I did nothing about it.
I hated the idea of my past being connected to my future, so I treated the whole thing like it was just a dream.
Even if I still remembered every part of it perfectly.
Even if it felt more real than most things I actually lived through.
I pushed it to the back of my mind.
I tried to move on.
But I couldn't.
What if it meant something bad?
How could the factory end up looking exactly the way it does now?
What really happened in my past life?
Wasn't I supposed to be alone?
Those questions kept circling through my head over and over, never actually leaving, just getting quieter until something reminded me of them again.
That something happened in science class.
I was sitting there half-listening while Mr. White talked about basic anatomy. The liver. The stomach. Skin. Bones. The kind of lesson everyone else in class could sit through without caring too much about. But I wasn't really listening. I was still stuck in my own head, turning the dream over and over like I could somehow make it tell me more if I thought hard enough.
Then he started talking about the brain.
Its parts.
Its functions.
Memory.
And then he said it.
"...Right here we have the hippocampus. It's the part responsible for long-term memory—"
That was it.
That was the trigger.
I lost it.
The last thing I needed was someone else talking about memories.
At first it was just pressure. A sharp pain, like something in my head suddenly clenched. Then it got worse. Much worse. It felt like I was being stabbed directly in the brain over and over again, so fast and so violently that I couldn't even think between waves of it.
I started crying.
Then screaming.
And I couldn't stop.
I fell out of my chair and hit the floor hard, but I barely felt it. The pain in my head swallowed everything else. I forgot where I was. Forgot who was around me. Forgot the classroom, the teacher, the other students, all of it.
There was only pain.
Blinding, splitting, unbearable pain.
And then—
I passed out.
It felt like my brain was being forced open.
Not metaphorically.
Not like some poetic way of saying I remembered something.
It actually felt like something inside my head was being pried apart to make room for more.
Except the memory I was getting wasn't even new.
It was the same one as before.
Just more complete.
Much more complete.
Slower. Clearer. More detailed.
Far more detailed than I wanted it to be.
I was maybe eight or nine years old when I found Factory 24 in my past life.
There wasn't anyone with me.
That part hit me immediately.
I was alone.
I had just decided to go in and look around. I dug out the hole in the side fence, broke the office window, and made it into my base.
I still don't understand why.
That part bothers me more than it should.
Why did I do that?
Why did I care so much?
Why did an abandoned factory become important enough to shape two lives?
I made myself the leader, since no one else knew about it yet.
But even in the memory, I didn't seem satisfied with that.
Being alone wasn't enough.
It was boring.
Can you even call yourself a leader if you have no one to lead?
So I started pulling people in.
Building Factory 24.
Creating members.
And the most disturbing part was who I started with.
It was the same people.
George.
Leo.
Mel.
Melanie.
The exact same ones.
That made my stomach turn.
Why did I choose them?
How did I choose them?
Was I drawn to them for the same reasons both times, or had something bigger decided it for me?
Even inside the memory, I couldn't tell.
Then, of course—
Elaine.
Sarah.
Liam.
They had to be there too.
I don't know what exactly caused it, but we got into the same huge argument all over again. Elaine got banned. Sarah stopped being friends with her. Liam started coming to Factory 24.
It was all too close.
Too familiar.
Not identical.
But close enough to make me sick.
And then I was eleven.
Sixth grade.
And the factory looked almost exactly how it does now.
I should have felt relieved.
It was a complete memory.
A real one.
Something clear.
Something that actually explained part of my past life.
But the more I watched, the worse it got.
Everything lined up way too perfectly.
Even though this life started earlier—even though I found the factory years before I had in the memory—the result was the same.
Same building.
Same people.
Same growth.
Same shape to it all.
Just wrong in tiny ways.
Wrong enough that I couldn't stop watching for what came next.
George made a flag for Factory 24 in that memory too.
Only this time, it got accepted.
It was simple. White background. A giant "24" in the center. A yellow crown on top.
Like we were some kind of kingdom.
That detail unsettled me more than it should have.
Because that meant the past version of me wasn't just leading the factory.
He was turning it into something formal.
Something controlled.
Something almost worshipped.
And then the memory shifted again.
For some reason, it showed me in class.
The past me.
I was sitting in a different part of the room than I do now, but the lecture was the same.
The brain.
The hippocampus.
Memory.
Then I watched myself start crying.
Start screaming.
Start collapsing.
I passed out too.
That was what broke me.
What?
How could that be?
The whole reason I passed out in this life was because of this memory.
So why did he?
Why did my past self have the same reaction to the same lesson?
That didn't make any sense.
At first I thought that had to be the end of it. That the memory would stop there because it had reached the same point where I blacked out in real life.
But it kept going.
And what came after was worse than the factory itself.
I watched myself change.
Not slowly.
Not naturally.
Suddenly.
Like passing out had made something click into place.
I became more helpful to everyone.
More useful.
More reliable.
I became the person everyone at Factory 24 went to whenever anything needed to be handled.
At first that didn't seem so bad.
Helpful isn't evil.
Reliable isn't evil.
But then no one opposed me anymore.
No one disagreed.
And after a while, I declared myself the Leader.
Not a leader.
Not first among equals.
The Leader.
The one and only.
What I said went.
And I could feel the shift in him.
In me.
He was colder.
More direct.
More certain.
Less hesitant.
He moved like someone who already knew something bad was coming and had decided everyone else would just have to live under whatever rules he made to prevent it.
Then the rules started.
The first one that really changed the atmosphere of Factory 24 was simple.
No high schoolers.
That one made no sense to me at first.
Why would I do that?
We already had high schoolers coming to Factory 24 now. Nothing in the memory had shown me any big conflict with them yet, so why was the past me so strict about it?
And before I could even finish thinking about that, another rule got added.
New members had to be screened before being allowed in.
Screened.
What does that even mean?
Interviewed?
Questioned?
Background checked?
Why was I so paranoid about who entered the factory?
What was I trying to stop?
What did I know then that I don't know now?
That was the worst part of the whole memory.
Not the factory.
Not the crown.
Not the title of leader.
It was the feeling that the past version of me was reacting to a threat I still couldn't see.
And whatever that threat was, it scared him enough to stop pretending the factory was just a place for kids to play.
I woke up drenched in sweat.
Mom, Dad, and Melanie were all sitting right beside me, all with the same horrified look on their faces.
The moment they realized I was awake, they all started talking at once, but I was too out of it to understand any of them.
"Where am I?"
"■■■■■! Honey! Thank God you're awake!"
Mom was crying.
Why?
Then someone else stepped into view.
I didn't know him, but the white coat told me enough.
Hospital.
Great.
The doctor came closer to the bed.
"■■■■■, my name is Doctor Blanc."
"You're in the hospital. Do you understand me?"
I stared at him for a second, then nodded.
"Good. I need to ask you a few questions, alright?"
I nodded again.
He kept his voice calm and measured, like he didn't want to spook me.
"Can you tell me your name?"
"■■■■■■ ■■■■■■."
"And do you know how old you are?"
"Ten."
"Do you know where you were before you came here?"
"School..."
He gave a small nod.
"You passed out in class today. Your teacher, Mr. White, said you were screaming and holding your head before you collapsed. Do you remember that?"
A little.
Not enough.
"I remember my head hurting."
"That's alright," he said. "You don't have to force it."
Mom was still crying quietly beside me, and Dad looked like he was trying very hard not to panic in front of me.
Doctor Blanc glanced toward them, then back to me.
"We were worried you may have had a stroke," he said carefully, "or something similar affecting the brain."
That made everything in my head stop for a second.
A stroke?
What?
"That's why we brought you here so quickly."
Quickly?
How long had I even been out?
"How long has it been?"
"Only three hours."
Three hours.
That wasn't enough time for any of this to feel real.
A stroke?
That didn't make sense.
I was ten.
Can that even happen to a ten-year-old?
Dad finally spoke up.
"So he's okay?"
"For now, he looks alright," Doctor Blanc said. "He's talking normally, he knows where he is, and he's responding well. That's a very good sign. But I still want to be careful. Something clearly happened, and we need to make sure it doesn't happen again."
Then he turned back to me.
"Do you feel dizzy? Sick? Any pain?"
"My head still hurts."
"That's understandable," he said. "You've been through a lot."
Then his expression shifted slightly more serious.
"If anything feels strange again—head pain, confusion, trouble speaking, numbness, memory lapses, anything like that—you need to tell someone immediately. Do you understand?"
"I do."
"Good," he said. "You gave everyone quite a scare."
After that, they all left the room for a bit to give me space.
And the second they did, I started replaying the whole conversation in my head.
A stroke.
Memory lapses.
Confusion.
Pain.
No.
That wasn't it.
Then it hit me again.
Not the pain.
The understanding.
I remembered everything that happened while I was unconscious.
Every part of the memory.
The factory.
The leader.
The rules.
The ban on high schoolers.
The screening.
It wasn't a stroke.
It was my brain making room for that damn memory.
What the hell is going on?
What am I supposed to do about this?
What do I tell everyone?
Should I tell the doctor?
Should I tell my parents?
Should I tell anyone?
I didn't.
Now that I knew what happened, staying the night in the hospital wasn't going to change anything. My head still hurt, but the worst of it was over.
I tried telling them I was fine now.
They still made me stay overnight.
Probably for the best.
Even if I hated it.
It's been about a week since then.
School ends a fortnight from now.
I've thought about the memory constantly.
The second I got home from the hospital, I wrote everything down in this story before I could forget even one piece of it.
And after going over it again and again, I think I've reached a conclusion.
I saw the future.
Or at least, a version of it.
Everything was the same until the past me passed out.
Then he changed the way Factory 24 worked.
He changed the people around him.
He changed himself.
And whatever he did after that made the whole place colder.
Stricter.
Worse.
I won't let things be the same.
I won't ban high schoolers.
I won't screen new members.
I know at least a little of what happens.
That means I can change it.
I can stop it.
I can be better.