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Bill Bisbee looked up from his coffee and smiled at the waitress. She looked at him questioningly, glanced down to his change and then back up to him. He shook his head and she edged away uncertainly, before turning round and walking back to the till. She probably thought he was a creep and she was probably right, but not on this occasion. He went on sipping his coffee and looking out of the window, not expecting a free refill anytime soon.

It had been the second time that day he had experienced déjà vu. The first time, as he scooped up the two daily newspapers from the stand and heard the vendor say the words-‘if the headlines are different, the world’s okay for another day,’-the precise words his old man used to say over the breakfast table when he was a kid. His ma would always shake her head and smile and he would smile too, though he was never sure why. Back in the days when the end of the world was a joke and not a distinct possibility. Bill jolted up and looked at the old man, who looked back, half-curious and half-belligerent, until Bill looked down to the papers. The headlines sure were different.

The waitress had mentioned a phrase his ma used over the same coffee table and Bill had felt his head spin. Now it was over and he could focus on the caffeine jolt and the people outside the window, he wondered what the odds were of hearing too faraway phrases he had last heard used thirty years ago, in the same morning by two wildly different people. It was the sort of question that could drive people crazy; he thought and stirred the coffee again absent-mindedly. It took a few minutes for the curious feeling to subside and a few more to pass, as he thought about his long gone folks. He was halfway through the cup by the time he flipped the laptop up and began working.

Bill took to the street mostly satisfied with the report and decided to walk the city. A week’s vacation for a penniless freelance writer meant finding things to do. The city was alert, sure, but it only came live to the sound of a wallet opening and brimming with notes rather than the jangle of coins. Bill wandered the museum in that half-hearted way that single people did, trying to appreciate the art and instead becoming acutely aware of the couples bristling nearby. Into lunchtime-a hot dog in the park, pretending not to notice the hot joggers-and an afternoon in and around the local bookshops, drifting by the literature before succumbing to the latest comic books-sorry, graphic novels-and ignoring the unimpressed stares of the floor workers. He smiled, remembering something his best friend used to say and flipped open the book, marveling at just how expensive comics had become and just how old that made him feel.

“Rich people browse, poor people linger,” The man next to him said, bringing him out of his book. Bill looked up, the colour draining out of his face. The chubby man winked and looked over to the pissed off teenager, who wore his uniform the way school kids wore theirs on their first day back. He saw the momentary concern drift over the man’s face and Bill remembered to smile.

“I had a friend who said just that,” he managed to say, desperately trying to think of something else to say to ease the guy’s rapidly paling face. “What do you think of it?” he said nodding to the comic in his hand.

“It’s good,” he said, warming again. “Artwork’s so-so, but what do you want for nothing, right?” He winked again, everything back to being right in his world.

“Right,” Bill said, setting his own copy down on the shelf and shuffling hurriedly out of the shop, the pissed teenager grinning as he pulled the ‘push’ door twice, before breaking out into the street.

Coincidence is one thing but this was another, he thought to himself. The wind was getting up, which is what he needed. He felt the sweat being torn away by the breezes and he found himself back on his hot-dog bench, his mind racing. It felt like the old days, when the pills opened everything up, just before it slammed everything shut. No more pills, no more booze, no twelve step recoveries, just willpower. Two years down the line it had worked out just fine; he hadn’t weakened, no resolve had crumbled. But he wondered if right now he was having some sort of flashback. It was not beyond the realms of possibility. Bill had heard stories but had dismissed them as anecdotes rather than real, true things. He touched his brow and felt it was dry. The paranoia still tore through him but at least there was nothing on his face to give him away anymore.
     
“It’s real what you’re feeling,” a voice said, making him almost jump out of his seat. He turned round to face a man in a suit, looking directly at him. There was nothing in his build to suggest Bill should be worried. He was non-descript, harmless, but his features were too sharp, his eyes too lit. A familiar tingle ran through Bill; the urge to run and the need to ask questions.

“Excuse me?” he said, not wanting to show his hand just yet. First, he needed to decide which one of the two people on the bench were crazy. Or maybe coincidence would kick in again and it would turn out to be both of them.
 
“What you’re experiencing today is part of the plan,” the man went on plainly, before lifting a file out of his inside pocket and slipping it over. Bill opened it and looked at the photo of himself, the medical details, the personal information that it should have been impossible to know. Before he could open his mouth, the man smiled and patted his knee.

“We lifted the medical stuff from three years ago, when you were in the hospital suffering from an overdose. While you were sedated we performed the necessary tasks. Since then has been preparation, today fruition!” He said the last word too brightly and something in it made Bill wince. The man sensed joy in hopeless scenario’s and that made him dangerous, Bill realised.

“You are part of a project and you are a success, Mr. Bisbee. Congratulations. The next phase will need some explaining, though in relative terms it is actually very simple for anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge in technology,” he waved down to the laptop, as if it contained a map on it someplace.

“I’m sorry, Mr..” Bill let the words hang, until it was clear he would get no response. The confusion he felt gave way to a sudden burst of anger. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, or even what you think you’re trying to convince me of, but..” The man looked back over and Bill hated himself for the way his voice trickled out of steam with it.

“We chose you because you have nothing. We selected you because if you told your story no-one would listen. You have no family, you have no real friends. You are an empty vessel that we have decided to fill.” He looked over and smiled thinly.

“Thanks,” Bill muttered, dimly aware he was hurt at the naked truth of what the man had said.

“It’s luck, what you have, Mr. Bisbee because it means you have a chance. A chance to rebuild, regenerate; to become a whole new you.” His voice rose slightly and he tempered it with a slight tweak of his tie. “We have downloaded you, Mr. Bisbee. You are on a file. After we secured you, we decided to share you with others; the random people you met today were all downloaded with tiny, tiny pieces of you. Scraps of memories, phrases. A fraction of you has now been placed into them. This is part of what we hope to do.”

“And the next?” Bill said, blinking rapidly, wondering if this was him, in that moment, going insane. If this small, malevolent man was in fact a tree trunk and the last trails of Bill’s mind had already disappeared and were gone for good.
 
“Tomorrow we will filter the spam from your soul, Mr. Bisbee. All the unwanted messages will be removed, sir, leaving only the vital you, the you that are essential and vibrant.”  

Bill watched him as he spoke and finally he broke into a fit of giggles; they swelled, until it was a gale of laughter. He noticed no-one else was around, not that he would have cared. By the time it subsided, he noticed the man was simply waiting. He had an idea he had not blinked the entire time.

“Tomorrow, then,” he said and rose up. “I’ll meet you here at this time. You can laugh in my face again,” he looked over, smiling thinly. “Or you can beg me for what comes next,” he said flatly, all pretence sloughing off of his face, leaving only the grey, calculating hate Bill had sensed about him since the beginning of this strange, peculiar meeting.
 
And like that he was gone.

Bill watched him walk away and then looked down at his shaking hands. He balled them up into fists and then flexed them. After a few minutes his heart had settled. He thought about the lunacy he had endured and then made himself stand, made himself smile. The sun was setting and Bill decided to walk home, hide in the flat and order take-out. He would speak to no-one for the rest of the day and wait for tomorrow, which, by all accounts, would be the finest day of his life.

****
                         
Bill woke up early, as he always did and made himself breakfast. The memory of the day before was lingering in him, like a half-remembered dream. He watched the news and thought about going out for a paper, but the idea of leaving the house suddenly filled him with a low sense of dread. Instead he decided to flip open the laptop and check his emails. As he did he brewed up some more coffee and he noticed a request for another film review had been posted. He smiled-even yesterday, when I was a mere mortal, they still thought I did good work, he thought. After he poured the coffee, he read the criteria and plonked himself down in the chair-what the hell, he thought, telling himself he was being productive and not acting like a shut-in coward. Bill cricked his hands together and began to write. And write. And write.

Bill sat back stunned and looked at the time; in just over two hours he had written over twenty articles. He ran his hands through his hair and laughed out loud. How is this possible?  You know how, another part of him, lisping the same way the strange nameless man had done the day before, replied. He rolled his neck and sighed, telling himself it was just a good batch of coffee, that he was rested, determined. A minute later, he dropped onto the floor of tried to hit ten push ups. He hit five hundred without breathing heavy. Before he ran out of his building, Bill dug out the week’s pile of newspapers and ripped out the crosswords; he completed them at a rate of 90 seconds per set.
    
The museum opened up to him like a flower; every nuance of the brush stroke came into his head, each date and significance of the painter’s biography slipped neatly into his brain as if it had been there since birth. He kept going, hitting them all in under two hours, until some distant part of him told himself he had to eat. Without thinking he returned to the café from the previous day, sitting in the same seat and soon being faced with the same waitress.
    
“Coffee?” she said, trying not to catch his eye.

“Yes please,” he said and felt his mouth hum. “I feel I should explain myself, why I was smiling yesterday,” he heard himself say. It was as if Bill had stepped outside himself and was following a leaner, better version of himself. An upgrade, the thin voice whispered. The humming voice kept going and he watched, transfixed, as the girl smiled, dissolved, conversed. In a sequence of events that felt like a dream, an hour later he was walking her home after her shift, to her flat, her bedroom, her body. And even that was new.
    
Even in his delirium he waited for the old anxieties about his body to kick in, to cripple him. His were average, harmless concerns but body-blows nonetheless. He waited for him to fail, to disappoint but instead he watched as she marveled at him, his sure movements, his assertive grip. He smiled and she smiled, though she was not to know it was himself, all of it. For the first time since he could remember, every doubt left him and only certainty remained.

****
    
Bill Bisbee ran to the park, the energy pulsing through him like a beam of light. The man was waiting for him, smiling, casually waving to him. Bill remembered to breathe, to try and keep in control of the situation. As he slid next to the man, he tried to keep the grin from his face.
    
“I feel you’re day has been...productive,” the man said, looking Bill over like some sort of trophy. Bill knew he should have felt uncomfortable, disgusted even, but instead he revelled in it.
    
“I believe you,” was all Bill felt prepared to say. To give away anymore felt like a risk, a huge risk. The man nodded along, as if those few words were the only possible answer that could be given.
    
“All in twenty four hours,” the man went on, putting his hands together. “This has…potential,” he said and his eyes, burning, twinkled brightly.
    
“Am I the only one?” Bill asked in a quiet voice, almost a whisper. The idea scared him but exhilarated him, too. Almost a superhero, a small, selfish part of him marveled. Jealously fizzed in him, to think there could be others.
    
“That is not overly your concern, Mr. Bisbee. We need to think about the next twenty four hours, the next stage. All good things, Mr. Bisbee,” the man said, his voice almost taking on a sing-song quality.
    
“There’s more?” He asked, unable to keep the awe out of his voice. Bill suddenly equated the last twelve hours into his head and mapped out the same chances over the course of a week, a month…a year. His mouth went dry at the idea of it. It was only after a while, when there was no sing-song words to fill up the silence, that he looked back over to the man. He was staring at Bill with those burning eyes and something in Bill cooled.
    
“I can tell you are mulling over the possibilities, Mr. Bisbee,” he said, his voice flat, even though his mouth was smiling. “They may well be endless if we get that far,” he said and drew one hand up to wipe his dry lips.
    
“That far?” Bill said. Suddenly a weakness ran through him, a fear he could not quite contain. The power he felt began to drain, as if the man was siphoning off everything that was good about him. Perhaps he was.
    
“The knowledge, the junk, Mr. Bisbee. What is the next basic function a computer has to deal with?” His eyes searched Bill’s and to his shame, he found himself looking down to the ground.
    
“The virus, Mr. Bisbee. I will see you here tomorrow at the same time, I hope,” he said and rose without waiting for Bill to look up. “I would go home and get some rest,” he said. “And perhaps think about locking the door,” he added, quietly.
    
Bill finally looked up and watched the small, thin man walk away. In moments, he had vanished. Bill forced himself up onto unsteady feet and began to walk towards the setting sun. His body felt weak and drained but nothing more than that, at least not yet. As he walked through the park, he forced himself to appreciate the sun, the flowers and the spectacle all around him. By the time he reached the gate, he was aware of the tears on his cheeks but made no effort to wipe them away. Instead, he began to walk dutifully back through the city to his apartment, trying not to think of his body as a series of mechanics and connections and which would hold strong and which would sever by the time the sun rose the next morning.