A Sip of Infinity

Hemlock

My eyes opened slowly and vaguely, fog was formed on my vision. I felt familiar softness beneath me. I got up suddenly to notice to my wildest amazement that I was lying on my own bed. In addition to this bizarre turn of events, I realized that my wound had been cleaned and so smoothly that no stain of blood was visible.

 I was clothed in a brand new sweatshirt and jeans which weren't mine and those which I obviously couldn’t ever afford. I immediately checked my phone and noticed that almost two days had passed since the horrendous incident. Agonizing guilt and revulsion filled my insides, tearing me apart internally; mom's death was all because of my own faults and eccentricities. I knelt onto the ground and screamed with utmost misery. Just as suicidal thoughts filled my head, my eyes found a package lying on the mat near the doorstep, which was capable of distracting me completely. It was a brown package which had a card pinned to it which read: Hemlock. I tore the page immediately and a large bottle very much similar to a whiskey bottle emerged. It was a transparent glass bottle, with absolutely no writings or carvings on it with what appeared to be a most peculiar greenish liquid in it.

I stared at the bottle held in my hands for a few moments. The liquid looked nothing like any alcoholic drink I had ever seen in my entire life. It could be something poisonous, I thought desperately but the glittering liquid caused me to change my mind, and between the colossal sorrow that I felt, a horribly shameless desire to taste it rose inside me. Instantaneously, I took out the tiny glass I used for taking tequila shots concealed in my drawer and had one sip. As the liquid reached my throat, I experienced an icily refreshed feeling. It had a distinctly sweet flavor, unlike any juice or wine, and neither like that of any medicine that I had ever tasted but totally inexplicable. I felt absolutely nothing, it was perhaps no poison but just an ordinary drink, nor was it alcoholic. I stopped fathoming the mystery of my miraculous return and went outside.

The sun was beaming viciously and struck its vicious rays onto my face as I faced the ordinarily busy Manhattan Street. The instant I placed a step onto the pavement, I felt unnaturally weird. The world seemed to revolve slowly around me, every sound, noise, and even the sound of footsteps fairly distant from me became amplified in my ears. In an instant, all my senses turned highly advanced and began feeding me thoroughly with all the information in the surroundings. I felt as if channels of electricity were flowing upwards inside my body, assumingly supplying more blood to the brain. At that moment, I noticed a little girl walking alongside her mother on the pavement, holding a stuffed doll in her hand. I miraculously viewed moisture building up in the girl’s hands, simultaneously I experienced a Volkswagen arriving at an approximate speed of a hundred kilometers per hour from five hundred meters away, whose driver had some nerve problems.

Seconds later, the toy slipped through her hands and as the girl paced to pick it up from the side, I rushed forward at lightning speed to grab them both and placed them safely alongside her mother. While the unstable driver steered the car onto the left and crashed the luxurious sedan against the streetlight pole, and the airbag popped up to save him. The area grew crowded and surrounded the place where the sedan had collided with the light pole which didn’t even vibrate, and before the police could arrive I fled the scene.

What just happened, I thought, utterly perplexed. The sudden series of events left me thoroughly confused about me that what had taken over me. Then instantly, the idea struck me… it was the result of the drink.

I rushed back home, my brain getting stimulated with ideas all the way back upstairs. As I ascended the stairs I bumped into Harold, my neighbor, who apparently was a nerdy but highly intelligent eighteen-year-old teen in perhaps the entire locality, and someone whom I had mistreated for quite a prolonged time. He dropped the pile of books he was carrying in his skinny arms.

“Watch where you’re going Bane!” he snapped furiously, bending down to pick the pile up. Despite how ill he had been treated by me in the past, he still wasn’t afraid at all.

“Oh, I deeply apologize, here let me assist,” I offered, trying to pick up a few books as he half-stared at me, surprisingly horrified at the substantial alteration in my character and in my choice of words which I assure you I had never uttered in my life previously. “Is that the book which lucidly explains Einstein’s theory of relativity?” I asked casually, causing him to ogle me with possibly even more bewilderment.

“How…eh …how do you even figure that it’s at the bottom of the pile?” he asked mechanically, scanning my face like a robot, with utter amazement. Now, that was a very good question, how did I even know that it was a book which illustrated Albert Einstein’s most famous theories. The truth was, I had read the name of the author before, which was visible on the bottom of the back cover, about five years ago in the library, as Mr. Phil, my school librarian, had slipped and fallen on the ground as he had stepped on the banana peel that I had thrown onto the ground intentionally to make him fall. He had dropped the pile of books similar to the manner in which Harold dropped. “Umm…what do you understand by the theory of relativity?” he asked nervously, emphasizing the pronoun ‘you’.

“Well theory of relativity is a theory proposed by Einstein wherein he explains how the mass of an object increases when it is made to travel approximately close to the speed of light and is given by the equation E=mc²,” I explained automatically and with utmost confidence without pausing, as my brain provided me with every minute detail and information I had ever read or heard passively, at every physics lecture I had ever attended throughout high school. 

The information became more organized and was made easily available to me by my brain, like computer folders storing files and displaying them conveniently when needed. Harold got, possibly even more paler with amazement at the amount that I knew, nevertheless, he was impressed and astonishingly raised a hand of friendship towards me and requested me to assist him in his latest robotics project.