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Writer's pictureJ. Joseph

Our/My Casual, Quiet Morning

I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of this whole weird ability of mine. Like, take for instance today’s morning routine. It wasn’t super busy, so it should be easy for me to recount. At least today, we’ll see what happens when the longer term ones come back to me. Man, do they throw a bit of a monkey wrench in my memory. But that’s not something I need to be worrying about for today’s memory. Yet.

My day starts like most of my days. My alarm went off and I groggily got up. Muttering a meaningless complaint to myself, I suddenly felt the familiar wave of vertigo and just a little bit of exhaustion. I pushed through the feeling, heading over to my apartment’s bathroom. I emptied my mind, took a breath, and focused on my need to make some kind of healthy fruit-based smoothie. I headed out of the bathroom, towards the kitchen. I stripped off the clothes I slept in. I pulled out the blender from the upper cabinet. I took a beat to stare at myself in the mirror. I plugged in the blender and set it on the counter. Nothing had changed, but I felt healthier. I dumped in a cup and a half of ice. Turning to the shower, I turned the knob on to hot. Even though I probably didn’t need to, I started peeling and cutting the fruit. Taking a moment to breathe, I noticed in the mirror that there was a difference. As I finished cutting each fruit, I threw them into the blender. The difference may have been quite minor, but my evenings were having an impact. First bananas, then strawberries. I stepped into the shower. After the strawberries, I decided to get weird and threw some dragon fruit in as well. The shower felt nice, as though I hadn’t realized how much I needed it. Everything important in the blender, I added a little extra water. I knew, of course, as I needed a shower every day, often twice or thrice a day. Looking at the blender, I decided I needed an extra one of everything. After all, I am living tens of lives at a time. And that can be a lot of work. I switched the shower to cold water. I turned on the blender. The cold water tightened and refocused me. My mind honed in on the whirring machine. I stepped out of the shower. The smoothie looked, well, smooth. I started brushing my teeth.

With a rush of vertigo, I remembered my smoothie. Well done, I thought to myself as I finished half-assing my toothbrushing. That, I decided a while ago, was fine to half ass, as long as I always half-assed it at least twice a day. And, while I may well come to regret it eventually, that’s not today. Leaving the bathroom, I passed one of my two roommates as he sat on the couch staring at his Law textbook, who’s made coffee. As I reached for it, my roommate, who is also me, slapped my hand away. “No, I need this more than you,” the other me said quickly.

“Fair enough, I suppose,” I replied to myself aloud, “But only because we also made a smoothie for breakfast.”

The me who is studying to be a lawyer looked up from his/my law textbook and smiled. “Then you better hurry, because our own personal stats nerd woke up early.”

I shook my head. He/I isn’t a statistics nerd, or isn’t just a stats nerd. I, after my first great undertaking finished, wanted to see if I could do an impossible task, and set myself to use my newly mastered programming understanding to create an algorithm that could predict events. I entered the kitchen and, as the eventually-to-be lawyer had warned me, the programmer was pouring the smoothie into his cup. “Hey,” I said, “We made enough for us to share.”

“But these last couple days have been exhausting, and your working out through the nights isn’t helping much in the relaxing department.”

I nodded at myself and responded. “And I’d respect that if you’d made the drink. Just ask our lawyerly self.”

The programmer felt the need to interject, “He/we are not a lawyer, yet.”

“I heard that,” he/I shouted from the other room.

I frowned at me. “I was saying, if you’d made it, I’d give you first dibs, but you didn’t, we did. And that has always meant we share.”

“Fine,” he/I replies, “Will it just be the three of us, or are the horrible ones going to show up.”

I shook my head. “Our charisma builder, which, look at us, we definitely need, is currently in France or England. Or maybe Spain? Not sure, I didn’t save his/my phone number. I’ll remember where he/I was today someday. The mogul’s not in town either, some business trip.”

“And our less than legal self only shows up when absolutely necessary,” my programmer self finished the thought. “Okay, but can you at least run out and grab some donuts for us?”

From the living room, the lawyer me added on, “I second sending someone on a donut run for us.”

“See, not-yet-a-lawyer and I actually agree on something,” the programmer said as he poured a bit from his glass into a second glass, then used the blender to fill that one and another to roughly the same height.

I take up my juice and sigh. “Fine, but after my juice. I’m a little worn from the workout we did while I slept.”

“Then send one of us to sleep then,” he/I offered. It was something I’d done before, to good effect.

But I still shook my head. I went for a sip of juice, then countered, “No, I save that for emergencies. Otherwise my body might get used to that extra sleep.”

“Fair enough,” he/I said as he/I picked up the two remaining smoothies and left the kitchen to deliver one to his/my roommate. Alone in the kitchen, I drank my smoothie and looked in the fridge. I was also going to need to do a market run. We were low on fruit. Market run meant cash, which meant hitting up a drop. And, with rent coming up, we needed legal money, so we’d need to get a wire from the mogul as well. As I finished my smoothie and stuck the glass in the dishwasher, I walked to my focusing chair in the living room. It’s a nice, comfortable chair pointed directly at a blank, light gray wall.

Sitting in the chair, I stared at that wall and started to focus. I headed out to grab some donuts for the apartment. I cleared my head and breathed. I headed out of the apartment on a cash and money run. I shook my head and stood up in the nice, temperature-controlled apartment. The heat lingered in the damp morning air, almost oppressively if it didn’t feel so much like summer. The heat seemed to hang around me and only me as I walked towards the park, hoping I wasn’t going to need to hit more than one drop. I looked at my roommates and asked, “You guys doing alright with everything?” I slid into the donut shop and approached the lady behind the counter. Sitting down on the park’s bench in the wrong direction, I began scrolling through my phone as I surreptitiously checked the bush with my foot. They/we shrugged my question off, as they’re busy and focused. The lady was friendly as I bought a dozen donuts for the apartment, after all I go there often. Sure enough, my foot finds purchase on a small metallic case partially buried in the ground. I sighed in the vague direction of my roommates and walked back to the desk in my bedroom. Sitting down by the end of the donut production line, I waited eagerly for the donuts to be completed. After checking my surroundings and confirming no one was around, I pulled the small metallic box out from the brush and opened it. It’s actually a large walk-in closet, but unlike the bedroom which those two mes have to share, I got the closet all to myself. I got excited just smelling the freshly made donuts as she started to put the toppings onto them. I left the gun and the IDs, took half the cash, and placed a thin, receiptlike sheet of paper with a blue W on it atop the remaining money. I sat at the desk and pulled out my laptop. Taking the donuts, I started my walk back to our apartment. I reburied the box and turned back around on the bench. I opened my laptop to look at everything I missed in the last couple days. Eventually, I made it back to the apartment. I started to walk towards the bank. I missed less than I expected, but it was still a bunch. I realized at the apartment’s door that I forgot the keys. The bank was a bit of a walk, but now that I have the cash in pocket, the walk feels less oppressive. I heard a knock on the apartment’s door, and one of the other mes says he/I have got it. I saw my lawyerly self open the door and hand over the box of donuts to him as I walked into the apartment. The bank’s doors open with a rush of cool air as I step into the refreshingly air conditioned building.

I felt that rush of vertigo and abandoned my computer to grab some donuts. I met with one of the investment people about moving a comparatively small amount of money from the investment side’s cash accounts to the banking side’s checking account. I shared a dozen wonderful chocolate donuts with my two roommates as a less than healthy part of our breakfast. It was fairly simple, given I was for all intents and purposes, the owner of the accounts, but we chatted a bit about his life while we were doing the transfer. I saw the notification on my phone that the additional funds had entered our checking account. I stood up and said goodbye to the lovely gentleman who’d helped me. I went back into my room to shut down my laptop. I left the bank, heading to meet myself at the lab. I walked out of the apartment, heading to meet myself at the lab. The walk was not a particularly short or easy one, but I still was feeling a sense of accomplishment from all my successes today. The lab is slightly closer to the apartment than our normal bank, so I knew I would get there just before myself. I walk through a few alleyways, as I tend to do just to make tails more obvious. I walk through alleys, as I have ever since I first thought back on what happened that first day I really realized that I was different. There was only one kind of suspicious car parked but running over the course of my walk, but it didn’t follow, just sat there. I arrived at my lab and, entering through the back door that was jammed slightly ajar and therefore doesn’t require me to swipe in, I headed over towards the small, corner room. I walked in through the front door, nodded to the security guard, then swiped my badge to gain entry. In that small, corner room, I began to set up for the sample collection and testing. I walked into the small corner lab and nodded to another version myself, handing over the wad of cash only once the door behind me was closed.

Taking the money, I once more felt that rush of vertigo. Rather than let it sink in any further, I quickly tried to take samples of the particulate that seems to be released into the air whenever that happens. Because, while I’ve figured out what I can do, I still really want to figure out the why and the how. After gathering as much of the dust-like substance as physically possible, which is not much at all, I looked at the wad of cash and remembered its purpose. I placed the money on the table and, with a cracking of my neck, I emptied my mind and focused on the chore. I picked up the cash and slipped out of the lab through the back door, to head to the local farmer’s market to buy some fruit. I got to work on yet another series of tests to figure out what these things are and why they’re me, before the particulate degrades further into absence.

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