My Point of Origin

I wake in a featureless box, muffled drizzle of rain knocking through to my dreams, and for a moment I forget this world has become accessible only as one.

I open my eyes, and I lie in my own bed, in my own clothes. In my own home, deserving of the title – here hovels exist in the pages of novels, or movies, or you can build a scale model of one for a school project, if prompted. Mine lives in the walls, X-number of plastic bottles, documents exchanged from bankers to their lawyers, a written check long expired – and long obsolete – in a teenager’s birthday card shoved to the back of their desk drawer, because they didn’t feel deserving of its value.

Mine had been a skyscraper. Earthquake-proof, too. Best in my class, but now it’s been repurposed. That particular model was traded in for a sheet of paper proving competency in construction, as well as a handful of certifications with fancy acronyms supporting the idea that I’m capable of serving projects that won’t result in mass casualties. Or lawsuits. Orkan Resources love to stress that we should make every effort not to willingly cause those.

I hold up my hands, and find they are mine. These capped tusks are mine. These ears are mine.

This voice is not, but no one dreams of elements they’d rather shave away.

While the clock tick-ticks to waking, I enjoy a shower long denied me. Shampoos, conditioners, oils, gifts of gods long relegated to the shims between understandings by scientific pursuits. Weeks of grease buildup slough from my hair. Daigay and Mouse would bathe in rivers, but Joshua has declined the notion of one being important at all, choosing instead to rub himself clean on fragrant leaves, rolling the dice on his ability to identify their world’s equivalent of poison ivy. Not an awful idea, but may the gods strike me dead if ever a compliment slips to that little glory seeker. Faucets squeak off, a moment of inhaling mint-scented steam, I step out to grab my towel –

– and find the street instead. Crowds of green passing by wrapped up in the puffier garb of winter, no glances towards the one whose hand zoomed to their clothed groin or when it broke away, confused regarding the presence of clothes at all. I take stock: the dream’s put me in something unremarkable. Something adjacent to what I would wear, but also fuzzy, like the dream hadn’t been wearing its glasses. Above were grids of windows and billboards that played nonsensical images or shadow puppet plays across their screens, and the buildings they decorated reached up, and up, and up, edges smearing into the background of a grey, sky-less wall.

Maybe the fault lies with the dreamer. How many months had I been wearing transference attire for, again? How long since I had looked up at the city?

Pressing through the streets is like swimming through mud. The streets are clogged with uncompromising bodies seeking a destination through me and move as a single tide of green, whole in my peripheral vision, but their faces turn to swirls of wet paint when I focus to ask them politely to excuse me. Somewhere, I don’t know where, not anymore, I find an entrance to the less crowded underground and can breathe there among the red vines. Were there always this many loose cables? Electronic signs I do remember, all their advertisements for vehicles and skincare products. Enhancement pills promising the virility of dragons with photorealistic beasts open-jawed and roaring flames. But these images are pixelated, words in their slogans muddle into pasty mash.

And the tunnels. So many tunnels. A maze of tunnels barred with gates, guards, and electronic locks rotating through their clamors like a metronome. Click. Click. Beep! Schwing.

Movement opposite the gates catches my attention. Something moves in the piles of shiny garbage bags. I can see every reflection, every crinkle, the yellow-dappled teeth clothed in material that is not plastic, but a blanket; the masses not bags, but Orkan with sores and matted hair and slow, slavering mouths midst gaunt cheeks. They are so sharp in my eye that the image cuts cleanly in two.

A long table in a sanitary room: budget, permit, “March them where?”, new development, bird repellent.

A taped off chasm: rebar, overtime, buffer space, contractual obligation, “Asset, not a liability.”

I blink and the day is over, tools hung and gear stored away for the next crew. They arrive, slap me on the back, and shove me off to the street and into green glow: an advertisement just across the road, clear and true beyond the melting cars.

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“Transference applications now open! Protect your fellows and gain new skills! Contact your local recruiter today!”

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Home again, back to the box. Clothes on the floor, something with noodles layered on meat steams on a squat table in the room’s center, a fork sticking out, rain pitter patter.

New Mail! New Mail!

I swipe the messaging panel by the door to bring up the video recording, wherein the square window pops up with a slightly twitching image of two Orkan sharing their hands, marked by the geography of age, loose skin and wrinkles and silver-grey hair, caught by the camera built at eye level in the door. I press the triangular play button, my finger shaking.

“Hi, Lozen, it’s your mother! And your father! Just wanted to stop by and leave you this message, we know you’ve been busy out there with the job and all. But you really should come see us. It’s been, what, half a year since we last saw you? Construction is back breaking work, son, and your mother and I would be lying if we said there wasn’t a hint of worry. Dear, maybe he’s just tuckered out. We can… we can try again later. We’ll come back in a few days when it’s the weekend and maybe he’ll be free then. Well, you heard the overseer. If you won’t pick up the phone, then we’ll just need to keep knocking ‘till it drives you mad enough to respond. Make sure you’re taking it easy, son. Love you. Goodbye, my gem. Keep yourself happy.”

The message has a timestamp of under a minute ago. If I open the door now, pound my legs for all they’re worth, I should be able to catch them. I reach for the doorknob and only grab air, my fingers grazing a flat wall.

It’s wrong; it’s all wrong.

My fingers find no purchase. The door blends in, superimposed – rendered untouchable. The only marks my fists leave are stains of dark blood. I am trapped here in this place, trapped in the room and the rain and the tick-tock-tick.