Chương 6: Chapter Five

Thursday October 6th Dawn came as it always does whether you're ready for it or not. The pale hazy light filtered through windows I'd never bothered to put curtains on. I was still on the couch, still clutching my now brown blanket as a lifeline. I might have dozed off once or twice, but mostly I'd just lain there. I ran my fingers over the fabric as I'd done a million times, it felt like my blanket. It smelled like my blanket. I could no longer pretend that this was stress, or a migraine.

My body was hollowed out and empty. I imagined this is what running a marathon and then getting hit by a truck right before the finish line felt like. My stomach was long past hungry, my head felt stuffed with cotton and thinking had become a chore. Every muscle in my body ached and even blinking was uncomfortable on my dry tired eyes. Underneath all of that though was a strange tingling. An awareness that I couldn't put into words, not even if I'd been paid.

My entire life I'd been asleep and now I was finally awake. I glanced at my phone. From Tuesday to today I'd only once answered it for my mother who was bypassing do not disturb. I hadn't checked my texts or email. For the most part it sat forgotten on the charger. With some effort I picked it up. The world was calling and it was time to face the consequences of ghosting it. There were seventeen missed calls. Two from my mother prior to my answering. Ten from Kate.

Three were an unknown caller and the last two were probably spam or something I couldn't be bothered to investigate. I dismissed all of them and rid myself of the small red alert. I grabbed another sports drink from the counter and forced it down. I tried to brew another cup of mud but even after unplugging and plugging it back in, I had no luck getting as much as a hiss out of the machine. I did my best to organize my thoughts and form a plan of attack.

Fact One: If I disassociated, I could separate myself and see what I was calling the 'universe code'. Fact Two: This universe code seemed to exist on walls, objects and everything that I had looked at while I was in 'code vision' Fact Three: I was terrible at naming the things in the aforementioned fact one and fact two and for someone in marketing I should work on that Fact Four: I had been able to change a property of an object. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent.

Report it. Fact Five: All of these things (minus fact three although an argument could be made for it as well) seemed to come at a physical cost. Fact Six: I'd become much better at entering code vision and was experiencing less consequences the more times I did it, like calluses on a guitarist's fingers. Fact Seven: I used way too many analogies.. Or was it metaphors? Eh, oh well.

Fact Eight: I heard a voice say 'LEVEL UP' twice which implied progression and it implied there was someone or something measuring that progression. Fact Nine: Progression meant rules. Fact Ten: I had absolutely zero idea what to do with any of the previous nine facts. The logical thing would have been to go back to the hospital. To insist they do another scan and to tell them about the voice. However, I changed my blanket.

Which implied this wasn't something a doctor could handle but instead would lock me up for if I couldn't prove it. Or worse, if I could prove it I'd get locked up and experimented on like some science fiction movie. What I needed to do was to approach this like a scientist. Document, hypothesize and experiment to truly understand what was going on. Documentation was what set scientists apart from a crazy person. Or maybe it was what set a serial killer apart from a normal person. I took a deep breath.

Missed calls was easy, texts? Not so much. I had been MIA for almost 48 hours and as I scrolled through the over one hundred missed texts from Kate and other people at work the nausea began to creep back up again. I didn't respond to Julia, or anyone else from work. We didn't really talk anyway and most of them were probably just looking for gossip. I opened up Kate's texts which ran through the gambit of the stages of grief.

Disbelief: these were the 'this must be a mistake,' 'there's no way this happened,' the "is this a joke or a prank'. Then there were the angry texts: Angry at the company, at every single member of management, at Daniel and then at me for not responding, for not fighting harder. Then the bargaining: I'll do whatever I cans to fix this, the what does working hard even mean if they can do this, the please responds to me. And depression: The sad I miss yous.

Finally we got to acceptance: Kate: Sam, text me when you're ready. I'll be here. Me: Hey. I'm here. I'm okay. Kate: Oh thank God. Kate: What happened? Kate: Everyone is saying you stole designs from some other company. AllMart is pissed they're threatening to leave. Daniel somehow has a whole alternate design deck he wants to present Kate: Julia agrees that this whole thing is suspicious and she agrees but she's being kept in the dark too Kate: AllMart refuses to meet with anyone other than you.

They are saying that they had checkpoints with you and things don't make sense. Kate: Can I call? I'm really worried about you. Me: Not quite yet. I am still trying to figure some stuff out. I put my phone back on Do Not Disturb and turned back to the wall.