Just Breathe

For those of you who have seen Total Recall, it should be easy to imagine what it would be like to suffocate when there is no air pressure, and it’s not a pretty thing. Mars had a mild atmosphere and that allowed some atmospheric pressure which would make it possibly a little more slow, but if you were unlucky enough to find yourself somewhere with no atmosphere whatsoever, your story would end quickly with a pop similar to that of a balloon that has risen too high.

Time was a soda can, peaceful inside, but some idiots thought to shake it and see what would happen, and worse, they opened the lid. Now there is popping and soda spilling all over the place. Billions of people popping and flailing, confused and dazed, unable to understand what is happening as their realities and bodies shift across different planes and terrains.

Though I don’t know it yet, I’m going to pop eventually as well. But at the moment, I find myself simply confused and dazed, flailing and not popping.

My room. Sitting in here as usual. Nothing going on, just another 8 hour binge of some JRPG video game, Dragon Warrior 4 on the NES. The visuals are stunning to the eye of someone playing in 1990 but that was 44 years ago. To me it’s aged but nostalgic, the limited color pallet adding to question why I began playing in the first place. Finally a boss battle, after this will be a good place to save and take a break.

Whilst fighting the hilariously named Balzack the screen started to shift, the image hazy.

“Goddamnit”

Thankfully the game is turn based so the haze isn’t too bothersome, but even so, I haven’t saved in over an hour and I really don’t want to redo that dungeon. The console turns off.

“NOOOO! SON OF A BABY’S SHIT!”

Throwing the reproduction controller, I get on my knees to the console and pull out the game and start to blow on it, checking for anything in there, but as usual it’s flawless. Probably just too damn old.

Sitting there, lamenting on my lost progress I notice the color changing outside. The mild red of the sunset turning to a bright yellow with a green tint. The walls start to melt as an invisible hand shoves my face into the shag carpet. My body rips itself apart and puts itself together again, I’m asleep and then I awaken.

“AAAHHHHH! Oh my god. What the HELL! HELP!

Overwhelmed with the utter change in every intake of sense the first thing I notice is the yellow-green light. My eyes adjust and the screaming coming from my right is finally heard by me.

“DON’T JUST SIT THERE. HELP!”

I run the direction of the gruffy voice. It sounds like sandpaper, like he’s been screaming for ages. Trying not to trip over branches I finally see someone. The thick underbrush covering half his body, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong. Maybe he’s just as lost as I am in this forest.

Lifting each leg over a shrub with leaves I’ve never seen before, the man’s issue becomes clear. Somehow there’s a large tree root, and his leg is in it. If that wasn’t odd enough, his leg isn’t bleeding.

Finally realizing just how confused I am, and how possibly dire this situation is, panic sets in and oddly enough, the thought that keeps circling my mind is how I should be at home kicking some Balzack instead of doing whatever the hell it is that I am doing right now.

We stare at each other, chests heaving, eyes wide.

“I don’t know man. Does it hurt to move it?”

The man, eyes red from sobbing, starts a hysterical rant, talking a mile a minute, “Thank god, I’ve been stuck here all damn day. And yes, it hurts like a bitch when I try to move it. I was just at work, finishing up my shift, and everything was a blur, and I woke up here. SHIT! I’m scared. I don’t-“

The whites of his eyes, bloodshot with frustration, became clearly visible as his eyes rolled back and his body slacked. Another tear rolled down the side of his nose and the rest of the tree root became visible. He was gone.

The day wore on and I started to walk, hunger and thirst setting in but unnoticeable. Not a soul to be found. A clearing opened and I sat on a rock there for a while and just tried to rationalize.

Sometimes while sleeping, we get the feeling that we are falling and suddenly wake up. That’s exactly what it felt like, and I woke up again. Obviously, no rational conclusion was discovered.

This new setting was white, night outside but bright lights reflecting the white walls and cubicles. An office. There were more people here. And all of them were huddled around a man in a suit who I wrongly presumed to be the manager. A woman with four children, all crying, tried to hush them to allow the man to speak. He seemed just about finished, and when he was, I approached him and asked what that was about. He made a long sigh, indicating that he has explained this a thousand times.

“Look… I’ll make this quick and simple. I was at work and I overheard some new invention, a teleporter of sorts was being tested today. It supposedly had the dual function of time travel. We’d made beta teleporters before, but nothing like this. The experiment was conducted, and then everyone started to slowly disappear. I was still in the office for a while, and one of the head techs that was left told me that what’s happening is people are being moved from all around the world and maybe even different times in the future. The longer it goes on, the more unstable it gets, and the further away from our starting point we will be. Basically, we’re fucked. So live it up mate.”

I was one of the lucky few to find one of the people who knew what was going on. But perhaps it was unlucky. Ignorance is bliss they say. All this newfound knowledge told me was that it was the end, but it was hard to believe.

I began to get to know the people in the office and some were from different countries and even different times. According to a Korean man who spoke some English, there’s hardly anybody left in the future. He had been moved more times than he could count. Nobody could think of why there would be less and less people, but some ideas were brought about, people being spliced with objects like the man and the root, or people falling from the sky as one woman saw. Even the bottom of the ocean.

Although those were all valid and true, nobody thought of the biggest reason, which was that as time went on, more people would drift further from earth and find themselves on the moon, the vacuum of space, or some far away planet where they would fail to take their last breath.

We all left the building and went outside in search of food, the streets had been rioted and pillaged, but somehow we were able to find some food and water. For the most part we stuck together, but the people would change, some would disappear, the man in the suit ended up in a small town in Russia where, to his relief, his explanations would not be understood by anyone. New people joined the group, and we became wanderers. At one point, I seemed to be the last one of the original gang about 2 weeks later, and then it was my time to depart.

I may be the luckiest man alive, at least for now. The next place I found myself waking from a falling dream was literally falling through the sky. What made me lucky was that I was fairly low, and I could dive into the ocean below. This would be awful considering that I am both afraid of heights and a horrible swimmer, but shortly after landing in the water, I moved again.

Sopping wet, I woke up at what looked like a temple. I was on my knees with a small rock lodged in one of them. There was nobody. I was alone, and scared. Walking was difficult, but I did it anyways. I limped to the nearby temple and noticed a small garden. Looking around I figured it was a Thai temple, one of those ones where monks lived and made their own food, purging themselves from society.

I can gladly say that those were some of the best 2 years of my life. At first I was afraid, having no clue of when I would be moved again. After a few weeks had passed, I came to terms with the situation, and started to live like those who had inhabited this building before me. I noticed that I had traveled far into the future, the telltale signs of luscious growth surrounding everything in and out of the temple were prominent.

There were only 2 times that I had seen another person, one of which, a child, stayed with me for a few months before moving. The other was a scared man who ran at the sight of me, bleeding and bruised, splices running through his body, some pulled out halfway. Before running away, he clenched onto his necklace, a locket in the shape of a heart like it was the only thing in the world that meant something to him, and he was fleeing to protect it.

Sometimes we forget that everyone else has their own story, that they experience things in the same way that we do, and I feel sad to say that some people’s stories just aren’t so nice.

I was lucky indeed.

After that blissful period of respite, I felt my time come and I was moved again and again, the moves began to be quicker, I had a plethora of splices and I knew my time would come to an end soon, and it did.

One day I was in a deep sleep somewhere in a townhome in Europe. I woke up and immediately as I opened my eyes, before I could attempt to take a breath when I would surely fail, I saw the most beautiful sight of the cosmos, as many before me had done. The vastness was immense, and the beauty was so intense that I couldn’t hold it in. So I burst.