The Department of Lost Futures

Samuel stood at the intersection, hands deep in his jacket pockets. The early April wind stung his ears and sliced his neck, clinging to winter’s husk. The wind paused, then resumed with a serrated edge. The streetlamp above flickered like a cataracted eye.

To his right was his apartment. Inside, a kettle rested on the table beside a half-finished set list, and near it lay an unopened letter from his mother, who favored the intimacy of ink over the brevity of texts. The last one he received carried its familiar litany, urging him to eat better, to call his uncle, to consider his future. This one remained sealed, its silence heavier than advice.

To his left, shuttered storefronts leaned into the street, their dark windows throwing back his reflection with a hollow precision. Farther on, the train station sagged into ruin, its frame tired from decades of neglect. Beyond that, an empty road unwound toward the river, where streaks of pale sunlight spread across a sky already surrendering to dusk.

He lingered at the curb, shoes grinding against the grit of the pavement.

His phone buzzed, and on the screen Eli’s message appeared: Mic’s open tonight if you wanna try your new stuff.

Samuel let the screen fade to black and kept staring at the blank glass until his own face dissolved in it. The lines he’d written earlier surfaced, punchlines already crossed out, half-finished setups trailing off. He could hear how thin they sounded, jokes dying in his head before they ever reached a stage.

He shifted his weight, shoulders pulling tight as his eyes tracked right toward the thought of tea cooling on the table, then left toward a blur he couldn’t name. His throat tightened, and a bitter laugh forced its way out.

"Jesus Christ, Sam. It’s not a metaphor," he muttered.

The wind caught his jacket and pulled at the seams when he looked left again. Something inside the night bent with it.

The air fell still. Streetlights flickered out of rhythm, a bird’s wings hung in the sky without motion, and the pavement beneath him flexed as if it were glass filled with water. Layers of the street slipped over one another like film threaded wrong, and in each shifting frame he stood again, his body arranged in postures he did not recognize. He shouted, but the sound recoiled and returned, rattling around him without escape. The weight of the night pressed inward, the space around him shrinking, the whole world tightening as though it meant to close him inside it.

He stumbled, the scene twisting until left and right dissolved, the sky breaking into pixels while the ground beneath him shone with a blinding white glare.

The moment froze. Samuel found himself in a pale green lobby where the walls throbbed beneath fluorescent light. Muzak spilled from hidden speakers, thin and mechanical, and the damp carpet pressed water through his sneakers with each step. The air smelled sharp, an antiseptic sting that clung to his throat. At the far end stood a metal desk, its surface gleaming, and behind it someone tapped with metronome regularity on a tablet.

The badge on their chest read Corrin. They lifted their head with weary precision, their gaze fixed and lidless, the stare of a figure who had forgotten how to blink.

"Ah. Mr. Samuel."

He blinked hard, breath stirring his lips, and fell silent. Corrin’s smile spread with a clinical calm, as if rehearsed for moments exactly like this.

"No need to panic. You’re experiencing a minor anomaly. Happens more often than people assume. Your unresolved divergence triggered a review. Panic skews the data. We’ve had to shred entire timelines over less."

"I don't understand."

"You encountered a glitch. A misalignment. Four unresolved branches in your file. The system flagged it before reintegration. Left unchecked, such glitches threaten your primary thread. Trigger's disentigration. Your arrival’s fortunate. Less paperwork for me."

"I’ve no idea what any of that means."

"Perfectly normal. Please, sit."

Corrin gestured toward a padded chair reminiscent of a high school counselor’s office. Samuel didn’t move.

"Where am I?"

Corrin tilted their head with detached curiosity.

"You’re inside the Department of Lost Futures."

"Lost what?"

"Futures. Divergences. Alternate outcomes born from past choices and indecisions."

"This has to be a dream."

"We don’t handle dreams. That falls under the Department of Subconscious Inventory. We manage the unresolved lives you almost lived."

Samuel shook his head, his voice thinning.

"This is insane."

"Disorienting, yes. We must process four divergences before your variance lock clears. Your third divergence had a 67% chance of self-immolation. We miss those. So clean. So decisive. Shall we begin?"

Before Samuel could respond, the walls flickered with unstable light.

A door materialized.

Above the door, light bled into shapes that hardened into words. The glow wavered as if alive, yet the message fixed itself in his vision as Case File One. The One Who Ran. Samuel’s stomach turned as the letters burned brighter, refusing to fade.

Corrin gestured toward it with unsettling calm.

"What if I don’t go?"

Corrin’s face stayed impassive.

"Noncompliance accelerates thread decay. Processing prevents collapse. I recommend you proceed."

The door swung open and a breath of warm air poured through, thick with pine and woodsmoke. Somewhere beyond the threshold, a guitar carried a low tune that trembled against the breeze. Corrin shifted aside without a word.

Samuel looked from the doorway to Corrin, the glow spilling across them both, and then fixed his eyes on the dark beyond. The scent of resin filled his chest as he moved forward and crossed the threshold.

The air shifted, and the landscape unfolded in deep greens and rough earth. The sky stretched vast above him, a New Hampshire sky made strange, familiar yet sharpened into something unreal.

He stood at the edge of the clearing where tall grass bent beneath a bruised sunset, pine trees keeping silent watch while mountains loomed like sentinels in the distance. Behind him a generator hummed, and a cabin of mismatched timber, its roof patched with solar panels, hunched close by with smoke curling from its crooked chimney. The sky deepened into amber, and the air carried resin and damp bark into his lungs.

The cabin door shifted, its hinge groaning, and Samuel’s eyes snapped to the movement.

A figure stepped into the light, and recognition jolted through him.

The man wore flannel and worn cargo pants, his beard grown thick, his skin weathered by years outdoors. His hair was tied back loosely, his frame lean with the kind of strength carved from woodcutting and hunting. Samuel’s chest tightened as the man’s eyes caught his own, the familiarity undeniable and terrifying. They stood in the clearing, silence thick between them, until the bearded version of himself spoke first.

"Well, damn. I didn’t think you’d show."

Samuel swallowed, a knot tightening beneath his ribs as recognition struck. He faced a version of himself who had given in to the pull to disappear, a life he had scarcely let himself imagine.

"What is this?" Samuel asked.

The man chuckled.

"The audit. You already know that." He spread his arms. "Welcome to the quiet."

Samuel stayed cautious.

"You’re me."

"Close enough. I’m the one who walked away."

"Walked away from what?"

The man gestured outward, where the forest swallowed everything past the cabin.

"Everything. The job. The apartment. The gigs. The treadmill. I left."

"You ran."

"I stopped running. You’re the one still running."

Samuel edged closer, his jaw locked as the distance closed.

"Where’s everyone? Your family? Eli? Mom?"

The man’s eyes softened, but something hollow remained.

"Gone. I vanished. Stopped answering calls. Sold everything. Came here seven years ago. The calendars stopped mattering."

"You just left."

"I had to."

Samuel turned aside, the words slipping out in a rough murmur.

"You abandoned everything they worked for."

"They worked for survival. I’m surviving. They wanted freedom. This is freedom."

"This is isolation."

"It’s silence," the man said. "Silence’s honest. No one demands anything. No pressure to write jokes that amuse but don’t offend. No guilt. No ambition to balance."

Samuel’s chest grew heavy. The words pressed inside him.

"You gave up."

"I let go." His smile softened. "And you’re still holding on. Still trying not to disappoint. Still erasing punchlines for ghosts."

"That’s not true."

"Is it not? When did you last write something raw?"

Samuel drew his tongue across the back of his teeth, the shape of a sentence gathering and collapsing there. His shoulders gave the answer his mouth refused, and the man replied with a single nod.

"That’s what I left behind. The filter."

A hawk cried above, its shadow gliding over the ground while the trees rustled.

"But you’re alone," Samuel said.

"I chose solitude. Not loneliness."

The grass swayed gently.

"But what about"

The man raised his hand.

"That’s your problem. The what abouts. The maybes. They keep you trapped."

A soft chime carried through the clearing, and the man turned with a smile.

"That’s your cue."

Behind Samuel, another door appeared.

Samuel stared at the man. The taste of resin and woodsmoke lingered.

"Would you do it again?"

The man nodded.

"Without hesitation."

Samuel stepped toward the door, his feet weighted as though the ground itself meant to hold him, and as he crossed the threshold a faint whisper trailed after him.

"Freedom was easy. Meaning was not."

The door closed behind him. The world shifted again.

Samuel entered a dim bar where leather booths sagged with use and the ceiling carried the yellow stain of smoke. Strings of Christmas lights drooped along the counter, some flickering in brief surrender while others held steady in the dark. The air was dense with spilled beer and the trace of cheap perfume ground into the wood.

For a moment the room gave nothing back, then laughter rose from within it, soft and familiar, magnetic enough to halt him.

The sound struck him low in the stomach, sudden and sharp, and he froze before his mind had the chance to name it. His boots lifted and dragged on the beer-slick floor as he followed it across the room. In the corner sat Amara, and seeing her hit harder than hearing her laugh.

She sat in the corner booth, her drink circling slow in the glass, one leg crossed as a streak of gold in her hair caught the light. She looked unchanged, both the woman he remembered and the one he had worked to forget.”

“Beside her sat another Samuel, thinner, his eyes darting toward her with the nervous speed of someone bracing for reproach. He hunched over his glass, fingers locked tight around it, as though the grip alone might keep him steady. Amara laughed at something he said, the practiced laugh she had always used to sand down rough edges. Neither of them looked his way.

Corrin appeared at his side, silent, without the trace of a step.

"This divergence initiated after your third argument with Amara," Corrin said softly. "Here, you chose not to leave."

Samuel pressed his palms against his legs, his nails biting through the fabric.

"I didn’t leave lightly."

"Few do," Corrin replied.

Amara reached out, running her finger along Hollow-Samuel's jaw, tilting his head.

"You’re such a good listener," she said.

The other Samuel gave a weak smile.

"I just want you to be happy."

Her eyes narrowed.

"You make me happy when you’re being not difficult."

The words hit with a weight he knew too well, heavier than anger. He remembered when it broke, after months of compromise, the night he finally walked away. This Samuel hadn’t moved. This one had stayed.

"This isn’t love," Samuel said.

Corrin nodded.

"No. But it felt safer than being alone."

Amara leaned closer. Hollow-Samuel tried to match her, forcing a strained smile like a man desperate to keep the moment from slipping.

"Does it last?" Samuel asked.

"For years," Corrin said.

Samuel swallowed.

"And I’m miserable."

Corrin said nothing, the truth hanging between them. The bar flickered like broken film, the scene lurching forward to Hollow-Samuel slumped alone with an empty glass while the lights buzzed and the room sank into stale air.

"Where’d she go?"

"She left. People like her do."

The other version pulled a notebook from his jacket. Samuel recognized it as the one he used to carry for bits and ideas. Now, every page was scribbled over. Words crossed out. No punchlines left. Only apologies.

"I’d have lost my voice," Samuel whispered.

“You gave it up,” Corrin said.

The hollow version sat with his head bowed, repeating under his breath, ‘It’s fine. She’s happy. It’s fine.’

The words fell like an old habit that refused to break.

A bell rang and a door formed out of the air. Samuel tore his eyes from the broken reflection, his chest aching as he whispered, ‘You were never enough for her.’ He stepped through, and the world shifted.

The air shook with a mechanical hum as towers rose floor by floor, their glass catching the blaze of a neon sky. Screens the size of buildings flared awake, spilling faces and symbols across the dark. Billboards erupted above the towers, each one flaring with his face until the skyline carried nothing else. Letters seared across the dark, spelling his name in blinding white. Samuel Haddad. Another panel blazed, crowning him The Comedy Empire. More screens followed, the words pulsing like a chant. Live. Unfiltered. Untouchable.

He hadn’t heard his full name spoken like that in years. The sound felt both foreign and electric.

Drones hovered below like metal insects while cars streaked along glass boulevards. Crowds moved in patterns too precise to be chance, their bodies funneling beneath towers ablaze with light. Spotlights clawed at the sky as a stadium shuddered with screens looping his act, his face stretched until it smiled and smirked from every surface. The air snapped against his skin, and the streets beat in time with his pulse.

A voice called from behind him.

"Beautiful, isn’t it?"

Samuel turned.

Another version of himself stood there.

This Samuel wore a suit cut to his frame, a watch flashing at his wrist. His stance was fixed, shoulders set, and the smile on his mouth caught the light like glass. His eyes locked with a certainty Samuel had never carried.

"I’ve been waiting for you," Empire-Samuel said. "Welcome to the version you were too afraid to become."

"What is this?"

Empire-Samuel motioned to the city, the signs, the crowds, the stadium.

"This’s what happens when you stop apologizing. When you stop second-guessing. When you write for power instead of approval."

The giant screens filled with clips from his routines. The jokes cut quick and dangerous, no careful lines, no tightrope to steady him. Each punchline struck with brutal precision, and the crowd answered with a roar that shook the air.

"You sold out," Samuel said.

Empire-Samuel laughed.

"I bought in. I built a kingdom."

"You turned it into a weapon."

"Of course. The world loves cruelty more than hesitation. You knew that. You lacked the stomach for it."

Samuel shook his head. The pulse of the city beat against his temples.

"I couldn’t turn on my people."

Empire-Samuel’s smile thinned.

"Your people. The ones who taught you to fear failure. To choose survival over ambition. They loved you small. I shattered the cage and made myself larger."

He stepped closer.

"They handed you shame as inheritance. I sold it for influence."

In the distance, stadium doors hissed open. Screaming fans poured inside. Cameras flashed like lightning.

"This isn’t comedy anymore," Samuel said. "This’s an empire built on cruelty."

Empire-Samuel kept smiling.

"And they love me for it."

He pointed toward endless billboards where pundits debated his latest scandal. Ratings surged with every controversy.

"Do you believe anything you say anymore?"

Empire-Samuel's eyes narrowed.

"Belief’s for amateurs. I sell certainty."

"And when it collapses? When your name turns toxic? When the crowd turns?"

Empire-Samuel’s smile wavered but held.

"Then I’ll rebuild. I’ll survive. I don’t need their love. Only attention."

A door took shape behind him, its glow pressing across the floor.

Empire-Samuel spoke. “You’re afraid of being hated. I’m not.”

Samuel stood at the threshold, his shoulders locked as if the frame itself held him. “I’d rather fail than become you.”

Empire-Samuel’s reply was even. “You already have. You just don’t want to face it.”

Samuel stepped through the doorway, the frame sealing itself behind him as the glow drained away and the air folded into stillness.

The silence carried a sterile hum that seemed to leak from the walls. White panels stretched underfoot while the room rose higher and higher until ceiling and walls blurred into one suffocating expanse. His own breath echoed in the emptiness.

A figure sat waiting in a gray chair. Another Samuel. He was not wild, not hollow, not powerful. He held himself in rigid composure, as if carved into stillness.

He wore a sharp suit, shirt pressed and his pale blue tie sat straight. His shoes gleamed beneath polished cuffs. Calm eyes and a smooth face suggested he was free of tension.

He watched Samuel like a physician studying a patient.

"I thought you might not make it here," the quiet version said.

Samuel swallowed.

"Which one are you?"

"I’m the one who listened."

"To who?"

"Everyone."

The words pressed into him. He crossed the space, each step echoing too loud.

"You mean Mom."

"Yes. And the family. The mentors. The ones who told us how to live safely, respectfully, predictably."

His smile held, but something flickered.

"I followed their advice."

The restraint in this version unsettled Samuel more than cruelty or isolation.

"You gave up comedy."

"I set it aside. It was impractical."

"And you’re happy?"

"I am stable."

"That’s not what I asked."

Quiet Samuel’s voice softened.

"Happiness is indulgent. Stability is responsible."

Samuel stared. The words rang in him, echoes of old warnings. His mother’s voice rose beneath Quiet Samuel's.

"You’re scared," Samuel said. "You let fear pretend to be virtue. You say you’re protecting your family, but you’re hiding. From failure. From shame."

Quiet Samuel’s eyes darkened momentarily, then steadied.

"I’ve no regrets," he said. "My children will have opportunities we never dreamed of. My wife sleeps soundly. My mother’s proud."

He paused.

"Can you say the same?"

Nights stretched with empty rooms and pages cut through with black ink. Small wins slipped past unseen. His mother’s silence pressed hardest of all. The future blurred, but air still filled his lungs.

"I wake up every day still trying," Samuel said. "Even if I fail, I’m not haunted by whether I was brave enough to try."

"Do you laugh anymore?" Samuel asked.

Quiet Samuel spoke softly.

"I don’t need to."

A chime cut through the room and the air shifted. When Samuel turned, Corrin was already there.

"Final variance reviewed. Correction’s now possible."

Samuel glanced at the man in the chair. He looked like a ghost trapped inside a life too safe to escape.

"You’re the saddest one of us all," Samuel said as he stepped toward the door.

The light closed behind him.

The ground slid out from under him and his body lifted, weight gone. Space pulled thin until it snapped, and he dropped hard into cold air that bit at his skin. Traffic murmured at the edge of hearing while a streetlamp flickered above the evening sky. He was back at the intersection.

The pavement lay cracked beneath his shoes, each fissure catching the last of the light. To his left, the storefronts stood dark, their windows blank as mirrors. To his right, the road bent toward home, and he felt its pull as surely as gravity.

What he had walked through didn’t fall away. It clung to him, settling into the air around him until every breath seemed thick with it. The weight of his other selves hung close, not as memory but as presence, as if the clearing, the bar, and the burning skyline all pressed against the edges of the street.

His head reeled. Their voices pressed in, distinct and unshakable.

The one who ran.

The one who stayed.

The one who ruled.

The one who obeyed.

Each left its mark. Freedom brushed against him like an open door. Safety coiled close, promising rest. Worship glittered with blinding fire, while security wrapped itself in silence.

The wind slipped through the street, laced with the scent of rain and pine. It caught at his jacket and carried the weight of the lives he had seen, each trace of them clinging like smoke that would not rise.

He closed his eyes and drew the air deep. His pulse slowed. The tangle of regret, fear, ambition, and desire pressed hard against him, yet instead of crushing it gathered into a single, steady line.

The Department lingered in his mind. Corrin’s voice slid through the silence. Doors opened and shut in memory, each world stamped into him as if it had carved its place there.

Too vivid to shake. Too sharp to dismiss. They lived in him now.

His phone buzzed and he looked to see a text from Eli.

"Mic’s open. You coming or nah?"

The phone dimmed in his hand as he let it fall back to his side.

He raised his eyes.

The intersection lay still beneath the lamp’s pale light, the storefronts dark and the pavement empty.

Right led home. Left led somewhere.