Dome War
Eternal euphoria

Imagine a smile; one that looks like sunshine and unites the silent beating of humanity’s hidden heart and the loudness of good old fashioned selfish happiness. Put it on an expecting woman and give her the love of her life, the eccentric Mr Harrison and one might end up creating a piece of art finer than marble. Imagine three synchronized heart beats, a symphony so unique and aristocratic compared to the seven billion nine hundred million discorded ones. Imagine two of those heartbeats in one body and one day that body unconscious on a bathroom floor. Subtract the smile when the news of a compromised pregnancy due to a tangled up umbilical cord devastates one heart, ruining a harmony and imagine the tears that follow. Nothing specific- just tears. It is quite simple math actually. What is obtained is a devoted father who has done nothing he is more proud of than the adoration he bathed his family in, having to choose between saving his wife or saving his unborn child. Disappointed? Expected him to have plunged a blade in an infant? Or have let a boulder plummet onto the frail creature’s sternum? Fast forward to the tune of fifteen years and there a man stands at a literal door but figuratively, it is one that never received closure. Why did fake Chuck come to the former Fiona Harrison’s porch, violating the unspoken terms of an unofficial divorce? It had been four hours of enduring cars splashing puddle water on Chuck’s leather wingtips, impatience, bearing the thought of what he would even do to the miscreant once he caught up with him and how any of this was allowed to happen in a world where a homeless woman staring at a glass ball and reciting a fortune cookie is considered magic. Cowering away from revisiting his hall of shame, he entered a local bar to waste his frustrations with the cirrhotic and equally soothing power of a good rum. Simultaneously waking up from his underestimation of liquor themed debauchery and the resultant blackout in a corner were fuzzy memories of what had transpired for time to have flown by so fast. He shot up to a cross legged position and patted his body in the pocket areas and sure enough he found a flash drive- if a flash drive had actual gold in its integrated circuit and laced with nanotech and alloys only found on space shuttles and 3D printing tech. Grabbing his jaw and putting it in place, he stood, staggered a little and made his way to the counter to fulfil his day long trope of expecting strangers to be accountable for his actions. Before the barman could narrate the gory details of a run off the mill clone superiority complex induced beat down, it finally hit him. While drinking, the doorbell chimed. Not caring enough to turn around, he asked the barman to fill him on another, that is, until this enigmatic figure got comfortable on the stool next to our cockeyed protagonist. The cologne on this ‘stranger’ was unmissable, an unreleased custom made musk Chuck’s pharmaceutical company had shelved. He turned to see this strapping fellow and gosh, it was like looking in a mirror; one which was more than capable of making healthy life choices based on his bulk. The wry smile on his smug face did not think twice about getting time off to make way for a face gesture more appropriate for receiving a shiner. He pummelled to the floor, and judging by the throb in his right eye and the buttering on of some crowded adrenaline junkies that had a daily appetite for fisticuffs, he was ready to throw some shade. With the pandemonium in the room, Chuck managed to swipe something from his alternate self’s pockets and turned the tables by swiping a leg and pinning him to the floor. ‘Who are you? Why did you go to Fiona’s’, he asked through clenched bloody teeth. Fake Chuck replied, ’Operation Second Coming is almost complete. Hollow Earth is h…’and a glass bottle shattering on real Chuck’s head, courtesy of the bartender, cut his hearing off from the rest of the exposition.

Thrown onto the curb and stripped of his wallet probably when he was unconscious, what was left on hand was a lifetime supply of being banned from a bar and a flash drive. It was either the sour grapes or hangover kicking in that made him realize that the former was barely an inconvenience and needed to be brushed aside for Chuck to address the elephant in the abandoned street that he swore he saw tumbleweed rolling in. Seeing the engraving ‘Harrison Enterprises’ trademarked on its side and considering that the last company with that same name on electronic billboards throughout the city he knew quite well had always been a pharmaceutical industry for as long as he could remember, he ran to the only building whose name was homonymic to his. Since he had lost his ID card earlier along with his wallet, he was released to see a familiar face, one on his payroll too. In his eyes she was the beautiful and equally expendable Susan Wilkins, the only person tolerant or desperate enough to be the egotistic Chuck Harrison’s personal assistant and the only person not getting overtime but was still at work. Her subservience earned Chuck a key card that unlocked the door to the laboratory. ‘I have work to finish. You can call it a night Ms Wilkins’, he condescended to her. With everyone out of the way, an explanation was long past due so he immediately cut to the chase. The key to making heads or tail of an entire day of gaslighting was in his possession and so was the key hole- the USB port of a Windows XP anachronism. He injected the storage device into the computer and Bon Voyage, for he was to delve out of the eternal euphoria called ignorance!