At 16 years of age and in the middle of high school, Royce independently decides that he needs to leave St. Thomas for the mainland, landing in, of all places, Attleboro, a city in Massachusetts that is a suburb of Providence, RI. It doesn't make sense. "Why did you leave St. Thomas?" I ask.

Royce shakes his head. "I can't explain it," he says. "I was at school one day and time literally stood still." Terms like "breakthrough" or "paradigm shift" come to my tech-oriented mind. But then Royce reaches for something else entirely, something more human and divine. "It was an epiphany," he says. The first of three epiphanies, in fact, in Royce's life, along with many other unexpected twists.