Emergence 4.0 - Part Four, Kathy; Chapter Twenty-three, Prodigy

Week 25

Kathy loved jokes. Humor was a relief to her and she was a funny child.

Comedy is the art of the unexpected and of the surprise, Kathy loved it when she could suspend disbelief for a moment, allowing herself to be taken at unawares.

It was a departure from her normal mode of being.

Her laughter was the first unusual thing that her parents noticed about her, a trait which distinguished her from other children, it alerted them to the fact that she was different, because her laughter was different, it was mature, knowing, it seemed to come from a place beyond the tiny physical body of an infant.

Even as a baby she picked up on the punch lines of jokes. She delighted in them in her infancy. The fed her spirit, they were like water to a thirsty woman. She understood the spoken words, the inferences that were made and shared between adults. She understood and could follow their exchanges months before she had learned to speak.

It was unnerving to anybody who witnessed it, therefore her sense of humor became one of the first expressive traits that Kathy learned to conceal, it was an act of social alienation and self-abnegation.

Laughter is like crying, it is a free and open mode of communication, it is non-verbal and honest.

Kathy had to deny herself that, she had to keep it in check.

The laughing person is vulnerable, and Kathy had to learn to hide that vulnerability, withdrawing inside herself, to share her mirth with her ancestors only, and the other ghosts lingering in the outer-world.

Kathy was as quiet as she was observant. She learned to watch and ask questions of the voices within her.

It was better this way, for her it was better.

She also took joy in the acquisition of knowledge, the analytical skills she was developing were more astute, but she also found that asking questions, the types of questions she asked set her parents and teachers on edge.

As a baby, she did not flit about randomly like infants and toddlers do. She was not easily distracted or delighted by the things that most babies are delighted by.

She was a strange child.

Her introspection was so extreme that in those first months of life her parents thought she might be developmentally disabled. They had no way of knowing that in those moments she was communing with the voices of her ancestors. 

She was focused, balanced, and cautious. The evidence of her determinative spirit showed clearly through everything she did.

She repeated sounds and gestures in patterns that quickly became noticeable to her parents. The subtleties of her personality, the things they had thought were the ticks of autism, were in fact her measured and purposeful quest to learn.

Kathy was motivated by a deep desire to communicate, to be understood.

While she had the cognitive ability to speak, nearly from the day she was born, she did not have the motor skills to form words, those took time to develop. 

She trained herself, quickening the pace by which she would learn to walk, and talk, and she would not be stopped.

Her parents had no desire to get in her way.

In the days when they were still figuring out what their child was doing, if they were to interrupt her or try to redirect her, they would see the flash of anger in her eyes.

This was not the helpless rage of an infant wailing.

It was the anger of a fully formed person who would not be deterred from her path.

She was a frightening child.

Her parents were concerned for her wellbeing and her safety, both.

Kathy was crawling within weeks of being born, and walking within a few short months. In her private moments she was flexing her muscles, gaining strength, and tuning her body to obey her thoughts.

The voices within her guided her. Through repetition and diligence, she gained control of her limbs, she developed dexterity, and coordination.

By her first birthday she was dancing. 

Kathy practiced and practiced in the quiet moments of her day.

At night, in the dark, while her parents slept.

She did not speak a word until she was speaking in complete sentences. Her vocal muscles were the most difficult to master.

She practiced her breathing, she spoke to herself when she thought no one was watching.

She listened to the conversations happening all around her, the dialog without and within.

She knew that her parents were concerned about her.

Every person they ever brought to meet her told them how strange she was. Kathy tried to make things easier on them, but she was not always able to hide the things that she was doing, and she could not control her feelings.

The glands that produced the hormones and chemicals which formed the wetwork of the human emotional spectrum, they required a much greater level of discipline and measures of time to control.   

The direction for her exercises came from deep within herself. From her ancestors, and from her intimate link to the cynergenic field.

In the nous-sphere Kathy communed with those who were not directly linked to her heredity. She was connected to the assembled masters of every tradition, they instructed her in physical disciplines, martial disciplines, cognitive disciplines, the full scope of human knowledge was accessible to her. They guided her and focused her, kept her calm, allowing her to see her own life and experiences in the context of the collective experiences swelling within her.

She discovered a sense of belonging in the world through the interior of her mind.

She formed plans spontaneously, in order to realize her goals, her powerful mind operating beyond the limits of time and space, and then she had to slow everything down, to allow her body time to make the adjustments she was preparing it for.

It was excruciating, she wanted nothing more than to allow her mind to drift away, to leave the cares of the flesh behind, but when she felt that way, the chorus would rise within her, reminding her that she had a purpose to fulfill.

She had to prepare, be quiet, discreet, not draw attention to herself she developed her physical strength, and the strength of her mind.

She took pride in her accomplishments, they were a source of great esteem.

Kathy could shut the outside world off and retreat into the recesses of her interior life, But she could not escape from the voices within, they were always with her. She might ignore them for a time, but she could not depart from them, and even if she died, she knew that she would remain with them, as with all people, a shadow of herself imprinted on the cynergenic field.

Kathy followed the path of discipline, to protect herself from the world and from what was inside her, both.

Whatever her parents tried to teach her, Kathy took to with ease, despite the moment by moment challenges she endured in dealing with her atavistic connection to the past.

Nevertheless she was still a child, she had ordinary instincts, she wanted to belong to her parents, and for them to belong to her.

She wanted to please them, make them smile, watch them laugh. She did not like it when the things she said or did, or did not do, disturbed them.

Kathy mastered complex tasks without effort.

She had to learn, to pretend to learn from her parents and the adults around her.

This was one of the things that put her parents at ease. It was often the case that they would propose to show her how to do something, like tie her shoes, and she would just do it without thinking because the voices within her supplied her with the method.

This unnerved her parents, she had to learn to slow down and hide these things, even pretend to make mistakes so that they could correct her.

This was an exercise in conformity.

She struggled with the skill of blending in, with hiding her differences.

Her parents came to accept the fact that Kathy was pretending. They could tell because she was not good at it, and also because she would almost always shift to a pattern of action that was better, more efficient, quicker, more streamlined than what they had taught her.

For Kathy to get along she learned to be silent, to listen, to wait, to let the others fail. She had to be content that she knew the answers and had to resist the temptation to seek the reward of praise.

She practiced quietude.

She would not assert herself. She did everything she could to divert attention, seeking only the private recognition of her teachers.

She could not insert herself into the activities of her peers (she had none), she could not correct them, or provide the right answer to problems that were proposed in public settings to her classmates.

She learned to experience success as a personal matter, only harkening to the applause that came from within.

She turned in flawless work.

She reacted negatively to her teachers when they tried to highlight her talents, her knowledge and skills.

This was difficult for her.

Like any child she loved praise, and she had to force herself to eschew it.

More than praise from her teachers, she wanted friends

The other children in class with her, did not like her, they did not like the way she looked at them, or the way she looked through them.

They knew intuitively that she was beyond them

She was alien.

Kathy was unique.

She felt other.

She was different from every human being on the planet, different from all who had ever been.

She embodied the full scope of human potential and its actual realization in time.

She was unique in all the universe, she was born that way.

She was still young when she realized the differences that distinguished her from everyone else she had ever met. She had known empirically that this was the case. Her ancestors within her had said as much, and that estimation was confirmed by the voices of the entities she encountered in the nous-sphere, in Earth’s cynergenic field. Nevertheless, Kathy succumbed to a basic human tendency, which was to assume that the people she encountered were like her, that they shared a common point of view or perspective on the things and events they were witnessing.  

Understanding her differences did not help her manage her feelings, or those of anyone else. She had difficulties.

She knew that it was not her responsibility to control what other people felt. Whether they choose to be in a relationship with her, like her teachers, or whether, like her parents, the role had been thrust on them. 

People were afraid of her.

They either wanted to run away from her, or to exploit her.

Some people simply wanted to examine her, run experiments on her as if she was a laboratory animal.

Her parents were afraid of her, and afraid for her.

They were simultaneously proud of her, and ashamed that they had brought her into the world.

The people who cared for her knew that she suffered, but they could do little about it, some tried to comfort her, most did so only as a convenience to themselves.

Emergence 4.0

Section Four, Kathy

Part Twenty-three, Prodigy

A Novel – In One Chapter Per Week

#Emergence #ShortFiction #365SciFi #OneChapterPerWeek

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