The building, as I was saying, was Snickerdoodle Vomit in color. It wasn’t far from my dorm. I had gotten through school with passing marks and had wound up at Penn State. It was my second year. The world had changed and I guess I had changed along with it. Twins were now “resident aliens”, legally here, and there was even a representative for them in the White House. Doctor Givvens. The real Doctor Givvens was a retired judge from Baltimore and apparently had given his consent to let his twin represent the others at some national level.

Jake called me in the parking lot. I answered. Yes, I was here. Yes, I was coming up. He was so pushy sometimes. I walked up the long porch-way to the front door. “Closed for private event,” it said. I opened the door.

“Here for the party?” A woman entirely in green asked as I walked into the vestibule.

“Yeah I guess.” I told her. I cocked my head, unsure of myself. “What kind of party is this anyhow?” It was supposed to be a “safe” party.

She gave me a quick up and down. “You’ll be fine dear,” and began to talk on her phone. I hadn’t noticed she had it in her hand. She turned away conferring with a friend. The front area of the building had been converted into the party-goers landing zone. A sign-in sheet was there if you wanted to get private referrals, e-mail sign up, a drawing for a fitness club. The kind of things you expected at a big company get-together. That sounded just like my brother.

After high school, Jack had gone straight into a broker’s apprenticeship and I hadn’t heard from him in several years. He sent me cards on my birthday, and one on my graduation from high school. I knew that the birthday cards weren’t signed by him, but the graduation card was. Along with a debit card for four thousand dollars. It made my dad mad but there was nothing he could do about it really. It was in my name… And I needed the money. Mom had been committed to an institution two years before and it was just him and I at the house, never on speaking terms.

I pushed the elevator button and waited. More guests were showing up, better dressed than I was. I had on a polo and chinos and my Rockport Pro Walker 9000’s. This was as dressed up as I came. The elevator dinged and I got on, not bothering to hold the door. They were too busy chatting it up with the hostess anyway. The doors closed and the elevator lit up one button on the grid. The penthouse. I pushed it and it took me up.

I hadn’t been this high in a long time. Around three hundred feet in the air, you really began to feel the effects of the resonation. It’s why no one flew anymore. It’s why radio didn’t work and all signals bounced off of ground relays or better yet, used land and underwater cables. It’s why no one went into tall buildings. But here I was, going to the penthouse. God help me, I’d better not tell my mom about this. She would have an episode and have to be sedated.

Pretty soon I was already experiencing the effects. I hadn’t been this high since I was sixteen on a dare. I had gone into one of the buildings downtown and climbed the stairs. It was the most terrifying thing that I had ever done. I didn’t even make it forty stories up. At floor thirty seven, I had experienced a seizure and my friends had called the fire department. The police were called and my father had almost beat me to death. That was years ago. That was when Mom was institutionalized.

They still didn’t have a name for all the things you experienced when you were this high up. I had read “The official story.” How no one wanted to attempt a rescue at the International Space Station. They had let them all die. There was nothing to do. They said that JAXA had sent up probes in an attempt to capitalize on it, but it was lost. Little by little, NASA and the USAF were dismantled and shared among the Navy and the Army. It didn’t matter, really. Whether NASA went into the Sea like the rumors said or whether they just quit the program completely didn’t affect the common man like me. Right now, I was stuck in an elevator that was humming.

The buttons, the walls and even my jacket, began to become fuzzy. I was almost at the top. I wonder if all the clothes fell off, or were you just blurry. I was having a hard time focusing on everything, how sometimes things become blurry and double-visioned. Like that, but without the mental instability. This is how a crazy person must feel. Trapped inside of a body that is doing things on its own, when the consciousness remains intact. Maybe… It would have to be a specific type of crazy I guess. It was beyond me. I wasn’t a psychoanalyst.

The button dinged at the top floor and the door opened. It wasn’t really what I was expecting, but then again, I had no expectations. Some of the same logos that were at the bottom floor had smeared their signs here and there. When I say smear, I mean it. Ink didn’t work up here like it did on the ground. You could write deep, or into something… Similar to how you could not only impress the news-type into a ball of Silly Putty, but you could impress into it as well with grooves and gouges. The ink from the advertisements  floated in mid-air like opulent cotton candy clouds. I walked right through them.

They were there – people I mean, walking around with garments that couldn’t exist in real life. Larger than possible, colors that couldn’t work. Angles that weren’t supported by physics. And some of them were swimming through the air like it was water. I was hallucinating I decided, and dedicated my eyes to the floor and walked until I came to a wall, where I stopped, sat down, turned around and placed my back up against it.

I almost fell out of the building, and I would have if a hand hadn’t grabbed me and pulled me back.

“Woah Nelly!” The voice said. It wasn’t my brother, but a red-head with hair that was on fire. I wasn’t alarmed by it, because it didn’t appear to be real fire, but it was interesting to look at, nonetheless. I wanted to speak to her but all I could get out was a groan.

“Oh honey! Are you alright?” She offered me her hand to stand up. I waved her off and stayed on the floor. Not leaning on the wall, but not moving. I couldn’t look up. The walls were waving like coral in the sea and it was very unnerving to say the least. I didn’t know anyone and they didn’t know me. Where was my brother when I needed him? The woman with the red hair hadn’t left my side, instead she was looking at me with a cocked head. She squatted down and came eye to eye with me.

“Ohmygod, this is your first time, isn’t it?” she asked, wide eyed. She knew it was, everyone knew it was, there was no hiding it. Definitely my first time for whatever this was. Going this high.

My brother never showed up. I eventually did stand up and hung out with Blackstar all night… That’s what she said her name was. We talked, we danced and things got a little crazy when my twin showed up. Either Blackstar had slipped me something in my drink or it was just the way things were up here, but I sort of came to with my hands cuffed to a lamp post in the park. It still looked like we were on the top floor, but I couldn’t be sure of anything anymore.

“No hard feelings man.” he said. “I just wanted to meet you and I didn’t think you’d be too keen on me coming down there. Not after what your mom did to my brother.

“Your broth…” I stammered. For some reason I couldn’t speak.

“Yeah. Who did you think he was?” My twin scrutinized me, then sighed, placed a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry it had to come to this man. Really I am.” I looked into his eyes and saw what I thought might be compassion. At least he looked the way I look when I mean it.

Despite myself, I smiled back. I couldn’t really talk. It seemed I didn’t know how. Things were strange here and the way things worked didn’t work the way I wanted them to. I was aware that we were walking towards the bus station.

“…all like the bus station so much,” my twin was saying with wonder. He was genuinely curious. “It’s as if you really want to be going somewhere but don’t really know where.” he continued. How was there a bus station in the Penthouse I wondered. I also realized that I was incredibly hungry.

“Hungry…” I managed.

“Of course, how silly of me,” my twin said, and handed me the bag he had been carrying. It had two sandwiches in it and a pickle in a Ziploc. I looked down at it blankly and got on the bus as they waved goodbye. I could only think to myself: “What?”

When the Big Event came, they knew all about it. For years the scientists had told us that there were only this many months and this many days to be ready for it. They had warned us of possible outcomes and circumstances that may occur to us when it came. They had told us all the data, and we were all still afraid for our lives. In 2244 when the event  flattened the firmament, the impact decimating all life. We were left behind, in the mythosphere, as a remnant. An apology from God for the way things turned out.

The replacement Earth that God had built was much more safe and had every peace of mind ready and available for the humans left behind on the old one. They could feel free to live their lives and do what they needed to do without feeling overwhelmed or burdened, but the sky would be closed to them. Instead, the newer version Earth would be slowly placed down over the old one, until the meld was complete. It would be tricky at first, but He assured us that everything would work out in the end.

The good news is that we all got to ride the bus.