Chaos Theorem

Chapter 2: 87% Actor

I gave myself some time to mope, because I hadn't moped in a while and it was kinda fun, and then I got up from beside the closed restaurant and decided that I was gonna be productive, or as productive as you can be whilst you have no clue what's going on. Whatever, I was gonna try.
  I joined another queue line, hoping to find someone else to ask questions to, because that seemed to be the best way to go. Also, considering this was a Ferris wheel, I would be able to get a good lay of the land... that was if there wasn't anything tall to block my view.
  Plus, who doesn't love queueing? I just love it. Did I say that I love it? Because I love it. Definitely. The pushing in is the best part.
  And, as you do when you're a fake queueing fan, I put in my earbuds yet again, so that people wouldn't talk to me. But this time, instead of just the deafening sound of silence plaguing my ears, I allowed myself to listen to a song, because I'd not listened to music in, like, forever.
  I scrolled for an excessive amount of time, analysing the titles of the songs as if I was choosing who I wanted to save out of a group of people rather than choosing whether I wanted to listen to Lovejoy's song Portrait of a Blank Slate or Sia's song Hosta-
  Ooh, Wildest Dreams! Taylor Swift, album: 1989, the Taylor's Version of course. It was perfect, because this whole thing certainly felt like a dream.
  I pinched myself just to check.
  It hurt, a lot, but it didn't tell me that this was a dream. Damn it.
  "Save me, Taylor." I grumbled to myself, making the person next to me in the queue turn to me; they then turned back to mind their own beeswax.
  I exited my music app to once again see if my phone had been messed with. My eyes were drawn instantly to the battery, because I knew that my time must be running ou-
  "What?" I choked, a little louder than the grumble.
  The battery was still at 100%.
  Normal phones didn't do that.
  But what about this situation was normal?
  Literally nothing.
  Say you'll remember me,
  Standin' in a nice dress,
  Starin' at the sunset, babe~
  I fumbled with my earbuds, not even pausing the song before taking them out. I stared at the 100%, next to the white polygon that just as well have been red, because it was such a huge red flag.
  Wiiiiildest dreams, ah, ha,
  Wiiiiildest dreams, ah, ha.
  Taylor's distant singing flowed from the leaking earbuds, and flowed onwards into the ears of all those around me. It flooded their minds, but I had bigger fish to fry. Nobody had noticed that something was up. How had nobody noticed that something was up?! Were they all in on it?
  The person who looked at me before turned to look at me again. They didn't turn away fast enough.
  "C- can I see your phone?" I swallowed hard, afraid about how much my voice was trembling.
  "I... just take it." they rolled their eyes, but gave me their phone nonetheless.
  Their battery also read 100%! This phenomenon was appearing everywhere, but why? This was all so confusing, and I already had so many questions, that if this was a book the reader would be sick of the amount of rhetorical questions plaguing sentence after sentence.
  A death sentence. My death sentence.
  "Can I have my phone back, please?"
  I turned to them dramatically, "Can you not see that I'm having a mOMENT HERE?!"
  When I saw their shocked reaction, I cringed a little. Oopsie. Got a little melodramatic there.
  I added quickly, "I'm only kidding! Here you go."
  "Yeah."
  Awkward silence. I cleared my throat.
  "So, how long have you been here?" I queried.
  "A week." they responded simply, not once making eye contact.
  "Oh," my mind pondered over what to add, "Have... have you charged your phone since you got here?"
  "No." the person finished. They clearly wanted to talk no longer, which was a bit rude actually, because I was essentially 87% sure they were an actor here to trick me into thinking this was real, but I wasn't going to fall for it!
  I followed up aggressively, "Do you not think that it's weird that it's just on 100% all the time?"
  When they didn't respond, I opened the question up to the floor.
  "DOES NOBODY THINK THAT'S WEIRD?"
  An average person would have told me to chill the f out, but I was not going to chill. I was placed here, against my will, and Taylor Swift was now singing at nobody when she could be singing at me because queue line side character number five decided that today they were going to be selfish!
  Well, guess what?
  I could also be selfish!
  Although, I didn't like being selfish very often. I was very self-conscious of how mean I looked when I was selfish.
  Right now was a perfect example. Everyone stared at me awkwardly, and I crumpled slightly under their eyes before I cleared my throat. I went to say something, but found I couldn't bring myself to say anything. I guess that this was what people meant when they said you shouldn't bite off more you can chew.
  "For the record, I think that's weird."
  I heard him in the crowd, and then I saw it shuffle slightly as the boy tried to push through, but the others stopped him. They all told him to wait his turn, which, a), was a bit rude for various reasons, and, b), really an evil actor thing to do.
  I shoved the actors out of the way roughly until I reached a small clearing of people where the boy was, although he could have been a man. He had the appearance of both.
  His pale face was dark, but his hazel eyes were bright. His impatient face was what made me instantly warm up to him because it was a mirror of my own; he was also clearly fed up of this situation. He brushed his brown hair out of his eyes, which was when I knew we were different. He did it as if that was his priority, and not me, and he did this with such an air of confidence that I did not possess but I did envy a teensy little bit.
  His jacket was blue like that point between evening and night when you weren't sure what time it was because you'd lost track of reality hours ago. Said jacket was unzipped, and underneath it was a grey shirt with a large crimson anglerfish silhouette on it. He also wore jeans, which seemed fairly new, if not slightly faded from its original black colour, and vivid blue trainers that contrasted literally everything else about his appearance.
  "You're very dramatic, aren't you?" the boy glared at me.
  "Huh?"
  The boy added impatiently, "Are you going to say anything, or is this going to be a one-sided conversation? Because I don't do those." the sixteen, maybe seventeen year old boy looked at me expectantly, and swished his hair to the side again.
  "You need a haircut." I replied in annoyance, wanting to take a stab at him.
  "Yeah, no shit, Sherlock." the boy glared at me, his bad language making me feel more annoyed for some reason, "I was going to get one before I was placed into this dump. So are you going to help me, or is this conversation over?"
  Gonna play it like that, huh?
  A wise jedi master once said 'I have the high ground', but he was disillusioned because he thought that there was only one. There were two high grounds here. Maybe he could take the power high ground, but the moral high ground was still mine to take from Mr Overconfident.
  "I won't bother you for long, but I need you to tell me what you think is weird." I eyed him down, even though he was a lot taller than me.
  "There we go." the boy smiled a little, "Oh, and I'm about 87% sure you're an actor, and if you have any tricks up your sleeve I can assure you I have even more."
  Whoa. Psychic teenager.
  "I was just thinking that." I tittered before I could stop myself.
  The boy tilted his head, "About who?"
  "The guy whose phone I borrowed."
  The guy whose phone I borrowed turned to me angrily.
  "Yeah, you!" I glowered at them, before I added to the boy, "Anyways, you need to tell me what you've found. I might be able to help, but I can't do that if I don't have all the information I can get."
  "Ok then. Search for 'minigames'." the boy replied bluntly, "On your apps, not on Google. Google doesn't work here."
  And so I did. My fingers moved furiously across the touch screen, and my eyes widened when I saw...
  "There's another app on my phone! It's not malware, is it?"
  "It don't think so... but look, look, open it." the boy tapped my screen for me.
  I eyed him suspiciously, "If this is malware, and you're an actor, I swear to god, I'll- whoa, what?"
  On my phone read the following six words:
  The game has not started yet.
  ...Which was really unhelpful, and yet also helpful at the same time. If only I knew what it meant.
  And then it occured to me that the now less-than-87% actor boy might know.
  "What does it mean by 'game'?"
  The boy shrugged, his jacket rising and falling with his shoulders, "Dunno. I've looked everywhere else on my phone, but other than WiFi and reception not working, the clock being gone and our phones' battery constantly being at 100%, there doesn't seem to be anything up on our phones. We're isolated here, but we're not in danger. Yet."
  "Yet? What do you mean, yet?" I frowned, slightly afraid, as if his words were a personal threat.
  "Well, obviously nothing's apparent on the surface, but there could be something lying beneath the surface, if you know what I mean." the boy looked through the queue as we neared the front, "I've been here two days, and I've been on edge the whole time. I'm not normally like this."
  I considered his words for a moment. A looming threat. Weird things happening. But I mean, what else was new? My life had always been like this.
  For one last push, I started, "Is there anything else you can say that'll help, or is that it? I mean, that's fine if it is and all, but we're running on limited information, and-"
  "Actually," he interrupted, "There is something else which comes to mind. Have you ever heard of the theory of the multiverse?"
  "I... yeah. Isn't that a Marvel thing?" I nodded slowly, moving slightly closer to the front of the queue.
  "Well, yes, but it's also a real thing, obviously." the boy rolled his eyes.
  "It's not that obvious." I disagreed quietly.
  "If you say so," the boy laughed, as if I was silly, "But I've asked around... and everyone's version of history is different. World War 1 and 2, the plague, Henry VIII and his six wives, even that new king guy who just got coronated, I swear I've asked ten people what they were doing before they came here and only two of those conversations ended with 'thanks' and not, 'wow, your version of history is completely different to mine'."
  "Fun," I cleared my throat, "But how does that prove anything?"
  "I guess it doesn't. But, dude, there are literally elves here! And I walked past a furry on the way over here, but it totally wasn't a furry, it was an actual animal-person. That shit's not normal!" the boy sighed, nonplussed.
  "You shouldn't speak like that." I shook my head, "And, I guess this makes your ratio 2 to 9, because actually animal people are pretty normal to me. How many animal people do you have where you come from?"
  "One, who are you to tell me what to say, the swear-word police?" the boy scoffed, "And two, literally none! How many humans are in your world?"
  "Well, I don't see many humans either, so... uh!" I spluttered.
  There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. I tapped my fingers along my arm, before I stopped myself, because I was trying to stop that nervous habit, and then turned to him.
  I wanted to think of something clever, something witty to say.
  "'You're very dramatic, aren't you?'" I quoted his earlier remark against me.
  At first, I thought that the bomb in his throat was going to explode, but it didn't, and he just sighed, "Yeah, I know. But so are you."
  "So I have been told."
  "Also, I've been listening to your music this whole time, and you've got pretty good tastes." he smiled.
  I laughed, "Thanks. Sorry, I'll turn it off."
  And I did, whilst listening to the previously tuned-out vocals of one of Radiohead's songs.
  The ferris wheel finally stopped its carriages in an effort to let us on. Would it be us, or just him, I asked myself? But he turned back and moved his head in the direction of the carriage, which said enough. I followed him and sat opposite, drumming my hands on my knees as the gate was shut and the carriage started to move.
  The skyline of the theme park started to come into view. It was the strangest theme park I'd ever seen! It stretched onwards past the horizon, and it almost looked as if it merged with a city as it sprawled outwards. I saw a river, skyscrapers, some under construction buildings, more rollercoasters and a train track that stretched on for a long time.
  The sky above bled its bafflingly bright light across everything in sight. It hurt my eyes as I stared outwards.
  "My name is Nathaniel Grimsby," the boy muttered, taking in the sight as well. The sight of me, "But most people call me Nate."
  I smiled weakly, "I'm Kat McGuffin. Sorry I freaked out at you earlier, that was unnecessary, and a bit weird."
  "Yeah. Same." Nate nodded, but he couldn't gather enough willpower to smile himself.
  We looked at the mysterious horizon again, when I looked down and saw that Nate's hand was reaching out to mine. At first, I wasn't sure if I should take it.
  That was when I realised that this hand holding wasn't for me - it was for him.
  When I linked my fingers in-between his, it made me feel better too.
  "I'm gonna get us home. I promise." I beamed at him. A real, true smile.
  He nodded, reassuring himself, "Yeah. Yeah, I hope so."

To be continued...