#19

I began tasting the air around me, smelling the sounds, and seeing the vibrations. Synthaestesia, it turns out, can result from a state of advanced awareness as well as being a genetic anomaly. So I was experiencing it for the first time, and really sort of enjoying it. I decided to play a few chords on my guitar. I riffed out some blues. They looked mostly brown and green.

Well, so much for that. Another name badly chosen. I remembered the story of a man who experienced numbers as shapes and colors and even three-dimensional forms that he was ordered to sculpt by a doctor. I tried some simple math in my head. Same as always. I tried long division. Still nothing. Right brain, left brain, doesn't seem to matter. Although I had no way of knowing that long division necessarily took place in one hemisphere and small addition in the other. I just figured that was the case as a general rule.

Well, whatever, I thought. As I thought that, I could notice it wearing off. The colors sounded much less vibrant now. Damnit. I tried to think positive, so that maybe it would come back. It didn't. Now I had a raging headache like a bull in a china shop. See, the china shop is my head, and the china would be my nerves. The owner was this vein on the front of my forehead that was now throbbing with rage.

I tried to get back to my life. Downloaded some pictures of cherry blossoms to try and soothe the China shop owner. I knew he wouldn't care that I confused his nation of origin. Every picture I get from the Internet or read from a disk is automatically sent through a program to analyze it for hidden data. Nearly half of all images, audio files, and videos contain some hidden information, but few people know it. I only know it because I'm paranoid. I could get an honorary degree in Steganography, if not for all the secret government documents I found hidden in innocent pornography. Who'd have thought that between that perfect pair of tits would lie important secret memos from the DoD? Oh, yeah. Me.