It all started when Hope got off the bus at the wrong stop. Normally, she rode all the way through downtown and changed at the depot at Miller Circle, but today she pulled the cord to indicate that she needed to get out right in the middle of the business district. She didn't know why she did it; her hand simply moved up on its own to signal for a stop.
Things got stranger when the bus doors opened. Hope found herself standing up, scooping up her backpack and walking down the aisle without really thinking about it. She knew that she wasn't supposed to get out here; she knew that she would be late for class if she had to spend fifteen minutes waiting for the next bus to come by. But those facts existed only as abstract concepts, entirely unrelated to the concrete reality of her body stepping down the stairs and exiting the bus. They drifted through her mind with no real sense of urgency or importance.
Then she set out along the sidewalk. She caught a glimpse of herself in the reflective windows of one skyscraper after another, but they didn't reveal anything about her sudden departure from routine. She looked a little different than she was used to, but between the weight she'd dropped over the last month or so and the short haircut, Hope had gotten used to doing a bit of a double-take when she looked at herself in the mirror. Seeing those messy tufts of dirty blonde hair instead of the long, flowing locks she had gotten used to over the years was always a little startling. But a new 'do really couldn't explain why she was wandering off like this. Or even where she was going. Hope suddenly realized that for all the urgency in her stride, she had no idea at all where her body was taking her.
She definitely moved quickly, though. It only took her a few minutes to go six city blocks, and she wasn't even out of breath when she got to a red brick building on 10th Street that she didn't recognize. A few weeks ago she would probably have broken a bit of a sweat making that kind of a walk, but Hope's exercise regimen was paying off. Admittedly, she started it thinking she would be hiking, or walking some of the local nature trails, and not watching her body move under its own control to an unfamiliar destination, but Hope couldn't help noticing the positive side of the situation.
She literally couldn't. The part of Hope's brain that wanted to panic felt like it had gone numb.
Hope went through the revolving doors without breaking stride, and walked past the security desk to a bank of elevators. The guard didn't stop her. She didn't even seem interested in Hope's activities. She just kept staring at the security monitors with a bored expression on her face while Hope pressed the call button. When the elevator arrived, Hope stepped into it and pushed the button for the eighth floor without a moment's hesitation.
While the elevator smoothly ascended, Hope took a moment to take in her surroundings. A small plaque next to the '8' said, 'Violet Reveries Consulting', but the name meant nothing to Hope. She'd never heard of it. Nonetheless, her body had decided to take her right to it. The whole thing felt so surreal that Hope was more fascinated than upset or afraid. She felt like she was watching herself in a movie, spectating the events that happened to the strange young woman with the vacant expression and cloudy blue eyes she saw in the reflection in the elevator doors.
She was glad. Instinctively, Hope knew that struggling wouldn't achieve anything.
When the doors opened, Hope walked down the hallway to a black door set into a blank white wall. There was a tiny keypad next to it, and Hope watched herself tap in a combination of numbers that she didn't recognize or remember. It was a six digit number. Hope did a quick calculation in her head-the odds of getting that number right by accident were a million to one. Nevertheless, the light above the keypad turned green, and a speaker buzzed over the sound of the lock clicking open. Hope opened the door and went inside.
The room she entered was small, just large enough for a reception desk and a few chairs. A woman sat behind the desk next to a red door leading deeper into the building, and Hope was startled-well, as startled as she could get right now-to realize they had an identical hairstyle. The woman's hair was black instead of blonde, but she had cut it in the exact same way. Hope hadn't realized how butch it looked until she saw it on someone else. No wonder those women kept hitting on her last night.
Oh, and she was naked, too. That was also kind of strange.
The naked woman looked up as Hope entered the room and crossed over to the desk. Hope could see that she, too, had been staring into a security monitor like the guard downstairs...but now that she got a good look at it, the screen wasn't showing footage from the building. It wasn't really showing anything at all, just a weird flickering static that made Hope's eyes water involuntarily. (More involuntarily than anything else she was doing right now, Hope corrected herself.)
The woman looked at Hope with a serious expression on her face and asked, with no preamble, "Are you ready?"
Hope replied, still without knowing why, "Yes, I'm ready."
The woman's face broke into a smile. "Excellent!" she said, taking a form out from one of the desk's drawers and grabbing a pen. "Then if you'll just take off your clothes, I'll get your intake interview underway. Then we can get you inside and begin your full synchronization."
"Of course!" Hope responded, her voice just as bright and cheery as the woman behind the desk. The woman didn't have a nameplate, Hope realized. Everyone always had a nameplate at a reception desk, so you knew who to complain about when they did a bad job. But not this woman. She was resolutely anonymous. Hope thought about asking for the other woman's name, but then she remembered her mouth seemed to be following an entirely different script from her brain.
