Epigenetic inheritance

Smith woke up in a panic. He had hunted sleep throughout his life, and thus it evaded him like a giant white whale. Since his retirement, that whale seemed to hunt him in return. He had normally asked himself his grounding questions in order, but this morning was different. His first question was, when am I? He had fallen asleep in a different room. The French Victorian decor alluded to the late eighteenth century. No, that’s not right. He reminded himself. Let’s narrow this down, what time is it? He looked over at an alarm clock on the bedside table. It was almost one in the afternoon. The mirror above the dresser next to the bed showed an old man. I guess that’s me, he thought.

He got closer for a better look. His hair was silver streaks of static chaos. He patted the dandelion wisps, but they refused uniformity with the same wild abandon as a seaman recruit. The tattoos on his arms cataloged a lifetime of military experience. A scar centered in the belly of a Hippocampus on his left shoulder unlocked an answer to the who question. It had been his initials on a scroll. OSS, Otis Spartan Smith. His dad had paid a doctor to cut it out of his arm. When Otis left for OCS, his dad quoted Leviticus 19:28. When he returned as Lieutenant Commander Smith, his dad softened his prejudice on tattoos but deemed them only appropriate for naval officers.

What am I supposed to be doing right now? Smith looked down the baroque wallpapered hallway, and recognized the room at the end of the hall as his own. The door was open, and he could see a collage of framed vintage “Boy’s Own” magazines. He started to march on over, but his equilibrium was off. It was like transitioning from sea legs, but it was old legs. Damnit. He shuffled down the hall to his own room. Is she in my room? He remembered his wife had as much trouble with sleep as himself, and they had separate rooms for this reason. His room was empty. His notebook was on his bed. Thank God.

The daily itinerary section had a physical therapy appointment at two in the afternoon. It didn’t have a location listed, so it had to be a home visit. He had time to relax. He turned on his television. It was on the History channel, and a WWII documentary was running. It wasn’t his war, but his sense of achievement translated just fine. He propped the pillows on his bed and leaned back to watch his show, the whale of sleep jumped through the waves of blankets covering his legs and swallowed him without warning or resistance.

He saw a version of himself in his dream. This young man was unkempt with messy dark hair and tattered jeans. He was pulling wires off his temples and chest.

“Mr. Smith, what’s wrong? You still have fifteen minutes left in the simulation.” The nurse grabbed the wires off the floor next to the bed and pulled the slimy pads off and threw them in the trash.

“That was boring as fuck.” The young man yawned as he stumbled towards the door.

“You need to sit. That’s a strong sedative we used for this experience.”

“I’m good.” He said as he opened the door and left.

The old man’s consciousness followed, tethered.

“Mr. Smith, did something go wrong?” The young man at the front desk asked, looking conspicuously illegitimate. This wasn’t a doctor’s office.

“I need a refund,” Smith’s scrappy doppelgänger demanded.

“I can’t do that, but for another $2,400 I can send you home with the Serotonin Dreamscaping powders. It’s over a months supply of nightly use.” The man pulled out a beautiful tin with superb lettering and enticing art.

“Sold.” The young doppelgänger grabbed the tin and got out his phone instead of his wallet. He opened a banking app. He moved funds from an account titled Otis Trust to one labeled Cake Breakfast. He tapped his phone to a box beside the office computer.

Everything started to shake for Old Smith, but the world around him was oblivious. He heard his name muffled in the distance.

“Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith! Otis!!!” He came to, and looked up at a concerned physical therapist. His wife, Anne, must have left the door unlocked.

“Were you dreaming of military days?” The therapist asked.

“Some kinda battle.” He retorted as he got out of bed and straightened the covers.

“Are you ready to do some stretching and balance work?” She asked.

“I need to check a few things first.” The old man stumbled to his office to rummage through files. The physical therapist stood in the doorway waiting on him. He grabbed a file titled, “wills and estate planning.” He put it down on his desk. He then grabbed a photo album of his family. He flipped through it, and he asked the therapist if she could remember the age of his grandson.

“You have three sir, they are nine, ten, and twelve.”

“Are you sure… you know how time flies, that boy had to be twenty” Smith said, questioning time and reality.

“I’m sure. I saw them a week ago at your party.”

“I don’t know bout that.” He mumbled as he closed the album and returned it to the stacks.

He followed her into the living room and sat on a chair across from her to mirror the exercises she was there to administer. When the session was over, she called his wife to report his wellbeing. It made him feel like a schoolboy listening to a teacher report to his mother. He interrupted,

“I’m going to my office, you can let yourself out.” He smiled softly to appear more cordial than rude. She returned the smile,

“See you next week Mr. Otis,”

Mr. Otis, that moniker always irked him a little, but he let it go. He dismissed it as Southern colloquialism. He returned to his office and opened the file. He grabbed a red pen to make changes. He didn’t know which grandson he saw in his dream, but he did remember seeing that money was taken from a trust in his name. He scratched out his daughter, Amanda, as the executor of the trust and put an asterisk above it with the name of his lawyer. He then went to his room to call his lawyer and make notes in his notebook for any appointment he might schedule. When he got to his room, he crawled in bed and grabbed his phone and his rolodex. The television was still on, and it was finally on his war. It cut to commercials, but right before it did so, it showed planes landing on a Navy carrier. He put the phone and rolodex back on the bedside table. The program returned with focus on operation LINEBACKER and the recommissioned USS New Jersey. It seemed worth recording, but the remote was MIA. Somewhere between operation GAME WARDEN and END SWEEP, the old man had dozzed off.

His dream started quickly without any restful dark pause, which made it more jarring. The same young Smith was in front of him in a bed in a strange room. The old Smith stood at the end of the bed concerned as the young man started convulsing. He moved over to the head of the bed and rolled the young man on his side and put a pillow under his head. He grabbed empty snack bags and plates and utensils off the bed. He grabbed the can from his earlier vision. He opened it to look inside. How much time has passed since I saw this guy? He wondered. There wasn’t a phone on his nightstand. He tried to check the young man’s back pocket. The young man rolled over and looked at him and gasped,

“It’s you, who are you?”

“I think I’m your granddad, you dipshit. How much of this crap did you take?”

The man-boy’s face was blue and his eyes were watery and tinted yellow. They stared at each other in silence taking inventory of their physical similarities.

“I saw you in that old-timey house living a boring ass life.” The young man said. “It wasn’t worth the money or the trip.” He continued.

“I saw you jonesing in that shady clinic buying God knows what from some fuckwit.” The old man shot back.

Both men clutched their fists and held them up to their chests.

“Is this some kinda Grandfather paradox?” Young Smith gasped.

“Only if you find me in the seventies and kill me, numbnuts.”

They both grinned at the ridiculousness of the situation and their brashness.

“What brought you to this? Who can we call? Call your mother. Let’s call Amanda.”

“Do you know what she’d say? Do you?” The young man asked seriously.

“She’d probably mollycoddle your ass, that’s how you got like this.” The old man said bluntly.

“No. She’d shake a finger at me and say, “How many times do I have to rescue you.” She’d say it harshly and then add, “I hope you don’t die.” Then she’d leave me here like nothing of importance even happened.”

“Harsh.” The old man agreed and then shook his head solemnly before asking, “We’ll, whatcha gonna do bout it?”

“What would you do?” He asked the old man, sincerely.

“What I did, cause my mother said almost the same thing about my drinking, was I joined the Navy. Funny thing was that she threw a fit over it. She was not happy or proud or even relieved. I thought she would be. I was wrong, as usual.”

“Did she change her mind?” The grandson asked.

“Pretty quickly, but I had a moment of reckoning that I’d never be able to please her anyway. I joined the Navy because I was bored. No. Truth is, I wanted something to distract me from myself. I hated myself, and I flung between wanting to bash skulls or drink skull and crossbone.”

“Shit.” The young man said in a knowing whisper.

“Yea, shit.” The man confirmed.

“I inherited some of your photos. They say I look just like you. I think my mom likes the part of me that is you.”

“What part do you like?” The old man asked, consciously ignoring the implications of the word inherited.

“That, but I also like that I can stay calm in disasters. I like that I’m fearless. I like that I get along with just about anybody, but I can always tell when shit’s about to hit the fan. I like that I can sense danger, but I don’t like that I’m drawn to it.”

“Perhaps not, but what path could make that an asset instead of a liability?”

The young man didn’t seem to think a second about it or say a word, he just smiled till something caught his eye.

“Hey, gramps, I think your ship has arrived.”

The old man could feel the presence of the infamous bright light behind him.

“You got this.” He said.

“I got this.” His grandson replied.

The grandfather walked backward smiling at his grandson until his silhouette was enveloped in the glow of the afterlife.

When Anne found Otis, he looked peacefully asleep.