Knock! Knock!
There it is, the event I've been waiting for to disturb my peace. The tv is blaring a drama that I've been desperately trying to catch up on, and my pajamas are hardly stunning to a visitor walking in on me. I groan, I don't think they can hear me from the other side of my front door.
I kick my slippers to the side and let my bare feet skid along the carpet. I don't bother pausing my show either, because this visitor is only going to have my time for five minutes tops. I open the door and let the sunlight obliterate the darkness.
"Oh, hey, Dad," I say. "What's up?"
Dad looks at me, but there's something immediately different about him. He's shorter than I last checked. "Troy? My goodness, you're looking so beautiful today."
I look down at my pajamas, wrinkled and stained from a dip I used for some chips. "Uh, okay. What do you want? I'm kinda in the middle of something."
"Yeah? What are you doing? Trying on new dresses and shoes? Painting your nails? Doing your hair?"
"What? No, none of that today. It's good to just not care for like, twenty-four hours. Why are you slouching? You look so short."
"Yeah, you're right, sometimes you just need a break from the glamor. I understand."
I open the door wider and stand up straighter, and my hand goes to my hip as I grow more annoyed. He just stares at me, smiling, his eyes scanning up and down all over me. I scrunch my toes as I feel them getting peeked at. "Dude, I've got work tomorrow. Did you want to come in or something? I'm literally just watching tv and snacking out."
"Is Clyde with you?"
"Clyde? No, Ispio sent him on a mission three days ago. He won't be back until tomorrow. Is that it? Are you just looking for Clyde? He's not here, so can I get back to my veggie state?"
I step back as he pushes forward on his own, leaning against the door and opening it fully. "Man, I was such a knockout out back then."
What did he just say? "Where's Mom? Is she waiting in the car?" I try to peek around him to see outside my property, but the only car I see is mine.
"Troy, you're a specially trained agent whose tolerance for the weird and the impossible is significantly higher than the average person. I'm telling you this in the expectation that you won't freak out. I'm not your dad."
I backflip quickly, my hands dig into the carpet and spring me further away until I feel like I'm close enough to the couch. I jump high, curl into a ball, and land on the other side, pulling the gun I always leave inside a slit in the couch I made myself. I stay behind the armrest and aim my gun at this imposter.
"This should be good. Now tell me why I shouldn't blast a hole in the chest of a body-snatching, face-stealing, father-pretending spy that knows everything secretive about me?"
He doesn't flinch, and he doesn't move away from his lean, but he does raise his hands lazily to the same level as his chin. He's not taking me seriously at all. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. You didn't even let me finish."
"You didn't account for how agile I am, did you? Surprised you and everything with that little gymnastics demo."
"I'm not your dad, I'm you."
"Nice try, but my sister already pulled that one on me a year ago. I don't blame you though, I'm someone worth impersonating."
"I see that I was also very narcissistic back then. A double package with beauty, I guess."
I stand up and expose myself, pointing the gun and aiming for his heart. "Dedicated acting, I'll give you that. Unfortunately for you, you're talking to a natural liar, I see right through it."
"I'll ask you to please put the gun away so we can talk."
"You'll have an easier time convincing me that brown loafers go with a gray suit."
He keeps his hands raised, but his right hand flexes into a snapping position. He snaps loud and clear, the sound dry skin would make with enough pressure. Suddenly, my gun begins to rumble violently. I hold on to it, keeping an eye on the imposter and my gun by switching glances. My gun pulls itself apart, becoming mere pistol pieces as if it is barely being developed in the factory. The barrel, some screws, and the grip fall into my palm, looking fresh and brand new.
"Wha–!? That's not fair!"
He steps into my home, the only shelter I own that makes me feel safe, and violates my security. I even have to endure the double punishment of being in my pajamas with absolutely no defense at all.
He approaches slowly as if trying to tame a wild animal. "If I remember correctly, there's another gun hidden between the planks and the mattress of your bed. It's the last gun you've got, and I say it'd be a waste of time to do this song and dance twice. So how about you just let me have a few words? Save us both some time?"
"What did you do to my gun?" I hold out a screw between my index finger and thumb.
"I sent it back in time to when it was first made. Technically, I made it younger. Those are the pieces that are later assembled at the factory. Look, I can do it again." He snaps his fingers and the pieces of my gun rumble in my hands. This time I let them drop to the floor, and watch them turn into chunks of rock.
"What!?"
"Iron, charcoal, and carbon, I think. I don't know, I'm not sitting in my room studying the compounds of steel. Just realize that they are now the basic elements that can later be forged into the metal."
"Is that it? Are you gonna turn me into a fetus until my body can't be supported without an incubator? Out of all the cases I've worked, I actually guessed this is how I'd die."
"Hard pass. Killing you would also kill me. I told you, or me, I told me, I'm you, or me. I'm me."
He sits down on my couch and pats the cushion next to him, wanting me to join. Things go silent, neither of us saying a word. My chest tightens whenever I stare at the rocks on my carpet, the rocks that used to be my gun. I stare at his face, it looks just like my dad's face, or mine if I was about twenty-five years older. My stomach flips around as the rocks, the face, and the strange power all start to add up. I run to the bathroom and close the door.
"Hey," I hear him call from the couch, "what are you doing? You can't just hide in the bathroom, I'll literally turn that door back into planks, or however far I need to go to get rid of it."
My throat closes up in a familiar way, and finally, I let out a stream of vomit smelling of dip and chips into the toilet. Some of it splashes on the seat, I didn't even think to lift it up. It's green, I'm guessing that's the avocado.
"Oh," he says, "that's what you're doing. Okay, I'll give you some privacy, I'll be here, on your couch, watching whatever you're playing. Ooooh, is that Wondrous Werewolf? I love this show, haven't seen it in ages!"
This is impossible! That can't be me in the future, time travel doesn't work like that. What about all the paradoxes? That stupid cliche about how you're not supposed to meet yourself? But what was that power? I've never seen anything like it, not even from the Followers of Zooh with their magic. Is it even magic?
I continue to let out the snacks I've eaten all day until I hear another knock on the bathroom door.
"Hey, are you feeling any better? Want me to get you some water?"
It's him. I spring for the knob and lock the door. "Go away! I'm...I'm calling Ispio right now and getting reinforcements!"
"Oh yeah, the comms implant. How far along are you with the augmentations? Are those still your real eyes?"
"Stop it! Stop trying to mess with my head! You're not me! That's impossible!"
"Come on, I've seen the same things you have plus more. You should be able to deal with the impossible by now."
I kick the door hard, thinking that he's leaning his ear against it. "Enough! You're not me, you're just a dedicated metaphor actor sent to scramble my brain or something!"
Suddenly, my door turns into unsanded planks, then tree bark, then to a sapling with exposed, withered roots. "Oh, sweetie, now I know you're freaking out. It's a method actor. You'd know that if you just kept a cool head."
He's right, my hand is trembling in front of me as I cover my face with an arm. My chest aches because my heart is pounding so hard and fast, and my lips are dry from all the air I keep sucking down. I'm terrified, but this man remains so calm.
"No! Don't turn me into a baby, please! It's only cute when it happens to Clyde!"
"Oh, I remember that. Cute, little Clyde. Also, I can't kill you, because that would be killing me. Look, I'm patient and all, but repeating myself is getting annoying. I can prove it right now, I know all your tickle spots. Watch."
"AHHH!"
"Okay, okay, sorry, I won't touch you. Believe me?"
I shake my head and my entire body trembles. I focus on my rapid breathing and try to slow it down. I control it, then I control my shoulders, arms, and legs, and eventually, I'm feeling okay. I stand up and wipe my mouth with a piece of toilet paper.
I breathe deep, then let it out slowly. "First, can I just say, what the fuck?"
"Okay, but you can't say that again in this episode. You only get one before the mature rating hits."
"So you're me from the future? How far into the future?"
"Oh, I'd say about thirty-seven years from now."
"Why are you here?"
"Finally! I've been trying to tell you that for an hour."
"I was in the bathroom for an hour?"
"Shush, you've already asked a question. I'm here, specifically to see you because I need your assistance with a highly classified mission."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. I have to phone Ispio for something like that. They have to know if I'm going on a mission."
'No, you're not. I'm here on this day because you're not scheduled to work today. Don't worry about gadgets and disguises, I've brought along everything we might need. I'll even teach you how to use it, I know my technology is going to be much more advanced than yours."
"Is one of your gadgets a fainting chaise? I'm feeling a little light-headed from all this."
He reaches behind him and pulls out a small gadget with a screen and a few buttons on the side. It lights up, and he scrolls through menus until he expands a folder and selects a photo to show me. It's a building here in town, instantly recognizable. The Connecticut Science Center.
"Lame! Your classified mission takes place at the museum?" I ask.
He keeps scrolling to the next picture, a picture of a wall inside the museum. "It gets better."
"A wall?"
He scrolls again, showing me a picture of something shiny inside a dark room. I try to look hard, but I can't tell what it is. Whatever it is, it's sitting on a display pedestal surrounded by laser tripwires like some James Bond scene.
I point at the unknown object. "What is that?"
"That is the raw conductor of reality's language."
"Explain."
"Surely you've heard of the world being readable through mathematics?"
"I thought that was just some buzz-word pretentious crap scientists like to say."
"You're right, it is, but there's truth to it. That conductor will let you see the coding of the world around you, and if you're capable, you could alter said coding to change the reality around you."
"What?"
"Basically, it lets you alter the world and its physics. Rules won't matter to the one using it."
I pull on the screen to get another look, yanking it out of his hand. "And this all-powerful artifact is just sitting here in Hartford? Why here?"
"The real security comes from the Science Center not even knowing it's there. They've got nothing to do with it, and they will never find out a different organization is using their building to store this...thing."
"Thing? It doesn't have a name?"
"Not really."
"Can I name it?"
"Um..."
"The Animatrix! Sounds kinda like what it does."
"Sure. Was I always this annoying?"
I give him back his little tablet. "So, if we're going to break in there, I'd like to know what our first step is going to be."
He brings out a familiar piece of technology; a small box capable of shrinking items down for easy transportation. He walks to my kitchen table and releases a stack of books and scrap paper. "You should already know by now: research."
I groan, throwing my head back and making my disappointment obvious. The last thing I want to do on my day off is a research paper.