Discovery

A note from the author:

Crossing Streams is a slow burn. If you enjoy gender/body swap and appreciate an introduction to a sci-fi setting and a bit of flirtation and character development before jumping into your smut, this chapter is for you. If you prefer sex to sexual tension, Chapter 2 is where you want to start.

Discovery

Crossing Streams, Chapter 1

Two miles from downtown Boston and twenty-five stories below the bright blue Janus International sign hanging over Fulkerson Street -- that is, a full five stories beneath the pavement -- I pushed open the cracked door to room B524 and loosened my tie.

"Morning, Ady. Glad to see someone's still enjoying themselves enough around here to show up early to work." Her eyes meet mine over the brim of her coffee mug, mid-sip.

"Hey, Vic. Happy Monday." Ady smiled quickly. "We have quite a bit on the docket today. You better get linked up."

Sitting down and setting my bag at my feet, I pulled a thick, black binder across the table toward my seat and read the title printed in bold across the open page, number 338. "Fuck, another observation assignment? We get ten of these a week." I slumped in my chair.

"They weren't lying when they told us we start out bottom of the food chain," Ady said, shaking her head. "Upside is it should be pretty simple, so you can read the brief after the jump. If you move quickly, we might even be able to get in a long lunch, maybe walk down to that pizza place you like on 6th?"

"Oh, actually, okay. That'd be great." Taking one last swig of my coffee and tossing the cup into the overflowing recycling bin, I rolled up my left sleeve and snapped a worn metal plug into a valve on my forearm. My stomach growled. I hadn't eaten breakfast.

I looked across the table at Ady, who'd already pulled the glass jumping helmet over her face. She adjusted her nametag, and I sounded out the name in my head like a motivational proverb. Like I did every morning. Adelaide Mahdavi: My coworker of four months, and the girl with whom I was beginning to fall in love.

She'd shut her eyes, signaling she was waiting for me. I took my time taking her all in. Her thin, hooked nose, her full, pink lips, the waves of brown hair cascading over her shoulders. Her uniform was in perfect compliance. Her Janus-trademark blue canvas jacket was well-ironed, and her necktie was pulled tightly to her collar.

With my own eyes, I traced my IV tube from the valve on my forearm to the wall. Luminescent blue liquid pulsed down toward me like alien blood. I followed the silvery piping upward, then did a double take when I saw it connect with the buzzing Janus unit mounted above Ady.

I was supposed to be hooked up to the unit above

my

seat, not Ady's. We'd crossed the streams. I opened my mouth to ask if we should cancel the jump -- more realistically, to yell as many curses as I could before the jump commenced, because we could hardly stop it at this point -- but I was too late even for that. I watched Ady's eyes open wide through her helmet, a piercing blue glow replacing her typical brown. I pulled my helmet down and blacked out.

///

When I came to, we were mid-jump. I'd taken the ride more than 300 times at this point, but I was far from used to the sensation. All at once somewhere beneath me and somewhere above me, I could see a shiny, black skyscraper. The world stretched in all directions, twisting and pulsing as the landscape shifted from white to green to red and over again. It felt like my very molecules were being pulled apart, that my whole body was filled with empty space, that I was a thousand feet tall. And then, suddenly, it all stopped. My consciousness slammed into my body like an arrow let loose from a bow.

I took in my surroundings -- a lavish hotel room, two queen beds, a minibar -- and then looked in my partner's direction. Chin length blond hair, big hazel eyes, maybe one inch short of reasonably fudging six-foot. I was looking at myself. Ady and I realized our predicament at the same instant. I watched my jaw drop open from across the room. "Shit!" we said together. Her baritone drowned out my alto.

"What the fuck is going on?" Ady's eyes -- my eyes -- were wide with shock.

I stepped in front of the mirror and confirmed the problem went both ways. Ady's body was where mine was supposed to be. "We're in deep doo doo, Ady, I didn't think it was possible to swap our projections. We mixed up our IVs. Jessica is not going to like this."

I took a deep breath and steadied myself, and anxiety took a back seat to wonder. It really was Ady in the mirror staring back at me, clad in a shimmering, pistachio-colored slip. Her hair, my hair, whatever it was, was up in a bun that looked like the labor of hours. I watched in awe as her long fingers traced her full cheeks, her collarbone, then the fabric at the edge of her dress's deep neck. I watched her run her hands over her breasts, her tiny waist, her hips, and I realized as I felt each beneath my own hands that they were

mine

. I was in Ady's body, and I felt good. "Whoa."

Ady stepped into the mirror next to me. With my face and my body as a foundation, she wore a sharp grey suit, her tie and pocket square a matching blue to my dress. Her fingers ran over the soft silk of her tie. "Whoa is right," she said.

I smiled, and in the mirror, white teeth peeked out from behind my lips. I didn't usually smile like that. "Ady, I could look at this mirror for hours."

She snapped back to attention. "I'm glad you mentioned that, actually, because that reminds me: We don't really have hours to spare, Vic. Right bodies or wrong bodies, we gotta get going. Jessica will be much less likely to fire us if we're able to turn the fuck-up around."

I opened my work bag, projected through the jump as a cherry-red leather handbag, and pulled out a folded piece of computer paper. In thin black monospace, it read:

B524-2045-338

Mahdavi, Adelaide

French, Victor

Crowd: 1

13 November 1984

18:37-19:45

The Sandberg Hotel

37 Brandywine Avenue

Wilmington, Delaware

United States of America

Clearance(s) required: memory enhancement (1), time sensitivity (1)

Alias class: A2

OBSERVATION. Search the lobby for Mr. Stanley Reese (see photo packet). Listen to his conversation with Mr. Elijah Ewing (see photo packet), likely arriving from the outside-facing doors at about 18:52. Record and drop all information regarding Goddard Holdings Co.

INVITE NO SUSPICION.

"Are you sure we should go through with this?" I asked Ady. "Why don't we just jump back and try again? I don't want to mess something up." I looked up at her, now standing a good four inches above me, and frowned. "I'm nervous doing this in your body."

Ady took the paper from my hands and pointed at the top set of lines. "Crowding readout is already at one. Another party's been down here already. If we leave now, they're gonna have a hard time finding a spot to send us back without collapsing the timelines," she said. "And as I've tried to make clear, I am

not

about to get fired."

Ady pulled a lighter from her jacket pocket and held it under the paper, looking over to me for confirmation. I nodded, and she flicked the wheel. The paper burned quickly.

I took a few wobbly steps toward the door, then stopped. I was wearing heels. I looked down at my arm and found an empty wrist. "Do you have the time? I guess you're wearing the watch."

Ady pulled her sleeve up just a bit, revealing a shiny silver Rolex. "It's 6:45. We have about five minutes."

Shit. I didn't have time to learn how to walk. I leaned down and pulled the heels off my feet, feeling the cool tile of the room's kitchenette on my skin, then the rough hallway carpet. I tried to focus as we jogged down the hall, to concentrate on the task ahead, but the dress's swishing reminded me with every step I was a stranger to my body.

Once the doors to the downgoing elevator had closed silently behind us, Ady pulled me closer by the arm, firmly but gently, and brought her mouth to my ear. Here voice was soft and low. "No one could say you don't look the part." I turned, looking up to her face, and unclenched my fists. She gave my arm a squeeze. "Enjoy yourself." It could've just been the gratuitous cut of the dress, but suddenly I had goosebumps all the way up my arm.

The elevator dinged open. A glitzy stretch of burnt-orange carpet opened wide just past the glass doors to our front, and paired sets of periwinkle sofas peppered the lobby's outer edges. The whole place looked a decade too far in the past. In the far right corner, a few well-dressed men, some carrying drinks, walked in and out of a doorway. The sign above their heads spelled out "The Tamarind Restaurant" in yellow neon.

Ady pushed open one of the glass doors and paused in the threshold, then turned back at me. "That's him," she said, pointing discreetly to a man sitting on a sofa to our left, legs spread comfortably wide. Reese was heavy, his skin uncomfortably pink, and his suit's fit was just a touch too small. He'd combed his silver hair flat against his scalp.

We were walking through the lobby slowly, making our way to the sofa beside his, when Reese threw up his arms. He turned to the outside doors with an open-mouthed smile and bellowed across the room. "Elijah!"

Not yet more than a step into the building, a thin, dark-haired man in a black overcoat turned to look at Reese, then approached him deliberately. "Mr. Reese." The man carefully pulled two leather gloves from his hands, slid them into the inside pocket of his coat, and held out his hand for a handshake. This was our introduction to Elijah Ewing.

Reese grabbed Ewing's outstretched hand and pulled him into a deep hug, clapping him three times on the back. "'Mr. Reese', eh, Eli? Seems like working with the big dogs has you in need of some mellowing out." Reese eased out of the hug and put a meaty hand on Ewing's shoulder.

Without a pause, Ewing lifted the hand off his shoulder. "Let's keep the touching to a minimum, Stanley," he said with a straight face. Reese dropped his hand, opened his mouth, stuttered, then closed it again. Ewing glanced toward the restaurant. "But you can buy me a drink."

"Okay, boss, you got it." Reese's smile returned. "That is exactly what you need."

I stepped closer to Ady. We'd stopped walking when Ewing came through the door, and we were standing in the center of the carpet, just ten feet from the two men. A couple, a man and a woman, now sat on the couch directly to our left, and a small group of men drifted in our direction, talking quietly as they wandered from the restaurant's entrance. "We should go in ahead of them. It'll be less suspicious, I think," I said, speaking lowly. I thought back to the precept watermarked in capital letters at the bottom of the brief, Janus International's unofficial motto: INVITE NO SUSPICION.

Ady linked her arm in mine and led me purposefully to the doorway, where a cheery-faced host waited behind a stand. He smiled. "Good evening. Do you have a reservation, or are you looking to get a table?"

I watched Ady tilt her head sideways, peering through the threshold. "We'll just take a seat at the bar, please," she said, turning back to the host.

"Perfect. You two swing me your IDs and you can come right in."

Ady unbuttoned her jacket and tried the left pocket, then the right. She gave the host a polite smile. "Sorry, I know it's in one of these. I'll just be a second."

I released the clasp at the mouth of my handbag and held the edges open wide, pushing aside a lip balm container and some pens in search of the counterfeit Janus had issued Ady. I looked up at the sound of footsteps. Ewing and Reese had reached the doorway. "Hey, Gary." Reese waved to the host, and the pair walked through the door toward the bar.

I looked at Ady and saw she'd already passed over her card. I dove back into the bag, rummaging until my fingers met hard plastic. "Here's my driver's license, sir."

The host took the card from my hand and glanced at me, then the card, then at me again, and held it up to the light. "Can you tell me your address?"

My eyes widened. Ady and I had both been issued aliases for the assignment, our typical A2 class identity kits, but I'd only memorized my own. And now I was in Ady's body, trying to pass for... Sara Gomez, a 22-year-old court reporter, if memory served me correctly. I ran the name over in my head, hoping the repetition would dislodge a memory. I looked into the bar and saw the two men with drinks already in hand. "Sorry, can you repeat the question? I'm a bit distracted."

Ady stepped forward, then, placing her hand firmly on my lower back. I shivered again. In Ady's skin, my skin, every touch felt a million times magnified. "She's with me, sir, I hope you can understand." Ady pulled a ten from her wallet and held it out toward the host at hip level. A Hail Mary.

The host shook his head. "I'm not typically one to turn down upstanding money from upstanding characters, if you'd came here last year. But the staties have been on my

ass

about fakes since they bumped up the drinking age. All I'll say -- George Orwell was right about 1984, if you catch my drift." He shook his head, then looked at me again. "Just your address, Ms. Gomez."

I watched Ewing get up from his seat at the bar and pull on his gloves, sliding his mostly untouched drink over to Reese, and I took a step back. "You know what, sir, I'm starting to think I'm not in the mood for a drink after all," I said. "You have a good night."

Ady scrunched her eyebrows and mouthed, "What are you doing?" I walked her over to the closest sofa, placing us a good distance from any other lobbygoers. Ewing walked briskly out of the hotel's front door, letting it slam shut behind him.

"They're already done their conversation, Ady, there's nothing we could've done. It'll be okay. This is what our enhancements are for." I bounced into the seat. "You run back through the memories, isolate their voices in the peripherals, and we can piece it together by the time we get to the drop point." I looked at the clock on the wall behind us. "It's 7:10, we have a good thirty minutes before we need to be ready to jump."

"Vic... I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do that in thirty minutes. I'm having trouble reaching back. Something's wrong." A bead of sweat dripped down Ady's forehead.

My stomach dropped. I'd never seen it from this perspective before -- normally, it was Ady who watched it happen to me -- but I knew sweat was a telltale sign the occupant of that body was nervous as hell. And Ady nervous was a very bad thing. "Okay, okay, let's think for a second before we freak out," I said, freaking out. "It has to be connected to the mix-up with the projections, right? That's the only other major change."

I thought back to the moment I realized we'd swapped Janus units, to our confusing first minute in the jump, to the brief Ady'd burned (the only protocol we'd followed) as soon as she knew we were going through with the assignment.

Bingo. There it was. The brief, the clearance requirements, right in the middle of the page: memory enhancement (1), time sensitivity (1).

"It's the clearances. It has to be," I said. "

You're

not cleared for memory enhancements -- Adelaide Mahdavi is cleared for memory enhancements. Right now, Janus thinks

I'm

Adelaide Mahdavi. I'll have to run through the memory log."

Ady thought a second, then nodded. "That has to be it."

"You're gonna have to walk me through it. I have no idea where to start." I paused and looked back up at the clock. "And directly afterward, I'll teach you to drift. We'll need to give you time to find the drop point."

She nodded. "Okay, Vic. I need you to close your eyes. The enhanced memories should all be in there already, we just need to get your brain to realize that they are. Think back to the first moment you saw Reese in the lobby." I pictured the buttons straining on his shirt. "Now... the last moment you saw him, sometime just before Ewing left the bar."

"Got it."

"Okay, then ease yourself back to somewhere in the middle, like when Ewing first arrived... or when I put my arm around your waist."

I opened my eyes and looked at Ady. She was smirking.

"That feeling, the feeling of finding the middle between too separate points in your memory, is what you want to follow. Push that feeling until you've filled in all the middle parts, all the details you need, and then ease into all the different pieces. Focus on the visuals, like you've turned the TV on mute, then the smells, like you're spoil-testing milk. When you've got the sounds isolated, we can start transcribing."

I thought back to our host's greeting, as we stepped up to the stand outside the restaurant. I was looking at the host; he was smiling. I could smell warm spices wafting faintly from the kitchen, and I felt the woolly bristles of the carpet under my bare feet -- kind of really fucking gross, now that I was thinking about it. In the sounds, just before the pair's footsteps approached us, I heard it. "'Goddard is moving on Holmes Psychometrics.' Ady, I got it, that's the first time they mention the holding company."

"Okay, great!" Ady's face lit up. "Now teach me to, uh, drift, and you can transcribe on the move."

"So, you never would've guessed, but I'm gonna ask you to close your eyes," I started. Ady shut her eyes and stuck out her tongue. "And when I'm done explaining this, put your hands over your ears too. You'll need to drown out as much sensation as you can. You know when you're swimming deep underwater with your eyes closed, but you can still feel which way is up? Time is just like matter, and when it gets really concentrated at one point, you can feel which direction the gravity's pulling. Like the sun, or a black hole."

I took a deep breath and started again. "The room we first projected into should feel particularly dense because of the jump. Now it's essentially had two timelines in this reality: one where it's empty, and one where we've jumped in. Everything jumpers interact with can be traced that way. That's one reason overcrowding is a problem, actually. Too many jumps in one area and, even with time sensitivity clearance, most people on drift duty have a hard time making drop." Ady opened her eyes and motioned for me to hurry up.

"Sorry! You know I can't stop myself once I get going," I apologized. "Why don't you try feeling for it now, up and to our left."

She closed her eyes again and pushed her fingers over her ears, then sat still for a torturous few seconds. "I feel it. I feel it! It's just a gentle pull."

"Good, okay. Now we should be looking for an even bigger pull, but probably somewhere farther off."

"Yes, there is one. More faint, maybe from the other side of the street."

"Let's go!" I put a hand behind Ady's shoulder and prodded her out the door. We crossed the street.

"Start transcribing." Ady stepped behind me, reversing our positions, and put her arm at my waist. "We need to walk to the right a bit. I'll guide you so you can focus." She turned my body, and we began forward. I could make out a small park in the distance.

I traced through the evening's events in my mind, and pulled out a pen and notepad. My steps, bouncing as I scrambled to keep up with Ady's pace, turned my normally neat writing messy.

Word for word, I transcribed, starting with Reese's first mention of Goddard.

Goddard is moving on Holmes Psychometrics, that neurotechnology firm outside Boston. It doesn't make any sense to me. The guys went to MIT, sure, but they're fruitcakes.

Ewing, now, as the two entered the bar:

That was to be expected, Stanley. I think you'd be well served to remember those fruitcakes are about to sell a multimillion-dollar business, and you've gotten what, one promotion since Goddard hired you eighteen years ago?