Quantum Leap
In this first chapter, the protagonist begins her journey through a fragmented reality, guided by signals only she can read, compelled by a collective voice that dissolves boundaries between thought, paranoia, and higher cognition
"So, Me, are you ready? Did you absorb everything from the books and the video in your neighbor's flat? Smoked all your cigarettes? Scrolled enough? You know you can't bring anything with you, no cigarettes, no phone, no keys. You don't want to be traced. No one must know where you are. You don't need to worry. Just trust us. Follow the instructions. Follow the signals. Trust the leak. You'll recognize them. The plan will unfold before you, adapting as it goes."
"Yes, I think I'm almost done. I just feel a bit strange. Every time I light a cigarette and inhale, I see flashing green lights, beautiful, psychedelic. Let me finish this last one."
The knock arrives at 3:00 a.m., metallic, absolute, a chime that cracks the spine of spacetime. Time stops.
I've absorbed everything. The books, the video from the neighbor's flat, the scrolling, the cigarettes. Nothing comes with me. No phone. No keys. No trace. The way is clear, I'm out.
First directive: the house with three windows. Locked. Not this one. My eyes scan rightward, catching an entrance to the courtyard like that painting back home. Another closed threshold. I turn left. Open.
The cold pre-dawn pulls at my skin. I follow the narrow path, walking briefly along the main road so they'll see the direction, away from the village. A car passes. I'm a signal being read, or reading, or both.
Turn right. Go uphill. Hide behind the parked car. Wait.
Adrenaline tastes bitter. My second heartbeat pulses in my brain, the one I recognize now as theirs, The Whole, transmitted through the dark. The rooster: one, two, three. Not yet. Again: one, two, three, four. The dog's bark synchronizes with my nervous system. It's time.
Hide in the kennel.
A strange thought: they lift it with me inside, load me onto something that moves. The moon watches.
Walk the olive trees. This is calibration. Prove you can read correctly.
Left, right, back, forward, the grove blurs into a spiral. Adrenaline, completion, motion. Calibration complete.
Through the fence hole. Downhill into the ditch, careful, slippery. Circle the pool. Mark the territory. Laundry room ahead, tucked into stillness.
The dog barks without pause. No one emerges.
Inside: the camera, disguised as a gas sensor. Green light blinking. The Whole is watching. I wave. Protocol. Then the disorientation hits, dense, absolute, without mercy. I strip, shove my clothes into the washer. Try to fold myself into a laundry bag.
"It won't fit. I hear you laughing. Not funny. Two bags instead."
Then it hits: overwhelming faintness, withdrawal of consent. Body betrays itself, slumping beneath mounded fabric. Vision fragments. Time blurs, twelve hours? When consciousness returns, night has reclaimed everything. My limbs move wrong, muscles stiff, perception broken.
I stumble outside, searching for the fence hole but find only shadows. Holes look dangerous now, traps for brittle bones. A deep grunt: mother boar.The signal.I sit. Green flashes stutter through my mind. Realities overlap. I don't know why I'm here. I want home. I feel insane.
The moon drifts like a fast-moving clock, but night refuses to end.
"I can't find the exit. I'm trespassing. It's cold, wet. Back inside."
Back in the laundry room I void myself onto the fabric, and the smell hits me: sharp, chemical, wrong. Not my own waste. I bag the soiled bundle, leave it at the threshold, a strange, wet offering. I collapse into leftover cloth and finally sink into dreamless blank.
I wake wrapped like a cocoon. Nearby: a bottle of water. A few cookies.
They left this. I have to learn to feel. Really feel. Let my body speak before language does.
Two kinds. The first, sweet, dizzy. The second, nutty, better. I'll go with this one.
A chained dog lives above my room. His chain scrapes across the roof in rhythm with my sleep. When I wander outside, he barks without pause. When I return, silence. He's my guardian, or my jailer. I haven't learned to distinguish.
Someone stays next door that night. Voices, a television. No one comes.
By the morning of the third day, strength returns in increments. I wrap a towel around my legs like a skirt and step outside. The dog watches. I give him a nod before retreating once more, awaiting the next protocol, the next phase of this leak that tastes like physics.
The air hums. Somewhere, a threshold quivers.