Page 8 of Seer
The cool weather meant I needed another layer. I had a few plaid flannel shirts, but after this morning’s vision I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to wear them again.
Leaving that decision for another day, I threw on a semi-wrinkled white button-down over the t-shirt but left it open. I still had plenty of time to get a better cup of coffee, and I’d need the caffeine. Status update meetings should not be held first thing in the morning.
I’d stopped going to the coffee shop near my apartment a couple of months ago. The drag queens weren’t too unsettling, but after I ran into the puppy and kitty play group, I hadn’t been back.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t some sort of jerk trying to yuck someone else’s yum. I’d happily drink my coffee next to drag queens and BDSM practitioners any day of the week. But they never consented to me knowing about their alter egos, which was a new twist my psychic ability had added recently.
I’d had the visions at night since I was thirteen years old. At first they only came once a month or so. The frequencyincreased until now it was rare for me to go a week without one or two.
But earlier this year I’d walked into the coffee shop, and three guys were standing in line to order. I could see their drag personas kind of like a hologram overlaid on top of their real bodies. Initially I was too freaked out by my new ability to think about how they might not appreciate me being able to see something so personal at a glance. But after I calmed down and considered the implications, I rationalized that they did drag in public so it wasn’t too intrusive if I could see that aspect of their lives.
But the puppy and kitty play people were another story. They’d been sitting at a group of tables one Saturday afternoon, just drinking their coffee and chatting in their street clothes like everyone else in the shop. Yeah, I didnotwant to know that about them, and I was positive they’d all prefer I didn’t know it either.
So I started to avoid going out in public. Work was pretty safe. One person in customer support was not only in the process of transitioning, but they also did cosplay as Raiden fromMetal Gear. But I’d already seen them, so all I could do was make sure I treated them like everyone else on the team. They were fun to talk to about gaming when we were in the break room at the same time.
But in every other aspect of my life I’d become very cautious. Takeout food, grocery delivery, and Amazon were my friends. If I didn’t go to restaurants or stores, I wouldn’t run into anyone and accidentally learn their secret identity.
However this morning my need for decent coffee was worth the risk. I decided to try Pour Some Sugar on Me, a bakery close to Bent Oak’s residential area. Hopefully at this hour it wouldn’t be too crowded, and I’d be less likely to learn something I didn’t need or want to know.
In my truck on the way to the bakery, I let Barry Manilow’s smooth voice and over-produced backing instrumentals soothe away my unease from the vision. “I Can’t Smile Without You” might not have had me grinning by the time I walked in, but I was at least more relaxed.
There were only two other customers in the bakery, and neither of them had an alter ego. The scent of pastries filled the air, and the bear claws looked especially delicious. I was feeling virtuous after my workout, though, so I stuck to coffee. Okay, I got a mocha latte, but whatever.
I should’ve picked up coffee or pastries for everyone in the status meeting, but I wasn’t feeling that friendly today. I’d finish my cup before I got to the office, and they’d never know.
By the time I arrived at work, I’d shaken off the unnerved feelings left over from this morning’s vision, and I was as ready as I could be to pay attention to everyone’s mind-numbing but necessary updates.
Up until a couple of years ago, I used to look forward to work. My business partner Steve and I had built Rogues Gallery, a dating app for people marginalized by more mainstream apps, from scratch. We’d had an initial angel investor who paid our salaries while we developed the app, plus another round of investment funding to get us through the product launch. But we’d underestimated the demand, and my first few years as Chief Technology Officer had been a whirlwind of trying to strengthen the system’s back-end storage and processing while also adding bells and whistles suggested by our users.
Those things still needed to be done on an ongoing basis, but I was bored. I needed a challenge, and keeping Rogues Gallery running wasn’t interesting anymore.
I just hadn’t had the guts to tell Steve yet.
I’d met Steve Derryberry in elementary school. I’m still not sure why, but he was one of the few kids who didn’t look at my large body and decide I was unintelligent and uninteresting. Before Steve, I’d mostly kept to myself. Outside of school I’d hidden from my shitty home life by reading, playing Pokémon solo, and working on the computer I was building from spare parts.
Then Steve invited me to his house, where his mom fed me, peppered me with questions about my day, and dropped the occasional kiss on the top of my head. When she died a couple of years later, Steve and his siblings weren’t the only ones devastated by the loss.
He and I had leaned on each other throughout middle school and high school. He hadn’t batted an eye when I’d told him I was gay, and I’d helped him make sure he wasn’t leading on the battalion of girls he slept with but never wanted to date long-term.
We’d still hung out together regularly after he went to college, since he lived with his grandfather while attending the University of Texas at Austin. I couldn’t afford to go to college—I hadn’t cared enough about high school to have the grades to get a scholarship. But I’d taught myself coding, and I’d been able to turn that skill into a job as a freelance programmer.
Steve majored in business, with the goal of us designing our own app one day. After college he moved back to Bent Oak and took a job at a tech support call center. We brainstormed and brainstormed for years, but we couldn’t come up with the right app idea. It wasn’t until five years ago that a casual comment by Cole Washburn—yes, the former actor Cole Washburn—kicked off the idea for Rogues Gallery.
But now I was tired of the day-to-day grind of running a successful company. I wanted the thrill of designing something from the ground up again, the risk of not knowing whether our idea would be successful.
Kurt, my Vice President of Technology, was more than ready to take over the CTO role. And, as much as my childhood made me nervous about the financial implications of going off on my own, I had very few expenses. Thanks to Rogues Gallery, I’d saved up more than I could spend in several years.
I only hoped Steve wouldn’t hate me when I left.
The status meeting went well. No surprises, which was reassuring. Customer satisfaction had risen over last quarter since we’d implemented some new features and response time improvements. The number of users who’d formed long-term relationships through the app, something we advertised, had also increased. No matter whether I liked my job or not, knowing I’d had a hand in helping people find their romantic partners would never get old.
Aurelia, our Chief Financial Officer, droned on about labor costs and expenses, and I tuned her out. I found myself dwelling on the guy from my vision. All of my other visions, at least the ones I’d been able to verify, had come true at some point. Which meant the guy I’d seen was dead, or he’d be dead soon.
It could happen to any of us, really. Okay, maybe not caused by whatever or whoever had killed the guy from my vision, but death coming without warning. We only had one life, and my vision was a frightening reminder that things could end abruptly.
Down the table from me, Aurelia raved about EBITDA, and then Norah, our VP of Marketing, went on about new clientacquisition ROI. How many more status meetings did I want to sit through? Was this the best use of the one life I’d been given?
My muscles tensed, wanting to move, to act. I needed to talk to Steve today. Now.
