The Traveller

I could scarcely believe my eyes as I opened them. As I got up from the bed I was lying on, I had to rub them to make sure I was not hallucinating. I wasn't.

I am standing in what looked like the first floor of a log cabin. The walls, the floor, and the ceiling were all made of strong hardwood. From a window beside the cot I can make out the outline of trees, as well as hear the song of the birds, but there is too little light for me to see more clearly. It must be near dawn, I thought.

The next thing I noticed about are my clothes. They're not the usual T-shirt-and-jeans I'm used to. In their place was a green tunic, a dark red vest over it, black pants held by a wide belt, the leggings tucked snugly into a pair of felted high boots.

But it still doesn't explain how I got here. As I screw up my eyes in concentration, I began to remember exactly what happened before I woke up in this strange place...

* * * *

"Yup, we'll definitely be late for English lesson."

I made that remark to Him Soon, my classmate, as we headed back to the classroom after finishing an experiment in the lab during Biology. He simply shrugged, as if saying that it cannot be helped. Outside, it was getting dark - flashes of lightning indicated that it would be raining soon. As we got near a group of classmates strolling and chatting in front of us, Him Soon veered left out of the shaded corridor to cut a path to another one opposite the canteen. I followed suit, but did not go further than five steps before something happened to me.

I looked upwards, just in time to see a lightning bolt zigzagging its path down - towards me. I glanced at Him Soon, now several paces away and barely noticing anything wrong afoot, then stared transfixed at the lightning as it drove straight towards my chest. It felt like being hammered with a wrecking ball. I hardly registered the boom of thunder before everything went black.

* * * *

So I was struck unconscious by the lightning, but that still doesn't explain how I'd end up here, I thought while examining my body for any signs of injuries. Not a scar remained, even those acquired from incidents in the past. When I touched my face, it felt smooth, not pimply. And I'm not wearing glasses either, even though I see clearly, which is weird for a guy who's 1000-plus degree myopic. The only mark on my body appears to be the red stains on the fingers of my right hand that I got for dipping them in eosin solution during the biology experiment.

Sudden footsteps alerted me to the presence of another guy in this cabin. It came up from the small flight of steps opposite the corner where I was. Mentally bracing myself, I awaited the unknown person to come up to me.

Up came someone wearing a brown, heavily-cowled robe, with its hood up. He faced me, silent, as if scrutinising me. Without warning, he threw back his hood. Underneath, his face was that of a Buddhist monk, Eastern in appearance, with a bald scalp, long eyebrows, and a thin scar that runs down the cleft of his left chin.

"Welcome back, Traveller," he spoke.

Traveller. As that very word reverberated around my head, memories that were long locked away flooded my mind. At first, the staggering amount of recollections nearly had me down on my knees, comprehending only brief snatches of it - facing off a red wyrm, wielding a bone scimitar that bursts into flames, talking to a band of warrior-women - however, gradually I began to make sense of those seemingly alien reminiscences, but which were actually my own. The instant I understood everything, I opened my eyes again, this time with a new certainty.

I am a Traveller, a walker of planes, an explorer of worlds. With the arrogance of deities, I am one of them whom alter realms and create places as they are now because of our actions. Some of us prefer order - others had an affinity for chaos. There are no rules that could bind us, yet we are held more tightly in chains than they who know nothing of our existence. None, except one of our own, can know our true identity. No one, I realised as I gazed back at Raijin, the monk who initiated and introduced me as Traveller several lifetimes ago.

"They'll be saddened by your departure. I'm sorry to bring you in this way, but certain matters of urgency require your ways to be put into use again."

"I wish to at least offer them comfort," I said.

"...Very well,"

* * * *

Extending my mind using psionics, I touched the minds of everyone I loved, anyone who grieved my 'passing'. My parents were especially anguished, and it pained me to feel the keening of their hearts and yet being unable to tell them in person that I'm okay.

Instead, through an empathy link, I had only offered them solace, reassurance that things would end up alright if they would move on. Withdrawing from their minds, I prayed - though to whom, I know not - that they would continue their lives with acceptance.

* * * *

Returning to the cabin, Raijin's temporary residence in Orb, I found nobody left in side, but stowed away in a chest right in the middle of a room were the possessions of all my identities. After putting them on - separately - the bottom of the chest reveals my next destination. Inscribed on it was a rose with one leaf and its blossom between the two horns of a crescent moon. A ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of my lips as I consider the company that I would find there.

House of June, I thought, here I come.

The Clique

I have to concede, its a good thing our school doesn't have superstars. Here, everybody is well-known, one way or the other, but even though we stick to our own groups, we kinda know everybody else - thats about 500 guys or more, just in our own year.

In other places, there are some guys and girls in a clique so powerful and popular, others cannot afford NOT to voice their open dislike for any of those "pop kids". That's 'cause if they retaliate, the less popular ones will be in serious trouble - isolated by the rest of the school population. Here are a couple of rules that exists for joining such a terrible group.

#1 - Be daring, outstanding, mean, aloof, anything that allows you to defy the norm and regime yet runs along the lines of The Group's so-called "style".
#2 - Stand your ground and lift your chin, no matter how others challenged you. Stare down the challengers. Winners gain in reputation, losers diminish in stature.
#3 - Be ruthless. Somebody brings up your ire, make sure they go down in flames. Make sure other people fear you, admire you, respect you. And in that order.

That said, I don't think I wanted to be in such a group. If I'm crazy enough, I'll probably find other equally insane guys to bring them down. If I can find such people, that is.

Green Rooftops

Man really know how to make hell. Try checking out your rooftop to see how many animals or plants that are there. Your answer: most probable NONE. Even a desert would be teeming with cactuses, arachnids, and jerboas. But no, not on a rooftop.

That's why the "green rooftop" movement spreads throughout the world, particularly accross Europe. The idea is plain - you make buildings with flat roofs, heap a couple layers of some materials, including insulators and composite soil on it, and then you start planting. In essence you take a plot of land to buuild for your needs, then you return it to nature.

This, along with the curbing of high-rise buildings (only developing countries favor really tall buildings to show off their cities nowadays) are among the initiatives developed cities have taken. Imagine, your rooftop turned into a garden which supports buttterflies, bees, and a myriad of other animals, or transformed into an orchard where you can pick tomatoes and limes for the day's meal.

I apologise for the lack of photos, but search "Green Rooftops" on any search engine, and I'm sure the pictures that came out on the Internet will guarantee to make you smile. For these rooftop gardens aren't just environmentally friendly or economic, they're also beautiful.

Something I've Learned from Reading A Random Book This Week

You want to make people die a horrible death? Try this: give him/her the ultimate antibiotic that destroys absolutely every microorganism in the human body. AIDS, common cold, pneumonia, influenza viruses, cancer cells, you name it, the drug destroys it. Side effect - massive diarrhoea because of total lost of good miicroorganism in his/her intestines.

Why? Because the human body's immunity system is already capable of warding off most attacks of disesase. Apply this super-antibiotic, and the immunity system collapse completely within days, because the human body thought there's no longer a need for it. Now if you take of the antibiotic, the human body will not be able to fend off any attacks of disease from microorganisms.

Give people this drug for a couple of months, and they'll say their sickness was cured. Completely. Then you take of the drug. Within hours, they will succumb to diseases totally unobserved-of in medical history and die most horribly.

Call me a psychopath, if you want to.

Source: Andromeda Strain