When I got home, my parents fanned all over me, and I let them. I told them the same story that I had told the soulless office aid and I let them baby me. The bruises and cuts did hurt, and though I played it off at school, the macho act took a lot of effort.
I decided to show the crate of flashlights to my parent. I told them a friend had given it to me, and that was true. My writer was my friend, mostly.
As usual, I skipped my math homework. That class was so easy that the classwork was more than enough to prepare me for Mr. Torrigino's tests. Also, his tests were super awesome.
I showed my dad all the settings, from the different lights to the night vision and the fact that the x-ray wasn’t true x-ray. Crouched over the box, my dad twisted the ring up, and it locked into a new position. He pointed it to the oak tree, and the tree's golden glow disappeared. At least, it disappeared for me.
"It's gold," he said. I nodded, not sure what to say.
He had made it go away for me. It was possible. My writer made me a way out.
Next, my dad pointed it to himself. "What color am I?"
"Green," I said from memory. "Like a redwood forest."
He smiled and turned it to me. Everything's glow disappeared. "You're blue!"
I joined his smile. "Yeah." I sighed in relief. As long as the light was shining at me, the glowing would go away. That was one solution.
We took a walk down our street, looking at different living things. My dad hypothesized about what the lightless-light was illuminating, from a living force to transferred energy. Eventually, even though I wasn't offering any ideas of my own, he also settled on the idea that it illuminated one's soul.
That's when we ran into a soulless one.
She was maybe seven years old. Cute little girl. She was riding her bike in her front yard, doing something perfectly seven-year-old like. But when I looked at her without the light, it was missing. And from my dad's expression, I knew he noticed it, too.
She was soulless.
Against my dad's judgement, I walked up to the girl. "What's your name?"
"Sarah," she said, her eyes sparkling blue. Her hair was so blond it was the color of polished silver.
"How old are you?" I asked. "For real. You understand?"
Sarah's gaze drifted to her house. "I'm not supposed to say," she said. "But I'm a hundred and thirty-two."
My dad gasped behind me. Most seven-year-olds had trouble counting that high, and yet this girl, this soulless being, was able to say it off the top of her head.
I heard the flashlight click off. The grass's pink glow returned to my vision.
"What happened?" I asked. My dad looked increasingly worried, but I wanted to know. It was an accident that I was shown this world, but now that I was here, I wanted to know exactly what it was.
"You don't know?" Sarah asked. "Aren't you one, too?"
I looked down at my hands and sure enough, they were still glowing. "No," I said. "But I can see you."
Sarah leaned in close to my ear. "I'm a collector," she whispered. My dad looked like he wanted to jump out of his skin.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
Sarah reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of soul marbles. They pulsed with the same light as Nathan's when they were outside of the beam.
"You can see them, right?" she asked. I nodded.
"What are those?" my dad asked. In the end, he was just as curious as I was. Caution only when so far in times of curiosity.
Turn on the light," I said. As soon as he snapped it on, the souls' auras disappeared for me.
"Why?" my dad asked.
"Power," Sarah said. She picked up a maroon one and dropped the rest in her pocket. She threw it at the bicycle. Suddenly, it started moving on its own. It glowed maroon until my dad trained the light on it.
"Is it possessed?" my dad asked, backing up.
"No," Sarah said. "It's just autonomous." She laughed. "You think they're actually souls? You think you actually have a soul?" She spread her tiny hands, and with one sharp look at the bike, she retrieved the marble. "It's just code. Programming. A locked consciousness." She pocketed her nugget of "code."
"Sarah," a woman called from inside the house. Suddenly, the girl's face lost its hardness and fell into childhood innocence.
"Coming Mommy," Sarah shouted, skipping with her bike back to the garage. Just before she disappeared inside, she turned around and winked at me.
My dad and I walked back home in silence. The implication was clear. There were people out there, soulless, collectors, whatever you call them. They collected consciousness from the dead, and put their code, their intelligence, to work.
And I was part of their world.
Author's note: Yup. That's what happens when you give me a sci-fi prompt and I smash it with my friend's soul-stealing and mix it with a bit of action. Hoped you liked it!
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