Chương 26: Scraping My Knees (05/10/1981)

DATE: Sunday, May 10, 1981 LOCATION: La Jolla, California | The Sand Castle Lower Foundation LOCAL TIME: 08: 00 AM PST Pain is a specific frequency. In my fifty-year-old body, pain was a dull roar—a constant background noise of inflammation and stiff joints. In this five-year-old body, pain was sharp, high-pitched, and immediate. I hung upside down from a steel I-beam anchored six feet above the high-density impact mats of the Lower Foundation.

We were forty feet below the La Jolla sandstone, encased in two feet of self-healing Roman Concrete. The subterranean air was cold, smelling of chalk, sweat, and the faint, salty dampness of the Pacific Ocean bleeding through the bedrock.

"Breathe," the voice said from below.

"Blood to head. Mind clear." I opened my eyes. Standing on the mat below me was Chan Kong-sang. Jackie Chan. Right now, he was twenty-seven years old. Ostensibly, he was here under the Warner Bros. development deal to choreograph The Usual Suspects. In reality, he was my Sensei.

"Drop," Jackie commanded. I unhooked my legs and fell. In the air, I didn't think; I calculated. My forty-pound body twisted. I landed in a deep crouch, forcing the kinetic energy down into my quads to protect my open growth plates, slapping the mat with my palms to dissipate the remaining shockwave.

"Good," Jackie said, circling me. He moved like water.

"But too loud. You land like rock. Land like feather." This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. He swept my leg. It was a test. He did it every day. My peripheral vision caught the shift in his hips. I didn't try to block it—my pliable, pediatric bones would snap against his conditioned shins. I also couldn't outrun it; my five-year-old nervous system lacked the myelin sheaths required for adult fast-twitch reaction times.

I had to move before he did. Anticipation over speed. I jumped a fraction of a second before his strike launched. Tucking my knees to my chest, I let his leg pass through the empty air beneath me and rolled backward, coming up on my feet five yards away. Jackie smiled. A genuine, beaming smile.

"Fast monkey," he laughed. I nodded, grabbing a towel.

"Thank you, Sensei. Same time tomorrow." I needed to shower and get back to Carlsbad. It was Mother's Day, and I had promised to be a normal five-year-old for the afternoon. DATE: Sunday, May 10, 1981 LOCATION: Carlsbad, California | The Tillman Backyard LOCAL TIME: 06: 00 PM PST The sun was setting. The smell of barbecue smoke hung in the air. I sat on the edge of the sandbox. My pregnant mother, Sue, walked over. She looked happy.

She wore a new dress—bought with clean, untraceable money from the Fractal Systems dividend.

"Hey, you," she said, sitting next to me in the grass.

"Hi, Mom. Happy Mother's Day." She put her arm around me.

"You've been busy," she said.

"I like to be busy." She turned my face to look at her. Her eyes were young, clear, and worried. She didn't know about the shell companies, the concrete patents, or the bunker in La Jolla. But a mother always knows when her child is carrying too much weight.

"You know you can just be a boy, right?" she said softly, brushing a smudge of dirt from my cheek.

"You don't have to save us, Chad. Dad and I... we're okay." A massive, suffocating lump swelled in my throat.

"I know, Mom," I lied.

"Promise me," she said.

"Promise me you'll play. You'll scrape your knees." I looked across the lawn. My brothers were wrestling in the grass, completely oblivious to the shifting tectonic plates of the global economy grinding beneath their feet.

"I promise," I said. She kissed my forehead and walked away to help Nick. I looked down at my hands—small, soft, devoid of calluses. Jackie Chan was teaching me how to survive the physical world. Bill Gates was building the weapon for the digital one. The GUI wasn't just a convenient way to open files. It was the interface through which humanity would process reality for the rest of the century. And Fractal Systems held the keys. I wasn't just a boy. I was the Admin.

And I was about to set the permissions for the entire world.