Chapter 2: Chapter 1

Waking up in a white room didn’t clear up any of my confusion: who was I, where was I, and I guess also when was I? White sheets, white walls, white curtains letting in white light- none of which helped the headache that came from trying to answer my questions. 

 

Who was I? 

Alex/Ripple. Having the mental-equivalent of two simultaneous muscle-memory-reactions was… off putting and very unhelpful. 

 

Where was I?

Definitely not home. That one was straightforward and profoundly unhelpful.

 

When was I?

To be honest, I remember not really knowing that under normal circumstances- so it wouldn’t help anyway.

 

As I was pondering my existence, someone dressed in scrubs poked their head in the door before yelling down the hallway that I was awake, before quickly saying to me that they’d be back with food and water before leaving. With that distraction gone, the haze over my memories slowly cleared up and left me with a lot of more questions. As I probed back through my memories, I constantly got two answers- both of which seemed true every time, as if I as a single entity lived two lives at the same time in completely different worlds. The only issue was which world I was in- if either.

 

Once again interrupting the oncoming existential dread, the nurse entered with a tray of food. Both of my sets of memories had humans, so she wasn’t a help with identifying where I was on a world-level. When I asked where I was, her answer of “Willow Road Medical Clinic” also didn’t help- roads named after trees were common in both memories. As I ate, she asked questions about what I remembered, and my vague and definitely confused sounding answers along the lines of “It was bright and loud” made her draw her face into a concerned smile while making a note on a clipboard. 

 

The headache I had since waking up had only gotten worse to the point that by the end of our conversation, I was asking the nurse if the light could be dampened, saying yes, I did have a headache bordering on a migraine. Again, a concerned smile and a note on the clipboard was made before heavier blinds were drawn.

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For a third time, I was left alone with my own screwed up memories- so I slept trying to ignore it all. 

 

I’ll try my best to describe the dream I had- I don’t think I can comprehend it myself. I came to awareness suddenly, seeing myself and myself through the self I was looking at through my eyes. I say myself, both were different, but still made me identify them as myself. Despite the confusing nature, it did very much clear up a little about my situation- one body was someone who’d call themself Alex and the other Ripple- but both were comfortably me. From there I swear I could feel my brain rewiring to accommodate both sets of memories- filling in missing terminology and understanding with the appropriate terms and concepts from the other. That mostly boiled down to ‘Ripple’ advancing their understanding of math and sciences by years, and ‘Alex’ discovering magic was in fact very real and very strange- even to someone who lived with it.

 

The system boiled down to: everyone has some abnormal Ability, however most are some combination of too niche or too weak to affect their life. About twenty percent of the population had an ability that was usable for something, a further ten percent had two, and a further five percent had three. Basically, two-thirds of the population is effectively ‘normal’ and the others can do something weird (adj). These abilities tended to manifest in the middle of each respective race’s puberty- falling into a range of a few years around that point. Abilities are not genetic, either in what they do or in power- a fact ignored by the nobles of many countries- and range from controlling fire to being able to hear sounds from exactly three years ago and exactly three hundred kilometers west.

 

With that all sorted out I was left looking at myself, looking at my other self…

 

I had never been so happy to be woken as I was when the dream finally ended. This time, someone dressed more like a human doctor came in and did a standard physical checkup- a fact that was either completely normal if I was in Alex’s world, or likely indicative of previous world-hoppers if in Ripple’s. Blood pressure, automatic reactions, pupil dilation, and whatever else they tested prefaced another round of questioning where I was much more confident in the fact I had absolutely no clue what happened. Notes were taken, expressions made, and not-quite-audible discussions had before the doctor said a few more things. 

 

“Don’t worry about payment, that was covered already. You appear to have recovered from the worst of it. Uhh, you are free to go if there’s no more questions. If you would like we can provide a mirror and some privacy so you can verify that nothing went wrong in the healing process”

 

Obviously, I accepted the last bit without hesitation.

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