“Hey,” Nikki says. “Let’s write a message to ourselves. Just so we know what’s going on. We might remember, but in case we don’t.” We jot down an account of all that has happened. Stranger leaves while we do this. At least I think they do, since it’s hard to tell when they’re around and we’re focusing on other stuff. I try to ask Other where they went, but they just express confusion. Since it’s not too important, I forget about it.
We head out soon after, to the communication point and post our letters. We assume they go directly to the book of whoever sent them, and I’ll guess we find out tomorrow. Or today. Or whatever. For now, we need to think of some way to pass the time – Other also wants something to do; I can feel their boredom. We decide to go on a road trip.
Nikki has to drive off-road due to the abundance of abandoned cars, which have mostly crashed into each other, not leaving enough room for us. Other feels entertained, and I’m smiling despite the fact we can’t see all that much in the darkness, and might collide with any number of things. At least we’re driving slowly.
“Do you think animals went away?” Nikki asks me.
“Like the people did?”
“Yeah. If you were Jesus and it was the second coming, but you decided nah, let’s not bring about the apocalypse, let’s do this weird shit instead, do you think you’d leave animals in these worlds or not?”
“That’s one big hypothetical,” I grin. “If I was Jesus, I guess I would. Remove only what’s not necessary, so just other people.”
“I was thinking the same.” Nikki returns to the road since there’s a clear stretch. “Are you Jesus, though?”
“Am I?”
“I’ve been wondering. You’re just like … her, you, whatever. But that could be faked.”
“I don’t think we should doubt each other, Nikki. What else do we have?”
“That’s exactly what someone who didn’t want to get caught would say.” I pout and Nikki laughs. “It’s also exactly what you would say, and you’re right. We’ll believe in each other, if nothing else.” I laugh quietly. “But something is off about this. It’s obvious James and Amelia don’t share a world with anyone else. I don’t know if we should let them know we do.”
I don’t ask why. I know it might make us seem suspicious. “I feel like they wouldn’t mistrust us because of it, though.”
“You say that now, but we’re going to be with them for a long while. Mistrust grows.”
“Only if we let it.”
“I guess so …” Nikki sighs. “Want to explore? There’s a shop with scented candles. Might be nice to decorate our base a bit.” It is a good idea.
We stop the car outside, and, using the same metal bat I used previously, we break into the store. We start sniffing the candles, pick the best ones, and place them in some bags we found behind the counter. A place where every item has a unique smell is a good place to ‘shop’ when it’s so dark. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to smell so well before. Once we’ve made our way to the back of the store, I notice Other has vanished. Presumably they aren’t capable of smell, so they got bored.
Nikki’s silhouette is clearly visible because of the car lights, and I’m holding a small, orange-scented candle, which I throw. Nikki catches it, grins and throws it back, aiming above my head – I can’t tell how much it missed by, but I can feel my hair being disarrayed by its passing. Nikki mocks the surprised sound I made, and I pick up another candle, tempted to continue this fight, but there is a chance that Nikki would be hit, and I don’t want to hurt them. They’re now standing close enough to notice my deliberation and they say to me “If you want to fight a bit, we could go to the mattress store nearby. There will be plenty of pillows.” I nod, and we take the bags back to the car, climbing out of the broken window carefully.
Not carefully enough, however, since I end up with a cut on my hand (not the same one I cut earlier). I ask Nikki if there are any plasters in the car and they find some for me. I thank them and am about to take them, but they withdraw them from my reach.
“Let me put it on.”
“Isn’t that … a bit unusual?”
“If you’re concerned about things being unusual I have some rather unfortunate news.” I laugh, and Nikki applies the plaster; more skilfully than I could using only one hand.
“Do you want to sleep in the mattress store tonight?”
“Sure,” I say. “Better than sleeping on the floor. Other and Stranger probably won’t miss us too much.”
Nikki laughs. “I’m being very roundabout here … but I guess I have to ask explicitly at some point.”
“Ask what?”
“Would you like to have sex?”
“I mean, yes. I want to have sex at some point in my life.”
“Do you really think that’s what I meant?”
“It seems most likely … but I guess that means it isn’t.” I blush, and even though it’s very dark, I feel like it’s unmissable. “Yes, then. To the question you really asked.”
Nikki holds my hand and pulls me into the mattress store – I can’t really keep up and trip once, but Nikki catches me. Once we get inside, we begin what I guess is foreplay: we roll around, jump, and have pillow fights; we leap down from cabinets onto mattress, laughing so much; and we play hide-and-seek for hours. Nikki grabs me, and I find myself pinned to walls, beds, furnishings. I can hardly see their face, but I can feel them. Finally, we do have sex, and a lot of it, and there are scented candles (pomegranate, of course), and biting. (painful biting, teasing biting) and we have a really good time. Nikki tells me how much they’re enjoying me all through the night, and I tell them how happy I am just as much. I’ve never enjoyed anything as much as this. But the details are mine and Nikki’s alone, and no-one else is allowed to have them.
#
Nikki informs me of what we did last night by showing me their letter. I show them mine and we have the exact number of points we expected to have given the details in the letters. The letters say nothing of our intercourse, but I remember that. And this reminds me that we share a world. Nikki brings it up, telling me: “I don’t think we should inform James and Amelia just yet.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Why not? If we start mistrusting them–”
“We don’t know if we can trust them yet, so this isn’t the start of mistrust. Besides, we have an even bigger secret. It wasn’t just us in that world.”
“So … those are non-entities.”
“They must be. I wasn’t expecting that; not to find them so easily, and especially not to get on with them. It might be dangerous, but keeping them in our world will give us the best chance of finding a time-altering one. If one exists.” Nikki rolls out of the bed. “We’re meant to go meet with them after waking, right? Because the experience is fresher.” I remember this rule, so we write down what we remember in the journals we were given, get dressed and arrive in the control room where Amelia is sitting with her face buried in her arms. James is sagging into his chair and does nothing more than move his eyes to greet us when we come in. Once we sit down, he clears his throat and says good morning.
“So,” he begins, “does anyone have anything interesting to report?”
Amelia raises her head to shake it. “It was a pretty regular event. I got an absolute load of points, though. Some event about a wheel … can’t really remember it properly. Have all of you done the same?”
James shakes his head. “I remember a task about a wheel, but I never found it in the end.”
“It was in the brewery. The abandoned one,” Amelia says.
“We didn’t find it either,” Nikki says. “We’ll look there next time, though.”
“Yes, that’s very helpful.” James notes this down and then looks at us. “Did either of you experience anything interesting?”
“No. We spent most of the time looking for the wheel,” I say. I know it’s not true, but I also know I couldn’t hesitate to say this. We have to tell them eventually, but not right now. Not until I’ve convince Nikki it’s right. James accepts my answers. “Then I have just a few more things to say, then we can head off. Firstly, I need to inform you both in a bit more details about our plans. We didn’t really want to tell you this before we sealed the bunker, but ultimately it doesn’t matter when we do: we’re certain that time altering non-entities exist. Jesus spoke of them, and said they were, in fact, common. We’re confident that we can capture one before the required time.”
“I see. Do you have any more secrets?” Nikki asks, leaning forward.
“There are things Jesus said which may be important, but I can’t say if they are or aren’t yet. I also can’t tell you everything they’ve ever said to us, but you’re welcome to look through the emails – I can forward them to you later.”
“I would like that.”
James notes this down. “That brings me to my second point. We’ve recently received another video message – it’s titled ‘Funny Survey Answers’. Obviously, he wasn’t being very serious, but he might mention something interesting.” After scrolling through his phone for a few seconds, the video starts playing on the big screen.
“Hey colleagues. Former colleagues. Even if the whole project has gone to pot, I was still interested in getting some feedback in case we wanted to try again some time – who knows, we might do – so I made it a task to answer a survey. I wasn’t going to look at these, but then I got curious, so I read them all. Most were … fairly awful. The mean scores for Fun, Design, Clarity of Explanation were all less than 0.0001. The mean score for originality was about 0.764ish though, so hey, at least we got that right. But the really entertaining bit was the ‘Further Comments’ section. Now, most people didn’t bother writing any, but a lot did, and here are the best:
‘Call Leon for a good time at 1123581321’
‘YOUR FUCKING GAME KILLED MY FAMILY’
‘Try harder – I’ve already bested you.’
‘What’s green and goes camping? A Brussel scout.’
‘Thanks.’
Okay, well maybe they aren’t that funny to you, but I found them damn hilarious. Especially if you look into the lives of the individuals who wrote these. I can’t betray their privacy so I’m afraid you guys won’t get why they’re so funny, but hopefully this entertained you all a bit. I know I’m getting so bored now that I’m out of the job. Anyway, nice chatting. This is Jesus Christ, signing out.”
Amelia laughs a bit and then buries her head in her arms again. She mutters something about how useless JC is. James lets out a long sign and Nikki just looks amused as they slowly shake their head. They stretch and then get up. “Well … that was a bit pointless. I hope all of their emails aren’t like that.”
“No, but very many are. You can tell which ones will be, but there is the slightest chance even trivial ones contain important information.” James gets up too. “I’m going to head back to bed. I’ll be watching a film when I get up – would anyone like me to wake them at that time?”
Amelia gives a thumbs up, not raising her head. “Yeah, but if I don’t respond leave me be.”
“I’m good,” says Nikki.
I say I’m good too.
“See you all later, then.” We all head back to our rooms, but Nikki doesn’t enter. They tell me they’re going to have their breakfast ration and go to the kitchen. I acknowledge this and leave the door unlocked for when they come later.
I’m curled up on the bed, and my phone tells me it’s 06:26. I drift into a state like sleep, except I don’t feel like I’m asleep. I check my phone again – it’s 08:36. I blink and then jump a bit when I hear a thud from the wall opposite the bed. That’s Amelia’s room. I would have thought nothing of it, but it happens again, so I crawl to the wall and press my ear against the wall. I can hear faint thuds every couple of minutes, but nothing else. Eventually they cease, and a few minutes after that I hear the door open – before it is, I’ve made it into bed and am lying still and forcing my breath to be slow. Nikki lies down next to me. Time passes and eventually they decide to get up. When I hear faint voices, I get up too.
It’s 18:03 and everyone is having their lunch rations – we watch another film while we eat, but there isn’t much talking. There are a lot of yawns, the occasional comment towards the quality of the writing, and James and Amelia exchange some digs at an old mutual friend of theirs who liked the film. When it finishes Nikki grabs a book and heads back to our room. I follow them.
Once we’re inside Nikki locks the door and takes out their copy of Your Ideal Selves and starts to browse.
“You want a new self?”
“Yes. Although I might not purchase it just yet – the system’s a bit unfair, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I see that. You can spend a load on one self, but to get the slightest improvement, you’d need to make up that much again.”
“Exactly. So, we should be careful what we buy – only if it seems like it will massively increase our productivity. I mentioned that in my review. Say, do you think that was yours they read too?”
“The ‘Thanks’?” I ask. “Maybe. But lots of people might have wrote that.”
“It’s pretty weird, either way. That at least one of ours should be read out loud.”
“I guess … but what you said is unusual. Are you trying to play a mind game?”
Nikki flicks to the end of their book, makes a note, and then closes it. “Something like that, yes. I wasn’t expecting to actually get a reaction – it was mostly just for fun.”
“I see. Did James forward you the emails?”
“Oh,” Nikki says. “Good point. I’ll check.” They look at their phone and inform me they have 114 new emails. “Yep, they say. I’ll start getting through these now. Want to read them with me?”
I nod and, so we lie next to each other on the bed, reading through each email, and watching each video – sometimes more than once if we notice something particularly interesting. We get through a lot of them before I get bored and start reading The History of Board Games. It’s not that good, so I skip to the Rules section and learn two new facts about the game: 1. Although it’s attributed to Wizards of the Coast, the true inventor of it was never found, 2. A very similar game is described in a four-hundred-year-old book, but it’s impossible to verify if this is coincidence or not. I decide to tell Nikki about it later, but they’re still very pre-occupied with the Jesus emails.
“Do you think the different way we see them is physical or psychological?”
“I don’t know how any of this works,” I say, “but psychological? It just seems easier to change what people think they see than what they actually see.”
“Right, I agree. So maybe there’s a way for us to see what Jesus really looks like.”
“How?”
“If it’s an illusion it transfers through cameras, right? It probably does is through mirrors and stuff too, but maybe there’s some way to catch it out. Extreme example, but what if we got a really intensely bright image to burn into something. Even if it is physical, it would produce some pretty weird effects.”
“That’s a really good idea. But how?”
“No idea … maybe if we got a Plasma TV and get an image to burn into that.”
“Good idea,” I say. Nikki smiles and goes back to looking through the emails. I switch books and I remain in the room for the rest of the day – except for when I go out to get out dinner rations. As James promised, they’re substantial.