On Matters Edge

  It didn’t take Cale’s mind long to recover from the upgrade to the teenager interface. He was excited to look at the changes himself, but before he could do that, he had to face the people in the room. Specifically, one person in particular, his mother. When Cale opened his eyes, he found himself being held in her arms and he noticed her eyes were red from tears. When she noticed he was awake, she waved over one of their family members as her tears turned into tears of joy.

  An older lady came out of the crowd and Cale didn’t recognize her. She had grey hair, a nice maroon colored dress, and quite a bit of age on her face that made her look wise. The old lady was hesitant, but at the urging of his mother she put her hand next to his head and closed her eyes. He noticed a warm feeling move from the old lady's hand down into his head and spread out into his body. She did this for a few seconds before beads of sweat started to form on her brow. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath with anticipation.

  The warm feeling ended not long after and the old lady said something in a reassuring tone that made the whole group make a happy sigh in response. His mother started to cry as she picked him up, hugging him tighter than he should have been and he made a small groaning noise as he was squeezed. After a minute his mother finally had her fill and let others come and touch him. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be doing but after the 4th person touched his head, Cale started to use his little sausage fingers to swat at any incoming hands. He was ok with his mother freaking out about him, but he didn’t know who everyone else was and he wasn’t sure if they would try and do something to him like the old lady had.

  He still wasn’t sure what that was, but he had an inkling that she was a healer of some kind. The warm feeling that came from her hand was not nefarious, but it had a definitive feeling of helping. He wasn’t sure why she didn’t try to heal him when he was unconscious, or maybe she had, and he hadn’t felt it since he might have been out of his body for a bit. He wasn’t sure how he was able to see his soul from that view, or what good it even did him. So far it was as equally confusing as it was pretty.

  The party didn’t last much longer since Cale’s unconsciousness had killed the party mood, but he was surprised that the group of people didn’t immediately leave. He tried to stay awake for the opening of his presents, but before he even got to that part, he fell asleep right in the middle of his birthday meal. Literally. He was about to grab another bite of mystery meat and noodles with his hands when he felt the warm embrace of sleep overtake him. Cale’s head landed right in the middle of his food, and he let out a loud snore. The table ooh-ed and ahh-ed at how cute it was while his mother cleaned him up. The guests left soon after they had finished eating, leaving Cale to his dreams and his parents alone to their worries.

  The next morning Cale awoke with an unusual sluggishness to his body. His hands seemed to move slowly, and his thoughts were not able to keep a steady stream of reasoning. He slowly stretched his little baby body in hopes of getting everything in motion, maybe the changes from the night before needed some calibration or something. As he moved his body around, he noticed his thoughts started to become more clear, and he could move his limbs and hands more freely. After he was done stretching, Cale thought about what had happened to him last night and replayed the events in his head.

  He wanted to dive into the new interface, but he found himself a little nervous after the chaos he caused at his own birthday party. If he had been willing to wait, he could have gone through the crazy out of body experience away from people. Instead, he had not only freaked out his parents, but also their guests. On top of that, he didn’t get to open his presents… AAHH! He didn’t get to open his presents! Why must he remember that sad fact over and over again? He also embarrassed himself and his family by falling asleep in his food. He hoped that being a baby would be enough to make everyone forgive or forget what happened. He doubted it, but he could hope.

  He decided not to open his interface at that moment; he was hungry and wanted to prepare himself before digging into his new interface. He was deep in thought and partway through his usual escape routine when he saw his mother was in the room with him. She was sitting in a chair in front of his door, eyes open and watching him with intense scrutiny. He could see her eyes darting back and forth as she seemed to take measure of him in a way he couldn’t see. He stopped trying to escape, which became physically awkward since he had one leg over the side of his crib already and he was slowly losing his balance because of it. The only thing to do was to keep going so he slowwwllyy moved down the edge of his crib while keeping an eye on his mother, until he was on the floor.

  He had expected her to say something or move to grab him, but she didn’t move or say anything. He would have thought she was a very lifelike statue if it were not for her eyes moving over him with such scrutiny. She was starting to scare him with the intensity of her eyes and with the fact that she had yet to make a move to pick him up or scold him for leaving his crib, it was giving him the chills.

  He decided to play dumb – he was still a baby after all – and tried his hand at walking for the first time, but his feet were so big and heavy that it looked more like a shuffle. He hoped his mother would pick him up when he got to her feet, as he approached, he grabbed onto her legs hugging them with all his might. She reached down and put him in her lap – the result he wanted – but when he looked at the expression on her face, he saw it hadn’t changed and instead was freakily unmoving.

  She should have been excited that I just walked for the first time! His baby brain started to freak out on him with thoughts of her no longer loving him or that maybe she would abandon him. He started to cry and lunged into her chest. Sobbing as he held on to her as tight as he could.

  “I’m sorry, Xavier,” she said to him, finally showing some emotion. Causing Cale to calm down as he felt her voice and listened to her heartbeat as she held him. “I know you can’t understand me, but I have failed to protect you somehow and I feel terrible!” Cale felt his mother’s cheek start to heave as she started to cry. He could hear her trying to talk but wasn’t able to fully understand what was being said between his tears and hers.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  He was able to pick up a few words like bossy priests, work, feeling guilty about leaving, and daycare, which was able to lead him to the conclusion that she would have to go to work soon, and he would have to be in daycare for a while. They both sat there for a few minutes embracing each other. It didn’t seem like his mom was mad at him and Cale was surprised that she was apologizing. Had she failed to protect him? All he could remember was all the chaos he was causing, but then again, he was supposed to only be a baby so why would anyone blame him?

  Eventually he heard his stomach rumble, which caused his mother to laugh and bring him into the kitchen. He decided not to mess with the interface today after seeing how upset his mother was. For the rest of the day, he behaved like a perfect angel. He knew he was going to cause more chaos in the future, but today. Today he would be good for his mother.

  ***

  The next day, the first thing Cale did when he woke up was open the manual config option in his interface by using the 5-point star design he had learned the day before. A huge warning popped up in his face with the same symbols he saw at the place where his head touched that orb. So those were some kind of error symbols. Well, warnings I guess, I wonder what the screen in the church is warning about. Cale put the thought to the back of his head and read the message before him

  ###Warning: It is recommended that only Professional Soul Programmers modify interface configs. Incorrect modifications can harm one's soul if not corrected.

  ##Would you like to continue? ##yes ##no

  Cale clicked yes so he could at least see what he was dealing with. He doubted any of it would look familiar, but he was curious as to what this type of programming language would look like. His interface showed a round rotating circle and then his consciousness was pushed outside of his body, exactly like it had been on his birthday. This time when he zoomed in on his soul, his vision had little icons on the side that represented tools of some kind. He didn’t select any of them since he wasn’t sure what they did, and this was his soul after all. As he looked at his soul his eyes traced the cloudy circles that wisped along in lazy spirals making their way around his soul. It was very mesmerizing. He brought his focus to the tendril that poked out of his soul and his eyes landed on the fractal design that faded from the tendril and piped into his soul.

  He could see pulses of energy flowing in and out with great speed, he couldn’t help himself as he put his finger into the pulsing energy, it looked so hypnotic… OUCH! He yelled. He wasn’t back in his body but somehow both his finger and his soul felt like they had been pinched. It wasn’t too painful; it just felt like a large static shock that you can get from running your feet along the carpet. Yeah, it hurts, but it is more surprising than painful.

  The potential for pain made Cale do some thinking. He couldn’t just start diving into this with zero experience. To start he would need to know cultural references of this civilization as well as the history of how this tech was created. If he went in too confident there was a chance he could really hurt his soul, and he didn’t want that. Cale repeated the five-point sequence and closed the config and did some thinking. Since he needed to know cultural references, the best place to start would be the simplest, and it doesn’t really get much simpler than toys and books found at a daycare. With a plan in mind, Cale was feeling extra smug and confident, of course it was at this moment that his baby body betrayed him as he felt a rumbling in his stomach and soon smelt the results. If he wasn’t so busy he would potty train himself.

  A few more weeks passed, and the fateful day came when his mother had to go to work, which meant he would be going to daycare. He thought she would be the one dropping him off, but to his surprise, it was his father taking him. His father had not been around much and was usually gone for long stretches of time before being home for only a few days at a time. Over the last few weeks, he had been around more and was home most nights.

  His father had much darker skin than his mother and black hair, but what really stood out were his green eyes. His father's eyes seemed to pierce everything he looked at, and Cale wasn’t sure he hadn’t seen his eyes have a slight sheen to them at times. Either way, Cale thought they looked cool.

  He and his father left the house on foot and walked a few minutes down the street until they came upon what must have been his daycare. His father knocked on the door and they waited for it to open. It didn’t take long before the door opened swiftly, and the owner of the house came out. To Cale’s surprise he recognized this person, it was the lady that pinched his cheeks! Uncertainty filled Cale as he was handed over to this lady he barely knew.

  “Thank you for watching Xavier, Gistine, I will be back after work to pick him up. I would love to stay and chat, but I am already late.” With a quick turn, his father continued to walk down the street and away from where he dropped off Xavier.

  What was that, dad!?, he thought. You didn’t even check to see if this house was ok inside! You just hand me off and dip! I hope you have a good reason! Cale shook his little fists at his dad’s back while his Aunt – apparently named Gistine – put him into a room that had a little gate to keep the kids in while they played. He surveyed the toys available to him and found it funny that even though he had traveled to a whole other planet, some of the toys still looked the same.

  There was the typical wooden “fit the shape” kids’ game. It looked just like the one he had for his kids, and it made him smile as he thought of Earth and the family he hoped to get back to someday. There were little toy hammers, animal-shaped blocks and all sorts of things someone of his age would find entertaining.

  He must have been the first to arrive because a few minutes later another kid was dropped off in the room with him. Soon there were around 10 kids in total playing in the room with him. He could tell some of them knew each other by how they played, where others were acting shy like he was. As Cale observed all of this, he realized that his life was going to be like this for a while. He knew of no way to speed up his growth, which meant he was in this for the long haul. This is going to be a challenge in patience, he thought to himself.

  Since he didn’t have anything better to do with all this time, he decided to think about his options – as he was going to be a baby for years to come apparently. First, he should check out all the toys to see if he could solve them or recognize them. Then he would go through every book or tablet-looking thing he could find. If he was fortunate, his caretaker would read to him and point to objects and teach him what they are.

  He needed to learn to read, write, and speak fast. If he was going to have to grow old the long way, he sure as hell was not going to be mute and have his will unknown to the world. There was already that baby butt picture thing that would have been a lot easier to solve if he could use words. A plan started to form, a risky one that would require either fooling people or having them trust him. It would all depend on the kind of culture this place was, and he was about to find out.