CHAPTER 1: James is reborn via mystic circumstance
Being an orphan, James had long concluded, was like being the universeâs personal punching bag. Love? A theoretical concept, like algebra or a warm breakfast. While other children whimpered over a scraped knee, James would stare, baffled. Heâd once set his own broken arm using a textbook and a frayed belt. The bone had healed funny, but the point stood: his childhood was less Harry Potter and more Final Destination: Early Years.
So, when 12-year-old James vanished into the Murkwood - a forest so dense and beast-ridden even the local squirrels packed switchblades - no tear-stained MISSING posters appeared. His absence was noticed with roughly the same concern as a missing sock. For five years, the forest kept him. It was less a fostering, more a prolonged, violent internship in Not Dying.
James emerged not with a heart full of heroic dreams, but with a stomach screaming for a sandwich. Heroism, to him, meant self-sacrifice, a concept as foreign as parental affection. You canât miss what youâve never had, and you canât sacrifice yourself for people you mostly want to steal lunch from.
Thus, on The Day Everything Got Weird, our âheroâ was attempting to liberate a loaf of bread from a baker whose mercy was as absent as Jamesâs parents. The baker, a man built like a fridge with a temper, unleashed the Hounds of Hellâs Bakery. James bolted for the one place that welcomed him: the lethal woods.
His plan was simple: let the man-eating wolves dissuade the bread-obsessed pursuer. The wolves, perhaps on a coffee break, failed to materialize. The hounds did not. The chase ended at the one scenic overlook the Murkwood offered: a cliff with a spectacular, bone-crushing drop that misted over the drop. No-one ever braved themselves to go down there!
Cornered, hungry, and profoundly annoyed, 12-year-old James did the only thing he could think of. He raised his hands and crossed them to defend himself against the raging dogs.
Then he slipped.
As gravity introduced him to the cliff face, a strange peace washed over him. Not the beautiful, angelic kind. The kind you feel when you finally surrender to a software update. He was tired. Tired of running, tired of hurting, tired of a world whose welcome mat was permanently tucked away. He didnât flail or grab. He just sighed, closed his eyes, and thought, âFine. Whatever.â At least I get to rest no more hurting
He did not meet the ground with a splat. He met it with a GLORP.
The ground, it turned out, was a pit of shimmering, electric, neon-blue⌠goo. It wasnât mud. Mud doesnât crackle with enough voltage to vaporize a stallion. It was like falling into a Tesla coilâs bubble bath.
Instead of being reduced to a pile of crispy orphan-ash, James was knocked gloriously, blissfully unconscious. For the first time in his life, the universe didnât punch him. It dunked him in its mysterious, radioactive energy-soup and hit the âMARINATEâ button.
For three years, he simmered.
When the universe finally pulled him out of its cosmic slow-cooker, James was⌠done. And by done, I mean he looked less like a former street urchin and more like a sculpture that forgot to put on clothes. His muscles werenât just defined; they looked like theyâd been drafted by a dramatic cartographer. His jawline could cut glass. He was, in essence, a biological masterpiece designed to cause marital chaos and prompt sudden investments in gym memberships.
James opened his eyes. He did not know he was a superhuman. He did not feel heroic. He was, however, ravenously hungry, impeccably groomed by unknown forces, and lying in a crater of spent cosmic sludge.
CHAPTER 2: James stature is upgraded to superhuman
Jamesâs first clue that the universeâs cosmic marinade had⌠lingered⌠wasnât the Michelangelo-sculpture physique. It was his eyesight.
He blinked. A hundred yards away, perched on a sad-looking dandelion, a bee was having a mid-life crisis. James could see the existential dread in its multi-faceted eyes. He could count the hairs on its legs. He could also, he realized with dawning horror, hear the frantic, tiny fwoop-fwoop-fwoop of its wings.
This was immediately drowned out by the WORLDâS WORST CONCERT.
It was a cacophony of chaos. The grinding of a pebble tumbling three miles upstream. The schlorp of a worm having a difficult Tuesday underground. The distant, judgmental gossip of tree squirrels (âAnd then he just fell into the glowy stuff, Frank. No class.â). It was a tidal wave of sound hammering directly into his brainpan.
James slammed his hands over his ears. It did nothing. The symphony of the forest was now playing inside his skull.
For a solid, agonizing hour, he sat there, teeth gritted, sweating through pores that were now suspiciously perfect. Pain was an old, familiar roommate. Hunger, cold, broken ribs - theyâd all lived rent-free in his body. This was just a new, louder, more obnoxious tenant. His terrible childhood had, in a super-twisted way, equipped him with the mental calluses to endure a supernatural sensory overload.
Slowly, through sheer, stubborn force of will, he learned to build a mental dam. He pushed the scritch-scratch of a centipedeâs shoes to the back. He muffled the photosynthesis happening in a nearby leaf (it sounded like faint, green popcorn). He tuned it down from "stadium death metal" to "annoying office radio."
Just as he found a fragile peace, he saw it. A fish. A glorious, stupid, silver trout leaped above the waterfall pool.
His stomach roared a command more primal than any superpower: FOOD.
He didnât think. He just⌠went.
One moment he was sitting on a rock 30 meters away. The next, he was crouched at the waterâs edge, the cold, slippery fish flapping pathetically in his hand.
He stared at it. The fish stared back, equally confused.
James let go as if burned. The fish plopped back into the water, probably to start a cult about the Silver Hand of the Sky.
âWhat the hell?â he whispered to the empty air. âHow did I⌠I was just over there. Thatâs not⌠people donâtâŚâ
His question was answered not by logic, but by a PAIN.
It wasn't a headache. It was a neural revolt. It felt like his brain had decided to do gymnastics while simultaneously being used as a church bell. Information - raw, dense, incomprehensible - flooded his synapses. Equations for materials that didnât exist yet. Biological schematics of creatures that defied taxonomy. Theories of gravity that made regular gravity look lazy.
To James, whoâd never seen the inside of a schoolroom, it wasn't "advanced physics." It was pure, brain-splitting noise. He didn't understand a single concept, but he felt it all cramming in, a library of the future being dumped into a skull that just wanted to know how to cook a fish.
He didn't know how long it lasted. He only knew waking up - floating on his back in the pool, staring at a blanket of stars. Night had fallen.
He paddled to the shore, his new, spectacular muscles working on autopilot. The headache was gone, replaced by a faint, buzzing hum of⌠knowledge he couldnât access. It was like having a supercomputer in his head, but the monitor was off and the keyboard was in Greek.
One clear, dominant thought rose above the weirdness, echoing from the deepest, most honest part of his being - a part untouched by glowing goo or future math.
His stomach let out a gurgle that shook leaves from a nearby tree.
Right. Priorities.
He looked at the water with his new, stupidly sharp eyes. Another fish, foolishly near the surface, swam by.
James cracked his knuckles. A slow, focused grin spread across his annoyingly perfect face.
The mysteries of cosmic evolution could wait.
Dinner could not.
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