Between Two Minds: Awakening

by D C Wright-Hammer

  “Yes, I confirm that this is my first attempted and only mind migration.”

  In my peripheral, I noticed another migration tech operating an automated mover to put a processing tube into place. She made it stand vertically and the viewing glass was facing outward toward me. Once I could see it—see him—time stood still. I didn’t know if it was shock or happiness. But it—he—had to be mine. I was looking at my new body. Like looking into a strange mirror at my mind’s soon-to-be host. Gone would be the shriveled legs, underdeveloped core, and scrawny upper body. In their place would be muscular legs, exceptional abs, and a chiseled chest. As much as I could have hoped for, he was exactly to my specifications. And in several hours, I would be him and he would be me. Even in those final minutes, it was still hard to believe it was real.

  “Pretty amazing, huh, Ryan?”

  “Huh?”

  She leaned in. “I’ve been doing this for a couple years, and that look on your face is the look that so many people get. It’s why I do what I do.”

  Sophia was caring, even if she was a little prideful.

  “Well, thanks.”

  “The last item I must discuss with you is the summary of our disclaimer. Once the procedure begins, there’s a roughly six percent chance that it will need to be stopped or reversed based on many factors. There’s also a roughly one percent chance that you won’t make it through the procedure as stated in your contract and liability waiver. Otherwise, the process will be seen through until the end, and you will then begin your recovery. Do you have any questions before we get started?”

  I couldn’t hold back my disbelief. “Is it as good as advertised? Am I going to be reborn?”

  “Mr. Carter, the good news is that you will be getting a new lease on life with new abilities like walking and running. The difficult news, and I cannot stress this enough, you will have quite the painful journey once in recovery. The post-migration phase is difficult in general, and is especially hard for a small minority of our migrators. Fortunately, we’ll be with you every step of the way, pun intended.” She smiled widely at me as her dart of humor pierced a hole in my anxiety.

  “Ha ha! Thanks! I needed that laugh. But I do have one last request.”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you give me a couple minutes alone? I need to say goodbye to Auto…err, my auto-chair. As strange as it sounds, I’m going to miss him.”

  “Not strange at all. Take all the time you need. Head around the privacy glass when you’re finished.” Sophia tapped the ADG logo on her lab coat again to stop the recording, then walked back toward the staging area.

  I sighed as depression began to flood my senses again. My shoulders slumped, and I tried to think about the things I had discussed in therapy. In the end, I just had to speak from the heart.

  “Auto, I’m not sure where to begin. You and I have been through a lot together. I’ve always kept you repaired and up-to-date on the latest firmware. You’ve always gotten me where I needed to go.”

  My whole face ached from the sadness.

  “When genetics failed me, you were there. When everyone in my life let me down, you kept me going. The change we’re about to go through isn’t about you. You’ve always been great. It’s about me moving on with my life. I need to truly stretch my legs. I want to use a toilet! But I will always miss our rides down the sidewalk, and I’ll never forget your calming motor. It’s what kept me balanced for so many years. Let’s take one last ride together to the staging area, and then I will say my final goodbye as your rider. It has been my honor and pleasure.”

  I gathered myself and headed over to the staging area.

  Sophia was standing in an elevated glass bubble with the label Control Station printed across the front. Over the intercom, she professed instructions to begin the process.

  “Okay, Ryan. You can remove your clothes, and I’ll have technicians assist you with getting onto the table.”

  Meticulously, I took off each piece of clothing. At first, I fooled myself into thinking I was being detail-oriented, but it quickly became apparent that I was really just stalling. Once undressed, I timorously entered the Lift and Release commands into Auto. I could feel my body trembling as he flattened out like a bed, raised me up, and retracted his safety straps. Mentally, I had to prepare myself to get onto the table.

  “Well, I guess this is it. Thanks for everything, Auto. I’ll never forget you.”

  The technicians wandered over, but I waved them off. “No. I can do this myself.”

  I had pulled myself off of Auto thousands of times over the last decade, but getting onto that table would be the last. I didn’t care how awkward it was; no one was going to rob me of the experience. I placed my hands firmly down and pulled my body and useless lower half over. The process was as clumsy as it always was, but I did the best I could. Once on the frigid table, I stretched out as much as I could. Despite how cold I should have felt, I was as figuratively naked as I was literally, so my heart was pumping a thousand beats a minute. The stress had even caused a slight delirium that made focusing on the remaining tasks at hand that much more difficult.

  One of the technicians typed commands into Auto, and I had the strongest urge to scream for her to leave him alone. For a moment, he didn’t move, making it seem like he was ignoring her to stay with me. But true to his programming, he slowly began to roll away from me, farther than he had ever been in the last ten years. The farther he got, the more it hurt. Eventually, he disappeared for good, and that was it.

  I sighed. “Thanks again, Auto.”

  All the fear for what lay ahead had gotten the best of me, and in bidding farewell to Auto, I could only muster a single tear down my right cheek before Sophia chimed in over the intercom.

  “You’re going to be secured to the table now, Ryan. Let me know when they’re tight.”

  Gray straps shot out from the side of the table and snuggly secured my head, chest, abdomen, arms, and legs.

  “That’s good.”

  “Thanks, Ryan. Next, a medical disk is going to appear above you. It’s going to complete a full body scan that will make your body temperature rise a little. Just breathe and relax.”

  A couple of electronic beeps behind me commanded lights in the ceiling to reveal the aforementioned medical disk. It dislodged itself slowly and assumed a rhythmic hover directly above me. Dull tones chimed as the disk scanned me from head to toe and back again. The warmth was actually a little soothing and took the edge off my vulnerable state.

  “The disk is going to attach itself to your head now, Ryan. Again, just relax.”

  With mechanical clicks, the disk transformed into the shape of a helmet and moved into position above my head. The warm air it produced blew my hair about, but it was otherwise pleasant. Steadily, the disk slipped onto my head, and we became one.

  “You’re going to feel a slight pinch at the base of your skull.”

  “Ah!” The pinch was a little more than slight, but there was no use in arguing semantics at that point.

  The disk-turned-helmet began to buzz.

  “Next, Ryan, IVs will be going into the veins in your arms. Please do not move while this is happening. Once successfully in, the IVs will dispense powerful anesthetics and muscle relaxers to calm you, quickly followed by sedation.”

  Medical tubing snaked out of the helmet and down my arms. Like fangs, the needles appeared from the ends of the tubing and, in a single motion, pierced my forearms and perfectly entered my veins with calculated precision and almost no pain. The effects of the drugs quickly made all my nervousness and discomfort melt away. It was a good thing that I was strapped to the table because I was so high by that point that I felt like I might float away.

  “Next, we’re going to get you upright for transfer to a processing tube.”

  The table began to tilt vertically. The steeper the angle, the m
ore I became aware of a sense of sheer horror growing from deep within my medicinal haze. It was a much different and more palpable fear than I had experienced leading up to the migration. Something wasn’t right. No, none of it was right, and as I was being rolled toward the migration station next to my host, the feeling completely overtook me. All I could think to do was yell for them to stop, to bring back Auto, and to get me out of there so I could get back to my normal life!

  Stop! Stop! Something’s not right!

  I couldn’t get the words out of my mind and through my mouth. Like a roller coaster creeping to its first big drop, there was no turning back. The drugs had already taken over and the chamber door to my migration tube swung open in front of me. All I could do was wonder what kind of hell was awaiting me during and after the procedure. They rolled me into place and spun me around so that I was facing outward.

  “Okay, Ryan. You’re going to be fully sedated and the mind migration will commence. We’ll see you on the other side!”

  As the door to my new life closed in on me, a terrifying voice popped into my head.

  It’s a deadly…procedure to migrate your mind.

  Chapter 3:

  Careful What You Wish For

  “It’s a deadly serious procedure to migrate your mind.”

  The words of one of my counselors echoed in my head. He’d been nicknamed “the Drill Sergeant,” and the more you listened to his aggressive Southern drawl, the more the name seemed to fit.

  “It would be the biggest mistake of your life if you took the procedure lightly. Just think about it for a second. We’re going to use a bunch of fancy computer technology to suck the living soul right out of your failure of a body. We’re then going to process it like cheese into an easily consumable format. Then we take that living soul that has only ever known one body in its entire existence and dump it into a soulless vessel, a brand-spanking-new host that has never had so much as a simple thought, much less all of your screwed-up memories. And believe it or not, that’s the easy part.”

  Over our few sessions, I had come to appreciate his brutal honesty, even if it made me tremble.

  “After a day or two, you’ll wake up in your new host. Except you aren’t awake. And you’re not sleeping either. Dipping in and out of the crevices of the host’s brain, your mind will be like a child after moving into a new house, looking in all of the rooms, trying to find the best place for his things. The only problem is that the house was just finished being built, and it’s possible that not all of the rooms are safe yet. Once your mind comes to that realization, the pleasantness of the situation immediately divulges into pure chaos.”

  Other migrators and I joked that he was trying to get us to quit the migration program so that ADG could keep our down payments, but again, for whatever reason, I respected his approach.

  “For forty-eight to seventy-two hours, your reality—your entire existence—will be reduced to a sprawling collage of pseudo consciousness. The mind that you have counted on your whole life to get you through each day will betray you as it reaches the depths of its new home. It’ll be like a Jackson Pollock painting of obscure thoughts and memories, and it won’t stop there.”

  I was almost too horrified to continue the thought, but couldn’t stop it.

  “At some point, you will become aware of the pain—the deepest, harshest pain that you’ve ever experienced. I’ve heard it described as third-degree burns over your entire body followed by a bath in razor blades and salt water. For most, this pain starts without so much as a warning and instantly squelches any peaceful thoughts.”

  It was at that point he had let loose a little chuckle, making all who were listening even more uneasy.

  “What on earth would cause such visceral suffering? Well, it’s because of a little thing called your new host’s central nervous system. You see, once it becomes aware of you, it does what it was programmed to do for hundreds of thousands of years. To it, you’re the most aggressive invading pathogen it has ever experienced. If moving into a new host wasn’t hard enough, even before you can put your things down and get settled, you’re being mauled by your own defenses. Your host doesn’t like you. It hates you so much that it’s even willing to hit the self-destruct button and attack itself, you, over and over and over and over again.”

  As the thought came to its terrifying conclusion, the fear from the session returned a hundredfold.

  “You’ll have to fight like hell during every moment of consciousness, and it won’t be easy. It’s like a prizefight where you’re a featherweight pitted against dozens of heavy weights. With each blow they strike, your mind will want to comfort you by going into shock. This is where you have to resist the urge to give up. It will be the longest, most difficult time of your life because the unfortunate truth is that the pain won’t dull until your mind settles, and your mind won’t settle until the pain dulls. We call this the catch-22 period. Of the few migrators we lose, this is where we lose most of them.”

  Shaking myself from the memory, all my thoughts came to an abrupt halt. It was like coming out of a fluttering dream, and I suddenly couldn’t remember anything I had just been thinking. In fact, the harder I tried to remember what was happening, the less that came to mind. Then my attention quickly shifted to the faintest voice coming from somewhere in the distance. It could have been the tiniest whisper from across a room, so I had to focus with everything I had to make it out. Just when I thought I could hear it clearly, a white noise began to fill the background. The static grew louder until it almost hurt. All the while, the voice kept talking even though I couldn’t make out any of the words. It reminded me of the old radio my uncle used to communicate off the grid, with all the hissing and popping between what must have been words.

  “Ry…ake…dee…brea…I’m go…coun…backwa…te…wit…numb…mov…yo…ha…”

  I wasn’t even sure if the voice was talking to me.

  “Te…”

  An explosion of colors and lights sprayed across the ceiling of my mind. It was the most intense fireworks display imaginable, and for a moment, it completely distracted me from all the other stimulation around me.

  “Ni…”

  The volume of the static shifted from loud to quiet, and the brightness of the colors and lights tapered off. A burst of energy invigorated my mind, and I concentrated hard to gain some perspective on what was happening.

  “Eigh…”

  I could feel—and hear—deep breathing. It reminded me of my favorite scuba-diving simulator. But something was behind the breathing that I was struggling to make out. The more I thought about it, the more it sounded like a bass drum beating to a steady rhythm.

  Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

  “Seve…you…doin…gre…Ry…ke….it up.”

  Smoke! I could smell thick, suffocating smoke from an old-time cigarette, and the aroma of butane from a lighter. My grandpa was the only one I knew with the bad habit. He would take deep puffs and exhale a cloud. He tried to blow it away from me, but it always saturated the room. I knew I shouldn’t breathe it in, but part of me liked the smell because it reminded me of him.

  “Si…”

  Mint! I could taste and feel unmistakable cold from peppermint. It was like I was eating a whole tube of toothpaste, but so minty that it almost burned my mouth and throat.

  “Fiv…”

  A number! I heard a number from the voice! I wasn’t sure what number it was, but I knew I’d heard it and it was a number.

  “Four.”

  Another number! In vein, I tried responding. Hey! I’m here! Why are you saying numbers?

  “Three.”

  Hello! Can you help me? I think I’m lost, or maybe something is wrong. What do the numbers mean?

  “Two.”

  Thinking as hard as I could, it hit me. I had a procedure! But for the life of me, I couldn
’t remember exactly what it was. My legs! It has to be related to my legs. All the procedures I’ve ever had were for my legs. Or spine. Oh no! Did I go through with the spine transplant? Ugh. Those never go well. I would be so pissed if I spent all those credits and was still paralyzed. But at least I would still have Auto.

  “One.”

  The walls of my mind began to quake. Returning, the white noise blared louder than ever and the colors and lights flashed with even more intensity. The drumbeat rumbled harder and louder as if there were many hearts beating inside my head. Mind-wrenching anxiety ensued, anticipating that something purely evil was about to happen. Then I came to the realization that the space my thoughts occupied was getting smaller by the second. Claustrophobia set in quickly followed by immediate suffocation.

  I can’t…I can’t…I can’t… Feeling consciousness slip away, it took everything I had to finish the thought. I can’t…breathe!

  The deafening sounds, blinding colors and lights, and lack of air were all unbearable to the point that I would have welcomed reprieve in any form. Just when I was coming to peace with the idea that my time was up, my mind began to spiral down like an unplugged drain and all my thoughts swirled away. In their place, a mind-jolting migraine set in, and in disbelief that I could feel any more pain, a god-awful agony consumed my entire existence. As my essence slipped into the abyss, my life flashed before my eyes in an instant. Then silence. Numbness. Darkness. Emptiness. Nothingness. But somehow, I still had consciousness.

  Taking account of my surroundings, it seemed as if I was suspended in infinity. I couldn’t help but wonder if I had just experienced death. But if this were heaven or hell, there wasn’t much to the place. As bad as the experience was, I had always imagined dying would be much worse. Then I thought I was probably just awaiting my actual fate, and therefore, I was floating in purgatory until a supreme being decided what to do with me.