Chapter 33 : Tracy's Vision
Tracy's dressing room had acquired new artifacts since the last time Albert had been in proximity to it.
He knew this because the door was open and the visible portion of the room from the hallway had a different configuration than what he'd clocked before: a new whiteboard covered in what appeared to be a structural diagram of Wednesday's relationship to Tuesday, a small terrarium on the vanity containing something Albert chose not to identify, and a folding table set up near the couch that held a pizza box, two energy drinks, and a stack of folders labeled with names Albert didn't recognize.
Grizz was by the door. He stepped aside when Albert approached.
"He's ready," Grizz said, with the tone of a man who had prepared a general for a meeting with a dignitary and was now standing down.
Albert went in.
Tracy was at the whiteboard, marker in hand, studying the diagram. Dot Com was on the couch with a legal pad. The pizza was cold — it had the specific smell of pizza that had been cold for at least two hours and was now the ambient temperature of the room. Tracy turned when Albert entered and pointed the marker at him.
"You came."
"I said I would."
"People say things." Tracy uncapped the marker with his teeth and recapped it. "Dot Com, what's the current structure?"
Dot Com looked at his legal pad. "Tuesday is a character who is also a committee who is also an emotional state." He said this with the tone of someone who had been taking notes on this for forty minutes and had made his peace with the content. "She exists in multiple forms simultaneously."
"That's the premise," Tracy confirmed. He gestured at the whiteboard. "I drew it out."
Albert looked at the whiteboard. The diagram had boxes connected by arrows, several of which pointed back to themselves. One box was labeled TUESDAY (WEREWOLF FORM). Another was labeled TUESDAY (BUSINESS CASUAL). A third was labeled TUESDAY (THE FEELING WHEN YOU REMEMBER SOMETHING BAD ON A TUESDAY).
"Walk me through it," Albert said.
Tracy pulled up a chair and sat on it backward, arms over the back. This was apparently the configuration for serious explanation. "Okay. Tuesday is a character. She represents the day but she's also a person. She's in charge of something — I haven't decided what — but she has authority." He put the marker down. "And she keeps getting interrupted by other versions of herself. Each version of her has different opinions about what Tuesday should be doing."
Albert sat on the edge of the couch.
"So you want to play all the versions," he said.
"That's the whole idea. Why wouldn't I play all the versions? They're all me."
Dot Com made a note.
Albert looked at the whiteboard. The structure wasn't wrong — it had the bones of a real sketch concept inside it. Tracy's instinct was sound: multiple versions of the same character arguing about priorities was a genuinely funny premise, particularly when every version was right from its own perspective and collectively incoherent. The Tuesday framing was the decorative wrapping. The core was the committee.
"What if Tuesday convenes a committee meeting," Albert said, "where all the versions of Tuesday have been assigned different responsibilities, and the meeting is to decide what today's agenda should be, and every single version of Tuesday has decided the agenda should be completely different because they're each representing a different aspect of being Tuesday."
Tracy stared at him.
"Tuesday the reliable shows up having prepared," Albert continued. "Tuesday the unpredictable shows up having forgotten what the meeting was about. Tuesday the ominous shows up and nobody will ask what she's been doing. Tuesday the administrative sends an email during the meeting about the meeting."
"That's a committee," Dot Com said. "About a day."
"That's a committee that IS the day," Tracy said. His voice had shifted into the register he used when an idea had clicked — not excited exactly, more focused. The particular focus of a performer recognizing something they could do. "They're not talking about Tuesday. They ARE Tuesday. All of them, simultaneously."
"And the sketch ends when the committee finally agrees on the agenda," Albert said, "and then immediately disbands because it's now Wednesday."
Tracy sat with this for four seconds. Then he stood, picked up the marker, and started writing on the whiteboard. "Dot Com. Notes."
"Already noting," Dot Com said.
They worked for two hours.
Albert had brought his own notepad, which turned out to be necessary. Tracy generated material at a pace that required a second hand: some of it was genuinely unusable — the version of Tuesday who could only speak in annual report language, the werewolf thread that kept returning despite having been gently redirected twice — but some of it was sharp, the product of a mind that worked associatively rather than linearly and occasionally produced connections that linear thinking wouldn't reach.
Tuesday-The-Reliable should have a binder she never opens because she already knows what's in it.
Tuesday-The-Unpredictable should have completely wrong information that is presented with total confidence.
When they finally agree on the agenda, the agenda should be: "To determine whether we need a second meeting."
Albert wrote them all down. The pizza was still cold; he ate a slice anyway because it was there and because the afternoon was running long. It tasted like late-night television production in a way that had become normal rather than novel, which was itself a kind of progress.
Grizz, from his position near the door, said nothing for the entire two hours except for once, when Tracy's argument with Dot Com about Tuesday-The-Ominous's costume reached a level that suggested resolution wasn't coming organically. Grizz said: "Maybe she doesn't need a costume." Tracy said: "Grizz, you've done it again." The costume argument ended.
At some point Tracy paused in the middle of explaining the bureaucratic subtext of Tuesday-The-Administrative and looked at Albert.
"You don't laugh at me," Tracy said. "Other people — they laugh at the thing, not with it. Like they're watching from outside." He was holding the marker but not writing. "You laugh with the funny parts."
Albert put down his pen. "The funny parts are genuinely funny."
"That's what I'm saying." Tracy looked at his whiteboard. "Most people don't know the difference." He paused. "You know what's actually funny versus what's funny because someone told you it was."
"That's pattern recognition," Albert said. "You learn to tell the difference if you pay attention long enough."
Tracy nodded with the specific gravity of a man who had been thinking about something for a long time and had just encountered someone who had also been thinking about it. "You're going to write this one with me."
It wasn't a question. Albert looked at his notepad, which had six pages of Tuesday's Committee material in it, and didn't argue.
The HUD delivered quietly at 4:47 PM, during a sub-argument about whether Tuesday-The-Ominous should have a catchphrase:
[TRACY WHISPERER — CHAIN STAGE 2][Incident prevented without Tracy noticing: complete][Progress: 2/3 | +3 Nerve]
Albert absorbed the notification and went back to the notepad. The broadcast went out — he felt it — but at 4:47 PM with the building running at late-afternoon occupancy, the ripple was modest. Somewhere on the floor, a PA probably paused mid-task and thought about Albert Myers for four seconds and then kept moving.
Tracy didn't notice. He was explaining why Tuesday-The-Ominous needed to be introduced by someone who was clearly terrified of her.
"That's the second beat," Albert said. "Put it between the binder reveal and the wrong-information reveal."
Tracy wrote it on the whiteboard. "Yes," he said. "Yes, that's it."
The dressing room door at six PM had the end-of-session configuration: Grizz had retrieved the energy drink cans, Dot Com was organizing the legal pad into an actual usable document, and Tracy was standing in the doorway with his arm around Albert's shoulder in the manner of a man who had spent two hours in productive collaboration and found the experience satisfying rather than exhausting.
"You're on the list," Tracy said. "The real list."
"There's a real list now?" Albert said.
"Grizz made one." Tracy looked back. "Grizz, how many people are on the list?"
"Four," Grizz said.
"Good. Good number." Tracy released his shoulder. "Come back Thursday. We need to work on the ominous entrance."
Albert went down the talent corridor with the notepad under his arm and six pages of Tuesday's Committee material and the mild pleasant exhaustion of two hours of actual creative work rather than careful strategic management. The Tracy interaction had been — he ran the internal assessment — genuine. Whatever Tracy's radar had clocked on Albert's first day in the lobby, the three months since had converted it from assessment to something that functioned as trust, even if Tracy's version of trust looked different from everyone else's.
He turned the corner toward the elevator bank.
Devon Banks was at the end of the corridor.
Not in his path — to the side, near the talent wing's fire door, which opened to the stairwell. He had his phone in one hand and his other hand in his coat pocket, and he was looking at Albert with the assessment expression. The cataloguing look. He was noting the notepad under Albert's arm, the door Albert had just come through, the direction of travel.
He looked for three seconds. He made no gesture of acknowledgment. He turned and pushed through the fire door into the stairwell.
Albert kept walking toward the elevator.
Devon had been watching him leave Tracy's dressing room, noting which relationship had just been invested in, calculating what disrupting it might cost against what it might accomplish.
Albert pressed the elevator button and waited for the car.
Thursday. He'd be back in that dressing room Thursday. The Tuesday's Committee sketch was going to be good — genuinely good, not system-good, not meta-knowledge-good. The kind of good that came from two people building something together in a cold pizza room in the back of a television studio.
Devon could note whatever he wanted.
Support the Story on Patreon
If you are enjoying the series and would like to read ahead, I offer an early access schedule on Patreon. I upload 7 new chapters every 10 days.
Tiers are available that provide a 7, 14, or 21-chapter head start over the public release. Your support helps me maintain this consistent update pace.
Patreon.com/TransmigratingwithWishes