Life is alright after the cleansing. It is hard to let go of the past, for sure, but things are not so different now. And I have a reason to be a different man in this new reality.
In this hard new world, life exists as it did before; people are hostile and violent but they are not stupid and societies have largely held together, though they are much smaller since populations around the globe were literally decimated by command of the new world ruler, the ascendant weed known as Illuminatos, who has turned the eyes of the entire human population black with red pupils. He exists as twisted trees around the globe that cannot be removed by conventional methods, and that give off spores that touch minds and make them susceptible to his control.
But I still have my job and my regrets, and even in this dark time, I wonder if I should be married by now, sharing my life with someone. This new time has taught me that it’s not enough to evolve, I’d been forced into that by the new world order, hardered to kill without second thought to protect myself from a world that forced everyone to literally fight for their lives or perish. Even though I rose to the occasion and I defended myself against the crazed on Night One, when Illuminatos first released his spores, and I have survived to this day, Night Three Hundred Ten, I am still alone and craving companionship. I had a friend, his name was Silas, but I have not seen him in a long time, and honestly, I haven’t confirmed that he is still alive.
We were doing something that gave me purpose. He had strange dreams like I do, but his were about a hellish place that we were trying to map on paper. I still have it and I stare at it sometimes. It reminds me of our cooperation, me allowing myself closeness to someone rather than retreating to the other reality in my dreams. I don’t dream of a hellish place, I dream of my life lived with different choices made, and I can go there to escape all of the life that I know.
It is real, I know that it is, a different me, at the same point in life, but in a different world, and it made me happy to know that I was happy somewhere. It’s why I kept living my life, to see that one chugging along.
Things have taken a sad turn as of late; it seems that I have been incarcerated in the other life and I fear that the place where my other self finds himself will be the end of my other life.
I am not consumed with despair, though, I have plenty of opportunity to take out my rage. When I caught my neighbor letting his dog shit in the parking lot and he refused to clean it, I was cheered on by others in the apartment complex as I beat him to a pulp and rubbed his face in the excrement. Everyone else made him strip naked and wipe the grass clean of the shit with his clothes, I was inside by that point. But I haven’t been starving for the escape as I had been. And all this time in my own life has renewed my feelings of loneliness, of disconnectedness.
I was in a bad fight recently, maybe I lost, but we both took our licks and kept moving, so I’m inside a lot lately. I tried to call Silas at the number I had for him, but it just rang and the voice mailbox was full. So I’ve been dreaming a lot lately and I’ve been studying my predicament, the predicament of my other self I should say.
I am a state police officer in the custody of what I believe to be an organization of scientists and I’m plotting to get out. It’s like a TV show and it’s much better than anything on these days.
PRL Serials 