Chapter 20: Reflected In A Broken Mirror
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Clinton dodged some traffic as he made his way across the street. Not that it was a big effort, it seemed like vehicles weren’t allowed on street level, the only exception being the landing pads for cabs. He did have to wonder if this was a normal day, or if it was exceptionally busy. Petri had mentioned this particular megalopolis was one of billions, stretching the size of a nation, but that still didn’t really give him a perspective. The human mind can’t really comprehend numbers that size, anyway. Well, his couldn’t. 

He turned around when he got to the other side, making sure he still had a good view of the shop. Just because he wasn’t comfortable in clothing stores -- god forbid someone would try to make him try something -- didn’t mean he was keen on getting lost. He took another look at the streetscape. It was both reminiscent of and different from cities back on Earth he’d been to. Buildings lined the street. That part was familiar. But side streets snaked up and around and through those buildings, and the distinction between pavement, road and building was a little more blurry. Still, thoroughfares were well maintained, and he saw what looked to be small creatures that seemed to be cleaning up the grime of daily passage. 

But the reason he’d crossed the street, of course, wasn’t because he was trying to put distance between himself and the store. Well, it wasn’t just that. Andromeda knew better than to try and make him shop for clothes, but the others might not have similar knowledge of his strange idiosyncrasies. He’d rather explore for a bit. There was something he’d caught out the corner of his eye when they’d gone in, something he’d especially noticed Petri not looking at, even seeming to try and divert everyone’s attention away from it. And while he tended to be a careful person, occasionally Clinton allowed himself the luxury of being a little bit nosy. 

He was now coming up on it. For safety’s sake, he checked his belt again for the locator, in case he got lost. He wasn’t keen on being the first human being to end up in the alien-lost-and-found. ‘Captain Durand, please report to the front desk. Your first officer is waiting for you and he’s lost and scared.’ He chuckled to himself at the mental image as he looked through the window. The inside, like the outside, was fully decked out as a mid-twentieth-century diner. No strange proportions, no specific access to creatures much larger than a human. Everything seemed to be proportional to, well, him. Of course he had to check it out. 

He went around to the double doors and pushed them open, and he realized that the second set of doors essentially made this an airlock, and he felt the ‘whoompf’ of atmosphere being pressurized. His ears popped, and the indicator on the inside of his mask informed him the atmosphere was clean and entirely breathable. Huh. He’d assumed the aesthetic was just another thing that they’d picked up on without context. Why would they have, well, ‘air’? 

He opened the second door when the system had cycled, and was greeted with a wave of anachronistic nostalgia for a century he had only a passing familiarity with. He had no real love for twentieth century Americana, but there was something strangely familiar about standing in a diner, Elvis playing on what appeared to be a real jukebox, on an alien planet. He could smell eggs and bacon. He had to shake his head to shake himself out of the shock. 

Besides, all that wasn’t what had arrested him. It was the people. A woman wearing an authentic uniform was walking from table to table with a pot of coffee. The booths were filled with people wearing period-inauthentic clothing. There was one man in what Clinton vaguely recognized as Meiji Japanese, and only because he’d had an unhealthy fascination with east-Asian cultures when he was in his teens. A woman at the bar was wearing some interbellum European military uniform and sporting a giant afro. Another had managed to squeeze himself into a booth wearing what appeared to be a renaissance-era hoop skirt, although he was the only one wearing something so far removed from the diner’s aesthetic. 

“What,” he mumbled to himself, “the hell?” The woman seemed to have noticed him and sauntered over leisurely, smiling a toothpaste-perfect smile. 

“Bohm dia, Senhor! Muito prazer, como vai?” she asked. The cognitive dissonance almost knocked Clinton off his feet. He blinked a few times, trying to see if turning reality off and on again would work to make it make more sense. At least he was able to figure out most of what she’d said with his Spanish background. 

“Uh,” he said, ¿Habla inglés? Español?” The woman’s smile froze for a second, and then she reached up to her collar where he only just now noticed a little device. A translator, probably. 

“I’m sorry, darlin’. My name’s Darla. This is your first time here, right?” Her switching to a gentle southern drawl threw him for a loop even more than the Portugese had. He just nodded and then looked around. 

“What… uh… what is… this…?” He was trying to formulate a question that made some sense, or at least one that might have an answer that would. The woman cocked her head, seemingly confused as well. 

“This is the Diner, sweetheart. We’re not really a new branch, but I reckon if you’re new in town you might not be familiar.” She looked him up and down and then whispered conspiratorially. “The uniform’s off by a bit but we don’t really mind all that much ‘round here. I can give you some tips some time if you want.” Then she stood up straight. “But you’ve got everything else down pat, honey. What’s the name for that face?”

“Whuh,” Clinton said. “I’m… uh… Clinton.”

“Oooh, that’s a good one!” the lady at the bar said. “Do you have a backstory, or you just in it for the aesthetics?” Darla turned to her, hand on her hip and an exaggerated chiding expression on her face.

“Come on, Aida, we don’t ask that ‘round here.” She turned back to Clinton. “I apologize, sweetheart. We don’t get a lot of newcomers here very often, so it’s hard not to get all excited when we see a new face.” She winked. “If you catch my meaning.”

“I… I don’t think… Uh…” He frowned in confusion. He obviously hadn’t. 

“Oh, that’s quite alright,” Darla said. “I can explain it easier if you’ll connect real quick.” She looked at him expectantly, and there was an awkward silence that stretched into infinity as the woman’s face froze in the horror of misunderstanding. “Honey,” Darla said quietly, “why aren’t you here?”

“Wh-- But… I -- I am,” Clinton said, although he was starting to feel weird. Was he about to wake up? Was none of this real? Darla took a step back as her smile slipped away from her face and everyone in the diner grew quiet and started to stare at him. Slowly but surely, all of them began to look at him in fear, some of them even something close to… revulsion. All the eyes on him were starting to make him feel extremely uncomfortable, and his eyes landed on the door. 

“You’re not,” the woman said. “Where are you? I don’t understand. There’s nothing where you ought to be. Why can’t I talk to you?”

“But… we’re talking right now!” Clinton said, panic creeping into his voice. 

“Not really!” Darla said, and her voice was starting to get a little… double. Like it was melting away. “Oh…” she took a step forward, and Clinton saw something else in her face. Something that was somehow worse than the fear. Pity. “Honey.” She reached out to him and then pulled her hand away as if she was scared of getting burned, or catching whatever she thought he had. “You’re stuck, aren’t you?”

“I -- I mean…”

“Maybe this will help,” Darla said, and then her features became a little blurry, fuzzy, melting together until, in front of him, stood Clinton. Still wearing the flapper dress, holding the pot of coffee, make-up still on point. “I understand, Clinton,” she said, her voice still the same as it was before. “Accidents happen. I’m sure one day you’ll be able to…” The sympathetic smile on his own face was horrifying. “You won’t always be stuck like that.”

“Yeah,” the person identified earlier as Aida now said with Clinton’s face, Clinton’s mouth. “Medical science progresses every day. I am so sorry.” There were nods of agreement from the various Clintons that lined the booths, although several of them still looked scared of him. 

Clinton Blake was mortified, terrified, horrified. He looked between all of them and didn’t have any words to express any of the million thoughts that went through his head. His own face looked at him from every direction, in clothes that made him look out of place everywhere. For a second, he wanted to reach up and touch his own face, to make sure it was still there, but he knew that that was the first step to madness. Besides, he wasn’t even sure he wanted it there at that moment anyway. 

“Clinton?” Darla-Clinton said. “Are you okay? Do you need to sit down? I’m sorry if this is all a bit much.” She put a hand on his arm and he felt his stomach drop out. She was still wearing her nail polish, and that nearly sent him over the edge. He wanted to run. He had to run. “How long have you been like this, Clinton?” she asked.

“I… For as long as I…” he began, and then clamped his mouth shut.

“Your memories too?” Darla said with all the empathy and pity one might reserve for a wounded kitten. Someone at one of the booths, that had seemed very aggravated already, stormed out, and in the airlock, Clinton saw them grow taller, hair and skin colour all disappearing into the grey mass of the Unity. “Do you at least… you know…” Clinton turned back to her, hoping to explain to her that this was all a misunderstanding, that he wasn’t Merillim, but he couldn’t get his mouth to move when he was looking at his own face. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing he could think of. “Are you at least happy with… the face you have?”

Clinton felt his eye twitch. He clenched and unclenched his jaw and he wanted to answer. He wanted to tell her that, sure, he was happy like this. It would allow him to explain that he wasn’t one of the Unity, that he was a human and that he didn’t need to be able to change his face to be happy, but the words weren’t coming. Why weren’t the words coming? Why were his eyes stinging? Why did his throat hurt, like there were words burning a hole through his esophagus? 

“I -- I’m… I don’t… I don’t know…” Clinton mumbled, and his voice cracked. He tasted salt and realized that tears stained his lips. “I’m not… I don’t…”

“I’m so sorry,” Darla said. “At least you can get that much changed, right?” Clinton-Darla said with a reassuring smile. 

“I -- I -- I --” Clinton stammered, his brain stuck in a boot loop, trying to come up with something useful. He looked out the window, as if trying to find a way out, and saw a familiar face, one that wasn’t as horrifyingly familiar as his own, standing in the airlock and then yanking the door open with force. 

“Clinton!” Andromeda said, practically yelling as she ran into the room. She took one look at the room, at everyone around, then at him, and her jaw clenched tight. She waved her hand around. “All of you, whatever you think you’re doing, stop it! Take that face away or whatever!” Petri walked into the room behind her, clearly horrified. Andromeda seemed furious. “I don’t care what you think is going on here, give ‘em some space!” With that, she ran up to Clinton and put her hands on his shoulders. “Are you okay?” she asked, and Clinton felt his lip quiver. He wanted to say something, but still the words wouldn’t come. He should be fine, right? Why wouldn’t he be? Why wasn’t he?

He shook his head. 

“I’m not.”

“Oh, love,” Andy said, and wrapped her arms around him.

Gosh this poor sweetheart.

I just want to say thanks again to the wonderful patrons who are making this story happen. After a whopping eleven chapters have been commissioned in the past month alone, I consider myself very lucky indeed. The patrons will be getting these chapters a lot earlier than they're posted here on scribblehub, so I would like to ask you to think about joining too. It really doesn't take much, and it helps me out so much more than I can say. 

Don't worry, I'm not done with Blake yet ;) Not for a long time. 

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