It must have taken me a month before I finally started to feel comfortable working for the corporation in that strange building. A building I was now living in and not just working at. This gave me a lot of time to watch what was going on around me. Having a balcony really helped in that regard. It wasn’t just the building that was strange, the whole surrounding area was off in a weird way.

The streets weren’t empty, you would see people from time to time walking here or there or a car would drive by and yet it still felt desolate. There were local shops that were still open, and you would always find people in them. Places like the convenience store across the street, the Asian grocery shop or the Jamaican restaurant next to it.

It was like any other part of the city, but the surrounding apartment buildings and offices seemed empty. Again, not completely, I would still people coming to and from them occasionally, but far fewer than there should be. I felt like I was in a movie set, I even rewatched the Truman Show to see if I could distinguish anything from it in the real world. But I don’t think the analogy really fit what I was seeing, so I probably wasn’t in a reality show? I wish I had pictures or video I could include with this to give you a better idea of what I mean.

Despite what was going on in the surrounds, the building itself was full of life. There were many people that worked here, and that parking lot would fill up by nine. We also had delivery trucks at the loading docks coming and going all day long. How could we have that much stuff coming in and out of this place? I started wondering if there were basement levels that I didn’t know about. Maybe the building went down several stories? Who knows? I wasn’t really the exploring type. Anyway, as it turned out, the fifth floor had several dozen people working there not including security and delivery people and they came from all walks of life.

The researcher that I had been assigned to support, did not need that much assistance. Mr. Hendrickson, which is what he insisted that I call him, did not like me much. Which was fine since the feeling was mutual. He just wasn’t Frank. He gave me menial tasks that any lackey could have done for a quarter of what I was getting paid. Counting pills, running quality checks and potency test and the like. Anyone coming out of college could have done this crap. I had a university degree in chemistry from an Ivy League school.

At some point I would have to talk to Sherry about Mr. Hendrickson. Sherry wasn’t just the face of the company, but she was also the point man for HR.

I think the real problem was Mr. Hendrickson already had an assistant. One who was somewhat attractive and had been there longer. The forty-something balding, paunchy man had a nice twenty-something blonde haired and blue eye beauty named Ms. Williams. Yes, I was forced to call her that even thought I was probably older than her by a couple years. She was severe in expression. She wore her fake blonde hair back in a tight bun. She never smiled for me, but practically melted in the presences of her mentor, Mr. Hendrickson.

So, I had a shitty job working for some shitty people. I’m sure this is a situation that many of us are familiar with, right? Luckily, they were not the only people who worked on the fifth floor. There was plenty of others, so I wasn’t a total misfit. I could still make friends and I found a whole group of them.

There were some more complex drugs that were labour intensive. LSD and ecstasy were not easily synthesized and there must have been about ten people in that lab to produce those two drugs alone. Frank worked with two other people. Meth was relatively easy in comparison. About a half dozen people worked in the grow rooms. They were the friendly sort of people and definitely bigger misfits than I was.

I had managed to make friends with a handful of people. We were the lunch table crew, and we were the kings and queens of the lunch hour! As for Frank, I rarely saw him during working hours. The meth lab took odd lunches and breaks that did not really line up with mine. Sometimes Frank would stop by my apartment after work, but usually we met on Saturday nights for dinner at the steakhouse we found when we first got to town. That was how we maintained that friendship.

Usually, I ate my lunch with this guy Jacob. He was the traditional stoner, a mid-twenties white boy with dreadlocks and a permanent smile. He always had a rock shirt on and ripped jeans. I cannot think of a time I hung out with him when he was sober. Hell, I can’t think of a time at work when he was not high! Like me, he also lived on the third floor in one of the reserved apartments. He knew a good deal when he saw one! I suppose it goes without saying that he worked in the grow room.

Next to him at lunch always sat Sheila. She was a pretty, black woman in her early thirties with corn rows who could not have been more different than Jacob, yet they got along well enough to be work friends. She lived somewhere else in town, but she did not talk much about her personal life, unless she was complaining about her boyfriend. She had no problem producing the drugs but would never take one herself. I had to say I had a lot of respect for that. On the other hand, Jacob had killer weed, so to each their own, I guess!

Next to Sheila always sat Jaz. That was his seat, and he would stare down anyone else who took it. It was funny how everyone always sat at the same table in the same arrangement at every lunch hour. Of course, I found myself doing the same thing, so I guess if you can’t beat them join them. Am I right? I have no idea what his real name was, everyone just called him Jaz and he never told me anything different. He was a short half black, half Hispanic man closer to his mid-thirties who wished he was Sheila’s boyfriend, but that unfortunately was never going to happen. She had clearly put him in the friend zone, and he was never getting out. He kept a neatly trimmed beard, I mean not a hair was out of place and he kept it short, he was meticulous about it. It was that kind of attention to detail that earned him a spot in the meth lab as one of Frank’s assistants. He seemed to like Frank and the company. Yet he was always working on one money making scheme or another.

I liked and respected Jaz, he made half the salary I did which was too bad since he was a good worker and smart as hell. Everyone else at the table made less than that. He was quite the character and he had a higher pitch voice than you might have expected from him, similar to Mike Tyson.

Speaking of Tyson, there was another woman at our table called Tammy Tyson. A meek skinny little thing that Jacob like to think of as his girlfriend, but she was listless and I think she only hung around with him because he had awesome weed. She lived in some horrible apartment a few blocks away with a bunch of cats. However, she could often be found hitting a bong in Jacob’s apartment and staring blankly, which seemed to be her default mode. She also worked in the grow room. What a surprise, right?

The sixth man at our six-seat table was Dominic. His family was originally from the Caribbean, but they had clearly mixed with white people once they came to America. Dominic was now the second generation born in Chicago. He was also the strangest one by far and I got into some of the weirdest conversations with him. Sometimes about science, sometimes about sex (Dominic’s favourite subject) and sometimes about stupid shit. He actually worked down on the second floor, but came up to our floor to have lunch and hang out during breaks. He told me that the people in the gen lab were ‘boring as shit!’ Dominic changed girlfriends more often that most people changed their underwear, which I really hope is every day!

It was after one of these strange conversations with Dominic, that I had to come back to my apartment. I came in through the door, immediately put the Misfit on the media center and cranked it nice and loud. I went out to the small glass lined balcony for a breath of fresh air. I took out my vape and started puffing. I looked up at the vanilla sky, which was an improvement over the usual smog color, and I recalled what happened.

Dominic and I were having last break alone. It was not unusual for a Wednesday. We often planned our breaks, so it was just the two of us hanging out. We sat at the usual table next to the glass windows that overlooked the parking lot. From the fifth floor I could look down on Frank’s Tesla and imagine large seagulls shitting all over it. That always amused me a little. We puffed idly on our vapes and talked distractedly for a while about Dominic’s latest girlfriend.

“Say, JR,” Dominic asked changing the subject. “You went to school, right?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I’ve got a chemistry degree from Princeton.”

“That’s great. I got one in Biology,” he replied. “University of Chicago, of course. Hometown boy, you know.”

“I hear you,” I said nodding.

“So, you and I,” Dominic said. “We must be the same age, right?”

“Sure, I guess,” I shrugged. I had no idea how old he was.

“Well, I’m twenty-seven,” he told me before turning it around on me. “How about you? How old are you?”

It was such an innocent questioned. Without thinking, I shrugged and said. “I’m not sure.”

“Not sure!?” He said with a screwed up look on his face. “What do you mean by that? You don’t know how old you are?”

“I don’t know, I never thought about it,” which was really weird wasn’t it? I mean, I must have celebrated at some point, right? Why hadn’t I thought of it until just now?

“Okay,” he said throwing up his hands. “That answer was even stranger than the last one bro!”

He was right. I was starting to feel uneasy about it.

“Okay, when is your birthday?” I could tell now that Dominic thought I was trying to be funny. He looked at me with a smirk that suggested he did not quite believe me.

The problem was I could not answer that question either. I thought I might be born sometime in the summer. But I could not recall the exact date. Was it June or July? The twenty-third sounded familiar, or was it? I confessed that I did not know.

Finally, Dominic laughed. “Bullshit dude! You’re messing with me now, you must be!?”

My expression was totally straight. I felt lost and to myself more than Dominic I said. “I really can’t remember. This is so strange.”

Dominic got serious and stared me in the eye trying to figure something out. “Your high right now, aren’t you!?”

I was not. I told him so.

“What color is the sky?” He said pointing out the window.

I looked out and up. “Vanilla.”

“Dude you must be high!” He proclaimed. “Those clouds are white!”

“What’s the difference?” I questioned.

“The difference is whether you’re high or not!” Dominic laughed. Then he asked. “Alright then where were you born?”

That was easy. As far as I could remember it was… “California which I guess is in Cascadia now.”

“Alright, that’s a start. You know where you were born at least,” he said. “So, what does your birth certificate say?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “It’s back at my apartment.”

“Alright well go back to your apartment after work and look at it,” he said. “And all will be revealed!”

Break was over by then and Dominic left me sitting there sitting listlessly and staring out the window. I was not high, was I? I had not taken anything that day I never did at work or before. I might go over the Jacob’s after work, but I would never get high at work. So, what was going on? Why did I feel so strange? Why couldn’t I recall certain basic facts about myself? None of this was making any sense. Have you ever had that happen? It’s strange feeling, isn’t it? Is this what it’s like to have Alzheimer’s?

I thought about this the rest of the day. In fact, I could not think about anything else that afternoon. Even while I stood on the balcony looking up at the vanilla sky, I could not stop thinking about it.

I finished smoking. I came inside and went to the bedroom. In the top draw of my night stand I kept it. It was the long form document, which was all I had. It had been creased and worn over time. When I opened it up and read it, I found that the line that had my birthday had been creased so badly and worn over time that I could not make it out.

I texted my problem to Frank. He was just getting off work. He phoned my back. “What the hell JR is this some kind of joke?”

“I’m serious,” I said. I was starting to become alarmed at this gap in my memory. I was right about where I was born. It was a California birth certificate, Orange County. “I can’t remember what day or year I was born!?”

“I thought you were born August forth?” Frank questioned.

“That’s the former president’s birthday,” I stated.

“What the black guy?”

“Yeah,” I was not sure who the current president was. Whoever it was I was pretty sure I had voted for them. Some woman, I think!?

“Damn,” Frank said. “I think you might be right. Oh well, I wish I could have been more help to you.”

He hung up.

I went over to Jacob’s to get high. I need to calm my mind down somehow! I told him my problem.

“Dude that’s totally messed up!?” He proclaimed after hitting the bong, he handed it to me.

I took a deep inhale. I spit the smoke out saying. “I know! What do I do man? I’m starting to doubt my own existence!”

“Call you mom, man!” He said. “Moms always know!”

“I can’t,” I replied. “She’s dead.”

“Then call you father.”

“Haven’t talked to him in a while,” I said. “Besides I don’t want to call him up and ask him such a stupid question.”

“You got any brothers or sisters?” Jacob questioned.

“I don’t know,” I said. Was I an only child or were there others? My head felt like it was going to explore.

“Wow!” Jacob said and just stared at me for a second. I handed him back his bong. He looked at it and shook his head. “I knew this new strain was good, but that’s it man! I gotta cut you off!”

“New strain!?” I exclaimed. I got up and moved back from the table we had been sitting at. I started pacing around that glass monstrosity he called a dining room table “What the hell have you been giving me!?”

“Relax!” he said. He could not stop laughing long enough to make it sound effective. When he caught his breath back again, he added. “It’s just something I’ve been playing around with at work. They let us take samples home.”

I was feeling very paranoid, my skin was crawling, but I didn’t even feel like I was in my own skin! The sensation was bizarre to say the least.

“All I know is, I’m starving,” he stated. “Let go up to the café and get something to eat.”

“I thought it was a restaurant?”

“Whatever, dude,” he replied, his eyes half lidded. “All I know is we get an employee discount!”

“Seriously!?” I asked. I kept thinking, why didn’t anybody tell me these things sooner!?

The weed was too good. Everything look like it was painted on a glass surface. The walls of the hallway on our apartment level appeared as a darker mustard yellow compared to the much lighter bright yellow, they had been earlier that day. I had to touch the walls of the elevator to make sure it was real.

The restaurant was open at four, but it must have been about six when we got there. The place was half full which Jacob assured me meant it was a slow night. It was only a Wednesday evening after all.

We were greeted at the front desk by none other than Jaz dressed in a black suit and tie. He had another waiter with him whom I think I recognized from accounting in the front office.

“Oh, for Christ sakes Jacob,” Jaz said with a look of serious annoyance. In a hushed tone he said to him. “How many times have I told you not to show up here high!?”

Jacob shrugged a leaned against the desk. “I don’t know man. Not enough apparently!”

“Okay this is the last time I seat you,” Jaz said furious. “Next time you can have wings at that shitty bar down the street because you will not be getting in here high again!”

I was still looking from Jaz to Jacob and back again in disbelief. I finally managed to blurt out. “What the fuck Jaz!?”

“What!?” He replied confused.

“You work here at the Grasshopper!?” I pointed out. “You got a good job the next floor up!?”

“I moonlight here couple of days a week,” he said with a shrug. “I like to pick up shifts for extra cash. A lot of us do. You see, unlike you, I have a plan to get out of here one day and do my own thing.”

“I don’t need to get out of here,” I said. “I make a quarter million a year.”

“What the fuck JR!?” Jaz growled in a low voice. He lowered his voice because people were starting to stare at us. “You just started here!? How the hell do you make that kind of money!?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, that’s just what they offered me.”

Jacob pointed at me. He looked suddenly serious and said. “Dude, you are buying tonight!”

Sure, why not, it’s not like any of this is real anyway! I thought to myself. Fuck! What was going on here!? I just put my AR glasses on and said to myself fuck it, I’m going to pretend this whole dinner is a video game!