WORK-LIFE BALANCE
----------------------------------------
Other-Dang went to sleep as soon as they returned from the restaurant, curling up on the couch in Dang’s living room and drifting off instantly. Dang watched his doppelganger sleep for a while. During their conversation at the restaurant, he’d found out Other-Dang was the same age as he was biologically, but his physical aging had halted after his accident, so he was likely to resemble a 17-year- old for the rest of his life. Unless, of course, he sprouted some facial hair which, from Dang’s experience, was nigh impossible.
Dang didn’t sleep immediately. In fact, he didn’t think he would sleep at all. It was sort of hard to consider sleeping when you were staring at someone completely identical to you who’d come from an alternate universe; when you'd just been attacked by murderous robots and informed that there was some multiversal deity of war seeking to conquer your world or reduce it to nothing.
These thoughts danced around in Dang’s mind as he sat on the couch opposite C-Dang’s, slowly sipping a glass of Gin. After a while, he headed to his computer, logged on to the internet and stared at the contact information for Tiger and Wombat for a while; contemplating whether or not to inform them about all of this. Considering that they would most likely be at the forefront of the battle if some cosmic conqueror was en route to Earth, then it would make sense for the two of them to be aware. But then he reminded himself that it was two in the morning and that the both of them were teenagers who would get over-excited if he called them to confirm the existence of alternate universes and branching realities.
He wasn't interested in the moment at the possibility of having them come over to discuss the topic. He sighed, shut off his computer and decided he’d let them know about it whenever he had time on his hands.
Not very long after he’d turned the computer off, he turned it back on, contemplating again but this time, it was on whether or not to inform the US government. This took him much quicker to make a decision this time: he decided that no, he didn’t need the incompetent morons screwing this up. They’d be better off without government involvement in all of this.
He looked over his shoulder at his sleeping doppelganger, who slept so unbelievably quietly. He didn’t snore, or even move around on the couch. He just simply slept, quiet and perfectly still, almost like a corpse.
Dang’s eyes went wide with fear as he felt a pang of concern in his gut. He darted out of his chair and rushed over to Other-Dang, kneeling just beside him and placing a finger beneath his nose just to confirm he was still breathing and hadn’t just died on the couch. It took a few seconds to confirm but he felt the warm breath against his finger.
“Phew,” a sigh of relief escaped him. He tilted his head backward so he was staring at his ceiling and placed a hand on his forehead. “What a drag,” he sighed again.
Afterward, he headed to his room, climbed into bed and forced himself to sleep, although it was a rather brief sleep considering he woke up five hours later at seven in the morning when his alarm went off. He groaned and rolled to the side, unaware that he was already at the edge of the bed. The result was him rolling right out of bed and crashing to the ground. His hands flailed around and, in the process, he knocked his alarm and lamp right off the bedside table. The lamp shattered as it hit the ground, shards of glass flew in every direction, some of it getting in his hair and flying towards his face.
He sighed miserably and pulled himself to his feet before dusting the glass out of his hair and then stretched his hands above his head to the right side while letting out a loud, long yawn as he did. He trudged out of his room and headed to the living room to find Other-Dang sitting by his computer, staring at it with intense focus, fingers clicking away erratically at the keyboard and at the mouse. He saw several dozen screens popping up on the computer each second.
“Uhm, what are you doing?” Dang asked while tilting his head in confusion
“Checking to see if there’s been reports of anomalies on your world, other than the one you encountered yesterday,” Other-Dang answered. “It’s possible that there’s been more sentinels who’ve come here and might now be hibernating, waiting until they have a new directive. If there are, we need to sniff them out and take them out before it’s too late.”
“And you can do that from here?” Dang asked with a hint of disbelief in his voice.
“I’m writing a code I intend to broadcast to your world’s satellites, an update of sorts, it’ll make it possible to identify anomalies on time,” Other-Dang didn’t look up from the computer screen as he responded to Dang’s queries. “If I detect any, we’ll head out to investigate, take care of it ourselves. Might be unwise to get your authorities involved right away.”
“Chances are I might be busy with stuff,” Dang said quickly. “So, if you find something while I’m out, just reach out to me and wait until I can provide backup, okay? Things here are different than on your world.”
“What stuff could you possibly be busy with?”
“Personal life stuff. Gotta take a shower now and head out. We’ll catch up later.”
“Alright, then,” Other-Dang nodded. “Anything comes up, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay. Also, who are Tiger and Wombat?” Other-Dang asked. “I see you’ve got their contact info on your computer.”
“They’re–,” he hesitated for a moment, incredibly reluctant to describe them with that word but he finally continued with it, “superheroes.”
“Superheroes?” Other-Dang asked while looking confused
“Yeah,” Dang said while looking up to the right before continuing. “Uh, like Superman? All-Might?”
Other-Dang shook his head in confusion. “We, uh, we don’t have those on my world. What do they do?”
“Well, Superman and All-Might are fictional…from comics and manga’s…wait, you do have manga on your world, right?”
“Yes,” Other-Dang nodded. “Of course.”
“Okay, good,” Dang sounded relieved. “As I was saying, Superman and All-Might are fictional ones. But this world’s got real ones. Like Tiger and Wombat. They’ve got powers, they dress up and they’re reliable in the field,” Dang went on. “But they’re teenagers and a little naive and easily excited so you should probably keep that in the back of your mind. So do not call them or get them involved in this. Not now, at least.”
“Okay,” Other-Dang nodded.
Once he was done with his shower, he changed into clean, ironed clothes, wearing a simple black shirt with the top two buttons undone, blue jeans, and white sneakers, and smoothing his hair as best he could. After, he checked on Other-Dang again to find him still immersed in whatever he was doing on the computer.
He helped himself out of the house, burying his hands in his pockets as he embarked on the walk to his car. It was a rather nippy morning, one filled with all of the warning signs of inbound winter.
That annoyed him.
Winter was his least favorite time of the year. The snow was a particularly irritating obstacle to deal with in his line of work, considering it introduced a whole new set of variables he had to plan for. Not to mention, he lived in an observatory on a mountain so winter was especially harsh to him all the way up there. He wondered if Other-Dang’s cybertech could withstand the cold that would come when winter arrived.
Actually, no, it must have been able to. After all, Other-Dang probably had winters in his universe and must have handled them just fine. Or was he from a universe where it was summer all year long? Or spring?
Was that even possible? Did his Earth rotate differently than Dang’s did. Was the existence of aliens confirmed in his world?
A whole new set of questions and thoughts bombarded Dang as he walked to the car but once he was behind the wheel and had ignited the engine, he pushed all of those questions and thoughts to the back of his head and reorganized himself. His first stop of the day was the New Beginnings and Future Hopes [NBFH] shelter downtown which catered to the homeless, orphans, people with disabilities, and the elderly.
The shelter was important to him, and he’d made it a personal tradition of his to visit whenever he’d completed a bodyguard gig, all so he could donate to them and keep them running, considering it was a privately-owned and run shelter that often struggled to secure funding from the government. It was his donations that had made it possible for the shelter to move out of a small, rodent-infested brick building on 5th Avenue to a large, five-story building downtown, with a lot more space to shelter those in need of it, as well as much less of a rodent problem.
He brought his car to a stop in the parking lot behind the shelter, then alighted from it and took the rear entrance in, which meant he had to pass through the kitchen. When he strode into the kitchen through the back, he was immediately met with cheers by the cooks there, with Joseph–a particularly burly man who’d been there for as long as Dang could remember–actually stopping what he was doing to give Dang a hug.
“If it ain’t our hero!” Joseph roared. “Dang!” he gave Dang a firm pat on the back and shook him excitedly. The others swarmed Dang too and he felt hands on his head, rubbing excitedly, roughing up hair that had taken quite some time to make presentable.
Once the cooks relented in their excitement at seeing him and let him pass, he headed into the main shelter, looking around at just how much it’d changed. There were a group of people that were sitting in one corner, watching a game of football between Chelsea and Manchester City on the television, and they cheered when a Chelsea player put the ball in the back of the net to make it 3-1. It was an old highlight–Dang remembered that game.
There was another group sitting around someone who stood in front of a whiteboard, pointing at words that had been written with a black marker. The language class, intended for people who hadn’t had access to education or for immigrants who didn’t understand English very well.
A third group was gathered around a table tennis table, participating in some sort of tournament–it was mostly teenagers here. He walked past the table tennis players and greeted them as he did. A few of them greeted back, some of whom recognized him and greeted rather cheerfully.
He started toward the stairs that led to the first floor, even though there was an elevator and escalator in the building–he just preferred the little workout that regular stairs provided.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Just before the stairs, there were kids sitting at a table, they looked to be to be about fourteen-years-old, both of them blindfolded as they played chess. He stopped by them and watched with arms folded, curious about if this was just some fun little thing they were doing or if they actually were capable of playing a serious game of chess without their eyes.
Much to his surprise, they played almost like they weren’t blindfolded at all, like they had an image of the chess board printed in their minds. He got so immersed watching them play that he forgot all about why he’d really come to the shelter, sticking around until the game of chess concluded, his mouth hanging wide open by then.
One of the boys who’d played, a silver-haired boy with bushy eyebrows, chubby cheeks and a round chin turned around, his face tilted in Dang’s direction, three layers of blindfolds over his eyes. “You look surprised,” the boy said, speaking in a British accent, a somewhat rugged one. “Why’s that?”
“How–,” Dang was confused. “Are those even real blindfolds?”
“We can see without our eyes,” the boy answered. “I’m Caleb, by the way. This here’s my brother, Chase. We’re twins.”
Dang looked at the other chess player. He had a thinner face than Caleb and his hair was a sandy colored blonde, his chin pointy, his lips curled into a grin. He waved in Dang’s direction. “You’re Dang,” Chase said. “The Gift Bearer.”
Dang, looking puzzled, paused and thought for a moment before asking "How do... you know who I am?”
“They talk about you a lot here,” Caleb answered. “You were here once too, weren’t you? They say you had no memories of your past but that you were a good kid, helpful to have around. Said you could do things, kind of like we can. Could you show us your powers?”
“Wait,” Dang took a step back. “So, you’re saying the blindfold thing, the two of you being able to see the chess board without eyes, it’s an ability?”
“Yes,” the brothers answered in unison. “We call it Perception. We can perceive the entire world around us without needing to see it, it’s almost like it’s our skin collecting all of that data and information, transmitting to us in unison. Chase continued "We call it….brains,
“And we can do more than that too,” Caleb added. He pointed a finger at a chess piece on the board and Dang watched in awe as the piece levitated one, two, three -- five inches into the air. Chase made the piece spin around before bringing it right back down onto the board.
“But do you have eyes?” Dang asked. “Behind those blindfolds, I mean.”
“Of course we do,” Chase sounded a little offended. “What, you think we were born without eyes? Everyone has eyes, mister. It just so happens that we have to keep ours covered for personal reasons.”
“What personal reasons?” Dang inquired.
“We’d rather not talk about it,” Caleb said sharply, a tone of finality that meant: Drop it. No further questions.
“Huh-huh” Dang nodded. “Well, I’ve got to head on up to see Anna but if you two are still down here when I’m done, what say we play a game of chess?”
“You’ll lose,” Chase said smugly.
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Dang smiled and then he started up the stairs, mulling his head over the twins. Abilities like theirs, that was incredibly impressive, and the shelter was helping them, just like it’d helped him.
He went past others in the corridor of the first floor and exchanged greetings with them as he made his way to Anna’s office. He knocked on the door before helping himself in and he found Anna Li behind her desk, sipping on a mug of Coffee. Her brown hair already being streaked with lines of gray; her face already wrinkled with the first signs aging settling in.
She smiled as soon as Dang walked in and set her mug down.
“Dang,” she said and rose to her feet. She went toward him and gave him a warm hug. She smelled the same as he remembered. Like roses.
Once she pulled away, she rubbed his cheek in the same tender manner she’d liked to when he’d been a kid here all those years ago, after which she returned to her seat and gestured for him to have his.
“How’ve things been going?” she asked. “With work and you know, everything else. Your life generally.”
Dang shrugged. “I guess it’s been fine. Had to protect Jonathan Cage at a gala yesterday, he’d been worried about someone trying to assassinate him.”
“All the environment pollution he’s responsible for and the real estate he’s been snapping up, rendering people homeless, he’s right to be worried of such a thing,” Anna shook her head angrily, making known her distaste for the man. “I don’t know why you agree to protect some of these men. They’re not worthy of it.”
“It’s good money,” Dang reminded her. “Money that goes a long way in aiding the people and causes that I care about.”
“Right, right,” she sighed. “Still, I hate that prick.”
“That’s obvious,” Dang laughed a little.
“Oh, so you laugh now?” Anna asked, teasing him with a smile. “That’s a good change.”
“I’ve always laughed with you, Anna.”
“But not with others?”
“No,” Dang shook his head. “Not with others.”
“Tell me, Dang, have you ever thought about getting yourself a girlfriend?” Anna asked, eyeing him curiously.
Dang’s eyes went wide at once and he stammered as he tried to get out a response to the question he hadn’t expected. Finally, he gave up and instead asked: “Why would you ask me that?!”
“Nothing,” Anna said. “It’s just, you’re not getting any younger. And I hate to see you lonely. You should be happy.”
“I am happy,” Dang responded unconvincingly. “Very happy, even.”
“I think we both know that’s not true,” Anna sighed. “But fine, I’ll drop it. I won’t pester you about that sort of stuff. Although, if you were looking to date someone, there’s a girl who helps out here at the shelter, Sasha Storm, she’s incredible. Intelligent, powerful, kind, the right age, and she’s got all the right things a man might be looking for in a partner.”
“Why does it sound like you’re trying to hook me up with this person?” Dang scowled.
Anna gave him a coy smile. “What? I would never.”
“I’ll think about it,” Dang said. “But just so you know, I’m not lonely. I’ve actually got sort of like a roommate now.”
“In that observatory of yours?” Anna snorted. “Must be frightening for your roommate. Who is he?”
Dang grinned. “Well, that’s the trippy part. It’s me.”
Anna laughed "I don't follow."
Before Dang went ahead to inform her of the night’s multiversal events, he made sure her computer was unplugged, both their phones switched off and placed a sufficient distance away from them, all the windows fully sealed, and the blinds drawn over them so that the room was barely lit. And to make sure they really weren’t being listened in on, he checked her vents, an action that she described as a ‘lunatic’s paranoia’.
Finally, once he was comfortable enough to speak, he told her all about the construction site, skipping no details about what had happened and how he was now living with a cybernetic doppelganger. The entire time he spoke, she followed along with a serious expression on her face, nodding every few seconds to indicate she was still following along and paying attention to every tidbit of information he parted with.
When he was done narrating all of it to her, he expected that she would sound a little afraid or look a little in shock seeing as he’d just revealed to her that there was a chance that some lunatic conqueror was on his way to enslave Earth.
Instead, all she did was shake her head and say: “Boy, the world’s getting crazier every day, isn’t it? If it’s not careless shootings or increasing taxes, it’s universe-scale invasions. I tire of all of this; I’m getting too old for it.”
Dang frowned at the woman, wondering if she was starting to go senile in her old age. “Wait, you’re not worried about this?”
She looked off into the distance with impassiveness. “Why would I be worried about something that’s entirely out of my control? If some psycho is going to appear right out of nowhere and enslave or destroy our planet, it doesn’t sound a lot like there’s anything I can do about it, right?” She then turned her head towards Dang and gave him a warm child-like smile. “But there’s two of you now and the way you described this other Dang, he sounds every bit as special as the one I raised. I have faith that the both of you will be able to do something about all of this. And if you need help, you’ve got those Tiger and Wombat lads to help you out, haven’t you?”
“They’re teenagers,” Dang replied.
“So are you,” she reminded him. “I seem to recall a much younger you sneaking out of the shelter to deal with some thugs who’d dropped by earlier in the day to stir up some trouble and force some money out of our hands,” Anna spoke softly. “You did all of this and returned as though nothing happened. It was only when I woke up and found that the money stolen had been returned to my purse that I decided to look into it. Imagine my surprise when I found out five grown-up armed thugs had been hospitalized, and that the footage of the attack showed a boy just about your height and size was responsible for doing it.”
“I never confessed to that,” Dang said.
“You didn’t need to,” Anna smiled. “I looked through your clothes and you just so happened to own the exact hoodie and sweatpants the boy in the footage owned. I got rid of it so the cops wouldn’t trace it to you.”
“I thought someone at the shelter stole my clothes,” Dang remembered. “I came to you to complain about it but you just said it was fine and that you’d get me new ones.”
“I used the money you returned to replace the clothes.”
“You never mentioned that to me.”
“I didn’t need to,” Anna smiled. “But the point is, kids are as pure as humans ever are. At that stage, they’re not thinking about a lot other than doing the right thing. So, you shouldn’t write off the teenage heroes just because of their adolescence, it might be just that which makes them suitable allies. And if you need more help, we’ve got a few special kids here at the shelter.”
“Like Chase and Caleb?”
“You’ve met them?”
“Yep. Where’d you find them?”
“I didn’t,” Anna smiled. “They found us. Just like you did. They sort of just wandered in here one afternoon, didn’t remember much about who they were or where they came from. But I knew at once something was different with them, the same way it’d been different with you. We’re helping them with what they can do. Maybe you could help too.”
“I’ve got a lot on my plate–,”
“I know, I know,” Anna said quickly. “But when you don’t, okay?”
“Okay.”
After their conversation, Dang sent Anna $100,000 for the shelter, exactly half the sum he’d been paid by Jonathan Cage. Afterward, he headed downstairs for the game of chess he’d promised and he wasn’t at all surprised when they handed him his ass in five consecutive games of chess, although to be fair, he was one man playing against twins.
By the fifth game, people had gathered around to observe, many of whom were rooting for him, in hopes that he might knock the twins off their throne. But it was not to be.
After the fifth game, Chase shook his head in disappointment.
“What’s that?” Dang asked.
“You’re really good,” Chase commented. “But you’re a loner.”
“What?”
“You try to do a lot with your king,” Caleb explained. “You put him in dangerous situations, and only rely on the other pieces when things get tough. You’d beat an amateur with tactics like that and maybe a few semi-pros but in the big leagues, playing like that would get you destroyed. The king has limited moves in chess for a reason–,”
“--And that’s because he’s expected to rely on his pawns, bishops, rooks, knights, and queen,” Chase finished. “He can’t win on his own, only with the help of those around him. You’re trying to win alone, and that’s why you keep losing.”
After the game, Dang got ready to leave but spoke with a few of the other kids at the shelter, two of whom asked for help with an upcoming race derby. Dang gave them advice on running poses that optimized mobility and pace, and promised he’d come watch the race.
After leaving the shelter, Dang mulled over the words of advice from the twins for a bit before getting on with some of the lesser important things he had to do that day, one of which included turning in for his part-time job at the café. A job where he didn’t get paid but did just to kill time on some days.
He worked until evening before leaving and heading to report in at his other job. This job just involved just involved him watching over a billionaire’s house while the billionaire attended some all-so-important conference that required him to leave his wife and kids unattended to and with little security.
Dang was bored with the job for a while, until he finally spotted a black van pull up outside the house with armed men climbing out and immediately spreading around the house. He sat up on the rooftop across the street from the house where he’d been observing, a grin on his face.
“Finally.”
The criminals put in a much harder challenge than the ones he’d faced at the Quantum Lab in school but much less of a challenge than the ones at the gala or even the sentinels. Once he’d taken them all down and had them taken away by the authorities, he resumed watch over the house until the billionaire returned with his security team around eleven at night.
The billionaire paid him, sending over $300,000 for a job efficiently done, considering Dang had taken down the criminals without any damage being done to the property or to its occupants.
Dang got in his car and was driving home when his phone suddenly started to wail as his alarm went off. The sudden alarm startled him and caused him to swerve to the side of the road and bring the vehicle to a halt, which resulted in the truck that’d been right behind him honking loudly, the driver stuck his head out the window to yell curses at Dang, all of which got ignored.
Dang reached for his phone and furrowed at the Red Alert flashing on his screen. Tiger’s profile image just above the alert; a transmission coming in from the superhero.
Dang accepted the transmission and Tiger’s voice yelled through his phone speaker at once. “Oi, Dang man!” There was an explosion in the background. “Uh, we could use some assistance! We’re under attack and uh, this dude looks kind of like you!”
There was some silence.
“Actually, he says he is you! Get here. Quick!”