The next morning, Alessa felt more conflicted than she ever had, and her frustration with Janie had reached an all-time peak. She couldn’t imagine why Janie wouldn’t just come out and say whatever she was trying to insinuate during yesterday’s conversation. The growing rift between them troubled Alessa deeply, and it was making her reconsider everything. Was saving Isaac really worth the risk of losing her best friend?
All of this indecision had left Alessa with a stronger appetite than usual, so she’d decided to fix herself an egg sandwich before her morning class. After downing the sandwich, she found that the hearty sustenance did indeed help to fortify her outlook. She just hoped her housemates wouldn’t notice the absence of the ingredients she’d borrowed.
Striding down the first floor hallway from the kitchen, Alessa heard a muffled noise, like a heavy lock clicking, from the other side of the wall to her right. That was odd – she didn’t remember there being a room on the other side of this hallway. She stopped in place and eyed the wall. Sure enough, it was blank. Alessa was about to chalk up the disturbance to a figment of her imagination when she noticed a narrow fault running most of the length of the wall from top to bottom. As she looked closer, she could see other fine slits adjoining the first – the outline of a door.
Before Alessa had time to consider what she was seeing, the door swung inward and a hand extended out, yanking her by the collar into a small, dark room.
It took Alessa’s eyes a moment to adjust. The room was no larger than a supply closet, and the only source of light was the blue glow from hundreds of security monitors that were mounted to the walls in every direction. She saw images of the quad, the science building, the outside of her house. The Z-E-Pi kitchen. Inside her bedroom? Alessa’s mouth dropped. Had the university really taken the security cameras that far? Wasn’t that a violation of some kind of privacy right?
As she watched, one by one the screens flickered and replaced their crisp images with a single error message. “CAMERA OFFLINE.” The room glowed brighter as each monitor flashed the error on a vivid white background, and gradually Alessa could make out more detail.
The security monitors were unlike anything Alessa had ever seen, shiny glass panels hung in neat rows across every surface of the room. The screens were almost paper-thin; Alessa hadn’t even known such technology existed. In the corner, she saw what she believed was a control panel, with various glowing buttons seemingly floating in midair alongside a continuously updating list of text. She made out the first couple lines.
Camera 1753. Status: offline. Cause of malfunction: unknown.
Camera 8237. Status: offline. Cause of malfunction: unknown.
Now that she could see more clearly, Alessa glanced around alertly looking for whoever had pulled her into this disturbing little closet. With a gasp of surprise, Alessa saw that it was Janie. She was watching the monitors attentively and turned to Alessa as the last one flicked to the error screen, a fevered look in her eyes.
“Alessa, we don’t have much time, so I need you to listen to me. Don’t repeat anything I say here – otherwise we’ll all be in great danger. Do you understand?”
Alessa just nodded her assent, her heart in her throat. She could tell that Janie was dead serious, and Alessa was clutched by fear. What was going on?
“Okay. I need to know how much you remember.” Janie stared intently into Alessa’s eyes.
Alessa shrugged her shoulders. “Remember about what?” she croaked.
“About the war? The outbreak? Losing our family? Starting over in Paragon? The rebellion? Anything?”
Alessa had no idea what Janie was talking about. She just stared at Janie in bewilderment.
Janie groaned with frustration and put one hand to her temple, looking off to the side. “It’s worse than I thought,” she muttered to herself. “I hoped the dreams might have triggered something, but her stitch seems to be holding strong.”
Janie continued to stare into space, and Alessa realized she was listening. In fact, Janie wasn’t touching her temple, Alessa saw, but her ear. Was she wearing some sort of concealed earpiece? Janie nodded in response to whatever she heard on the other end of the line.
Turning back to Alessa, Janie grabbed her shoulders and looked her directly in the eyes once more. “How about Joe? Do you remember Joe? Do you remember the day he was captured? How you and Isaac became close after his death?”
Alessa couldn’t keep up. Each thought felt like a trudging step through thick, viscous goo. Some of these names – Joe, Paragon – sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place why. Her mind still catching up, a thought occurred to her about Janie’s initial line of questioning. “Wait, did you say ‘our family?’”
Janie exhaled a deep breath, tears welling in her eyes. “Alessa. I’m your sister.”
Alessa shook her head, her heart pounding. She didn’t know how it could be true, but something inside told her it was. She felt faint. “How…”
Janie brushed off the question and continued at a rapid pace. “Alessa, we’re almost out of time, so I’m going to get to the point. Nothing beyond this door –” she gestured at the hidden door Alessa had entered through, “– is real.”
Alessa still felt ten steps behind. “What?” she whispered.
“The university, these people, your memories, Isaac’s apparition – they were all deliberately chosen to create the illusion of an early 21st century college where a girl, you, falls in love with a ghost. It’s 2114, Alessa – almost a 100 years later than you think it is. Isaac is real, but he’s not a ghost and he’s not in some other time. He’s as alive and present as you and me. He’s just on a different set.”
“Set? Wait, Janie, slow down. I can’t –”
“There’s no time, Alessa. The dramas, please try to remember,” Janie pleaded.
Alessa just stared blankly, shaking her head in disbelief.
“This is all the set of a TV show, Less. You’ve been, well, brainwashed essentially – we call it ‘stitched’ – to think that you are your character, and so has everyone around us. But in reality, we’re all prisoners here.”
Alessa’s mind was racing. This didn’t make any sense.
Janie continued. “The memory wipe technology – the stitch – they used on us isn’t perfect. There are certain things they couldn’t erase, like your name and your feelings for certain people. So the producers worked those things into the plot, then they used a selective perception tool on you to smooth the edges around their deception, helping you miss the clues that might alert you that this wasn’t reality. The idea is that the more real this world is to you, the more you’ll forget who you really are, and the less likely it will be that you’ll rebel again.”
Janie paused, waiting to see if Alessa was following. She continued softly, “Do you see? That’s why you feel all those things when you see Isaac. You love each other. None of that is made up. But you were both captured and separated months ago, and held prisoner while they did – who knows what? – to you both. You probably thought he was gone forever. I didn’t know what had become of either of you for months. Then finally our spy within the production team taught me how to resist the stitch and helped me infiltrate the show.
“But Isaac isn’t gone, Alessa. We’re going to save him. And not just from some bogus special effects fire, but for real. We’re working on a plan to help you both escape. We just need a little more time.”
23. RECONCILIATION
Grabbing Alessa’s shoulders once more, Janie beseeched Alessa to be cautious. “Less, we’re almost out of time, so I’m going to emphasize once more how critical it is that you don’t let on that you know any of this.”
Alessa had never seen Janie look so frightened. She still couldn’t process most of what Janie had said, so she just nodded quickly in response.
“Say it. Promise me you’ll be careful.” The reflection of a hundred tiny screens glowed eerily in Janie’s wide eyes.
Shaken by Janie’s frenzy, Alessa st
uttered, “I… I promise. I won’t let anyone know.”
Janie dropped her hands from Alessa’s shoulders with a visible sigh. “Just remember that if you’re not careful, we’ll both end up like Nikhil.”
“Like Nikhil?” Alessa remembered the night they almost kissed, watching those security officers drag him away into the dark. She whispered hesitantly, “What happened to him?”
“He was the star of another show that they’re filming on campus, but his show wasn’t supposed to intersect with yours. So the producers had him taken away…” She shook her head. “I honestly don’t know what they did with him. No one has seen him since.”
Alessa gasped quietly. Her stomach felt queasy as she realized that the violent tussle she’d seen really had been her fault.
Janie grabbed Alessa’s hand. “I know what you’re thinking, and it’s not your fault. None of us could have known.” She paused, her eyes clouding, then continued slowly, “Well… maybe I could have, but I didn’t know about him meeting you until the night of the party. I thought the producers were introducing a love triangle – I never imagined he was from another show until I learned what happened from my contact a couple days later.”
Janie’s reassurances made Alessa feel slightly better, but not entirely. She wasn’t even sure if she could believe everything that Janie had revealed, but regardless, she suddenly felt petrified. Maybe she hadn’t been living the happiest life for the past year – or however long she’d been part of this charade – but she had at least felt physically secure. Alessa would never have guessed that her seemingly normal everyday life was so fraught with danger, that one misstep could end it all. She felt on edge, and then she realized with a start that the feeling was all too familiar.
“Janie, how long have I been here?”
“On the set? Since the start of the semester – all of your memories before that are fake. But you were being held prisoner for months before that, over a year actually.”
Alessa rubbed her eyes with her hands, willing herself to wake up from this nightmare. She didn’t.
Janie tried to reassure her. “I know it’s a lot to process. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for my behavior the past few days. It’s just that, I didn’t realize that time travel was the plotline the producers had in mind – I thought it was too out there – and then when I suggested it to you, I unwittingly set you on that path and fast-tracked the story. I knew that when you finally reunited with Isaac, the show would be over and we’d lose our best chance at getting you both out. So I was just freaking out. I hadn’t been able to get in touch with my contact and I thought I was going to lose you. But it’s okay now, we’re working out the plan.”
As Janie finished, one of the monitors flashed back to life – students milling around the cafeteria. Then another, and another, their pace accelerating. Janie swore.
“Okay, you have to go, now. We’ve been in here for a couple minutes, so you can’t just reappear in the same spot you were when the cameras went off.” Janie snapped her fingers rapidly as she assembled a quick plan in her head. “Oh! Got it – run over to the stairs and walk down them as if you had gone up to your room one last time before going to class. That should account for your whereabouts during the blackout.”
Alessa nodded, her heart railing against her rib cage. She wasn’t ready for this yet.
The screens were popping back on at a rate of two or three per second now, and Janie was visibly panicked. She turned Alessa around and pushed her towards the door. “I’m sorry, it’s time. We’ll talk again soon. Just remember your promise and act normal in the meantime. Okay? You can do this.”
She opened the door with one hand, the other on Alessa’s back, the room flashing with each resurrection of a camera. “Oh, and Less? One more thing. I love you.” And Alessa felt herself shoved from behind back into the hallway of Z-E-Pi.
The sunlight filling the hall was blinding after the dimness of the security closet. Alessa could feel the adrenaline surging through her body; she knew what she had to do. Feeling her way along the wall, she ran as quickly as she could to the foyer and halfway up the stairs. Grasping the rail, she took a couple deep breaths to steady herself, then turned around and began descending. She hoped she’d made it in time.
As she exited the sorority house and briskly made her way down the path toward the quad, Alessa suspected that she hadn’t given the producers any reason to be suspicious. Even the security guards she passed didn’t give her a second look.
As her heart rate began to slow, Alessa was able to dismiss the threat of immediate danger and try to wrap her head around Janie’s revelations. Her mind was reeling. A thousand questions popped into her brain in rapid succession, each thought raising another before she could even begin to ponder the answers.
Trying to remain calm and maintain a normal walking pace, Alessa shook the myriad ambiguities from her mind. Now that she could think instead of just reacting, she focused her thoughts on one question: what evidence could she find to support Janie’s radical claims?
Glancing around, Alessa reasoned that everything looked pretty normal – students bundled up in the cold hurrying to and fro, a maintenance worker raking leaves into a pile. The ivy-covered walls, the professors in their tattered tweed jackets, the mousy little librarian and her dusty old tomes…
Come to think of it, maybe everything was a little too normal.
Then there were the cameras, of course. The university’s claim that they were for security wasn’t completely unreasonable, though the fact that they were apparently hidden even in Alessa’s bedroom did point towards there being something unseemly going on. And the monitors in that closet were certainly more advanced than anything Alessa had ever seen. Even if such technology did exist today, she couldn’t imagine the school budgeting that much money for fancy equipment when regular old flatscreens would have done just fine.
And then there was the closet itself. Alessa had walked down that hallway in Z-E-Pi countless times and never once noticed a doorway there. And once she finally did see it, it wasn’t like it was cleverly hidden or anything. Yes, it was the same color as the wall, but the outline of a door was plain to see. It felt almost as if she had been wearing fogged up glasses without realizing it, and then the fog was wiped away and she could finally see clearly. She wondered what else she had missed.
Entering the econ building, she looked around the lobby and noticed another hidden door similar to the one in her house. She stood in place for a few moments, pretending to fiddle with something in her bag, and casually watched the other students filing into the building. Not a single one seemed to notice the door, or anything else around them for that matter – they all just walked straight to class, their eyes fixed on their destination. Were they acting? Alessa remembered what Janie had said – “We’re all prisoners here.” Had Alessa been wandering around in the same daze as everyone else?
Alessa thought back over her experiences. Were there red flags that she should have caught? It did seem odd that Isaac and Alessa only ever saw each other. If he really was a ghost, why hadn’t anyone else ever seen him? Or if their house really was stuck in some sort of time warp, shouldn’t everyone who lived there be affected at some point? Why hadn’t she seen any of Isaac’s other family members or, for that matter, anyone else who had ever been there before or after Isaac’s or Alessa’s times?
And what about the more bizarre claims that Janie had made, for example about all of Alessa’s memories before ESU being constructed? Losing her parents felt so real that Alessa couldn’t imagine those memories being artificially implanted in her. It was pure agony to know that her family was gone, an almost physical pain. But then again, why didn’t she have a single photo of her parents? Janie had said something about the memory wipe – the “stitch” she called it – not being able to erase certain feelings, and also that they had lost their – Janie and Alessa’s – true family. Maybe the feelings were real then, and her memory had just been altered to apply thos
e feelings to a different circumstance?
If that was true, though, did that really mean that Janie was her sister? They did look somewhat alike, she supposed. By no means twins, but they shared the same dark hair and sharp features, and Alessa had always felt like she’d known Janie forever, even though they supposedly only met a few months ago…
It suddenly hit Alessa that she didn’t even know Janie’s last name. In months of conversations and emails and shared classes, it had somehow never come up, and Alessa had never thought to ask. She felt that familiar foggy feeling, the thought beginning to slip away almost as soon as it had occurred.
Quickly, Alessa pulled out her notebook and jotted “Janie’s name” in the corner of a sheet. Tearing the page from the book, she marched into her econ lecture, taking a seat toward the back of the class.
As she unzipped her backpack, Alessa had the frustrating feeling that she’d forgotten something. She strained to remember what it was. Homework? No, she was certain she’d done the reading… Did she bring her laptop? Yes, there it was in her bag…
And then Alessa noticed the crumpled piece of paper that she was clutching in her hand. Unfolding it, she saw her own writing in the upper right corner – “Janie’s name.” Alessa shook off the fog once more as her line of thought came flooding back. She didn’t know Janie’s last name.
Before she lost the thought again, she opened her laptop and navigated to the student directory. Searching for Janie, only one listing came up:
Khole, Janie. Freshman. 33 Mason Manor (Zeta Epsilon Pi), Rm. 2E
Alessa’s head swam as she quickly closed her browser and shoved the paper to the bottom of her bag, hoping no one had noticed what she’d been doing.
So it was true. Janie was her sister. Something clicked in Alessa’s mind, and she knew she wasn’t going to lose that fact again.
Alessa wondered why the producers would take the risk of listing Janie’s real name in the directory. She remembered Janie explaining that the stitch couldn’t separate a person from key facts about themself, like their name. Alessa supposed that if she had looked herself up and saw a different last name in the directory, she would have immediately recognized that something was wrong. So given that the producers thought Janie was stitched as well, it made sense that they wouldn’t try to change it. And until today, their selective perception technology had worked like a charm to hide these little inconsistencies – it seemed as though anything that caused dissonance in Alessa’s mind would be forgotten the moment after she recognized it.
What Tomorrow May Bring Page 136