Chapter 2: Chapter 2

“No.” Natalie stated firmly.

“No?” The woman asked. “Why not?”

Natalie forced out a laugh. “Why not?” She repeated mockingly. “Because no program will ever help me get over the fact that my entire life was a lie that didn’t happen.”

“I know this can all be very hard to accept.” The woman said back. “But what you said is hardly the full picture-”

“Oh.” Natalie interrupted. “And also my fiancé was a lunatic who changed reality itself just so he could get a girlfriend. When… when he proposed to me, and I said yes, did that not even happen? Was it just a memory he implanted in my head to get me to love him? Did any of my memories happen?”

“You’re not alone. Many other people have been in your position. It’s okay to be unsure.”

“Unsure!?” Natalie stood up and yelled. “I’m just unsure!? I don’t even know who the hell I am!”

“Please try to calm down.”

“I want to go back home! Right now!”

“Please, if you can’t calm down, we might need to cast a spell to-”

“GET ME OUT OF HERE! NOW!”

The woman did not know what to say next. She was quite a bit taken aback by Natalie’s sudden change in demeanor. Just a few minutes ago she was staring at the ground, barely moving at all, and now she was screaming at the top of her lungs. In all fairness, though, she wasn’t that experienced with identity death victims, so maybe it wasn’t really that surprising.

“Get me out.” Natalie repeated, softly.

“Okay.” The woman said to her. “Let’s go.”

***

The empty, seemingly endless white void was a plague on Natalie’s senses. After two weeks of walking back and forth from building to building in the vacant space, she felt like she was going to go mad.

She wondered, what the hell was she even walking on? There was no visible floor under her, just more white. Was there more under the floor? Did the area under the floor even exist? Just how far did this void go?

She was at least sure of one thing: she never wanted to see the color white again.

During her walk, Natalie learned that the woman she was following was named Sara. She seemed to be a nice woman, all things considered, but Natalie was just not in the mood for conversations. And it took a few failed attempts to start one for Sara to finally realize that.

Sara opened the front door to the hotel that Natalie had been staying in for the duration of the trial. Every day for the last two weeks, she had woken up in her bed, eaten breakfast, then walked down to the courthouse for most of the day. It was very tiring and tedious, and she was glad to finally be going home.

Sara and Natalie approached the woman at the front desk.

“Natalie will be leaving today.” Sara said. “But she may be coming back soon.”

Natalie groaned while Sara gave her a sympathetic look.

The woman at the front desk wrote something down on what looked like some kind of booklet, then happily said “alright, you’re all set, have a great day”.

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With that, Natalie and Sara went to the elevator and hit the button to the fourteenth floor. Silence hung in the air as the elevator went up. A silence that was soon broken as they reached their destination.

“Hey…” Sara said hesitantly. “I know you said you didn’t want to go to the program, but I really think it’s what’s best for you. A lot of people in your position have been helped by it.”

Natalie didn’t say anything in response.

“Look… I’m not going to force you to do something you don’t want to. If you don’t want to go, then you don’t have to. But, if you ever feel like changing your mind, then just send us a message.”

Natalie, again, said nothing.

Natalie continued to say nothing as the elevator door opened and she walked with Sara down the hotel hallways. The walk was short, but it felt like it went on for hours. It probably had something to do with how the hallways themselves were long and maze-like. Some days she even had trouble finding her room. Natalie seriously wondered why the hotel was built this way.

Eventually, when Natalie finally did get to her room, she collapsed onto her bed in exhaustion.

“I know you’re probably not thinking of this right now.” Sara said at the door. “But you won’t have to worry about Astian. He won’t wake up in your apartment. We have some level of control over your reality and will create an explanation for his absence.”

“Can you just leave already?”

Sara gave a silent nod before exiting the room, shutting the door on her way out.

Natalie groaned into her pillow. It had been a long two weeks, but at last, it seemed it would soon be over.

So much had happened in these past two weeks that Natalie couldn’t even process it all. When she had first woken up in this world, she had been in this hotel room, and she freaked the hell out. How else could you possibly react after waking up in a different place? But people soon came and were able to calm her down.

Not like she could remain calm for long though, because soon afterward she was hit with bombshell after bombshell. First, that magic was real. Second, that she was in a new world composed entirely of plain white. Third, that her fiancé was a lunatic criminal that used magic to change reality.

And fourth, that she wasn’t Natalie Parker.

No, she was actually supposed to be a man named Nathan Parker, and Astian changed reality to make her his girlfriend. Her entire life, all her memories, were not real. To be fair, that’s not how the people here explained it, but that’s how Natalie heard it.

How could one possibly cope knowing they lived an entirely different life they didn’t know about? Natalie had known her whole life that she had been a woman named Natalie Parker. But that was wrong? What could she possibly make of that?

And this partial program, the one that Sara had offered her after the trial ended, these people seemed to really want her to go to it. They said it would really help her, but Natalie had her doubts. She had been to a partial program before (or maybe that memory was fake), and she found them boring. Plus, how could a partial program help her cope with the fact that her life was a lie?

Those thoughts mulled over in Natalie’s head as she fell closer and closer to sleep.

At least sleeping wasn’t impossible in this world. There was a day and night cycle, well… kind of. Every eleven hours there would be a transition where the world would change from a white void to a black void, or vice versa. The whole process would take one hour. All together, a single full cycle would take twenty-four hours to complete, just like a full day on Earth.

Natalie sighed. She could only hope that what these people said to her was the truth. That sleeping in this bed after the end of the trial would take her back to her apartment, and just a day after she last slept in there. She couldn’t imagine what she’d have to do if she was out for two whole weeks on Earth too.

Slowly but surely, Natalie started to doze off, with her eyes beginning to close.

But just before she fell asleep, she swore she saw a man in her room, looking out the window.

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