As someone who has done math competitions for several years of their life, I can't tell you how frustrating and annoying they can be. Nothing could have possibly prepared me for learning what odds I have beaten to exist, and what that means for my new daily existence.
My name is Arthur Romanchuk, and for the first eleven years of my life, I have been a fairly normal, if not a wee bit above-average kid if I don't say so myself. I come from a mixed background: my mother is from Hong Kong, and my father is an immigrant from Estonia. I grew up speaking five languages at home and two at school. I was born in Nevada, but I grew up in San Antonio, Texas. Then, last year, I moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. I made friends everywhere I went, did way too well in school for everyone's liking (the number of Asian jokes I received is not funny), and teachers came to give me higher-level work in class to keep me occupied. While all my peers struggled with negative numbers in sixth grade, I learned number theory and Calculus.
My teachers also desperately wanted me to take medicine. Personally, I don't see a problem with fidgeting, and it helps me come up with new ideas all the time. My best masonry projects were supposedly "ADHD" outbursts. That's just how it is.
The thing that always bugged me was dyslexia. I have trouble reading all seven languages I speak. Many times, my teachers have had to return a paper because I accidentally wrote Cyrillic characters for English ones. How in the world I mixed Belarusian with English is beyond me, but it happens. I regularly practice speaking and writing English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Belarusian, Estonian, Spanish, and Russian, but I mix everything up too often.
Besides these things, I thought I was just another guy. Keyword thought.
Being a polyglot was the weird thing about me for over a decade before the weirdest of the weird happens. Today, my school takes a field trip to the World War II Museum. They do this every year, yet no one seems tired of this place. Everyone absolutely adores the USS Tang exhibit, but that's about as interesting as the place gets. That is until I got adventurous. They recently began constructing a new wing of the museum for the postwar exhibits. I, being beyond bored of listening to the events of D-Day, decide to sneak off and take a sneak peek. The hallway was still under construction, but I wanted to see whatever it was.
"Where do you think you're going?"
I look around and see my Greek teacher, Mr. Broussard. He is a strange man. Even in the year-round heat of New Orleans, he insists on wearing cargo pants. He changes between a Hawaiian shirt and a Saints T-shirt every day of the week. His walk is funny, and some of the Cajun kids say it's like he is always at a fais deux-deux, whatever that means.
"I'm quite sick of this place," I reply. "I already know the war backward and forwards. All of my great grandparents were war veterans. I've heard the horrors of the Eastern Front, Burma, China, and the Philippines enough times to give me PTSD. What does this have to do with anything?"
"Fair point, but per school policy, I cannot leave you out of my sight," says Mr. Broussard. "I see that you're reading about Roman mythology. Care to share what you're reading about?"
I was carrying a picture book of the Roman gods at this very moment.
"It's really nothing," I say, maybe just a little too quickly.
"Really? Do you know the origin of Serapis?" asks Mr. Broussard.
"Isn't he an Egyptian god?" I question. "I think he was also Greek when they ruled Egypt. Then he became immensely popular under the Romans, who often replaced Osiris with him. That doesn't have much to do with Jupiter and the other Olympians, does it?"
"Well, here's something to know," Mr. Broussard begins. "Jupiter and Zeus were not always the same deity. The Romans worshipped Jupiter well before they encountered the Greeks. They say that Rome was discovered by the Greek hero Aeneas, but other people, namely the Etruscans, already lived there. Weird things happen when worlds collide. When the Romans conquered Greece, the story changed to say the old Etruscan, now Roman gods were the same. Things can change if anyone can brave the thought. Never forget that."
Mr. Broussard is always so apt to preach to the choir.
"You don't mean to tell me you believe in these old myths, do you?" I question. "There's no way these apply to real life. They're just ideas people threw around to explain their swords disappearing or something."
"Perhaps we should dis- look out!" Mr. Broussard abruptly pulls me backward, falling onto the hard pavement. The construction site appears to shudder for a moment, then erupts into flames. A hazy figure, that of what appears to be a very large duck, circles around what was the construction site. I squint my eyes through the -am I hallucinating? - green fire.
I look harder at the figure, whose form seems to shimmer as though it's made of water. The creature appears to be a bird of prey, perhaps an eagle, with crimson feathers and menacing yellow eyes. Its talons are as though they are from a claw machine. All around it, an aura of fire interlaced with specks of emerald shine brightly. If not for the complete chaos the scene is engulfed in, this would have been a beautiful sight.
I collect my wits. What on Earth is this thing? No, it can't be.
"That's a phoenix!" I yelp. The tendrils of green slowly simmered down, but the creature suddenly flies directly at me. I just barely manage to somersault underneath.
"Here, grab these!" Mr. Broussard calls out.
He throws at me a mismatched pair of combat gloves. One is a deep, rich bronze, the other a shade between gold and silver.
"What's are these supposed to do?" I call out.
"Put them on!"
Having no better choices, I do as he say.
Suddenly, it's as though I'm playing a game of Halo. Each of my arms suddenly possesses a large gauntlet. The one on my left is the same bronze color as the glove I wore. The right is now a camouflage pattern of shades of gold, silver, and colors between the two.
The phoenix, having recovered from its shock, charges towards me from behind. I spin around as I feel it approach me, grab it by the wings, then judo-flip it into a trash can.
"You'll need something more classic than these sci-fi death traps to take it down!" Mr. Broussard calls out.
Classic. Like what, a sword?
Then, the gauntlets changes shape. In my left arm, I wield an unusual curved blade, its rich bronze luster gleaming in the sun.
A khopesh, I remember to myself.
In my right, another unusual blade, a Roman gladius, appears. Half of the blade is lustrous gold metal. The other half is dark and glassy, deep as obsidian. Down the middle is a long streak of the shiniest silver I have ever laid eyes on. Its surface is covered in a thin layer of iridescent tarnish.
It's my turn to attack. With the khopesh, I slash at the giant bird charging at me. It dodges my blade by mere feathers. In a quick backstroke, I reap it back towards me. The bird skewers itself on the blade of my extended gladius. The cursed bird then explodes into gold glitter.
Just as I recover my wits from what just happened, three squad cars stand before me. The weapons reduce back down to combat gloves.
"Down on the ground!" I hear someone yell out.
A pair of cold handcuffs bind my hands behind my back, and for the next hour, all I see is the caged back of a Ford Taurus.