Trimensional anxiety

 

I.

When I called late in the evening and I showed Britt the small paragraph in the third page of Småstaden Posten, her reaction was a giggle and a small push to my finger that was still pointing the letters. Still and despite her obvious dismay she read it.  All of it.
“I don’t believe it.” She declared finally and turned towards the kitchen to look at the food roasting in the oven.

“What you don’t believe?” I tried to argue.
“Isn’t Småstaden Posten who had a series of articles about unicorn sights a year ago?” I didn’t answer. “And it wasn’t Småstaden Posten that had a research over the value of brontosaurus meat?” she continued.
“Oh please, that was one of the ...you know, gossip magazines...” I answered in vain and her laugh came loud from the kitchen.

Britt’s principles about true and logic are things I can never argue or line on. She could dismiss the most obvious, packed with evidence that didn’t march her logic or common sense, as she called it.

Oh, well, skip it. The paragraph in the bottom left of the third page of Småstaden Posten read:

Dangling on one leg.
Patrons at Kungens Vapen in the centre of Småstaden last night got a shock when they saw a leg dangling knee-deep from the roof for some time. Everybody in the pub saw it and all witnesses’ reports agree that it was a single feminine leg, bare, wearing some very  exotic shape  black heels. After two, maximum three minutes, it disappeared upwards. Detailed examination of the roof from the owner of the establishment and two police officer showed everything normal as it should be.

“There are witnesses with emphasis on the plural of the word witness,” I said trying to add some buoyancy to my voice.
“So what?” said Britt. “What does it prove? Småstaden Posten witnesses?” She added and even though there was a certain portion of sarcasm in her answer there was also some kind of doubt.
“I’m not sure what they saw but so many witnesses? Public hysteria or something?” I tried to be reasonable.
“Well, there you are...” she said coming out of the kitchen carrying a pot with steaming roast and oven garlic potatoes.

She served and for the first few minutes of our meal we remained silent. The meat was wonderful and the potatoes magnificent. I had brought the wine and after a few bites the image of daggling legs had moved far away from our minds letting us focus in the highway to a couple’s heart, their stomach.

However the newspaper, open and folded in the third page remained in the far corner of the table to remind us that this was not over yet. Plus we both knew a witness. Not one of the Kungens Vapen patrons but one of Britt’s neighbours. A sixty years-old retired postman who lived in the same floor with Britt and seemed – for at least for as long we knew him – as a sane person fully functioning and sociable to everybody including the grumpy lady at the fourth. Mr Olsson.

A former civil servant and law obedient citizen, Mr Olsson, felt obliged to report to the police the unexpected appearance of a pair of goggling eyes accompanied by a pointy nose and dark coloured lips in his bathroom while he was taking his morning shower. The unexpected of the situation and the nakedness added to Mr Olsson embarrassment and discomfort even though he immediately jumped out of the water and hurried for his robe hanging behind the bathroom’s door.

His sudden jump from the water full bathtub and Pythagorean laws made things worse creating a slippery floor with Mr Olsson barely managing to hold himself up by hanging from the bathtub’s plastic curtain that followed him to the floor adding to an already embarrassing situation.

Further details never reached the rest of the house but Mr Olsson was sure that he saw the dark coloured lips moving like laughing and the goggling eyes having tears of elation and mockery. This last bit was what really upset Mr Olsson who in his sixty years had never been laughed or mocked before.

II.

Britt tried to keep a certain understating when she heard Mr Olsson’s story and practiced some carefully put empathy when Mr Olsson himself repeated the story in her sitting room with coffee and a chocolate muffin in hand.

To my surprise and ignorance, Mr Olsson and Britt had built a friendship based in mutual admiration that occasionally had included coffee and chocolate muffins but not me. So imagine my astonishment when I found him at Britt’s sitting room drinking coffee just a couple days after the incident.

The poor man, as Britt later explained to me, had come to ask a big neighbourly favour. To use her bathtub for a couple of times until he can move over the incident. Britt not sure about the reality of the whole thing but feeling sorry for the poor chap accepted volunteering her shower gel, even a bath tower which Mr Olsson accepted with humbling dignity and obvious relief.

However Mr Olsson’s sincerity didn’t move Britt’s scepticism. On the contrary it strengthen her doubts about the poor old man’s rationality. But two evenings later another story reached the newspapers and this time it was not only Småstaden Posten’s third page, it was not only one paragraph and even made it to the nine o’clock news in the streaming services.

Just two streets away from my apartment this time and in the very centre of Småstaden a Miss Eklund who lives in the third floor of a very elegant apartment building and a Mrs Blomqvist on the fourth floor, stimulatingly screamed in the sight of a headless women for Miss Eklund and a bodiless female head for Mrs Blomqvist crossing their bedroom and sitting room respectfully.

The news unexpectedly shook Britt. She was not prepared to see something like that in the streaming services, which she held in great respect and value.

According to the streaming, Miss Eklund moved with her son immediately after the incident and Mrs Blomqvist had to be hospitalized for the night since every single move or sound led her to hysterical screams. The streaming informed us that her son and daughter in law were on her side taking care of her while her daughter was thinking to move back with her. No mention however of a Mr Blomqvist but no need either.

Immediately after the news and under the title “breaking news” the streaming services presented a young bearded man with a shiny bald head, very dark eyes and an extremely low voice who explained very slowly time travel.

We watched him silently navigating us among theories and assumptions that often reached the limits of romantic dramas.
“We need some real science here,” Britt said after a few minutes in silence with the streaming services having turn to a woman who was trying to explain something obviously complicated using a map of stars and symbols.

During the conversations more reports came with other incidents that sometimes reached the edges of childish fantasy.

That night I slept at Britt’s apartment and I had the sense that her scepticism was transforming slowly into fear. I didn’t say anything, I just hold her tight hoping that she wouldn’t understand that I had long moved to fear without crossing scepticism.

III.

Tommy Hanson is a colleague. Member of the third directive, two floors down and to the left from the sixth directive where I work but his flamboyant character and disrespect to authority and rules – actually that what made him perfect for the third directive – often brought him to my office.

Tommy works, if that isn’t too strong a word for it, three days a week and he spends most of this time trying to introduce others to his hobby, scheme conjectures. A field that obviously suits better the thirteenth directive or office forty-one but Tommy has always been a person that crosses boundaries and even though a member of the third directive he considers himself a scheme conjectures expert.

I tolerate him for one and only one reason, we grew up together, he knows my mother, I know his mother and he pays the best multidimensional domino in the world, so when we partner for the directives championship we always win.

For all the years I know Tommy, twenty-six to be precise, he always has theories or better conjectures that explained every kind of natural or non-natural phenomenon including thunderstorms and green lights on the moon. By the way, the existence of life on the moon has been for long his favourite conjecture and one he has often analyze to Britt.

Of course he knows Britt and to my astonishment Britt finds him cute and entertaining. Perhaps the excessive distancing of reality of his hobby challenges her logic, I don’t understand it but the same time I like that he somehow fits in my life even if that that includes Britt.

Tommy has a huge selection of medium size notebooks full of newspapers and magazine cuts. But the best part of those notebooks are not the cuts but his notes since there is a Tommy handwritten note under every single cut with his opinion, analysis, conclusions, theorizing. Some of these noted extend to page after page with Tommy keeping notes over notes and about notes.

When it started I found it funny even though obsessive, sometimes intriguing, rarely interesting. The point is that I got used of him storming in my office shaking his notebook in the air above his head announcing a new theory or conjecture full of motivation to be on the front line of any exploration.

When Mr Olsson incident happened we didn’t tell him anything but he found out somehow and he landed in our sitting room uninvited asking all short of questions. Britt answered all of them with some self-restrain trying to stop his imaginations going further than what Mr Olsson suspected illusion could take him. She also cleverly manage to keep Mr Olsson himself away from Tommy, using his age as an excuse.

Knowing Tommy, I was expecting his return next day and readiness to camp outside Mr Olsson’s apartment if necessary just to hear the story for the man’s mouth. Thankfully Miss Eklund and Mrs Blomqvist happened, both living close to me and surprise-surprise, to where Tommy lives and that attracted his interest more than Britt’s neighbour. But when streaming services started talking about it Tommy and his notebooks were unavoidable and this time I was somehow forced to pay attention.

“Look at me, old boy,” Tommy shouted when h e entered my office shaking his notebook, “it’s happening and it’s happening here, now, round the corner!” Sadly he meant it literally!

IV.

The most logical action would have been, me follow the pointing finger towards the window and look round the corner. However that was impossible since the third directive is windowless, so I remained calmly sat looking at his pointing finger and trying to think what my next move should be. Nothing came to mind but thankfully Tommy came closer and with a big bang left his notebook in front of me, over my directive certified pad.

“Can you hear the screaming?” Tommy whispered.
I couldn’t.
“It’s fear,” Tommy added without waiting any answer from me.

I looked at his notebook; it was open now in a page with a magazine clipping and the picture of an arm holding a magazine with the picture of an arm holding a magazine. Tommy just stood there watching me looking at the picture.

“Can you see it now?” He fizzed excitedly. “It’s happening.”
“I suppose something is happening, but what?” There was pity in Tommy’s eyes I never seen before.
“Time travelling old man, can’t you see it? Is there...” and his finger hit hard on the photograph.
“It could be one of those PhotoBooth fancy filters.”
“You cannot PhotoBooth this,” a slight sense of anger creped in his voice.

I looked at the photograph more carefully and in the end I had to admit, there was nothing PhotoBoothed about this picture, there was an arm without body holding a magazine with the photo of an arm without a body holding a magazine.

“You mean the bald guy in the streaming services was right?”
“No, yes, no and yes!” Tommy answered at last more relaxed and with a smile. “No I didn’t watch anything on the streaming services yesterday, yes I know who you mean, no I don’t agree with him and yes he’s partially right.”

He put his palm in front of my face stopping me from saying anything and he continued.
“Obviously somebody somewhere is experimenting with time travel. Obviously he or they are still in testing period with a lot of problems. Obviously this photo is their effect to show us that they want to communicate ...somehow; show us what they are doing and perhaps reinsure us that there is no danger. At least no danger to us.” He stopped for a couple minutes deep lost in his thoughts.

“Have you...” I left the sentence unfinished but his look let me understand that, “Of course I have. Personally. Directives thirteen, twenty-six, thirty-one and fifty-eight and with a double copy message to directives two, eight, twenty-five and sixty-three. You don’t think much of me, do you?” his look had signs of hurtfulness so I decided not to say anything.

“Directive twenty-five answered an hour ago suggesting that we need more facts before deciding any kind of action and in the meantime we should all stay calm.” Saying that he stood up and reached the door of my office. Looked outside and then closed the door carefully returning to the chair in front my desk.

“What I didn’t tell them yet is about the manifestation zone.” And while saying that he turn a couple pages in his notebook he stopped in a page with a map. A full Småstaden map with the water towers, the walls and the yellow parks. Everything cycled carefully with a purple marker.

“If you check better you will see these small orange marks and these small blue marks are nothing else than the incidents. You can see your street and my address.” Intentional pause for more effect. “This is the manifestation zone, the focus of all the disturbance, the very organized mayhem centre!”

I looked at him waiting for what was coming next. “And I’ve got a pretty good idea of the cause and what is coming next.”

V.

“Actually it was not my idea....” I looked at him almost shocked. Tommy admitting that something involving mystery, conjecture and unexplained wasn’t his idea? That was new.
“It was Britt’s idea.” And that was a shocker. A multihydrogen, hypersonic and multicardiac bomb sock that shook all my body starting from my toes and eventually hitting my forehead.
“My Britt?” Was the only thing that came out of my mouth before looking for my water bottle in one of my office draws.

“You know she’s directive two, don’t you?”
“Accountants Tommy, accountants. Directive two is accounts.” I almost screamed.
“Well, that’s what they like everybody to believe.”
“They are damn accountants Tommy. Britt is an accountant. Not any of your ... conjectures.”
“If you say so...”
“It is so!”
“And you are a train conductor. You know logistics ... sixth directive and everything...”

I didn’t say anything. Logistics was the cover but the sixth directive didn’t exactly logistic tracks and trains. But that was supposed to be a secret. That said, Britt was an accountant... period!

“Britt is an accountant,” I repeated loudly and forcefully to make sure that everybody heard it. “Directive two is accounting,” I added in a lower tone.
“Accounting, fine... fine, you are right, but this is not the point, is it?” Tommy said calmly.
“And what’s the point?” I felt forced to ask.
“Leaving aside your paranoia? Time travel is the point and the big whys. Why now, why here. That’s the point.” And with that Tommy stood up and started walking around the room.

“Listen carefully,” he said after a few seconds in silence. “Time travel is something transmitted through time and space; and the element space in this case is the crucial one since it is located in our neighbourhood. That’s what it is, can you see it now?”

In all confusing matter and shock I could somehow see it but what came out of mouth was something totally different, “and all that was Britt’s idea?”
“Oh man, listen. If there could be time-travel or whatever time this is, I reckon that we are part of the dance. There is a transmitter and there is some kind of a receiver or a ...reassembly station.” He paused and looked at me, “that was Britt’s idea.”

“Reassembly station? Like a break? The one before?”
“Britt’s idea.”
“Britt’s idea?”
“We repeat our selves, but yes it was her idea.”
“This morning?”
“Yes this morning.”
“And she was still home?”
“Having breakfast and watching the morning news in the streaming services.!
“Reassembly station.”
“Reassembly station.”
“So their destination is somewhere else.”
“Far or close away in time.”
“Time-travel.”
“Or something like that...”
“I need to think.” Tommy didn’t answer, he sat in the chair in front of my desk and looked at the wall behind me. Black poster, gold lettering, “we move and shake things”. The well known motto of the sixth directive; logistics.

I looked at Tommy and he seemed so calm. I should be calm as well; after all I was always the calm one, the groundwalker and the partner in multidimensional domino tournaments. The logic.

But now I was in conflict and while what Tommy had just said made sense, Britt’s involvement didn’t. It was irrational, out of all Britt patterns. Britt was an accountant, predictable, liable. No haphazard hobbies and slapdash interests, no conjectures and definitely not notebooks with cuts and notes. She couldn’t even read Småstaden Posten because it was ‘an exaggeration of fake news and fairy stories’. Her words not mine.

Fine, I had to concentrate and talk about it with Britt later in the evening. Open conversation, honesty, good relationship and all that.

“So we have time transportation, travel or whatever else you can call it, where one person broadcasts a body of somebody, part by part in a in between reassembly station and from there it is transmitted to its final destination where it will be reconstructed as a whole. Start as whole, dissemble and then reassemble.”
“Now you say it, reassemble station might not be the right name.”
“Britt’s idea?”
“No, that was mine.” This time I actually smiled.

VI.

While in a meeting at the eleventh floor, Britt left a message for me with the services saying that she had a very busy schedule, she was going to be late so if I wanted I could pick something for dinner and we could all meet at my apartment, leaving a hint that she night spent the night with me.

Still bewildered with the fact that Britt was counselling Tommy in matters that had nothing to do with accounting or logic so here I was in the Japindie shop ordering tandoori sushi,  basmati noodles and fried tomatoes with apple sauce for desert when I heard Tommy’s voice from the entrance calling me.

After our noon conference we haven’t spoke for the rest of the day, me in meetings and him ...wherever Tommy does when he is supposed to work still I as definitely not prepared to meet him at the Japindie shop. 

“Hi partner,” he said getting closer. “Is purple wine ok with you? I got us a bottle. We are eating japindie tonight, right?”
“We?”
“Oh yes. Britt called earlier and she invited me. She said we need to all meet and put our brains together.”
All?

“Did you tell them about your thoughts? The reassemble station and everything?”
“That’s why we are meeting tonight.”
“Why?”
“To decide.”
“To decide what Tommy? If you are going to tell them?”
“And other things...”
“Are you planning to destroy both our careers?”
“Don’t worry about me...”
“Tommy, I worry about Britt and ME!” I think I shouted the last one because everybody in the Japindie shop –including the cat, turned and looked at me.

“I’ve better get two bottles,” Tommy said after looking at me silently and walked further in the hop where the drinks were stocked.

Britt was waiting for us outside my apartment building. She had keys but she hadn’t used them.

“I was sure I saw you in the Japindie takeaway so I thought I could wait for you,” she said as she had read the darkest of my thoughts regarding our dinner companion. “Hi Tommy,” she added nodding to Tommy who was walking just behind me carrying two big bags, one with the food and one with the wine. I was not in my best hospitable mood.

“So, what’s the idea now?” Britt asked after we finished with the last tandoori sushi and started with the third bottle of purple wine.
“We need to communicate.” Tommy said sipping loudly some of his wine.
“Communicate? Are you both out of your mind?” I felt that I had to be the voice of reason. “Aren’t we going to say anything? Not inform the directive?”
“Which directive?” Britt asked with a hint of a smile on her face.
“I don’t know. The seventh? Thirty-two, the fifth?” I tried to ignore the hint of a smile.
“We did,” Tommy said with a short of cheers nod of his glass.
“No you didn’t,” I was getting more and more frustrating with their attitude. “You just told them half of what you know.”
“So, now you think that what I know is true and fact? I thought you had doubts and reservations.”
“I had –and still have... well... arguments.”
“There you are, no reason to tell them yet before we are all sure.”
“All?”
“Including you, dear,” Britt said softly touching my arm.

We all remained silent for a few minutes drinking our wine, lost in thoughts. In the end it was Britt to break the silence.

“We need to communicate but this raises some questions with the top one, can they see us?” She attracted both our attention and focus.
“Can you communicate with an arm or a leg?” Valid question followed by more silence and thoughts.
“Perhaps an arm and a leg is what we see...” I said quietly.
“Oh gosh, he’s back,” Tommy cried with a smile.

VII.

The next morning Tommy looked in my office first peeking through a half open door to make sure that I was alone. The evening before had finished uneventfully with all three of us deep in thoughts, Tommy drinking that last of the purple wine, Britt ready for bed and me full of doubts and fears for too many things including our careers in the directives.

Early risers both of us had the chance to talk a bit about the possibility the directives might find out what we were up to and Britt reinsured me that if there was even the slightest possibility this to happen she would be the first to know. A little voice in my brain kept saying ‘but she’s an accountant’, alas her confidence silence any worry fast. After all, accountants know it all, don’t they?

“He’s laid off,” Tommy said in a real low voice closing carefully my office door behind him. “The streaming officer,” he added seen the wonder in my face. “The one reporting the incidents for the streaming services.” He felt that he had to give me something more.
“The directive?” I murmured.
“Probably,” Tommy said while moving closer and reaching the chair in front of my desk.
“Shit Tommy, it was a rhetorical question.” I nearly shouted but I kept it low. The directive listens, the small voice in my brain said.
“I must warn Britt,” I said.
“She knows,” Tommy whispered. “She’s the one who told me.” Again? She told Tommy first?
“Miss Eklund and Mrs Blomqvist have gone as well.”
“Gone where?”
“Britt didn’t know.”
“What about Mr Olsson?”
“Still home, Britt checked.”
“The directive know,” I said with despair and finality.
“Yes, but which directive?”
“Seriously Tommy?”

“Well you know that the directives don’t really communicate between them, competition, pride, rivalry and all that...” Tommy left his sentence unfinished but I knew too well what he meant. After all I was part of the directive and rivalry has been a strong motivation to all directives all the time.

“Rivalry and low ethical standards, that should be our motto and identification,” Tommy whispered.
“Oh please man, shut up. You are going to get us all in trouble,” I whispered back with the little voice shouting in my brain ‘the directive listens’.

“Listen, we have  to hurry up.” Tommy said a bit louder.
“Tell them what we think?”
“No. With the message.”
“With the message?” My mind was wandering and speculating disasters everywhere.
“Yes dude, Britt is waiting for us, lunch break.”
“You talked about lunch break with Britt?”
“You catching up. Let’s go!”
“Now?”

I’m not the jealous guy or at least I never thought of myself us a jealous guy but here I was. My Britt seemed to share a lot of time and secrets with Tommy, my colleague, my childhood friend, my domino partner Tommy and I kept finding out from ...Tommy. The little voice in my mind didn’t say anything but I could guess what the damn little voice in my mind was thinking and these thoughts were not the thoughts of a not jealous guy.

“Tommy what’s going on here?” I kept it inside for too long and I was boiling out.
“What?” Real surprise filled his face.
“What’s going on with you and Britt.”
“Accounting.”
“WHAT?” And I’m sure that this time I was shouting.
“She’s good with numbers and with time travel and all that I had to ask and she was ready to answer and...”
“WHAT?”
“Oh Buddhachrist, you thought...”
“WHAT?”
“Oh dude... This is so funny. I have to tell Britt!”

VIII.

We were close to where we were going to meet Britt for lunch, both of us silently walking fast, me the angry one, Tommy enjoying the situation.  There was some rain, so little was moving around and we were just ready to turn the corner when my eye caught on my left some kind of a weird movement. Obviously Tommy felt the same because our turn left was simultaneous.

An obviously male torso stood there, turned towards us with something like a pad stack on its chest that projected a picture. And this is the part where things started getting far more weird. The picture was one of Britt, my Britt, in a garden of yellow flowers.

‘Stood’ perhaps was not the right word to describe the situation since the torso was somehow hovering nearly a meter above the ground. And then it vanished just like it appeared; suddenly.

“Did you see that?” I managed to say.
Tommy was obviously in some kind of shock. He kept silent. I felt like slapping him on the face.
“Tommy, that was Britt’s picture. Britt’s. My Britt’s picture. I took this picture Tommy.” Tommy kept silent but I was getting loud and scared.
“My Britt, Tommy.”
“There was a ...mistake,” Tommy managed to answered and after standing there for a few seconds in total silence we both simultaneous moved towards the empty space where the torso had been just a few minutes before.
“There was absolutely no mistake, I saw it, you saw it, we both saw it.”
“No, no there was a mistake.” Tommy insisted.
“What mistake Tommy? That was my Britt.”
“There were no arms.” He answered uneasily.
“You can’t be serious,” I said a bit louder than I was intending.
“Listen man, there is never been a torso without arms. Without head, without legs but never without arms. “
“And what does that means?” I was getting lost.
“That here is some kind of evolution here.”
“Evolution by giving less than more? Doesn’t make sense.”
“Oh good, while seen a torso or a head in the middle of nowhere makes so much sense to you.”
He was right, of course. But no word about Britt’s picture.

Britt was there. Walking. She just came around from the corner, obviously heading for the cafe we were all going to have lunch. Two women standing by the door stared at her but she didn’t notice it. She noticed as two standing on the other side of the road watching so she moved towards us.

“What?” she asked when she got close and saw our faces.
“There was a projection with a picture of you,” Tommy said before I open my mouth.
“Me?” She asked with eyes wide open. “How odd!”
“In the garden,” I added.
“Where?”
“Up there,” Tommy pointed the air space between the buildings where the torso had appeared.
“No, where was the garden?”
We both looked at her surprised.

“Is it important?” I asked.
“If it was my garden, it is.” She said angrily.
“Not sure, don’t think so... but I remember that it was me taking ...this photo.” I answered and Tommy looked lost and the same time so focus.

“She’s right, you know, everything is important.” Tommy said after a few minutes of silence.

The women cross the street came closer and one of them turned to Tommy and asked, “did you see me as well?”
“See you?” Tommy asked confused.
“Yes, on that torso. The picture...”
“See you?” It was my turn to ask.
“Yes, me in that garden...”
“We didn’t see you... but we...” I tried to finish it but she didn’t let me, “Oh you saw my friend here. She thought the same.”
“No,” Britt said, “they think that they saw me.”
“In a garden?”
“In a garden.”
“Oh Buddhachrist,” the other woman cried and run away.

IX.

None of us was in the mood for a lunch or a break. This was new. Now the projector could project in choices. Control what we saw.
Not easy to absorb and not easy to let it go.

“They are trying to tell us something,” Britt said when we finally sat down in a small cafe further away.
“They are manipulating our minds...” I managed to mumble.
“If that was not the directive’s work,” Tommy said ignoring my look that followed.
“But why?” Britt said.
“Because that’s what the enemies do...” they both looked at me in wonder.
“What enemies?” Britt asked.
“The enemies. The enemies, you know... the enemies of the directive...”

“Oh Buddhachrist, you started conjecturing,” Tommy shouted in my ear.
We all looked around us aware that we were not alone. Only a young lady in the counter and she was not looking at us.

“This is getting really really serious and I’m wondering...” Britt started saying, “why the cover up?” Tommy finished her sentence.
My jealousy was peeking again from the dark sides of my brain. Britt nodded.

“Perhaps an inside war?” Tommy dared to suggest. This time if my jealousy shut.
“Our worse enemy, our own selves.” Britt said.
“Rivalry gone too far?” I said not wanted to be left out. But my addition obviously made an impact and I could see it in the way the both looked at me.
“We would know, wouldn’t we?” Tommy asked.
“Why? Accounting, logistics and speculation?” I said in a sarcastic tone.
“Far above out paid grade?” Tommy said.
“Too far,” Britt added.
And back to silence.

“Okay, let’s face facts.” Britt said after a while. “We are dealing with some kind of scientific sorcery here...”
“Sorcery, Britt? Are you serious,” I couldn’t old myself after all this time Britt calling me the drama queen of the relationship.
“I used the word sorcery lacking any better into the scientific spectrum,” she said using her mother-tone voice. I didn’t say anything.

“Then we have a certain mind manipulation, right?” She asked. Tommy and I agreed. “Thought projections,” she added.

“That’s one side, on the other we have rivalry in the directive that has evaluated really bad lately.” She continued and we both nodded. “I mean we have directives intentionally boycotting or harming other directives. Don’t we?” she looked at me and  I knew exactly what she meant. Logistics has been mean with the accounting lately.

“Do these ...personalized projections form some kind of threat?” I tried to add to the conversation with a question.
“Or a blackmail?” Tommy said always going for the worst.

“That would make sense if it was just me, but it wasn’t,” Britt said sceptically.
“But it was only women...” Tommy murmured.
“Right.”

We were ready to leave the cafe with more questions than answers in our minds and definitely no idea on what we were going to do when a light smoke seem to round the corner and the legs all wearing black boots started marching from nowhere.
The three of us stood there in woe.

“What in the name of Buddhachrist...” Tommy managed to say.
Instinctively I grabbed Britt’s hand.

There was no sound, just black boot marching in the air. It was like even the air had stopped moving. The girl from behind the counter came to the window and stood next  to us looking speechless.

“Shall I call the directives?” She asked after a minute or two. 
“Yes. Yes. Please do.” I said looking Britt in the eyes. Perhaps this was a solution that would wake up everybody up. She understood.
Britt always understands me.

X.

We all returned to our respectful directives and I found myself sitting in my office and going mindlessly through logistics when my communicator rang making me jump.
“Director 3 would like to see you in his office immediately,” a female for the secretarial said. ‘And that’s it’ I murmured to myself while moving through the alleys to the director 3 office.
Before reaching the door I actually wondered if Britt and Tommy got similar calls.

Opening the door I found out that while I had no idea if Britt and Tommy got similar calls, all the middle level workforce of the sixth directive was here, in the director 3 office. I always thought we were more. We weren’t.

“Good, we are all here,” the director 3 said looking around. The room s in graveyard silence.
“I suppose you all suspect why we are here and it has absolutely nothing to do with logistics.” He started slowly. “But that’s the point, nobody knows what it is about.” He pause for a minute.

“There is something going on with this ...body parts, but nobody seems to know what. Not the sixtieth directive not even the thirteenth. Nobody knows.”

“Any speculation?” Somebody in the front dared ask.
“That’s the thing, all speculation seems irrelevant. We just don’t know.” The director 3 answered.
“So, how we deal with it?” Somebody on my left side asked hiding behind the bodies’ of the others.
“There will be a directive soon,” the director 3 answered loudly to make sure that everybody, including everybody out of the office, heard him.

“But for now we all have jobs to do and responsibilities to deal with. That’s what we must deal with.  So back to your offices and logist.” And with that we all silently left the director 3 office. Nobody said anything, nobody looked at nobody and we all hidden behind paperwork and orders. Directives as usual.

In the apartment I found Britt cooking and Tommy looking outside from the front window.
“I suppose you all had the meeting. Right?” They both nodded.
we all fell in silence.

I went to change and when I came back to the sitting room I found Britt and Tommy sitting in front the screen, watching streaming news.

“Has the directive direct? I asked.
“Nope,” came from Tommy.
“They must be scared,” said Britt.
“The directive scared? That’s new.” Tommy said.

“Think of it. Why call us to tell us that they will take care of it but they know nothing about it that they are going to take care of.” While it didn’t make sense the way she sad it absolutely made sense to both of us.
“They are in panic,” I said loud after a few seconds.
“Buddhachrist, they are...” Tommy added and Britt shook her head.

“That might not be so ...bad,” Britt said and we both looked at her in wonder.
“Think of it,” Britt continued looking both of us straight in our eyes. “A few hours ago we all speculated that there is a directive war behind all that. Now we know that there isn’t.”
“One speculation down,” Tommy said.
“Well, a giant speculation.” I said shaking my head.

“Not that it simplifies much,” Britt said. “If it wasn’t the directives who is? an outsider or an insider we don’t know?”
“Outsider makes more sense.” I said. “Especially of you add the fact of the ...scientific sorcery!” Britt didn’t look at me.
“Right,” Tommy said.

XI.

The next morning after doing my cardiac exercises and getting dress I walked to the cafe we meet with Britt the days she doesn’t sleep in my apartment or I in hers.

Neither of us looked fresh and relaxed. Obviously we both had a hard night and a lot of things to think. I hope our relationship was not one of them since I was sure me making that scientific sorcery comment didn’t wok very well with her. We drunk our morning coffees in silence and we walked to our group of buildings in silence.

A few meters from the main entrance I couldn’t stop myself, “listen if I said or did anything that bothered you yesterday I apologize.” She looked at me with what I thought tears in her eyes.
“Oh sometimes you are so ...so ....self centred. That’s the only thing you should apologize, otherwise I’m just ...worrying and ...afraid.” And saying that she entered the gate and walked fast towards the accountants building. I just stood there watching till somebody pushed me from the back.

“Did you have a fight?” It was Tommy. Avoiding to answer I returned with a question, “so what are we doing today?”
“Our job?” Tommy answered fast, he must had prepared the answer before.
“You mean Thursday as usual?”
“That’s what the directive said, didn’t they?”
“Yes they did, indeed.” We both remained silent for a bit till my communicator rang and it was like a thunder in the quit office.

Paranoia made us look at each other and Tommy checking the door. I picked the communicator and unexpectedly it was Britt’s voice from the other side.
“Have you been outside?” that was a strange question so early in a working day.
“Lunch break is in two hours,” I answered mechanically.
“I know you don’t have a window but try to check outside. Look at the gate,” she said and then ...nothing. The communication was off and I was standing still looking at Tommy who was staring back at me.

Grabbing a file form the ‘in and out’ pile I moved towards the door while telling Tommy what Britt had just said. Tommy followed silently. There was a wide window by the end of the floor’s long corridor and pretending that I was heading for the secretarial this was I aimed.
And I arrived with Tommy just behind me and I stood in front of the wide window and I looked out, towards the gate and what I saw was Britt looking back at me.

No, no Britt exactly, I mean not today’s Britt, it was Britt five six years ago, different hair cut and she was standing in a garden with yellow flowers and it was all in a picture hanging from a black shirted torso. And this time I felt totally lost not able even to whisper something to Tommy who was standing close behind me, so close that I could feel his breath in the back of my neck.

“Buddhachrist,” said a woman behind us. Obviously one of the secretariat team who had just come out of the office and looked where we looked. And saw.
“Who’s that young girl?” She asked
Neither of us said anything.
“Do you know her?” Tommy asked after a bit and the woman nodded negatively.
“Have you seen her before?” Tommy asked again the woman, again she nodded no and then obviously worrying what the next question would be she returned to the office she just had exited leaving Tommy and me alone in the corridor in front the wide window with a young Britt among yellow flowers looking at us.

XII.

Not for the first time the seconds seemed like eons while sitting silently in my office and not knowing how to react to what had just happened in the gate.

Neither of us knew how many people had seen the picture, if any had recognized Britt in the picture and the fact that this time it was not a short of projection like when each woman saw herself in the picture. This time everything was very specific and Britt was in its centre.

We talked a bit about it but nothing could come out of all the different speculations and for a change even Tommy didn’t have any of his conjecture theories in hand to serve as an explanation.

We checked the latest reports and memos and all we saw is the directive as usual. There was no streaming in any of the directive offices so we had to wait for lunch time to see what the news agencies had to say.

Thankfully lunch break came and Tommy and I almost run for the exit all the way to the cafe we usually meet with Britt. She was there waiting with a very dark look in her eyes.

The girl in the counter sensing our jumpy state gave us a strange look but then she served our coffees she added the small sweeteners and thankfully turned to her next customer who had just entered the cafe. She hadn’t recognized Britt and that was good. At least for now.

To my astonishment and surprise and after we sat down in silence I noticed that Britt was much calmer than me and Tommy. Actually Tommy’s paranoia had hit red with his eyes checking every movement inside and outside the cafe. I had sat with my back to the wall ready to defend us from any hostile movement and Britt ... well Britt was staring her coffee.

“We know something new,” she said after staring a bit more at her coffee. Tommy and I looked at her abstractly.
“Listen, we know that there are different fractions of senders and we know that one of those fractions has decided to talk to us.” She stared back at her coffee. “Talk to me,” she added. Tommy and I just nodded silently. What else could we do?

“We must go home and prepare,” Britt said.
“Mine or yours?” I asked automatically.
“I think yours. It makes more sense. You are closer to the epicentre o the whole thing and it seems that most of the messages to me have come to your apartment.” Again Tommy and I jut nodded silently.

“But,” she obviously hadn’t finished. “Tonight I want to go back to my place. I need to think without any distraction.” I was ready to ask if she thought of me as a distraction but I decided not. Not the time. Perhaps we all needed a break from each other.

Later the same evening and alone I my apartment with a glass of a port wine in hand I was looking outside of my window when a new portal –or whatever we call them now, open just cross the road on the second floor and this time it was different. It was legs wearing high black boots marching.

I left my drink on the table next to the window and rushed to my room to get my camera but when I got back the portal had closed and the only thing that remained was the sound n my mind of marching boots. Marching black boots.

XIII.

On Friday morning, our stenographer arrived more scattered than commonly. The woman came straight in my office where I was with Tommy Hanson engaged in a conversation of the many different assumptions with the strange appearances and she threw the morning of Småstaden Posten to my desk. Front page, top post; Britt’s photo.
“It’s all over.” She said.
“All over?” Tommy and I looked at her in amazement.
“Online, print, magazines and newspapers. All over.” She said. “There are also more people disappearing,” she added.
“The directive?” I asked.
“Perhaps.” Tommy said.

“We should expect it to happen.” I said.
“Of course,” Tommy nodded.
“Right, everybody saw what we saw.”
“Right.”
“And the directive had to act.”
“Right,” the stenographer agreed.
“Britt’s face, name and address,” I mumbled in fear.

By Friday noon there was nowhere Britt could hide. Her face was everywhere, print and online, even on some adverts including one promoting a new hair-shampoo. News hounds of all breeds and types were scattered all around the town and especially the streets that led to Britt’s apartment. They overflowed the place and every corner around her building was snaked with cables of generators, television cameras and microphones while the press-photographers and paparazzi were having the snappy-shot time of their lives. A site had a photo of her toilet sit and another a snap of her dishwasher full of dirty glasses and plates. And obviously there was more to come.

Britt didn’t go to the directive and thankfully she stayed at my place, as we had already agreed waiting for us to finish and somehow make a plan or at least make a plan to work.

Following running procedures and rules. Tommy and I were permitted for an early leave. We literally run to my house where we found Britt looking outside of the sitting room’s window like a trapped bird.

“This is not our town anymore,” she said when we entered the house. “Our homes aren’t our homes anymore. Why can’t they go away and leave me in peace, damn them. I hate them all!”

And while saying that a vision of her head, her chest and one arm holding some kind of a cartoon came from the roof staring at her. Britt let a cry and run to the kitchen. Tommy and I remained in the room looking at the head that was looking for Britt.

Then Britt stormed back in the room screaming, “Who the hell are you?” No answer came just a small movement of the handless arm pointing at the white cartoon that had something incomplete written. Fragments of words, two letters one looked like an ‘R’ the other like ‘Y’ and more between them.
Britt was still screaming, “Go away,” tears falling in both chicks. “Please go away.”
And off it went.

Britt sat in the sofa slowly and quietly crying but Tommy and I looked each other with a something between owe and surprise. They, whoever they are, they try to communicate, with us. To be precise, with Britt. And she was there crying.

“I want to go away,” she said after a few minutes of silence. “I want to go up the hills and I don’t know, sail away far to the ocean.” I took her hand and she didn’t pull away. She was scared. I was scared.

“Britt, darling...” I whispered but it was Tommy’s loud sigh that stopped me. This time there were two arms hugging from the roof and both pointing at the carton. The words were there only this time the word ‘RUN’ was clear.
“What the...” I heard my voice and the fear inside it.
And then nothing. Clear air with the three of us in shock staring at the roof and the word ‘RUN’ screaming in our minds.

XIV.

By Saturday noon you could see strange platforms and portals appearing all around. It was not an arm, a leg or a torso anymore. There were shadows and shapes of creatures marching and obviously carrying some kind of weapons nobody could identify.

Disappearances also continued. Actually increased including people from the directive. Paul from the eighth directive and Jan from the sixth had disappeared and I knew it because it also happened to  Harlan from the Eighteenth directive while he was talking about it in the lift for the sixteenth floor in front of a bunch of people.

And while Tommy and I tried to keep appearances at the office in a world that was slowly going mad form fear, Britt stayed home unveiling and applying the plan. Communicate with a torso and arms without head and hands.

In a paranoid desperation, the night before, the three of us had cut big pieces of paper and with thick markers we wrote in big capital letters a series of message.

WHO ARE YOU?
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
ARE YOU FROM THE FUTURE?

Perhaps we could add some more messages and some of them more clever but in the limited time and possibility to be read we thought that the three of them make sense and they might give some answers to us.

Back in the office, I was waiting for Tommy to finish with his looking around I tried to have a talk with the prime of our directive but he was really occupied and disturbed with the disappearance of his first and second secretary during lunch time increasing the number of disappeared only in my directive to nineteen. I was getting angry and frustrated.

“Nothing?” I asked an assistant I found randomly walking up and down an alley in the fourteenth floor.
“No direction,” he whispered lost in his fear.
“No memo, nothing?” I asked again.
“It’s like the directive has vanished.” He was definitely dispirited.

A clerk appeared from an office on the left.
“A memo?” the assistant asked full of hope.
“Nothing, sir. I was going to ask the same, you an assistant and all that...” He didn’t have to finish his sentence, we all felt the same. There were no directives from the directive.

Thankfully I saw Tommy coming out from one of the lifts.
“I was looking for you,” He said when he got closer. “Any news?”
“No directive,” the assistant answer instead of me and the clerk nodded in a vain agreement.

Tommy didn’t say anything just looked at me and we both understood so we started walking toward the lifts on the way to my office.
“If you get a memo, forward it to me,” the assistant shouted behind us.

On the lift’s screen a bulletin from Småstaden Posten was saying that the army had connected the disappearances with the shadows and the shapes randomly appearing all around the city and that they were calling the reserves and the veterans to be armed and ready. The bulleting actually included a series of service numbers of veterans immediately recruited.
Neither Tommy or I were included, we were still considered too valuable for the directive.

We said nothing till we arrived at my door where a group of assistants, secretaries, clerks and the stenographer seemed to wait for me.
“Anything?” one of the assistant asked.
“Nothing,” I said keeping my head down.
“No directive? No memo?” Agony was obvious in his voice.
“What are we going to do?” another one said while Tommy tried to push his way to my door.

Pushing and shoving we somehow managed to go through them and enter my office. My dark quiet office with only one sound. A constant blip-blip-blip from my computer.
We both moved behind the desk and looked at the screen.  There was a message from Britt.
“Come home fast, got an answer.” And we almost run.

XV.

“It just isn’t our world anymore,” said Britt looking outside the window. Strange windows in the sky or the side of the buildings opened to show legs, boots or torsos marching, huge machines constructed to point at us with eyes looking inside our minds and souls.
It was definitely a new day.

“He understood,” said Britt. Tommy and I have come home almost running. Almost because running was difficult with everybody in the streets watching and pointing the strange window. While we were both trying to catch up our breath, Britt was looking outside obviously deep in some thoughts.

“They are human, no doubt.” She said after a while. “But why they do what they do?”
“This is definitely not time travel,” Tommy said reaching the window and looking at a new outline that had just opened cross the street same level with my apartment.
More boots marching.

I reached for her hand and she didn’t pull away. “Britt, sweetie...” I began.

But before I could go any further the man, the very same man we kept seeing in my apartment hanging from the roof or coming out of the floor came in front of the three of us.
This time I was angry.

You could see this portals windows or whatever they were everywhere nowadays but they were there projecting whatever they project. They didn’t find any interest to any of us. Just kept marching or showing machines. But he did. He stood there staring at all of us.

He looked at the written papers on the floor, then back at the three of us and then back at the papers. Then he moved closer and now it wasn’t just legs, feet or a torso. Now a full grown man with jacket and hat was standing in front of us. Pointing one of the papers.

“Are you from the future?” Britt asked nervously.
He nodded NO! Britt’s face betrayed fear.
“Who are you?” She dared ask again. H slowly pointed at us. We didn’t understand so he repeated the move, first pointing at himself and then at us. And then the same again and again. First himself then us.
“You are us.” Tommy shrieked. “You are like us, you are humans...” The man nodded again, affirmatively this time.
“Please, talk to us...” Britt said but too late, he had gone.

“Oh my Buddhachrist, I know where they are coming from,” Tommy said in the sudden silence of the room. “They are from a different dimension.”

“WHAT?” Britt and I almost yelled.
“Look out there,” Tommy said pointing out of my window. A new frame had taken shape with more boots parading. “Doesn’t that bring back memories?”
“What?” I asked again in frustration.
“Haven’t you see those boots before?” Britt and I remained silent for a minute researching out brains’ information and trying to analyze.
“Nazis!” We said on voice.
“Nazis indeed.” Tommy said.

“A different dimension where Hitler won.” Tommy said in a whispering voice.
“He created his iron empire...”
“He took over the world...”
“Travelled to the moon...”
“Mars, the stars...”
“Discover new weapons...”
“Nukes, lasers...”
“Portals...”
We were just adding into one another’s fears completing like a puzzle the picture.
“And now he invades our world.” Britt said.

And then the portal in y apartment opened again and the man stood there screaming, “RUN, run for your life. They are coming.”
“HE IS COMING!”

And just then a yellow ray went through his chest all the way through his torso and hit the wall of my apartment carrying with it blood that splattered all over a painting of green scenery.

We run!
And we are still running.

The end