After quickly packing up his meagre possessions, the ash-grey canvas backpack held a few changes of clothes, two manuscripts, and a fountain pen. He slung the bag over his shoulder, gave the tiny room a final glance, and felt no attachment.
After all, this was a psychiatric hospital.
The head nurse at the door looked at the handsome young man who seemed momentarily lost. She felt both regret and relief. "Simon, do you want to say goodbye to everyone?"
His name was now Simon, Simon Westeros.
The first name stayed the same.
The surname had been changed a month ago.
Because he didn't like the body's original surname, and he longed for a fresh start.
Before his rebirth, he'd been watching Game of Thrones; the sweeping storms of Westeros stirred his imagination, and with a life as fantastical as his own now was, he picked "Westeros" as his new last name on a whim.
From today's vantage point, the novel titled Game of Thrones wouldn't appear until 1996—ten years from now. As for how old Martin would name his new continent in the future, that wasn't his concern.
Hearing the head nurse, Simon came back to himself and shook his head. "Better not."
The two left the ward and entered Dr. Henry Chapman's office. Dr. Chapman, Simon's attending physician, was a decent Middle-aged Man. Also inside the office sat a bespectacled white man in his forties who introduced himself as John from Stanford University; he was here to help with Simon's discharge.
Simon had been admitted to this psychiatric hospital nine months earlier.
At the time, the incident had caused a minor uproar.
A inspirational youth raised in a children's welfare home, he'd entered Stanford at seventeen with a full scholarship—then, less than two months into his first semester, he'd suddenly gone insane.
Severe violent schizophrenia.
That was the diagnosis Dr. Chapman wrote on Simon's chart.
The truth was, twelve souls had abruptly crowded into a young body—how could he not go a little insane?
In the broken memories, the youth, overwhelmed by clash of multiple consciousnesses, had trashed an entire reading Room in Stanford's library and injured several people before being strapped down and sent to this psychiatric hospital south of San Francisco.
His original consciousness was a director from across the ocean who had just finished his first feature film and the box office had been solid. The company planned to negotiate a deal with Universal Pictures, one of Hollywood's Big Six, and to win him over the boss added him to the Los Angeles-bound delegation—an all-expenses-paid trip.
The booming film market in his homeland had all of Hollywood salivating, so the talks went smoothly.
After reaching the agreement, Universal's top brass invited the team to Sun Valley, Idaho, for a media-industry retreat. More than twenty of them boarded a Boeing 737 out of L.A. with plenty of other Hollywood folks.
Less than half an hour after take-off, the 737's engine abruptly failed and while diverting to San Francisco for an emergency landing, the plane crashed.
When awareness returned to him he found he was still within San Francisco County, but he found himself back in 1985, apparently crammed with many other minds into a single young body, followed by nine long months in the asylum.
He had no idea how he'd gained control of the body.
Just before the crash he'd left the luxury forward cabin where the Universal executives and his company team were and gone to the rear to discuss filmmaking with several Hollywood peers.
Perhaps his sheer unwillingness to give up has resonated with the bodies original consciousness. During those nine months he'd sensed the original boy's fierce reluctance, he'd grown up through so much struggle, life was finally about to begin, only to fall apart before he could enjoy the results of his hard work. He himself was equally unwilling to fade away, after slogging away for years he'd just begun his rise, and in a blink it had all turned to smoke.
Whatever the reason, he ultimately became the body's sole owner; the other dozen minds sank into deep silence.
Though their consciousnesses vanished, their memories lingered.
Fragmented as those memories were, he realized the shards alone were an immense treasure trove.
Everyone in that rear cabin had been elite Hollywood film workers—top-tier screenwriters, cinematographers, editors, composers. They were the crew of a box-office smash under Universal; the film's director and star had also been on board, though they'd been invited to the forward cabin—he didn't know whether they'd survived or perished alongside him and the others.
After the discharge paperwork, Simon bade farewell to Dr. Chapman and the others, then climbed into John's sedan with his meagre luggage.
Clearly, John loathed today's assignment; once he'd dropped Simon at the Watsonville bus station and fulfilled Stanford's final obligation, he sped away.
During the month before discharge, Dr. Chapman had talked with Simon many times, asking about his plans for the future.
Returning to Stanford was certainly an option; Simon's major was the hottest computer-science program at Stanford, and someone who had already lived thirty-plus years into the future knew all too well how many dazzling fortunes Stanford CS students would mint in the coming Internet wave.
Yet Simon barely hesitated, he chose to drop out.
He was, after all, a director at heart, and his mind now housed the memories of more than a dozen Hollywood elites. He was effectively a top-tier film crew rolled into one person; with resources like that, there was no reason not to take a shot at Hollywood.
As for the coming Internet boom, letting all those easily opportunities slip past simply wasn't in Simon's nature. Once he'd made it big, he could always join the feast, as an investor or otherwise, and still reap the riches of the tech revolution.
Of course, right now, standing outside the bus stop by California's Highway 1 in the small town of Watsonville, Simon knew he still had a very long road ahead.
He was still a penniless nobody, and he was quietly grateful that his personal situation qualified him for federal free health-care; otherwise, after nine months of treatment, he'd be saddled with a medical bill big enough to make anyone question life itself.
In America, seeing a doctor without insurance is nothing short of a disaster.
He bought a long-distance ticket to Los Angeles. While waiting for the coach, Simon checked his wallet: $198 left, money the original owner had earned from a summer job before enrolling last year.
The recent name change had cost more than two hundred bucks, mainly for the required notice in a small Watsonville paper, plus the fee for a new driver's license. In the U.S. a license doubles as ID and is cheap, just a few dozen dollars, so although he couldn't afford a car, Simon had gotten his license at sixteen.
Judging by the prices of things at this time, gained from the memories he has assimilated, the remaining cash could cover the barest food and shelter for about a week.
That would be enough.
A week was plenty to land a job that kept him going in L.A.; the body's former owner had started hustling for odd jobs at thirteen and had maxed out every relevant skill point.
Thinking of this, Simon felt a twinge of heartache. The memories were patchy, but he could still sense the awe-inspiring toughness of the boy who had lived before. That "Simon" had been dumped in a San Jose children's home at six, stubborn as a wild animal, rejecting foster family after foster family, and supporting himself from age thirteen.
Following that thread, Simon tried to reach further back, before age six, but found only scattered fragments impossible to piece together.
Then he quickly snapped out of his drifting thoughts.
Startled, he realized tears had slid down his cheeks unnoticed.
A mother and her little boy waiting nearby were staring. The young woman tugged her four or five year-old son a step farther away from the perceived weirdo.
Embarrassed, Simon wiped his face. He understood now: even though the ill-fated soul had lost all control of this body, it still refused to recall certain memories, so stubbornly that, even without consciousness, it kept its heart barred to strangers.
He shrugged, then let's not think about it.
Since he has inherited this life, he vowed to make it shine brighter than anyone else ever could.
Simon silently made that promise to the departed soul.
Perhaps that distant awareness heard him; Simon felt his mind gradually calm.
After about half an hour a coach finally pulled up at the simple stop, an through-service that had started in downtown San Francisco.
Simon stepped aside to let the mother and child board first, then followed them aboard.
The bus was nearly full. Simon walked down the aisle until, in the second-to-last row, he found an empty seat. A woman in a plaid shirt sat by the window, brown hair veiling most of her face as she pored over a thick A4 manuscript, pen in hand.
He stowed his backpack overhead and sat in the aisle seat.
Sensing movement, the woman glanced up, gave Simon a polite nod, and returned to her pages.
Simon nodded back, but surprise flickered across his face, he knew her.
More precisely, he recognized her; she couldn't possibly recognize him.
Kathryn Bigelow.
The first woman in Hollywood history to win the Oscar for Best Director, an achievement that etched her name into cinema history.