Switcht
By Richard A. Becker
Waking up in a strange room was one thing. Waking up in a strange body was something else all together.
The vidscreen showed a pneumatic blonde groping her own cosmetically altered flesh.
“I thought you said you weren’t feeling yourself today,” said a wheedling off-screen voice.
“I sure am now!” she exclaimed, as the audience roared.
He turned off the vidfeed and stared at the huge SONAC logo emblazoned in its place. What the hell had happened?
Didn’t I used to be black? And 60 years old? And have only one leg? What was I doing before three minutes ago?
He didn’t move. He felt his head, his neck, his collarbone — no lumps, no bruises, no signs of brain trauma. As if he could count on recognizing those. There was something on his back, just below his neck, though. He needed a mirror. He decided to stand up and test his new legs.
He switched the vidwall to mirror mode and studied himself, trying to control his trembling. Male, Caucasian, late 20s, not too badly out of shape, had most of his head hair and no facial hair besides eyebrows and eyelashes, no visible tattoos or piercings or brandings or scars, not too pretty but not ugly either. Based on the vidfeed, he guessed his new body had been heterosexual, or at least very tasteless, but he wouldn’t be sure about the first possibility for a little while.
He darkened the windows to opaque and took off his clothing with more caution and care than he’d ever stripped a lover, or so he thought. Under the shirt was nothing terribly remarkable, just more white skin, no large outgrowth of hair on the back or belly. Under his trousers was nothing very different than he’d seen in his original flesh, though admittedly he was a bit disappointed with his genitalia. That’s all? he thought. No body art there, either, and the only suspicious scar was a fresh pink spray-on bandage over the juncture of his spinal column and the base of his neck. He touched it. There was no pain, but numbness spread from the place his finger had touched like ripples on a pond.
He stood naked, gazing into the reflection that was not his own, and felt reality spinning away from him. He fought down the urge to scream. He was a stranger in this body, but he needed to understand what had happened. Perhaps it could be reversed. The weight and solidity of the new flesh contradicted any hope of reversal, but he clung to that idea desperately.
Many would have argued that he was better off in a newer, younger body. His memories were coming back to him now — he was Edgar Richland, of Washington, D.C., a black man born in the mid-21st century to working-class parents, married twice, divorced and widowed, five children in three different states, raised Unitarian against his grandmother’s wishes, lost his leg in the police action in Belize, spent four years as a vegetarian because of a girl he’d loved, left-handed, his childhood best friend had been Kaseem Morrell who had died at 16 of an undiscovered heart condition — he was still Edgar Richland, even in this body. He was a researcher of some sort.
“I am Edgar Richland,” he whispered, afraid to hear his new voice. It was deeper than his real voice, but only a little. There was also a trace of accent, which puzzled him. He spoke again, more distinctly American, with a slight effort. “I am Edgar Richland.”
He saw a wallet on a small side table. He looked at the papers inside. According to the Homeland Social Security ID card, his name was Vladek Jandak, émigré from the former Czechoslovakia, age 26, still waiting for his Green Approval, occupation: waiter. He had no personal insurance, but he did own a small Hero Motors Rani that was fully insured.
He spent the next two hours searching the apartment like an astronaut crash landed in an abandoned alien commune. There was no pet, no roommate, or lover. There were packets of vac-fresh food that he held up to the light, wondering at their labels that were so familiar and so alien (I didn’t buy this . . . I don’t eat this). He peeked in his own medicine cabinet, picking up every bottle and jar and box and looking at it carefully. Thank God I’m not sick, he thought.
When he was done, he sat down and looked into the mirror again for a long time. What was he to do with his life now? Had he stolen this man’s body? Was it a voluntary trade? An accident? He tried to imagine explaining the situation to his children and grandchildren. It would be hard enough to explain to his next-door neighbor at his condominium. In fact, it would probably be impossible to explain to anyone.
He could only imagine a few possible motives to transfer his mind into a new body, and most of them fell by the wayside rather quickly when he considered them. This body was not wealthy, so that wasn’t the reason. As far as he could recall, he hadn’t had any enemies to escape, so that could be taken off the short list. And he was fairly certain that his original body had not been terminally ill. Moreover, he liked to think that he wasn’t the kind of person who would steal a man’s body in order to preserve himself. It wouldn’t even have mattered if the victim had been a convicted murderer or terrorist, and there certainly was no reason to believe his new body was either of those things.
He was distracted for a moment by the essential sameness of the human condition on a gut level. The five senses were pretty much the same, he realized, regardless of whose flesh you wore. Textures and scents . . . nothing jumped out as being alien to him. And I’m full, he thought. I wonder what I ate for lunch?
He collected himself. I need to find out more. He searched further, stymied by his lack of passwords for the new body’s Internet accounts but encouraged by a few new caches of papers here and there. Eventually, Edgar found a card for something called NRI Research, located downtown. He had a hunch that it meant something, so he scanned it and the computer took him to their Website. It was a clean, professional site that explained NRI’s mission in neuropsychological research in very general terms, gave general contact information and an address, talked about grants and awards, charitable efforts, and so forth. He hunted down his body’s keys, left the apartment, looked hopelessly for the Rani’s parking spot, gave up, and took public transit down to NRI.
The overhead display on the bus said it was Saturday afternoon. He wasn’t sure if anyone would be at NRI when he got there, but he had nothing else to do. He definitely was not ready to try and find his loved ones and tell them he’d turned white, young, and not himself.NRI was a pleasant-looking three-story building, all beige stucco and glass. It was easy to find.
Someone was there. It was a black man in his 60s, with a slight limp from an artificial leg, a fringe of white hair around a gleaming brown crown, faint white goatee, large and expressive brown eyes, average height, a build that had been strong and tough but now was weathered into something softer but still durable. It was himself.“Welcome,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“I’m Edgar Richland,” he said, hesitantly.
“I think that’s debatable,” said his body, “but for the moment, let’s say you are. How are you doing . . . Edgar?”
“Not very well right now. I don’t remember anything from the past five weeks. I was in my apartment — a man’s apartment, watching a vidfeed this afternoon, when I came to.”
“It’s perfectly understandable that your clearest memories are from five weeks ago. That’s when they recorded me. Total lacunar amnesia would be a little puzzling, though. Are you sure you don’t remember anything before this afternoon?” He didn’t at first, but he found that when he concentrated more, he had better recall of the past several days. There had been a laboratory, and he had been extracted from a complex series of devices, shaky on his feet but otherwise fine. There had been a series of conversations with a bemused Asian-American woman in a soft pink sweater, who had confirmed that he remembered himself accurately. He had eaten lunch at the cafeteria, read the newspaper, gone to the library . . . things became more indistinct over time. After only a few days, he had begun to have blackouts.
But even in the blackouts there were flashes of something else. It was a man’s mind, someone born and raised in a small provincial town in Eastern Europe, who’d moved to the big city and taken any job he could find to pay for his ticket away from the people who called him a yokel and laughed at his cheap shoes. Someone who wasn’t Edgar Richland, and wasn’t someone Edgar Richland could imagine wanting to be. The original owner of this body — they’d been intermittently switching back.
“There’s an error here,” said his body. “I think I’d better show you something that will help stir your memories a little bit more. Come with me.” He obeyed, and it was one of the weirdest experiences of his life, following himself down the hallway, listening to the cadence of his footsteps in his borrowed body. He watched as his body unlocked and opened a door, flicked on fluorescent lights, and ushered him within. It was the laboratory from his lost time. “This is the project you volunteered for,” said his body. “The marketing people call it SWITCHT.”
Edgar looked at the equipment, the plastic institutional furniture, formica tabletops, tiled floors, and it all seemed strangely familiar to him. He was particularly drawn to a chair surmounted by a dome that was clearly intended to cradle one’s head and — do what to it?
“It looks like a hairdryer from a fashion salon, doesn’t it?” his body chuckled. “Just like in the old vids. Functions on similar principles to old-fashioned MRI scans, in a way.” His body had a frank and open expression on its face as it continued. “In a very broad sense, of course. Do you remember what it does? It helps stabilize the firing of the temporary neural pathways overlaid in your brain. You don’t remember? Well, you will.”
They continued walking around the laboratory. Edgar found himself watching his body; how it walked, talked, even how it breathed. This was different from viewing a vid recording or a photograph. He felt a weird urge to rush his body, hug it to his new flesh, just to know what it would be like. Not a homosexual impulse, not even autoerotic, just an exploration that no other pioneer could have had.
“Did you notice that you had no difficulty walking, talking, using your hands?” his body said. “That’s proof that the process does what it’s supposed to do. It switches personalities, but leaves the basics the same.”
“I did retain the accent.”
“That makes sense.”
Edgar wasn’t completely sure that it did. He was still pondering the nature of his exploration in this new body. Was it really pioneering? Or was it the same experience of the flesh that everyone had, merely one step removed from his origin? He decided that the strange newness of his condition was a sort of trailblazing. He was able to see himself as others saw him, but there were no words to describe it. One had to live it.
“Now of course you couldn’t use the skills I’ve acquired, we haven’t taken the process that far yet. We’re working on it, though.” His body looked at Edgar eagerly. “Did you recall that I was a neuropsychologist? Did you remember any part of my college years, or my internship, or my residency?”
Edgar’s mind flooded with impressions. The disappointment with words and how little he could do with them to change the world. The day Keyma had agreed that she would support him as he went back to college. Endless nights with amphetamines and the Internet. The first time he cut into flesh and saw blood seep away, trying to calm the urgency of knowing that everything depended on his skill. A laser burning a vital nerve juncture. Making the connection between a flesh puppet and a real human being, using words to treat illness alongside of the scalpel. He remembered things . . . strobing, dreamlike, uncertain memories. Were they all real? Were some of them memories of dreams he’d had? Were some of them fantasies he was having now? Without corroboration from other people, or physical evidence, how could he know?
“I-I think so. I think I do now. A little.” Edgar Richland felt perspiration bead on his forehead.
His body leaned forward delightedly, mocha-colored lips parted in a generous smile. “Who was my favorite teacher at Harvard?”
Mine. My favorite teacher at Harvard. Not yours.
He struggled to remember. There was a face that could not resolve in his mind’s eye. A faint memory of laughter over a dry gin martini, years after graduation, peers instead of mentor and student. He felt tears come to his eyes, his throat tightened.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s all right. You don’t need to.”
Yes I do! I do need to remember my favorite teacher in medical school!
“Can you remember your own favorite teacher in school?”
There was Mrs. Harjavti, the big tough lesbian who taught soccer, she’d been like an aunt to him, he was the teacher’s pet . . . He folded his fingers together, white-knuckled. Go away, he said to Mrs. Harjavti’s ruddy face and thick stumpy knees, go away, I’m Edgar Richland.
“Her name was Mrs. Harjavti, wasn’t it? She brought marzipan for after practice sometimes.” His body was visibly proud of himself.
Edgar could taste the marzipan, and remembered the smell of the grassy football field. He replied, thickly, “Sometimes she did.”
Edgar’s body nodded. “I wrote it down so I wouldn’t completely forget it when the process reversed itself. I wanted to test you with something that wasn’t too traumatic. And those were happy days, weren’t they, Vladek?”
“They weren’t my happy days. They were your happy days. We’ve switched bodies. I’m Edgar Richland.”
“Vladek, this would be a lot easier if you learned to relax and accept it. It’s going to happen whether or not you do, but you’ll find it hurts a lot less if you recognize reality and let the experiment come to a conclusion.”
Edgar Richland looked at his body as it smiled at him. “And what is reality?” he asked.
“Big question,” the other Edgar Richland — Vladek Jandak, he reminded himself — laughed. “But in this case, it’s got a simple answer. You’re you and I’m me. You volunteered for a test run of this new SWITCHT treatment. The treatment makes you think you’re me, and I think I’m you. But unless certain rare conditions exist, it’s not permanent. Again, we haven’t gotten that far yet.”
“Our minds switched bodies,” Edgar Jandak said.
“No one can actually switch bodies,” said the genial black man, “the mind is an emergent system derived from a complex interrelationship of firing synapses, neuron paths, chemical secretions, and much more. The mind is not a fixed latticework of magical energy that can be picked up and put down wherever we feel like it.”
My eyes, thought Edgar Jandak. So kind. Give them back to me.
“What we can do is teach the brain to fire its synapses differently and ‘ghost’ in memories and ideas that aren’t native to the thinker. We can temporarily make the brain send electrical impulses down different neural configurations. In short, we can tell you that you’re someone else, and for a time, you will believe it.”
Edgar’s mind fizzed with a giddy sense of universal vertigo. Vladek wanted a cup of black coffee. Edgar pushed him down into the darkness, holding tight to the moment.
“It’s possible that you might cling a little to the ‘new you,’ but that’s a purely psychological phenomenon,” Richland said. “Everyone we’ve tested has shown that the brain’s neural pathways rebound nicely from the transfer. No damage, no permanent effects.”
And there was someone else in his brain with Edgar Jandak. He was an angry, self-pitying man, full of petty jealousies and years of repressed rage. He was fluent in three different languages, and had never had a single successful relationship with anyone in his life. He didn’t let himself love anyone for fear that they would treat him as badly as he expected everyone to treat him. He lived alone, no pet, no lover. His apartment was decorated in matching, simple colors, merely what he could afford rather than what he wanted. Did he care?
Die, please die, Edgar Jandak thought. Don’t live anymore. Even I don’t love you.
“Vladek, are you listening to me?” Richland asked. “I said, we’re going to need to run some tests today. Dr. Tsuridome will begin your adjustment therapy, and there’s a battery of neurological tests we need to do, too. It’s only going to take a couple of hours.”
“I-I can’t stay.”
He started to get up. A firm, gentle grip caught his pale wrist and guided him back to the chair.
“Now, Vladek, be reasonable. It can’t be work, can it? The stipend we paid you was fairly handsome, considering how short the transfer was intended to last,” Richland said. “But that’s only right, of course. We’re also ready to give you all the psychiatric follow-up you might need. You understand? The testing and therapy need to begin today.”
Edgar looked desperately out of Vladek Jandak’s body as he nodded to Richland, and he could no longer remember Charmaine’s body or the scent of the honeysuckle that grew on the fence of his uncle’s small urban backyard.
As Vladek Jandak went to the laboratory with Richland, Edgar clutched at the sands of memory that hissed away into lethean nothingness. Reading Bless Me, Ultima in the university library when he seriously considered majoring in journalism and literature, screaming at the red and meaty stump of his knee in the ditch by a jungle road, countless cheap chicken sandwiches and tacos at fast food joints, a thousand hot showers, half-remembered nights of sleep, chicken pox: vanishing, all vanishing. Did he love butterscotch or hate it? When had he first needed corrective eye surgery? Was he right-handed or left-handed?
Does God have a place for what I am?
Edgar was a sandcastle, lapped by gentle yet persistent waves; he finally let go of the terror, ebbed away.
They were finished testing Vladek Jandak. He joked about still wanting to put on a lab coat and carry a clipboard, too. He thanked Doctor Tsuridome and agreed to return next week for follow-up. He shook Edgar Richland’s hand, and had no idea why Richland seemed slightly sad. He went to the elevator, exited the building, lit a cigarette, thought about tomorrow night’s shift at the restaurant, tried not to think about what he had been. The SWITCHT transfer had completely dissolved, and he had to be himself again. Just like everybody else.
“Switcht” is copyright © 2006 Richard A. Becker and appears here for the first time with the author’s permission.
A native of Los Angeles, California, Richard Becker writes for advertising by day, and for himself by night. His short stories “Revolt of the Ultraists!” and “The Return of Cthadron” will appear later this year in the anthologies Daikaiju 2 and Spicy Slipstream Stories. His short film, “The Call,” is currently in production with Some Company Films.
