Special Episode 1: So This is The New Year?

"… and I don’t feel any different," Mina said to the boy she was flirting up. Sylvie rolled her eyes. She was very different then she had been. Back before, Mina would never have talked to that cute boy with his blazing brown eyes. She probably wouldn’t have even been at this party. Of course, Sylvie knew that that wasn’t what she was talking about; Mina had had a few drinks, and was discussing with the smoking and smoking-hot boy the differences between alcohol and marijuana.
Sylvie wandered off, hoping Mina wouldn’t notice and wouldn’t follow her. She couldn’t decide if she was fortunate or not when a swarm of three gruff looking men descended upon her.
"I’m much tastier than my brother," the largest one got very close to her. His breath stank of whiskey. Sylvie smiled at him and extended her arm. He smiled and was about to take it and drag her upstairs, but he yelped out in pain. Sylvie maintained her smile as she drew her arm back. He held up his arm for his brothers to see the four slowly bleeding wounds as she walked away.
She glanced at the clock on her way to the bathroom to wash the flecks of skin out from under her nails. 11:55.
She hoped that they weren’t going to do that kissing thing when the calendars turned. Some jackass like Big Billy Gruff back there would grab her and shove his tongue down her throat. She despised that. Not kissing itself; in fact, there was one boy, entirely not in attendance (she didn’t realize that he would have been if she had offered to take him along) that she wouldn’t mind kissing many times. It was just the actual application of kissing so far in her life that she despised.

The clanking of crystal and glass was a sound that Waldo had been accustomed to on special occasions by the time he was five. It no longer gave him a headache, as it did most people naturally sensitive to sound. Actually, nothing gave him a headache anymore; he had drowned out that weakness by exposing himself to the most grating sounds possible. His parents had already drowned out some of his other weaknesses. He barely felt physical pain. Not because his parents had beaten him so that his nerves were all dead! Oh, dear, no. They barely even spanked him when he was younger. No, his father had made him run basic physical training exercises every day since he could walk. He had strained every muscle until he could barely feel it when they were pulled. Well, that’s not exactly what it was; the pain just didn’t phase him.
His parents had stamped out all his response to emotional anguish as well. That was something that they hadn’t done intentionally; it just happened with such circumstances. He still felt happiness and sadness and love, but he just ignored all the pain and joy it brought. When he was supposed to be smiling, his friends saw how forced his smile was, but knew it was sincere. It frightened some people at first, but his friends were used to it within a week of knowing him.
His parents had, as usual, a collection of strange people that they only vaguely knew and who only vaguely knew them. Waldo began to wonder a couple times if he was even in his own house.
So he retreated upstairs and got on the internet. No one was on, so he started playing random games, most of them sports themed. These allowed the mental numbing, so that he could feel no

Explosions off in the distance rattled Jennifer’s one room, cold, stony apartment. She stood up, letting the covers slip off of her bare arms and legs, leaving her defenseless in her barely warm, barely too large t-shirt, and nothing else. She looked out the window, and watched the bright, brief flowers burn in the sky. The sparks fell to earth as the cooled and blinked out.
She swore then and there that she’d stop just being a spark again. She’d go back to her old life, where she was a part of the whole flower, not just an after image.
They had put her in this room, that awful organization, just because she had proverbially stolen a loaf of bread. Now, it was time to get out.
She tore open the lonely, dirty, stained mattress, and began bending some of the springs to her whim…

"SO THIS IS THE NEW YEAR! AND I HAVE NO RESOLUTIONS!" Dirk’s drunken friend Bubba belted out on the karaoke machine. Todd laughed; emo music sounded exactly the same off key as it did on. He turned to his sister to make note of this fact, but she was gone. He glanced at the clock on the wall; it was 11:55.
"Oh, we gotta get upstairs! Almost the new year!"

"It’s self-assigned work… *-CLICK-* … EARN your penance for… *-CLICK-* … there ARE no problems with easy solutions. *-CLICK-* So you want to be a doctor? *-CLICK-*"
There were two televangelists on TV. Amazing. Dawn shook her head as her father continued flipping through channels. She glanced at her mother, who quickly averted her watching gaze.
She wondered why her mother was acting so strange today. And why her father kept changing the channel away from sitcoms. And from news. And, for that matter, anything that was made in the last ten years…
She knew that it was New Year’s Eve, but they weren’t watching any specials. They hesitated on one for a few seconds, and during those she noticed that Dick Clark looked a lot older than he had last year. A lot older. But then her mother made a noise, and her father quickly swapped it.
Marty was nowhere to be seen, but Dawn could still smell her on the air. She smelled of liquor; she had smelled like liquor since her fourteenth birthday a few weeks ago. Of course, she hadn’t been drinking; her friends had poured vodka all over her on her birthday, and for some reason the refused to shower thereafter.
At 11:55, Marty came downstairs. Dawn did a double-take when she finally showed up, as she now appeared to be in her mid twenties.
"Mom?" Dawn asked cautiously.
"Yes, honey?"
"Why is Marty older than me?"
"Marty’s always been older than you, dear."
Dawn turned to her father, who nodded sincerely. But his eyes were full of fear. She looked to Marty.
"Yeah, I’ve always been older than you, squirt." Marty laughed.
"Oh. So… I… See."
She had been so sure… But now she figured that she had just forgotten. And that was okay. She could deal with that. What the hell?

"… Everybody put your hands up and nobody gets hurt!" The biker screamed as he burst into the convenience store, brandishing a gun.
Sunny hated bikers. He also hated New Years Eve. That was why he had to work, which we already know he hated. He also hated clichéd robbery lines.
"There’s no one here but me, dumbass," Sunny growled. He hated when he had to talk, and he hated growling. He hated putting his hands up, but he did anyway, because he hadn’t loaded the shotgun beneath the counter because he hated doing that.
"Oh. Well, gimme all the money!"
Sunny hated conflicting orders. "Should I put my hands down first?"
"Yes, please," the biker commanded with false sweetness.
Sunny hated false sweetness, and he hated emptying the cash register for robbers. He hated robbers. He hated robbers as much as he hated people who earned their money. They were all so awful. But he obeyed. Because he hated death as much as he hated life.
"Happy New Year!" the robber cackled as he dashed off.
Sunny hated that, too.

"… Best suit money can buy! Down at the… *-CLICK-* … or are you going to screw me ov… *-CLICK-* …dress on the mannequin! It doesn’t work! Let’s make… *-CLICK-* …believe that we are wealthy? We are not! We are poor! Dirt Poor! You little ingr… *-CLICK-*"
Zach’s family didn’t celebrate the New Year. It didn’t seem important to them, and it seemed even less important to Zach. Both his parents were out working, and he was just watching TV. He couldn’t find anything on, but for just this once it didn’t bother him.
Across the street, Zach’s casual acquaintance Brant was lighting fireworks off on the front lawn. Zach glanced out the window occasionally to watch the flaming flying objects.
Brant’s voice carried across the street, two words: "I wish…" and then the flaming flying objects drowned him out. Zach would have wondered what he wished, but he didn’t care at all.
"*-CLICK-* …The world was flat to them, because that’s what… *-CLICK-* …..

"It’s like the old days, man!" Mario’s friend was stoned out of his gourd. Mario couldn’t remember his name, because he was stoned out of his gourd too.
"Man," Mario murmured, laying back in the beanbag, "I wish I had a car… So I could travel…"
"Dude, dude dude dude!"
"What?"
"I forget. Where’re your parents again?"
Mario giggled. "I forget."
"Man, it’s like the old days man!" Their conversation became cyclical; at no point did either of them remember who had started it or who the other one was. But they kept on smoking, all through the night.

"There’ll be no more airplanes," Dinah Oswald heard her daddy telling the strange men.
"… Or we can take the speed-trains," her mother said into the phone. "What? They don’t have those anymore? I remember when I was a little girl, my daddy always took me on the fast-trains…"
Dinah blocked her mommy back out, and, still pretending to sleep, kept listening to her daddy. "… Or Toll-ways or free-ways! They’re going to take away our transportation! It goes down in seven months. Be ready. I’ve been watching them for months, and I’m pretty sure that’s what they’re trying to do. We have seven months to stop them." Dinah opened her eyes to glance at the clock; it was 11:55. She saw Dr. Ruby there before she shut her eyes again. She knew he had seen her eyes open; he had that smile he got when he was going to help her keep a secret. She smiled, and covered it up by pulling the blanket farther over her head.
A fact that will be useful for understanding the preceding scene is that she is pretending to sleep on the couch.

Joe was looking at a monitor, information streaming down it. He read it at an incredible rate. His eyes filled with fear, and he looked at the prisoner shrouded in darkness. "My god, you’re going to the interior…"
Two bright rows of gleaming white teeth appeared in the darkness, a horrible grin. A weak, genderless, terrible voice cracked from between them. "There’d be no distance that could hold us back."
"My god, there really wouldn’t… We’ll stop you! We really will, I swear!" Joe backed away from the monitor and the window.
"No, you won’t… Nothing can stop us. And all you traitors and uninvolveds? Well, it’s just too bad for the uninvolveds…"
Nataliya looked up at Joe. "He’s right," She whispered.
"I know he is," he grimaced. "There’s nothing we can do about it except survive it…"

A great cry rose across the land; it came in four or five bursts, moving from east to west.
"Happy New Year!" The people screamed, as (many more than) thirty dialogues bled into one.