The numbness from the pain relievers went away a little later that night. With that, my mobility returned.

I received the letter and sat quietly on the hospital bed, while the elderly doctor watched me. My eyes tried remain calm as they slowly skimmed the familiar handwriting:

To my friend,

You were around when the Handmen were stopped, and I have experienced your dream of how the world would be changed for the better and the worse. Though this new world may seem very different to you, much of it is the same. Those mixtures of contrasts and comparisons were what produced the title that I have coined The Greener Effect. Though, you may not understand now, you will soon realize why I have given this generation that name.

I'm going to tell you a story. Many years ago, there was an outstanding surgeon who worked at a hospital in a huge city. His name was Able. This doctor had different ideas on how the hospital should run, and often desired to rebel against the Oath of Doctors. The hospital director often had to lecture him on how important it was to follow the normal regulations. Little did anyone know that the director of that hospital was a valuable member of the Handmen, who was only upholding their ancient ideals.

He was killed along with the Handmen on the day that all of those explosions occurred, leaving the hospital in a frenzy with no direction. On that same night, Able's older brother Alex was hit badly in the head by flying debris from the explosion, while he was walking down the street. When he arrived at the hospital, he was alive, but most of his brain was destroyed, leaving him was in a coma.

Dr. Able loved his brother, Alex. He only wanted the best when he made the decision I'm about to reveal... A couple weeks later, a patient was rushed into the hospital. He had a gunshot in the heart and was soon going to be pronounced dead. Dr. Able discovered that both his brother and this patient had the same blood type and looked about the same age. Against everything he was taught, the young surgeon took the heart from his brain-dead brother and placed it into the dying patient. He did a full blood transfusion and all. That doctor killed his own brother by giving life to the patient.

Days later, the patient woke up with no memory nor recollection of anything. He didn't know who he was; he didn't even remember basic motor functions. Dr. Able saw this as an opportunity to trick the patient into believing that he himself was Alex.... A year passed, and his motor skills returned. He met a woman who also was undergoing physical therapy around the time he was. They fell in love and got married. Another year passed with the happy couple having a son...

I will stop this story for now, because if I continue, too much will be revealed. I will tell you this, though. If you haven't caught on already, YOU were that patient. You were the one to lose all of his memories and was tricked into believing that you were Alex, Dr. Able's brother. Now, let me tell you who I am...

I am you... Over the ten years, I made new memories. I had a family. I loved my false brother, Able. I lived in darkness not even knowing an ounce that Able lied to me. I AM you... but I AM Alex... I am the product of a selfish, yet desperate man, who only wanted to have his brother back. That is who I am... Yes, there's a lot more to this story. I have discovered things that you and detective Bronze couldn't even imagine... I know everything plus more, but if you have received this letter, that means that I have been erased, and you regained the memories you had back before that gun backfired at the concert of the Instrumentalist.

I've always wanted to know how I used to think back before Able tainted me... Perhaps, I'll never know. There is something that I do, though.

You have the desire... You have what it takes to learn what I have learned. You have the drive to find out the mysteries that have yet to be uncovered. If you still wish to save this rapidly dying world, look in the glove compartment in my car. There will be a clue there. I haven't been able to follow that one very well, but maybe you will be able to make something out of it. Though I am gone, I will always be a part of you. Farewell.

~Alex

That was the end of the letter. After finishing it, I couldn't help but think back to the day I was twelve and received a letter from the deceased prophet. Once again, I was given a choice. Though it was lightly offered, it was still a choice...

I knew everything now, but I just woke up. I felt overwhelmed and exhausted, even though ten years passed. I survived the gunshot. I confronted Aya. I discovered everything I needed to find out, but did I need to jump right back into this crap? Ever since I was twelve, I dedicated my life to this bunch of garbage. At the age of twenty-two, I witnessed the defeat of the group that I desired to be gone.... Now, I'm thirty-two years old... How much more of my life am I going to waste on this stupid mystery?! This is NOT my job! I was just given the choice ONCE AGAIN to live happily in darkness or to rise above the darkness and waste more of my time on things that don't even matter.

I have a family now. I don't care if I know them or not. They know and love me well enough to be loved back. That's how this story ends! I'll live happily ever after in a world that is STILL spiraling into a void of manipulation and corruption. I'll sit down like the other billions of men. I'll sit in my underwear while drinking a 2-Liter bottle of soda, eating beef jerky and watching football. I have a son... I want to teach him how to do things that my dad never taught me. I have a wife... I want to fall in love with her like I did during the ten years I was someone else. I want to go on dates with her and sleep next to her in bed.

I never asked to be a rebel of the Handmen. I was just a stupid kid at the time that I was given that decision. I QUIT.

“So what are you going to do, Hireki?” asked the elderly doctor, witnessing my outward reaction to the letter.

I looked up at his wrinkled face and asked him a question. “If you could have dedicated more time to your family than your job, would you do it all over again that way?”

The old man leaned back in his chair and stared at me with a frown on his face. “I could save a million lives and be happy, but if I could spend even one second more with my deceased wife, it'd bring me more joy than saving all of those people... Does that make me evil?”

I stared back at him, “I don't know...”

“No.. It doesn't...” said a small voice from behind the door of my room. The door quickly creaked open and my son, Novato walked in. His face was calm and serious. His face, his movements, even the tone of his voice was totally different than how he behaved earlier when I first met him. The child stood in the middle of the room and looked deeply into the elderly man's eyes. “Joy... Happiness... Anger... Hatred... Joy is never evil. You were given a question that forced you to choose... If you would have said that you hated one more than the other, then you should ask yourself if you're evil...”

The old man thought for a moment, then nodded, “Indeed, Boy. Indeed...”

This is my son?!

The 8 year-old boy turned his attention to me. “I can tell that you're not the man that you used to be... You're not the man who taught me how to speak, nor walk... You didn't take me back and forth to school... Neither are you the man who abandoned mommy and I... You are someone totally different, yet you're still my father, and I want to get to know you.”

My eyes grew as I heard this child who I was told was my son... He spoke with such maturity... He spoke almost as if he was wise...

He continued as the old doctor and I listened, “There is only one task that you need to do, Daddy... That task is to-” The power turned off in the entire hospital. The room became as dark as the night sky that rushed through the window.

“W-what's going on here?!” the scratchy voice of the old man yelled.

I heard the door of my room slam shut.

“Who's there?!!! Hello?!” The doctor yelled as I heard him attempt to stand up and search for the door.

I sat quietly in my bed. My mind was still in shock that my son spoke the way he did. I wanted to get to know this boy. I wanted to see how he'd become when he'd grow into an adult... Silence took over the pitch black room.

A couple minutes passed, and the lights turned back on. The boy had vanished and the doctor was laying face first on the ground.

Not again... Please not again... My body was tired. My life was tired. My heart, my mind, my spirit wanted to rest... There was writing on the pale wall in front of me. It was written in what seemed to be a pink marker:

THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER, MR. HIREKI

My heart fluttered. I could honestly say that it stopped beating for a few seconds. Blood stopped flowing through my veins. The clock in the corner of the room stopped ticking. My lungs stopped breathing. Everything was still... Everything was frozen... The monster followed me to the future...

The words began to fade off the wall, as if it was written with invisible ink, leaving me questioning if everything was just a dream.

My heart began to beat again. Time flowed normally. Was it all in my mind? Was my son really in here giving me and the old doctor some wise words? He's only a little bo-.... WAIT A MINUTE... He reminds me of someone...

The doctor wasn't moving. The sentence on the wall had faded away. My son was missing... Was Aya really behind it all?

Where was my supposed-to-be wife? WHERE IS EVERYONE?! This wasn't making any sense. If Aya did this, then there's no doubt that the old man is dead... I thought I had a normal life, now. I thought I could live a happy, carefree life.

Perhaps, it was all a dream... Who was I to think that I deserved a family without putting the work into making it? Who was I to think that God was finished with me? Ten years may have passed, but nothing had changed. Did my son take part in potentially killing this old man? Maybe it was my fake brother... Then again, the writing was obviously from Aya... How old is she now? Eighteen?...

I leaned forward and buried my face in my hands. I was going to cry. I wanted so badly to give up right there. It was then, that I noticed something. I had... biceps? I quickly scrambled to pull up my hospital robe. I looked down. Abs too?! I put the letter down and hopped out of bed, despite there being a dead doctor on the floor. I looked at my reflection on the window. I saw that my hair was longer, and there some were gray strands that seemed to stand out.

Wow... I have really changed... I thought to myself. My body was truly in shape. I didn't even feel the pain from earlier anymore. My clothes were folded nicely on a chair on the other side of my bed. I immediately took off my robe and put on the jeans and dress shirt. At least my good sense of fashion didn't change much.

I walked over to the old man, who hadn't moved since the lights returned to the room. I gently rolled him over. He was dead... Despite my desire to put all of this crap behind me and start my life anew, I saw that wrinkled face of his. He spoke about wanting to see his wife again. If he wanted to see her this way, he would have done it a long time ago... This man didn't deserve to be killed. He seemed to have known my name... Perhaps, he knew Alex before the incident that made me regain my memory...

I couldn't let his death be in vain... I knew my son didn't kill this man. I needed to find him and my wife.

The door opened, and Able looked calmly at me. He saw the dead, old doctor. “You killed him?...” Able asked.

Of course he was going to think that... “No,” I said, looking down at the man's wrinkled face once again.

Able looked at my attire, “You're dressed and out of bed already? That was a quick recovery...”

“What was wrong with me other than a huge headache?” I asked.

The young doctor walked into the room. “You have regained your lost memories... I have gotten over the fact that you have lost everything I taught you these ten years. I don't know who killed the old frog, but I can easily pin the blame on the man who tried to assassinate The Instrumentalist...”

My eyes widened. I stood up and looked at Able. My mind was focused, my anger grew, “.......” but the words weren't there...

The young doctor knelt down and examined the old man. “He was my teacher, you know. I would never do a thing like this.”

I walked towards the door.

“Thanks to me, the medical field has been widely expanded over the years. You were just an experiment. After you, many new medical and health experiments were performed. There have been many new discoveries.”

I stood at the door with the letter Alex wrote me in my pocket.

“People can live significantly longer now... Many deformities can be reversed and restructured. Veins can be artificially made with a special type of metal and surgically implanted in order to reduce deaths due to gunshot and stab wounds. Bones can be injected with more calcium, so that they are harder to break!”

“How many 'experiments' failed before you finally succeeded in your operations?” I asked with my back towards him.

My fake brother looked at me and yelled, “MORE LIVES WERE SAVED THAN LOST! SACRIFICES HAD TO BE MADE!”

“Like your brother?” I asked calmly.

The angry doctor stood up and walked towards me, “YOU LISTEN HERE!”

I turned around and punched him hard in the face, making him fall backwards. His glasses fell off. “My son and wife are missing... If you're as great as you say you are, then save that man's life right there. I need to find my family.” I turned back around and started to walk down the hallway.

Able walked back to the door and looked at me, “The receptionist probably knows where your car is.”

--

I walked down the night streets. I wasn't tired anymore. I just wanted this to all be over. The only way to do that was to continue. In a video game, you can never get anything done without walking forward. It's the same in real life. The receptionist gave me the keys to my car, after she saw that I was perfectly fine and had no health insurance. I told her that my “brother” would pick up the tab.

After about an hour and a half, I arrived at the gas station where my car was located. They told me that I got into a fight with some drunk men earlier that night. There was only a couple of cars parked there, I tried the keys in each car until I found the one that was mine.

I got into the car and quickly opened the glove compartment. That was where Alex explained that my clue was. There was only one thing in the compartment, a section from a newspaper. The Obituaries... There were a LOT of names in this section. Why was that a clue?

I turned on the interior light in the car, and that's when I saw it clearly. There was a name circled right in the middle of the paper: Iris Crawford. Hmm... I remember that name from somewhere...

[FLASHBACK:

Her beautiful eyes stared into mine with fear, yet determination. “If I don't come out, then you'll know for a fact that I am dead and that the 'secret society' exists.” ]

My hands clenched the paper tightly... Could it be the same person from my teenage years?

I read the information on her:

Iris Crawford

Committed suicide at age 34. Ten years earlier, her husband suffered the same fate. She is survived by her only daughter, Aya Crawford, age 18, student at McHartford High School.

GREENER