2. Hello? Hello? Is anybody in there?

Time seems to be passing at its own rate these days. I say "days," but I can't really tell. There are no windows in here, no clocks, I'm not wearing a watch. I seem to keep nodding off and waking up again, not sure whether I've dozed off for a few minutes or entire weeks. Every time I come to, I find myself sitting here, as always. It almost feels like I've always been here, like I've never left.

That said, it suddenly dawns on me that I haven't actually tried to leave. Haven't wanted to, haven't had the energy to, haven't even thought about it until now. I'm starting to wonder, just now, if it's possible that I'm here by choice--perhaps I've done something to myself on purpose ... maybe this is some kind of experiment, or an attempt to learn something about myself, or to undo something done to me by someone, even ...

Knowing who I am might be a nice start.

1. Write what you know

(The nameless man with a nearly empty mind finds himself in a nearly empty room. The walks are blank. The only furniture is a plain wooden table and a plain wooden chair. On the table there is a laptop computer. It has been turned on. There is a blank page staring at him. He feels compelled to type.)

Not sure what I'm supposed to do with this thing or who it is that wants me to do it. There's a good chance that I set all this up before I ... blacked out, some time ago. There's an equally good chance I was brought here by someone else, someone observing me ... holding me? Perhaps, if it is someone else, that person is as much in the dark as am I about who I am and why I'm here.

Haven't tried the door yet to see if it's locked. That didn't even occur to me until now. I doubt I could even stand up, let alone walk, if I tried. It's as if I just woke up in this chair, at this desk, ready to write. I vaguely remember waking up a few other times, then going back to sleep.

I don't know how long I've been sleeping. Don't know where I am. Still don't know who I am. I see that I can string words together easily; perhaps I was a writer.

The keyword there is was. Whatever I did before I went to sleep, I don't think I can do it anymore. Not sure I can do much of anything at the moment but sit up, stare straight ahead of me, and type these words.

That'll have to do, for now. It's not much, but it's a start.

0. Today is the first day of the rest of your life

(The omniscient narrator returns ... in a new guise)

In some unknown place,
at some time,
a man is waking up.

He does not know who he is
Does not know where he is
Where he has been
or where he is going next.

He knows he is a man
(the evidence of THAT is staring him in the face, wide awake),
but that is all he knows,
and he's not even all that sure he believes it.

The man suspects he has been sleeping
Dreaming
Wild, vivid dreams
Horrible dreams
The kind any sane man would consider nightmares
But not this man.

He does not know how long he has been dreaming
cannot be sure they were only dreams
cannot be sure they will not return
the next time he closes his eyes.

Somewhere in his gut he senses something he does not want to admit
A truth he cannot face
Not yet at least
Not before he finds out who and where he is
How he got there
And why it all happened in the first place.
He wants to go back to sleep
but he can't.
Not now.
Not here.
Because the thing he cannot deny is this:
Something is beginning
or perhaps beginning again
any
minute
now.