Suddenly I was in a strange world. A city similar to mine but eerily different.
I was alone; wandering crowded streets that felt both familiar and foreign. Two guys standing outside of a cafe saw me walk past. They noticed me.
One was a young, pale, thin man who looked just like Chris Palmer; one of my previous partners. He had close-cropped black hair. A widow's peak. Bright brown eyes. A childish smile. He wore a black leather biker jacket with black jeans; a white undershirt and fancy dress shoes. He stood with another young man rakishly leaning on the wall. This guy looked just like my friend Fletcher. He was tall and thin. One side of his head was a close buzz-cut while the other side partially obscured his slender face with a curtain of straight blonde hair. He wore glasses, military jungle boots, dress pants and a long brown trench-coat.
They both took immense interest in me. Asked me if I was lost. They stated that I looked familiar. I couldn’t remember how I had gotten to this place; this city was a strange, futuristic amalgam of every city I had ever lived in. These two guys felt familiar. I wanted familiarity. So I decided to spend time with them. Maybe they could help me figure out where I was and what was happening.
They brought me back to the bachelor-pad they were sharing together. The man who looked like Chris took me aside to speak to me in private.
“Look...I know this is going to sound weird, but I feel like I know you. Something happens to me when I look at you. I'm getting this weird urge to touch you. To be touched BY you. I'm not really sure what's happening but I want to know if we're on the same page.”
“Yes,” I said. “We are. You look just like . . . I feel like I know you, too.”
The man who looked like Fletcher had been eavesdropping on us. He shouted from the other room,
“I feel like I know her too! Like I knew her once or have seen her somewhere before!”
I spent the night with them. The man who looked like Chris convinced me to sleep in his bed. He gave me a soft, over-sized button-up dress shirt to sleep in. During the night when he thought I was sleeping, he touched my face very tenderly.
When I woke up I tried to find the clothes I had been wearing. They were gone. I had a strong urge to leave. Something wasn't right. So while the boys were sleeping, I fled wearing only that white, over-sized dress shirt.
Dazed and lost I walked through the city streets. I kept seeing people I thought I knew but they were different somehow. I saw Aubrey (or at least, someone who looked identical to her) coming out of an apartment building. She saw me too. She made eye contact. Seeing me apparently had the same effect on her as it had on the boys. Her expression looked like she recognized me, but couldn't understand why or from where.
I was staring at the girl who looked like Aubrey. I accidentally bumped into someone. She was shorter than me with beautiful dark brown skin and long flowing black hair. Her eyes were black and sparkling. She had on a pretty white dress. I didn't recognize her.
“Hello!” she said cheerfully. “Are you lost? You look lost.”
I told her how I had suddenly and unexpectedly appeared here. How everything seemed off and familiar. How I kept seeing people I knew but they didn't actually know me. How I was confused and frightened.
“I will help you!” she said happily. “That's my job.”
She took me by the hand and brought me to the tallest building in the city. We went up to the rooftop. From there she said I could get a better look at the city and see if I recognized anything. By that time the sun had set and the city was twinkling in the dark. I instinctively looked up. I wanted to see the stars. But instead of stars, the sky was filled with flashing red and blue lights. The humming of thousands upon thousands of drones. I didn’t see any stars. Only drones.
“What the hell is all that?” I said, mouth open and staring. The buzzing filled the air like a terrifying insect swarm. “That isn’t familiar at all. We don't have night skies filled with drones where I'm from.”
“The night sky here always looks like this,” she said. “The drones come out at night to make deliveries and various repairs throughout the city.”
I stood for a while watching them.
“Um, what year is it?” I asked.
“8019.” she said.
I stood silent for a while again.
“But I'm . . . I'm from the 21st Century.”
She gasped.
“What!? What do you mean? The first Mars Colonies? World War III? The Water War?”
“Earlier.”
“The Great Equatorial Exodus? The Northern Migration? The Loss of the Polar Caps?”
“Eariler.” I said, rubbing my temples.
“The pandemic? The advent of Harry Potter?”
“I … what?”
“Harry Potter! A holy figure worshiped by people from that time period!” she said, staring at me, wide eyed.
“Um . . . ok? Yeah, sure. Harry Potter. Right about there.”
She conjured a floating screen out of thin air. On it there was very old, badly preserved footage of a presidential election. An angry orange man was shouting incoherently.
“Is this familiar to you?” she asked.
I squatted down on the roof, my head in my hands.
“Yes.”
She became very serious. Her voice started to change. It suddenly became very deep. Very frightening.
“How did you get here child? You're not supposed to be here.”
“I don't know!” I cried. “Why do all these people look like my friends? Who are these people? Where am I? If what you're telling me is true all my friends are long dead! I want to go home!”
She held my hand.
“The world is always populated by the same people in all times.” she said.
“What?”
“We have to get you home. Come. We will find you a door.”
“If that's true then where are my best friends? Where are Kori and Christian and Katy? Where are my parents? Where are they? If I could find them maybe I could ...”
She took me by the hand and began running. We ran away from the city and into the forest. I realized (along with a wave of nausea) that even though we were running at a breakneck pace, we weren't actually moving. The city was changing around us. The ground was roiling underneath our feet. We ran in place as if stuck on a treadmill. But buildings rose and fell around us. Trees sprang up, grew old and rotted away. Total devastation was replaced by rapid growth over and over. The sky flashed blue and black. Everything was flashing in and out of existence.
Someone grabbed my other hand.
I turned and looked back. A shirtless, heavily muscled, beautiful dark-skinned man was running behind us. He gripped my hand and smiled at me.
“Who … who is he?” I shouted to the girl over the roar of creation and destruction.
“Another Limb!” she yelled.
“A what!?”
“He and I are Limbs of Vishnu!”
We kept running. Now we were running through a cramped and rotting maze of wet logs. An old structure. The floor was slippery and wet.
At the end of the maze was a white door.
Through the white door, into a white light.
Their voices, in unison:
“Good Morning. Goodbye.”
I woke up.
