He drummed his fingers on the edge of his laptop, the low taps breaking the pressing silence that seems to push on his eardrums and make the air hum, as if with electricity.
Then, without thinking, without really knowing what he's doing, he fires up his laptop and logs on.
It takes him a while to pull up the site page. And once he does, simply stares at the screen, as if looking for some answer there behind the bold white font and cheap red background.
It's his website. His life. His high school pride and his college dream. And now, none of it even makes sense.
He thinks on the last few years, and then the last three days, and comes to the shameful and embarrassing conclusion that Mikaela was screaming at him all along; he is an idiot.
He wasn't the popular one as a kid, obviously. In middle school, he used to hide in the bathroom stalls with his feet up on the toilet and the door locked, cowering in his little fragile prison of stone gray, graffiti walls while the bigger boys wandered around outside, talking loudly and yelling. Or he'd run from them in laps around the playground while others laughed. Or he'd hide behind a massive personality that would give him a tendency later in life to spaz out at everything big.
It was the teachers as these cheap schools of his that convinced him there were issues of authority in the world. They overlooked the boys who took his money at lunch, the same boys who he would later outsmart and even get drafted into working for; their eight-grade clerk who kept track of the lunch money they stole.
Then in his first year of high school, he discovered technology. And oh, what a glorious thing it was.
Online, he could be anybody he wanted to be. The cries of people just like him, protesting against the conspiracy of the world, and he learned the secrets of what they had done, whispered by the voices others would call "wack jobs."
He moved to California. He got into computer imaging and programming. He made two best friends. Together they would sit around the neighborhood park or inside Fassbiner's loft, talking about the psycho things they had heard about the election and the invasions over cold pizza and cheap Mexican bear Leo had taken from the house.
And then he had sat at home and watched Mission City burn to hell.
He was smart. He was determined. And after long, sleepless night online, he finally found the truth; it was what he ahd always believed. Aliens were among them. Mission City wasn't just some cheapo terrorist attack. This was the real effing deal.
And so, a website was born.
Then college. Ivy League. He would have to get a new roomate; that was the inevitable- but at leat the real effing deal was still alive, and about to go big.
He had major battles with Robo-Warrior and believed himself to be the righteous right hand of conspiracy-unmasking alein god. With and insight to the world, a hero to be worshipped.
And then he had met Sam.
The kid had looked all his proof in the face, while his psycho Mom had climbed on all their furniture, and told them it was stupid, a lie.
And Leo had been furious.
This guy had a kick-ass car. He had Alice hot for him. And he already had a girlfriend that looked like some goddess out of Playboy. He would be an asset. Didn't he see that?
And then Leo's world had come down in a shower of sparks and flying books and blasted stone walls as "Alice" stormed through, and he had the idiocy to believe she was after him.
Why hadn't he seen it?
"Tu eres un blind-eyed idiot." he mutters to himself.
He had gotten his biggest wish; he was thrown into the life he had always wanted and imagined, with aliens towering over him and transforming into kick-butt cars, evil robots tracking his every move, on the run from the governments of the world.
It was the real effing deal.
And he had never been more scared in his life.
It was always alright before because none of it was real. He could daydream and theorize all he wanted to; but in those visions, the pain never lasted, and there was never any real danger at being involved with a bunch of illegal robots.
And then in one single afternoon, Alice had cracked that vision. And Optimus had shattered it.
He remembers seeing Optimus break through the roof of that warehouse, like a towering avenging angel, and delivering them all from certain hell. He remembers seeing Sam's face when he came back through the forest, looking like he had rolled in a dirt pile.
He remembered glimpsing that crumpled, shining body lying between the trees.
He remembered Sam's words, that this was the real effing deal, and he was in the middle of it, shouldn't he be happy?
"Just stop complaining!"
He was so scared, he hadn't even realized Sam was in it all along.
And then later than night, it hit him. FBI? CIA? They weren't after him; they were after Sam. Sure, he was at the right hand of the Wanted Alien Boy and his demon goddess girlfriend and that wack-job Robo-Warrior with all their shiny cars, but it was Sam they were after, it was Sam Megatron had pinned to that table, so why was he complaining?
Sam was everything he had ever wanted to be. The Chosen One, the Alienboy, the robot's precious human hero. Looking at the way he interacted with Bumblebee and the way the other robots- Autobots, he corrects himself- fought to protect him, Leo can tell that he is special to them. And Leo is willing to bet the price of next semester's tuition that Sam was in the middle of Mission City as well. Sam was living in the world Leo could only dream of for years.
And in one afternoon, looking at Sam had completely broken that dream.
In the library, when Alice was hunting them down like mice and concrete and stone was shattering all around them, Leo realized that all of this wasn't about thrilling action; it was luck and skill, trying to survive from one step to the next as you ran for your life. In the warehouse, as he watched Megatron pin down Sam and torture him and prepare to rip his brain out of his very body, he realized being wanted for your knowledge on the aliens- as he'd so foolishly deluded himself into believing he was- could actually be a fate worse than death. And when he saw the expression on Sam's face as they sat around that bonfire, after Optimus had died… he realized all of this wasn't about guts and glory. It was about heart-breaking pain and sacrifice. And when he made his last stand beside Simmons, he realized that, if Sam was once just a kid off the street like him, and was about to dash across Decepticon front lines…then maybe he could make a difference, too.
And then in that car, he had literally cried for his life.
You were so pathetic. He tells himself.
But at the end of it all, at that Pyramid with Simmons, when he chose to stay, determined to redeem at least some small part of himself…
Sam's determination, his sacrifice, and of their sacrifices, started to hit him, and hit him hard.
What are you doing? He had wondered.
Seeing all that, even if it was from just the sideline….it had changed him. Forever.
He stares at his website now, at the words of the cocky, ridiculous, spazzy teen he was three days ago, though it seems so much longer than that. He reads the words on the screen, written as if a stranger posted them.
And then he smiles at himself. And poses his fingers over his keyboard, hovering, thinking, and suddenly the words pour out in a way they never have before.
The last three days have been…crazy. I know, muchchos, understatement of the freaking century. But the point is, the world knows now what we've been trying- sort of- to tell them all along.
He pauses, thinking, and then brgins to type even faster, afraid his fingers won't be able to catch his thoughts in time.
Only it was a lot different than even we conspiracy freaks even imagined.
I learned a lot in the past three days, most of which cannot be repeated on this blog, unless I want to wake up in some jail cell with my life erased. I learned that college libraries are not a good place to hide when you're running for your life. I learned that airbags in certain cars work really well when you're in the free fall of your life, and I also learned that I am a whiny, selfish dumbass.
It doesn't matter whose right or wrong, people. It doesn't matter if your site was first, if you beat another blogger (COUGH COUGH Robo-Warrior) at uplading a video in those precious few seconds.
What matters is the truth. And I don't mean that statement like a used to- rather, what matters is living in the truth.
His fingers are flying over the keyboard now. The words are pouring out onto the screen like water. He can't stop. Doesn't want to.
So if you're reading this, you obviously have no idea how crazy it is out there. People are dying. The world is in danger. This is just the beginning. What matters in the long run isn't how long you knew what was really going on, but how you live with it.
I always said life as we know it is an illusion. That the psycho government peeps were keeping what was real from us. I always thought of action and glory and all that s***.
I was wrong.
This website, this conception, that we actually know the Real Effing Deal…that's the illusion. We sit on our asses and rant about what is going on and pride ourselves in knowing the truth that we imagine ourselves to be a part of, and the irony is, we don't know anything about it at all. That's the illusion. Because we're here imagining instead of living. And it's time we all broke free from it.
So if you're reading this, get off your ass and do something about it. Support the ones that came to save us, cause there's not that many of them left. Don't bother checking back for updates here again. Move on with your life. Live in the world instead of just trying to see it as something different.
-Leo
He watches the little blinking line after the last letter of his name, for how long he's not sure. Then he submits it.
After a while, he logs out and shuts the computer down, the laptop closing with a sharp snap.
He never posts on his blog again.
He leans back in his chair, stretching his arms over his head and sighing, before folding his hands behind his head.
Sharksky and Fassbinder are going to be pissed, there's no doubt about it. But they haven't been through what he's been through; they haven't seen what he's seen, and part of him hopes they never will. But part of him begs that they will someday understand.
He turns off his laptop. He closes it down. He isn't Leo the robo-freak anymore. He isn't Leo the oh-my-god-I'm-destined-for-alien-greatness. But he isn't Leo-the-wide-eyes-opened-saint, either.
He's just Leo. Just him. He's balancing himself; he can feel it. He was never meant to be a hero or even part of a story like this, but he is. He was. Somehow, some way, they chose him. Not because he was special. Not because he deserved it. They-or Fate- just did.
The laptop sits on the desk, gathering dust, before he finally moves it. He clears out all his Area 51 stuff and Kitten Calendars.
He doesn't know where he's going, now. But hey…he got shot at, bombed at, and warped halfway around the world to save the planet from alien hell. What could be college- and a few job interviews- compared to that?