In Continuum.

Ten minutes to the time when Will was supposed to wake up. He stared at the second hand as it ticks each digit away on the clock face, moving the tiny gears inside the white plastic cube. Nine minutes now, and Will continued to stare at the second hand, pretending that the world was about to end in nine minutes, and we only have our last wishes - what last wishes? He continued this mundane boring activity until it was five seconds before the alarm was supposed to ring. He counted down from there, to four, to three to two, and that was when he slammed his palm down onto the snooze button to stop the doomsday clock. He saved the day, he felt good about himself, and he got out of bed a second before his imaginary world got blown into smithereens. Nine fifty in the morning, a brand new week to the same old school. Another week of work, bad news, more bad news, assignments, projects... he looked at himself in the mirror and squeezed his cheeks together, an effort to squeeze some life out of that dead pan face. He got ready for breakfast, then changed into a random t-shirt he picked out from the closet. 

Will's journey to school begins here, as he waved goodbye to his mother at the front door and waited for the elevator to arrive. The enclosed space within the elevator somehow made him feel secure, and he started to sing a tune at the top of his voice, despite knowing that the elevator could stop at any floor at any moment. He'd stop singing when the elevator hits the third floor, just to allow the echo of his voice to settle down for a while. He exits the elevator, down the staircases to the left of the lobby, and through the parking lot and the back gate. The construction of the MRT station was still moving forward, and he notices something different on a daily basis. A new tree planted, a new post erected, a new sign revealed, a new entrance opened. A horde of morning commuters were already at the bus stop, just waiting for the bus to arrive - hopefully on time. Will sat next to a middle aged caucasian man and his two sons, he's seen them there every morning for the past few weeks now. Will tapped his right foot to the beat of the song in his ears, his cellphone tucked deep into his left pocket because he knew that nobody would bother texting him at that time in the morning. The bus came, he hopped on, and his brain automatically shut down from here on out. 

Will is on his way home from school right now, the events of the day passed like a song with two notes, with every higher note coupled with the lower one, over and over and over again. Lecturers came in and gave talks, then followed by another lecturer coming in to give talks. In between those mundane routines, he hung out with friends and avoided people he didn't want to encounter on corridors. There were laughs, but they were soon forgotten amidst the noise of the crowd and his own random thoughts of the day. Distractions, like the sound of some irresponsible passenger on the bus blasting music through his cellphone. Will leaned his head to the bus window, and he felt the vibration of the bus engine gently against his skull. His eyes stared at the hammer above his head for a while, the one with the sign below that read "In emergency, use hammer to break window". He thought to himself how nobody would know that that is the hammer when the bus overturns or something, because it looked nothing like a hammer. He's seen it on Mythbusters before, he remember Adam breaking a car window with something that looked like that. He thought about stealing that hammer and then bringing it home as a trophy, like how he used to steal bus number plates from the back of double-decker buses. 

It was his stop after half an hour of day dreaming, with the bus trapped amidst the peak hour traffic, the air-conditioning failed to do what it was designed to do halfway through the trip. He tapped the shoulder of the man seated next to him who was falling asleep with his chin touching his chest. He shifted himself pass the sleeping man and down onto the crowded aisle, with the music in his ears still blasting away. He pressed for the bell, and the red light at the front of the bus lighted up, and everybody started pushing their ways through other passengers who wanted to remain in the bus for a little while longer. The afternoon rain left the expressway moist and glittery, as the sunlight was reflected off the puddles by the side of the world and created white spots in Will's eyes. The glare was uncomfortable, and he turned his head away from the road as he tried to connect to the internet via the EDGE network on his phone. He wanted to check how long it would be before his bus arrived, and the connection seemed particularly slow that day. He typed in the bus stop number that he has memorized, and then the bus number in the box right below. Seven minutes, he thought to myself. Just enough time for one more song. 

Four bus rides a day is what it takes for Will to go to school and come home. In the mean time, Will does nothing more than to listen to the music on his iPod, come up with possible topics for his blog, and the occasional studying he does on the bus when there is an exam coming up. He does the latter rather seldom though, because reading anything on a moving vehicle is nauseating to him. Will made his way down the last bus of the day and found new trees planted along the road. Like most of the other bus trips, he'd purposely pick a song that has a nice introduction, like Teardrop by Massive Attack, before the bus pulls into the bay, just so that he'd have a good song to walk home with for the rest of the way. Little excitements to him, he thought, went a long way. He peered over the fence at the school he used to attend, the grassy knoll now pulled down to make way for the new MRT station, and a giant advertisement stood in its place, a banner from URA that is advertising to sell the land. More houses, he thought. More constructions around his house, and he thought to himself once again about leaving this country altogether. He seemed easy, he thought, since he had nothing to hold on to, no reason to remain here - not at that time. 

He fished the key to the back gate out of his bag, and he wondered if the lady behind him was going to the same estate as well. She was always five steps behind him, and he imagined her to be some kind of spy, hired by somebody out there to make himself feel more important, bigger than he really is. He imagined meeting his friend at the back gate, and he made a small conversation with this invisible friend under his breath. That is what he does from time to time, conversations with himself when nobody is looking, just to kill time and to create more random thoughts that he shares with no one but himself. The lady was going to the same place as he, and he held open the metal door for her. He expected a thanks, but the lady merely walked pass him and went through the parking lot without saying a word. Will cursed under his breath and made a hand gesture at the lady as she walked away. He continue talking with his invisible friend until he reached the elevator, and that was when he started his mini karaoke session all over again. He started singing on top of his voice, usually the same song everyday, until the elevator reached the seventeenth floor where he'd stop, and all would go back to normal - normal - all over again. 

Will is back home now, taking off his socks in front of his computer. The screen is lit and the browser already turned on. Will is waiting for a page to load right now, and he was changing out into more comfortable clothes. The dinner was being prepared in the kitchen, and his mother was asking him about how the school was. He went through the same websites that he'd visit everyday, from his blog to his friends' blog, from Digg to Cracked, from Mac Rumors to Apple Insider, from ComingSoon to RottenTomatoes, from torrent sites to torrent sites. Another celebrity caught drinking while driving, another boy being shot somewhere in the world. Scientists discover new link between cigarette smoking and sex, a snake is born in a country in Africa with three heads - with pictures! A lousy movie tops the box office in North America again, and someone is cursing at somebody else on an online forum. A fake picture surfaces on Mac Rumors about the new iMac, somebody is having troubles downloading a document from the web for his new Macbook. Top ten list of the biggest douchebags in Hollywood, new and interesting ways to make your desktop look awesome. 

The rest of the night carries on like this, surfing from one website to another. No instant messages, no text messages, no e-mails. The only sound from the instant messaging client comes from the occasional question in regards to a school, and the virus that sends random messages around through your contact list. He studies a little bit at night, hears the sound of news coming from the living room, and he reads the exact same line for the fourth time. He realized it, but he couldn't help it. He needed to get some work done by the time he goes to sleep later on at midnight, since there isn't a point for him to stay up longer than that. Will grew tired quickly of the books, and thought that a warm shower would wake him up a little. Yet, it did nothing to cheer him up, but the time spent staring at the white tiles in the bathroom made him think of more things, more random thoughts, more empty thoughts that he'd share with no one but himself. He thought about the time when he used to have someone to text to when he needed somebody, when he could wake up from a nightmare in the middle of the night and call somebody. He remembered those little dates he'd be going for after school, all of those being non-existent now. 

Hey you, I remember that other time on the phone when I told you about this. I told you that it was very hard for me to recall how my life was like in the past when you never existed in my life. Or rather, to me, you never existed at all before that fateful day in August. I don't remember how it was like to wake up to an empty cellphone screen, or how it was like to stay up late into the night just to have a phone conversation. I don't remember how it was like to connect with somebody other than myself, or the feeling of not sharing strange and random thoughts even when they sound ridiculous and mean nothing at all. It was just me going through the motions, from one day to another, over and over again. Then, you came along, and it just seems like you have taken over everything in my life right now. Whether or not it is a long bus trip, my time spent on the internet, I have something - or someone - to look to now. You are more than that, of course, you are more than the spices that add taste to my life. You are more than that. It's just that, I feel, you have penetrated even the most trivial aspects of my life, and everything swirls around you now. 

I am just thankful to have you around, you know, and glad that I do not remember how it was like before all this - and I don't want to. I want to focus on the present, on the now, and how to make every passing day somehow better than the last. We haven't known each other for very long, much less been together. But hey, these past couple of months has been some of the most memorable times of my life, even more so than the months and years before we met that I have lived at times. So thank you for being you, and let's hope that this endless conversation that we've been having since day one, literally, will last for a long long time. I love you my beautiful stranger, and I bet you already know that.