Omar came to in his kitchen, gripping the handle of his refrigerator door. He doesn't know how he got there, or even why he was there in the first place. In this sort of situation, most people would be concerned or confused, but for Omar, he saw it as being, at most, mildly odd.

His interface said, “ … the reason why humanity goes extinct so consistently, let alone how to prevent it. Players are encourage to either, …” but that's when his mind began to wander again. With very, very little thought, Omar decides that he has more pressing issues to deal with than the fate of humanity.

“What was I supposed to do? … Getting something?” he mumbled to himself. Once he realizes why he was there, he says, “Oh yeah!” and grabs the bottle of iced coffee he believes he forgot.

Remarkably, after he finished eating, Omar managed to follow the introductory lecture for several more minutes thereafter. Over that time, the lecture had concluded its fifth and sixth topics and had begun number seven, the final topic.

Welcome!

An Introduction to Reality Break

…

…

5. Skills and basic character stats?

  • Learning and acquiring new Skills

  • Improving basic character stats

  • Returning to Outworld

6. How do I win?

  • No True Win Condition

  • ‘Reality Breaker’ as the End of Player Progression

7. Then what's the point of this?

  • The Goal of the Reality Investigation Program (RIP)

Before Omar even leaves the kitchen, he realizes something else. For some reason, he can't remember what he was doing for most of that time, other than listening to his interface drone on about some “boring stuff.” This was unusual for the half-deranged man-child because, if given the choice, Omar would rather do nothing at all, than do something that was boring.

“What the hell? That's not how it's supposed to work,” he said. “The boring stuff should've done itself.”

When he reached his bedroom, Omar found another surprise. On his desk, next to the mess he made, were three bottles of iced coffee; two of which were still full and unopened.

“What the heck am I doing?” he asked with some concern, because he could no longer ignore the seriousness of this situation. He raised the bottle in his hand to his face and then glares at it with a mix of confusion and disdain. “I don't need another bottle … let alone, three more bottles.”

The situation gets worse the more he thinks about it. Omar could clearly remember drinking from that one opened bottle, back when he had been eating. By the end of the meal, just before he declared his rice sandwich experiment to be a “huge success,” he had only finished half the bottle. Since then, by the look of it, he had yet to drink anymore.

He could recall sitting back in his chair, utterly satisfied, and then briefly closing his eyes. When he tried to remember what happened after that, he could just barely recall opening his eyes, but he could not remember what he was looking at. Beyond that, everything else, except for the voice of his interface, fell into a fuzzy dream like haze. Eventually he became thirsty, but otherwise there was just the several minutes he spent listening to the lecture in earnest. He did this and then simply “woke up” in the midst of grabbing the handle of the refrigerator's door.

There was just the lecture, and then there was the refrigerator door.

Omar's convenient lapses of attention were not perfect, at least compared to the standards held by normal people. However, with his typically minimal standards, they might as well be.

Still, there were times when he'd awoken to find himself in strange situations after allegedly doing even stranger things.

Despite the amazing cognitive feats his unique psychological condition afforded him, Omar was still subject to the limitations of the human brain. This was how many of those strange situations arose, but they continued to happen because he would sometimes find those strange outcomes to be hilarious. There was an element of humor in his madness which was then reinforced by his pathological need to avoid boredom.

Omar turned what would normally be a human failing into a source of amusement, and as a result, such outcomes, strange or otherwise, were encouraged. However, the current situation was not one of them.

For Omar, there was nothing funny about “accidentally doing work,” even though, and unbeknownst to him, that was pretty much what he did all the time. This was ironic in a way that was absolutely and unrecoverably lost on him.

⁂

He placed his most recent bottle on the desk, in line with the other bottles, with the original opened bottle at the other end. On this side of his desk, the line of bottles looked almost inappropriately tidy. On the other side was a mess of paper and electronic components that, along with his keyboard, were shoved into the sort of pile that if photographed and disseminated, would lead to Omar's name being placed on a terrorist watch list. Between the two sides was the intervening mess from what remained of his “rice sandwich” experiment, but that was better left forgotten.

All of the bottles, even the opened one, were wet with beads of condensation that dripped down along the glass surface and onto his wooden desk. Patches of frost also covered portions of the most recent bottle, while the original bottle remained mockingly half-empty. Omar was actually thirsty, but instead of doing the rational and simple thing, he simply sat there while staring at the four bottles of iced coffee.

“Once was very dumb, twice was very strange, but three times!? That's just wrong!” he said, while shaking his head. Omar tried his best to not be overwhelmed by what he was feeling. “It's just disgusting,” he added, trying to put some of those feelings into words.

In getting these extra bottles, it was like some part of him violated a deeply rooted commandment: “thou shall not do more than is absolutely necessary.” He was used to the way other people constantly tried to force him to do more than was necessary, but it was another thing, Omar thought, to do that to himself, even if it was only just some part of him. It was a rule so deeply rooted that, to violate it, was akin to violating Omar himself.

Of course, Omar wasn't aware that, according to this line of thinking, he technically “violated” himself on a regular basis. His frequent tendency to avoid doing difficult things by making everything harder than it needs to be, was one such thing that he wasn't aware of, and so it didn't count.

Suddenly he stands up, grabs the opened bottle of iced coffee, and then resolutely says, “Being thirsty is dumb too!” as if he were some champion of justice proclaiming some ineffable truth. He hesitates because, according to his thinking, “Guzzling iced coffee like this, would be a crime against nature,” and so he only takes a modest gulp, barely more than a sip, that he savors with his eyes closed and all the while, groaning in approval.

After dramatically smacking his lips, he said, “Ahhh, that's sooo good,” and just like that, he was once more at peace with himself and with the world around him. It was as though he'd come home again, and all had been forgiven.

Now it was time for the coup de grâce, where he would finish the rest of the bottle in one blow, guzzling it all at once. In his mind this wasn't hypocritical at all, because he would guzzle it reverently, and that's what really mattered. As he begins, he thinks, “You know what? It doesn't matter. I'll just leave the others—” but was interrupted when only a single drop of iced coffee fell from the now empty bottle. He shouted, “Wwwhat!? Huh!? H—how? …” in shock and disbelief as he glared, uncomprehendingly, at the empty bottle in his hand. “But I didn't drink it,” he said pleadingly, like a child. “I just … but I didn't …,” and then he sat back down while still glaring at the empty bottle.

He looked within himself for answers, and his body confirmed what he already knew. “No. … it's true,” he lamented. “I'm not even thirsty anymore. But—but that was supposed to me drinking that. Me!” He pounded his chest with his fist for emphasis.

As if there was a conspiracy to further deny him the direct experience of drinking his precious beverage, all of the extra bottles were now gone. His desk also appeared to be entirely clean and tidy, but in his heart, it felt paradoxically dirty.

After he absently placed the now lonely, empty bottle on his desk, Omar realized that his hands were slightly wet. With an expression of mouth-gaping horror, he stared at his wet hands as though they were covered in the blood of some heinous act he'd recently committed.

Of course, there was no blood. It was just water.

Nonetheless, the act implied by his slightly moister-than-damp hands was still similarly heinous—at least to him. “What have you done? WHAT have you DONE!?” he asked repeatedly, and accusingly, while staring at his wet hands. It was evidence to him that he did something unnecessary again.

Omar's natural inclination was to shift any blame away from himself and onto someone else. While it was true that he had done these acts, it was only because it happened when he wasn't himself. There ought to be someone else to blame, but in his current state, the act of cognitive dissonance strained even his unnatural abilities, and yet he still managed to blamelessly find fault in himself.

“I was supposed to drink that. I'm supposed to do all the drinking and eating,” he said in a small voice.

That was really the only line that had been crossed. Putting away the extra bottles and cleaning his desk were the very sort of thing that would normally happen during his convenient lapses of attention, but Omar was not currently in the mood to acknowledge that.

Really, it wasn't just the current mood. Omar simply felt violated. Up until now, there was this other part of him that he'd been conveniently ignoring because it had been, by design, literally convenient for him to do so. It had always been at the edge of his awareness, but now it had suddenly become more apparent.

As a sentient human being, Omar at least had the minimal level of self-awareness to qualify as such, and so not even he could be entirely oblivious to the presence of another outwardly acting part of himself. He could, however, easily deny that it was another personality because that other part of him designed itself that way.

Early on in his behavioral deception, Omar read the diagnostic criteria for dissociative identity disorders (like multiple personalities), and then subconsciously recognized that at some point in the future, “society” would try to unfairly press that label upon him. In preparation for that eventuality, he subconsciously avoided developing some of the defining symptoms that would be used to diagnose such a condition. Because this began during Omar's formative years, his dissociative condition never developed into a multiple personality disorder. Technically.

As an example, his dissociative amnesia was never used to forget traumatic events. Instead, he simply and consciously decided that those traumatic events didn't really matter. This technically involved him psychologically processing these traumatic events, and that meant his coping mechanism was mentally healthy in the most unsettlingly ironic way imaginable.

Now, however, he was faced with the reality that this violation had actually been an act of betrayal.

“I trusted you,” he began saying, almost mournfully, to his hands. “I trusted you, but you took advantage of my greatest weakness; you took advantage of me when I wasn't paying attention!” Despite his impassioned denouncement, his hands remained silent.

As a point of fact, Omar had many, many great weaknesses, but this was not one of them. It wasn't much of a “weakness,” at all, and if anything, it was one of Omar's greatest strengths. And for the record, ever since his first year of high school, most of the people around Omar that had to endure his antics, made regular use of this “weakness.” Furthermore, because this exploitation was so often to Omar's benefit, he did not mind it in the slightest.

His parents even went beyond this to actively encouraged others to exploit their son in this way, sometimes to the point of practically begging.

They wouldn't have characterized their actions as begging; but it was begging. There was little else that one could call their desperation to convince their son's teachers to rely upon Omar's chronic inattentiveness.

In his first year of high school, Omar's parents spent several weeks repeatedly trying to explain how, “Omar learns best when he's not paying attention.” But his teachers did not buy it, at least, not initially. Their skepticism was understandable, and professionally so, given how this statement implied something that went against the accepted bounds of developmental psychology and common sense.

It was only after his parents finally added, “… and he's less annoying,” that his teachers agreed to a small trial run in order to see this for themselves.

That “trial run” never ended.

Thereafter, and until he graduated from high school, Omar had special permission to play with his Gameboy, PlayStation portable, or any other portable gaming device during class, but only if it was on mute and he did not use headphones. Additionally, he was allowed to ignore everything around him whenever he was reading one of his books, regardless of whether it was fiction, or some “boring” nonfiction book that he was being paid to read.

This was how most people saw Omar during his high school years.

While walking, Omar was more than capable of safely navigating street traffic and crowded halls, even though while doing so, he would almost never look up from his game or book. Like this, he could easily make his way to school, to his home, or into other people's homes; certain business establishments, and other places he shouldn't even be able to reach.

When the police came to talk about the numerous complaints and “sightings” of a “creepy boy with a book,” his parents knew they had to have a serious talk with their mildly psychotic idiot of a son.

⁂

“… I don't know, it's just illegal,” his mother had said. “And Judge Judy's not even a real judge. That's just a TV show.”

This was incorrect. Judge Judy was in fact a retired judge in the state of New York. Neither Omar nor his parents knew this, but Omar got the point just the same.

“I understand, ma'am,” he had said, and she knew he meant it.

His father stepped in and began to say, “You know what!? This is just—” but stopped when his wife gave him a stern look and mouthed, “what are you doing?” The man had been visibly irate but completely silent throughout the entire conversation thus far, largely because he didn't trust himself to speak. “I'll be right back,” he said, and his wife understood. An interruption like this required one of them to use certain “tricks” to keep their chronically inattentive son seated while also preparing to recapture his attention once the other returned.

He came back sooner than his wife had anticipated, noticeably angrier and carrying a rather thick textbook. Fuming and ready to lay down the law, he stormed into the living room like he had a score to settle, but then stopped abruptly when he noticed his wife was still working. His entire demeanor changed, including his anger, which seemed to deflate somewhat while he simply stood there, quietly, like an actor patiently waiting for someone to say, “action.”

Meanwhile, Omar's mother continued working, uninterrupted. She would say, “Hey, Omar,” and then between her and their vacant-eyed son, she would dangle a crystal that hung from a string. Even when he was a toddler, Omar's parents knew that he responded well to shiny things. The very moment that the dangling crystal appeared, Omar would sit up, completely transfixed by the sparkling stone, and going so far as to lean forward while slowly reaching for the shiny thing. Then his mother would hide the stone behind her other hand and Omar's vacant-eyed stare would return as he instantly lost interest.

This repeated itself a few more times until Omar's mother said, “Hey, Omar,” again, but without bringing the crystal back out. When she caught his attention, she pointed towards her own face while quickly saying, “hey, hey” several times. Omar's eyes would focus on her face and then he'd suddenly flinch like he finally just realized why this woman looked so familiar.

She turned and nodded at her husband who quietly said, “thank you,” and took that as his cue to continue where he left off. He picked up the scene right after his dramatic entrance when he'd just stormed back into the living room. He took several angry stomping steps and then stopped, still several meters away from his son.

A seated Omar, who felt like there ought to be something interesting nearby, was busy searching expectantly about himself despite being uncertain as to what he was looking for. When his father suddenly appeared to be standing, the teenager smiled and tried his best not to look surprised. “Wasn't he just sitting on the couch?” he wondered to himself.

Without waiting, the man said, “Here!” in a frustrated growl, and then immediately thew the large and heavy book at his son like a Frisbee.

It was, in all, absolutely genuine and well-done performance.

Teenage Omar, who had his hands folded politely on his lap, caught the book at the last possible moment so that he wouldn't have to waste the effort of raising his arms too high. It was a display of preternatural hand-eye-coordination, and yet no one in the room seemed impressed.

Omar said, “Sir?” while he held his hand out, palm up, like he was waiting for a tip. In case that wasn't clear enough, he gestured “give me money.”

“In a week, I'll have a test ready for you,” his father said loudly, and Omar gestured more insistently. “You know what!?” he said, “I am not going to pay you a—” but then his wife looked at him dangerously while reaching for something. Her body language suggested that even though she loved her husband, she was ready to jump up from her seat and lunge at him with a knife. “In—instead, I will … ” and he paused to think, as though his next words were a matter of life or death, “d—drive you … anywhere you want, no questions asked, but … uhm—uhh within 30 minutes of here … and on normal roads—” and then his wife stepped in with “—AND while obeying traffic laws.” Omar's father nodded approvingly and said, “R—right, right. Also … uhm … ” and his wife shrugged while silently indicating that she couldn't think of any other conditions to add.

Before he could say anything more, Omar spoke instead, saying, “Fifty-three,” mechanically.

His father said, with confusion, “Fifty-three—uhm, minutes?”

Omar, who had thought that 30 minutes seemed a little bit short, nodded and said, “Yes sir.” By then, he was used to his parents' uncanny ability to accurately guess what he was thinking.

“That's each way, isn't it?” his wife asked in growing realization. Omar nodded, as he too was starting to understand what he was thinking about. She began to say, “But if they ask or call—” to Omar who interrupted her with his own question, asking, “Do you mean before purchasing, ma'am?” but it wasn't really a question.

This was a common concern his parents had. “… and just what do you expect us to say when they,” meaning the police, school, fire department, etc… “call us to ask about you?” is how it typically went.

Ever since he realized that the question was rhetorical, in that they were not actually asking him to create some sort of script for them to use, it had been relatively easy to address this concern, preemptively, before they even voiced it. His mother bit her lip while his father approached the couch where his wife sat.

He quietly asked, “Honey? … ” because he hadn't figured it out yet.

That's when Omar said, “It's just a store. I'll be in-and-out. They'll be expecting me,” and then smiled beatifically while appearing to be eternally grateful.

When Omar's father finally understood, his eyes grew wide.

It wasn't really a store; it was factory that dealt with industrial chemicals. Omar had a “chemistry set”—and he did … things with it.

Actually, his parent's suspected that he had two such sets, with the other set hidden somewhere and likely full of chemicals from their agreed upon prohibited list of “substances that could turn our house into a Superfund site.” As savvy as his parents were, they grossly underestimated the number of hidden “chemistry sets” he had.

This understanding overwhelmed Omar's father and left him in denial. This was very much one of those situations that he would say, “I'm just an architect,” because she was a molecular biologist. However, the molecular biologist crossed her arms and sat back on the couch, her mannerisms and body language expressing, “I'm not responsible for this one,” while mouthing to her husband, “It's your idea.”

He desperately wanted her to intervene, but knew that she wouldn't after invoking the “you break it, you fix it,” rule.

The architect closed his eyes, and said, begrudgingly, “… Yes. It's a deal.” He opened his eyes and saw Omar standing right in front of him, holding out his hand.

Omar's rapid movement had been a side effect of some martial arts books they paid him to read. They knew he'd never use it offensively, understanding that for some reason, their son did not like to appear outwardly aggressive. It was a brilliant move on their part as it greatly reduced the incidents where his bullies knocked his book or Gameboy out of his hands. Just as with most of their efforts to prepare their son for his eventual journey into the real world, the side effects were strange, but only mildly so.

Omar and his father shook hands while the former said, “I'll do my best! I won't let you down, sir!” excitedly, but with eyes suggesting that the “lights were off” in there. In Omar's “experience,” people at this stage in his negotiations were less likely to back out of a new deal if he wasn't there. After this, there wasn't that much left to do, and that meant that less effort was needed to maintain the ruse.

And so, the hand shake continued, awkwardly, before Omar's father looked at his wife. Her eyes appeared to be nearly as dead as Omar's eyes were vacant, but really, they just reflected how dead tired she was. Both of Omar's parents aged prematurely enough that people had begun to mistakenly assume that Omar was their grandson.

Even though her look said nothing, it was enough to remind the weary-eyed father of their son's recently adopted strange expectation. “Oh! … right …” he said, at first in realization, and then in quiet defeat. “Pizza,” he said, his resignation now complete. Only then did the handshaking finally stop.

At some point, Omar had begun to associate deal-making with takeout food.

“Yes, please,” he said, and then it was like the energy drained from his body. All of his fake cheer and politeness washed away as he sort of fell into a low-energy mode. Then, as if the past ten minutes had just slipped his mind, he looked momentarily confused when he realized that he was holding a book. He said, “oh, yeah,” except it came out as, “Uh. Yeh,” and then shrugged noncommittally.

Genuinely curious about his latest assignment, Omar opened the book and then the lights went out almost immediately. He fell into a full fugue state and began reading the book while walking away.

⁂

When the time came, Omar's father drove him to the industrial factory, and on the way there he said, “You know? There are a lot of laws out there, and some of them are really unfair. Rich people with lawyers who read lots, and lots, of books, don't even get in trouble in the first place.” He knew how rehearsed he sounded, but he correctly assumed that it did not really matter.

The prematurely graying couple had discussed his new plan in depth, but now, while he was talking to his son—or that other part of him that they've learned to deal with—he felt like he was making a deal with the devil. Omar's parents knew that they were crossing a line; some point of no return.

“Uhm, … go on,” he said, and gave the usual indications that he would be listening, even though he would look like he wasn't.

⁂

Like he promised, Omar was in-and-out. He carried two empty paper bags as he left the car, unfolding one of them while he walked out of sight. When he came back, he was carrying a single paper bag that was heavy enough that he needed to use both of his hands.

The young Omar walked along a gravel path that was well-maintained. There were other concrete paths elsewhere, near other buildings, but this was the quickest route to and from the distribution manager's office. Even before he reached the passenger-side door, his father could hear an assortment of clinking sounds from the bag his son carried. Based on those sounds alone, he could tell that the bag contained all sorts of bottles made from various materials like glass, plastic, ceramic, and probably metal too. Neither said anything as they drove away in their car.

On the way back home, Omar couldn't wait to play with the dangerous chemicals he bought. After noticing that he still had that other paper bag, he started to think about something that he wanted to do, and he had an idea of how he might do that. “Good thing I brought two paper bags,” he thought to himself, as he opened the bag and set it on his lap so he could began mixing some chemicals together. While driving along on the highway, all the windows were open, and Omar decided that he was practically inside a giant fume hood, so he didn't have to worry about that. He kept his hands deep inside the bag and out of sight, so as to not frighten his father.

Once they got back into town, Omar said, “Turn right onto Lakeview Road, please,” at the appropriate intersection. His father complied easily enough now that everything seemed to be sealed and safely tucked away. That is, everything but this one bottle his son held. Suddenly Omar said, “Hey, what's that,” while pointed towards the driver's side window.

Omar's father pretended to look, but because it was an obvious distraction, he still kept an eye on his son under the pretense needing to do so to drive.

While watching sideways, he saw Omar toss the glass bottle out through the open passenger-side window, and struggled not to say anything.

For his part, Omar didn't know what was in the bottle, so he had decided to get rid of it as soon as possible.

In the car's rearview mirror, Omar's father looked for the broken remains of a glass bottle on the sidewalk, but instead he saw a puff of purple smoke come out of a sewer grate. Initially, he felt somewhat relieved by the sight of the purple smoke, but this was partly because it reminded him of a chemistry demo his wife showed him back when they were dating. He even remembered the reactants because they were fairly simple. “Iodine and aluminum?… ” he mumbled before he caught himself. The deal was “no questions asked,” and if he broke these deals too brazenly, his son would develop a new annoying habit like the thing with the pizza.

However, Omar said, “Nope,” mechanically, before adding, “It's okay,” because it was already too late.

His father deflated a little, sighing self-consciously at the reminder that he lived with two—or at least one-and-a-half—geniuses. Then his gaze returned to the rearview mirror, which caused his expression to rapidly change from mild curiosity to, “what the hell have I unleashed!?”

Omar quietly watched his father's reaction and felt oddly satisfied by it. He hadn't even turned to look at the chaos he had wrought upon this idyllic suburban neighborhood. When he did, he started laughing and said, “haha. Whoops.”

Surprisingly, while looking at the foam that was coming out of the now distant sewer, Omar's father was distracted by his thoughts regarding the repercussions of the new deal he made. Stopping at the intersection, he turned left to get back to the route he was on before the ominous detour. Taking one last look at the distant foam that was, by then, covering the street, Omar's father wondered how that much foam could come from just one bottle.

The foam drifted further down the street and onto the nearby yards before it completely evaporated, but there was no one present to see that. Even after several days, authorities never found the source of the gas leak. There was nothing they could do, and the smell remained in that neighborhood for several months thereafter.

⁂

Amongst his peers at school, Omar was infamous but mostly ignored. Those who knew to leave well-enough alone, avoided him like they would a homeless person on a sidewalk. However, that same infamy attracted the unwanted attention of the occasional bully that didn't know any better, as well as the sorts of people that must touch a hot stove in order to learn not to do that.

Outside of school, Omar was known as, “that creepy boy with a book,” and was generally regarded as being an omen of dark tidings; like a sign of unfortunate things that happened, or had yet to come. In his small suburban community, he was to his neighbors what the Flying Dutchman was to sailors; from afar, he seemed like an ordinary boy that was perhaps lost and in need of help, but once approached, rather than being an ordinary boy, he was something well-beyond the help that any mortal could provide. Of course, except for that last part which was spot-on, Omar wasn't really a bad omen or anything like that. However, this impression was reinforced by to the unsettling fact that he “liked to watch.”

Eventually, though sometimes a bit after-the-fact, Omar would show up at most public spectacles, tragedies, and other inexplicable accidents. His acts of petty revenge were often as deniable as they were convoluted, but only a small fraction of all local calamities were actually his doing. Still, he tended to avoid crowds because he liked his personal space, and then there was that transparent plastic rain poncho of his that made it easy to read or use one of his portable gaming devices while walking around during inclement weather. And if it was a rainy evening, it was only natural that he'd stand under a lit street lamp, if available, to read his book. There was often quite a lot of downtime at these sorts of events, but luckily Omar would always have something to do while he waited for the interesting parts to happen.

It was like this, albeit downwind, that Omar watched the authorities as they searched futilely for the fake gas leak. He had to leave as soon as someone pointed and said, “it's that creepy boy with the book.”

In any case, as it turns out, the foam-based fake-gas-leak attack had just been an amusing mistake. His targets were on “Lakeview street” not “Lakeview road,” even though the latter was listed in the high school student registry that he stole.

The intended targets had been a pair of siblings who once shoved and pushed him as though he were a giant beachball. This had been in elementary school, and it only happened once. Omar was saved by a teacher who intervened and then ensured that the siblings were subsequently punished. By this point in high school, Omar had actually forgotten all about the incident, and was only reminded recently when one of the now teenaged siblings approached him to apologize for how they treated him.

This had been a mistake. As far as Omar was concerned, there were no statutes of limitations when it came to his petty acts of revenge.

Eventually, that family moved into a crappy apartment in the city while they finished paying off the mortgage on their unsellable house.

Meanwhile, after the third such fake gas leak, other kids in the small suburban community began to suspect that these strange events were of Omar's doing. This wasn't due to any actual evidence they had, but was rather based mostly on the fact that “the creepy boy with a book” had been seen around town more often than usual. If anything, that would technically be evidence in favor of Omar's innocence, since that meant he had been seen in many places where nothing inexplicable occurred. But of course, Omar wasn't innocent.

The cause of these mysterious gas leaks, much like the lingering odor, was left unresolved, but the animosity towards Omar only grew. More than that, his harassment intensified to a degree it had never reached before, but given the deal he made with his parents, this proved to be oddly convenient.

During this period, law enforcement officers frequently visited the Raji home, but it was usually to safely transport the special needs boy that lived there. On these occasions, officers on their regular patrol routes would come across Omar while he was in the process of being harassed and attacked by groups of neighborhood kids. These were vicious moblike assaults, but luckily enough, Omar was never seriously injured. In fact, because of how difficult it was to actually hit the creepy boy with amazing reflexes, some of these kids resorted to throwing rocks, even though none of those ever hit him either. On two such occasions, a thrown rock accidentally hit one of those aforementioned patrolling police cars, coincidently, just as it came around the corner.

Once all the restraining orders and injunctions were approved, Omar was never bullied again. This was the fruit born from the Faustian deal that Omar's parents made with their son.

“Isn't it our duty to educate our child about the law and the legal foundations of our society?” his father began. “And some children grow up to become lawyers and judges by studying—”

“Oh, cut the crap, Nicolae.” his wife said, interrupting him. ”That's supposed to be morality; you know, the difference between right and wrong? Omar doesn't have any morals.”

It was early in the day, just after Omar had left for school. This was before the trip to Omar's favorite industrial factory, and even before he finished reading the introduction to legal theory book his father had thrown at him. The couple were alone in their bedroom arguing about this new plan that Nicolae had devised.

“Yasmin,” he said, imitating his wife. The glare she gave suggested that this was a mistake. He tried again, “Honey, what else are we going to do? He'd be in prison right now if they caught him doing just one of the many things we think he might have done.” The last part he almost whispered conspiratorially while looking around, before adding normally, “Lawsuits are safer than his chemistry set.”

Yasmin bit her lip. It was a good point, but she had a counter for it. “It's not just going to be lawsuits, and he won't just use it to avoid doing illegal things—he'll use it to avoid getting caught or worse. You know how vindictive he is. Revenge is the one thing that he goes out of his way to do.”

“Of course, people use the law to act with impunity. Corruption and abuse of the legal system are just as much a part of our society as anything else.” Yasmin looked like she wanted to say something, but she simply frowned silently. Then Nicolae said what he thought his wife was having trouble admitting. “Why should we—I mean—he have to suffer because we can't afford a team of high-class lawyers?” It was an honest Freudian slip, and one that neither would disagree with.

“There's no way we can afford to pay him to read through an entire law school curriculum,” she countered, obviously swayed by Nicolae's argument. In truth, this was the part of his plan he knew his wife would have the most trouble accepting.

He looked away evasively before speaking. “We could probably convince him to do this for free … ” and he let his words linger for a moment to test his wife's reaction. This time, for a change, she hadn't figured it out yet. “You already said it yourself. We just have to convince him of this.”

Yasmin gasped, her eyes widening as she realized what he meant. She pointed at him and said, accusingly, “You want to empower our son to commit crimes for his weird sociopathic revenge hobby!”

“They're only crimes if he does something illegal,” he said calmly. However, mentally he added, “and it's only illegal if he gets caught.”

Nicolae didn't have to explain what he meant or what he had in mind. Yasmin immediately understood his reasoning and that, by implication, there were no better options.

“It had to be something I was exposed to while I was pregnant,” she said suddenly and without preamble. “Is that why he's like this?” she added, asking a question she had asked many times before.

As a molecular biologist, Yasmin dealt with a variety of chemicals and biological agents. Whenever the stress of raising Omar reached a certain point, she would start asking these sorts of questions. “Or maybe it started with my mother first, in some dormant state, and then it was triggered by something I was exposed to. Maybe I just need to go further back to—” but he drew her close and for a moment, neither said anything.

“Are you going to start experimenting on people again?” he finally asked.

With grim amusement she said, “That's sort of my job, you know.”

“Well, it is now,” he said kindly in response. “And anyways, you know what I mean,”

In recent years, since Omar's diagnosis, Yasmin began researching congenital disorders in humans, even though it wasn't the sort of thing that a molecular biologist would typically study. To justify her investigation, she had to shift the focus of her research to genetics, and then specifically to epigenetics. In pursuit of finding an explanation for her son's existence, she pushed the limits of ethical human experimentation by hiding experiments within her experiments. Even today, she still keeps track of all her test subjects and the children born since the official end of her experiments.

“I thought, if I knew what happened, how he got this way, then I could do something with that. But it's isn't like I could fix him, regardless of what I found.”

“He isn't broken, Yasmin. He's just different; he's not like most people.”

“He's not like anyone!” she said excitedly, but with a mother's concern and a scientist's curiosity. “I looked, and I can't find a single report of anyone even remotely like him. He's our son, but he's—he's not even anything like us. Just imagine what we could do if we could remember and understand everything we ever read. He could do so much, but he doesn't want to do anything! How can he live like that? Doesn't he get bored? When I was his age, I already knew I wanted to become a biologist.”

When the words stopped, Yasmin seemed to return to herself. Nicolae gave her a moment to catch her breath before he responded, somewhat placatingly. “I know honey. That's just how it is. I know it's hard for us to understand, but that boy has no ambition. But you know what? That's why this will work. He won't become a scientist but he also won't become a supervillain.”

She laughed at that, but then said seriously, “It's amazing sometimes—the things that he can do. If he wanted to, he could change the world—”

“Or he could destroy it,” Nicolae added. Yasmin gave him a worried look. “For good or bad, he's too lazy to change the world.”

There was a brief pause while Yasmin collected her thoughts. In her mind she conceded the argument, but she hated having to say stuff like that out loud. Nicolae understood this because he too preferred to not say such embarrassing things. Yasmin gave her consent by saying, “He does have a sense of self-preservation. So maybe with this he could, accidentally, do something meaningful.”

From there, they discussed the finer details of actually putting this plan to action, but they almost needn't have bothered. Convincing Omar that this would help him with his petty acts of revenge in order to then persuade him to do all necessary work for free, turned out to be frighteningly simple.

And so the couple armed their son with books on legal theory and briefings in case, tort, criminal, and property law. Knowing their son and his tendencies, they figured that those areas of law would have the most immediate use. When they started providing him with a comprehensive collection of local, state, and federal laws and ordinances; police activity logs, and other regularly updated public documents; he took them greedily, like he would when accepting money. Eventually he took the initiative in continuing his study of law, or at least some part of him did.

In the end, the ultimate impact of Omar's new legal powers were as profound and disappointing as his parents thought it would be.

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