Most people didn’t notice when the cataclysm came. A new dawn came and everyone went on as usual, unaware that everything had changed. But at first, it was only the little things that were different.
Cataclysms are supposed to come with hellfire and trumpets. With nuclear launch codes and packs of ravening zombies. Alien abductions. Cows gone wild.
Instead, it was a refrigerator door that now opened from the left instead of the right. The threads on the bottled water went the other way as if the universe expected everyone to now be left-handed.
A host of tiny, inexplicable changes had turned the whole world a bit wrong. When this sort of cataclysm happens, it can not resist the opportunity to happen again and again. It exponentiates. The cataclysm revels in the fact that it can get away with things while most people continue shuffling through their lives, oblivious.
Livia knew Rufus before it all began, back in a reality where she was a Lisa and he a plain old Rob. Livia recounted the banal details of their lost former life. The changes confused her at first and frightened her later.
She would tell Rufus about the frig door opening from the left. About how the bathroom walls were yellow instead of teal.
He suggested that she hadn’t recovered from a bad dream. The night before, she called out in her sleep. He held her until she quieted.
Reality truly was going haywire. “Rob” would never have been so considerate. She might not like the teal paint, but Rufus was definitely an upgrade.
Lisa was not alone in her memory glitches. There were others. Others noticed the tiny changes. Soon there was a name for it. Mandala Effect.
The Mandala effect explained away all the inconsistencies as misremembering that were cemented by others misremembering. They worked themselves into a group frenzy of false memory. There was no change, no conspiracy, only mob-driven nonsense.
But who else would remember her yellow bathroom? Plus, the cataclysm was sloppy. It missed many little supporting details. For all that Rufus insisted that the bathroom was always teal, there was a partial can of buttercup yellow paint in the garage.
Laurena felt as though there was something important she should remember. Ruger told her it was pre-wedding nerves. But weren’t they already married? She could remember the day so clearly, only hadn’t Ruger’s hair been brown?
She ran her hair through her pale curly hair, remembering that it had been brown and straight the day before. There was more. Did she love Ruger enough to marry him? She felt as though he were a chance-met stranger in her bed.
For Lora, the “false” memories were more real than her daily shifting existence. At least her memories stayed the same, even if the color of the carpet did not. Ron tried to tell her, gently, that the carpet had always been chartreuse. They had picked it out together as a joke that they grew to love.
She raged at Ron. He flinched and went to stay with his parents. But weren’t his parents deceased? She remembered a funeral, once upon a shift.
The next morning she found the bathroom was yellow once more. The reality quakes stopped. Or so she thought. She was still Lora and he, Ron. The refrigerator door opened from the right.
The paint in the can in the garage was teal. Lora no longer remembered what color the canned paint was when it all began. But wasn’t it under the bathroom sink?
Ron was nicer than Rob but not as nice as Rufus or Ruger. He went to her support group, and held her hand. But unlike the rest of the members, he didn’t remember. His memory was at the mercy of the cataclysm.
Lora didn’t know if the remembering was a blessing or a curse. Her friend Monique went mad from the memories of a thousand different lives crowding her head. Stan started wearing an actual tinfoil hat.
Harry committed suicide a month after the last quake. The pressure of being company president was too much for a guy who could remember a simpler life as the corporate valet. His suicide note suggested he wasn’t even sure if he would still be dead, come next quake.
The rest of the group pledged to remember forever. As if they could ever forget. They went underground when their group was declared illegal. Leah didn’t mind meeting in deserted factories and old basements. What mattered was the fellowship of the others who remembered the reality when refrigerators only opened from one side.
Author’s note: Mandela/mandala, yes. It is on purpose. 😉
