#writing
Chapter 4: Agnotology
With another snap of his fingers Dexter released Max from his paralyzed position in the spaceless void, transporting him back to the interrogation room in the small county Police Station as if it never happened, the strange man gone from his seat, similarly without a trace that he had ever been present. Max looked around, almost nauseous from motion sickness, but more overcome by confusion and determination to be worried about that. He thought he ought to be worried about some malevolent god whose only goal was to make his life a living nightmare, but if anything it gave him some clarity. Before, he had a job, a car, a routine, but no direction. This entity sought to destroy all these attachments, but Max wasn’t scared, for now he had no purpose. This entity had inadvertently given Max the purpose he needed, and Max saw through the Entity’s gaze. He knew that from the right direction, he could outsmart the entity and see beyond the information he was feeding him.
The door that Max had originally come in from opened behind him, revealing the female officer from before.
The Officer stared at Max for a second, before reading the writings on her clipboard in a monotone voice. “Ok you’re free to go. Head to the front desk to collect your things.”
Max was puzzled by this information. “Free to go? What do you mean?”
The officer flipped through some papers on her clipboard. “Looks here that someone paid for your bail.” She flipped another paper and stared intently at the clipboard, as if whatever she was reading was in another language. “It doesn’t say why though, must be some anonymous donor. Guess it’s your lucky day?”
“That doesn’t make any sense, i’ve only been in this room for like an hour, and I don’t have any close friends. Who would pay for my bail, and so fast?”
The officer laughed to herself for a second. “Don’t worry about it. Jeez, i’ve never seen an inmate so displeased with emancipation.” Before Max could ask another question, she left without saying a word, clearly waiting for him to leave the station, as he was now a free man and no longer her problem. Max was worried for a second, as he thought he still had his handcuffs on and wouldn’t be able to get up, but upon looking down realized he didn’t have any handcuffs on, and was just holding his hands together as if he was a mime. Strangely enough, he didn’t even have marks around his wrists. It was as if the handcuffs had never been there in the first place.
He tried to understand what had happened, but then remembered the things the strange man did, with the room disappearing, his own disappearance, and evidently the handcuffs as well. He was most likely responsible for the events of the week prior as well, which only further cemented his ideas that what the man had done wasn’t just smoke and mirrors, and maybe he did have some god-like power afterall. None of it made sense to Max, but he had come to terms with the fact that thinking about it didn’t do him much good.
He collected himself, rubbing his hand on his mildly concussed head, which still hurt to touch, before walking out to the front of the station. As he walked out through the halls, he looked through an open door into a room next to the interrogation room. There was a window inside it looking into his room, and he figured that this was the room beyond the mirror from his room. There was a cop looking through some footage on a monitor. Max looked at the footage he was viewing. It appeared to Max that the officer was watching the interview he had had only moments before. Only, this wasn’t the same interview. It was him on the footage, he was sure of that. The person talked like him, he answered like him, but Max knew the person on the footage wasn’t himself. The person in the footage wasn’t saying the things Max remembered saying. To add to that, the person interviewing him wasn’t the strange man either. It was some detective he hadn’t seen before. The detective was giving a real police interview. Max failed to understand how this could be possible, how the cameras could show this, when this wasn’t what had happened. The cameras must’ve been hacked or something, but the footage was too real to be faked. It was Max on the screen! Max thought maybe his head injury had caused some sort of memory loss, but he assured himself that the events from before felt way too real.
He tried to piece this impossible situation together like a puzzle, but all the pieces were from different sets; they didn’t fit. Suddenly, it donned on Max that this was yet again the work of the strange man. He felt stupid for not realizing it sooner. Anytime something happened that was unexplainable, it was the man’s doing. Not only did he have control over what Max perceived, but he could control the things other people saw. He had created a fake interview to cover up his little confrontation with Max. Or maybe that was the real interview, and he had somehow transported Max to a different reality to talk with him? He definitely could control the world around him, as he was able to remove the handcuffs, which definitely were there. Or were they? Afterall, there hadn’t been any marks. The more Max thought about it, the more he realized he didn’t quite understand the extent of the man’s power, only that he definitely could control more than just perception, he could control what other people saw. If Max had learned one thing in the military, it was that you always overestimated your enemy. Always assumed an ambush would go wrong. Always assumed you needed more ammo, and always assumed they were the most powerful they could be. It was better to be over prepared than underprepared. Max assumed he could control everything around him, time and space in its entirety. He’d have to use the power of anger and resentment to cloud his enemy’s mind from using his whole extent of his power, and to prevent him from realizing Max for the powerless ant he was to him.
Max walked over to a desk, RETURNS written in big black letters above it. A officer stood to Max’s attention, who seemed all too happy to be talking to him.
“Hello there! Based on your great outfit, I’d assume you’re here to collect your items and return to your life! Can I get a name dear?”
“Uh, Max. Max Miller” groaned Max, who was immediately reminded of the annoyance of normal conversation, when not faced with the greater problem of a god-like entity whose only purpose was to torture you.
She stared down at a list of names. “Ah here we go. Maximilian Miller. Great name by the way, I’m jealous! I’ll get your items right away sir.”
She stepped into a backroom to find a box with his stuff, which relieved Max to get a break from this inhumanly happy person. She came back too soon, with a slightly crumpled cardboard box full of his stuff.
“Lets see here, some clothes, a nice pair of boots, wallet, loose change, oh, and this letter.”
Max was surprised, he knew he probably wouldn’t get his gun back, as it was now evidence for a crime scene, but he never thought he’d gain something when grabbing his stuff. He knew he hadn’t come in with a letter, as he wasn’t exactly in the letter-writing mood while he was busy losing his grip on reality a week prior. He immediately saved himself much confusion as to the letter’s existence, and assumed the stranger had placed it there in his infinite power.
Max quickly collected his items, changing into his old clothes in a changing room. He tucked the letter into his back pocket, and then headed to the front desk to make sure if there was anything left he had to do before becoming a free man. Afterall, the stranger couldn’t have made getting out of jail this easy right?
Sure enough, upon asking at the front desk, there was one more thing that Max had to do. He was handed a slip of paper, which basically told him that because he showed lack of cognition and possible suicidal tendencies, he was required to go to a mental health clinic to assess his mental health. Max wasn’t thrilled at the news of this, but he didn’t want to fight the law, and figured a “get out of jail almost free” card was better than nothing. Afterall, it would give him something to do seeing as he didn’t have a job anymore.
Max strolled back to his house, his jacket providing him with more than enough warmth during the surprisingly windy night. He was looking forward to getting home, but also worried at the mess he knew he’d come back to. For all he knew, the house could be a crime scene, taped off with caution tape and an eviction notice slammed on the front door. He knew his neighbors would resent him, given his altercation where he held a gun to someone’s head. He strolled down the sidewalk for a while, until he turned around a corner to a familiar street, which was oddly quiet, at least compared to what he was expecting. The people in their houses were happy as they always were, gathered around the tv with the families. They didn’t seem distressed in the slightest, it was as if they had forgotten the events of the past week Max had so painfully endured. He passed by a neighbor standing in his driveway who waved at Max as he always would, smiling friendly at Max as he walked past him.
Max’s curiosity got the best of him and he turned around to talk to the man. Max inquired, “Why are you so unfazed by my presence? Do you not remember when I aimed a gun at our neighbor out in the street last week, and the cops had to detain me?”
The man thought for a long time, looking into the sky as if the answer sat among the clouds, before nodding enthusiastically. “Oh yea, that little thing. I think everyone remembers it, but we know you, you were just having a bad day, that’s all.”
Max got mildly angry at the man for basically letting him off easy for his actions a week prior. “Why is everyone so fine with this? And i don’t even know anyone! I never talk to anyone!”
The man’s face became distressed at Max’s sudden outburst, but almost immediately his face went back to smiling in a creepily persistent way. “Maybe I… err, we… know you better than you think!” The man maintained his smile throughout his speakings, which gave him an almost inhuman like appearance, as if he was an alien trying their best to impersonate a human. The man paused. “Where were you these past few days by the way? Everyone missed you!”
“I was in police custody, for when I tried to kill myself” Max explained, feeling like he was repeating himself to a small child or a dementia patient.
The man thought again for a few seconds in the same way as before, coming to the same enthusiastic conclusion as he had before. “Oh that’s right! Well everyone missed you here! We’re so glad you’re back!”
The man kept repeating himself, and seemed to remember what had happened a week ago, but not the implications of it. He had always found his neighbors annoying, but this was unusual even for them. Max realized this unusual behavior was most likely the doings of the stranger. He was controlling their minds, or something, in an attempt to wipe away the mess from before, much like how he covered up the “interview” at the police station.
Max awkwardardly said goodbye to the neighbor, in an attempt to get away from the conversation. The man just stared creepily at Max, waving goodbye until he entered his house.
The inside of the house was similar to the outside. In some attempt to clear the past, The stranger had given the house a total makeover. Everything in the house was completely clean and fixed where repairs were needed. There were no longer any dust particles floating around, and the air smelled crisp and fresh. It was as if the house itself had forgotten the events of the week prior.
Max felt just as unsafe in his house as he had outside on his street, and he began searching the rooms to look for any semblance of evidence of his doings here a week prior. He knew he had left the house in quite a mess, but everywhere he went he saw no evidence the house even had someone living in it. Max stepped into the living room, and the first thing he noticed was how clean everything was. The crummy carpet, with its various stains was now clean and a much lighter color, revealing how much dirt had actually been caked on over the years. The dishes had seemingly cleaned themselves, and the various appliances were cleaned and restocked, to near perfect condition. Max almost felt like he was in a showroom, just a guest in some model home. He searched through various cabinets, and found that everything he owned was still there, if not organized and replaced for higher quality items, which gave him a mixed sense of relief and uneasiness. In his bedroom, his clothes were neatly stacked and in their respective cabinets, his old american flag was no longer caked with dust, and his bed sheets were neatly folded in a way he almost didn’t want to sleep on them out of courtesy. He surveyed the rest of the house and, finding no immediate threats to his safety, he made his way back to the living room. He sat down at the counter top in the kitchen, not knowing exactly what to do.
Max remembered the letter in his back pocket, and took it out to examine it. He was unsure if opening it was the right idea, afraid of what he might find inside, but he figured he may as well get it over with. The letter was much like the ones seen in old-timey medieval movies. The envelope was a nice, almost weathered white paper, and it crinkled satisfyingly when he held it. It had a red wax stamp right in the middle, with an unknown, yet galant symbol ornating it. It depicted a sun in the middle, surrounded by four triangles at different angles, followed by shadow figures of similar shape and orientation, casted off of the original shapes from the sun. It was clearly symbolic of something, but Max couldn’t figure out what. He grabbed a knife from a kitchen drawer, which was brand new, clean enough to see one’s reflection in it. It was the same knife he had always used, but it had suddenly been renewed to it’s pristine, original quality, and maybe even more. He assumed all the other cutlery and cooking equipment had also been restored to this level of quality, and he didn’t even bother entertaining his curiosity by checking. He used the knife to cut through the top of the envelope, which separated easily under the newly sharpened knife. He hadn’t considered opening the letter the traditional way by the seal, preserving the pristine paper and wax, but if he had he probably wouldn’t have done it anyways out of spite to who he assumed it was from.
He pulled the letter out of the envelope, which was just as equally pristine and formal, as if it was from the 15th century. It could’ve been written with ink and quill for all he knew. The paper had a nice, almost leathery feel to it that made him feel important to even be holding it. The symbol from before was at the top and the bottom of the paper, stamped on with black ink. The letter read as follows:
Dear my friend Maxamillion Miller. What a fancy name for someone so unfitting of it! I am writing this letter to you to inform you. I could’ve come to you as I had before in the police station, or appeared anonymously in a dream, but I figured a letter is a bit more meaningful, and symbolic of my time and the value of my information.If you haven’t figured it out yet, which wouldn’t surprise me, given your vastly inferior memory, this letter comes to you from the man from the police station. I am also responsible for your perceptions a week prior. What you have seen so far is only a glimpse of my omnipotent power, the likes of which you could never fathom. It is in your best interests to follow my commands. No one will be there to help you. If you haven’t seen already, the people of your town and the police are oblivious to the events that have happened, any cries for help will be seen as ramblings of a child who saw a ghost under the bed and pushed aside, but for you, your ghost is real. It is in your best interests to go on with life as if nothing happened. Do not leave town. Do not spread word of my existence. Most importantly, do not attempt to end your life. All will be met with serious consequences. Lastly, consider my coverup of before and your living improvements a gift to you, if only to show you how kind I can be.
Vestra Deus Regem.
Max immediately crumpled up the note in rage. He couldn’t stand idly by doing nothing while this stranger chipped away at him until he was nothing! Max’s initial suspicions were correct, for he now knew for sure that he could control what others could see, for all Max knew, he could summon a volcano in town square and nobody would bat an eye. Max had no one to go to, nowhere to hide. A normal person would’ve given up at the odds seen stacked up against them, faltering and collapsing like a beam under pressure, but Max was no normal person. He had a purpose to escape this world, or simulation as the stranger put it. In all honesty Max wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. The one thing he did know though, was that given enough time, an opportunity would present itself to Max for him to get close to the stranger. Close enough hopeful that he would be able to usurp him of his power. But for now, Max was powerless. His best bet was to stay under the stranger’s radar and not do anything rebellious. Max yawned. He decided he’d start on this path by going to sleep.
The next day Max awoke differently than he had before. He was in the same bed he always had, but it felt more comfortable than before. The sheets felt as smooth as silk, and the pillow was cool and crisp. The shutters were fixed and blocked the sun from shining directly into his eyes, while still letting some natural sunlight in to awaken him naturally. He felt refreshed, but at the same time he was mad at himself for taking advantage of these luxuries. He knew the stranger could take them away just as easily as he offered them, and it was on Max if he became weak by reliance. Max got out of bed easier than he had before, and used this opportunity to get a headstart on getting ready for work. He got halfway through his shower, before realizing his routine was broken as he no longer had a job to prepare for. For someone so powerful, it was funny to Max that he could fix Max’s whole life, but couldn’t be bothered to give him his old job back. Maybe it was all part of his plan so he could have more time to toy with Max. Max tried not to dwell on that thought.
After a surprisingly refreshing shower, he made his way to the kitchen where he decided what to do with his unemployment while making a simple breakfast. He looked on the countertop and saw the slip of paper from the police station under the envelope. He must’ve taken it out of his pocket by mistake and not realized it. He knew what the paper was for, remembering the lady at the police station telling him how he had to attend a mental health clinic for his crimes. He hadn’t remembered what day, time, or location he was even supposed to show up, so he picked up the paper and skimmed it for this information. The clinic, conveniently enough, appeared to be only a few blocks away, close enough for him to walk. Max skimmed lower down on the paper, and realized his walk would have to be more of a run, as he was supposed to be at the Clinic 3 hours ago. Max stared at a clock on the wall. “Dammit, I slept in.” Max quickly finished his bowl of oatmeal (which tasted much better than he had remembered) and ran out the door, forgetting to grab a jacket in his haste.
Max bolted out the front door down the street, ignoring the neighbor from last night who waved at him while smiling, like an animatronic on an amusement park ride. Max tried to ignore the neighbor and focus on how late he was for this appointment. He sprinted down the sidewalk past some residential houses, almost tripping over an old lady and her yappy dog, before he finally arrived at the clinic. Max ran through the door of the mental health clinic panting, the little bell jingling as he shoved open the glass door and kneeled down to catch his breath all in one motion. After he caught his breath he looked up. To his left there was a lady in a nurses outfit at a registration desk. She was looking at him as if he was the third druggie this week, which actually made Max feel better that some people could recognize the absurdity in him. To the right was the waiting room where some other particularly lost souls sat, contemplating random thoughts or reading magazines till their appointments. Max stood up and walked over to the front desk.
“Hello there! How can I help you?” The lady said cheerfully, her happiness channeled into a persistent gaze which caused Max to feel awkward as he met her eye level.
“Uh hi, I have a checkup” Max said uncomfortably.
“Alright, do you have an appointment with us?” The lady asked sincerely, which Max interpreted as condescending.
“Yea, I think, I got this little slip of paper from the police office, I think this is it.” Max handed her the piece of paper.
“Alright this all seems to be right, looks like you’re a bit late, but it’s a slow day I think we can squeeze you in. Just sit down over there and your name will be called momentarily.”
Max said thanks and then sat down in a far corner in the waiting room. He expected more of a beration from the nurse for being late, but he was also fine with getting away with yet another act of unwilling insubordination. Max sat down and found the chairs were stiff and uncomfortable. The one tv mounted poorly to a wall was playing infomercials at a surprisingly loud yet distorted volume. The magazines were missing multiple pages. It was everything Max had expected and more. Luckily, before he had to endure the wait any longer, he was called into a backroom by a nurse. He followed her through a long hallway to a typical hospital-like room, where he sat for a moment again, until a time later the doctor entered the room.
“Hello there, sorry for the wait, I’m Dr. Monroe”. The doctor told Max, shutting the door behind him. He sat down across from Max at a desk, pulling some papers out from a drawer and organizing them. “So, are you Maxamillion Miller?” The doctor stared at him intently.
“Uh yea thats me, last time I checked.” Max made an unenthusiastic laugh, to which the doctor responded with silence, only making Max feel more embarrassed.
The doctor ticked off another box, “Age 35? Used to work at a factory till a few days ago?”
“Yes sir, that’s me, although don’t worry i’m trying to get another job real soon” Max replied.
“Uh huh, spare me the details man I’m just filling out the paperwork.” The doctor responded with complete lack of interest in a low croak. Max would’ve liked this kind of person before, they were no nonsense and just trying to get by, but now Max realized how this person was mean to the people who came here for actual help, Max suddenly feeling like he was included in that group.
The doctor finished up the paperwork and set it aside, “Ok now that the formalities are done with, what seems to be the problem?” The doctor appeared to only be giving his half attention, but it was still significantly more than before so Max went along with it.
“Well I was seeing things doc, like you’ve never seen before, I thought I was drugged or something, I-I can’t even explain it.” Max knew exactly how to explain it, but he didn’t want to say too much in case the stranger was listening to him. Besides, he figured this doctor wasn’t listening to him much anyways.
“Uh huh, seeing things you can’t explain? Severe cases of pareidolia. The police report says you tried to kill someone and yourself? Hmm, sounds to me like you got a pretty extreme case of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.” The doctor looked smug in his diagnosis.
Max looked alarmed. “No, doc I don’t think that’s it. I don’t have ADHD”
The doctor moved forward right in front of Max. “Hey, I’m the doctor here, you’re the patient. You let me do my job that i’m qualified to to, and I won’t go down to the factory and tell you how to make children’s toys, or whatever you make down there” The doctor pushed the end of his pen into Max’s chest as he spoke, which irritated Max beyond belief, but he hid it behind a stern stare.
“Actually we make steel car frames.” Max assured the doctor, who ignored his comment.
The doctor moved to a cabinet in the back corner and pulled out a bottle of pills which he gave to Max. Max flipped over the label on the orange bottle, which read the words: RITALIN 20MG 3 TIMES A DAY. The doctor finalized the prescription paperwork without another word and handed it to Max.
“Now I want you to take those for 3 weeks, grab a slip of paperwork from the front desk as you walk out for your prescription.” The doctor ushered Max out of the room and closed the door behind him, leaving him alone in the hallway.
Max already had little faith in the performance of the healthcare system, but that was beyond easy. He knew this was the doings of the stranger to get him to a clean slate, away from his outburst with the police. The stranger wanted Max back to being a normal person with normal problems, all so he could mess with him, then fix him, and repeat the cycle forever. Max chucked the pills in the trash can out of anger, and walked right out the front door without picking up the paper for his prescription, and without paying.
Max held his arms together shivering as he walked outside. The weather had gone from pleasant to foggy and windy in the time Max had been inside, and he suddenly regretted not grabbing a jacket when he had the chance. Max looked around as he got outside. He didn’t feel scared, nor defeated, he just felt lost. There was no-one to help him and he didn’t even know where to start with taking down the Stranger. Max felt no rush to go back home where he would be even further reminded of his predicament. He strolled down the sidewalk in the opposite direction of his home to cool his head a little bit. The city was as bitter as he remembered, if only a bit more urban. He hadn’t really been out on the town in quite some time, probably years, and it was weird for him to see everything so built up. Restaurants sat where he had remembered empty plots before, buildings were taller and with different signs, and the roads seemed much more maintained and significantly lacking in cracks running down the length of the asphalt. Max turned a street corner to see an old gas station he used to go to. It seemed to withstand the test of time, unlike some other buildings around him, and he went in to grab a snack for nostalgic reminiscence.
The door opened with a jingle of a bell much like the clinic had, but that’s where the similarities ended. The gas station was small and cramped, with shelves of food and soda crammed into a small room, and the windows were cracked and dirty, barely allowing any light to get in or out. Max could barely make out pedestrians as multi-colored blobs as they passed by the gas station.
:Can I help you with anything?” Asked an old man behind the cash register, who’s voice had seemingly left him for greener pastures.
“No thank you sir, i’m just browsing.” Said Max. “Unless you can help me fight an omnipotent god ruling over our reality as a simulation.” Max was entirely sarcastic in what he said, knowing it was so outlandish the man would assume he’s joking, which made it all the funnier to Max. What Max didn’t account for was that the man would immediately bolt over the counter and tackle Max to the ground.
“Simulation? What do you mean simulation? Who told you this?” The man shook Max up and down, constantly looking left and right to make sure no one was witnessing his Class C misdemeanor Battery charge in the making.
“Get off me you crazy old man!” Max yelled, shoving the man off of him, taking note of the surprising strength of the man.
“No! You know! You know about the truth! Who told you!” The man angrily jumped back onto Max, causing him to fall over once again.
“God- Get off me! If I tell you, will you get off of me?” Max yelled irritatedly.
“Yes, but we can’t speak here! They’re listening to us… Follow me to my back room!” The old man jumped off of Max and bolted back over the counter with surprising agility. Max took a while longer than the old man had to recover, taking some time to straighten out his shirt and his hair, before following the man into the back of his shop. He could’ve ran way right then and there, but based on the perseverance he saw before he was sure the man would’ve chased him and done who knows what.
Max opened the door to a room behind the shop. The room was about the same size as the shop itself, but was severely different in every other way. A mostly deflated air mattress sat in one corner, being held together by some sort of tube duct taped on to inflate it, and shoddy stitches done to hold it together incase of leaks. Every wall was covered in pictures of various things. The overarching similarity of most of the images seemed to be disasters from every era. There were newspaper clippings referencing Abraham Lincoln’s death, blurry pictures of ufos, a large hastily-drawn picture of a sasquatch, conspiracies on the moon landing’s authenticity, pictures of the Titanic, a picture cut from a news paper of Michael Jackson, etc. If there was ever a conspiracy about anything, it was on this man’s wall. The floor was littered with garbage and scraps of paper, of which most were covered in even more handwritten conspiracy theories. The room was definitely the product of a crazy-conspiracy theorist, but in Max’s perception of the room, he’d seemed to have lost the theorist himself. Max looked around the room, making sure there weren’t any other doors he could’ve walked off through, and saw that he had somehow disappeared from the room he had just walked into. Max walked further into the room, stepping slowly and hesitantly, getting himself ready for any sort of trap he felt he was walking into. The one trap he hadn’t prepared himself for was the old man to spring out from his concealed spot behind the door Max had opened, and tackling Max to the ground once again.
“Ack-! Damn, you gotta stop doing that man!” Max said with strenuous effort, the man sitting on top of Max keeping him from breathing efficiently.
“Sorry friend, I can’t take any chances. I gotta make sure you aren’t one of those lizard men.”
“Wait lizard men? What are you- I’m not a lizard man!” Max screamed, flailing his arms in a pitiful attempt to free himself from the old man.
“Well that’s exactly what a lizard man would say. The only way to test if you are actually a lizard man or not is to administer the test…”
“Hey hey now, what do you mean a test?” Max questioned, trying with considerable effort to turn his head to view the man, but finding himself unable to from his position on the floor.
“Well if you’re not a lizard person, you should have nothing to worry about. It’s perfectly harmless, mostly, to humans. Administering the test, now.”
“Wait stop! Don’t do anything rash! I’m warnin- Wait, is that tin-foil?” Max had been caught off guard by the man’s test, which just consisted of him placing a tin-foil hat onto Max’s head.
After waiting a few seconds, the man slowly got off of Max. “Ok, yea you’d be a sizzling pile of goop if you were a lizard man right about now, I can trust you.”
Max quickly got up and stared at the man. “Of course I’m not a lizard person! There are no lizard people you crazy oaf!” Max felt insane just to be arguing with this old man, but for some he found himself compelled to stay with this crazy person.
“Look we can go back and forth all day, but we’re just wasting time. I’m not crazy and I can prove it.” The old man said in a seemingly coherent voice, to which Max noticed.
Max crossed his arms. “Ok then prove it.”
The old man paced around the room, as if he was some sort of clever scientist. “Well, I know that you can see when he manipulates you, when he changes things around your house and the world. I know that when he makes these changes no one else can perceive them, as if they were never made in the first place. But you remember. You know what he did, and you think no one can help you.”
Max was taken aback, and wondered if for a second this was the stranger himself playing a joke on Max. “How do you know all this? There’s no way someone could know this except the stranger.”
“No, you see for ordinary folk they aren’t perceptible to these changes, to being controlled, because they go against the unchanged simulation. But me? No, I’m not an ordinary person, and neither are you. We can see these changes in the simulation. I know it’s controlled by those lizard people!” Max tried to ignore that last part and focus on the other things he said. The man had been right about everything (except the lizard people), and there was no way he could be the stranger. Max wasn’t one to believe the words of some crazy psycho off the streets, but in crazy times he knew he would have to take desperate, equally crazy measures.
“Ok, I believe you. But if we’re gonna take down this stranger i’m gonna need to know your name” Asked Max.
“Just call me Uncle.”
“Ok Uncle” Max said with a smile. He waited for a second for him to ask Max’s name, but he never asked. “Don’t you want to know my name?” Asked Max.
“No way, we can’t risk the lizard people sneaking into our minds and getting our information. I’ll just call you Bucket.” Uncle said completely seriously.
“Uh, whatever you say Uncle. What should we do now?” Asked Max. He figured he could’ve fought him on how dumb it is to not just use real names, but he didn’t see much of a point for such little reward. Besides, maybe he didn’t want this man knowing his actual name.
“We’re gonna send him a message…” Replied Uncle mischievously.