To Be God - MIRAI SMP ORIGINAL REWRITE

Chapter one

But today, he struggled to keep focus. Only his body was at work — his mind remained elsewhere, wandering persistently to last night's dream. He can only piece together two things from it — one, that the person was somebody else. And two, that it must have been set over a hundred years ago.

They say anything you see in a dream is based on — subconsciously or not — something you've seen or heard of in real life. But try as he might, he cannot in God's name recall any familiarity of that person or life. He tried doing some quick research on one of the computers at work but he couldn't really find anything to explain what he dreamt.

Hopefully his search history is wiped. Out of all the things he would like to avoid having to explain to someone, googling 'random person hanging themself in medieval dream meaning symbolism?' would definitely be on that list. Maybe if he—

"Are you going in or not?"

The gruff voice from behind snaps him back into reality and turns him around. Standing behind Alec is a uniformed man with a cigar poking out from the right corner of his lips. Thick-browed, a roundly-shaped face and a fat nose. It's Terry, the security guard — a heavy-set chainsmoker of a man with a perma-frown etched on his face. He's also never seen his eyes either, since Terry never goes anywhere without cementing his pair of sky-blue aviators onto the bridge of his nose. But he's convinced even if he took them off the amount of bush on his eyebrows would still hide his eyes.

Alec's exchanged minimal conversations with him from time-to-time. But from what he's seen, he's always serious. Tonight though, Terry seems especially more serious than usual. Come to think of it, what the hell is he doing in the office this early? Or late.

"You've been standing in front of that elevator for five minutes," Terry says, nodding towards the stationary elevator in front of Alec.

There he goes again. Unnecessary thoughts pre-occupying his mind while his body subconsciously continues to function. He hadn't even realised he had walked himself over to the elevator.

"Yeah," is all he mumbles back. "I probably have."

He's too tired to figure out what Terry's doing here at this time of day. He presses a finger on the button with the arrow symbol, and in seconds there's a small ding, followed by the elevator doors sliding open.

"Have a good night, Satchwell." Terry says again from behind, his eyes unreadable from underneath his sunglasses.

"You too, Terry." Technically it's early morning, and if he wanted to be a dick about it he would have corrected him on that. Lucky for Terry, he's not a dick.

He casts a weary side eye to Terry before quickly stepping inside. The doors slide shut again behind him. Before he knows it the small compartment shutters and shoots up, flying toward surface level.

》◆《

The facility is located hundreds of feet below ground with over sixty floors. The building's not on maps, making it almost impossible to locate — even if you do find it, getting past the high security is harder.

When the elevator doors open back up again, he's led to the ground reception floor. The exit is barricaded by metal doors that can only be opened with either an eyeball scan or fingerprint ID. Alec tends to use the latter. Pressing a thumb on the fingerpad, the steel doors beep and rattle before sliding open.

The first thing his face is hit with is the icy breeze of the outside's cold air. He slugs himself out the doors and glances up. It's about fifteen minutes past two. The skies are still dark and the stars glow dim outside in the city of Jackson, as if it were still midnight.