You Are Not Designed For This World

You Are Not Designed For This World

"Thomas Leonardo Tan Chuang Xiang?"

The school counsellor eyed the tall boy over her horn-rimmed glasses. He was standing in front of her desk, arms behind his back, staring at the ground as though deep in thought. At the sound of his name his head jerked upwards.

"Sit down, please," said the school counsellor, indicating the chair in front of her desk.

As he took the seat, the years of counsellor experience kicked in. She noticed the grin on his face which made him look slightly aloof, as well as the relaxed seating posture, with a slight slouch off the back of the chair. He had clasped his hands together and spread his legs slightly apart, and instead of looking ashamedly at the floor or at the walls, he was looking at her with apprehension. Immediately, she knew that this one was going to give her some problems.

"You do know why you're here, don't you?" she asked. The first question was always the rhetorical guilt-checking one; standard protocol. Obviously, she expected him not to reply.

"I haven't submitted fourteen worksheets, five assignments, two projects and an essay over the past three weeks," he said, almost matter-of-factly.

"I... er... yes, well," she said as she struggled to regain her poise, "Your teachers are worried that you are falling behind in your studies, Thomas."

"Please," he smiled, leaning forwards in his chair and placing his clasped hands on the desk, "call me Tom."

This small movement disarmed her; he almost looked like a bank manager or corporate director, sitting like that. A small part of her brain chipped in and warned her that she might be dealing with someone who was far older than he appeared to be. Then her years of experience interrupted and she realized that this was just a little punk with a superiority complex and no respect for any authority.

"Well, Tom," she said, "I hope you realize that you need to do your work and hand it in on time. Don't you know how much trouble you're putting your teachers through, never having a full set of papers to mark and-"

"It's just a couple of assignments," he said, as his gaze shifted to the window. "It's not like I killed anyone."

She thought she caught the edge of sarcasm in his voice. "Of course it's not like killing someone, but it's a serious misbehaviour nonetheless. Now, if you don't start doing all your-"

"Funny how everything is relative, isn't it?" he said, never looking away from the window, "Imagine if I had murdered one of my classmates as well. We wouldn't be here discussing a few tardy worksheets, would we?"

Alarm bells were going off in the back of the school counsellor's mind, but she was the captain and she knew how to steer this misguided soul back into sane waters. "Well, if you had murdered one of your classmates, you'd be at a police interrogation centre, being interviewed by a couple of police officers."

His gaze shifted back to her face. "I know. Pales in comparison, doesn't it?"

"Look, Tom," she said, grabbing a sheaf of papers and squaring them on her desktop, a quick respite from looking at that face, "murder is not the reason you are here, and thank God it's not. You're here because you haven't been handing up your homework, and-"

"I have murdered someone," he said quietly.

"I'm sorry?"

"I've killed someone," he said, looking down at the desktop. The school counsellor could see that his face was flushed with remorse. Either he had really committed homicide, or he was a brilliant actor. She was utterly at a loss at what to do with this confessional manic; years of experience hadn't prepared her for this. Eventually, she decided to play along and see where it went.

"Who?" she asked, keeping her voice steely.

"Her name was Loretta. She was on a journey to find her father, along with this boy named Roland. They were just passing through but I made the Dark Lord's henchman to incite the butcher into an angry rage, and he killed her-"

"I'm sorry, what?" The tension was building up in her like a coiled spring, but it was dampened by a new layer of confusion. "You made the Duck Lord's henchman- what...?"

"The Dark Lord Naxxarim's evil henchman Gilgore," he corrected her, "in the story I've been writing."

"Story...?" then the spring melted back into wire, and she couldn't help making a small, relieved chuckle. "It's just a story?"

"It's not just a story," he said, a hard edge in his voice now. "It's a whole new world."

"Is this what you've been doing instead of your homework? Writing stories?"

"Yes." She was too intoxicated by her relief and returning confidence that she didn't notice that the boy had none of the earlier relaxed air about him. His mouth was now lined and unsmiling, and the grip in his hands had tightened.

"I'm sure you know that schoolwork is more important that these fantasies of yours," she said.

"Really," he said. "In this past week alone I've formulated a whole compendium on the rules of magic in my world. I've done dozens of drawings of the type of creatures which might survive in such an environ-"

"Thomas," she said loudly, cutting across his explanations, "I'm sure your world is amazing and all that, but you must realize that you are wasting too much of your time and energy on all these things which aren't real."

The was a pause. Then, "They're real to me," he said quietly.

She fell back into her chair with a sigh. Another idealistic dreamer without a realistic view of the world he lived in. Maybe she should try another tact.

"What do you want to be when you grow up, Thomas?" she asked, expecting the obvious answers: writer, artist, movie director, game designer.

"I'd like to personally go and help less-fortunate children in remote rural areas around the world."

Once again she was surprised at his reply, and frustrated that she couldn't read this kid at all. "I see. And how are you going to do that?"

"I'll travel to all these places with stuff they might need and-"

"Yes, but where will you get this 'stuff'? And the transportation?"

He was quiet for a while. "From friends," he said.

She barely heard his reply. "You'll need money for these things, Thomas," she said, "and how are you going to get money unless you get a good job? And how are you going to get a good job unless you get a good education? So you see, it all comes back to you not submitting your homework on time."

He was silent for a moment. "Thomas?" she asked. "Are you listening?"

"You think that all your problems can be solved with money, with a job, with an education," he said. "We spend so much of our lives chasing degrees and the perfect high-paying job so we have lots of money - and then what do we do with it? And all the while our creativity is restrained, imagination is discouraged, dreams are squashed into the harsh ground of reality."

"Think pragmatically, Thomas," said the school counsellor, slightly irritated now. "The world might not be what you want it to be, but you can't change it. People need money to survive in this world, Thomas. You need to work hard if you want to achieve anything."

"I have worked hard, ma'am. I spent so much time and effort in creating the world my story takes place in, and-"

"You need to work hard in the things that matter," she interrupted him, "like your mathematics and your sciences and your history and your economics. These things have a real use in life, not like your stories. You need to learn the skills of the world to survive in it."

"Skills? What skills? Knowing when and where and who to lie to? Fighting for yourself before considering the needs of others? Controlling people from your seat of power? Killing the stories one by one?"

She looked at him. There was a fire in his eyes, a passion which burnt with the fury of a thousand ideals. And the sad thing was, she thought, he actually believed them.

"You are impossible," she said. "Thomas, you will finish your assignments by the end of the week and you will hand them in to your teachers promptly." She grabbed the sheaf of papers again and opened her drawer. "The world needs realistic, practical people, Thomas, and it would benefit you, and the people around you, if you started to grow up and realize that. Good day to you."

She bent down to file the papers, and when she looked up again, he was standing there, behind the chair. His body was rigid; his fists were clenched in his jaw was set.

"You're wrong," he said. "You're completely wrong."

"You were not designed for this world, Thomas," she said, exasperated, "so it might do you good if you would redesign yourself to fit in."

For a moment, his eyes locked on hers, and in that fraction of a second she though he would storm out through the door, or burst into tears, or lunge toward her and hit her. Anything but what happened next.

His hands started to glow orange, and so did his eyes. A streak of energy arced across his stomach, from fist to fist, crackling like lightning. His feet lifted slowly off the floor, such that he was levitating in the middle of the room.

"Wha-what's going on?" she screamed.

"I'm rewriting reality," he said calmly. "I wasn't going to do this for a while yet, but you forced my hand."

"Wh-what?"

"It's going to be a new world, ma'am!" he shouted excitedly. "A world with caring, compassionate people, without greed or deception. People would need stories to survive, so let's see where all your education and jobs and money gets you now!"

"Stop! Stop it right now! You're insane!" she cried, as he room exploded with orange light.

-----

Wow finally. The original idea for this story was supposed to be an exploration if the people who were not designed for this world switched things around so that the would would be designed to fit them; over the course of writing it kinda got overshadowed and squeezed into the end there. Well, the story's kinda moot now, but it was a fun exercise in body language and expressions.

By the way, Leonardo is named after Da Vinci, the only creative dreamer whose name I could think of at such short notice.

Not created for this world,
The Edna Man