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Chapter 1: Call Me John Doe

My father named me John Doe because he thought it would make me harder to find. "They are always watching," he'd say, taping aluminum foil to the windows. "They" with a capital T. The kind of They that control the satellites, whisper subliminal messages, and put fluoride in the water to make you impotent. Every crazy thing he did was because "They were out to get us" and I was "meant for great things."

Now, everyone says that you're "meant for great things" growing up: teachers, guidance counselors, that weird bus stop lady who smelled like cats and prophecy. Bobo, my parasitic best friend and codependent life partner, says it's all a joke. "They say 'you're meant for great things' to every half-bright kid that'd rather be jerkin' off in the corner than doing the mathmaticals on the ditto sheet."

When my dad said it, he meant it. Our entire lives revolved around all the great things I was supposedly destined for, and he hid me away like I was Jesus Christ John Connor for a Judgment Day that would never come. He was a big believer in the f-word: Fate.

Personally, I subscribe to Bobo's philosophy that fate is just a form of manipulation where you can't see the strings. The best we can hope for is a lot of Slack in those strings. Slack with a capital S because it's the closest thing to freedom in life. "We're all about the Slack, man." Bobo also says those who embrace The Slack are called "Slackers," if you want to get etymological about it, but he usually follows that up with, "No, really, it's true, that's where slacker comes from, but don't look it up."

Christ, "meant for great things," like fate is this cosmic talent scout, and I'm its next big discovery. Little do I know that today is the day that fate comes calling, and I'm about to walk into the casting room and find myself between a camcorder and a stain-resistant leather couch.

There's a dull thump at the door of the basement cave I call my apartment, and the sound pulls me out of my Count Chocula ruminations. Odd. It wasn't a knock, but a thump, and I never order any packages. Ordering packages puts you on a list, and according to dear old Dad, They can't round you up if you're not on a list. They being the CIA or pedo adrenochrome vampires.

I walk over and open the door. A newspaper lies on the "Piss Off" welcome mat. It's the Kansas City Sun, which is even odder. I don't subscribe to any paper. I have a phone and my father's deep-seated belief that They control the media. "They" being the Illuminati or Masons, but never the Jews. My father was always adamant about that, and I honestly can't tell you why. They seem to be every other nut job's go-to boogeyman.

Point is: Who still reads the newspaper these days? Even if I did, it wouldn't be The Sun.

I pick it up, and immediately there's this... Vibe. Vibe with a capital V. Like the world just shrunk an inch, pulling me closer to the paper. I lose my Slack, along with it, and feel fate's tug.

Shit. I can already tell I'm going to spend the rest of the day obsessing over this thing.

"Bobo, you gotta see this," I call out. "Someone left a paper at the door. The KC Sun."

"Huh?" Bobo grunts from the kitchen. "So what?"

"Didn't you hear me? It's the Kansas City Sun, not the Kansas City Star. The Sun."

"Yeah, no. I get that. So what?"

I rush into the kitchen and wave the paper at him. "Bobo, there is no Kansas City Sun!"

Bobo sighs. "No, John. I see where this is going. This is that weird penny all over again."

"You mean my 'lucky penny.'"

"No, it was just a weird penny because no matter how many times you flipped it, it always landed on heads. So you spent days testing it out, just sitting on your ass, flipping a penny, being like, 'Hey, Bobo! Five hundred heads in a row—what's the likelihood of that?' And do ya know what came of your thorough testing? You verified that the weird penny was, in fact, a weird penny, then put it in your pocket and lost the weird penny."

I ignore him and sit down, unfolding the paper. It's got today’s date, and immediately, the front page headline catches my eye. Storm Surge Leaves Franklin Underwater.

"Who's Franklin?" Bobo asks.

I shake my head. "Not who, where. They're talking about a place." I scan the article. "Torrential rain blanketed much of Franklin and the neighboring state of Tennessee."

Bobo perks up at that. "Franklin's not a state, right? I know we didn't do too good in geography, but I'm pretty sure it's not a state. Do a google."

I grab my phone and pull up a wiki. "The State of Franklin was a proposed state located in present-day East Tennessee. It was supposed to be the 14th state, but it never happened."

Bobo turns back to the paper. "You know what's also weird about this thing? They're spellin' all British-like. Lots of O-U's like 'labour' and 'colour.'"

I keep flipping through the pages, and reality keeps getting looser. The sports section has the Kansas City Monarchs leading the Central Division—not the Royals—the Monarchs. Jackie Robinson's old Negro League team that folded in the '60s, but here they are playing the Cubs.

"Why is everything so... off?" Bobo asks.

"Off doesn't even begin to cover it." I flip to the world news. "Prussia just signed a deal with Tesla to install charging stations across Northern Europe."

"Prussia don't exist anymore. There was a whole war. You know, that one war—"

"—You mean World War One?"

"No, that one war that was 'cause that guy got shot. They named a band after him."

"Archduke Frans Ferdinand?"

"Bingo! Man, 'Take Me Out' is such a banger. I wonder if it'd be a good fuckin' song, especially when that drop comes."

I bring Bobo back on track and point at the paper. "It also says the People's Republic of East Korea is launching rockets over West Korea's airspace just to freak them out."

Bobo just stares at me, not getting it. Admittedly, he's not the brightest bulb on the tree, but he's not exactly dim, either. He flickers and has his moments.

The deeper I dig, the more wrong it all feels. "It's like someone rebuilt our timeline from memory, but their memory was shit."

"Is that what we're looking at here?" Bobo asks. "A newspaper from another universe?"

I turn to the classifieds, and that something that's been humming in my bones starts to tingle. My eyes start scanning the columns, and before I can stop myself, I'm connecting dots.

"John?" Bobo says from a quadrillion miles away. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," I lie, as my hand reaches for a pen. The fifth letter of the first Missed Connection is improperly capitalized. I got oFf on your groveling like a dog. The second missed connection also has a misplaced space after the fifth letter. I'm a Fr eaky, man slut. There's something here—I can feel it. A pattern. A message. Fate's strings are tightening. I start underlining the fifth letter of each missed connection.

"John." Bobo's voice is careful now, the way people talk when someone is on a ledge. "This is exactly how it was with your dad. Coded messages are straight outta his playbook."

"This is different. I actually found something."

"He always found something too. Didn't he spend a month decoding a flickering streetlight he thought was sending him messages in Morse code?"

He's right. This is how it started—finding messages, seeing patterns. It was his first step down that nut job rabbit hole. After that came the panic. They were on to us—They being either the lizard people or pig people depending on what timezone we were in—and we had to move. Still, the what-ifs circle around and call to me. I gather letters in the margins. Those letters become words, and those words turn into a message with an address: Freethinkers needed to study the odd and eccentric. Open interview. Today. 3PM. Corporate Woods. Building 5. Suite 555.

I check my phone—it’s 1:47 PM.

I stop myself and ask Bobo, "Do you think I'm crazy?"

There's a painful beat of silence where a good friend would say, "Noooo. No way." Then Bobo says, "Yes. Christ, yes. John, you're a bag of picked-through trail mix; you're nothing but fucking nuts. Know why? Because I'm your best damn friend. But you're not your dad level of nuts, not yet, but this is definitely startin' to get there."

I tear off the strip of paper and stare at the ribbon of crazy in my hands. "That's exactly why I have to go. Think about it: An open interview means interviewers. Real live normies, not delusions. If I show up and there's nothing there, or it's just some office with a bunch of mediocretin drones looking at me like I'm nuts, then great. I'm nuts. Mystery solved. But if there is something..." I grab my keys. "The easiest way to prove I'm sane is by doing the insane thing—to know that it's insane."

"That's some pretzel logic right there," Bobo says.

I snap my fingers and point. "And as a reward, we'll hit up Oak Park Mall and get a pretzel."

* * *

We take the "Chick Magnet," a.k.a. my 2001 Corolla with more rust than paint, out of downtown and into the cookie-cutter labyrinth of the 'burbs. Dad moved us around a lot growing up, but we always found ourselves back in KC. In terms of places to lay low, you couldn’t pick a more inconspicuous locale than a mid-tier city in the middle of America, smack dab between two states. Something about the place just emanates an aura of tapioca pudding.

Case in point: Name one thing about Kansas City.

Okay. Now, name one thing about Kansas City that isn’t the Chiefs or their barbecue.

See what I mean?

The 'burbs alone are a nightmare. It's an endless grid of cookie-cutter Americana on the flattest land possible, honeycombed with McMansion hell, and for some reason, every neighborhood is named something fancy, like "Oxford Estates" or "Nottingham Hills." All it takes is one wrong turn, and these places close around you, swallowing you up and trapping you in a labyrinth made entirely of cul-de-sacs.

Bobo goes full Irish sea captain on me. "And ye be cursed to spend yer days evadin’ the minotaur, pullin’ out yer hair, screamin’, ‘The road! The road’s right there! Just past them two front yards!’"

I chuckle and toss a roach out the window, then manually crank it back up as we turn into the belly of the white-collar beast: Corporate Woods. The place is a termite colony of accountants and business degrees. Home to the middle-class, mid-level manager cogs who’ll spend five minutes explaining what they do before you realize even they don’t know why they’re getting paid.

"If I ever have to work here," Bobo says as a power suit power-walks past us, "just put my head under the tire and roll back and forth until you stop hearing it crunch."

Staring at all the identical buildings, I mutter, "It's like someone poured twelve thousand gallons of grey paint over everything interesting. That feeling I get is here, but it’s… muffled. They’re hiding something under all this conformity."

"Now you sound exactly like—"

"Like Dad. I know."

Building Five looms ahead of us—all glass, steel, and synergy. I put the car in park. "Stay put. No offense, but you’re not exactly… interview material."

"Says the guy in a Megadeth T-shirt."

"Hey, I showered today." I grab my phone. "I’ll be back in twenty—either with a job or confirmation that I need medication."

The fifth floor is the epitome of corporate blandness: beige carpet, fluorescent lights, industrial air freshener masking the smell of bad coffee and crushed dreams. Suite 556 belongs to "Quantum Actuarial Solutions." Suite 554 is "Paradigm Synergy Analytics." But 555… doesn’t exist. I do another lap. Then another. On the third lap, I ask a woman with dead eyes and sensible shoes where Suite 555 is.

"You mean Quantum Actuarial Solutions?" she mumbles, dully tapping her phone.

"No, that’s 556. I’m looking for 555."

"Oh, then you’re looking for Paradigm Synergy Analytics. It’s right next door."

I groan. "That’s 554."

"Are you sure you’re in the right building?"

"Building 5, Suite 555, on the fifth floor. It’s a lot of fives."

She looks up then, and there’s something wrong with her smile. "No, it’s only four fives. That’s probably your problem." She snorts, returning to her phone. "Keep looking. You know what they say, 'fifth time’s the charm.'"

"Who says that?"

"Oh, you know…" That weird smile of hers grows wider. "Fifth-floor people."

She walks off cackling—yes, actually cackling—and something about this floor makes me think all the other fifth-floor people are just as screwed in the head.

I take another lap, and I start to feel that Vibe pushing me forward. I’m walking in circles, yet I’m getting closer. On the fifth lap around the floor, I stop between 556 and 554. There’s a door there. A door that absolutely, positively wasn’t there on laps one through four. A plaque next to it reads: "555 - B.O.B."

This is clearly that "turn back now" moment in every horror movie. I go in anyway.

The office is a maze of cubicles and a time capsule from the Clinton administration. It’s empty and completely untouched by the decades. Ancient computers made of fresh white plastic sit on every desk, their screens dark except for one. A water cooler that probably remembers the O.J. trial burbles. It’s all crisp and clean—no dust anywhere.

I pick up an AOL installation floppy disk and marvel at its antiquity, then squint, confused. A second AOL floppy disk is sitting exactly where I picked up the first. I pick that one up, staring at the empty spot on the desk, wondering if I’m just seeing things. I glance down at the two identical floppies in my hand, then back to the desk. A third AOL floppy disk is now there. I drop the other two and grab the third one but don’t hear any clatter. I look down: the first two floppies are gone. They never hit the ground. Okay… I drop the third floppy disk and watch it hit the high-traffic carpeting and stay put. I keep staring at it, waiting for something to happen, until finally I blink. It’s gone, and a fourth floppy disk is now right where the others were.

"It’s as if this whole office has been put on pause…"

The single glowing CRT monitor draws me in like a moth. "Enter Password:"

On a lark—because this whole day has been one giant lark—I type in "5-5-5-5-5." The screen flickers. There’s a click, and the smooth whisper of the supply closet door opening on its own. Inside, where the paperclips and toilet paper should be, is the gleaming interior of an elevator.

"Okay. Secret elevator in the broom closet. That’s one hell of a delusion."

I slap myself, hard. Then again. And once more, for good measure. The elevator doesn’t disappear. I’m either completely sane or so far gone that reality’s stopped bothering to check in.

The elevator interior is that woody brown that just screams 1970s. Like the office, it looks like it was installed yesterday. No numbers, no emergency stop, just a single glowing button labeled, "B.O.B."

"And down the rabbit hole I go…"

I press it. Down… Down… Down… My ears pop once. Twice. Three times. That Vibe I’ve been chasing has my ass cheeks positively vibrating.

The elevator stops with a "ding!" and the doors open to a David Lynch fever dream. Muzak plays over a fuzzy speaker. Six chairs line one wall, five occupied, one labeled with "DO NOT SIT" inked on that old printer paper with the holes punched in the sides. The occupants all stare straight ahead in crisp suits: three men, two women, and a whole array of paranoia alarm bells, telling me they’re all G-men.

I mutter to myself, "Be cool. You’re cool. A little stoned, but you’ve got your Slack."

Behind a curved desk holding a massive old-timey telephone switchboard, a receptionist with cat-eye glasses stares at me, nonplussed to oblivion. Above her, a Kit-Kat Clock swings its eyes back and forth—except… I swear to "Bob" Dobbs, it just glanced at me.¹

I approach the desk, channeling what little confidence isn’t being crushed by the sheer weight of the Weird surrounding me. "Hi. I’m here for the interview."

The receptionist’s mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. She’s eyeing me like I’m about to pull a rabbit out of my ass. The Kit-Kat Clock’s eyes sweep past me again, definitely pausing to clock me, and I tell myself there’s no way I’m being judged by a novelty timepiece. Finally, she finds her voice, and it comes out squeakier than she probably intended. "Okay, then! You’re not on the list, but you are somehow here. You are here for an interview. What’s your… your name?"

"John Doe," I say, then add the part I always have to add, "Yes, that’s actually my name."

The receptionist types something, waits with fingers hovering over her keyboard, then types again in the distinct body language of someone having a panicked conversation over text while trying to look like they’re not. Don’t ask how I know that.

The back of my neck tingles. The suits against the wall aren’t even pretending not to stare. The girl in the corner, in particular… She’s kinda cute if you ignore the murder glare. She’s sizing me up like she’s deciding which organ to harvest first.

"What do you think?" one suit mutters to her. "He’s got NSA wonk written all over him."

"No, Grubhub," she replies dryly, "but he forgot to bring the food."

I glance up at the Kit-Kat Clock and catch it in a dead-on ogle, tail frozen mid-swing. The moment our eyes meet, it starts swaying again, trying way too hard to look casual. I almost expect it to start whistling, minding its own business. Okay. What the hell is this place?

The receptionist’s frantic texting escalates to a hushed phone call. "Yes, he’s standing right here… No, I’m serious… He says that’s his actual name…"

"Would you like to see my license?" I offer, and she nods so fast her glasses bounce. I hand it over. She trades me a clipboard, and pulls a flower pen out of a vase. "Take a seat and fill this out."

I eye the "DO NOT SIT" chair, then decide to sit on the floor against the opposite wall.

One look at the "job application," and I realize I need to stop calling it that. This thing is the unholy offspring of a Choose Your Own Adventure book and a tax return. The first question: "Are you left-handed? If yes, turn to page 43." I’m not, but I flip there anyway. Page 43 just says, "Please exit the building immediately. If you experience any nosebleeds in the next 48 hours, contact a neurologist at once."

The questions get weirder from there. It doesn’t want my birth date but needs to know if I’m a Gemini. I am, and the form has a specific section for Geminis and only Geminis.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" No.

"Are you sure?" Well, less so now that you’ve asked twice.

"Who killed JFK?" The bullet.

"Can two plus two equal five?" Well, if two numbers love each other and the other two like to watch…

I circle "yes," then turn to page 54 as instructed: "Please request addendum C-7 from the receptionist." I do, and she hands me another stack just as thick as the first. I think I hear her whisper "good luck," but it might also have been "good God."

One by one, the G-men are called through a door until it's just Murder Girl. I take the opportunity to slide into a newly vacated seat, with the "DO NOT SIT" chair between us.

"Do I say broken mirrors are bad luck, or should my answer match my stance on black cats for consistency?"

Murder Girl hums. "I don’t believe in luck. There’s opportunity, persistence, and chaos."

"I once had a penny that landed on heads no matter how many times you flipped it. What would you call that?"

"A broken penny," she says matter-of-factly.

I offer a hand. "I’m John Doe, and you’re…?"

She doesn’t take it. "That’s classified."

I pull my hand back, suddenly unsure of what to do with my entire arm. "Right, well…"

"Do you go to every job interview dressed like this? What is it? A Silicon Valley ‘I’m too smart to give a shit’ angle?"

"Well, I am one of those things. What about you? Lemme guess: You killed for your country and have that proudly highlighted on your resume."

A scream rips through the air from behind the door. It cuts off suddenly, like someone hit mute. Murder Girl doesn't even flinch. She just examines her blood-red nails. "I didn’t put my body count on my resume."

I set the long-ass form down on the "DO NOT SIT" chair. "Would that've been in poor taste?"

"No, that’s just also classified," she says, then smiles. Her teeth are very white and very straight. Pointed? No. But fangs wouldn’t be out of place. Shit, why is that kind of a turn-on?

I snort, and it’s a painfully out-of-body experience where I can see myself snorting, then cringing because I know exactly how not suave it is. I’m not the smoothest talker—that’s usually Bobo’s job as my wingman—but something about her turns my words into chunky peanut butter. "That’s, uh, good to know. I don’t know how to put this, but is this job of the murdery variety?"

She squints at me, abruptly suspicious. "You don’t know what this job is, do you?"

I shrug. "I know it’s weird. I like weird. I can deal with weird. Weird is never boring."

I return to my form… which isn’t there. I just put it down on the "DO NOT SIT" chair. Where did it go? I look under the chair, behind it, even check my own lap. Nothing.

"Excuse me, miss?" I call to the receptionist. "I think this chair ate my application."

She stares me down over her cat-eye glasses. "Did you ignore the sign?"

"It says ‘Do not sit,’ and I did not sit, so no, I didn’t ignore the sign."

She tsks. "You ignored the sign."

"Yeah. Okay, fine, but where did the form go?"

"Hell," she says, and I swear the Kit-Kat Clock’s eyes roll.

I blink several times, then turn back to the "DO NOT SIT" chair. Something tells me that if I put my hand on that worn-out cushion, it’ll go right through and end up somewhere else. I reach toward the cushion. The air feels thicker, like pushing through invisible Jell-O…

I take a breath and press my hand down…

…against the very normal cushion. Oh. Never mind.

"Mr. Doe, we will see you now." An old man with a combover and a cleft lip that leaves him permanently sneering stands in front of me. Two goons in three-piece suits flank him.

That is not good. I’m starting to think there really isn't an open interview.

"Actually, I think it’s her turn." I try to point to Murder Girl, but my hand is stuck. I look down and only see my wrist. The rest has been swallowed by the cushion. I try to pull it out; some kind of membrane tears, and I sink further in. "Oh, that’s not right."

Director Combover sighs, annoyed, and turns to the receptionist. "Doreen, why didn’t you notify the Collectors that the Musical Chair showed up in the lobby?"

Her voice goes squeaky. "I did! It’s not my fault they’re dragging ass."

Director Combover gestures at the massive switchboard on Doreen’s desk, “How did he even get in here?”

The receptionist thumbs through a stack of timecards. “I don’t even know. That entry point hasn’t been used in months—It wasn’t even plugged in.”

I sink up to my elbow into the chair. The air is scorching hot on the other side. I feel around and hiss as my hand brushes against the burning-hot metal frame of the chair.

Director Combover turns back around and gestures at me. "Alright, come on."

The suits casually pull their jackets aside and rest their hands on their holsters.

"Up, now!" Director Combover snaps. "Yank your arm out, or you lose it. Either way, you’re coming with us."

I don’t think. I should think, but I don’t. I just close my eyes and dive face-first into the rough fabric and decades of collective farts. My inner ear does a loop-de-loop, and suddenly, up is down as half my torso sticks out of another chair.

It’s blindingly bright, hot, and dry. My eyes adjust, and I find myself in a desert wasteland staring at a decaying road sign: Welcome to Hell, California.

An air-raid siren begins wailing in the distance. A voice echoes off the flat terrain, warning about an "unknown entity." Shiny, shimmering shapes of spacemen emerge from a concrete bunker and start running toward me—Oh. I’m the "unknown entity."

In the lobby, Director Combover's goons grab my thrashing legs and pull. I grab the sides of the chair and push, screaming as the hot metal singes my palms.

The spacemen get closer—no, not spacemen; soldiers wearing fireproof suits, holding something. Decades of video games pattern-match the objects immediately, but I’m struggling to rationalize seeing them in real life. Then the blue flames appear and point in my direction. Oh, "Bob." They’ve got flamethrowers. I’m staring down the barrels of flamethrowers.

I look down and see the scattered pages of my job application, as well as four arms and half a torso of some creature cooked well beyond well-done.

The PA echoes over the distance: "Activate eradication protocol."

"PULL ME BACK!" I switch tracks and scrabble back into the chair as flaming napalm flies in my direction. My ear does another loop-de-loop, and suddenly I’m back in the lobby, staring up at the two goons and Director Combover.

"You done?" Combover asks.

"Yeah, I’m done." I say, and the goons pull me to my feet.

NO REALLY, CLICK HERE TO BUY THE BOOK.

1. Bobo and I believe in the ironic divinity of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, prophet of the hipster cult, Church of the Subgenius. Due to the Holy Salesman's ineffable nature, his nickname, "Bob" is always depicted in quotes.