Prime Identity

by Robert Schmitt

  “How do you and mom know it’s going to be different this time?”

  “We don’t.”

  “But then, why?” She gave me another piercing look that nearly stole the breath from my lungs.

  “Because it’s worth it.” I chuckled at the thought of what I was about to say, then gave her a smile as I wiped away the tears from my eyes. “I wish I could tell you something else, but that’s really all there is to it. Life is full of pain. It’s complete agony. But it’s also beautiful, and wonderful, and incredible. I guess we just have faith that it’s worth wading through the sorrow to break through to the joy.

  “The day you came into this world, and I held you in my arms for the first time? It was the single best moment of my life. In that instant, for the barest stretch of eternity, my heart was brushing against heaven. It made everything that had happened to that point, all of it, worthwhile.”

  I put my arms around her as she leaned against my shoulder.

  “Dad?” She tilted her head back to look at me a few minutes later. “This... all of this... we’re going to be okay, aren’t we?”

  I locked eyes with her. “After everything we’ve been through? We’re going to get through this just fine.”

  “But... with you being an arbiter...”

  “Surprisingly enough, I’ve got a really, really good maternity leave policy.” I raised my eyebrows. “They won’t let me work past my first trimester, so you have nothing to worry about there.”

  “I love you, dad.”

  I put my arm around her again and kissed her on the top of her head. “I love you too, sweetheart.”

  All told, I thought Jake and I did a pretty good job imitating each other for his parent’s benefit while we stayed with them over the next two weeks. Of course, it wasn’t enough to fool them for long. Julia, perceptive as always, discovered our deception within the first two days of our visit. It still made me cringe just thinking about the way Cecil looked at me when he found out. At least it was fun while it lasted, I guess.

  But with our discovery out, both Jake and I decided to ask Cecil if we could borrow the brain-band his company had developed. In an uncharacteristically cheerful mood, he gave us a pair of bands to keep for good, explaining the few caveats to their use. First, the bands only worked within a range of about a hundred feet of each other. If we moved out of range, the bands would simply stop working, and we’d find ourselves back in our own bodies with a considerable dose of disorientation on the side. Apart from that, the bands tended to overheat with more than two hours of use, so they weren’t going to be anything like an actual solution for us to finally be back in our old bodies. Still, the prospect of everything going back to the way it was meant to be, even for just a moment, was too intoxicating an idea for us to ignore for long.

  “Are you ready?” Jake asked as he took another swig of water.

  “I would have been ready half an hour ago,” I huffed, coming into the room while I ran a brush through my hair. “But someone insisted I shower first.”

  “I’m only getting my body back for two hours, and you haven’t showered in two days. I don’t want grime and sweat on my skin to be the first thing I feel.”

  “I thought you’d want a shower to be the first thing to experience back in your body.”

  “Don’t be a perv.”

  “Too late.” I grinned. “You have to pee now, right?”

  “I still don’t know why that was the one condition you had for this exchange.” He pursed his lips. “But to answer your question, yes. In fact, we’d better get a move on before this gets unbearable.”

  I leaned my head forward and pulled my hair away from the back of my neck to allow him to clamp one of the gray bands Cecil had given us onto the base of my spine. After a slight pinch, he pressed a small button on the center of the clamp and I heard a light chirp.

  Taking an identical clip from his hands, I reached up and pressed the clamp into the back of his neck, where his head met his spine, and then pressed the center button. A light on the side blinked a few times as his clamp chirped the same note mine had.

  I frowned and sat on the bed next to him. “How are we—”

  With a sensation like the world’s worst brain freeze, my brain seized for a second. Coming back to myself, I blinked and looked around. I almost jumped when I looked to my left and saw Amber sitting there and looking at me with a mirrored expression of shock.

  “It worked,” she breathed. As if to confirm it to herself, she moved her hands up to cup her breasts. “This is incredible.”

  “Yes, they are.” I raised an eyebrow, my eyes on her hands. She followed my gaze, and only then seemed to realize what she had been doing.

  “Oh, sorry!” She blushed and dropped her hands back to her sides. “It’s just... I never thought I was going to feel this again.”

  “Whoa.” I stood up and crossed my legs. “You weren’t kidding when you said you had to go.”

  She laughed behind me as I darted into the bathroom and snapped the door shut behind me. As I bolted to the toilet, I reminded myself that, finally, I would not have to sit down. That was the whole point.

  “Did you have fun?” she asked as I came back into the room a minute later with a wide grin on my face.

  I sighed. “You have no idea. It’s the little things you miss the most, you know?”

  “Actually, I do.”

  I frowned and looked down. “I didn’t think it would be possible, but I forgot. No matter what you do, that last drop always ends up in your underwear, doesn’t it?”

  She grated her tongue on her teeth in disgust, but then couldn’t seem to keep a straight face. She squeezed her eyes shut and laughed. “You know, I really, really wish I could say I didn’t know what you were talking about.”

  “Sorry.” I grinned again.

  “Anyway, can I ask for a huge favor?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Can I spend some of our two hours flying?”

  I smiled. “Of course.”

  “I mean, because of the short range, I’d have to drag you along.” She tapped the clamp on the back of her neck for emphasis.

  “Yeah I know. Let’s go.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure thing.”

  As we came down the stairs on our way to the backyard, we bumped into Sam, who smiled when she saw us.

  “Hey, mom, dad, Grandpa wanted to know if you wanted to go sailing tonight to watch the fireworks for New Year’s?”

  Amber smiled. “I’d love that. Growing up, we’d go sailing around Marina Del Rey every New Year’s Eve to watch the fireworks. I mean, if that’s okay with you, Jake?”

  “Sounds good to me.” I nodded.

  “Hang on.” Sam studied Amber. “Mom?”

  “Yep.” She pulled the hair off the back of her neck to show the brain-band pinching her skin there. “We’re in our old bodies, for a little bit.”

  “Sorry.” I turned to Sam as Amber bounded out of the house, then shrugged helplessly at the look of surprise on her face. “Your mom just really wanted to go flying.”

  Not having the time to wait for a response from her, I pulled the glass door open and stepped into the backyard. My eyes were drawn to Amber, who stood by the pool with her eyes closed.

  “That serum really did a number on my powers, didn’t it?” she asked.

  “I mean, I don’t think I really have a full grasp of your powers yet.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “But even to me, it felt like a pretty big difference.”

  A grin split her face, her eyes still closed. “This is insane.”

  “You can say that again.” I couldn’t stop myself from grinning too. “Be careful. You don’t—”

  The breath was stolen from my lungs as a solid wall of air slammed into my face and the familiar sensation of weightlessness stole over me. Blinking to try and keep my eyes open through the gale-force wind, I looked beneath me to see the ground shrinking away at a furious pace. Within seconds,
we had easily cleared a thousand feet of altitude. I looked to the side to find her squinting with her fist held out in front of her as she propelled us through the air at an impossible speed.

  Turning my head, I was disoriented as the horizon spun around us multiple times in the span of a second while she flew us through a dizzying set of corkscrew loops.

  A minute later, I forced myself to take a deep breath as we came to a stop thousands of feet in the air. I cupped my hands to the side and caught the passing wind to twist myself around in the microgravity bubble I found myself suspended in. As I spun in a slow circle, I took in our surroundings, and my stomach lurched. We were miles out to sea, and easily a mile above the cold-steel expanse of water below.

  “Wow.” I shivered, then turned my attention to her. For her part, she had her eyes closed and was doing some slow backwards somersaults through the air.

  “I’m sorry.” She blinked a minute later after realizing I had been watching her. “I guess I didn’t realize how much I really missed this.”

  “Don’t stop. It’s kind of awe-inspiring to watch you use your powers, to be honest. You make it all look so effortless.”

  “Mkay.” She bit her lower lip as she looked back at me. “I’m thinking of trying something I’ve never done before, but it might be... scary.”

  “I trust you.”

  “You sure?” She searched my eyes, her own glowing a faint purple from her draw on her powers.

  “Yes.”

  I blinked as her eyes flashed a richer shade of violet and the air around us shuddered a little. A moment later, the two of us rocketed up through the air.

  “Amber?” I looked over at her, shocked that, although we were travelling up through the atmosphere at what was clearly many times the speed of sound, the air around us was still and quiet. “What’s going on?”

  “I made a bi-directional field of negative spacetime curvature around us.” She squinted, her eyes trained upward as we cleared the upper reaches of atmosphere.

  “How strong?”

  “About a quadrillion times the force of earth’s gravity, I think.” She smiled at me. “And about a foot thick on either side.”

  “We...” I looked around at the black expanse of nothingness all around us, and an involuntary shiver ran up my spine. “We’re in space.”

  She nodded. “The gravity field around us is strong enough it’s holding in the air. And the gravity field outside that is strong enough to repel almost any space debris away from us.”

  “You sure?” I glanced around at the firmament of stars that stretched out in almost every direction away from us, my mind on the accident with the Space Station only a few months before.

  “Well, I did the math a few days ago. Unless it’s travelling faster than forty-eight thousand miles a second?” She tilted her head to the side. “Or a quarter of the speed of light? It’s not getting through to us.”

  “Wow.” I whistled. “This is impressive.”

  “I’m also filtering out most of the sunlight.” She nodded toward the faint orb of the sun, which was washing warm light over us. “Otherwise it would be boiling us alive right now.”

  I laughed. “This is amazing.”

  “Everything you said about going up to space made me really want to try this.” She sighed, her eyes taking in the breathtaking scene around us.

  I followed her gaze and looked out at the silvery band of the Milky Way stretched out in front of us. Looking down, I could see, suspended hundreds of miles below, the outline of the California coastline speckled with clouds.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What? What are you sorry about?” I turned away from the view to study her.

  “It’s not really fair to make you just stand there and watch me use these powers, is it?”

  I grimaced as something in my stomach withered away at the guilty look she gave me. “Amber, you’ve got it all wrong. You’ve had to watch me use your body and your powers for the past three months, and I know it’s been killing you inside. You have nothing to feel bad about. That’s your body, and they’re your powers. I didn’t mean to be the one to take them all from you.”

  “But...” She grimaced and pulled the two of us together with a gentle draw of power. “This isn’t my body anymore, is it?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “These bands might let us live in each other’s bodies for short bursts, but we both know that’s not something we can keep up. This isn’t real.”

  “I wish it were.” I was surprised at the emotion that tinted my voice as I looked down at myself. I flexed my arms across my chest, and an unexpected warmth crept over my skin at the familiar weight that accompanied my movement. “I know you aren’t going to believe this—because, let’s face it, your powers are amazing—but I really think that if I could, I’d rather be me again. I...” I gestured down at my body. “I think I missed this a lot more than I was ever willing to admit.”

  She nodded, tears in her eyes. “I think using these bands might have been a mistake.”

  “Yeah.” I reached over and pulled her into a hug. “A glorious, horrible mistake.”

  We were quiet for a while, just holding each other. When our eyes finally met again, I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “You know, this is going to sound kind of odd, but seeing your eyes like that?”

  “What’s wrong?” She frowned. “Is it weirding you out?”

  “No.” I laughed again as I took her hand. “Just the opposite. I love your eyes. But now they’re even more incredible. It’s a huge turn-on. But... that’s weird, isn’t it? I’ve been in your body for months now. I shouldn’t be turned on by just looking at you.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that.” Amber grinned and ran a hand through her hair to pull it into a ponytail, which she secured with the hair tie on her wrist. As we were both in microgravity and her hair had been sticking out at almost every possible angle, it had a marked effect on her appearance. “If it helps any, you’re causing the same effect on me.”

  “What?” I stopped short. “Really?”

  In response, she leaned forward and gave me a long, slow kiss.

  “Wait a second.” I shook myself to try and clear my head after we had broken apart. “You wanna go at it?” She nodded eagerly. “Here?”

  “It is the final frontier.” Her eyes burned an even deeper shade of purple, and I felt the air around us hum from the energy she was putting off. “And I wasn’t really sure I believed you before, but you were right. These teenage hormones are driving me crazy.”

  I shivered at the way her voice trembled on that last word, and my concentration broke completely a second later when she leaned in and kissed me gently behind my ear.

  “Don’t make me beg,” she whispered, trailing a finger across my chest. “I know exactly where all the sweet spots on that body are now, remember?”

  “Damnit.” I shivered again, then pulled her closer. “You know, I was just starting to get used to being the one pulling the strings in the bedroom.”

  “Don’t worry.” Her voice was low and sultry as she pulled my shirt off. “I’m just borrowing them for a bit.”

  21

  WE DECIDED TO LEAVE the bands with Jake’s parents. The temptation for us to use them at every opportunity was just too great. And, while we used the bands almost every chance we got while we were on vacation, the ache that consumed us every time we had to return to our swapped bodies grew to be so powerful that, by the end of the next week, it was unbearable to not be using the bands. It was starting to drive both of us insane. And so, when we left Los Angeles, it was with an inexplicable sense of loss.

  With only one month left in my internship, it seemed Kiara was hell-bent on showing me every possible technique for handling different castes of rogues. I understood where her fervor came from. When Jake had been Gravita, he had worked almost exclusively as a lone agent in rapid response. The powerset he possessed lent itself well
to a wide control of engagements, and when combined with the ability to fly at supersonic speeds, it meant dispatch tended to call him in whenever things started going badly anywhere within a few hundred miles of Chicago, which was often. Knowing that, I would have been a fool to think I wouldn’t be filling a similar role once I was out of my internship. That left me with the need to be able to adapt to almost any possible confrontation with rogues.

  I grew to expect a sparring match each day with a new arbiter and a new powerset before Kiara and I would go out on our beat. While I tended to hold my own with most of the arbiters I faced, a definite weakness emerged within the first week of my daily matchups. No matter what I tried, I found myself almost completely at the mercy of any mind smiths I faced within the first seconds of our sparring.

  “It’s not a matter of will power.” Kiara’s voice came in through my earbud as I stared down at my phone, the cold of the marble façade behind me seeping onto my back through my quilted leather jacket as I leaned against the front of a building. We had been discussing my growing frustration at being overcome by every mind smith I faced. “In fact, trying to just muscle your way through with willpower is probably the worst thing you can do when facing a mind smith, since they almost always work by manipulating your surface thoughts. If you’re straining to keep something on your mind, they’re going to be able to use that and bend it against you.”

  “Your solution, then, is for me not to think?” I laughed as I looked up and watched a diesel bus grind through the intersection in front of me, its wheels churning laboriously through the salt and slush on the road.

  “In a way, yes. Are you familiar with Taoism?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “There’s a central belief in Taoism, called wu wei, which can roughly be translated as effortless action, or action through non-action. That’s how you have to fight mind smiths.”

  “What?”

  I could hear the frustration in her voice. “Okay. Think of it this way. How does water move down a hill?”