This choice: Put the brakes on for now • Go Back...Chapter #89Cutting Deep by: Seuzz   "Let's get Rosalie finished up," you say, getting to your feet when Dane and Gillian return. You look at Prescott. "You coming with us?"
"I should get back home," he says reluctantly.
"Joe, where are you?" you ask, looking between the others. "I'll need to borrow you."
"Then maybe I should switch with Dane," Gillian giggles. "I don't want you getting in here and deciding you really want Gillian after all." You roll your eyes
* * * * *
The four of you return to the school, so Dane can pick up his car, but it's only you and Gillian who go up into the loft to pick up the sigils and transfer them to the Strausslers'. "You coming in to school tomorrow," Gillian asks.
"If I get all this done," you reply. "Probably. Maybe. Suddenly I'm a little nervous."
"Why? Like it's joining a new school? It's only Westside. You know Westside."
"But Westside won't know me. It's going to be weird having them all treating me different."
"You'll be fine. Me and Chelsea and Andrea will see to that."
You shrug. The fact is that you've been feeling quite comfortable at playing other classmates. It's going to be hard to let go of that sense of familiarity.
* * * * *
So you delay for a bit when you get to the Strausslers'. You take Jonathan's mother and father into the "occult library", where you remove their masks, strip them of the golem layers, and put in new layers using Andrea's hair. "This might make it a little hard for us to control them," you observe after you send them back out--looking slightly confused--to resume their false existences. "Andrea might need an excuse to be out here regularly."
"You mean, maybe Jonathan should break up with Monique, start dating Andrea?" Gillian asks, sounding a little excited.
"Except Chelsea said something about Jonathan and Kelsey becoming a couple. Andrea should have a say in it. I'll leave it to her." You sense her interest in such an arrangement is, at best lukewarm, but that she would resign herself to it if she had to. "Well, I guess we should get started."
The world briefly darkens, and you wake in Jonathan's bed. You feel ravenous. Shit, you gasp, and clutch your stomach. With all the excitement, you forgot you needed to take care of your real body today. You feel very stiff as you sit up.
Gillian and Andrea are talking softly when you enter the library. "Are you going to be able to do this in one go?" Andrea asks. "It's going to be a lot of work, and I need to be there when my mom gets home."
"Let's do as much as we can, and then see. Joe, er, Gillian, how late can you stay out?"
"Probably only until ten. My hubby will be calling before then."
"Then I'll start by trying to put Andrea's and Gillian's brains together. I'll add the others if we have time."
You sit cross-legged on the master sigil sheet, laying the two golem-dolls in place, and covering one with Gillian's mind-band and the other with Andrea's mask. Andrea herself sits behind you, and places a very warm palm on your shoulder. A nurturing fire spreads from her into your bones as you close your eyes.
The two girls spring up before you: Andrea as a complete person, and Gillian as a more abstract web. You concentrate on the latter first.
Ye Gods. This is going to be harder than you thought. Everything is a tangle. It's not just the vast ocean of memories, but the internal structure. Memories are connected to past memories in interlocking streamers, but these streamers also curl about each other, some loosely and others in tight knots. You're not interested in Gillian's memories, only in her personality, and you go hunting for aspects that look like character traits. But you can find nothing that looks like what you want.
You puzzle over this, searching more carefully and deeply. You plunge into the mass, letting it drape about you, and begin to feel its influence. You're not wearing her mind band directly, but you can still sense her presence about you: her laughter, her anger, her sense of playfulness, her memories of home and relatives and Braydon and school. It's like she's whispering all her secrets into your ear and into your brain.
And then you realize that there are no "personality traits" as such to copy. There are only her accumulated experiences. Her skills come from what she's learned; her habits from what she's done; her proclivities and moods and quirks from the way those experiences have bent and shaded each other. The girl herself is the form of her experiences, and you can't copy that form without copying everything. And you don't want everything. You don't want warring memories of half a dozen girls inside you.
Or can you get the form without the content?
Though the memories and experiences are thick, there are spaces between them, which are the negative of the positive form that is Gillian Kiefer. You concentrate on the spaces, holding them in your grip until they seem to congeal into a solid kind of emptiness. And when you feel like you've got a solid hold on that negative form, you dismiss the actual mind of Gillian Kiefer.
What's left reminds you of a coral reef--the calcified shell left by a dead creature. There are no echoes inside of it.
Now, what happens if you add Andrea's mind?
It's not hard to unhook her mental imago from her physical form. You bring the former into contact with Gillian's negative space. They bump and collide, and refuse to merge. But you press and push and strain and--
And suddenly they are twisting and combining. You almost lose control; you do lose control, to the extent that you can only gasp and watch as the living, glittering mind of Andrea Varnsworth slides into the cavities of Gillian Kiefer's. The merging entities writhe and spin, and if there were sound in the place you suspect they'd hiss and fizz. But then calmness returns, and you can regard the results.
It doesn't look like Gillian's mind anymore. It doesn't seem much like Andrea's. Cautiously, you enter into it, as you'd earlier entered into Gillian's. None of Gillian's memories remain: you only have Andrea's around you. They are still familiar--echoes of the memories and intuitions you'd had while playing her part. But the coloration is different. Andrea is very serious, but this Andrea feels lighter and more playful. Memories of growing up mostly alone are not as oppressive; impressions of boys gazing lustfully are not quite so mortifying. Indeed, those latter memories are tinged more with something like regret. Luke Bennett is cute, a stray thought says as it darts past. Why am I so mean to him?
Ah! This is exactly what you want. With your eyes still closed, you fumble for a free mind band, slide it into the place you think it needs to go, and copy this merger of Andrea and Gillian into it.
"What's going on?" Gillian asks as you open your eyes and lean back.
You mop your brow. "Figured out how to do it," you mutter. "How are we on time?"
"You were in there for twenty minutes," Andrea says. "Your stamina is holding up."
"Are you going to need me?" Gillian asks. "Andrea was telling me about the whole 'recharging' process, and I'd kinda like to--"
"I'll need you when I add myself to the mix. But I think we can get the rest of the girls merged without too much trouble." A tremble--perhaps from exertion, perhaps from excitement--passes through you.
* * * * *
It's fairly quick work with the others, now that you know how to do it. First you add Amanda Ferguson; then Lin Pol; then Jelena and Bethany. "Okay, Joe, now I need your help," you say, slide over to lay into the middle of the sheet.
The world wavers, and then you're standing over your body--the skinny form of Rosalie Shabbleman. You ignore the quick thrill that comes from finding yourself inside Gillian Kiefer, and sit down. "What exactly are you doing?" Andrea asks.
"It's hard to explain," you reply. "Basically, I'm keeping the form of each girl while emptying out the contents. Then I pour the new girl into the mold. It changes shape. I keep the new shape, subtract the mind, and pour in a new mind. I'm going to add my own memories now. I figure that will leave me with all my own memories with none of the others. But I'll be, er, 'shaped' into a different form."
"Are you still going to be 'Will Prescott'?"
That gives you pause. "I don't know. I'll still remember everything I know, but I'll probably feel different about it all." You hesitate. "I suppose if something funky happens, I can repair myself by using the anima you guys are carrying around."
Andrea doesn't say anything, but you suspect you know what she's thinking: We'll be keeping an eye on you.
You close your eyes and set to work on the last stage. It goes quickly at first: you just merge your own memories into the form you've created from the five girls. It twists into a new shape. You then lay hold of your own imago. You hesitate very long before snipping off the mental form and letting it evaporate. But nothing odd seems to happen. Of course, you realize with relief. Your real, original personality is still there, inside your anima. The new personality is just going to be a disguise, like the personalities you assume when putting on a mask. You twine the new mind-mask about your physical form and bend over it for the long task of joining the connections. You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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