The Switch

OK, officers. I suppose you want to know who I am and how I got here. Fresh as a baby's backside, as they say it? Naked, with no ID, not records, no fingerprints on file, nothing, eh? And my accent's American, so you can be sure I'm not some kind of foreign agent. I've already told your friends my story, but I guess you guys are hoping if you make me repeat it enough you can catch me in some kind of lie? Fine, be my guest. The way I've told you may sound unbelievable, but it's the only truth I know. 

What? To the microphone? Sure. Why don't you just give me that.

Let me start at the beginning. I was not always a woman...

*    *    *

I am running.
Behind me, the stars' light glints in my billowing black hair and red-orange dust churns under my feet. My breasts bounce in time with my long stride. The bizzare mesa desert-garden would hold my fascination at any other time, but not now. I need to get to the other side, before sunrise.

I sight the subtle glint of the Anchor Veil just as the first red rays of the morning sun peer over the mountains. Already it is beginning to fade away at their touch. I have been away too long, for the sake of careless self-indulgence. Curse! 

I drive my body to the limit. One minute left, at the most, and I had better not push it. If I get caught up in the disintegrating field but don't manage to fully assimilate, who knows what might happen? I push the thought away and run faster. Rocks and scrub blur by beneath my feet and wind whistles across my skin. My breasts hurt.

Five more seconds. I see the first wave of detachment occurring in the outer ring of the Anchor, 5 meters away. With a fierce roar, I launch my body into a forward dive.

Time flows in fragments. The orange sun, reaching into the blue-black sky. The impossible polychrome shimmers of the Anchor, evaporating from the burning scar in the earth where the nexus marks were scribed. A slow arc, fluid like flight, entering the impossible blaze of color and darkness. The initial tingles of transfer. Then, a searing, tearing pain--intolerable, blinding. Eyes exploding like superheated tomatoes, skull crunching, spine twisting and snapping as though alive. Soul leaving body, but torn. Ripped. The scream of a damned man, seeing a death more torturous than any possible to experience merely with the physical body.

You play with fire, you get burned, the man thought he heard the devil laugh quietly.

Then he awakes. And I know no more.

*    *    *

I awake, my body covered in sweat. Did I make it?

Around me, the lab is trashed. Preparation for this last run was hasty and merciless. My bootprints adorn the tipped stacks of papers, not yet righted and filed away. Ugly welds and uncleaned torch cuts cover the chamber, where last minute changes had to be made. Behind my head, the generator hums gently, the absence of warning tones assuring me the delicate resonance crystals haven't been damaged by my latest escapade. If I had lost them, it would be five years of work down the drain.