Chapter 3: A dream?

-Schatten House, Phoenix, Arizona

-August 25, 2022

In the house where Joe Schatten lived together with his mother, a magical situation was happening that would change the development of the entire future of this world...

In the bathroom of one of the rooms of the house was a 16-year-old Joe looking at himself in the mirror with a look in his eyes of surprise, confusion, and reflection.

All this is because the look in this young Joe's eyes does not belong to the original owner of this body, but to a Joe from a parallel world.

That's right, Joe Schatten found himself waking up from his strange "dream" only to find himself in the body of his other self that joe had been "dreaming" about and had been seeing all his life until the day he performed that strange ritual.

Joe was in shock trying to understand his situation.

He looked at his reflection in the mirror and he noticed that although it was still similar to his own, now his body was skinnier, lacked muscles, and was even shorter than before...

Who would have thought that a good diet does influence growth, doesn't it?

He passed from being a normal person in a world ruled by science to apparently, transmigrating to this body due to the strange ritual of his other self from this parallel world...

'Was this supposed to be another weird and crazy dream? If not, what kind of bad joke is it,' Joe thought still not believing what was happening.

Joe was deeply sceptical of his current situation, he had never believed in the supernatural or gods or reincarnation or anything like that.

Yes..., he always wished it existed but that didn't mean he believed in all those fucking things, it was just damn wishful thinking.

He always believed that when you died you just disappeared from existence in an eternal state of sleep.

That's why he was more than stunned now.

'This has to be a dream. A very long, very graphic, very realistic dream, but a dream nonetheless.'

'That's right, I must be having an extremely realistic dream and this is just a fantasy I'm going through until I finally wake up' he said to himself.

Joe was an avid reader and loved psychology, he had once read that sometimes you can have dreams that are so real that they don't seem like dreams.

But the strange thing is that these dreams are usually the kind where things happen that don't seem strange or disturbing and when you open your eyes you come to wonder whether they really happened or not...'

'And my case isn't exactly like that, fuck, maybe I really did transmigrate' thought Joe with a lot of doubts in his head.

He knew that hyperrealistic dreams are so intense that sometimes people who suffer from them have false awakenings, that is, they think they have woken up, got dressed, gone to work, or go to do their daily activities as usual, when in reality they are still in bed sleeping.

This usually occurs in the REM (rapid eye movement) sleep state, when the brain is active and fully functioning to archive the memories it needs to store and get rid of the less important ones.

In this state, dreams can seem very real, because they are even literal as the brain decides what to remember and what to forget.

Joe considered many things and probabilities at first.

But as time went on, he began to feel less and less sure that this could have anything to do with a realistic dream state.

Now he was experiencing transmigration first hand, so he could not remain in a state of denial for much longer, he was now in a world parallel to his own where supernatural beings and humans with supernatural abilities exist.

Who knows what kind of strange and fantastic things he might find in this world.

It was then that he realised that this was something he could not yet reason about or find any logic in at the moment, so it was best to accept the situation and then worry about these things.

Joe always considered himself a calm and logical person, having read a lot about psychology and having lived a complex life had really helped him to take all sorts of situations in his stride.

Although this situation was a bit extreme compared to his everyday life..., but he was still able to keep calm and think everything through.

Thanks to this in a short time he decided that although he still had his doubts that this was a very realistic dream, he might as well see how it played out and get on with his current situation.

With his mind made up Joe walked out of the room into the room of his other self...

'I guess this is my room now' Joe thought as he made his way downstairs.

On his way down the first thing he encountered was an empty house.

As usual, today his mother wasn't home either.

Lilith Schatten, Joe's mother, is a Phoenix Police Department's forensic scientist, she loved her job and used to spend all day at work, usually, she only came home to sleep..., the few times she and Joe had breakfast, dinner, or time together was when there was no case she had to intervene in.

Of course, Lilith usually tried to be present at his house on holidays or special occasions like Joe's birthday.

In fact, Joe remembers that when he was younger on his birthday, he used to come downstairs and find his mother preparing breakfast for them both.

But she gradually lost the habit of doing this...

'Even in this parallel, supernatural world my mother is still the same' Joe sighed and shook his head with a slight smile on his lips at the thought of her.

His mother may have been a little distracted but he loved her anyway.

Joe and his mother never argued, they were both very calm and tended to get along well during their time together.

And if one of them was angry, they didn't usually take their anger out on the other, they would make bad jokes to vent it.

Joe's mother was a strong woman who loved her work and tried her best at what she did.

Joe admired her for this and he was grateful to her because he never lacked for anything essential, he always had good food, good education, and could even afford to buy what he wanted because she earned a good salary.

Besides Joe could understand all the effort his mother made, she had had to raise and care for him alone since he was born because his father never showed up...

Well..., Joe didn't blame his biological father for never showing up in his life either after all his mother and father did only have a passing romance..., which ended with her getting pregnant a few months later, but his father never got to know this because he left before Lilith Schatten found out about her pregnancy and she was never able to contact him again.

Joe's mother's whole family was German, the Schatten's were an old German family that during the second world war moved to Argentina, his mother despite having German blood was born and lived all her life in Argentina, where she met Joe's father.

Joe only knows that his father was an American man called Joseph who had gone on holiday to Argentina and had a passing love affair with his mother.

Before Joe used to ask his mother a lot about him, but she was reticent to talk about the man, so over time Joe stopped asking about his father..., and he also came to understand that she didn't know much about his biological father either.

But certainly, his mother never forgot him, how Joe knew this, well..., it was easy to guess when a job offer arrived in the USA and his mother instantly accepted the job...

Lilith Schatten was a well-known forensic doctor in Argentina, she learned from Osvaldo Hugo Raffo himself, the most important forensic doctor in Argentine history.

It was in 2015 that Lilith was asked to intervene in a very important case in which a group of American tourists died mysteriously in Argentina, including the son of a very important US celebrity.

Lilith accepted the job and with her help, the case was quickly solved, it was determined that it was a homicide and the culprits of the murder were caught..., it was shortly after this case was solved that she got a job offer at the Phoenix Police Department.

Apparently, a few months ago the previous forensic doctor of the Phoenix Police Department had resigned and the person who replaced was not doing a good job, so the police department took the opportunity to make a job offer to Lilith who had a very good background.

...And yes, Joe had to move with his mother to Phoenix Arizona in the USA when he was only 9 years old..., and to make things worse, his mother's new job was much more demanding and consumed practically all of her time.

While Joe was preparing his breakfast, he started to remember different moments he lived with his mother and he realised that in the remnant memories he now had of his other self there were also all these memories and it seemed that except for some differences most of the things were similar in both cases.

Well... put in all the supernatural stuff and there's clearly going to be a few things that are going to be different between the two worlds.

Once Joe went to sit down for breakfast, he found a gift wrapped box on the table along with a letter from his mother in which she told him that yesterday when she came home from work she found him so asleep that she didn't want to wake him up, she apologised for not being able to get there earlier yesterday to celebrate his birthday with him but that she hoped the gift she had left him would be enough to compensate.

'Could it be...?' thought Joe with an idea of what his mother had left him as a present, he quickly opened the box and there he found some keys..., but not just any kind of keys, they were the keys to a YAMAHA motorbike.

Realising that his mother had given him a motorbike, he made his way to the front door of his house and quickly got out, stopping when he saw a black MT-09 motorbike parked in front of the entrance.

'This... is mine?' thought Joe as he excitedly observed the beautiful black MT-09 up close.

But his enthusiasm would have to wait because after a while his mobile phone alarm went off and when he looked at the time he noticed that it was already 8:15..., and he had classes at 8:30.

"Perfect, the only thing missing, being late for school..." Joe complained.

'Hmm, I could skip..., no, that would just create more problems for me' Joe thought as he sighed tiredly and prepared to leave quickly.

"Well, at least I'll get to ride the motorbike for the first time" Joe said looking at the motorbike with a slight excited smile on his face.