The coffee tasted like nostalgia.
It wasn't a specific memory, just a chemical approximation of one—a flavor profile engineered to trigger a vague, comforting sense of well-being that Ethan couldn't quite place. It was rich, nutty, and perfectly hot, never scalding, never lukewarm. It was the best coffee he had ever tasted.
It terrified him.
Ethan sat in the faculty cafeteria, a space that had undergone a subtle but disorienting renovation during his "two days" of unconsciousness. The scuffed linoleum floors he remembered, usually sticky with spilled soda, were now polished terrazzo that gleamed under the lights. The flickering fluorescent tubes, which had buzzed like angry insects for six years, had been replaced by warm, recessed LEDs that mimicked natural sunlight so perfectly it made the back of his eyes ache.
He stared at the man across the table.
"You're not eating, Ethan," Reginald Voss said. He sliced into a poached egg with surgical precision, the yolk running rich and orange across the plate. "Protein is essential for neural recovery. The brain consumes twenty percent of the body's metabolic energy, you know. If you starve the engine, the car doesn't run."
"I'm not hungry," Ethan said, his voice tight. He kept his hands in his lap, squeezing his fingers together to stop them from trembling.
He watched Voss eat. He had spent the last twenty-four hours since his "awakening" scouring the university website, the digital faculty directory, and even the dusty physical yearbooks in the library. According to every record he could find in this world, Reginald Voss had been the Director of the Institute for the last five years. There were photos of him at fundraisers, citations in academic journals, a brass plaque in the lobby listing him as a "Visionary Benefactor."
But Ethan had never seen this man before yesterday.
In Ethan's mind—the mind that still felt the phantom bruise of a filing cabinet impact—the Director was Arthur Hargreaves. Hargreaves was a loud, sweaty man who wore ill-fitting suits and shouted about budget cuts. Voss was a statue carved from ice and money.
"You're staring," Voss said, dabbing his mouth with a linen napkin. He didn't look offended; he looked amused. "Is there something on my face? Or are you still trying to remember where we met?"
"I remember everything," Ethan lied. "It's just the fatigue. The doctors said it would come and go."
"Ah, yes. The gap in the tape." Voss took a sip of his water. "It's frustrating, I'm sure. To have such a brilliant mind and yet lose track of the narrative. But don't worry. We're here to help you fill in the blanks. That's what colleagues are for."
He signaled a waiter—a young man with a smile so symmetrical it looked like it had been drawn with a protractor—to refill Ethan's cup.
"We have the board meeting next Tuesday," Voss continued, his tone shifting to business. "I want you to present the new findings. The data from the generator. It's time we justify the expenditure."
"The generator is off," Ethan said quickly. "I haven't run it since... the incident."
"But you will," Voss said. It wasn't a question. "You're a scientist, Ethan. Curiosity is a terminal condition. You'll run it again because you have to know. And when you do, I want us to be ready."
Voss stood up, smoothing his jacket. He placed a hand on Ethan's shoulder. The touch was light, but Ethan felt a weight settle on him, a pressure that pinned him to the chair.
"We need you whole, Ethan," Voss whispered, leaning down. "We have such great things to build together."
He walked away, moving through the cafeteria with a grace that parted the crowd. Students and faculty nodded to him with reverence. Ethan watched him go, feeling the cold spot on his shoulder where Voss's hand had been.
He reached into his pocket and touched the crumpled scrap of paper. NOT YOUR SKY.
It was the only thing in the world that felt real.
The lecture hall was full.
Normally, Ethan's "Advanced Quantum Mechanics" seminar attracted a dozen students at most—the die-hards, the masochists, and the ones who had failed the prerequisite and needed the credits. Today, every seat in the amphitheater was taken.
Ethan stood at the podium, his chalk hovering over the blackboard. He looked out at the sea of faces. They were attentive. Too attentive. There were no phones out. No one was whispering in the back row. No one was sleeping. They watched him with a collective, unblinking focus that reminded him of a flock of birds sitting on a wire, waiting for a signal to take flight.
"The... the Observer Effect," Ethan stammered, his voice echoing in the acoustic perfection of the room. "Can anyone define it?"
Thirty hands went up simultaneously. The motion was so synchronized it made Ethan dizzy.
He pointed to a young man in the front row. "You. Mr...?"
"Patel," the student said, standing up. "The Observer Effect is the theory that the mere observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes that phenomenon. This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner."
"Standard definition," Ethan muttered. He wiped his chalk-dusted hands on his pants. "But let's go deeper. Is it the instrument? Or is it the consciousness behind the instrument? Does the universe exist in a state of superposition only until a mind decides to look at it?"
The room was silent. The students stared at him. They were waiting for the answer, not thinking about the question.
"If I close my eyes," Ethan said, his voice dropping, "do you all cease to exist? Do you dissolve into probability waves? Or do you stay here, solid and real, because you're observing yourselves?"
He closed his eyes. He stood there in the darkness, listening. He expected to hear the shuffle of feet, the nervous coughing, the sound of life.
He heard nothing.
The silence was absolute. It was the silence of the void he had walked through two days ago. It was the silence of a paused video.
Sweat pricked at his hairline. They aren't real, he thought. None of this is real.
He opened his eyes.
The students were exactly as he had left them. Sitting upright. Pens poised. Waiting.
"Dr. Maddox?" a voice called from the back of the room.
Ethan squinted. Standing in the doorway at the top of the stairs was Dr. Julian Kline. In Ethan's old life, Kline was his academic rival—a petty, jealous man who wrote scathing peer reviews and stole creamer from the faculty lounge.
Here, Kline was smiling. He walked down the stairs, his footsteps heavy and rhythmic.
"Fascinating philosophical pivot, Ethan," Kline said, stopping at the bottom of the lecture well. "But perhaps we should stick to the syllabus? The Dean is quite particular about the curriculum this semester."
"I'm teaching them to think, Julian," Ethan said, defensive reflexes kicking in.
"You're teaching them to doubt," Kline corrected. His smile didn't waver, but his eyes were flat, devoid of the usual spark of malice Ethan was used to. It was worse. Malice was human. This was just... programming. "Doubt is inefficient. We deal in constants here. We deal in what is measurable."
Kline turned to the class. "Dismissed. Dr. Maddox is not feeling well today."
The students stood up in unison. They gathered their books. They filed out of the room in two perfect lines. Not one of them looked back at Ethan.
Ethan stood alone at the chalkboard, the dust settling around him. He looked at the equation he had started to write—Schrödinger's wave equation. He had made a mistake in the third variable, a deliberate error he often used to test if anyone was paying attention.
No one had corrected him. Not even Kline.
They didn't know the math. They only knew the script.