Undercover As Geek

The Restoration

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It is Friday evening, and I am slumped against my couch watching the TV, like I have been for the past three days. My eyes are glazed over and I'm not paying attention to the dental commercial that is happily bouncing across the screen. I have shut myself in the house and hardly eaten since the awful confrontation Tuesday. At first, my parents were after me, checking to see if I was sick or had a disease. But after average results and no response from me, they gave up. And then they began to argue again. I did nothing to break up the vicious battles. It was as if everything and everyone jumped a world away after my heart packed up and left me.

I am empty. My emotions have trickled off gradually while I've laid on this couch, drowning myself in useless television and the occasional surf of the internet. My mind enjoys torturing me, replaying Noah's words in my head over and over and over again, until I am smaller than a dust mite, cringing in its shelter. My shelter is my house, and I further hide my soul away in the shell of my body. I go to the bathroom and nibble on sustenance out of pure survival, my muscles acting on their own to jerk myself around my house.

Never before would I have expected myself to react this way. Sure, I'd known I would lose my UFOrdinance family and become a loner again, but I didn't know it would hurt this much. I didn't know that I would come so close to having Noah, the best gift life could offer, and it be not only torn from me, but have it reject me. Spit me out like a poison. Make me feel worthless. How can I come so close to happiness and find myself farther away than I had begun?

The news flashes onscreen. I barely pay attention to the suited anchorwoman as she spits out a sob story of an orphan boy returning to his family. I will never return to my family. They've cast me out. And then the dark-skinned lady says something that makes me sit up on the couch with an energy that I didn't know I had left in me.

"And now," she says, her voice bright and energetic, the way news women are supposed to be. "We have an update from SETI, or the Search for Extra Terrestrial Institute."

I remember Kay's hopeful face when she explained herself what the acronym stood for. I wonder if she is watching this newscast now, too.

The woman turns to the screen behind her. On it is the logo of SETI, a basic logo that I guess one of the head geeks made in his free time between alien discoveries. It is a bunch of wide dots across a black background with some of the dots in the middle bending to create the illusion of a sphere. Below it are the words, "SETI Institute". I remember it vaguely from an ad or something that must have been on a magazine or website.

"SETI institute is an exploratory science," the woman reads, clearly, off of a script. "that seeks evidence of life in the universe by looking for some signature of its technology." Hmm, I think. Sounds a lot like what Geoffrey was talking about when we were on the hill. "While they aren't a famously known organization," the woman continues. "They are a recognized research facility regarded highly among the most ingenious scientists of our time."

My eyes begin to droop as I wonder if the energetic lady will ever get to the point.

"They are being recognized publicly at this time because" -- I sit up again-- "they have recently, as of yesterday afternoon, publicly accepted a local high school club into their midst." I am on my feet with a whoop, and barely catch her next words. "From West Collier High School, a group by the name of UFOrdinance studies and searches for extra terrestrials and evidence of their life. SETI has mentioned that they have been applying for several years, but have been repeatedly turned down due to lack of credibility.