Anyway.
I was on my ninja 600 scouting a road for doing this--need a closed loop where cops wont notice you driving with a blindfold--when I stopped the oddest road sign. NE Drive. Northeast Drive? The sign wasn't missing any other words. I knew from the map that it was a squiggly line and not a loop, however I was through with my search and figured carving some twisties would be a great way to end the night.
The road took me back to the city where it ended at an abandoned building. I looked up and finally caught the name of the road: "Non Euclidean Drive." That's a pretty badass name for a road. I wondered what it meant, when I saw the doorway. Maybe, door frame is more correct. It was just standing there, by itself. Not really on the road...that sort of ended in some gravel, near a building...grass...bit of fence...the other details aren't important, actually. This door was just, in the ground. Not connected to anyway. And I mean the frame, not the door. The door has apparently been ripped off. The hinges were bent and ripped. And then I found 20 dollars.
Ok I didn't actually find any money...I'll skip ahead. I dreamed about a door. Doorway. Not the one I found, but this one was in a field, a sort of dark field at night, and the door was still attached, and it was very much like the doors from Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. Then I woke up.
The next day I was back at the doorway. Call it boredom. Normally on a Saturday I might spend all morning watching TV, but on this particular Saturday I chose to watch "The Killing," and the first episode made me realize the entire series was just a long-ass episode of Law and Order, so I read the plot synopsis on wikipedia and left my apartment to wander the city. For some reason I wandered straight to the doorway.
And stepped through.
Not sure what made me. Maybe I was looking at the frame. While reading the Dark Tower I always imagined myself doing weird shit with those doors, like trying to wrap my arms around the frames, or go through in the wrong direction, or break the frame. I didn't do any of that, though, because this wasn't some magic portal doorway. Just a frame someone installed in the middle of a gravel lot. Also it was not my frame, so I felt negatively about damaging it.
Anyway, I walked through it exactly once, and then went home to play video games. And that is when shit got weird. Why? Because my apartment building...um...moved. Every other building on the street seemed the same, but my building...my building...well, that morning it was called Renoa Apartments, and it was an old-ass mostly-concrete shithole left over from the 70s. It was between a nice apartment building on one side, and a weird looking apartment building on the other side that had like wood walls, which was totally weird. In between them, though, was...um...a different building. This building was called Everfield, and it had glass shit. Like big glass doors, big glass bay windows into the lobby, and big windows for every apartment. And it was twice as tall. What the fuck?
When watching movies or TV shows like Dr. Who, I always imagined that if I were ever in a weird situation, I wouldn't freak out. I would just stare. Turns out I was wrong, because instead of staring, I looked around to check the street name, even though I knew exactly where I was, and then I got this sick sense of scary vertigo shooting up from the pit of my stomach and I had to sit down. I buried my head in my hands and it still felt like I was falling. Then I heard someone behind me. I looked up. And saw....
...someone I didn't recognize at all. So, not Jesus. Or Batman. Or a blue police box. Anyway. The person stared at me briefly, and I recognized that look. It was the quick glance you give someone you've seen before--many times--but never talked to, someone's whose plight you are quite curious about but can't show it because you don't want to engage them at all. There is only one class of people who are capable of giving that look: passive aggressive neighboors.
Someone about that made me feel ok, like the world wasn't just going to slip out from under my feet. I've been dislocated before, whether it was chasing after a girl, or locking my keys in my car, or getting lost in a small beach town in high school...it's always the same problem and the same next step: feel your jeans to make sure you will have a wallet, find a coffee shop or a bar, buy something, and sit for a while. Tell yourself you'll splurge on a hotel room until you get things sorted out.
So it was with courage that I approached the interloper and studied the call box. And that's when I saw my name: Forkk. Yeah, with two K's. I know. Pretty strange fucking name. Either this was somehow my apartment, or I was about to meet the only other Forkk in the country. Had to be the second one though. This place took key cards and all I had was a set of keys. I dialed the other Forkk using the call box.
And my phone rang.
Unrecognizable number. I declined the call. Then the call box fucked up so I called again. Then I got another call. Damn fucking spammers. Respond to a craigslist ad about taking two girls out to dinner and forever get the occasional call from people who could only have gotten your number by buying it from scammers. Anyway, I suddenly realized that maybe this was about Microsoft calling me back for an interview (on a Saturday...) and I picked up. And then I heard my own voice come out of the fucking speaker box of the apartment. And that is when my spine...hell my feet, legs, hands, everything went cold. I was shaking and disoriented but I moved my thumb and pressed the "7" key on my phone. The call box blared a single tone and I heard the front door unlock.
I stood in the lobby, briefly, thinking, "what the fuck?" When someone got out of the elevator and gave me another passive-aggressive curiosity look as the passed. That woke me up. I dashed into the elevator just before it closed and pressed "5" -- what I had seen on the call box.
Ever walk into an apartment, a really nice apartment, and appreciate how everything is cool and layed out, and then later you return to your own and wonder why it seems to drab and messy to you, as if, no matter what you do, you can't seem to make the right decisions when you go to ikea, perhaps never realizing that the other people's apartment wasn't furnished from Ikea in the first place? That feeling. I had it walking into this apartment.
Everything was sort of ugly, or misplaced...maybe looking good by itself, but not with the rest of the ensemble. And everything was very much the kind of thing I would buy, right down to the Lego pirate ship on the shelves. Except that my real apartment had a different pirate ship.
There was a basket near the doorway with keys in it. The keys had a pink object on them. Girl keys! I never put pink objects on my key ring. But if my girlfriend is here why didn't she text me first? Shit! It's my birthday. Could they have remodeled the building just to really get me? Oh shit quit being such a narcissist.
Then I went into the bedroom, and that is when shit got real. Why did shit get real? Shit got real, so very real, because there was a hot readhead tied up on the--my?--bed with a giant red bow going over her boobs. Yeah, it was my birthday. I'm always forgetting about that shit! Only probably was this wasn't my girlfriend.
I'm not going to tell you all of the things I thought about right then. We can skip that. Yeah we'll just skip right to...well I left. Without touching her. I left and headed for my favorite bar to think things over. Except my favorite bar wasn't there either. My favorite bar was an Irish pub that makes the best damn flaming dr peppers you've ever tasted. The bar in its place was some random sports bar. What the fuck?
I always imagined, if I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone, or whatever, that I'd figure it out a lot sooner. Well, I didn't, and I felt pretty sheepish when I finally realized that my next move should be to go back to that doorway, especially since I had a dream about it. There was no indication that it led to another planet, but it would be best to at least rule it out. On the way to the door I stopped and asked someone on the street what the date was. Yup. Same day, just one day after yesterday. Haven't been, like, hibernating long enough for buildings to change.
When I got back to the doorway I didn't run around it or any shit like that. I walked back through it, careful to go through only once, and in the exact opposite direction. I didn't even pause, although I wanted to. There was absolutely no indication that I had been transported anywhere. The entire lot, every detail, appeared to be the same on both sides of the door frame.
Whatever.
I ran back to my apartment...and my apartment building was back! Yay! Wait. What the fuck?
The feeling of vertigo was back, but this time I didn't stop as I went inside and up the stairs. There was a note on my door. Shit. Only my girlfriend writes me notes like that, and she only puts them on the outside when she's mad at me. It read:
Hey dumbass. I was here waiting for you in my fuckin hot ass french maid outfit. I waited three fucking hours for you and I know you came in because I heard you-
What?
-but then you left before I even saw you. You forgot it was your birthday again, didn't you?
Shit. Also: what the fuck? Who was in my apartment? Who cares. Back in reality. Should go to work...get a few hours in...even though I'm planning to quit.
I was halfway there before I turned around and headed straight for the doorway. Then I arrived and started detecting shit. I was a detective.
I walked around it, both directions. Nothing special. Stuck my hand through, just a little. Then I got scared and ran all the way back to my apartment just to make sure it was still there. It was. Note to self: leave that detail out. Anyway, then I threw a rock through the door. Nothing special. And when I peeked around the door frame, even walked around it, the rock was still there. The rock I threw went through the doorway and I didn't, and here I was on the other side.
Then I tried wrapping my arms around the frame. My left arm made it as far as touching my right arm. I could see and fell them both touching. For some reason, though, I wasn't satisfied. Something was wrong, and I was still sick to my stomach thinking about that other version of my apartment building.
That is when I threw my badge through. My badge is blue, mostly blue, with an ugly ass picture of my face that makes it look like I'm a hitman for the mob. I could see it through the doorway, but when I went around, it turned white. I walked over and picked it up. Microsoft. What? I don't work for Microsoft.
I sat down and tried to sketch the door in the gravel, trying to figure out which side you'd go in...it didn't make any sense.
"I draw faster than you," came the voice. I looked up and felt a brief flash of vertigo. I was looking at me. "You didn't drawing class at university, did you?"
"What? No they didn't let C.S. majors take those classes.
"You just had to ask politely. Anyway, here's your badge," other me said.
I rose and we traded badges. Brief silence.
"Ned Stark dies," I said.
"Oh thank you for telling me, you saved me from reading that terrible book."
"Really?" I asked.
"No, I just wanted you to feel good about doing that. I read it...Nothing can give those ten hours of my life back. Wait...what time is it on your side?" he said.
"July 8th," I answered. "And its like 5 pm."
Other me looked at his watch. "Shit. So, no playing the stock market."
"They'd be the wrong stocks, probably," I volunteered.
Awkward silence.
"I'm not having sex with you," said other me.
"Cool," I said. More silence. "Is Uncle Owen still alive?"
"Yeah. You?"
"Yup. Did you solve 3 sat?"
"No. I'm starting to question myself about whether or not P really equals NP."
"Yeah me too."
"Shit."
"Did you ever ask Jen out, like for real, in high school?"
"No I just took her to prom and kissed her this one time."
"Oh. I was hoping at least one of us did. What about Linda?"
"No dice."
"I guess everything is the same." We both shrugged. I mean, I shrugged. Lot of shrug action. Then I asked: "Did you get run over by the ride-the-duck assholes?"
His eyes grew wide. "Those tour boats? No."
"Oh, well stay away from those fuckers. They ran me...." and on I went.
We tried to work out some manner in which having two of us would lead to profit, but aside from both of us banging one of our girlfriends, we couldn't think of anything.
Truth be told neither of us really wanted much information from the other, because neither of us wanted to find out if they had made the poorer decisions. I knew this because I thought that way, and I was talking to myself.
Then we went our separate ways, and after double checking we were in the right, um, dimension, we, or at least I, went back and tore down the doorway. Just before I did so, I glanced behind me, just in case Jesus, or Batman, or The Doctor was about to give me a whoopin for wasting such a precious occurrence, but there was no one.
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