Jaja, Carla doet ook weer eens poging tot een Nano. Het feit dat ik nu al vreselijk achter loop laten we even achterwege. Het feit dat ik een verhaal schrijf dat nog geen plot heeft laten we stervend achter in een steegje. Ik weet niet waar dit verhaal heen gaat, but I'm sure I'll find out eventually. I schrijf in het Engels, want, naja, zo zat het in mijn hoofd Please, vertel me wat je vind! Strooi met ideeën! Because believe me, I need it.

This is the story of an ordinary girl in an ordinary world which suddenly stops being ordinary. Due to the switching of the magnetic poles of the earth, the life energy of humans is disrupted. Tisha finds herself surrounded with people who are receiving extraordinary powers and who start relying on her to help them. But will be she able to, since she is just an ordinary girl?

Hello world. My name is Tisha and I am an ordinary girl in this vast, extraordinary world. I’m 19 years old, almost 20, I have brown hair, fair skin and light brown eyes. I was born in an ordinary village and I’m now living in an ordinary city where I study Business Management. I had quite an ordinary life. I had a normal, non-traumatic childhood, a nice and easy high school period and none special life changing events. You could say I’m the most regular, ordinary person you could meet. You know, the 99%. The reason I am writing this, is because even though I am an ordinary person, I tend to get involved with the business of other, less ordinary persons. And I don’t even mean to. It just kinda happens. First, let me tell you about the day that the world itself stopped being ordinary.

I was at school, attending a lecture about implementing sustainability into your management. Rather boring, since we had this last year and the whole class is now reciting the motto ‘people, planet, profit’ in their sleep. But after class we heard a rumour. Something was going on. Something big. Something happened. And it was worldwide. It didn’t really make sense to me and to be fairly honest, I didn’t believe it. Our world today might have a lot of threats, but everyone knows that a third world war would completely destroy the earth as we know it, so no one will start it. I went home and to my complete surprise my housemates were discussing the exact same thing.
“They say weird stuff is happening all around the world,” my younger, 17 year old, roommate told me with her eyes as big as thee saucers. I could only raise an eyebrow to that.
“Stuff like what?”
“People jumping 15 meters into the air and stuff! I also heard that some kid stopped a car with his bare hands!” Okay, this was getting ridicules.
“Did you check the news? Maybe there’s something on.” I was given a blanc stare.
“Didn’t think about that,” my other blond roommate giggled. I rolled my eyes and snatched up the remote. As soon as I found the news channel, I froze. On the screen was a boy, around 12 years old, jumping onto a two story building from the sidewalk. Without any equipment. This could not possible be true! My roommates were chattering again, but I didn’t hear what they were saying. I could only stare.
As I said in the beginning, I am a very ordinary girl. I’ve always have been. That is exactly why I’ve always dreamed of being different. No, not different, but special. And now I saw it was possible in this world. What I was seeing wasn’t a movie, nor a scene in a book. This was real life.
“The authenticity of this video has yet to be confirmed, but there are reports of similar events around the world. Scientist cannot explain this phenomena yet, but whatever it is, is seems to be global. We will keep you updated on the latest developments and discoveries. Police and government urge everyone not to take measures in their own hands. They stress that life as we know it will be continued until further notice. Schools will be open and public transportation will function accordingly. ”
Everyone was startled as the remote fell on the ground. I turned on my heals and sprinted to the staircase. I climbed the stairs with two steps at the time, jammed my key into my door and slammed it behind me. I quickly pulled my laptop out of my bag and opened it. Impatiently drumming my fingers I watched the device waking up to a new, different world. Finally! I quickly entered my password, failed, entered it again and clicked franticly on the internet icon.
I didn’t exactly know why I was in such a rush. All I know I was extremely excited. Not just excited, but completely thrilled. I dreamt about this so much. Every book I read made me wish I was born into another world and now, the world around me had changed. I wanted to know how and why.
Google is your friend. A lot of people use it carelessly. It’s a very, very powerful device if you know how to use it. And I knew. The results were scanned by my professional eye, until three words caught my attention. Magnetic pole reversion. It had happened. Like, today. It was a scientific journal. It actually contained quite some typos, apparently they wanted to be the first to publish about this phenomena.
The earth has two magnetic poles, one located at the south and one at the north. However, the poles tend to switch, so the magnetic north pole ends up at the south and vice versa. This process can take between a 100.000 and 200.000 years, but excavations and examinations of earth layers has shown that there have been some really quick switches, some even within a month. What kind of effect this switch has, is not known to man yet. They only know that the magnetic field gets really weak when the poles are about to switch, which causes more UV light to penetrate the ozone layer. The most interesting fact was that the switch was running late. Very late. Actually, the last switch was 780.000 years ago. Until today.
I leaned back from the glowing screen. The poles switched. Was it a coincidence? What connection does it have with unhuman strength?
I Googled again and found myself browsing Wikipedia. Earths polarity apparently had a connection with the earths energy, at least, that was what the article about ley lines was telling me. I shook my head and slowly closed the laptop. This was getting ridicules. It would be absurd that I found out the cause, or actually the correlation between the phenomena and a recent happening before actual scientists did.

I spend the rest of my evening in my room, waiting till I heard my roommates go to their rooms so I could sneak down for some food. I realise how weird my reaction had been and I didn’t want to face my roommates at this point. Maybe tomorrow, or maybe they would have forgotten already. After a shabby dinner of soup and bread, I crawled into bed. My attempts to find sleep were interrupted with dreams about super powers and every anime I’ve ever watched passed the revue.

I woke up tired. Off course. My head didn’t seemed to have slept at all. I tried to push it aside, tried to drown my thoughts in the shower, but the news of last night kept playing in my head. Why was this getting to me? Why was I so utterly obsessed? It was probably fake anyway. Some kind of massive April 1st joke, even though it was the middle of October. Reluctantly I made my way to school and as expected the news was the talk of the day. I kept quiet that day. I listened to the people around me, the rumours, the theories. Most of them didn’t make sense. A lot of them involved plots of governments, an internet hoax or the awakening of superpowers. I dragged myself through the lectures of that day, but nothing seemed to stick. Who wants to hear about the four necessary factors to become a successful manager when there are people jumping 15 meters into the air?
After the last lecture I walked out the door and just wanted to go straight home. There were some things I wanted to write down and examine further. But faith had other ideas.
The screams lifted the grey clouds in my head instantly. I looked up and my eyes locked unto a girl standing amidst of a circle. No wait, people weren’t standing around her in a circle. They were lying on the ground. The girl seemed about my age, Asian, small and in complete panic. She was staring at her hands like they were snakes. Someone called her name, I was too far away to hear, so I came closer. A boy walked towards the Asian girl, who screamed: “No, wait!” while thrusting out her hands in a gesture to stop the boy in his movements. Instead of stopping him, the boy was flung away by an invisible force.
I froze to the ground. The reactions of the people around me were.. mixed. Some screamed and ran away, taking cover in the school building or behind benches. To my sad, sad realisation a lot of them took out there phones. The Asian girl looked up and saw someone filming her. She started crying.
“Please stop!” she yelled, while reaching out with her hand. Again, the person with the phone was flung aside.
I was halfway the schoolyard before I realised I had started walking. About five meters away of the girl I stopped.
“Could you please lower your hands?” I asked as calmly as I could manage. The girl spun around on her heals, eyes big, face shocked.
“Please, stay away from-“
“Lower your hands!” I bellowed with as much authority as I could muster. The girl, who had started raising her hands in a begging facing, from and slowly lowered them. I signed. “I’m sorry I didn’t want to yell at you. But it is very important that you listen to me. Shall we sit down?” Without waiting to long for an answer, I slowly lowered my body and crossed my legs. The girl, clearly still shocked, hesitantly followed my example. “Now, please put your hands on your knees.” I proceeded in putting my hands, palm down, on my own knees. Again, the girl followed my lead. I smiled and relaxed a bit. “What is your name?”
“Juawen,” she answer in a small voice.
“My name is Tisha. We need to calm you down a little bit, don’t we? Now, take a deep breath and exhale for about 5 seconds.” The girl looked a bit insecure, but as I demonstrated the technique, she took a deep breath.
“Okay, you can exhale a little less hard,” I said as I scrambled to my feet after the force of her breath had knocked me over and blew me away three meters. Juawen looked shocked.
“O my, I’m so sorry!”
“Hands down! Thank you. Let’s try again.” We repeated the exercise and this time she breathed with a little more caution. While we were doing this, my own mind was working over hours to process what just happened. The girl was thrusting people away with an invisible force which seemed to be concentrated in her hands. However, she just knocked me over with her breath. It didn’t feel like she really blew me away though. It was more a.. force. An energy. Damn, life energy, really? I should have paid more attention to that yesterday. I made a mental note that I needed to check the connection between the Earth’s magnetic field and the life energy of people and then focussed my mind on the problem at hand. “Do you feel a little calmer, Juawen?”
“Yeah, I think so,” the girl spoke softly.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“I, I don’t know.. A friend of mine startled me and I turned around and then.. They flew away..” Juawen slowly lifted her hands and turned her palms upward. Her dark eyes were filled with disbelief and tears. “I don’t want to hurt someone!” Her force was begging and truthful. I nodded.
“Do you want to come to my house for a bit? We seem to have quite an audience.” I smiled a bit, while a made a gesture to the thirty or forty people who were standing around us. Juawen swallowed visibly and nodded. I stood up, dusted off my pants and reached out to the girl. Juawen stared at my hand for a second and slowly reached out with hers. For some reason both of us seemed to have expected.. something. But nothing happened when her small hand touched mine and I pulled her up.
“Show’s over people!” I said hard and firm, after which I led the girl away.

I held her hand until we left the yard and were walking on the sidewalk towards my house. I let her go and realised I was shaking. Damn, how the hell did I manage that? My eyes trailed to the right. Juawen was about 15 centimetres smaller than I was, which made her look even more fragile. I knew how I managed. It was her utter fear of herself that gave me the courage to walk up to her.
“How are you feeling?” I said, as I smiled as friendly as I could. The girl looked up to me, but quickly changed her eyes back to the sidewalk.
“Okay, I guess. I don’t really understand what is happening.”
“Neither do I, actually,” I admitted. “But I have a theory. Even though it’s not much.”
“You do?” Juawen looked up to me in total disbelief, which kinda stung. Was it that weird to think that I figured something out? But the girl didn’t know me, so probably she was just surprise. I signed softly.
“Yesterday the magnetic poles of the Earth switched.” Juawens look told me that I probably should elaborate a little more about the magnetic poles. “Okay, you know how the Earth has a magnetic field? This field protects us against UV light and without it, life wouldn’t be possible on Earth. This field has two poles, a north and a south pole. These were originally located at the landmasses we know as the North pole and Antarctica. However, these poles switch every 100.000 or 200.000 years. The last switch was 780.000 years ago, until yesterday.” Juawen seemed to process this and nodded.
“Okay, and you think this might be connected to my.. powers?” I shrugged.
“I have no idea actually. Because the last switch was so long ago, nobody really knows what kind of effect the switching of the poles has. Some expected natural disasters, others a complete disarray within the animal kingdom, but most people expected it wouldn’t have any effect at all. But isn’t it a really big coincidence that the poles switches yesterday and now suddenly people are stopping cars with their bare hands?”
“Damn, you are really smart, aren’t you?”
“Nah, I just know how to Google.” We arrived at my house and I fished out the keys from my bag. Luckily my roommates weren’t home yet, so we took two glasses and a bottle of soda and went upstairs to my room.

“I would like to look up a few things, if you don’t mind,” I said, while pulling out my laptop. Juawen nodded and sat down on my bed with her legs crossed. I pulled out my notebook and started to write some things down.
On top of the page I wrote: ‘Switching of the Earth magnetic poles’. Then I wrote down: ‘Why does it happen?’, ‘How does it happen’ and ‘What effect does it have?’. I bit my pen and continued: ‘Earth’s energy -> Ley lines. People’s energy (chi, aura, etc.)?’ I turned to my laptop and started Googling.
“Uhm, Tisha?”
“Yes, Juawen?”
“Thank you.” I looked up, a little surprised.
“No thanks needed. I’m glad I could help.”
“You were the only one, you know. I saw them, my friends. They were running away. And the others were just looking. Filming me.” Her voice broke and the girl started crying. I quickly got up and sat down next to the girl. I hugged her, but no words came to mind to comfort her. She was absolutely right. That was what this world came down to. Look, don’t help. The bystander effect. Our social media actually made it worse. The world seemed to be at loss. Maybe it was a good thing the world changed. We could use a little change.