Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 29 - Mass Hallucinations

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Peter was on the air again, feeling more alive than he could ever remember. He peered into the shiny black circle at the center of the monstrous television camera. Its dull red light illuminated let Peter know that once again, he was in charge, and millions of scared and tearful people depended on his leadership.

“How long has it been since the event occurred?” he asked. “Given the various — and varied — states of mind we all experienced at the time of the event, this is unfortunately a question no one has been able to answer with absolute certainty. But my guest this hour has some hope for us all.”

It was the start of his seventh hour of non-stop reporting from the anchor desk and he felt like he could keep going for seven hours more, if not longer. His body, his mind — everything about him at that moment — was at the top of his game. He was made for this, for the news and guiding the nation — the world — down difficult and confusing paths. 

Before going on the air, he’d shaved and put on a clean shirt and suit from the closet in his office. He wore his favorite solid red tie that he reserved for only the most important newscasts. His hair was perfect and dark brown once again, and the few wrinkles on his face didn’t make him look old but dignified. He was energized and electric. Razor-edge focused and excited.  

He’d done this before, of course, barreling through seemingly endless coverage of breaking news stories, fifteen-hour marathon broadcasts as the Gulf War erupted, or waiting for Y2K to slam computers to a crashing halt as the new millennia rolled in around the globe.  Grieving with the world on 9/11.  Watching those towers topple in terrible overwhelming clouds of debris-laced dust.  Lives lost and others irrevocably altered, morphed unfairly without choice, without reason as the world turned to him for guidance and direction.

He’d stared at those same towers again just that morning before entering the studio. They stood tall and straight, resurrected and powerful just blocks down the street like guardians returned to herald an era of a world that had either gone completely mad or somehow radically self-corrected itself. 

Those previous forays into non-stop news coverage throughout the years were monumental and unprecedented.  But today was radically different from them all.  Every news story prior to this very moment was nothing compared to staring at the wide-eyed camera that projected his image to the world as he attempted to bring some semblance of an explanation to something completely inexplicable.  It was now ten o’clock in the evening for the eastern United States, and a nation of anxious and confused citizens had kept vigil over their television sets throughout most of the day as they sat in rooms and on furniture that many had not been seen in years. 

“Joining me at this hour is Dr. Rachel Blatner,” Peter continued. “Dr. Blatner is a Columbia University-trained psychotherapist specializing in delirium, dementia, and amnestic cognitive disorders.”

The camera panned back to show a young woman, easily no older than eighteen or nineteen years old, nervously sitting at the desk next to him. She had thick blonde hair that curved out and away from her face in two massive waves and wore large glasses with circular frames that made her eyes look huge.

“Dr. Blatner,” Peter continued, “some of your colleagues are already suggesting the world is in the midst of some sort of mass hallucination. What’s your take?”

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“I think that’s definitively wrong, Peter,” the young woman answered. “Granted, many people are experiencing similar symptoms at the moment, but a mass hallucination would result in more similar experiences among everyone involved.  But as you’ve been reporting, we’re hearing stories that while a great majority of the world’s population was walking around in a haze for the first few hours after the event, many others were not. For example, when I ‘came to,’ or however we want to call it, I immediately knew a displacement had occurred, even though I obviously didn’t comprehend the fullness or complexity of it all. To that point, I’m not sure we ever will.”

“But you’re saying the experiences were different between people,” Peter said.

“For the most part, yes, exactly,” said the young Dr. Blatner.  “And while a mass hallucination, or mass hysteria, would be accompanied by things like, well, like the reports of…”

“…Cloudy memories,” Peter chimed in.

“Yes, cloudy memories, as well as the apparent loss of consciousness that is one of the few symptoms apparently experienced universally because very few people have been able to recall any actual event that caused all of this.  Though I’ve not yet heard of anyone who was passed out and then woke up as a result of the event.”

“Except for people who were already asleep at the moment of the event.”

“Right. Most people were just almost magically…here.”

“So most reports correlate to the fact that the event occurred sometime around 9 PM Eastern Standard Time — let’s call that B.E. — before the event. Is there an agreed-upon ‘wake up’ time after the event happened? A.E., we could say?”

“To the best of our knowledge most people were becoming cognizant of the change around 8 AM here in New York, so that’s 6 AM on the west coast, early afternoon in most of Europe, and 10 PM the next night in Sydney and New Zealand.”

“Dr. Blatner,” Peter said, “for those who are experiencing some of the ongoing displacement issues, what should they or those around them be doing right now?”

“Okay, so from what we’ve gathered in such a short amount of time is that there are several different groups into which people fall right now. I’d say that after the event — A.E., as you say — roughly a third of us came to with some level of realizing something had occurred, but not yet having the recall of all our faculties and memories and such. Then there’s another third of people who have been left in quite a bit of a daze as if almost sleepwalking. Over the course of a few hours, most of these people are slowly waking up and becoming more aware something happened. Then there’s another group that has varying degrees of all this, including a subsection of those who not only had an immediate recall of their thoughts and memories, but had an immediate understanding that a global time shift — for lack of a better term — had affected every person, animal, and mineral on this earth. They’re the ones I’d very much like to speak with as they perhaps have a better cognitive grasp of what happened since their memories were allegedly more clear than most at the very moment of all this switching over to now.”

“So for those whose memories are not so clear, even now, then what?”

“As I said, from what we can tell, and my own experiences attest to this, most people are experiencing, or soon will experience, sort of a falling away of that cloudiness. For me, it felt like I was coming out of anesthesia after surgery.  You may feel like your brain is operating underwater for one moment and then suddenly it won’t be.  But even then there are still a lot of unanswered questions.”

“And there have been many reports that children, in particular, are dealing with somewhat extended memory loss.”

“Yes, from what I’ve heard, and again I just can’t emphasize enough that I’m really as much in the dark right now as everyone else, but from what I’ve heard, whereas most people have total recall of all their memories from before the event, many children apparently do not.”

“So what’s the age we’re looking at for people to regain full retention of their memories?  Infants? Toddlers? Older than that?” Peter asked.

“I wish I could say, Peter,” Dr. Blatner said.  “There have been reports of ten-year-olds who remember being fifty, but eight-year-olds who only remember as much as they did when they were originally eight, I guess, the first time around.”

“I know it’s not polite to ask a woman her age,” Peter said. “But here you are a trained and highly educated psychotherapist, but you look like a teenager.”

“I’m sixty-eight years old,” Dr. Blatner volunteered.

“And yet you look like a teenager.”

“Complete with acne once again.”

“Like you, it seems, everyone suddenly reverted back approximately forty years in age.”

“It appears so, yes,” Dr. Blatner answered.

“And apparently a large segment of the population - those who were under forty years old prior to the event - are unaccounted for.”

“That’s my understanding, as well,” said Dr. Blatner.

“And what about…” Peter paused. He shuffled the pale blue cards in his hands, that were scribbled with notes in his messy penmanship.  “What about those of us who had allegedly died prior to the event?”

Dr. Blatner looked at Peter with pursed lips. Pity poured from her eyes.

“I’m afraid we can’t yet explain that, either,” she answered. “I honestly have no explanation for how you’re here, Peter.”

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