[ WP ] You are a tabloid writer who has just won a vacation on the other side of the country . Afraid of flying you take a road trip . On route you start to notice something strange . In every state there is a town by the same name , the same name as the town you 're from ( continued in text )

`` So what brings you to Puxville?'' Asks a man who's face I've seen before, in a voice I have almost definitely heard, but neither of which I can place. 
 
 `` Research.'' I smile, and take my milkshake, curiously taking a sip, running my tounge across my lips to clean them, lingering as I do over the crinkle in my skin where my small scar begins. I am instantly taken back to saturday mornings at my own Puxville's diner, the taste is scarily similar. 
 
 `` Do n't mean to pry, but what's there for you to be researchin' here?'' The familiar man asks, clearing a table and nodding goodbye to leaving customers. 
 
 `` Just coincidences.'' My milkshake is half finished already and I feel a nostalgic sickness in my stomach, must n't drink so fast. 
 
 `` Quite a little war mark you got there.'' The man beckons toward my scar, and I'm once again hit with an uncertain recognition of his odd bluntness. `` Been lookin' for coincidences somewhere rough?'' 
 
 He takes my drink from me, seeing my subtle push of the glass as a sign my eyes were too large for my stomach. I forgot how large they made those. 
 
... but of course, I've never been here before. So why would I know? 
 
 `` This was before my research days, actually. A fire when I was a kid. In fact because of this I almost never would've been the research type, had eyes for being a fire fighter instead.'' 
 
 The mans eyes light up, content in me biting into his small talk. 
 
 `` Ah the services? Well ca n't speak for where your coincidences get you but our fire boys are somewhat of local heroes. Drink for free and all that - just not on duty.'' He winks. 
 
 As he waddles away to clean away another table, I focus on where I should know his face. Because it's not a nagging possibility; I know that face, but something here is wrong. I'm seeing the features but not the man, the podgy nose and greasy skin, wrinkled brow and missing teeth - all the corner pieces but not the puzzle. It nags me until I leave, and his face falls to the back of my mind behind the more pressing coincidence before me. 
 
 I'm staring at a clock tower, attached awkwardly to a town hall painted white. I could take a picture of my view, as I see it right now, and hold it over a view of the town I grew up in and it would take sharp eyes to spot any sort of difference. 
 
 In fact, it took me a few bewildered minutes of looking around until I noticed them, the slight differences that threw me at first. For example, in my home town, Puxville, the clocks'3' has long since been absent from the clock face, whereas in this Puxville, the clock ticks without a'4'. Once this hit me, I saw it everywhere; and the Diner was no exception - in fact the diner was a test. 
 
 Much of my youth was spent wasting money on sickly drinks within my town's diner, and without me trying I've found the places interior tattoed into my head. From the outside, it was identical down to the name,'Eatsville', a name equally bad in both towns. Walking inside, I was again thrown into uncanny valley with the upside down familiarity of the place; tables were in the opposite side of the room, as if mirrored. And instead of the jolly singing Barry taking my order was a larger, gruff gentleman. 
 
 But I knew his face, did n't I? 
 
 Walking around the town I saw the same thing anywhere; everything big was the same, everything in it's right place, streets all going the same way, fountains in the middle of parks. 
 
 So why was everything so different? 
 
 Houses were exactly where I'd grown up with them being, but their doors were coloured differently. Streets went where I knew they would, but all had each others names in a strange jumbled system - it was only when I visited the butcher, drawn to it by the faint sound of a man singing, that the distorted nature of this place truly set in. 
 
 There behind the counter, selling an old woman lamb, was a man singing cheerily to himself. It was wrong. That voice did not parody the hits of the month with the prices of meat, but with the prices of milkshake - and this shop was n't filled with the air of artistic spectactle, but influenced by the booming presence of a large gruff man stood behind the counter. 
 
 
 I did n't need to call out the man's name, the woman's playful compliment toward'Barry's darling singing voice' told me all I had to know. Somebody had pressed shuffle on my town and somehow I'd stumbled right inside. 
 
 As I awkardly blocked prospective shoppers, mesmerised by the alternate reality I was struggling to comprehend, I heard the faint ringing of sirens in the distance, instinctively bringing my hand up to feel the uneven skin of my scar, and I began to wonder: 
 
 Who else here is living the wrong life?
