Aurora Wasteland Quarantine Page 3

  He thought about his day tomorrow, and how it felt like it would be the same as today and all the days before that. He was on a rail, just moving through life as if some external hand was pushing him along. It felt like he wasn’t making choices, but was he? He didn’t know.

  As the sun rose on day 22, and Matt prepared his cup of coffee he noticed something. Something different, something that would take him off his rail and change his pattern. There in the sink, staring up at him was a weed. Its green stem weaved its way through the sink grate and poked out into the sink. Unable to take his eyes off of it, Matt leaned in closer. There was a weed growing in his sink. He was pretty sure that was weird, but he wasn’t sure anymore with the whole adjustment to normal and everything.

  Eventually, the coffee maker beeped at Matt for taking too long to fill it with water and Matt broke off his eye contact with the weed. As he finished making his coffee and sat down to work with no pants on, Matt’s thoughts drifted from the weed in his sink. He had a meeting later that day to go over his new design plans with a few of the other architects. He’d found that while the days had started to blend together, Matt’s work hadn't faltered, in fact, he’d found himself more productive. The meeting was about the new satellite design they were working on. Matt had been focused on the new techniques for using mirrors and lights to see the earth, most importantly he was working on a way to see back in time.

  If you travel far enough from the earth and looked back at it, you can see the past. Light travels at the speed of light, so if you could travel faster than light you can see back in time. Matt’s design would remove the need for travel and loop the light back on itself using mirrors and much more technical mathy stuff, as he liked to put it.

  Minutes before the meeting was supposed to start there was a knock on his front door. After over three weeks of not leaving his house, Matt was used to packages arriving. He watched through his smart door knob as the delivery man placed the package down, took a picture of it, then left. Matt waited for his phone to let him know the package was delivered, but it never came. He opened the app and pulled up his orders, there were none scheduled for the day.

  Less than a minute before the meeting Matt jumped from his chair and grabbed the package waiting for him at the front door. It was addressed to him but was from a company he didn’t recognize. His computer chimed and reminded him about the meeting. So, Matt placed the package down on his kitchen counter and forgot about it as his meeting began.

  The package sat there unopened or thought about for the duration of the morning. It wasn’t until there was another knock at the door that Matt thought about it again. Again, he watched through his smart door knob as the package was left and photographed. Then again, Matt went out and got it.

  Matt placed the new package down on the counter next to the first. Maybe someone had bought him something? Like a mystery box or something, only two packages in a single day seemed odd.

  Again, work pulled Matt away and he left both boxes on the counter unattended. As the workday began to run down there was a third knock at the door, this time, out of sheer interest Matt sprinted from his computer and ran to his front door. Where he startled the delivery man who was just about to take a picture of the box.

  Matt asked who the man was, and where the packages were coming from. The man only replied with a laugh, and told Matt “good one”, then snapped the picture he needed and left. Matt watched as the man got back in his truck, which was smaller than most delivery trucks Matt had witnessed, it looked more like a mom and pop shop truck. Across the back was written ‘Moe’s’.

  Confused, Matt returned to the kitchen and opened all three boxes like he was an excited kid on Christmas morning. Inside was nothing but unassembled parts. None of the boxes came with instructions on how to assemble it. Again, he thought it must be some kind of mystery box, maybe work had gotten it for him? He placed the boxes, full of random electronic and mechanical parts, on the floor and went about the rest of his day, though his thoughts returned to the boxes often.

  By day 34, the collection of three boxes had grown to a mountain. The delivery man was still dropping off three per day, and he still only gave out the vaguest of information. Matt had figured out that the man’s name was Vince, and that he worked for a company called ‘Moe’s Custom Builds’. Matt had even tried flirting with Vince in the hopes of coercing him out of some information. Vince didn’t buy it, and Matt knew no more than he knew before the first box. All the boxes were the same, no instructions, and what appeared to be random parts.

  On day 55, the packages stopped arriving. Matt never saw Vince again. He wondered if he finally had everything, he needed to figure out what exactly had been shipped to him. He took all the pieces out and laid them down in his kitchen, living room, hallway, bedroom, and eventually bathroom. There were a lot more parts than he thought there’d be. He meandered throughout his house sorting the pieces. He grouped them by what he thought they did, then by more precise breakdowns based on what the part actually did.

  The day after, he found himself randomly zoning out and staring at the parts. He’d find himself standing at pieces he didn’t even remember existing. Occasionally he’d move parts around without even remembering he did it. Work became somewhat of an issue and he found himself taking vacation and personal days, mostly because he’d spend entire days just losing time staring at the parts.

  At some point the days for Matt started to blend together without him knowing it. On day 89, Matt woke up to something he had no memory of creating. As he crossed his kitchen to acquire his much needed coffee, something across the room startled him. Two large pieces of glass stood parallel to each other, no more than a foot or two apart. Forgoing his need for coffee, Matt approached them. The pieces from around his house were gone. All of them seemed to be used around the two large pieces of glass, that the closer he got, he realized weren’t glass at all, they were actually mirrors. Two large mirrors facing inwards towards each other. Behind each mirror was the hum of a machine doing… shit, he had no idea. The two machines were joined by a number of large cables, all of which were plugged into a single outlet on the wall.

  Matt stared at the machines, the mirrors, and wondered. Had he made this? What was this thing? What did it do?

  What felt like hours passed as Matt examined the device sitting in his living room. Eventually, his stomach reminded him about the coffee he was supposed to have made hours ago, and Matt abandoned the device and headed straight for the coffee maker. As he filled the coffee pot with water, Matt noticed the weed in the sink. It was still there. Still growing. In fact, it was substantially larger than the last time he’d noticed it. It now rose a few inches out of the drain. He smiled at it as he ran his finger along the stem. He thought of Jess, the receptionist, and wondered how she was doing. It had been way too long since they’d talked.

  Coffee in hand Matt found his phone buried under papers on his desk and typed a message to Jess. His finger hung over the send button. It had been a long time, what if she didn’t know who he was? What if… he deleted the message and stared at the machine in his living room. What should he say to her? Maybe he should just say ‘hi’? Or maybe something about the weather? No, it had already been too long. He had to tell her how he felt. But how did he feel? He thought he might love her, but maybe that wasn’t true anymore. It had been so long. Without overthinking it any longer, he typed a message and hit send. Then the machine in his living room started to hum. The mirrors glowed with a harsh light that seemed to override the sunlight coming through his windows.

  Matt set his phone down on his desk and stepped towards the machine. The light felt different as he approached, like it was passing through him. He stepped between the mirrors and could see the reflection of his reflection echoing off in each direction. Infinite Matt’s doing exactly what he, present Matt, was doing. He turned and looked into the other mirror. It was doing the same thing. It reminded him of his grandmother’s bathroom. She had a mirror
above the sink and a mirror on the door. When the door was open you could see copies and copies of yourself forever. This felt so much like that, but even larger, longer, more infinite, even though he knew that wasn’t possible. On day 89 as Matt stared into the mirrors of the device he didn’t remember creating, something happened that altered his life forever. Hands from the Matt behind him reached through the mirror and pulled him in.

  At first, everything felt the same. Except the light felt a little off. It wasn’t as harsh as before. But as Matt looked around the room it seemed like he was still in his home. The device was still standing there built, everything was as it should be. Except… he glanced over the side of his sink to see the weed. It was substantially smaller than just seen minutes ago. What had happened to it? He reached down to touch it but found he couldn’t. His finger passed through it like he was a ghost. Had the machine killed him? He had after all walked into a device he’d built somehow without knowing about it.

  Then something every paradox movie warns you about happened. Matt saw himself walk back from his front door carrying a box. He watched himself set it down, investigate it, then get distracted by work. All while not noticing Matt himself standing there in the middle of the house. Was that the first delivery? How had the other Matt not seen him? What the heck was happening to him?

  As the other Matt went about his meetings, the real Matt returned to the machine. It was still running. Could ‘the other him’ not see it? Matt pressed his hand against the mirror’s surface and watched his hand pass through it. He tried to pull it back out, but every inch of him that passed through the surface seemed to be stuck on the other side. The other side... What was on the other side? Matt squinted through and could see another copy of his house. Along with another copy of him working on the computer. With his hand already partly through, Matt allowed the rest of his body to pass through the mirror’s surface.

  This time the weed in the sink was larger than before, its head and stem rose higher than the sink itself. There was even a meter stick attached to it to measure its height. Another Matt was sitting at the computer. This one had a beard that was way longer than he’d ever let his get. It actually looked kind of good, Matt made a mental note of that.

  Unsure of what to do, and getting a little bored, Matt returned to the machine and stepped through again. He repeated the process over and over again. Sometimes he’d be further in the future, sometimes the past. He never found a day that he wasn’t at home. At one point while watching the future version of himself enjoy a bowl of cereal, Matt touched the spoon, and by accident, the other Matt’s hand. For a second, he feared he may have caused the world to end and the universe to collapse in on itself. But it didn’t. Something else happened entirely. For about 34 seconds, Matt was able to control the other Matt’s body. He could taste and feel everything the other Matt tasted and felt. The cereal and his balls could attest to it.

  The only hitch was, he could only seem to take over the body once with each journey through the mirror. 34 seconds wasn’t long enough to really do anything. He also hadn’t been able to find a way to control where he was going, it seemed random, plus he hadn’t gone back to the same day twice in a row.

  He often found himself visiting days where the parts for the machine were scattered around his house. But, 34 seconds of touching per day, in random day orders, made it impossible to help the other Matt build anything. He’d been certain that it had been him that had helped the past version of himself to put it together. But based on what he’d experienced, he’d likely been a hindrance.

  Time became even more strange and unreal than before. While it seemed previously he’d been stuck in some sort of groundhog's day loop, now he was stuck in an unending day of repeating previous days over. He didn’t sleep, he had no night. Everything was running together. Even his thoughts.

  He watched as the weed in the sink changed like a flipbook being shown out of order. It shot up and down, sometimes it wasn’t even there yet, but more so now it was getting larger and larger.

  Time was different. What felt like hundreds of years passed. Matt wasn’t even 100% sure what day he’d started this journey on. Even if he could go back, he didn’t know how he would.

  He thought about God, the universe, life, all the deep stuff. Eventually, he wondered if maybe he was god. Even if that seemed crazy, he might be a little crazy. Living like this wasn’t normal, the human brain wasn’t designed to live alone.

  Time again became something entirely different. Matt visited days he’d never thought could exist. According to the weed, he visited day 10946. He’d hoped that when all of this started that the lockdowns, quarantine, and virus would be over within a few months. He was wrong, day 10946 was way past a few months. Matt watched the other Matt continue to go about his normal life. He still had coffee and his life seemed to have transitioned to just never having pants on. As the other Matt worked, original Matt, if you could call him that, sat and stared at the machine. He was tired. He wanted out. He… something outside the window caught his attention. Someone was standing and staring through one of the house's windows. Matt got up to look at them, only it wasn’t really a ‘them’ at all, he didn’t know what it was. The shape was human, but there was no face, no clothing, no anything. Blackness, which was closer to being the absence of color, made up the being. Matt waved, the being did not wave back. It only stood there watching, unmoving. But Matt could feel it looking at him. The other Matt seemed to not notice the being standing at his window. Matt wondered if he couldn’t see it.

  The longer Matt stared at it, the longer he felt uncomfortable. He moved back to the machine, glanced back at the being, and stepped through the mirror.

  Day 196418 greeted him on the other side. The length of time that was from when he first started all of this boggled his mind. Then he did the math. It was impossible. He should be dead. Long dead actually. There was no possible way for him to stay here. He glanced at the window. The being was still there, as were his friends. Every window in the house had a similar being standing there, watching Matt. Chills ran down his back right to his butt. Matt clenched as he spun around the room. The Matt from day 196418 filled his coffee and sat down for work.

  This had to be wrong. This couldn’t be his future. That Matt should be dead. Those people, or whatever they are, shouldn’t be standing there observing him. He looked up at the machine, it had to be wrong. It must be guessing at what the future might be. Maybe he was too far for it to guess correctly. But what did that matter? It didn’t help Matt get back to the day he first stepped into the mirror. He… in the distance, he could hear quacking. Quacking? He looked at the beings in the window, they continued to look at him. Why was there a duck quacking? He approached the machine. The quacking seemed to be coming from the machine. Why was there quacking coming from the machine? Then some half memory from a lifetime ago fell into place. The quacking was his phone. He used the same ringtone for everything, or rather he used to.

  Matt stood between the mirrors and squinted through them, trying to see where quacking was coming from. Then, just as before, hands reached through and grabbed him, only this time, he recognized them. They were his hands. His own hands from another version of himself were pulling him into one of the mirrors. Then, like so many times before, Matt fell into the mirror. He stumbled out into his living room like always, only the quacking sound was infinitely louder. His phone buzzed and quacked on his desk. He glanced into the sink as he made his way to his phone. The weed was tiny, just as he remembered it so long ago.

  Matt picked up his phone and stared at the screen. It felt so familiar. A message popped up on the screen. It was from Jess, the receptionist, she wanted to know if he wanted to grab a coffee sometime.

  Newspaper Headlines

  “Local start up wins NASA satellite grant” - Edmonton Epoch

  “Moe’s Custom Builds aid in satellite design contest” - Brightness Falls Gateway

  “Weeds plague during plague” - E-Calg
ary Science Digest

  “Matt and Jess getting married over Zoom” - Matt’s mom’s family Newsletter

  “Space agencies ask you to stop flashing your junk into space, you never know who’s watching” - Lethbridge Dark Times

  Conclusion from the Narrator

  That’s it, being alone blows, who knew? I mean I think we all did, but like a lot of things in life, we did little to prepare for it. We often deal with the undesired outcome instead of fixing the root problem. Like Matt, we need more in our lives. Becoming lost in work isn't a valid way to spend indefinite time alone. Like the machine in Matt’s living room, humans are complicated machines. We need more than just ourselves to really make us blossom, even if that’s multiple copies of our time traveling selves.

  BEACON OF EMPATHY

  INTRO FROM THE NARRATOR

  As The Virus became part of our everyday lives, we had to make adjustments. Things we took for granted before were lost to us. Being near people, you didn’t know whether it was at a movie, concert, or sporting event, was put on hold indefinitely. People you didn’t know no longer looked like people. Instead, they looked like disease carriers. So, you did your best to stay away from them, not that they wanted anything to do with you anyway. You were just as likely to pass it to them, as they were to you. The rules of social interaction changed. Six feet away was the new standard. Which, if I’m being honest, in certain situations, I hope sticks around. No one wants to be within 6 feet of someone dropping a nuclear deuce. It’s just unseemly.

  The space someone left you became a beacon of how serious they were taking The Virus. Someone who was reaching over top of you in the grocery store, without a mask on, to grab a box of cereal, well, it was likely they weren’t too concerned about it. Others would patiently wait and give you your space to do what you needed to do. The beacons of empathy didn’t glow brightly for everyone, but how’s that different from life before The Virus?