The last person sitting in that group with Gus Little, Leslie Moira, Aisa Fryman, and Kermit Kinnard was born on November 16, 1999 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His name was Ijames Noa, and it didn't take long for Leslie to notice a pattern in his actions that did not manifest when he first introduced himself.

Every once and a while in between the eating, conversation, and laughter at Gus and Aisa's random outbursts at each other, Ijames would scratch the crook of his right arm at the elbow. When he was asked a question by anyone from the group, his scratching would increase in frequency and would then die down again after he had answered.

"Well… Leslie may be really smart, but I bet she doesn't have as good a memory as Ijames does. This guy is like a steel trap," Gus boasted at Aisa.

"Really…" Aisa said feigning interest, "is that fact?"

"You're damn right it is!" Gus said angry at her attitude, "Tell them, Ijames!"

"Well…" he scratched, "it's nothing really. I've always had a pretty good memory," he scratched again, "Things just stick in my head really easily," he finished by scratching yet again.

"You're being modest," Gus said taking another sandwich from his lunch, "You don't even study and you do fine on tests and everything."

"I study!" Ijames snapped.

Gus looked at him with a raised eyebrow and an expression that said the following: be honest.

Ijames scratched once more. "… a little bit," he added, and everyone laughed.

They all continued to eat and talk and enjoy the afternoon when a girl suddenly walked up and snapped a picture of them all.

"What the hell are you doing, Mary?" Gus spat through his sandwich.

"I just got this great new camera! I've been using it all day. It's awesome!" Mary said enthusiastically.

"Well, go take your pictures somewhere else if you don't mind… this isn't a damn red carpet," Gus said shaking a fist.

Mary stuck out her tongue. "You're just mad that I took a picture of you with food hanging out of your mouth."

Aisa started laughing obnoxiously at Gus as everyone else giggled. Gus tried to get to his feet as fast as he could, but he slipped much to Aisa's amusement. Mary took off running and Gus followed.

"Gimme that damn camera!" he yelled disappearing into the school after Mary.

"I guess lunch is over," Leslie said still smiling.

"This was fun," Kermit chuckled.

"Yep," Ijames said and Leslie watched him scratch his arm a final time before the lunch bell sounded.

Leslie's observation was not an isolated incidence. Ijames scratched his arm whenever he was in a situation where he needed to provide an answer or whenever he was under any type of stress. He could stop if he thought about it, but over the years it had become an unconscious habit that was easier to deal with through acceptance rather than resistance.

Just recently, Ijames was taking a History test where a teacher named Ms. Jaden thought he was suspicious because of his scratching. Ms. Jaden wanted to make sure that none of her students were cheating, so she carefully watched Ijames as he completed the test. By the end, Ms. Jaden concluded that Ijames had done nothing of the sort, but she got confused when she noticed that his answers read almost exactly like the The Western World. The Western World was the name of the textbook that the class was using.

"This is uncanny," she said to herself, "I made them put all of their things outside the class during the test, so there's no way he could have used the textbook… I guess he knows the material really well…" Ms. Jaden thought back to Ijames' scratching. "Maybe he was just really itchy," she shrugged and gave him a 95 score.

Ijames' answers did, in fact, read exactly like the textbook on that test. Gus made no exaggeration when he said that Ijames had a good memory. In truth, Ijames could remember anything provided that he laid his eyes upon it, heard it, smelled it, or touched it at least one time in his life. He did not study because he did not have to after he took the labor of looking through the material given to him at least one time.

Said in other words, Ijames Noa's brain was taking high quality snapshots of every piece of information his senses gathered. After each snapshot was manufactured, his brain filed it away into some vault that was secure yet highly organized and easily accessible to the owner. The thing about Ijames was that he had no idea that any of this was going on within his skull. As far as he knew, he just had a good memory.

In Ijames' last year of high school, he developed an independent project that centered on the creation of a time capsule that would be buried and opened at some point in the future. His project raised several eyebrows among the faculty because it seemed like it came out of nowhere. Ijames, however, liked to test new things and push them in random different directions every once and a while, so, roughly, it fit his persona quite well.

Coincidentally or not, the name Ijames did not exist in many languages at all, and where it did exist it was just a name with an unknown or sentimental meaning. Even more interesting, is that the last name of his family, Noa, can be translated in some language from some time to mean, "motion." If you don't get what's being hinted at here, his name, in sum, can be translated to mean, "unknown motion."

In time, ironically, the administration approved the time capsule idea, and Ijames soon found himself wondering around asking for volunteers to help. By then, Leslie, Gus, Aisa, and Kermit had all grown to be lifelong friends to Ijames, so once he found that the rest of the student body was disinterested with his idea, he came to these four for aid. It was a good idea to bring them all together anyway seeing as how high school was almost over and they would soon be parting ways for college.

They all met during a sunny afternoon in a relatively secluded place and dug a deep hole into the ground that was six feet deep and five feet in diameter. Ijames removed a metal rectangle shaped box from a large bag he had set down earlier. He opened it and lined the inside with plastic.

He scratched. "I hope you all brought something to put inside."

"Absolutely," Aisa said searching the ground for her backpack.

"Well, I'll go first while you look. This is what I brought…" Gus said walking up to Ijames and handing him two objects closed inside of two separate plastic bags. One contained a stack of papers lined with very small print, and the other contained a picture enclosed within a frame.

"That stack of papers is every story that I ever thought of summarized down as short as they could possibly get. I could never tell them well, so maybe someone else will." Interestingly enough, Gus came up with yet another story immediately after he said that. He sighed before he continued, "The second thing I have there is something that you'll probably recognize."

Ijames looked at the picture. It was a photograph taken almost four years ago when they all first met each other.

"I remember this day perfectly. We all met pretty randomly just because we didn't want to eat in the cafeteria," Ijames laughed as Aisa and Leslie peered at the picture over his shoulder. "This is good, Gus," Ijames continued setting the objects into the case, "It's better than me at least. I just brought a couple of my favorite comic books and a few cans of my favorite soda. Reading comics and drinking soda… I figure that I might be able to share one of my leisure moments with the people of the future."

He removed both items from his bag, put them in plastic and shoved them into the metal box with Gus' two things.

"Here you go," Aisa handed Ijames a framed black and white photograph she had taken of a small tree, "On the back I wrote down its address and its latitude and longitude. I wonder what it will look like in two hundred years… I saw it one time while I was on a walk, and I took a picture of it for no good reason. I figure that I can put it in the time capsule so that other people will see what we see right now."

"Cool," Ijames said scratching. He took another plastic bag and placed the photo inside. He set it down with the other things inside of the metal box.

Kermit's object was already covered in plastic and he set it down into the case on his own.

"It's a letter to a friend of mine…" Kermit said, "I know it'll be hard to find if we put it inside of the capsule, but I don't doubt that he will come across it eventually."

Ijames eyed Kermit carefully. "Are you sure? I mean, if it's supposed to be for someone why don't you just give it to him… or her? Odds are that they won't get it in time."

"Well… I can't contact him right now," Kermit said, "but you don't need to worry. He'll get it."

Ijames scratched, "Okay. It's your choice," he said.

Leslie walked up to Ijames last and handed him a small thick black notebook surrounded by an oversized sandwich bag. Leslie didn't say anything at first, and everyone's eyes watched her mouth in anticipation.

Now, Leslie saw something at that moment that no one else could see. In a way, she transcended herself and saw through the world. She looked to the past and unconsciously saw her birth. She looked to the future and unconsciously saw the Plague. At the end of her journey, she crashed back into her shoes and found herself surrounded by a group of close friends. She felt that there was only one thing she could say at that zenith, and this is what she said:

"This is it."

Not long after, they left that spot behind and their possessions buried beneath ground. They all walked away smiling at each other talking about the moments they had shared during high school. No one knew what things that the future would bring, but they didn't have to be afraid. This was the moment where they could look toward the things that would be and remain strong in the face of the unknown journey. This was it.