Back when the internet was a thing, Jean had seen a picture of what seemed like a random pile of junk. The picture was captioned “Name one thing in this photo”. The photo didn’t look doctored, and everything looked like it must be something, but the more you looked, the more you realized that there was nothing to name. There was nothing even remotely recognizable.

Looking at the person with the clipboard felt the same. The shape, at first glance, looked humanoid, until you realized there was no recognizable features. There was movement and angles and color, but nothing to call an arm, or head or even limb. The being was a kaleidoscope of rejected interpretations of the concept of human.

But they were holding a clipboard.

They were holding a clipboard and felt… real?

Jean didn’t remember them, and looking at them felt weird, as though they were partly made of white-noise. Yet, they were more solid than anything Jean had imagined up until now. He had no idea how to feel about this, but decided it was best to just go with the flow and assume things would be fine.

“So, um.” Jean was looking around. Beside the… clipboard person, he didn’t remember the dock or the harbor either. They weren’t the forgotten context of a memory unexpectedly coloring or twisting some fantasy scenario. That could happen, and it could be weird. They were usually vivid flashes of sight or sound that scrambled his thoughts. This was different, this felt more than vivid. There was no scenario here, he wasn’t just pretending, performing for an audience of self. It was new, unknown, and terrifying in an awesome kind of way.

“Would it be weird if I asked what was going on?” Jean asked.

“Probably not too weird to ask. Are you new? You park like you’re new.” The being said.

“Is it parking if it’s a boat?” Sam asked, and Jean nearly shat himself. Now Sam for sure was not real. And the being didn’t react to his question, so that probably remained true. He didn’t mean to have Sam to speak up, but he’d written enough lines for the guy that this was exactly the kind of context bleed he’d come to expect from his scenarios. But now they were in new territory, and Jean’s old boundaries of reason and sanity had clearly spread a bit thin.

Ignoring Sam, Jean considered the question. “New here I guess? I’m pretty sure I’m actually dead, or imaginary, or a god, and I’m not wholly convinced there’s a difference. But nothing looks familiar. I mean... That mostly looks like a dock. And Those look like modern-ish buildings back behind you. But I’m pretty sure I’ve never been here before. And if I’m honest, I’m not entirely sure what you are. Make that, I’m entirely sure I don’t know what you are. And I’m hearing myself say that, and I realize its an awful thing to say. I just cannot figure out a better way to ask. “

“You know what? It’s the strangest thing.” the Lovecraft-ian horror said. “I can’t find your cultural translator anywhere? Your speech is fine, but your body is a mess. Unpleasant to look at, and that is not what we want. For the all of me, I can not figure out what you’re sailing on, but I hate it. It’s like the only culture you’re translating is ‘conversation’, and it’s not very good. Is there a reason you’re like this?”

”Wow.” Jean felt judged, and inexplicably on the spot. “No, I- What the fuck is even happening? I’m not even sure we’re not the same person, so. Ya wanna maybe drop the accusations and tell me how I can figure out if any of this is real? You are exactly as judge-y as everyone else I’ve ever met with a clipboard.”

“Ooh, okay, clipboard. I gotcha. You’re real new then huh? Well that’s all right, we can clipboard you all right.” The things said, before shouting over their shoulder, “Georgie, we got one that sees the clipboard. Sooner is better, I can’t look at it for another moment.”

Jean was now pretty sure he’d just gone completely delirious. He heard maniacal giggling coming in response from a boat house back near the shore.

“I’m pretty sure it’s called docking” Sam said. Jean Looked down at his hand and noticed He was doing a hand puppet, with his thumb as the lower lip. That was an old game from his early scenes, before he had a lot of practice playing multiple perspectives.

What began as a snort of laughter became a scream of pain as a giant beam of light crashed down on Jean and his ship from the heavens. It was intense, and completely inexplicable, but then it was over.

It was impossible to say how long it went on, tho it seemed like just a moment. Jean felt dizzy and trapped. He swayed and stumbled on his feet blinded by the light. Even his sense of time was shifting as his attention focused down into the moment, toward his body. He felt a bit like he’d lost touch with something.

His consciousness had been built up by chance over eons. Washed up on the shores of forgotten moments. Then instinctively, naturally, Jean had started to piece things together. Then he told himself stories. Stories of what was, then stories of what could be. Stories of what if. His memories, when not lost completely, were crisp, unchanging. Meaningless, at first. He’d had no insight into his memories. No connection to his past. Even reliving memories was like playing a movie for no audience. He reenacted memories, but didn’t experience them. And again and again, his memories told him why.

He had died.

And his death had been so… randomly unexpected. He wasn’t wholly surprised that he’d lived to see an apocalypse. He’d had no confusion about his mortality, and even before the Swarm destroyed the world, the apocalypse clock was constantly creeping toward midnight. The rest tho? He refused to accept that he’d died while wearing a tinfoil hat. He could only hope his body was never found.

It was from this judgment of his own death that his sense of self grew.

It was a slow growth from this seed, not just connecting his shattered past, but valuing it, evaluating it. Then experimenting with it. He Created stories to explore his past, then to explain it. But in the end, he wasn’t alive. He was the memory of Jean playing with a Jean doll. But the events of the last few minutes were changing that. There was still a degree of weighing his reactions. But they were reactions. More than anything he had tried before, this had begun to ground his perspective in the moment, and the completely unanticipated pain that scourged him, brought the here and now into stark clarity. A shock of adrenaline screamed through him and wiped away any disassociation with his body.

From where he’d fallen to his knees, Jean looked up. His ship was a lot smaller. It looked futuristic, with a sleek black hull, but with a polished wooden deck and one sail and boom. Was it a schooner? A Skimmer? He honestly had no idea. It also had a motor on the back and high-tech navigation equipment. He was honestly a bit floored, because he was intimately familiar with every inch of his home. Board or bolder, it was his “Mindscape”. It was his own fucking imagination, how the hell had it been changed to be unfamiliar?

“You saw the clipboard right? What did you even do to yourself? Somehow you managed to interface conversational language directly without going through any other translations.” A man, or what now looked like a man, stood next to Jean holding a clipboard. No more eldritch horror of uncertain familiarity. He just looked like some well dressed guy. He reminded him a bit of Sam, sharing his tanned-brown complexion and slightly effeminate demeanor, but the similarities ended there. For one, this guy was bald and two: he had style.

That made Jean looked around confused. Before, everything had kind of been generic looking, possessing the same quality of white-noise uncertainty that had masked clipboard dude.

“Hey, what’s your name?” Jean croaked as he stood back up, looking over to see how the town had altered.

Like the shipyard and the man with the clipboard, the town had been a mosaic of the right pieces and shapes, appearing normal only from a passing glance. Now, it looked like any coastal city, except it didn’t really have shipping yards. He supposed it was more of a marina. There was a hill overlooking the bay, and a large stone building sat atop it like the cross between a government building, and a castle. He was absolutely sure it was or had a bar, but he didn’t know how he knew.

The man smiled but looked reproachful “A little rude to ask my name without giving yours. But I suppose I don’t mind. My name is George.”

“Uh, sorry George. I’m Jean. Why does everything looks normal now? And what the fuck was that pain?” Jean asked, trying to decide if it had been worth it to stand up.

“Well, You got lucky. Clipboard was a bug we found and turned into a tool. It sort of translates experiences. That’s why, as you’re looking around everything makes way more sense, and I don’t feel like running away screaming from some monster here to swallow my souls. There’s a lot that goes into the program, but that’s the gist. If you come ashore we can get you sorted out, so off you come.” “Oh, uh, sure.” Jean shrugged and hopped over to the dock with more ease than he probably had any right to. In this case, the imaginary practice seemed to pay off. I thought George was the other guys name.” “George is a common name, was that not obvious in your translation? That’s what the pain was, we updated your cultural translator. This community is made up by people from all kinds of realities. If we saw each other in our natural states, we might not even recognize each other as living beings, let alone as persons. I might see you as a reality-spanning, unchanging cloud; or I might come across as the concept of noxious.

”It all depends on our perspectives, and how individual complexities developed in our respective environments. Georgie figured out a way to use the ‘sense-of-self’ you feel under the Warden System to ‘translate’ your perceptions into something more normal. You must be careful using it tho, it’s all open source, so a lot of people have worked on it. Still, it’s mostly a passion project for old Georgie.”

The fact that George was using air quotes just made the entire concept all the more confusing.

Jean pursed his lips in thought. “There’s this practice in my world called improv. The idea is that people get together to create a story together. They rely on each other to play along, to make things go smoother. It’s expected that the actors will ‘yes and’ each other.”

“’Yes and’ just means, if one actor sets up a scene, the other actors will all try to reinforce that same scene. I always thought of it as a “go with the flow” sort of mentality, and tried to live like that. In a lot of ways it’s how I tried to live, for better or worse.

“And I want to do that here. No rabbit holes, no breaking the illusion, just smile and nod. But I got to know. What do you see when I give you air quotes?”

Of all things, George rolled his eyes. “Well, I see you raise your hands and do sort of a bunny ear thing with your fingers. Just like I raised my hands and did bunny ear things with my fingers.”

“Okay, I get that that’s how I perceive it-” Jean began. “Look I’m going to try something” George interrupted. “There’s an explanation that works about two thirds of the time. Could you describe sight, or color, to someone born blind? What if you were deaf? You, a man who born blind, have asked someone born deaf, to explain sight. We don’t have the frames of reference to interact. Thankfully, we found the clipboard bug. Well George did, other George. Georgie, that is. With a little AI assisted empathy can take your sense of self and translate the alien to the average. Now tell me you understand.” “Maybe?” “Look, you don’t really have to think about it that much. Mostly you just live your life, not thinking about the fact that everything around you is metaphor. That’s not really new anyway. Occasionally incongruities pop up. If that happens, if things stop making sense, slow down and see if you can’t figure out what’s sticking out. Then beat it with a hammer till it stops fucking shit up, because it probably wants to eat you.”

"What?”

“Just kidding, but ya know, do be careful. Sometimes people use this metaphor’s shadow to hide all kinds of things. Anyway, we can discuss this more in a bit, but now that we’ve overcome the language barrier so completely, it’s time for paperwork.”

“Oh I get it, we’re not in not purgatory, we’re in hell!” Sam Chimed in.