I wipe the lenses of my glasses on my coat and place them back over my eyes. I shiver in the cool winter wind and continue my walk down the old road.
A group of school children walk past me. I wonder how much Lindbergh Elementary has changed since I was a child. Probably not much. As I walk, my mind drifts back to those days. I was never very popular in school. I wasn't too bright, and I wasn't interesting to look at or to talk to. I was just there.
Jimmy wasn't like that. Jimmy wasn't like me.
Jimmy wasn't like anyone.
/\/\/
Jimmy and I were best friends since he first moved to Retroville. It was always the three of us then. Jimmy, myself, and Sheen. All the things we did in those days, it seems like a lifetime ago. I guess maybe it was. I'm getting old. Jimmy is too, in his own way. It's hard to think of Jimmy the way he is now as the energetic, vibrant kid I remember. But of course it's not like he was ever normal like the rest of us. Like Sheen and I. Try as I might, I can never recall Sheen's face clearly. It's like every time I try to remember him, a part of who he was is blurred, forgotten.
/\/\/
Sheen went missing when he was about 13 years old, I think. Officially, nobody knows where he went, what happened to him. Jimmy covered it all up. I was never very good at keeping secrets as a child, but this one I still carry with me, even now. So many times I've tried to tell his family what happened to their son, but the words get stuck in my throat, and I feel like I might pass out. It's like the secret is too big to remove from my body. I am a coward.
I think everyone knew Jimmy was involved, even though there was no proof. Everyone knew in their mind that he was to blame, but they said nothing. That's when Jimmy stopped going to school. People avoided him now. People would go about their lives as if Jimmy Neutron never existed, and that was more than fine with them. The only people who cared about Jimmy now were his parents, myself, and his then-girlfriend Cindy Vortex.
/\/\/
Highschool was an odd, empy part of my life. With Sheen gone, and Jimmy never coming out of his lab, I went through those years feeling alone. Cindy was with Jimmy on-and-off all through this time. She and Libby Folfax had a thing for a while. They both seemed so happy then, and when they had eachother they could forget all about Jimmy, just like everyone else. Then Libby's family moved away to Germany and that was the end of that. I'd never seen Cindy cry so much, the night after Libby left. Pure, raw sadness. I didn't know what to do, so I did nothing. All I could do was watch. I am a coward.
After that, Cindy was with Jimmy until they were both well into their 20s. The whole time she waited for him to propose, but nothing ever happened. He had his enormous mind on other matters. One night she drove away, and never came back. But it was like he didn't even notice.
/\/\/
I stop walking. I look around and see the lights in the houses either side of the road dimming. They flicker for a second and I hear a low, electrical hum in the air. Then the headache comes, slowly at first before bursting into a searing pain. I'm bent over double, feeling as if my skull is going to crack open. My ears ring so loud it blocks out all other sound. Before my eyes I see shapes and forms which I do not understand, both beautiful and impossible. Then suddenly blackness. I realise my eyes are closed, and I slowly open them. I pick my glasses up off the ground where they've fallen. Around me, everything appears normal. Jimmy's brain blasts seem to last longer than usual nowadays, and they are much more intense. What have you been doing to that head of yours?
/\/\/
Jimmy was always different. You could see that just by looking at him. His head was huge and bloated from the size of his abnormal brain, which continued to grow larger as he got further into his adult years. It inflated like a balloon to contain the mind within. When he was in his early 30s he got fully recognised by the world at large. Soon everyone in the world knew about Neutron, the smartest human being to have ever lived. He changed everything with his intelligence, completely revolutionizing the world of technology, among other things. Some were even saying he was the next stage of human evolution. The media essentially worshipped him, but he never revealed his hometown. He owed us that much. I didn't see Jimmy much in those few years.
Then one day, he wasn't on TV anymore. He'd given his gifts to the world, and now he had come back home to continue his work. The media tried to track him down, but he'd hidden himself well here. He'd taken special measures to keep his secrets safe. Eventually I suppose they gave up their search, and a part of me thought maybe Jimmy was going to just be Jimmy again now. If only it were that simple. This is when he stopped leaving the lab completely.
/\/\/
I look up. Before me is the old Neutron house, an immense beast crouching by the road as if in wait. The paint is peeling and one of the grimy windows has been smashed in. Whenever I see this house I think of Jimmy's parents. He was always so embarrassed of them, but they were the sort of people all the other kids wished their moms and dads could be. They were good people. As the years went on their son's work became more and more worrying. You could tell they were scared about whatever he was doing down there, underneath the house.
Sometimes I even wondered if they were scared of Jimmy himself. I wouldn't blame them.
Eventually the stress became too overwhelming, and Hugh and Judy Neutron moved away to a quiet retirement village out of town. As they left they thanked me for looking out for their son all these years, but they just couldn't do it anymore. They drove away. I still visit them from time to time, and we talk about Jimmy. Their little boy genius.
/\/\/
I walk past the old house, to the little wooden clubhouse in the yard. I hold up a strand of hair and the machine by the door reads my DNA. The VOX AI system greets me by name. I walk through the door and go down, down into the heart of everything. Down into the lab.
/\/\/
Wires, cables, motors, machines. The constant sounds, and blinking lights. I stand there for a moment, losing myself in this strange but familiar underground world. An almost-humanoid form aproaches me, and I recognise it as Goddard. Beneath the glass dome of his forehead I can see the wires of his mechanical brain. He takes me by the arm and his artifical skin is soft to my touch. His AI is fully functioning to the point of being nothing less than human, but he does not speak to me. He knows I am not here to see him. As he leads me deeper into the labyrinth, I feel as if I am walking deeper into Jimmy's mind.
I begin to feel a fuzziness in my mind. The corners of my vision cloud with faint colours and shapes. We must be getting close to the center. Close to Jimmy.
We reach the entrance to the central chamber, and Goddard leaves me to enter alone. I instruct VOX to open the doors, and they do so with a hydraulic hiss. I walk through the open doorway, and onto the bridge leading to the platform in the center of this enormous sphere-shaped room. This is where Jimmy Neutron sits.
His frail body reclines, lifeless, on a cushioned vinyl chair. Cables support the monolithic immensity of his head, covered in pulsing veins. Tubes and wires connecting Jimmy's brain to the lab's systems hang from his head to the wall like spider's webs. The huge surface of the wall itself is covered by hundreds of whirring computer servers, all linked to Jimmy's impossible mind. They increase the capacity of his intelligence to even further beyond human.
I approach the monstrosity that Jimmy Neutron has become. His face is unrecognisable, stretched thin across his enormous skull. I look up this mass of flesh and see one of his grotesquely bulging eyes, and it meets mine. I lay my hands flat against his head, and rest my head upon him. Beneath my ear I can hear the sounds of his blood pumping.
I stayed there for an uncertain amount of time with my eyes closed, just listening to his brain work. Maybe it was hours. Maybe it was days.
/\/\/
One by one everyone in his life had left him. I was the only one who had stayed. I am the only person in his life now, and he the only in mine. Many ask me why, why have I given up my entire life to stay by his side? I never got married. I never had children. I shut out everything and everyone, just for Jimmy. Why? Why stay? But I know the reason.
I loved him as a boy. I loved him as a man. I love him as whatever he is now, and whatever he may go on to be. That's why I stayed.
/\/\/
That night I dream. From the blackness of my sleeping mind a young boy comes to me. I haven't seen him in a very long time.
Carl. He says. I've found something. I have to go.
What did you find, Jimmy? I ask him.
He sees the look on my face and shakes his head slowly, his eyes never leaving mine. You can't come with me. Not where I'm going.
Will I ever see you again? He doesn't answer. He begins to walk away.
Jimmy!
He looks back and I see a sad smile on his face. Gotta blast, he says in a quiet voice. Then he goes away into the stars.