Overlap

Chapter 37-A: Origins of Truth

<01/04/2011 - 13:11 | Saffrin Middle School (English), Austell, GA, USA>

Thanks to the enlightening moment I had today in gym class, I could feel my mind speeding up with the lifting mood. The hundreds of thoughts per second in my head were accelerating a little more, putting me into what I would call a work-mood. Since this is English class, I could in theory work on whatever I wanted to, since I'm already days ahead of my assignments, but I still need to make sure nothing new gets added on.

So, I sat patiently in a random empty cluster of desks as everybody was already settling in for the usual. I felt calm, and at the same time awake and alert, ready for any action. Lumina on the other hand was not too familiar with the routine I was engaging with, and spoke up first once she noticed the difference.

"How come you're not sitting by your group today?"

"I just don't feel like it for some reason. Plus, I'm not staying here once the roll call is over with."

"You're not?"

"Nope. I have plans to head to the media center again, login, and work on some of my stuff from home. But I have to stay for roll call first." It's become a bit more routine for me lately. I've been ducking out of classes where I'm ahead, and going to the media center. They've got computers we can all use, and all I have to do is access my flash drive and work on the new projects.

"Oh. That's interesting."

"Yeah, I've decided to work on it at school during my free time as well as at home. It really helps me out with this UAD thing. It feels amazing to work on all of these projects."

"Well, I won't argue that it's a bad idea. I just wish you could sit with your friends more often."

"I can do that anytime during class, but I may have to wait ten minutes before I can actually do anything. Looks like there might be a new assignment?"

"Want to talk about stuff to pass the time?"

"Sure, I guess... But no more of those embarrassing stories." I'm still trying to mentally recover from some of the things I said to her, uncertain what came over me earlier.

"Okay... What about whatever else is going on in your life?"

"Like what? I don't really get to do anything anymore because of school. I don't have any strong friends for me to hang out with outside of class. And I don't have any upcoming field trips either."

"What about your Sunday School?"

"Oh, I stopped going to that the day after my parents split..." It was a strange thing for her to bring up. It's been too long now, and I've nearly forgotten about going to church. But I'm not unhappy for this outcome. "Now that I think about it, Sunday School might be a big waste of time."

"It is? I mean, I wouldn't know."

Right. Lumina has no churches of worship in her world. It would have bothered me at first, but something different happened instead. "It's an interesting subject; religion. I've been reading the Bible lately."

"Really?"

"Yeah... The more lines I read out of that text, the more I feel like it's all just someone else's mental mess thrown together into some crazy book just to tell a popular belief about the afterlife. I keep coming across inconsistencies that make no sense, and horrific verses about the way we are seen or treated by this so called God. Does that sound crazy?" It's really the first time I've started to question this whole religion nonsense. The only reason I wanted to read the Bible in the first place was to find out where the Altiri come into play with the sacred verses. If God and Jesus played key roles in prophesizing the Bible, then surely there would have been at least a single mention of aliens. But there isn't a single mention of it in there. Instead, I'm learning something different.