Mind and Flesh Page 12

  I enter the lab corridor. There is a closet next to the door, with a sign “lab coats”. I open the door, take a lab coat and put it on. Lab coats are usually located either outside of a lab or next to the entrance. I should not enter this lab first. Something else I need to do right before… I walk along the corridor and open the door to another lab. This is lunch time, so there wouldn’t be many people. This lab is full of electronics. Not what I am looking for. I close the door and walk further until I find a lab with what I am looking for. Chemicals. I reach for the fume hood, since toxic substances are most usually stored in close proximity to the fume hood. Indeed, after opening a few cupboards with a warning sign I find what I was looking for. Chloroform. I put the bottle in the fume hood, fill several fifty milliliters tubes with it and pocket them. I put the bottle back where I found it and look for a piece of cloth. There aren’t any around here. I keep around in the lab. Ok, there is something else I can do. I pick up an abandoned lab coat, grab a pair of scissors and cut a piece of it. I then throw the lab coat in the garbage bin and get out of this lab.

  I face once again the door of the lab where the neuro-engineer should be working. Doubts are starting to creep on me. Chloroform is dangerous, I can damage the brain cells with that. Precious brain cells. I should have looked into another way to neutralize him. I was so happy to know that I can easily find chloroform on-site that I forgot to look for alternatives. Well, I can’t back out of this now. I push the door. Wait! Do I need to wake him up for the mind transfer? I can just go make a solution of ammonia in the lab I was in. Yeah, I will do that to stay on the cautious side and not become asleep myself once I transfer into his body.

  I go back to the previous lab. Ok, I have everything. Just some ammonia and isopropanol, about two milliliters each then I complete with six milliliters water in a fifteen milliliter tube. I leave this lab again, and go for the door of the neuro-engineer lab. Do I have everything now? About twenty minutes have passed since I stole the card in the restaurant. Restaurant… Wait, is that guy maybe out having lunch? If he is out having lunch, I will wait inside for his return. In any case, I am already inside the building, so even if they deactivate the card I have more time now. I push the door and enter the lab.

  There it is. My machine, on a bench in the middle of various electronics. It has been opened and its pieces have been carefully laid around it, with the wires still connected. Even when it was fully assembled, it didn’t look much better as it always was a raw prototype and the different warts were just clipped on a base frame. The more classical computer parts to run the algorithm and the display are not even separated in their own case, they are just savagely screwed to the guts of the frame. The nice modern screen sticks out in all this mess. And in front of it, the neuro-engineer busy inputting data on a computer next to my machine. As the door closes behind me, he turns towards me.

  “Hello? Can I help you?”

  My heart starts racing again. I force a smile that I am afraid comes out as a rictus, and answer “Hello! Don’t mind me, I am just checking if the air conditioning is working in the labs of this wing. It doesn’t seem to be working in the other wing.”

  He replies “Ah alright, it seems to be fine here,” and then resumes what he was doing without looking at me. I stop smiling. I need to get into action. Just like before when I needed to steal the access card, I am afraid to act. I stay transfixed. This guy here is going to die. It will be a loss to science, he is brilliant. Perhaps he is a nice person and doesn’t deserve to die. Should I talk to him, and ask for the machine back? Explain the situation?

  No. I have been betrayed by everyone so far. I can only rely on myself, no other human being. And his position is the best fit for me. No mercy. I pull out the cloth and the tube of chloroform. I hold my breath, pour some of the chloroform on the cloth, sneak behind the man and quickly press the cloth against his mouth and nose while locking his arms into place. He tries to struggle as I touch him, but I don’t let him break my grip while I maintain the cloth on his face. Until I feel him relaxing. His weight then collapses on me. I accompany his fall and let him lie on the ground. I let out a sigh of relief.

  I grab a sheet of paper close by. A datasheet of whatever, doesn’t matter. I turn it, take a marker and write “FUMIGATION IN PROGRESS – do not enter”. I take some tape and attach my caution sheet to the door. No one is going to disturb me now.

  I use a lot of a strong tape to fix the man tightly to a bench. I also fix his neck so that when I wake him up he doesn’t shake the neuro-helmet off. Once I am satisfied with him, I go back to my machine. Nothing seems to be broken, he was just analyzing my montage and trying to find out what does what with the help of some other equipment. I screw everything back together, make sure the power is on and place the neuro-helmets on my head and his.

  My sister climbing a tree when she was a kid. A series of numbers hanging from the tree instead of fruits. The system recognizes me. I am relieved, everything is still working perfectly. No one broke my precious toy. I don’t want any background effect of the sleep signals during my operation, so I take the vial of ammonia and open it under the nose of the neuro-engineer.

  He seems agitated and sneezes. He then opens his eyes and looks at me.

  “What does this mean? Who are you?” He looks at me with pathetic eyes. He is ugly, I didn’t really notice that before.

  “Shut up,” I reply while I ask for the machine to analyze his brain and decide on the neuronal synapses to set back to blank state. I give the order as quickly as possible to prevent myself from letting my feelings get the best of me. I killed him. He is nothing but a vegetable.

  I then proceed to trigger the brain copy. That man’s neuronal synapses are now rewired to reflect mine.

  He opens his mouth and says “It worked. Now fucking remove all that tape.”

  I answer “Sure” and start to unwrap him. He lets out a few “Outch!” here and there as I tear off some body hair.

  “You could have been more careful with were you taped me,” he says with a tinge of reproach in his voice.

  “Well, that’s what you did, genius. You can’t blame me.”

  “I know.” He winks.

  He seems happy to be in that new body. I am not. I condemned myself to die, since I didn’t actually leave this body. I made a copy of myself that will live on. And I am still stuck there, where I don’t want to be. Do I really want to die, now? Couldn’t I live on?

  “Hey… Do you really need to… disappear?” he tentatively asks. Is he going through the same train of thoughts? That wouldn’t surprise me, since we basically are the same person.

  “I don’t know… Yes, I suppose. I will erase my neuronal activity with the machine.”

  “No… You can’t do that…”

  “Yes, it needs to be done.”

  “No… That’s not what I mean. How do you suppose that I will look with a dead body here?”

  I look at him with my mouth ajar. Holy shit. My objective was to transfer my mind to a new body and I would erase myself, end of the story. I didn’t think about what happens next since it was none of my concern in this body. I am so selfish. Selfish for not having thought about the life of my clone, and my clone himself is selfish for asking me to live on instead of putting me out of my misery.

  What can be done? Either I leave this place and go suicide somewhere. Or maybe… he can transform me into a vegetable and sneak me out somehow? No, that seems impossible to achieve. Smuggling a body out of the building without raising suspicion. Perhaps if he cuts me in smaller pieces, put them in dry ice containers? Would he actually do that?

  “So errr… what do you want to do? Leave this place and suicide? I can… help?” he asks.

  “I don’t think I can suicide. I want to get this over with. I am sick of living. I will erase myself. Can you cut me into pieces to smuggle me out?”

  “Wow that’s… that’s gruesome,” he says with a look of disgust. “I don’t think I can do that. And a
nyway, what do I do with the pieces?”

  “Bury them?”

  “I don’t even know if this guy has a car to take the pieces away.”

  “Ok. Let’s assume he doesn’t. The alternative is that you cut me into pieces then keep them in boxes with dry ice, then put the boxes in the biohazard waste disposal that will be eventually be incinerated.”

  He looks at me for a long time. He swallows noisily then says “Yes, ok,” and sighs deeply.

  “Thank you and goodbye,” I comment while ordering the machine to delete my consciousness.

  PART 3 – His Flesh

  Her naked body is lying on the wheeled metal table in the cold room. I undressed her and kept the clothes nearby to later envelop the butchered pieces in them. This whole scene is very unsettling to me. The body of my wife. The body I inhabited for a little while. The body remaining still that I will now destroy. This is a waste. I loved her, I am in love with that beautiful body of hers, and I started to enjoy my time in her skin. I am very attached to her body.

  Now that I am not inside of this body, I don’t even think that it is broken anymore. She is beautiful. Why couldn’t I be stronger and recover from the rape? No, it only seems easy to say because I see it from a new different perspective, now that she is not me anymore. Moreover this is too late, I am in a new body, and she is dead. Dead for good this time, her heart stopped soon after it stopped receiving signals from the brain.

  I have not yet had the time to explore this new male body of mine. I just feel lighter and freer in my chest area, also no hair is falling around my face.

  I steady my hand carrying the bone-saw. I wish I had found an electric buzz-saw instead, because this is going to take me quite a while. Hopefully, as long as there is the fumigation sign no one will enter and witness me butchering a human body.

  I have already dissected animals in the past. I didn’t feel much about it. This was work. I did not see the animals as pets or live creatures, just instruments for my research. However, now… A human body. This feels completely different to me. And definitively not work. More like a murder. I am finally giving a tangible and physical presence to the murder of my wife, and this unsettles me a lot more than the butchering itself.

  My hand starts to shake. No! I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to…

  No. It is too late to go back. I have to commit now. This is just removing evidence. She is already dead, the deed is done. And I also murdered the guy whose body I just took over. There is no going back. After all these murders, I shouldn’t be so peachy about what I am doing. Exactly, I should force myself to live through the gruesome consequences of my choices. Take responsibility for my actions. Realize the dark side of having escaped my body to live again in the body of others. For my survival and comfort, others had to pay the price. I traded their life for more of mine. This is now my turn to pay a modest price, by experiencing some of the horror that I caused.

  My hand stopped shaking. I gently place the bone-saw on top of her wrist, make sure the straps are strong enough, and start to grind. I clench my teeth and feel my eyes becoming watery.

  ***

  I sit on the neuro-engineer’s chair, in his office. I remain still. Not just because I am exhausted. I still have the images of the butchered body vivid in my mind. My shirt is moist with sweat. I feel dizzy. I look at my hands. I do not remember the exact skin color of this guy, but I doubt that it is supposed to be this pale. My throat is sore. There is a bottle of water nearby, I grab it and start drinking. Until I realize that someone else previously drank from it and I am now sharing bacteria with them. No. Probably my bacteria now. I give myself a smile. A nervous smile.

  Looking for something to distract my mind, I turn on the computer. It was already on. The screen says that I need to… enter my password. Oh. Great. Even if I am in this body, I did not keep memories of that guy’s password.

  Fuck. Shit. Fuck fuck fuck! Why did I not think this through? My previous incarnation didn’t see past transferring to the new body since it was the end for him/her. What about me now? I am not prepared for this new life. I took over with no knowledge about this guy. His life. His habits. His secrets. I need to at least access the neuro-engineer’s timetable, e-mail address, physical address and any other way to replace him in his life. And I need to know what he found out and revealed about the capacities of my machine…

  Brilliant. Genius. What a selfish moron I am, not even helping myself.

  Although… Each of my previous iterations agreed to die for the next one to survive. Still certainly not because they were selfless. No, instead it is because I am too weak to accept where life leads me and live on through uncomfortable circumstances.

  I do not accept the misfortunes life throws at me. I don’t believe in fate or destiny, so there are no situations that I should be forced to endure as long as I can fight against it. Fuck life, I will survive and thrive. Create the life that I want.

  And right now what I want is to get revenge on those that forced me to be on the run from my own body. I used to work in the field of sciences to better humanity. What is humanity doing in return? Betraying me? Crippling me? Raping me? Watching all my troubles and never helping? Humans are not as good as they want to make it seem. They seek sex and abuse power. What if I could change them? What if I could… correct their minds? The prospect is appealing. I need to figure out how. Create the conditions for life that I want.

  For now, I will start by infiltrating the life of that body. And it is not a stupid password that will stop me, even if I wish I had actually extracted the password out of the neuro-engineer before killing him. I would have used force if necessary. I will not hesitate to use violence ever again.

  More and more, in places where informatics security is important, passwords have to be complicated and changed every once in a while. Public sector and its research are not exempt of that trend, this was the case at my previous Institute as well. A lot of people have trouble keeping up with remembering a changing password and see that step more as a hassle than a security measure. Consequently, they write it down in their office to have it available in case they forget it. I even remember a brilliant researcher that stuck his password on the wall, available for everyone to see. This is obviously not the case for this neuro-engineer. Perhaps it could be written behind some wishes cards hanging around? Perhaps in the notebook left in the middle of the desk? No. I go through his belongings, looking for the password. I search everywhere I can, but I have to accept that the password is nowhere to be found.

  I look back at the computer screen. “If you forgot your password, please call IT at…”. If I call IT, they might ask a security question. I don’t know anything about this guy, so it would not be a good idea. Perhaps I can find a few things in his personal papers? I have his phone and wallet. His phone… I can’t even use it. Another password I need to crack.

  At least there is his address on his identity card. I can go to his place. I come across papers belonging to a woman sharing his name. Ah. His wife. An unforeseen complication. Will she be able to see through me, see that the mind is different? This is… very likely. I will have to be careful. I will see and improvise. Eliminate her if necessary.

  There is a city map on his desk. I pick it up. It is a cycling map, which explains why I did not find any car keys but instead there were some unfamiliar small keys. I would not be able to recognize his bike… Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to live too far away. I can get there in about half an hour. What time is it? Late. The wife might already be there before I arrive.

  ***

  “Good evening honey,” the wife says as I open the entrance door, her voice coming from the couch. I cannot see her yet, only the back of the couch. “You are late! And why didn’t you come with your bike? What happened?”

  I thought this over on the way here.

  “I had an accident,” I reply. “The bike is damaged, I left it at work.”

  “Oh no! What happened? Are you alright?”


  She stands up and comes closer to inspect me. Ouch. She is ugly. Skin damaged, likely from too much tanning. Fake eyebrows that she drew herself. Weird hair styling pulled backwards. The opposite of my wife, who was a natural beauty that took a healthy care of herself. As I stand with my mouth ajar, she talks again “Well, aren’t you saying anything? Are you alright? What happened? Oh that is an ugly scratch on your head… Are you ok?”

  What she has just seen is part of my plan. “When I was cycling, a car parked next to the bike path opened its door. It projected on the road. I hit my head. I feel dizzy.”

  Little she knows that on the way here I used a rock to scratch slight marks on my forehead and arms.

  “Come here, I will dress you. You should see a doctor to see if you have a fractured skull. Are you hurting somewhere?”

  “I feel some tingling around the wound. Apart from that I don’t think that I have anything broken. However, I feel like I lost my memory a bit. I couldn’t remember the code of my phone to call you.”

  “Oh dear… Let me show you after I patch you up.”

  “Thank you.” Victory! I will use her to access all the passwords. She seems to have a good relationship with her husband, and since she knew the password of the phone already, perhaps they trusted each other so much that they knew each other’s passwords. Which was the case with my wife, but as it turns out she still was not trustworthy. What a fool I was.

  She brings me to the bathroom and sprays some disinfectant on my wound, then wipes my forehead gently with cotton. She finishes by posing a soft kiss on my forehead. Oh no. No no no.