Fin Wilson had always been fascinated by lightning. As a physics major focusing on electromagnetism, he'd spent countless hours studying its properties, measuring its effects, and theorizing about harnessing its power. The irony that it would kill him was not lost on him in his final moments of consciousness.
The day had started normally enough. A crisp autumn morning in Boston, the air carrying that perfect blend of dying summer heat and encroaching winter chill. Fin had woken early to prepare for his presentation on electrical conductivity in non-traditional mediums. Twenty-one years old and already making waves in the department, he'd been invited to present his research to a visiting professor from MIT.
"You're going to crush this," his roommate Taylor had assured him, sliding a mug of coffee across their shared kitchen counter. "Just don't talk so fast this time. Not everyone's brain runs on the same nuclear fuel as yours."
Fin had laughed, adjusting his glasses as he reviewed his notes one last time. "I'll try to remember that humans need to breathe between sentences."
The sky outside had been clear, that's what made it all so impossible later. Not a cloud in sight, just endless blue stretching across the horizon. The meteorologists would later call it a "bolt from the blue" phenomenon, one of those rare lightning strikes that can travel horizontally for miles from a distant thunderstorm, appearing to come from clear sky to those at the impact point.
Fin had decided to cut across Boston Common to reach the science building. The presentation wasn't until 11AM, but he wanted time to set up his equipment and run through his slides once more. He'd been walking along one of the treelined paths, mentally rehearsing his opening remarks, when a strange feeling had crawled up his spine.
Static electricity. Hair standing on end. A metallic taste flooding his mouth.
Fin had just enough time to recognize the warning signs from his own research before the world exploded in blinding white.
The lightning bolt struck with the force of a small bomb, carrying over 300 million volts of electricity. It hit the tall oak tree next to Fin, splintering the trunk and sending a massive secondary current through the ground beneath his feet.
Time slowed to a crawl.
Fin felt every muscle in his body contract simultaneously as electricity surged through him. His heart stuttered, trying desperately to maintain its rhythm against the overwhelming current. The air in his lungs superheated, burning his throat and chest from the inside out. His vision filled with dancing purple afterimages, neural synapses firing chaotically as the electricity scrambled his brain's delicate electrical patterns.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
And yet, in that moment between life and death, Fin's mind was strangely clear. His thoughts raced with crystalline precision, connecting dots from years of research in mere microseconds.
This isn't normal lightning behavior, he thought distantly. The discharge pattern is too focused, too directed. Almost as if...
As he collapsed to the singed grass, Fin had the absurd thought that this bolt hadn't just struck him by chance, it had chosen him.
A second later, pain swallowed everything.
Then darkness.
Then...nothing.
For three minutes and forty-two seconds, Fin Wilson was clinically dead.
The first person to reach him was a jogger, a retired nurse, who immediately began CPR while shouting for someone to call 911. The emergency response team arrived in under five minutes, their defibrillator delivering shock after shock to Fin's already electricity-ravaged body.
"We've got rhythm!" one paramedic had shouted, just as Fin's consciousness had begun drifting into a strange, starlit void.
Something had pulled him back then, not completely, but enough that distant sensations registered through the fog. The rattling of the ambulance. The pressure of an oxygen mask. Voices swimming above him, technical terms about cardiac arrhythmia and neurological damage filtering through the haze.
"Unusual burn pattern," someone had noted. "Never seen lightning do this before."
Fin tried to speak, to tell them about the strange focused nature of the strike, but his body wouldn't respond. His mind, however, was racing, cataloging symptoms, analyzing the experience with detached scientific curiosity despite his condition.
The burn patterns spiraled outward from his chest in fractal patterns, following the path of least resistance through his nervous system. Classic Lichtenberg figures, but with an unusual symmetry that defied normal lightning behavior. And deep within his tissue, cells that should have been destroyed were instead... changing.
Had he been conscious enough to access his equipment, Fin might have detected the subtle electromagnetic field now emanating from his body, a field that wasn't there before the strike, pulsing with rhythms that matched no known terrestrial pattern.
But consciousness was slipping away again. The ambulance lights seemed to elongate into streaks of color. The voices of the paramedics stretched and distorted like audio played at the wrong speed.
"We're losing him again!"
The last thing Fin registered was the monitor tone flatting into that dreaded continuous beep. His second death of the day felt less violent than the first, more like sinking into dark water, pressure increasing from all sides until even thought became impossible.
As his consciousness faded completely, a single realization surfaced:
This was no accident.
Something had reached out from beyond normal reality and touched him. Whether it was fate, cosmic chance, or something with actual intent, Fin couldn't say.
But in that final moment before oblivion claimed him, he felt something both terrifying and wonderful, a sense that whatever came next, it would be beyond anything he had ever imagined possible.
The void waited, not empty as he'd expected, but filled with distant pinpoints of light like stars in an endless cosmos.
And somewhere in that vastness, someone, or something, was waiting for him.