I woke in white sand and warm sun. My legs were halfway in the water. It felt cool and nice, a contrast to how I felt which was hungover and exhausted, sicker than I'd ever been.

  Little wavelets broke over my feet and shins. It took me a while just to push myself up. The beach was a long strip of glare out to either side. The sea a glassy, azure plain. It was beautiful. But I’d never been anywhere like this in my life. Had I? I couldn’t seem to recall... anything really. Nothing specific anyway, just a blur of cars and city streets, of working late and studying hard. What was my thesis? How could I forget?

  This was paradise. The sea. The sand. Everything felt new to me, but there was something wrong with the light, with the horizon, with the sounds, even with the smell. Not wrong in a bad way, you understand, just different to how I felt it should be. People say you can’t see Earth's curve, but trust me, you notice when it's gone.

  The air didn’t smell salty. When another little wavelet broke I caught up some of the water in my palm and sipped it to confirm. This ‘sea’ was fresh. It tasted so clean and sweet that it made me realise just how thirsty I was. I staggered a few steps until I was waist deep and dunked my head right right in.

  The next little wave broke over my neck and shoulders. It felt so good. Some of the nausea and the throbbing confusion started to recede. The sea's embrace was so cool and inviting that I wanted to dive right in. But when I opened my eyes under the water I got a blurry impression that the it got deep very quickly away from the shore. A large shadow circled in the depths and I jerked back hastily, splashed back up into the light, air, and dry sand.

  There were other people scattered across the beach. There were palm trees and jungle slopes beyond. Six other people, all of them white. The pang I felt on noticing that made me look down. To my relief my own skin was much darker.

  “Thank fuck!” I thought, and then. “Maybe I’m racist?”

  One of the whiteys was stumbling over, a middle aged lady, fairly broad. She was had the slacks, blouse, and professional expression of concern which I associated with teachers back when I was in school.

  “Are you alright?” she asked me, coming closer.

  Her accent was also broad, but it felt natural. It felt the same as mine. I just didn't know where it was from.

  I clutched at mental emptiness and it folded me. Panic drove out my air. You should know where you're from right? I’d been... aware of lapses, but this was like putting your foot through a missing step, or like groping for a light switch and not even finding a wall. So much I should have known was missing from my head. All the most important stuff was gone.

  “You right darling?”

  The lady stopped just outside arm’s reach, hesitating like she wanted to move in closer. Gasping I waved her off.

  “Yeah. Nah. Yeah, I will be.”

  She waited for me to get my shit together. For some reason it was my clothes that helped. Tee shirt, board shorts, skate shoes. That felt right. It should be... Saturday night. I should be... on my way home from a shift. But what store? Where? Who? It hurt to even think about.

  “Took me a while too,” she said understandingly. “Something very weird has happened.”

  “I bet.”

  “Do you know your name?” she asked after a few more seconds.

  “Tumai,” I told her. It took some hard thought to get it. I forced myself to leave the rest and straighten up.

  “Tommy,” she said smiling. “Hi. My name’s Jan. I... can’t remember the rest of it.”

  She offered me her hand. I tried to smile back and shook without correcting her mistake. Part of the reason was that her getting it wrong irritated me, and that little spurt of irritation felt so familiar that it was actually comforting just then. If people stuffed up my name often enough to give me the shits then I must be a real person. A real person with a real history, just one I couldn’t reach.

  The other part of the reason was that Jan’s smile was shaky. Her hand was cold and clammy in my grip.

  “It’s good to meet you,” I told her. “Have you talked to any of the others?”

  “A couple,” she said. “But let’s go meet the rest.”

  So I followed Jan away from the water and up into soft sand.

  The others turned out to be three men and two women.

  Eric was a florid faced man of late middle age dressed in work shorts, work shirt, and a high vis vest. He sat in the middle of the beach in his boots with his big beer gut hanging, and he must have been just as racist as me because the first thing he did when we approached was spit.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Who brought the runt?" he asked with half a grin. "He’ll be fucking useless.”

  Jan introduced us both, seemingly undaunted. The other men weren't as rough. Andy and Ryan both seemed like business types, in shirts, ties, and slacks. They were both older and taller than I was, but still what I’d call young.

  Andy looked only a few years older than me, late twenties at a guess. I thought he must have been in sales. You could tell from the way he smiled as we shook. He eyes though seemed a bit too wide and a bit too wild. He was freaking out as well.

  Ryan was one of those people who make a hand shake into a competition. He had at least a decade on Andy and me and was much richer, I'm guessing. His clothes looked well cut. He carried a suit folded over one arm and must have been much better at covering how he really felt because his smile seemed genuine. His eyes assessing.

  Jan introduced herself and me to the other two women next.

  Vanessa was intimidatingly beautiful, elegant even. Somewhere between Andy and Ryan in age she was very fashionably dressed. She had the demeanour, and makeup, of someone for whom beauty was a part of their job. Despite being barefoot with high heels in one hand she seemed very composed, very well put together. I couldn't really tell if she was freaking out at all.

  Chloe was younger, maybe twenty?. She wore the expensive kind of active wear and declined to shake my hand. Out of all the others she was the only one who wasn’t completely white bread, with long dark hair, dark eyes, and a caramel tan. The look she gave me though made it clear that she thought herself far above me and mine. I knew we were all out of sorts just them but it hurt more than I would have liked.

  They all called me Tom, of course, or Tommy. Jan’s introductions had sealed that. For a while we all just stood around on the beach asking each other questions that none of us could answer. The idea of kidnapping came up, the drug trade, some kind of sick game, a survival bout or a battle royale. None of us could remember what hell had happened. There seemed no reason for it. None of us could remember anything important at all really. Generalities yes, but nothing specific, no last names, no addresses, no friends or family faces.

  Chloe started crying first. But I wasn’t far from it myself.

  “I just wanna go home!”

  She sank down to the sand in her expensive sports shoes with her hands up over her face. Jan and Vanessa rushed to comfort her, Ryan and Andy to reassure. They almost competed with each other to explain how everything would be alright. The seven of us could pull together. We just needed keep calm and stay together until rescue came for us. Someone would sort it all out.

  I wasn’t quite so sure.

  Looking away I saw Eric. He sat staring at the ocean. All the bluster had left his face. He looked old and very pale, almost green beneath his grizzle. We locked eyes for a second and I knew he felt the same. Turning I staggered away. I needed a walk. I needed to get away from so much loud and social talking.

  It was definitely not a game show. There were no camera crews, no drones, nothing of the sort. The beach stretched empty before me for at least a kilometer toward a headland in the... east. Yes east, the sun was rising from that direction. To the west the beach stretched even further, a long, pristine strip of white curving around a deep bay to another headland across the water.

  Another world.

  The thought kept beating at me. I stared over the bay at the green clad slopes above the far shore. Palm trees and pandanus on the foredune, but behind them it looked like jungle hills.

  Were all of those plants from Earth? I couldn’t make out the dominant tree but that forest looked lush and primal. Where there any countries with beaches that had both pandanus and whatever kind of palm this was? Maybe somewhere in Africa? Sri Lanka? The Caribbean? It was somewhere with coral sand.

  The strength left my knees and I sat down with a thump. It wasn't any of those places, but how the fuck could I remember all of them and not the country that I came from? Not my family and friends? Someone, or something, had deliberately removed information from my head. The important information. The most important bits. They'd done it while I was unconscious, probably without my consent. It felt really bad, realising that, so bad that it almost made me want to quit.

  For a while I sat alone on the dune with my head in my hands wondering who the fuck, and why the fuck, and whether they’d do it again. That’s what felt worst about it. The fear that someone might just put me under again and I'd wake up somewhere else. If they could wipe my fucking memories then they could do this to me whenever they wanted. This might be all I ever did.

  Now of course I know that's not how it worked. Plenty of other evils existed but Arrival was its own thing and not so easily repeated. Back then however, newly woken, ignorant, it threw me for a loop. It made everything feel useless. It made me physically ill.

  I sat for a long time. Gradually the warmth of the sun drew my attention. I watched its shadow creep under my legs. It was shining down at a slight angle from out over the water. A southern bias, I realised without intention. It felt like I was used to the sun passing north of overhead.

  For some reason that thought lifted up my spirits.

  "Fuck you," I thought, lifting a finger to whoever had sent me. "I can work this out myself."

  The beach was beautiful. The jungle dark and a little bit scary. The sea was paradise. It stretched with barely a ripple out into the distance, to that horizon which looked so wrong. Like a line drawn. Like the end of existence. Like only the Island behind me was real.

  Another world.

  It was the horizon that convinced me. This was not Earth. The supernatural was real. There were a heap of other differences but this was not a show, or a prank. Rescue was not coming. We had the air, the wind, and the waves. We had water. We had shade. I did not know how cold it would get but it felt tropical enough right now that I thought be might be fine

  Eventually we would need food. We would need something to cook it on. I remembered that shadow in the depths and thought we might need something to defend ourselves as well. Back down the beach the others were still clustered. It looked like their conversation had become more argument than talk.

  I didn’t want to rejoin them yet. Being young and stupid I didn’t give my safety any thought. I didn’t think that I should tell someone what I was doing. I just pushed myself to my feet and started climbing up the foredune.

  I thought I might take a little bit more of a walk.