Peripheral Vision

By Mark Love

What started out as a gift, soon ended up being a curse. My vision is not like the rest of mankind. My peripherals show me the past, present, and the future at the same time. My life is not what I thought it was. Your's isn't either.
We are the offspring of the Gods, known as the children of the strings. Together we have nurtured the strings of life, such as the string you now preside on now. Together the Players have created the music which allowed the strings to mature, using the Jumpers to create stings of life in its' ever ending quest to evolve.
This is my story of how my life as I thought it was, changed from a Player named Kristi. Your existance and life as you know it lies in the palm of our hands. Learn how we created it, and the lessons we learned in a story that has never been told, until now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781312957213

Mark Love

Mark Love is professor of theology and ministry and director of the MRE in missional leadership at Rochester University (Rochester, Michigan). He worked for seventeen years in full-time congregational ministry and has consulted with congregations and their leaders worldwide.

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Peripheral Vision

Peripheral Vision

Copyright © 2015 by Mark Love

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2015

ISBN 978-1-312-95721-3

Mark Love

1104 S 11th St

Kingfisher, OK  73750

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Preface

This story was comprised from quite the unordinary circumstances. I was at work, lacing up my boot strings when the left one broke. I didn't think much of it at the time, but as the weeks went by, I never remembered to replace it. Out of morbid curiosity, I left it alone to see how long it would last until I had to ultimately replace it. I still haven't to this day of publishing this book. It was as though I was using it as a countdown; to what is still unknown.

My love for the classic rock has inspired me through out my life. It's the magic that it has while the beat keeps the inner child in you going. We can all listen to a song and immediately refer back in time when we heard it first, and how we felt. I think it's stronger than the sense of smell; which can do the same thing.

Humans take their vision for granted. We tend to focus on what's in front of us and forget the power we have in our peripherals. We use it mostly as a defense mechanism as we go through life rubber necking so we don't feel we've missed out on something. But what if you could use it as a tool that allows you to do the unthinkable?

I took this question and decided to answer it for myself. I wrapped the powers of the peripherals, the magic of the music I was listening to, and the fragile strings of life into the pages that I lived out in my imagination as I wrote this story. Listen to the music as it plays out in the pages. Only then will you find the magic that it truly has and the power to influence a story like this.

Chapter 1: Peripheral Vision

I stand alone while the cool breeze brushes by my frightened body as I shelter myself behind a blind fold to escape the life I can't continue to lead. Below me is a sheer cliff which welcomes my peril if I encompass the courage to take my final step forward.

I've been haunted with a curse since I was a child, and only wanted to see life through the eyes of a normal person. It was only a dream at once, but now it's taken its toll. I just didn't know any different and can't seem to fantasize how it could be.

It was explained to me as a child that a normal person has a line of sight that extends to the side view of their heads. The farther from center of view, the less detail you get from the outer vision. This is called peripheral vision. I always wanted this, but I've been deemed something much more. At once I thought it was a gift. As I grew older, I realized it was something of a bigger problem that I couldn't escape.

Decision making is relatively easy for most people. You see something, you respond. But what if you could see the past, what's in front of you and its outcome all at the same time? Welcome to my nightmare, and the life I choreographed using a technique that took my decision making and total manipulation to a whole different level.

My parents thought I was a genius when I was going through school. I just couldn't be challenged enough in their eyes with the curriculum that public schools had to offer. I went through college while I was still in my teens. I got several masters degrees before I was in my early twenties. It was just too easy for me. What they didn't know was the skills I had used to excel myself through school and why it wasn't a challenge.

I tried to talk to my Mom about it once, but she just giggled and called it an active imagination. My Dad was too busy trying to find something to see if I could in fact be challenged, and the doctors told me that I had a photographic memory and left it alone.

What they all didn't know was that it wasn't photographic, but merely my life playing out in front off me every time my eyes are open. The past, determined by how far I wanted to go back, the present time, and the recourses of my decisions I made at that moment and what it would become.

It seemed that the more I talked to people about it, the more they felt that I had fallen off the deep end, so from then on, I just kept my secrets to myself.

Chapter 2: Schooling

As I had mentioned, schooling wasn't very difficult for me. From the age of nine, I started to use my gift at the time to sit down on a test day, look at a question, and immediately see the teacher going over the lesson on my left side of my peripheral vision. She was literally giving me the answers that I was inquiring for.

This was the past that I could recall, but I could only go back about a weeks times. Once I decided on the answer, my right side peripheral would play out my future in the same amount of time distance to see that I had aced the test.

As you could see, all I had to do was show up for class. Studying wasn't much of a challenge if any study was needed at all. This wasn't just a photographic memory, this was like going back in time and sitting in class and going over the material live. I was actually seeing this as I needed it.

When I got into college at the age of 16, it was nice to finally get out of the house and the blanket of my parents who had pushed me so hard in my studies, so they thought anyway.

We had moved around so much that it was almost unachievable to have any kind of relationship with a girl and I lacked any kind of social skills with the opposite sex. Lucky for me though, college had a course in this too; even though it wasn't an accredited one, but hormones were raging everywhere, including mine.

I really didn't know who I was or what I wanted to be back then. Most of us in their later teens really don't. I tried the party scene for a while but it was a horrible failure due to the fact that I had never indulged in the liquid spirits before, and found myself passed out quite early in the game. My gift wasn't much help for me at this point, but it was worth the try and needless to say a learning experience.

I was blessed with cuteness though. It wasn't hard to get a girls attention, but more so knowing that seducing me would be a little risky and turning a shy boy into a man would be a trophy to some girls. Some times I felt that I was standing on an auction block going to the highest bidder though. I wanted to get this feeling out of my head, but I had a hard time making the commitment.

Teachers loved me in the beginning of the semester because I always had the answers. After a while though, they passed me by when they asked for answers in class because I'd quote them word for word from their lectures on the subject.

I was starting to learn that it would sometimes be better to just not know the answer and keep quiet. Once I did this, I began to notice people, their actions, but more so their vulnerabilities'.  This was the time that my gift started to kick in and my life would never be the same again.

The day I turned 18 I moved out of the dorm room and rented myself a condo just off campus. I couldn't wait to make the move. The late hours of noisy and continuous pranks had taken its toll and the welcome silence of my own place seemed to settle me down.

This was the first time that I can remember when my atmosphere was determined by me and my own actions now. I've never had this before, but I felt a peace with it, and from that moment on, I wasn't going to give it up.

I was putting myself through college on a full academic scholarship, but I helped classmates with private tutoring to make the extra spending money. I was surprised that there were actually students who took their studies seriously. I never saw this in the dorms.

This wasn't just an opportunity for me, but a way to exploit and manipulate people in a plot that would change me forever. My gift had gone into overdrive now, and nothing would be the same again. The only thing that would limit me would be my imagination, which was going into overdrive itself now too.

Chapter 3: Information Highway

I was never one to sit in front of