Space and Time Issue 121 Page 3

  “So,” she says, lighting the joint. “Is that your real body?” She takes a deep drag.

  I squint at her through the cloud of smoke. “Does it matter?” Exhaling, she offers me a toke.

  I take a hit and cough, the burning in my throat making me wonder whether this athletic body has ever smoked before. The twinge of guilt I feel evaporates under the relaxing effect of the weed and Natalie’s proximity.

  “Just curious,” she says. “So you’re really into this scene?” She waves the joint around.

  I shrug. “Who doesn’t want to be someone else once in a while?”

  Although I can’t admit it, she’s the only reason I’m here. After hearing too many times that I wasn’t her “type,” I had to do something drastic to prove her wrong. From the way she leans against me, one hand on my forearm, I suspect I’m more her type now.

  “Exactly,” she says. “It’s not just about sex.” She blows smoke and pushes her bangs back.

  My heart pounds. I place my hand over hers.

  “I completely agree, Natalie.”

  She arches an eyebrow. To my surprise, she leans closer and kisses me. Her lips are softer than I ever imagined. I run my fingers through her hair and slide my hands down her back. Bliss. The perfect moment I’d dreamt about for months.

  A loud crash from inside the apartment startles me. I bend down and poke my head through the window.

  “Freeze! Freeze!” a voice barks. “Get on the floor! Now!”

  A man shrieks. Naked bodies streak past the kitchen.

  “Don’t move! Everyone stay where you are! I said don’t move!” The voices draw closer.

  Natalie and I exchange a panicked glance.

  Together we lower the fire escape ladder and climb down its rusty rungs to the dark alleyway. When I drop the last six feet, I lose my balance in this taller body and stumble forward, scraping my palms on concrete.

  Natalie pulls me up and we bolt past overturned garbage cans. Rats scurry ahead of us and disappear into the shadows.

  “Hey! You two!” A gruff voice shouts from above and echoes around us in the narrow passage.

  We round the corner, racing away from the flashing red-and-blue lights of the police cars in front of the building.

  * * *

  Natalie and I crouch in the back seat of a speeding livery cab.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” I say. My boxers cling to my sweaty thighs. My chafed hands sting.

  Her hair whips around in the cross-breeze from the open windows. She futilely pulls it away from her face.

  “I can’t get into my apartment. I left my swipecard back there.” I slap the car seat. “I left my body back there. It’s probably in custody by now! Shit, if they have my wallet, they know who I am, where I live.”

  Natalie hasn’t spoken a word since our escape. I can’t blame her for being in shock.

  I stare at the stretch of rundown buildings and abandoned cars, squinting at the dark street signs as they zip past.

  “My sister lives near here,” I say. I lean forward and give the address to the impassive driver. Picking up two nearly naked passengers hadn’t fazed the man; he was probably just relieved we weren’t concealing weapons.

  Why hadn’t I listened to Lena? My sister had warned me about the increased raids on swapmeats, not to mention the risk of abusing my network privileges to snoop through Natalie’s personal e-mail. But when I found the swapmeat invitation in Natalie’s inbox, I’d downloaded it anyway.

  The cab pulls in front of Lena’s building and I punch my pin number into the backseat display to pay the fare. As we scramble out of the car in our underwear, a quartet of drag queens in platinum wigs and fishnet stockings stand in the entranceway and hoot and whistle at us: “Hey, babies. It’s hot, but not that hot.” Their raucous laughter trails us into the foyer.

  I ring Lena’s apartment, our special signal: two long, one short. I have to repeat it twice before the door buzzes open and we push into the cool lobby. Natalie wrinkles her nose at the stench of trash and urine in the elevator. Her expression, the shadows on her face in the flickering fluorescent light, make her look like a completely different person.

  I pound on the door of 14D.

  “It’s late, Drew,” Lena says in a groggy voice. Light shines through the peephole. “Who the hell are you?”

  “It’s me. Open up.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “It’s Drew!” I lean closer and stage whisper, “I went to the swapmeat.”

  The locks clatter and the door partially opens, the chain still fastened.

  I speak quickly. “Your favorite color is lime-green. You like mustard on your French fries for sick reasons I’ll never understand. You twisted my arm so hard you dislocated it when I was in fifth grade.”

  “Drew? Oh my God, you’re such an idiot.”

  The chain slides off and the door opens.

  “This is Lena,” I say to Natalie. Her arms are drawn together over her breasts and she’s hunched over as though she’s suddenly become aware that she’s standing in her bra and panties. I guide her into the apartment. “Lena, this is Natalie, from–”

  “Tony,” Natalie says. Her eyes flick to me nervously. “Actually, my name is Tony.”

  * * *

  I peer over the kitchen counter into the living room. Tony’s on the couch, feet propped on the coffee table while she–he–watches the newscast playing on the wallscreen. Even in Lena’s baggy sweats and plaid shirt, Tony is gorgeous. I think about our moment on the fire escape. It should bother me, I suppose, but even now it’s difficult to consider him anything but a woman.

  Lena pours me another shot of Absolut. “So that’s the body of the woman you’ve been stalking?”

  “C’mon, Lena. Stalking?”

  “Let’s see,” she says. “You hacked her e-mail. Crashed an illegal party. And you brought her body home. I wouldn’t exactly call this the model of a healthy courtship.”

  She has a point, I guess; Lena usually does. “I just wanted her to give me a fair chance, to get to know the real me.”

  “While you pretended to be someone else?”

  “Well... Maybe I didn’t think things through.”

  “You knew exactly what you were doing. You went there to fuck her. And you still want to, even though that isn’t Natalie in there. That’s a man, Drew.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re leering at her. Right now.” Lena lets out a long breath. “I am so tired of your drama.”

  Lena always could read me better than anyone else. It was both comforting–and annoying as hell–to have someone I could trust to call me on my bullshit.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I say.

  “Hallelujah.” She lifts her shot glass to me, then downs it.“So where’s your real body?”

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you could help me with that.”

  Lena had been writing a series of articles on the underground body-swapping scene, which is why I’d thought she’d support my idea to get some inside information on what happens at an actual swapmeat. Instead, when I broached the idea, she’d been dead-set against it.

  She sighs. “This is one mess I can’t clean up for you. You are in serious legal trouble. Turn yourself in. The sooner you do, the sooner I get my brother back.”

  “I am your brother.”

  She pauses, stares into her empty glass, and reaches for the vodka.

  I grab the bottle, preventing her from pouring. “Hey, I’m Drew. I’m your brother.”

  “Don’t you even know what you did to your...self?” She points at my head.

  “What are you taking about?”

  “The patterns of electrical impulses in our brain, the neural connections that make up our consciousness, are disrupted by the swap. Another pers
on’s memories are superimposed over them, effectively rewriting the brain with a new personality. But the process isn’t permanent. Eventually the imprinted memories will fade, and the personality of whoever’s body this is, will return. As for my brother, his memories will resurface in his own body, wherever it is. Probably prison, I imagine.”

  “But what happens to me?”

  “If your current memories are swapped back into Drew’s body in time, they’ll stick. But it might be too late already. You’ve been carrying these memories for longer than usual. No, more likely than not this will end with you forgetting everything that happened tonight from the moment Drew’s brain patterns were scanned into this body.” She shakes her head. “What were you thinking? I told you to stay away from that swapmeat.” Lena was never one to pass up an opportunity for an I-told-you-so.

  If I’m not really Drew, who, or what, am I? I feel like myself, I have all of Drew’s memories, but if Lena is right my mind is merely an imprint of Drew’s consciousness, a superimposed photocopy destined to fade away to nothingness.

  “If I turn myself in,” I say, “how much time am I looking at?”

  “With all the criminals exploiting this new tech?” She sips at her overfull shot glass. “Three to five years, minimum. But I know a lawyer–and this is Drew’s first offense.”

  I square my shoulders. “I can’t go to the cops.”

  “You have to. It’s for your own good.”

  At one time I might have listened, but I know now that Lena cares nothing about what happens to me, the person standing in front of her. Her only concern is finding her brother’s body.

  “I can fix this,” I say. I’ll find a way to swap back into my body and preserve my memories of tonight. And I’ll find Natalie so I can help her too.

  * * *

  When I enter my apartment using Lena’s spare swipecard, part of me expects cops to come swarming out of my bedroom. Instead, as I hoped after reading the morning’s news, I find a single man reclining on my loveseat with a link-pad in his lap.

  It’s me. My own body.

  “You must be Drew!” He stands and proffers his hand. “I’m Enrique.”

  My own handshake feels strange to me. It’s surreal seeing my body move about of its own volition, hearing my voice coming from someone else. It’s like watching a holo of myself. My body’s paunch is noticeable and I make a mental note to do more sit-ups.

  Tony enters right behind me and Enrique’s eyes widen. “You’re...?”

  “Tony.”

  “Ah yes,” he says, “I remember you from the swapmeat, gorgeous.”

  “How–how did you get away?” I ask him. I had read the morning’s e-dition describing the fiasco at the raid–which is why I chanced coming here–but the details are important if I’m going to have any shot of getting out of this mess.

  Enrique sets the link-pad on the coffee table and flicks back to the front page. The headline reads “COP SWAP” and the holo-clip shows three nude women and a naked man with strategic mosaicing.

  “The officers broke into the apartment and charged right through the neural arch. Someone triggered the lights while four of them were in the Blue Room,” Enrique says. “One minute there are four cops, guns drawn, standing over us. Next thing, the lights blink and three naked chicks and a dude are screaming at us to freeze while the ‘cops’ suddenly make a run for it. We followed them out in the confusion and grabbed all the duffels. We made it to the park and matched IDs to faces as well as we could. I went to the address on your driver’s license.”

  Relief washes over me. This confirms that there’s no evidence linking me to the party.

  “So everyone got away?” Tony asks.

  “Except for those four bodies the cops were stuck in,” Enrique says.

  “So what do we do now?” I ask.

  “We wait it out until next month’s swapmeat,” Enrique says. Although he’s addressing me, Enrique can’t keep his eyes off Tony. I’m disconcerted at the open lust on my own face. I imagine that this is what Lena meant when she said I’d been “leering” at Tony.

  “Waiting isn’t an option,” I say. I explain what Lena told me about the temporary nature of our overlaid brain patterns.

  “I can’t... I don’t want to forget anything,” Tony says.

  “Me neither,” I say. I think about the kiss on the fire escape, that perfect moment with Natalie’s body. Although it’s only been twelve hours, the thought of losing those memories, losing who I am, right now, at this very moment, terrifies me. “I can’t explain it, but I already feel like a different person than the guy who walked into that swapmeat.”

  “I hear you,” Enrique says. “I wonder what it would be like, waking up, not being able to remember anything from the past few days. I bet it’s like going on a bender. You don’t remember half of it, but you know you had a blast.” He winks at Tony. “Just live in the moment is what I always say.”

  I feel an irrational twinge of jealousy. This is not Natalie, I remind myself. “She’s” a man. But I have a responsibility to protect Natalie’s body, don’t I?

  “Last night, all of us who escaped the swapmeat agreed to check in on a message board to find each other and sort things out,” Enrique says. “So we should be able to track down our own bodies.”

  “Fat lot of good that does us with no way to swap into them,” Tony says.

  “Did you sign onto the message board already?” I ask.

  “I was just about to.”

  “Don’t. That’s exactly the sort of thing the cops will be looking for,” I say. “As for the swapping, maybe my sister can help. She must have contacts with some of the organizers, or at least someone with access to the tech.” And now that I’ve secured my real body, I think she’ll be more inclined to help.

  “In the meantime, we should stick together,” I say. I want to keep my body close, and I need to keep an eye on Natalie’s body as well. “You both can stay here with me while we sort this out. Tony, you should take the bedroom.”

  “That’s an awfully big bed for one person,” Enrique says to Tony with a smirk.

  Tony rolls his beautiful blue eyes, but seems amused.

  “Enrique and I will share the pullout couch,” I say firmly.

  * * *

  When I return from visiting Lena, I find Tony playing holo-games at the computer in the living room.

  “How’d it go?” he asks. He clicks off the game.

  “Lena’s contact knows where a set of portable swaplights are stored. She’s dropping his fee off at their usual rendezvous now.” I think about all the overtime I’ll have to work to pay Lena back–if I still have a job after all this. I had Enrique call the office to tell them I’d be working from home for a week.

  “Can we pick up the swaplights today?” Tony says.

  “No, later this week, after Lena confirms the location is secure.”

  “Is that necessary? Sounds a little paranoid,” Tony says.

  “Best to play it safe under the circumstances. The bodies of four cops are still missing and the authorities are taking this personally. They’ve been rounding up everyone from that stupid message board. “

  “Where’s Enrique?” Tony says.

  I hated to let my body out of my sight, but on our way back from Lena’s place, I had suggested Enrique pick up some beer at the corner grocery so I could talk to Tony alone. I dreaded having this conversation with him, but there was no avoiding it.

  I take a seat next to him on the couch. Tony’s careless about dressing, always forgetting that he’s in a woman’s body. His shirt is undone to the third button, and he has a habit of leaning forward, hands on knees, when listening.

  “What’s wrong? You seem upset,” Tony says. He twirls his hair around his index finger, a Natalie-gesture that throws me off. I’ve been seeing more of Natalie in Tony
lately. I wonder whether Tony’s personality is beginning to fade.

  I pull my link-pad from my jacket pocket.

  “This is an article Lena just finished for tomorrow’s e-dition. You should see it.” I hand it to Tony, who reads it aloud.

  “‘Yesterday’s subway fatality has been identified as a swapmeater who escaped from Saturday night’s bungled police raid of a sex party in Old Chelsea.’” Tony looks up at me.

  “Keep going.”

  Tony reads, brow furrowed, and a moment later his face smoothes into shock. I had hoped it was just a coincidence, that the Anthony Washington named in the article wasn’t this Tony.

  “Oh God.” He drops the link-pad to the sofa. “I’m dead? I’m dead.”

  “Your body is dead,” I say. “But you’re still here.” I put my hand on his shoulder.

  “Whoever was in my body...he jumped in front of a train? Why would he kill himself?”

  “You don’t know it was a suicide. It could have been an accident,” I say. Or murder, depending on how one looked at it. They might never know who was inside the body and his or her state of mind.

  “Oh no.” Tony covers his face. “It definitely was suicide.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I’m on some strong meds for depression. I guess the poor bastard in my body wouldn’t have known that. Who knows how the mind transfer affected him?”

  “It’s going to be okay, Tony.”

  “How? I’m dead!”

  I gently brush the hair out of his teary eyes. “I’m so sorry,” I say. With Tony’s real body gone, all that remains of him is here, in Natalie’s form. Eventually that too will be gone. This was a death sentence. I pull him into a hug.

  “We can keep swapping you before your consciousness fades,” I say. “That should keep your neural patterns intact. In theory, we should be able to keep you alive indefinitely.”

  He shakes his head. “When I went to that swapmeat, I wanted to experience what it felt like to be someone else, to wear a different body, a different gender. But just for fun, just for a short time,” he says. “No, it’s all over for me. Tony Washington is dead.”