15:34. University of Fine Arts and Pedagogy, Almaty, Kazakhstan, March 16th.

The rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes. an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors and shaved the grass and tunneled the soil and molted the bushes. It shrank men's hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain, and it never stopped. (Ray Bradbury-"The Long Rain" -The Illustrated Man).

His eyes were glued to the old, yellow pages and his trembling fingers grasped the book cover tightly. Mr. Ray Bradbury seemed to have predicted the future because his neverending rain depicted so poetically in his story "The Long Rain" had materialized here in Almaty and was reigning supreme for the past weeks. The former capital of Kazakhstan had never seen such rain. The young man was hunched over, perhaps too close to a dim reading lamp offering a warm pale orange shelter to the worn-out pages. The man had sharp features: high cheek-bones, sunken cheeks and a protruding chin. But the sharpness of his features was toned down and contrasted by his soft eyes, the eyes of an old wise man who had learned too much too quickly during his many many springs. He loved reading. That is all he had done these four years since arriving on Earth. He had wanted to know everything there is to know about Earth's nature, its people, their history, their psychology, their social norms and habits, their art, their genius minds of the past and present, how they love, how they hate, how they dream, how they strive. He had used his intelligence and thirst for knowledge to become a lecturing professor of Art and Literature. Now he instilled his knowledge in others while also perpetually cultivating his own.

Kim Jongdae was his name and his students called him Professor Kim but his colleagues and aquaintances (he had no real friends, his books were his only companions) called him Chen in an effort to create a sense of familiarity and warmth, the illusion of a family, rather than an academic staff. Truth of the matter is, he was known to be mostly a loner, a melancholic, reserved, lonely soul, always book-in-hand accompanied by an intense, pondering look on his face. He had fought the windmills with Don Quijote, chased the white whale aboard Pequod alongside Ahab, rooted for Winston to never admit 2+2 was 5 to O'Brian, he had gone buffalo hunting with Francis McComber, he had seen the shadows on the wall in Plato's Cave and found the light, he had gone through Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise alongside Dante and Virgil, went down the rabbit-hole with Alice, saw the House of Usher crumble, marched the streets of Dublin with Stephen and Leopold Bloom on June 16th, 1904 and yet still he wanted more, he wanted to live many lives and experience the adventures and adrenaline he longed for. Perhaps he was trying to regain something he had lost. His stream of consciousness was interrupted by loud thunder.

Thunder.

Thunder so loud it shook his heart and made his ears ring. The thunder reprised, it sounded like an avalanche right outside his window, huge boulders rolling downhill, fireworks amplified and blown up tenfold. The lightning slashed the sky, wounded it in streams of blue and purple, frantically lighting up the clouds like strobelights in the sky, a symphony of drums and snares. Again and again. Thump, thump, thump.

This should have made him feel at ease. He was no stranger to Zeus' arrows. He had been feeling shocks under his thumbs, electrocuting himself at the touch of metal or wool, sometimes the pages of his books would rise without him even touching them. But he was not in control. This is something he did not want. Mind over matter is what they said. And his mind had grown and broadened, he had fed his mind but not his senses. His body and what it was able to do had been forgotten, dulled by sheer power of will and stubbornness. He wanted to erase the past. The past hurt. That person was not him anymore.

The thunder banged on the walls, the lightning clawed at the windows. It created patterns, squares and hexagons and octogons. The thunder roared. He tugged at his heart, beating louder than the thunder now. Thump. Thump. Thump. Like a rude old lady downstairs banging on the wall with a broom. And then the rain fell. It sizzled like eggs and bacon in a frying pan, it fizzed and poured in buckets, it created streams and rivers, oceans that drowned ditches, potholes, basements.

"Professor Kim!"

The door had flung open and the eager astronomy teacher, Mrs. Salikha had rushed in, her glasses hanging around her neck, her long plaid skirt reaching the ground and almost causing her to trip in her sudden rush that indicated a state of urgency.

"What is it, Mrs. Salikha? And please...do knock next time, you almost gave me a heart attack....

"Look at this article! What is the meaning of this? It is not April Fools just yet and I don't believe the reputable scientists working for this magazine would dare make stupid jokes like these? Never in my life have I seen such an absurd lie printed in such a reputable paper! A throbbing vein was pulsating in her forehead and the corners of were nervously twitching.

Kim Jongdae took the paper from her hand and looked at the front-page article. This couldn't be right......

"Scientists at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory have reported an eclipse of the sun will be visible on March 18th. March 18th...it was now March 16th...that meant two days from now there would be an eclipse? But how? This was not supposed to happen for several years....the planets don't just change route, time does not simply stop and accelerate in the universe. Time flows at the same pace, merely touched by relativity to something. But out there...this shouldn't happen...Why is this happening? How can this phenomena occur now? It makes no reasonable, scientifical sense...From a mathematical, phenomenological standpoint this should not happen. And yet here it is, happening. Together with the neverending thunder rains, this is definitely a bad omen. Something is happening. The first thought that comes into Jongdae's mind is: "Do the others know? Have they sensed this?" as he scolds himself for not thinking about them in what seems like years. And yet they were like brothers once. But all was lost as they had been scattered across the Earth. And that is only ten of them. The other two....he dares not think about it and tries to keep it together.

Mrs Salikha lets out a scream and her hair curls up. Jongdae jumps up.

"What is wrong?" He looks behind him. Nothing. Then is he the source of her fright?

"You....what....? I must be going crazy.....the article....and now this....I have to get out of here!"

"You can't drive in this thunder storm, it is too dangerous, let me help you, calm down..."

As he touches her white cashmere sweater, its fabric rises up and he can feel a small shock as they electrocute each other. Mrs. Salikha jumps up startled.

"Stay away from me, Mr. Kim, just stay away!" she shouts, turning on her heels and running out of the room and across the hall.

He does not follow her. Turning to face a mirror on the opposite wall of the reading room he is in, he stares closely at his face. He now sees what startled the woman. His hair is standing up and his eyes are now the color of the blue and purple lightning outside. Little strings of light ignite in his pupils, his eyes are almost glowing. No wonder she ran. He no longer looks like a plain human, like just another college professor, blending in. He now is his past self, one he had wanted to forget.

"No......"

As his eyes ignite with white flashes over blue and purple depths, he sees a wall. A dark wall. And squares. Pentagons. Hexagons. Octogons. A lamp on the wall. Darkness. Screams. More walls. And then there is the feeling of falling. In the past as well as now. Jongdae falls to the floor, clutching his heart as electric shocks, now visible, surround his convulsing body. His powers are returning to him.

On an old dusty desk, hidden among the leafy files and bulky books, near the snowglobe paperweight reflecting the light caused by the storm, lies a small, fragile looking hourglass. Its wooden frame lies still. Its light-brown sand starts flowing up, defying gravity and dancing upwards, spiraling gently through the glass waist. Up, up, up it goes....then freezes. The room is silent. The rain has finally stopped.