Then.
There are things that they don’t tell you
when you sign up for a Mindswap Vacation. Oh, sure, they will tell you
that it’s like swapping houses for a week with someone in another
country, except that you’re swapping bodies and lives.
What they can’t possibly tell you is how disorienting it is. They don’t
talk about how every old pain in your “vacation body (that’s what they call them in the
brochure) is like a thousand fires, even though it long ago turned into
white noise to the original inhabitant. When you first make the upload
to the vacation body, your limbs feel like lead weights hanging from a
tree trunk. You shake it off. But when you wake every morning, you
forget you are not you and the heaviness starts all over.
Unlike your average jaunt to Hawai’i or London, this vacation has rules:
1. You cannot (CANNOT) tell anyone about your Mindswap Vacation. The whole point of the vacation is to live out someone else’s life. If their friends, girlfriend, parents, boss, etc. know, then it takes you out of the experience. Plus, Mindswap is not public knowledge. It’s reserved for kings and queens and presidents and rich douchebags with more money than brains (before and after the swap). Every once in a while someone like me slips through. Me? I’m a reporter that found out about this when interviewing my local congressman. He was drunk and loose-lipped and chose to pay the cash to send me on vacation rather than risk me reporting the barrage of absolute fuckedupedness he verbally vomited into my tape recorder.
2. You cannot (CANNOT) do anything to
drastically alter the life of your vacation body’s owner. Minor
infractions result in a fine. Major infractions (murder, incest, rape,
etc., etc.) result in a permanent swap. The fellows at Mindswap
corporate are of the opinion that if you go on vacation, you shouldn’t
come home to prison bars or a Best Western hotel with a suitcase full of
what’is left of your life. I guess this is easier than explaining to the
world your mad scientist shenanigans. I mean, if everyone knew about
this, they could simply arrest you once you’re back in your original
body.
Your entire life can be turned upside down and inside out and there are
only two rules to follow. There would be a guidebook full of rules if
someone didn’t decide long ago that the less this stuff is documented,
the safer it is legally for all parties involved.
As I said, I’m a reporter. My name doesn’t matter much because it isn’t even my name. I’m borrowing one permanently while my former self sits locked away for unspeakable crimes against humanity. The Naturewood crimes. I’m sure you heard about them. When you learn about the grisly things that can be done to a human body using a coffee table leg, you tend to remember.
I remember. I can’t forget. The women and children were my family from my former life. But now I’ve got a new wife. Sure, Valentina is beautiful and smart and the kind of free-thinking artist that only exists in romantic comedies and books written by heartbroken hipsters, but she’s more or less like a stranger to me. At least to the part of me that is actually still me.
When they prepare you for the swap, they push what is you into a corner of your mind so that the other vacationer can access what you know and get around without looking like a tourist. After the swap, I suddenly knew how to play guitar, paint and do yoga. But the most disconcerting thing about all of this is the echoes of the other person’s memories. When I smell a certain perfume, I’m reminded of places I’ve never been. I also feel a love for Valentina that isn’t my own. It’s like a craving for something that doesn’t exist. You can imagine what you want, but you can never have it. She also feels like home. It could be worst. My mind could be jumbled with sociopathic tendencies.
The former inhabitant of my vacation body was also a reporter (I wonder what dirt that poor soul dug up to land himself a vacation?). Brilliant, huh? Mindswap screens vacationers so that their lives match on at least a superficial level. It makes it easier to keep up the illusion.
Today.
I’ve had some rough days on vacation. I
won’t bore you with tales of homesickness and bottomless sadness. But
today has been spectacularly awful. It’s worth your time to hear me out
on this one.
Today, I woke up like every other day. Shook off the heaviness. Brushed my hair. Brushed my teeth. Got dressed. Kissed Valentina goodbye. Walked to work because my car broke down (this happens more often than it should). Sat down at my desk in the middle of the bullpen. Bullpen? Imagine your office with no cube walls and more mess. No. Even more mess.
The jumbled, static voice of the police scanner alerted the room that someone was about to be sent off to cover a disaster or murder or mugging or fire or god-only-knows-what. Some days you pray that it happens on the west side of town. That is someone else’s beat to cover. If it happens on the other side of 5th street, you can spend your day in the safety of the office, re-writing press releases from corporations pretending to be involved in your community and chugging coffee all day. I’ve ruined enough shoes climbing through the burned-out remains of buildings still dripping from the spray from a fireman’s hose. I don’t look forward to these assignments.
In the middle of rewriting sanctimonious
drivel about some oil company donating Neolithic-era laptops to poor
school kids, I missed the address screeched out of the scanner. My
editor’s firm hand on my shoulder told me this was my story on my side
of town. “Murder!” he exclaimed, like a kid opening a Christmas present.
Jeeezus how I hate these assignments. You coldly try to ask family
members questions about the deceased while they wail and moan and the
beat cops give you the evil eye ‘cause they know you’re going to taint
some future, mythical jury pool with your hastily written article. That
is, provided they catch the guy/gal that killed the poor schlub you get
paid to write about. It’s a cynical business.
There is a pecking order to everything in life. The newsroom is no
different. Every reporter is assigned a photographer as they rush out
the door to cover disasters. The photographer may have to put up with
your insane, Hunter-S-Thompson-esque ramblings and cryptic directions,
but it’s the reporter that drives to the site of tomorrow’s headline.
But not today. As I said, my car was in the shop. This leaves the tall,
lanky photographer named (no joke) Joe Camera to taxi us to the
assignment. This is not normal. Reporters are not named (as far as I
know) “Bob Typewriter”. This tall drink of water is an anomaly.
Now.
As we twist through the Sacramento streets,
I notice among other things that we’re not only in the vicinity of my
beat, but my neighborhood as well. I think to myself that I might
surprise Valentina on her day off while I’m in the neighborhood. My eye
twitches a little when I think about my distant, former life. Dropping
in on my wife was something I did often.
Joe drives down 4th street as I think absentmindedly about how this is the road I drive to work every day (when my jalopy of a car is actually running). Then he turns down P Street. Too close to home. I wonder if Valentina might be one of the gawkers out on the street trying to get a glimpse of a dead body like she’s a kid from a Steven King novel.
As we turn into the parking garage at my shitty apartment, I start to sweat. How can I look my neighbors in the eye tomorrow after grilling them with uncomfortable questions today? Most mornings, my arms feel like lead. Right now, my chest feels that way, too.
We climb the steps that lead to my floor, my leaden feet feeling as if they’re going to crash straight through.
When I see a familiar face (and body) on the ground in front of my apartment, surrounded by pissed-off-looking officers, my heart sinks. It would be like looking in a mirror, if only it were a couple years earlier. He sees me and sneers in a contorted way that I could never have managed when I wore that skin. You have to be a sociopath, a sicko and a murderer (a murderer!) to be able to pull off that look.
I look closer and see blood on his handcuffed hands and clothes. The world spins like a top and I vomit what seems like everything I’ve eaten in the last two years.
When you work a beat as a reporter, you end up knowing and occasionally befriending every last cop, judge, county clerk, bailiff, bail bondsman, etc., etc., on your beat. When the world stops spinning for a moment, I spot Officer Jeff Hensley before he sees me. He’s pale white and shaking in a way that tells me that I don’t want to go into my apartment ever again.
I reach for my apartment door when Officer Hensley spots me. He takes off his hat and absentmindedly runs his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I can’t let you go in there.” I mumble something that my mind doesn’t quite register. Jeff answers, “Freedom of the press or not, you don’t want to see this.”
He tells me about a prison break and asks me if I know this man. He’s trying to put the puzzle pieces together because nothing about this makes sense. But I barely hear what he’s saying. Everything seems muted. The colors. The sounds. They’re dulled like I’m watching TV underwater in a cave.
The investigating officers move through my peripheral vision like waves crashing. In a break in the waves I spot Valentina. She is lifeless and face down in a pool of crimson. I let out an unholy bark of a laugh for a second as I think about the irony (red is/was her favorite color).
The world starts spinning again as I see them haul off my former body. I think about my parents, friends, coworkers, acquaintances, etc. from my former life and I feel homesick. I think for a moment that I’ve decided that this vacation is over and tomorrow I’ll pack my bags and go home. To my real home. But I know that I won’t. Because I can’t.
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