The Shift

Remember when we were kids and we thought the future would be chrome and shiny with flying cars? Or, speaking of chrome, that an 'end of the world' apocalyptic scenario would have ruggedly handsome anti-heroes, haunted by their past, trying to make it through a world full of deviant S&M biker gangs while surviving off canned dog food? Well, this is the future, and the end of the world, so-to-say, isn't really like that. I'm sure it could be, and maybe it is, privately, in someone's bedroom-- but people don't even know what's going on. The city looks the same, food and water taste the same, people look the same, except there is sort-of a shift.

It happened when the beings, as I call them, made themselves present. It could have been years in the making, but I only noticed it when I started paying attention to the news. I'd been going through a rough patch, and uninspired and monotonous lifestyle, and decided to rely on my phone and television to fill the void. I seemed to be the only crazy person who found myself noticing that nobody else found the news (or any other channel) to have, what I can only describe as, an unexplained interference.

Stories got mashed together and other shows were all screwed up. Somehow when I asked coworkers or friends about what they had viewed on their screens, they'd tell me it was "The same as usual.", or, "Yeah, there's always something going on". That part was true, there was something going on. I would sit and try to watch as the screen would blip and the news anchors would switch topics as if parts were cut out. It didn't feel like the news was live anymore, it was more like old fuzzy tapes that had been badly spliced. The news would sound something like "It's Rush hour and there looks to be a bad bottleneck on highway 29 degrees Celsius and feeling hot without a breeze out there and tomorrow looking like a generous amount of food donated by a local grocery store to a women's shelter-" and so on. I felt a bit helpless while actually feel my mind start to numb with what I would most likely imagine the TV to sound like if I were only half listening from another room, or while doing a task, like cooking or something. That's just how it is now, stitched together nonsense that no one else really cares about.

Maybe that's how it all started anyway, 'no one else really cares'. That's why it's the end of the world, right? If we cared, then subtle changes would be noticed and addressed. Well, back to the night that I saw the beings. After their appearance, I have quietly pretended like that I also live normally and don't feel the shift. I don't talk to anyone about it anymore, I don't know who the beings control. Anyway, I saw through the jumbled messages once and saw two translucent humanoid shapes looming behind the news anchors. I didn't really even believe myself at first; I flipped the channel, it was a talk show, I rubbed my eyes and implored them to refocus. There they were, the beings, behind both big cozy chairs the show host and the guest speaker sat in while discussing inane pleasantries-- those shows were always bad to begin with though. The next channel, a cooking program, I strained longer this time to see them. Cooking is a hobby of mine, could this be the beings' ploy? After a few minutes I could barely remember what I was looking for, the content was so distracting, these people- the actors, would just change what they were saying and doing so often that I found it difficult to focus on the background. How could I when my attention span was actively being worn down to dust with the aggressive shifting? This is their plan I thought, unsuccessfully trying to tear my eyes from the moving pictures, they're ruining our minds. They don't want us to have the ability of finishing our thoughts.

There it is! Finally, I saw it again. It loomed over the chef I was watching, moving with her as she went from making baklava filling to putting it in with some heavily salted boiling water and rigatoni noodles. "Remember to salt to the level of the sea." she told the viewers. That sounds interesting, I thought, I do like mixing sweet and salty flavours together... this recipe could work-- I shake my head and grab my necklace to ground myself again. I can't let them brainwash me too.

Since the shift I've sold a lot of my belongings to have extra money and have a minimalistic lifestyle now. I've only kept a few treasured items that hold a lot of emotion and nostalgia for me; an ornate diamond and white gold ring, and a small heart shaped locket. I never understood lockets or having such a tiny picture inside of one, but now it's a tool for me to keep myself reminded of the actuality that I live in. I'm a lot like that locket, small and insignificant but what I keep inside matters the most to me.

I went out to pick up groceries today; "how are you?", I asked the cashier who was scanning my assortment of walnuts, honey, and pasta. "Fine." She replied. "Do you need a bag?" I told her I didn't but she absent-mindedly started filling one anyway. Before the beings and the shift, I might have found this normal behaviour. I might have just thought that she was tired or had been working long hours, maybe I would have been annoyed at her not listening to me and being too spaced out. Now this is all too common. It's just how people are; they have no attentive listening and seem un-phased by everything. I worry that I'm starting to get used to it. All I want is to sit and relax after dinner with a movie or show the way I used to.

I wonder why the beings made us these shells of ourselves. There were so many questions I kept wondering. What were they really doing to us? Why now? How did they get here? What are they really? Was it just them doing this? I had been so convinced that they were the mastermind puppeteers behind everything since I saw them on the TV. This isn't what my childhood self would've thought the end of the world, or society as we know it, would look like. What did I use to imagine? I remember thinking the cashier's behaviour could have been normal...

As I settled onto my favourite chair, and clicked the power button, facing the remote towards the TV set, I found my locket with my other hand. I saw the screen flashes, blips, the grainy blurs and somehow it was making sense, I shifted in my seat to get more comfortable. What if all along the beings had been here just trying to help us? My hand slowly let go of the necklace as I turned the volume up, for once I could make out what they were saying. I thought I could smell something sweet and nutty cooking, but it didn't matter. I couldn't see the beings anymore and I knew the traffic would be warm, sunny, and charitable as always.