The next few weeks were decidedly awkward, as neither Amanda or I had any idea of how to treat each other. I had weird memories of Vincent being her, but they didn’t feel like mine, and trying to sift through them felt like swimming through molasses. To Amanda on the other hand, I was practically a stranger. The old antisocial scientist who thought his feelings could be solved with math equations was simply too different from the twenty-something high school dropout who volunteered herself as an anomaly handler and test subject every summer because it was fun, and continued to apply for an internship even after one of them temporarily possessed her. The only saving grace was that she had to leave and search for food while I was bedridden with a concussion and cursing this swaying “boat” realm to hell, giving us plenty of alone time to sort through our thoughts. Well, more like attempt to, really.

I still didn’t know what to think about the whole becoming-an-anomaly thing. It wasn’t unheard of, certainly, but they were always the fringest of fringe cases, except for when it was facilitated by a separate anomaly. Heck, there were more people who accidentally created supernatural shit out of pure luck than people who transformed into an entity themselves. And considering that I still had most of my identity intact? I was relatively confident that people like me could be counted with just two hands. And I should know, I took to the supernatural more than trans girls took to thigh highs and computer science.

Well, whatever. I’d deal with it somehow if- when we ever find our way out of here.

“So, that’s why you put on Vincent’s mask? To get in character because you thought it would help you escape that corridor?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I don’t have anything to keep track of time, but I was there long enough to start hallucinating pretty bad so I was ready to try pretty much anything at that point. I tried making sense of those notebooks for so long, but I was always more of an algebra person, to say the least.”

“It’s interesting how your powers made you get all his knowledge too. I wonder if you could become an athlete, too, or even get access to secrets you have no way of knowing about.” She furrowed her brow, thinking about the possibilities.

“Ehh, I wouldn’t say that.” I stretched, feeling sore from sitting up on my bed, and took a sip of the tea my new friend had somehow managed to find and heat in her water bottle while I tried to piece my thoughts together. “I think I knew the basics from bashing my head against his journals, but the rest I just kinda bullshitted and pretended to know what I was talking about. As for the secrets, I did have vague memories of “Vincent”s childhood, but I don’t know if they’re real or not. Was he a gifted kid?”

“I have no idea.” She shrugged. “I looked up to him for being a big contributor to the field from my college, but I wasn’t a die-hard fan. Still sucks that he’s gone though…”

My mind raced, trying to find a way to change the subject, “So, you looked up to him. What is your career, actually?”

She perked up -success- and said, “I’m interning to be an Eidologist! I know the field is risky, but there’s tons of benefits into it, and reality science is just way too weird to not try and figure out everything I can about it!”

I smiled. “I was looking to be one too, actually. With my education I would have to start out with the dangerous field stuff but that was what I was most interested in anyways. I was introduced to it after being forced to as a prisoner, and I ended up taking a liking to it. After all of this I’ll probably huddle up in my room insensitate until my parents kick me out to the streets, or end up in a psych ward, but after that I’ll probably still go crawling back for more eventually if I don’t kill myself.”

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I looked up after a moment of silence to see she had an uncomfortable look on her face. Ah shit, I ran my mouth again.

“Hey, I didn’t say I will put a bullet in my brain. I don’t want to, but let’s be realistic. I’m totally fucked. Being stuck in this place might not be solitary confinement but it’s pretty damn close, and that shit can scramble your eggs more than a war on drugs commercial.” Her face didn’t get better.

I took a deep breath and screwed the cap on the bottle. “Okay listen, I know it sounds like cope or whatever, like a classic defensive “I’m miserable but at least I’m saying it like it is, look at me so smart unlike you naive people, hope and happiness is dumb” act. And it honestly probably is. But like, I’ve known from a young age that I was gonna die a very horrible death.” I deadpanned. “Psychology for people like me is flooded with bullshit, but it’s clear that the high IQ ones end up manipulating and “succeeding” and the low IQ ones end up behind bars. Rather than laying low or getting social revenge I was expelled from three schools for beating the shit out assholes, and hospitalizing one of them. I fucked with school property because I was bored. I got kicked out of my martial arts studio for misusing my black belt skills. I climb boulders without a harness and tour anomaly disaster sites for fun.”

I sighed. “And that’s not even to mention growing up poor and performatively non-binary with shitty parents. So, yeah. The statistics are against me to say the least. Practically doomed the second they cut open my ma’s stomach. Or maybe even eight months before when I won the genetic anti-lottery. Sorry to break it to you if you wanted a lifelong trauma-bond buddy but I’m probably not gonna last long even if we do get out of here.”

She opened her mouth, closed it, and just looked down at the floor.

“…By trauma bonding I mean the type between victims, if I abuse you I give you full permission to just bash my head in with a chair and burn the masks. The term is used for both shared trauma and victim-abuser because language is dumb as hell.” I couldn’t stop myself from adding on.

She snorted. “Yeah it’s like that with Eidology too. Phantasia is both a type of entity fueled by the subconscious, and the word for entities that manipulate the subconscious. Hell, we can’t even fully define where “entity” stops and “phenomenon” begins”

I laughed too. “So that’s your word for it. We just call the mindfuckers memetic-hazards, ripped straight from SCP. We don’t have a word for the ones born from subconscious though.”

“What’s SCP?” She tilted her head.

“It’s…” I blinked. “Oh, wow. I just registered the fact that you’re from a parallel universe.”

She let out a loud, disbelieving laugh. “Really? After all this time you only just noticed?”

“No! I knew that, a ton of those diaries mentioned a ton of weird shit too so I’d known people from other worlds come here, and I knew you were one of them cuz of the weird Vincent memories but I just never like, processed that? Wow. That’s really weird.” I giggled excitedly.

“Yeah, I guess it is! We’re kinda like, the first contact aren’t we? Humanity finally met life from another planet.”

“Yeah! Fuck that doomer shit about my future, where’s my Nobel Prize, huh?”

“And my First Steps award!” She agreed.

“And it would be the first awards granted to an anomaly too. And a trans one! Wow, the times are so progressive!”

We broke into a small fit of giggling together at that, before Amanda looked at me, “Hey, I know it’s not much, but I’m gonna try to pull some strings if we get back to my world. As a human anomaly, you won’t have many rights, but I’ll do my best to make sure you’re treated properly. Best case, you have no record of your past, you get housing, food, and entertainment for the rest of your life, and the experiments will just be like a job to do. Maybe they’ll even try using your powers for the betterment of humanity.”

My smile fell slightly, but I still nodded, not bothering to point out that none of that will happen if we end up back in my world, or even any other of the seemingly infinite worlds connected to this hell dimension