HTBAUTDFA, Part 4: Drunk on the Mandela Effect
Placating a Nazi cop about the existence of lizard people is not my idea of 'stability.'
Hello again, and thanks for still reading this weird little story of mine! First the updates, as usual: my rock band the Roland High Life was featured on the Boston radio station 92.5FM’s Homegrown Showcase earlier this week, which was pretty cool. We got wedged into an interesting line-up of tunes:
I often struggle when I have to think up comp bands to pitch us with to playlists and promoters (“For fans of” blah blah). Do I compare us to Green Day, or Ted Leo & the Pharmacists? Would the Lemoheads resonate? Maybe the Hold Steady? Or do I hit the Matthew Sweet nostalgia note? Either way, I’ve never once thought of comparing us to Sublime or U2 or Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse. But hey, I’ll take it!
I’m also getting ready to share some early mixes for upcoming Irish folk album, Forfocséic, Vol. 3: Love & War, and you’ll be the first to know when I do.
But for now: back to the story! When last we left, 9/11-obsessed finance bro Jason Tavares agreed to attend an addiction support group for conspiracy theorists, where he met a paranoid mom named Monica Lund, and then got into an argument with a racist cop who believes in Lizard People. Because hey, Jason might believe in a problematic conspiracy theory, but he draws the line at outright bigotry! So he threw a tantrum and left.
And that’s when it started to rain…
Chapter 5
Jason walked out of that eerie church basement just in time to see the skies erupt in a hyperstorm, all fire, sludge, and hail coasting on the beads of electrical rain. He was old enough to remember what it was like when rain was just a normal thing that happened. It was still wet and bothersome, of course, but hardly disastrous. Not like these freak tempests -- extreme weather chimeras, compounded by carbon emissions and the last-ditch atmospheric chemicals from geoengineering (and possibly intensified by chemtrails). These hyperstorms were getting more frequent as the days went by. They didn't last long; they didn't have to. It only took one point twenty-one milliseconds to burn a human shadow to the side of a building and stain the walls forever, and although his life had taken a pretty dark turn, Jason wasn't quite ready for that kind of ending.
Not yet, anyway.
So he did what he usually did to cope, and made a run for the bar on the corner, a neüneon night club called Station Eleven. The automated bartender with its spinning wheel bowtie gave the place a kind of classic speakeasy feel -- even if the visible cogs on the robot server were a bit anachronistic. It recommended Jason some kind of creamy cocktail, based on his personal algorithms.
He took a sip, swishing the velvety liquor around his month. Say what you will about automated service, but the bot had whipped the egg-whites so damn perfect that it almost would have warranted a tip, if robots cared for cryptocoin in the first place.
Then a gentle voice behind him broke the petrichoral silence: "What about here? Do you come here often?"
He turned and saw Kyle standing behind him with a dark blue Yale tote bag on her shoulder. She wiped a bandana through her short hair, slicked by oil drops from outside. The rain dripped in rhythms with the MIDImood electro-jazz humming through the barstool speakers.
"Did you follow me?" Jason said. He tried to make it sound flirtatious, but it came off more accusatory. "Like you want to tell me that I'm not crazy, but I should hang out with you and your crazy friends anyway?"
"I just came in to get out of the rain," Kyle said with a shrug. "Why?"
She glanced around the dim room. There was no one else there in the middle of the stormy afternoon, but she looked left and right like she had to be sure. The sporadic strobe displays contrasted starkly with the darkness outside. She dipped her thick glasses down to the tip of her nose, then she leaned in close to Jason and asked, in a low and husky tone: "Do you think it's a conspiracy?"
The lightning outside crackled again. They waited in the patience of each others' eyes for the sonic boom to follow, but nothing ever came.
Then Kyle pulled out the stool and sat beside Jason at the bar.
Jason finished his third bot-mixed cocktail and waved his hand across the chip reader for another. "You sure you don't want anything?" he asked Kyle. "I'm buying."
They'd been there for an hour already, just making small talk. It almost made Jason feel like a person again. It probably helped that he wasn't so worried about exposing the shame of his conspiracy obsessions. After all, Kyle was just as paranoid as him; that's why she was there with the group. There was something undeniably attractive in her angular features, and the way her wide brown eyes looked back at him with interest from behind those glasses. He still couldn't tell if she was flirting with him, or just being nice. Granted, the kind of crazy that you wanted to bring back to the bedroom wasn't usually the kind that saw space aliens spying on the street. But Jason figured he should take what he could get, as long as it made him feel normal for a while.
Kyle leaned back in her chair. She folded her hands across her chest, and waved him away with the underhand. "I'm fine. Really. It messes with me."
"Sucks for you." Jason was skeptical of anyone who didn't drink; his father had taught him that. And his mom, for different reasons. He took another big sip, relishing the linger of lavender rum at the back of his throat. "It's the only thing keeps me stable."
Kyle didn't say anything. She placed her tote bag in her lap, like she was thinking about leaving.
And just like that, Jason knew that he had blown it. Maybe he had reached rock bottom after all.
"I'm kidding," he said, fumbling for recovery. "I don't need another fucking support group."
"Stability is what matters," Kyle responded, lenses reflecting the colorful collection of liquor behind the bar.
"Yeah, well. Placating a Nazi cop about the existence of lizard people is not my idea of 'stability.'"
The sonic boom of atmospheric electrons roared again outside, casting a white flash of radiant light across the bar.
"It's wild out there," Kyle said. "You know why?" She raised her unbleached eyebrows and made a clicking "c"-sound at the back of her tongue.
Jason rolled his eyes, giving into the jab. Maybe there was still hope to salvage this after all. "Yeah fine, okay, it's chemtrails -- "
"I was actually going to say climate change."
She dropped her head and looked back up at Jason with the playful smirk of disappointment. It disarmed him enough that he fumbled for his next words. "Chemtrails which...exacerbate, obviously, the um, the impacts of climate change -- which are absolutely real, by the way, and not just some conspiracy. I mean that."
Kyle bit her bottom lip and held her breath like she was holding laughter in. It was playful; it was cute. "I think there's something else going on with you," she said. "I've met a lot of conspiracy theorists, and chemtrails are always just the tip of the insidious machinations. Unless you're really into geoengineering, which, hey, that's cool. But I don't think that would bring you to our little group."
Then she leaned in close to Jason again, with that asymmetric dimple deepening a pocket in her cheek. "So what's your thing?"
Jason cupped a hand around his mouth, and at normal volume said, "Not fucking space lizards." This time, it was Jason who wasn't sure if he was fucking with or flirting. "What's yours?"
Kyle smacked her lips and hung her head in shame, hugging her tote bag close to her. She took her glasses off and cleaned the lenses on the pocket fabric of her dress. "Do you remember the Berenstein Bears?"
"Sure."
"No you don't. What about Jiffy Peanut Butter?"
"Of course."
She shook her head. "Nope. When did Nelson Mandela die?"
Jason paused to think about this, racking his brain to find the answer that he was buried somewhere deep within. "Sometime in the eighties, maybe? On a hunger strike or something?"
Kyle slapped her hand on the bartop and made a nasal raspberry sound like a game show buzzer. "Wrong again!" she said as she put her glasses back on. "It's the Berenstain Bears, and they are not in fact Jewish -- though Felix won't believe it. And JIF peanut butter exists, yes, but there's never been anything called JIFFY. As for Mandela, he didn't die until 2013, of totally natural causes. And we were both alive for that. He was even President of South Africa for a time. But no one seems to remember."
"...Okay?"
Jason wasn't sure what to make of this. Why try to lead him towards one answer, just to turn it around on him? Was it some kind of power move, playing hard to get? He'd seen negotiation tactics like that before, at Kadath Capital. But that's when there was money on the line. This was something different.
"Well, so that's why I'm there."
The tone in her voice was confessional, even if the words themselves, well, weren't.
Jason cocked his head, and spoke slowly to make sure there was no misunderstanding: "You're at a support group for conspiracy theories because of Nelson Mandela and the Berenstein Bears?"
"Stain." Kyle placed a sharp emphasis on the suffix of that cartoon bear family, making it sound like the most important detail in the world, a revelation in and of itself. She took a breath to compose herself, then continued. "And yes. The wikis call it Mandela Effect, for obvious reasons. But for me it was the Berenstain Bears that clued me in. Are you familiar with cognitive behavioral therapy?"
"Uhh, no?" There was a lot coming at him then. Jason couldn't tell if he was intrigued, overwhelmed, or overwhelmed by intrigue -- although to be fair, he felt that way about Kyle before she started talking about childrens' books and revolutionary leaders.
Kyle's eyes rolled back in her head. She placed her tote bag on the bar then turned her attention back to him, keeping one hand on the bag. "It's a popular psycho-social intervention tool that's all about developing coping mechanisms for whatever it is you're struggling with. A big part of that is recognizing your own actions -- your own perspectives -- and learning to make tiny changes to those things just by being conscious of them."
Jason nodded slowly. "And this has what to do with the Berenstein Bears?"
"Stain," Kyle said again.
Jason was getting close to establishing a fun rapport with her. If she didn't kill him first.
"The idea behind the Mandela Effect is that all these weird discrepancies in our memories are actually psychic proof that someone has been altering reality -- literally making tiny changes to space and time. Maybe it's some deliberate manipulation, by someone or something with insidious intentions. Or maybe it's the universe itself, going through its own form of cognitive behavioral therapy, just trying to improve. I have my own theory, but that doesn't matter. Either way, our brains can't handle the ever-shifting continuity, and causes these glitches in our memories, flashbacks from previous iterations of reality."
Then Kyle threw her hands up flippantly and shrugged. "Anyway, that's my conspiracy! So chemtrails are really nothing to be ashamed of."
"Yeah," Jason said, nodding slowly. "Right."
He felt his breathing slow as the world spun around them. In the lull that followed, he flagged down the automated bartender and asked for a diet cola, fighting his instincts for more alcohol. This afternoon had already opened him up to a whole new world of strange, and it would have felt wrong to dull his senses after that. Perhaps Jason's own obsessions with chemtrails and hijacked planes acting out demonic rituals weren't so weird after all. But now he wasn't sure if that was good or bad.
What if the truth that he'd been searching for was not the one he'd wanted? Or what if the New World Order and flaming streaks of jet fumes were just small pieces of something more? The constantly changing histories would explain why the answers had eluded him for so long...
The robot returned with Jason's drink. He drank down nearly half of it in a single gulp. "If someone did have the ability to alter the timeline," he asked, "or create a parallel reality or whatever: why would they waste that on the Berenstein Bears?"
"'Stain.'" This time Kyle's refrain was dry, almost automatic. A tiny change that she'd grown tired of correcting, like someone explaining how to pronounce their name.
"Are you sure?" Jason said with a playful smirk. Maybe more meaningless flirtation would be enough to distract his mind, to stop her from getting too close. That always worked in the past. Hadn't it?
"I have to be sure," Kyle said. "Or else I fall back down the endless wormhole of that exact same question. And when that happens, I tend to alienate myself from everyone I know. So, ya know. I try not to do that."
"All because of one vowel in the name of a kid's book." Jason's attempt at diversion had failed. But he had something else instead: a surprising sense of kinship with Kyle and her fears of isolation. "Hence the group."
"Hence the group," Kyle repeated. She reached over to grab Jason's soda glass and took a drink. "That's the point of it, what we're trying to accomplish -- understand -- together. Whatever theory you believe, it doesn't change the reality that we live in."
"I disagree," Jason said, remembering what Mr. Atal had told him: the theory changes the reality it describes. "Lizard aliens and parallel dimensions altering the timeline both sound like pretty fucking stark departures from reality, if you ask me."
"And yours doesn't? Whatever it is?"
Kyle finished off the rest of Jason's soda. He didn't order another. He leaned back on his barstool instead, balancing on the back two legs.
"What I believe isn't popular, I'll give you that. But at least it's grounded in practical, plausible reality, even if some people refuse to see the labyrinth."
"Oh. Oh my..." she said, her jaw hanging loose at the end. "You really are a 9/11 Truther, aren't you?"
Jason's heart stopped. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Is it like full-on Crowley Illuminati-type shit, or...?"
"What? No. Maybe?" Was she serious? Why was this weirder than Lizard aliens?
"Wow. Okay, wow," Kyle sang the vowel, keeping it open as she spun away from Jason and focused her attention on the bottles behind the bar. "I guess I thought you were cool, but now I know you're one of them, so..."
Jason lost his balance on the chair legs for a moment. He threw his torso forward, trying to offset that falling feeling that sank inside his chest as he assured himself that she was only joking. That it was part of the playful rapport they were creating together. But he wasn't sure.
And, well, the idea of someone ostracizing him for his beliefs was still kind of raw.
His four legs hit the floor again. "Okay, Berenstein Bear Lady," he said, his voice imbued with a stern sense of balance and grounding. It was the kind of negging move he'd seen other men use on women. They all swore it worked, though Jason never saw any proof of that himself.
But as the tone of his condescending words left his lips, they felt...alien. Inhuman. For all the times he'd put himself forward as a different person than who he was within, now the skinsuit no longer felt like it fit.
Kyle wasn't suffering from the same identity crisis. "It's 'Stain,'" she said again, with a confidence that Jason wished he could muster. "And at least I acknowledge that I might have a problem. I don't look down on other people either, especially the ones like me, whose perceptions might be off."
"My perceptions aren't off, I know -- "
Kyle's side-eye was enough to shut him up, black pupils magnified by her thick lenses. She waited a moment before she pushed herself off the stool and began to put her coat on. It was deep red and printed from some kind of vinyl-like material. "You should come back to the group next week," she said. "I think it'd be good you."
"Okay. Yeah. Whatever."
"Think about it," she said as she buttoned up for the storm outside. "You can talk to Monica. She's dealing with a similar thing. Or at least, it's the same timeline universe and terrestrial lifeforms as you -- which can count for more than people realize."
Kyle smiled and tried to make a joke of this. It didn't work. She reached down and picked up her canvas tote bag -- when did she put it down? -- then touched Jason's knee and said, "Trust me: it gets pretty lonely when you're outside the central universe and always looking in."
Her words resonated inside of Jason's head at a frequency that sent him into a fugue, shifting his sense of space and time and leaving behind a sinking sense of emptiness that not even alcohol could fix.