Mind and Flesh Read online

  The dick stopped growing. I reached maximum size. I am not impressed. I fantasized better. Still, it looks good, and that is all that matter to me right now. And the pleasure it is giving me. How I missed it! Looking at the penis gets me more and more excited. I slide faster and faster.

  There is a sudden release of tension, a signal, a background threshold that has been reached. Then I ejaculate, while accompanying the projection of sperm with a firm grip on the tip in order to maximize the feeling of tickling mixed with peace and relaxation.

  I stay there for perhaps a few minutes, standing immobile with just the light movement of my hand caressing my cock. Then I feel like I gradually get my awareness back, and it strikes me. There is sperm on the floor and the side of the bathtub. And I need to clear all evidence relating my new body to the death of the neuro-engineer.

  I go grab some oxygen bleach and absorbing paper, and spray the bleach on where my sperm is. I then scrub with the absorbing paper and throw it in the toilet bowl and flush. I should also remove my prints.

  Most likely, if people find the body of the neuro-engineer they will conclude that it was a heart attack. Because that is the truth anyway. There is nothing that would hint of a murder or even a suicide. However, I still feel like I should take more precautions to assure a relatively better safety for this new body of mine. It feels like a prized trophy that I had been craving for. Now that I have it, I do not want to let it go!

  Ew. The bucket of vomit. I need to clean that, too. in order to be as little affected as possible, I hold my breath and close my eyes as much as possible while still allowing for rudimentary vision. I then empty the content of the bucket in the toilet bowl again and flush. Not everything is gone. I resist the growing urge to vomit, and I flush again. And again.

  Ok, it’s gone. I spray the bucket with bleach, scrub it and get rid of the paper. Should I also bleach the glass I drank from? Well, since I’m at it, there is no hurt in doing so.

  After the glass, I use a soft towel on every surface that I touched or that the guy inhabiting this body before me could have touched. I barely look at the body of the neuro-engineer when I walk through the living room. I have no regret.

  I triggered neurons in the medulla oblongata to continuously stimulate the vagus nerve to decrease the heart rate, while neurons linked to the accelerator nerve were blanked. Death by cardiac arrest was a good idea for a painless death. Well, I think that it was painless? I did not actually see it. I did not see my old self die. Actually, the process was so smooth that it feels like I just transferred from one body to the other and that I did not make a copy this time. Or perhaps, I am getting insensitive and I do not care as much about the fate of others. Yes, I should not forget that I made the previous owner of the handsome body disappear.

  Once I am satisfied with cleaning up any trace of my presence, I throw a last glance at the body on the couch. His eyes do not look in peace much… I wonder if his expression of distress was mechanically caused by the cardiac arrest, pain, or… second thoughts on dying.

  In any case, this is behind me now. I open the front door, careful to use a towel not to touch the doorknob directly with my fingers. I then go back inside to start picking up components of my machine.

  ***

  I enter my new apartment. The door directly leads to a square room with a couch and TV in the first half of the space. In the middle, there are two chairs and a round table surmounted by a laptop. Finally, a kitchenette towards the end. There is a storage cabinet near the kitchenette, and nothing else that could pass as a meager decoration. I drop the machine and the neuro-helmets on the couch, then explore the rest of the apartment. There is a bedroom with some dressers, and a small bathroom with a shower. This guy clearly did not care about living in comfort or luxury. Or since he was at an early step of his career, perhaps he could not afford much better yet.

  The thought of having to go through the academic ladder again suddenly demoralizes me. This was such a pain… The quest for grants, papers to publish, extensive networking and so on. I am not really tempted to go through that again just to get a better standard of living for my new body. And perhaps it will not even be possible, since I do not suppose that the government guy will allow me to publish any information related to the machine. Well, perhaps he can pull some strings to help me out.

  Wait, why I am thinking so ahead of myself instead of being more wary about that guy and more focused on my objectives? I should not let the relief of obtaining this new body cloud my mind. I feel thirsty. I open the fridge and find that it is almost empty. Damn the previous owner of this body, he could have bought some stock before dying. I think that I saw a grocery store outside, very close from here. I grab a bottle of water and open the drawers in the kitchenette area until I find a glass. I pour myself some water. I feel like shit, I still need to get a lot of water to pass the hangover.

  I then leave the apartment, close the door with my new keys, head down the stairs and walk towards the location of the grocery store. I enter, pick up a basket and start grabbing what I need. I am casually shopping, only a few hours after I murdered another human being.

  As I am pondering which toothbrush to buy, pain starts. My head. It hurts again. Fucking headache. I try to massage my temporal area to make the feeling of being crushed go away. It feels slightly better, but the pain is still here.

  I hurry up to choose the items I need. I don’t know this place. Hard to navigate and look around with that fucking headache. Too many lights. Too many people. That old woman walking in the middle of the lane.

  Move away. Move away old debris. Why are you so slow? She is pissing me off. My head hurts.

  Fuck her. I force my way through and push her with my shoulder. She screams.

  “Shut up or I tear off that wretched skin of yours and wipe the fucking floor with it!”

  I think she stops dead silent with her mouth open. I don’t see clearly, I am already moving away. My head... I don’t care about this old lady. I need to find over-the-counter medicine.

  Not here. Not this aisle. Beauty and care products, I am getting closer. Ok, here. I squint to read the names on the boxes of medicine. I find paracetamol, put a few boxes in my basket. I head for the cashier.

  Not walking anymore. I can focus on calming down and keeping my composure until I can swallow a pill. The lights make me dizzy, and being in an unknown environment I am not used to prevents me from leaving my body to auto-pilot. The cashier. She asked me something.

  “What?”

  “Do you have the loyalty card?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like to purchase it?”

  “Fuck, no leave it be. I have no time to waste with that shit.”

  She looks outraged and angrily starts to pack my items in plastic bags.

  I might come here to shop often, I should not leave a bad impression.

  “I am sorry,” I tell her. “I am having a migraine. All I want right now is to leave this bright place behind and crawl into bed.”

  “Oh… I see… I am sorry…” she replies.

  As soon as the price appears on the monitor, I pay cash, wait for my change without even checking if the amount is right, take my bags and leave. I really do need to rest in bed as soon as possible. I hope that at least the bed is comfortable.

  ***

  I am in the bathroom. Need to brush my teeth from the taste of vomit.

  I grab the toothbrush and put it in my mouth.

  I spit it out.

  It is infected.

  It is someone else’s toothbrush.

  I extract the new one I bought from its case and put it in my mouth.

  It is too soft, a bit slimy.

  I take it out and examine it.

  Fuck! It is a wrinkled penis.

  The one I had before.

  I don’t want to see it anymore!

  I put it in the sink and grab a pair of nail scissors.

  I stab the penis repeatedly. It bleeds. It scr
eams.

  The whole sink is full of blood.

  The scream becomes high pitched.

  The mirror on top of the sink moves away to reveal the government asshole with a camera.

  He asks me to stop stabbing that old dick, he wants me to cut mine.

  I look down to my pants.

  No, I don’t want to do that.

  He says it is the only way he will give me grants to keep working on the machine.

  Do I really have to do that then?

  He nods.

  As quickly as possible, I stab the scissors in one of his eyes.

  I pluck the eyeball out and drop it in the sink, with the penis.

  I stab the eyeball.

  He asks me to stop, but the voice is different.

  I look up, and my sister is missing an eye.

  I am sweating. It takes me a few moments to realize that I am lying down in my bed and this was another nightmare. My bed sheet now feels so damp… Disgusting. I need to take a shower.

  I get up and go to the bathroom. I take off my pajamas and enter the shower. I turn the water on and get under the spray. The warmth feels so good. It helps release some of the tension.

  I dreamt about my sister. I wonder how she is doing. Perhaps I could check out on her. As long as I do not get her more involved… No, not if I am under surveillance which is very likely.

  What a pity. I acquired a great body, which lets me think that my life is on better tracks. And I wish she was a part of it. That I could make good use of that handsome body of mine.

  Once I am done rinsing the soap off my skin, I start the coffee machine while preparing some toasts. Here I am, a dangerous killer, making his morning toast. I killed multiple people and possessed other bodies than mine, and yet I have to go through the motions to keep myself alive.

  One day it will be possible to transfer the human mind into an artificial brain. If my technology were to get released, this would probably happen within a decade or two. However the transfer alone is not enough. There needs to be an artificial body to answer to that brain, as a brain in a vacuum would be a terrifying experience: another form of locked-in syndrome. So, there has to be a robot body, or at least an avatar in a virtual space. And then there would be no need to eat. To drink. To have sex. Would it be possible to cut off all the human desires then, and stop this nonsense of power and violence? Just as roads populated with automated self-driving cars are safer than roads populated with human drivers, would humans brains mounted in machines disconnected from their bodily needs be nicer and live in harmony? Even after thinking about it for a few seconds, I guess that there will still be incentives to try to have the edge over others, and to have more power than them. A robot body with better specifications. Control over the production and distribution of robot parts. Many will keep trying to obtain every potential advantage, and more weight in decision power. Is humanity doomed to fail building a happy and kind world, forever unable to escape the darkest side of its nature?

  In any case, I will not wait to see what happens to those that will try to become post-physical and abandon their physical bodies. Human nature itself needs to be corrected, not its vessel. I want to act on all humans in the most widespread way possible, and as soon as possible. What better way than if the government decides to put my machine in every building and every house in order to spy on people’s thoughts, and then my machine has global access to correct human nature? Perhaps this world will be a better place, and the horror that I went through will not happen to anyone ever again. This is what I will achieve with my machine. Get revenge on human nature by correcting it to the standards that I will choose. Even if I have to transgress those standards to reach my objective, even if I already became a monster.

  I will do whatever is necessary. I am a monster. I am a butcher. I am dangerous. When I want something, I get it. No more bending over and incurring others. Once the week-end is over, I will upgrade the machine. And while it upgrades, I will do as much research as I can to pinpoint the areas of the brain I want to target. So when the government asshole deploys my machine everywhere, I will impose my will upon them all. They will be reprogrammed to behave like the idyllic human beings that they are supposed to be and not like the animals that they like to think themselves superior to.

  ***

  I position my newly acquired card against the reader, and the transparent panels of the turnstile set themselves in motion to let me through. The lobby of this institute displays different sorts of machines behind glass. There are also signs explaining who built them and when. I walk past the reception and call for an elevator while a security agent standing there nods at me. I nod back at him and enter the elevator. As long as I look confident and not hesitating, everything should be fine.

  As I am about to press the button to choose my level, I hear hurried footsteps followed by a call “Wait! Hey, wait!” A man is trying to reach the elevator before it leaves.

  I do not wait press the button anyway.

  He still manages to reach the doors in time before they close on him. “Thank you,” he whispers in a deep breath. Apparently, he thinks that I pressed the button to maintain the doors open, since they did not close before he arrived. Now that I think about it, I don’t know why I pressed the button for the floor and not to the one keep the doors open. When I was still in my original body, I would have done it the other way round.

  The guy leaves the elevator at the very next floor. That little trip was not worth getting in and annoying me. He could have taken the stairs.

  Two more floors and here I am. I look at the signs to find where my office is approximately located and set off in that direction. Now at any moment I could meet the two research assistants that worked under the patronage of this body, and will now have to work for me. Since I knew who they are, I only had to look up their pictures on the internet. Hopefully, they will not be too suspicious of their boss having a different personality.

  I don't meet too many new people on my way, perhaps because I arrived early. Whenever I meet someone, I nod at them, unable to determine if I am supposed to know them or to greet in a warmer manner. I finally reach my new office, at the end of a corridor. I open the door and see that it is as small and impersonal as the apartment I was in. No notes on every corner, no publications piled on the desk. Everything is neat and ordered, with nothing apparent on the surfaces.

  I turn on the computer and look through the window while it boots. Although the room is small, there is a nice view on the campus park. The computer asks me to log in. I type in the password. The icon turns into a loading sign… come on… come on… A red cross. Shit! It worked just fine on the laptop in the apartment… Maybe I just didn't type it in correctly. I try again… the loading sign… And yes! I see the start screen. Good. What a pain. How convenient it would be if I could keep some information and memories from the brains I take over!

  Alright, now I just have to…

  Hammer to my head. Fuck! The pain. It is back.

  My head. Hurts.

  I search in my pocket and retrieve a pill. Fuck, there is no water. I am unable to swallow without water.

  I leave the office. Bathroom. Bathroom.

  Bathroom, here! I open the faucet, place the pill in my mouth, drink some water and swallow.

  Fuck. I close the door, lock it, and sit on the toilets. I massage my forehead.

  I keep at it. Focus. Focus. Please, make it stop.

  I stay here. Pain.

  Someone tries to open the door. Shit. Fuck off.

  I wait. Slowly, the pain gets less and less heavy, until I can finally think clearly. What the fuck is with these migraines, this cannot be the hangover anymore. That body must be deficient. I am really not lucky, why can't I have a nice perfect body to settle in?

  As I stand up, I realize that I was sitting on the ceramic directly. Shit, that's disgusting!

  I grab some toilet paper, wet it under the sink and rub a bit against my bottom. Now I am wet, but I feel
less dirty even if I probably did remove much of the germs.

  Oh well, I came in early, so hopefully no one pissed here since last it was cleaned. And now I have a wet butt.

  I go back to the office, feel ashamed and hoping no one is around and will look at my back. I will not sit right away, but rather wait for my pants to dry for a bit. At least I have a view on the park.

  “Hey boss!”

  I turn around. The two assistants, smiling broadly.

  “Wow boss, you are so happy to hear us that you wet your pants?”

  “Shup up!” I reply. Their smiles vanishes.

  “Woah boss, sorry to catch you in a bad mood. You mailed us to ask for a meeting this morning, right?”

  “Yes, yes.” And now I realize that it was probably out of character to ask them to meet me in that small office with only one chair. “Let's go sit.” Hopefully, they will lead me to where we usually gather.

  “Sure.” I follow them to a meeting room with a few tables, lots of chairs and a video projector aimed at a white screen on the wall. The three of us sit around a table.

  “So, what's up?” asks one of the two. This one is tall, thin and wearing small glasses, dressed with a polo shirt.

  “Is it because you want us to be here when you interview the students for the internship?” The second one is short and plump and wears a large T-shirt.

  Ah yes that is right, I saw that e-mail about selecting a new intern tomorrow. “No, I will deal with this by myself. Alright so, I will walk you guys through the plan of a new machine. I want you to optimize the design, make it smaller and…”

  “What does that machine do?” asks the tall one. He just fucking cut me mid-sentence. I should cut his tongue and insert it back in his anus.

  “This project is top-secret. I am afraid that I can't let you know exactly.”

  “What?” He replies, bewildered. “That's bullshit. I want to know what I work on.”

  “If you want to work on something at all, you are going to do as you are told.” I scold him with a threatening voice. He looks at me with wide eyes, under shock. I am probably not handling this the way my predecessor would.