by Sean McMahon
CHAPTER TWELVE
Total Protonic Reversal
1st Restart – Friday Afternoon, 12:01pm
Arush of air, like being in the epicentre of a wind tunnel. A blinding whiteness in every direction, entirely removing their sense of spatial awareness. The thundering, relentless sound of air vacating an infinite echo-chamber of nothingness.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the sound ceased, like someone pressing a mute-button on reality. An airlock re-stabilised, after all the oxygen had been vented out into the cold, dark, heart of space.
And then, there was sunlight. As devoid of heat as it was crystal clear. Their surroundings appearing before them with impossibly perfect clarity, akin to an interactive, high-definition image. Everything was swathed in a colour scheme that looked almost hyper-realistic.
Hal and Kara found themselves standing outside Fir Lodge, covering their eyes against the savage brightness of their environment.
‘Kara,’ whispered Hal.
‘Hal,’ said Kara, equally disorientated. They both fell to the ground, landing heavily on the shingle of the driveway. Hal was on all fours, dry-heaving, clearly needing to throw-up, but not being able to produce anything. Kara, meanwhile, rolled onto her back, fighting the involuntary hyperventilation that her lungs were trying to engage in, feeling like she’d been hit by a truck full of smaller, baby trucks.
The ultra-bright sunlight reflected off of an equally crystal-clear, large red object, that was moving towards them at speed.
‘Ka…Ka!’ exclaimed Hal, trying to get Kara’s attention, his mind wrestling for dominance over his ability to actually form words. Kara was gradually managing to slow her breathing, dialling back her panic attack from “full-blown” to “pretty-serious.”
‘Wh-what?’ mustered Kara, suffering from the same problematic inability to reboot and regain her senses.
‘Ka-car!’ said Hal, finally.
The red, family-sized vehicle pulled into the driveway, the displaced shingle sounding like a fuse that was burning ever-closer to a stick of dynamite. In this instance, the dynamite was represented by Kara’s head, which was currently lining up perfectly with the oncoming, potentially skull-crushing, tyres.
She rolled to her right, successfully evading the tyre, which was now occupying the space where her head had just been.
The driver killed the engine, opened the driver-side door, and stepped out. The ground crunched beneath his feet, the sound so excruciatingly loud that it forced Hal and Kara to cover their ears.
‘Will!’ shouted Kara and Hal in unison, the sight of their friend snapping them out of their mutual discombobulation. They breathed a sigh of relief, comforted by the fact that they were no longer forced to deal with what was happening alone.
Will took a moment to stretch, trying to shake off the two-hour car journey, and looked up at the lodge. The place looked beautiful. His wife Stacey stepped out of the passenger side and asked him to pop open the boot. Will clicked the button on his key fob and the boot of the car opened obligingly, the pistons of compressed air supporting the boot door hissing softly.
Rachel and Jon came out to greet them, stepping unceremoniously over Kara’s legs. She let out an involuntary yelp, and pulled her legs inwards before they could apply the pressure of their full weight on her, and scowled at her soon-to-be hosts.
‘What the hell guys,’ said Kara, ‘help me up!’
Jon and Rachel continued to greet the first arrivals, ignoring her request. Deciding to take matters into her own hands, she pulled herself up, using the side of Will’s car for support, and dusted herself down, as Hal tried to get her attention.
‘Erm…Kara…’
Kara moved between Will and Jon, who were shaking hands.
‘Seriously Jon?!’ she said, approaching him with the intent of playfully punching him in the arm.
‘KARA!’ shouted Hal, causing her to freeze where she stood. Hal never shouted.
‘Your clothes,’ he said, more calmly.
She looked down at her body, and then back at Hal.
‘Yours too!’ she said, moving away from the greetings being exchanged, and circling around Will’s car so she was standing next to Hal again.
She reached out for Hal’s collar, which was dishevelled and needed straightening, but that wasn’t what drew her to do so. It was the fact that he was wearing what he was wearing in the first place. Upon contact with the fabric, she felt a sizzle of what she assumed was static electricity, and pulled back her hand, as a barely-perceptible blue light tickled her fingertips.
Will and Stacey made their way inside with Rachel and Jon, leaving Hal and Kara behind. Before she could comment about the static-electricity and, respectively, the rudeness of their friends, their joint attention was pulled towards a streak of white, which was moving through the hedges that made up the boundary of the front of the lodge. They quickly realised it was another car, which pulled onto the driveway, apparently aiming for the spot alongside Will’s car. The newly acquired, high-definition upgrade to their eyesight that Hal and Kara had only just inherited went haywire. Their perception of the surrounding environment began to shake from side to side, at first from left to right, with furious speed, and then with the occasional up and down directional change thrown in for good measure, presumably just to really sell to them the shared sensation of unbearable motion-sickness.
‘I feel like I’m in one of those paint mixer machines you see at the hardware–’ said Hal drunkenly, his sentence cut short as he tumbled to the ground, fumbling around on the sea of stones that covered the driveway. To a casual onlooker, it would have looked as if he were looking for a non-existent contact lens, as he tried, with embarrassing futility, to regain his composure.
Meanwhile, Kara was having a whale of a time trying to get her own shit together. She would’ve offered Hal a hand, were it not for the fact that someone had seemingly, and rather thoughtlessly, switched the gravity off in her immediate vicinity, forcing her to focus intently on clinging to the ground in order to prevent herself from plummeting all the way down into the sky. Her theory was immediately debunked, due to the fact that, in reality, she was rolling around on the shingle the whole time, a meter or so from Hal.
She and Hal were so busy trying to regain their equilibrium that they had all but forgotten the existence of the other, until they finally collided with each other. The sizzle they had experienced earlier which, to Kara at least, felt like hours ago was a little more “punchy” this time around. In the same way a flame-thrower tended to be a little bit more “punchy” than a recently-struck match.
Blue lightning sparked between their bodies, forcing them apart. Kara flew over the top of Will’s car, rolling several meters across the shingle, through an unfortunately-located patch of mud, and onto a beautifully maintained grass verge. Hal was a little more fortunate, as he was flung into the solid concrete support wall of what, he would later remember, was the sauna and steam rooms.
With his vertigo abated, Hal shook his head, as if he’d just downed a can of energy drink and was finally thinking clearly again. He would have noticed, then and there, that he wasn’t experiencing the usual debilitating pain that inevitably ensued after a full-blown electrocution, especially one that was followed-up by a chaser of blunt-force trauma, but he was understandably more preoccupied with what happened next.
In Hal’s defence, it wasn’t a common occurrence to be afforded a front-row seat to bear witness as the existential nature of reality was turned completely on its metaphoric head.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Face-Off
1st Restart – Friday Afternoon, 12:03pm
Kara pulled herself up from the perfectly manicured stretch of grass, and instinctively proceeded to brush the mud from her legs, but noted that, oddly, there was none. She met Hal’s gaze, who looked as white as a ghost. She closed her eyes, shaking her head at the loaded terminology.
“Nope. Just nope,” thought Kara. And then
she saw it. Or rather, she saw herself.
‘That’s impossible…’ she whispered, moving closer to the aberration that was currently standing a few feet behind Will’s impossibly-bright red car.
Kara stared, slack-jawed, at the carbon-copy of herself, now standing behind her frighteningly-realistic duplicate. The imposter even had her hair just right, short and freshly-straightened, her clothes identical to what she was wearing when she had first arrived at Fir Lodge. Even her mannerisms were eerily precise, as if the clone had practised and rehearsed her movements so that they were imperceptible from the real thing. The real her.
She continued to observe, as the imposter released a copy of Hal from the confines of the back seat of Jasmine’s car.
Jasmine showed signs of perceivable relief that the journey was over, as the other Hal hopped out, and popped open the boot of the car. Their doubles then proceeded to lug their cases into the lodge, with Jasmine following just behind them, saddled with several light bags of food and drink.
Hal’s doppelganger was equally convincing. The way he moved, the way he laughed, right down to the way he used his left hand to use his phone.
“He even has the south-paw thing down,” thought Hal, as impressed as he was terrified by the attention to detail.
Hal waved at Kara to get her attention, but she was understandably preoccupied. He tried harder, waving his arms like he was trying to guide in a low-flying aircraft. She snapped out of her trance but, unfortunately, she noticed Hal’s warning too late, unable to avoid Robert, who was positioning his car onto the drive behind her. His passenger wing mirror collided with her hip, the force of impact clicking the mirror into the closed position. She recoiled away from the vehicle, more out of shock than any physical pain.
In order to remove himself emotionally from the insanity, Hal had started to consciously take notes of their surroundings. Of course, he’d have to confront his evil-twin at some point, but he’d seen enough movies to know that there was a right way and a wrong way to approach the sinister usurper of his life. He surmised that the electricity was probably important, as was the fact that he was still wearing his costume from last night.
“Or is that tomorrow?” he thought.
Kara ran over to him and went to grab him, but he took a step back, and she rolled her eyes, realising why.
‘Oh, right,’ said Kara, with frenzied eyes. ‘What are those things?! And why can’t anyone see us?!’
Robert exited his car, and was milking a stretch. Kara shouted out his name, fruitlessly attempting to get his attention.
‘I’m like ninety-percent certain he can’t hear–’ but Hal stood no chance of stopping her. She was proper going off on one, like Rachel often did when engaging in a rant over something Jon had done wrong.
Hal followed her, placing his hands in his boiler suit pockets. He felt his phone beneath his palm as he did so, and pulled it out. He stabbed the home button with his finger.
‘Dead. Well, that’s typical,’ muttered Hal.
Then, like a gunslinger from the wild-west, his right hand flew to the outside of his right-side pocket. He could feel the comforting bump of the filter box nestled beneath the fabric, where he stored his hand-rolled cigarettes.
“Every cloud,” he thought to himself, as Kara stomped her way over to Robert.
‘Seriously, Robert? You’re ignoring me too?! Snap out of it,’ she yelled, raising her hand with the apparent intention of giving him a gentle slap.
Hal couldn’t be sure from the angle, but he was certain her hand went straight through Robert as she did so, like he was a construct in a virtual-reality game.
“Maybe there is no spoon,” thought Hal.
He began to stare suspiciously at everything, looking for shades of green-tinged code. After a few moments, he gave up staring at a nearby flowerpot, which was clearly minding its own business in a convincing-enough manner as to satisfy Hal’s paranoia. Remaining somewhat suspicious, he begrudgingly dismissed the idea.
‘Sometimes there is a spoon I guess,’ he mumbled.
Judging by the fact Kara was staring at her hand and sporting a frantically confused expression, he made the leap and concluded that he’d actually seen what he thought he’d seen. He walked over to Robert, raising his own hand, like a speedster preparing to reverberate at high speed, held his breath, then plunged his open hand through Robert’s chest, retracting it instantly. Hal sheltered his now closed fist, as if nursing a severe burn.
‘Are you ok?!’ shrieked Kara.
‘Oh, yeah, totally. It didn’t hurt or anything, I just wasn’t expecting that to happen?’ said Hal, wincing at the tone in his own voice, as if the inflection of a question mark at the end of that sentence was an unreasonable assumption to make. Luckily, Kara was too busy losing her mind to notice such semantics.
‘WHAT IS GOING ON?!’ shouted Kara, dispensing a barrage of quandary-bullets in his direction. ‘Why does that thing have my face? Why are there…copies of us walking around in there with our friends? Why are we wearing these stupid costumes?! Why is Robert a ghost now?! And why...why…actually, just answer those first please,’ said Kara, knowing that she would have more questions shortly.
Hal had no idea how to answer her tirade of questions. They were apparently now living in a cuckoo-land town, just south of Logic-Ville.
‘Well,’ said Hal, rubbing his five-o’clock-shadow chin stubble, and deciding he might as well just go for it. ‘I think…I think Robert’s a hologram, we’ve been cloned, and are also somehow invisible for some reason. Honestly? I’m Jon Snow right now, I know nothin’.’
‘I don’t know what that reference means!’
‘Are you being serious right now? Dude, you need to start Game Of–’
‘Hal,’ said Kara, sharply, ‘what do we do?’
Hal felt the room, acknowledging that his friend clearly wasn’t in the mood for him dropping pop-culture references right now.
‘I guess…we head inside? See how this plays out?’ he said.
And with no other plan in their arsenal to speak of, Hal gestured towards the lodge and made his way to the entrance.
Kara, still shaking, proceeded towards the front doors as well, flinching at the sound of laughter being generated by their traitorous, evil clones, which was emanating from within. Kara instinctively walked around Will’s Car, but Hal didn’t see the point after his experiment with Robert. He walked straight towards the centre of the vehicle, expecting to walk through it, experiencing unexpected resistance as his chest smacked soundlessly against the car. Rolling his eyes to mask his embarrassment, Hal tried to pretend he had conducted yet another impromptu experiment.
‘Note to self;’ said Hal, ‘not everything here is a hologram.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ghosted
1st Restart – Friday Afternoon, 12:07pm
They slipped in through the front door, completely unseen due to a level of stealth that wasn’t so much a perfected skill, as it was more an intrinsic by-product of their current disassociation with the universe, watching as their friends and duplicates dispersed throughout the lodge. It was a unique experience, like watching a playback of a video recording of their memories. Only there were details that couldn’t have been memories at all, given that they had not been present for some of the things they were witnessing. Hal noted a perfect example of this, as he witnessed a conversation that was taking place between Rachel and Kara. This was something that he couldn’t have remembered, because he had been outside with Jon at the time.
One thing Hal and Kara confirmed pretty quickly was that they were, indeed, entirely invisible, but it was taking their minds time to adjust to the new status quo. They instinctively moved out of the way, as the manifestations of their friends and, more horrifyingly, themselves, moved around them. Neither of them wanted to experience the sensation of passing through another human being again any time soon, or, in fact, ever.
Waiting for an opening, to ensure there
were no obstructions ahead of them, the invisible spectators ascended the wooden staircase that led to the communal living area, finding a quiet corner that they could observe from without having to constantly dart out of anyone’s way. Hal tried to project an air of light-hearted banality by striking up a conversation.
‘What made you scream back there?’ said Hal, correcting himself immediately, ‘back then? Shit, you know what I mean,’ he finished, quickly realising that the biggest problem they would need to overcome during their time here was apparently grammar.
Kara’s eyes, which were wide with wonder, fluttered slightly, as she regained her composure, locking on to his words as if they were an inflatable lifeline being thrown out to her drowning sanity. She swallowed, expecting her mouth to be dry and croaky when she spoke, but realised it was apparently unnecessary.
‘When we got from back from Jerry’s, I went to go find my phone,’ began Kara. ‘Will and Peter were playing pool. They were laughing about something. I asked Will why he was ignoring us, but he just kept playing. I tried to slip past him to get into my room whilst he took a shot, but he turned around and…and…he literally walked right through me Hal!’ She said it again, almost as if she needed to say it out loud a second time. ‘He literally. Walked. Through me!’ her eyes widened again, filled with a desperate fear that stemmed from the thought that he would think she was crazy. ‘You must think I’m insane. You have to believe me Hal, please tell me you believe me!’
Hal responded immediately, in the hope he could ease her anguish.
‘Kara, I believe you. The same thing happened to me.’
‘Will walked through you too?!’
‘What? How would that even…no, he was nowhere near me, it was Jasmine. On the stairs, just before I got to you. It was weird though, she was there, then all I saw was a white mist as she walked through me, then she was…out of me, and–’