Struck

Author’s note: I do love me a good nap. I was recently in the midst of an epic dream when a storm blew through and the power went out. When the electricity came back on, the clocks beeped and roused me out of a deep slumber. This story was bouncing around my head replete with names as soon as I regained consciousness. I suppose it was a dream. Regardless, the human brain is a pretty extraordinary thing.

Dontavius Havens

Dontavius Havens was a 12-year-old black kid raised on the mean streets of Chicago. His mom worked two jobs. He never met his dad. His grandmother did most of the heavy lifting. Dontavius was a quiet, smart child living amidst a sea of chaos.

On this day, Dontavius had walked down to the local market to buy himself a soda. It was hot, and the wind off of Lake Michigan did little to mitigate that. On the way home, the sky darkened precipitously. Dontavius quickened his step to beat the storm he now knew was coming.

Mystique Havens got home from her waitress job amidst a massive downpour. She was surprised to discover Dontavius’ room empty. Her surprise turned to alarm when she couldn’t locate her son in the apartment. Grabbing her flimsy raincoat, the desperate young woman rushed out into the maelstrom.

It was simple blind luck that she found the boy. He was sprawled haphazardly on the concrete between two buildings in front of a dumpster. At a glance, he looked like a pile of discarded clothing. In the pelting rain, she scooped up her limp son. He was unconscious, and there was a ghastly wound on the right side of his scalp. The ambulance arrived in six minutes and had them both in the ER at Northwestern Memorial in short order.

Struck By Lightning

The working theory was that Dontavius had been struck by lightning. The burns on his scalp and clothing were consistent with that diagnosis. The ER resident was solemn. The head scans were grossly normal, but there was no way to know his true state until Dontavius woke up and they could do some further testing. Mystique prayed as she had never prayed before.

The following morning, Dontavius was sitting up in bed awake and alert. His head hurt, but he could move and speak normally. He was also oriented to person, place, and time. Mystique was relieved beyond words. The attending physician said they would keep him in the pediatric hospital overnight for observation and send him home the following day. That night, Dontavius did not sleep.

He was discharged the next morning, but he did not sleep that night, either. Nor did he sleep the night after that. In fact, he never slept again — not a wink. He appeared incapable. There were no deleterious effects. Dontavius stayed up all night reading or playing on his mother’s laptop, but he no longer needed sleep. When Mystique reported this to his pediatrician, the doctor was skeptical.

Wise Beyond His Years

When his hair came back, there was a broad white splash where the bolt had struck him. Kids are cruel, and his classmates made fun of him for it. One day over lunch, a large boy named Hester, who had failed a grade, knocked Dontavius’ lunch tray to the floor and laughed. The bigger boy’s knee suddenly jutted at an insane angle, and Hester fell to the floor screaming. The other kids present attested that Dontavius had not touched him.

Dontavius had been quick before. Now he was something else entirely. After a month, his teachers had a conference and moved him on. There was nothing more they could offer him at the level of his peers. Dontavius finished high school at 14 and was accepted to the University of Chicago on the strength of his test scores alone. Along the way, he transformed $113 in birthday money into more than a million dollars in cash via day trading over the internet.

This was the Information Age, and Dontavius inevitably gained a following. He was wise beyond his years, and he knew things he never should have known. This eventually led to a series of interviews with representatives from the government.

Hardened Compound On A Private Island

Dontavius explained in measured tones that Kim Jong Un’s diabetes was out of control and that the rotund North Korean dictator had a wound on the sole of his left foot that would not heal. He told the government scientists that Vladimir Putin had begun hearing voices and explained the content of the narrative. He stated that Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei was actually dead and that the country was being run by a shadowy confederation of generals from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. All of his observations, no matter how outlandish, were later demonstrated to be empirically accurate. The scientists visited Dontavius regularly in his dorm room and recorded the interviews.

It took Dontavius three years to complete a PhD in Applied Mathematics. By the time he walked, his net worth had climbed to more than $850 million. Mystique no longer worked as a waitress. Dontavius purchased the island of Raye Caye off the coast of Belize and moved his mother there. Sparing no expense, he designed and contracted a hardened compound on the island that was both self-sufficient and impregnable.

Enough Wealth And Power To Change The World

Something subtle changed about the world around Dontavius’ 18th birthday. Mankind was still chaotic and violent, but there seemed to be an inexplicable underlying order to the chaos and violence. Nation states went to war and economies rose and fell as though some disembodied will were driving the details. Throughout it all, Dontavius and Mystique maintained themselves on Raye Caye. Dontavius no longer granted interviews.

When the time was right, and the world was primed, Dontavius reemerged into the light. By now he was fit and imposing at 25. The brilliant white splash tracking along the right side of his head was both distinctive and awe-inspiring. Now in possession of an uncanny ability to anticipate both financial markets and geopolitical affairs, Dontavius acquired wealth and power at a rate that was truly without precedent. Some speculated that the lightning-struck boy was history’s first true supervillain. Others opined that he was the Antichrist. Regardless, Dontavius Havens was about to fundamentally change the world.

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