"How strong is your will to live?"

I opened my eyes as the light dissipated from existence. A high pitched ringing noise resonated within my head. I was lying down on my bed looking straight up at the ceiling. As I became fully conscious, I realized that I had a small headache.

*What happened last night? I'm not hungover, am I?*

I hit my forehead with the palm of my hand and scolded myself.

*What are you doing... the last of the exams are today!*

I was still wrapped up in the comfort of my blanket, and my body refused to leave its warmth. I knew that if I got up, I'd be hit with a blast of cold air from my poorly ventilated room. But now was no time to sit around. Finals were important, after all. I couldn't just go about failing my cla.s.ses. With the energy of a thousand suns, I pushed my back off of the mattress until I was sitting upright. My headache intensified.

*Just gotta get some water...*

I stretched over to my nightstand where I normally kept my metal water bottle. And thank goodness it was there. After quickly downing the contents of the container into my mouth, my headache eased slightly. As my groggy brain stabilized, I noticed that I hadn't changed out of what clothes I was wearing yesterday.

*You lazy f.u.c.k... you somehow made it to your own room, but couldn't spare the extra effort to get these last bits of clothes off of yourself before hopping into bed... disgusting.*

Berating myself, I walked over to check on what was really important. My computer. And the chess match from yesterday. Or was it two days ago? Not bothering to remember petty details like that, I hastily opened the replay. My opponent was... someone, but that wasn't the important part. What was important was that I had lost miserably. There couldn't be that many people that I knew personally that could beat me so easily. One of them was the president of the school chess club, and my friend...

...

*Huh? Why can't I remember his name? What's going on?*

I couldn't remember the name of my best friend. Or was he my friend at all? Who was he? All I remember was what he vaguely looked like. Maybe some of the color palettes that you could use to paint a picture of him, but that was it... I must have really hit my head on something if I was drunk.

*Come to think of it, my chess match was supposed to be against Jeanna, wasn't it? When is this from?*

I checked the date on the file.

1/1/1970. The beginning of Unix time.

*That's really odd... did I factory reset my computer a few days ago?*

I checked the current date on the bottom right corner of the screen. 1/3/1970.

*So the game was not yesterday's, but the day before... ahh, I must've seriously gone all out yesterday, then. I don't remember a thing.*

As I glanced at the bottom right of the monitor, I realized something else.

*No WiFi?*

I clicked on the icon. But it revealed nothing.

*No internet connections available?*

This was really strange. Even if the router in our own home was going haywire, the computer should at least pick up the surrounding signals from neighboring houses. But that wasn't the case here. There was radio silence.

*Well, the internal WiFi card might be busted... whatever, I really don't want to check on that right now.*

It was already past seven o clock. Less than an hour before school. This time, I really *had* nearly overslept. Maybe I should've been grateful for my parents waking me up a little early the past couple of days.

I put on some new clothes, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and headed towards the door leading out the hallway all under three minutes.

Once I closed the door behind me, I immediately noticed a few differences in the hallway alone.

First, the painting with only the us, the Xu children, as kids. This photo clearly had to be doctored, because I'd never seen it before.

*Or maybe it was a second take that went well?*

Jeanna and I were identical to the one I previously knew - she still had the confident smile and gesture to go along with it, and I was but a small child looking clueless as always. The difference was with the twins. Rather than looking away from each other contemptuously, they were instead grinning at the camera like they seriously meant it. A perfect pose for the picture. Seeing both of them like that was slightly unnerving. They always had some sort of argument going on, so how could they fabricate this genuine sort of smile right away?

The second difference was the picture of my parents. It was replaced by a completely new photograph. Of two people I'd never seen before. They were slightly older than my parents, and they seemed like a wealthy American couple from the middle of the 20th century.

*I feel like I've seen their clothes before...*

Something dawned on me then. I looked at their sleeves, then I turned to look at the third photograph. The one will a four or five year old Jeanna in an unknown background. A match. The couple from this unknown black-and-white photo matched the attire of the couple standing behind Jeanna. Black leather gloves on the man, dainty white gloves on the woman. I looked for the engraved plaque on the bottom of the picture. The one I knew had the names of my parents on it, but this one merely had a number - "10". No information about who these people could be...

*So she knew something about them? Who are these people, really? And where is she now? Where are Jonah and Jeanne? Where is... he?*

As I walked forward through the hallway, I realized that I had many questions that I should know the answer to, but didn't. I approached the end of the hall, and I let my hand rest on the right wall. The third difference; the painting of the monolith was gone. All that remained was the white background.

*What's going on here? Am I dreaming?*

Believe it or not, it's quite common for a dream to start like your normal day with some minuscule differences that you typically ignore. I've had many of those. Actually, since your dream brain shuts down all concepts of logic, even normally impossible occurrences are given a free pa.s.s, and you let them happen without batting an eye.

There was only one way to find out - a reality check.

In a dream world, even though your brain is on overdrive, it's impossible for it to perfectly recreate everything. Reality checks take advantage of this fact. There are certain actions you can take that should be possible in the real world that aren't in a dream world.

Example number one. Reading. Written text is never a constant in a dream. Every time you look at it, it will change. So I s.h.i.+fted my gaze towards the plaque of the unknown photo. It still read "10".

*No dice, huh?*

The reality check was a failure. But one failure doesn't guarantee anything, so I moved on to another test.

Example number two. Breathing. The breath in your dreams is always regulated by the one of your real body. So even if you pinch your nose...

"Haaaah!"

I couldn't breathe with my nose pinched. Even with two failures, I still wasn't convinced, so I had to try one more thing.

Example number three. Hands. For some reason, your hands are almost never the same as they are on your real body. So I looked down and examined my hands.

*One, two, three, four, five digits on each hand...*

I flipped them over and re-counted. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Since it was nearly impossible for three reality checks to fail within a dream, I came to the conclusion that this was indeed reality.

Even though they were only pictures on a wall, something about the world still seemed a little off. But I couldn't place my finger on it. And even if I did know, the likelihood that I could do something about it was low. So I forgot about it and headed towards the kitchen to have some breakfast.

That's when I noticed another strange thing. No one else was home. There wasn't a trace of human activity. No evidence that anyone had been home for a few days. Of course, the house still remained pristine, but none of the kitchen tools and appliances looked like they'd been touched. Wasn't today supposed to be a special occasion? An extra family member was supposed to be home today... that's right. Jeanna was supposed to be here. Or else how could I have played chess with her just a few days ago? But it was clear she wasn't here now. Instead, in the place she normally sat was a handwritten note.

It was folded up neatly in thirds, and the cover read - "For you, our last hope". I opened it up, not sure what to expect.

It merely read, "Survive. And win."

The author remained anonymous. Not even a signature on the thing.

It was so sloppily written that it couldn't possibly be Jeanna's handwriting, which meant someone else had to have been here. But I don't know who it could be. Especially with the house in its current condition.

If this was a joke, it was in poor taste. So I discarded the possibility. No one in my family would tell jokes this bad. Which meant that I had to survive something...

*Our last hope?*

...

I really didn't feel like being someone's last hope. That sounded way too nerve-wracking for very little reward... which meant the only thing left to do was go on about my day like I didn't see anything.

I chucked the note in the trash, crunched down some dry cereal, and opened the door to the outside world.

*Whatever's going on, I'll do my best to ignore it.*