The Fixers

Before he knew it, he was falling backwards and hitting the ground. It was just a blur of something that had charged out of nowhere, knocking him over. Supine but alert, Jim instinctively looked behind him in the direction of where the force had been heading and saw anomalous fading blocks of reality closing in on themselves.

Jim slowly stood up, dusting himself down. He felt a tingling under his skin, static electricity charging him. He checked for any damage to his head. No bleeding. But he felt uneasy, confused.

Jim nursed his back from the fall as he turned the corner onto the main street and saw a man watching him. There was a shadowy flickering first, like low-resolution blocky graphics glitching on a high definition screen. From it a dark figure just materialised, standing there with head slightly bowed forward, but turning slowly to track Jim’s movements.

Once he was far enough away down the street, Jim glanced back to see the figure still standing there. He swung around another corner, his pace increasing. When he saw the second one standing across the way, shimmering into view from out of nowhere, Jim’s panic levels rose. He broke into a small trot as a survival instinct propelled him forward. 

As he trotted across the parking lot, he caught another crackling glitch in the canvas of his world as one more of the dark figures appeared next to a streetlight. Again, there was the slow turning of the head as it tracked Jim, who ran the last few hundred yards to the store.

Jim tried to slow his breathing and tame the thumping in his ears after hurrying the last few hundred yards. He slipped in through the sliding doors, which didn’t close quickly enough for him. With a cursory nod towards the cashier, Jim made his way to the back of the store. He stood in front of the refrigerator seeing some fractured reflection of himself in the smudged glass and listened for the sound of the front doors opening. 

Nothing. Jim pulled open the refrigerator, the seal breaking with a satisfying pop and a rush of cool air and he clutched at a gallon of milk. Slowly Jim turned to make his way to the next aisle. He had only left the house to get milk that would sit in his fridge until breakfast. But Jim slowly traversed the next aisle, killing some time.

He figured that before long he would start looking suspicious. It wasn’t possible to spend any amount of time in a convenience store without doing so, he knew. He grabbed a random bar of chocolate to make his stay look more genuine and wandered over to the beer section.

The alcohol was stacked in boxes in the corner, with six-packs and singles lining the shelves of a couple of refrigerators next to the front window. Jim furtively peered out through the flashing neon advertising sign of the convenience store. Nothing out of place. No dark figures. Jim breathed a sigh of relief and grabbed a pack of beer.

Jim wasn’t bothered that the cashier, a young man with a slightly unkempt bohemian look about him, wasn’t rushing to serve him. Jim encouraged him to take his time restacking packets of cigarettes on a shelf. Jim patiently absorbed every moment, glancing now and again to what he could see of the street outside. It was late evening, but as the summer sun was taking its time to set he'd have enough daylight left to get back home.

Jim paid up and stepped towards the front doors. As he did, he saw one of the dark figures at the end of the aisle in the beer section. The door pulled apart for Jim as his feet hit the mat. Some warm air from outside resiliently pushed its way in, battling the cold front from the a/c unit above the door. Jim moved quickly outside, his fight or flight senses on edge. 

A black pick-up truck flashed past on the road and Jim could see a woman in a red jacket crossing the street with a cellphone pressed to her ear. Jim kicked himself into a brisk walk. Vigilantly he continuously scanned everything around him, listening. Each appearance of one of those men had been preceded by a crackling static.

Jim made it home with no more sightings. Slinging the milk into the fridge, he sat down at the kitchen table, pondering over what he had seen. Was it one of those things that he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone about as they wouldn’t believe him? He surmised that it was probably best he kept it to himself,  opened the chocolate and started chewing on a piece.

Jim took another chunk of chocolate and left the rest on the table as he went to the bedroom. Darkness was taking over outside and as he moved to draw the blinds closed, he froze. Through the glass of the bedroom window, he could see a face peering through in the bottom right-hand corner. Jim couldn’t make out discernible features, it just looked like someone wearing a balaclava was peering in. As they locked eyes, the figure outside pulled back. Jim lunged for the blinds to close them and from somewhere outside heard a crackling static.

He raced around the apartment, closing all the blinds and curtains, isolating himself. After double-checking the front door locks, Jim pulled his phone out of his pocket and sat back down at the kitchen table. As the glow of the cell phone lit his face, Jim scrolled through his contacts. Who could he call? It was again a roadblock for him. Who would believe him? His apartment sat on the second floor, so there was no way that anyone could be outside of his window. How could he call the authorities and explain that and well as shadowy mystery men watching him?

Jim put the phone down on the table and immediately slid his chair backwards. He stared wide-eyed at the chocolate bar which was fully intact, unopened. Jim stood, staring, his head swirling and turning, searching for any kind of explanation. He knew that he had opened the bar of chocolate. He could still taste the sweet almond flavour in his mouth. Jim exhaled heavily and hastily left the kitchen. 

He’d only left the house for some milk. He was nothing special, had no deep dark special secrets that would give reason for anyone to be watching him. But was anyone watching him? Was this just mind tricks? Jim checked himself, his sleep had been fine, his diet on point and no stresses out of the ordinary at work. It was just an ordinary life that was of little interest to anyone. Jim steeled himself, a wave of rationality clicking inside of him. He moved back to the bedroom window and eased the blinds apart.

There was no face. Jim peered down at the ground below. The street was well lit, bright enough to see clearly that there was no-one skulking around in the shadows. Maybe that face had just been a weird reflection and nothing more. Jim looked up as he heard a vehicle approaching from the left. A black pick-up truck flashed past, and from behind it a woman in a red jacket crossed the road, a cell phone pressed to her ear. Under the weight of deja vu, Jim released the blinds and fell on the bed, curling up into a fetal position. Maybe if he just stayed there, eyes shut tight, morning would restore all order. He thought about checking the chocolate, but he realized in the moment that he couldn’t force himself to move.

Jim had awoken well-rested surprisingly, not remembering having dreamt. He hesitated about opening his blinds and before heading into the bathroom he had kicked the door open, standing on guard. He had refused to turn his back to the mirror at any point while he was in there, fearful that it was going to act as a portal through which unwanted strange figures would come. Even though nothing strange happened paranoia plagued him every moment. He had cautiously peered over the kitchen bar to see the state of the chocolate bar. Half-eaten, as he had left it.

The morning passed by without incident and Jim started to believe that his hypervigilance about watching everything was keeping the shadowy figures at bay. Maybe if he didn’t let his guard down, then they couldn’t creep up on him. He continuously scanned around on his drive to work and refused to leave his work cubicle because of his proximity to his planned escape route, the stairs. Jim had repositioned his computer so that he could keep one eye on the cubicle entrance. Nothing more than the usual shuffling by of regular people happened.

Later in the day, hunger took Jim took the stairs down to the reception. He smiled at the young receptionist as she signed for a package from a bike courier, and then Jim was outside. He looked around for any faults, any drop in the graphical quality of the world, listening for the ominous crackling sound. But he instead felt it first. It was coming from his hands. He felt the charge expand outwards and briefly the view in front of him changed. As he stared through the gaps in his fingers, he could see a bizarre blocky graphic-like image shifting into view, a rocky, desert landscape. Head spinning, feeling like he was going to get pulled through to somewhere, Jim tried to step back towards the building, but he stumbled and hit the ground.

Quickly he hopped back to his feet, looking around for someone to try and confirm what had just happened. Surely someone must have seen something. But everyone on the street was minding their own business, no-one stopped to ask if he was ok. No-one had even noticed. He looked back into the reception, neither the courier or receptionist was looking in his direction. Then Jim looked up and saw the security camera over the front door. He stared into its blankness a realisation dawning upon him.

Jim ran back inside, scanning for all the security cameras that were around in the foyer. He scurried up the stairs and saw more of them all fixated on him. How had he not noticed all this before? This was how they were tracking him. Entering back into the office he looked up at the ceiling and saw them scattered in a grid, watching every single area of space. There would, of course, be CCTV cameras out on the street to track him. He suddenly started cursing himself for having installed the doorbell camera along with the cameras throughout his apartment.

The app on his phone scrolled into life. He entered his passcode to access his home security and he could see a live view of the living room, a view towards the front door. He flicked to the left and the view switched to the kitchen. Then to the home office. Then to the bedroom. Jim stared in horror at the screen as he saw six of the dark figures on the screen. They were standing around his bed all facing it, two on each side and two at the foot of it, forming a grim fence from somewhere otherworldly. But in the gap between the two figures at the foot of the bed, Jim could see himself curled up in a fetal position, asleep and oblivious to the intrusion. He saw himself not in sharp, clear vision, but as a blurred, jittery pixelated image.

Horrified, Jim felt trapped and made his way back down the stairs, through reception and out onto the street. As he broke out into the sunlight, he saw a black pick-up flash by and his cellphone, still with the view of his bedroom, played its ringtone. He looked at the screen which showed just random characters he didn’t even recognize, and out of frustration or panic, he answered. As he did, he looked up to see the woman in the red jacket crossing the street. Jim heard a soft voice on the phone which drew his attention. “Stay right there. Don’t move''. Jim looked back at the woman crossing the street. She was looking fixedly at him with big brown eyes.

He wanted to run, but his depth of focus shifted across the street behind the woman to a CCTV camera mounted on a streetlight. They would find him wherever he was. Suddenly the woman was right in front of him. She was no-one Jim recognized, a middle-aged Latina woman with jet black hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her voice was soothing, soft and mellow as she asked to let her see. Jim looked at her puzzled.

“The phone.”

There was something warm and motherly about the woman and Jim handed her his cell phone. The call ended and the view of his bedroom was back. Jim shuddered.

“Who are you?”

“There’s much to understand,” the woman smiled, matter-of-factly. “Sometimes worlds touch upon each other, no different from you brushing past someone on the street. But sometimes fractures open between worlds, horizons blur a little bit. Glitches happen and they need fixing. An omniverse of glitches isn’t going to sustain itself. “

“What?”

“That Jim curled up on the bed,” she replied, flashing a glimpse of the phone “let’s call him ‘Jim A’. He’s the one who’s been seeing all the Fixers. Not you. It’s just shared memories. Think of it as a fork in the road. A version of you woke up, split off in that moment of panic when Jim A had passed out on the bed. You essentially came into existence when Jim’s brain panicked and shut down. You have all his memories up until that point. You believe it all happened to you. It didn’t. This here,” the woman pointed to the screen, “you’re viewing something else in another timeline in a near yet distant place. He’s still sleeping there.”

“What? No, all that was real. The glitches, those men. It was here, I’m right here!” exclaimed Jim.

“That’s the point Jim. You are here in this world not in Jim A’s, you never have been. Understand that when conditions are right, such as highly charged emotions, stress, these forks are created naturally. Each version of you creates new versions of themselves as well. As for your anomaly, it started when someone from another place glitched into Jim A’s world and set off a chain reaction. Jim A was touched physically. Well, you remember getting bundled to the ground, even though that didn’t happen to you. The energy of the tear, the glitch, it touched him. It caused him to start having moments out of sync with his world, be it in time or space. So Jim A, without knowing it, started leaving a wave of tears, holes if you like and the Fixers are trying to patch them. It’s easier while Jim’s sleeping, everything is localized. They can do their work.”

“Fixers?”

“The Fixers are plugging the holes. Other Jim will wake up and think it was all just some temporary brain overload because everything in his world goes back to normal,” explained the woman. “He’ll be cleaned up and won’t see the Fixers anymore.” 

Jim shook his head in disbelief. “Assuming all that’s true, again, who are you?”

“I’m here to ensure that you don’t trigger any new glitches. You were created while Jim A still was still being influenced by the energy, so that means that it is part of you, entwined with your DNA. The Fixers are able to clean Jim A up, his future splits will be “glitch-free”. You, however, are special. Quite unique. You were created from a glitch. That makes you powerful. Dangerously so. The more glitches in the omniverse, even the potential to create them, the weaker the entire stability of the entire structure becomes.”

Jim reached out and took back his phone, which now showed an empty bedroom. The woman noticed. “See, they fixed the glitches, you are seeing your bedroom in this world now. Not into Jim A’s.”

“If that’s true, why haven't I caused glitches here? Wouldn’t I have seen the Fixers here if I had been starting to tear the universe apart?”

“As I said. You are special. Unique. We don’t know what you are capable of. How you, um, operate.”

“So they’ll come and fix me next?”

The woman smiled conservatively back at him, “Something like that. Unfortunately, they can only fix the effects of glitches, Jim. Not causes. We haven’t figured that one out yet and sometimes information has to get lost.”

A black pickup truck flashed into view and smoothly pulled up to the curb. The woman in the red jacket walked up to it and opened the rear door. “You should probably get in now,” she said.