Читать книгу Genesis of the Guardians - Kevin Qi - Страница 9

Do you ever get a feeling of detachment from the world, even for just a second? It feels like you’re watching a movie which has been cleverly angled to portray a first person view. All sound is muffled, and your vision begins to lose its focus. Then, suddenly, everything comes back into view, and you feel more alive than ever before.

Now, imagine that, except instead of sound being muffled and your vision losing its focus, you actually stop hearing and stop seeing. Not only that, you lose all of your senses, including smell and touch. Then, in a flood of information, your brain processes all sounds, and all sights.

If you can imagine that, then you’ll get a pretty accurate idea of what happened to me. Blake had just pulled off an insane play, and we all cheered because it had won us the game. In the midst of our celebration, I suddenly couldn’t see or hear anything. Panic seized my heart, and I shouted out. I’d lost my sense of direction, and had started falling to the floor. But then, like a computer booting up, my senses came back to me one-by-one, in the space of milliseconds. But each sense was a such a novelty to me that it felt as though the pause between each recovery spanned hours.

First, I realized I was falling. Unfortunately, without sight or hearing, I could not do anything about it. I felt hopeless, knowing that I was falling yet unable to see, let alone do anything about it. Sight came to me next. Although my eyes had been open the entire time, I could finally see again. Yet, there was something different about what I saw. Everything was sharp. I could focus in on individual things. I had never needed glasses, but I felt like I’d just put on some miracle lenses. My eyes darted all around my visual scope, taking in everything. I could see Blake and James in the middle of throwing down their headsets, looking urgent. No one else had even noticed yet. There was something graceful about seeing this situation, however horrifying, in such clarity. It was like living life in HD after knowing it for fifteen years in 240p.

Hearing came back to me next. In the short span that my brain had to comprehend what was happening, it didn’t even try to understand what I was hearing. It wasn’t necessary. But it didn’t even consider how powerful it would be. I could not only hear the tremble of my friends’ voices as they called out, I could hear the clink of the dishes as Beatrice finished up washing, and the rumble of Robert’s voice as he talked to her. Everything was so loud. It was bearable, but only just. Almost immediately after I regained hearing, I could smell again. Oh, the things I could smell! I could smell the conditioner that each of the other seven people in the house had used. I could smell the tacos that we had eaten half an hour ago. I could smell the garbage in the can outside, almost 10 meters away.

Finally, feeling came to my arms and legs. I could move. With my head about a foot away from the ground, I quickly reached with my arms to brace myself against impact. I ended up in a position that looked like I was planking. I exhaled a huge breath. “Thank God.” I said, and promptly fainted.