Chapter 15

They say a person can go four minutes without oxygen, four days without water, and four weeks without food.

Four weeks. What is four weeks? It's absolute hell. Four weeks of listening to someone complain about how hungry and starving they are.

Terri started out, believing he could stand starving himself; he only lasted a week. At that point, he started eating ice. At first, I was fine with that, but then I decided that I didn't want any room for error. Even if water isn't enough energy to truly fuel a person alone, there's still energy there. I wanted to make sure that no energy was going into his system at all. I wanted to force the universe to give in without a single condition.

It has been exactly eight weeks since we started. I've nearly gone insane, and I'm sure Terri has surpassed insanity and gone to super sanity. But… I was right.

"You're still moving."

"Yes. It's horrible. I can't even describe how it feels to have nothing left in you, yet to be able to have the same energy as any normal day."

"Then it's settled. I made sure to double the time to be absolutely sure, but there's no way you could be alive without any energy going into you. I know you don't fully agree with my logic on all this, but even you must agree that you are the walking definition of free energy."

"I agree. It defies all logic and reason, it breaks several fundamental rules, but I agree."

"Then it's settled. The first foundation, energy, has been destroyed."

"Congrats. Now, for the love of God, can I go back to eating?"

"Actually, I got a present for you."

"Yo, it better be food or I will eat you."

"Pervert. Anyways, I'm paying for wherever you wanna eat tonight."

"I wanna go to the most expensive-"

"Within a $100 budget."

"That's actually still a good amount of food. Let's just go down to Bojangles."

"Hell yeah, I love Bojangles."

As we sit at our table, looking over more chicken than any healthy person should eat in a week, we discuss the next stage in our plan.

"Alright. I think gravity should be next."

"Why? Shouldn't you work on one of the harder ones so we don't have to break Light and Death one right after the other?"

"Nah, it's gotta be gravity. I need to be able to fly, like today."

"What is with you and flying?"

"I just want to get away from it all, you know?"

"Get away from what?"

"Maybe I just want a change of scenery. Or, I want to do things and see things that I might not be able to while I'm stuck on the ground."

"And you can't do that on the ground? You can't take a vacation and visit another country or wherever it is you want to go to?"

"Just visiting isn't enough. I want a degree of freedom you normies can't get."

"Don't call me a normie."

"You are a normie."

"How am I a normie?"

"Bro, you're already about to intern for your job. Looking to get hired right out of college. Then you'll be looking to get married to the cute girl at the grocery store, and then you'll be looking to have a kid. You're straight shooting for that normie lifestyle."

"Even if that's what I end up doing, is there anything wrong with that?"

"Not for most people, I guess. Just, I want something a little bit more. More as in more of this amazing chicken."