Chapter 3: Felix and the Book (Reprise)
I returned home, somewhat disappointed and frustrated my search turned up very little actual results. I was about to start Team Fortress 2, when I noticed that the strange book we had was stuck a little bit in the desk. I pulled at it, and while the book came out, the lock fell through. The book, after so long, had opened. I flipped open to the first page.
“WARNING: Reading this book has the unfortunate side-effect of ruining everything, as it is corrupt. This cannot be reversed, and I have no way of removing this book from New Infinity. Even if everything is reset to the day before, parts of its influence will still loom around. While this book will chronicle everything the reader has to know about themselves and the town, there are dire consequences. I urge you to NOT READ THIS BOOK.”
On one hand, they make a strong point as why I should not open the book, but on the other hand, this would be all the answers I need. This is what I have been waiting for. I flipped through until I found the chapter on Felix, my main focus. I won’t read much, just enough to get the gist and see if Felix can’t reset everything. He doesn’t need to know I’ve been reading this. I mean, he’ll probably figure out, but it could be anyone. Hey, Francisco and Twitch are trying just as hard as I am to get dirt on him, and he’d expect them to be up to no good more than me.
Felix, the creator of the unofficial digitized civilization New Infinity, was born to rather strong-willed parents who abandoned him in a Boston orphanage to prevent his early death. While nobody (not even Felix) can recall how long he was at the foster home, it was at the very least twelve years. During this time, he was spending evenings at the local library, researching computers. He picked up programming at a young age, and his reliance on cheaper 3.5” floppies led to a strong fascination with condensing code as much as possible.
Well, that’s a start. I took out a sheet of notebook paper and a pen, and started to assemble a timeline of Felix’s fate.
By 1999, Felix was set to go home to Marie and Samuel O’Flannigan, a younger Irish family of a first-generation husband and a newly immigrated wife seeking a better job in America. However, in a morbid twist of the proverbial knife, the couple died in a collision with a speeding semi-truck. Felix waited four days at the door to the foster home for them, before giving up and finding a job early. That July, he applied to a computer databasing company hiring a code cleanup person. Felix got the job almost immediately, and worked with them for eight years. At the time of his acceptance, his ID had stated he was no older than 18.
Based on a number of purchase records, times were tough for young Felix in 2005. Alcohol and illicit substances often ended up on his purchase record, and days would go by before he’d make a food purchase. Eventually, his purchase record contained only a train ticket and an immensely hefty purchase of gasoline, and the bank records have yet to be updated since. He roamed the country before stopping at an abandoned military field in Oregon, and has been living out of there ever since.
…That was it. That was all the information on Felix. The next section talked about the software itself. It was all very helpful, yes, but there had to be more. There had to be! I flipped through again, but could not find any other pages about Felix. Most of it was technical stuff about New Infinity and digitized civilizations in general. I sighed and closed the book. I spent the evening playing Team Fortress 2 as rain fell outside.
The next day, I headed out for school. It was still kind of raining, and there was occasional thunder. I actually really like the rain. There’s something kind of humbling about hearing the thunder or watching rain fall. It wasn’t anything too serious. I packed the book with me, as I felt it could make for some interesting readings. I was still cautious to make sure I was only reading what I had to, as Felix would catch wind of what was going on. I had started a bit of my writing assignment, but wasn’t sure if anyone would believe that a brilliant researcher would contain a tool of ultimate destruction in a glass orb. Seemed really dumb and out-of-character, but it would at least look cool drawn out or whatever. After I finished my lunch, I took the book out of my backpack. “What’cha got there?” Nathan said.
“A book about Felix and New Infinity and stuff.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“We’ve always had it. I think I mentioned it back at the beginning of the year.”
“With the twisted cover?”
I flipped it over, showing them the front. “It’s a bunch of curved shapes and lines, but it’s all fractured-looking. Like it was an image, but someone scrambled all the pieces.”
“That is really odd,” Franklin said, “And another thing that’s odd is all the rain we’ve had. Usually it only rains once or twice a month, and very little.”
“Must be the wet season,” I said, “After all, it is spring.”
“I guess,” he said.
During Felix’s class, Francisco spent the entire period on his phone, writing stuff down that he could find online. I’m guessing it wasn’t much.
I hope it wasn’t much.
I got home and flipped through the book again, looking for some more stuff on Felix. What I found instead, was a chapter labeled “Ashley Smith”.
ns 15.158.61.23da2
