Versions of us

Variables and Versions

Cassiel dreamed of glass.He was running through a corridor made of mirrors, each reflection slightly off,one blinked too fast, another looked older, one turned away just as he turned toward it. His hands bled from the edges of the dream, a hundred cuts opening with each step. He called out, but the voice that echoed back wasn’t his.He reached a door with no handle.

A voice whispered behind it: “Choose the wrong version, and you vanish.”

Then the door dissolved, and he was falling.He woke with the sun in his eyes and a dull ache behind them. The bed was warm on one side. Someone had been there.He sat up fast.The journal,his journal,lay on the pillow beside him. The cover no longer blank. Carved into the leather were three words in looping ink:

Don’t trust time.

Cassiel touched the words. Ink bled onto his fingers. Fresh.But when he opened the pages, they were empty again.A knock startled him. He crossed the room and opened the door to no one. Only a folded scrap of paper on the floor:

You’re in Version 26. Don’t waste it.

At breakfast, the dining hall buzzed with rumors. Not about the sky, or the glitch, or the missing time.About Cassiel.Whispers followed him. Someone had seen him vanish and reappear. Someone else said he’d been talking to his reflection. Someone else swore he glitched like the sky.Elior passed him in the corridor but didn’t stop. Just a brush of fingers against his wrist. Enough to say I remember, not enough to risk being seen.Rhea avoided him entirely.

And Arlen—

Arlen wasn’t in any of his classes.The last time Cassiel had seen him, he’d been staring into the cracked mirror behind the chapel staircase, mumbling words in a language that didn’t sound human. And when Cassiel had spoken his name, Arlen had looked up with two different eyes,one his usual steely gray, and the other impossibly violet.

“Don’t follow me,” Arlen had said.

Cassiel had followed him anyway.The hall outside the greenhouse shimmered as he approached it.Reality seemed thinner there. The windows breathed with condensation that formed symbols instead of mist: fractal spirals, infinite loops, mirrored glyphs. He traced one with a fingertip, and it vanished instantly,as if the glass had read him.He stepped inside.Rhea was there, surrounded by plants that looked like they belonged in alien biomes. One curled toward her fingers like a snake charmed by warmth. Another shuddered when Cassiel came too close.

“You’re early,” she said without looking.

“I didn’t know we were meeting.”

“You never do.”

She plucked a blue-black flower and crushed it between her palms. The scent hit him all at once,lavender and lightning.

“Do you want answers,” she asked, “or the illusion of them?”

“I want truth,” he said. “Even if it breaks me.”

She glanced up. “Good. Because that’s exactly what it’ll do.”

Rhea handed him a vial,identical to the one from his dream. Only this time, it had a label:

SERUM 03 — Authorized for Version 26. Use sparingly.

He uncorked it. “What does it do?”

“Shows you pieces. Fragments. You won’t understand them right away.”

He downed it in one gulp.The world ruptured.Again he stood on the roof. But this time the stars were too close. They hummed.A chorus of voices echoed around him,fragments of memory, warnings, promises:

“...You said you loved him in Version 18.”

“...I erased you. I’m sorry.”

“...Arlen lied. He always lies.”

Elior appeared from the shadows. “You don’t remember the last version, do you?”

“No.”

“Good. That one ended badly.”

Arlen materialized beside him, soaked in shadow. “You’re asking the wrong questions.”

Cassiel’s older self appeared again, scarred and half-blurred.

“You keep repeating yourself,” he said. “Always the same mistake.”

“What mistake?” Cassiel demanded.

“You fall in love with the wrong one.”

“What if I love all of them?”

“Then you fracture.”

The rooftop rippled underfoot. A storm was brewing in the sky but the clouds were made of static, and lightning fractured into binary.From the edge of the roof, Cassiel could see the city beyond the campus, twisted and wrong. The buildings pulsed. Streets looped. A train slid sideways along a spiral track, never reaching its end.

Rhea stood behind him now. “You’re beginning to wake up.”

Cassiel turned. “Wake up from what?”

“From you.”

She handed him the journal. It now had a hundred pages filled. All of them were his handwriting.

“I didn’t write these.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Which me?”

“Exactly.”

He woke, for real this time.His dorm was cold. His pillow was damp with sweat. The vial lay shattered on the floor.The journal sat open at the foot of his bed.A single phrase blinked on the page:

You must choose before Version 30.

Below that, in inkless embossing, a choice was offered:

EL.

AR.

RH.

?

He reached out to touch it and the page flared with warmth, like skin.He didn’t sleep the next night. He wandered instead.To the library. To the old planetarium. To the locked doors of Hall B—which, according to campus maps, didn’t exist.It was there he saw Elior again.

Elior looked startled at first, then softened. “You’re starting to see them, aren’t you?”

Cassiel nodded. “How do you live like this?”

“By forgetting enough to function.”

“And the rest?”

Elior hesitated. Then he pulled out a slip of paper.A photograph.Cassiel. And Arlen. And Elior. Laughing on a beach.But Cassiel had never been to a beach.

“What version is this?”

Elior didn’t answer. Instead, he kissed his forehead gently. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is who you want to be in this one.”

Back in his room, Cassiel sat cross-legged with the journal.On the first page now, the words had changed:

You are Cassiel. Version 26. You love: [Incomplete]. You trust: [In flux]. You fear: Becoming him.

He flipped to the final page.Blank.Waiting.Cassiel picked up his pen.

And wrote:

I don’t want to be rewritten.

But the page erased itself.

To be continued.