Fantasy Matrix

This is the end of whom I no longer want to be, I thought to myself with all the conviction that I could muster. The addictions to the physical stimuli and residual negative mental loops had left their scars on my unhappily single and broke life and my body.

No more am I the whiny horse led by the jockey of my addictions to food, past mistakes, social media, porn, analysis paralysis, YouTube drama, lounging around aimlessly, and every other limiting thing that reigned supreme in my old self. In the meantime, Old Self, I don’t care how you feel or what limiting thoughts with which you try to bait me to do things I know I’ll regret later! I'll either push myself through mechanically or like an inspired junkie, er, role model.

I sat there on my unmade bed with renewed calmness and clarity on embarking on the most massive transformation that I could imagine for myself right then and there.

I threw on my coziest coat and power-walked to the front door with my fists balled up to brace myself for the frigid winter run in the night.

I don’t give one iota about how out of shape I am right now; I’m going to make this body run to exhaustion to force some damn internal change!

I swiftly opened the door with that declaration, and a huge gust of prickly cold wind bit me in the face. It also bit a crack into my resolve.

I know David Goggins would probably kick my pretty lil’ ass right now as I’m hesitating like a beta wolf with its tail between its legs.

I hopped out, muffling my moan, and pathetically jogged across my front yard while mentally chanting, Just do it! Quiet the useless chatter, just do.

I got to the right-hand street corner leading to my local supermarket two minutes later. Ah, screw this! I’m still gonna change, but this flat-out sucks. What in MY world am I going to do next? I thought as I started running back home faster than I had jogged out.

In the backyard of my home, a set of huge, yellow eyes in the blackness of night glowed towards me. Intrigued to find out what kind of animal it was, I walked towards it. I made out in the faint moonlight that it was a barn owl. The eyes hypnotically embraced me so that I seamlessly walked into a trance-like state. The howling winds grew stark quiet. Warmth pervaded the previously frigid air.

Before I knew it, I woke up right in front of an ancient building without my coat and just in my pajamas. I instinctively opened the heavy plain wooden door and walked along the marble corridor that looked swept clean.

Beautiful, calming instrumental music echoed throughout the building. An enticing scent of paper and fresh ink flowed out of the open room straight ahead of me. I entered this enormous library filled with millennia of knowledge. I found no one else here. The atmosphere was simultaneously peaceful and eerie.

I walked from aisle to aisle, flipping through peculiar-looking books I had never seen or known before. They were all in English but mentioned many things that didn’t exist in the world I knew. They weren’t dusty in the slightest. Somehow, the building was being well-maintained. I glanced at the library walls intricately decorated with metallic paints and structural pieces.

A massive humanoid octopus about twenty feet tall and dressed in a shiny, white tuxedo looked upside down at me while it hung from the ceiling. Once it caught my eye for a moment, it slithered down to where I was between aisles. I dropped my book, and the giant octopus caught it mid-air.

”I'm a GMO, also known as a Giant Mystic Octopus. Choose your ideal personality,” The Giant Mystic Octopus instructed in its Patrick Stewart-sounding voice. Intuitively knowing what to do, I closed my eyes and imagined the person I’d always wished to be, giving it all the tones of reality. I saw myself in my mind’s eye, dressed in the fashions that I would proudly wear, talking in the cadence I enjoyed, being the well-rounded individual to people I wanted in my life, and living the lavish lifestyle of my dreams. Now, I was experiencing that it was truly all in my physical reality.

I felt an electric sensation reverberating throughout my entire body from the synaptic party in my mind through the tingling buzz in my toes. I knew the personal transformation process was unfolding as I was imbued with many millennia worth of wisdom by the Giant Mystic Octopus. Not only was my conscious mind being enlivened with massive amounts of knowledge, but so was my subconscious mind as I began to feel like an entirely different person, one who was everything I ever wished to be.

I felt something solid and comfortable underneath my back. A golden, comforting light shone down on me and I felt touched by an angel as I slowly opened my eyes. It turned out that the lamplight in my living room was on. I looked around, trying to process what had just happened. I had no more mental chatter other than fully acknowledging the present moment and my most recent experience with delightful curiosity. I was back in my winter coat, and it still felt cold.

Then I felt something hard in my coat pocket as I shifted my position. After taking the object out, I saw that it was an ornamental version of the Giant Mystic Octopus I had met in that ancient library, but I still could not discern whether or not it was a dream. Seeing that it was folded closed, I opened it, and a piece of paper unique to that library rolled up inside. I unrolled it to read: Find that barn owl in your backyard if you want to have another upgrade. It appears when you have elevated emotion.

A notification on my phone alerted me. I saw that a deposit was made into one of my bank accounts. It wasn't payday for anything, to my knowledge. Checking the balance for one of my accounts, I saw that it was $16.1 million. As I stood there in my newfound calm curiosity, a text message from a seemingly unknown person popped up that read: Hey babe, so what do you want to do after our date on the cruise tomorrow night?