I lay in the tank with the door open, allowing my pulse to slow. "What is happening to me?" I wondered. I breathed slowly and deeply, letting the fear dissipate. I focused on each breath, trying to calm my racing thoughts. Part of me wanted to get up and leave, but the panic returned every time I tried to rise.
After about five minutes of struggling with myself, I decided to close the tank, try to relax, and use up the rest of my hour. I shut the lid, immersed myself in the dark silence, and allowed the tension and fear to wash away.
Seemingly moments later, the light turned on. I opened the pod door and looked around, experiencing the same sense of oddness and discontinuity I had before. I examined the room outside the pod. It looked the same.
I pulled myself out of the pod and dried myself with a towel. I felt the soft terry cloth against my skin. I smelled the salt of the tank. I heard the hum of the lights. All my senses worked; they had the texture of reality, yet somehow, my brain registered it as unreal. It wasn’t like any dream; this was fully lucid. I felt like I was myself, and I was in control. The world looked and felt and acted like the real world, but somehow it wasn’t.
I didn’t bother to shower; I just dressed and made my way back to the lobby. My focus was intense as I struggled to scratch the itch in my brain telling me things were wrong. As I entered the lobby, Luanda turned to me, and I saw what looked like afterimages—faint, ghost-like versions of her, all moving slightly out of sync. As the main Luanda spoke, the afterimages resolved, but the sense of unreality lingered.
Luanda smiled and asked, “How was it? Did you like it?”
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I kept looking at her, examining her thick, dark lips as she spoke, seeing the same wispy afterimages but less clearly. I studied her hair and dark eyes, watching as the creases of her thin white blouse shifted with her movements. The afterimages were everywhere I looked, sometimes nearly imperceptible.
She gave me a weapons-grade glare, and I realized I had been staring at her for a good fifteen seconds. Her voice, a bit sharper and higher in pitch, broke the silence. “Please, take in the wonder that is Luanda. I’m here for your viewing pleasure,” she said sarcastically. As she spoke, her hand quietly slid into a large woven purse on the counter.
I felt my cheeks flush, and I raised my hand to cover my face in embarrassment. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” I looked down, almost flinching. “I don’t know what it is. Somehow, everything looks weird since I got out of the pod. Is that normal?”
She shook her head and said, “No, it’s not normal. If you don’t want people thinking you’re hitting on their girlfriends, you might want to stop leering at them. That guy you mentioned came by, and I brushed him off. Now I’m starting to wonder if I should have.”
“When was he here?” I asked.
“I don’t know; it was just a few minutes after you came in. He even had a photo of you. Are you some kind of creeper? Was that guy a private detective or something?”
“I honestly don’t know who he is,” I said, turning around and heading towards the door. In that instant, I felt like whatever happened next would be better than the embarrassment of facing Luanda. “You might want to stay low for a minute,” I added over my shoulder. “I’m pretty sure when I go out there, he’s going to put a bullet through me again.” With that, I opened the door and stepped outside.
Looking across the street, I saw the blue Nissan parked less than a block away. The front left window was rolled down, exposing what looked like the barrel of a rifle. Suddenly, there was a flash and a loud bang. I glanced around and saw a shattered window behind me. Inside, Luanda crouched low behind the counter, her hand in her purse, drawing out a tiny handgun. Then I felt a pull and looked down to see my dead body lying on the concrete, my blood spreading around me. The pull grew stronger, and then it was dark again, and I knew I was back in the tank.
