The Other Me

Sometimes it’s easier to pretend that everything’s fine. This wasn’t one of those times. Still, I put on a smile and went through the motions until the end of the workday.

When I left at the end of the day I went straight home to try and straighten the whole mess out. I pulled out my phone and looked at the twelve messages I’d received over the course of the day.

Each message was, supposedly, sent from my own number. That’s easy enough to spoof, I guess, if one knows how. What concerned me were the intimate details contained in each message. Things that I’d not told anyone or written down anywhere…ever.

I read over the last message again, trying to make sense of it. It left more questions than answers.

Your bank password will be given to you tomorrow morning. Trust me, this is for your own good. You’ll find things a little tight until payday, but when the auto trade happens on Nov 22, three years from now, you’ll never have to work again. You’ll even have enough to buy J a house, even though she doesn’t even know you feel the way you do about her. When you do, don’t let her know it was you. Let it be anonymous for her and her kids.

I went to my laptop and logged on to my bank account…or tried to anyway. Not only had my password been changed, but I got an alert on my phone that someone unauthorized had attempted to access my account.

After spending twenty minutes on hold, I was connected with a service rep. They told me I had changed my password three times in the past few hours, and the account was now locked for further changes for a twenty-four cool-down.

The call ended with them trying to hint that maybe I was having a dissociative episode and might benefit from medical help. I’m sure they thought they were being gentle and subtle about it, but it hit like a hammer.

Was I going crazy? How would I have disturbed my own meeting this morning with a text to myself? Was someone trying to convince me I was going insane? Who would do that?

I was left with questions I couldn’t answer. Rather than continue the fruitless conversation with myself, I settled in for a Friday evening of binging streaming video. At least those passwords hadn’t been changed.

I finally got to sleep despite the nagging worry that my life had been hacked in some unrealistically deep way. My sleep was not restful. When I was woken by a text message notification, I didn’t feel like I’d slept at all.

The text message contained my new bank password, and login credentials to a stock trading site connected to a national broker with an office in town. It concluded with, “The good pruning shears are in the kitchen junk drawer—don’t know why. I’ll answer your questions Monday. I know it won’t do any good but be careful tomorrow.”

Not that I had any reason to, but I checked the kitchen junk drawer. I didn’t see any pruning shears in there. Of course, it was a mess. I dug into the drawer, and under the top layer of odds and ends…there they were. Missing for the entire summer, yet this person knew where they were.

I logged in to my back account and noticed it was short a thousand dollars. I checked the transaction history and found an in-person withdrawal that happened while I was in the meeting that had been interrupted by the text message. I looked at the record of the withdrawal and found that it was verified with ID, debit card, and thumbprint. On top of that, I knew all the tellers at the bank by name, and they knew me, as I was there on a weekly basis.

It was looking more impossible the further I went. I’d only added thumbprint verification for cash withdrawals a week prior, as soon as the bank offered it. Whoever this was, had a passable ID, my debit card with the chip, and my thumbprint.

I checked in my wallet, and found that my debit card was, indeed, still in my possession. Still in a haze of feeling violated, I checked the stock trading site. I had three transactions. The first was a deposit of one thousand dollars that included a free five-year membership. Next was an automatic purchase order for GryTek at nine dollars, which had triggered yesterday at noon, resulting in the purchase of one hundred shares after the trading site took their fees. The third was an automatic sell order of the GryTek at nine thousand dollars.

Here again, the transaction records showed that the transactions had been made in person with ID, and that certainly looked like my signature. I checked through the terms and conditions. The agreement was binding and there was no provision for refund. That money was gone.

Should I get the police involved? Someone with my debit card in hand, and my thumbprint, withdrew my money from the bank, and then bought a hundred shares in a nobody company. It would sound like buyer’s remorse…like I wanted to back out of a hasty decision.

I spent the day going in circles, trying to decide how to handle the situation. No idea I came up with was satisfactory. At some point I turned on the TV and let some documentary series play, until I fell asleep there.

The morning came and I woke feeling not refreshed, but like I had at least gotten some sleep. I showered and dressed, planning to spend the day trying to research identity theft, to see if it had ever been done so completely.

The phone rang around noon and I answered, hoping for the thief, but got a coworker instead.

“Could you swing by the office? You missed a signature on one page of your benefits packet. I need to get them out to FedEx this afternoon, but without your signature you’ll miss out on your revenue sharing.”

I drove to the office and handled the paperwork. I sat into the car and had no sooner started it than changed my mind about heading straight home. I got back out of the car and crossed the street to the park.

I walked to the bench by the water where I sometimes ate my lunch and sat facing the river. I wanted to clear my mind, let rationality take over.

The river made a pleasant burbling in front of me; the sunlight sparkled off the water in bright shards. I took a deep breath, letting the fresh air of the park calm me. I’m not sure how long I sat there, but I rose and headed back out of the park as the sun hung low in the sky.

I hadn’t even made it out of the park when my mind began to race again, going in circles as I stepped into the crosswalk. A screech of tires and loud honk made me jump. The last thing I felt before everything went black was my knee shattering against the bumper.

When I woke in the hospital, my entire body felt like a giant bruise. I could only see out of one eye. I reached up with a hand in a cast, only my pointer finger free, and felt at the bandage covering my eye.

The TV at the other end of the room was tuned to a news channel. They were talking about a hundred-fold increase in the stock price of a little-known scientific instrument company that had just signed deals with every major smart phone maker.

I found the remote by my other hand. That hand wasn’t in a cast, although that elbow was immobilized. I turned up the volume.

“The announcement of the deals signed by GryTek early this morning signaled a meteoric stock rise. The CEO has said that they plan a series of stock splits, to normalize their stock prices over the next few years. The first came as a surprise this morning when they made a one to five split.”

I muted the TV. It seemed I now owned five hundred shares of GryTek. I muted the TV, turned my head to the left…and there I stood, smiling.

“Hey, there I am. I couldn’t remember what room I was in,” the other me said. “I know this is weird but hear me out.”

We looked like identical twins, although I noticed a small wrinkle near the corner of other me’s eyes I knew I didn’t have. “What…what is this?”

“GryTek just had the first of several stock splits. Over the next three years, that one hundred…well, five hundred now…shares will turn into twenty thousand. They reach their peak at nine thousand and four dollars a share before they collapse completely.

“For the next three years, their name will be in the news constantly. They make a sensor that ends up in every smart phone and smart watch, until they get pounded by a patent suit.”

“How…who…?”

“I’m you, four years from now. I had this same conversation with myself, on your side, four years ago. Last year…three years from now for you…I retired. A few safe real-estate investments and I’m set for life.”

“If you’re from the future, how does this all work? Causality, I mean?” I asked.

“Hell if I know. I didn’t invent this, just stumbled on it by accident…you’ll see. Was there a version of me that didn’t have a future me come back and make that investment? Maybe. That might have been the me that started all this.”

“But you have my debit card…?”

“Of course. It doesn’t expire for another four years for you, next month for me.” Other me stood. “It’s time for me to go.”

I noticed a slight limp as other me walked a few steps away then faded away into thin air.