The Little Things In Life

Life is full of surprises. Surprise tests. Surprise parties. Surprise babies. It's a universally accepted fact at this point. Life can and will surprise you when you least expect it. Case in point: the large capital letters spelling out RESET YOUR PASSWORD that are floating in front of me. Yes, a real, live error message. In front of me. In real life. Surprise!

I'm as unsettled as you are, or at least I assume. Maybe you were aware of the apparent simulation beforehand, but I wasn't. I thought I was a living, breathing human being of the genus Homo and species sapien. Apparently not. Evidently not. There's an error message in front of my face and it's flashing and demanding and what frickin' password--

Moe would know. Moe knows everything. Moe will know if I'm having a psychological break.

"Hey, Moe?"

"Yeah?"

"You wanna come in here real quick?"

He doesn't answer, but I can hear him moving around now. RESET. He's rolled out of bed and started walking out of his room. YOUR. He's shuffling down the hall, calling out, "What's up?" PASSWORD.

"What the f--!?

"Yep, okay, not crazy."

"Not crazy?! Yes crazy! Insanely crazy!"

"Not crazy enough that I'm the only one seeing it, though."

Small victories. Shared hallucinations. Simultaneous break downs.

"That should not be how we're measuring crazy, Piggs."

He's standing next to me now. He's looking at me and at the words and whipping his head back and forth and back and forth. It's kind of making me dizzy. I gotta make it stop.

"Okay." I grab his shoulders to turn him around, the words still shining in my peripheral. "That's crazy. The whole standing in your home and giving yourself whiplash. Baseline crazy."

"I think it's a pretty reasonable response. There's letters floating in the middle of the kitchen, Piggs. A password--what password? How is it even doing that? What is it?"

"Those are all wonderful questions, Moe, but I'm in the same boat you are. I quite literally handed you your paddle."

"Is this even real life?" And now he's looking more at the words than he is at me again. "How do we fix it?"

"Fix it? I vote we ignore it until it goes away or becomes part of the house. Like the can wall."

"The can wall was a mold filled mistake and you know it!"

"And now he admits it! Words are floating in the frickin' kitchen and he admits that stacking a bunch of unwashed cans in direct sunlight is a bad idea?!"

And now we're off topic.

"I thought we moved past this!"

"I did, too! But then I woke up this morning and there's a cryptic message floating in the kitchen and I need to deflect the crazy onto something else before I actually lose it."

And now we're hysterical.

"Breathe, Piggs. C'mon, you're getting worked up over nothing."

"Reset your password, Moe. In the kitchen."

"I know."

"Floating words like a video game."

"Piggs."

"It's crazy."

"Aloma!"

"Morgan!"

And now it's quiet. Or as quiet it can be when I'm hyperventilating and Moe is muttering under his breath. And I swear to God the floating Devil words are buzzing, honest to every higher power buzzing. I hate what today has become. Life was so much easier before I woke up and rolled out of bed and shuffled down the hall and came face to face with what I assume is an omen of death. Or impending doom. Or something. It's definitely something.

"Did you try turning your back on it?"

"What?

"Like, have you tried not looking at it? Maybe it'll go away if we look away."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Oh, and floating words do?"

"Okay, Moe, fine. Let's do that. How do we do that?"

"Turn around, count to ten, hope for the best?"

"Good enough for me."

And so now we're in the kitchen with our backs to this morning's surprise. Personally, I'm having an intense staring contest with the cabinet hardware. I'm pretty sure Moe is doing his best to roll his eyes to the farthest corner of his eye sockets.

"Okay, Piggs. On three."

"One."

"Two."

RESET YOUR PASSWORD.