A Lucky Man

Mike Buchanan was silently reading in his almost dark room, where only a small night lamp cast a light on his book. Next to him, near his armchair there lay a half empty can of beer. Maybe it was due to his almost trance-like state of mind that he didn't even notice that something was crawling up on his bare arm.

It was a tiny scorpion, which once reaching the face of the man, stung its venom mercilessly under his skin. He felt a sharp pain on his cheek, and tried to get up from the chair, but the mixture of alcohol and the insect's venom had its effect, and he fell unconscious on the floor within a few minutes.

That would have been his last beer had he not arranged with his buddy for a night cap and a game of chess.

When his friend Billy arrived about eleven, half an hour after the accident, he found Mike with strangely twisted arms and legs, and a swollen face, which looked like it had a tomato glued to it.

Billy called for the paramedics, and the ambulance took Buchanan, already in a deep coma, to the hospital.

When he awoke a few days later, everything changed for him. His sensory perception was immensely enhanced. He could see through the stone wall, and notice, much to his amusement, a nurse kissing a doctor in the next room. His ears almost couldn't tolerate the noises, as he heard every whispered word within a hundred meters radius.

In other words, Mike Buchanan had become a walking radar station for whom nothing could be kept secret anymore.

Fortunately, the x-ray didn't give him away, and he was released soon from the hospital, free to enjoy the blessing of his new existence.

Money was not a problem as before. He peacefully watched a well dressed fellow from the comfort of a coffee-bar, who took out some money with his credit card. He watched the man tap his pin-code, seeing the buttons as clearly as if he were watching a big screen movie. All he had to do is steal the credit card.

A new phase of his life had begun. He bought a few tuxedos, a couple of pairs of shoes, and a fancy car. Then he boarded a flight to Paris, the city where he wouldn't have gotten in his wildest dreams, and once in the restaurant on the top of the Eiffel Tower, he invited a maddening blonde for dinner.

He realized now that there was nothing he couldn't get in the world.

Ten years passed for Mike Buchanan. Ten years of continuous partying, dozens of easy-going women, and traveling along the wide world.

Senator Mike Buchanan was flying above the clouds in his private airplane, a Cuban cigar in one hand, the other holding a glass of his favorite Champagne. Suddenly a heavy turbulence shook the plane, which trembled in the hurricane, like a barren leaf of a tree. Death came for the luckiest man of the world with the plane crashing.

Maybe Mike was the prototype of the next phase of human evolution. One thing is sure: in the long line of dreams, sometimes even reality becomes one of the dreams.

THE END

Bio: Botond Teklesz is an English single major Hungarian by mother tongue. Botond says of himself "I love to write and to translate. I am a fool for Sci-fi and have read most of Bradbury and Asimov. I mean Hamlet is great but it never made me laugh."

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