by Micah Thomas
Shaking his head with amazement, he got to business. Time to find out who we are.
The computer desktop was as clean as the apartment. Thelon started digging through the internet search history.
Nothing in history for the last two days. That made sense. He’d been at his parents’ place. Hmm. There’s good stuff. Porn. Ten videos watched in the span of five minutes. Way to nut, my man. Let’s see what you were into. Nothing too freaky. Girl on guy. Two girls on guy. Red blooded, normal-ass porn.
Further in the history bar, before the porn, he’d been searching for something. Reincarnation. Dubious conspiracy sites, a few wiki pages, forums on something called the Mandela Effect.
Thelon sighed and scrolled more. You knew something was up, didn’t you?
The rest of the internet history was banal. Engagement ring shopping. Recipes for dinners. Style blogs. International business news. At least you weren’t some Republican monster.
Thelon checked the bookmarked pages next. Time to see who you tell people you are.
Links led to social media sites and Thelon was grateful to the technological Gods that the passwords automatically populated. The career website was professional, but too vague to tell him anything useful. 100% sterile. Same as his wardrobe. His personal social site was dedicated to photos of him and a woman tagged as Annie Washington. Black. Prettier than anyone who’d ever look his way. That’s her. That’s who I’m going to marry. T, you lucked out. She’s beautiful.
The computer beeped and he saw an alert for an instant message. Annie.
Guilt. Anxiety. Fear. He couldn’t talk to her. Had nothing to say. Not a single coherent memory of her. No way he could bullshit through a conversation with someone he was supposed to love. He closed the browser window. Fuck that for now.
He opened his personal email client icon on the desktop and the computer spun its working wheel for several minutes before displaying a message: “No account found. Would you like to setup a new account?”
Thelon’s skin popped in fresh goosepimples. Someone else had been in the apartment. No way homeboy didn’t have a personal email. Why would he delete it?. He knew it. All of this had happened since he…woke up—not woke up; since he came to in this life—It was staged somehow. All of it. Prepped for him. But why?
Facing the ongoing weirdness was too much, every detail overwhelming. Listless and strange feelings washed over him. A feeling of expectation and disinterest within his limbs and fingers, like he had something more to do, but nothing to do. His mouth hung open and he panted while inventorying his mind. He knew himself. He was Thelon, the undiscovered felon, party promoter, and cool cat on the Eden scene. Yet, something horrible had happened to him and he couldn’t remember facts, people, or places except someone named Henry. And he was also some corporate cog living in the city who visited his parents on the weekends.
He decided to break into the untouched six pack of beer he found in the cabinet. By the fourth, he was buzzed and passed out atop the luxury bedding.
~
THELON DIDN’T FEEL like he was dreaming. He was awake in bed, but paralyzed. The room was dark and shadowed. He couldn’t make a sound despite trying. Only his eyes worked, and he blinked rapidly. He faced the window. I’m on my side. Go back to sleep, Thelon. That’s when he sensed he wasn’t alone. Though it made no sound at first, he knew someone or something stood by the bed directly behind him.
His throat only made a choked gargle when he tried to call out. Fear on a scale he’d never experienced ran wildly through him and still he could not move. Whatever the thing was, dread horror—abject horror—emanated from it. An overwhelming panic blocked out all rational thought. Nothing compared to this, until it spoke in a whisper close to his ear.
“How do you like living in T’s life? Are you going to fuck his wife?”
Thelon’s fear escalated to fresh heights, but still he could not move anything except his eyes, which opened wide like an animal just pieced by a bullet. Inside, he screamed out of control. His breath escaped his mouth in feeble squeaks. Time held no meaning through this agony.
As abruptly as it began, the dread stopped. Though he remained paralyzed, Thelon gained control over his breathing. Too aware of preceding terrors and grateful for its end, he experienced a new bafflement when a second voice came from the window.
“Hey.”
He saw the silhouette of a man behind the curtain directly in front of his field of vision.
“Don’t listen to him. Don’t trust him. Don’t listen to him. Go back to sleep.”
A deep calm, as good and fine a feeling as the other had produced, flowed from this second entity and Thelon could not resist following its instructions.
~
THINGS HAPPENED AUTOMATICALLY for Thelon when the bedside alarm went off. He snapped up. He knew he had a job to do. I need to go to work. They expect me at work. I’ll be late if I dawdle. No time to stop for coffee. Gotta go to work. It took effort, but he stopped the marching inner dialogue a moment to rationalize. Work will be like working on the roof with Dad. I’ll feel better. That’s it.
He held this abstract premise in his mind, that with work would come focus, and with focus, his mind would clear and things would feel normal. After all, he knew where he worked. Shit.
However, he had no idea what he did there. I shouldn’t go. Going to work meant interacting with people who knew him. This could be the fast path to being exposed as a fraud. His resolve, so strong a moment before, crumbled into doubt.
T, brother, this is gonna be rough. Again, as it had in the night, he bounced between thinking of this life as his and this life as belonging to the man known as T.
A decision had to be made. Stay in this apartment I don’t recognize or go somewhere that might jog my fucked-up memory? He passively accepted the impulse from somewhere else within him. It was his physical compulsion to go to work.
While he got ready, he rationalized again that since he recalled the office so well, a sense of being at work would be nice. Perhaps all this weirdness would be over and he’d actually be T once he got there. Wouldn’t that be great?
He gazed into his closet; organized clothes, shoes on racks, ties also on racks. Though he knew the tux hanging in there would be overkill, he froze, flummoxed at what level of dress would be appropriate. Thelon settled on a gray suit—no tie. Not because he couldn’t find one that matched, but because he had no God damned idea how to knot it.
He knew that he didn’t live far from the office but hurried out of the apartment. Let’s just hope they don’t need anything from me today.
The walking commute did his body good. His muscles and lungs enjoyed pumping at a brisk pace. He stopped, stunned. Something is off. Weird.
People on the street stared into their phones. Everyone—even those behind the wheels of cars. Thelon tapped his empty pocket at his thigh. Oof. Yeah.
He resumed his walk, though now with a disconnected sense of wrongness, a jittery searching in his eyes. The world him felt flat. Unreal. The scene before him seemed false and familiar because it had been repeated in every film set in New York City.
Busy people marched like schools of fish, seeming to know just who they were and where they were going. How can they be so sure of anything? He wondered if he’d known that before. Been a man in control of his life. Are they all going to work? Do they all have inner lives? Is any of this real? The city could have been populated by robots.
Thelon stopped walking again, this time because his body said he had arrived. A steel tower. A skyscraper. A place of business and suits. An office building. His eyes widened. His office. He knew that he’d been here before but not in words. Not in knowledge like a story someone could tell out loud. Well, this is confusing.
~
HE HAD NO time ponder his sensory confusion. People pushed into the building and he was lollygagging. Thelon joined them and let his instincts carry him, a passive passenger walking through the skyscraper’s entrance.
The elevator filled him with awkward dislocation because he didn’t know where to rest his eyes. Certainly not on the phone screen of the shorter man in front of him. The riders thinned to just him as he reached his lofty floor and headed in through heavy glass doors to face the music.
Fuck, I’m nervous. What if I’m called into a meeting to present something and I am a total blank? None of that happened. After the company entryway, rows of low-walled cubicles channeled in all directions to offices. Alert faces of young professionals stared into computer screens to the quiet murmur of calls and key clacks. What do we even do here?
Thelon walked on autopilot and held his head up as though he deserved to be there. After a complete circuit of the north side of the floor, there it was: his name on a bronze plate upon an office door. This is the office I remember. Relieved that he’d made it this far without being questioned, he closed his door and surveyed his stuff.
A desk. A plant. A computer. A teleconferencing phone and flatscreen TV. Okay. Now what? He sat and adjusted his ergonomic executive chair, which was just a bit nicer than the one at his apartment. Thelon started up his computer and attempted to see if he could figure out exactly what his job entailed.
Emails upon emails. Hundreds, it said, since he’d last signed in on Friday. Nothing here indicated the nature of his job. Thelon read without comprehending; emails he’d sent, those sent or forwarded to him. Buzz words that meant nothing to him.
While alone, his anxiety dipped to almost nothing. It seemed no one needed anything from him, and he could take his time getting his bearings. This is kinda fun.
His happy morning spent Googling business terms ended when an alert popped up on his computer. A meeting invite reminder told him that in fifteen minutes, he was supposed to go to Conference Room A.
Thelon cringed. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Here we go.
He headed back to the main hallway where a color-coded floor map told him the location of Conference Room A. First to arrive, Thelon took a seat in the middle of the huge conference table and waited with a completely empty mind. A deadened nothing replaced the fear that had filled him only moments before.
Men and women filed into the room chatting among themselves, giving Thelon no notice. A woman fiddled with the audio video cables and projected a computer monitor upon a descending screen. Thelon gazed ahead without comprehending the series of slides with graphs, numbers, and other visual representation of data which could have been sales, widgets produced, or human casualties.
The presenter was a handsome white guy in his mid-twenties. Like Thelon, he wore a suit without a tie. His hair was messy but tied up in a bun atop his scalp. Thelon disliked him and his jargon-filled pitch. However, Thelon learned something. Apparently, the Energy Portal represented good news and this company had played some small part in the infrastructure contract to connect the world to free power. In doing so, it was poised to collect wealth beyond calculation. When the boring meeting finished, attendees filtered out of the room, their mindless chatter resumed.
The presenter said, “Yo, T, hang back a second?”
Thelon understood contextually that the man was talking to him, but again, T. T is worse than Mr. T. Please don’t tell me that is my nickname here too.
“Sure,” Thelon said. In the brief minute or two of waiting, Thelon blanked hard. Rationally, he thought he should be reacting. He was being called out. His fraud would certainly be exposed. These warnings fell flat and he continued to feel nothing as his eyes rested on the motivational poster in wait.
When the room cleared to all but the man and Thelon, the guy asked, “So, what did you think?”
Dude, he’s talking to you. Thelon looked at the man and put on his best fake smile. “It was good.”
“Yeah, but what did you like specifically?”
“The whole thing,” Thelon said. Leave me alone, please.
The man smiled back, shook his head, and said, “Okay, you cagey fuck. You animal! This was your baby and I just put a ribbon on it. Is that what you wanted to hear? Everybody knows the work is yours.”
“But what did I do?”
“That’s the beauty, bro. We worked hard to get to this position where we don’t have to do anything. Hey, we’re meeting up at Telly’s tonight to celebrate. Reservation is under yours truly. Tell ‘em Chad sent you. You’re coming, yeah?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Thelon received a painful, unwanted pat on his back from Chad and retreated to his office having learned nothing. He continued staring at his computer, reading emails and Wikipedia articles about his company and business in general, praying no one disturbed him.
~
THE EMAILS PILED up as he first attempted to consume the most recent and quickly became swamped. 2,000 new unread. Fuck.
He leaned away from the desk.
I should see a psychiatrist. If everything in the last forty-eight hours had been part of a stress related psychotic break, then he should get help. He was certain that a job like this came with insurance—if not the best insurance.
He’d go to the doctor. They’d tell him he’d suffered a brain injury and then fix it. That’s all it would take. He’d do it. He’d do it today before something bad happened. Thelon hadn’t messed up yet, but around each corner, anything could happen.
But he saw Henry on the TV screen. Who is Henry? This is bad. I’m in bad shape.
He cradled his head in his hands and let the returning fear run through him. Thelon didn’t know what was real. Nothing felt right, but everyone recognized him like he belonged. That couldn’t be true. He didn’t feel safe and didn’t know how to get there from here.
He’d made up his mind to go to an urgent care doctor when something beeped and buzzed in the office. Then it happened again. Thelon swiveled in his chair and looked around for the source of the sound. There’s a phone in here. His missing phone. That made sense. He could have left it in the office on Friday. Thelon had gone out to his folks that night and had his mental breakdown there.
Thelon followed the buzzing to the large, potentially plastic, decorative potted plant in the corner. He poked around the leaves but didn’t see anything. Another beep and buzz told him it was beneath the dirt and soil. What the fuck?
Glancing at the door and hoping no one found him like this, he dug his fingers into the pot. He had to lift the entire plant out and let soil litter the carpet to get to the phone, wrapped in plastic at the very bottom.
The phone was weird. Like an iPhone, but with a rugged plastic case built around it. The touch screen lit up with a New Message. He had to swipe to open them. He did, and his stomach dropped as he read them.
“Thelon.”
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Hi.”
Thelon wiped dirt off the display and entirely irrational bad feelings rocketed in his body. Adrenaline. Nausea. Sweats. Heart racing and emotions which could not be put into words, but one he knew were bad, foul, horrors. He coughed and touched his cramping stomach with his free hand, wiping dirt on his fine shirt.
“Yeah?” He typed and pressed send.
Messages bounced back without a pause.
“This is Nestor.”
“Shit’s fucked up, yeah?”
“Not sure what’s real anymore? Got a headache the size of the Moon?”
“It’s all real. All of it.”
“We need to talk.”
Thelon read the words with disbelief as they populated the screen. No. No. No. Then, the phone rang.
Confusion. Alienation. Dissociation. The two lives within Thelon—T and him—converged and exploded or imploded. His body tightened. He clenched the phone in his hand and pressed it to his ear. Somewhere dis
tant from that tense body, someone spoke. The vibrations traveled through molecules of air into his eardrum and translated into a voice, but Thelon could not hear it as words yet. Before his brain converted the vibrations to meaning, he knew them, and they were horror itself. Nestor. The name meant nothing to him, but even sounding it out in his mind caused him pain.
The jolt subsided. Distantly, he recognized that his panic was irrational. This is just a phone call.
Though he could think and hear again, his body tensed unbearably. Nestor. A name he had never once heard in his entire life compelled dread and loathing. His voice was familiar but terrible. Gravel. Pitched strange; almost strangled. Uneven and staccato in cadence like a man talking backwards. The words meant nothing, but penetrated Thelon. Each syllable jarred his insides, his bowels rumbled, and he dared not fart to relieve the pressure there.
Now, clear and plain, Nestor’s words made sense: “The pilgrims found the same old death at the end of the road. You must find Henry. You must find Cassie. Bring them together at Black Star. Put their pieces back together.”
Thelon found his voice, tongue dry in his mouth. “Who are you? I don’t even know what is real.”
Someone knocked on the office door. Thelon ignored it.
Nestor said, “Henry is in Seattle, Washington. Cassie is in Mesa, Arizona. Black Star is in Cahokia, Illinois. You will travel to each in that order. You will bring them together at Black Star. You will not say my name or mention me, or you will die. You all will die.”
The message was clear, but Thelon couldn’t reply, couldn’t ask questions, couldn’t treat this like a normal conversation and ask, ‘but why?’ or ‘how?’ His hand cramped harder squeezing the phone to his ear until his earlobe pinched. His stomach flipped and he knew he might vomit and shit—definitely shit.
Nestor shouted through the phone so loud Thelon’s ears popped. “Water! Now!”
Thelon swung open the door and pushed past the woman standing there as he ran to the bathroom. His temperature climbed faster than a fever. Burning up, sweat dripped into his eyes. His body vibrated at a horrible frequency. He lost coherency at an atomic level. Panic ripped through his mind.