©®2006

The First Place

It began with the breaking of light. No fire’s flame or simple flashlight, but light itself was broken on April 16th, 2030 at the Kansas State Fair.

The light-breaker’s name was Andrea Stark. She was 16 years old. She was the only participant in the Fair who was born blind.

The fair drew an impressive crowd, especially Andrea’s project titled:
“The Internal Frequency.”
The time was 12:34 pm, and people wished to see one more project before lunchtime called to their bellies.
The crowd around Andrea was whispering with speculation and guesses as to what her bizarre creation could or would do. She listened to their comments, barely containing her enthusiastic glow.

The next few moments would change the world forever.

She would be the cause of it all.

Her project resembled a spider’s web in the shape of a diamond.
Piano wire created a prism with a total of 6 corners.
The topmost held a moth trapped inside a light bulb.
The bottom-most point was a suspended salamander, encased in what appeared to be household Jello.
The 4 perimeter points each held a seemingly random object as well.
The furthest right was a glass-enclosed violin, smaller than a human hand.
The following item was a bag of broken glass.
The next held a thick clear liquid.
The final item suspended by the piano wire prism was a dissected horse's eye, which gathered the most attention from both the children and gathering flies.

Andrea Stark approached her project, holding a tuning fork that looked as homemade as she did. Soon they would see the world as she did - the world she was given the key to.
As Andrea reached the microphone, she appeared to be in a trance, as if she heard a sound that hid far beyond normal hearing. Beside her sat a computer with an audio spectrum wave visible to all onlookers. Behind the monitor, was an overblown picture of the Kansas skyline, its outlined peaks and valleys mimicked the computer monitors waveform display, which in turn matched the real skyline that surrounded the Kansas State Fair.

Andrea stood holding the tuning fork against the right side of her exposed belly, which looked to be coated in a type of thick brown grease.
The world of darkness she had embraced since birth had revealed to her a great secret. It was time to share that secret with the world.

The crowd quieted.

With an innocent voice she spoke:
“I apologize to those of you who have been altered by the hands of man. Seek each other. To the rest, welcome.”

Smirks and nervous comments arrived as Andrea turned and activated the computer behind her. The speakers fed back a frequency that grew louder and somehow more organic with each passing millisecond. The crowd’s uneasiness grew as they collectively felt a presence. Something ancient and alive brewed just below the surface of their available senses.

The crowd was now completely silent, confused on a cellular level.

A second later the spider-web structure began to turn, despite any evidence that it could. As the sound grew, the frequency vibrated the piano wires and the assorted items in the project shook until they bounced in a dance that seemed to taunt nature itself.

The waveforms on the monitors slowly aligned...the frequency perfectly matching the surrounding mountains and valleys of greater Kansas. The outline burned into people's memories like a sunspot.

This was the last image most human eyes would ever see. This was the moment Andrea Stark had been shown visions of since birth.
In a moment stiller than an iguanas stare - all things visual were washed in a black light so complete and viscous, it made the memory of sight seconds earlier seem something from a child’s fairytale.
When the light returned, the Kansas State Fair attendance had abruptly gone from 21,000 to just five in less than a nanosecond.
To the remaining humans left in the frequencies wake, it appeared that the apocalypse had just occurred. After hours of searching the fairgrounds the five remaining humans found each other, confused and afraid.

In the years that passed, humanity slowed to a snails pace.
State by State, country by country survivors gathered - harvesting their knowledge and theory's as to why they were left behind. The remaining humans represented less than one-hundredth of a percent of the world’s past population.

It took the world's remaining scientists 23 years to finally discover the key as to why they had been abandoned. As to why they hadn't disappeared like the majority of humanity had.

Countless tests and hypothesis pointed a finger to the same piece of human flesh.

The Earth's population now stood at 9014...and every human accounted for had one scar in common.
A wound that now symbolized their rejection to humanity's evolution.

The End.