Fragments

Mondays were always the same. Get up. Go to work. On and on. While the sun shines in the sky this morning, those same dark clouds are rolling in over the horizon. Those same dark clouds that scream, get inside or else! These storms have been more severe in recent years. People scream from the mountain tops about climate change and the ilk. But, I don’t know. Seems to me that people should just go inside if they need to, and they should just not worry about it.

This thought flaps its wings as I round the corner. Like I always do. My office building is just up ahead. I pass by the same sign that reminds us not to litter, the same bus corral where people wait to get to wherever they are going. Even the guy with a paint can for a lunch box. Yep. It’s all there.

Just like it always is.

But, ahead, I see something different. A man, who may be about my height, is strolling down the sidewalk with a brown duster and matching hat. Like if Indiana Jones was set in the 1920’s. I avert my eyes. No one wants to be that guy. The one who stares. But from the corner of my vision, I see the man in the duster veer toward me. Oh no! Am I going to get mugged?

But he only bumps into me, and he whispers, “Morning, John.” And walks past me.

I stop.

My head pivots, a camera scanning its environment. My eyes begin to bulge and my lungs somehow begin breathing fast, more shallow. He knows my name? And his voice… sounded like…

As I turn, I notice that he has stopped his forward progress. He is making the same motion. While my face is one of shock and surprise, his is one of calm. A slight smirk painted upon his cheek.

I turn to face him, just as he lifts his hat so I can see his…

His face…

No… that’s… my face!

Then he runs.

And, against my better judgment and all the rambling doubts that cycle through my brain like the leader of a spin class calling out orders and reminders and telling them to keep pushing, I run after him! Me? Him-me?

People on the sidewalk are clearly unhappy, being pushed around this way and that. One man’s phone skidded across the pavement.

“Sorry.” I mutter as I leap over him on surprisingly agile legs.

Another woman’s bag of groceries comes flying out of her hand and as I streak past her, “Excuse me.”

He-Me turns down an empty alleyway. This reminds me of one of those scenes from a movie where the person in front might topple over trash cans, ladders, and pallets to obstruct the path for the person who is chasing them. This path is perfectly clear.

And when he reaches the chain link fence at end of the alley, he turns to face me.

I skid to a stop, my breath coming out of me is shattered pieces, as if my lungs were made of glass. I pant. Then I get a cramp in my side. I groan audibly.

“Still haven’t made it to the gym, have I?”

My voice calls to me from outside of my body, but I lean forward my hands on my knees wondering why haven’t I been exercising, and am I going to vomit?

“At least not in this world?”

This world? I stand, finally able to breath deeply like someone who is used to heavy cardiovascular exercise. “What…” I hold up my hand again, still unable to talk.

“Listen, we don’t really have a lot of time. I’m not even sure I can convince you. You’re the stubborn one. But I need to tell you about this, then we need to get a move on.”

I pant, “Wait… we? Shit. I’m late for work!”

“Work can wait.” Other Me says without a shred of irony.

“You’re kidding?” I pose. Somehow the thought of missing work has snapped me back to reality. I turn to leave, “I have to come up with an explanation that is not this to appease my boss.”

“You can’t go to work,” he replies with the thick air of desperation and urgency.

“I can. I must. I will.”

“Two minutes.” He holds up two fingers.

I am still panting and sweating a lot, so I guess I could wait that long. That’ll give me time to think up an excuse. “Fine.” I set the timer on my watch.

“Alright.” He composes himself, as if he is sifting through a file cabinet, looking for the proper envelopes. “Ok. Here we go.” He rubs his hands together, just like I do when I’m about to get ready to do some work. “You are not you.”

“What?”

“You are a part of you.”

“A part of me?”

“Yes. But only one part of you. Not the others.”

“Others?”

“A Fragment.”

“Fragment.” I repeat, somehow at the exact same time as Other Me does. Odd.

“Yes.”

I scratch my head. 1:45 left. I tap my watch. He nods, understanding filling the pool of his eyes.

He stands up a bit straighter. “This world is not the real world. You and I are Fragments of ourselves. Pieces that have been separated into smaller parts. And this world is the same in all the Fragments. But there are inconsistencies that overlap, Redundancies. When you notice the Redundancies, you can connect the worlds.”

I look at my watch. 0:27 second left.

“To release yourself from the world, you have to combine the Fragments and become whole. Then the system will override and—”

But he is cut off by the beeping of my watch. I tap its screen and it goes silent. “Time’s up.”

“Wait. What are you doing?”

My body, knowing what it wanted to do, has already begun to walk back toward the entrance of the alley. I was going to be no less than fifteen minutes late, and I hate being late. I wasn’t even able to think up an excuse for my boss yet. “I’m going to work.”

Footsteps clatter and he is standing in front of me, his hands on my shoulders. Something weird and electric shoots through my body and the world starts to vibrate in a soft thrum. He quickly removes his hands from me and the vibration ceases.

“Please move.” I ask.

“You can’t leave. They’ll know.”

“They? Yes, my boss will certainly be suspicious of why I’m late.”

“No, not your boss… well, yes, your boss. But your boss is not your boss…”

He is rambling like I do sometimes. when I get nervous, my brain addles along, trying to fill in the gaps in between anxious breaths. I can picture the conversation with my boss, Smith, who will certainly make me stammer over my words as if he was pushing me along a broken sidewalk.

“Your boss is not your boss.” He tries again. “Well, I mean. He is. Wait. Let me start over.”

“Please move.”

“Just one more minute.” He hold up one finger this time.

Is this how people feel when they talk to me? Frustrated, annoyed, and… sympathetic?

I roll my eyes this time and tap my watch. “Fine. Then I leave.”

I can hear the seconds ticking away in my mind as he speaks. “What you know as bosses in this world are actually those who are part of the system that hold you… us… hostage. I call them Agents.”

“Like the Matrix? This sounds a lot like the Matrix.”

“Uh… yeah.”

Tick tock. My watch reminds me to leave. “Cute story. Bye.” I this time, he allows me to walk. But as I turn the corner, going to work, I can see the expression on Other Me’s face even though I am not looking at him. He will be running his hands over his face, muttering corrections to himself, feeling sorry for himself. Disappointed. And angry.

Delete Created with Sketch.

When I enter my cubicle, I punch in my login information which automatically clocks me in for work. And within seconds, Smith is there.

“Good morning, Mr. Rivers.” The words are drawn out slowly as if they are being read from a strip of paper held in his hands.

I spin in my chair. And I restrain a reaction as I look at Mr. Smith. He wears the same black suit that he always wears. Straight out of the movie.

“Where have you been, Mr. Rivers?”

Mr. Rivers… that voice. “Uh…”

“Well?”

My mouth is fluttering open and closed like a bag in the wind when a thought suddenly came to me. I could feel it shock me in the eye brow, “I went for a run.”

Even Mr. Smith was startled by this. He seems to be stammering. His processors tying to find the logic in my statement. “You went for… a run.”

I look at his face. His dead eyes. His slicked back hair. The stiff suit. “Yes.”

His eyes flick around, taking in my features. They dart from my furrowed brow, to my cheeks, perhaps taking in the flush of my skin. He opens his mouth, “Well, Mr. Rivers, regardless of your outdoor proclivities, you realize there are procedures that must be followed. Those procedures bring order. Order is necessary to produce results. And results must be upheld to the highest standard.”

Unsure what to say, I nod as if my neck is on rusty hinges.

Mr. Smith stands up straighter, adjusting his suit jacket. Are those sunglasses in his jacket pocket? “You were late to your post today, which means—”

Suddenly, the fire alarm is going off. Mr. Smith looks around as if perplexed why the alarms are ringing. He gives me a look that defies explanation, though I can feel snakes sliding up my spine. Other people stand from their cubicles. I’d never noticed before, but these people never talk to one another. Somehow I hear the mumbling of voices, like people are sharing intimate details of their lives, perhaps the first steps of a young one or the recent date. But no one’s mouths are moving.

I file in behind the other lemmings, Mr. Smith vanishing into the shadows somewhere. As we curl around the stairs, I follow along, hearing the same drone of conversation. When a hand suddenly grabs me, sucking me through a doorway, which shuts silently behind me, I am staring back into the face of Other Me.

“I pulled the fire alarm.”

My eyes bulge, even though somewhere deep inside, I knew this, “Why did you do that?”

“Because I need your help. To free us.” His hands are gripping his hair like a vice. I do that when I get frustrated or overwhelmed, grab my hair like I might tear it out. “The system breaks our mind into different parts, but it wasn’t me that figured that out, it was another one of me… us! He figured out the Redundancies, the things that make the worlds separate, like—”

I hold up my hand, “Just be quiet.”

He does.

“I think your story is exciting, and it might make a good book, you know. You should try writing. Or perhaps method acting might be more your thing.” I am amazed by the fluidity of my words. But something about looking into my own face has opened up a channel in my mind where my thoughts can flow freely, because I have no fear of judgment from myself. I already know how I see me. “But I will literally be fired if I don’t get back out there. Smith is already up my butt for being fifteen minutes late. I mean, fifteen minutes. Are you serious?”

“Oh, I am very serious, Mr. Rivers.”

The two of us look over our shoulders to find Mr. Smith standing there, arms hung at his sides. When I look around I realize that there is nothing on this floor of the office. There are not even any structural beams to support the floor above us. I find myself perplexed by this as Smith starts talking, but I cannot hear him because of the physical impossibility of this floor. No desks. No walls. No doors. No beams. Impossible.

“… so you see that you must end here…”

“Wait. Nonononononoono. This… isn’t— This isn’t right. It’s— it’s not. Not right.” I mutter.

I turn to see Smith and Other Me, who has pulled some little device the size of a screwdriver from his jacket pocket. He is poised to push a button atop it. “What?” He says.

“Mr. Rivers, this is not rime.” Smith replies.

“This is impossible.”

“Oh,” Smith smirks, “it is entirely possible, Mr. Rivers.”

“I already—” Other Me begins but I place my hand over his mouth. And I feel as if I am downloading data, somehow.

“How does this floor even exist?” I ask.

Smith tilts his head to the side like a curious dog.

Other Me moves my hand off his face, then gestures like this should be obvious, “I already explained this to you.”

I continue looking around the room, taking in the stark white walls, Mr. Smith’s black jacket standing out of place like a stain on my pressed oxford shirt. “So you weren’t kidding…”

His hands become fists and are pressed together in front of him, “No! I, too, am serious!”

My shoulders slack and in the white walls I can see… static? Like a rivers of code rippling through the sheet rock. And then, on the other side of the room I can see something else. A small red container with two golden humps connects like handles, making an ‘m’. “What’s that doing here? There’s not a…”

Other Me looks where I look. He smiles while my face is still contorted in confusion. While our tones contradict one another, his is glee, mine is confusion, the word we utter is the same, “Redundancy.”

He holds out his hand and looks at me. “Trust me?”

“Do I trust myself?”

“I guess we’ll find out.” He hesitates no longer and presses the red button atop his screwdriver device and tosses it. Then he drags me along as he runs with surprising speed and strength. A hissing sound emits from behind me and the world distorts, like a computer that is having trouble processing information.

“That’s a wall!” I scream.

But Other Me does not hesitate. I dare a glance over my shoulder and Mr. Smith is in position like he is running but his ping is not right. He barely moves and he seems to be glitching. At one point he was standing on the ceiling at a full sprint but not moving. Then he was mid run but sideways in the floor, sliding back and forth.

“Trust me!”

It wasn’t a question. Next moment I realize that I have flung myself through a wall, falling into the morning sky toward the ground.

“We’re gonna die!” I find my mouth screaming.

“Nope.” Other Me says, and he is right. When we land we hit the ground softly as if we had stood up from a couch.

But only one set of feet hits the ground.

Before I can process this, I continue running, knowing that the virus that I released (How’d I know that?) will only hold off the System (Did I Just capitalize that?) for a few moments. I can feel the energy and experiences from the other Fragments coursing through me as one of them, an athlete, pumps my limbs. (How do I know this!?) My lungs steady and the world flies by at a smooth pace. I can feel the rhythm of my feet slapping the ground. I can almost feel my clothes melting off me as I round a corner.

Feeling that I’ve come far enough for now, I pat myself down, removing the last remnants of my office uniform. Now I am dressed in black sneakers, black athletic pants, and black short-sleeved hoodie and a black cap. (When did I change clothes?) But I can feel my limbs are more comfortable in this outfit than the restricting garb of the office crone.

The virus should take the System about five minutes, give or take, to remove, a voice of mine replies.

I’m ready to run, replies another.

“How many mes are there?” I ask.

Every person is broken into five Fragments. Other Me replies.

“How do we get to Final Me?”

And all the other voices chime in at once, Redundancy.

I adjust my cap and bounce comfortably on my feet just as the knew knowledge from three other Fragments bounces around in my own mind. One of me was a computer engineer. Another an athlete. The third who found me worked in an office like me, but was more adventurous. I’m not sure what I have to offer. But I can feel all their (my) hands on my shoulder as I continue down the long road ahead of us at a steady jog.