Chapter 2

Ulmer

II-What the hell is going on?

Matter transportation is not supposed to hurt.

That’s what they always tell you, anyways. It doesn’t seem accurate, doesn’t feel right. Your body is shunted through hundreds of feet of space in an instant. One moment, you’re here. The next, you’re there. And yet the process is supposed to be completely painless, the worst side effect that people are supposed to experience a mild headache or nausea. I’d been transported dozens of times onto dozens of skybuses before, and I had never even felt a little sick.

This time was different. My body was completely wracked with pain. I was in the void of transportation, completely insensate, until the pain begun. It consumed everything, every inch of what could be my body exploding in extreme pain. I couldn’t even think of or describe what sort of pain it was. It was pain without descriptor, unimaginable. I couldn’t even dream of  it ending. It seemed like everything people were afraid matter transportation could be.

And then suddenly I was there, up on the skybus, but instead of standing straight up as I was before I stumbled, then fell to the ground completely, face smacking against the floor. My head rung out, my jaw hurt, my knees protested. Surprisingly, Elian didn’t rush to come help me up. It was pretty rude of him, though many of the things he’d done so far had been pretty rude. I tried to lift my head off of the ground but it felt heavy, weighted down by pain. Everything was sore, too, even though I hadn’t been sore when I had been transported.

I wanted to find someone and complain about this, but I also wanted to get a job here and that wouldn’t make a good first impression. So instead, I just had to get up and-

Get up and-

After a long minute of struggling, I finally got up. I didn’t understand why it was so difficult. Why everything in my body seemed to want us to stay down on the ground. It was like trying to get up underneath a blanket of lead.

Elian is nowhere to be seen. I suppose he abandoned me. But why? There’s a strong sense of abandonment, and yet some part of me feels like it was to be expected. That, too, is foreign. Would it be rude? Yes. Did it fit the things I’d seen of the teen so far? No.

Funny, the pod up here was much larger than the pod down there. As I walked towards the door, I felt like something was off. Walking was different, and harder, but I didn’t know why. I realized I should probably see a doctor as soon as possible, and stretched my hand towards the door of the pod to open it.

Then I nearly shrieked in horror.

My hand was pale, bleached, white. My fingers were small and thin, the hand itself child-sized. What the hell was going on? My body stepped forward even though I’m not trying to. I attempted to hold it back, tried to stop what’s going on, and with great effort I could stop it, though I could feel it still trying to move forward. Once I felt my body moving no more, I reached up to my head, feeling long, straight hair here. My other hand moved across my face as I still did my best to stop the body from moving.

I felt a strong mixture of fear and confusion throughout my body, but those emotions didn’t feel totally mine. Like someone else was feeling them. Yes! Someone else! Whoever’s body this was, they had to still be here! But then how was I there? Was I somehow piggybacking on their brain? Two minds in one head?  The body tried to move again and now I let it move. It ran out of the pods, then frantically looked around the room, running through the exit and onto the main hall of the Skybus.

Three stories tall, the main hall had a large atrium, with various shops, movie theatres, and restaurants surrounding it, as well as the entrance to the main hotel. There were lots of chairs and signs showing where the Skybus currently was and its future destination. The body looked around frantically, eyes scanning the atrium until it saw a bathroom. Running towards it, it stopped, paralyzed, as we stood before a mirror perched above the drinking fountains.

This body was young. And female! We were a girl, a child. No, not precisely a child, a preteen was more accurate. She was pale, with long black hair, completely prepubescent. And yet I thought it strange that the emotion in her deep grey eyes was panic and fear. Why did she find this body horrifying? Wasn’t it her own?

No…. no! Those thoughts rung through my head involuntarily. No! How can this… how can this be?

I tried to stay rational. It clearly had to be some sort of matter transportation error, right? I had never heard of matter transportation failing this badly before, but…

Well, it was the only explanation!

 You think this is a matter transportation error? A glitch? A bug in the system? These thoughts weren’t my own. But I didn’t think they were hers? They’re MY thoughts. You mean that you’re not her either, not the person whose body we’re in? I shook our head, and in the mirror the other person saw it. You can…. you can hear my thoughts. I tried to think at the other person. Well, we can’t hear all of each other’s thoughts. I only started hearing yours just now. And have you been hearing mine this whole time?

No. So I guess we can control it, somehow? Or maybe we could?  Maybe.  So you’re not her, I’m not her… If you’re the person whose body this is, and you can hear us, please reply?

The head was silent. After a moment, the other voice said, Did you hear all the things I thought about her not replying? No. So we can control it partially. A deep mental sigh of relief. So they aren’t completely in here… Well, that’s good news. Um, well then, I guess we should go… I don’t really know what you’re supposed to do when you get randomly transported into someone else’s body, but I’m sure there’s someone you can go to for help. Maybe the Sky Transportation Administration people? Maybe they can just beam us back down and we can be seperated again?

I shook our head. No, that sounds like a bad idea. They’re going to think we’re crazy. I really don’t want to be locked up somewhere with someone else in my head. Look, I…. This was a bad idea, but it was the only thing I could think of. There was this person I met, right before this happened, his name was Elian, he seemed… if we found him, he might-

There was laughter. I didn’t really feel like we were exactly speaking these words to one another. It was kind of like how your thoughts are when you’re not thinking about thinking- not precisely words at all. But I could hear him laughing. Well, that’s going to be pretty difficult. I don’t know how I can help at a- Oh my gosh. I can’t believe I didn’t realize it was you before. Ulmer?
No. No no no no no no no. This whole experience was already the worst. Already hell. Already a nightmare where I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do. But the other person was Elian? It explained so much. It was the obvious answer and I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. And it was terrible! No! I had enough dealing with Elian for like an hour. I was ready to rip my hair out dealing with him for that short period of time. Now he was in my head for who knows how long? I was practically ready to just jump off this skybus.

But I had to play it cool. Oh, Elian. Wow. I...  did not expect that. I can’t believe I didn’t realize it was you sooner. Ha ha, yeah, that’s what I just said. Me neither! I mean, it wasn’t like you would just abandon me in the transporting pod or anything. Also, wow, thanks for not informing me that Matter Transportation really hurts! I would have liked to know that in advance! It doesn’t usually. That time was an exception, because of that…. thing that happened. Yeah, I guessed that, that was a joke. I guess humor doesn’t really translate between minds.

I really didn’t believe Elian that his comment was a joke originally, but nodded. Alright. Um, Elian, let’s just sit down, get our bearings. Maybe in a moment we should go to luggage claim and get our stuff. Does this body have anything in the pockets of the clothing? What pockets? We were wearing a top, a jacket, and a mid-length skirt, and upon inspection none of the pockets were large enough to fit anything. As I checked, Elian moved us to a comfortable bench and sat us down. He looked around the atrium with great excitement, taking in all the sights. I didn’t know the Skybus would be like this. I imagined it would be a lot smaller.

Well, they’re huge. Employee training videos can’t convey everything, I guess. So since I’m not available to help you- there was a slight giggle in his thoughts as he mentioned it again- do you maybe want to go ask someone about this all?   N-no. I- I don’t know what to do. We could go back home to my parents. I’m sure I could say something to them that would make them believe me about who I was. But that would be admitting defeat. Maybe we could go to Elian’s parents? The people who randomly let their young teenage son go for a summer job on a Skybus?  I don’t know, if they were like Elian, I could see them as pretty lax folks. Elian, this is… well, this is unbelievable.

I guess it is. I don’t know how this could have happened at all with matter transportation. This girl, is she like a combination of us or something? If that were so, I think she’d be less.. you know… White?  Elian himself was white, but even he wasn’t as pale as this girl. And small! And female. Maybr she’s someone from a different pod? But how would that work? Maybe the signals crossed? I don’t know. It’’s a very bizarre bug in the system. And how are we even doing this thing? How are we even both thinking at the same time with one brain? I really don’t know! This brings up a lot of bizarre physical and philosophical and psychological questions, but the most important question of all i-

“Josephine!” There was a man walking towards us. A balding, red haired man. “Josephine!” Yes, he was referring to us. He sat next to us on the bench, and slid a folder over to us. “Hey Jojo, I thought you said you were going to arrive later. If I hadn’t picked you up on my sensors… why didn’t you come and see me like you said you would?”

Elian and I were paralyzed. We both had no idea what was going on, what this man was talking about, or anything at all. Finally, I said, “Well, I was just catching my breath for a moment. Getting a drink of water.”

The man rolled his eyes. “Jojo, you know that you shouldn’t be doing that. Not out in the open, at least. Come on, I’ll take you to my office, I can brief you there.”

There was nothing we could do but follow this man into his office. We should tell him we’re not really Josephine. Jojo. No. I cannot see that ending any way but badly. His office was accessible through a small door by the elevator, going into the employees only area of the Skybus. Once we arrived there, he closed the door shut. “So, how did the transfer go?”

“It went great!” said Elian. “It went just spectacular!”

The man smiled widely. “That’s great to hear!” I wasn’t pleased with Elian’s response, but I was pleased that he agreed we should go along with all this. “And here I was, all warning you about it, and everything went just fine.”

“Yup.” Elian replied. “Everything right now is perfectly fine!”

“Anyway, you’ll need to lay low for now, but I’ll get you all the information you asked for. Just stay in your hotel room, and if you need anything, go out in your disguise.” He slid over a cell phone to us. “You can use this to pay and I’ll contact you over it. You really can’t stay in here for much longer, I’ll take you to the hotel room as soon as it’s clear.”

Well, I was even more confused about what the hell was going on now.  This girl, this Josephine, was clearly wrapped up in something large, and something dangerous. Ulmer… did you get any of that?

No. Not at all. But I think it’s best for right now to just do what this man says.  Alright… I just hope it doesn’t get us into any worse trouble. Yes, me neither, Elian.  I took the cell phone into my hand, noticing it was a cheap model, the basic sort of phone you get if you don’t want anything fancy for nearly free. It didn’t have a password, it was simply slide to unlock, and we unlocked it, revealing a main screen of almost nothing. As we examined it, the man suddenly got a message on his own phone, and stood up.

“Well, Josephine, you need to go to your room right now. The disguise will be there. Good luck.”

“Okay. Thanks a lot!” said Elian.

We left the room, and I attempted to remember what way it was back to the atrium. After a few wrong directions and turns, we finally got there. All Skybuses were identical, so once in the atrium it was easy to get to the hotel room. My family rarely stayed in Skybuses’ hotels, but we’d done so once or twice so it was easy enough to find the room. Once we were inside, Elian flopped onto the bed.

I can’t believe this is happening. Nothing about our life makes any sense right now.

It’s not that strange. I’m sure if we really we Josephine that would have been a normal interaction with a normal person. Things only look strange looking in from the outside.

I’m sorry, from any angle that interaction seems mega-sketch. I hope we can at least find out something before whatever’s happening with this guy is supposed to happen.

Yeah. That’s be nice.

Elian let out a deep sigh and rolled across the bed. Well, this is my first time being in a hotel room by myself but I’m not alone! Ha. After a moment, Elian paused. Ulmer, once again, I’m really glad you’re here. I would have totally screwed up that conversation with that guy and they’d probably be carting me off to some mental hospital somewhere if you hadn’t been there. I’m really glad we’re in this together.

I was not. I would rather be completely alone in this. Elian’s presence was not needed. In fact, I’d call it actively detrimental. I really didn’t like having him here. It was making a bad situation worse. But I didn’t tell Elian that. Instead, I just smiled, and said, You’re welcome. Hopefully things will make more sense tomorrow.