(Author Note: this is a little school project I did - do not expect good work)
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I distinctly remember the scent of ground-up cloves and the rhythmicality of bubbles breaking the surface of the teapot as my mother hummed her way through the ritual of brewing. Those sounds, as opposed to the screams of the angry man, console me as the spotlight bores down, nearly searing my skin off, and just beyond the stage's edge, a sea of gaunt faces here to watch my execution.
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"I don't regret it," I say into the microphone propped before me. I know the crowd wants a performance. They want me to slam my knees and let snot run across my chin as I plead with them, but I see no point.
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I am punched in the stomach, and thrown onto my back.
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I dare to gaze up at the sky even after I ruined its fertile earth with no remorse. It was cerulean blue. The same as my father's crisp shirt.
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My father would gather me onto his lap, and guide me through another "fun fact of space" as the fragrance of my mother's tea curls in the air. I didn't understand at the time why people were empty shells to me whilst my dad had a bright soul so vivid I could point to its colors. I later discovered it was the glory I had attributed to him.
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The world did too.
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"A renewed space scientist who discovered the properties of black holes, quasars, and the Kuiper belt. Please welcome, Matteo Davis!" The showman's grainy voice fills the living room as yet another interview of my dad airs on television.
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Then the interviews stopped.
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The graying Principal at Bridgewater High School, Ms. Lydia, looked at me with watery eyes, "Your father's dead, Zavier."
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Silence. She was expecting something of me. I left her disappointed.
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Memories, however, are slippery things, so, maybe I cried into Ms. Lydia's worn cardigan instead of grabbing my bag and walking home. Maybe I showed some emotion at the funeral. Maybe, I didn't smile as I stood over my father's wheezing body, his blood pooling on the marble floor of our new manor. The one he bought with his hefty paycheck.
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The paycheck I wanted him to put toward the discovery of Aliens.
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"Something has to be out there, Dad." I had said, the night before.
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"Aliens are just a myth." He started. "I know you said you saw something, but there is no way to prove it."
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"But we can. We just have to create a forcefield-"
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"Enough!" He was out of his seat, pacing his home office. "Even if we did create a forcefield- or whatever the hell you're talking about- and aliens did exist, did you think of what that would do to people?"
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Of course, he was choosing humanity over knowledge. People weren't just empty shells to him. He wasn't in desperate search of something that wasn't human to remind him that he was; something that would relate him to the colorless souls he walked by; for the colorless to stop being colorless.
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That day, my father stopped having meaning to me. He stopped being vivid.
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The scientific world was aggrieved by my father's death, perhaps that's why they promptly took me on after university. In their eyes, I was the younger version of him, so it didn't take long to get access to everything my father had worked years to earn. Especially with their deluded idea of legacy at play.
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I am kicked again, and the blue sky turns into a swirl of stars.
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I had found the two largest magnets that could conjure enough force to funnel matter and energy to a central point, placed them at opposite poles, and let them create a swirl of stars. However, within seconds of the whirlpool's creation, I realized it was a grave mistake. Aliens aren't real and I had exposed the world to a raging force field to learn that fact. The whirlpool was efficient in quenching its thirst, dragging everything to its yawning mouth.
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"Is anyone out there?" I had whispered from the crumbles of what was the American space headquarters, my body surprisingly intact, but to whom did I call out? Possible aliens? Humans?
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The rest are hazy picture-like moments, but surely enough the whirlpool had retreated and now a gun is pressed to my temple.
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It took me 32 years to realize being human meant putting personal meaning into each soul; to give it color. That knowledge, I cannot regret.
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The gun fires.
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