I wake up and know exactly where I am. This is extremely disconcerting, maybe the second-most disconcerting thing I can remember after that time I woke up and was somewhere I knew nothing about. Fortunately, or rather, unfortunately then but more fortunate in hindsight, that got old quickly. It's almost enchanting to travel the world with no destination. Though it kind of defeats the freedom and purpose of nomadism to be forced into it...? Anyway, I'm not about to make another lifelong adjustment and lose out on free airfare. I mean, I could adjust if I wanted. Man is infinitely adaptable, or so Man says—personally, I say Man can burn in hell, capitalizing his own name, telling himself he's infinitely adaptable (doubt it)—but I refuse. In fact I've just had an idea, or at least become aware of an idea I've already had: I should just go back to sleep, eke out another wink and hop once more aboard the Somnambulant Speedway. This could be a vivid nightmare. The dream logic would make more sense that way. But now that I say it, there's a tugging at the edge of my perception. Why have I been cogitating so cogently? Why did I just use alliteration? I didn't find it amusing, did I? Oh...I see now. There's a recognition of a new presence in my psyche. You. Usually when I say the word "you" I'm talking to myself and, for some reason, the first person feels distasteful. I could be admonishing myself, giving advice, or rarely, trying to cheer myself up. Now, though, I can't shake the sense of otherness off of the word. Someone else is in my mind. It's you, then, tapping into my conscious experience. I can't believe I didn't notice until now, but to be fair, I've been a little busy wrapped up in the mentropic spiral of this feeling (that I know exactly where I am), so I had already run through my opening narration, which I'll admit I often do for my own enjoyment; I've convinced myself it's to take inventory of where I am and how I'm feeling, but to tell you a secret, I like the sound of my own inner monologue. So yes, the reason I noticed you is because I realized I've gotten into acronymic territory (the Somnambulant Speedway) with someone who doesn't even know what the hell is going on. I apologize. If I were the spiteful kind—one to survive something harrowing and refuse to help, or even sabotage, others undergoing the same thing, just to give voice to my bitterness, resentment, and hurt—I would tell you to get fucked! You think just hearing about my sleep schedule is confusing? Try scrawling out three different timetables on the back of your hand with ink from a shack that would have smelled better with a dead body hidden under it. Terrible. The smell was so bad I think, in that case, practice somehow made less perfect. Anyway, I'll give the spiel. Fair warning: it's a bit rusty. In developed nations they look at you first with detached sympathy; they can take their pick of unmeasurable human tragedy from all over the world, thanks to the news cycle and whatnot, so they're a bit dulled. Their diets also tend to be really bad. Then they transition into what might seem like different reactions depending on their outward group loyalties (civic, religious, cultural), but all boil down to the realization that you have some abnormality in your brain structure and you need to be removed from their vicinity immediately. Then you need to either run away or, as I did towards the end of my time trying to explain my "condition," let the authorities come and take you away, knowing you'll be given a bed eventually. In less developed nations things become more interesting, because there's no need to manufacture this dilemma about the weight of your privilege, on the global stage, compared with your complete lack of influence on your country's policies and activities, on the global stage, because all the world is a (global) stage. Ironically enough, like everything else, it would probably be an easier job in less developed nations; they still have manufacturing sectors. Still, because you've had to listen to me thus far, I'm going to assume you don't have the ability to harm me. Unless you're a massive masochist. So basically, for as long as I can remember, I've woken up in a different place than where I fell asleep. (From my talking about "what I can remember," I hope it's obvious I don't know an event that could have caused this. Saying "my birth" seems useless. I'm tempted to say my bed-hopping couldn't have begun until I was old enough to survive on my own; if a baby teleports out of its crib, it's not going to have a good time. That's trying to apply logic to the illogical, though. Maybe whenever I fall asleep I wake up somewhere else, but if I'm wearing a diaper, it's changed and if I'm starving, I'm fed. Could be worth testing). And yes, I've tested. Meditation doesn't work. I mean, it doesn't trigger the effect. It doesn't make me feel very calm either, but that's a separate issue. To wake up somewhere new, I have to properly fall asleep. And while I can't confirm this, I've inferred that I won't wake up somewhere about to be destroyed. I'm still here, after all. (If you can't tell: that's become my one assumption from which to work backwards on everything). Otherwise, I'm as stumped as you. Probably more stumped, really, because you can sleep on the problem. That preamble out of the way...I'm not sure. I say "that X out of the way," a lot, but it's essentially a signal for some less conscious aspect of my mind to supply the next sequence of thoughts I'm expecting. It hasn't worked yet, so I'm stalling for time—oh yeah, I have it now. Running through this nonsense almost lost me the feeling—but this all started when I got a feeling that I know exactly where I am. Exactly. Weird that I homed in on that the instant I woke up. That feels more like a considered conclusion to me than an intuition. As in: I would need to uncover the details of my imaginings and surroundings, and then compare them on top of that, right? I don't know. I've just woken up. My internal clock is off by an average of six hours. And unless I can square the probabilistic impossibility that my working memory (not very good) and the number of places I would wake up (billions) have coincided, it seems like the anti-pattern around which I've structured my whole life is collapsing.

Meanwhile, the building is collapsing.

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