I had originally written this like I normally do, dumping my thoughts into here as soon as things happened. As you'll soon see, that doesn't really mean much in this context. When I went to read back what I had written, none of it made any sense, I was the one that experienced it. I've done my best to untangle all of this for you, and I hope that I can properly convey what it felt like.
Things started like they always do, I was assigned another branch to check in on, on another planet. I hopped on the shuttle, and had an unremarkable ride here. There was a funny feeling in my stomach during the jump. I wasn't sick, and it felt almost like nerves but not quite. But... why would I be nervous? I've shuttled between planets hundreds of times by now. At the time, I didn't know what to make of this feeling.
There's a part of me though, a part that knew this feeling, even if I couldn't accept it then. I've been noticing this happening more and more recently. Feelings that, on some level, I know exactly what they are, but I just can't describe. Like they're far away and I can't find my glasses. The form, the colors, the movement, I can make those out, but trying to parse out any details is difficult. It's not impossible, sometimes there's flashes of clarity, an edge here, a texture there. The distance doesn't change it either. Somehow, no matter how close or how far I am from the feeling, it's just as blurry. Almost as if the feeling itself lacked defined features to begin with.
I know the feeling has the details though. I can tell because of how it's interacting with those around it. A feeling that I do recognize butts up against it, and the way that it bends to fit the edges of the blur tells me a little bit about it's shape and the space it's occupying.
But they're my feelings how can I not know what they are? I'm feeling them? What's holding me back?
I did my best to ignore the feeling, and, I know, ignoring it isn't going to make it go away. I just didn't have the energy or the willpower to make any attempt at teasing out what little I could. These shuttle flights always take a lot of energy, and by the time I knew what was happening, by tank was running low.
The jump to the system was done and we were finishing the flight over to the planet itself. As it came into view, I had another funny feeling, like I had seen this planet before. I've never been here, but it does look an awful lot like a lot of the other planets I've been to. After a while, every planet that's inhabited starts to blend together. They each have their unique details, but the overall form starts to become a blob, especially from this distance.
I ignored this feeling too, and wrote down the first part of my journal entry.
We landed, I grabbed my backpack and luggage and made my way towards my hotel. I checked in, same as always, got my room key and made my way up to drop off my things before grabbing some dinner. Except this time, when I got to my room, the fatigue hit me like a truck. Normally by now I'm making my way back down and out into the town to have a simple dinner and prep myself for the day of work tomorrow. Instead, I drop my things where I am and shuffle my way over to the bed. I'm a little hungry, like always, but the exhaustion is stronger than my want to eat.
"Whatever," I think to myself. I'll get some rest, eat in the morning, and I'll be ready for the day ahead.
I pull the sheets over me and drift off to sleep.
To say the night I had was strange would be an understatement. I haven't really talked about this before, but I don't normally dream at night, at least not anymore. Growing up I used to dream all the time, even remembered a few of them quite vividly, some of them to this day. Somewhere in my late teens they became less and less frequent. Now I'm lucky if I have a dream once every couple months. I'm saying all this to provide some context for why it was so strange that, when I went to sleep that night, I had several dreams.
What was even more strange was what was actually in the dreams. It's like those blurry feelings graduated into full on experiences. I could feel everything that was happening in each of them, but only in broad strokes. It's like looking at one of those abstract paintings, except you know there's something behind it. Something very clear, very real, but the only window you have to it is this piece of art. It didn't just stop at the environment either, I was blurry in these dreams. Not literally blurry, to be clear, but... conceptually blurry... if that makes sense. Maybe this is better expressed through an example.
One of the dreams I remember, I wake up in a sea of oranges, reds, and browns. This is clearly somewhere with lots of trees, and it's the middle of Autumn. The colors tell me that much, but that's the extent of what I can determine about my surroundings. I look down at myself and I'm wearing an outfit I used to wear all the time a couple years ago, before the t-shirt got damaged by a washer and I couldn't wear it anymore. But... I felt like myself from 10 years ago. I know that doesn't really make any sense, and maybe this is some quirk of how my brain works, but the combination of emotions as well as how it felt to be in my body maps to a very specific point in my life, and it's not the one where I wore this outfit. It's like two versions of myself were melded into whatever version of me this is in this dream.
I had several more dreams just like that. Strange, but oddly familiar, environments lacking any kind of details. Another weird thing is that there was nobody else in any of these dreams. In every single one, it was just me. Me, or, a version of me? Versions of me?
Again, I write all this down in my journal when I wake up in the morning.
I was surprised when I felt quite well rested. After the night I had, I expected to wake up feeling worse than how I went to bed. How do you experience something like that and then everything feels fine afterwards? Actually, not even just fine... weirdly... normal? As I think back on these dreams, there's this weird sense of nostalgia, or something like it at least. It can't be nostalgia, though, these were not real experiences or memories.
I decided to go about my day as normal, get through work, and reflect on this some more once that was out of the way. There is something here, and I can't just ignore it, but I also don't have the time to dive into it before I needed to be in the office. This hotel included breakfast, so I went downstairs, ate quickly, and started walking in the direction of the office. Normally I'd go somewhere else to eat, as the hotel food is usually pretty bad, but it felt like if I experienced any sort of emotion right now, I'd get hit with another wave of... blur... as I've started to call it by this point.
It was a short walk over some plain streets and paths towards the office. Trees and other plants lining the walkways, keeping everything shaded and placing a barrier between me and the wider world. Like any other work day, I met up with the local manager, Jane, and got started. It was odd though, I don't know how, but it seems like she knew that I was going through this. She was definitely the type for small talk, she met me at the door with a huge smile, like she was ready to talk my ear off all day. Quickly though, her expression softened. It was clear that she was intentionally skipping the normal pleasantries, keeping things focused on the task at hand so as to not trigger anything. We got through everything we needed to, I made sure all the systems were working as expected, and went over all the troubleshooting procedures with her.
As the day came to a close, she offered to walk me into town and buy me dinner. I accepted, if only to have some way of distracting myself from the blur a little longer. The walk was quiet, she again made no attempts at small talk. A gentle breeze was now blowing through the trees and across the street, adding to the background noise and cooling things down just a little bit. It was just on the bottom edge of ideal weather already, so the breeze meant I had to throw on my jacket while we walked to keep from getting too cold.
We arrive at the restaurant and head inside, it's a small little place, only a couple of tables and the kitchen. As we get seated, there's only one other group there, another pair. I couldn't see the face of the one, but part of me recognized something in the way they were sitting. They were feeling it too, the blur. We order our food and then just sit for a minute.
"How are you feeling?" Jane breaks the silence.
"I'm... not sure," I responded. "A little odd, I suppose. But it seems like you... know that already?"
She gives a gentle smile and nods her head a little. "It's normal," she tells me. "People give it different names; fog, haze--"
"Blur," I add.
She smiles and nods again. "A lot of people just call it... strange."
She went on to explain that the feeling is related to the Cycle on this planet. She said that what happens during the Cycle leads to these kinds of feelings. When new people come here, their body seems to know what is coming, and these feelings are the brain anticipating it. Our food arrives as she's talking, and she tells me to dig in while she finishes explaining everything.
As I begin to eat, I notice something about the food. The more I eat, the more the blur starts to go away. The blurry feelings still exist but they're fading a bit, at least for now. Jane explains that this restaurant specializes in making food that is just the right mix of flavors without being too complex or too bland. She says it allows your brain to latch on to something, but it's not a blank slate for the brain to fill in, nor is it a strong feeling that might allow one of the blurry feelings to come up again.
"It's easy to get lost in it, though, the food. They keep track of how often people come in, because sometimes people will just keep eating and never face these feelings. It's not healthy, so the chef offers the person help. There are people here that specialize in navigating the blur, as you call it." Jane leaves the explanation there and starts on her meal as we sit quietly.
I know some Cycles can lead to strong emotions in people, they lead to strong emotions in me all the time, but this is beyond anything I've seen or even heard about before.
We finish the meal, the food melting away the blur, however briefly. The Cycle is tomorrow, and Jane offers to be there with me so that I have someone that I know at least a little bit there to talk to when it's done. I take her up on the offer and we agree to meet near the restaurant again tomorrow, as it's pretty close to my hotel.
I had more of the same dreams again. I'll spare you the details, or really spare myself trying to work out the details, I guess. Again though, I felt well rested. I continue on my same routine as yesterday, heading downstairs and eating the hotel breakfast. What I notice now though, is the hotel food seems to be doing the same thing as what I had at the restaurant yesterday. I guess the hotel gets a lot of visitors from elsewhere, and knows that they will need the food to help with the blur. I take a closer look at my surroundings and notice that even the decor of the hotel seems to have the same effect. Not too plain, not too flashy. Maybe that's why I'm still able to get a good night's rest despite the dreams? I save that thought for later, though, I need to spend some time preparing myself for... whatever is about to happen.
I finish eating and head out, back towards the center of town, to meet Jane. It's a brisk morning again, a little colder than yesterday, and the ground is damp. It must have rained last night while I was asleep.
Jane is there waiting for me already, and has a cup of coffee with my name on it. She's sitting on a bench, and wearing a beautifully knitted sweater. As I approach, she looks up from her book and gives me a smile, reaching down to grab the cup of coffee and hand it to me.
"Thanks," I say, holding the warm cup in my hands.
"Of course," she replies, "you like my sweater? I made it myself. Picked up knitting last year to pass the time and prepare for these cold seasons."
"It's wonderful! I love the colors."
The sweater was made up of a few shades of purple in angular patches, forming a patterned gradient, going from dark to light as the sweater got closer to her head.
We continued with the small talk a little longer, before Jane mentions that it's getting close to time for the Cycle. Because of where we are on the planet, the Cycle will be happening in the middle of the day, just before noon.
We head over towards a nearby park and take a seat at another bench. It's only a few minutes now, and she tells me to finish my coffee and get comfortable, beause it's best to be sitting down when this happens.
The moment is here and there's this strange sensation behind my eyes.
I close them for a moment, and reopen them, only to notice that the world has changed around me. I'm still on the bench, and Jane is still there next to me, but as I look around I see... me.
I face forward and directly across the street is an identical bench, with me and another person sitting there, my elementary school teacher, the one who got me so interested in Cycles. I look at little longer and the me that's on that side morphs into me in elementary school. I look to the side and there's rows and rows of benches. Each one has a version of me on it, along with someone else. On one bench, me from a few months ago with Rose. On another, me from two weeks ago with the artist. The longer I looked, the more versions of me I saw. At some point though, I started to see versions of myself that weren't real, but I could tell that these were still me, just if my life had gone a little differently. On one of them, I see me, with you. A very specific you.
The more of me that I see, the less defined I become. I slowly start to blur as what is, what was, and what could have been start to overlap. My point of view drifts away from my body, and I turn around to see my own face. It feels like forever that I'm in this state, and the longer it goes, the more I lose my sense of self. Who am I? Which me is the real me? Are they all the real me?
After a little while of floating, my view shifts and I'm now looking through the eyes of the me that was across from where I started. Then my view shifts again, and I'm seeing through the me that's with Rose. Then it shifts again, and again, and again. Faster and faster, I start to feel as if I'm multiple versions at once. The world is starting to shift as well, endless variations of the bench, the path, the sky. All the different possibilities of how this planet could have looked or will look.
The world is spinning, but I start to notice Jane moving. She's reaching towards me, Rose is reaching towards me, the artist, my teacher. They're all reaching out to pull me into a hug. As her arms close around me, the world stops spinning in an instant, my view is back to me, the real me, the current me, and I'm sitting at the park bench.
I look down at my hands, noticing every detail. The creases on my fingers, the freckles, the cuts that never quite healed. I do the same for the rest of my body, taking note of how everything feels. The blur is still there, but I have another new experience sitting there next to it, giving me a little more information about its shape.
I ask Jane how long that was, and she says I was only there for 30 seconds. It felt like days. We sat in silence, listening to the breeze shake the leaves on the trees overhead.