The Solar Flare Read Online Free Page A

occasionally, but it is nothing like what humans do, and my kind are few and far between.”
         “So how did you ‘become’ human?” She asked, still not buying into his story.
         “ I didn’t know how to do it. I had seen humans being born, and I had seen them die. I figured my best chance had to be surrounding one of those circumstances.”
         “You mean you couldn’t just possess someone?”
         “No. I was an essence, and I had energy, but I could not touch a human. I tried. I had no power to do anything. There is nothing stronger than the seam between a human body and a human soul. That is something only death can break. I had grown tired of my lonely existence observing humans. At one point I didn’t want to exist anymore. So, I decided to give it some serious effort. I decided that the only way for me to become human would be to try to take the body of someone who had just died.”
         Ava shifted in her seat. The thoughts of this made her uncomfortable, even though she wasn’t sure she believed all that she was hearing. She waited for him to go on.
         “I spent a lot of time choosing who I would try to become. Then one day I unexpectedly ran across this man,” he gestured towards himself.
         “Who was he?” Ava asked.
         “You wouldn’t have liked him Ava. When he wasn’t out sleeping around, he was busy shooting up at the expense of his parent’s trust fund. He was spoiled, foolish, and weak. He seemed to me a bit of a coward. He had no personality and was downright unpleasant.”
         “Why would you choose such a person?”
         “Because, . . . I had observed his careless behavior. You could say that he was a sure thing. It would be only a matter of time before he overdosed, and when he did, I would be there waiting.”
         “What happened?”
         “One evening, he was in his vast apartment by himself and had the bad judgment to take too much. Wasn’t long before his heart stopped and he collapsed. As soon as the life in him departed, I forced myself in. Looking back, I was just lucky, I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Somehow I channeled my energy to re-start his heart and figured out how to breathe. After a few minutes I opened my new eyes and observed my surroundings.  It was the most amazing experience but I was weak. Withdrawal is a bitch, but I had to go through it. Took me about 24 hours just to figure out how to crawl.”
         “So you revived a dead body?” Ava asked incredulously, still not quite believing it.
         “It’s not that morbid Ava , he had been dead less than a minute. You of all people can understand this. Humans attempt to do this to each other all of the time. Only, you call it cardiopulmonary resuscitation. CPR is only done on people who are clinically dead.”
         “Yes, but if the person recovers and wakes up, they are still the same person.”
         “That’s true. I can only imagine how strange this must sound to you. Believe me, I don’t think anyone would have missed him, and it’s not like I killed him, he did that to himself. We don’t have the power to touch someone who is alive and well when we are in our vapor like form. Humans are unaware of our existence when we are like that. They really have no idea. Besides, I didn’t even want to try taking over a body that had been long dead.”
         “So you truly are alive. I mean you seem alive, aren’t you?”
         “Yes, I’m alive as you are, and then some. In the beginning I was feeble. After about a week I seemed to recover and I could walk. I ate everything he had stashed in his apartment, packed a bag, took all of the cash he had in his safe, and left. This was long before The Great Impact of 2079. I crossed a few continents, changed my identity and started over. After spending centuries observing humans I had learned some of the languages.