Losing Yourself in Your Characters

Plucked right off the sidewalk, I now stood face to face with Kelly in a narrow brick alley. He looked tired.

“Close your eyes, keep one hand on the wall to your right, and follow me,” he ordered.

I nodded and did as I was told. The only way to keep my pursuers in the dark was to keep me in the dark as well. “How do those guys always know where I am and where I’m going to be if they can’t even see me?”

Kelly didn’t answer right away, possibly because he was focused on guiding me through what seemed like a brick labyrinth. “Everybody mixed up in this knows more than they should.”

“Me included?”

“Especially you. Everything you know, they’ll know soon enough.”

“Is that why you’re so cryptic?”

“Well…” Kelly drifted off, and for a moment I lost grasp of his hand. I heard a car door open in front of me. “Sure,” he answered, finally. “In you go. Watch your head.”

Once he was in the driver’s seat in front of me, chauffeuring me to who-knows-where, I asked if it was safe to open my eyes. It wasn’t.

“Is it safe for me to ask who you are and what you want with me?” I asked.

Kelly sighed. “I’m using you to buy time.”

“For what?”

“For all of us. But specifically for me. I need to find the Director.”

“The Director of what?”

“Right now? A somewhat off-the-books branch of the R&D wing of a multinational corporation with quite a diverse set of investors. He’d like to be director of… a lot more.”

“Is that who the men in black suits are working for?”

Kelly didn’t answer.

“Hello?”

“Oh, I forgot your eyes were closed. I was nodding.”

We rode on in silence. “And who are you?” I asked.

“Haven’t I already told you?”

“You just told me to call you ‘Kelly.’ But that’s another thing. How come I’m remembering things that apparently never happened?”

“He changed his mind.”

“Who? The Director?”

Kelly went silent.

“Are you nodding again?”

He didn’t answer immediately. “No, I’m just trying to figure out how to explain this to you. What we’re dealing with.”

“What, like time-travel?”

“You’re a writer, right?” Kelly asked.

“Uh, yeah. But what’s that got to do with—”

“What kind of characters have you written?”

“Hopefully interesting ones,” I said with the barest pretense of humility. “ I’m about to publish my debut novel. I’d say it’s pretty character driv—”

“Have you ever written any atheists?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Did you realize they’re all wrong?” Kelly asked.

“Who?”

“The atheists. In your stories. They’re all wrong.”

“How do you know?”

“The atheists don’t believe they’ve been created by a higher power. But they were. By you.”