I found myself back in high school, but something didn’t feel quite right … like I’d already done it all before.
After stumbling through my first day, not being able to find my locker and having a few strange encounters with teachers as I caught myself talking to them more like another adult than you would as a teenager, I began to notice other details that were off…
Most notably, a girl I had fallen for in high school was nowhere to be found, even though in my head I already knew exactly what had transpired between us and how it hadn’t worked out … yet my friends acted as if they’d never even heard of her.
Back at home, I talked to my Mom for a while before she left for work, then went to get into my own car just as someone else in a big, black truck crashed into it. Three people were inside and we all exchanged tense looks as they pulled out and drove away without even getting out to apologize.
It was then that I realized I had a phone in my pocket, so remembering Sara’s number, I tried to call for help, but I had trouble dialing the number (which is a common occurrence for me in dreams). When I finally managed to dial it, she didn’t answer, but I heard another woman’s voice on the other end instead.
I oddly asked who it was and she replied, “You don’t recognize your Mom’s voice from Northern Michigan anymore???” as if I hadn’t just seen her minutes earlier.
I asked where Sara was and there was silence, after which I heard rustling of other people in the background on the other end.
She spoke more quietly that “there were agents in the house” and tried to give me a secret email address that had been setup to contact me, but got cut off before she could finish giving it to me.
Sometime later, I was in a nondescript office with big glass windows, looking at a laptop with several other people. Randomly an error popped up on the screen about some malware, yet I noticed the error included a password that referenced me and I opened it anyways.
A few seconds later, a dossier came up on the screen about me that showed my name and even fingerprints, but the pictures were of an older, bearded guy who definitely wasn’t me. As I studied the screen in confusion, I soon noticed that one of the windows was a live video feed of me, which I tried to hide by covering the laptop’s webcam with my thumb, only to realize that it was actually coming from somewhere outside.
I stood up and looked out the windows to see a black sedan parked on the curb with its windows down and a large camera pointed right at me.
Taking off running for the door, somehow I managed to catch the car before they could speed away and inside were three people – two men and a woman – in oversized coats, all of them shocked as they looked back at me.
“Who are you?!”
“What’s going on here?!” I demanded, but they didn’t answer.
The next thing I knew, I was sitting in a booth with them in the back room of what appeared to be a pet store, and the walls around us were covered with dossiers just like mine as it looked like they were trying to piece something together themselves.
I sat quietly and listened, deducing that somehow I was in a different timeline than my own, but they weren’t sure why or who was responsible. They were still suspicious of me until I finally asked what I could do to help.
The woman thought for a minute and then asked if I could try to find some snacks.
One of the men added that he would like a glass of wine, to which I got up and went looking for a kitchen or something in the store.
Coming up empty handed, I saw an old woman up front so I went and asked her where the snacks and wine were. She took me to an aisle that had crackers for birds, but said that they didn’t sell wine.
When I clarified that they were for the people working in the back, she looked at me confused and asked, “What people???”
I walked back to the hallway that led to the back room just in time to see their three faces staring back at me for a moment before they all suddenly disappeared.