Survival

by Chris Wright

  Gina's profession was lost on him a little. He understood about robotics and he understood about engineering, but couldn't quite grasp what it was that Gina did when she told him all about her day. She talked about circuit boards and algorithms and other things that sounded like she had just made the words up. All he had in his head were Terminator-type machines, and Gina was their creator. Of course, he knew this was nowhere near the truth, but it gave him an image he could understand in his mind and something interesting to tell his friends.

  “Did you sleep okay?” Gina asked him.

  “Yeah, like normal. Are you still having nightmares?”

  She nodded.

  “It's working with those terminators” he laughed, “You do know they're going to take over the world if we're not careful”.

  She had heard that argument many times, but there were lines of code programmed that should stop any android uprising, besides, that kind of autonomous functioning was still decades away and like most humans she had decided not to worry about it as it wasn't going to happen yet. They both got out of bed, slipped on their dressing gowns, had their usual morning cuddle and went down for breakfast. Gina had her daily bowl of healthy cereal while Tom tucked into fried eggs, fried tomatoes and something else fried that Gina couldn't quite make out. Their differences ran to almost every facet of their daily lives, but it kept each day and moment different. They hadn't planned what to do that day yet, perhaps a walk in the park, maybe go and catch a movie. They discussed it as they sipped their orange juices deciding that it looked like a nice day for a walk, as the winds were light and the clouds were sparse, allowing the warming rays of the sun to filter down to the diverse carpet of flowers outside.

  “I feel a bit better today” Gina said, “I think I've definitely been working too hard lately”

  There was a reason why Tim brought up the Terminators giving her nightmares. He was joking, but there was a serious side to what he said. Gina had been mentioning the last few days that she was feeling weird, and was noticing people around her almost acting and looking robotic to her. She decided that she was that fixated on her job that it was starting to affect her in strange ways, which alarmed her. She knew she was working too hard, trying to be a perfectionist, and it was messing with her brain and she was unable to let the circuit boards and transistors go.

  “A walk in the park will do you good, there won't be any robots there” Tom said chuckling to himself. He agreed she was taking her work too seriously and needed to have a step back from it, a nice break, “We should book some time off work soon, maybe hit the coast”

  “That sounds like a great idea” Gina said smiling. They didn't go away as much as they should and a vacation was well overdue.

  They finished their breakfasts and turned to go and get dressed, just as the phone rang.

  “I'll get that” Gina said as Tom continued on to the bedroom, “Hello?”

  There appeared to be no immediate answer, so Gina repeated her greeting. She listened hard as she heard a strange static sound crackling through the receiver.

  “Hello?” she said again, the crackling getting louder. This was either a crank call or a call centre that had rang her automatically with no one on the other end she thought, and so put the phone down.

  It rang again before she had the chance to turn and follow Tom, and she picked it up again.

  “Hello?” She said once more, a little frustrated.

  The static sound crept back, quickly and louder than before and seemed to snap at her ear drum with a piercing tone.

  “Jesus” she said as she slammed it back down. There must have been some fault on the line somewhere she thought, so dismissed it and walked off to join Tom in the bedroom.

  “Who was it?” he called over as she approached him.

  “I don't know, I think there's a fault on the line, as all I got was static. If it carries on, I'll contact the company”

  She continued on through the bedroom door towards him and then started getting herself dressed. Back in the kitchen the telephone flashed momentarily with an intense web of blue filaments.

  Brandon’s House

  Danny awoke, his head thudding from the wound he had received the day before. He touched the deep cut, winced and pulled his hand away quickly. He had slept on Brandon's couch that night, it wasn't particularly comfortable and his body ached in random places, muscles he didn't know he had were sore and tight. He sat up and looked around. The lounge looked like it had been tidied up, he couldn't remember them cleaning up their empty beer bottles the previous night, so Brandon must have thrown them away after Danny had dozed off. He had only had a couple, but he was that tired that they knocked him practically straight out. He decided to go into the kitchen and help himself to some breakfast. He tried to be as quiet as possible, as Brandon must still have been asleep. The remarkable and tragic events of the previous day were all he could still think of, a deep sorrow and grief about what happened to Monique continued to flow through him. He kept replaying that moment in his head over and over, torturing himself. He couldn't imagine how it felt for Monique, those last devastatingly brutal moments. It brought tears to his eyes again and he wiped them away with the back of his hand.

  “Danny” said Brandon, who must have heard him and was stood in the doorway to the kitchen.

  It made Danny jump and he spun round towards him.

  “Hey, sorry if I woke you, do you want a coffee?” He asked Brandon.

  “Erm, yeah sure” He replied looking slightly bemused, “How did you get in here?”

  Danny stopped for a second, what did Brandon mean? He'd been here all night.

  “I slept on the couch remember?” He replied, thinking that Brandon must have had much more to drink than he thought, and had just woken up bleary-eyed and muddled.

  “Err, no I don't remember, and what the hell happened to your head?”

  “Are you serious?” Danny asked.

  “About what?”

  “About not remembering me sleeping on the couch”

  “No, you weren't here last night. Why do you think you were? And I'd still like to know how you got in here, I thought I'd locked the doors before I went to bed” Brandon said annoyed.

  Danny couldn't quite believe this. Had Brandon really completely forgotten about yesterday? Danny had got used to waking up and his imaginary friends being plucked out of existence, but this was something new. It must be related to everything that had been happening before.

  “So, you don't remember me coming around yesterday at all?” Danny asked, Brandon shaking his head, “Do you remember the Shadow people? The monster me and Monique encountered, and the TV report about it all?” Danny asked further, afraid of what Brandon's answer would be.

  “No, what the hell are you talking about? Monsters? And you said shadow people, so you've seen them too?”

  Danny couldn't believe it, although with all the reality changing events that had happened lately, he should learn to not be surprised by anything anymore.

  “Okay, I'll show you” Danny said as he walked back into the lounge and picked up the TV remote,” It'll be all over the news, you'll see what we were talking about”.

  He turned the TV on and started switching through local stations and news stations trying to find one that was reporting on the aftermath of the reality creatures' bloodbath. He changed channel after channel unable to find one that was showing it. That didn't make sense to him as it was major news, it should be on one of them. He expected it to be on the national news, it was something so out of the ordinary they would be covering it on a 24-hour channel, but there was no mention of it. Even the headlines that flashed across the bottom of the screen didn't mention it. He kept trying more channels, flicking back through the ones he had already tried, sure that it would be featured any moment. But there was nothing, like they had forgotten about it, forgotten about dear Monique.

  “What are you trying to find Dan? You're acting weird, and what's that cut on yo
ur head?”

  Danny threw the remote down angrily and turned to Brandon

  “This is crazy, with everything that happened yesterday you'd think they'd mention it” Danny said confused.

  Was this the next level of some kind of psychosis he was fast approaching? He had clear memories of meeting Monique, both of them discussing the unusual things that were happening, the creatures from the void, Monique's' devastating end, speaking to Brandon about the shadow figures. But it all now seemed to be unravelling in his mind, did none of that happen? It can't be.

  “Wait” Danny exclaimed looking over at the increasingly perplexed Brandon, “You mentioned Shadow figures”

  That meant that part of this was true, part of it had happened, but other parts had been scrubbed out of their collective history with only Danny being able to recall them.

  “Yeah I've been seeing the shadow figures for about a week, I thought I was going mad-”

  “Okay” Danny interrupted, trying to see if he can jog Brandon's memory. He had a link to the shadow forms, so maybe he can tease something out from that, “What do you actually remember from yesterday?”

  Brandon looked irritated, he had woken up and found his friend had let himself into his house, made himself breakfast, started rambling about things that made no sense and then began to ask him pointless questions.

  “I'll tell you what happened Dan, it was the same as any Friday. I went to work, earnt my pay, came home and phoned my sister and -”

  “Wait, wait, wait” Danny interjected once more, angering Brandon to the point where he was staring at Danny wild eyed as if a fist was only one wrong word away, “You're missing a day man, it was Saturday yesterday”

  Brandon stood there confused, what was Danny talking about? He looked around at his clocks on the wall, his calendar that was on the back of the kitchen door and then pointed to the TV news bulletin as well, just to make sure.

  “It’s Saturday today Dan, what the heck is wrong with you?” Brandon shrieked getting more impatient with this ridiculous conversation.

  Danny looked at the TV, then his own watch and then the clock on the wall. They all said it was Saturday, but that made no sense. Yesterday was Saturday, how can this be possible, you don't have two Saturdays in a row. But the TV, clock and wristwatch all matched what Brandon was saying.

  “This is getting worse” Danny said as he nursed his head wound as it throbbed with pain. What a minute he thought, the gash on his head, this was proof that yesterday happened to him. He was somehow living two Saturdays successively, how was this possible?

  Gina’s Apartment

  Gina and Tom left their apartment and took a gentle stroll to the south side of the city. There was a nice gentle path that took them over bridges and along two of the rivers that ran through the city, well maintained tracks bordered by shrubs and wild flowers. The route took a couple of miles and led out of the city, eventually leading into the Open Park on the outskirts. It was one of the numerous vast expanses of countryside that was easy to get to and made living in this city so pleasant. The flowers that dotted the walkways attracted the attention of countless insects that buzzed around them in their own wildlife metropolis. It was a pleasant stroll, exactly what Gina needed. They reached the Open Park, deep in conversation and decided to lay down on the grass for a while. They began studying the intermittent clouds above them that rolled on by nonchalantly, to see what shapes they could make out of the randomness. There were other people doing similar things around them, all of them out to enjoy their Saturday too, surrounded by the serene sounds of nature, away from the constant grind of cars and traffic that was the lifeblood of any city. They had been so absorbed in their own conversations on the way here, laughing and joking hand in hand, that this was the first time they actually noticed anyone else around them.

  “I see a helicopter” Gina said, looking back to the sky, away from the direction of other people.

  “Where?”

  “There” She said pointing upwards.

  Tom looked to where her index finger lined up with the sky and chuckled to himself.

  “That looks like an elephant to me, you sure you don't need glasses” He said jokingly.

  “Hey, shut up you” she said digging her elbow into his side.

  They looked back around them and Tom noticed something odd. He couldn't make out the faces of any of the other people, despite trying his hardest. Maybe he was the one who needed glasses, he thought. He then saw something in the trees in the distance, but couldn't quite make out what it was.

  “What's that?” He said pointing in its direction.

  Gina looked over and squinted, the sun glare making it difficult to see anything in the distance too clearly.

  “I can't see anything, are you messing with me now?” She said elbowing him again, this time a bit harder. He had deliberately pointed to nothing to wind her up about his jokey glasses comment, she decided.

  “No, I'm serious, right next to that tree”

  She looked a little closer but still couldn't make anything out, maybe her eyesight was worse than she thought. All of a sudden, she heard a loud static crackle that seemed to shake her brain from side to side, so forceful it actually hurt.

  “Are you okay?” Asked Tom, instantly sensing something was wrong.

  “Yeah, I had a sudden pain, it’s probably just the start of a migraine or something”

  Tom stood up and told her he was going to get a little closer to whatever it was he could see in the distance, noticing that there was another shape stood in front of the trees further to the left. This was strange, he thought. He told Gina to wait a minute while he went closer to investigate. She watched him wander off towards the trees in the distance, all the time wondering what he was doing, as she still couldn't see anything. She glanced around at the other people and noticed something that instantly ticked her 'isn't that weird' box. She couldn't make out the faces of any of them. But what freaked her out the most was that they all seemed to be doing the exact same things that she and Tom were doing, the same movements, one walking away into the distance and the other looking round at the next couple to the side of them. The next couple were doing the same thing, the couple after too, everyone all around them simulating Gina and Tom’s exact movements. She spun her head from the couple she was looking directly at to her right, and looked at the couple to her left. The woman to her left spun her head round to the left too, perfectly mirroring Gina’s movements, as if it was a chain reaction. Gina jumped up as another static thump echoed in her head. She noticed the others jump up too, exactly the same. What the hell was happening? Now Gina was beginning to panic, something wasn’t right and her heartbeat duly thumped ferociously to let her know it agreed.

  “Tom! Come back” She screamed, alarmed by the sight of the copycat people around her.

  He jogged back seeing that she was upset about something, other people around him running back to their counterparts too, once again in perfect synchronisation.

  “Are you okay?” He asked

  “Look around you, everyone is the same” She replied. She knew that sounded completely ludicrous, but the words just popped out.

  He did as she said and stood there in a stunned silence. He was seeing the same bizarre impossible thing Gina had seen, their actions mirrored perfectly in real time with their own movements. He lifted his hand and the person to his right lifted it too. He looked to his left and the others looked to his left. Who were these people? This was crazy.

  “I'm going to find out what's going on” He shouted as he ran towards the couple on the right.

  As he did this, Gina knew that someone else would be running towards her, and she slowly turned her head to see a faceless man darting towards her, before they finally stopped a few feet away. She let out a scream as the faceless man bobbed his head back and forth a foot away from her, his hands wildly gesticulating angrily. Tom meanwhile was gesticulating at the strange faceless woman in front of him, his head bo
bbing around angrily asking who she was. The fact that where her face should be was what he could only describe as a blank canvass scared him a little, but he decided it must have been some kind of mask. But why was this deranged woman wearing a mask? And what were all these people doing this for?

  “Who are you?” He shouted, leaning forward closer and closer with a mixture of anger and worry.

  Gina moved herself back from the faceless man as he stuck his non-face closer to her threateningly.

  “Tom, help!” She cried desperately afraid.

  Tom pulled his head back from the faceless woman just as she let out a strange static cry that he could almost feel in his bones, and then heard Gina screaming his name behind him. He spun round and saw a man standing over her and he instantly started running back to her. The man standing over her ran the opposite way identically, towards a faceless woman stood in the distance. He reached Gina who stood there terrified. Neither of them could figure out what was happening.

  “We've got to get out of here now” she shrieked.

  “What did that son of a bitch do?” He growled angrily.

  “It doesn't matter, let's get out of here now, please”

  They turned back in the direction of where they came, back along the walkway, as quick as they could, their heart rates increasing with each panicked stride.

  “I don't know what the hell just happened Tom, do you understand what just happened?”

  Tom seemed dumbfounded, he had seen what happened but didn't believe it. Everyone there seemed to mirror every movement they did with prefect precision, all of them, even down to his rage at the faceless woman, which was repeated round and round. He should have been terrified of a woman without a face, but his anger had caused any fear to dissipate into a fog of hatred towards whoever was in front of him.