It's not about the cereal.

In a studio apartment in the middle of a city, Peter lies face down in a bowl of cereal. He has passed out from the amount of gas that has collected in his small box of a living space. A leak, emitting a high pitch tone untraceable to his ageing ears, pooled for days going unnoticed now reached intoxicating levels. He stirs for a moment, lays still, then falls to the ground, Honey O’s stuck to his face. The force of the fall was enough to wake him from a state of unconsciousness to a groggy stupor.

His head throbbed, his vision blurred, and he found himself struggling to breath. One arm found the corner of the dining table, and he pulled himself up. Stumbling across the linoleum floor he crammed his fingers between the window and it’s molding. A moment later he inhales a sobering breath of air from the open window. He pants and braces himself on the windowsill, giving his body a moment to recover and his headache to subside.

He looks up to the sky with a quizzical look, as if he’s heard something but can’t tell where it’s coming from. Thinking it’s just a hallucination from what he just experienced, he turns to his kitchen to uncover what made him pass out.

Shirt collar stretched above his nose, even though that won’t help him much, he looks around to see what might have caused the fainting mid breakfast. Searching, all the while occasionally glancing back at the window, thinking he still hears someone talking to him.

The culprit stands before him; his decades old gas stove rusted and caked with layers of grease dripping down the sides and into the small gaps that are always impossible to clean, but let’s face it, he would have never tried to clean it anyway.

Peter whips his head around to look out the window again, then glances at the other two windows at his apartment, and up at the ceiling.

“Who’s there?” He yells at the dust and cigarette stains collected on his walls.

“No!” He shouted, “No, I’m yelling at you! The one talking!”

No response comes.

“No th-that was a response there,” frantic and confused, he starts running around his apartment trying to find where the voice is coming from. He checks his fridge, the fire escape outside his window, and even the lamp shades.

“Yeah, I’m checking everywhere asshole. Where is the mic, huh? Who did this? Greg? Did Greg put you up to this?” He asked.

But he ultimately, he knows Greg. His supposed best friend of 20 years would never try to implant a speaker or any sort of surveillance device into his apartment because Greg wasn’t very tech savvy and stopped speaking to Peter six months ago. Greg was tired of how complacent Peter had become. Never wanting to do anything but drink, smoke, and watch TV. Greg had his own ambitions, he wanted to move up in his company, re-marry, travel. Peter was not a great influence and not a great support system for Greg and his dreams. Greg wanted to do things, and would try to support and build Peter up, but Peter would never change. Greg knew Peter would never -

“Stop it!”

He stands on his couch now, frozen from shock.

“What the heck was all of that?”

He contemplates the possibility of being dead, or still hallucinating -

“No, I think somebody is screwing with me.”

Nobody is screwing with Peter.

Terror floods his veins and Peter becomes lightheaded. He makes a run for the door-

“Stop it!”

-and sprints down the narrow hall of his apartment building. Allowing gravity to do most of the work he skips steps and leaps down flights to make it to the fire exit door that opens to an empty back alleyway behind his building.

“Why are you everywhere?!” He screams, unaware of people walking along the sidewalk only ten feet from where he emerged. Peter looks up and down the alley, seeing dumpsters and a dead end one way, and the street the other. He fans out his sweat-soaked t-shirt and starts for the open street, when a voice, unlike the one he has been hearing this whole time, speaks up from behind him.

“Well, you haven’t changed at all,” the voice said.

He stops, knowing that this voice is different and speaking to him, not about him. Peter turns to find his old friend Greg standing in the opening of the door to his building.

“Wh-wh- Gre-” Peter stutters. The thoughts in his head whirling around the words he tries to form into a sentence. He can’t make sense of anything; therefore, he cannot form a comprehendible response to say to his former best friend who left him because of his passivity of life.

Confused because he can still hear the disembodied voice, he stares at the man, shocked. Peter, gaining ground in his own mind and remembering their last conversation, glares at the man.

“Greg,” he says sternly, “What the hell is going on? What is this voice? Did you try to kill me up there?”

Greg puts his hands up in peace, “No, no that’s not my doing. That was just a tragic accident waiting to happen because you won’t get an inspector in to look at your apartment.” Greg puts his hands down and slides them into his khaki pockets, “But that is what brought me here.”

“What?” Peter retorts. “Can you shut this voice up?”

“Who does the voice sound like?” Greg asked.

“What?” Peter spits again with the same snippy cadence.

“Sound, Pete, who does the voice sound like?”

“I- I don’t,” Peter stops for a moment to listen and think. He doesn’t recognize the voice, because the voice comes from someone that he has never met, and does not exist yet. “I don’t know, and apparently, I won’t know because the person doesn’t exist,” he responds in the form of a question.

Greg smiles, “Yeah, they’re right. They don’t exist right now.”

Peter approaches Greg, finger pointed aggressively at his chest, “You are doing this. What’d you do Greg?” He grabs Greg by the shirt, “Did you put something in my head?”

Unphased, Greg calmly responds, “No, I did not put something in your head. No, you are not dead, you are not hallucinating and no you are not an alien experiment.”

“You’re in my head too? Explain, Greg!”

“You’re still passed out in your bowl of fruity boulders upstairs.”

“Honey O’s, I was eating Honey O’s.”

Greg leans down and sniffs Peter’s face, “Hmm no I’m pretty sure it’s fruity boulders.”

“You smug piece of-” Peter lets go of Greg’s shirt and heads for his building’s stairwell, “fine let’s go check.”

“You always had to be right,” Greg says from behind Peter.

Peter turns around, furious, “What’s that ‘sposed to mean?”

“Pete, you’re more worried about who is right about the cereal then what is going on with you right now. You’re not dead, but you are dying. Doesn’t that concern you?”

Peter looks down at the milk stain on his shirt, and realization hits. Grabbing the railing he launches himself up the stairs, skipping steps and moving against gravity.

He reaches his front door and finds Greg sitting across the table from his limp body, still drowning in a bowl of Cocoa Stones.

Peter looks up at the voice, again at nothing, then stares at the cereal bowl. He points a shaky finger at the bowl and looks at Greg, “Wh-”

“Really Pete, you haven’t changed a bit,” Greg says. “Open the windows and sit down, you’ll be fine now that you’re here.”

Stunned, Peter ignores Greg’s demands and pulls out another chair at the table to sit down, not taking his eyes off his own body. Greg sighs and stands to open the windows himself.

“The same t-shirt and sweatpants you wore for ten years. The same haircut, well, sort of haircut. When was the last time you got your haircut?”

Peter doesn’t respond.

When he returns, he crosses his legs and looks at Peter, craning his neck to get his attention.

“You heard me? You’ll be fine. In ten minutes, you’ll wake up with milk in your nose and probably shredded wheat plastered to your face.”

“I was eating Honey O’s.”

“Yes, but now you’re eating something else.”

“How? I only eat one thing for breakfast, Honey O’s. I have for years.”

“Yes, but in this timeline, you eat cocoa pebbles. You have for years.”

Peter focuses his eyes on Greg’s to catch a punchline, “Timeline?”

“Yessir.”

“What?”

Please stop saying ‘what’.

Peter jumps out of his seat, “Why does the voice have an attitude now?”

“They’re just trying to tell your story in the future. Well, from the future. In one of these timeline’s, you become a big name in the philosophical community. The voice is a future student writing your biography.”

“I’m so confused.”

Greg chuckles and holds out his hand, “Take my hand.”

Peter hesitates for a moment, then gently places his palm to Greg’s. Instantly, their surroundings change and they’re no longer in Peters apartment. Peter looks around and recognizes his childhood home, his parents getting ready for work, and him as a child waiting patiently in the dining room. His father walks over to the table, both arms stuffed with a variety of cereal boxes. Their mouths move, but no sound comes out, Peter doesn’t need sound for this moment though, he remembers every memory with his parents, and he remembers these moments fondly.

“I remember this moment,” Peter starts. “I chose-”

“Doesn’t really matter what you chose,” Greg interrupts. “What matters is whatever you choose changes the future right?”

Peter stutters, a lump forming in his throat and his face becoming flush, “Y- yeah I guess so.”

“I know this is hard Peter. I’m sorry maybe I should have warned you.”

“It’s okay,” he responds quietly.

“Now, I will warn you about this next jump, this might be hard,” Greg leans to catch Peter’s gaze, “is that going to be okay?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Their surroundings change instantly again, this time to a house Peter used to own with his partner at the time. Greg and Peter stand on the front lawn watching two police officers silently discussing something on the doorstep. A younger Peter appears in the doorway. The officers say something else, and the young Peter covers his mouth as he starts to cry.

“Okay, never mind, I don’t want to do this, take me back.”

“I’m sorry Peter, but you need to see these things.”

Everything around them changes again, and they’re in Peter’s apartment. Peter sighs and turns to find his body, but it’s not there, and neither is the bowl of cereal.

“Where are we?”

“Your apartment about ten years ago. You’re alone, working hard, but alone.”

A younger Peter with his hair freshly cut enters the room sits at the table and sets his laptop down. He furiously begins typing, completely engrossed in what he is doing.

“You did okay for a while on your own. You started writing your second book. The book that was going to be the hit. But then,” Greg points at the young Pete.

He gets frustrated from something on the laptop, stands and walks to the fridge to retrieve a beer. He cracks it and leaves the laptop open to sit in front of the TV. A moment later he picks up the phone and calls someone.

“And that’s you calling me so we can drink and watch some crappy movies.”

Peter chuckles and says, “those were good times.”

“They sure felt like it at the time, but in reality, what were we doing?”

“Existing?”

“Yep, and that’s it Petey.”

Don’t call me Petey.

Peter jumps and looks up at the empty ceiling, “Oh it reads my mind too?”

“Yeah,” Greg responds, “they interviewed me for the biography. I told them so much. I told them you hate being called Petey and I told them about this near-death experience,” Greg says, with the last few words in air quotes.

“Well, this is sort of a near-death experience, right? And wait, how did you tell them? And why are you here, how are you doing this?”

Greg thinks for a moment. His mind expanding through to the beginning and end of time, just for fun. He already knows the answer to Peter’s question he just likes playing with the voice in Pete’s head.

“I am a little bit your conscience, a little bit Greg’s, a little bit of everyone’s, with a dash of stardust whisked with the spoon of time.”

“Thyme?”

“T-I-M-E.”

Peter puts his head into his hand’s and falls back into a nearby chair. “So, you’re not Greg.”

“No, not exactly. I came to you as Greg though,” he explains, “because he is the only person you will listen to, even though you pushed him away. He is the only one that can wake you up from yourself and get you to write that book.”

Peter drops his hands and sees that they are back at his normal apartment, his body sitting across the table from him.

“I got lost man,” Pete says, tears starting to form in his eyes, “I lost them, got lost in my work, and lost everyone else. I chased Greg away and the love of my life. It’s too much, and too-”

“It’s never too late. When you wake up, the voice will be gone and, in the future, will be done with your biography. When you wake up, you will live, call Greg and apologize. You will tell him about this experience, talk it through, and write about it. You will accomplish your dreams and later die knowing you did everything you wanted to do with your life with your friend by your side. Despite losing everyone you had lost remember the support system your friends can provide you. Don’t forget to give them credit. Because of your past you can’t do this alone, and you don’t have to.”

Peter stirs, and falls to the ground, spilling milk and Honey O’s onto himself and the floor. He gasps for air, using the side of the table he pulls himself to his feet and runs for the open window. His chest heaves and his mind reels, unsure of what to make of what he just experienced. He finds his phone in his pocket and pulls it out. Finding Greg’s number, he dials it and waits for him to pick up.