If Not For Everything

When you wake up, the first thing you notice is a lot of light. Goddamn, why is there so much light in here? You’re used to seeing green light from the Sun fairly often, but this is like – light. Then you realize: maybe we’ve landed. Surely the others would have woken you up…? But what if they’re having a party with John without you? That thought sends your eyes wide open. And then you stop. Stop thinking, stop breathing…stop.

You’re in your room. Your bedroom. Not the one on the meteor, with its cold walls and boring decoration. The bedroom you slept in for years. You blink. Oh. You’re dreaming. Obviously. Well, you might as well enjoy it while it lasts.

You look over to your makeshift table next to the bed, reaching for your shades to block out this awful light hurting your eyes. You pause again. They’re Bro’s shades. Not yours, the ones you got from John on your thirteenth birthday. The triangular, ironically anime shit shades. You quickly glance around, but you don’t see yours, so you put on the anime shades. Grateful for the shade, you walk over to the window and pull down the shade. It’s fine later in the afternoon to have the window open, but in this morning light, it’s brutal.

You’re surprised – your dreams have never been this real. You can feel perfectly the pull of the shade in your hand, the press of the bridge of your shades on your nose. You can feel that your hair is messed up, and that will have to be fixed, but first you have to know what day it is. It’ll help you get a feeling for this dream, you think. Maybe making it too real will snap you out of it and you’ll wake up.

The desktop sits where it always has and you turn it on, thinking to yourself that your shades take a lot less time to boot up for use. When the computer has woken itself up and everything is loaded, you look at the time and date. It’s 11:23 AM, April 14th…2014? That can’t be right.

Okay, you decide, this is too screwy. Time to get up. No more of this. By the time you get out of this stupid dream, you guys will probably have landed and you can see John and everything will be okay again. Being in your old room is uncomfortable. It’s too nostalgic and, you have to admit, more than a little freaky. Still, you weren’t sure you’d ever see it again, so you take a sweeping look around. Then you slam your head into the computer desk.

You groan in pain, not having expected that to hurt so—Oh fuck. This isn’t—But how could it not be? What? This is…real.

You shut off the monitor and look at your face in the black screen, the closest you have to a mirror in your bedroom. Unable to see enough, you rip off your shades and glare at yourself, perplexed. You’ve matured a lot in the three years since you hopped aboard your ride to the next session. Your face got longer, you lost the last of your baby fat, not being able to go outside has faded your freckles some, and your eyes are more startlingly red. But your reflection in the monitor is slightly different. You still look older, but…well, you look older still. Your freckles aren’t faded, and in fact, there are probably more of them than there ever have been. Your hair is long, almost an inch below your ears, and still very, very blond. You have – oh motherfucking – you have ear piercings. Were they…were they supposed to be ironic? You have no idea, but you’re rather horrified. Your teeth are straighter – they’ve never been as bad as Egbert’s, but now it looks as if you’ve had braces. Which you haven’t. Why the hell do you look so different?

A crazy thought begins to form in your head. What if…what if landing in the next session sort of…voided everything that had happened? What if everything was normal? Although, that didn’t really explain why you were older and different. Seriously, what was going on here…? But if your theory was correct, or even somewhere in the realm of possibility, then what about the other guys? John, Rose, Jade, and all the trolls? Were they back in their homes, too?

You turn the monitor back on and click the Pesterchum icon. There’s only one handle on your chumroll, and you don’t recognize it. Seriously, what kind of handle is “noobPwner”? And why the hell is it on your list of chums? You’re pretty sure you wouldn’t consider anyone with such a stupid handle a chum.

You shake your head. Whatever. Crazy shit is happening this morning, and you guess you’ve just gotta roll with it. You click “add chum” and type “EctoBiologist.” Not only is John the first person you want to talk to right now, but you are also very interested in seeing if he’s going through…whatever you’re going through.

-- turntechGodhead [ TG ] began pestering ectoBiologist [ EB ] at 11:27 --

TG: hey egbert
TG: uh is there crazy shit happening at your place or what

You wait for a minute for a reply, and when you don’t get one, you start to panic. You were just remembering last night that John always answered when you were upset. He couldn’t make a liar out of you now.

TG: john seriously
TG: dont fuck with me bro i need to know if youre home
TG: like home home
TG: now is not the best time to be ignoring me

You take a deep breath, trying to stop from completely flying off the handle. You run a hand through your hair, and recoil at its foreign length. You’re about to give up on John (seriously, that guy is never around when you need him) and try Rose when you get a reply.

EB: um, I’m really sorry man, but I think you have the wrong handle. my name’s not john, it’s jason.

“What the fuck,” you murmur aloud. The teal text makes you think of Terezi, but even she couldn’t screw with you like this. And John wasn’t as good of a prankster as he thought. He couldn’t pull this off either. Well, maybe he could. Especially when you’re freaked out as much as you are. But you mean, John wouldn’t pull this type of joke, it’s not lame enough.

Still…

TG: you sure youre not fucking with me
TG: because if you are i swear to jegus i will attack you with a shitty sword

EB: . . .
EB: uh yeah. I’m pretty sure my name’s jason.
EB: can you not attack me with a sword plz

TG: so just to clarify youre not john
TG: youre some gamer douche right

EB: if you’re trying to troll, you’re doing a really bad job of it dude
EB: but whatever I’m blocking you
EB: kthxbai

-- ectoBiologist [ EB ] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [ TG ] at 11:36 --

Alright, yeah, that settled it. John would never say “kthxbai.” Though he would enjoy the ironic joke about trolling… You dismiss the idea. Someone else, this Jason idiot, has John’s chumhandle. You decide to try Rose after all, but just as you’re typing “tentacleTherapist” into the “add chum” section, there’s a knock on your bedroom door and then it opens.

“Hey, bro. You up and ready to go?”

Bro was standing at the door. Bro. Your adoptive brother, your – well, you don’t really want to consider right now that he’s your biological father. Bro’s alive, and standing at the door. There’s no sword in him, he’s got his shades, identical to the ones you wear, on his face as usual, and he looks completely unfazed, leaning against the doorframe. He is the cool you hope to be.

You only realize now how much you’ve been ignoring your memories of Bro. You did miss him, you were lying through hurt and numbness when Terezi asked you if you’d loved him. Everyone needs someone, and when you were growing up, you had him. He was your parent and your brother and somehow your personal trainer, as well. Shit, you’d missed this guy.

You know he can’t see the tears pricking your eyes and you try your very hardest not to smile. You try to be casual, but you’re so confused and your emotions are all over the place like they never have been before. Somehow you manage to say, in a voice that just barely wavers, “Uh, go where?”

He catches it, you’re sure. He raises an eyebrow at you and you know that behind his shades he’s giving you an intense gaze with amber, almost orange eyes. He takes a step toward you and out of instinct, you tense, waiting for the strife to begin, but Bro seems unarmed. He just looks at you, and you blink as he reaches out and lowers your sunglasses.

“Are you high? What’ve you been doing in here?”

“Uh – I’m not high,” you mutter.

“Whatever.” He half-shoves your shades back onto your face. “But we’ve been talking about this and talking about this. You sure you’re not on something?”

You resist rolling your eyes at your now-not-dead-Bro. “No. I’m not,” you say with more confidence. “Can you just…refresh my memory? I think it’s been filled to the brim with too much irony.” Ain’t that the truth.

“California. We’re checking out another university this weekend. It’s the one that’s actually offering you a scholarship. Small, but still. You’ve got the week off from school for this, remember?”

“Oh, yeah, right,” you say, still having no idea.

Bro pauses. “Are you even packed?”

“Uh.” You look around the room and spot a big red and black suitcase, zipped full to bursting, from what you can tell. “Of course I am.” You nod toward the suitcase.

Bro takes a look and nods in return. “Fine, kid. Just be ready, ‘cause I’m leaving in five minutes.”

You breathe out in relief as he leaves the room. You pull up the suitcase onto your bed and look inside. There’s a lot of stuff packed in it – clothes, a couple of pamphlets, a professional camera, a jacket, an extra pair of shoes and other things you guess would be good to take when visiting a college campus. As you think it, the thought seems absurd. But kind of…cool. Mature and adventurous. You’ll worry about talking to John and the girls later.

You dart around the room, finding your phone (a much better one than the one you had three, or is it four years ago) and an iPod, and you look around, still trying to see if your shades are lying around somewhere. You can’t find them.

You figure you’re out of time, so you grab your suitcase and run out into the apartment as coolly as you can just as Bro is opening the front door. He lets you out first as he locks the door and you breathe out, trying to calm yourself. You’re not even sure what’s going on, or what world you’re in, but you try to be as casual as you can on your way to a college in California.

All you need right now is some time to breathe and figure out what the hell has driven you into this…alternate universe. Or the same universe, but something really weird has happened. I’m the Knight of Time, you remind yourself. You should be able to figure this shit out.

Bro gives you a few strange looks on the car ride to the airport. The last time he does it, you finally demand, “What?”

He just shakes his head and turns back to the road. “Nothing.”

You’re willing to let it go, but apparently Bro isn’t, and a minute later, he elaborates, “You just seem…different. Kinda spacey.”

You look at him from your peripheral vision. “Different?” you repeat, wondering how you might go about explaining what you’re experiencing.

“Unfamiliar. Like you have no freaking clue what’s going on.”

To put it simply, that was completely true. So you have to make a decision: do you tell Bro about your sci-fi hell adventure through space and mysterious reappearance on Earth, or do you play along, pretend that no adventuring ever happened? God you wish you didn’t sound like such an idiot.