This choice: Stay at Blackwell's for now • Go Back...Chapter #68Disappearing Friends by: Seuzz   It was a sweet set-up at the Strausslers', but there were certain distractions there that you'd rather not get mixed up with again.
"You can go on back, get reacquainted with Monique," you tell Joe. That gets a quick rise out of your still-naked colleague, and you avert your eyes. "I've got something I want to talk about with Frank."
And that gets a hooded look from Joe. But he dresses and goes, with Frank ushering him out. "What's up?" your remaining colleague asks when he returns. He has a very guarded expression.
As well he should. He looks grim after you've told him what you want to do, but he agrees that it's probably for the best.
You make a phone call to someone who hasn't heard from you in more than two weeks.
* * * * *
"Where's Frank?" Jonathan Straussler asks the next day when he waltzes into Blackwell's library. It's Monday, late afternoon, and he's looking flushed and healthy in a t-shirt and track pants. No surprise: He would have just had afterschool basketball practice.
"He can't come over," you tell him with a grimace. "I fucked up." Jonathan's face falls.
"I brought my golem out last night, after you left," you continue. "You know, the thing that was pretending to be me at home and school."
"Uh huh," Jonathan says. His Adam's apple bobbles as he drops into the chair opposite you.
"There was a homeless guy under the mask— Yeah, I forgot about that," you say, changing tack. It's less embarrassing than admitting the terrific goof you made with Frank. "So after we got the mask off, we put it back on him, put him in some of Blackwell's old clothes and put a few dollars in his pocket. Frank then took him downtown, took the mask off him and threw him out on the street. Anyway, after that—"
"Look, is Frank alright?" Jonathan demands.
"Oh, he's fine. He's just grounded is all."
His brow furrows. "For what?"
"I'm getting to that! Well, first thing is, we got into the mask, got into the imago, and I got that hex snipped out of it."
"That's great," Jonathan says.
"Yeah, and I wanted to get it snipped out because I was going to put my imago on Frank. You know, so he could have a hiding place the same as you. I gave him a chameleon skin, like you, so he could switch between his face and mine."
"So he's off being you?"
"Yeah, and it's turning out to be a semi-permanent thing. It turns out that hex was the only thing keeping my golem alive at school. All the guys like Black and Lynch and Kirkham and the Molester? They were leaving him alone only because he has that thing on him. So Frank shows up at school without the hex on him, and they suddenly realized they can get close enough to beat the shit out of him."
"Oops," Jonathan says.
"So they all went at him, and the school's suspended him—and a bunch of them too—for a week for fighting. And that's how come my dad's grounded him."
Joe winces, but he grins too. "And you can't send another golem out to replace him?"
"Well, we could put my imago on you, and you could—"
Jonathan throws up his hands. "Oh no!" he chortles. "I like what I got now! Besides, you already got your face, so why don't you go home and take your own medicine? Besides you haven't seen mom and dad in almost a month. It might do you good, and if you don't gotta go to school anyway, you could hang out in your bedroom and do your research there. What's that look for?"
He must have caught the wry expression you were giving him. "Mom and dad," you say. "You called them 'mom and dad' instead of 'your mom and dad'."
"Well, they are my mom and dad," he retorts. He points to his forehead. "Remember whose anima you got running things up here."
"Well, that's true. I guess I'm just so used to thinking of you as 'Joe' that—"
"Oh yeah," he says, and snaps his fingers. "That's the big thing I needed to talk to you about. I found a flaw in that brilliant 'chameleon skin' you invented." He smirks.
You get a lump in your chest. "Yeah? What's that?"
"Joe's disappeared on me."
"Huh?"
"Yeah. He's gone. Evaporated. Don't remember a thing about him." Jonathan's smirk remains fixed on his face, even though his words are making your blood run cold. "It's like I never was Joe Durras."
Fortunately, before you can find your voice and scream, he wipes his palm across his face, and Joe's face appears; Jonathan's shirt billows out a little as it is filled with Joe's larger muscles.
"Oh, but now he's back again," Joe says. "Sound as a dollar, like he's never been away. But now it's Jonathan who's gone. Well, not completely, not yet. But give it twenty or thirty minutes, and it'll be like he never—"
Your voice finally comes back online. "I don't get what you're trying to say, Joe!"
"Was that part of your design?"
"Is what part of my design?"
Joe stretches across the table to put his face close to yours.
"So, when you put on a mask, you remember what's in the mask, right? But when you take it off, you forget that stuff. Except the stuff you did while you were wearing the mask. You know what I mean?"
You nod slowly, and blink. Yes, that's exactly what happens when you wear a mask. When you were wearing Jonathan's mask, you could remember everything he himself could remember. But now, having been so long out of it, you can only remember the things you were doing while inside it—and can barely remember those.
"Well, it's the same way with this 'chameleon skin' set up," he says. "Jonathan is just a mask attached to my underskin. When I'm in it, I can be him. When I'm out of it, I don't remember the stuff that was inside it."
The light bulb finally goes off over your head. "Oh! So you mean—?"
"Right. You're so fucking smart," he sneers, but it's a good-natured sneer. "Joe is also a mask. Deep down, where it's me, I'm Will Prescott, same as you. The way you set me up, Jonathan's a mask, and Joe's also a mask. So when I'm running one face, I don't have access to what the other one thinks or knows or remembers—"
"Is that so bad?" you ask.
"Or can do, I was going to say," Joe says. "Yeah, maybe you don't miss Joe when we're just sitting around jawing as Will Prescott and Jonathan Straussler." He wipes his hand across his face, and Jonathan reappears; his shirt billows out, then sags against his lankier torso. "But you might miss Joe if Jonathan needs to use Joe's prodigies. Because Jonathan really doesn't know how to use them. He just sort of flails." He has to snap his fingers half a dozen times before he can get a luminous globe to appear in the palm of his hand.
You tug at your lip, and are about to ask if that's really so much of a problem, when it hits you. Your mouth falls open in horror. "That means that when Frank was at school as me, and those assholes came at him—"
"Uh huh," says Jonathan. "They were going after you, basically, and without Frank around to help, God save him from whatever they were able to do to him!"
* * * * *
You are so horrified by the picture Joe has sketched that you fly back to your notebook to figure out a solution—if a solution there be.
To your relief, you're able to construct one.
"Imago is just dead anima," you explain to Joe as you start chiseling a new sigil onto your work table. "It's what's left over from anima."
"It's a shadow cast by anima," he says airily.
Dammit, you forgot that he's got at least as big a brain for this stuff as you.
"Anima is where the real memories are made," he continues as you purse your lips silently. "Where they're kept. The stuff inside imago is just a shadow that they cast in the imago. In the brain."
You grunt. "Well, the point is that I know how to modify imago, including the brain stuff, and the same kind of trick can modify anima too. So this new sigil—" You connect it with a long, curving arc to a new sigil you've attached to the main anima scrollwork. "It will take a copy of the brain imago and insert it into the anima, so that whoever's got the anima will also get those memories. Permanently. It's like a merger of minds." You look up to see a thoughtful expression on Joe's face. "Make sense?"
He pushes you aside and kneels to study your work. When you're finished, he pronounces himself satisfied. "Clever," he says. "Wanna try it on me?"
So you do: You copy Joe's mental imago into one mind band, the Will Prescott anima he's got into another, merge them, then copy the result back into him. After an hour, during which the "Joe Durras" memories and personality have not faded despite his running under Jonathan Straussler's face, he pronounces himself satisfied.
"But how are we going to get Frank out here for the same thing if he's grounded?"
You don't see a way to get Frank out, so Joe suggests an infiltration into your house—via another member of your family. When you look askance at that, he suggests pulling some of the Westside bullies out to the Strausslers, where they can be turned into golems and ordered to protect Will when he returns to school.
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