Uri O22 wanted to think about nothing, and yet, he thought about everything.

He wanted to be drunk, empty. He wanted to ignore what was happening to him, to think that it was only a dream, a nightmare that would vanish upon waking up on the brink of an alcoholic coma. He wanted to sedate himself with the strongest ferments that nature offered to cross the borders of consciousness; right as the old shamans had done in the past; just like some did in the nightclubs he frequented in the present.

He looked in the mirror and couldn’t believe what was happening to him.

But the dark circles around his eyes were not lying, neither the paleness of his face, nor the empty blisters of sedatives in the garbage can, or the unanswered messages that a couple of close lady friends, concerned about his health, had left on the phone, nor the congratulations of his upstairs and downstairs neighbors for the diminished noises.

The twenty-four hours after discovering his powers had been an ordeal. Uri’s memory had become a puzzle of a thousand pieces, all scrambled; starting with such silly things as not remembering if he had shaved or not.

“Now you and I are one entity,” his brother had told him, using his own mouth.

Uri deduced he had become Juzo sometime between the confrontation with the android and those mercenaries in the park and his return to life in the hospital when he was unconscious. That had to be the explanation for the terrible headaches he suffered and the excess static energy that had forced him to change the fuses in the loft twice and activate the switches using wooden rods.

And he stirred so much in his head that he changed those questions for only one: what drug had he used to have such a dreamlike ride?

However, the hole in the ceiling and his burned pants were proof that imagination and insanity were excluded from reality.

On Friday afternoon, disturbed, he took the car keys ready to go out for a ride to clear his mind up. He shook his head, put down the keys, and walked out. Walking was his favorite routine for exorcising his demons, and now, more than ever, he needed to implement it.

Within a few blocks, he realized that his feet had gone on automatic pilot and had been led to the gates of Homam Enterprises. His unconscious was wise. He needed to take care of something despite his condition, and maybe picking up his duties could help him clear up.

Raising his head to the top of the building, where the late afternoon sun painted the mirrored windows a beautiful orange, he took a deep breath and opened the glass doors. He walked into the nearly deserted lobby—by that time, everyone had gone home—so only the security guard and a few late-leaving employees could see him entering without his usual ‘make way for the ruler of the world’ attitude. A pale imitation of what he had been a few days ago.

As if to calm an imaginary fever, he dipped his hand into a decorative fountain and moistened his forehead; went to the elevators, and suddenly:

“Good afternoon, Mr. O22.” That damn synthesized voice.

With goosebumps and the terror sinking his heart, he turned to find a huge red eye gleaming at his side. How had the android gotten so close to him without hearing it coming? Was his mind so thousands of miles away that he hadn’t realized it?

“It is good to see you in good condition again,” said the Cyclops. “I wish you a speedy recovery.”

It’s not Broga. It’s not Broga, he had to remind himself, and looked at the blue jumpsuit the android wore, and the metal plate on his chest that identified him as 9772.TIM. He was one of the company’s automatons; Uri himself had bought it a year ago.

“Thanks, Tim,” he said, trying to behave, and hurriedly climbed into one of the elevators.

Back in his office, Uri took a seat in front of his computer and remained motionless without lifting a finger. Minutes passed, his heartbeat returned to normal, he forgot the jump scare with the android, and the emptiness that was devouring his mind took hold of it once again.

“And what did you expect?”

He smelled delicious coffee. He looked down, found a half-drunk cup of coffee on his desk, and someone told him: “… And just today I stayed up late to finish this summary of accounts—as if I knew you’d come!”

He looked up, and there was Rita, wearing a radiant green jumpsuit and a matching green beret, all decked out in sparkling costume jewelry. At what point had she entered? When had she left the coffee there? Had he been drinking it? Apparently so, his mouth tasted like coffee.

“I already warned you,” said a young man with glasses. “It’s too early for you to come back.”

With the tiredness marked on his face, Uri looked at his always neat friend Trevor Homam at the office door. At what point had Trevor told him it was too early to come back? Had they spoken about it on the phone?

Wait! When was Rita gone? He looked for the coffee. The cup was not there anymore.

Trevor raised his eyebrows. “Is something wrong with you besides being in another galaxy? Go home.”

“I haven’t been here in almost two weeks; work’s piling up,” Uri replied.

“Two weeks? What are you talking about?” Trevor was puzzled. “You were here yesterday, don’t you remember? We talked about Morris & Co. and you told me there’s a new Cyclops model that flies,” he said, and when Uri seemed not to remember, he continued, “You asked me for the record of the corporations that worked as military contractors for the last thirty years.” Uri’s expression was still blank. “Hey, you really don’t remember, do you?”

Uri chuckled; he didn’t know whether to lie and say yes, or be honest and say no, or ask Trevor about that record of corporations they allegedly talked about. Or had he already seen it himself, just didn’t remember it?

“We spent the entire afternoon looking at the companies we have worked with, and the names of the scientific and military projects in which we have been involved, one by one,” Trevor added. Answer granted. “When we finished, you said you just wasted your time. You didn’t apologize for making me waste mine, by the way. Then you walked home.”

Uri’s face was still an empty tapestry.

“Uri, why don’t you talk to Sarah? You are obviously not well.”

“I do not want to bother her.”

“Uri, have some rest, please.”

Giving up, Uri shut down his computer and left.

It was still a couple of hours until the afternoon turned into night, and the sun was still there, stretching its long nails between the skyscrapers, scratching Uri’s eyes. Bad time to have forgotten his dark glasses.

He walked along the avenue, staying under the shade of the buildings. He slammed his shoulder against someone, ignored the reproach, continued, and almost crossed the street before the pedestrian traffic light gave him the right to pass. A horn forced him to snap out. He apologized to no one and moved on. Suddenly, his cell phone chimed. Was it Rita calling to let him know he had forgotten something? Car keys, maybe? No, he hadn’t come by car, he’d come walking. And Rita? Had he seen her today?

“What?” he answered the call reluctantly.

“Uri, Uri!” he heard someone say on the other side.

Uri recognized the voice. He took a deep breath and greeted him in a gentler tone. “Lisandro, hi.”

“I’m finishing my karate classes. I’m going to B-Crush tonight. See you there?”

“I don’t think I’ll go.”

“Great, it will be tomorrow then!” Lisandro Carinae decreed. “With the boys, we want to give you a welcome party to the world of the living.”

“Good, good; I’ll be there,” Uri said, knowing in advance he wouldn’t go; he didn’t want to know anything about anyone, much less that spoiled little brat and his ass-kissing group. Then he excused himself and cut off.

And as he walked, memories of him gradually came to mind, sitting in front of a monitor, with Trevor by his side, looking at endless records of contracts and financial operations, along with photographs of the artifacts and facilities built during that period.

Damn! So that had happened!

He sighed, and again, he didn’t know what to feel, whether disappointment at not having found anything to help him clarify the panorama of his situation, or terror because he could no longer trust his own memory.

Ruben, the building’s caretaker, was smoking outside at the entrance when he saw Uri walk up.

“Hey, princess, you’ve just recovered from that stroke,” he told him. “Why don’t you call for a cab instead of coming like this, doing your best impersonation of the way those automatons walk?”

But Uri didn’t answer him, didn’t even seem to realize he had just spoken to him; Uri walked past him, greeted him almost automatically, entered the building, and continued down the hall to the elevators.

“A fool,” Ruben said and took a drag on his cigarette. “Poor kid.”

Uri thought he just heard Ruben speaking to him. Wait! It was Ruben? Or it was the other caretaker, the boring one? Which one of them was on duty today? Well, it didn’t matter now; he was in the elevator, and he wouldn’t go back just to see who had spoken to him.

Inside the cubicle, he looked down to not see himself reflected in the mirrors. He ran his hand over his head, feeling his hair, and rubbed his face. Yes, his hair was messy, and there was his stubble. Didn’t he shave that morning? Or did his beard grow extremely fast? As long as he looked like Juzo, he should evade all mirrors. He was terrified to see him talking to himself, not because of what he could say, but because it was making him feel he was losing it.

He arrived on the twelfth floor. It took him a while to enter the right code on his door’s electronic lock; using a wooden pencil he’d left by the door. He got into his loft. In the dark, he took off his coat, threw it on a chair, and unbuttoned the first buttons of his shirt.

He heard a muffled thump. Someone was knocking on the door. Who the hell—? His neighbor, Mr. Quintana, perhaps? In the years he’d been living there, Mr. Quintana had knocked on the door only once, and it had been to ask him to turn down the music.

He looked through the peephole, and the shock of the unexpected threw him back.