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Part 1-18: Split
I expected another trip to darkness, but instead I was hit with a blast of bright white. My hands went to my eyes, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. It was quite irritating, like when the sun forces you to squint, and was even starting to hurt a bit.
“Okay? What is this now? What are you doing?” I said.
“Alena, what’s wrong?” It was Deluxe’s voice, clear as a bell. Was she here too?
“Really bright! Where are you? Can you see me?”
“You haven’t moved at all,” said Dack.
Someone poked my shoulder.
“Wifi? Is it?” said Willy.
“What? I can’t see… make it stop!”
“It is bad.”
“Agreed! Is this what you want to show me?”
“No. Wait.”
I did, as my friends behind me murmured. I kept my hands over my eyes, because the feeling provided some comfort. After a half minute or so, I had the sense that the light had gone behind a cloud. I peeked.
It was like I was looking at the park through a piece of glass that had water running down one side. Except that wasn’t quite right. Not down it, but sort of into it… as if I was lying down on my back under a glasstop table and someone turned on a faucet overhead. Everything was wavy and distorted, radiating out from a central point.
“What are you seeing?” asked Fergus.
“I don’t know! It’s messed up and wobbly… who spiked my eggs with LSD? Ha!” No one laughed.
“Guys…” said Deluxe. She didn’t say anything else, so I assume it was to keep Willy out of the loop. I bit back my questions and tried to make sense of the scene. It was getting better. Much better, in fact. The wobble faded until it was only a shaky blotch in my vision, pulsing out in little ripples every now and then. I traced the center of the disturbance to a small boxy building. The info kiosk.
“Wifi…” I whispered. “Holy…”
“Better. Now?”
I looked over at Willy. Instead of a man, he was a man-outline, coloured in with a storm of fuzzy blue static, glowing brightest where his face should have been. I looked down to see if my hand was holding a blue hand, and then became extraordinarily confused when I saw and felt my hand holding his human hand, and saw my other hands clasped together in front of me. The blue shape stood up, rising out of sitting-Willy like how I pictured a ghost would get up and leave a coffin.
“Come. Cannot stay. Long.”
If I sat there and thought about it too hard, I’d never move, so I got up.
This part is tough to explain. You hear of out of body experiences; people hallucinating that they are floating above themselves in bed or during surgery or whatever… that I can at least picture in my head. It was what was happening to me now, except I could still feel the blanket around my shoulders, still feel the heat of Willy’s hand in mine, even as I stood over the two of us and the others. The standing version of me clapped my hands to my cheeks, and I felt that. I tried to make sitting-me scratch the side of her leg. Didn’t work. I closed standing-me’s eyes and concentrated on the feeling of the earth under my butt, then scratched. Success. With my hands also on my cheeks.
I started to hyperventilate. Must’ve been both me’s ‘cause people started to ask what was wrong and I watched and felt hands touch my back. I had to get away from this, so I turned on my heel and stalked away from the blanket. I kept my head down and focused on the sensation of walking until I could feel less of the other me. People were talking and it sounded like they were sitting right beside me, which was not helping.
“Quiet! Please! Quiet!” I said, and received no response. I sought out the ground-on-butt feeling and said it again.
“Sorry lady. You started flippin’ out,” said Fergus, from directly behind me, even though I was twenty paces away.
“I’m in two! Both, me and… I don’t— just keep it… I don’t…”
My mind tore through its catalog of calming techniques, flailing around like a drowning rat. I half remembered something about long breathing, and latched onto the idea like it was a floating hunk of garbage in this panicky whirlpool.
Inhale over one… two… three…
Exhale over ten… nine… eight…
I don’t know how long I did this for, but I didn’t stop until things stabilized and I no longer felt so much everything. The blanket and the hand were there, yes… but I was mostly in… second me now. I had dropped to all fours in second me, and now got to my feet, still shaky.
The blue man-shape form stood before me.
“Is. Better?” it said.
“What is this? What did you do to me?”
“Showing you. See.”
It moved aside, and I tried to take in what I was looking at, now that the rat clung to a tentative shoreline. I saw the park. It was overcast. Everything was grainy and washed out, like it had gone through an overzealous photo filter. The wobbly pulse still throbbed from the info kiosk. The borders of the park were a chaos of churning, cloudy distortion. I saw people, and animals. They had blue hazes in them, it seemed. Like Eden, but wispier and smoke-like. There were also bright white lumps scattered about, like giant misshapen pearls.
“I watch,” said Eden, and gestured for me to turn around.
I did, and flinched. I was proud that I didn’t yelp. On the horizon behind me, rising an impossible hundred storeys or so above the town, was the clock. It was a great, magnificent tower, black and regal against the bone-white sky. The time stood still at two to midnight, and the numbers here were all facing the right way.
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