assumptions and hypotheses

What ... an asshole.

I don't think I should be calling mystical beings - or whatever the hell he is - names but that dude just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's a case of how we ourselves would be the least likely to handle others like ourselves. Oh well.

I closed my eyes and let myself lie down. I look up and I'm back where I was before he came. That infinite white space.

I closed my eyes and started going through Drake's memories for answers. Answers to what I'm not entirely sure yet.

Anchors.

Drake is an anchor and I am now Drake, but does that make me an anchor too?

Somewhere sometime a decision was made that led to this Drake - the one inside me - getting hurt as a consequence. Hurt enough to die even if he lives on inside me through his memories. Those that have encoded themselves in this brain and this heart.

What is clear so far is that something went wrong somewhere. The Drake that came to be as a consequence of all the worse off decisions Drakes before him made. The one I saw when I first entered this place. The abused Drake, the tortured Drake, the insane Drake. The murderer Drake.

Except for his mother he had no one.

His father abandoned him and his mother.

His supposed family treated him and the person he holds most dear like enemies.

When he went to school he was an outcast, and when he entered the workforce he became an easy target. When something went wrong he would get blamed.

He had no reason, nor purpose to survive except for his mother. Who ended up killing herself because Drake wasn't enough to keep her tethered to a life that brought her only pain. He found her body. He broke. His heart broke and he let go of the fragile hold he had over his sanity.

In hindsight it's fairly easy to see the decision points. The ones where this Drake got the short end of the stick.

The decision to hire the tutor that would end up seducing his father. The decision to leave him being taken away from his mother, removing any sense of self she had with it.

The decision to move in with a family that hated them and staying there despite the abuse. They could have left. His mother clearly needed help, but they would have been better of on the streets than in that place.

Despite seeing the signs Drake never recognised the extent of pain his mother was suffering from. The constant struggle it became for her to stay one more day. A decision to get her to seek professional help which she so clearly needed that was never made.

The decision to kill when the pain became too much, when he no longer had his reason to live. The decision to kill himself.

And so many other decisions in-between. So many different paths he could have taken that would lead to at times slightly different outcomes or completely different lives. The sad thing being that those universes where he took those other paths exist out there, somewhere.

I wonder to what extent I can influence this life. Will the decisions I make lead to different universes being created? Or as someone who technically doesn't belong, will that not be the case? Because I am in the body of an anchor does that make me one too? Or has the merging of my soul... I don't know what else to call it... Has the merging of my soul with that of Drake altered his composition enough to no longer make him an anchor in this world? Because technically, probably, this Drake died.

Drake at this point is 16 years old. He just entered high school a few months ago. Although he is not the most popular kid in school, he isn't an outcast. He has acquaintances, though I would be hard-pressed to call them friends. He goes to school and comes back home, not having much of a life outside it. His father hasn't left yet, and his mother is still suffering. They haven't moved back in with her family. Chances are that family doesn't even know of his existence. All that would change during his sophomore year.

Is it wise to make changes? What did he say again... The worst off version of an anchor get unpredictable. The massacre and suicide were probably unexpected at the end there. Maybe it went so out of bounds of whatever hypothetical parameters the anchor Drake was supposed to operate in that it broke something in the system. Enough so to reset the world... If that's even what happened.

If this was a universe wide time-travel situation, that would literally destroy so many universes. All the ones that came as Drake grew and more and more decisions were made leading to the creation of different worlds.

The Drake that I remember, the one inside me, he was the product of so many decisions - years into the future...

It doesn't make sense. Clearly I am here for some purpose, that entity of Drakes made that much clear though he was cryptic as hell about it. My exact purpose for even existing right now is unclear, however.

Wait. Could it be that because Drake completely lost it at the end there he broke his universe? Do anchors have that much power?

Then again the entire universe was created with one decision made by an anchor, then it wouldn't be that extraordinary for a decision to cause its collapse... right?

Fuck. All of these thoughts are assumptions and hypotheses. I can't actually confirm anything yet, though some things are more likely to be on the right path than others. It's all conjecture and I could be completely off base.

I don't think I am but I could be. Let's operate under the assumption for now that I am not an anchor and this universe is an isolated reset incident. No matter how much power that entity holds - though I don't believe him to be responsible for my current predicament - going back in time across the board would pop billions of lives out of existence. It wouldn't make sense. The amount of power required for that boggles my mind.

Nowhere in Drake's memories can I see him being careless enough to fall from his treehouse and be hurt enough to die, so whatever event or entity brought me here made that happen. Yet, they didn't erase Drake but they merged him with me, to a certain extent.

I still don't understand why me.

Considering the life I lived Before I highly doubt I'm an anchor. I basically had an expiration date written on my existence the moment I was born, though none of us knew at the time. A life like that severely limits how much you can do during your life, especially if you waste most of it going through the motions like I had. Just because the likelihood is small, doesn't make me not an anchor. But it also doesn't make me one.

Fuck my head hurts.

I can think it all over however much I want but it's like walking in the dark near a cliff not knowing when you might set a wrong foot somewhere you weren't supposed to.

I don't have all the answers now, but I have enough an idea on what I can do next. If I fuck up too badly I'm sure that entity of all the Drakes will visit me to set me straight. Despite being such a cryptic asshole he seemed as though he wanted better for this Drake that had been - would have been.

I put my hand on where my heart was located and promise Drake to do what I can. I thank him for the chance to live and tell him that I will take care of his mother because I love her like my own, because of him.

When I opened my eyes again in that hospital room it felt like a weight had lifted, my headache - a constant companion - gone.