Jeremy Pinsky couldn't help but feel like he'd forgotten something. He pounded pavement in downtown New New York City with this prickle on the back of his neck like in one of his sims. Like someone was watching him. So he'd turn his head and of course everyone marched along looking as disinterested in him as they should be, eyes glazed over while they checked for mail on their augs.

And then that feeling would come on again. What had he missed? Was he supposed to do something? Meet someone? Go somewhere?

Go somewhere? Jeremy thought. Yeah, home.

He was beat. Long days in the trenches. Sixteen-hour days, six days a week, nothing but watching advertisements and giving a detailed opinion as to whether each advertisement had worked on him. None of them truly did, but part of his job was pretending. It was draining.

Movement at the corner of his eye nearly made him jump out of his skin. Jeremy stopped in the middle of the crosswalk, jostled every which way by passersby. He couldn't remember why he'd stopped, and he felt like a fool. Especially when someone shouted "Move!" right in his ear and his heart did backflips in his chest.

Jeremy shook away the forgetfulness and sprinted across the road before the lights changed. The automated vehicles took off in a whisper like spectral bats out of hell. He continued on his normal route home, navigating familiar streets amongst crowds of unfamiliar faces.

He caught a man's reflection in a shop window. Following him. The man wore a suit, a fedora hanging low over his face. Something about him seemed sinister, so Jeremy deviated from his route home, went left and walked a couple blocks. He peered over his shoulder. The man was still tailing him. So he crossed at the next lights and went down an alley on his immediate right.

Jeremy waited. Waited for even a speck of the sinister man to appear. He planned on grabbing him. Pulling him into the alley and showing him what's what.

The man didn't appear.

Jeremy waited and waited, and then he forgot why he was standing there, and he went out of the alley, and he navigated his way back home. They'd turned on the simulated rain and the pitter-patter of it put Jeremy in a trancelike state. He stood outside of his apartment complex and forgot why he was standing out there.

"You need to go home."

A thick, rubbery voice that seemed to occupy multiple pitches at once.

Jeremy turned. A man in a suit. The man took off his fedora and his head swelled like a water balloon. White skin going pink and glistening, like a chameleon out there in the simulated rain. His eyes were empty pits. The nose just fell off and hit the concrete with a wet plop sound, like a lizard losing its tail.

The thing raised a long silver tube with a red light on its tip.

Jeremy had a thought then: Isn't that from Men in Black?

His mouth started to get the words out when the light flashed, momentarily blinding him, and then he forgot what he was going to say.

[Scenes from the Mothership, Entry #0312-23]