A/N - This is the POV of a kid who went through the agent training at six
years old. In "The Indicator", as Sydney is taking pictures, the camera
zooms in on a little boy. I set this up to be his POV when he's older,
maybe about 25 or something. So, yeah.
My mother once told me that up until I was seven years old, my eyes had been blue. Oh, before then they'd always been changing from blue to grey, then back to blue. But then I went away for about a month. A few days after I got home, my mother picked me up, put me in front of the bathroom mirror and showed me that I had green eyes now.
I'm not a very normal person. Usually people can remember things that happened to them, as long as they had a big impact on them. Me? I can remember almost everything back to when I was five. I mean everything. Even the things certain people didn't want me to remember.
When I was five, I can remember my dad on the phone, talking to one of the people he worked with. They were talking about Christmas. Now, my father wasn't a very secretive person. Especially to me, my mother, and my big brother. I'd known about him being in a very dangerous line of work since before I can remember. Well, I knew he had little code words for each thing. And I knew that 'Christmas' was a code word. especially since it was June.
But when I turned six. my father seemed more distant from all three of us. I remember my mom telling me that she didn't know what was wrong, but whatever it was, he'd be himself soon.
I started first grade that year. I spent my class time doodling anything that had to do with sports on my notebooks and workbooks. We had to take a standardized test that year. Now that I'm older, I know what some of the questions on that test were for. I had talked to a friend of mine after the test, he hadn't liked those questions. I was one of the kids who knew the answers to the spatial relationship questions. Why do rainbows occur? Why do you have to be standing behind the sun to see them?
I was considered weird for a moment. Hell, I considered myself weird. Can you imagine a six year old thinking they were weird? But like I said, I wasn't normal.
A few weeks later, I can't remember exactly how long because, hey I was six. but in a few weeks my mother and father received a letter for an achievement program. The look on my fathers face was running from emotion to emotion. I didn't know what to think.
But when they decided to let me go, I figured that when I got back, everything would be back to normal.
Normal. I've been using that word a lot. And at times I wish I knew what it really meant. Because this program had to have been anything but normal.
Now, I know what it is.
Sixteen of us kids. Sitting in a small room, set up like a classroom. Some of us bonded with each other while we waited for instructions. Specifically, me and the girl seated next to me. She had brown hair and blue eyes. We talked on and on until we finally found out what we were doing.
Putting together these puzzles. They were easy. And not just to some of us, to all of us. But I remember knowing something was wrong with this when we started putting together guns. then with blindfolds. weird right? But I pushed the thought aside. I was six years old and getting to 'play' with something I'd never been allowed to look at, let allowed touch.
After that, all I remember is being home. Yeah, I don't remember the whole 'erasing the memory' process, but I wouldn't want to.
My father was even more distant after that. To hell with things being normal. They'd never be the same.
That was when my mother saw my eyes. If I close my eyes real tight I can see her looking straight into mine, trying to see if they would change back. No one in my family had green eyes. Well, unless you count my grandfather, but he was the only one.
A month later, things were getting better. My father talked to us much more. Even more then before. But every time my brother would comment on me going away for that month, my father would get quiet and then excuse himself from whatever room we'd been in. Soon, everyone just gave up on talking about that month.
My father. he died a year and a half after the month I'd been away.
My mother cried, my brother stood there, shocked. and me? I thought about everything I'd been through that month.
I don't remember the funeral. In the back of my mind, I think I didn't really want to know.
Skip to a few years later. I'm 20 years old and have been traveling every since I graduated. I stopped in Italy on my way back home and guess who I 'bumped' into? If you guessed the little girl I'd met, you'd be right.
Turns out her name was Katie. We talked for what seemed like forever. Seems that she also remembered the whole thing. And when I asked her how, she told me she'd been hypnotized to remember everything. That's when she told me she worked for the government.
I had even asked if she knew why we were put in that program
Her answer was simple, "We were trained to be agents."
So now, she is one. But me? I was trying to stay away from it. She also told me she'd kept track of all the other kids we'd been in the group with. they were agents too.
We lost touch two weeks after I went home.
I became a photographer. I figured that after traveling and seeing how much beauty this world did have, then I needed to show it somehow.
But there are better ways to know beauty. Simple: I met the love of my life.
Am I normal? The normal kid put in that month program would be an agent by now; all the others were. So am I normal?
Married, one little girl named Cynthia, a house on a high hill and a dog that loves to run in fields.
And I'm not an agent. I'm not risking my life day after day. Instead, I stay home and work on the photos I took the day before. Cynthia in my lap and my dog licking my foot. And my wife is outside working in her garden.
Am I normal?
Not in the least.
My mother once told me that up until I was seven years old, my eyes had been blue. Oh, before then they'd always been changing from blue to grey, then back to blue. But then I went away for about a month. A few days after I got home, my mother picked me up, put me in front of the bathroom mirror and showed me that I had green eyes now.
I'm not a very normal person. Usually people can remember things that happened to them, as long as they had a big impact on them. Me? I can remember almost everything back to when I was five. I mean everything. Even the things certain people didn't want me to remember.
When I was five, I can remember my dad on the phone, talking to one of the people he worked with. They were talking about Christmas. Now, my father wasn't a very secretive person. Especially to me, my mother, and my big brother. I'd known about him being in a very dangerous line of work since before I can remember. Well, I knew he had little code words for each thing. And I knew that 'Christmas' was a code word. especially since it was June.
But when I turned six. my father seemed more distant from all three of us. I remember my mom telling me that she didn't know what was wrong, but whatever it was, he'd be himself soon.
I started first grade that year. I spent my class time doodling anything that had to do with sports on my notebooks and workbooks. We had to take a standardized test that year. Now that I'm older, I know what some of the questions on that test were for. I had talked to a friend of mine after the test, he hadn't liked those questions. I was one of the kids who knew the answers to the spatial relationship questions. Why do rainbows occur? Why do you have to be standing behind the sun to see them?
I was considered weird for a moment. Hell, I considered myself weird. Can you imagine a six year old thinking they were weird? But like I said, I wasn't normal.
A few weeks later, I can't remember exactly how long because, hey I was six. but in a few weeks my mother and father received a letter for an achievement program. The look on my fathers face was running from emotion to emotion. I didn't know what to think.
But when they decided to let me go, I figured that when I got back, everything would be back to normal.
Normal. I've been using that word a lot. And at times I wish I knew what it really meant. Because this program had to have been anything but normal.
Now, I know what it is.
Sixteen of us kids. Sitting in a small room, set up like a classroom. Some of us bonded with each other while we waited for instructions. Specifically, me and the girl seated next to me. She had brown hair and blue eyes. We talked on and on until we finally found out what we were doing.
Putting together these puzzles. They were easy. And not just to some of us, to all of us. But I remember knowing something was wrong with this when we started putting together guns. then with blindfolds. weird right? But I pushed the thought aside. I was six years old and getting to 'play' with something I'd never been allowed to look at, let allowed touch.
After that, all I remember is being home. Yeah, I don't remember the whole 'erasing the memory' process, but I wouldn't want to.
My father was even more distant after that. To hell with things being normal. They'd never be the same.
That was when my mother saw my eyes. If I close my eyes real tight I can see her looking straight into mine, trying to see if they would change back. No one in my family had green eyes. Well, unless you count my grandfather, but he was the only one.
A month later, things were getting better. My father talked to us much more. Even more then before. But every time my brother would comment on me going away for that month, my father would get quiet and then excuse himself from whatever room we'd been in. Soon, everyone just gave up on talking about that month.
My father. he died a year and a half after the month I'd been away.
My mother cried, my brother stood there, shocked. and me? I thought about everything I'd been through that month.
I don't remember the funeral. In the back of my mind, I think I didn't really want to know.
Skip to a few years later. I'm 20 years old and have been traveling every since I graduated. I stopped in Italy on my way back home and guess who I 'bumped' into? If you guessed the little girl I'd met, you'd be right.
Turns out her name was Katie. We talked for what seemed like forever. Seems that she also remembered the whole thing. And when I asked her how, she told me she'd been hypnotized to remember everything. That's when she told me she worked for the government.
I had even asked if she knew why we were put in that program
Her answer was simple, "We were trained to be agents."
So now, she is one. But me? I was trying to stay away from it. She also told me she'd kept track of all the other kids we'd been in the group with. they were agents too.
We lost touch two weeks after I went home.
I became a photographer. I figured that after traveling and seeing how much beauty this world did have, then I needed to show it somehow.
But there are better ways to know beauty. Simple: I met the love of my life.
Am I normal? The normal kid put in that month program would be an agent by now; all the others were. So am I normal?
Married, one little girl named Cynthia, a house on a high hill and a dog that loves to run in fields.
And I'm not an agent. I'm not risking my life day after day. Instead, I stay home and work on the photos I took the day before. Cynthia in my lap and my dog licking my foot. And my wife is outside working in her garden.
Am I normal?
Not in the least.