Reawakened
Emily wakes up to her alarm clock blaring at her. She never liked it, but she always obeyed it as if it were her mother asking to get up. That is when Emily had a mother. She gets up and turns the alarm off. "Good morning, mom. I'm gonna try to have a good day today." She says to a picture of a MAC-enite wearing a beautiful white, sequined dress on her nightstand.
Emily walks out into the kitchen and gets herself a bowl of cereal. "Do you want anything, dad?" She asks as she sees her father walk up from the basement. "I'll just have some coffee." He says in his usual gruff voice. He still managed to be overweight for a man who works on inventions all day and hardly eats. Emily grabs his coffee and sets it on the stand next to his chair. "Maybe one day you'll invent the razor to shave your beard." Emily teases. "You sound just like your mother." He says as he takes a sip of coffee and reads the newspaper.
Emily eats her breakfast and grabs her backpack. "I'll be back at 6 because I have robotics after school today, okay?" She says as she starts to walk out the door. He grunts and continues to read. Emily walks out of her house and gently closes the door. As soon as she exited her home, she became a soft-spoken girl who gets bullied for a living.
Across the street, a man with robotic arms and legs, who she's rarely seen despite being neighbors, walks outside of his house and zips away. Right behind him is a boy who Emily knew as the class clown, Tyler, a mischievous grin always shining on his olive-toned face. "Hey, wait up!" He yells to no avail. He notices Emily and waves before running off. Emily starts to walk her way to school, thinking about all the things she has on her class schedule.
Emily goes through all of her classes with no worry. When lunch rolls around, she sits at the corner of the lunchroom and gets out her lunchbox. Emily had decided to make her own lunch today and doesn't really care for leftover spaghetti. She begins to eat and pauses, noticing that the trio of bullies is not around. She must've caught a break for once.
She continues to eat her food happily and notices that a tall figure is standing next to her. A boy sits next to Emily, and she slides over a bit, making room. She wouldn't usually do this, but there was something different about him that she felt deep inside. She decided to allow herself to open up this one time.
"Do MAC-enite's dream?" She asks, then after realizing what preposterous she said, shrinking away into her lunch. "Yes, we do dream. It may be different, but we do dream. Why do you ask?"
"Last night, I had a depressing nightmare. I dreamt that my dad died and I killed myself. Some say dreams are the way your brain tries to rationalize the world. Do you think I need help?" She says, shrinking into her shell. Kaine keeps silent for a second, a blank expression, showing no signs of what he's thinking.
He then puts his shiny silver metal arm around her and says, "No, I think you are fine just the way you are. Do you know what loops are?" Emily thinks for a second and replies, "Like a circuit board?" Kaine chuckles and says, "Loops are like a door in a hallway filled with doors. I think they taught the butterfly effect in science a few weeks ago. Basically, when one door closes-" "Another opens." Emily finishes. "So, why do you ask?" Kaine looked at her thoughtfully. "Because every dream you have is of a previous life where you died, and I closed the door and opened a new one."
Emily is silent for a little. "What TV shows have you been watching?" She asks jestingly. Kaine responds, "This is no joke. I have created about 1,423 loops." Emily sits and ponders over this. "How many have I been in them?" She asks in a way that makes Kaine feel as if she believes in what he's saying. "Only 1,010. Not including this one." He says, adding the rarest of smirks after his sentence.