4. Adam (9 years)
"Adam!" A voice called from outside the Strata family's rickety and deprecated house. "Can you come out and play?" With a pleading look at his mother, Adam answered "Sure Donovan! Wait a minute!" Both Sheila and Adam took Torus' death very hard. They were given the news by a stony-faced Guardsman who introduced himself as Ulysses Coleman, and said "I was on Torus' first and final patrol." At this, tears welled in Sheila's eyes. She had a premonition about this the night before, a dream. In the dream Torus had been calling for her, and she tried to come to him but was held back by an impassable stone wall that seperated a bright, sunny world from a dark, waterless place where nothing lived. "He," Ulysses went on, "He told me to tell you that he loved you. He's gone, miss." With "He's gone," Sheila became hysterical with tears. "NO!" She screamed over and over, "NO, NO, NO! He can't be gone, he said he'd come back, that he'd be safe, NO!!" She collapsed on the floor in front of Ulysses, crying her heart out. "There, there, miss Sheila." Ulysses tried to console her, but it was hard, as Torus was a model for excellence in his eyes, too. "He's gone to a better place, miss, don't be sad." There was no consoling the grieving wife, however, and she continued to cry a river for the husband who she saw in that waterless land. The only words she could gasp out were, "Why? Why did he have to--" and then was lost in the hysteria again. Eventually, she cried herself to sleep laying on the couch that Ulysses had put her on. Seeing this, he saw fit to leave, when he spotted Adam hiding halfway behind a corner of the wall. Walking up to the boy, he knelt down and ruffled his hair "Hey kid, how are you?" "Who are you?" Responded the boy who had just seen his mother carried onto the couch by a strange man, a task he associated his father with doing. "I'm from the Guard" he responded. "Where's daddy?" Adam asked, questioningly. "Your dad...was a brave man." A smart child, Adam immediately grasped what was happening and tears streamed down his face. "He told me, he told me to give you your callsign, should you become a pilot." Ulysses's voice choked with tears, remembering Torus's final moments, "He told me to name you 'Rowen.'" Now that the grown man was obviously done speaking, the consummate polite boy took his turn. "HE CAN'T BE DEAD!" Adam screeched, "HE TOLD ME HE'D COME BACK! HE TOLD ME HE'D STAY HOME!" He, too, became hysterical. Ulysses just stood there, letting the boy wrap his arms around his waist and cry into him. Muttering, "There, there," every once in a while. Sheila awoke to find Ulysses gone and Adam curled up next to her on the couch, with eyes red from crying (a quick look into a mirror showed her face to be similar) and a note taped to the table in front of her, written in blood. "I'm sorry I couldn't come back. He told our son, now I tell you. His callsign should be Rowen." It was signed "Torus 'Bull' Strata, Loving husband and father." As she finished reading the note, a gust of wind took it through the open window and carried it off into the distance. With this last token of his love, Sheila moved on and accepted him as gone. "Alright, here I come Donovan!" Two years had passed, and Adam had grown up a normal, healthy boy with extreme telepathic powers. His mother had taught him several things, as well. Manners, respect, reading writing, and 'rithmetic, and to hate HECTORs. The years she spent with Torus served as a scourge upon her body, and she subliminally taught the boy to abhor the machines. Adam ran out the door to see Donovan waiting impatiently, having climbed the tree in the Strata family's front. Jumping down from the top of the pine, the older boy said "ouch! About time you got here, Adam!" He did a quick shake of his injured leg, and began to run (with a slight limp) toward the playground. He and his best friend would spend hours on end playing in this playground, and they never seemed to get bored with it. Donovan stood a good inch taller than Adam, even at nine years old, and had brown hair with a ponytail in the back, with brown eyes, like his friend. Donovan's control of the metaphysical was comparable to Adam's, although his telekinetic side fell lacking a bit. The two were fast friends, meeting when Donovan was in first grade, although the younger boy was still being taught by his mother. The next week, Adam would begin attending classes at La Escuela del Camino del Rio, or River Road Elementary, the same school that Donovan went to. "Try and catch me!" D yelled to his friend as he took off in the opposite direction. "You're faster than me!" Adam whined as he began to chase after D. Dodging through playground equipment, and then bushes, and finally trees, they ran. At some point, Adam yelled to his friend "Alright, you win!" While gasping for breath, he noticed that they were lost. Yelling, "Donovan? Can you hear me?" Getting no reply, the boy reached out for his friend's mind. Sensing it, he sent a telepathic message, Donovan! We're lost! I know! Replied the eternally-cool Donovan. We should be fine as long as we keep going South, that's the way back to the playground. But which way is South? The younger boy voiced the concern that had entered both heads. Well.... D attempted to divine an answer for their situation, The moss always gwos on the North side of trees, so.... Just go the other way! He responded logically. Uhh...Donovan? There's moss all around these trees. Well then...um...try and contact your mom? No, she'll get mad. Adam tried to block his mind from the thought of Sheila mad at him. That can be our last resort. Well then, do it. Unless you have another bright idea.... Ma-an! Adam complained. I hate telling my mom that I'm lost! While complaining, he reached for his mother's touch. "Where are you, mom?" He thought out loud. Adam? What's wrong? Came the brown touch of his mother into his head. Well...Mom...we're lost in the woods. Again? I want you to promise me that you wont go in the woods...again! Alright, Mom! Just get us out of here! Okay, here's a safe place for you to teleport yourselves. She sent him the image of a clearing in front of their house. Tell Donovan. Donovan! Adam called. Yah? Here's where we're gonna teleport, and he relayed the information to his friend. Alright, on three. One, Adam said Two, Donovan added, Three! They said together, and ended up standing inches from each other when they opened their eyes. Laughing, they continued playing on the playground, while a ways off, a lonely girl stands with crayon-box brown hair down past her shoulders and a look on her face of total desolation. Her and Adam make eye contact briefly, and he is entranced by her. Walking over to this enigma, he introduces himself and his friend. "Hey, I'm Adam, and this is my friend Donovan. What's your name?" "I'm...Jasmine." She said haltingly. "I have to go now, though. Goodbye!" She teleported herself away in all haste. "How weird!" Donovan and Adam said at the same time. Quickly dismissing the errant girl, they continued playing, but the image of that girl standing alone staring at them would haunt Adam until they met again.
5. Adam (16 years)
Beginning his sophomore year of High School, Adam was an excellent student with 4.0 GPA and fairly popular. Although never extremely handsome, he was constantly the easy-going guy and made quick friends of both sexes. He was dating a girl he'd met in eighth grade named Trinity, and they'd been going out since then. He seemed to be in love with her, and she was constantly running through his head. They met everyday and went out to play games and hang out down at the river that lay near the High School. Like the burgeoning youth, Trinity hated HECTORs and their pilots. "The last dome I was at was attacked by pirates, and the Guard didn't arrive to help until it was too late. Most of my friends died, and my family and I were lucky to escape." Adam did well to avoid mentioning his father's employment. Attending a party at his girlfriend's house, Adam was hanging out in the front room with Donovan and a few of his other friends, when he noticed that he hadn't seen Trinity for a while. Being a courteous person, he quickly peeked into her mind and saw she was in the bathroom and left her alone without further persecution. When, after an hour, she was STILL in the bathroom, he did a little deeper digging and plugged into her optical nerves, and what he saw disgusted and enraged him. Bursting into her bathroom, she found Trinity making out on the floor with another guy only half-clothed. The back of his mind recognized him as Jack, a guy Adam had had Biology with. "Trinity!" Adam roared. Both Jack and Trinity recoiled at his entry, and Adam's best friend sensed his distress. "Hey, man, cool it, we were just having some fun...." Obviously Jack was clueless that Trinity and the enraged man in front of him were going out. "Adam! I'm sorry, it's not what you think!" Trinity stammered out. "Oh, no, it's never 'what I think,' is it Trinity? I'M never right, but you are, oh YOU ARE." Adam spit out with vile rage. "Hey, you mess with my girl and you're gonna get messed up, buddy." Jack drew a knife from his pants, carelessly discarded in the two's frenzy. He stepped between Trinity and Adam, "You don't talk to my girl like that." "How clueless are you, Jack?" Adam said, faintly sorry for having to do what he was about to to an ignorant bystander. He glanced behind Jack's shoulder to the image of Trinity escaping through the window. He sent her a terse message. I don't want to see you again, bitch. "I'll show you just how clueless I am, buddy!" Jack charged him with knife thrust ahead of him. "First of all," Adam started, telekinetically disarming the racing Jack, "She's not your girl. Second of all," he lifted the poor sap an inch above the ground, "She's mine. And third of all," he sent Jack flying against the wall of the bathroom, just as Donovan burst into the bathroom, "I'm not your 'buddy.'" "Adam!" Donovan yelled, "What did you do?" He raced to the unconscious, bleeding Jack and did a cursory inspection. "You're gonna take the fall for this, old friend, you've got to get out of here, now!" Finally realizing what he'd done, Adam looked at his hands, "Damn! Come with me!" When Donovan nodded, the two raced out of Trinity's house, never to reenter. They ran and they ran to the edge of the dome. Where Adam started to walk through it, committing suicide. "Hey!" Donovan warned, "That's not solid, dude! You could-" While he'd been talking, his friend's arms had gone through the bubbled wall of the dome and were being scorched by the gasses of the Avara, the wide space of land that was infected by Mist. Frantically pulling Adam back from the edge of killing himself, they dropped to the ground ten feet from the bubble. "Let me go!" Adam yelled, shaking free of the stronger man's grip easily enough, and climbed back up to his feet, beginning anew his walk toward suicide. "Adam!" Donovan yelled frantically, trying to break through this insanity that had a hold of his best friend to get to the man he knew. "Adam! Don't do it, you'll leave us behind, don't leave me behind!" Suddenly, Adam shook his head and stopped dead in his tracks, not six inches from the fatality that was stepping into the Avara. "You're right. We'll go back. I'll take what I deserve, and I'll serve my time." He turned quickly and started briskly walking back into the center of the dome, followed by Donovan. Back at the party, another person had gone into the bathroom and seen the blood splatter on the wall and floor, and called the authorities and an ambulance. Trinity served as an eye witness, and Adam was later sentenced to ten years in prison for the telekinetic assault of Jack, though Jack had a full recovery from his injuries.
"Adam!" A voice called from outside the Strata family's rickety and deprecated house. "Can you come out and play?" With a pleading look at his mother, Adam answered "Sure Donovan! Wait a minute!" Both Sheila and Adam took Torus' death very hard. They were given the news by a stony-faced Guardsman who introduced himself as Ulysses Coleman, and said "I was on Torus' first and final patrol." At this, tears welled in Sheila's eyes. She had a premonition about this the night before, a dream. In the dream Torus had been calling for her, and she tried to come to him but was held back by an impassable stone wall that seperated a bright, sunny world from a dark, waterless place where nothing lived. "He," Ulysses went on, "He told me to tell you that he loved you. He's gone, miss." With "He's gone," Sheila became hysterical with tears. "NO!" She screamed over and over, "NO, NO, NO! He can't be gone, he said he'd come back, that he'd be safe, NO!!" She collapsed on the floor in front of Ulysses, crying her heart out. "There, there, miss Sheila." Ulysses tried to console her, but it was hard, as Torus was a model for excellence in his eyes, too. "He's gone to a better place, miss, don't be sad." There was no consoling the grieving wife, however, and she continued to cry a river for the husband who she saw in that waterless land. The only words she could gasp out were, "Why? Why did he have to--" and then was lost in the hysteria again. Eventually, she cried herself to sleep laying on the couch that Ulysses had put her on. Seeing this, he saw fit to leave, when he spotted Adam hiding halfway behind a corner of the wall. Walking up to the boy, he knelt down and ruffled his hair "Hey kid, how are you?" "Who are you?" Responded the boy who had just seen his mother carried onto the couch by a strange man, a task he associated his father with doing. "I'm from the Guard" he responded. "Where's daddy?" Adam asked, questioningly. "Your dad...was a brave man." A smart child, Adam immediately grasped what was happening and tears streamed down his face. "He told me, he told me to give you your callsign, should you become a pilot." Ulysses's voice choked with tears, remembering Torus's final moments, "He told me to name you 'Rowen.'" Now that the grown man was obviously done speaking, the consummate polite boy took his turn. "HE CAN'T BE DEAD!" Adam screeched, "HE TOLD ME HE'D COME BACK! HE TOLD ME HE'D STAY HOME!" He, too, became hysterical. Ulysses just stood there, letting the boy wrap his arms around his waist and cry into him. Muttering, "There, there," every once in a while. Sheila awoke to find Ulysses gone and Adam curled up next to her on the couch, with eyes red from crying (a quick look into a mirror showed her face to be similar) and a note taped to the table in front of her, written in blood. "I'm sorry I couldn't come back. He told our son, now I tell you. His callsign should be Rowen." It was signed "Torus 'Bull' Strata, Loving husband and father." As she finished reading the note, a gust of wind took it through the open window and carried it off into the distance. With this last token of his love, Sheila moved on and accepted him as gone. "Alright, here I come Donovan!" Two years had passed, and Adam had grown up a normal, healthy boy with extreme telepathic powers. His mother had taught him several things, as well. Manners, respect, reading writing, and 'rithmetic, and to hate HECTORs. The years she spent with Torus served as a scourge upon her body, and she subliminally taught the boy to abhor the machines. Adam ran out the door to see Donovan waiting impatiently, having climbed the tree in the Strata family's front. Jumping down from the top of the pine, the older boy said "ouch! About time you got here, Adam!" He did a quick shake of his injured leg, and began to run (with a slight limp) toward the playground. He and his best friend would spend hours on end playing in this playground, and they never seemed to get bored with it. Donovan stood a good inch taller than Adam, even at nine years old, and had brown hair with a ponytail in the back, with brown eyes, like his friend. Donovan's control of the metaphysical was comparable to Adam's, although his telekinetic side fell lacking a bit. The two were fast friends, meeting when Donovan was in first grade, although the younger boy was still being taught by his mother. The next week, Adam would begin attending classes at La Escuela del Camino del Rio, or River Road Elementary, the same school that Donovan went to. "Try and catch me!" D yelled to his friend as he took off in the opposite direction. "You're faster than me!" Adam whined as he began to chase after D. Dodging through playground equipment, and then bushes, and finally trees, they ran. At some point, Adam yelled to his friend "Alright, you win!" While gasping for breath, he noticed that they were lost. Yelling, "Donovan? Can you hear me?" Getting no reply, the boy reached out for his friend's mind. Sensing it, he sent a telepathic message, Donovan! We're lost! I know! Replied the eternally-cool Donovan. We should be fine as long as we keep going South, that's the way back to the playground. But which way is South? The younger boy voiced the concern that had entered both heads. Well.... D attempted to divine an answer for their situation, The moss always gwos on the North side of trees, so.... Just go the other way! He responded logically. Uhh...Donovan? There's moss all around these trees. Well then...um...try and contact your mom? No, she'll get mad. Adam tried to block his mind from the thought of Sheila mad at him. That can be our last resort. Well then, do it. Unless you have another bright idea.... Ma-an! Adam complained. I hate telling my mom that I'm lost! While complaining, he reached for his mother's touch. "Where are you, mom?" He thought out loud. Adam? What's wrong? Came the brown touch of his mother into his head. Well...Mom...we're lost in the woods. Again? I want you to promise me that you wont go in the woods...again! Alright, Mom! Just get us out of here! Okay, here's a safe place for you to teleport yourselves. She sent him the image of a clearing in front of their house. Tell Donovan. Donovan! Adam called. Yah? Here's where we're gonna teleport, and he relayed the information to his friend. Alright, on three. One, Adam said Two, Donovan added, Three! They said together, and ended up standing inches from each other when they opened their eyes. Laughing, they continued playing on the playground, while a ways off, a lonely girl stands with crayon-box brown hair down past her shoulders and a look on her face of total desolation. Her and Adam make eye contact briefly, and he is entranced by her. Walking over to this enigma, he introduces himself and his friend. "Hey, I'm Adam, and this is my friend Donovan. What's your name?" "I'm...Jasmine." She said haltingly. "I have to go now, though. Goodbye!" She teleported herself away in all haste. "How weird!" Donovan and Adam said at the same time. Quickly dismissing the errant girl, they continued playing, but the image of that girl standing alone staring at them would haunt Adam until they met again.
5. Adam (16 years)
Beginning his sophomore year of High School, Adam was an excellent student with 4.0 GPA and fairly popular. Although never extremely handsome, he was constantly the easy-going guy and made quick friends of both sexes. He was dating a girl he'd met in eighth grade named Trinity, and they'd been going out since then. He seemed to be in love with her, and she was constantly running through his head. They met everyday and went out to play games and hang out down at the river that lay near the High School. Like the burgeoning youth, Trinity hated HECTORs and their pilots. "The last dome I was at was attacked by pirates, and the Guard didn't arrive to help until it was too late. Most of my friends died, and my family and I were lucky to escape." Adam did well to avoid mentioning his father's employment. Attending a party at his girlfriend's house, Adam was hanging out in the front room with Donovan and a few of his other friends, when he noticed that he hadn't seen Trinity for a while. Being a courteous person, he quickly peeked into her mind and saw she was in the bathroom and left her alone without further persecution. When, after an hour, she was STILL in the bathroom, he did a little deeper digging and plugged into her optical nerves, and what he saw disgusted and enraged him. Bursting into her bathroom, she found Trinity making out on the floor with another guy only half-clothed. The back of his mind recognized him as Jack, a guy Adam had had Biology with. "Trinity!" Adam roared. Both Jack and Trinity recoiled at his entry, and Adam's best friend sensed his distress. "Hey, man, cool it, we were just having some fun...." Obviously Jack was clueless that Trinity and the enraged man in front of him were going out. "Adam! I'm sorry, it's not what you think!" Trinity stammered out. "Oh, no, it's never 'what I think,' is it Trinity? I'M never right, but you are, oh YOU ARE." Adam spit out with vile rage. "Hey, you mess with my girl and you're gonna get messed up, buddy." Jack drew a knife from his pants, carelessly discarded in the two's frenzy. He stepped between Trinity and Adam, "You don't talk to my girl like that." "How clueless are you, Jack?" Adam said, faintly sorry for having to do what he was about to to an ignorant bystander. He glanced behind Jack's shoulder to the image of Trinity escaping through the window. He sent her a terse message. I don't want to see you again, bitch. "I'll show you just how clueless I am, buddy!" Jack charged him with knife thrust ahead of him. "First of all," Adam started, telekinetically disarming the racing Jack, "She's not your girl. Second of all," he lifted the poor sap an inch above the ground, "She's mine. And third of all," he sent Jack flying against the wall of the bathroom, just as Donovan burst into the bathroom, "I'm not your 'buddy.'" "Adam!" Donovan yelled, "What did you do?" He raced to the unconscious, bleeding Jack and did a cursory inspection. "You're gonna take the fall for this, old friend, you've got to get out of here, now!" Finally realizing what he'd done, Adam looked at his hands, "Damn! Come with me!" When Donovan nodded, the two raced out of Trinity's house, never to reenter. They ran and they ran to the edge of the dome. Where Adam started to walk through it, committing suicide. "Hey!" Donovan warned, "That's not solid, dude! You could-" While he'd been talking, his friend's arms had gone through the bubbled wall of the dome and were being scorched by the gasses of the Avara, the wide space of land that was infected by Mist. Frantically pulling Adam back from the edge of killing himself, they dropped to the ground ten feet from the bubble. "Let me go!" Adam yelled, shaking free of the stronger man's grip easily enough, and climbed back up to his feet, beginning anew his walk toward suicide. "Adam!" Donovan yelled frantically, trying to break through this insanity that had a hold of his best friend to get to the man he knew. "Adam! Don't do it, you'll leave us behind, don't leave me behind!" Suddenly, Adam shook his head and stopped dead in his tracks, not six inches from the fatality that was stepping into the Avara. "You're right. We'll go back. I'll take what I deserve, and I'll serve my time." He turned quickly and started briskly walking back into the center of the dome, followed by Donovan. Back at the party, another person had gone into the bathroom and seen the blood splatter on the wall and floor, and called the authorities and an ambulance. Trinity served as an eye witness, and Adam was later sentenced to ten years in prison for the telekinetic assault of Jack, though Jack had a full recovery from his injuries.