Not a dream, then, he thought, looking at the tattoo with something approaching disgust. He had always hated tattoos and swore he would never have one.

But if not a dream, then what was it? Gary searched his memory. The experience was real, it actually happened. But how? Was this in any way connected with him just ‘knowing’ stuff? Stuff that he’d no recollection of seeing, hearing or reading?

If nothing else, it at least went part-way to explaining why he had no memories before that interview, twelve years earlier.

Thinking about that interview, it occurred to Gary that although his unquestionably eidetic memory gave him full, detailed recall of every instant of the past twelve years (except, of course, for the four days he was comatose), his recollection of the actual interview was limited to an impression. He didn’t actually remember a scary event; he remembered that it was a scary event. He couldn’t pull up a picture. Could this have been a vicarious, or even a planted memory? Could it, indeed, be like one of those childhood memories drawn from photographs or second-hand tales rather than from actual lived and retained experience?

Moving on from there, he searched his memory for the first real, living picture he could conjure up. It was himself, seated at his desk in his tiny office, pulling files from his in-tray, perusing them, tutting, then placing them in his out-tray.

Indeed, caught up in the day-to-day minutiae of his job, he had never fully realised that this was all he ever did. He arrived at his office at or before eight-thirty each weekday to find himself alone there. His out-tray was always empty and there was a pile of files in his in-tray. He would then spend the day pulling files from his in-tray, perusing them, tutting, then placing them in his out-tray. Every day was the same. He just came in, moved papers about, and went home. Every Monday to Friday. Never failed.

He sometimes heard colleagues conversing outside his office, but never actually met any of them, never spoke to anyone or even – now he gave it some thought – had any memory of actually seeing another employee. He never interacted with anyone. He didn’t know who gave him the files or who took them away again. He assumed he was a link in some form of process chain but had no evidence to support that assumption.

In the twelve years he’d worked there, he had never been on holiday, never taken any sick days, never not been there. He wondered what would happen if he took some time off. Of course, he couldn’t do that. Where could he go? What would he do with himself? He could hardly spring-clean for a fortnight!

---

The strident electronic tones of his alarm interrupted Gary’s reverie at precisely twenty minutes to six in the morning.

He jumped out of bed and completed ten press-ups followed by the same number of squat thrusts. He then spent three and a half glorious minutes under a shower set to a temperature of thirty-seven degrees Celsius to cleanse his body and refresh his mind before dressing.

He entered the kitchen on the stroke of six o’clock and prepared his regular breakfast – a bowl of whole wheat cereal, two rounds of toast, buttered and topped with marmalade, and a cup of English Breakfast tea.

As usual, there was no-one in the office when he arrived at a bit before eight-thirty. Unfazed by this, he went into his tiny office, closed the door behind him, sat at his desk and, as usual, started moving papers from his in-tray to his out-tray, by way of perusing and tutting. Later in the morning, at about eleven o’clock, he heard some people talking outside his office. Not unusually, Gary had no idea and, as far as he was concerned, no interest in what they were discussing.

Or did he?

He opened the door to his office and looked around.

The voices he heard had stopped. There was no-one there. He looked up and down the empty corridor. No sign of anyone. He walked the length of the corridor, opening doors and looking into offices as he went. Every room was empty. More than that, every room was unfurnished. There was no sign that anyone apart from him worked in the building. Ever.

Stunned, Gary leaned against a wall, slid down, and ended up seated on the floor. He brought his knees up to his chin, held them tightly there and started a gentle rocking motion. Back and forth, back and forth, all the while muttering “too much” to himself, over and over again.

Darkness fell.

He picked it up, looked at it, tutted, and put it back down again.

All night he sat there, unmoving. Morning eventually arrived and with it, plenty of questions, but still no answers.

Minutes become hours, hours become days, days become weeks, weeks become months… but I imagine you know that already, so I’ll cut to the chase, as it were.

A few weeks later, whilst at his dining table demolishing a take-away pizza he’d picked up on his way home from work, Gary remembered hearing about a meeting that was due to take place shortly. That he’d never heard about it before didn’t occur to him. He had, in a very real sense, come to be aware of it. The information had, in an equally real sense, been planted in his brain, and still remained. What was puzzling about this information was not so much what was given, as what was not given. And what was not given was threefold: a date, a time and a place. That left Gary perplexed.

What was confusing to Gary was not only that he had no record or recollection of coming by this intelligence but that, like the number of persons affected, he seemed simply to know it, almost as if it were his original idea, that he had originated it. Clearly, this couldn’t have been the case: Gary, as anyone who knows him, if such a person exists, will confirm, had never spawned an original idea in his life – or, at least, in as much of it as seems to be recorded.

At some time during the night, when he was tucked up in bed, fast asleep and dreaming of – well, your guess is as good as mine – he found himself in a large room, empty save for a single desk and two chairs, the simple, straight-backed wooden affair on which he was seated and the plush, leather-bound executive chair across the desk from him. It was occupied by a distinguished looking man of indeterminate age. He had a short beard with neatly-trimmed hair that was on the brown side of black with wisps of grey and wore dark-rimmed spectacles. Dressed in a three-piece suit of cerulean blue with close-matching shirt and tie, he had the appearance, the air and the apparent assurance of a senior executive. He looked at Gary and smiled, exposing impossibly white teeth.

“Hello, Gary. Thank you for coming,” the man said, in a smooth, mellow, bass-baritone voice.

“Where exactly am I, and who are you? If I may ask.”

In response, Gary’s interlocutor merely pointed to a sign on his desk, on which was printed the name ANDREAS PUGLIESE and the words CLIENT RELATIONS.

“That doesn’t tell me where I am, Mr Pugliese, or what I’m doing here.”

“Andy, please,” the man replied, “Where you are is irrelevant. This is a virtual meeting. Your body is currently asleep on your bed at home. You are probably confused by certain things that you have recently seen, heard and experienced. If you aren’t, you are either intellectually more astute than we had assumed you to be or you haven’t been paying attention.”

Gary shifted uncomfortably in his chair and started to speak but changed his mind and said nothing.

Andy continued, “Twelve years ago, we produced twenty thousand individuals, globally, with a specific goal in mind.”

“I’m sorry, Andy, but this is making no sense to me at all. Twenty thousand? Produced?”

“Yes, Gary, produced. Human adults, but physically, mentally, psychologically and spiritually, with significant organic and inorganic enhancements that raise you above the common herd to a level we describe as a human manifestation of logical constructs – intelligence and logic made flesh, if you will.

“Let me come at this from a different direction. Every day, up to 100,000 adults die worldwide. On a specific day, fifteen years ago, we selected twenty thousand whose deaths did not result from or in compromised cognitive function and who, at the point of death were cognitively ‘normal’.”

“And what, you revived them?”

“No. What we did was to take what made those individuals unique and set in process a path to replication and enhancement. After three years’ development and growth, you were ready.”

“I was ready? Just me?”

“No, Gary, all of you. Twenty thousand individuals.”

“So, what you’re saying is that I’m some kind of clone? I’m not real?”

“Oh, you are real, sure enough. You are more than real. What you represent, all twenty thousand of you, is the next stage in human development. When we activate your full capabilities, which we intend to do as soon as we consider the time to be right, you will be equipped to bring to this planet the destiny we always planned for it.”

“And what’s that?”

“All in good time, Gary. All in good time. For now, you should return to your daily life, continue as normal but aware that you have an ultimate purpose, a higher calling, if you will, and conduct yourself accordingly. To help you remember this, you, and by you I mean all twenty-thousand of you, will bear on your left shoulder, a mark that will remind you of your destiny.”

Gary awoke with a start; alone and in his bed. His alarm clock showed it to be a little after two o’clock in the morning. He thought he had just emerged from a particularly vivid dream but, to set his mind at ease, he got up, went into his bathroom and looked in the mirror. The sight of a tattoo below his left shoulder almost made him retch. He poured himself a glass of water, drained it in one swig, and looked in the mirror again. It was still there. A bright green logo made up of two Xs topped by a horizontal bar.

The number 20000 in Roman numerals.

And bright green.

The strident electronic tones of his alarm interrupted Gary’s sleep at precisely twenty minutes to six in the morning.

He jumped out of bed and completed ten press-ups followed by the same number of squat thrusts. He then spent three and a half glorious minutes under a shower set to a temperature of thirty-seven degrees Celsius to cleanse his body and refresh his mind before dressing.

He entered the kitchen on the stroke of six o’clock and prepared his breakfast – a bowl of whole wheat cereal, two rounds of toast, buttered and topped with marmalade, and a cup of English Breakfast tea.

He did, however, listen carefully to the news and subsequent discussions. No way was he going to be caught out by that trick again.

His mind was far from clear and settled, though. During the night, he had been awake for the better part of an hour, wrestling with a single concept that was greatly troubling him. For the first time in his forty-eight years – certainly the first of which he was aware – he came to realise that he had no memories prior to the ordeal of the interview for his current position, twelve years earlier. Somehow, three dozen years of his life were closed off to him. And yet every detail of every day since that horrendous meeting was burned indelibly into his memory. Apart, of course, for the four days during which he was comatose.

He had no recollections of his childhood, his parents, his education, his undoubtedly angst-ridden teenage years or the first decade and a half of his adult life. He had no real friends now, but had he ever had any, or enjoyed the company and companionship of another? Had he ever been in a romantic or sexual relationship? He believed himself to be heterosexual, but was that the case or had he accepted the default position and never really thought about it? If, as seemed likely, he had never been in a relationship that could reflect or even define his orientation or sexuality, how could he know for sure? Had he been a studious youth or a bit of a playboy, a daredevil or a ne’er-do-well? Did he have a degree of any sort from a university? Did he have any qualifications at all? Who, in short, was he before he was Gary the internal financial compliance auditor? How, indeed, had he managed to secure that position given, as far as he was aware, no qualifications and no relevant experience?

And what gave him the idea that there were two hundred UK resident people affected by the recent incident? Had he guessed it, had he heard it on the radio and registered it below the level of consciousness, or did he actually know it, and if so, how?

The other question that’s bothering me and, I imagine you, too, dear reader, is this: how on Earth did he get back to sleep after only an hour with that lot going through his mind?

It being Saturday, Gary wasn’t required to go to work, so had a couple of days free. His habit had, for some time, been to busy himself with housework in his free time – his was possibly the only residence anywhere that was thoroughly spring-cleaned every week: upstairs on Saturday and downstairs on Sunday. This day, though, he purposed to spend some of his time searching through his files for clues to his past; his identity. As he only ever used one of the three bedrooms and one of the two bathrooms, he reasoned that it probably wouldn’t hurt if the unused rooms missed their weekly do-over.

The rest of the morning he spent sifting through his filing cabinets, looking for correspondence, receipts, bank statements or anything dated more than twelve years ago. He found nothing.

Confused beyond belief, he extended his search. Where, he asked himself, can one expect to find information of an historical nature about oneself? His first conclusion was the medical profession. They would be sure to have records going back to his birth. He had no recollection of ever visiting a doctor – never been sick or suffered any kind of injury – so had to rely on the app on his phone. This was one of the many apps that he had never before used. However, he was aware that his National Insurance number, which was a way in, was printed on his tax forms and he knew where they were, as he’d been looking at them only recently.

He entered that number into the app and it asked for his date of birth. He knew his birthday and how old he was, so he could work that out. He got into the app – but it appeared to have no history. The government app that covered, amongst other things, income tax gave no more than five years’ history, and most publicly available registers could only be searched after inputting information that he simply didn’t possess and demanding a fee that he was disinclined to pay.

His conclusion, after spending two days searching, was that no information about him existed before he secured his current employment. That understanding, coupled with the knowledge that he had broken the habits of a lifetime by doing no housework whatever and thus left his house looking like a veritable pigsty, left Gary feeling more than somewhat low.