Chapter 4 - It’s Showtime!

 

 

My sister Milli was understanding and took me in after I explained the situation.

“Milli, I am so tired and have to take a nap.”

“OK, Joseph, go to the master bedroom. I hope you will not mind the mess,” she said, and pointed her hand toward the bedroom.

“I don’t care about anything anymore,” I thought. I said “Hi,” to my little nephew, Asa, and went to bed. I fell asleep several times but kept waking up in less than twenty minutes. The weather was strange. It rained on and off and the Sun was hitting my face at different intervals. I began to analyze the situation again and went over all the possible scenarios. “I don’t know anymore. I just need to be patient as there are too many unknowns at this time. My symptoms and the surrounding effects keep changing at an unpredictable rate.”

I looked out the window and was amazed by the scenery. It was right after the rain ended, the sky was crystal blue, the Sun’s rays were entering the bedroom and everything looked so peaceful. “Maybe I am in front of the gates to Heaven. This will all be over soon.” I thought of this as I was learning to accept the “Heaven vs Hell” reality. I also reminded myself of “The Hollywood Rob” rule and went to the living room to talk with Milli and Jonathan.

We spoke for a while about my situation. I was told to stay at the house until I found a job and a place to live. I hoped this would blow over soon and I would be able to return home.

Jonathan and I went to the backyard and the conversation continued. “This week has been rough. I lost my wife, my job, and I don’t feel too good. I need a joint! Do you have any?” I asked Jonathan.

“Joseph, you need to calm down and relax, then I’ll give you something.” 

I knew Jonathan always had a little bit of weed lying around somewhere. I kept asking for the joint but the answer was always evasive. He finally gave in when we entered his workshop; a wooden structure with two separate rooms that could easily be converted to a man cave. He picked up a small smoke pipe that was lying around among the countless number of individual tools.

“Here it is, Joseph, enjoy it. I need to find a lighter.”

I was really excited as I was holding the pipe with both hands. “It sure will make me feel good and help to forget about all this shit that’s happening in my life.” My thoughts were interrupted when I realized that I don’t really care for drugs. “I don’t do drugs and hardly ever drink. I am a gym freak and this goes against my religion.” The last time I’d smoked weed was about six years ago while camping in South Georgia. Weed and alcohol never had any effects on me, besides making me feel euphoric at first and sick later. I wouldn’t be able to work out the way I did if I was a party person. There are exceptions to every rule. There were two occasions in my life when I enjoyed getting drunk and high.

​

A couple short memories. . .

In 1994, a few weeks before permanently moving to the USA, my buddy Honza and I went to my mom’s cottage for the weekend. The cottage is located in the wooded Vltava River canyon, about an hour from Prague. It was a great trip. We did all the fun stuff fifteen-year-old kids would do when left alone. We explored the area by inflatable kayak, cooked our own meals, talked about everything, drank beer, and listened to our favorite bands of that time; Tři Sestry, Vysací Zámek, and Orlík. In late afternoon, it was time to visit the pub located in the nearest village, Krňany, about a forty-five-minute walk through the woods. In those times, nobody checked IDs. If you looked old enough you were able to drink as much as you wanted. A restaurant or pub could not be sued if you drove drunk and killed a person. That evening, I had ten half-liters of a lager beer, one Bavarian beer; a mixed drink consisting of Fernet and tonic and, of course, one “Zelená,” (peppermint liqueur), a favorite drink of the Tři Sestry band. I felt OK until I started to walk across the pub toward the exit; I opened the entrance door and immediately fell on the sidewalk. Both Honza and I had the same amount of drinks, but he didn’t appear to be drunk at all. I don’t remember how we returned to the cottage. He was holding me as much as he could, but it didn’t help, as I fell on a bunch of rocks more than once. The next day, I was really sick and vomited several times. This was the first and last time in my life being this drunk.

The first time I visited the Czech Republic as an adult was in 1998. In Prague, Honza, his friends and I went to a bar for a few drinks. There were about ten of us, so we sat around one large circular table. Honza’s girlfriend, Hana, who was very cute, wore a short dress and had a small purse. Everybody wanted to smoke a joint, so Hana pulled big rock of hashish out of her purse and broke it into many small pieces. The rock must have taken most of the space in the purse. “How nice the bartender doesn’t care, and we don’t have to worry about police,” I said to everyone, in great relief. This was the first time in my life I saw people using drugs in public without the fear of being persecuted. The weed and hash mix was amazing. An instant high rushed through my body after just a couple of inhalations. 

 

At my sister’s. . .

Jonathan was searching for the lighter, but after several minutes could not find it.

“Come on, Jonathan, what’s wrong with you? I need to get high as fast as possible, to forget about everything.” I kept asking this and similar questions over and over again. He gave me answers totally unrelated to my questions. I instantly thought about my wife and kids mixing irrelevant words into sentences. On certain occasions, Jonathan was moving his head from left to right and not looking at me at all when answering the questions. My kids behaved the same way over the weekend.

“It’s starting again! The NSA or the Hell/Heaven or the TV producers or the Matrix people instructed another person I trust and like to drive me insane. What am I going to do? Don’t panic, remember ‘The Hollywood Rob’ rule.”

My thought process accelerated at a faster and faster rate. I began to have severe chest pains, breathed heavily, was scared and frantically asked for the lighter.

“Joseph, relax, I have the lighter but it doesn’t work. Here, take it and calm down.”

I took the lighter and tried it several times. I was feeling worse and worse but finally, the lighter worked. I lit up the joint and inhaled multiple times, as hard as I could.

“Thanks, Jonathan, this is exactly what I need. I’m fucked up, you know women, they give me a hard time everywhere I go. I can’t win with them. I got to tell you all these stories. . . in Prague, my buddy Rob fucked all these hookers. . .” As I was saying this sentence, I lost control of my body. From that point on, I only remember a few memories and circumstances surrounding those flashbacks. Probably due to the drug, I began to think faster and faster until all the possible scenarios blended together into one new reality. I tried to adjust my behavior to stay calm and at the same time to appease all four scenarios at once. As a result, it became impossible to control my own body regarding all actions/reactions and the ability to communicate in a rational matter. I was not able to control my voice, and all questions and answers. The following pages have the most detailed recollection of the events that I am able to remember. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.

“The NSA will come soon to take me away. They will be able to do it because I’m high. I better break the aquarium and fake an injury. An ambulance will come to take me away before the NSA.” I frantically broke the aquarium. Milli and Asa ran away from the house. Jonathan tried to hold me down, but I easily broke free. It felt like I had supernatural strength and physically could do anything.

I continued to think. “The aquarium will not be enough. I need to break something else, like the computer sitting over there. . .” I folded my hand into a fist and smashed it into the screen as hard as I could. I wanted to get more people to witness the injuries, so I ran outside to contact some neighbors.

“I am in Reality TV so I better give them a good show.”

I danced on the street, yelled that I love Michael Jackson and even attempted to moonwalk. For no reason, I realized that I couldn’t become too happy because I didn’t want to go to Hell or Heaven. I had to become neutral and not be positive or negative. I then lost the ability to control my thoughts altogether; thinking and saying one positive sentence followed by thinking and saying one negative sentence in order for my mind to stay neutral.

“I love Michael Jackson but I hate niggers, no I love Black people. I hate Jews, no I love Jews, I hate Asians, no I love Asian. . .

“I like Gorbachev, no I hate Gorbachev, I like Reagan, no, I don’t like Reagan, because he made everybody miserable. No, wait, Gorbachev made everybody miserable. I like capitalism and hate communism. No, I like both socialism and capitalism. . .”

My uncontrolled thoughts and speech, similar to the above, occurred at a faster and faster rate until I decided to run back to the house. For some reason the “Heaven vs Hell”, the “Paranoid NSA”, and the “Matrix” scenarios now became part of the Reality TV show. The show, however, was not about deciding between socialism and capitalism anymore. It was a sadistic reality show with these rules:

The game was a Reality TV show broadcast live, 24/7, all over the Earth in the year 2117. Due to severe overpopulation, there were frequent wars over raw materials, land, food, and water. Everything tangible became scarce and the world’s governments, consisting exclusively of religious fundamentalists and related sects, had no choice but to ration everything. The middle class no longer existed. People were either poor or rich, nothing in between. All media, including internet communication, was strictly censored and monitored. The freedom of speech and assembly was nonexistent. Democracy no longer existed. The government struggled to keep the people from protesting, therefore, a show was developed where live suffering of human beings became the zenith of the program. The people loved the show since it somehow relieved them of the misery they were experiencing in their everyday lives. The game was a joint venture between the US government and a major media company. A political prisoner, usually an atheist, was taken to a hospital where his memories were erased. New memories were implanted in his or her brain to mirror a fake life between June 30 1978 to December 15 2016. After the memory implant, the person was released to a “dome” where everyone was an actor and the settings mirrored the year 2017 to the smallest possible detail. The person’s brain was wirelessly hacked by the producers. The sickness and hallucinations that I was experiencing were periodically uploaded into the brain. At the same time, all the actors, including fake family members, were instructed to drive the person crazy until he or she would be killed or driven to complete insanity. There was always a lucky person in the audience who had a chance to decide and direct the killing of this person. All methods of killing, including torture, were permitted.

​

I ran toward my sister’s house, realizing what was going on. I was stopped by a police officer a few feet from the house. He said the most unusual and frightening sentences I had heard from any of the actors so far: “So, you met your friends, the aliens from Pleiades, right? This is how it’s gonna go from now on. . . as long as you can hear, see, feel, and touch, you are not saving the world and everything will get worse.”

He then touched my right shoulder. I quickly began to think about the meaning of the message. “Any normal person would be more than happy to give his or her life to save the world. I can still see,” I said to myself and closed my eyes. “I can’t see any more, but I can still feel, hear everything and my shoes touch the ground. What am I going to do?” I woke up lying in an ambulance, turned to my left and there was a nurse sitting next to me. She asked what happened. I continued to think again at a faster and faster rate. “The actress is trying to trick me. This is all part of the TV game. I was told not to see, hear, feel, and touch. She is asking questions to get me to talk. If I continue to break the rules of the game everything will get worse. The ambulance will take me to a hospital where I will be tortured. I won’t say anything, but I can still see, feel, and touch.”

I ran out of the ambulance but was stopped by two Cobb County police officers, a Black male and White female. The officers attempted to arrest me. I was approached and touched by one of the officers. Immediately after I was touched, I woke up lying in the police car. “No,” I said, and continued to think. “I keep breaking the rules of the game. I can still see, hear, feel, and touch. Instead of going to the hospital, I’ll go to prison, where I’ll be subject to torture according to the viewer’s wishes. I need to come up with something really quickly to reverse this. As long as I can get back to my sister’s house, I’ll be able to stay in the game unharmed.”

I closed my eyes and the ability to hear went away. I was lying on the back seat of the car and my body started to get cold. The areas of my body that were touching the car seat became numb. “Good, at this point I can’t see, hear, and touch anything. Let’s see if I can feel something.” The surrounding air was becoming colder and colder and the only thing I was able to feel was the beating of my heart. I focused my thoughts. I didn’t want to feel my heart anymore. I continued to think with my eyes closed and noticed it was beating at a slower and slower rate until I couldn’t feel a single beat. I was relieved, since I would wake up in Milli’s house in a few minutes.     

I woke up unable to concentrate and focus my eyes. I looked out the window and the scenery was changing. “Where are we going?” I was taken out of the car, but was unable to walk on my own. The officers searched me inside of the police station. I was in handcuffs and tried to run away. The officers were holding me and as I fought harder, they also fought harder.

I woke up in a small holding cell. The walls and the flat bed made out of concrete were a white color. There was no pillow or blanket. The metal toilet with a sink was right next to the bed. The ceiling was high and there was a camera above my head. I was cold, nauseous, and dizzy. My face and eyes were hurting. I did not know what was going to happen next; I reminded myself of “The Hollywood Rob” rule and became afraid again. “My life was fairly normal from June 30 1978 until December 15 2016, when I had the lunch where the first weirdness appeared. My eyes became dilated, Ronnee the actress reacted according to a prewritten script and so did the other actresses, Jessica and Christine. Therefore, everything in my life that happened from June 30 1978 to December 14 2016 was a fake memory implant. The live Reality TV show with real people started on December 15 2016. Everything from the point of awakening that morning in my house was real. Now the show was coming to an end and I would be tortured in the most brutal way imaginable, similar to the Inquisitions directed by the Catholic Church in medieval times,” I thought, and I had no choice but to lie down and wait for the executioners.

I closed my eyes and heard noises coming from inmates in the surrounding cells. I also heard Milli, Jonathan, and my chiropractor friend, Mark, calling me to wake up.

“What is going on? I could also be at the gates of Hell. My body is lifeless, somewhere in a hospital, and my dying brain is generating the voices of relatives and friends who are standing next to me.”

​

As I continued to lie in the cell with my eyes closed, everything around me was quickly getting colder. I was not able to feel anything except a small tingling in different parts of my body. The tingling feeling first appeared in my right arm. It felt like someone was cutting the nerves, until I lost movement in the arm. The exact same scenario happened in my left arm and in both legs, one after the other. I lost the ability to move my limbs. “Maybe I am already being tortured, but was given a mercy. Some nice person in the audience decided to cut my limbs, however, an alternate reality was being uploaded into my brain simultaneously, so I would not feel the pain.” This thought made me feel better as I was falling asleep.

​

My body was lying lifeless, almost asleep, in a small cell without the presence of any other human being. Suddenly, there was a bright white light that felt like sun all around me and I was gently touched on my right shoulder by some person’s hand. As the brightness of the light intensified, I realized how to overcome my difficulties. “Act normally, but change your patterns from time to time. As long as you can feel and see, but can never hear and speak again, it will get better and better and better. . . love will provide the ultimate answers in the most difficult situations and, eventually, you will help to save the world. If you break the rules, everything will reverse and you will continue to sink deeper and deeper into the abyss. . . to a certain point, or when you figure it out, the game will reverse in your favor again.”

The light disappeared and I was in the holding cell again. “I feel refreshed and can move my limbs again. Great, this is the next chapter of the TV show. If I abide by the rules, I will eventually get out of the jail.”

My fingers felt cold and numb. I massaged them and noticed the wedding ring was still on my finger. “Interesting, why wasn’t the ring taken away when I was booked?” I normally did not wear my wedding ring because it interfered with gym workouts. The gold ring would easily scratch after prolonged contact with metal dumbbells. I also liked to keep a potential flirting buddy in suspense about my marital status as long as possible. This was also useful during a job interview. I kept Leah in suspense about my marital status until several days after I started to work at Immucor. About a week before I was fired from Argos, Romana handed me the ring and said, “Take the ring and wear it from now on. You will need it.” This was a strange comment. I listened to her and wore the ring continuously, going forward.

 

There was nothing to do in the cell but wait. I kept hearing the voices of relatives and fellow prisoners. There was a small rectangular window by the entrance. The glass was blurry to a certain height, a person would not be able to see outside while sitting on the stone bed. I jumped on the bed to glance into the adjacent room. This was the main area, where detainees waited to be booked. There were ten rows of blue chairs in the middle of the room where people waited for paperwork to be finalized. There were other holding cells (probably similar to mine) at the edge of the room, where my cell was located. The officers were sitting at their desks, across the room, directly facing my cell. I saw Jonathan and his friend, Mike, sitting in the chairs.

“They helped me and fought the police. Now they are being booked in for assault on a police officer. What should I do? Should I scream and bang on the window for help? No, I can’t do this. I don’t know what is going on. These are most likely just paid actors trying to trick me into breaking the rules of the game. Remember, I am allowed to see and feel, but not to hear and speak.” 

I thought of another strange rule of the game. “If you look at and concentrate on a person sitting in front of you, it will go faster or slower.” This was unusual, but I gave it a try anyway. There was a man sitting directly in front of me, wearing a hoodie. I was not able to see this person’s face. Within a few minutes, he looked at me directly, but there was no visible face. There was just an empty black space inside of the hoodie. “This already happened, on the night I was driving through the ghetto. This could be a sign. I will only look and concentrate on this person and ignore everyone else.” The more I looked at the man, the more he began to lean back, as if he were falling asleep. Everyone around the person started to move at slower and slower pace until everything came to almost a complete standstill.

“This is not good. The time is coming to a standstill. If I continue to look at this person then my mind will be stuck in this place forever.” I was able to move my body at normal pace and continued to think. “If my body functions according to regular time flow, I will starve to death. There will not be enough time for a guard to bring me a meal.”

I stopped concentrating on the person and focused on Jonathan. He was sitting at one of the chairs, looking down, not moving at all. He wore a bright red shirt. The longer I looked at him, the faster everyone in the entire room moved until they were all running around. “This is too much. I need to get some sleep right now.” I experienced the same symptoms again while trying to fall asleep. My body was cold, shivering and numb, until I did not feel the bed anymore. I took the wedding ring off my finger and inserted the front part of my tongue inside the circle, then closed my mouth. The ring felt real. “At least I still have some feelings left.” At that point, it was the only thing I was able to feel. “I need to remain as calm as possible for the game to continue. There is a camera right above my head so I’ll give them a good show.” I repeated the following scenario several times, but made sure it was slightly different from the prior one, so the guards would not think I was crazy:

 

1. Sat on the bed and played with the wedding ring for a few minutes. 

2. Used the toilet, washed my hands and face.  

3. Lay on the bed pretending to be asleep, then played with the wedding ring.

 

I did this until I was so tired, I fell asleep on the floor. I had wild dreams and as soon as the white bright light appeared again, a guard looking exactly like my friend Kamil, who moved back to the Czech Republic a couple years ago, walked in, woke me up and asked, “Are you OK?”

“Yes, I am fine,” I answered. As soon as he walked away, I realized one of the rules was broken. I can never speak again. “Kamil came here to help me get out of the jail and I fucked up by answering his question. I’ll never get out of this cell. Hopefully, there will be another chance to get out of here.” I fell asleep on the bed and as I was having wild dreams consisting of all kinds of craziness related to the possible scenarios, two guards walked in and woke me up.

“You there, are you ready to walk out of this cell? Are you going to behave?” One guard asked the question while I was sitting on the bed.

I reminded myself of the “don’t talk, no matter what” rule, so I kept quiet.

“He is playing hard. We will keep him here as long as we want to. Let’s teach him a lesson,” the second guard said, while I kept looking down, ignoring both of them.

“OK, let’s go, then, he had his chance.” They both walked out.

“Should I have talked to them? No, it would not do any good anyway. Best I just remained silent.” At this point, everything seemed like an eternity. I looked out of the small window and all the people waiting to be booked were gone. The officers were also different. “The shifts must have changed. Maybe I will get out of here soon.” There was a TV set hanging from the ceiling on my right-hand side, playing the current news. I watched the TV for a few minutes and observed the program was steadily speeding up to higher speeds. The TV program was speeding up faster and faster, but everyone in the room moved at normal pace. The longer I continued to watch, the faster the program was playing. The guards did not notice there was anything wrong with the TV. “This is another trick played by the producers. I will not give them the pleasure of driving me insane this quickly.” I stopped watching the TV and sat on the bed and thought about what to do next. “There is another possibility how to end this. I will indirectly tell the guards that I don’t want to play the game here anymore. There are three possibilities for what could happen next:

​

1. The game will end and I will be tortured before I die.

2. I will be taken to a hospital for a new memory implant and the game will resume in the jail or somewhere else.

3. The audience and the producers will be impressed I figured everything out. A full pardon will be awarded and I will be released out of the dome to the year 2117 to live a normal life. My original memories of my real life in the 21st/22nd centuries will be re-implanted into my brain.”

 

I made the decision to end the game there. I didn’t like the holding cell at all. There was nothing to do but wait and look out of the small window. After staring out of the window for a while, two female guards were walking around the perimeter, checking on the prisoners restrained in cells similar to mine. “Good, that’s perfect. I am sure they will be able to help me. I better sit down on the bed, so they won’t be scared.”

The guards entered the cell and one of them asked, “Are you ready to walk out of here?”

“I’m not saving the world because I can’t hear and speak, but I can only feel and touch,” I replied in relief, hoping to walk out of the jail in a few minutes.

Both guards looked directly into my eyes trying to figure out what was going on. They looked at each other and walked back to the booking room, leaving me in the cell by myself.

“Am I doing something wrong? Maybe the person in the audience is patient with me because he or she doesn’t want to end the game this soon. You know what? Next time a guard asks if I want to walk out of here, I’ll just say ‘Yes.’ I’ll probably remain here but it’s worth a shot to try all the options. I have nothing to lose anyway.”

I wasn’t able to keep up with the time anymore. Sometime later, one of the female guards entered my cell. I told her I didn’t want to be in the cell anymore. She took me to the main room, where I was told to sit down on a blue chair so the booking process could resume.

​

It felt great to be out of the small holding cell. The claustrophobic cell was designed for a person to lose time perception. The cell had a video camera, but did not have a clock, magazines, or anything at all to keep a person occupied. The cell was designed to drive a normal person insane. I realized once a person is at the mercy of any institution, the employees of the institution can treat anybody as they please. If, somehow, the person gets injured or dies, the evidence can be manipulated to such an extent the entity is not at fault. A reason for natural or accidental death could easily be fabricated. The blame is placed on the person or fellow inmates, and the video showing the actual evidence is somehow lost or damaged.

​

I was ecstatic and positive until I realized the game would continue in the jail for the foreseeable future. The room looked bigger than if viewed from the holding cell. There was a round black clock mounted on the right-hand side wall. It was a mechanical clock with small and large pointers for hours and minutes. This type of clock was frequently used in schools, hospitals, and train stations. “I am going to look at the clock to kill some time.” I didn’t know the day, but the clock showed a few minutes after nine. It was probably morning, since I was arrested at night. As I was watching the clock, the large pointer was moving faster and faster. Everyone except me, including the TV program, was moving faster as well. I was frightened so I stopped looking at the clock and shifted my eyes towards the floor. “I don’t want to become part of some invisible dimension where time moves way faster than normal. The flow of time would continue to accelerate to a point of no return. I would simply just sit here for centuries or until the surrounding area became completely blurry. At the end, the seconds, minutes, and hours of the time would move close to the speed of light. A point of singularity would be created, where time would separate from the fabric of space-time. Time would no longer exist, and I would be sucked in and ‘spaghettified’ by a black hole, where atoms of my body would flow for eternity.” This was really scary, and I had no idea where all this information was coming from. The producers must have uploaded more data into my brain to keep the show interesting. Anyway, I was so happy when the flow of time returned to normal after a few minutes. I did not dare to look at the TV or the clock again.

A female officer called me over to her desk and explained the situation. I was advised to call someone to bail me out. It was very difficult to concentrate, to dial the number to reach my wife. After several tries, she answered the phone and I said, “Hi, Romana, I am in jail. I don’t know where I am or what is going on. Can you find out and bail me out?”

My wife then answered, “Why did you act like that at your sister’s house? What’s wrong with you? I am sorry, but I will not bail you out. Go see the judge.”

The phone disconnected and I was standing there speechless, looking at the wall in front of me.

“I have two children with Romana. She is the last person on Earth I thought would let me die here. I have to remain calm, no matter what. She isn’t really my wife, she’s an actress acting according to the instructions. This is Hollywood.”

I hung up the phone and walked back to the female officer sitting at her desk. “I cannot reach anybody. What should I do?” I asked the officer. I gave up on trying to figure out what to do next.

Everything, including my family, was directed by the producers.

“Please go back and sit over there. Someone will call you to take a picture and your fingerprints,” she said.

I went back to the same chair where I sat before. Several men sitting behind me were having a conversation. The discussion seemed normal until the participants started to mix unrelated words into sentences. To ignore the abnormalities, to sit and wait, were the only options left for me to move to the next level of the game.

​

A male officer called my name for me to come over for the picture-taking and fingerprinting. I fully cooperated with the requests. There was nothing unusual about the procedures. The officer pointed to a small room and advised me to change into a prison uniform. The officer who looked like Kamil came by to see if I’d changed into the uniform.

“What should I do with my clothes?” I asked.

“Just throw them in that bin and come over here. We’ll take the elevator to the basement,” he said, and the two of us went to a nearby elevator. “We’ll wait here for the rest of the group,” the officer Kamil said.

Shortly after, another guard and a prisoner approached us. The four of us entered the elevator and the other guard said, “You’ll like it down there, we have showers and nice beds ready just for you ladies.”

As soon as he finished the sentence, I began to have chest pains and my body felt cold. “I messed up,” I said to myself. “I broke the rules again. Why did I open my mouth? I am going deeper into Hell, where I will be raped and tortured by fellow inmates. The member of the audience chose this type of death for me.”

We exited the elevator and one of the guards said, “OK, ladies, go over to that room.”

There were several rows of chairs, and a TV hung from the ceiling. We were told to sit down and watch the TV. The other inmate was a rough-looking Hispanic guy. I looked at him several times and hoped he would make it painless and quick. He must have noticed that I was staring at him.

“What are you looking at? Do you want some, hah?”

I looked away and did not say anything. My body began to shake uncontrollably, I was unable to control the seizures. I woke up in a room that looked like a cafeteria. There was a small window located near the ceiling displaying perfectly blue sky. Another idea was imagined by my mind: “You have to keep the good and bad forces of nature in perfect balance. Due to love, the good force will always have a slight advantage over the bad force in the end. You have to save yourself before saving the world.” I realized this as I was looking directly out of the small window, admiring the perfectly blue sky. Prior to this moment, there was a real possibility of never seeing daylight again. “You quickly learn to appreciate simple things in life if you know they’re lost forever. What is Ronnee doing? I hope she is not going through something similar. I miss Ronnee so much and would do anything for her to hug me. The next stop may be Heaven.”

I gave up again, I didn’t care what was going to happen next. I lay on the floor and covered myself with a blanket. As I was falling asleep, the time kept speeding up again. The prisoners were running in and out of the room until someone attempted to pick me up.

“Are you OK? What is going on?” I felt that a guard and an inmate were dragging my body out of the cafeteria. “Maybe I will enter the next stage of the game.”

I couldn’t move my limbs at all and was placed in a wheelchair. The uncontrollable seizures returned. The officers and nurses were holding my body to the wheelchair. For no apparent reason, the facial pains went away and I was able to focus my eyes and move my limbs again. I grabbed a hand of the officer standing behind me. He was scared and immediately pulled his hand back.

“No, wait,” I said to him. “Please, put the hand on my shoulder.”

He gently placed his hand on my shoulder.

“It feels so good to be touched by another human being, thanks.”

My breathing went to normal and I was able to understand the conversation among the officers and medical staff. Time perception also returned to normal. I finally regained control of my body and mind again.

“Is it over? What is going to happen next?” I kept asking myself, over and over again.

​

There is no question that if I had not resumed control of my body, I would have been sedated. I was feeling close to normal and assessed the situation. “All this is really strange, but anything can happen when you are on TV. I better get used to the craziness if I want to live a little longer. What if this is the ‘Heaven vs Hell’ or the ‘Matrix’? How do I really know what is happening? Every situation that made me believe I am on TV is purely circumstantial.”

I was able to walk on my own and a guard took me to a larger cell with a window and shower. “This is definitely a good sign. I am reversing the situation by moving from the underground gates of Hell back to the surface, to the real world. I need to interact with everyone like nothing unusual has happened.”

The water flowing out of the shower was cold. I dressed again and lay on a mattress that was on the floor. This was the first time since the arrest that my body and mind felt normal. My brain was able to process information at normal pace. The time appeared to be flowing at normal speed, as well. My head, face, and eyes were not hurting anymore. I was able to relax and concentrate again. “Maybe I’ve been given a chance to relax a little and to plan my next move.” I just lay there, not tired, and kept looking out of the window at the perfectly blue sky.

​

A female guard opened the main door and I was told to follow her to the adjacent room, resembling a larger hallway. There was a nurse waiting for us not too far from the holding cell.

“I need to ask you a few questions before your release,” she said.

I froze my face to hide emotions. “The game has probably resumed and this could be another trick for the audience to see my reactions. I better remain emotionless no matter what.” I thought to myself, as the woman was speaking.

“Are you having any thoughts of suicide or harming yourself in any way?”

“No,” was my instant reply.

“Do you have history of mental illness? Are you on any prescription medication?”

She asked several more questions related to health and lifestyle and I always answered “No.”

At the end, I sat down on one of the empty chairs and waited for a guard. About twenty minutes later, a guard and the same rough-looking Hispanic inmate I met earlier in the day approached me.

“OK, let’s go, follow us,” the guard said.

The three of us were walking through empty, grey, windowless hallways and the inmate started to talk. “I will have my way with you. You’re gonna be my bitch. We’re almost there and you are gonna meet my brothers, bitch.”

I kept walking with my head down and did not react to the comments. I knew better at that point. “The rule is: ‘as long as you can see and feel, but can never hear and speak again, it will get better and better.’”

We must have been walking through the corridors for at least five minutes. I was scared to death but kept looking down, pretending not to be able to hear and speak. The inmate kept making similar comments and for some reason the guard never told him to stop. “Are the brothers waiting around the next corner? Will it be quick or will I be picking up soaps in showers for days to entertain the TV audience?”

We finally approached a medium-size room with about ten chairs, two dressing rooms and a window opening where another guard was sitting and looking at us.

“OK, we’re here. Get undressed and throw your uniform into that bin over there.”

Both the guard and the inmate left the room. I almost panicked, but changed my mind at the last minute. I asked the guard sitting at the window, “What should I wear once I get undressed?”

He looked at me, reached for a plastic bag and said, “Here are your street clothes. Get dressed and sit down over there.”

I did just that and the guard said, “That’s a smart move. I would advise you to keep quiet once you walk out of here.”

I was emotionless, I just sat in the chair for a few minutes and was escorted out of the Cobb County Jail shortly after.

​

It was late afternoon on January 24th, my mom Alena and her husband Milan were parked several hundred yards from the building. I walked at normal pace, I didn’t try to run, so the guards wouldn’t get suspicious. As I approached the vehicle, I was hugged by both of them. They were so happy to see me. I did not talk or smile, a complete stage of emotionless overtook my mind and body.

A light blue metallic Dodge Caravan was the vehicle I was expecting, but instead I entered a white Chevy van. “Milan, what’s up with the van?” I asked.

“My van broke down a few days ago and this is a loaner from my boss,” he said.

I didn’t ask any more questions and wanted to go home as fast as possible. The scenery was comforting; the sky was blue, everything was alive, the Sun radiated warmth and positive energy. “What a difference from the grey, dark, and gloomy prison cells. It must be extremely difficult to find your soul and make inner peace with yourself after spending a few years in prison. I hope this was my first and last time behind bars,” I thought.

Mom kept trying to persuade me to come to her house to recover and to spend a few days with her. She was persistent, but I didn’t change my mind. Romana, Teresa, and Julia were surely waiting for me at home, so I refused. I could not wait to see my family again.

The house was empty and did not feel like home anymore, it felt like an empty prison cell. My wife and daughters were nowhere to be found. Romana, Teresa, and Julia did not kiss or hug me. “What is going on? Where is my family? I am not here to think, I am here to act according to the other people’s wishes,” I said to myself.

​

Mom and Milan went to a Chinese restaurant to buy some food and left me alone in the house. Nature was what I craved the most; seeing trees, feeling the Sun and listening to the birds were needed to heal my soul and mind. The jeans I wore were falling from my waist. There were not enough openings left to tighten the belt. My body felt achy and beaten, with several large blue marks on my arms, possibly caused by fighting with the police. I went in the backyard, sat on the grass and tried to relax in the satisfaction of finally being free. It was so peaceful.

It felt so warm and white bright light was all around me.

“Wake up, Joseph, wake up, I brought you some food,” Mom said, as she was slightly shaking my body.

I opened my eyes and found myself lying on the grass, on my back, with both arms and feet stretched out as far as possible. I was hurting all over my body. Facial pain was the most annoying; headache, eye pain, and my cheeks felt like they were about to collapse into my face any second. I was unable to open my eyes due to the Sun’s brightness. I got up, then went to the nearest restroom, located on the bottom floor, where a large mirror was mounted on the wall above the sink. The restroom was the darkest area of the house. The walls were painted green, with dark hardwood floors and only one florescent lightbulb above the mirror.

“Why are my eyes hurting so much? I need to see myself in front of the mirror.” I was not happy with the skinny, wrinkled, and bearded person in the mirror. The appearance of the person was unfamiliar to me, way different from the person I knew from looking into a mirror each morning. The person’s vision was blurry and the eyes were dilated to the fullest possible extent. “I hope the Sun did not damage my eyes while I was asleep,” I said, then I quickly moved my face closer to the mirror and was able to partially refocus the eyes to their normal state.

​

The Chinese noodle soup, and fried catfish with vegetables, tasted excellent. I was only able to eat less than half of the portion. A cornbread with milk was the only meal I had eaten since yesterday lunch. I told Mom to go home.

A warm shower and more sleep were exactly what I needed. The bed felt more comfortable and softer than normal. I closed my eyes and after some time noticed that everything around me felt colder. I couldn’t feel the bed, my fingers and toes were numb, the heart was not beating at all. 

“Joseph, open the door! I brought you a fruit smoothie to go with your dinner!” Mom yelled, as she was standing in front of a glass sliding door leading to the backyard.

I opened my eyes and the area of the bed underneath, around me, the sheets, and my white shirt and underwear were completely wet. I was shivering and felt cold.

“There is no way my body produced this much sweat in such a short amount of time. How long was I out?” I questioned myself and went to the bottom floor to unlock the sliding doors. Mom handed me the smoothie and offered to stay with me for a while.

“Please go home, I want to be by myself and relax,” I said to her and she left the house. 

I ate some more fish, and noodle soup, and drank the smoothie. “That couch and TV over there looks really good. I’ll watch TV, relax and go to sleep, hopefully with no problems,” I thought. I sat on the couch, turned on Netflix and, from the many available programs, chose a documentary describing the life in 1980s America. The documentary began to play normally, but there were several abnormalities after about ten minutes into the program. The show criticized the US government in an unusually hard way. The criticism went to such extremes, I no longer believed this had actually happened.

“There is no way something like this would be available on a public or private TV network.”

At certain times the program would slow down and speed up. There was the déjà vu; a small segment of the show repeated itself but with different actors. Bright white stars of different sizes were appearing and disappearing near the outer edges of the TV set. I was frightened, turned off the documentary and searched for another program. There was nothing available on Netflix anymore, except the program I just watched. I turned off the TV.

“Nothing is over, the producers are fucking with me. I was made to believe I’m in the safety of my house so I can recharge for the next level of the game. This is about to get ugly,” were my thoughts.

​

I turned on the lamp placed on a small table right next to the couch and remembered the unusual sentences said by the police officer during the arrest, just before he touched my shoulder. “So, you met your friends, the aliens from Pleiades, right? This is how it’s gonna go from now on. As long as you can hear, see, feel, and touch, you are not saving the world and everything will get worse.” I kept thinking.

“I need to figure this out while there is still some time. It’s all over if I go to jail again. I have been given clues periodically to figure this out. I am not an idiot, it should be a piece of cake. The aliens from the Pleiades region?” I opened my mouth, was caught in complete surprise, unable to move my head and torso.

“For my fifteenth birthday, on June 30th, 1993, my mother gave me two books about UFOs as presents. One was written about a man (I can’t remember the name), a resident of Switzerland who claimed to be the only person in the entire world having in-person contact with extraterrestrial human beings from the Pleiades region of our galaxy, the Milky Way. He was writing about the encounters since the early 1950s. Furthermore, he was writing about the current and future problems our civilization is facing and will face during this difficult time in our history: dangers of overpopulation, religious fundamentalists brainwashing the majority of the world’s population to submission, materialism/selfishness and greed, lack of inner spiritual development, false teachings regarding the meaning of life, not taking responsibility for our actions/reactions by shifting problems and solutions to be resolved by imaginary gods, wars for land, water, food, and natural resources, global warming. Several decades later, he was contacted by an extraterrestrial woman named Semjase. The documents regarding his contacts with Semjase amount to over 1,500 pages.

“It has been twenty-four years since I read the book. I need to remember as much as possible. This could be another clue on how to survive this ordeal in one piece,” I thought. 

At age fifteen, I was not sure if the extraterrestrial contacts were real. However, I knew for a fact the problems facing our civilization that the man described were real. To this day, I never read another book in my life that would describe all the global issues facing humanity in such detail and at same time offer viable/doable solutions to those problems. Even if the man was a phony, I knew he was serious about saving the planet.

​

The second book listed about forty people claiming to have contact with extraterrestrials from countless regions of the Universe. The book was basically about nothing, describing where and how the contacts happened, how weird the aliens and their ships looked. On many occasions, the aliens performed medical experiments on people who were kidnapped. None of the individuals claiming to have the contacts were described as fakes and phonies, except for one, the Swiss person. The small article described how he faked the pictures of the aliens and ships including physical evidence, such as material composites unknown to Earth’s scientists. “Why were books that were contradicting each other to such an extreme given to me at the same time? This could have been another memory implant, so anything is possible. Did this have a purpose? Maybe someone tried to teach me to think logically on my own, to figure things out on my own, to be able to strip away all the endless bullshit filters and to see the world the way it really is, the real world that is facing self-destruction in the near future.”

There was one more incident. One evening in spring of 1994, while living at the homeless shelter for single moms, my mother was excited and said, “Joseph, you will not believe what happened. A large flying disk, looking like a UFO, flew above me than quickly disappeared.”

“OK, whatever, I’m going out and will be home a little later than usual,” I said.

“No, really, believe what I am telling you.” She kept trying to convince me.

“OK, Mom, I’ll see you later,” I said to her, and walked out of the room. I felt sorry for her. “I hope she will come to her senses. She is losing the custody of my sister and it is really hard on her. Hopefully she will stay in reality.” I loved my mom and began to worry about her.

​

There were four possible situational scenarios: the Reality TV show was the most likely, the Heaven vs Hell was the second most likely, then the Matrix, and finally the NSA surveillance, which was the least likely of them all. “There could also be another scenario,” I said, and continued to think. “I can only remember flashbacks of the arrest. I can’t remember anything on a continuous basis since I smoked the weed. What if the aliens have somehow uploaded data into my brain on how to save the world? There were the blackouts, time perception changed, I spoke faster than normal, heard unrelated words in sentences and my health rapidly deteriorated. Parts of the information on how to save the world were purposely released to the authorities and the NSA was alerted. This would explain the unusual surveillance activity continuing for days prior to the arrest. I was drugged and thrown into jail by the intelligence agency, hoping to break me down, so I perhaps subconsciously released more information. Maybe the information already given to the agencies was so extreme, the government decided to kill me if I provided any additional details, consciously or subconsciously. I was constantly being tricked and monitored to see if I had a mental breakdown, or the agency was simply curious about how much of the ‘weirdness’ a human being can withstand. My family, friends and the people I knew had no choice but to cooperate. This is government spending at its finest,” I thought, and only became more confused due to the complexity of the situation.

​

None of the scenarios were ruled out, but the Aliens/NSA surveillance hybrid became the most probable. Most importantly, I did not want to give up that easily. The usual symptoms: facial/eye pain, inability to concentrate and different time perception were present. Fighting the symptoms one at a time would be the most logical and practical solution. I drank some coffee to regain the ability to concentrate. With milk and no cream was the way I drank coffee. I was in the tax accounting profession for years and became addicted to coffee at work, especially at Argos; Columbian dark roast tasted delicious and at least eight small cups a day became the standard.

I took my favorite large blue mug with the “Giant Cup of I Don’t Give a Shit” statement written in large white letters on both sides. I felt relief as the warm coffee, with a large dose of caffeine, was inside of my stomach. “I have to do something about the time perception. An old-school mechanical watch would work the best. It would be easy to look at and concentrate on the large pointer.”

I did not feel like going shopping at all. Walmart, on Terrell Mill Road, seemed like the perfect store to buy a simple watch, to get in and out as fast as possible. The Nissan Leaf was at my sister’s house, the Mercedes was the only car available to drive. My wife and the kids were probably at friend’s house, unwilling to communicate or help in any way. This was sort of understandable given the circumstances of what happened in the past week.

​

Music was what I needed to keep my spirit high and to remain focused. I couldn’t find my cell phone to listen to Pandora, the car’s radio antenna was broken, and so an old iPod from the mid-2000s was the only remaining option. Thousands of songs of different artists were uploaded to the iPod. I turned on The Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Disk 1, the most relaxing album I thought of. My vision increased significantly during the ride to the store. As in prior experiences, everything appeared sharper and brighter than normal.

​