Stranger Than Fiction, Stranger...

It was far, far away. It was so close that it defied space and time. It was beyond the physical. It was the physical. It was vast, like God. It was small and humble, like God. Honestly, I don’t know what it was. But that’s where the gods dwelt, and that’s where the Sol Shades came from. Who would contrive such a thing? The Nerd…

He was busy in his tower—a tower perched atop a high mountaintop, overlooking a beach where waves crashed against jagged rocks. The Nerd Tower. Every evening, the sun sank into the horizon, smearing the sky with fiery hues and casting a golden glow over the rippling water. Another day complete. But never fully complete unless he came up with Another Crazy Idea!—something strange and new to share with everyone in the Temple.

It was nearing one of those fateful sunsets when he got the idea for the Sunglasses. He was silently talking to himself as he limned the idea onto his trusty sketchpad. You see, if you put them on, you become—no, you don’t even become, you ARE the person who sees you in them. Yeah. That’s it... No. Wait a minute. Not you. You can’t put them on or even own them. Somebody else has to put them on. Yeah. That’s better.

“That’ll do, that will work,” said the Nerd out loud as he scribbled images of the Sunglasses in his sketchbook with a goose feathered quill, in a frantic, Twombly-esque way, managing to splatter ink all over the table and his hand as he did it.

Despite his flights of frenzy, the Nerd was a stately man, reasonably attractive, with a great white beard and serene, cerulean eyes. Oh, he was a man of craft, always full of ideas—many of them good. And he was good at execution, too. Oh yes, he was a brainy fellow.

To bring this idea to life, he needed to work in the laboratory—a sedate, white, cube-like building, freshly painted every other Thursday. So, the Nerd made his way down from the tower to the lab, which stood some distance away. Once inside, he went about actually making the Sunglasses. It didn’t take long. Soon enough, they were ready.

It took a little doing to convince everyone to convene a meeting so that he could present his new idea.

“You what?” said Management.

“You see, the person who puts them on becomes—no, actually is—you,” said the Nerd.

“Me?” said Management.

“Well, not you literally, although it could be you,” said the Nerd.

Management hung up.

The Nerd had to call them several times to get them to agree to a meeting.

He arrived at the Temple exactly on time, Sunglasses in hand. The gods were sitting on their thrones in their gleaming, golden Temple, open on all sides, with suns pouring in light.

“They’re magic,” said the Nerd, holding the Sunglasses up. “When someone puts them on, not you, but someone else, that person becomes—IS—you.”

“What happens if you put them on?” said the Critic. He was a shrewd one, and shrewdly dressed all in black, with a large cape and a high collar. He was bald and had dark, bulging eyes with sagging lower eyelids.

“Me?” said the Nerd.

“Anybody,” said the Critic.

“I just told you,” said the Nerd. 

“Forget I asked,” said the Critic.  

“See, it works like this,” said the Nerd. “The owner of the Sunglasses doesn’t become a mirror image of you. They would still have their own appearance, personality, all that—but in some fundamental way, they would be you, as if they had always been you. No matter who they were before, the moment they possessed the Sunglasses, they would be, in essence, just another incarnation of you. Does that make sense?”

“I suppose,” said the toga wearing Greek Philosopher. “If you believe in reincarnation.”

“Could we mass produce these?” said the Capitalist. He looked like a cross between the Monopoly Man and Thomas Edison. 

“I’ll help,” said the Devil.

“You shut up!” snapped Gorgeosity, her golden curls flipping. She was the most beautiful among them. “Speak when spoken to.”

The Devil obeyed.

“I think you could use a simpler design,” said Elinor, the practical one.

“You mean the look of the thing?” said the Nerd. “I agree.” He was never great with style, even when he stumbled upon it accidentally.

As they were handed around—no one put them on—the Nerd described them. “I made them from a special polycarbonate found only on the asteroid Garbo. Steve Jobs would love this. The tint comes from blue pigments of the painter, Tintoretto. The iridescent effect? That’s caused by thin-film interference.”

“Enough. No more technical jargon,” said the Consultant, in crisp tweed and a paisley tie. His features were rather plain and unremarkable—but his charm and etiquette made up for it.

“Then I have everyone’s approval? We can try this out?” asked the Nerd.

“Who do you want to try it on?” asked Queen Lisa, the model-good looking wife of The Main Guy. Today she was wearing a billowy sundress, sky blue, with tiny yellow polka dots and a wide sash across her slender waist. The Main Guy, also good looking, sat beside her, in his nice pair of jeans and clean, white t-shirt. 

“I don’t know. I thought we could drop it into a world and see what happens,” said the Nerd.

The Cartographer, a bespectacled dwarf, unfurled a vast, creased map of the universe. The map kept unfurling, infinitely. He pointed to a spot. “What about here? It’s just one real guy and a bunch of fictional characters.”

The Main Guy studied the map. “Yeah, that looks fine.” 

“May I suggest a twist?” said the Devil, holding up his fingers to indicate a small change. 

The Critic winced.

The Devil continued. “Going with the mass producing idea. We’ll make it a brand. Call it Sol Shades. Get it? Soul? Sol? Now here’s the twist. All these shades we put on the market. We get lots and lots of people wearing them. These “brand” sunglasses, the mass marketed Sol Shades, will have the effect as described. But this particular pair—the prototype—would be different. One pair of special Sunglasses that would make the wearer the only other real person in a world full of fictional characters and countless versions of you. And to keep things interesting, the prototype wearer would be immune to the effects of the mass-produced sunglasses.”

“Because otherwise, you would have a logical fallacy,” the Greek Philosopher pointed out. 

That didn’t stop the Devil. He had more to say. “If the person who owned the special Sunglasses encountered someone else wearing Sol Shades, nothing would happen. They would be immune to the effect. This way, the prototype wearer remains the only other real person, while the world around them is filled with doppelgangers.”

“—and fictional characters. Don't forget them,” said the Fool, and he shook his jingling marotte which had a head carved to look like Napoleon on the top of it. 

“That’s a good idea,” said Bart, the man in charge of animated characters, many of them—if not most—fictional as well. He resembled Conan O'Brien, smelled of patchouli and wore a necklace of brightly colored beads.

“Hey, that was my idea,” said The Writer, who looked a little like me, clean shaven, with short brown hair, everything except the bad teeth. I don’t have bad teeth, but he does. He, The Writer, was speaking to the Devil. But Bart assumed he, The Writer, was talking to him, Bart. I really didn’t have anything to do with it.

The Devil grinned, revealing porcelain veneers. He was good at stealing ideas, and he could read minds.

The Devil tilted his head slightly. “Was it?”

“Was it what?” said The Writer.

“Your idea,” said the Devil.

The Writer shrugged. “Well, I think so. But then again, maybe you thought of it first.” He scratched his head, glancing toward the reader. “Or maybe it was you all along.”

Suddenly, it wasn’t entirely clear who was responsible for the Sunglasses anymore. Or who was real. Or if anyone was. The lines between the characters, The Writer, and the reader (Reader?) blurred, leaving only one thing certain:

You’re not quite sure who you are anymore.

That said, let’s get on with the story. In the world they selected, Ooth, everyone except one person was fictional. The Sunglasses would change that. Those who wore the mass produced Sol Shades would become a version of the one real person, while the owner of the special Sunglasses would become the only other real person. Two real people. Fictional characters. And a bunch of copies of one of the real people—the one without the Sunglasses.

“These Sunglasses are a little dark,” said the Invisible Creature, a chameleon-like being who had taken the form of a dragon the size of a basketball player that you could not see. His voice echoed, deep and menacing, like James Earl Jones as Darth Vader—but twisted through a voice-modulating app, warped into something monstrous and unnatural.

Nobody said anything, and, apparently, nobody cared. About the Sunglasses being a little dark, that is. As for the Sunglasses themselves, the general consensus was to placate the Nerd and give his idea a try. A little experiment. A game to play on some unfortunate world.

Back to the laboratory. Stylistic modifications were made according to Elinor’s suggestions. The Sunglasses now had a smooth, sleek frame made of pure gold—but plated with fake brass to look cheap. However, they still retained that trademark multicolored oil-slick-on-water shimmer.

When it was time to introduce the Sunglasses to Ooth, the Jock, a bigger, taller version of Cat Stevens, and more muscular, dropped them from a cloud into the chosen world, Ooth. They floated down steadily, shifting position in the winds, like the feather in Forrest Gump. The Sunglasses, the special ones, would infect other sunglasses, turning them into Sol Shades. That is how they would be mass produced, magically. 

And now, we enter Ooth. The first character we see is the one real person in a world full of fictional characters.

Silas Jameson was the head professor of Linguistics at the Nankoot Institute of Technology—NIT. He was semi-famous, 55 years old, with a scruffle of thick, moppy white-gray hair, combed, unceremoniously, across his head. His face had a droopy, permanently unhappy look. And who could blame him? He was known for writing scathing books and giving lectures on power and inhumanity.

One day, a young woman, one of his students, appeared in his office. She stood in the doorway, her blouse unbuttoned too far, revealing some cleavage and the barest edge of a white bra.

He was taken aback. “Can I help you?”

“You gave me a D minus,” she said.

“Oh, you’re one of my students,” he said, blinking hard. He didn’t recognize her for two reasons: one, he was shocked; two, he had a lot of students. “You can retake the exam. Study Chapter 7. The bonus question is on syntactical structures and B.F. Skinner’s work. I’ll write it down for you.”

“You’re so hard,” she whined.

He was taken aback. But he kept a straight face. “I’m... sorry you feel that way. What’s your name?”

“Mandy,” she said, leaning against the door-frame.

He passed her the note with the retest information. She studied it as if it were the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen.

“I’ll look over your grade,” he said. “There’s also a tutor available. Have you checked into that?”

“No,” she said, fluttering her thick eyelashes, like a doe.

“Check into that,” he said, then looked down at the book he had been reading. When he looked up, she was gone. He felt a little rude, but really, so was she. Kids these days…

Two weeks later, when it was time to grade the retests, Mandy’s paper was among them. Her full name was Mandy Jenkins. According to the seating chart, she sat in the sixth row, just right of center. She passed the test. He gave her extra points for the bonus question, pleased that she had clearly studied. He erred on the side of generosity but felt he handled it fairly.

And then he forgot about her. He had books to write, lectures to give, and interviews to do. Always the interviews. Silas, could you explain your thoughts on the Condervergian crisis? Silas, do you believe in God? Silas, can we turn the clock back on nuclear proliferation? Silas, oh Silas… Life without a woman was wretched, but at least he had more time for his work, and those constant interviews.

Something strange was happening, though, that got his mind off these troubles. He was beginning to feel like everybody else was also him. Not everybody, but a lot of people. Any time he saw someone wearing a pair of Sol Shades—and there were a lot of them about—he got to feeling like that. Do you ever feel that way?

Then, one day in the fall of the next semester, he saw her again. She was wearing the Sunglasses—the special ones. His heart nearly stopped. What was it about her that was so…fetching? Besides the obvious, of course. Because she was very pretty. That went without saying.

Little did he know that he was casting his eyes upon the only other real person in this world.

She looked chic in those sunglasses. Confident. Her hair was tied up, with a few loose strands falling around her face. She wore a tan sweater and a pleated, deep-blue skirt, reminiscent of a school uniform. There was something triumphant in the way she carried herself now.

He waved her down. He just had to. She noticed him and approached. They sat on a bench together, and he asked her questions—about the grade, her current studies, and her plans.

She was studying the Hanwa classics. She wanted to be a writer, maybe even a great one. She didn’t want to write serious academic works like he did. Instead, she wanted to write serious literary works. She called it “literary chic lit.” She seemed to have found her groove, really coming into her own. In fact, that was the first book she self-published, Stella Found Her Groove Again.

She stopped talking and looked at him, waiting. His heart skipped a beat. Was she waiting for him to ask her out?

He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. It was wrong. He was too old, too respected to risk it. He had written books about the abuse of power—he couldn’t abuse it now.

Since he said nothing, she said, “Well, I must be going,” and left. He watched her walk away, feeling a pang of sadness. Should he run after her and ask her to lunch? No. He had a daughter her age, from a marriage gone wrong—then divorce, and a bit of drinking after that.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Was it just lust? She had controlled the conversation. Really, she had. He liked that. Had there been something unspoken between them—a flicker of tension, lingering in the pauses, in the way she had gazed at him? This was not the same woman who had come to his office. She was different now. She was no longer extravagantly flirtatious, intentionally or unintentionally—or perhaps both—as she had been in the office. Subtly flirtatious, maybe. Dangerous, now, for sure.

He never saw her again. But he thought about her, in an unrequited love sort of way. His favorite theme, apparently. She became his muse. He wrote a personal, revealing novel, A Wistful Life, Paths Untaken, which became a bestseller. A completely different direction for him. It wasn’t literary chic lit. But then again...maybe it was. Maybe it was.

He never remarried. He dated occasionally, but it went nowhere. Some years later, he saw that she was self-publishing her fiction. He read it, clandestinely, and admired it, though it was not the sort of thing he would usually have read. Ever. It always featured a powerful, self-possessed female protagonist making her way in a male-dominated society. It was chic lit. Some passages were quite beautifully written. Literary...chic lit. 

As the years passed, and as he read her books, he began to feel close to her—so close it hurt—and yet, of course, she remained impossibly far away. Here she was, the only other real person in the world, and largely, she existed in his imagination.

The gods can be so cruel.

Of course, there were also those other versions of Silas running around with those Sol Shades.

And they were real, too, since he was real. But they were all him…

And about those fictional characters… He got to know some of those pretty well. Not just the ones in Mandy’s books. Also the ones largely populating the world he lived in. Because everyone besides him, Mandy, and anybody with a pair of Sol Shades, was a fictional character.

But the thing about it, when you really think about it, is that fictional characters are also real. They’re just like you and me. They might even be you and me. Who knows?