She starts the day with a blaring alarm clock somewhere near her bedside. Tired, barely awake, and only on the edge of consciousness, she feels around for her alarm clock to silence it and breathes a sigh of relief as she does. Silence is met with relief and she exhales, closing her eyes for just one more moment. Phoebe rolls over in bed, this time to stretch, and she smiles to herself as she feels tension release in all of her limbs as she hyperextends herself from head to toe. It takes her only a few moments to feel fully awake, and she slowly climbs out of her warm, cushy bed to face the day.

She glances at the clock once again. 6:00, it reads. Enough time to take it easy as she moves through her morning routine. She heads to the bathroom to go about her business in there and finds freshly folded bath towels waiting for her. "Past Me is really good at this treat yourself thing," she says to herself, laughing quietly. Minutes later, her teeth have been brushed, her face has been washed, and she is changing out of her pajamas and into a loose-fitting tank top and yoga pants for a morning workout to be done in the comfort of her own living room. A little extra effort goes a long way, she has learned.

As she stretches and bends and twists and turns and arches on the yoga mat, small beads of sweat collect along her brow. She listens to the video instructor on Daily Burn, the only regular workout regimen that she has found actually works for her too-busy schedule. "Balance," the instructor says in one breath. "Breathe," she emphasizes in another.

Breathe.

The session comes to an end and she lays on the floor for a few moments as she collects herself before trudging into the kitchen. Phoebe goes through the motions of making coffee before disappearing into the bathroom again, this time for a quick shower to rid herself of the stress of the morning's workout. By the time she is done, so is the coffee, and she wanders into the kitchen to pour herself a mug of Bella Donovan start the day. The freezer holds a variety of clearly-labeled breakfast burritos that she made over the weekend to allow herself some semblance of a meal during her busy morning, so she grabs one to heat up in the microwave while she pulls out her laptop and skims the morning news headlines. The Tweets she missed while she was asleep like a responsible adult, the Facebook posts from friends in other timezones who have already started their days, and others who are ending theirs on the other side of the world.

The commute from home to work is easy. She hits every green light and makes it to campus in record time. Security waves her through as they see her badge and she finds her assigned parking space. With a big thermos of iced coffee in one hand and her work bag resting on her shoulder, she walks through the parking garage and into her office building at Pixar, offering friendly hellos to coworkers she knows and even those that she doesn't. The work day goes by quickly; meetings, renderings, check ins with various other animators and art directors, and later on, a preview of a segment that has just finished rendering on the editing floor. Phoebe catches herself smiling in the dark as she and her colleagues watch a segment of the next great Pixar masterpiece in the works.

The commute home is not too different from the drive this morning. Instead of heading back to Rockridge, she receives a phone call from her mother and her stomach sinks almost immediately. She has only barely read the name on the caller ID before the usual thoughts begin to rush through her brain. Did she fall? Did she run out of medications again? She answers the phone and braces herself for the worst. "Hi, Mama," she answers. "You're on speakerphone. I'm driving."

"I figured as much, qiānjīn," Jean answered quickly. "Dinner's almost ready so I just wanted to make sure you had left work already. You work too much and I know I worry about you."

Her words hit Phoebe like a punch to the gut and suddenly her chest felt tight. "I'm on my way over, Mama. I should be on time. I'll see you soon."

She hears a click on the other end of the phone and she knows that she's gone. Puzzled, Phoebe pulls over into the parking lot of a Whole Foods so she can get her bearings. Had they made dinner plans that she was forgetting about? That certainly seems to be the case. She fiddles with the on-screen GPS in her car and it takes a few moments for it to get to the screen that lists her saved destinations. She presses her mother's address and looks around, trying to get her bearings once again. As the polite GPS lady speaks, Phoebe's brow furrows, and she glances at the screen once again.

2434 Russell St, Berkeley, California

"Berkeley?" she asks herself. She had expected San Jose, but somehow, San Jose feels very distant in the moment, almost like a half-forgotten memory. Phoebe shrugs it off and follows the guided route, arriving at Jean's home in no less than fourteen minutes. As she pulls into the driveway of the obnoxiously orange house, she realizes that she feels strangely at home even if she can't quite recognize it for what it is herself.

As she walks into her mother's house, she is immediately greeted by delicious smells emanating from the kitchen. She kicks off her work shoes and slips into one of the many extra pairs of slippers that Jean has waiting by the door before walking into the rest of the house. They hug, they chat, they eat, they catch up. Jean is healthy and well and happy, her diabetes is under control, finally, and she asks Phoebe many, many questions about her non-existent dating life. Phoebe takes the questions in stride, and eventually, after some long chats and belly laughs, they decide to call it a night.

The drive home is a quick one, less than ten minutes away even with minimal traffic. It doesn't take long for that uneasy feeling in her gut to return, and as Phoebe tidies up her apartment in preparation to wind down for the evening, she runs the events of the day through her head and suddenly it hits her.

2434.

14 minutes.

Unlucky numbers that her parents taught her about as a child. Numbers she wouldn't pay attention to on any other day, but a nagging feeling that won't go away is forcing her to think twice.

The diabetes. The family dinner. The house in Berkeley. None of it is real.

She violently gasps for air as she wakes up. A heavy feeling sits on her chest but nothing is there. She looks around her bedroom to get her bearings and finds her phone to look for the time. 3:54 AM. It takes her another moment to realize that she has broken out into a cold sweat, and she quickly rushes to the bathroom to wash her face, thinking that it might help her get her wits about her.