Mike found the heavy rain a pleasure. The scent on the air as pollen washed away. The sheer force of how it smashed into the roof. It was heavier than normal for his area but it hadn’t concerned him. Honestly, he felt a little relieved because it meant work would be a little easier today. That slight comfort, however, was balanced out by the fact his blue polo and khakis were still drying.

“Welcome to Best Buy.” Another employee greeted the customer as they walked in the door. What the customer said was inaudible, but shortly after, Mike had seen his coworker point in his direction. Despite the queue being empty, they walked through the winding ropes. He felt himself cringe a little bit but also heavily related to that level of social awkwardness.

“So what can I do for you today?”

“Well, I went to use my external SSD this morning but I can’t access anything on it.” Mike paused for a moment and seemed to be in deep contemplation.

“Have you tried turning it off and back on again?” The customer glared at him. After a silence that was a tick too long, Mike began to laugh, “Oh I’m just kidding, it's just some IT humor. It seems like your hard drive got corrupted. Leave it here with me and I’ll get the data recovered off of it ASAP. Just fill out this form so I can contact you when the job is done.”

The irritated look had washed off of the customer’s face, “Okay, yeah sure. Just please be quick about it. My boss will kill me if this isn’t fixed soon.”

“Don’t worry, luckily it's pretty slow today so I’ll get started right away. This looks like a job for,” Mike lowered the glasses from the top of his head to his nose, “Geek Squad.”

The customer sighed and made their way out of the store. It wasn’t long before Mike had started setting up his workspace. Luckily data recovery wasn’t the most difficult job, just time consuming. Best Buy’s data recovery program was pretty good, so he connected the drive to his terminal and ran the software. While that was going, he decided to catch up a little bit on the other work that had been left the night before.

A few hours had passed and Mike approached the work station again. The software had finished running on the hard drive. It seemed pretty successful in restoring a bunch of the data that had previously been lost. One thing that had always bothered him about Best Buy’s policy, was that he wasn’t allowed to check and make sure the files actually worked. Their software was supposed to do an automated check, but with how unreliable big corporations were, he definitely didn’t trust what he couldn’t verify himself.

Mike began thumbing through the files and noticed a lot more files were on the drive than previously seen. He took a screenshot to show the comparison to the client and sent an update email letting them know the drive was ready for pickup. When proofreading his email, he noticed the highlighted file read: Mandela Effect Evidence. Now this had been a tempting tidbit for Mike. He loved conspiracies an almost unhealthy amount. However, he liked his job more and didn’t want to risk breaking policy.

As he stood up to walk the floor, another coworker had just walked into his work area. It was Carly. Her jet black hair framed her face perfectly and complimented the emerald hue of her eyes. She was intimidatingly pretty. Mike was a self described “short king” and she easily towered at least a foot taller than him. She had a lot going for her, but he specifically admired how knowledgeable she was. Over the years, she had taught him a lot both with the tech and the job. As she approached, Mike stumbled just a little bit backwards into the table. He leaned against it to try and play off how unintentional it was.

“He-hey Carly! How’s. Uhh how’s work going? Hard at work or workly harding?” He let out a nervous chuckle, wishing for death when his error caught up with his brain.

She let out what he presumed was a pity laugh, “Oh you know how it goes. A million things to do, not enough time. Luckily this storm is making it easier to get through it all.”

“Oh totally, I felt you-I mean feel you on that.” He cursed himself for his constant panic, “Anyways, what brings you to my neck of the woods?”

She could feel him struggling but tried to not bring too much attention to it, “I am actually here to invite you out for drinks after work. A bunch of us are getting together after closing time. No pressure, but you’re absolutely welcome to come.”

“Yeah, that sounds great actually! I don’t have any plans after work, so I’m free for sure.”

“Perfect. I’ll see you when we close then.”

Carly walked back out the door to Mike’s work area. He sat back down, forgetting he was going to take a lap around the store as a break. A smile began to form at the corner of his lips. He knew he had a habit of isolating and avoiding social gatherings, but it was nice to be invited at times. Especially by someone he admired as much as her.

Before he could get carried away with plans for the night, he saw the file open on his computer. His heart sank for a moment. He didn’t mean to but of course his clumsiness was going to cause more problems for him. For a moment, the mouse icon hovered over the ‘X’ at the top of the window. Then he thought if he were already destined to get in trouble for it, he might as well sneak a peek at what was in the document.

After a quick skim, it seemed to be loaded with evidence accusing a big tech company, Int-Cell, of being able to influence people’s memories. Something about an experimental technology that was able to broadcast falsified memories that most people’s brains just accepted as fact. It wasn’t perfect as some people were left with the previous memories, but it was just enough to make them a minority.

“I fucking knew it was Berenstein Bears!” The words came out a little louder than he had meant. He sprinted out of the office and went to find Carly, who was out on the sales floor and easily spotted in the aisles.

“Hey, hey, hey. I found the literal cornucopia on that hard drive I was recovering.”

“What? You went through a customer’s drive?”

“Well, I didn’t mean to. It accidentally opened when you talked to me earlier. But that doesn’t matter. The Mandela Effect is being made by Int-Cell.”

Before Carly could respond, dozens of men in suits rushed through the entrance of the Best Buy. Both her and Mike were unsure of what was going on. But he noticed they were making their way to where the drive was.

“I have to get that drive. The fate of memory everywhere counts on it.”

Mike began to sprint and took a shortcut to where his work station was. He got there right as a couple men rounded a corner on the opposite side of the hallway. As they did so, they yelled at him to stop. He took the chance to go in and swipe the drive. Although Mike may not have had the longest legs, he was using his adrenaline to push his speed to the limit.

He knew the front door was swarming with people, but the back door, however, hadn’t been opened yet. The alarm would be ringing if it was open. In only a couple seconds, he made his way through the emergency exit. To his surprise, there weren’t any cars sitting around the back. It seemed they were in too much of a hurry to get the drive to fully surround the store.

“Remote start, don’t fail me now.” Mike fumbled with his keys until he started his car with them. At this point, his body was operating on its own. Behind the steering wheel, he slammed on the gas and started driving. At first he wasn’t sure where to go, but then he remembered the contact form earlier showing where his customer had worked. Having spent a long time in the area, he knew the exact office he needed to find downtown.

Luckily, it wasn’t far away from the Best Buy, all he had to do was just make it in one piece. That was a lot easier said than done, especially now that his pursuers had caught up with him. One had begun to match his speed and something in him screamed to slam on the brakes. As he did so, their vehicle aggressively shot over but missed his, causing them to flip off the side of the road.

Mike let out a celebratory holler as he resumed speeding up. He wasn’t sure how he knew what to do, but something pulled at the back of his mind, driving his decisions. Was he the chosen one? Had this evidence been the red pill he’d been looking for his whole life? Everything felt so clear and it was a rush. An unknown muscle memory kicked in and he drifted sharply in an intersection, narrowly avoiding a series of cars in oncoming traffic.

“Call me Neo the way that I am the One! Nothing can stop me now!” He shouted in another fit of glee.

Coming up at the end of the road was the office building he had been looking for. Newfound confidence taking the wheel, he charged straight into the front glass. Doing a ninety degree slide in the waiting area, the door shot open. His hand instinctively shot to his seatbelt, which he had still taken the time to buckle. After depressing the button, he threw the belt off of him and ran to the elevator.

He tapped the button a couple dozen times before he realized that it was fifty floors up. It would never get down in time.

“Stairs it is I guess.”

Mike made his way to the stairwell. Luckily, he didn’t have to go all the way up to the top. Unluckily, however, there were a good twenty flights of stairs to travel. A couple flights in, noises of the men in suits broke into the stairwell. This was the extra push that Mike needed to keep charging through unending sets of stairs. Finally, the twenty-first floor was in sight.

After rushing through the door, he found a conveniently placed chair and used it to block it at the handle as best he could. With his new stroke of luck, the first office he checked matched the information his customer gave him. He barged into the office. Inside, the same customer who dropped off the hard drive was sitting at their desk.

“Ahh it would seem he’s beginning to believe. Isn’t that right Mr. Hunt?”

“Wait, you know my last name?” Mike was caught off guard, given that he had only met the man earlier that morning.

“I know a lot about you and would love to talk all about it. But, as you know, we are in a time crunch. Hand over the drive. I need to get this data in the right hands as soon as possible.”

Mike handed over the drive and in a few seconds, his new friend had submitted a copy of the report somewhere else. At the same time, a couple of the suits broke the door down, covering the only exit.

“Give it up Mr. Hunt. You may have gotten the data away but you won’t make it out of here alive.” The lead suit spoke at him as the two began slowly getting backed up towards the glass window.

“Look, you’ll have to trust me one more time Mike. We’ve gotta jump.”

Mike couldn’t make heads or tails of the situation, but for some reason he trusted the guy. They kept backing up until they were a few steps away from the giant glass pane. He took a deep breath in and cleared his mind.

“The name’s Hunt, Mike Hunt and I AM Geek Squad.” Time slowed dramatically as both parties turned towards the window. In sync they ran full force, breaking the window and plummeting towards the ground below. All anxiety was gone from Mike’s mind. As he hit the cement, the world around him went black.