Chapter 3

“Ever since I could remember, She was all that mattered.”
—James J. Caterino, She

GRAPPLING WITH THE IMPLICATION that in this new reality I was not back in my own timeline nearly sent me back into a coma. Yes, I was fourteen again. But nothing that I knew of life when V1 was fourteen had any relevance to my life as V3. I knew absolutely nothing about being a teen in 2018. My memories were ancient history.

No wonder things had seemed catawampus. I made my first conscious effort to search the memories of V2. Some of them were fogged over like he’d already forgotten. Present memories were mostly there. I compared them to my V1 memories. My mother looked different, sharper, and more professional. My sisters, while identifiable, dressed differently, had better teeth, clearer complexions, and in the case of Em, a smoking hot body. My father still worked on an automobile assembly line, but it wasn’t Studebaker. The house that looked so familiar to me in the memories of V2, wasn’t in South Bend, but was in Fort Wayne. Dad assembled trucks in the Chevy and GM lines at the plant in Roanoke.

Everything was just the same but different. No wonder V2 had been suicidal. I was near it myself.

This meant that I was a freshman in high school, missing the first semester, in a reality that I had no idea how to function in. For the first time, I was thankful for being in a hospital where I could have time to adjust to the new world I lived in. I needed to pay more attention to the droning news shows on television. Who knew what else was different?

I could practically hear the mysterious voice that sent me here laughing.

Fuckers!

Somehow, the little things that were the same as when I was a kid or an adult in V1 were almost more disorienting than the things that were different. My Kindle password was the same. My street address was the same, but in a different town. Names of people my parents or sisters mentioned were the same as I remembered from 1952—what few I actually remembered. It’s funny how after sixty-six years, how many of my ‘old friends’ I’d forgotten as I moved away from the homelands after college. Occasionally, a name would ring a bell, but trying to put a face to it was difficult. And I had no idea what to do about it.

“Bruce Sandusky asked about you,” Mom said when she came in to visit after work. “You know a lot of kids are concerned about you, but they don’t really know how to relate. It’s not like they can come up here and have a party. When we get you home, why don’t you plan to invite your friends over and we’ll do something for your birthday.”

My birthday was the same day of the month. Just a month away. I’d be fifteen. I was panicked thinking that I didn’t know who my friends were. I focused on trying to sift through V2’s memories for something useful. I didn’t want to start telling people I didn’t remember things. Mom had already mentioned wanting me to talk to a counselor. If I had memory loss issues ... I didn’t dare talk to a psychologist about being an old man in a young kid’s body. They’d lock me away.

Well, one thing I remembered well enough was that kids talk on Facebook. My grandkids were on Facebook so I had an account just to keep track of them and their kids. I logged on and was happy to see that V2 had the same password as V1. Perhaps I’d find out who my friends were here.

The stream was packed with condolences. Early on, it seems, word had gotten out that I was dead. Classmates put messages on my stream saying they were sorry I was gone and I’d been mostly a pretty decent guy. Nobody was talking about me as their best friend in the world or as their worst enemy. I searched out my school friends first. About twenty were on my friends list. Of course, a lot of others that I wasn’t friends with had posted comments on their threads. I went through the process of sifting through all the pages and trying to put names and faces together. Many looked familiar but out of place. Still, if I saw them, there was at least a chance that I’d recognize them. I read through their timelines and moaned. What did I have in common with any of these privileged little brats?

I posted a quick message: “Looks like I’m not dead after all. Bunch of broken bones. Missing this semester. Good luck, everyone.”

Almost immediately, I started getting comments back. “Too bad. Better luck next time.” “You’d have been better off dead. Ms. Perkins is a bitch.” “Let’s do it together next time.”

Everyone believed I’d attempted suicide and were more upset that it failed than they’d been when they thought I was dead. What a screwed-up bunch of little...

I had to get past thinking like this. I had to try to figure out how my V2 thought or I’d be toast when I got out of here. I checked his groups and found that the one he was most active in was called ‘Watch List’. Most of the conversation was about how miserable life was and how they were going to commit suicide. V2 had told his friends that he thought walking in front of a bus would be easiest. I guess that’s what got me here.

I shut down Facebook and decided I needed to figure out what other groups he was involved in on social media. Fuck! I hardly knew what social media was. The only times I’d logged on in the past were to see pictures of my great-grandchildren. Great-grandchildren who would be the same age I am in this other reality.

I got to thinking about my books. It surprised me that we had a few different titles in our library but there was a huge overlap in our interests. I was fourteen. I wondered if V2 knew about SOL. I opened the browser again and started to type in the address. That answered that question. It auto-filled. Again, the password was the same. If I’d found out one of my great grandchildren was reading this smut, he’d have had a firm talking to. Right. I was thinking this as I was checking his library ... my library of stories. I could justify it because I was really eighty. Only I was only fourteen and it was definitely illegal for me to access these stories.

I was getting a headache.

My library had the same active stories I’d been reading when my Kindle died in the nursing home and they’d stolen my charger. I might have been suckered but the nurses in the hospital didn’t appear to be interested in the Kindle or the charger. One even helped me get it plugged in. I checked the reading history as well as the library. I always deleted stories from the reading list when I finished them, but I kept them in the library.

I was only a little surprised to find a pretty big selection of brother-sister incest stories. Most of the stories were coming of age type stories with a few of the military and time travel stories that I’d enjoyed. What was missing from V2’s list that had been in V1’s list were do-over stories. Well, why would a fourteen-year-old be thinking about a do-over. I guess it made sense.

I was a few weeks behind on some of my favorite serials and set about catching up. Some of them I had to search for because they weren’t in V2’s library. A few, it appeared, hadn’t been written in this reality. That sucked. Now I’d never know how Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain ended. I still found a couple of good ones and as I was reading, I got hard. Then, damn it, I couldn’t do anything about it. I still couldn’t reach my cock with my fingers. I was going into a permanent state of blue balls.

“So, Francine managed to get herself pregnant over the summer and Colin is being an ass about it. Everyone knows he’s the daddy. But, of course, he’s not stepping up and claiming it,” Em said when she visited me Friday after school. She was pretty good at keeping me updated on all the gossip, even though I didn’t know half the people she was talking about.

“Are they going to kick her out of school?”

“Why would they do that? She’s not due until like April and she’ll get teen pregnancy leave with a tutor so she’ll graduate. She’ll probably have to sit in the back of the classroom so she can breastfeed without everyone staring at her when she gets back, but she’ll only need the daycare center during PE.”

I stared at my sister. Our high school had daycare? And single moms sat in the back of the classroom breastfeeding? What next? Did they allow conjugal visits? Old Faithful was getting chubby just thinking about it. I shifted around as much as I could.

“You okay?”

“I just need to piss. I’ll call a nurse.”

“Oh. Don’t bother, I’ll do it. Let me get the pan.”

“Huh? I have to, like...”

“We already got instructions,” she said. “The whole family. We can’t spring you from this joint unless we are all trained and willing to participate in your care. It’s just a little urine. I can hold my nose. You don’t need the poop pan, do you?”

“No, but ... um...”

“Let me get the gloves.”

Em snapped on a pair of disposable latex gloves, just like the nurses did. I’d almost gotten to the point where I could piss without getting an automatic hard-on when a nurse shoved my cock in the spout. But...