His words are so unexpected, it takes me a moment to process what he said.
"You're looking for
me
?" I repeat.
The man smiles and nods. His calm demeanor only makes my sense of fear intensify.
"It's going to be okay," he reassures me. "Can I come in and explain?"
I don't move, not sure what to make of this. He makes a motion to go past me and I don't stop him. He sets his briefcase down on the coffee table and takes a seat on the couch.
"Come on," he says sweetly. "Close the door and take a seat. I'm sure you're wondering what's going on."
The whole day I've wanted answers so badly that my desire for information overtakes my sense of fear. I close the door and take a seat on the loveseat furthest from the couch.
"Who are you?" I ask.
"My name is Richard. I'm here to help you, and apologize."
"For what?"
"You weren't supposed to wake up the way you did."
"Alone on a bench in Central Park?" I ask, unable to hide my anger.
"Is that where you ended up?" He sounds genuinely surprised. Interesting.
I nod.
"We checked there," he says half to himself. "I guess you were already gone."
"Who's we?"
He nods his head and clasps his hands together. "Before we begin, I have to ask. Have you discovered your new ability yet?"
I stare back at him blankly. I wonder how much information about myself I should let him know. Although, as it stands I don't remember anything about myself, so there's not much to give. In fact, just about the only thing I do know about myself is that I can change into any person I want to. Look like anyone I want. I suppose that's the only reason why he's here, so there's probably not much harm in letting him know I know. I give a slight nod.
"Good. I'm sorry you had to find out on your own. Normally we ease you into it. There's a process. Unfortunately everything got messed up."
"Why?"
He leans back in his chair and looks around the hotel room. I guess there's something he's going to hold back because he looks nervous.
"How's your arm?"
He nods to my right arm and I move it slightly and am reminded of the pain I felt in it earlier today.
"That's where we gave you the shot," he explains. "It should be gone by tomorrow. It's like when you get a flu shot."
I give him a stern look. "I'm not worried about my arm. Please tell me what the fuck is going on."
"Listen. Before we begin anything there's something you need to understand, because I'm sure you don't remember. You asked for this. You volunteered."
I nod. "Yeah I figured that from the letter I left myself."
Now his whole body perks up. A sense of alarm hits him. "You left yourself a letter?"
I nod.
"Can I see it?" He asks.
I shake my head. "Maybe after you tell me everything you know."
He takes a breath again and nods. "Fair enough. When you ask 'who's we', you have to understand that I can't tell you who we are, but I can tell you what we do. The whole point of the amnesia is to protect ourselves."
"From what?"
"What we did for you wasn't exactly legal."
His use of "for me" as opposed to "to me" doesn't go unnoticed, and I think he meant it that way.
He continues. "We're experimenting with something. We know it's safe, however there's really no way to test it unless it's tested on a human being."
"Why?"
"Think about it," he says, getting excited. "You can change your physical body into any form you want. All you have to do is think of the form you want to take. That requires conscious thought. That requires a complex mind. It's not like we can test this on rats or chimpanzees. When you're testing a drug, all you need is a creature with an immune system like ours. Immune systems aren't conscious of what they're doing, they just react. What we're doing requires more. It's a paradox. In order to prove it's safe, we need to test it on a human being, but in order to test it on a human being, we need to prove it's safe."
I nod. It makes sense, but then again the argument the salesman gives you always makes sense. What's the fine print?
"We've been working on this for a long time and we know it's safe. That's why you volunteered."
"Why did I volunteer?"
He shrugs. "I don't know. You just said you were tired of being you. Combine that with the fact that when we screened you, you were a fairly healthy person. Actually, a very healthy person. You were a perfect candidate."
"But how do you people know me? How did you find me? Or how did I find you?"
He hesitates, looking in the corner of the room as he thinks. I can tell I'm starting to get to the part he doesn't want to tell me.
"That's a difficult question to answer because I'm not allowed to give you any information about who you used to be. Hell, to be honest with you, I had to practice having a conversation without using pronouns before they would let me see you and believe me, that's a difficult thing to do!"
"Why won't they let you tell me anything about me?"
His eyebrows raise and he smiles. "It's not us, it's you. You didn't want us to tell you anything about yourself."
I think about that for a moment, thinking about the letter I left for myself.
Please don't concern yourself with me and who you were before. Your name, your age, your gender, your background, all of it doesn't matter
is what I wrote to myself.
"Well I've changed my mind," I say. "Now I want to know."
He shakes his head. "You were pretty thorough. You see, given what we were doing, we needed you to sign paperwork saying you won't sue us no matter what happens. You put a stipulation in there that in turn, we have to agree to keep all information about your prior-self confidential, especially from you. If we tell you anything about who you were before this, our agreement is void and we're opening ourselves up for litigation. So I'm sorry, but I can't tell you anything about who you were."
I sit back in my chair and think about this. So I really will never find out who I was. This is it. This is me for the rest of my life. A lost soul with no real identity.
"Don't look so sad," he says, snapping me back to the conversation. "This is a new beginning."
Interesting. That's what my letter said as well.
"Can you tell me about how this ability works?" I ask.
"Yes!" He says enthusiastically. "I can tell you everything about that. So as you know, you can change into any form you want-"
"Form?" I ask, cutting him off. "What does that mean? I can change into a chair or something if I want?"
"No," he says shaking his head. "Sorry. We say
form
but really we mean
person
. You can change into any person you want. And even that has some rules."
"Like what?"
"Well for starters, there are limits to what you can do. You know Lavoisier's law of conservation of mass energy?"
I give him an annoyed look and shake my head. "I don't even know my own name. Why would I know who Lavoisier is?"
"Matter is neither created nor destroyed," he explains. "It's like that. Your original form had a certain amount of mass to it. You can change your form and you can be taller or shorter than you originally were, but you can't take it to the extreme. For instance, you can't make yourself a giant and you can't make yourself a foot tall."
I nod, thinking back to when I met Barry and thought if I get into trouble, I'll just turn myself into a seven foot three-hundred pound man. Good thing it didn't come to that.
"It also limits how old you can make yourself," he says. "You can't turn into a child. At least, not a very young one. Like a toddler. If you tried, you'd probably look like someone in their late teens with a toddler's face. Same thing if you try to make yourself as tall as you possibly can. You can probably make yourself pretty tall, but you'll be a twig. You'll look stretched out."
"Okay. So nothing extreme."
"Also, you can only change into a basic genetic human being. You can't turn into an animal or something. And you can't add limbs or anything like that."
"So no dogs and no three armed people. Got it."
"Or a third boob?" He says jokingly."
I give him a weird look.
"Total Recall?" He asks.
I shake my head.
"Never-mind," he says, looking embarrassed.
"So why can't I give myself extra limbs?" I ask.
"Well the human body is kind of like a perfectly designed machine. Each part has a purpose. You can't add or subtract parts without altering other things. For instance, if you did give yourself an extra arm, it would create more veins to pump blood through and create stress on your heart. Your body isn't designed for that, so you just won't do it."
"What if I give myself an extra heart?"
"Like a time lord?" He says with a grin again.
I look at him blankly.
"I'm going to give up the sci-fi references on you," he says disappointed.
"Please do."
"Just because your body is changing doesn't mean
everything
is changing. There are certain vital organs that need to continually be working in order for you to stay alive. The brain, the heart, the lungs, among other things. For example, if you tried to change your heart, even by giving yourself a second one, it means your heart would stop working for a moment, and then other parts of your body would stop working in turn and you'd be dead before you completed the transition. You can change genders because the parts that are different between men and women aren't necessary in order to stay alive. This is also true if you tried to replace a missing organ. Say you donated a kidney. You wouldn't be able to create another kidney because that matter is already gone and your kidney's don't change when you do."
I nod, not sure what to say.
"I'm also just realizing you probably don't remember this next part."
I can tell he looks nervous about this. My eyes narrow and my expression hardens.
"You're sterile."
It takes me a moment to realize what he means, then it registers.
"I can't have children?"
He shakes his head. "We had to...disable any reproductive capabilities you had. We're not sure how that would work and wasn't part of our test. It's really for your own protection."
"Why?"
"Well if you are in male form, I suppose there's not much risk, but if you were in female form and were to get pregnant, we're not sure what would happen if you changed back into a male. The male body is not meant to handle a fetus. Literally. Where would it go? It would probably damage other organs in your body, even if you just changed momentarily."
