1 Chapter 0, New Beginnings

* Beep Beep Be... * The cellphone alarm didn't even have a chance at making noise, as John was long prepared to turn it down. Anxiety was eating at his nerves as today was a big day for his research, if it all worked out the way he planned, that Nobel prize was going to fall right into his lap.

- "Gotta' do everythin' quick! That research won't wait up for me!!" - John said as he quickly got up from bed and ran to the bathroom to take a bath and dress up.

John's research consisted in experimenting with a newly discovered particle, the "Johnon", it a peculiar particle that didn't interact with anything, aside from basic collision, didn't respond to temperature, and required a special equipment to be detected. This equipment was product of a lab accident John had, he was trying to study Tachyons and was quite sure his machine would be able to detect this theoretical particle, to his surprise, the machine did discover something, but not what he was looking for, instead an entirely different particle came up. This particle wasn't something known so John had to name it, at the time he didn't have a good understanding of the particle, so he talked about it with his colleagues seeking advice, even his supervisor was in the equation, but as none had heard about something like that they couldn't suggest a good name for the particle. In one of their department reunions, one of his colleagues jokingly dubbed it "Johnon", the entire room broke into laughter and the joke got running, a month later it was the official name, at the time John didn't know where to hide so people couldn't see his tomato red face from embarrassment.

As John got more familiar with the Johnons, he discovered three basic things: first; Johnons had no momentum, second; Johnons didn't interact with other particles, and lastly; Johnons didn't traverse through solid or liquid matter. This got him thinking, maybe if he could amass a large amount of them in a tiny space, something interesting would happen, as the natural concentration of Johnons in the air was quite thin.

This resulted in almost six months of work, going everywhere to collect these tiny particles and dump them into a container in his lab, he got his friends to help, his colleagues, even his little sister and her friends at uni. The collection was fruitful, a large amount of Johnons were collected and waiting in his lab ready for the experiment to start.

As excited as he was, John was no fool, he wouldn't go out of the house without a healthy breakfast, nor he would run on the streets, all these things could make anyone's day go wrong, and today, nothing could go wrong. John got his breakfast, and went out of his house, all the way to his lab, a couple of blocks away. On his way there, distracted by his thoughts, he failed to notice a person running at high speeds in collision course with him yelling at him,

- "OUTA' MY WAY!!!" - but these words fell into deaf ears, John's mind wasn't on Earth at this moment, completely walking in automatic mode, the outcome was obvious, the person failed to dodge John on time and crashed into John, as both fell down on the street John luckily was uninjured, but another story was that of the runner, he was going so fast that he flew a couple of meters in the air before falling head first into the pavement knocked out cold instantly in the process. John a bit dazed got up and quickly approached the unconscious person.

- "Hey! Are you alright?" - John asked worriedly, he knew that if the person was awake, he could move them, but in other case it was best to call an ambulance, as moving an unconscious person could resolve in grave injuries if not done by a professional. As the person was unconscious he decided it was better to call 111. Just as he was about to hit the call button on his phone, he heard yelling from the direction the person came,

- "DETAIN THAT PERSON!!" -

It was the police, they were chasing the person now lying flat out cold on the floor,

- "you have done well young man, this individual was just about to get away with assault, could you please accompany us to the station?" - asked the officer on charge, John was reluctant, he couldn't waste his precious time going to the police station to make a statement,

- "could I not go with you? I have important things to do and this was all an accident" - he asked the officer tentatively,

- "well, it's not strictly necessary to do it, but you will miss out on the possible rewards, and I have to take your declaration anyway, so please could you briefly describe what happened here?" - the officer was quite a nice person, and got quite a good impression John's books, not only he got away from going to the station, he didn't have to do much to continue his journey to the lab. John briefly and succinctly described the incident, the officer wasn't that happy about his tale, but it appeared that John really didn't know much else. The police wrapped things up and got on their way with their suspect in custody, now very much awake to their luck and hatefully glaring at John, who got on his way to freedom.

John didn't take the incident to heart and soon put it on a corner of his mind, there were more important things to do now, that delicious experiment was waiting for him to be done. As John was walking, a sudden wave of nostalgia came over to him, "father, mother, your son will change the world today, and open a door to new things for humanity to explore, I know you wanted me to be the one doing the exploring, but this is my passion, that arduous survival training you made me do in my childhood won't go to waste! It's strictness made me who I am today..." he thought as a tear rolled down his face.

Just as he was going to enter a depressive mood from remembering his dead parents, he got to the lab, waiting there, calling him to enter and discover new things, to reach new heights in his career, to adventure where no one had gone before ,

- "Today is the day! Today history will be made! And people will remember my name!" - he exclaimed as he ventured inside.

The equipment was all set and ready to go, John just had to push a button and the experiment would commence. Nervousness and excitement came all over him, would the experiment work? did he make an error somewhere along its construction? will he discover something new? questions and doubts plagued John's mind for one last time before the great moment. John decisively pushed down the button. The electric motor started working, the gears started turning, liquid went through its pipes, the machine became alive. Everything was working well, almost too perfect to be true, so John started worrying, everything was going too well, if his years on the lab taught him something was that if everything appeared to be going perfectly, it meant that something was going horribly wrong, and it was just waiting to flare up and explode in his face. Something was indeed wrong, John just didn't know at the moment, he searched all over the machine to spot the flaw, and after about a minute of looking, he found the place were everything was going to fail, a vent wrongly got open the moment the machine started running, and it urgently needed closing, or all the Johnons would go away. The problem was that the vent shutter was deformed and John had to do something quick, and in a moment of stupidity and hunger for success, he used his own body to close the gap, he thought he had the basics of the Johnons figured out, they wouldn't go through his body, and as this part of the machine didn't have anything harmful to his body, he was confident that his makeshift fix would work well. As John was thinking this, the particle tank valve got open and the Johnons started flowing through the machine, John started to feel a numbness in his body, slowly spreading until all his body was numb, then he started to loose sensation all over his body, his senses were slowly shutting down, the soft purring of his equipment was now silent, he couldn't feel the vibrations that the machine was provoking, he didn't smell, nothing, at this point John fell over unable to control his body, everything going black, like he was disconnected from his body. After a time that seemed an eternity to him passed, everything started to go back to normal, the slightly damp air around him, the metallic smell of the machine, the soft and relaxing purring it made, the cold feeling of the ceramic tiles under him, a voice called him from afar, so far away, he thought it was a mile away,

- "Professor! Professor! .... " - a female voice called him, John was still a bit disoriented,

- "Professor! Are you alright? Professor!" - it still sounded far away, but coming closer and closer, until it was clear, as everything else,

- "professor, you had me worried right there, what were you doing laying on the floor? the experiment was successful, but... maybe it's better for you to review the results "- said his laboratory assistant, Sarah. She was a prodigious student of the university and very proactive in looking for a experiment to work on, John viewed her as an instrumental part of his success in building the experiment, without her, he would have taken months, if not years longer to succeed, and although he knew all the theory and how the machine had to be created, minor details always eluded him, Sarah was a perfectionist, so those little details always stood up to her.

- "Yeah... Let's go look at the results.... " - John said as he slowly made his way to the front of the machine. He could tell something was not right, his brain was not working at full pelt like it always had, it felt a bit sluggish, like when you just installed that new software on your new computer and it barely could run it, everything felt slow around him, there was definitely something wrong with him, he just couldn't tell what.

The results were nothing special, everything they said was something they already knew, it was like nothing happened and all their work went down the drain, the open vent at the back of the machine dispersed almost all of the special particles, meaning they had to start collecting from scratch to try and do the tests again,

- "Damn!... All that work, for nothing!! " - John said as he threw the laboratory logs to the ground,

- "Don't worry Professor, there's still time, I think we can make it before the university deadlines "- comforted Sarah, if they didn't show any results before two months time, their funding would be cut, at least three quarters would go away, and they would have to move to a smaller and crappier laboratory to continue their research,

* sigh * John sighted as he said - "You are probably right Sarah, I don't feel very well now, I will probably go back home and ponder on this failure, maybe we didn't notice something important... " - something was wrong, but he couldn't figure out what, the vent shutter was a minor problem, even with that, the experiment went its intended course while he used his body to close the hole the vent shutter left open,

- "Sarah, there is some repairs to be done, a vent shutter got banged up on the back where you found me, could you please fix it? Ask George for help if you need any... * sigh * I'm going home now, see you tomorrow "- John said as he made his exit from the lab.

It was late now, the sun was going down, barely a minute from night, John was walking home while kicking pebbles on his way, he was trying to forget about the failure, fixating on it wouldn't do him any good, sometimes, the best way to fix a problem was to not think about it for a bit. Something took him out of his thoughts, a loud exhaust noise coming from down street, "these people don't have any consideration for the rest of the world... well, some say the louder the car, more thugs are inside!" John thought, he hated open exhaust pipes, they made a terrible noise, and waked him up at night when the neighborhood thugs had their clandestine street races.

John kept walking ignoring the loud noise produced by the car down street, but at that moment something inside him told him to run, as fast as he could, but just as he started running, a loud noise came from the car, * Bang Bang Bang!!! * bullets rained from the thugs' homemade guns, John wasn't able to dodge them, three or four of them lodged inside his body, he was screaming in pain inside, yet unable to make a sound, he felt as time dilated, how unfulfilled his life was, left his parents house early and their expectations of him shattered, no girlfriend, no friends, only an unhealthy obsession with research, if he knew this was coming, maybe he would do things differently, "if I survive this I will definitely look for a girlfriend and make my parents happy wherever they are..." these were his last thoughts, everything going dark, the massive pain slowly going away, he felt as he drifted away... That's when it happened, a metallic and foreign voice sounded in his mind,

-"Do you want another chance?"- it asked, John wasn't certain what the voice was, or what it wanted from him, but he was sure as hell that he did want to live, so much things he postponed for his research, so much things he wanted to do in his life, there was no hesitation in his desire to live again,

-"Then it shall be done"- the voice responded to his thoughts...