Lighting Bolt

It was a perfect mid-summer day. The kind of day where the songbirds start chirping early and the fireflies dance late into the night. Davis loved everything about summer - the longer days, the hot weather, wearing shorts, and baseball—especially baseball. In his youth, he had excelled at the sport enough to get a few college scholarship offers but opted to stay behind to be with his high school sweetheart. In the fall after graduation, huddled in a white room, doctors would explain they did all they could for her. Even with the best cyber augmentation available, the cancer cells grew too fast. Summer days like this still remind him of her.

Davis lifted two blue, five-gallon buckets filled with worn baseballs into the trunk of his car. A couple of balls bounced out, rolling to the ground. Reaching down and tossing them back into the bucket, he noticed another broken lace on his old dusty ball glove. He picked up the glove examing it closely. He'd had this glove since high school. This glove was the same one he was wearing when he pitched his team to the championship game and the same glove he was wearing when making the last out on a diving catch in left field that local townspeople still talk about. The glove was now showing its age. He'd have to look into fixing that later as right now, he was headed up to the ballfield to practice with his youngest son, 12-year-old Rece.

Rece tolerated baseball. He liked being on a team and goofing around with his teammates, but he wasn't the athlete his Dad was. With his shaggy blonde hair constantly in his eyes, Rece preferred skateboarding and reading stories about Greek mythology. But he liked spending time with his Dad and the fun they had together. They usually went for ice cream after every game.

"We should get you that new mitt," Davis said, tossing the ball carefully back to Rece. "You can keep using my old ones if you want, but wouldn't you like one of your very own?"

Rece didn't respond. He started at his feet, picturing them on the placement of his skateboard. He thought about the skating video he watched earlier, how effortlessly the skaters performed their tricks. They floated through the air like some freestyle skateboard angels. He liked to imagine the skateboards were gifts from the gods, like Apollo receiving the golden chariot from his father, Zeus.

"Rece. Rece! Get the ball. You gotta pay attention, man." Rece snapped to focus, saw his Dad pointing behind him, turned, and walked to get the ball. "Hustle, man, c'mon," a slight annoyance growing in Davis' voice. Normally very patient with Rece, today Davis let his irritation be known. Perhaps he was thinking about work or all the house projects that needed attention.

"The sun was in my eyes. I felt like a cyclops." The thought of a cyclops standing in the outfield made Rece smile. Picking up the ball, looking towards Davis, the distance between them seemed impossibly long. He wished he could ride Pegasus over to his Dad to deliver the ball.

"Ok, c'mon, let's see a good hard throw. You can do it." Davis held his mitt up as a target, trying to keep his voice positive.

Reaching back as far as he could, Rece closed his eyes and gave it everything he had. He let out a grunt as his arm shot forward like a trebuchet. It felt good—strong— like Zeus unleashing a lightning bolt.

"Rece dammit, cmon. Throw it TO me", snapped Davis, opening and closing his mitt a few times. "TO me." Rece opened his eyes to see his Dad walking slowly away to retrieve the ball, shaking his head and muttering something Rece could not make out. Finding the ball's final resting place, Rece impressed himself at how far he threw it even though it sailed over his Dad's head. Rece celebrated by doing a kickflip on his invisible skateboard.

"Rece! Hey, look up! Rece!" His Dad's voice sounded different, more urgent than he ever remembered hearing before. Rece looked up in time to see a dark dot flash in front of the sun for the briefest of moments; the mitt at his side didn't move.

Instant darkness. A soft figure grew closer in the reflection of the black mirror. "Rece, you know you shouldn't be watching that. The Dr. says replaying that isn't healthy." A nurse walked up and started touching the dark screen. "If you keep doing that, we'll have to limit your access to your neural ROM memory transmitters. Or yet, we'll have to wipe your memory clean. We don't want to have to do that—we know there are good memories buried in there you like to replay. Did you take your meds today?" The nurse continued to tap on the black screen.

Rece sat motionless on a stiff gray couch, his reflection in the large black screen peering back at him. He sat slumped, expressionless. It's difficult to conceive that inside this frail body once lived a great athlete, moving with grace and power.

"Why won't this thing work," the nurse pleaded, still taping on the black screen. "These new computational window models are so finicky."

A tannish-brown object peeked out from the blanket wrapped around Davis. Davis held the thing close in the black reflection. The leathery smell of the object took Davis back to high school, back to more peaceful times. The object—a new baseball glove—still had its price tags. Running down the outside of the pinky of the glove were large black handwritten letters. They neatly spelled out R E C E.

"Ah, there we go. Finally, oh look, a baseball game, your favorite. Well, you enjoy the game Davis, and I'll be back to check on you in a little while. In the meantime, no more self-memory hijacking."

Davis sat motionlessly. He held the object in the lap tightly as the game announcer said, "What a beautiful summer day for baseball. The weather is hot, and the sun is shining."

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