What happened to Gor?
What happened to Gor?
Gor never rebelled as a child. He always listened when adults were speaking and never shied away from responsibility. However, when Gor turned thirteen, he began to remember. Buzzing thoughts, whose meaning he did not fully grasp, formed in his brain. He did not confide in his friends, thinking it was a hassle to explain, as he did not even know how he was feeling himself. He did not think anyone else would know either. Anything coming out of their mouths came as an afterthought compared to their own struggles. Talking and expressing himself was not something he sought out anymore. Gradually, he became more and more worrisome, and his demeanor became increasingly awkward, which people noticed.
He arrived at school late and skipped classes, hiding in the dusty nooks of the library. Most of the time, there was no one there, so he had the whole place to himself. Through the open window facing the backyard, Gor would listen to the careless laughter of his friends outside. Sudden bursts of laughter would erupt, followed by unrecognizable whispers. There Gor would sit, basking in the evening summer light, waiting for his hands to stop shaking, telling his mind he needn't be afraid. But fear would shake his core and paralyze his legs. He was afraid that if he started talking, people would find out he was not human, he was not one of them. Then he would be forced to confess how, in the middle of the night, in sheer panic, he snuck into a random house. How he ended up in a room dimly lit and brightly decorated, and in one of the corners, there was a crib. Back then, he looked inside and saw a peaceful-looking sleeping baby. Gor stared at it for a few seconds while a thought emerged in his mind. Muffled noises nearby snapped him out of his thoughts. He sensed people approaching the room, and at that moment, overwhelmed by sheer panic, he grabbed the infant, ate him, and took his place. Everything happened so fast. Gor was human for so long that he vaguely remembers everything from before - everything jumbled together into one big mush.
Gor would spend days on end chasing something in his mind he thought he needed to have, feel, or have lost. He was obsessed with it. He felt it in the way the autumn wind gently brushed the trees, he saw it on the bench on his way to school, and he saw it in the midnight sky. At night, he would bend over his desk, and underneath the dim light of his lamp, he would write down his thoughts as a weak attempt at organizing his thoughts. Later, Gor would contemplate and think about a dozen times how he would come clean to his family. Maybe, naively, he thought they wouldn’t care. After all, he is the son they raised and loved. Yet something told Gor he shouldn’t do it. Gor realized the potential of his human self. He thought, “I refrained my thoughts on the topics of my peers. I acknowledge both my specialness and my mediocrity. And in the depths of my mind, I find nothingness. It is not a deep meaning for life or chasing a finite list of pleasures that resides deep in me. It is the endless fear of the illusion of complexity of self.”
Gor could not go back to the way it was. He remembers too much of his past self, of who he is. While waiting to pick up his sister from kindergarten, a thought ran through his head. He couldn’t be the only one - he firmly believed there should be others. Gor made it his goal to find out more about his species. They had to be around him.
End of Part 1