IF LIFE WAS GUNNA BE LIKE THIS THEN WHY GIVE US THE PAIN WHEN ITS CLEAR WE CAN'T LIVE IN IT
WHY IT MATTERED IN THE FIRST PLACE
MIND HEART BODY HURTS – WHATEVER THIS YEAR AND TODAY IS
There was more to the visually gibbering, rambling chalk passage on the sidewalk, but fed up teen living in this life understood that bit well and well enough.
The dust was so caked in, it would take a good month for this message to disappear. The words themselves were blocky, bled all over and into each other, creating this premeditated, shapely stain that quibbled and swerved by desperation.
"E's" were fat, "R's" always curved into the personal space of the other letters, causing them to bend, overlap, causing the effect to carry on, not lessen. All with their respective deformities and weaknesses united these letters because they were dragged out for too long. When the author didn't realize that it was way too late to let up on the chalk, to let the letters form and end. Or they just didn't care more.
This message had to get out of that someone's mind, because every single second that it remained there, it would damage it further.
She was walking, looking downwards before spotting the mess all over the asphalt. Being in her state of mind, she could not help but to look through it, find something within this mess. She's been doing that more lately than the things she once dedicated herself to do.
Going for a run, the very thing that kept vented her emotions healthy, methodized. She couldn't care more about logic--reason as she let her routine degrade, couldn't care more about reason right now.
But she was getting mad again. She had to focus—focus that anger again, as she pulled out her phone, as it briefly reflected the setting sun as she whipped it from her blue sweat jacket, and walked down the barely maintained, broken sidewalk.
Away from it. Away from that… The thing she refused to think about. The thing that caused that poor soul to scribble the sidewalk, the reason why said sidewalk was broken beyond repair—that twisted, curved, and made things that were impossible to twist, curve, and exist—
She shook her head fierce, despite what rattled within it and rattled her. She can't be like them, despite her time running out.
She watched the world lethargically accelerate into misery and weirdness through her phone. Reminding herself to lighten her grip on it was a new thing for her to learn many things.
Through search results, snapshots, information codexes, news articles, wiki articles, wikis themselves, speculations, testimonials, lost reports, current reports, speculative reports, video clips and public service announcements perfectly painted how utterly confusing this "transition" was. Is.
A spectrum that also worked as a pendulum, showcasing events breaking everything again, the response, being lost in the myriad of confusion, and then applying tape towards the strongholds and institutions that lost progress for years now. Most days, all in that order, randomly selecting some on others, as the pendulum also swings in a 3D space.
Because fuck you, humanity.
But this wasn't the first time, and that made the girl even more furious. She read this over and over, possibly for two years of new stuff downpouring into the fold, and it all was supposed to make sense.
For it all to click, to prove that maybe she's letting herself fall into hysteria, that she needed to calm down and act like an adult that she's going to be, and she'd take that. She'd accept it without question.
But all this proves is what she got out of these signs; that the nature of all this insanity is somehow more terrifying than she ever thought.
And yet we're not pulling ourselves together.
Sick of this, this literal madness. All of it. But all that changes tonight, even if she comes out of this worse. Even if she becomes the latest victim of this…thing that she must face. What she and others once thought of as reality.
Then her phone had the nerve to annoy her with that damn pop up.
This device has experienced critical Shift influence, which can make it more susceptible to overload. ORACLE upgrade needed, have docking device required for the conversion?
Before she could smash the screen in with her thumb, the alert that she was looking for told her that the bus was pulling up, which she confirmed when she saw it coming, emerging from the blaring sunlight to shield her eyes when it stopped at the curve.
That alert interrupted that pop-up, and Jackie found herself sighing within a body wrecked with both heat and exhaustion. It was so intimate with her, associated with her, nowadays, and she couldn't stand it. She clucthed her head and felt her grip weak...
Her headache pounded her mind when it's been asking it to stop for weeks, her brow furrowing for long periods when the action still feels off to her, and finally, the stress from her muscles constantly tensing ached when she couldn't handle it stabbing into her before.
All these things made dull and apparent when she walked into the bus, and the driver asked if she was okay. She simply lied with a nod when she counted how many times she lied on a hand.
She wasn't like this. Everything wasn't like this.
She realized that she's been thinking in circles, in that dreaded "death spiral." Tonight. It had to be tonight.
The teen sat in front of the bus, as the said pair of seats were against steel walls while the rest faced towards the front, to the ascending raised the second level. There were a decent mix of people, off duty construction workers, people on their way to their night jobs, seniors, bratty teenagers, office workers, women with their children, the works.
This normalcy soothed her, at least. But she does find it crazy that one of the tossed away pieces she took for granted was public transportation of all things. Systems and their purposes for the people she's always been for, but even then…
Taking a breath, she lifted her phone and scrolled along further. Working up the courage to do the next step as she tried to set her jaw…
She felt the stare before she heard the voice, "Now I don't know much about those phones, but I think you'll break it if you keep that up." Jovial statement and tone, but clearly out of passerby concern.
As the voice talked, the teen looked at who's she's going to answer. An older woman, portly, nearly taking up the two seats even without her typical elderly brown bag. Wearing all black, dress, gloves and even hat, it was hard exactly to make out her face as it was covered with a screen. Still, even without seeing where the eyes are exactly, it's polite to look one in the eyes.
"You've still got it in a mighty death grip!" the old-timey woman chirped. Her voice had a ravaged quality to it, like it was more than the passage of time that affected it, versus some accident or outside force.
Along with the grip, the girl's guard was lowered, calmed, as she responded, "Sorry ma'am. I got caught up on something."
The old timey woman made a droning sound, the girl at least picked up on the context clues that she's going "ahhh…" quickly. She maintained the "eye contact," even as the bus kept moving.
"Trust me, you kids need to stop worrying and—what's your name?" the old woman asked abruptly.
"Jackie," she answered affirmatively.
"Jackie, you're going to be more fine than whatever your worrying's saying otherwise, dear."
There was a forced smile despite herself. While it's the typical response, the usual appeal to wishful thinking, Jackie was taught to obey authority and has a natural inclination to do so as well. No need to argue back that sentiment was useless.
Maybe all beliefs, or values, or human progress; useless now.
The feeling of the old woman's stare vanished. Closed her eyes? Jackie saw her crane her head to the window, where the fading sun was incredibly bright. Jackie guessed that she saw through the smile…
She hated this, dealing with this, this whole thing wearing on her, changing her.
This thing, this whole thing, changing her in such a way that it's becoming subtle. Jackie stewed in silence as the disgust instantly plopped into the pit of her stomach. She hated this.
Jackie snapped her head toward the old lady, as she exclaimed softly but pregnant, "Oh no…"
Her eyes darted to the window, turning to face it regardless of what she had to do with her body, twisting it around. She, along with those now trapped on the bus, had to watch reality flutter apart.
It started as visual static, simmering as it vibrated the shutdown city shops and neighborhood vista apart. The gleaming orange hue outside collapsed within the flutter, and now it started to creep into the very bus.
Everyone started to rustle about, vocalize their fear in shouts, and they could only do that as the simmering got thicker, as everything started to fall apart.
"Oh nonononononon—" Jackie turned toward smudge that was once a mother of two, the children's cries droning into a fever-pitch. "Not now, not my babies, PLEASE NOT NOW--!"
"Fuck!" what was the bus driver shouted out genuinely, as he scrambled for the intercom, finding it via his training in this scenario happening versus his own wit. He grabbed whatever it once looked like and spoke; "Everyone remain calm as I ready the Shift Grounding Agent, it is—"
He choked on his mistake, steadily gulping as he forces his heart back down his throat. But it was too late, "It will be on standby, I repeat, IT WILL BE ON STAND--!"
Nobody could hear him anymore. They became apart of the discourse, an unwitting choir setting the screaming, shouting, and stuttering soundtrack to their uncertain doom.
But Jackie held firm; she had to. Even if she couldn't see anything anymore beyond shifting mass and matter, she had to be a hero to these people. She had to, or else the Shift wins, and even more people will lose it—SHE HAD TO! She had to. She had to. She had to. She had to…
But it was all just too much.
It wasn't a flash; it wasn't as luminous, straying, or graceful as light. But what was once reality started to erupt into a white, growing wispy state. Everything that once was, beginning to ignite into this miasma as the humans that never belonged strained themselves screaming.
Jackie wavered, then faltered, then started to cry, finally shutting her still-quivering eyes in a brief moment of futile, hallow acceptance.
The effect quickly dissipated as the bus reformed, only to go dark.
Via the metal platelets slamming themselves down and shut, the bus was armored, then anchored onto wherever it was. Jittering into place with precision and clung into place with a final slam into the concrete outside.
The creaking, caused by the shutters coming in so fast that the metal itself wasn't ready to deploy yet, was the only audible thing aboard.
The emergency lights came on as the bus driver was inanimate, practically in a self-appointed coma as he only looked forward, arms swinging limp and drenched with sweat. The mother of two kissed her babies--toddler and infant--as their faces were red, coated with tears and stretching as they continued to holler. The bratty teens were shellshocked where they sat, and the off-duty workers looked about where they stood and posed, only realizing that they were ready to pry the door open if it had to come down to it.
Something Jackie, shaking in her seat with eyes in her eyes, noted.
She covered her mouth, fighting her body not to throw up all over the floor, as she rabbit-kicked her foot onto said floor repeatedly as she made a scene.
"Jackie, honey--!" the old woman, who dropped her cane and struggling to get up to pat the girl's back, "There's no need to fight, we were all scared--!"
Jackie croaked out a no and forced it all back down. She jumped a bit before realizing that her vision was wavering because of her heartbeat. She smudged her hands against her face to wipe the tears and sweat, "I'm not giving it the damn satisfaction--!"
"There's nothing to prove, dear--!"
Jackie had her brow furrowed, eyes wild as she snarled at the helpless lady trying to help her, "THERE NEEDS TO BE, OR ELSE EVERYTHING WON'T HAVE A POINT ANYMORE!"
She realized before that came out and shrunk back into her seat. She saw everyone looking at her. They all saw what she has become.
She felt an apology was out of the question, and only if the elder wants something like that from the person she was becoming. She silently shifted back into her seat, looking downward as she tried to ignore the whispers she heard anyways.
"Are you okay with pretty long and pretty sad stories, kid?" the old woman asked, sat down again.
Jackie nodded. Well, it was only proper to, anyway. It's better to weather the elderly's seemingly endless stories versus acting like an "upstart," thus plunging them into a somehow less coherent rant. While her mind will focus on the falling apart present, she's going to give this old lady her ear. Who knows, it could be the ear she needed, making Jackie's decision more justified.
"As you can tell, I'm pretty damn old. My time was when we didn't really know about this crazy stuff and it happened at random. I cannot tell you how scary all of it was, watching all of that tear down every single thing that we learned in class, what our parents told us and kept telling us over and over because we didn't listen… 'This is reality, this is life'. Kinda hard to reconcile when it was changing like it did."
Jackie tried evading the rebrewing feelings by responding, making it to the point so the woman could get to hers, "Must've been terrible."
"Oh Jackie…" those words conveying age more than any of her looks, temperament, or sound. "I didn't know what 'terrible' even meant back then."
The bus driver came back to live as a augmented screen appeared before him. He looked at it, looked at what it displayed, a 360, rotating cam around the vehicle, as he turned it to scan the now-normal. He sighed with a whimper, before grabbing the intercom.
"Shift Falsestart confirmed. Will be moving momentarily."
He retracted the shielding when he really didn't want to, the latches coated in black, crushed dust that covered the windows, making the orange shine dirt brown. He resumed the route as if none of that never happened.
The bus went down a turbulent road, Jackie attempting to keep still by forcing her hands into her lap, gripping her blue track pants. She looked at the woman, still not returning her hidden gaze, and she wasn't really looking at anything in particular, by impressions.
"It wasn't even anything related to that. Some storm that ended up becoming a tropical one, some high category… It was a disaster. I lost my town. I lost some of my friends, teachers, neighborhoods—even the strays weren't spared. Standing water that would've drowned me and I was 17 then. My house had a caved in hole that took the entire front of it and we had to use the wreck as some makeshift raft-harbor. The relief efforts were poor, reconstruction always ended with things breaking further and overall for the first few years, we made the mess that we were in incurable. There was nothing saving it."
A ping a guilt tore through the stagnant anger building in her chest. How could she claim to be suffering this when she didn't even know it like this strong woman had? Wrong. Completely and utterly wrong of her to think that. This shit has completely clouded her head and she somehow hated it more. Whatever "it" was.
"Hey, I said it was sad, but it has a happy ending. Sad stories can have happy endings, y'know!" that stare made her pick up her head, as it "met" the woman's eyes again. Jackie didn't know that she was too busy looking at her lap and balled fists.
"How…? I-I'm glad, but all means, but…" Jackie sputtered out.
"This is what I mean, what I was saying. We made a new 'town', we banded together old and young, figured out how to survive day to day, struggled and cursed when we had to live those days, and cried when the day rescue came; the day that we lived for… I met the man of dreams I didn't even know I had, and we've been at it for 65 years and would've been 68 had he not been a huge knucklehead. I even made friends along the way, right down to the cliché…Just came back from the funeral for one of them. She was my bestest friend."
Jackie blinked rapidly at that; she felt her eyes burn a bit. "My condolences."
"When you went through a life like we did, there's… Something about it that made it lengthy, a lifetime filled with details even if it was seventy-six and only fifty mattered… But listen to me, dear. I could be completely wrong. Maybe you guys are too stacked against this, too outgunned by whatever all this is, maybe the human race more or less ends during your time and there's nothing that you could've done… But I'm sure you all will survive that, this, somehow. I don't believe misery is all you need to build character, but believe that even when something like this happens, there's the terrible and the good, and they're both extreme. And you're in the middle of that, and you can learn from both. Grow from them. Become better from them."
The bus settled down, as the road smoothed out and the woman's words could be heard loud and clear to Jackie. She put a hand on hers.
"If this ditzy, daydreaming girl got to live to become an old woman, I'm sure someone like you can double my record," as she smiled as she said the next bit, that being clear from the shroud. "So stop getting those wrinkles when you don't need 'em! Life will give them plenty, along with scars, along with pain. No need to add anymore."
Jackie could only exhale at that, whatever words she could've said didn't matter. She took her words in, they didn't settle into where she needed them, but she let it sit close to her all the same. "I didn't…," Jackie found the words that she can say, "Get your name, ma'am."
"Edith", she answered.
"Thank you, Edith ma'am. Your story is amazing and I'm so, so honored to have met you. You gave me something to think about," Jackie warmly smiled, truly did.
Edith's now revealed smile of her own beamed, under the ancientness of her face. Her mouth moved, "I just wanted to help you, dearie. You seemed so… Angry. Sad. Worried?"
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Jackie looked back at her phone, she sighed as her emotions came flooding back, her face finding itself back into his new shape.
"No… I guess I'm just like everyone else. Lost."
The bus stopped and the destination alert caught Jackie's attention as she looked down at the phone again. This was the place. She waved at Edith as she walked out of it, stepping back out into the darkness.
Jackie walked down the street, with the impressive lights surrounding her, burying her face into a light of her own.
The sun was waning, dark enough for the city deem it to be a night. It would've been 7 PM. Her head rose from her phone to admire the sun drowning within the orange, cloudy haze, lacing throughout with brown. That was normal. That eased her.
That eased her a bit before returning to what she's going to do. Knowing that "tomorrow" can easily cloud this view gave her the resolve to cross this line.
The messages screen bothered her again. It felt like it shanked her blue eyes, and they were as far as she's concerned. She closed them again, to gain some semblance of relief, and sighed. Sweerishh was the sound that ripped from her sleeve racing against her sweat-suits shirt.
The phone, what didn't weight more than what she could lift daily, dragged her arm down to her side instantly for the millionth time. She just couldn't do it. This was against everything that Jackie stands for.
But as she opened her eyes, scanning across the empty, gleaming streets, the unease returned. The orange-brown haze cloaked the areas the lights barely reached, giving off stagnation.
Cars parked with no signs of owners on her left, stores that are open on a technically on her right, with a lone bus-stop pole that comes with the guaranteed, hour-long wait if not at all tonight, she looked at it all. It was motivation enough. She knew she had to go there, and she has to do this.
Jackie felt silly, stopping at the bus-stop while still looking at it. She made it her physical-metaphorical line, her crossroad. She looked at her phone again, biting her lip cringing, knowing that she can't cross it without crossing the line that doesn't have the benefit of being so well drawn. Tangible.
She pressed on her father's direct message channel and began typing. "Gonna run for a bit longer. Today kinda…left me in a funk. Totally fine if you reject given what's going to happen, but I"
The text stopped when she froze. Thumb twitching held back to stop. The text ceased to exist when she slammed against the backspace key repeatedly.
"Went for a run longer than usual. Today was pretty bad. I'm steering clear of anliarliarliarliarliarliar"
She couldn't help it. It was lying to him. Lying to the face of the man who taught her that lying could be the easiest thing to accomplish…but the most harrowing to maintain.
She couldn't help to look at the stupid one from the other day, about how he forgot that there was still milk in the house despite buying another jug — the simplicity of it. It was just too much.
Then she heard it. She couldn't help to listen to it.
Even when she was away from it as possible, it was still in the air. The sounds of celebration, people's voices intermingling, the video presentations that droned said voices into chittering mumbling while advertising why they're there in the first place.
They were sounds that personified the chill in the astrosphere, representing the unease of what kind of time she and others live in now. She was gripping at her sports bag's strip across her chest so hard; her fingers pale white.
She couldn't help but hate it.
She cleared the failed attempt and succeeded this time because she had to.
"Run was longer than usual because…today was horrible. I still feel horrible. Gonna stay out a little later because…I feel like doing that will get this out of me. If you want me to come home regardless, I will in a heartbeat. I promise I won't get caught up in what's happening tonight."
Nothing but truth poured out in that text she sent. "Caught up" meant that she'd be a victim, another poor victim in this horrible time.
She's diving headfirst into it.
She crossed the bus stop without thinking about it unless it strengthened the resolve. As soon as she turned the corner, she entered the very place that celebrated the death of not only her normalcy but the whole world's. The time period she supposedly lives in. The oppressive light blinded Jackie as she went to Steppe Avenue for the first time.
It made no sense. It was truly fantastic.
The light from the various augmented projections didn't illuminate, more like radiate as the colors were amalgamating much less bending, constantly in cascading flux until coming together to form the said holograms. Jackie didn't expect there to be swarms of people clustered, moving up, down, all around the space.
The bizarre street layout, converted for commercial purposes, sidewalks engorged, and roads split in multiple ways, didn't compare to the once buildings that shrouded everyone.
Compact. In design, in structure, and overall aesthetic. As if the buildings were layered continuously, layered, layered, and someone forgot to stop. So compact, each building has a feature jutted inward or outward to offset any potential malfunction. So much, they even "rotate," and another piece takes the previous' place. They stood tall as they swayed subtly when one looked at them enough, and always swung in ways that made one feel snared, never reeling back because one ever noticed when they "closed in."
The first "Grounder" was a colossal structure that towered over the whole street—described as silver and white hued, like an engorged stump. But Jackie knew the rest was underground. Glanced at her right and she could see the first "PATHO-S" station, passing by it. Gunmetal, a spacious building further down the street's right, looked bulkier than the rest of the buildings surrounding it. Closed as the "technology" was already risky without tonight's event happening. And she knew that the Dr. Taber Memorial Center was behind her, but she didn't feel like turning to see it.
She refused to look at anything around here as is. No need to devote any more attention to something that naturally steals it.
The moving, compact buildings surrounded the populace, as multiple augmented projections came and went in sets, radiating constant and everchanging light across the plain.
And Jackie wondered why, exactly, she's the odd one out. She began walking down the street, amalgamating into the crowd, and felt like she was now living as her sentiment.
Once upon a time, she got a picture, the description, and sounded like something out of this world, cool. She recalled she was…five, when her parents sat her down, told her what was going on. "Futuristic!" Was what she thinks she shouted out, cutting off her father.
Which made him lose the heart he built up to explain what it meant thoroughly.
It was disconcerting just being here, seeing it all happen and yet still feeling like being wholly removed from reality. Her sight darting side to side at what popped up or what shined against her eyes, barely hearing her thoughts as sounds came in crowds, as she moved across the physical claustrophobia everyone was projecting unknowingly or not. How can see enjoy this sight if outright rejected her senses?
It was uncanny. Truly fantastic.
And yet, this'll soon be the reality for everyone.
Jackie wished that she didn't see the "construction." Almost like a skin graph, the local store was slowly being enveloped by it's shifting segment, essentially a tumor. She ended up staring in disgust as she noted the foundations, like the walls and steel frames, were comprised and now of the shifting segment, slowly fitting the surrounding buildings.
"Shiftication". And it was happening right before her eyes.
In her haste, she quickly looked down to her phone once more and bit the other bullet in the series of many she had lined up.
Dug in her sports bag's front pocket and grabbed what she was looking for into a fist. She quickly figured that handling it in the way she did could damage it, so she looked it over with the most generous grip she could allow and felt like giving it.
Hers was blue, but navy—as any lighter shade wasn't made yet when she ditched it, sure there is now. A trapezoid overlapped with a semi-circle, the scrunched top, and ridges with smooth curves filling out what the framework couldn't. It fit perfectly snuggle in Jackie's fingers, even with the two that turned it about in both expectation and trepidation.
She glanced at the people that had them fused into their ears.
She could only glance at them because they were the type to walk up and down in places like these continually. Despite frilly and meaningless displays, color, background or theme, they all were looking at what's happening, with the information conforming about their face.
Most of them could've been investors before all of this, committing to keep track of the changing world even if it didn't make any sense anymore. If it made sense to them, then fine. Jackie knew that it was a meanspirited read, because they ranged from investors, teachers, emergency workers, to just people.
Still. No way in hell she's putting that in her ear.
She soon jammed it on top of her phone and watched it change. The ridges simply continued down to the phone's edges and the phone's build simply gotten bulk. There wasn't much of a screen anymore but transformed phone being transparent on the surface, with the innards holding technology morphing into borderline sci-fi components. It was complete.
Jackie took a deep breath and pressed her index and middle fingertips against the "phone's" surface. The machinery gleamed and became circularly focused around them. She removes the fingers, and the logo appeared with the equally as iconic ambient sound, rising tonally into a soft fade.
"Athernet," the sudden, soft voice over said, something Jackie forgot about.
Then she startled backward a bit, causing the duo of guys behind her to follow suit in a chain reaction, then proceeding onwards into the crowd by going around her. She said sorry on reflex, brewing with guilt.
That manifested because of what startled her: the reply her father sent back.
"Alright. Text back when you get home. lov u"
She clutched her phone hard. In the best-case scenario of doing this, would she even get back no later than 3 or 5 in the morning?
Guilt. Anxiety. Hatred. These things never stood with Jackie for this long. Never stewed within her. She never even consider that she'd use those things for fuel to keep her going, now.
She shook her head. There's no use with thoughts that go in circles. Forward. Focus.
She discarded the message with a finger swap and poked about in the hub while ignoring the "Welcome back"-themed reminders about how to use Athernet, yet constantly huffed to herself as she got stuck with something. She redid actions, stumbled about sometimes because her vision was wavering as her heart hammered through her body. She simply didn't care about how she wanted her hub to be laid out and plowed through the multiple screens, turning briefly into "dust" then reconstituting into the next screen.
She was getting used to this, being so hapless at the point of being irrational, and it made it worse in her mind. Her countless nights of thinking about this where she barely slept, witnessing her life regularly change without any chance to settle, much less assess. Then she figured that she's only the odd kid out, and surely everyone else accepted what's going to happen with open arms, and she had to be browbeaten to reach this conclusion. She would even love for that to be the case, even.
Then she realized even the ones accepting it did it in the sense of resignation. Not acceptance. Not adaptation. Resignation.
A series of days happened, thinking about this repeatedly at the point everything was ruined for her before this day came.
She finally found the search engine after minutes of fighting through the "features".
"Tabby ToMorrow" was searched and queued up with many upon many videos.
Calling them videos were a stretch, they were sheets of media more than anything, but they served the same primary function. All of them cluttered against each other, the contents all over the place equally as. It wasn't what she was after.
She wanted to refresh herself; she wanted to measure the weight of exactly what she's getting into.
"Tabby ToMorrow first Shift Talk"
It instantly popped up, and Jackie tapped for it to play, looking at it intently.
The holographic haze reconstituted into a meek, feminine figure; hair long and spiraling, which made Jackie question if it was on purpose due to the length and coverage, as she fidgeted on screen. A pregnant pause followed when the image was cast and as the video played, indicating to Jackie that Tabby was still trying to figure out what she'll be soon famous for.
"So, uh," Tabby begun, then cleared out of her throat. "Right. The Shift Noumenon…"
Tabby clasped her hands together, and started again when she regained the confidence, "We're…starting to get a handle on what exactly it is, so that's good, and the public—us, yeah, you and mean—are getting the complete information as they look more and more into it, so that's good…"
She paused, Jackie noted. Was it because she noticed she said "so that's good" twice? The constant stumbling over words?
Even if it was something modern—well, "recent"—Jackie couldn't help to be fascinated by things like this. Immortalized words in history being said by someone that was completely and utterly mortal at the time. People coming into their own in real time.
"I just—wanted to make this video because I want, well, it started off me, by myself, recording what I needed to know and remember…but then I thought about people not somehow not getting what's been said, and maybe I just start over, record these instead, and post them. My name isn't really important, but what's happening is, s-so…"
That humility lead to your name being important, Jackie commentated in her mind. People didn't get what was being said because they weren't human about it. The revelations and the lack of having ones that made sense eroded them away. We needed someone that talked like you, like us.
"The Shift Noumenon," Tabby continued, "Started happening…after the Infinite War, 1940's. Weird things sort of…happened. Tides never reaching the beaches, days speeding up and nights lasting weeks in some countries—just weird stuff. Many at the time thought the atomic bombs' aftereffects were causing this, somehow, which…yeah. People already on edge, being pushed and pushed until the first Shift happened on 1955. And we were so unprepared."
As if on cue, Jackie glanced over and saw the Shift Simulators closed. Lined up adjacent to the proceeding station in a spiral, they were black, layered spheres on a podium that doubled as steps. Practically air sealed and became airtight when they operate, having multiple, folding shells to achieve it. Once you were in, the sheer existential dread of what you want to witness instantly sets in as you're locked away for what felt like eternity and cessation when it was 3 minutes.
It would've been distasteful if they were open night.
"They were dubbed as you and I know them as the Transitional Shifts. Cosmic waves that alter reality at the point of warping it. Again and again, they happened what started off seasonally, then monthly, then… 'regular occurrence'," Tabby separated both hands and thrust them down in a chopping motion, hammering her point.
"Reality as we knew…simply changed. Literally. And after the Shifts happen, weird things just happen, because it's allowed now, in a way. Weird things we just…can't keep track of, now."
We do know, now, at least, Jackie mentally sighed. She was already searching for another video of what she meant. She let the current one finish before clicking that one.
"So, we just sort of…gave up. The Modern era had to end because the Shifts sort of took what contemporary times meant for a lot of people. And as I, and many people my age were told because we were born after this, contemporary times formally abdicated across the world at 2000, The Last Year. Here we are, in the Transitionary Point."
Tabby had more to say, Jackie was sure, but she had more to say and convey clearly, in the next video she chose.
She looked more confident due to her growing status. Her grimy hair was stylized, with indigo streaks accenting her sharp bangs and locks. She wore eyeliner, painted her nails, and overall looked healthy. Her voice, mumbling and lost, was more direct, but still maintaining its awkward tone. Jackie at least cracked a smile, at that.
"Alright everyone," a growing Tabby ToMorrow began, "Let's talk updates! The good doctors at the Taber Memorial Research Center finally allowed OFFICIAL definitions to what exactly the weird stuff the Shift manifests…or allows manifestation, in one case..."
She made a face. Something between bewilderment and terror clearly played up…yet captures the two raw emotions. "And it's terrifying. Completely terrifying."
"The tangible changes are as follows: 'additional clauses to the physical laws as known, 'lifeforms that cannot possibly exist able to', and 'other untold Noumenon unearthed after a Shift's effects settle'," Tabby exhaled quickly, bringing her hands together, with her thumbs fitted against her chin.
"So. That meeeans that the laws of physics are constantly rewritten, creatures that should not be able to exist can now, and things man weren't to never know are out there for us to discover. Yeah."
Jackie definitely got her appeal, outside her personal one. She's pretty cute with her wide-eyed and borderline cartoony expressions both for the comedy, the release of tension and…it being fuel for the "overly-eager" crowd, yet they were so genuine, you couldn't help but agree that you feel exactly the same way she is.
"To recap—Shift happens, surrounding reality that it hits will be warped and constantly 'shift' about, and now that we know, when it stops doing that: the three aftereffects will happen at random. The previously affected areas are ticking time bombs," Tabby emphasized.
She looked at the floor around her room, then wondered aloud, "So how does the siVis thing play into all of--?"
"Here we go…" Jackie couldn't help but say to herself. The thing she was looking for.
"Oh! Right," Tabby said, laughing as if she forgot she was recording briefly. "My ever-allusive siVis Experience and siVisTrends video: the one even if you guys don't rake up the views by the subject matter, it'll be popular because I've been putting it off for so long!"
She made a noise Jackie could only describe as "Bullllurgh~" as she waves her arms in exaggerated exasperation. "Sorry guys, that's gonna take years at this point. Even with the love you all showered me, I can't just be handed the classified stuff from Taber's on a silver platter, still. It's still too recent, too weird, even for all of this. I'm just not a mir—"
Jackie queued up her siVis video.
Now Tabby looked as Jackie, and the world knew her. Long, jet-black and indigo infused hair, eyeliner full and curved upwards near the sides of each eye, showing off her bare shoulders and arms in a spaghetti strap, purple top.
Tabby ToMorrow. The Informer of the New Weird.
"siVis. siVis. siVis," Tabby begun. "Just when we got all the crazy pieces to the puzzle, another one plummet down and lays on and scatters the whole table. And it's not even a part of it all!"
Pretty much it, Jackie thought, as she was currently mulling over the others.
"You all were waiting for this one, ladies-gents-and all my devilish inbetweeners. Ever since I was beginning to pop, this was the subject you wanted me to discuss and compare notes with. But, like everyone else, I didn't have anything written down because I was afraid that suddenly, it wasn't the Shift Noumenon that got me."
Tabby made a half smile, "Thanks to the unbelievable support, now I'm the gal that's reporting straight from the Center's mouth. And, somehow, became a personality—earned your trust. Now I'm glad that I never made this one until now. One, would've been crap, and two…it's just better for me to have done it here. Now."
She became stoic. Tempered her breathing.
"Now let's do this. Discovered in the '70s, by the late, great, Dr. Gia Taber. She did her best to study, inform, and influence the phenomenon until her slow death due to Shift warping, The Last Year: 2000. And I don't think I'm strong enough to describe the finer details, so you'll have to seek after them yourself. But I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about."
Jackie nodded, melancholily. She was just an anthropologist at a time people yelled at you for not being a Shift Researcher, had to take up multiple fields to even get anywhere with siVis while having the worst case of Shift warping at the time, and generally became something people often coined "bitter agony" in the last thirty years of her life. "It hurt to look at her", just as much as it hurt to learn about her.
With a story like that, calling her the Mother of the Transitionary Point wasn't an overstatement, but an honor of remembrance.
All of this was just too much.
Jackie looked up, and she wished she hadn't.
A man in a black hoodie marred by a white mess, portraying the wear and tear.
The hood was an effort to cover it all, but it wasn't enough.
His visible forehead and temple profile were transparent, jutting outwards and inwards, as if he was a broken construct, the pieces shifting about. He couldn't help to pick at the indent-like gash that made the image worse, his fingers—normal, human fingers—kept digging and picking; picking, picking, picking and digging, frantically. When no one was looking.
In fear. Object terror. Lost.
Jackie froze in her tracks, covering her mouth, long after the ping of shock sparked and expanded across her system, making her chest throb and beat.
She tried to look away with her wavering vision, but his son clutched in his other hand waved at her — no younger than three.
And his face was completely warped. He smiled at Jackie, despite the fact it constantly moved.
Jackie dry-heaved harshly, seemingly echoed throughout the street.
She trotted away, despite wanting to sprint desperately.
She heard things fall out of her bag somehow, but she didn't care. Everything was a blur; her eyes welled up enough to make the world something she finally couldn't see anymore.
Heard a voice behind her, may've been the passerby with bags in their hand, either weird arms or the blur made it so, might be telling her that she dropped something. Didn't matter, none of it did, in the face of this giant clusterfuck.
Tabby's video, her words, still played and acted as narration for Jackie's ordeal.
"To be clear since life decided to make it vague as hell, no, siVis is not a by-product of the Shift Noumenon. Dr. Taber warped by the Shift was something before her discovery by a mere day or so, even by hours. The two aren't connected the way you'd think at first, but indirectly, since seeing the world so differently caused her to 'found' it. Something like the Shifts, it was always there, always sort of…meant to happen in the way that the Shifts did. In that weird cosmic sense. In short, it's an anomaly."
She paused it there, quickly. Jackie blinked enough tears out of her eyes, enough to see she was coming up towards her final destination.
Steppe Avenue, then Great Steppe Avenue, is both the longest and most connected road in Davenport, Jackie heard. Everything leads to it, and everything branched from it, somehow, someway. Steppe Avenue and Peterson Street, the street that leads to Pell Forest.
As she looked for and found the Shift Tracker Radius, is where the brunt of tonight's Shift will happen.
Despite still running, which morphed from trotting, she managed to open that and shrink Tabby's video, playing it as she looked at the projected wave cover Bell, dissipating.
Tabby then flicked her index finger upwards, turning on her Athernet feed: various shapes and sizes of official documents spinning in motion around her before settling as she grabbed and dragged a picture in front of her. A blonde, young girl in a singed cheerleader outfit, staring at her hands in the ruins of a cafeteria burned crisp black. Wide-eyed. Too shocked to cry.
"Drowned out in the madness of The Last Year, the case of Jason Pike High happened. The Boiling Girl. Cassie Morgan, the first public siVis user. Though not the first reported, as Japan had the Atsuryoku modern folk tale, then later discovered to be Nathan Fuuki. They were the first siVisTrends of many, as the cases piled up and up, well into the Transitionary Point, present day. Victims of siVis, despite the possible damage toll or possible victim count they managed to rack up. They're people, unfortunately to you all who thought otherwise. The whole problem with all this is the fact siVis manages to make our already confusing situation outright hazy."
Tabby kept the images, footage, articles and other media swirl about her, as she looked to her audience.
"From many Trends testimonies, it's an experience — a state that puts you beyond even the Shift Noumenon, at least in feeling, in senses. You're granted many abilities that could uprise, enable interaction with the Shifts, Nulgarrt—without being warped due to the exposure. But despite all that, they constantly brought it back to you still being yourself. And they're right at least on the levels we can understand, like DNA—Blood; all matches up with their previous records barring the stress of existing like this. No one for sure knows how to cause this, except for witnessing—or even surviving—a Shift. Stretches across the whole Noumenon as well."
"Play it well, and you're granted with something out of this world. And there's plenty of stories I've covered that shows that playing it well, in the face of these things, is your only option other than the inevitable. So please--," Tabby finished, both as a potent plea and a perfect place to shut the video down as Jackie closed Athernet.
She looked towards her destination as she sprinted down Peterson, overtaxing herself towards the forest's trial's entrance on her incoming left. The hazy orange skies turned into a dimmed brown, the sun nowhere in sight anymore.
She had to. She couldn't live like this anymore. Trapped within these circulating thoughts that only boil her alive. She needed to be above this terrible life so that she could live again, screw the possibilities of ending up like them.
Jackie Jackson decided that she'll get supernatural abilities by trying to survive the experience of reality warping itself at first hand. On what would've been a Thursday night.