Chapter 1: The Wrong World

The first clue that something was wrong was the light.

It wasn't the soft, gray light of a 2025 sunrise filtering through the blinds of his university apartment. It was a golden, intense, almost aggressive light, the kind of California coast light that warms the skin and forces you to squint even before you open your eyes.

Michael Gray groaned, rolling over on the mattress.

The second clue was that: the mattress. It was too soft, sagging in the center, and the flannel sheets felt childish, worn by countless washes.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes. The room was his, but at the same time it wasn't. It was his childhood room, the one he had left behind years ago.

There were the same posters of alternative rock bands from the early 2010s that his younger self had hung.

There was the same scratched wooden desk and the old participation trophy from a youth soccer team. But everything felt... small. Or maybe it was him who felt different.

He got out of bed, and the feeling of strangeness intensified. His body felt lighter, less dense. His movements were more agile, almost unfamiliar. He looked at his hands.

They were his, but thinner, the knuckles less pronounced. The hangover he expected to feel after last night's party —the end of semester celebration with his university friends— wasn't there.

His mind was clear, too clear, but wrapped in a fog of confusion.

'What the hell? Did they bring me to my parents' house last night?'

The thought was absurd. His parents lived three hours from his campus. No one would have driven that far.

He headed to the bathroom, his steps silent on the worn carpet. The hallway was the same as in his memories, a time capsule of his adolescence. He opened the bathroom door and the smell of the mint toothpaste his father used hit him, a jolt of nostalgia so vivid it almost made him stumble.

He looked up at the medicine cabinet mirror.

And the world stopped.

The face looking back at him was his, but it was a ghost. It was his face from 10 or 11 years ago.

The skin was smoother, without the trace of the incipient beard he always had to shave.

There were no dark circles from late night studying. There wasn't that hardness in the jaw that he had earned in his early adult years. It was a softer, rounder face, the face of a boy.

Panic, cold and sharp, began to climb his spine. His breathing accelerated. He brought a trembling hand to his chin. His fingers searched for the small, almost invisible white scar, just below his lower lip.

The memory was sharp: a stupid skateboarding fall at age twenty, a few stitches. A small map of a bad decision.

But the scar was not there. The skin was smooth, uninterrupted.

'No. No. No. This is a dream.' He pinched his arm hard.

The pain was sharp and real.

It was not a dream.

'Am I high? Did someone spike my drink last night?'

It was the only logical explanation, but the lucidity of his thoughts contradicted the idea. He didn't feel high; he felt terribly, unbearably sober.

He stumbled out of the bathroom, his heart pounding against his ribs.

He needed more proof, something to disprove what his eyes were telling him. He walked into the living room.

The couch was the wrong color, a bland beige instead of the navy blue his parents had bought in 2022.

The television was a thick, old model, not the thin flat screen he remembered. He touched the back of the couch. The fabric was rough under his fingers. It was real.

His gaze swept the room, desperately looking for something that made sense.

And then he saw it. On the kitchen wall, hanging from a nail next to the fridge, was a calendar. A kitten calendar, cheap and cheerful, the kind of thing his mother would buy at the supermarket.

He approached, each step heavier than the last. His eyes fixed on the top. The month's photo was a tabby kitten playing with a ball of yarn. And above the photo, in large, playful letters, was the date.

He didn't read it at first. He saw it. The shapes of the letters, the numbers. And his brain refused to process them. He had to read it out loud, in a raw whisper that he didn't recognize as his own voice.

"FEBRUARY. 2015."

The word fell into the silence of the house like a stone in a bottomless well. 2015. Ten years ago. He was in the past. His mind rebelled, searching for any other explanation. 'It's a joke. A very elaborate joke. My friends... kidnapped me and decorated a house to look like the past. It's the only answer.'

But as the thought formed, he knew it was a lie. The feeling of his own body, the absence of his scar, the smell of the house, everything came together into one monstrous and inescapable truth. It was not a joke. It was not a dream.

It was a nightmare.

He was trapped in a place and a time that were no longer his. The panic he had felt in the bathroom transformed into pure, existential terror.

He leaned against the fridge, the cold metal against his back, and slid to the floor, his breathing turning into short, quick gasps.

The California sun continued to stream through the window, indifferent, illuminating a world that, for Michael, had just ceased to exist.

…..

The panic was a wild animal in his chest, clawing at his lungs, stealing his air. Michael remained on the kitchen floor, curled up, his forehead resting on the cold linoleum. His mind was a whirlwind of impossibilities, a white noise of fear.

'This is not real. It cannot be real.'

The thought repeated itself, a useless mantra against the overwhelming evidence of his senses. The sun on his skin, the cold of the floor, the smell of dust in the house... everything was too tangible to be a dream.

He fought to breathe, forcing air into his lungs in ragged gasps. And in the midst of that storm of terror, a part of his mind, the logical part, broke through.

'Panic is useless. Think. I need data. Facts. Variables I can confirm or deny.'

He clung to that thought like a castaway to a plank. Logic was his only lifesaver in an ocean of madness.

He forced himself to stand, his movements stiff and clumsy.

His first instinct, a desperate need for normality, was to call his mother. She would know what was happening.

He fumbled in his pants pocket, but his phone wasn't there. He ran to his room, to the nightstand where he always left it.

But his 2025 smartphone wasn't there. Instead, there was a white iPhone 5, small and thick in his hand.

It felt like a brick. He turned it on. The wallpaper was a photo of a beach he didn't remember taking.

He unlocked the phone and went to his contacts.

He searched for "Mom." The phone started ringing, a high pitched, distant tone. It rang once. Twice. Three times. And went to voicemail.

'That's weird, she always answers.'

The voice that answered was not his mother's. It was a recorded voice, young and shaky, his fifteen year old self's. "Hello, you've reached the Grays. We're not available right now, leave a message."

A chill ran down his spine. 'We're not available...'

With the phone still in his hand, he went to the bathroom. The need to see his own face again was overwhelming. He looked at himself in the mirror. It was him, no doubt, but he was a ghost. The 16 year old boy staring back looked like a stranger.

With his heart pounding, his attention returned to the phone. He looked at the lock screen, this time focusing on the date below the time. February 20, 2015. He laughed, a dry, nervous laugh.

'No. Impossible. The phone is wrong.' But the kitten calendar and the phone said the same thing. It was too much of a coincidence.

Panic transformed into terror. He dropped the phone onto the bed. He started running through the house.

"Mom! Dad!" he yelled, his adolescent voice cracking.

He searched frantically, opening every door. His parents' room was impeccable, the bed made, as if no one had slept there in a long time.

Their closets were full, but everything felt... motionless. It smelled of dust, not perfume. The refrigerator was almost empty, with just enough for one person. They weren't there.

He needed an external data source, one that wasn't part of this strange house. He remembered the old family computer in the study.

He entered the room. The computer tower came to life with a loud clatter. He opened Google.

First step: confirmation. He typed "current date." The answer: February 20, 2015.

Second step: identity. He typed his own name. The results were for a local high school student.

Third step: the ultimate proof. His family.

With trembling hands, he typed his parents' names and the word "accident." His stomach twisted. He pressed Enter.

The first result was from a local newspaper. The headline was like a direct hit to the solar plexus.

"Northgate Couple Dies in Traffic Accident on Interstate 5."

He clicked. The page took time to load. The article's photo appeared first: a grainy image of a wrecked car. Then, the text.

"...David and Laura Gray, residents of Northgate... passed away Tuesday night... a couple of months ago..."

Michael stopped reading. He couldn't. His eyes frantically searched for the end of the article, looking, praying not to find the confirmation he already knew was there. And he found it. The last sentence.

"Survived by their only son, Michael, 15..."

A hollow sound escaped his throat. He backed away from the desk as if the monitor were red hot.

He fell backward, tripping over the chair and landing on the floor. It was true. In this world, in this timeline, his parents were dead. They had been dead for months.

And he... he was an orphan.

…..

Michael remained on the floor of his father's study —a stranger's study— for a time he couldn't measure.

The computer screen had gone dark, but the article's headline still burned in his mind, seared into memory.

The cold logic that had driven him to investigate shattered, and the fragments were replaced by a single, overwhelming emotion: grief.

He stood up. His movements were stiff, like a robot's. He turned off the monitor and the electrical hum died, leaving a silence that was almost physical. He left the study and stood in the middle of the hallway.

The house, which had previously seemed like an alien set, now felt like a grave.

His grave.

He started walking, aimlessly.

He walked into the living room and ran his hand over the back of the beige couch. His fingers felt the rough fabric and his mind, for an instant, replaced it with the memory of the soft blue velvet of his real home's couch.

He saw himself, at twenty, watching a game with his father, his feet on his father's lap, arguing about a bad play. The memory was so sharp, so real, that a physical pain shot through his chest, a cramp in his heart. He pulled his hand away from the couch as if it burned.

With a heavy heart, he headed to the end of the hallway, to the room he knew would be the hardest.

His parents'. He hesitated at the closed door, his hand suspended over the knob.

'Don't go in there. Don't do it.' But a masochistic force compelled him to turn the knob and push.

The room was impeccable, frozen in time.

The bed, perfectly made. The air smelled stale, with a slight, sweet floral aroma. He approached the dresser. He saw perfume bottles.

The smell he remembered from his mother was citrusy, fresh. None of these bottles smelled like that. He opened the closet. Hanging in a neat row were her blouses and dresses. He reached out and touched the sleeve of a silk dress.

The fabric was soft. He closed his eyes and inhaled, hoping to find a trace of his real mother's perfume, but only found the smell of mothballs.

'It's a stranger's closet.'

On the nightstand, there was a thick leather photo album. With a feeling of dread, he picked it up and sat on the edge of the bed that wasn't his mother's.

He opened it.

The first page was a photo of a baby with his same face, wrapped in a blue blanket.

'That is me, but it is not me.'

He turned the page.

A photo of a smiling family at Disneyland. The boy with his face, about eight years old, wore Mickey Mouse ears and smiled with a missing tooth. The parents' faces were the right ones, but their smiles, their clothes, the memory itself... it was all false.

He felt a wave of nausea. He was spying on the happy life of a ghost.

He kept turning the pages, each one a new stab.

The boy on his first day of school.

The boy at a soccer game.

The boy opening Christmas presents.

He ran his finger over the smiling face of the boy who bore his name.

'Who is this happy boy? Where was I while he was living this life?'

And then he came to the last photo in the album. It was more recent. The boy in the photo was about thirteen or fourteen. He was on the beach, hugged by his mother, the Laura of this world.

Both were smiling at the camera.

It was an image of pure, unconditional love. The sight of that woman, so similar and yet so different from his mother, hugging the version of him who did have the chance to grow up with her, was what finally broke him.

He slammed the album shut, the dry sound echoing in the silent room.

He needed to get out of there. He stood up and walked, almost running, back to the safety of his own room. He closed the door, leaned against it, and slid to the floor.

And there, in the solitude of the only room that felt remotely his, the dam broke.

He didn't scream.

The pain was too deep for noise. He curled up, hugging his knees, and the tears he had been holding back since the moment he saw the calendar began to flow.

They were silent, hot tears that burned his face. He cried for the twenty two year old man he had been, for his engineering career that would never begin.

He cried for his friends, for the nights of video games and laughter that were now just ashes in his memory.

He cried for his sister, Chloe, whom in this world he would never have the chance to meet.

And above all, he cried for them. For his mother and his father. The real ones. He cried with the sharp, wrenching grief of a son who had just learned he was an orphan, ten years too late.

The daylight faded behind his window, giving way to the orange of sunset, and then the darkness of night.

And Michael didn't move.

The outside world continued its course: the sound of cars passing, the distant laughter of neighbors, the barking of a dog. But inside that room, time had stopped.

When the next day's sun streamed back through the window, it found him in the same position.

He was no longer crying.

He had run out of tears. Now there was only emptiness, a black hole at the center of his being. He crawled to the bed and got under the covers, like a child hiding from monsters.

But the monster was not under the bed.

It was inside him. He stared at the ceiling, his mind a blank canvas of pure grief. There was no more logic. There were no plans. There was no future. There was only a silent echo, the final truth of his new existence: he was alone.

And he always would be.