The Chaotic Life of Jasper Blair

Jasper Blair was the physical embodiment of chaos, and somehow no one seemed to notice.

He was born during a particularly bad thunderstorm, and while that probably wasn’t too much out of the ordinary (lots of people were born during thunderstorms, after all) it did seem like too much of a coincidence that the hospital was struck by lightning at the exact same time he arrived. (Thankfully there had been a fire station right next door and no one was hurt.) Jasper himself had been too young to actually remember this, of course, but after hearing the story told the exact same way at least once a year on his birthday, he could practically see it in his own memory by now. And that story was just the beginning, as most births are.

He hadn’t ever had a normal first day of school—something always seemed to go wrong. The spider infestation in first grade, for example, or the rabid dog that had visited the playground during recess in fourth. Neither of those incidents had been his fault (and even if they had, no one ever suspected the quiet dark-haired kid who mostly kept to himself and didn’t cause any trouble), but there had been more just like them and somehow only happened at the schools he attended.

And let’s not even get started on the issue of Jasper and cars. More often than not, riding with anyone (usually his parents) invoked some kind of problem ranging from mild inconvenience (hour-long traffic) to major disaster (a deer through the windshield). Which was why he was sure that he himself should absolutely not be driving, but here he was taking the test.

“Any day now,” his driving instructor said. “But hopefully today. I do have a schedule.”

So he started driving.

At first, it was all so far, so good. The road was clear. The weather was clear. The windows were clear. Even his head was clear. Everything was fine.

Until, somewhere around twenty minutes or so in (not that he was actually keeping track), the driving instructor fell asleep, which Jasper was pretty sure was not supposed to happen during a driving test.

“Uh…hello?” He tried to get her attention while keeping his attention on the road. “Could you, like…wake up?”

She did not wake up and he had the horrible thought that maybe she was dead, because that was just the sort of thing that would happen on his watch, even though it had never happened before.

But wait, she wasn’t dead. More like…passed out. Heart attack? She did look like she was kind of up there in age.

Though Driver’s Ed had never taught him what to do when your instructor had a medical emergency during the test, it was a good thing he knew exactly where the hospital was after being there so many times (mainly for other people). Somehow, he made it there with both of them and the car in one piece, and he only realized after pulling into the parking lot that it probably would have been a good idea to pull over and call 911 way before getting to this point, but hey—at least they were here.

What happened from there was mostly a blur, but as he watched his instructor being carried away on a stretcher and wondered how he was supposed to get home now (he was pretty sure he wasn’t allowed to drive the driver’s ed car by himself), someone called his name.

He turned to the man approaching him in a business suit. “Jasper Blair?” the guy asked again.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Jasper said. “Uh…do I know you?”

“No reason why you would,” the man responded pleasantly. “You can call me Agent Vaughn.”

“Agent? Are you, like…a spy?”

The man gave a small smile. “Something like that. We’ve been looking for you for a while.”

“Who’s we?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. If you’ll follow me, please.”

Because he seemed nice enough and going with random strangers in business suits who introduced themselves as “Agent” wasn’t suspicious at all, Jasper followed him. And somehow, as soon as he did, it was like they both just…teleported. One minute they’d both been standing in the hospital parking lot, and the next they were inside a small room with a closed door and nothing else except a singular table and two chairs.

“Since I know you’re going to ask how we got here,” Agent Vaughn said, “all I can tell you is that we have methods of instantaneous transportation. Saves time and energy, you understand.”

Jasper didn’t really, but nothing about this day made sense already, so what was one more?

“Am I about to be interrogated?” he asked. “I swear what happened to her was not my fault! Stuff like that just always happens around me and I don’t know why because I didn’t do anything and—”

Agent Vaughn held up a hand to cut him off. “Trust me, I know. That’s why I brought you here.” He gestured to one of the chairs. “Have a seat, please.”

Jasper sat.

The agent held up what looked like one of those forehead thermometers to Jasper’s head. After a few seconds, it beeped and he pulled it back to study it, frowning.

“Just as I’ve suspected,” he said quietly, mostly to himself. Then he looked at Jasper in concern. “So, here’s the thing. Your Chaos reading is extremely high.”

“Am I supposed to know what that means?” Jasper asked.

“It means,” Agent Vaughn responded, “that you are practically made of Chaos.”

“Oh.” Jasper laughed. “I mean, I kind of already figured that.”

“No, I don’t think you understand.” Vaughn sat down and folded his hands on the table. “I mean this literally. Your very existence puts everyone around you in danger—that’s why disasters always happen when you’re around. With this amount of Chaos concentrated in one person, I’m surprised you weren’t born with a twin with a corresponding amount of Order to balance you out. And you don’t have any siblings, do you?”

Jasper shook his head. “Nah, my parents say my birth was so traumatic for them that they stopped at me. Can’t blame them, I guess—though sometimes I do think it’d be kinda nice to have a brother or sister. Probably for the best that it’s just me, though.” His brain finally caught up with what Vaughn had mentioned a few seconds ago. “But wait, I don’t get all that Chaos and Order stuff.”

“Ah, right.” Agent Vaughn stood up and started slowly pacing the room with his hands clasped behind his back. Kind of like Jasper’s math teacher when she was about to explain some concept that was going to sail right over his head. Or one of those movie villains preparing to launch into a monologue that laid out their entire plan for world domination. Neither image was exactly comforting.

“Our world exists because of a force called the Balance, which manifests itself as a series of opposites,” Vaughn began. “Good and evil, up and down, right and left, off and on, and so forth. But the strongest of all such types of pairs is that of Order and Chaos. They are what hold up the very existence of our world. As a whole, the world contains an equal amount of both. But these forces can be unequally distributed in different places. Some places in the world have high Order, the pyramids, for example, while others have high Chaos, like the Bermuda Triangle or other places people deem ‘cursed.’ Are you with me so far?”

“I think so? Kind of.”

“Good. Now, Order and Chaos also exist in every living thing, including us,” Vaughn continued. “Most people—and animals, and plants, et cetera—are born with a generally balanced amount of both forces. It’s usually not exactly half and half, of course; perfect neutrality is practically impossible. But it’s usually enough that they are roughly equal. The problem is when one or the other is more concentrated. An extremely high concentration of Chaos or Order in a certain place in the world is very rarely a huge deal; while such places do tend to attract a lot of attention, locations are fixed, so any problems caused by Imbalance can be avoided by simply avoiding those areas. But when the Imbalance is with a person, well…people move around. They make choices. They have needs and preferences and desires. And all of that combined with Imbalance, especially an Imbalance of Chaos, is a recipe for catastrophe.”

“So…what, you’re saying I’m…evil?” Jasper asked. Because he was pretty sure he wasn’t. Sure, he somehow caused problems for everyone but himself, but it wasn’t like he ever did it on purpose. He hardly ever did anything.

“No, of course not,” Vaughn said. “Chaos and evil are not the same thing. What I am saying, as I’ve said before, is that your existence is a threat to everyone around you—as you’ve already noticed. If nothing is done, this will only continue to get worse as you get older. You have the potential to destroy…well, maybe not the entire world, but at least everyone in your vicinity.”

What a cheerful message of hope and encouragement to give to a barely-sixteen-year-old.

“Sooo…is there, like, a way to fix it, or…?”

“Oh, yes, of course there is; that’s why we brought you here. All you have to do is take this”—Vaughn held up a tiny pill—“and the issue will be resolved, quickly and painlessly.”

“Great, so that will erase the Chaos in me?” Jasper asked.

Vaughn gave him a tight smile. “More like it eliminates the Chaos at its source.”

“But…you said I’m made of Chaos. Wouldn’t that make me the—” Wait.

No.

Jasper shot to his feet, knocking over the chair. “You’re trying to kill me?”

“‘Kill’ is such a strong word,” Vaughn replied.

“What, is there a weaker one for taking someone’s life for no reason?”

“I was certain we’d already been over in great detail exactly why this is not for ‘no reason.’”

“Okay, but…I’m pretty sure my parents won’t be super excited about me being dead.”

“Ah, nothing to worry about on that front. We’ve got your doppelganger already set up. Your parents won’t even know the difference.”

“Hold up—my what?” This conversation just kept getting weirder and weirder.

“Your doppelganger,” Agent Vaughn repeated. “Looks exactly like you, talks exactly like you, acts exactly like you. Even has all your same memories. Basically, another you that’s going to replace you. Though he’ll only wake up once you’re…out of the picture.”

“You’re saying there’s a clone of me lying around here somewhere?!”

“Of course—there’s one for everyone. Or rather, everyone we need to keep an eye on due to Imbalance. Trust me, this is standard procedure. You’re not the first person we’ve had to deal with because of this issue, and you definitely won’t be the last.”

“And this is how you deal with it? Isn’t there some way to, I don’t know, just cancel out my level of Chaos or something?”

“I’m afraid not. Neither Chaos nor Order is something that’s just in you; it is you. Or at least part of you, as integrated as your blood or bones are. As I mentioned before, your Imbalance could have been corrected by a sibling with the same amount of Order as you have Chaos, but seeing as how you don’t have that, well…the only way to remove the Imbalance is by removing you from existence.”

Jasper had so many questions, but clearly now was not the time. “Okay, but what if I just don’t want to die?”

Agent Vaughn nodded. “Most people don’t. It’s quite understandable.”

“So you’ll understand if I walk out of here without taking that pill?” Jasper asked, standing slowly.

“I’d rather you didn’t do that. It would make my job just a bit more difficult.”

“Oh yeah, that would be so bad, wouldn’t it?” Jasper took the tiniest, least-noticeable step towards the door while maintaining eye contact with Vaughn.

“This isn’t personal, you see,” Agent Vaughn said while Jasper continued inching, slowly, slowly, towards the door. “It’s just a matter of maintaining the Order of the Balance.”

“Order of the Balance? What about the Chaos of the Balance? Has a cooler ring to it.”

It was a comment just to keep the guy talking, but he didn’t respond. The smile was frozen on his face.

Jasper’s body went cold. “Wait, is there a Chaos of the Balance?”

“Now, what in the world are you talking about? Chaos and Order are both part of the Balance, of course, but no organization calls themselves the Chaos of…well, anything. That would be bad for business. Anyway, are you going to take this pill or not? This is the last time I’ll ask, promise.”

“Nah, I’m good.” Just a few more steps and he’d be out of this crazy place.

Agent Vaughn sighed. “They always choose the harder way.”

Jasper decided not to wait any longer to see what would happen next. He bolted for the door.

“Initiating lockdown,” a computer’s voice echoed. Alarms started blaring throughout the building and Jasper could just barely hear Vaughn call for backup.

Jasper glanced behind him, expecting to be chased—which led to what may have been one of the few occurrences of something bad happening directly to him (well, few besides this entire day). He ran straight into a group of agents, who swiftly grabbed him. One of them pressed a cloth of something cloyingly strong to his face, and he was out cold.

He woke up in a mostly dark room and a bed that had him wondering if he had ended up in the hospital.

“You’re okay, don’t struggle,” a voice said, as Jasper was doing just that. “The sedation will wear off in a few minutes. Sorry about that, by the way. It was the only way to look like we were seriously trying to catch you—which we were, since if Vaughn knew you escaped, well…let’s just say I’m glad we caught you..”

“Wheremmi,” Jasper murmured. There was a cloud in his head where his brain was supposed to be.

“Somewhere safe, I promise,” the voice replied. A silhouette of a person moved in the edge of Jasper’s vision. “But not safe for long. We need to get you out of here quickly while Vaughn believes we did our job and executed you. We’ve already sent out your doppelganger. Contrary to what Vaughn may have told you, they can be awakened while their actual counterparts are still alive. This means your parents also won’t be any the wiser while we get this all sorted out.”

Clouds weren’t nearly as good as brains were at processing this kind of information. “Wha…?”

“I know there’s a lot going on right now,” the voice said, sounding apologetic. “But we really need to get going.”

“Go…where?” Jasper finally managed to ask.

“To an extremely top-secret place not even Vaughn knows about,” the person replied. “It’s where we’ve been keeping the other Chaos-Imbalanced people he thinks we’ve killed off all this time.”

That woke Jasper up. There were more like him? Still alive?

The person must have read the question in his face. “That’s right. Vaughn thinks Chaos will destroy the Balance, but there is no Balance without both sides. Which is why we’re bringing you to our ultra-secret sector—the Chaos of the Balance.”