Serendipity (n.)

-  Sometimes the things you ask for turn out in ways you don’t expect.

 As far as meeting your son goes, mine was a disappointment. No warm feeling in my heart or upturn of the stomach, no fear of whether you would be a good parent or not, just a feeling of utmost disbelief and surprise.

It was another Friday night, which means party night. Well, for most of my classmates anyway. Party night denotes being stuck in my make-shift science laboratory provided by my parents trying to make scientific breakthrough. Trying. I am sixteen and in my last year at the university and during the last few years I’ve achieved significant fame in the scientific community for my work in particle physics. I am a genius, so they say. Frankly, I’m just a hard worker – a curious and a bored hard worker.

When I was eight, I started to read about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, since then I’ve been trying to prove that time travel can happen. I am fascinated with the idea that when a things travels to the speed of light, time can slow down, thus enabling the thing to be in a future point in the time-space continuum. In theory, this is of course possible, but many scientists discounted time travel to the past. I wanted to prove them wrong.

Only if I can get this formula correct.

As time droned by, I heard a loud crash from the next room. Not that I minded because I was nowhere close to cracking the formula I am looking for. I stood up from my work table and grabbed a metal rod. You never know when a metal rod might come in handy. I walked out of my lab and opened the door of the room where the sound came from.

And there he was, a guy probably my age, standing, covered in soot and dressed in some weird clothing, His hair was dishevelled and he looked a lot like me.

“Who the hell are you?” I asked curiously.

The boy approached me enthusiastically and hugged me too tight. Under normal circumstances when a foreign creature tries to hug me, I would have run away in alarm and distress. But there was something eerily familiar with this boy. It’s as if I knew him, or at least a part of me does.

“Thank you thank you thank you it was you who showed up. I was afraid it would be somebody else,” he said whilst still latched on me.

I pushed the strange boy away and pried him off me. He really does look like me. Suddenly, a thousand thoughts bolted through my mind. What if this boy was a secret government clone project to duplicate my genius and he is about to take over my life and he’s here on mission to kill me? What if this was my twin brother who was separated from our family and now he’s come back to reclaim his rightful place? I wanted to ask him how he got inside this room but somehow all I managed to say was, “Who are you?”

He looked at me funnily, as if the answer was supposed to be obvious. “You really looked like me when you were younger,” he said and he chuckled.

I was perplexed.

“I realize that this is utterly confusing, but you are Lee Taemin are you not?” he asked.

I nodded. How did he know my name? Before I could pry out the information myself, he started to talk again.

“You really are a genius!” he said reverently. “Anyway, Lee Taemin, I am your son, Kai.”

***

I woke up with a colossal headache. I lay there quietly, hoping that I was in my bed and what just happened was a terrible dream. It wasn’t.

The boy named Kai was peering at me with widened eyes. Apparently, I was still on the floor where I fainted. He had this indistinguishable look of worry and amusement on his face.

“Are you alright?” he managed to ask as he helped me sit down.

“Fine. Oh y