In Continuum.

Einstein's Birthday Present

Once upon a time,there was a man named Mr. Physics.Mr. Physics loved Physics,and frequented Dr. Science's laboratory a lot,a person he deemed as the smartest man alive.Dr. Science had a lovely daughter,and her name was Ms. Chemistry.Nobody knew why her father changed her last name to Chemistry,but people assumed it to the love for the subject.Ms. Chemistry was obsessed with Chemistry,and would lock herself in her father's giant underground laboratory to work on tube after tube of chemicals.Mr. Physics first met her when he was 23,and she was 21.It was love at first sight,and after Mr. Physics showed Ms. Chemistry his own studyroom,with a wall fully occupied by a chalkboard full of mathematical equations,he proposed to her with a ring shaped like a hydrogen atom,with the diamond as the electron.They were married on the runway of NASA,with a rocket firing off into space,hired by her father Dr. Science,at the very moment when they kissed and the cameras flashed.

But none of them ever noticed anything wrong.Or rather,what it is to come.Due to her father's over exposure to nuclear wastes in his own experiments,there is a fault to her ability to have a baby.They tried and tried,and everytime they consulted their family doctor Mr. Biology,he'd shake his head and convey the bad news over to them in the most complexed and complicated way.Since they were both geniuses,they understood.And late every night,Ms. Chemistry would cry herself to sleep while Mr. Physics prayed to a little statue of Albert Einstein.

In the fall of 1964,when the sky was snowing and the weather was oddly warm,Mr. Chemistry bursted into Mr. Physic's laboratory,telling him about the good news Mr. Biology told her about.'I am pregnant!I am pregnant!' she yelled,and her voice echoed off the clean,smooth surfaces of Mr. Physic's lab,followed by a loud cry of joy,and then the soft sounds of a couple weeping in happiness.

'Push!' Dr. Biology repeated.'Push!'

In the emergency room,Dr. Biology and his nurses surrounded the operating table anxiously,as Ms. Chemistry laid on the table in agony.Her hand in Mr. Physic's,and her face twisted with pain and shock.She whispered in Mr. Physic's ears,that immediately after this child,she is never going to have another,and that she is going to devote her time to creating a medicine that is going to eradicate all sorts of pain.

'Well,if you do then...can we have another baby?' Mr. Physics asked.

'NO!Not until i create the medicine to slim down in under 24 hours!' she yelled back,still pushing the baby out of her womb.

*

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Amenda. Not Amanda,but Amenda, with the E. She was born at a healthy weight of 3.35kg, measuring a length of a little more than 30cm, and cried the moment she came out from her mother's womb, a clear sign of a healthy baby. She have two eyes, two ears, one nose and a mouth, but nobody knew the colour of her hair, or the colour of her eyes, or if she looked anything like Mr. Physics or Ms. Chemistry. Nobody knew, because Amenda was born invisible.

Mr. Biology held little Amenda in his hands - or rather tried to - when she appeared.

'So?' Mr. Physics asked.

'I am not sure...' replied Mr. Biology, trying to feel in between the baby's legs. 'A girl, i think.'

Everybody was stunned when Ms. Chemistry brought little Amenda home. At that time,she still didnt have a name,and everybody called her The Invisible One.But no matter how badly her family urged, she refused to accept any names provided by anybody,or bothered to come up with a name herself.She would stare at the empty cradle late at night,listening to the soft sound of the baby thrashing against the side of it,and at times making a very childish giggle. She hated those noises,like arrows piercing her eardrums.She couldnt accept this fault,she told herself.This failure is unacceptable! You see, Ms. Chemistry is a Virgo, and she is a perfectionist. She demanded accuracy down to the tenth decimal point, and would test every experiment of hers at least fifty times for accuracy.But this particular case - this experiment - was a one time deal in which she had absolutely no control over. The by-product of the experiment - the baby - kept making weird sucking noises from the cradle that, whenever Ms. Chemistry thought of her, she would weep deep into the dead of the night, when Mr. Physics slept soundly and quietly.

But one morning, Ms Chemistry woke up with an idea, and was particularly happy. She made breakfast for Mr. Physics for the very first time, and Mr. Physics secretly calculated the probability of this day ever happening again in the rest of their married life. The result was an bliblical number to one, and he was dismayed. However, he cheered himself up, and Ms. Chemistry bounced onto the bed in between his legs and smiled from ear to ear gleefully.

'What is it?'

'I've got a name!'

'Really? What is it?'

'Amenda. With the E,instead of the A.'

'Why?'

She never told him why she decided that name,and gave a less than convincing excuse that it was a beautiful name. Sure it was a beautiful name,but Mr. Physics never recieved a true explanation to the meaning behind her name, nor did he bother to press on further.But secretly,whenever Ms. Chemistry cradled her new born baby,she would repeat her name under her breath,thinking that by doing so the baby wouldnt seem too big a failure after all. She convinced herself, and successfully, that once or twice in a scientist's life, something like that occurs and, if he or she is able to embrace it by constantly reminding herself of it,she would be able to be rid of it once and for all, at least for the experiments to come.Like a memo stuck to the fridge door,reminding someone of past mistakes and a note to self, never to make the same ones again.

Amenda,in truth,can be broken down to A Menda.

And 'Menda', is in fact, Latin for 'Mistake'.

*

Dr. Science died of old age a couple of years after Amenda's birth due to a horrific laboratory explosion all over the evening news.And with his death,came along a lot of tears from the couple and of course,mournings and regards from all over the scientific world. But the greatest impact on little Amenda,wasnt the frequent arguments flaring up between her parents ever now and then,or the ones late at night involving a finger pointed at herself by her mother,and his father storming out of the house with a bottle of scotch. The greatest impact was however,the decision of her father to make her his own student,and teacher her himself,since the smartest man on Earth was dead,and that everybody else was too dumb to teach his dear daughter.

So over the years,Amenda grew up gradually like a normal girl under the care of her father in studies,and her mother in everything else.It was the decision of her mother to ground Amenda in the mansion they resided,because of the way her neighbours gossiped about a floating set of clothes in the backyard of the scientists' house one night,and it got the whole neighbourhood talking about the haunted mansion for four months straight.Nobody knew about the baby - the little mistake - because they were ashamed to tell anybody that the perfect couple,with the perfect grades in school,with the perfect set of IQ points and the perfect lie ahead of them, had a little hole in their great master plan - Amenda.

Amenda loved books,and Amenda loved the birds.She stayed in the attic of the house,a dusty corner of the house with a simple bed and a dressing table.Her room is mostly filled with books,and they piled and piled on top of one another until they were like small hills in a dark room. Amenda loved the idea of birds,the way flying was made so easy for them.The way they spread their wings before flight,and taking off from that same old branch next to the window into the sky. The ease involved,the ease to take off into liberation and salvation fascinated Amenda since she was a child. But because of that everlasting desire to see the outside world,her mother locked little Amenda in the attic,and would only allow her to roam the house at night.Her father built guardian robots to look after her twenty four hours a day and seven days a week,and she would be under constant surveillance by other robots all around the house. The door to the attic is usually locked and guarded by down heavily armed robots.Outside in the back lawn under the window of the attic,a robot dog stood guard with it's fearsome teeth and sharp claws.Everybody thought the scientist couple was developing a nuclear bomb in secret,with the amount of artificial security involved.But in actual fact,it wasnt so much about keeping something IN secret, but rather to keep a secret IN.

There is a robot however,to keep Amenda companied.His name is - none other than - Albert.

Albert is as tall as Amenda,and he looks just like a human boy. He had straight black hair and dark blue eyes, and Albert spoke with a very human voice indeed. He is Amenda's best friend in the world, and Amenda is his best friend in the world too. Despite being invisible all the time, Albert is able to see Amenda through his infra-red eyes. He wears the same suit all the time,a futuristic suit with a silver sheen to it,and Amenda would admire just how beautiful the stitch work is every time.

Amenda was awfully quiet one night.It was a cold winter night,the coldest in her recent memories.The heater wasnt working,and the blankets werent warm enough.But was it really the weather,or the chill in her heart making her shiver all over?Amenda hugged herself in the corner,rubbing her arms red with her bare hands,singing a soft song under her breath to distract herself.She could see her breath in the air,but not the hands that were covering her mouth.She was cold,still cold despite singing about a warm sunrise she has never seen before.

Through the shadows,Albert came along.He was wearing the same old suit,and he never feels cold,nor warm.He stood there with his head tilted to one side,and a worried look upon his face.

'Should i alert Mr. Physics or Ms. Chemistry?' he asked.

'No Albert,' Amenda whispered. 'Just don't.'

'Why?'

'I don't know,just stay here with me.

'Is there a way i can keep you warm,Amenda?'

'Of course you can't,silly.' replied Amenda.'You are not real,just like me...'

'Just like you...' Albert said,and spoke no more.

*

Albert is Amenda's only source of information from the outside world. Albert is able to recieve news through a hidden antenna in his head,and is able to connect himself to the nearest computer to have the news printed out.Albert does this often,and Amenda kept herself busy while alone in the room,reading the news of the outside world.As a birthday gift one year,Albert printed a whole series of pictures,of birds from all over the world. Albert remembers,and he remembered the smile he saw through his infra red eyes,the smile across Amenda's face that day.She hugged Albert,a long and warm hug Albert never experienced before,and they stayed that time for the longest time that night,when all was quiet and the robots outside the door was on standby mode.

'I have a surprise for you.' said Albert one year,on Amenda's birthday.

'I like surprises.' Amenda replied.

'Before that,i'd like to ask you a question.'

'What is it?'

'How does it feel to be...invisible?To have never seen yourself before?'

Amenda paused for a while,the smile on her face momentarily gone.She was dumbfounded at the question,at how ridiculous it sounded and yet,made so much impact upon her heart.What is this she is feeling?She thought.Enlightenment,or is this what people call a 'Heartache' ?

'Well,I...'

'Take your time. We have all the time.' Albert interrupted.

'Well, how do i put it really? I have been invisible all my life,and even with the honesty of all the mirrors in the world, none of them can be frank enough to tell me just how beautiful or ugly i am. I am invisible even to myself, and it is not just the physical aspect of it but emotionally as well. I see the world Albert, and i see myself in it. But i do not feel my presence,like i am feeling yours right now.I know that i exist,whenever you talk to me and how the floorboards would react to my weight. But when i think about it,when i truly think about it,do i really exist?How do you define existence,when all that IS of you are the sounds you make?The way dust forms a little cloud whenever i blow them,and the way vapour condenses on the cold window in winter. Is that it?All that is left of me in this world,just little implications of my existence? Albert,sometimes i feel like i am stripped,that i am rid of all the rights of a human and like you, trapped within a self that is not myself. I feel i want to fly away sometimes,to get out of my life. I want to take off like the hummingbird by the window we saw last summer, i want to break away from my parents. I know that they love me, i know that they care. But how am i supposed to live like that, when all i know about them is what they dont see in me?I am a failure Albert, i think i am.I am a failure in their eyes, even my name speaks volumes about how i am in their eyes. Menda is Mistake in Latin, remember me finding out about it when i asked you to print a Latin dictionary? Albert, you are a robot. You dont know how it is like to be caged,do you?To feel, to smell,to taste,to like,to love? I feel like a withering rose, i feel like a garden full of weed,and if i do not attempt to break out of here people are going to remember me as this...THIS! But what is THIS? What am I Albert?Just what in the world am I? People in the neighbourhood called me a ghost once,and the robots see me as a property to guard. My parents see me as a mistake,so much so that i am beginning to see myself as a major failure in everybody's life.And how about you Albert?How about you?'

Right then,the printer started automatically.The tip of Albert's index finger was opened,and a little wire was attached from there to the back of the printer.It came to life,and the little wheels started rolling,the ink within the printer started moving left and right,printed a picture upon the plain white paper.The picture was red,but it was a little blurry at first.But as the printed continued to push the paper out of itself, the picture came into full view.Albert was silent as the paper slowly drifted onto the tray before the printer.Amenda picked it up,the picture floated towards her face.

'I see this.' Albert said.

*

A drop.

A second drop.

A third.

'I sense a human emotion materialising.' Albert said.

'Sorry,' Amenda said with a chuckle. 'I am crying again.'

'Are you displeased, Amenda?'

'No silly,' Amenda said. 'Humans cry for happy reasons too.'

In her hands, bordered by the plain white paper,the red face of a person, a person Amenda does not recognise.But the setting was there,the old bed she sleeps on as well as the dressing table.They were behind the person in the picture,in red with white lines across the picture.It was the picture of herself, her face just after Albert told her about the surprise,with a wide grin across her face.

'I look broken!' Amenda said with a smile,though still teary in her eyes.'Do i really look like that?'

'Not anymore.' said Albert.'Not anymore...'

'Happy Birthday,Amenda.'