“Huh?”

I should have noticed how Lucas was no longer looming over me. Or, how I was now looking down at Mrs. Kauffman who had been the same height as me. I thought it had been a simple matter of straightening my back and no longer slouching, an unconscious habit I’d carried over from bending over at my laptop―maybe I'd gone long without refreshing my prescription glasses. In fact, I don’t remember wearing them since the incident.

Of course that is why we drove all the way out there― to start dropping some bombshells.

“ Lu, I think what you've not been trying to say is that I was abducted by aliens,” I said grinning. I knew if I did otherwise, he'd find a way to squirm out of the issue. After worrying his lip in contemplation he said,

“That's about right—”

“There…was that so hard?” I said punching him on the shoulder.

“Ow!” he yelped. Damn, I must have forgotten that I was no longer an average Joe; I must have used more force than I intended. Something blinked into existence in the top right of my vision—I blinked and blinked again. They were still there, two bars of forward slashes arraigned parallel and horizontal to one another. There had to be about 10 forward slashes for the upper and the same number for the lower—

”You're doing it again,” Lucas said. “What are you looking at?

”A moment,” I said, holding up a hand. The upper bar's slashes were scarlet, like the led indicator on the truck stereo while the lower bars were a vivid chemical blue color. I think its name was YInMn or something along those lines. As soon as I turned my attention away from them, they seemed to fade into the background like an auto-hidden taskbar.

“What do you know about the scarlet and blue bars in the corner of my vision?” I inquired as my eyes flitted to the side. Which was comical because they did not actually exist in Euclidean space; they faded in when I was looking and faded out when I wasn't. That spoke to some element of intent in it.

“What bars in the corner of your vision?” he asked

“Uh, of course,” I facepalmed. “How can I explain something only I can see?—”

Then I realized, smacking my fist to my palm,“Think video games, ”

Before we stepped out of the truck's cab, I paused to mull why I was so readily accepting of the alien technology. I should have been panicking that there was something nesting against the base of my skull, or flowing inside my veins. It wouldn't have changed a thing.

If whatever alien entity had made me easily pliable and accepting of this, and even gone as far as to effect both physiological and cosmetic changes, then there wasn't much I could really do about it.

In a sense, they held the strings. Whether I lived or shed my mortal coil, they could do it with a running commentary. Thus far, I had no reasons to think they were benevolent but neither had they shown any overt signs of being malicious. I shove the thought that I was some experiment at the back of my mind. It wouldn't have done me any good if I worried about the dues they would soon collect.

Even if I were to flip out in hysterics, or succumb to the feeling of helplessness the end result would remain the same. Of course, I did say I would go with the flow, which meant testing the hell out of these alterations. There was no better baseline to measure myself against than my dear muscle-head of a friend.

Never had I seen Lucas so enthusiastic after undergoing an equivalent of 5 stages of grief in five minutes. Which included crying-laughing, bonking his head against the car horn and screaming like that one marmot who realized their mate had just sired one too many mouths to feed.

“Okay, all right—” he muttered to himself as he skipped on the spot in the way sprinters did. “So, this is how we want to do this huh? The scientific method? Improvise, overcome, adapt eh?”

“How can you say something so right yet sound so wrong?” I shook my head wryly. “ You had me in the first half,”

“You're smiling—” he said, giving me a lopsided smile that couldn't have been anything but an attempt to repress a grimace. “Who are you and what did you do with K?” He chuckled. Honestly he was right, I was more of a scowl kind of guy—when we'd first gotten to know one another he'd jokingly told me I was emo. I think I was one generation too late for that. I preferred to think of myself as ascribing to stoicism.

“Less talking, more doing―” I said as I limbered up. My bones let out satisfying pops that startled my friend Lucas.

“ Bruv!”

The first exercise we did was a sprint that would have us transverse the distance between the pickup truck and an old picket fence. As soon as we’d taken a running stance, I noticed the two bars fade into corporeality where the hinge of my glasses would have been if I was wearing them. Our starter was a timer set to start beeping after 30 seconds; both of us waited with bated breath as we stared straight ahead.

My breath was evened out and my heart rate was still at rest despite the anxiety of the impending trial. Despite that, my other senses were acute enough that I could hear Lucas’ clench his fists, and the crunching of soil as he shuffled his feet to prime his stance. When the beep-beep-beep of the stopwatch finally rang out, specifically the first part of that sound, I was already in motion.

I felt the shots of dopamine underneath the adrenaline that hit my bloodstream with every falling step. I could imagine them being dispensed like the nitrous hissing into the engine with every gear shift and depression of the clutch as I pumped my legs. There was nothing else on my mind except that I was one with the wind―scratch that, I was the wind. I came to a sudden skidding stop as I realized I would almost overshoot the picket fence but I misjudged the distance and had to do the unthinkable or run tilt first into the wood. I did a running flip― and still managed not to break my neck.

“Show off,” Lucas wheezed, hunching over his knees. He came to a stop about five seconds after I did. I was barely winded from the sprint, in fact I bet I could do two more like it before I had to tap out.

“Well? I could bet trophies you set a new world record for sure,” he grinned, shaking his head resignedly. “I've never seen you so happy—” he was right, I could feel my face want to split from the shit-eating grin I was putting out right then.

“What's happened to your bars?”

“Hmm,” I hummed as I cast my awareness towards the two bars, only the scarlet side had shown any changes. Two of the forward slashes had been depleted―as I watched, I could see the second to last filling up. If I squinted I could almost tell that there were tiny pixels being highlighted every second but staring at it too much made my eyes water―I didn’t understand that mechanism at all. I told him what I'd seen.

“That proves it. That's endurance…or in gamer terms, stamina,” he said as he wiped off the sweat beading on his brow with the back of his wrist.

“ I guess so too, ” I reiterated. “ I thought I would be health—hell, half expected the blue one to go down instead since we don't have magic and all.”

“ Wow bruv, mana will always be blue but stamina will never—” he paused as if it'd come to him. “Wait for you to think there could be magic?” His brows literally flew off his face.

“ I dunno,” I shrugged. He had a point— but what would aliens do with magic? Or was it the, 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ kind of thing? My expression must have let it slip because he was quick to say,

“Wow!” . Lucas threw up his hands—he turned around. “What are you waiting for? Stare at a rock or shoot a fireball—do something!”

Dare I say, I hadn't the vaguest idea of how to do magic. I stared at a rock to no avail, it did not suddenly implode or move; I only got a migraine for my troubles. I even did Lucas' visualization at the expense of looking silly.Besides that, the blue bar never went down.

“We're definitely missing something,” Lucas said, frustrated on my behalf. He came up with theories as to why magic was impossible, throwing lexicon from fantasy books he'd read. He even called me a muggle—did not know how to feel about that.

While I could see the allure of doing the impossible with some aethereal force bordering on fantasy, I didn't feel like I'd lost anything. Because how else would the appeal of colors to a blind person?

Before our dear muscle weeb could descend into more theorycrafting, his phone rang.

“Hold a sec,” he said, raising to pick the call. “ Hello Ma…huh? We were just by the weald catching some fresh air that's all. K? Uh yeah…he's alright why? Huh?” he suddenly went silent. His face suddenly whirled to face me as he screamed, “That's on the news?!”

I winced as that caught my attention. What manner of quandary had the world decided to throw my way now?