Hacking the Sun - The Re-Remake

Chapter 7 Epistemology 3/3

"Is it who you are or something someone else tells you to be?"

Drugs in her hand, painful memories, and the endless wish to step away from reality left her dreary in the eyes. "I need this," Jessica said hoarsely. 

Closer steps, the white pants neared. "If you can look me in the eye with complete belief in that, then you go right ahead and take it."

Once again, Jessica eyed the Mesnomer. As it dropped from her hand, she felt stomach knots and the prelude to a headache. Wrapped in her own arms, she tried to hide the pain. "What the hell can I believe in?" she sobbed.

"Start with yourself," the lady pressed. "If you start there, life will be your looking glass!"

"Jessica snickered. "You can fuck off."

The lady stared disquietly at Jessica's rising glare. On the verge of a breakdown, the teenager's sanguine attention leered before she coughed words like vomit.

"What do you know of what I live with? You're like the automaton teachers who tell me to worry about my shit grades," she laughed. "But you're not as bad as my 'friends,' though, who shit all over my sense of style for—who the fuck cares! Their job is to worry about my rep, which makes adults look at me like I'm a fucking alien. Oh, wait..."

There was no hiding the hysterics. In attempting to lash back, Jessica's outcry slowly minced into delirious whimpering.

"I'm-done-giving-a-damn! Everyone, the moment I show a fraction of what I can do, they brush me off. Ah-and teachers get offended because of w-what? Because I calculate out of my head? My classmates, they're confused no matter what I do. Scared even! Everyone else is awkward around me, intimidated for something so stupid as my verbosity. Correction: 'Big words!' I can't use symbolic logic around other students... or even logic. Maybe one day, when I incorrectly apply the word literally, I can get them to like me.

"I am the black sheep whenever they see me and not what they want to see! The outcast because I-I-I can recite a lecture from memory. One mention of quantum algorithms, the world shouts 'hack!' What does a freshman need that for, rrright? When I'm not toted as a reject, I'm a circus act. If not a circus act, just a plain old fffreak! What's the point of me being me? What the hell is me? I never asked for me!"

The old woman's eyes never left, never winced, and never faltered. The young teenager was quivering, oblivious. And after choking on her last word, she fell to her knees, nails dug into her scalp.

"With everything you can do and teach this old hag," the woman said, "I have to imagine someone, somewhere, would be rooting for you. The world is not a frozen vacuum, sweetheart."

Jessica's tears drowned the color in her eyes. Fingers to her own head, they gunned for what lay inside. "Why couldn't I lose this instead of my parents?"

Clarity.

"What is your name?" the lady said.

"Jessica."

"Tell me your whole name."

She stared. "Jessica Teresa Leibniz."

"Jessica Teresa Leibniz. When I say that, what does it mean to you?"

"A lot of things."

"And what do you want it to mean?"

"A lot of things..."

"Are they the same?"

Upright and confused, Jessica looked at her watch. Creativity, uncertainty, that's all she thought up; they defined her. "My mom and dad," she started hesitantly. "I saw a glimpse of their hopes before I was blindsided. I might end up nothing. Right now, I don't really know. Don't know if I care."