My Barbie "We Girls Can Do Anything" Game, I got it for Christmas when I was four. Funny how "anything meant movie star, rock star, doctor, pilot, fashion designer or ballerina, no secret agent or even CEO. I wanted to be a philosopher even before I knew what one was. I just wanted to be left alone so I could think. I knew I was special. I am special. I just have to wait to show it.

I'm running through a fog, so thick, so thick. Something's chasing me. I just can't run fast enough.

I'm hungry.

Jane slipped in and out of consciousness during her acupuncture session. Little by little, she remembered how she had come to lie on that operating table and how she came to be Veritas. Every needle that slipped under her skin brought her closer too full lucidity. She barely felt them as she hovered groggily but more awake then she had ever been in her life.

The four of them, Jane, her mother, her father, and her sister, would eat dinner together at least once a week. This was supposed to be their time to bond, but her parents would always try to pry into her life and then insist that she needed therapy when she wouldn't indulged their presumptuousness. Instead, she would marvel at how little she had turned out like them. They seemed so... she didn't even know the right word for it. They disgusted her with their close-mindedness and materialism. Even more so, they disgusted her just by being satisfied with the world as it appeared to be.

She could feel herself becoming more like them with every passing year as she lost first her innocence, then her faith, then her mind. She knew her soul was next. Then she would be just like them and every other empty shell that walked this false Earth. She was simply losing herself; she was losing what made her special.

She could feel it strongly that evening as she tried to see green code in her spaghetti and meatballs. She could feel the intricate lines on her fingers and toes melting away as she tried not to listen to her father tell her how she was crazy and how she needed therapy. She almost believed him that time, except her thoughts turned to a boy, a tall, awkward-looking boy, to whom she had never spoken a word. Even so, she felt a connection to him.

He was in her English class where he sat exactly three seats to her left. She had studied his face while he silently read the assignment, "The Whiteness of the Whale," from Moby Dick. From the expression of melancholic wonder on his face, she knew that she didn't have to read the chapter; she could just read him. She read the chapter even so, maybe because the exam wouldn't cover his face or maybe because the way he pressed his lips together told her that some secret on par with the meaning of life could be found on those pages.

Good and Evil; everything and nothing...the finite and the infinite, ignorance and omniscience...

"Call me Ishmael..."

She wanted to talk to him, but she never quite built up the courage. She'd somehow convinced herself that she didn't have to, that they shared some sort of special bond. She tried to send him psychic messages, asking him to talk to her, to sit next to her, to look at her, to do something, anything, but he never did. So she kept watching him in a melancholy silence until she gave up or lost hope or lost interest. She didn't know exactly what had happened. He faded from her view and from her mind as her attentions turned to her ever-intensifying search for the truth until he was little more than a shadow, little more than the faded remnants of a dream she had lost to a sudden awakening.

Oh, I just know I'm going to be late. I'll never make it to school on time. If I get another ticket, I'll lose my license. I've slept too long. I've slept too long. I've slept far too long.

She'd been sleeping far too long.