Awake

A blur of color. Rotation and taut muscle fibers. Pressure, pain, too-bright lights, too-loud WHIRRING, too-rough wood, a breathe that lasts forever -

- it snaps into awareness and contextless knowledge.

His head is on a mahogany table, tastefully carved. He lifts his head off the table-

-and finds himself in an office.

It's clearly leaning in to the whole wooden aesthetic: there's a wooden desk, a wooden bookshelf, a wooden strange-trinket shelf, a wooden door that's clearly the entrance, a wooden door on his side of the desk that's probably a closet, and fancy wooden chairs that are conspicuously less fancy than the one he's sitting in. 

Even the carpet is just a different shade of brown.

He doesn't recognize wherever the fuck this is. What the fuck?

On the desk are some office supplies, a corded phoneset, a desk-clock reading 6:34, and a computer monitor. Connected to the computer is a weird whirring metal cylindrical thingy holding a cracked black cylinder, and a wire attached to something on his head.

...it's a helmet latched to his head.

what the fuck is this get it off it's not coming off get it off get it -

- breathe. He slows down, finds the latches, and undoes them. 

He takes off the helmet. It has three goofy looking brown (ugh) cylinders. There's what looks like LED bars, that... seem to mean that the battery's empty?

...okay what was he doing last? It's hard to think, like the eddy currents in his thinking fluid are dissipating into smoke - what the hell was that metaphor, what - last, he was... was...

Nope, nothing.

..who is he? He's... what's his name? Why the fuck doesn't he know his own name? Okay, okay, breathe, where does he live, where does he live, why doesn't he know where he lives, oh god he's going crazy, he's finally lost it...

He has a proper panic attack, then. When he eventually regains the ability to think coherently - or at least as coherently as he was earlier - he finds himself curled up in his chair and only somewhat light-headed.

Alright. Think. Think for your life.

What country is he from, what state - aha, state, he must be from the United States! ...or he's just Australian. He can't think of any other countries that he knows has states, so presumably he can't be from any of those.

What year is it? The computer looks like it's post-2010, and the fact that he just thought that means that 2010 is a year that's in the past. Wow, isn't he so knowledgeable, he knows that it's after 2010! Maybe after years of deduction he'll know as much as a 4 year old child!

Okay, moving on, this is probably his office, right?

His thoughts are starting to keep their vortices more, and... an awful idea comes to him. 

Suppose you're being pitched a movie. The premise: Man wakes up in office with amnesia and a sci-fi helmet. Obviously the plot is that he was working late at night on some experimental MacGuffin and accidentally wiped his memory in the process. 

He's either the brilliant gadget genius or the clueless klutz of a lab assistant. So, which is it?

Well, he clearly likes sci-fi, right? Would that be more likely if he was the genius, or the starry-eyed assistant? Eh, both seem equally likely.

What else - right, why the hell does he keep thinking of weird fluid metaphors for thinking? Is... is he a robot with a brain that computes by sloshing around ferrofluid in an intricate dance?

No, no, there's no way that's possible yet. His judgement is extremely trustworthy here, why wouldn't you trust the intuitions of the amnesiac who doesn't know what year it is and clearly has had his mind altered by sci-fi gadgets?

He gets a faint sense that to most people this would be the most existentially terrifying part of this whole kerfuffle, yet for some reason he's finding it merely terrifyingly disorienting. After all, wouldn't it shake your identity less to realize you were a robot as long as you still had veridical autobiographical memories? At least then you'd know who you were, if not what.

Okay, get back on track. Why does he think ferrofluid computers would be dumb?

Well, because then your computing at the speed of fluids, instead of electrons in wires which move at half the speed of light. Also, if human-like AI was around, then why the hell hasn't it spread across the internet, recursively self-improved, invented nanotech and superviruses, and then taken over the world?

...okay, he definitely has technical experience. But was that something a genius would think, or merely what the plucky assistant could deduce? 

Also: nanotech and superviruses don't exist yet, seemingly. Or at least aren't publically known about. Well, except for that global pandemic that may or may not have been an engineered virus. Wait, what?

...that sounds like a worrying fact about the world he apparently lives in. Presumably it's not, like, immediately relevant?

Okay, moving on: how would a helmet end up wiping someone's memory? Well, it could, like, kill you via electrocution. What a great idea, brain. What's next, patenting a helmet that just shoots you?

His first failure to learn something from introspection prompts him to back up. He realizes he's just been ignoring his surroundings, when he should be investigating. There might literally be a stack of paper explaining everything that's going on, and it'd be incredibly stupid to sit here navel-gazing for hours when he could just read.

Okay, things to investigate: desk, sci-fi apparatus, weird trinkets, bookshelf, computer, and mystery door.

The sci-fi apparatus is clearly the most important thing here. Maybe it has a RESTORE MEMORIES button?

It's a blue cylindrical container, exposing the insides. The top is curved, with what's probably a purely decorative spherical bulge, and the bottom curves into a flat base. An amusingly mundane USB-A cable characteristic of the 21st century comes out of the base, and is plugged in to an equally mundane USB hub that probably connects to a computer inside the desk (there's a cable coming up from the desk to the monitor).  Slotted inside the container is a cracked black cylinder.

x cylinder, he thinks. Oh hey, he's played interactive fiction.

I don't know what you mean by cylinder thinks himself, to himself. Did you mean the black cylinder or the cylinder hub? You know, "hub" is a good name for it. Unless it's, like, not a hub.

The cylinder has two stickers, with visible wear and tear. The first reads:

This is an UNRELEASED dreamie produced by Dream Inc. ALL unauthorized persons in possession of this dreamie will be PROSECUTED for theft of intellectual property to the full extent of the law.

...well, hopefully he's an authorized person. Also, lol, "dreamie", who comes up with these names... it's gotta be him, right? 

Well, that probably makes it more likely that he's a gadget genius working at Dream Inc. Or maybe even the CEO! Ooh, does he run this place? Maybe he can just call up his underlings and order them to explain what the fuck is going on.

The second:

WARNING: This dreamie is EXPERIMENTAL and safety certification level NONE. Use of this dreamie may cause side-effects possibly including DEATH. Dream Inc. is NOT LIABLE for any and all damages incurred by use of this dreamie beyond the assurances of level NONE safety certification.

There's also some handwriting in red marker:

Personal property of Maxwell Carter. Return to him if found. And seriously, please don't try it, it's not some porno, it's just a boring dreamer experiment, and it'll kill you. Dream Inc has only had one casualty in our history, and I do not want to mourn another.

...well at least he's not dead.

Maxwell Carter.

That feels right. He sure hopes he's Maxwe- no, Max Carter. If he's not, then he'll exploit his recent name-unbinding to change his name to Maxwell Carter. It is objectively a good name.

...so, dreamies are probably, you know, dreams, that you can experience via cartridges, wow, that's a dream come true, good job to the genius who invented that which hopefully is himself, wow, could he really have made that... get back on track. 

So, this dreamie seems to be... not really a dreamie at all, just a test of what's probably the equipment. Seems to have required some forethought, what with the stickers and marker writing, which implies the cylinder's been around for a while. The stickers are worn, so maybe it's a test that he's been running regularly.

Why his head would be in it, when presumably it was explicitly not meant for people, though... was it just a mistake? And why's it cracked? 

...he also doesn't seem to have any burns on his head, or at least not any that still hurt. Also, he has some stubble. But is it handsome stubble, or ugly stubble - not the time, Max. It'd be weird for the equipment test to mindwipe you but do no other physical damage, instead of, like, burning your scalp or stopping your heart or interfering with your breathing. Huh, interfering with your breathing? By screwing with your brain's control of it. Of course he knows that, he's (probably, hopefully, please let him be) Maxwell Carter, CEO of Dream Inc, beloved of children and all who still dare to dream - wow he's struggling to stay focused.

Was marker man lying? Maybe he, Maxwell Carter, was secretly working on amnesia dreamies, for reasons that hopefully aren't evil, and then either amnesticized himself either voluntarily or by force.

If he did it voluntarily then there'd be a note, right? But then wasn't it right in front of him - 

- he looks down, and finds a note on the floor.

In sloppy handwriting, it reads:

EAT AFTER READING

It'll be at the last that'll ever be asked.

Get out by 7, else you're William Tell.

The clock reads 7:02.

He eats it immediately, of course, and tries to think.

No, belay that. It's time to search, fast. There's a desk drawer, he opens it-

A handgun. And other office stuff that he doesn't have time to look at.