Chatter of people around him, some with a friend , some talking on their phones, some laughing as if they'd gone mad from the joke played on them yesterday. A man on the big screen on one of the buildings, talking about the aftermath of yesterday's April's fool. A gasp surfaces from the audience, shouts of surprise erupts from some who are yet to know about yesterday's joke. I however am not surprised, that is only natural, you should go along with the joke on an April fools' day. Well its not too late to join in on the joke. In that case, lets go to the destination I have in mind, perhaps that will relieve me of my stress, these worried people should do the same. My destination is in front of me, a river glittering shiningly as if watching me with its bewitching eyes. Well, I'm going in. -Jump- *Crunch* -Screams from people- *Aaaaahhhh!!!*

Somewhere far away.. The person on TV in my room is talking about the shocking headlines, some sort of supernatural phenomenon occurring in Illinos. "Yes, we have received reports that around 98% of the people living in Illinos are dead. What started as perhaps an accident, when a person with a seemingly tired face, jumped off the bridge and into the river , soon turned into a full-fledged massacre of the town's residents. The only survivors are the disabled residents who could not move on their own. Survivors report that they themselves were having suicidal thoughts about jumping off the bridge and that they felt an unnatural thirst. While nothing as to the cause of the wide-scale suicides has been discovered, in addition to no bodies being found even after a thorough search of the river, the river has been observed to being contaminated heavily with parts of human body and the river's water has changed the color to a tint of blood-red. In addition, many rumors about the survivors hearing a crunching noise after the splashes of water whenever someone jumped in, has been reported. All the survivors are currently living in seclusion, under the protection of NYPD." A man , with a mobile phone and papers in hand, enters unseen on the camera. He whispers something to the newsperson "Hush hush" , the two seem to have entered a conversation. "Uhuh" the newsperson replies, "Hush hush" the 2nd person's voice is not high enough to be recorded by the camera, "What?!" The newsperson asks in surprise. "Hush hush" the 2nd person continues, "More?!" asks the newsperson clearly shocked. They end the conversation with a final whisper by the 2nd person "Hush hush", "My god." the newsperson looks up seemingly in a daze and finally returns to facing the camera. "Folks, further events have reported where this type of massacre, dubbed the 'Fools' massacre' , have started occurring.. Citizens have been warned to lock their doors and either destroy the key or place it in a random spot. The symptoms of this disease or phenomenon are, feeling of tiredness or stress and an irrational longing for water sources. This has developed into an emergency situation, as ordered by the government, and until the causes and cures can be found , citizens are ordered to do as advised earlier." The newsperson raises his arms and takes a long yawn "Hmm, that should be all for today. I seem to be feeling quite tired. That guy lying down over there seems to be covered in water, I wonder if more water will come out if I open hi- "

The TV was closed abruptly by the old man. "What was all that crap about? Bleh, who cares? These damn joints, can't take a bloody step without getting tired. Water should help, I guess, now where is somewhere with lots of it again?"