1: The Setup   •••

 

Echo Mike Kilo Charlie Uniform Foxtrot

EMKCUF

There. That’s all I need.

But why not write more? Why not tell the story as it happened? I might need some of this documentation later anyway. And someone might find it interesting.

Remember that song “I’ve Been Everywhere”? An Australian wrote it, but I first heard the Americanized version, sung by Johnny Cash. “Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota, Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow, Sarasota, Wichita, Tulsa, Ottawa, Oklahoma...” Okay, it isn’t a spectacular song. I only thought of it because I’ve been everyONE, man — beggar and priest, Black and white, man and woman, cop and robber, astronaut and movie star. Everyone has interesting stories, but I was recently murdered by government agents and later did a short stint as President. No one is going to believe this anyway, so I should just write what I remember.

It’s the how that truly boggles the mind.

This all started at “Medical Research Facility No. 8”, a surprisingly modern and massive building in the middle of nowhere...

No, let me back up. It started long before that. It started with me being a useless layabout.

Childhood was no picnic and I adopted a strategy called “keep your head down” and also “don’t make waves”. That worked well enough until adulthood, when I woke up one day in the late 1990s to find myself 20-something years old with no direction or drive. I only got a job because I needed shelter and food. But the rest of my foggy plan — having a family and getting through life without much trouble? That eluded me.

So I was sitting in a fast food restaurant flipping through a discarded newspaper’s classified ads. Winter was coming and the landscaping company I worked for during the summer was about to shake loose its temporary help.

I guess I was hoping for the perfect job to show up there in the small print, because we know that happens often. Something like: “Air conditioned, middle class salary, no experience required, we provide transportation.” Or maybe: “Trade places with a young billionaire!” I knew even if I did find an ad saying one of those things, it would be a scam, but a guy can dream, can’t he?

Instead what I saw was this:

“EXTRA $$$!!! Scientific study nearby. Cash for participation. All expenses paid. Medical staff on standby. Apply in person.”

The address was one town over. No phone number. I had a load of free time and just enough gas to get there.

Yes, friend, I did balk. Was it a drug company testing weight loss pills or sleeping pills or quit-smoking pills? A guy I knew who’d done a sleep study once was all kinds of fucked up. But don’t judge if you’ve never been where I was. Not quite homeless, but close enough to smell it. No family to speak of. And the thinning wad of currency in my pocket had to last until something unlikely came along.

Driving was quite the prospect in the collection of grease and bolts that I called my car. One tries to stay within earshot of a salvage yard with a car like that. I took a deep breath, said a little prayer, winced as I sneaked a glance at the fuel gauge, and drove off.

The place turned out to be a strip mall, at which point I should have cussed, punched my dashboard (gently), and used what remained of my gas to drive directly to a homeless shelter. But just as I rolled into the parking lot, my car clunked and died; I shifted to neutral and hopped out to push while steering through the open window until it was mostly aligned in a parking space.

The second red flag was a sign in the window: “MEDICAL RESEARCH FACILITY No. 8”, it said. That was the whole name. It was between a laundry mat and second-hand store in a structure that was ramshackle before I was born. And that parking lot... On the left and the right, several cars were in no better shape than mine. But in the middle, in front of my destination, were three jet-black SUVs parked neatly in a row; their license plate numbers were sequential and their windows were tinted black enough to hide nuclear reactions.

In a fit of poor decision-making, which had characterized my entire short adulthood, I ignored all that and walked inside.

The interior was sectioned off so all I saw at first was a small room with three padded chairs and a counter — and the young woman behind the counter smiling brightly as if my presence had introduced a new chapter of happiness to her life. A bit more pale than I usually fall for, but... Whatever suspicious questions I’d come up with disappeared from my mind as my circulatory system made abrupt readjustments. Something about a face that pretty smiling so welcomingly... In the moment, I wouldn’t have noticed someone stabbing me.

“Uh, I’m here to sign up for the study”, I blurted.

“One more!” she called through a slightly open door behind her. To me, she said, “You almost waited too long; we’re about to close up this location.” Before I could formulate a witty response to that, she passed a clipboard across the counter; it was stuffed with paper, mostly blank spots I needed to fill out. When her fingers briefly brushed against mine, I felt electrified, but also felt that all bodily systems might shut down. She helpfully pointed to a cup of pens on the counter, perhaps intuiting that I couldn’t have found them on my own. “I’m Beth, if you have any questions”, she said, her voice like musical sugar.

I’ve never filled out so many forms in my life; a person can run for Congress without filling out that many forms. I felt as if my brain had been ground to dust. I only had to ask Beth for help a couple of times — “What if I don’t have an email address?” and “What do I write if I don’t have a bank account?” Email addresses were new in those days, at least to me, and I hadn’t found a reason (or means) to get one. Bank accounts were much older of course, but not meant for people in my circumstances.

When I reached the “Psychological Evaluation” portion, I looked up at her; she grinned and shrugged as if it didn’t matter that much. How do you answer a question like “Blue is louder than yellow (true/false)”?

Finally complete, I handed the stack to Beth, who asked for a photo ID, which she inserted into a machine that quickly popped it back out to her. She began feeding my pages into another machine, which I understood to be similar to those test-grading machines back in high school. “Enjoy the physical”, Beth told me, nodding toward a door next to the counter. I went through it, discovered a short hall, and the next open door was clearly where I was supposed to go.

Two people in long white medical coats awaited me cheerfully; I admit I was startled to learn the Black woman was the doctor and the older white man was the nurse, but fortunately I hadn’t voiced my wrong assumptions. They performed more medical tests than is probably a good idea to undergo in a shabby strip mall. Things I’d never heard of. They asked more questions and ran more tests until I was exhausted.

Just as I began to relax, assuming I could go home, the nurse directed me further down the short hall, to the final door at the end. “Interview”, he explained when I raised my eyebrows.

Through that final door was a middle-aged white man wearing too-blue jeans which had probably been ironed and a T-shirt that advertised a domestic beer brand.

“Colonel Ferris”, he said, shaking my hand in a way that indicated he had earned the rank, goddammit, possibly running illegal guns for Contras, and then we sat across from each other. He glanced at his computer screen, which apparently already displayed everything I’d written on the forms, and then met my eyes. His steel gaze was intimidating; I dropped my focus to the edge of his desk.

“Do you consider yourself a ‘good person’?” he asked.

“I suppose so”, I drawled nervously.

“Do you believe that right and wrong are always clearly defined?”

Another red flag, recognized only in hindsight.

“I suppose so”, I said.

“Take gambling”, he suggested intently. “Would you say it’s wrong to gamble, put money on a horse race?”

“No”, I answered quickly. “It might be illegal where you are, but it’s not wrong.”

“What about killing?” he asked in the same calm but firm voice. “Is it wrong to kill another human?”

“Almost always”, I said. “Not if it’s self-defense or in a war.”

He pursed his lips. “We’ll need you to sign a non-disclosure agreement. You know what that is?”

I admitted I’d never heard of that, and he explained, adding: “It’s mainly to protect trade secrets.”

“I need some assurances”, I said nervously, eyeing the form. “Like a promise that the testing won’t screw me up. It sounded a bit ominous when the ad said medical staff would be on stand-by. Like something could go wrong.”

Then Col. Ferris laughed. “Oh, that’s just to make the ad sound interesting,” he said, showing clean white teeth. “It’s merely a precaution. We don’t expect anything adverse to occur.” Then he shrugged and turned to his computer as if to close my file. “But if you don’t want the ten thousand dollars, that’s up to you...”

Whoa. No one said anything about ten freaking thousand dollars.

His face softened at my surprised expression. “Two thousand up front”, he said, “as soon as you sign this. Eight thousand more upon completion of the study.”

So I signed the NDA and a few more papers he slipped across to me. I agreed to show up at the same strip mall in a week’s time, to be prepared for “up to four weeks” of participation, to arrange for care of any dependents, pets, or other obligations (none of which I had except rent and a power bill). And he gave me a check for $2,000, drawn on the account of... “Medical Research Facility No. 8”.

As I was leaving, Ferris, the doctor, and the nurse were all shutting down their computers and unplugging modems. Beth had turned off everything near the front counter and was standing by the front door as if waiting for someone. She smiled at me again, which felt like warm sunshine on a chilly day. “Good luck!” she said.

I nodded and muttered my thanks and was reaching for the door when Col. Ferris popped into the front room; I turned to face him. He looked slightly embarrassed and glanced between Beth and me. “Uh, I was supposed to give Beth a ride home”, he told me and sent an apologetic look Beth’s way. Then he indicated me with a gesture while still looking at her. “Our latest applicant actually lives not too far from you.” He rushed on to override my protest while Beth simply stared at him. “His record’s clean, Beth; background check already came back. Not even a parking ticket.” He looked at me and tossed something; I caught it. It was a key fob. “Don’t worry about your car, son.” He pointed to the parking lot outside and the three SUVs. “Take 399 and bring it back next week.”

Beth and I stared at each other, neither of us sure how to respond. Col. Ferris disappeared into the back room.

Finally, I said, “I guess, uh, I mean, I don’t mind taking you home. If you don’t mind.”

Beth put a brave face on it, smiling brightly as ever, and shrugged.

And I haven’t even gotten to the good part, but that’s all the time I have for this installment. Now I just have to figure out how to save this file and make sure I can access it next time I have a chance.

 

2: Out Of Our Minds   •••

 

Let’s see; where was I? Oh yes, Beth. But it’s okay if I skip a week and get back to Beth later, because the next part is the important part.

I showed up as requested; they’d already vacated their slot in the strip mall and Col. Ferris was standing next to a delivery-truck-type vehicle and two other men who were wearing street clothes but looked like they’d be more comfortable deployed far away and wearing special forces gear. Ferris jumped in the windowless rear of the vehicle, as if to prove it wasn’t dangerous, and I joined him along with three other “participants” — we were told the testing was at another location.

I took stock of my three fellow guinea pigs as we chatted during the ride; Ferris kept to himself.

There was Brian Hollis, a Black man, taller than me, thinner, faraway eyes. He said he was 39, divorced, no children, out of work for nine months, and had been living at a YMCA. Kate Adams was white, blonde, amply distracting in the upper blouse area (I had to work at keeping my eyes pointed at her face), 22, had a young child who lived with Kate’s mother, and trying to pay off a credit card. Michelle Hung was Asian, short, slender, 19. She said she was a third-generation American. Her parents had recently died in a car wreck, just months after her last grandparent’s funeral. She wanted the experiment’s money for college.

The ride was about an hour and ended inside a building. Brian asked where we were and Col. Ferris grinned and said, “Don’t be nervous; you’ll get a ride back into town when this wraps up.”

The two men we’d seen in plainclothes earlier were now in security guard uniforms along with several others — all packing sidearms. No reason to be nervous, eh? They held doors open for us as Ferris ushered our group into an air-conditioned and well-lit interior. Soon we were seated at a giant and highly polished wooden table in what looked like a board room.

Col. Ferris introduced a woman in a white lab coat as Dr. Werner, and then Ferris left. Werner reminded me of an overly stern principal from elementary school.

“Welcome”, she said without meeting our gazes, “to Medical Research Facility No. 8. The particular experiment for which you have volunteered regards human memory and the recording and transferring thereof. None of the procedures are invasive — surface contact only. It’s understandable if you’re nervous. Please, allow this short video to put your mind at ease. It is from my own brain.”

She pressed buttons on the small podium; the lights dimmed and the white wall behind her lit up from an unseen projector as Dr. Werner stepped out of the way. The video showed what appeared to be a dirt path in a green, grassy field. Then the viewpoint began to move as if someone was carrying a camera while walking. No sound. Once or twice, the view jerked around as if the camera tried to follow a bug or bird, but mostly it stayed on the path.

“That was a memory from yesterday”, Dr. Werner said when the lights returned. “I took a walk behind this very building and our computers were able to retrieve it from my mind.”

Whoa.

“I’m certain you have questions”, she continued, “and probably one of those questions is about potential applications of this technology. While my job is merely to get this to work, we assume future possibilities might include police investigations or testimony in court — imagine if an innocent defendant could prove his innocence by volunteering for a memory scan? If the technology pans out, such a thing could be admissible some day. We also imagine it will be useful for personal memory-viewing — much like we now look at photographs or film reels. Also, of course, espionage.”

She grinned for the first time; it wasn’t as comforting as grins are supposed to be. “You’ve seen spy movies? All the recorders, tiny camera gadgets... Unnecessary if a machine can read memories after a mission.”

Brian and I looked at each other nervously; I caught Kate’s eyebrows rising.

“You’re going to read our memories?” Michelle blurted.

Dr. Werner handed us each a piece of paper with lots of fine type on it. “It will all be confidential”, she said reassuringly. “Sign this form to acknowledge. Think of it like attorney-client privilege or something you’d tell a priest or therapist.” The form included lots of legalese, but it did appear to say they wouldn’t tell anyone what they found in our minds. We all signed after some hesitation.

A few minutes later, we were in a lab. Not the kind with vials and tubes and chemicals, but the kind with four padded beds that looked like expensive massage tables surrounded by piles of computers, wires, and beeping equipment with lights and knobs. So much equipment that we couldn’t see each other from one bed to another.

Two techs waited at each bed; they were all business. Remove your shirt, please, sir. Lie facedown here, please, sir. I felt them attaching electrodes up and down my spine and then around the back of my head. I wondered if we should have shaved our heads, but I was having trouble forming any thoughts at all knowing Kate was eight feet away without a shirt. A tech knelt in front of me and attached electrodes around my forehead and temples. The other seemed to be massaging my scalp, but I guessed he was working wires in and around my short hair.

“First, we’ll pull a single memory”, Dr. Werner said loudly enough for us all to hear. “A very recent memory — within the past week or two. Think of the exact date and time. Short-term memory has the best chance of time accuracy.” One of my techs prompted me so I told her the exact date and time I had been sitting in the fast food joint reading the classified advertisement.

I was surprised it took only 15 minutes, and then we four re-shirted and went back to the meeting room. Stupefied silence shrouded the room as videos of our memories played on screen. Me, looking around the restaurant’s dining room and eating a burger while reading the newspaper. Kate watching a movie the previous evening, Brian’s interview with a YMCA counselor, Michelle making dinner for the elderly woman who rented a room to her. Clear as day, if a little jerky. There was sound too. Numbers alongside the screen represented other info, Dr. Werner told us: odors, tactile sensations, emotions, and various thought-patterns.

I’d never owned a computer but I marveled that so much information could be transferred to and stored in one.

Then we were led to an apartment of sorts, elsewhere in the labyrinthine structure: four tiny bedrooms, a kitchenette with fully stocked fridge, two full bathrooms with the expected supplies, a living room with a giant television set, and a small exercise room with free weights and a treadmill. We found several changes of clothing, correctly sized.

Dr. Werner’s parting message had been that it would take a few hours to calibrate the computers; we would continue with experimentation the next day.

And now I’m frustrated that I still haven’t gotten to the really startling parts; I only wrote the above to lay a foundation for the Big Thing that happened the next day — and so I wouldn’t forget them. So I’ll skip our afternoon and evening of snacks, meals, conversations, TV-watching, exercise, and... well, a handful of extra-curricular activities but that’s beside the point.

It was the next day where it all went wrong. So very wrong.

***

We woke, ate, showered, dressed. All in comfortably loose but ominously matching white cotton outfits. An intercom system said they were ready for us. By 9 a.m. we were in the lab again.

“This will take a bit longer than yesterday”, Dr. Werner warned us calmly. “It might become uncomfortable after a while, so we’ll administer a mild sedative.”

Within 15 seconds of getting the shot, I realized “mild” was a lie. My skin quit sensing the electrodes, then I realized I couldn’t move, and finally I lost all sensory perception of the room. The whole world went away. I kept consciousness for a while, or maybe I dreamt I was still conscious, but then I lost that too.

When I woke, it was slowly. I was on my back and felt like something heavy was on my chest. Then I felt like something was propped under my rump. I wiggled my fingers and they felt softer against each other than they usually do — no calluses. That’s what woke me fully; I opened my eyes and held up my hands to look at them. Even before achieving focus, I knew those hands weren’t my hands.

Paler, smaller, softer, with shorter fingers. With nail polish. The same color Kate had been wearing earlier. For a moment, I feared what I’d recently seen on the TV news — a mistaken surgery: they’d cut off my hands and given me hers. But no, this was worse than that.

Because I sat up and realized the “something heavy” on my chest was actually Kate’s well-filled brassiere and the “something propped under my rump” was actually Kate’s posterior. Yes, friend, I ripped open that shirt — or I would have if I still had my hardened muscles from years of manual labor. With Kate’s arms and hands, I only managed to pop the top button.

“What the hell is going on?” someone yelled and I jerked. I looked around. I was in one of those comfortable bunkrooms we’d slept in the night before, but I was alone. I sat very still then, looking around carefully.

“Can anyone hear me?” the voice screamed again. But this time I could tell it wasn’t audible. It was inside my head — yet clear as day.

They’ve made me insane, I decided. And somehow they’d replaced my entire body with Kate’s. Where is MY body?

I got up slowly, noticing a distinct difference in the way Kate’s body moved, compared to the one I had inhabited before the “mild sedative”.

Who made whom insane? came that voice in my head again. Who is this? Why can’t I control my body? The voice didn’t “sound” like anyone; it seemed like my own thoughts but was clearly arising from a separate consciousness.

Reaching for the doorknob felt like I was drunk; the knob was higher than I’d expected; everything was a tad higher than expected. I tried to ignore the voice.

Don’t ignore me! it shouted again.

I opened the door and glanced into the hall, slightly dizzy. It was the same apartment we’d been in the night before. I walked to the living room and found it empty. I was about to try the exit door when I heard someone yell:

“What the ever living fuck!”

This new voice wasn’t in my head, but it was my voice. The voice my body makes, I mean. Okay, this is more difficult to narrate than I originally assumed. It was the voice I’m accustomed to hearing myself generate, but it wasn’t coming from the body I was now in, which was — as I said — Kate’s. It was difficult to understand at the moment too, not to mention hard to believe.

I froze — or rather Kate’s body that I was walking around in froze — and momentarily I heard another doorknob turn. The person who came out of that bedroom was me, which nearly caused me to wet my pants, which would have been embarrassing since I would then have to clean up lady parts and I wasn’t ready for that yet.

I stared into my eyes, which wasn’t quite like looking in a mirror: not only was everything reversed, and all the motion disassociated from my conscious mind, but also because there was fear in those eyes.

“Kate?”

Both our voices said it. I was wondering if Kate’s brain had been switched with mine, while whoever was in my body was seeing Kate’s body (me) and wondering if it was still Kate.

I shook my head (Kate’s head). Then I said with Kate’s voice. “No, it’s me, Frank. At least I thought I was Frank...” I looked down helplessly at the beautiful young woman I had become.

“I’m Brian, goddammit”, said my former mouth. That body — mine! — held up his hands and gazed at the arms tanned from many hours in the sun. He pulled up his shirt and looked at his pale stomach. I wondered if his shock was worse than mine — I’d become a woman, but Brian... Brian had just become a white man. He stared around wonderingly.

“Bathroom”, he whispered, and I followed my former body into the nearest bathroom, where we squeezed in front of the mirror.

I felt short. Damn, I was short. Brian wasn’t worried about his height; he was staring at his newly blue eyes, touching his face, and rubbing his chin — he’d been scruffy when he walked in; now he had my smooth chin. Then, very slowly, he ran his fingers through his very straight hair. The hair I’d walked into this place with.

“You’re not Kate?”, he said to me slowly, still trying to accept it, and I shook my head.

Don’t do it! the voice in my head screamed as I tentatively pressed my hands against my tits. If you suddenly grew a bosom like that, you’d touch it too; don’t bail on me now. Those are MINE, part of my brain screamed. Not anymore, I thought back at the voice.

I admit I was about to stick my/Kate’s hand down my/Kate’s pants, but then Brian/me got the same idea. He pulled his pants down right there, and gasped.

“I never thought I’d say this, my man”, he said quietly. “But I’m about to call the police.” He pronounced it “POE-lease”, which looked weird coming out of my body’s face; I’d never said it that way before.

Then we heard other yelps and other doorknobs opening.

Michelle’s body and Brian’s body came out of their rooms. After another several minutes of confusion, and learning that the outer door was locked, we gathered in the living room.

We sorted it out: I was inside Kate’s body, Brian was inside my body, Kate was inside Michelle’s body, and Michelle was inside Brian’s body.

“This isn’t what they said would happen”, said the body that looked like me — Brian. “They flat-out lied to us. They switched our brains around!”

“I don’t think they did”, said Brian’s body — Michelle. “Because I can still hear your mind inside this body. I’m trying to shut it up before I go crazy. It’s screaming at me. And cursing a lot.”

I nodded. I realized the voice I’d heard in “my” head was Kate’s. I also found I was able to suppress it without much effort. Michelle’s body (Kate) agreed: “Yes, I can still hear Michelle inside here.”

My body — Brian — protested. “I don’t hear nothing in here, man. If Frank is still here, he’s keeping quiet.” Then he jolted. “Ah, okay. He says he’s still in here.” (That made sense; I knew if I was in there, I would have kept quiet and paid attention until absolutely necessary.)

“So they copied our minds?” I asked, still getting used to speaking with a different mouth. My accent was different. I’d have to work on that. “What the hell?” Then I suddenly realized: “I’m just a copy...”

We stared at each other with hollow, horrified eyes.

I was no longer Franklin R. Dinson, though I know I had been just a few hours earlier. The original Frank is still Frank. I’m just a copy. A copy that somehow got downloaded into another body. And somehow the copies were in control.

“What do we do?” asked Michelle’s body.

“We need to figure out what to call each other”, I said. “I keep thinking ‘my body’ and ‘Brian’s body’, but that’s not going to work, is it?”

After some argument, we agreed to call the bodies by the names they already had, for the simple reason that we already recognized them that way. So I became “Kate”. My former body was still “Frank”, and so on. All while keeping in mind (ha) that differing minds were in control.

Suddenly, my body — Kate’s, I mean — jerked, and I realized Kate’s original mind was trying to reassert control. I quickly suppressed it. Bodily autonomy! she screamed at me from somewhere inside. You can’t have my body!

I assured her that I could and did, but also screamed back: None of this was my idea! I will damn well get out of here the minute I figure out how.

The others had similar issues over the next few minutes. Each of us realized we could root around in our hosts’ thoughts and memories.

Then the door opened.

 

3: ‘We’ve All Got To Evacuate!’   •••

 

This time, the guards weren’t casual; they were alert and bristling with “just try me” attitudes. A doctor we hadn’t yet met entered once the guards had taken positions.

“I’m Dr. Tillman”, he said. “Everything will be explained, so—”

We cut him off with a barrage of questions. Frank (Brian’s mind in control) jumped up to physically confront the man, but two guards quickly secured him. I wondered how much he was hampered by being in a strange body, or if the guards were just that good. They didn’t seem to expend any extra effort: Frank appeared helpless in their hands. Oddly, I noticed Frank blinking at me and looking around as if he was only now realizing what was going on. One of the guards holding him shuddered but maintained his grip.

“Help him up”, Dr. Tillman ordered the guards. “He’s understandably upset.” The guards helped Frank to his feet but didn’t release him. Tillman sighed. “As I was saying, everything will be explained. First we need to check everyone’s vitals and debrief you.” He looked around the room. “Is anyone in physical distress? Need to throw up? Pain? Okay, good.” He glanced at the clipboard he held, then at me. “Frank number two?”

“Uh”, I said, not sure how to answer.

“You’re the copy of Frank Dinson, correct?”

“As far as I know”, I said.

“Okay, come with me.”

Two guards fell in beside me, but I followed Tillman of my own accord — I wanted out of that room. I wanted answers. But when the door shut behind me and other guards moved to cover it, I suddenly missed my body; it was now locked away separately from me.

In a small office, Tillman offered me a seat in what looked like a dental patient’s chair.

“Entirely routine”, he said, holding up a stethoscope and one of those light-up eye-check devices. I shrugged and he moved closer. “Must be quite a shock”, he said as he placed the business end of the stethoscope on my upper... bosom, “to wake up in a body like this.”

I nodded.

Don’t let him try anything funny came Kate’s thought from deep inside. I hadn’t seen a doctor in a long time, and never as a woman, so I didn’t know what would be “funny” and what would be normal. I’d never really thought about it. But he didn’t ask me to open the shirt, so I guessed that was a good start.

But when he placed the little scope up to my left eye, he placed his other hand on the skin of my neck. Very casually, as if to steady my head. I twitched; it seemed unnecessary.

Before I could worry about that, though, something else happened. Where he touched me, skin-to-skin, I suddenly felt a... a doorway, a passage, a tunnel, yawning open between him and me. Suddenly I could see his thoughts — it was just like being in Kate’s head, except I was in both. He was indeed getting a little charge out of touching me, and with every blink he was taking a quick glance at Kate’s — my — cleavage. I almost had an epiphany right then about what life must be like for a woman, but instead...

Instead, I jumped. There’s probably a better word. Transferred? It felt like a jump, a leap — a wild and dangerous push-off from Kate’s mind with a hoped-for landing inside Dr. Tillman’s mind. I did it on impulse, without having time to reconsider; I knew he’d lift that hand off my skin in a few seconds. I felt his body twitching and his eyes blinking; he had no idea what was going on. Kate recognized it immediately and rose up to reassert control of her own body.

Don’t say a thing! I mentally shouted at her before I lost contact with her mind.

And then I was in control of a different body. An overweight, aging, tired body called Dr. Tillman. His mind was strong, much stronger than Kate’s. He/I stood jittering in place for a good ten seconds as I secured control of motor functions. Kate’s soft brown eyes simply stared at us.

“Frank?” she whispered, once Tillman’s body became still.

“Don’t say a thing”, I whispered back. I didn’t know if the room was being observed and I wasn’t about to glance around searching for cameras.

I picked up Tillman’s clipboard — I figured the best thing to do was play the part. “Everything seems okay”, I said too loudly. “No adverse effects.” Then I added very softly: “I got out as soon as I could, Kate; the least you can do is keep quiet a few minutes.”

Then I rapped my knuckles on the door and a guard stuck his head in. “This one’s fine”, I said. “Let’s check the next one.” I was rifling through the papers on the clipboard, wondering who was next, but also stalling because I was trying to plan my escape route from a building I’d never seen the outside of.

Suddenly, I grasped the young guard’s hand. “Good job, by the way, all of you.”

He looked up in surprise, as did the guard behind him. Kate simply stared in silence. Immediately, I felt the opening between Tillman and the guard, and I jumped across. Once again, while halfway through I could reach both minds. I reminded Tillman that the guard was armed and fit, and then I was in.

I had the guard’s mind instantly. I’m not saying he was dumb; he was simply as unprepared for a mental assault as he was very prepared for a physical one.

“Th-thanks!” I said with the guard’s mouth.

“You okay?” the other guard asked. “You stuttered there for a second.”

“Fine!” I replied. “Let’s get moving.” I looked at Kate and nodded my head toward the door, then gave an icy stare to Dr. Tillman. His mouth moved a couple of times, but then he nodded. I knew he would sound the alarm the second I was out of sight. I also knew, from being inside his mind that my ability to jump between bodies had come as a complete surprise to him. Not part of the plan at all. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in his brain long enough to find out what the actual plan had been.

Kate got up and walked between us as we followed Tillman back to the apartment. There, Tillman asked for “Brian number two”. When my former body, Frank, didn’t react, Tillman pointed and raised his voice. “You. You’re next.” Frank almost said something, but then didn’t. Now that I knew about jumping from one mind to another, I looked at the two guards’ hands on Frank’s biceps. They’d been holding him for several minutes. Had Brian’s copy jumped? Was Frank “me” again? My original, I mean. Which guard was Brian number two in? I wasn’t sure. Could Brian number two jump back and forth? Maybe he was reading all three minds while they were all in contact.

Frank stared hard at Kate as he passed, but Kate kept her eyes down and went slowly to the living room. Frank didn’t look at me; he had no idea I’d switched bodies. His two guards released him and stayed in the room. I walked with Frank and Tillman and the other guard back to the little office. Tillman cast one more glance at me as I pulled the door closed.

For just a moment, I wondered whether I should wait. My old body was just on the other side of that door. And I was becoming convinced that it was free of “Brian number two”. That’s the body I belonged in, the only body I’d ever known before today. But... whether Brian number two was still in there or not, my original mind was definitely in there. That part bugged me. What would that mind think of me barging back in there and taking control? If he was anything like me, and I’m fairly certain we were nearly identical at that point, he wouldn’t want it. He was, at that very moment, thinking of a way to escape that damned facility. We all were.

How I wished I could read minds at a distance. I wanted to coordinate with my fellow victims — all four original minds and all four copies. But I couldn’t. I had to act on my own. I acted.

Suddenly, I turned to the other guard in the hall. He was taller than the body I was currently inside, and looked a bit more athletic.

“Man, I feel funny”, I told him, blinking slowly and leaning against the wall. When he involuntarily put up a hand to steady me, I grabbed it and switched across. This time was even faster.

The first guard — the one I’d just left — gazed around in confusion. “What just happened? Is everything okay?”

“Fine, fine”, I told him. “You said you were feeling sick? Call it in, get someone else over here, and I’ll walk you to the break room.”

While that first guard reached for his two-way radio, I searched my new mind’s memories, finding the break room and the general layout of the building. We were indeed in the middle of nowhere, out in a shallow valley between two large farms. I wondered if Dr. Tillman was calling someone already, or if he even knew how to describe what had just happened. I sure didn’t. Or maybe Original Frank already had a hand around Tillman’s throat, readying his own escape.

The first guard changed his mind halfway to the breakroom. “I’m actually feeling okay”, he suddenly announced. Probably didn’t want a write-up.

I grinned at him but the rest of my body was already launching the attack. I suddenly had an immense knowledge of hand-to-hand combat for a guy who’d rarely been in a fight, and within seconds, the guard was slumped unconscious and tucked away in a maintenance closet. And I was moments away from being free.

I had a gun, a radio, and a finely-tuned athletic body that put my original one to shame. Sprinting down hallways and around corners, I quickly made it to the garage where several black SUVs and a couple of delivery trucks waited. I knew where the keys were and how to open the scroll-up doors. Just as I grabbed the keys and hit the door-open button, I squawked into my radio. “It’s Dr. Tillman! He’s gone bonkers! Need help quick!” I kept shouting into my radio about Dr. Tillman as I turned the key in the ignition.

Then I heard another voice — another guard — saying something about a fire in Corridor 12, wherever that was. I suddenly realized it sounded like one of the guys who’d restrained Frank back in the apartment. Was Brian number two making his escape too?

I looked up and saw him — the guard — sprinting toward me. He was pulling out his gun. I already had my gun up and the window open. “Wait!” he suddenly shouted, skidding to a stop. “It’s—”

But I fired. He might have been about to say “It’s me, Brian!”, but he might also have been about to detain me, or shoot out the tires, or shoot out my brains. I will never know. I fired again and watched the body crumple.

I shoved the shifter into drive and peeled out of the building. I tossed the radio into the passenger seat and roared down a couple of freshly-paved asphalt lanes, past a very surprised gate guard, and then out onto a county farm road.

Where to go? What to do? How to get help?

I mean, I couldn’t actually go to the cops, right? What could they do? Probably tuck me safely away in a mental institution. In those hectic moments, it didn’t occur to me that I could have transferred into a police officer. I was still thinking of myself as a “person”, just a person in the wrong body. The guard — me — had a phone in a pouch on his belt, but I couldn’t think of what to use it for. I did assume it could be tracked because I’d recently seen a movie in which the government tracked someone using her phone. Also when switched bodies again, this body could use the phone to report in. I tossed it out the window. The radio followed it.

I knew I needed to switch bodies and quick. Anyone chasing me would have a good working description of this body. And the vehicle. How much time did I have? I had no way of knowing. I didn’t know if there was a limit to how many times I could switch bodies, or what the rules were. No one else knew either, I suppose. I had already done a couple of things that no one else had ever done (except possibly Brian number two, but if so then he was probably gone now). I was breaking new ground.

I calmed myself by reasoning that I could switch bodies faster than the previous body could report what had happened. If I made it to a crowded enough area, I could switch like lightning through a crowd — be 10 bodies away before the first one had time to do anything. I passed two or three farmhouses then turned suddenly onto a dirt road, hoping no one was close enough in pursuit to see the dust plume my tires threw up. At the next farmhouse, I saw a new-enough pickup truck so I skidded into the driveway and leapt out of the SUV. I hurled its keys as far into the nearby field as I could — wouldn’t want this guard having access to them after I left his mind...

And then an old lady stuck her head out the screen door holding a shotgun. “Hold it, mister!” she screeched, and I brought myself to a breathless stop. “What’s all the commotion?”

“Ma’am!” I cried, looking as earnest as I could with my hands in the air. “There’s trouble at the research facility! We’ve all got to evacuate!”

She hesitated long enough for me to lunge forward and tip the barrel up. Her finger squeezed air after I dislodged the weapon from her hands. But I handed it back to her as her eyes bulged with fright and grabbed her wrist with my other hand.

“Sorry about this”, I muttered.

And then I was in her head, in her body. I grabbed the guard’s sidearm before he could think to use it, and whacked him across the side of the head with the shotgun.

“Get back!” I hollered at him. Then, to someone inside: “Lester! Bring the truck keys!”

Lester — the woman’s husband — arrived and nearly fell victim to a medical condition as he saw me (his wife) holding a shotgun and a pistol on the young security guard who was now bleeding from his temple and reeling on his knees. “What in blazes?” Lester said.

“Watch him!” I ordered, handing the shotgun to Lester and taking the keys he’d brought. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Then I moved toward the pickup as quickly as the elderly body would go.

“What’ve you done, son?” Lester asked the security guard, who appeared to have no idea.

Then I was gone.

Fortunately, the woman knew the area well — and that information was now mine. She knew the nearest business — a feed store — so I headed there quickly. I could feel her heart thudding painfully and I wondered if it would give out; I needed a younger, healthier body, and soon. At the feed store, I tossed the keys after parking. A beefy young man came out to greet her/me.

“Mabel?” he asked. “What’s the rush?”

I handed him the gun, which he nearly dropped, and then I switched into him. And then profanity erupted from my newly owned chapped lips — the man didn’t have a vehicle. But he too knew the area fairly well. While Mabel stood there in the gravel parking lot looking dazed, I dashed away, taking the fields instead of the roads, heading for the next house I knew had a vehicle.

I wanted to get back to town, to civilization, before a flock of black SUVs surrounded me on one of these back roads with no witnesses. And I did. One person at a time, one vehicle at a time, I switched. It’s harder out there for someone like me; there can be miles between people. For a few person-to-person transfers, I handed over cash money as I went — thinking I could accrue enough for a hotel or cab or something. But then I realized each person I inhabited already had a place to stay, a way to get around. I would never need my own money again. After a dozen people, I felt like the trail was growing colder so I tossed the gun into a pasture, got on the main highway, and headed into my hometown.

I left a trail of very confused country folk who’d have some interesting stories to tell for years to come, even if none of them would ever truly know what had happened. Maybe they would think it had been demon possession. Maybe it was.

 

4: Back To Beth   •••

 

That was months ago, and some of the details aren’t as clear as they used to be, but I’ll write what I can remember.

On the day of my escape, which seemed like a very long day, I didn’t have a chance or inclination to test my newfound state: its limitations or abilities. I certainly didn’t have time to sit around weighing its morality. The main thought fluttering through my brain — besides the escape itself — is this:

People are strange.

I thought I knew it already, but it’s worse when you’re inside their heads, an actual part of them. They smell; they chew their nails and pick their noses like toddlers; they have odd cravings. They like weird stuff, like country music or potpourri. Many are old, weak, sick, mean, or otherwise icky to take up residence inside. A surprising number of them wear startlingly uncomfortable clothes — especially the women. How do they stand it?

When given the choice, I chose young adult bodies, especially fit ones — in case I needed to run. And relatively dull-witted ones put up less of a fight when I slipped in.

I’d never been a toucher — I only shake hands when social custom requires it — but on that day I realized just how often people touch each other — even strangers. Especially handshakes, but also shoulder touches, back-pats, hand-on-knee. I touched more people that day than I had in the previous five years — because it’s the way I jetted across. (Don’t ask me to explain my nature; who knows? Electrical impulses? An artificial disembodied soul?) So I was glad it was a warmer-than-usual autumn that year, which meant more exposed skin.

I also noticed women, on average, displayed more skin — shoulders were a safe bet in weather like this. Not that they like uninvited touching any more than anyone else, but they seemed more accustomed to it. Judge me if you want, but I was fleeing for my life.

So I found myself riding herd on the brain/body of 21-year-old Maria as I approached Beth’s small rental house in a scuffed up older automobile.

Remember Beth? The smiling, helpful receptionist at the strip mall? A week earlier, I thought it was simply good fortune that I had the chance to meet her, drive her home, talk for half an hour. We had clicked. Two casual dates had followed, ending with a fairly serious all-nighter at my apartment just before I went in for the experiment. I had promised her I’d come see her as soon as the experiments were over; we had plans for my $10,000. I didn’t have any idea what she knew, if anything, about Medical Research Facility No. 8. And I certainly didn’t know what to tell her if she answered the door and saw Maria’s face. But by then I had calmed down enough to think she might know something.

I circled the block — and surrounding blocks — multiple times. I was looking for a stakeout vehicle, but didn’t see one. All the vehicles I saw appeared normally parked and were empty. I looked for suspicious persons loitering on sidewalks, and didn’t see any. One family was barbecuing just inside their chain link fence as dusk fell. A middle-aged lady was walking her tiny dog. (The dog stared at me suspiciously, but didn’t say anything.) A lone young man sat on a front porch smoking. Safe enough.

I parked a block away and walked to Beth’s house. I could see the flickering light of a television through the curtains. I pushed the doorbell button, heard the chime, and waited.

The porch light came on a moment later; then Beth opened the door. She seemed confused to see me, then looked beyond me, in all directions.

“Maria? What’s going on? Are you okay?”

Whoa. I hadn’t expected her to recognize this person. Our town was large enough that I’d assumed Beth wouldn’t know every random body I found. A stroke of luck, I figured. I hurriedly searched Maria’s memories and found a community college night class.

“Oh, I’m glad you remember”, I blurted. “I have something important to tell you. Can I come in?”

Beth hesitated. Then she shook her head briefly, with a self-deprecating laugh. “Sorry! Yes, come in.”

I knew the way, but pretended I didn’t. Beth brought me to the living room and asked if I wanted a drink. Maria was thirsty, I noticed, so I agreed to a glass of water, which Beth brought. I noticed her TV screen was paused in the middle of a VHS movie I’d lent her when I was still Frank.

“How did you even find me?” Beth sputtered, reaching for the remote and turning off the TV.

“It’s a long story”, I shrugged. “But I have a message from Frank.”

Beth froze then. Remember the “paralysis ray” in the old cheesy sci-fi movies? It was like that. Just for a second.

“Frank who?” she quickly recovered.

“Dinson”, I said.

Beth blinked three times. She really was beautiful. Also cute, which is a rare combination. It disappointed me that Maria’s body chemistry wasn’t reacting to Beth at all, but surely that was for the best.

“How do you know Fra— him?” was her next question.

I wondered why she’d cut off the name. Was someone else in the house? I decided to be on my guard.

“I only just met him”, I said, in Maria’s voice. “Less than an hour ago.”

Three blinks again. Her eyes searching mine. Almost like she already knew but wanted to hear me say it.

“Where is he?”

“That’s difficult to explain”, I said. “How much do you know about what goes on at... out there?” I decided not to mention the name of the facility.

“I’ve only been out there twice”, she said. “Mostly I’m a receptionist at the in-town recruiting locations.”

Nice avoiding the question, I thought.

“So you know? Or you don’t?”

“About?”

“The experiments.”

It was the most uncomfortable I’ve ever seen Beth, and I hated to see it. She clearly knew something and was trying to decide if it was worth breaking an NDA just because some woman she barely knew claimed to have met Frank.

“I’m not allowed to say”, she finally decided was okay to say. “But you said you had a message... Is he okay? How did you meet? What’s going on?” Then she stared hard at me. “And you look scared, Maria. Are you okay?”

I decided to risk it all.

When I saw Beth lift a hand, as if by instinct to touch Maria’s shoulder for comfort, I grasped it. As expected, a mental doorway opened. Through Maria’s eyes, I watched Beth’s eyes widen — even before I jumped. Like she knew what was coming, could somehow sense it though no one else had yet done so. Then, through Beth’s eyes, I saw Maria’s eyes widen.

Maria gasped. “What the hell?” She looked around. “What am I doing?” She yanked her hand back.

“Please stay”, I begged her. “It’s late...”

Maria looked at the glass of water in her hand and carefully set it down on the nearest coaster. “I don’t know you”, she said softly. “But I remember where I parked my car.”

“Please don’t say anything.”

“I ain’t crazy, lady”, Maria said. And then she was gone.

What the fuck, Frank! Beth’s mind shot at me.

The real surprise was when she picked up the remote control, turned the TV back on, and pressed the play button for the movie to continue. As if she still had control of her body. When she began to set the remote down, I stopped her, just to see if I could. I felt her indignation, but I could override it if I wanted to. I discovered I didn’t want to, and released control.

She put the remote down and settled back as if to watch her movie.

Just act natural, she told me.

I checked first, I shot back. No one is watching your house.

But they ARE, though, she replied. Don’t you dare move my eyes, Frank. But there are cameras in here. Everywhere except the bathroom.

I felt fairly stupid then.

What the hell is going on? I asked her. How much do you know?

First, she thought at me, what happened? How did you get out? Is your body okay? Ah, I remember.

We were sharing a brain. Just as I had access to her memories, thoughts, and emotions, she could see and experience mine. So in some unexplainable sort of way, she was now remembering what I had experienced. Memories she didn’t have a minute earlier, but did have now.

Now, please, I begged her, tell me what YOU know.

Which seemed like a silly thing to say, after my previous paragraph. She didn’t need to tell me anything. I could simply remember her memories. So I did.

This is what I “remembered” from her brain: It was run by the CIA. Hearing of scientists working on memory transfer, “Col. Ferris” (probably not his real name) had been tasked with setting up the experiments and recruiting personnel. At first, the simple ability to read/view memories of captured terrorists was the main thrust; then they found the ability to make copies of entire personalities and implant them in strangers. Imagine if you could copy an expert spy’s knowledge and download it into someone that would never be suspected — a child or an elderly person, or a respected member of the opposition. That person could spy at will, without suspicion, and then report back. The current experiment’s true goal was to figure out how to “delete” the copies once the agency was finished with them.

That’s the only thing holding them back, Beth thought to me. They’ll deploy this technology as soon as they figure out how to delete the copies. But — until today — they had no idea we could ‘jump’ on our own.

Wait. We?

Yes, we, Frank. Why do you think I recognized what was happening as soon as you — Maria — grabbed my hand? And how do you think I can maintain control of this body, simultaneously with you?

Oh, shit.

So you’re not the original owner of this body? I asked. Who the hell ARE you?

I’m Beth! she mentally yelled at me. You wanna hear my story or not? I can finally tell it to someone without anyone overhearing.

Tell me.

She “told” me, as we sat there silently, but I was also remembering her memories.

She was one of the original “prospects”, she said. A group of four people just like my group. They’d had their copies switched around just like our group. Beth — or rather Beth’s copy, “Beth number two” — had awakened inside a man’s body and started freaking out. Her body had been under the control of a copy of the other woman in their group. The two had touched each other in the apartment, long enough to sense “the opening”, as Beth called it. All four had time to conspire and get all the copies back to their original bodies before debriefing.

By the time Tillman talked to them, they were re-merging with their originals. All four told Tillman that another personality had been in control briefly, but that it had “faded” — none of them mentioned the “jumping” part. Doctors Tillman and Werner had been disappointed, but suspected that the copies were still inside somewhere.

So they let us go, kept us under observation, and gave us jobs, Beth told me, her eyes still focused on the TV screen. Anyone watching would have had no indication of the internal conversation.

Wait. Am I talking to the copy or the original right now?, I asked.

She laughed. I became acutely aware of how good it felt to be a part of that.

Both of us, she said. Aside from a few brief moments, her original mind and the copy had exactly the same memories and personality, and now they shared those moments too.

Can your copy still jump?

She didn’t know; she’d never tried it again. But I do sometimes go halfway, she said.

Halfway?

You know when you’re jumping through the opening? And before you’re all the way across you can sense both minds at the same time?

Yeah, I had noticed. We laughed again. Fortunately, the VHS movie was funny, so anyone watching the cameras would assume that’s what caused the giggles.

I’ve practiced focusing on the ‘halfway’, she said. Remember when I handed you the application packet and my hand touched yours?

Of course.

I was reading your mind right then, Frank. To see if you thought I was cute. And that’s how we ended up... Well, you know.

Oh, shit. She — I mean we — could read minds.

So can I stay here a while? I mean, in your head? I’ll leave if you don’t want me around.

 

5: Breaking Beth   •••

 

The answer was “no”, of course.

After a night of sharing each other’s dreams, we awoke refreshed, had coffee, and considered the whole thing.

We couldn’t escape the conclusion that Col. Ferris and his team would easily figure out the chain of events. Of course they would interview the guard I’d escaped in. Dr. Tillman would talk — if Frank (the original) hadn’t done something to him. They would talk to the subsequent bodies I’d jumped to. By now, the CIA knew we copies could “jump”. After exhausting my short list of emergency contacts, Ferris would remember I’d driven Beth home a week ago. Someone would interview her, possibly forcibly scan her memories. And if anyone was watching the camera feed from her home, they’d get awfully suspicious about Maria’s arrival, visit, and then abrupt change of character and sudden departure.

It’s best if you hop to someone else, she finally concluded. I’m supposed to work today, a new location. Sadness flowed through us. Jump to someone I don’t know. Keep jumping. Then I can report it truthfully, but you’ll be gone. It’s safer for both of us.

“Best” was relative, I knew. Best would be my original body — I could merge back like Beth had done. But Frank was either in the custody of the CIA and wouldn’t be getting out any time soon, or he had escaped or died trying. If he had escaped, I had no way of finding him. I knew she was right. With Beth likely already under suspicion, I was putting her in danger by staying.

I loved her, and I loved being in her brain — it was the most pleasant one I’d ridden inside. But I would go anywhere, do anything, be anyone, to keep her safe.

We made our plan.

Fifteen minutes before her ride showed up, we walked across the street to the man smoking on his front porch. He brightened considerably — I got the impression he’d kept an eye on her — and she asked to “borrow” a cigarette. And then a light. When he put out hand to light the cigarette he’d given her, we cupped ours around his, and I (with a quick mental kiss goodbye) jumped across. She winked at me, and I winked back. She handed me the newly lit cigarette and then walked away.

I took a long gander at her retreating form, wondering if I’d ever see her again, and in what condition. I had to keep moving.

Just follow the plan, she said to me.

I jerked, my new hands dropping the cigarette on the porch. How are you talking to me? I thought. We’re not touching!

Silly, Frank number two, she chided me. I jumped with you. We’re going together.

I picked up the cigarette and took a long drag on it — that new body really craved it. So Beth number two was coming with me. “Beth2” is shorter, so I’ll use that. The Original Beth — just “Beth” — was on her own for the first time in months. (I wondered what that must feel like — intentionally breaking your own mind in two.) We had a plan to escape for now and then let her contact us when she was convinced she was in no more danger. Time to go.

I doused the cigarette in a sand bucket on the porch beside me. Beside us. I would have to start thinking us. We went inside, searching the new mind’s memories for anything that would help us escape. He didn’t have a car, but did have a roommate who’d just driven to work and kept a spare key in the apartment. We secured that spare key, put on shoes, picked up “our” wallet, donned sunglasses, and set out. We left his tiny folding mobile phone in the house.

We barely made it around the corner, sauntering casually, when we saw Beth’s ride roll up — a black SUV. As soon as we were out of direct line of sight, we started jogging. Bad idea; this body wasn’t made for it. We slowed back to a brisk walk and lit another cigarette.

I could sense that Beth2 wasn’t attempting to control the body; she was only along for the ride. But she interjected suggestions and warnings when appropriate. Almost like a conscience. And she helped suppress the man’s original consciousness so I wouldn’t have to focus on it. I wondered if we were straining his brain with so many things happening in there.

It took half an hour to walk the two miles to the roommate’s place of work; a small computer store in a bleak shopping center. The roommate’s car was, fortunately, parked around the side, so we walked right up to it, used the spare key, and drove away.

Where to? A larger city, we decided. A place with more people and more of them on foot. Because you can’t grab the wrist of people sitting in closed up automobiles. I hadn’t been to very many big cities before then, but in the movies it’s always New York City where people are on foot all day. So we headed that way.

Out of kindness for the man we’d overridden, we didn’t take him too far; about an hour. When we switched — both of us jumping together — we left him his car and cigarettes. Our new body was a redneck with a pickup. We absolutely refused to dip tobacco when his body tried to do it by habit. Ugh. Somehow it seemed nastier than smoking. We made him drive two hours just for that. We only switched again because he was getting hungry — and Beth2 pointed out we never needed to eat if we switched bodies in time. Same thing with going to the bathroom or taking showers or sleeping. Let me tell you, it had been pleasant to do most of those things while sharing Beth’s body, but it rarely was with anyone else. You might be the kind of person who enjoys taking a wad of toilet tissue to a stranger’s nether parts, but we are not that kind of people.

An hour here, two hours there, switching vehicles when we switched bodies. We took a jagged path, hoping that would help. We stayed off toll roads in case there were cameras, and stuck to back roads when we could. Got pulled over at 2 a.m., which worked out well because we were in a woman’s body and the deputy felt entitled to put his hand on her bare shoulder. We went right into his brain, profusely apologized to the woman, and then drove away in his patrol car. He met up with a state trooper not long after, giving us more latitude in how far we could drive in an official vehicle. We discovered absolute radio silence regarding anything like our situation; if the CIA was on our tail, they weren’t asking the local authorities for help.

***

From New York City, you can get anywhere in the world. Or you can disappear amongst the millions.

Warm autumn days continued to loiter, so plenty of skin was available. And more people in NYC had mobile phones, so it was easier for us — in each new body — to call the appropriate friend or family member and give an excuse for our temporary erratic behavior. We didn’t want to ruin their lives or marriages, you see. (Okay, I admit that I hadn’t thought about that until Beth2 pointed it out). We only needed to borrow their bodies as long as we could stand each one.

This is as good a spot as any to mention that we did feel bad about it. I mean, we were taking control of other people. Which is a little like slavery, a little like demonic possession, a little like (from those people’s perspective) mental illness. They could still think, and feel, and observe, but we — especially both of us together — could entirely suppress their control of the body. The only iffy times were just after waking from sleep, when there would occasionally be a struggle for control. We copies were somehow sharper, stronger, and more self-aware — we fought harder, anyway.

Unlike a ghost or a demon though, we couldn’t (as far as we knew) exist outside a body, outside another person’s brain. The only times we sensed the “opening”, the ability to leave, was when touching another person. I can’t speak for Beth2, but I would have been entirely happy slipping out into the spaces between people. But it wasn’t an option. We had to be in someone.

We also couldn’t end ourselves, as far as we knew, without killing the current host. Not that we seriously considered it, but there was no obvious “delete” button.

We did learn we could get inside someone without taking over — just ride along as baggage inside their minds — but in order to move to the next person, we’d have to wait for someone to physically touch them. Even those “ridealongs” felt wrong, even when the host didn’t take notice. We saw what they saw, heard what they heard, tasted what they tasted, and so on. Pooped when they pooped. I could be in the back of your mind right now and you’d never know it, but I bet you’d be enraged if you found out I was in there, spying on every personal moment.

But what could we do? It was easy enough to choose kindness — if we must be in there, we should treat the bodies at least as well as they treated themselves.

We roamed, we wandered. We learned the city from top to bottom. We spent nights on the street, which is worse than it sounds but mostly survivable if one has a mental companion. I don’t recommend it unless you have our ability to jump. No one who touched us could hurt us, because we would simply take over the new body. If there were two of them, Beth2 and I would temporarily split up, jumping to two separate bodies and then re-merge when convenient. We spent nights in jail, but jailers enjoy manhandling folks so it was easy to keep moving on. Skin to skin; only a half-second required now; no more weird jerking or wide-eyed stares. We slipped in smoothly.

And finally began looking for a body we could rest in.

Because we learned something we hadn’t known at the beginning. Not only did each person we occupied have a memory of the experience — their side of the experience — but it soon became obvious that some of our memories were getting stuck in their brains. Look, I don’t know how brains work, but it sure seems like brains regularly rewrite or move memories around. I’d think about something and later realize the host remembered that thought as its own. A nightmare about my childhood or a memory of Medical Research Facility No. 8. Any time Beth2 and I thought to each other. All of it left traces. Whatever “we” are, we require a living mind in order to survive. “We” might be collections of electrical signals with a bit of spirit/soul mixed in — if you believe in that sort of thing — but all that has to “live” somewhere. In a physical brain.

Even worse, we found that some memories didn’t come along with us when we moved. We kept noticing things we’d forgotten. Blank spots. Everyone forgets stuff, but... I had always remembered my childhood street address, and now I can’t remember it, but the body we just left can remember it?

We were losing parts of ourselves. Little parts. Mostly insignificant.

But it scared us. No matter how many memories we started with, if we lost some with each jump, then it stands to reason that we would eventually lose it all. So we decided to plant ourselves in one person for a while.

Finding the right host wasn’t easy. As I’ve said, people are strange.

Experience taught us women’s minds were typically more pleasant than men’s. We agreed young adult bodies were the most comfortable, on average. We wanted someone with no pets, roommates, significant others, serious medical conditions, bad habits...

You know how hard it is to find someone like that? Do the math. Start with the population of NYC and then subtract. Subtract the men, children, older people, married people, anyone with children, smokers, heavy drinkers, people with girl/boyfriends, people with roommates, the very ill... You arrive at a small number quickly.

I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky that we had the choice. Now there’s a perspective-changing thought. We became kinder to people once we noticed almost none of their burdens are by choice.

And it was a moral issue, somehow separate from the first one I mentioned above. At least that one wasn’t truly a choice — we had to be in someone. But choosing to settle in a single individual rather than continuing to hop, that brought up the question: which is more wrong? Beth2 was more practical. Either way, it’s wrong, she told me; either way we’re taking from someone. But those are our choices, Frank. The second option required more personal stuff. Eating, restrooms, showers, dressing and undressing, taking medicine... But it was also easier to get used to one body.

I remembered Col. Ferris’ questions about right and wrong being clearly defined, and thought about it often. I had been so simple-minded in those days. Nothing was as simple as I had once thought. But whatever point Ferris had been trying to make with those question, he was wronger than we were. He and his whole team. Yes, we were doing our thing to unsuspecting people, just as he had done. But we weren’t given the choice. I vowed to do all in my power to find and end Col. Ferris and his entire project.

When we switched into our chosen host, we did so in a museum — so the previous host would have no way of tracking down the next one — even if the CIA somehow got that far. Jennifer — our new host — met almost all our criteria.

Then, once we were comfortable in our new body, new home, new job, we set about the rest of our plan. Beth’s plan.

 

6: ‘Echo Mike Kilo Charlie Uniform Foxtrot’   •••

 

I told you we’d made a plan, Beth (both of them) and I.

The first part was for me (and Beth2) to get away. We’d done that. The second part was for Original Beth to contact us once she deemed herself safe. But she didn’t know where, or who, we’d be.

What she’d come up with was this: starting a website. The internet was new to me back then, but Beth had been on it. Collectively, we knew about search engines, and Beth had said a person could start a website and use a particular set of terms in a certain order, a unique order, to ensure that anyone searching for those exact terms would find that exact website.

The only weak point in the plan is that we didn’t know exactly what the CIA could see when they scanned Original Beth’s mind. Based on the demonstrations we had seen, we figured that as long as we didn’t say the phrases aloud or write them down — if we only thought them to each other inside Beth’s brain — then the CIA couldn’t discover them.

Both Jennifer and Beth2 could type and knew how to use a computer, and Jennifer owned a computer. We found out how to start a website. In between working at Jennifer’s job, showering her body, dressing her, fixing her hair, keeping her place clean, and other necessary chores, we started a website. This one.

Now you know why this account begins the way it does:

“Echo Mike Kilo Charlie Uniform Foxtrot”
“EMKCUF”

Those are terms not found on any website on the entire internet — not in that order. Plus it’s easy to remember (read them backward).

That was all we had to do, plus add an email address at the bottom. We only began typing the rest when we noticed our memories slipping away. What if we forget all of it someday? But mostly the page is so Original Beth can find us when she searches. When she feels safe to do so. She hasn’t contacted us as I write this. We continue to hope. I think even Jennifer’s consciousness has grasped our situation and is pulling for us. She seems like a nice person.

What if someone else finds this website, you might ask? Well, that’s why I labeled it “fiction”, silly. Hopefully anyone other than Beth or the CIA will assume it’s merely entertainment.

To be clear, Beth’s not her real name, nor is Frank mine. I assume you guessed that by now. We figured using real names would be a quick way to get caught. And no, the CIA isn’t the agency in question.

***

And once we were on the internet, a whole new world opened to us. News, for one thing. We found our hometown’s newspaper online. It was a ragtag website, but it had archived stories. Including one about the death of Frank R. Dinson.

The writer of the story depended entirely on a local police report, so it was limited. The body of Frank R. Dinson had been found in a garbage container downtown. Gunshot wounds, severe bruising, numerous lacerations, and possible strangulation. Whoever had killed Original Frank wasn’t messing around. There were no suspects, the story said. Another unsolved murder. But Beth2 and I knew what had happened. Frank had tried to escape. Possibly he had been temporarily successful. But he was entirely unprepared for life on the run; he’d been no match for the agents who came after him. Whether any copies were in his brain at the time, we had no way of knowing.

Weeks later, we were surprised to see a wedding announcement on that same news website. Brian Hollis had wed Kate Adams about six months after I first met them. The blurb said Hollis was employed by the city and Adams was a college student. Interesting. Were they themselves again? Or had another copy been inserted into Kate’s mind? Was “Brian” still controlled by Michelle’s copy? We would never know. And we couldn’t find anything about Michelle Hung.

 

7: Frank & Beth2 Go To Washington   •••

 

Of course we couldn’t stay in Jennifer forever. No, she had as much a right to autonomy as anyone else we’d co-opted, a right to get her brain and body back. I hope she appreciates that we didn’t do her any particular harm. Except Beth2 and I had kept her from dating on the grounds that it would have been very weird. (It was weird enough to share her dreams about her previous boyfriend.) Once we left, she could take up that pursuit again.

We stored this work-in-progress to a floppy diskette, along with necessary usernames and passwords, and handed that diskette over to each person we switched to. The idea was that we’d change those usernames and passwords with each new body, so the memory in the previous brain wouldn’t land us in hot water. (Later, of course, we upgraded to CD-ROM and then to a flash drive.)

Outside our/Jennifer’s apartment, we shook hands with a handsome young man running for a local political office — and moved across into him. We held Jennifer’s elbow as she shuddered and looked around in surprise. She hadn’t been herself all winter and spring.

“It’ll be okay, miss”, we told her. By touching her we maintained a bit of mental control until she was ready. “I promise to do everything I can once I’m in office.”

We didn’t stick around to wait for him to win or lose an election, but we did shake hands with quite a few people over the next few days, including the mayor at the time. That man was a scumbag, yes, but we used him to move through to someone else — a party consultant on his way to D.C. The District was another matter entirely, so different from New York City, but full of people accustomed to shaking hands with strangers.

Oh, the stories we could tell! But won’t. Within weeks, we had enough dirt to put half the Senate in prison — if anyone had the political will to investigate anything — and if powerful people had a tendency to be found guilty or get sent to prison. Most of them seemed pretty confident they’d get away with it and most of them were correct.

But I wasn’t interested in sending elected officials to prison; I was interested in getting Col. Ferris and his operation shut down.

We hated it — being in Washington D.C. Especially Beth2. We split up then, though she always stayed in the mind of someone near me. We came up with signals, ways to recognize each other in other people’s bodies. We relaxed our moratorium on dating and sex, deciding that we had a right to it as much as anyone else. Maybe we were just being selfish. Maybe we found ourselves in bodies that had a difficult time resisting each other. Maybe we selected a few of those bodies for exactly that reason. Regardless...

For a short while, we imagined we could cause some kind of change, and maybe we did with a few of our votes when we controlled the brains of Senators and Representatives, but... Changing the course of a ship like the U.S. is more complex than people think it is. Certainly we hadn’t realized. You can’t just make a speech like a guy in a movie and the whole Congress votes along with you. We found it nearly impossible for a single person — or even two people — to change anything big. Also, we were young and uninformed; even the new information gained from riding those minds often didn’t help. I won’t tell you which votes were mine or Beth2’s, mostly because we got it wrong sometimes. Maybe a careful reading of speech transcripts from the floor of the House and Senate during those months might reveal something. Maybe not.

Regardless, we moved into the White House — where I hoped to finally have the power to get at Col. Ferris.

In this account, I’ve intentionally obfuscated dates and exactly how much time passed, just enough to leave the reader to wonder: which president? The 2000 election was a doozy, yes, but you’ll never know whether we were president before or after that. Or both.

The hardest part was getting anyone around us to admit to the existence of Medical Research Facility No. 8. Apparently the president isn’t privy to everything. Even when I mentioned it by name to specific people who should know, they played dumb. Until I switched across to their brains. Turns out Col. Ferris had a bit of a reputation within the relevant agency. Not the kind of guy you’d want to cross, but the kind of guy you should definitely call if you needed a job done. With a little help from Beth2 and the people she controlled, we worked our way through several layers of the agency until we found the people with the right strings. It helped that by then we knew the crimes of a number of elected officials. A large number. That made it relatively easy to get quite a few of them to do our bidding. They could make calls, threaten to go to the press...

We didn’t want it going public. We didn’t want the nation to panic when major news organizations broadcast that disembodied minds created by secret government facilities were floating around the country, taking over people. We kept it under wraps as much as possible. The few reports that did leak looked like lunatics had written them.

Suffice it to say we got rid of Col. Ferris. I don’t mean we had him killed. We had agents from a different agency show up to arrest Ferris and several of his employees. All of it very hush-hush. That’s the most satisfied I’ve ever been in my life — seeing the confirmation that Ferris was stowed away in an off-the-books detention facility. Then we put loads of top secret records on our flash drive, and we stashed copies in various places online in case we needed leverage some day in the future.

There were two downsides. One is that no “participants” were on-site at the time — we’d hoped to free someone, rescue someone. Those parts of the records had been scrubbed, almost like Ferris got wind of the coming storm beforehand. The second was that it felt a little anticlimactic, because it was already so far behind us — Beth2 and I had done and experienced so much in the intervening period that Medical Research Facility No. 8 felt like a bad dream out of the past.

 

8: Adrift   •••

 

Now we can look up Original Beth, Beth2 said.

Yes. Very much yes. Beth might not even know we’d taken down Ferris; who knew how long she would wait? We had waited long enough.

We have the means right now, I pointed out. We were then residing in the body of a powerful bureaucrat within an agency that could easily find her.

We called in a low-level agent, and Beth2 slipped across during the handshake. I went back to bureaucratic drudgery while Beth2 took to the skies in an official capacity.

There were complications.

The next day, my office phone rang; my secretary told me the name of the agent calling me. I knew it was Beth2.

“What is it, Agent Dunbar?” I asked gruffly. This body’s voice was always gruff. I couldn’t make it sound kind if I tried.

“She’s not here”, Dunbar said. “The subject.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“My end isn’t secure”, Dunbar said. “But the house is empty. The answering machine is full. The guy across the street says he hasn’t seen the subject for weeks.”

“You’re the field agent, Dunbar”, I reminded Beth2. “Use your presumably agenty skills and find out what happened.”

That evening, it was my home phone that rang. Agent Dunbar was crying on the other end when “my” wife picked up the phone. “Honey, this man says he’s an agent of yours? He seems really upset.”

“Beth’s dead!” Dunbar wept into my ear as soon as I took the phone.

“Christ, Dunbar! This line isn’t secure! Pull yourself together, man.” But I was already weeping inside. And my wife was staring at me impudently, accusingly. I shrugged and made an expression that I hoped looked like regret or shame. “Look, Dunbar”, I said, this time more softly. My wife nodded. “I understand why you’re upset. But this kind of information cannot be transmitted in this manner. We could both lose our jobs.” My wife’s eyebrows shot up. She wasn’t a fan of me losing my job, apparently. It probably meant I’d be around more, and she didn’t take kindly to that. “Find a place to sober up”, I ordered, gently. “Or have a few drinks. Whatever you need. I’ll cover it. Then gather what information you can and get back to Washington. Pronto.”

Beth2 was back as soon as commercial air travel allowed. She’d managed to hold herself together long enough to find out what happened. Apparently Original Beth had recently bought a car, or had one gifted to her. And then drove it off a cliff. Not a huge cliff, because there aren’t any mountains in the area of our hometown, but a high enough one that both the car and Beth were destroyed.

When? Three days before Col. Ferris had been arrested.

Could he have seen it coming and tried to tie up loose ends? Or was it truly an accident? I will always assume that Ferris had her killed just like Frank. Maybe he was having the last laugh, living comfortably on the taxpayer’s dime in a facility not listed in any official documents.

***

With Original Beth and Original Frank both gone, we had no more home to return to. We were adrift in this world of strangers — many of whom we knew very well, from the inside. We were forever homeless — bodyless spirits, minds, conscious electric sparks... Nowhere to go, no one to be. First we hid out in the body of a senator’s wife who was already weepy due to his affair, and there we wept. All three of us. Beth2 and I didn’t even take over the woman’s body; we just hid in there and cried with her. For days.

If I had been alone — without Beth2, I mean — I’m certain I would have found the first suicidal person I could get ahold of and ended it. But I did have Beth2, and she had me. It was enough to stave off the darkest of thoughts, but we were both pretty crushed nevertheless. Distraught. Whatever. Again, don’t judge until your body is killed and you are left hiding in other people’s minds.

I want to kill him, Beth2 thought to me one day as we mourned. Ferris. Tell me it’s okay, Frank. We know where he is, we can get there. We can make it happen.

I wanted to get him too, of course. And yes, I knew we could. We could transfer from person to person until we were a guard outside his cell. Hell, we could even go into Ferris, force him to confess what he was currently keeping to himself, find out whether he was responsible for the deaths of our original bodies. We could. And usually I’m the emotional, instinctive one — usually it’s Beth2 who holds me back and convinces me of what’s practical.

This time, I played the practical one. It wouldn’t change anything, I told her. It wouldn’t bring her back. Or Original Frank. We have to let it go. I felt her break inside me, and I broke too, and we wept some more.

Then we skipped town as a foreign dignitary.

 

Epilogue   •••

 

When I wrote that last bit, I thought I was finished. The page isn’t even necessary now that Original Beth is gone. It was the saddest ending imaginable to this tale we’d kept up for many months, but that was it. Nothing else mattered.

But more stuff did happen.

I don’t know what you would do as a copy of your original mind with no original body to return to, but I know what we did after learning of Beth’s death. We drank, friend. We smoked things that shouldn’t be smoked, and snorted and injected our way across Europe. And from there through a dozen troubled countries into Asia. And back. And south to Africa. And boated to islands. Everywhere. I guess I have been everywhere, man.

Beth2 sobered up before I did — we were in separate bodies at the time. She pulled me from my stupor and we tried to make a plan.

We can go anywhere, she told me. Do anything. Be anyone.

I’d always wanted to go to space, so we did that. We jumped from mind to mind, mindhiking we began to call it. Like hitchhiking, but safer. Drove race cars, rode racehorses, went to the bottom of oceans and the tops of mountains. And sex can be as interesting as we want it to be — we could be anyone. Even switch bodies during, which is mind-expanding in exactly the way you think it might be.

Sometimes I get morose and try to mourn the fact that I’m a different person now — because we still lose old memories with every jump, and because we’ve gained so much knowledge in our travels. But Beth2 reminds me that it was bound to happen anyway.

And I am glad we wrote what we did. We visit this website often to re-read our early adventures. Most of the time it feels like the fictional story we pretended it was. Sometimes it reminds us of things we’ve forgotten, though not everything. Like our original names. I didn’t include them in the story, so now they’re gone. And the name of the town we came from. We could find out if we wanted to... Remember those files on our flash drive?

But why would we want to? That flash drive can’t help us with what we miss the most.

We can speak a dozen languages, but can’t remember childhood birthdays. I have a memory of Beth’s first period, but not of me graduating high school. She remembers a toy car I had at age five but not her siblings’ names. It all gets jumbled. I can recite hundreds of beetle species and speechify on their mating habits, and also dock a spacecraft to the International Space Station, but I don’t remember what my mother looks like.

We numbed ourselves to it and moved on.

***

We wrote that last bit several years ago, just after returning to the U.S. “We” is almost always how it is now; we’ve shared so much as one person and mixed up our memories that neither of us is ever really separate from the other. When Beth2 moves into a different body, I recognize some of Frank’s old mannerisms in her. And she says she sees a lot of her old self in me.

The world has changed since this story began: smartphones, social media, and streaming entertainment. But Beth2 and I continue to float through it like ghosts. Ghosts that require the use of living people’s bodies.

Now we’re wondering if we’re immortal. Can we keep jumping? Forever?

We ran into a guy in California who looked a lot like I used to look — what little I can remember of my original appearance. And his wife looked a lot like Beth used to look. Before our bodies died, I mean. Except this guy created a couple of apps and became a billionaire, so really nothing like my original self at all. Guess where we live now? They were just quirky enough anyway that no one noticed any personality changes. This mansion is nice. Secluded. And neither one seems to mind much that we’re here. Sometimes we even let them have control again and just ride around. We might stay here a while.

Who knows what’s next? We heard they’re experimenting with artificial sentience up in Riverton, which got Beth2 and me to thinking: could we transfer into a sentient robot’s mind like we can into a human mind? How would that work? Would we want to? Maybe if we get tired of being reclusive young billionaires, we’ll drive up there.