1 Chapter 1 - Crash Landing in Your Broadcast

No one has ever supported me in writing the way she does.

The thought took root in my mind, as Candy continued to explain how I could best begin writing my first novel. She had done it before, and she was now helping me with my fledgling steps.

Soft waves of R&B music emanated from her speakers — the playlist I had shared with her the day before because I had wanted to sing one of the songs to her. The song was titled 'Go Crazy'.

Candy had only recently recovered from a fever, but she had come on-line tonight to appear on my iPhone screen. I talked to her in a chatbox shared by many other fans of her broadcast.

I sometimes felt slightly bad when we had conversations in code, that the rest of the audience would often have no clue about. After all, I had always tried to avoid attention by remaining in the shadows. And I had quite the inkling that Candy would be fun to be in the shadows with.

She's giving me writing lessons on a broadcast I should be paying for.

I felt grateful in a way that was unfamiliar to me. For a long time, I had been conditioned to feel nothing but resentment for the people in my life.

"Oh baby, don't worry, the only thing you'll be sweating from is pleasure." I laughed as I typed the words into the chatbox. I had rushed to type them as soon as they popped into mind so that the moment was maintained.

Candy read it out loud on her broadcast and laughed. "Someone sounds experienced."

No, Candy was not that kind of broadcaster. She was a broadcaster on a PG13 platform that allowed no drugs, pornography or violence. Also no sex, probably. But the conversations that we had were pure sex.

A fan of hers had just asked her out to 'exercise', and she had just deftly dodged the euphemism by light-heartedly explaining that she did not like to sweat late at night.

I was not a pervert. I was simply expressing my affection in the only way I knew how. The broad landscape of expression of emotions was by default, a fog of unexplored land to someone suffering from Autism. And somehow, Candy seemed to understand that.

My parents must have noticed my limited methods of expressing affection when I was of quite a young age, too. The showers with Dad had stopped. Mom had become physically distant. I had been moved from my parents' bed into my brother's room.

And there, my shows of affection had conveniently stopped.

It was hard not to feel like a freak. I was already very prone to avoiding social interaction. Now, that limitation had been augmented by the fact that I would be inappropriate at any time I chose to express my positive emotions toward someone.

I had kept to myself in class, from Nursery to High School. I also preferred interaction on the Internet to meeting people in-person. As for friends, I only had a few from childhood to speak of, but I guess that was all I needed.

How many writers had been published before the age of 16? None that I knew of. Which meant that the number of them which existed was extremely small. She could be famous for all I knew. Then again, she really did seem like a prodigy.

One probably had to be a prodigy to understand me right off the bat. My anxieties had caused me to communicate in a very indirect manner from youth. It was a rule that I use metaphor and implication to communicate my most intense thoughts and emotions.

Cryptic communication made me feel less exposed. I had always felt a strong aversion to merely stating the underlying, intended message. Perhaps it was because I subconsciously felt that my thoughts and emotions were disgusting.

My communication patterns took some getting used to. My closest friends had, for years, asked me what the point I was trying to make was. Then, they grew to understand me. It had taken them years.

It had taken her only days.

I logged onto Discord and hopped into my childhood friend hangout. "Hey! Looks like a game of DOTA!" I greeted them with my usual opener.

My friends laughed. "Dude, download Phasmophobia. It's the shit!" It was a game about paranormal activity.

I was psyched. Candy loved ghost stories. She told them all the time on her broadcasts.

Common interest was important. That had been explained to me during a class on dating for people on the spectrum. I had come across it on the web.

While the game was downloaded, I stepped to my window to have a cigarette. It was illegal that I was smoking. I did not care. Nobody seemed to care. As an autistic person, it seemed that my simply being alive was good enough for my family. Expectations were managed.

"Give us a sign." I said ominously, into the microphone. I was heard, the game informed me. I laughed. I had always been very skeptical of asking something unseen for a sign.

My requests had never been answered. I had given up after some time.

***

Mindless destruction caused our paths to cross.

There had been something therapeutic about watching my vehicle crash and tumble across the lazily designed landscapes on my slightly cracked mobile phone screen. It was cathartic, almost.

The further my vehicle had gone, the more I had earned. But that had not been the primary source of income in Crash Delivery. The real money had come from really banging up my vehicle. Every time my car smashed into the ground, it had proceeded to cartwheel into the surrounding buildings and structures. That was where the real money had been.

Receiving incentives for destruction had felt nice. I had not received the same encouragement in real life.

The advertisements in Crash Delivery had annoyed me, though. Every few rounds, I had been forced to watch thirty seconds of them.

I hated having my time stolen from me.

Buy Premium for an Ad-free experience! Tempting, but I had held out. I was a broke kid. I had recently heard my parents squabbling about being barely able to keep up with rent payments. And at the rate things were going, it seemed like filling my stomach at lunch would be a challenge in the coming months. Besides, in my list of questionable priorities, cigarettes trumped food.

Crash. Bang. Wham. Ding. Just like a digital representation of the way my life had turned out. Sans the reward.

I was not doing well at school. In the classrooms of Woodrow Wilson High School, it seemed that the norm was to have, at all times, more than five people talking at one go. This made it impossible to listen to what the teacher was saying.

When God created me, I guess he must have forgotten to include an auditory filter. Multiple sources of auditory stimulation created an unbearable ricochet in my head, and prolonged periods of exposure would eventually make me explode in frustration.

Sometimes, I had been able to keep it in until I got home. Sometimes, I had not.

The detention classes had been quieter, though. During those, I had the silence and space, alone in the corner of the room, to scribble little snippets of prose or poems. Somewhere in Woodrow Wilson High School, the following poem had been scraped into the surface of a table with a protractor:

Pitch black

Dirt track

Circling round

Doubling back

Hit the sack

Insomniac

Can't help but wish

For a heart attack

The advertisements in Crash Delivery had annoyed me so much that I had tried to stop them from appearing by installing all the advertised applications.

I had installed four other silly-looking mobile games before I had panicked and checked if I was on WIFI. Then, I had sighed in relief. I certainly could not afford additional charges for data on my mobile plan.

But the advertisements had not stopped.

The next application, called Uplive, had looked vastly different from the rest. It was not even a mobile game.

In Uplive, the first thing one sees is pictures of rather attractive looking girls. Asian girls!

That had grabbed my attention. But to my dismay, most names were in Mandarin. I could not speak or read a word of it despite being Chinese. That was often the case when you were a Chinese born in America.

I had clicked on one of the pictures. The first girl looked like a model, but I could not understand a word she said. She seemed to be hosting a broadcast of some sort, and people were sending her messages in a chat box beside her video feed. Now and then, temporary decorations flashed across the screen, and the girl would seem elated.

My nostrils had flared in disdain.

So, this was one of those applications.

I decided, nevertheless, to do some window shopping. The girls, after all, were quite attractive.

I scrolled down to the next broadcaster. This next one danced in front of the camera rather awkwardly. Next!

Scrolling through a couple more, I landed in a broadcast where a girl was singing in sweet, American English. I had been mesmerized. But after a song or two, the interest waned.

The next broadcaster seemed offbeat. At first glance, she did not seem to be doing much. She was not singing. Neither was she dancing. All she was doing, was talking.

"Welcome to my broadcast, Andrew! I'm Candy. Make yourself at home. Don't be shy to chat with all of us here in the chatbox!" she had chirped.

I was taken aback. No other broadcaster had greeted me.

I characteristically did not respond.

Candy looked different from the rest. She had not worn any makeup. Green dyed hair, which had grown out to reveal a natural black, framed a face characterized by eyes set somewhat awkwardly, perhaps a centimeter or two too far apart. A button nose hovered daintily over lusciously thick lips. In all aspects, she looked very much like the typical girl next door. She did not seem to be in the habit of smiling.

I observed her from the safety of my silence for a couple of minutes. Every broadcaster before Candy had seemed to be putting on a show for the audience's benefit — too many smiles, too many cutesy poses, too many high pitched words.

A cloying amount of plastic affection.

Candy gave her audience none of that. Her broadcast felt like a bunch of people just hanging out and chatting about whatever came to mind. And despite not being involved in the conversation, I had felt like I was part of the group. It was strangely engaging.

It had reminded me of my first few days in high school before all had gone to shit.

Then, Candy smiled, and my mobile phone, which had already been on maximum brightness, seemed to light up even more. Her eyes embraced the outer edges of her face, transforming to reveal their perfection in sparkling crescents. Laugh lines which I would have never dreamed existed framed that button nose which now reminded me of inquisitive bunnies. Her lips spread into a square - an expression one might have mistaken for a grimace had it not been framed by a sharp, V-shaped jawline which was unmistakably the product of genuine mirth. Her neck, which I had not noticed before, revealed muscle tone which was surprising for someone who smiled so infrequently on camera.

Suddenly, Candy's entire demeanor made sense to me.

The glassy surface of a still river, framed by unyielding mountains, sears a scene of sensation into one's mind only once a day upon sunset.