“Am I ready for this?”.

 

He drew a deep breath, opened the empty suitcase and looked across his room. “How am I going to fit all of that in?”. On the shelf were photos of him with his friends, some who he had known since childhood, some who he met later in college years, but all of them meant the world to him. “I will still be close to these beautiful rascals, right? I can still chat about the most random things with them over WhatsApp video calls, right?”.

 

Controlling his emotions, he looked at his cabinets, they contained his prized possessions – superhero figurines, countless comics, and the trophies that he had won playing cricket in high school. “I guess there is only space for a couple of comics”. The wardrobe next to the cabinets was overflowing with clothes, most of whom he did not wear more than twice, but loved all of them equally. He quickly rewatched the bag packing tutorial on youtube. “Ah, clothes go in first.” He started browsing through his wardrobe to choose which ones to keep. Hidden somewhere underneath those clothes were countless love letters written by his girlfriend. “Definitely have to take these”. As he read through them briefly, he felt a lump forming in his throat. “Will we survive this distance?”, he could hear her voice. He let a couple of tears roll down his eyes before holding himself up again. “A little tight on time for crying now”. He quipped to himself to push aside the emotions.

 

As he was stacking the clothes in his bag, he saw boxes of his favorite sweets and savories put together lovingly by his parents. The emotions took over him, he closed the door to his room as he cried a little more. Holding back the tears, putting on a happy face, with grit in his mind he said to himself, “I am ready for this. Back to packing”.

​

The twist

​

After much struggle, he finished packing his suitcase. “22.3 Kgs. That should be fine”, he said lifting the suitcase with the weighing device. “I will be back in six months”, he said to the superhero figurines that he was leaving behind. As he walked to his drawer to grab his passport, he noticed something strange in his mirror. Standing in front of it, he blinked, waved and finally started scratching his head in disbelief as his mirror-self stood still. “Have I been drinking again?”, he asked himself.

 

As he looked closer, his mirror-self twitched briefly, smiled eerily and said in a robotic voice, “Welcome to Innate technologies. Future secured, by you, for you.” His heart skipped a beat as he sat down on his bed. Staring at the mirror in disbelief he asked, “Is this a prank?”. “I am sorry. I do not know what you mean”, replied his mirror-self. As he was trying to gather his thoughts, the robotic voice spoke again, “You have a new message from your parallel universe self M2385X”. “Message start”, his mirror-self exclaimed as it twitched again. The eerie expressions faded away, now he was staring at a more humanized version of himself in the mirror. “I know this looks and sounds absolutely lunatic, but I am a future version of you from a parallel universe”, said his mirror-self in a tone of panic. “We do not have much time to go into the details, but for now you will have to trust me blindly and do exactly as I say”.

 

He could not believe his senses, “This is bad dream, just a bad dream”, he tried convincing himself as he started walking briskly away from the mirror. “I know you have no reason to trust a talking mirror; I get it. Maybe this will help – your phone will soon give you a notification saying that your cab with the number plate DT6784 will soon arrive at your location”. In a couple of seconds his phone rang, terrifyingly he unlocked the screen, read the notification and sat down in his bed in utter disbelief. “How did you know that?”, he asked. “I cannot give you any more information, but for now, you are instructed to not get into that cab”. His mirror-self twitched again, “Message end”.

 

He was staring back at himself again.