#writing #fiction

The Enigma

Table of contents

• Chapter 1. The Repetition of Genesis
• Chapter 2. The Arbitraries of Modus Operandi
• Chapter 3. Vertigo
• Chapter 4. Agnotology
• Chapter 5. The Necessity of Collective Arbitraries
• Chapter 6. Ragnarok
• Chapter 7. The Palindrome Known as an Epilogue

Intro Before the Intro (2025)

This is one of the first large writing projects I ever attempted, and is definitely the first one I ever finished. I wrote this when I was 16 years old to impress a girl (is there ever a better reason to do anything?), and while I am somewhat scared to put this on the internet due to the content of the story (which may be both crude and amateur, and if so I do not stand by my former self!), I think it serves as an important stepping stone in my pursuits as an author. I have not edited the content of this text whatsoever so formatting errors may exist.

Introduction

When I was really little my dad gave me a moleskine notebook for Christmas. I didn’t use it for anything productive, mostly just doodling small pictures and such, but it helped me put my thoughts, and mainly my creativity, down in one place. I continued getting notebooks throughout my life, and they became more cohesive as I grew up, but they were still my ideas and aspirations. In these notebooks, I would write little stories, comics, theories, but they were never very well made, and I quickly lost interest in what I would write, or would be embarrassed by the low effort, so they were all either really short or unfinished. This idea for this book was no different. It was the same type of idea, same premise, the only difference in what made me complete this was confidence in my own ability to write. I want to thank my friends, as well as family members for not only giving me the experience and ideas necessary to write this story, but also the inspiration to start it and the confidence/meaning to write the whole thing. I might be going off track but here is my main point: With the right people to support you, anyone can write a story. No matter how stupid or pointless you might think that story is, it matters to someone, and if you place value on the people’s beliefs who support you, then you should like what you write to. Anyone can write, no matter what it is, and everyone should write. Lastly, don’t assume what you write is going to be your masterpiece and it will be what you are known for. If you believe that, then you will be known for thinking your work is some amazing piece of artwork and seen as egocentric. Furthermore, the best writers did not write one book. Stephen king wrote over 90 books, Ernest Hemmingway wrote at least 27 books, and Ray Bradbury wrote at least 24 books. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, because I’m just a 16 year old kid who wrote a short story. I don’t know everything, but I think these are good ideas to think about when writing a book.

Tl;dr:Everyone is creative, they just need to right people to provide them support and confidence to write, as made apparent by the fact that I was able to write this with the support of some friends, but don’t become obsessed with your writing to the point of narcissism because like anything, it’s a learning process and the beauty is in improvement.

Chapter 1. The Repetition of Genesis

In the beginning there was light. Or that’s what Max had been told. He wasn’t sure if he believed it, but he was too apathetic and invested in other thoughts to care. He was never a religious man, nor a romantic, and he faced a struggle in life equal his perseverance; that he never felt the need to question anymore than where he’d find his next meal. People were born, people died, trees grew and wars were fought, life did it’s own thing, and made sense to him in the ways it affected him. As long as that didn’t change for Max, he was alright.

 Max woke up how he always had, mildly miffed at the way the sun cast a long, golden beam right between the slits of his shutters, directly into his eyes. He gathered himself, slowly getting out of bed with the same reluctance that would carry him throughout the day. He went through his normal routine as he always had, in a fittingly normal fashion. A cold shower, a bowl of steel cut oats, and finally ending it with donning his grimy factory overalls, a badge of shame, announcing to the world his position in life, of which he was painfully disdained to admit. He wouldn’t have given it much thought, given his personality, one would expect him to be fine in the position he held. That would be true, if he hadn’t had a taste of the top. 

Nearly 15 years previously, when Maxamillion Miller was but 20 years old, he was drafted into the army to fight in the vietnam war in 1969. Max had had no purpose in his civilian life, and this was an awakening for him. For others it was seen as a death penalty, a cease to normal life to fight for a beurocrat behind a poster board. Max had been given purpose, and an outlet to exercise his abilities which would have gone to waste in his small home town of Newport Arkansas. His feeling of meaning would be as fleeting as his usefulness to the US after the war, after his draft had been served in 1971, he returned early as a result of a congressional bill passed by anti-war hippies, his words not mine. Ironically, he found this unfair. “How could these people control his fate with a stroke of a pen?” He would think to himself angrily, but his prospect for an answer was quickly replaced by the need for survival, leading him to his vexatious current existence at the auto factory in Logan town, Ohio, while his search for reclamation and redemption became a distant visage, only thought of in times of nostalgic appeal when he stared above his closet shelving to his military uniform neatly folded collecting dust, topped by a trifold American flag.

Max made his way out the door, saying his gauche “hellos” and “wonderful weather we’re having” to neighbors he’d known for years, but never by name. He saw his house as a place to live, not to congregate, and as such missed out on neighborly things like parties and block-wide bbqs. His hands, maladroit and stiff from the cold november air, fumbled with his car keys, until he opened the door with a satisfying click. He drove uneventfully to the factory, his radio emitting a pervading, unostentatious static. He arrived at the factory, the roaring and whirring of the various car-making machines inundating him with the same sense he had felt every day for the same 15 years, giving him a sense of safety and guidance throughout his daily, uneventful tasks. He’d worked in the same position, eaten the same ham and cheese sandwich, and stared at the same faces every day for so long, that even the gradual phasing out of old types of cars for the manufacturing of revolutionary new cars with fancy curves, bold colors, and revolutionary technology being manufactured was normalized. 

After work, he made his usual stop at the local grocery store, the intrusive jingle of the background music as his companion while he picked out the same ingredients for the same meals he’d been eating for 15 years. “15 years” he thought. 15 years in the same house, same job, same car, He suddenly was overcome with ideas of his past, ideas of what once was, seeming like a child’s endeavors in scope to his mature, adult life, but seemingly more real, not to mention necessary, the more he explored these buried memories. He couldn’t go on living the life he had. His despair and hopelessness turned into anger and resentment, his mental thoughts started to become physical as he lost hold of himself, his anger he’d bottled up roared inside of him, like a tiger in a cage struggling to break free. he began minorly convulsing, his eye twitching slightly like a mental patient and his breathing becoming heavy and definite. His vision was a haze, his reasoning hidden behind blissful wrath. The tables had turned, the tiger was outside the cage now, and the order of power had been redetermined. In his epiphanent rage, Max failed to notice the store employee who, having seen similar outbursts, begrudgingly tapped the disoriented man on the shoulder, in a reluctant show of aid.

“‘Sir, are you ok?” The attendant asked hesitantly.

Max snapped out of it instantly, voice of reason seemingly tranquilizing the tiger inside of him, usurping its throne of power in the process.

“Uh, yea i’m alright” Max said, in an almost nauseated state, before hastily gathering his groceries, along with a bottle of whiskey to quell his thoughts, and leaving the store.

Max didn’t think much on the ride home, but the radio static became much more apparent, and way less soothing as he pulled into his driveway. He walked inside with an air of urgence and ignominy hung over his head, forgetting to lock his car door in the process. As he closed the door to the outside world, all his feelings hit him at once, in what can only be described as the opposite of a catharsis one would expect after a similar catatonic episode. He couldn’t quite tell if that meant there was more to come, but he didn’t care much as he poured a glass of whiskey in a seemingly vain attempt to return to his normal routine. 

Consciously, he had forgotten the whole incident. He went along his normal routine. Putting away groceries, watching tv, and making himself a grill cheese. It was unhealthy, easy, and he had made it the same way for 15 years every night. Subconsciously though, he had not forgotten the incident. He was still deciphering what had happened, and fitting the messy result into an amalgamation  of reassurance. Little things he had done for years that blended into ambiguity had suddenly become examples and arguments in the subconscious debacle of his life thus far. The miniscule seemed much more apparent, even if he didn’t realise it. The floor tiles were cracked and dirty. His couch sagged into the carpet, and the light snuck through the blinds, exposing the dust as it filtered through, much like how reality was now sneaking into his mind, and exposing his impurities. He put his mind to his sandwich, starting off with a light buttering of both pieces of sourdough bread, crumbs falling on the floor as he carelessly pulled the bread out of the bag. He turned on the stovetop with a click, the fire responsively engulfing the escaping gas, heating Max’s face for a brief moment. He placed the bread onto the pan, a light sizzle hissed from the pan coincident with a golden-brown crust forming on the bread. The brief moment of anticipation during the bread’s cooking was enough time for a thought to escape into Max’s brain, which caused a brief panic, which he once again quelled with a sip from his whiskey, which made a clink as he placed it back down on the cold stone countertop. It burned the back of his throat a bit as he swallowed, as he wasn’t usually one to drink, let alone hard liquor on a Thursday night. He then picked up the two pieces of bread, now toast after having been cooked on the stove, and dropped them onto his plate prematurely as a result of forgetting that cooked food is usually hot on the fingertips. Finally, like the cherry on the top, the icing on the cake, the crux of the biscuit, came the cheese. It was cool to the touch, almost soothing after the bread had burned his fingers ever so slightly. He laid down two pieces of cheese onto one side of bread, the cheese instantaneously melting into the bread itself, before being tucked in like a child under the final layer of bread, forming a grill cheese. The cheese oozed out the side of the bread, and out through the imperfect curves and bubbles of the crust, coagulating lightly on the outside edges of the cheese, preserving the warm, gooey, golden goodness inside. It was grilled cheese alright. He seemed awfully proud of his work, almost enamoured by the way it sat perfectly on his plate, warming his hand through the ceramic. As he slowly ate it, he came back to his old thought process, gently soothed back to the comforting ambiguity he once knew. The whiskey made him sleepy, but soon enough that was the only difference between then and any other night since the past 15 years. He left the dishes for the next day, and drunkenly fell asleep to the thoughts he had grown used to, nothing.

Chapter 2 The Arbitraries of Modus Operandi

“Did we get it?” A small man in a blue lab coat asked a taller man excitedly.

“Looks like it, thank god.” the taller man sighed, reeling back from the microscope-like object he was looking into. The microscope was an appendage of a much larger machine, of which there were many protrusions, all equally as complicated and alien as the latter. The machine was adorned in all sorts of beeping lights, dials, and monitors, of which a plethora of scurrying people adorned in similar lab coats were maintaining. The taller man stopped a diligently walking woman with a clipboard. 

“Susan, how goes the extraction of the data?” The tall man asked, slightly louder than before as a result of a new whirring noise produced from the large machine.

She clicked on her clipboard, to what would appear to be a digital screen, which shined in a seemingly positive manner based on her confident smile at the results of her tapping. “It’s running at 98.6 percent efficiency Dr. Merridew, the machine should only take an hour or so to compute the data, and then we’ll finally have the recipe.” She said beaming with joy, her voice taking a higher pitch as she finished her sentence.

“Good job” Merridew said, as he patted her on the shoulder in praise. “You all did great today! Every last one of you. I couldn’t be happier to work with a better team on this project, and in record time as well. Everyone go home early!” The doctor yelled across the room, being met with applause as people smiled and hung up their coats and left through the clean room exit. Now all that was left was the Dr., and a few other head scientists.

The remaining scientists stayed in celebration of the end of their research. A plump man with a green coat with the words “BIO TECHNICIAN” printed on the back rummaged through a desk to reveal a bottle of whiskey, of which he then poured 3 glasses for the remaining men.

A man with an orange lab coat now stood up, his liquor sloshing around the glass and clinking the ice cubes together as he raised it to give a toast to his comrades. “Of all the shitty jobs at Anubis, simulation research has got to be the worst one, but at least I got to spend these past 3 months with you bastards!” He said, causing an uproar of laughter from the other men. They clinked their glasses together, sloshing alcohol all over the spotless sterile tiles. The other men went around the room, giving their own speeches, each getting more and more illogical as their alcohol consumption went up. After a while of talking and drinking, the Doctor, revealed to be the main scientist, seemingly remembered his job to retrieve the results of the experiment. He drunkenly walked over to a phone on the wall, tipping over a few test tubes next to him on the way. The man in green looked up from his seemingly empty glass at the crash in a state of alarm, but then wondered if maybe some more alcohol had appeared and stared back into it. Merridew, unaware of his actions, reached the phone, and failed to punch a string of numbers into the phone twice, muttering some curses under his tongue, before finally typing the right numbers to induce a brief buzz, and then a click as someone picked up the phone on the other end.

“Hello, this is the intern’s office, how can I he-” The gloomily sounding man said on the phone, his voice being cut off by the audibly irritated doctor.

“We were supposed to receive the recipe results by now!” The doctor yelled angrily into the phone, beads of saliva flying carelessly out of his mouth onto the speaker.

“Uh yes sir, i’ll send someone right away to retrieve it” The man hastily said on the phone, desperate to end the conversation with the belligerent man. He clicked the phone into its base, briefly staring at his nameplate reading “temporary manager”, which gave him a great sense of pride and determination. He grabbed a clipboard of names, before walking into the main office of the intern center to make an announcement. A grid of cubicles stretched on for 50 feet or so in front of the man. People worked and bustled about much like the science lab, albeit with less enthusiasm, and whirring and buzzing being replaced by phone calls and personal conversations. The manager followed a list of names on a clipboard with his finger, hesitantly deciding who to scar with an encounter from the man on the phone, before finally landing on one unlucky poor soul. “People, we need someone to go up to simulations for a delivery, can I get Jerry to do it?” The manager asked politely, going mostly unheard to the office space, until finally an irritated woman rolled into view from her cubicle on her desk chair, a cupped hand over her phone. “Oh Jerry went up to shipping to deal with a dispute, he’ll be back later today” The man sighed, and pushed up his smudged glasses as he went a few names further down the list. “Ok, what about Dexter, Dexter Adams? is Dexter here?” The man said, spying over cubicles for the unlucky soul.

Dexter sat staring intently into his computer monitor, ignoring the calls for what he would assume would be him, but he didn’t know for sure because he knew nobody’s name. His desk was completely empty except for the bare necessities of supplies like a stapler and a few pencils. He could leave at any time and nobody would have even known the desk was being used, in stark contrast to the personalized desks of his fellow employees, which were anything but vacant with their motivational “hangin there” posters, and bejewelled pencils. He had it organized and cleaned exactly how he liked it, everything according to his decision. Dexter finally figured it was his name they were indeed calling, so he stood up from his dark, privy cubicle to address the man who had called his name so many times.

“Dexter, where have you been? Sleeping on the job again?” The manager said to Dexter, putting a hand over his shoulder in a comraederic way, to which Dexter shuddered with relentment.

“No sir, not on company time” Dexter said insincerely, as to speed up the pointless conversation. He wasn’t actually sleeping, but he may as well have been. The interns contributed nothing to their job, and only did the busy work no one wanted to do. Dexter hated the job, he found it demeaning and a travesty to his true image of himself to be ordered around by other people, but he had no other choice. The company he worked for, Anubis , was inefficient, but was anything but strapped for money. They payed well, and he’d have been stupid not to take the job, but sometimes he wondered if the pay was worth the degrading treatment. 

The Manager led Dexter out of the office into the main stairway, the sounds of the phones and general office commotion going quiet as the door closed behind them.

“I’m really sorry about this assignment, the gentleman seemed cranky on the phone but do what he asks and you’ll be just fine, uh pal.” The manager said embarrassedly patting him on the back, realising he’d already forgotten the employees name. He always tried to bond and get to know his employees, but that was hard when they usually left or were fired after about 3 weeks. Even with that Dexter was a tough cookie to crack, but the manager had fleeting hope. Dexter hid a sneer behind a confident smile, and contemplated dark thoughts as he turned away from the endlessly overconfident manager up the stairs to the simulation wing.

Dexter stepped into the lab room, greeted unpleasantly by the thick smell of booze and the loud whirring that seemed to suspend all quieting thoughts. Broken glass and soiled papers littered the floor, and three scientists slept obnoxiously, flailed over chairs and tables. The 4th scientist, Merridew stormed intently and ungracefully over to the intern, crushing broken glass beneath his polished leather shoes.

“Where have you been? We have been waiting for you!” The uncomposed man said, gesturing to his sleeping friends, of which two were snoring loudly.

The intern, initially off put by the tall man, smiled with ulteriority as he realized he was too drunk to have any real power over him, or at least exercise it over him at the time.

“Doesn’t matter where I’ve been, all that matters is I’m here now, so what do you need, old man?” Dexter said confidently, pushing aside Merridew and stealing a glass cradled in a sleeping scientist’s arms, who only made a slight whimper at the loss of his sleepy companion. Dexter poured himself a glass of whiskey, gently shaking the bottle as the last sliver of liquid left into his glass, much to the dismay of the now awake scientist. Dexter sipped the whiskey, making sure to savor every last drop, his arms crossed as he leaned against the large metal machine contently, causing his back to vibrate greatly. He watched as the doctors’ appalled, frozen gaze turned into anger, and then into helplessness as he realized that everything was being recorded on the security cameras. If the footage got out of his abuse of company equipment, time, and not to mention employees, he’d most certainly be fired. His career was in the hands of an intern now, and Dexter knew it. A normal, maybe provisionary person would’ve asked for money, or access to the break room etc, but Dexter was anything but normal nor provisional. He intended to do what would best benefit him, even putting his personal efforts of vengeance aside to gain the upper hand in the long run. He was vengeful, maybe even cruel, but he wasn’t stupid.

He considered his options, looking around the room intently for things could aid him, while the doctor looked onwards nervously. Dexter crept into computer cabinets, examining the various chips and wires. Dexter knew all about machinery, and looked for parts he wouldn’t normally be able to acquire himself. “Particle connectors, Hodkin repressors, is there anything good in here?” Dexter exclaimed irritatedly, both to show actual anger and to partly scare the doctor.

“Just take what you want, I can write it off and then we’re done.” Merridew sighed reluctantly.

“Oh don’t worry I will, but why the rush? I just got here” Dexter taunted, stepping over the puddles of broken glass and alcohol spills. He bent down, picking up a shard of glass and examining it. “Jeez you guys really wrecked the place, you were really screwed anyways, I didn’t even have to come down here” Dexter snickered, tossing the shard of glass at one of the scientists, who snarled in disdain. 

Finally, one of the scientists chimed in nervously. “Why don’t you just take the simulator?”

Dexter turned around, the scientist’s uneasy words having peaked his interests. “I’m sure you guys can write off a lot of things, but there’s no way you could write off a whole simulator, there’d be an investigation” Dexter said accusingly.

“While that would normally be the case, this is an old model, one of the last of the x200 series’. This was it’s last experiment before it was meant to be dismantled. It would be much easier to get rid of something the company doesn’t want in the first place.” The scientist said apprehensively.

Dexter scratched his nonexistent beard intently, his calming appearance seemingly releasing some tension from the scientists. “I see your point, but this thing is massive! They would notice an entire room sized machine disappearing, and I certainly couldn’t hide it.” Dexter motioned his hands to show the bulk of the machine.

Another scientist stepped up from behind the other, almost in que to answer a question he had more expertise in. “While that is true for most simulators, this one was a custom built model. It has a detachable core that is about the size of a consumer simulator, the difference being it has the power of a full commercial one. Only thing needed is proper coolant and power.” The scientist said confidently, tapping on the machine affectionately as he spoke as if it were his own child. Dexter, after some thought, agreed to the idea, seemingly satisfied with the idea of owning a commercial grade simulator in his own home. He had many consumer ones, but they were slow and unrealistic, especially for his crazy ambitions. He imagined taking control of an entire country, maybe even a world, and having complete control over every detail down to the atom. His house was more than capable of cooling the device, with his extensive cooling devices collected throughout the years for his jury-rigged contraptions, and power was all good too, as he stole it from a local power line. He motioned for the scientists to unhook the machine, making sure to watch them in case they added a tracker, or removed a vital component. The scientists were blissfully unaware of his surveillance, nor any such ideas, they were just happy to be released from the control of this lowly worker.

They pressed some buttons and turned some knobs, which prompted the machine to open like a pharaoh’s sarcophagus, revealing the core inside. It was a small glass-like cylinder, which glowed a faint green hue around it. Wires clung to a tall scepter that held the core, the wires going off in all directions like vines on a jungle tree. The scientist reached in to grab the core, already warm to the touch from being away from the coolant, but Dexter pushed him aside to grab it himself. He unhooked it easily from its spot in the machine, causing the whole machine to turn off and the lights to flicker momentarily from the power change. Dexter held the core in his hands, the faint green light radiating over his evil green. 

Dexter turned to the men, thinking how funny it was that for people so drunk, they sure sobered up quickly when their jobs were on the line. He wondered why he was even there for  a second, the whole moment seeming like a dream, then suddenly he remembered. “Oh! The recipe! How could I forget.” Dexter said, putting his face in his palm comically. He walked slowly to a back room, where a small terminal lay unlit on a dark, neglected desk. A small green cursor flashed on and off on a prompt line, to which Dexter typed PRINT KEY into a dusty keyboard. The machine made a beeping sound, and then emitted a large, floppy disk-like, well, disk. He had the recipe for the scientists, but before he left the room, he had another idea. He typed PRINT KEY SIMULATION into the machine, and once again he acquired a disk. This one was not a recipe, but the simulation seed for where the recipe came from. He found it more meaningful, and symbolic, if he were to toy with the pre existing members of the simulation, instead of creating a new “seed”. They were the reason he even came down here, he felt it right to save them from deletion. It would also save him the time of generating a new simulation. He quickly tucked the simulation disk into his pocket, and waved the recipe disk around like a flag as he walked triumphantly to the door, the scientists eyeing it anxiously like dogs. Right before he was exiting the room, he remembered one thing. He walked back to the room with the computer and typed EJECT SECURITY TAPE. This caused one last beep as a disk came out with all the footage of the past 3 hours or so, enough time to prove what happened that night. With his new toy in hand and his blackmail material hidden away, he finally handed the recipe to Merridew. 

“Hope it was worth it” Dexter whispered closely as he placed the disk in his unmoving hands, before walking away proudly. He strided down the stairs, making sure to do a slide down the handlebars to properly show his happiness, before almost falling and regaining his composure. He didn’t bother going back to his dank dark office, because he was sure he’d be fired the next day anyways. It didn’t matter to him, as he had everything he could want right now and more. He descended all the way down the stairs to the emergency exit, a shortcut any employee knew to get out faster. It was covered in warning signs saying “don’t open unless emergency, alarm will sound” but in the time he had worked there, it never did, nor did it this time. He opened the door to a torrential downpour, which wasn’t that unusual considering it rained nearly every day. He sheltered the two discs under his jacket, and made his way to the shelter of his car. After fumbling with the keys for a second and getting into his car, making sure to place down the disks safely, he got back out. He ripped off the employee ID card stuck to his shirt, and threw it at the building, landing in a nonchalant flop. He felt totally emancipated, physically and mentally. The water felt cleaner, the air felt crisper. He drove home with a smile on his face, making sure to take the long scenic route home.

Dexter pulled into the driveway of his crappy apartment. His tires bounced as they rolled over the unrepaired crack in the cement, bringing his car to a sudden halt. The apartment was at best a squatters den and at worst a threat to public safety, it had bars over the windows and trash overflowing from the unkept bins out front, some of which had spiderwebs laced in between the handles. The front lawn was befitting of the house, a small patch of brown weeds lay dying in a dirt patch, and a rusty pink flamingo stood to mark its former glory, where green grass must’ve been at one point. A bystander might think the apartment was abandoned, save for a dim light creeping through the dirt-stained barred windows. Dexter fumbled with the door key for a second, propping the tapes and the core up onto his knee, using his free hands to find the right key from his pocket. Finally, he found the key, and the door opened with a click. The door creaked open to what can only be described as a hoarder’s paradise. Trash filled the entire house, going back as far as one could see, and the smell it excreted did little to distract from the view. The stench clung to Dexter’s nostrils, and it would’ve made him shudder if he hadn’t grown used to it as he slowly grew the trash piles over the years. He assumed a guest might take notice of the sights and smells, but snickered at the idea of anyone purposely coming to his place of refuge. He liked to remain anonymous, away from the peering eyes of the outside world, and this apartment was perfect for that task. He paid “rent” to some shifty russian man he’d actually only seen once, and the only government document with his name on it was his driver’s license. In reality, he was quite a neat and orderly person, but allowed the trash to build up and the outside to decay to deter anyone from finding out his apartment was anything more than a squatter’s den.

He made his way through the sea of trash, passing by a herd of soda cans, grazing on his kitchen countertop, safe from the rolling waves below. He navigated out of the living room to a room in the back of the house. It was empty of all furniture of any kind, but some discernible craters in the carpet partially covered by water stains indicated this was once a bedroom. Dexter gently set down his items on the floor, moving some plastic bags out of the way to make room. He stood up again and pushed his palms against the wall, moving slowly across the wall like a metal detector. He continued shifting his hands in this motion until he seemed to have found what he was feeling for. He grasped at a seemingly invisible object on the wall with his fingertips, until slowly the edges of an object began to reveal themselves from the wall. The fake object appeared to be a fake panel, and Dexter moved his hands to get a better grip as the object exposed itself more from the wall. Finally, Dexter pulled the panel from the wall effortlessly, setting it down against the wall to reveal a hidden passageway with an ominous staircase, trailing down like a dungeon, shrouded in darkness. Dexter picked up his items from the floor through the passageway, putting the panel back on the wall behind him, once again hiding the true meaning behind the crumby, decrepit apartment.

Dexter walked down the stairs carefully, descending deeper into the oubliette, before finally the staircase came to an end at the room itself. He flipped on a light, flooding the room with light and revealing the room to be reminiscent of a mad scientist’s lair, if only a bit small. The hidden room was in direct contrast to the rest of the apartment above. The floors were a stainless sterile tile, clear enough to mirror the rest of the room in glossy detail. Countertops topped with papers and flasks were strewn around the room, fitting into the scientists stereotype. The walls were a clean and scientific white, unlike the stained, peeling wallpaper of the apartment above, The lights shone brightly and clearly, unlike the dimly lit apartment, where the light that did shine revealed a multitude of dust and pollutants which floated freely throughout the air. The most impressive thing was a massive machine that took up over half the room. It sat right in the middle of the room, with a multitude of wires and hose hanging off of it, some connecting to various other terminals and controllers around it. The whole machine buzzed, beeped and whirred, and it was clear this was some form of simulator. It had a resemblance much like the one at the Anubis building, albeit much more makeshift, as if it was ready to blow up at any moment. Dexter had been working on it over the years from a collection of parts, both legal and illegal, but it was missing one vital part, the core, of which he hadn’t had until now. In the far corner sat Dexter’s bed, the sheets unfolded, littered with paper scraps and ideas. This was the way Dexter had actually lived, and perfectly represented him in his own mind. It was clean, scientific, yet hidden from the outside world, forced to don an ugly persona; not in fear of being found, but in fear of being judged and limited in the freedom this place allowed. When Dexter had moved into this apartment, he didn’t know about the secret room. It wasn’t until a month or so of living here that he noticed and opened the panel in the wall, revealing a shoddily hand-dug room, which had most likely been used for drug manufacturing or storing of some sort. All that was left of the previous operations now was a table and some lights hung on the walls to illuminate the rough makeshift passageway that looked due for a cave in any minute. Dexter knew when he found it that apart from the people who made it, who were long out of the picture, no one knew of this place’s existence besides him. He took it upon himself to rework the entire room into a sanctuary, a private oasis for free practice of ideas, away from the prying eyes of human opinion and morality. Bit by bit, month after month, he rebuilt the room. He started by demoing the plywood supports, replacing them with rebar and a concrete foundation. He laid steel beams and sleek tile floors. Then he meticulously learned the basics of plumbing and electricity, not wanting to compromise his location by hiring a professional, and not to risk his ego by transferring work to someone else who could possibly mess up his dream oasis. Finally, he laid the foundation for a liveable home, with room to work and to grow. What was once just a prison cell to him, further tying him to society’s nosy grasp, had become his wardrobe to Narnia, a place where he could be free.

Dexter set down his various items on a table, sighing a sigh of relief as he relaxed in the confines of his true home. He pulled out a journal from a cabinet in a nearby desk, knowing that his real work was just beginning.

He consulted his journal, opening to a page showing a list of hand-scribbled operations for what appeared to be a very confusing machine. With the help of the journal, he flipped some switches, which prompted the machine to start flashing some red lights as if in distress, but Dexter remained calm. He hit a few more buttons, until finally the machine seemed to open up, a great deal of smoke pouring out from inside onto the floor to cool the now exposed core. The process was much like the one done at the Anubis building by the scientists, although unlike a tomb, this machine seemed to be more like an iron maiden with all its haphazard protrusions jutting out like spikes. Dexter reached inside to unhook the core from the machine. He grabbed hold of the cylindrical object, and yanked it out without care to it’s fragile chassis. The machine’s lights turned off and the sounds quieted down momentarily and then spurred back up at the sudden power change. Dexter stared at the core, the yellow light emanating onto his face and the outside warming his hand mildly. Knowing he would not be needing it anymore, he tossed it onto the ground in a nonchalant way, watching it smash into a million tiny pieces, the light lingering momentarily in the wreckage, before slowly dying completely. He probably could’ve sold the core, as he was very resourceful and clearly not one to waste an opportunity, but he figured the value of the message behind smashing it was worth far more than the money he would’ve gained from selling it. The smashing of the old core both metaphorically and literally sparked the end of an era, and ushered in a new one, full of new heights, possibilities, and ideas. Not to mention the further stretching of the limits of human morality and ethics.

Dexter turned back to the table and grabbed the new, green core. In his haste to leave he hadn’t actually fully examined his new toy. It looked alot like the old core that was now shards of glass stuck in his boots, but it was much bulkier and commercial. The light it emanated was almost blinding and Dexter had to wrap his hands in a piece of cloth so as to not burn his hands, showing just how much more powerful the core was compared to the old one. Stretched across the side was a picture of an ankh charm, with the word ANUBIS™ under it in gold font, clearly showing how this was never meant to be used by anyone but the company. Carefully, Dexter placed the core into the center of the machine where the yellow core had sat before, pushing aside clamps and wires to make room. He had to readjust the machine from an internal level as well, to make sure the circuits wouldn’t immediately fry from the sudden power surge. He hooked the wires up to the core, before finally giving it a light shove into the machine. The machine recognized the new core immediately, the lights around it shining brightly and the sounds from before whirring back to life again. Dexter stood back from the machine while it closed back into itself, admiring his Magnum Opus. He had been building this machine for years to come, but with this final part, it was complete. Dexter turned around to grab the simulation key he had taken from the scientists. He was eager to test his new toy, and didn’t want to spend the time making a whole new simulation from scratch, plus he felt he owed it to save the simulation, how in a way, without the simulation, he would never have stumbled upon the core in the first place. Besides, he could just delete it at any time, it had no power over him.

Dexter stuck the floppy disc-like card into a slot on a console. The machine made a few beeps as it loaded up the information.Just then a monitor to the left turned on, a picture appeared on it showing the gold ANUBIS™  logo with the ankh symbol like on the core, accompanied with a small loading bar. It finished loading, taking its sweet time loading at 99% which annoyed Dexter, before finally finishing and displaying the simulation.

The simulation itself was displayed on a plethora of  monitors, some showing some basic, yet incomprehensible data about the simulation itself, while others showed Matrix-style code running constantly across the screen. These screens were incomprehensible to humans, as they were a representation of the core itself thinking. The simulation worked by simulating what was supposed to happen, while using deep-learning to assume what would happen, some of them were more powerful than others, and could be more precise and simulate more as well. This current one was simulating a small county, and was accurate enough down to a single atom. Two other monitors right in the middle were the actual screens used to interact with the simulation. On one screen, was a prompt, where data could be input to modify, while the other screen showed various views inside the simulation, like a camera in a tv show. When Dexter had turned on the simulation, it had picked up exactly from where the scientists he’d stolen it from had left off. Dexter saw a man sleeping in a bed on the monitor, there didn’t seem to be anything unusual about the picture, and the man didn’t seem to be under any stress or pressure, he was just sleeping peacefully. Dexter was intrigued as to what he was looking at. He moved his sight to a monitor to the right, the one where he could input data. He typed in a few lines, until he found some notes the scientists before had left while researching.

—————————–ANUBIS——————————-

Researcher: [Dr. Merridew]

---

Test Subject Name:   [Maximilian Miller]

Age:  [35]

Current Residence: [Logan Town, Ohio]

Occupation:  [Auto Factory Worker, Horus Automotives]

Friends/Family:  [N/A]  Notes: Family detached, No attempt to socialize 

except in necessary interactions, no pets.

Possessions: [1B 1Br House, 1 Automobile, Colt M1911 Handgun + 3 green tipped magazines, various miscellaneous household amenities]

Additional Notes: [Max is a regular Joe, he has a normal job, no social life, no romantic interests, no intent to buy new things. If he disappeared right now no one would even notice. This makes him the perfect test subject, he doesn’t change, which gives us a clean base to test on, and an easy way to “undo” him if we mess up.]

---

Dexter was pleasantly pleased, he had misjudged the scientist’s as incompetent, but clearly they were smart enough to choose a great candidate for testing. Whether they had custom made him, or found him by chance Dexter didn’t know. It didn’t say exactly what they were testing him on, or what they were trying to get from him, but knowing corporate bureaucracy, it was probably something stupid and overly expensive like finding the best breakfast food.

Dexter stared once more at the screen. This man inside this machine had been living uneventfully his entire life. Unbeknownst to him, his ordinary life was about to change forever.

Chapter 3. Vertigo

Max awoke from his sleep the same way he always had for the past 15 years, the same reluctant attitude to start the day, the same sun, shining directly into his eyes from between his broken shutters, and the same enduring thought, that he was bound to repeat this routine for years to come. The only apparent difference between this morning and any other from the past 15 years was the slight hangover he was afflicted with from the events that happened the night before. He brushed it off, trying to ignore it as he went through his morning routine; breakfast, a cold shower, and the same overalls he wore every day to work. Today though, there was something, off… Max couldn’t quite tell what it was, but he knew something was out of place, or something was added. It wasn’t something as apparent as his house suddenly changing it’s layout, but it was that obvious. “Had someone gone and changed the shades of his carpets to be slightly lighter? No, why would someone break in to do something so minor, had someone lowered his chair-leg height by a fraction of an inch? No, it wasn’t that either.” Max couldn’t quite tell what it was, but something was definitely off. Max stared down at his watch, which seemed odd to be on his left arm. “Oh crap I’m late.” Max said out loud to his empty house, trying to ignore his perceptions as he rushed to work.

The next day, much to Max’s dismay, was much the same. He saw small, minute differences in objects throughout his day, but these small changes disappeared like they were never there when he focused directly on them. “I could’ve sworn this toothbrush had more bristles, when did that crack appear on my windshield?” he asked himself these questions throughout the day, with them only becoming more prevalent and unanswerable as time went on.

As the days went on, his apparent “condition” got worse and worse, even when he thought it couldn’t get any worse. By the 2nd day he felt scared to even leave the house, and by the 3rd day he didn’t even leave his room. He seemed less and less attached to everything he saw, and he began to question the reality he had always had so much faith in, or at least the reality he had remembered. The only place he felt like he truly understood things was in his own brain, yet the fact that it could retain such memories without anchoring them to any solid facts only worked to fuel his questioning. He was like a rock on a riverbed, slowly being chipped away at by the fast-flowing water, unable to grasp any sense of constant except the change itself. He slowly lost faith in everyday household objects, scrutinizing every detail of them as if a friend was playing a prank on him by replacing his possessions. But Max didn’t have any friends, and a prank on this level would be too grand to be played out, especially on someone as random as himself. Max found no answers to his situation, and that silence brought him no solace.

On the 5th day Max lost his job at the Auto Factory, after failing to show up for three days. His 15 year record of perfect attendance meaning nothing, even his co-workers forgetting his presence after a few days. Not that this mattered much to Max, he had forgotten he had even had a job, being much more fixated on how the hairs on his arm seemed to have moved since the last time he blinked. No neighbors came to his house, no family members called to check up on him. His isolation he had so happily endured now becoming his greatest weakness, like a hole in a boat for a man lost at sea. 

His mail piled up in his mailbox, until the mailman couldn’t even put any more mail in it. . Max made an attempt to read some of it, in a desperate attempt to find sort of sanity in the world, but the characters seemed alien to him. He went to a neighbor to ask for help in deciphering his mail, but all the neighbor heard was incoherent mumbling as Max tried to form sentences in a language he was becoming disattached to.

The neighbor reached out a helpful arm for the distressed man “Sorry? I can’t understand you, do you need help? Are you ok?” Max couldn’t understand what the man said, and ran back inside confused and frightened, leaving his mail at the neighbor’s feet.

Max sat under the comfort of his blanket on his bed. In near total darkness under his bed cover, he sat motionless. It was the only place left he felt comfortable and constant anymore, yet even then he felt the texture of the blanket changing slightly. Sometimes it was rough and wool-like, others it was a thick fur.  He was further pushed back into his mind, which was the only thing that didn’t change. This seemed to be a  blessing and a curse, as because he knew what he was perceiving, it allowed him to have a firsthand view and part in assuring his own insanity. Max didn’t know what was happening to him, and at this point he could barely remember when it started. 

“Have I always been like this?”

 “No, get a grip Max, this isn’t normal, you were normal before.” 

“What’s wrong with me? Have we gone insane?

“No, there’s no way we’ve gone insane, someone’s playing a prank, or they’re drugging us”

“Who would do that? Seems like a lot of work, yet it’s all so real, it’s unexplainable…”

“We should go outside again, maybe we can get help”

“No! If we go outside we will get lost, we’re basically lost in this house by itself, and every day it seems less and less familiar.”

“So what do we do? We get worse and worse every day!”

“We have to break the cycle while we can still think a little bit straight.”

“You don’t mean…”

“Death brings eternal silence, and it will be our peace, we have no other option”

On what Max wasn’t sure was his tenth day of unending torment, Max, with his reasoning seemingly faded beyond repair, he tried to kill himself. From Max’s perspective though, of which it was the one of the last things he was sure of, it was the most sane decision he had ever made. It wasn’t a decision he wanted, but it was one he needed, and it was out of desperation. He figured the only way to end his terrible perceptions would be to end his ability to perceive all together.

 Max took a few uneasy steps out of his unfamiliar house. The clouds in the sky squiglled like worms in his peripheral vision but seemed to float back to their normal path when he looked directly at them. He had to look at the ground to make sure he didn’t trip over anything as he uneasily walked out into the street. He was lucky enough to not need glasses and not old enough to need hearing implants, but he imagined this is a lot like what it was, only 10 times worse. His perceptions seemed to betray his mind, but this one he one thing he was sure of. He uncovered an old handgun from his pocket, back from his military years. It wasn’t the one he used in the military, but it was the same make and model, and the grooves on the handle felt comforting in his trembling hands. He screamed some incoherent jargon to his neighbor down the road, whose face turned from inviting to shock as he stared down the barrel of the gun held by the crazed lunatic. Max pointed the gun at the man uneasily, who stood still and surprisingly calm throughout the ordeal. Neighbors gathered at their windows to watch the crime scene unfold in front of them. Mothers closed blinds and hurried kids off to back rooms while fathers stared on helplessly while they called the police. Max was oblivious of the doings of the people around him, barely able to remember why he was even standing in the unfamiliar street he had driven down for 15 years. The man, in a selfless act of devotion, tried to ease Max by telling him to put the gun down and slowly move closer. Max stood confused at the man, wondering why he had such a cautious body language, and why he was talking in such a soothing voice. Max stared down at his hands, shocked to see a gun in his right hand, causing him to promptly jump and swing the gun rapidly in the direction of the man. The man dove to the floor behind a car at this sudden lapse in perception, while the more daring bystanders rushed back into their houses at the uncaring waving of the weapon. The man continued to console Max from behind the car, who only perceived the words as incoherent shouts and ramblings. Max tried to respond, but his words were only heard by him as mumbles and moans. At this point Max’s confusion of the situation caused him to remember why he was outside holding a gun, and he was brought to a feeling of shame and embarrassment as he stared at the neighbors who looked at him like they were deer in a headlight, completely at his mercy. He realized he wouldn’t get this moment of clarity again, and in one sudden movement, he moved the gun up from the man to his head, and promptly pulled the trigger. He was surprised to hear the click of the trigger, feeling that he’d be dead by now, and even more surprised by the screams of the people around him as he completed his action. Before he even had time to contemplate what had happened, he was shoved to the floor harshly by a police officer and blacked out as his head banged against the pavement.

Max awoke sitting on a thin mattress/cot, his head feeling like small little daggers were digging into his skull. His vision was blurry, but not in the way it was before. He could actually perceive his blurriness! His pain, although severe, was understood by his brain! He felt around his head and touched a bandage wrapped around his head, feeling a small bump where he had fallen, which hurt to the touch. He wasn’t sure how he had regained his clarity, but he wasn’t about to let it go to waste. He studied the room around him as his vision slowly came back to him. The walls were cold and grey, he presumed they were concrete, and in front of him he could see some other rooms, although they seemed to be separated by tall, similarly grey gates. He Got up uneasily, using the frame of the cot to balance himself, and went to examine the gates. As he got closer, he lost his balance and leaned into the gates as he was too far from the support of the bed. His depth perception wasn’t all back, and his hand went right through the slits of the gate, causing his head to bang against the gate with a loud thonk. The pain in his head went up significantly, feeling like someone was pushing his skull inwards on his brain, but the feeling the pain only signified to him more that his clarity was back, which brought him minor joy. He used his hands to support himself off the gate, which were colder than the concrete walls. He figured they were actually bars of some sort, given their metallic feel, but what place has bars? He stared down at his body and much to his dismay, he saw an orange blob roughly following the shape of his body. He was in a prison.

Just then, two blobs walked towards the cell bars. As they got closer, they appeared to be wearing blue suits, so they must be police officers. One of the officers yelled at him to sit down on his bed, while the other one fumbled with a ring of keys to open the cell door. The shorter looking officer finally opened the cell door with a clink of the keys, while the other grabbed him harshly by the arm and forced him into a powerless position. The cop then handcuffed Max while the other one examined him. 

“How are you feeling Max, can you walk?” The taller officer asked. She appeared to be a female based on her voice, and she was much taller than the shorter cop currently putting Max in handcuffs behind him. She seemed to examine him with much reluctance, as if this was the third druggie she had detained this week, but with the due diligence of a professional.

“Yea, i’m fine I guess. How’d I get here?” Max slurred out, shuffling uncomfortably as the cop behind him raised his arm in a way he wouldn’t normally bend it.

“All that will be explained in a second, I just need to make sure you’re fit to walk and talk before we deal with all the questioning.” The female officer informed him. She nodded to the cop behind him, who pushed him to a room down the hall from his cell. Max tripped as his walking was still uneasy, but the man behind him pushed him up by the arm and kept him walking. Everything around Max still seemed to be blurry, but from the looks of the room, he wasn’t in prison, he was just in a local police station, which assured him a little bit, as he wasn’t sure why he was even here, and he couldn’t even remember what it was he did. It couldn’t have been that bad though if he only had a two guard escort in a small town jail, who seemed to be in no rush.

The guard in front opened up the door to a room a little bit down the hall from his cell, and motioned for the guard behind him to sit him down in a chair in a metal folding chair in the middle of the room. Max sat down, and examined the room a little bit better while the guard uncuffed hir left hand from his right, but moved the left hand cuff to a ring on the chair, which now appeared to be bolted down to the ground. The room was similar in size to his cell, with the similarly grey concrete material for the walls, except a wooden door where the bars would be, and a mirror to his left. Old crime movies told him the mirror was a one way window, but wasn’t sure if anyone actually sat on the other side in small cases such as his. In front of him sat a metal table with papers and folders strewn across it, and a man sitting adjacent organizing these papers. The man had a dirty grey suit with what appeared to be coffee stains covering his dress shirt, partially covered by his crumpled grey jacket. He had a short, unshaven beard with obviously little maintenance, and long unkempt brown hair which he threw back like a mullet. His most distinguishable feature though was his yellow tinted aviators, which gave him a sense of importance, without losing that humanity by covering his eyes with polarized, black lenses. Once Max was properly detained, the two police officers left the room to just Max and the man, who sat there shuffling the papers seemingly unaware of Max’s presence.

Max sat in silence for a moment, noticing a clock behind his head on the wall, the clicking being the only sound in his ears besides the occasional shuffling of papers.

“Do you know where you are?” The man asked suddenly, looking up from his papers.

“Uh yea, I’m in a police station.” Max answered, caught off guard by his sudden break from silence.

“Yes yes I know that but broader, do you know where you are?” The man asked intently

“I’m in Logan town Ohio?” Max asked, not knowing if that was the right answer.

“Broader.” The man asked with an enigmatic smile.

“What do you mean broader? The US? How much broader can I be? Earth? The Milky Way?” Max answered angrily.

“I think you’re missing the point, I’m not talking physically.” The Man said in a playful manner.

“I don’t see how this matters.” Max answered

“Why don’t you let me do my job, and you just answer the questions. Where do you work Max?” The man asked without any seeming care.

“I-I work in an auto factory, or at least I think I did, I remember getting a letter of termination, but everything from a week or so ago is… foggy.” Max said uncomfortably, showing a great deal of effort when trying to remember the events of the past week.

“Do you feel like you’re making a difference there, slaving away at the factory, do you think anything in your life matters? Anything you’ve done?” The man asked out of the blue, leaning in towards Max in a seemingly offtopic and confrontational way.

“I don’t see how this is relevant, I want to leave.” Max demanded, not wanting to be reminded of these ideas or the outburst in the grocery store. Max tried to stand up, but was put at an awkward hunch as the chain around his wrist pulled on his arm, constraining him to the chair. Max struggled to free himself from the chain’s grasp, while the Man stared at him uncaringly.

“It doesn’t matter what you do Max, out there, you’re still handcuffed to a chair, you just don’t realize it.”

Max turned to the Man, his interest piqued by the Man’s strange words. “What are you talking about?”

The man smiled. “Your whole life is just shapes against a wall, shadows of a world you’ll never see, and that you could never understand.”

Max glared at the man “Alright this clearly isn’t an interview anymore, who are you?”

The man grinned again, leaning back in his chair, something Max couldn’t do because he was bolted to the floor. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me”

“Try me.” Max said.

The man leaned forward, close enough for Max to touch him if he wasn’t handcuffed to the table. “My name is Dexter and I’m a person from 2164 looking into a simulation to toy with your existence. I’m God.”

“You don’t seem so godlike to me” Max said, before spitting on the man’s face and leaning back awkwardly in the unmoving chair.

The man sat unmoving for a second, the saliva dribbling viscously down the side of his forehead and creeping into his inner ear. “You know, i’m not normally this personal with my subjects, but for you I made an exception, considering everything you gave me.” The man gestured to the room around him, as if Max had made it just for him. “But alas, If you’re not gonna respect me, then I’ll give you a reason to respect me”.

The man stood up and snapped his fingers, as if to trigger some sort of grand event, but nothing happened. Max scoffed. “Is this some elaborate prank? If i’m in trouble that’s fine but i’d like to speak to a lawy-”.

Just then Max couldn’t speak. In fact, he couldn’t do much of anything. He found his whole body had been stuck in space, except his eyes which he used to hesitantly scan the area. The room around him had disappeared, his body now sitting frozen on what appeared to be thin air, surrounded by nothing. In front of him stood the man, who seemed unchanged by the ordeal, still sitting in his previous position, staring at Max with a villainous gaze. “Now do you see Max?” The man stood up from his seemingly invisible chair, and walked on a bed of nothing towards Max. “I control this reality, and everything you perceive. My only goal is to torment you and you only. Consider it a great gift to even be told this knowledge, for it is the only true thing in your world. Everything else is pointless.”

Dexter stared at Max expectantly, as if he was entitled to a startled, almost fearful reaction, but Max only stared blankly at the man in the white suit, he was still processing the information thrown at him. Pointless? How could his entire life be pointless? This man went on rambling like a crazy person, but he definitely had the power to back up his claims of godlike power. But if he was a god, or some godlike being, why would a god be so fixated on him? Especially on something as typical as his torment? Surely a god would have greater things on his mind than proving his power to some insolent mortal such as himself? The man before him, he was too quarrelsome, too narcissistic, too greedy, too, human. That was just it, they were the ideas of a human. Max didn’t fully understand where the power of the man came from, if he was drugged, or if he truly was in some sort of “simulation”, but he knew that if he wanted to maintain any sense of who he was, he would have to obey the man, as to avoid his punishment.

Max put on his shocked face, hoping that he was convincing enough for the Tormentor, who was still staring expectantly. “Oh no, I now realize the power you have over me, and how you dominate my reality in every way my meager perception can observe and more”.

Dexter was momentarily taken aback by this oddly coherent response, as it was not the cry for mercy he had hoped for, but it was enough to sustain his god-like mentality. “Very well, I shall take your plea into consideration, and allow you to return to your insignificant life.” Dexter hadn’t actually planned to return his plaything to his ordinary life, for Dexter had assumed the man hadn’t taken Dexter seriously. Dexter had graciously tried to enlighten the man on his existence, but he had spat on him in incolence and disbelief. Dexter then tried to offer the man a chance to redeem himself, and he had lied to him of his subservience. “Fool me once, shame on you. But fool me twice, shame on me…” Dexter thought. He would not be fooled a third time. His time on the machine would no longer be in the pursuit of curiosity, but instead in pursuit of vengeance, a personal vendetta against the man who tried to outsmart Dexter Adams.

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.

Chapter 5. The Necessity of Collective Arbitraries

Uncle pulled out three pictures from inside a desk and pinned one of them on the wall amongst a plethora of other photos and sketches. “Ok ya see this photo?” Uncle said, pointing to a dated picture of a radio tower.

“Yea it’s a radio antennae, but what’s that got to do with anything?” Max asked, not quite sure where he was going with this.

“That’s a radio tower for a local radio station, it’s a few hours out of town. We are going to go to it.” 

Max was even more confused, but went along with it. “Why this radio tower, why not one of the ones in town or closer?”

Uncle grinned. “Bucket, you sure are a smart one with all these questions. We need to go to this one because we need to make sure the lizard people, or as you call them, the stranger, can’t track us. We need to go somewhere far away, but not TOO far.”

“Ok, I guess that makes some sort of sense, but what are we gonna do when we get there?”

Uncle grabbed the second photo and pinned it next to the first one. It depicted a large generator-like device that had antennas coming out of it from multiple angles. “We’re gonna hook up THIS machine, to the radio station… to hijack the airspace!” Uncle was visibly moving up and down now, clearly getting more excited as he explained his master plan.

“Slow down, why would you show me a picture of the machine and not just show me the machine? Where is it?” Max questioned, feeling this plan derailing before it even started.

“No no no no no, you don’t get it. The machine-ey box thing is, a little bit… irradiated, so I don’t want to grab it till we need it.” Based on this information,  Max was quite sure the man had suffered radiation poisoning, but he was too far in to quit.

“Ok, well where is it?” Max implored.

“It’s in my car, in a box. Just, don’t worry about it, I’ll have it when we need it.” Uncle snapped, almost sounding irritated for the first time.

Max did not pressure him anymore and took his word for it. “Ok so what’s the last picture for?” 

Uncle smiled “Ah ha, I’m glad you asked Bucket.” Uncle hung up the last photo, which was a picture of a Baker’s Square restaurant. “When we’re done we can get pie.”

At that moment, Max seemed to come to his senses and realize this was man really was just a crazed lunatic and he was stupid to think this man could help him. Sure, he had been right about some things, but the lizard men, and all the other comments made Max think he had just gotten lucky with some of his conspiracies. Then again, Max also remembered the craziness he had been facing. How he almost went insane, how everyone he saw had made less sense then this clearly deranged man. Max decided that if it weren’t for this man, Max would be completely without help, and this man was probably his only shot at getting close to the stranger. So, as Max came to his senses of insensibility, Max asked “When do we leave?”.

3 Hours later Max found himself driving to some radio station half way across the state, to meet some man he had met only hours before, to stop a tyrannical, godlike being from torturing Max for all eternity. The absurdity was only just hitting Max now as he had plenty of time to think as he drove along  the endless stretch of road. He was alone in his car, having offered to drive Uncle there, but Uncle insisted on taking separate cars, as to avoid “Lizardmen radar from picking up their combined brainwaves”. Max was perfectly fine with this, happy to get away from his incessant ramblings, but at the same time Max hated running the events of the past week and a half through head repeatedly to stave off boredom. He also was still mildly worried that the stranger was watching him, but Max figured if he was, he likely would’ve put a stop to Uncle and Max a while ago.

After another ten minutes or so of driving Max spotted the radio tower in the distance. He took a turn off the highway and drove down a side road until he came to a radio station. Max parked in the station parking lot, which didn’t have a single car in it. The radio tower looked to be abandoned for some time now, with trash floating around in the wind and weeds growing up through cracks in the pavement, yet Uncle said “that was the Lizard men’s cover so they could broadcast without arousing suspicion”. Nonetheless, he didn’t like the eerie feeling this place gave him, and the sight of the tower itself made his stomach drop. He knew something bad was bound to happen here.

Moments later Uncle pulled in behind Max. As far as cars go, Max’s truck was far from nice, but compared to Uncle’s car, it was a ferrari. Uncle’s old beater rolled slowly to a halt, parking sideways in between three spots carelessly. The car coughed as it drove by, and the tires screeched as it came to a stop. It’s paint job was chipped, overlapping the rusted chassis that had clearly seen better days. Max didn’t even know how the car ran, it must’ve been driving around since before Max was born.

Uncle turned off the car and stepped out to greet Max.

“Ah Bucket, I see you made the journey alright! that’s good!” Uncle exclaimed. “But but, before you say anything, we don’t know if you or me we’re kidnapped and replaced by the lizardmen while we were separated.” Uncle reached into his car and tossed Max a tinfoil hat. “Put that on, so I can be sure you weren’t replaced, and i’ll do the same.”

Max donned his tinfoil hat, glad no one was around to see it, and Uncle did the same. “Alright enough formalities, let’s get started, time is of the essence!” Uncle said, jumping up excitedly, hitting his foot on the side of his car. He limped to the back of the car accompanied by some curses under his breath and opened the trunk. 

“Come over here.” Uncle motioned to Max,  waving his hands excessively to Max, who walked over cautiously. “Look at this.” Uncle said, opening the trunk of the car. Max looked into the trunk of the car, expecting some sort of big reveal, but frowned, seeing only a locked lead box. 

“Uh Uncle, this is a box.”

Uncle snapped out of his excitement. “What? Oh, yea sorry let me get that.” Uncle stuck his head into the trunk of the car and unlocked the box. “Tadaaa!” He opened the box with a creak, revealing the machine from the pictures before. The inside faces of the box had burn marks and melted blobs of metal in the sides of it, speaking volumes to the radioactivity of the device inside. Max took a few steps back just to be safe.

“Alright so, now we just take the device to the top of the radio tower, plug ‘er into the radio-gizzy thing, and it should work!” Uncle did a little dance, running around the car clapping, his plan was finally coming together.

Max, being the voice of reason, asked the question he was dreading,” Ok, so who’s taking it up there?” Uncle stared at Max intently, making Max feel stupid for even asking the question. Max sighed. “Fine, i’ll do it.”

Max grabbed the device with one hand, his hand almost burning at the heat. He removed his jacket and wrapped around the machine to help with the heat, and made his way to the tower with diligence and haste, not wanting to hold this diy microwave for long.

Max made his way through a broken gate to the side of the building. It was completely quiet and there were no cameras in sight, yet Max still felt like he was being watched. He found a service ladder near the back of the building and carefully ascended to the roof. He climbed up, setting the machine down temporarily to pull himself over the edge of the ladder. Once on the roof he looked up at the antennae. It had to have been at least four times as tall as the building himself. Max walked over to the edge of the building and beckoned to Uncle down below. “Do I have to put it at the top of the tower?”

Uncle yelled back, “Bingo Bucket. All the way at the top, it’s the only way to counter the lizards!”

Max cursed under his breath at the mad man’s orders, but he followed them anyways, figuring he’d know the best. Max started ascending the ladder slowly, being careful to hold onto the machine and not look down. As he got higher and higher with every step, the wind picked up around him, threatening to throw him off if he wasn’t careful. A strong gust of wind made Max suddenly lose his grip with his one free hand, but he quickly grabbed back on and regained his balance. With every step he became more nervous and his hands became more covered with sweat, weakening his grip. He had to stop every so often to wipe his hands dry. He could hear Uncle cheering him on below, but after a while his supporting cheers were lost in the ever raging wind.

Max made it halfway, and suddenly felt more confident in himself. The tower became slimmer and slimmer as he got higher and higher, but his fears faltered under his confidence. This was it, he was about to save himself. He didn’t know exactly how this radio jammer helped him, but Uncle was so sure it would work and so then was Max. Max finally made it to the top of the radio tower, which was just a small platform surrounded by railings. Various signs warned him against exactly what he was doing right now, but he ignored them. He looked down at the world below him, his car and Uncle, all seeming like ants. He felt like a king up there, staring out over the tiny world, and wondered if this is what the stranger felt like. Before he could think any longer a swift gust of wind knocked him off balance, causing him to almost drop the machine over the railing, which was burning through his jacket without him realizing. This was enough for Max to snap back into reality and finish the task he came up there to do.

Max found a circuit board that seemed technical, and hooked the machine up to it. For something so complex at first glance, it was surprisingly straightforward to connect it. He attached some clamps to clampable-looking objects, and plugged cords into their respective slots based on similar symbols and color. Finally, Max attached it and heard the machine begin to transmit its signal over the previous one. Max sat down to rest momentarily, unknowing of what he had actually just done.

Max had indeed sent a message, but it wasn’t towards any lizard people. Without knowing, he had stepped outside of the “focused” part of the simulation into the “unfocused” part of the simulation. This wouldn’t have mattered if he was a part of the simulation, like every other person and animal, but in order for him to be able to react to changes made by Dexter, Dexter had separated him from the simulation, allowing Max to be affected by his torturous changes, without changing the world for the normal inhabitants. Dexter hadn’t taken into account that this would allow Max to be like Dexter in the way that he could change the outside world inside the simulation, and even leave the simulation, if done right. The focused area of the simulation was Logan Town Ohio and some surrounding areas, and by chance of Dexter not noticing, Max left the focused area to go into the surrounding unfocused area. This area assumes what happens inside of it, because it would be too strenuous to simulate everything in known existence, and operates perfectly with the focused part of the simulation, as long as it itself is not modified. But when an outside part of the simulation interacts with it, in this case Max placing a transmitter, sending radio waves the simulation didn’t account for, it doesn’t know how to respond, so it generates errors. Since the simulation was running on an ANUBIS™ simulator, these error codes were translated to the ANUBIS™ company itself, as is standard protocol, which evidently allowed ANUBIS™ to locate the simulator they had lost without a trace days before. This was not good for Dexter, who finally realized all this had happened under his nose from listening to police radio chatter. He also found out there was a relocation team on his way to his house, and within minutes, his home and everything he had worked for, was about to be destroyed and confiscated by the people he had hidden so well from. Oh and Uncle? He actually was just a psychotic old man, who believed lizard people were controlling the earth through radio waves, along with a few other theories. He just happened to relate to Max’s problem and help him by chance.

Dexter didn’t have much time left, he knew that. He knew that within minutes he would be arrested by police barging into his domain, and all his possessions would be confiscated, catalogued, and disposed of. His entire life was over, and all because of some person who wasn’t even real. Dexter was seething with anger, but in his anger, came clarity. He knew what he had to do. He had been made a fool by this man, and intended to deal with him. He could easily lock him in a cage, or torture him for a million lifetimes in the minutes he had till the police turned off the machine. But Dexter wanted something else. He wanted to deal with him in an equal way, without the facade he used before, as that clearly didn’t work. This would be a true test of superiority in Dexter’s eyes.

Dexter hit a big red button right in the center of his console, which was surrounded by a million warning signs and exclamation points.

The system blared at him in it’s robotic voice: WARNING! ENGAGING PRIMARY INTERACTION MODULE. ARE YOU SURE? [Y] [N]

Dexter typed a Y into the system and donned a virtual reality-like headset. What he was about to do was put himself into the machine with the same abilities as Dexter. He would be equal, and if he died in the machine, so would he in real life. Dexter typed in a location to spawn in, and laid back, waiting to be transported into the machine. His only way to exit would be to repeat a failsafe passcode that only he knew.

ENTERING SIMULATION IN 3. 2.. 1…

Chapter 6. Ragnarok

Max, feeling he had enough of a break, descended down the ladder. He stared down at the ground, looking for Uncle who he expected to be celebrating, but he was nowhere to be seen. Max touched down at the roof of the building, yet he still didn’t hear or see Uncle anywhere. “Uncle!” Max shouted “I did it! I put up the transmitter!” Max waited a second but didn’t hear a response. He still saw his car, as well as Uncle’s, and assumed he had just gone to look for something. He wasn’t worried.

Max descended the final set of ladders before touching down on the real ground. He felt much more secure now that the floor didn’t rock below him and the wind wasn’t strong enough to send him pummelling down to the ground like a meteorite.

Max walked out the gate where he had come in, again feeling much safer now that he wasn’t technically trespassing, and skipped around the corner to his car to meet up with Uncle.

“Hey Uncle I did it! I put up the trans-” Max was cut off, caught off guard by the sight before him.

“Hey there, Bucket.” Dexter said with derision. Dexter was standing in the middle of the parking lot where Uncle was before, holding a bent piece of pipe that was covered in blood and chips of bone, along with his hands. Below him at his feet was a dead Uncle, who had a pile of blood oozing from a crack in his skull. Max didn’t know who this man was before him, but his execrable visage eluded that he could only be one person: the stranger.

 Max took a step back, unsure of the amount of power he currently held. Dexter recognized Max’s uncertainty as a weakness and walked forward, splashing more blood on his shoes as he inched closer to Max in an intimidating way. “You think I didn’t know about your little plan? I know everything! Your little rebellion? Look where that got you!” Dexter motioned to the corpse on the floor.

Max pleaded, still walking backwards slowly. “I-I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

Dexter laughed. “Oh you bet it won’t happen again. Because this time, I’m gonna make sure you suffer.”

Dexter screamed and ran at Max with the pipe. Max stuck up his  arms to protect his head and took the blow from the pipe. Max flew back a little bit as the pipe banged against his arms, but he quickly recovered. Max used this time after Dexter’s attack to swipe his feet with his own, causing Dexter to lose balance and fall over into the puddle of blood, sending blood splashing over his face. Max then ran into the forest away from the radio tower, taking the time to comprehend what had just happened. 

That was definitely The stranger, no doubt, but it wasn’t the man in the suit from before. It was a relatively young guy who looked totally different from the man before. Why would he make himself appear like that? That person didn’t seem overly threatening, and he attacked Max with a pipe? Max knew his power, he could’ve done something much more devastating with much less effort. Max also realized that he had knocked the stranger down, meaning he could now take a hit. He wasn’t invincible or untouchable as he was before. To Max this only meant one thing: He had got off his throne, and he was now fighting Max appearing as he actually was. Max had dethroned the king and challenged him to a fistfight on equal ground, and without him even realizing, blinded by his vengeful anger. Max didn’t know what, but the transmitter must’ve done something to make him mad enough to face him one on one, and he wasn’t about to lose his opportunity to get to freedom. He didn’t know when he’d get this chance again.

Just then Max heard some twigs snapping in the forest and he ducked behind a log.

“Max, where are you? How about we just talk, man to man?” Dexter beckoned out to him, trying to lure him to fight. The blood on his face and body was hardening, and his anger hadn’t diminished in the slightest. “Just so you know, your friend died like a coward.” 

Max grew angry at the comment, and got up to take revenge, but crouched down lower below the log. No, that’s exactly what he wants you to do, To fight him. Max had made him fall for this trick, which is why he was here right now in such a vulnerable state, but Max was smarter than the stranger. He wouldn’t fall for the same trick. Instead he wondered why the stranger was so inclined to fight him. Max knew his strength, and assumed the stranger knew Max’s strength as well. There was no way that the stranger would bet all his revenge on a fight, there had to be some sort of backup he was employing.

Max exposed himself from behind the tree. “What is it?”

Dexter turned to Max, the bloodlust anger visible on his blood-soaked face. He smiled. “What is what?”

Max stepped closer, hiding a sharpened branch behind his leg. “What’s the backup? How do you plan to get out of here?”

Dexter wiped some of the blood off of his face. “You’re smarter than I thought, I’ll give you that. I misinterpreted your versatility and intellect.”

Max reiterated, stepping closer. “What is it? Is there a button in your pocket or something? That zaps you out of here?”

Dexter smiled fiendishly. “I’ll give you a hint. It’s the reason you or I am even here.” Dexter laughed. “You’ll never guess it.”

“I’ve had enough of your games!” Max screamed, lunging at Dexter. Dexter had seen the stick, and sidestepped Max, putting his foot out to trip Max. Max tripped and fell into the underbrush faceforward, snapping his stick and scratching up his face. Dexter took his chance to beat the powerless Max, hitting him over and over again with the pipe as Max cowered into a fetal position to shield himself from some of the blows. “You have ruined me!” Dexter hit him again. “You took away everything from me!” Dexter hit him harder, cracking the pipe a little bit. “Now, I am going to take everything from you!” Dexter screamed, hitting him one final time, the pipe shattering into a million rusty pieces, flying everywhere.

Max was in extreme pain at this point, with a broken rib and many other small injuries, but he didn’t falter in his counter attack. He leapt up at Dexter with all his remaining energy and tackled The stranger. Max screamed a primal scream, savagely punching him in the face over and over again until his knuckles split open. Dexter feared for his life and tried to say the failsafe word, but couldn’t at the barrage of punches hitting his face, even knocking out his teeth. Max didn’t hear any part of the word, blinded by pent up aggression from days of abuse. Dexter sat there, unable to speak, staring at Max. After a few seconds, Max rolled off of him, starting to succumb to his own injuries. They both layed there nearly dying in the forest, covered in mud, dirt, rust and bone.

Max felt his life fleeting, and with the last of his thoughts, he scoured his memory for anything that ticked off all the events. His grocery store outburst? The police station interview? Hell,  The Vietnam war? He couldn’t figure it out. Max started to feel the darkness come over him, making him feel warm and oddly calm, and he knew he was about to die. He could barely see the forest above him, his vision becoming blurry and sluggish.

He tried to speak.

“Ch-ch…”

“Chee-es…”

“Cheese gr-ill…”

“Gr-g… grill ch-cheese…”

Max opened his eyes and saw his body in the forest, sitting lifelessly next to his nemesis.They looked oddly peaceful, and he stared at the image for a long time. “Is this, heaven?” Max wondered, it sure seemed like heaven. Then, slowly, Max looked around. He was in a room, like a science laboratory. He saw screens showing views of places he had been to, places he lived in. He saw his bedroom, a view of the parking lot at the radio station, Uncle’s dead body next to his car. Max realized this wasn’t heaven. He looked around further, seeing a large machine in the center of the room. He made out the word SIMULATOR on one side of it, accompanied by an ankh charm. It had worked! He was out of the simulation! Max stood up, but quickly fell back down into the chair, feeling woozy. His body felt different. His fingers and eyelids, they all reacted differently than he had remembered, his muscles twitched oddly and his tongue didn’t sit quite right in his mouth. His nerve endings felt more sensitive, yet he couldn’t quite describe it like that. He felt like his whole body had pins and needles. He tried to get up again and fell to the floor, but he kept crawling. He crawled over to a mirror in the corner he had seen earlier and saw something he hadn’t considered possible. 

The face in the mirror, it wasn’t his. It was the face of the stranger, the man he had killed, and the one currently dying in the forest god knows where. Max hadn’t escaped the simulation, he had replaced someone. The simulation was a sinking ship, and The body Max found himself in was the only lifeboat, occupancy one.

Just at that moment the police raided the stranger’s house. They ran down the stairs, screaming at the confused Max to put his hands on his head, thinking he was Dexter, the man who stole the simulator.

Chapter 7. The Palindrome known as an Epilogue

Max spent the next 7 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit with no way to prove it. He had a hard time adapting to his new body, but over time he grew used to it. His new body was new and fresh, and he grew accustomed to his better eyesight and heightened senses. The new world was also particularly tough for Max to comprehend. It was futuristic, in a way Max never would have comprehended possible. Nonetheless, he was happy, knowing this was the true world. He relished in the idea that his life now had meaning, and everything he had done was worth it to get to this moment.  3 years, 2 months, and 2 days into his sentence, Max was let out of jail on parole for good behavior. He found it difficult to get a job and start his new life, but he sufficed nonetheless. He said hi to his neighbors, made friends at his job, he even got a pet dog, even if it was a robot. He was a changed man, a man with purpose, and if it wasn’t for the stranger, he never would’ve realized his full potential. In that way, he thanked him. He thanked him for guiding Max to the light at the end of the tunnel, and the eternal sacrifice he gave. In his honor, the first thing Max did when he got out of prison to his new home was make a grilled cheese sandwich.

FIN.