2012:

What an interesting device this is. A small plaque on the wall with a single button and a dime-sized hole to left of it. Of course, a button’s only purpose is to be pressed, not doing so would undermine its entire existence.

I press the button. The hole glows a murky orange masked by a small circular gate. They must’ve known I was coming. I produce a cigarette out of the crumpled box in my pocket. Strange they didn’t take this away from me. They didn’t even pat me down when they handcuffed me and put me in the back of the police car. I could’ve had a bomb, or worse, some kind of secret sensor that tracked all the movements in and out of said police car. I could have sold that device for millions. In fact, maybe I did plant this device already. I don’t really remember where I got it.

I press the non-smokable end of my cigarette into the hole and press the button. The crackle of burnt paper and tobacco. What a great sound. Was it being transmitted out of the hole? No. I see the lit cigarette. It’s seems very real to me. At least right now it does.

Hm. This box feels a little different. The text seems smaller. I remember crumpling up the box earlier in the event that my mission is compromised and they might try to poison me with my own cigarettes. What a dastardly plan.

I stare around at the patio. It’s dark. I’m alone. The whole area feels sort of like a small park you might find at the end of an alleyway. A lone table lit by a single streetlight. The sky looks real enough. Could be a biodome though. Something to invoke some kind of emotion out of me. Who knows what sort of technology this place is capable of.

EXIT

it’s basically telling me to. Is that the joke? Or is this some sort of test. A test of will. Do I run? No. But it doesn’t hurt to try the door anyway. I give that sort of look around people do before they say the N-word to a close friend. I press the bar. Locked. Not really surprising.

“Got another?” Chad? Oh wait, no. I don’t know this person. “Sure” I respond without much choice. A heavily tattooed man with that posture like he hasn’t seen light in years. Ghosts in his eyes. I hand him a smoke and he turns and walks away. Not even a thanks. Maybe there’s something to these cigarettes after all, and he knows it. Does everyone know?

I wander back into the waiting room. Or is this some kind of cell?…I peek into the tiny window on the door to my left. A padded isolation chamber, straight out of a movie. I always assumed these rooms were at the bottom of some high security prison. Somewhere you have to unlock the floor in the elevator with a key.

It doesn’t feel so scary looking inside from out here. There’s a boy on the bed in the very center of the room. One tattoo was visible on his leg: a crow on a gravestone. The rest of his body is covered by the straight jacket.

“Hey… Hey!”

There’s a larger woman sitting on a chair behind me. She reminds me of someone I knew from church years ago if she was homeless and had a meth problem.

“Hello.” I respond.

“Do you want to know the winning lottery numbers?”

Of course I do.

“Of course I do.”

She almost magically spawns an orange crayon and motions to me for something to write on. I have a pamphlet from the rack near the the entrance of this waiting cell. It had some pretty terrible artwork depicting different kinds of mental states. I could do much better. Maybe they’ll hire me to rework all their pamphlets. That could be a fun project.

Oh right I’m about to learn the winning lottery numbers. I hand her the pamphlet and she’s off.

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13

Not quite what I was expecting. But maybe she has a point. I hear people talk about “what are the chances that life could just randomly exist all of the sudden et cetera, et cetera.” But really, what are the chances of anything happening? Would it be more magical if 13 random numbers…Wait. 13? I thought it was 6. Maybe they changed it.

“Anthony Gonzalez” I hear over the intercom. The room isn’t very large. They could have just raised their voices a bit. I reluctantly walk over to the desk. A woman behind what I assume to be bulletproof glass. Liz? She looks so much like her. The aging didn’t do her well. But in her eyes I can still see her. She must be trapped in this place. A place devoid of time. How else could I see so far into the future? Just behind this glass 50 years must’ve passed. How long have I been in here? I look down at my hands. Still young.

“Follow me.”

A dull looking man escorts me to a small room. Weak minded, I can tell.

He begins scrawling down information on some absurdly detailed form. His hands are moving quickly, his letters skew and start becoming just scribbles of nonsense. I focus harder on his hand movements. Sporadic now. The form is covered with ink. I look up at him

“Alright, that’s it.”

“Can I sleep in the confinement chamber?” I ask. After all, how many people get to say they’ve slept in a solitary confinement chamber? Probably more that you’d think I guess. He seems taken aback by the question. It’s a simple yes or no.

“I suppose we can arrange that…”

The form is now, somehow, perfectly readable. Some kind of invisible ink I assume. He was trying to throw me off. I wonder what information he did manage to extract from me. in fact I don’t even remember saying a word.

The chamber was surprisingly warm, both in temperature and color. I felt safe. Unless…no. I promptly lay on the bed and pass out.

I stood on an empty plane of existence

close enough to see the atoms making up the walls that stood between myself and reality

sleeping in the bed before me

I saw myself

tattered and tattooed

asleep soundly

what a peaceful state of mind I thought

Gasp! (Well not really that sound exactly. I guess it might be more like AWUHH! It seems like there should be a better way to spell that onomatopoeia.) I’ve never had the pleasure of almost drowning, but I assume my awakening was similar to the experience to being reanimated. A new bed. A new room. I vaguely remember talking to a woman out in a nice garden with a tree. She asked me all sorts of questions. A dream? Perhaps. Where was the chamber?

“This is a whole new place with new faces and names.” I hear in my mind. The line repeats itself in my head.

Oh I have one of these. I got it at IKEA. Nice little square compartments. Better than a shelf in my opinion, because you can sort vertically and horizontally. These gym shorts seem far too big for me.

“Hey! That side is your side and this side is mine!”

A beast of a man. Roughly shaped like Sully from Monsters Inc., storms in. Startled, I drop the shorts. Now it makes sense why the right side is empty and the gym shorts are too big for me.

“Hello.” I say calmly. I may be small but I’ve got dexterity. I’d slip away from his clutches easily.

“Eduardo.” he reaches out his hand. They must’ve assigned me a friend. I shake his hand. I immediately visualize the germs from a thousand doorknobs jumping from his palm to mine. In between my fingers and even under my nails. Pulling my hand away I could almost feel a sticky film stretching away like the cheese on a pizza in a 90’s cartoon.

Anyway, I immediately wash my hands. I’ve never really had a germ phobia but I can’t be too careful here. This might be some kind of sick human experimentation center. Sounds exciting. I wonder what they’re looking at me for. It must be important. Eduardo must be my new bodyguard.

After the brief introduction I’m left alone again in my new room. I can’t believe they’d think I wouldn’t get the Portal 2 reference. If this is a game, it’s one I’ve already played. Although there isn’t any art on the walls. I’ll have to fix that at some point.

what a beautiful blue

came into my view

she’s grown so intriguingly

fond of me too

and i’ve shown her my warmth,

my heat, and my storms

and i’ve shown her my love

and i’ve shown her my form

and yet still she stays

just a distance away

when i reach out to touch her

she sways

A frail little man. His hands trembled holding the lighter up for me. They didn’t let us have our own for obvious reasons. There’s one of those lighter devices on the wall just to the right of him. Must be broken. Or, more probably, someone had misused the device. Poor guy must’ve burned his fingertip right off.

I wander over to the round table with my newly lit cigarette. There are cameras everywhere. 1…2….3,4..5……6. 6 cameras. Just in this tiny enclosure. This was where I had that conversation with that woman in my dream. I guess maybe it wasn’t a dream at all.

A few young adults are sat at the table that I climbed on top of in my dream. I mean. It wasn’t a dream. You would think that being in the actual location would bring all of it back to me but instead it just clouds the memory. I swear it has a different… tone. I don’t remember her name. I can’t even remember her face.

Eduardo is here at the table. He seems calm. Less beastly. Everyone has their cigarettes in hand.

“These are all we got here.” one of them says to me. A larger woman. Very auntly. “Brenda.” she reaches out her hand. I reluctantly return the gesture. Again, I peel my hand away as if it was stuck in old chewing gum. I address the rest of the table with a witty and humorous remark as I join them.

“What’re you in for?” Chad asks me. Wait. This still isn’t Chad. He looks much healthier now. Maybe it was the lighting.

“Going crazy.” I say. “Just completely losing my mind.”

“Haven’t we all.” A few breaths of laughter follow Brenda’s statement. I sort of feel offended. I mean, there is a difference between breaking a few plates in a fit of rage and stripping down to your underwear in a messianic delusion, running through a busy 4-way intersection as a demonstration of your newly found divine power.

No need to compare tragedies I guess. And I’m much better now anyway.

A long drag of my cigarette. It’s almost refreshing. Like a ice cold bottle of Coca-Cola®. I procure my notebook from under my arm and open it to the first page.

If found, please return to

GEORGE CLOONEY

My own humor amuses me. I wonder if they think that I think that I’m George Clooney. What a hilarious delusion that would be.

They only allowed me to have one of those small pencils, the kind you get at mini golf. I mean. I could still do some damage if I wanted to. I guess every precaution must be taken in a place like this. Even if it is really just a facade of safety.

“So, you’re an artist?” The girl to my right says to me. Very beautiful, but with a kind of repressed sadness in her eyes.

“Yeah. I mean I always have been. I’m trying to get a job as a game artist.-”

“Oh you like games?” A pudgy, but well groomed man. Bandages on both wrists “Check out this place.” He immediately commandeers my notebook and writes “BLIZZARD ACTIVISION” on the page I was on. First of all: rude. Second of all, how would an aspiring video game artist possibly be unaware of one of the largest video game companies on Earth? He might as well have suggested that I drink water when I’m thirsty.

I say none of this.

“Oh. Cool. Yeah. I’ll check that out.”

“Draw me!” The beautiful girl suggests. Her name is Dot I discover. I fiddle with the tiny pencil in my hand. I’ve never wanted a real drawing pencil so much in my life.

I nervously begin to draw the shape of her face. It’s wrong already. I start to add some stylized lines to maybe remedy the drawing. Maybe it’s not a pencil I really need, but an eraser.

“He thinks I’m ugly!” She begins to cry. I try to explain that it was merely a mistake. She won’t listen. People come out to the patio and escort her away in tears.

What a strange place I’ve found myself at.

“Smoking break is over!” Someone yells from inside. We all put our cigarettes out and return to the facility.

you’re good. get better. stop asking for things.

Visiting hours. I’m a bit nervous. I’m not sure what to expect. Will I be receiving instructions? So far I think I must be here to help these people see. See what it is that I see so clearly now. My notebook has everything I need to prove that my quantum diagram will-

“Hello.” It’s Alan’s father. It’s definitely him, but…older. Much older. He gives me a smile. I return the gesture.

“We’re just here to make sure our daughter is marrying the right man.” He laughs, but it’s not a joke.

Suddenly my heart starts racing. Was it…was it him all along? Or them- The Academy. This can’t be. She’s not here… We were never supposed to be together. I’m in here because..because I’m the anomaly and I must be dealt with.

I look at the television. Kid Rock. We make eye contact and he tells me he’s sorry with his expression. This so much bigger than me, I realize.

I look back at Alan’s father. Such genuine delight in his face. The prosthetic looks so real. I’m truly alone in here.

“AJ.”

My cousin Korey and his wife walk into the room. I dart towards him and hug him harder than I’ve ever hugged anyone. It feels like my feet touching the ground for the first time in a long time. I can’t help myself, I burst into tears. All this constant surveillance and these tests. But this. This feels so real… I thought… I thought I would never see anyone again.