Philosophical Zombie

Part One

Wade woke up from his sleep but noticed something was different.

His body had more mass. His cheeks were dressed with a full beard. His hair sagged in front of his eyes.

He woke up in a room he couldn't recognize next to a woman he had never seen but the name Martha reached him through sheer intuition.

He got up and brushed his teeth, a routine he did without much thought. Everything was different and yet there was no panic.

He snuck outside to try and get some fresh air. It was a sunny day outside, brighter than usual. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust from his dim apartment building. His brain somehow mustered the thought "California," so that's where he must've been.

It felt like a good time to run, but Wade found himself unable to. His protruding belly came into focus. It's been ages since he's been on walks like this.

He instinctively checked his phone and responded to business emails. He knew what to say but he had no idea where it was coming from. It felt correct, so he continued.

He crept back inside.

"Where have you been?" asked Martha, more as a formality than a genuine question. She had just woken up and was microwaving leftovers.

Wade sensed that he and Martha had grown distant in the past couple of months. They'd both been busy with work. Wade wanted to reach out and tell her how he felt that she had been ignoring him, but it didn't seem like the time.

"I went for a walk," Wade responded, slowly sagging onto the couch.

Martha went back to listening to music. Wade was alone with his thoughts once again.

He tried to remember his past but continually drew blanks. He defaulted to ponder existence. Was this real? Was he dreaming? He lightly pinched his forearm almost jokingly.

Though his newfound consciousness was an existential shock, Wade didn't feel much panic. It didn't feel like a pressing issue. He wondered if others had a similar awakening.

He felt a soft buzz coming from his pocket. He glanced at his phone. His friend was in town and wanted to see if he was available to get coffee and relive old memories.

"I'm gonna go get coffee with Grayson," he called out to Martha.

"Have fun," she replied, not paying attention. 

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Grayson McElroy was a stocky 30-something with gelled hair and a curious fixation on hats. Every time Wade would see him he would have a new hat and a story about what the hat meant. One might think there aren't very many hat stories, but Grayson would beg to differ.

Today he had a pale blue hat speckled with drawings of rubber ducks. It was tacky, but it suited Grayson quite well.

"I got this for my nephew, but I think it looks better on me so I got a second one." He reported.

He then went into laborious detail about what the blue represented, and how his nephew's birth had impacted his life, and so on.

While novel at first, Wade had learned to tune Grayson's hat stories out.

"So how about you? Been up to anything lately?" asked Grayson.

Wade didn't know what to say, but his lips were moving anyway, going into great detail about how cumbersome his job is, how his boss is a piece of shit, and how pointless the company's new paperless initiative is. The words came to Wade and he said them almost without his control at all.