America, circa 1960
No one at school understood the kid anymore. He spoke in quotes from The Brady Bunch and Mr. Ed. He lived for the television. As soon as he got home from school, he rushed through his homework and sat down in front of the TV and watched, mesmerized. His parents were no help, they held all their meals in front of the television so they could watch Andy Griffith while they ate. Sometimes after he went to bed he would sneak out and watch more. This obsession made him the perfect target.
One day, men in black suits took his parents and looked them dead in the eyes and told them that they were going to have to leave for a while, that their son would be taken care of. Because the suits told them in such a convincing manner, they believed it, and each packed a suitcase and left. His father said nothing to him. His mother's last words to him-in fact, her last words-were "Don't watch too much TV while we're gone, dear. It's bad for your eyes." He didn't look away from the screen as he said "Ok, mom." His parents died soon after in a soviet gulag. His existence and theirs were erased through subtle signals and more subtle tampering with records. No one remembered that they had a class with him. None of his neighbors even remembered the family that once lived near them. After a few days, he stopped questioning the pills that kept appearing near him, the ones that he took and that seemed to feed and water him perfectly. Eventually, he stopped needing to sleep. He watched that television unthinking for 2 years straight before they started airing the "special programs" just on his television. 2 years after that day, he woke up realizing that he had sat around enough, that now was the time to act. There were people in the world that were endangering other people, and endangering technology like his beautiful television. He didn't notice that he was wearing a new suit, or that he looked to be 50 instead of 15.
The first time, his face came up on the man's TV, a trick he was very glad he'd watched the special programs enough to learn. The man got scared and tried to turn the TV off, but he sent a shock through it and the man was laying on his lving room floor, electrocuted. And then he came to the man's house and shot him in the head to protect technology, and the innocents his boss's said were asleep, and the television programs. It didn't just happen once-he shot many of them over and over. Anything for the television that was his childhood, the only remnant of his real life. Television was everything he had, because the makers of the television had taken away everything else. So he defended it.