The next day, Charlie was up many hours before the sun rose. He went into his kitchen and pulled a small bag of flour from a corner cabinet and brought it into the living area. He threw on some clothes and brought a hand up to his mouth to stifle a yawn. Charlie’s body was heavy, tired.

The bed looked so appealing, even as a mere outline in the darkness.

“No, they’re letting you do this. You can’t show up and mumble ‘oops, I forgot’, or… ‘oops, I slept in’, or anything absurd. They’re counting on you.” Charlie told himself and stifled another yawn.

He arched his back and tilted his head up, his hands bent behind him as he cracked his bones just a little bit and stretched out to help himself awaken further.

Then his bleary eyes went clear with sudden alarm. ‘Wait! Did I… I didn’t… did I?! I didn’t buy beer!’ Then he froze, and began to rethink events. Alone in the darkness of his apartment, he began to rethink every little thing.

‘I fade out, things are different… I fade in… time seems to have passed, people remember things I don’t… little things… off… so caught up in myself that I didn’t think…’ Charlie began to run through the possibilities with more urgency. ‘How to confirm… how to…’ He thought back to the incident with the wine. ‘I ‘know’ I bought that wine. But then it wasn’t there. And how many times did I dispose of a clock?’

Charlie immediately strode back to the kitchen and put his hand on the refrigerator door. The dark smooth plastic was cool to the touch, the shadow of the room was almost comforting as his heart began to race. The little things he’d been too oblivious to notice began to add up to an ugly equation in his head.

“Side effect…” He murmured, and to test his hypothesis he gritted his teeth, his arm was fully extended and stiff as a dry board. What he was waiting for? What he was hoping for? Charlie tried to understand both of those questions, but he was at a loss.

“Just fling it open. Coward. Just do it!” He half shouted, but he didn’t.

Instead he pulled only slowly, the door cracking open and the dim glow of the light hit him an instant before the chilly air. The interior had been completely wiped clean by Sarah’s diligent efforts to the point where it almost looked brand new. Charlie’s eyes began at the top level, nothing. The next shelf. Nothing. ‘Embarrassingly nothing… just a few scraps left behind by Josef.’ Charlie couldn’t help but shake his head at that.

Then down his gaze went to the widest shelf, and there it was.

Beer. ‘Not Stone Brewery quality… but not far off… and just the sort of stuff I’d buy for this kind of event.’ Six packs stacked two high, three across, and three deep all the way to the back.

‘When could I have done this…?’ He asked himself, and couldn’t find an answer, his mind was a fog as thick as pea soup.

Like memories were there, but only visible through a thick haze.

For just a moment, Charlie’s heart rate accelerated faster and faster, it became hard to breath as he grasped through the fog for more and more information he hadn’t been able to process before. ‘How many? How long? Did something else do this… am I…’

Then he stopped. He looked down at the beer again, then slowly closed the refrigerator door. The seal crackled as it shut with a light snap, and he returned to the other room and opened up his computer.

A PIN entry and he opened up a browser. ‘Alright, this isn’t definitive, but it can’t hurt.’ Charlie told himself and searched for ‘Nelson Mandela’s death’.

He clicked on the top entry, a wiki which scrolled upward as he rolled his mouse wheel toward himself. The information was par for the course, everything he vaguely recalled about the former popular figure and then down to what he sought. “Died in prison in nineteen-eighty-four.” Charlie read it out loud. “So that’s normal…” He muttered, though there was a vague memory of the one time figure going on to be President of South Africa and dying in twenty-thirteen… ‘Mandela effect… false memories or intersections… Multiverse intersection was one of the possible predictions, since memories are chemical but our brain waves are essentially oscillating electrical voltages and that involves electrons which themselves interact with the quanta that are not bound to a dimension… memories could theoretically be carried between them… could people? No. I am not a flipping quark… that would be stupid… at least not without technology I haven’t even dreamt of…’

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

He grimaced and closed the laptop with a click.

Answers. He hungered for them all his life, the unknown was exciting, foreboding, his felt his skin tingle at the prospect, and a whole new world of possibility opened up to him, laid out like a vast and unexplored wilderness. Whatever fear or anxiety he felt, faded away.

‘What an amazing thing… what a…’ He let the thought drift off and slumped back in his seat, tilting his head back to stare up at the night cloaked ceiling.

‘No, it isn’t that… this is how I felt… before. My purpose… my reason to be… always to know more… I can’t help it… what I did was terrible… but this isn’t the end… I’m still here. So is everyone else… what did Josef say?’ He wondered and tried to pluck the memory from his mind, “Something about things still needing to be done…” Charlie muttered and scratched his head.

The exact words were forgotten, but the spirit of the message was not, and so he got up, went to his bag, dumped out the old clothes onto the bed, then went to the fridge and packed the beer inside with the little bag of flour and went out to lay the trail for his friends to enjoy.

It took an hour and a half in the darkness to lay even a short trail, but he didn’t mind.

If anything, the tingle in Charlie’s body had grown to ever greater levels of excitement, with only the faintest hint of anxiety. ‘I’m running alone today… Josef is gone so… oh well. Even if they run ahead, I’ll catch up one day.’ He promised himself when he dropped off his bag back at his room and went to sleep again until it would be time to go out for his run.

The beeping of a little blue alarm clock woke him with minutes to spare that he didn’t even really need. Within less than a minute, Charlie was up bright, eager, and outside in the crisp predawn air. It was cooler now than it had been, and the group was wearing longer running clothing, though nobody was shivering and a collective set of hands rose up to wave to him when he came into view.

“Who’s ready for a run?” Charlie asked.

“Me!” All six said at once.

“Who’s ready for drinks?” He asked.

“Uh, none of us, we have to work today.” Sarah said with a raised brow. “It’s Friday, not Saturday.”

“Oh… right… right.” Charlie snapped his thick fingers and covered quickly by pointing out, “Not having a job right now, you know I…”

“You could get one if you wanted.” Judy pointed out, “But if you don’t really need it, just do what you like, not to worry. If you hid it well, it’ll be safe where you left it, and if… you…” She trailed off.

Charlie visibly bit his tongue and hissed.

“You didn’t, did you?” Sye asked.

“No… not… not really.” Charlie admitted. “So-rry… I’ll just take it up as we go.”

“No big deal, easy problems, easy fixed, those are the best kind.” Mary pointed out with a snap of her fingers.

“Ready?” Mark asked, and Charlie took his place at the back of the group.

“Ready.” He replied, and as he often did, Charlie imagined a gun going off, and he began to jog.

His eyes were closed for a minute, there was only the feel of the cool air that wasn’t enough for him to freeze his breath, the darkness deepened around him, and there was the feel of his heavy feet on the hard concrete.

There was the sound of Charlie’s breath, and then something else.

Absurd as it might have been, he didn’t recognize the sound at first.

Other feet.

His eyes flew open while his heart pumped even harder than before, and he reflexively looked down.

There they were.

He raised his head and looked ahead and saw the back of Mark’s head directly in front of him. The trails Charlie laid were ignored, the little flour markers guiding them down various false paths were passed by. In other circumstances, he might have been bothered, but when they hit the first stopping point, his suspicions were confirmed.

Judy approached a bush where a flour circle was dusted about and darted her hand into the dark shrouded foliage. She yanked out a half of a six pack. “I got this one.” She said with a radiant smile over her face that Charlie was sure wouldn’t have needed the nearby street lamp to light up her face.

Then it was on to the next spot.

And the next.

And the next.

At each spot, one of the group snatched up the hidden stash and jogged along holding the rest until they made it back aground, skipping the end point at the Seattle’s Best coffee shop, they instead made for the starting point, six packs of beer tucked under their collective arms, huffing and puffing with the extra effort of carrying more weight, their shoes scraping over pavement with every step, until they made it back to the start as a group.

Charlie hunched over with his hands just over his knees. “Th-Thanks… th-that would have taken forever by myself.”

“Sure thing.” Judy said and swatted him on the ass.

He jumped a bit, but brushed it off to cover any confusion.

“Ah, yeah so… we didn’t get coffee this morning like usual, so… why don’t I just have a dasher bring some to us at my place, I still haven’t got enough space for everyone to sit on furniture but it’s something?” Charlie proposed.

“Sure, we cleaned the damn place well enough.” Philip teased and the rest of them nodded as if he had uttered sage wisdom.

“Agreed, let’s go.” Mark gave the decisive suggestion and Charlie headed across the street to the door of his building.

“Oh, say, do any of you all know when Josef is coming back?” Charlie asked, and suddenly they all fell silent.

“Oh… you haven’t heard… have you?” Sarah asked, and Charlie’s blood ran cold.