He approached the unfamiliar door and nervously took the key from his pocket. He took a deep breath, unlocked the door, paused, then opened it. To his horror he saw the exact bedroom he grew up in over 20 years ago. The same bunk beds, the same long dresser, and the same little tube TV with the metal button panel on the right hand side of the face. This made no sense, he knew he wasn’t in his old house, but this wasn’t just a replica of the room. It was his room. His heart sank as he began to think he was pulled out of time and sent back into history. What is happening? Is his life over? How will he get to work in the morning. What started as a fever dream walk down the apartment hallway has turned into some sort of demented loop of reliving his past. As he entered the room, the door shut behind him. It didn’t slam, more of a gentle latch shut, but it startled him all the same. He walked over to the closet and found his toy collection which he kept in a giant laundry basket. Just as he did when he was child, he dumped the laundry basket out onto the floor and began digging through his collection of cars and figures, grabbing one and inspecting it for a while before moving on to the next. He began to feel a rush of what he thought was nostalgia at first, but was so much stronger that he could only describe it as the exact feelings he once had as a kid, not just memories. He rummaged through the dresser, pulling out his old t-shirts and reminiscing on the life he used to know. His horror began to melt away and he began to smile. A smile born of joy and the transcendence of stress and anxiety. The sadness that often came coupled with nostalgia never arose, just the joy of time past. He saw the old Commodore 64 that his dad had set up in his room, and immediately remembered how much he loved playing After Burner. He dashed over to the chair and booted it up. He got as far as the title screen menu, but each time he tried to start a new game, the intro video would loop and he would end up back at the menu. The sounds of the game’s start up video were enough for him. He basked in the crude midi notes and felt a warm glow rise from his stomach into his brain. He hoped that this shift in reality was permanent, and that he could just remain in this room and in this feeling for the rest of eternity. Aside from the wonder and excitement of being back in one of his happiest places, his vision kept going a little fuzzy, and he would half to close his eyes tightly for a few seconds and reopen them for it to come back. This happened every few minutes or so, but quickly began to happen consistently, and eventually the blinking wasn’t helping. He started to feel the joyful feeling slip away, and a sense of anxiety began to creep into his chest. He stood up from the computer screen and looked around the room. It was still the same room he once had, nothing completely out of the ordinary, just a strange blur to his vision now. Before he could move on, he heard a thumping sound coming from outside of the door. Was it in the apartment hallway he came from? Or was the upper landing and stairs from his childhood home on the other side of the door? The thumping began to intensify, and almost as if guided by an invisible force he walked over to the door, determined to see what was causing it. The moment he started to reach for the doorknob, the door swung open abruptly, and the same guiding force pulled him towards it. And then, there was nothing.