Mana Dissociation Read online

  Mana Dissociation

  Christopher George

  Mana Dissociation 1st Edition

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 Christopher George

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.

  Cover design by Christopher George

  Editing By Daniel Willcocks

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my daughter Imogen.

  Though you are not the daughter of my blood, you are the daughter of my heart. I doubt that I will ever father children, but that’s okay, in all the ways that matter, you are my daughter.

  Dissociation

  /dɪˌsəʊʃɪˈeɪʃ(ə)n,-sɪ-/

  the action of disconnecting or separating or the state of being disconnected.

  Separation of normally related mental processes, resulting in one group functioning independently from the rest, leading in extreme cases to disorders such as multiple personality.

  PROLOGUE

  Have you ever learned a truth so shocking that you would rather believe that you were insane? Have you ever seen something that changes how you see the world so fundamentally that your place in it no longer makes any sense? My name is Jessie Wright and I don’t know what’s real and what’s fantasy anymore. All I know is that something is wrong with the world – very wrong.

  This wasn’t the way my life was supposed to go. I thought I had it all planned out. I was one of those students who sat up straight at the front of the class. I never talked back to the teacher and was always prepared for my classes. I wasn’t the sexy one at school, nor the popular one – but I did alright. I never went out drinking with the cool kids or played around with the bad boys. I had friends and that was all I needed. I only had one boyfriend throughout my college years and I studied diligently throughout university and got myself a great job straight out of college. Yep, everything was certainly going to plan. So why did it all go so wrong?

  That’s the problem. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m not what I should be. I’m different and I don’t know how. I’m seeing things that shouldn’t be. I’m doing things that are impossible. I’m a freak. This wasn’t the plan. The plan was career, husband, kids, happiness - in that order. That future is all gone now. I’ll be lucky if I’m not the sole occupant of a padded cell any day now.

  The strange thing about all this was how normal I was as a kid. Looking back on it, I was decidedly normal. I probably would have won one of those awards for ‘travelled least distance from the school’ at class reunions. This shouldn’t have happened to me. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t the plan.

  It all started a few months ago when everything still made sense. I was working for a medium scale American software company, you know? Computers? How cool right? I worked in the customer support department, but I wasn’t planning on staying there forever. I had big plans and I was beginning to get noticed by the powers that be. It was all going to plan. Right up until the point that it didn’t. Frustrating huh? You don’t know the half of it.

  I look back on my life now and I laugh at how naïve I was. I knew nothing and the sad thing is that I wish I still knew nothing. I don’t want this knowledge. I don’t want these gifts. I don’t want any of it. I don’t care about the power it brings or how it makes me feel.

  I may as well wish upon a star and click my ruby heels together. It would have about the same effect.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The sound of my fingers clacking against the keys on my keyboard echoed throughout my cubicle as I stared wryly at the screens several inches from my face. I’d forgotten to bring my glasses today and, although I could see well enough without them, text on the screen was sometimes difficult to read. The result was that I looked like an elderly woman trying to peer over a steering wheel and I ended up with one hell of a backache from all the stooping over my desk.

  “HR is going to want to talk to you, if you keep working like that,” a voice called casually from behind me.

  It was meant as a joke, but it wasn’t overly funny. I glanced back to see Curtis’s smiling face peering over the cubicle wall. I ignored him. He only wanted the attention anyway. He didn’t seriously expect a response to his jokes. He was the only one who seemed to find his jokes funny.

  “How can they be so stupid?” I muttered under my breath as I finally managed to gleam some sense of what the screen was trying to tell me. Curtis took this as an invitation to loom in further to read my screen.

  “Oh yeah, fourth one this morning,” He commented, “Developments’ rolling a fix, but it will take some time.”

  I quite liked Curtis although he could be a bit much at times. Although you could say this for him – he certainly made work entertaining. He was always ready for a joke or for doing something stupid. He kept a photo of a chicken in a frame on his cubical. This mystified me for the first few weeks when I had started working here. Maybe he had a pet chicken or something? Weird right? When I finally asked him about it, he beamed and replied glibly, “Everyone likes Chicken don’t they?” as if he was telling the punch line to some great joke.

  I’d been working with Curtis for about six months now ever since I’d joined the company. This was pretty much my first real job out of university and I was ready to make a name for myself. The fact that I was one of the few women in customer service wasn’t going to stop me. What counted against me more often than not was the fact that I was about ten years younger than the rest of the team and therefore didn’t have the experience. I was slowly working on that though.

  I didn’t get Curtis’s humour, but he was alright – most of the time. Well, some of the time. I shot back a quick reply to the customer that things would hopefully be resolved shortly and to be patient.

  “Touch typer, huh?” Curtis grinned, “You don’t need to have your nose three inches from your keyboard.”

  “Curtis?”

  “Yes ma’am?” He snickered. He always called me that when he was being annoying.

  “Go away.”

  “Rightio,” he chuckled as he disappeared back over the cubical wall. With any luck, he’d be gone for several hours. I moved onto the next support ticket and found myself repeating the email that I’d only typed out minutes before. I really should create a template or something to save myself the time required to type the standard customer support spiel – Everything is fine. The Software is acting as expected. It’s obviously something you’re doing. Have you tried restarting your computer? Clearing your cache? Standing on your head and spinning in a circle three times? Sometimes bugs just fix themselves.

  The tickets were coming in hard and fast this morning and there wasn’t much time for mucking around. I could even hear Curtis over the cubical wall trying to mollify a customer. It was funny, for all his zaniness in the office, once he got on the phone Curtis sounded almost professional which was weird for someone who regularly wore Hawaiian shirts to the office and kicked his shoes off when it got hot. He was hardly a poster child for office professionalism.

  I glanced at the clock and realised in frustration that it was only ten past ten. I’d hoped that it was much later than that. It’s funny how time flies when you’re doing something you love, but when you’re answering support tickets time seems to slow down to a crawl.

  This wouldn’t do. I’d need coffee if this was going to continue. I glanced again at the clock. It was close enough to morning tea that I could get away with something extra.

  “Hey Curtis,�
�� I called over the cubicle, “throw me a Kit Kat.”

  Curtis had a stash of chocolate in his desk drawer that could be used to open a vending machine. I never really asked why he needed so much chocolate, but he shared them so that was something in his favour at least. The red wrapped chocolate sailed over the cubicle wall a couple of seconds later without Curtis’s dull monotone voice even dropping a beat on the phone.

  I missed the projectile which flew almost defiantly passed my reaching hands and landed with a resounding ‘thunk’ on the desk. Damnit. That fall definitely broke up the wafers. I hate crumbly Kit Kats. Oh well, I was going to dip it in my coffee anyway. I tentatively retrieved the chocolate and my fears were confirmed as the packet sagged in my hands as the weight of the chocolate hung against the wrapper. Damnit. Could my day get any worse?

  I grabbed a coffee pod from my drawer and made my way over into the kitchen. Work had splurged and purchased a couple of those pod based coffee machines a few weeks back and the novelty hadn’t quite worn off yet. You couldn’t walk past three people’s cubicles without seeing a box of pods on someone’s desk. I mustn’t have been the only one in need of a morning pick me up. The kitchen was quite full and I had to wait my turn to use the machine. This happened pretty much every morning at this time.

  I brightened as I saw Karen on the far side of the bench. I couldn’t quite see what she was doing, but she appeared to be preparing something involved fruits. I didn’t inquire further. She’d been doing a series of weird diets over the past few weeks and she kept bringing in a variety of strange ingredients that had been required for the day. I moved over to her and waved briefly before getting in line for one of the coffee machines.

  “Kit Kat Coffee again?” Karen teased gently as she saw the chocolate in my hand.

  “So? What of it?”

  “Didn’t you do that yesterday morning.”

  “And... I may do it again tomorrow,” I smirked.

  Karen made a face and grinned, “I’m just jealous is all.”

  I looked at what she was preparing. She’d been cutting up strawberries into smaller chunks and had a bowl of something that she was placing the fruit into.

  “Oats?” I guessed. I was never that good at food recognition.

  “Soaked in Almond milk.” She amended, “…with fruit.”

  “Sounds delicious.” I wasn’t going to lie – that did sound good. It sounded far more appealing than the two pieces of toast with peanut butter that I’d eaten for breakfast. I really needed to start eating better. In fact I needed to start adulting better.

  The whole thing was kind of new to me. I’d only moved out of home a couple of weeks after I’d gotten this job to be closer to work and I still hadn’t gotten over the novelty yet. My diet could only be described as atrocious. It wasn’t uncommon that I’d have a few crackers and a bowl of ice cream for dinner. Granted, that wasn’t common, but I couldn’t deny that it had happened more than once.

  I really liked Karen. She was one of the senior salespeople for the company. I’d spent a fair amount of time with her as many of the customers assigned to me had come in from her. She finished her preparation and begin to daintily eat her food with all outward signs of enjoyment, although I could see her sneaking the sly glance at the Kit Kat in my hands from time to time. When she wasn’t dieting she borrowed chocolate from Curtis as much as I did. A fact that Curtis who enjoyed pulling peoples chains loved. It wasn’t uncommon to hear her howl in anger at some prank that he’d pulled on her.

  If I were honest with myself I’d have to say that Karen was my role model. She was in her mid-forties and had started in customer service as well and worked her way up the food chain. She seemed to have it all worked out. Family, kids, the works.

  She was also in excellent shape for her age, though this was due to an extreme regime of diet and exercise that I’d never be able to follow through on. I really enjoyed chatting with her and often found myself sitting with her to eat lunch on the odd occasion. She was very easy to talk to and had been a good source of information when I had been learning the software. Aside from her semi joking comments that I should eat better, she was probably the closest thing I had to friend here, and let’s face it she was right about the chocolate.

  I did feel a little guilty about my dietary habits. I wasn’t supposed to eat chocolate before lunchtime. It was one of my personal rules. My dad had been quite strict when I was kid. No chocolate before noon. The only problem was that the longer I worked here the quicker the desire for sacrilegious morning chocolate increased. Since I’d started with the company my chocolate time had decreased from twelve pm, to eleven am, then ten thirty and today ten past ten. No, wait let’s call it quarter past. By the time I got my coffee it’d be at least quarter past. It’s the small things that matter. Tomorrow I could make it ten past.

  “What do you have on for the day?” Karen murmured in between bites.

  “Support all morning, Then I’m training that new accountancy firm that came through,” I replied with a shrug, “They were one of yours right?”

  I’d been training this group for the past few weeks and other than being the most incredibly boring people in the universe they were okay. They picked up the software quickly and that was important. They also didn’t require arduous explanation for the most basic of features. This was a highly desired attribute in a client.

  Karen nodded with a smile, “They sent me an email the other day. They like you.”

  “What can I say?” I replied as I flung the coffee pod into a spin in the air and caught it gracefully. It was finally my turn for the coffee machine.

  “I’m very likeable.” I continued as I dropped my pod into the top of the machine, placed my cup under the nozzle and pressed the button. The coffee machine made its customary noises as it began to prepare my beverage. We were the last people in the kitchen. Obviously I’d come in just at the end of the morning coffee rush and everyone else had taken their drinks and gone back to their cubicles.

  “What about yourself?” I returned as I leaned against the bench to wait for the machine to finish.

  “Working on something big,” Karen replied with a chuckle and making a ‘shh’ motion with her finger in front of her lips.

  “Oh?”

  “Can’t say any more,” Karen continued, “But I might have a special project for you if this all works out.”

  “Really?” I raised an eyebrow. This all sounded very mysterious and unusual. Normally new clients were given to the Customer Service Manager and then assigned to a trainer from there. This must be something interesting and different. I was immediately intrigued.

  “Yeah, Big Client,” Karen whispered, “Big with a capital B.”

  That sounded interesting, but unfortunately before I could ask for any more information we were interrupted by one of the development team. I’d never spoken that much to the development team as they were located off on the far side of the office. I suppose to keep them away from the general noise and rowdiness of the customer support team. I’d seen them around though. They usually had the same look of dazed intelligence on their faces as they moved through the offices. It was as if they were trying to perform complex calculations in their heads and didn’t have the remaining brain capacity for mundane interactions with people. I hadn’t spent much time with them, but they seemed friendly enough when I had the opportunity to chat to one of them.

  “Good Morning, Aiden.” Karen murmured.

  Aiden nodded in reply as he glanced around the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of mountain dew from the fridge. And I thought I was bad with my morning chocolate. Mountain Dew was worse. That was the one rule I hadn’t broken yet. No soft drink before twelve. Ever. Well, at least not yet.

  “Have you ever seen Aiden without those sunglasses on?” Karen whispered as the developer made his way back to his desk.

  Aiden wore very thick mirrored sunglasses and never seemed to be without them. I’d heard office gossip that it was beca
use he had a corner desk that was right next to the windows that didn’t have any blinds on them, but he never seemed to take them off when he was in other parts of the office either. Maybe they were prescription or something? The odd thing about it, well odder thing about it, was that they were those old eighties style glasses with the thin piece of leather on the sides to prevent any light from peaking in from the sides. It made him look very silly, but he didn’t seem to care. I had no idea what colour eyes he had. No one did as no one had ever seen them. Other than that, he was like the other developers though he kept himself in better shape. He had long mousy brown hair that hung just over his glasses. Just scruffy enough that you could imagine how good he’d look all cleaned up. It was difficult to imagine it, but with a decent haircut, a shave and maybe some decent clothes he’d look quite proper indeed. I didn’t normally give myself into day dreaming about guys, but I must admit I had thought about him before. I’ve always found that the weird one’s tend to stick in my mind. Strange, huh? It had been that way all throughout university. My boyfriend at the time had been a gamer geek and had hardly been traditional. We’d broken up a few months before University finished.

  “He’s so weird.” Karen murmured softly to herself.

  “I think he’s cute,” I blurted out before I thought better of it.

  Karen coughed into her oats and flashed me a smile, “Would someone like to be Mrs Sunglasses?”

  I flushed red as I realized what I’d just said. Karen seemed to be almost giddy with mirth as she realized that she had a wealth of teasing material.

  “Got to go!” I replied with a manic grin and made a beeline for the door.

  “Jess?”

  “Yes?”

  “Your coffee.”

  * * * * * *

  “And so, once we’re done,” I drawled off in my professional voice, “We click save.”