The Other

Every time I go to sleep, I dream that I am someone else.

Adam stared at the typed words on the screen until the words stopped looking like words and began to look like gibberish.

His cat, a small calico who unceremoniously turned up one day at his apartment to set up residence, curled up on his lap ready for a nap. Adam had named her Valentine after a heart-shaped patch on her back.

Adam was supposed to be writing code for a client - some app for a new line of shoes made from recycled wastes of the Amazon rainforest or some such - but he couldn’t focus today. This morning he woke up again drenched in sweat, and when he checked the scale this morning he found that he lost another two pounds.

Even he had to admit he was looking rather emaciated these days.

He went to see a doctor and he was told he was just depressed, that all his tests came back normal. Adam asked for a full body scan just to be sure but the doctor just chuckled him out the door with a script for Zoloft.

He supposed he was depressed. But then again, it was his natural inclination. He was a perpetually dissatisfied, unhappy person. It was his baseline.

He had tried to be a more positive person once. He smiled when he didn’t feel like it, laughed when things weren’t funny. He locked away the negative things that happened in his life and tried to hide the key. In the end he abandoned the whole idea. All it accomplished was make him feel like an impostor and slightly ashamed of himself.

Adam sighed and decided to check his emails. There was a notice from his bank stating the balance on his checking account was getting dangerously low. He transferred some money from his savings but even that was also slowly dwindling down. He was hopeful when he was invited to interview at Virtuality - a new start up that’s supposed to be the next Google except with virtual reality - but he didn’t make it past the second round of interviews.

Thank you for taking the time to interview at Virtuality, San Francisco! Unfortunately, we decided to go with a candidate with more experience. We will be keeping your resume on file should a position open up that fits better with your profile. Thank you for considering Virtuality!

Adam tried not to take it personally. He knew he was a good programmer, great, even. But he never did well on interviews. It might have a little something to do with his crippling social anxiety.

No, he did better working for himself. He didn’t want to work for some big pretentious company anyway.

Still, the rejection hurt.

There was an email from his little sister Emily. At the sight of it Adam smiled for the first time that day. Maybe that week.

Hi!

Mom has been bugging me to e-mail you because you apparently don’t know how to reply to texts! My birthday is coming up soon and mom told me to tell you I want an Ipad and she said maybe you can get like a refurbished one for cheap or something? So if you can, that would be great! But if not, it’s okay too. Are you coming home for my birthday? Mom said we’re just doing like a pizza movie night or something. So no big deal.

How’s your big new job at Silicon Valley?? Mom says she really misses you at home.

Okay, that’s all!

Ems

Adam’s heart seized as he read Emily’s e-mail. He had left his mom and his ten year old sister back home in Iowa when he decided to take off for San Francisco. He didn’t want to leave them, but he had no choice. People were sparse in their small farming town of Cedar Hold, jobs even rarer. When he graduated high school his senior class was an impressive group of fifteen kids, apparently the largest class since 1972.

He was a gifted programmer, even in high school code came to him naturally. It was as if his brain functioned better as a computer than that of a teenager.

Adam had big plans. And truly his plans seemed solid enough at the time. He was going to be the first person from his family to obtain a college degree, he was going to find a job in California, the mecca of technology by all accounts, and make a lot of money. He was going to pay off the money her mother owed on their house that was underwater back in Iowa. Heck, forget that house. He was going to buy them a bigger, better house. Maybe closer to him. Somewhere in California probably. Or Oregon. Somewhere his little sister could find something better to do with her talents other than grow cabbage and bake bread.

Unfortunately, a lot of other brilliant programmers had the same idea. The competition in San Francisco was cutthroat, and Adam, with his measly bachelors degree from a middle of nowhere college (the only thing he could afford and had access to) was easily thwarted by the hundreds of other candidates with Stanford degrees and generational connections and naturally better social skills.

Now he was twenty-five, nowhere near the rich computer programmer he envisioned himself to be, and thirty thousand dollars of student debt poorer.

He couldn’t bring himself to reply to Emily’s e-mail. Later, he told himself, when he actually had something good to say. Perhaps when he was finally able to scrounge up enough money to buy a new iPad to send home. Some accessories too, like a keyboard and that pen. He smiled at the thought. Emily would flip her lid.

Another email caught his eye. The sender was blank, but the subject line was intriguing:

I think this will change your life.

Adam hesitated only slightly before clicking on the e-mail. He knew there was a chance this email was a scam, or worse, a virus or worm concocted by some sadistic computer savant. But Adam’s computer had a pretty good firewall that he built himself, and he used a completely different server for his personal stuff. He was confident that even if this email contained some kind of worm, that he would be able to identify and stop it in its tracks. Maybe even trace it. He wondered idly if there was some kind of reward for that - catching a cyber criminal. Maybe it could be his second source of income.

Adam clicked to open the message:

Adam:

I’ve been trying to reach you for months. I need to tell you something very important. It’s about your dreams, Adam, and what they mean. I’ve been having dreams, too. But about you.

I know it sounds crazy, but if you just give me a few minutes, I can explain.

P.S. Have you been to the doctor lately?

Lucas

Adam frowned. What the hell? He didn’t know anybody by the name Lucas. He also never told anyone about his weird dreams, not even his doctor. He only mentioned the sweats and the weight loss at his last check up.

It still could be a scam. But the message was too specific, too personal while still being vague enough that Adam had no idea what it could possibly mean. He couldn’t just ignore it, could he? He had to at least investigate.

Adam clicked on “reply.”

A plain black chat window appeared. Adam felt an immediate pang of regret. For a smart guy, he sure did dumb things.

He stared at the cursor in the chat window with dread as it began to type:

Hi Adam.

A long pause.

Thank you for talking to me.

Adam tried to close the chat window but the button did not respond. He tried to go through the task manager but it was not identified as one of the programs running. Damn it.

Don’t panic, Adam.

Shit. Adam guessed he might be being watched or recorded through the very computer the chat box was operating from, but like any neurotic programmer he had his camera and microphone covered up with two layers of duct tape. He eyed the duct tape suspiciously as the chat box filled with more words.

My name is Lucas Greer. I believe that somehow, every night, you have been seeing my life when you dream. I also believe I see your life when I dream. At this point you’re probably thinking I’m insane, and you might be right. But I have thought about this a long time, and it’s the only thing that makes sense. I also have proof.

Adam would have called bullshit immediately if it didn’t feel true. He had been dreaming as if he was seeing the life of another person for several months now. The images were not always clear, but they were consistent. A sparse apartment, taking the train to work, a job in front of a computer. There was a recurring theme of an ex-girlfriend that this person was still in love with. She even had a name but Adam couldn’t remember it. Helen? Hannah? The details always escaped him when he woke up.

He took a deep breath. His head was now pounding. Fine. He will play this game for now. He typed back: “Okay, what’s your proof?”

I know things about you… from my dreams, you see. I’ve been practicing lucid dreaming for a while now and when I wake up I immediately write everything down so I don’t forget the details. I know you have a cat, Valentine, who has an orange heart on her back. I know you’re a programmer and you’re self employed. You live in a small apartment north of San Francisco. Your apartment is sparsely furnished, mostly you have computer equipment. You’ve been losing weight. You’re worried about your health. Anyway, eventually I figured out your computer system and now, here we are.

Adam hesitated, then typed: “Those are all things anyone could easily find out about me.”

That's true.

But how about the things you know about me?

Adam paused. Valentine purred softly on his lap. Finally he typed: “I don’t know anything about you.”

I don’t believe you.

Adam was losing his patience. The curiosity of the initial email was wearing thin. He typed another reply: “Let’s cut to the chase. What do you want?”

The chat box was silent for a while. Then:

I want to switch with you. The next time we go to sleep.

Okay, so maybe this Lucas guy was missing a few marbles. That or he was hacking into his servers now as they speak. Adam wondered briefly if he could just shut down his computer now, kill all running programs. Since this particular computer was not connected to his personal network and is on a different server, it was probably not sending worms to all his other computers at that very moment.

You don’t have to do anything, you just need to know that I’m real and that I exist. This opens the pathway.

When you go to sleep tonight, I’ll do the rest.

Adam almost typed “but I don’t want to.” But that would be like admitting that he believed this silly story. And he didn’t want to do that because he didn’t believe it. Did he?

He turned off the computer. He didn’t turn it on for the rest of the day.

Needless to say, as much as he tried, Adam didn’t sleep a wink that night.

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