VALERY KONINGSBRUGGE

"I've finally met you. I knew you were out there somewhere. I just didn't know where."

The man's face drifts within the visor, like a mirror in the gloom. The neon lights buzzed around him, operational but failing. He smirks but his thin line of lips are molded by bereavement.

And then I realise why I feel like I've been conflating my memories with another's. Why I freeze up when playing my memories. Because there is a physical copy of myself working at the underwater station I regularly visit.

I fomented, "You're not fucking me! He who wears this face, reveal yourself or I will have to be crude."

"'You're not fucking' - HAHAHAHAAAAA!" He is hysterical, but I bear with him for his explanation. It is what is sure to happen when you spend your days in a pharmacy. The drugs loosen your head and isolate you from reality. "Choose - heehee - your words carefully next time you speak."

"What do you mean by that?"

"It means what it means! You spoke like a Floater call girl. 'No way you're fucking me!' Always complaining even though they'll get their due money."

I was surprised he was expressing this with such care through the microphone built into the Iko suit which usually made you sound like you were on your death throes.

"That is not what I meant!" I replied with frustration over humiliation.

"Then say what you mean!" he hurried. He crashed his fist into the counter away from Jennifer, meaning business.

"You know what I mean. I mean - do you not see our uncanny likeness?"

"I see it. That is what I meant by 'I've finally met you'."

"You mean, you really are me?" I questioned. He nodded as confirmation. I looked down at a catalogue on a counter stand which brought vicarious pleasures in cheap medication. This was to avoid his glare. Or was it my glare? "Then take off your Iko suit and reveal your face. Prove to me, we are the same."

"Why?" he asked. "You are looking directly at my face. My eyes. My nose. My mouth. You know well enough that I am you, and you are me. It is also freezing cold without the Iko suit, so maybe we can take a raincheck on that. And we are most certainly not the same. We live different lives. I have lived more than one. I have a different personality, belief, ideology, dream, nightmare. And I hail from a different world."

"Aha, so you are like the old man that tracks me down like a killer whale. And the girl I have brought to you to save. Does that mean you are a Compeller as well?"

He doesn't get the moment to answer because the alarm for the automatic door sounds and I hear the door whoosh open and slide close. The old man is here.

His footsteps are trying to be quiet but they cannot escape being unheard. I turn to my older self.

I whispered to him, "Do you have anything for the girl? She suffers from the cold." He slightly nods and climbs over the counter quickly. He is quite spry for an older me.

I carry Jennifer in my arms again and we sneak over to the corner of the first aisle on the right. The old man approaches from the left.

The single noise that forms in the silence that follows is the sound of the buzzing fluorescent lights. It harmonises with the swirling water that signifies the old man's position in the pharmacy layout.

I have to control my breathing and my balance as I step to the edge of the next aisle. Old me follows, keeping watch of any movement on the other side of the pharmacy. I peep out from the aisle and catch a glimpse of the old man's weapon.

A trident, fit for a psychopath. I reel back to cover. Me and my older self's bulky Iko suits huddle against the cover, there being not enough space for the two of us. He might spot a hint of our suits and we would be done for.

Then the automatic doors opened once again, a nail-biting interruption into the silence that cut the air.

"Val baby, all of the Floater guards are dead out there!" A woman's voice and I suspected the vocabulary of a Floater whore, but only one of them this time. "It's horrible!" Her high heels rattled against the glass floor. A school of fish were swimming below us, accompanying the Floater lady to the counter.

The fishes glowed with the progression of excitement with a blonde light which filled the room. It was enough of a distraction to get us to the third aisle where Jennifer's medicine would be.

I left my older self to search the shelves for the remedy as I stood on watchout duty. I didn't know what to do if I confronted him again. Maybe expel the truth that I was merely trying to save the girl, not hurt her.

"Val baby, you know our decision to elope. We talked about it yesterday. I think we should leave now - "

The flowing water had disappeared for a while, but now it returned as an acute noise, cutting off the working girl from her words and even worse, cutting her head from her body.

The school of fish simultaneously switched to a red shine which shone throughout every crevasse in the pharmacy.

My older self tapped me on the shoulder which nearly made me jump.

"I've got it," he murmured, "the remedy, I've got it." He held up a tube of a green-cyan mixture which was visible even through the red mood of the fishes. The liquid slimed from one end to the other and I wondered if it was even edible.

"Good - now we just need to get out of here."