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    BEHRINGER PRODUCTIONS
    Chapter 2: Slowly Adapting...

    "Neve! Com'ere!" I heard Timothy call from the kitchen. Moving slowly from the living room, under the low archway, careful not to mow over any furnishings, I went into the kitchen. There Timothy stood, a pickle jar held tightly in his withered hands. "Neve... would you?" He held the jar to me.

    "Oh... alright." I took the jar from him, balancing the blown sand cylinder between the prongs of my left hand. Using the jar lid gripper, I went to slowly screw the lid off with my right hand. Before the lid came off, I heard a crack of shattering glass. A moment later, two dozen pickles went sailing across the kitchen floor. I was horrified. Had such an event taken place with my strict Hindu family, I would be grounded for a week. Timothy merely bent down, snatched up a pickle, took a bite and said, "Thanks, Neve. You can go back to your TV show now."

    Baffled by Timothy's kindness, and lack of anger at the huge mess I had made, I backed up, turned, and went to the living room in silence.

    It was an amazing, but confusing feeling just getting used to the whole 'primary sense' change. Watching TV was something entirely different. It was like I listened to movies instead of watching them. Cartoons were more like radio comedies, and David Letterman became Howard Stern.

    Slowly, but surely, I was beginning to adapt, just as Timothy had said I would. It is said that humans were designed to adapt to any troubling or otherwise traumatic circumstances thrown at them. I began to see this was true more than anything else regarding human psychology.

    None of it was easy. I often forgot how big or strong I was, and would attempt to sit on the sofa. Yes, you can feel sorry for Timothy's furniture. Over the span of two months, I managed to completely annihilate all of Timothy's living room furnishings. He was sitting on the ottoman, and I would just stand in the corner. He never became angry at me when I would ruin said furnishings, it was the weirdest thing. His face was like an expressionless smile -- like one of those kids with Angelman's Syndrome -- always seeming to see the best side of every heinous situation.

    Before long, Timothy began to take me places with him, as if showing me how to live the life of a human in the body of a machine. "Good luck with that," I often thought when comparing the size of my shadow to that of a doorframe. He taught me, however, to do all the day-to-day things. He taught me how open a mailbox with a key, as if he had calculated the exact force it would take to turn the key, and the way my hands could accomplish that force without dropping the key.

    I was sent on a whirlwind one day on an outing with Timothy. We meandered slowly side-by-side down the park trail. The weather was cloudy, which was odd the desert climate. Timothy looked up to me with a tear in his eye, and a limp in his throat, and said, "Neve, you must realize that I won't be around much longer. I am 81 years old." I stopped in my tracks, looking down to the man I had just started to trust like a father. "Do not worry, big fellow. I have taught you everything you need to know to live in this world."

    "But..." I began, "I have nowhere to go." Timothy just nodded, and went up the porch steps into the house. I was so into thought I had not realized we went all the way home in that period of time.

    The next day, I returned from getting the mail. With the pile of letters in my hand, I moved slowly up the side ramp, and into the house. Everything was quiet. This was not typical for Timothy always played his records while I was out on errands.

    Timothy Clarke had passed away that day due to a heart attack, and left me nothing but a note with an address, and a small PS at the bottom, "You, my son, will live here."