Authentic
Since his revelation in the supermarket (others called it an ‘episode’), Clayton found it much more to his liking not to go outside anymore. It suited him completely, and he could do his job from a computer in the privacy of his own apartment. Even his boss had said he thought it was better for everyone if Clayton worked from home.
He had food delivered once a week (left outside the door), and never had to meet anyone at all. His mother had wanted to come over and tidy up for him, but he’d lied and told her he had a cleaning lady for that very contingency, and she wasn’t to worry about him.
Sometimes he would stare at himself in the mirror for a long time, to see if he could discern any of the changes he had begun to see in other people. As he expected, he was unaltered. He felt authentic in himself. He always would. There was definitely only one of him—he was unique.
He could hear the others around him—above, below, and on either side. When he sat by the window and watched them go in and out, he saw that they never questioned themselves. Didn’t they even know they weren’t authentic?—not like him at all.
Before his revelation, he’d been the same as everyone else. And in a time before that, even the others had been authentic. But slowly, bit by bit, they had changed and he had not. The day he realized, was the day his revelation had come.
When the police had shot their tasers into his flesh, the electricity had acted as a catalyst for the transformation into his fully cognizant self.
Afterwards, technology had made it simple. Now he had no need to make contact with anyone at all in person. It was perfect, and he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before.
After a while, he grew sick of seeing the inauthentic people on the internet. They started to scare him again, the same way the people in the supermarket had scared him, so he stopped watching videos. The conference calls he sometimes had to attend for work made him anxious. He couldn’t look at their faces knowing they were a pixel-thin facade of reality. He was frightened he might see them as they really were. Of course, they were jealous of his authenticity—that was a symptom of their condition. Finally, he stopped attending altogether. You had to look after your own mental well-being first.
A few weeks after his revelation, his mother came over quite out of the blue. Something she had never done before. He saw her on the camera above his front door. Eventually she gave up and went away.
In the evening she phoned him and left a message.
“Why are you doing this?” she wailed. “If you don’t answer, I’ll have to call the police and have them break down the door. You’re being unfair, Clayton. I love you.”
She didn’t understand—she was turning inauthentic too.
A strange feeling came over him later. A feeling of disassociation. At first, frightening, but he soon understood that it was perfectly natural. His body felt light and agile, as though he could leap hundreds of feet into the air if he wanted to, or step outside his window and hang there in space, ten floors above the street.
The company he worked for forgot about him. Maybe he didn’t work there anymore—he couldn’t remember doing any work for them for a while. He spent his time lying on the couch and realized he was ‘becoming’; the last part of his personal journey.
It did not come as a huge surprise when the police broke down the door and entered the apartment. They had white linen masks over their mouths and noses, and took something away that was lying on the floor—he hadn’t noticed it there before. However, they didn’t see him sitting watching them, and they soon left him alone.
He no longer needed sustenance, or anything else—he just was. All he needed now was time. Time to live his authentic life.