"--orry we have to do things this way, folks. I wish we could offer you counseling one-by-one, but our psychological staff is simply stretched too thin."
Richard Dickinson ooked around as the light faded away. He was sitting around a conference table in a small, brightly-lit room. There were people at every seat around the table, and one woman in a security guard's uniform standing at the only door into the room. Medical posters hung on the walls, and there was a large blackboard on the far wall crammed full with copious notes in relatively small handwriting. Richard picked out words like "ambulances" and "doctors" and "nurses" and "therapy" among the notes, and realized he must have been back in the hospital.
Looking down at his own clothing, Richard saw that he was wearing a man's collared shirt and tie; that much, at least, was a relief. He'd jumped into at least a dozen women by now, but he didn't think he was ever going to get used to it. He knew that the lines between the genders were blurring these days, with women dressing in suits and men calling themselves "metersexuals" or whatever it was called. But Richard was from another era, when men were men and women were women, and though he believed people had a right to live their lives the way they wished, he wasn't sure he would ever get used to the plethora of lifestyles that were beginning to emerge.
As he focused in on the words spoken by the man in the suit who sat at the head of the table, Richard realized that he was in a support group for people who were having trouble with the swaps. The man's speech was heavily laden with psychological jargon. "First of all, though," he said, folding his hands neatly--a welcome change from the expansive gestures he had theretofore been making--"I think we should all introduce ourselves briefly, so we all know who we're dealing with. Appearances are, after all, deceiving, as I'm sure all of you are very well aware by now." The man chuckled, and the group laughed lightly along with him.
"I'll start," the man said. "My name is Doctor James Parker, and I'm a licensed therapist; normally I work for my own clinic, but today, given all that's happening in town, I decided I would volunteer my time to help people here. Although I may not look out of place in this body, I have indeed been swapped; this body belongs to Jason Hart, and I'm glad to say that it has a much better hair than my normal body." He grinned and ran a hand through his hair, and the group laughed again. Then the doctor nodded to the next person around the table.
"I'm Patricia Morgens," said the teenage girl sitting next to Doctor Parker. "I'm seventy-nine years old, but I look fifteen again. I suppose I should be delighted to look so young again, but it's been a long time since I--"
"Ah ah ah," Doctor Parker said, placing his hand on Patricia's. "We'll have plenty of time to talk things over later. For now I just want people to introduce themselves."
Patricia nodded, then indicated to the person next to her that she was finished.
"I'm Lisa Akers," said the middle-aged man next to Patricia. "I'm a college student."
"I'm Brad Simpson," said the young woman who was next in line. "I'm a trucker... I don't actually live here; I just happened to be passing through town when the swap hit."
Next it was time for the teenage boy with the bloody bandage around his shoulder to speak. "My name is Sarah McMill--"
Before the boy could finish, though, the conference room vanished in a flash of light.
Richard found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.
On the other side of the gun, holding it in her shaking hands, Richard saw the scowling face of a young woman in a black leather tube top and black leather pants, with a head of big, apple-red hair. The woman sneered at Richard and said, impatiently, "Come on, lady, hand it over. I ain't got all day."
"Give it to him, honey," came a male voice to Richard's left, a note of urgency in his voice; Richard didn't dare turn his head to see who was speaking. "Your life is more important. We can replace the rest."
Richard blinked. "What? I... what do you want?" he asked, a little dazed and very terrified.
"You purse, bitch, your purse!" the woman said, pulling back the hammer of her gun. "Give it to me!"
"Okay!" Richard said, his voice shrill with sudden panic as he made sense of the situation. "Okay, I'll give you my purse. Just... please, don't shoot. There's no need to shoot."
For a moment, Richard was at a loss. Without a chance to look at his body, he didn't even know if he was carrying a purse, much less where it was on his person; all he knew at this point was that he was a woman and that his hands were raised high in the air. The woman with the gun appeared to be on the verge of shooting him, so Richard didn't dare look down or feel his body over to find the purse. At last, though, as he lowered his left arm, he could feel a strap shift on his shoulder, and he realized it must have been his purse. Reaching over with his right hand--slowly and smoothly, so as not to set the woman off--he took the purse off his shoulder and handed it to the woman, who took it and slid it over her shoulder.
The woman shifted the gun quickly to Richard's left and said, "Now you, man. Your wallet. Give it to me."
Richard, relieved to not have the gun in his face anymore, relaxed a little and glanced down at his body. He was wearing a grey skirt suit and high heels... neat, professional, but not good for running away if it came to that. Turning his head to where the woman's gun was pointed, Richard saw a man in his thirties in a business suit, his hands raised in the air as well. Without hesitation, the man reached carefully down to his pants pocket and pulled out a thick wallet, which the woman snatched up greedily and dropped into her purse.
As their hands met, Richard noticed that the man's gaze went blank for a second; then his eyes focused again, and he flinched and opened his mouth as though to scream; before he could get anything out, though, the woman with the gun said, "Shut it, man. You say a word and I shoot your freaking head off." The man closed his mouth, but his expression and his posture were still notably different than they had been a moment before; Richard realized that this man must have just swapped when the woman took the wallet from his hand.
The woman looked at Richard again, then suddenly she pointed her gun at him again. "You got some nice jewelry, lady. Hand it over."
At the far end of the alley where they stood, Richard noticed a new player entering the little drama they had going. An attractive young blonde woman dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, who had been passing by on the sidewalk, had noticed them; and now, slowly, silently, she was creeping down the alley toward the woman with the gun. The mugger was oblivious to the other woman's approach. When the blonde woman saw that Richard was watching her, she raised a finger to her lips to signal him to be quiet. Richard gladly obeyed.
"Come on, woman" the mugger said impatiently, wagging her gun. "You got a death wish or something? Fork over the jewels."
Keeping one eye on the blonde woman, Richard slowly began sliding the rings off his fingers. Meanwhile, step by step, the blonde woman crept toward them, until at last she was just behind the woman with the gun. Suddenly, the blonde woman rammed her body into the other woman's body with all her force, bringing both of them crashing to the ground. The scarlet-haired woman's gun went off, but it missed Richard and struck a trash can instead. All the energy went out of his body, and he staggered wearily backward while the man next to him screamed long and loud and the women at their feet wrestled. At last the blonde woman overcame the other woman, and, grabbing hold of the gun, she knocked it against the back of the red-haired woman's head.
"Thank you thank you thank you," Richard said breathlessly, kneeling down to reach eye level with the blonde woman.
"No problem, ma'am," said the blonde woman. "It's my job. I'm Ted Stark; I'm a co--"
Before she could finish, though, the blonde woman vanished in a flash of light.
This time, as the light cleared, Richard found himself wedged tightly into the front seat of a crumpled car, wedged tightly between the seat behind him, the steering wheel in front of him, and the cieling above him. Smoke poured through the shattered windshield from the engine on the other side, and blood stained the Che Guevara t-shirt he was wearing.
It took him a moment to collect himself. This was a shocking position to find himself in, though perhaps he shouldn't have been so surprised; after all, there were accidents all over the city. With the pace of his jumps, it made perfect sense that he would find himself involved in one of those accidents at some point. Richard was just glad he had jumped into this body after the accident, and not during or immediately before it.
This accident appeared to be a serious one. The misshapen interior of the car kept Richard from being able to move much, and an experimental push against the door told him that it was jammed shut; it was unlikely that he would be able to exit the car that way. As ugly as the car's condition was, though, Richard's situation appeared to be stable; and though the man looking back at him from the rear-view mirror appeared badly injured, Richard himself didn't bear any of the man's wounds. There was no particular urgency for him to exit the car, therefore, and so he tried to maneuver himself into a comfortable position where he could wait for the next jump. When he was able to, he would send for help for this man--or rather, whoever jumped into him next--but for now there wasn't much he could do.
Suddenly, however, a new detail caught his attention. Slumped over in the passenger side seat was the unconscious form of a woman. She was breathing, but her breath was slow and shallow, and she was covered with blood. She looked as bad as the man in the mirror, or worse; though she was alive for the moment, Richard wasn't sure how long that would last. He reached tentatively out to her, but then he drew his arm back; he was afraid to touch her for fear of making her delicate situation worse.
Just then he heard a crunching sound behind him. Turning his head, he saw a figure on the other side of the driver's side door, though the exact shape of the figure was obscured by the cracks in the class. "Hold on," came a man's muffled voice, "I'm trying to get this door open." That was followed by several more long seconds of loud crunching as the door shook on its hinges. At last the door swung awkwardly open, revealing a pudgy middle-aged man holding a crowbar.
The man leaned in to get a better look at Richard. "Oh God," the man said, "you look terrible. Are you okay? I mean... you're there, right? You can hear me?"
"I'm fine," Richard said. "I know how I look, but I just jumped in. I'm not hurt at all. But in the passenger's seat... there's a woman. I think she's in trouble."
The man peered past Richard, and a moment later he was joined by a silver-haired woman. "It looks bad," the man said.
"We'd better get her out," the woman said. Then, turning her attention to Richard, she asked, "Can you walk?"
"Yeah," Richard said, climbing out of the wreckage with some difficulty. "Go help her."
As his feet struck the pavement and he stood up, free of the car for good, Richard looked around him. He recognized this street; it was a busy street at the edge of downtown, a few blocks from city hall. He drove along this street every morning on the way to work and every afternoon on his way back home. Now, though, the street was littered with wrecked cars and broken glass, and the few people who were on the sidewalks were hurrying about restlessly. One building, which had once been a diner where Richard had spent many lunch hours, had been reduced to smoking rubble. This part of town had been hit hard, and Richard grieved to see a once-thriving part of his city in such poor shape.
There was a loud crack behind him, and Richard turned to see that the pudgy man and the silver-haired woman had managed to pry open the passenger door. They leaned over and looked grimly in at the unconscious woman.
"Is she going to be okay?" Richard asked.
"I don't know," the man said. "I'm not a doctor."
Richard stared down at the bloodied and broken figure in the car. There was a soft whistle in her breath now; he doubted that was a good sign. "Does one of you have a phone?" he asked. "We need to call her an ambulance."
The man shook his head. "Ambulances are all tied up. They'd never get here in time. I hate to do this, but..." The man looked over his shoulder at a nearby pickup truck; it was one of the few intact vehicles on the street. Turning back to the silver-haired woman at his side, he said, "Steve, think you can help me lift her?"
The woman--Steve?--nodded, and the two of them leaned down and carefully lifted the unconscious woman from the car. Together, they carried the woman slowly and carefully to the pickup truck, and with Richard's help, they laid her down in the truck's open bed. Steve climbed up behind the injured woman and sat down by her side.
"I'll get her to the hospital," Richard's rescuer said. "Do you need anything before we take off"
"No," Richard said. "Thank... thank you for this. For helping us. She wouldn't have stood a chance if you hadn't--"
"Don't worry, man," the pudgy man said. "Steve and I have been driving around town all afternoon, trying to help people out as we can. It's the least we can do, with things the way they are."
"That's very kind of you," Richard said.
"Nah," the man said, brushing off Richard's remark with a wave of his hand. "'Sides, we're not the only ones who are helping out. There are shelters set up all over the city, a few other little rescue squads like us... we're all just trying to do what we can. Things are ugly out here, but seeing what people are doing for each other... it really restores your faith, you know?"
Richard nodded. "You're absolutely ri--"
But before he could finish, the light snatched Richard away again.
As the light faded, Richard found himself sitting on a couch in a quiet living room. At last, he thought, some peace and quiet. His last few jumps had been harrowing to say the least; Richard was grateful for a quiet jump.
A woman in her forties and a teenage boy sat on the other end of the couch from Richard, cuddled up together; it was an odd sight, but no stranger than anything else he'd seen that day. A television on the opposite wall played the same bits of footage Richard had seen on television all day. Rather than a local channel, though, Richard noticed that this footage was on CNN; apparently his town's plight had made national news by now. He wondered what the rest of the world could possibly be thinking now. Had he still been in his own body, Richard might have been able to place a few calls and find out; now, jumping from body to body so fast that he hadn't even been able to contact his own staff, Richard was very much cut off from the larger world.
He sighed and looked down at himself. He was sitting in what felt to him, with his middle-aged body, like a very awkard position; he had one leg curled under his body and the other knee up in the air. Whoever he was now, this person must have been pretty young to think this was a comfortable posture. Richard dropped into a more conventional sitting position, taking in his jeans and loose-fitting t-shirt as he did so. He was about to sigh in relief that he was male this time, until he saw the flowery emroidery on his jeans and the pink nail polish on his fingernaisl and his bare toes. Female again.
Catching his reflection in the brass lamp on the end table next to the couch, Richard saw the pretty face of a girl of about twelve. He smiled half-heartedly at her and saw the silver glimmer of braces on her teeth. This girl reminded Richard a little of his neice... and with that Richard thought about his sister, his wife, hsi friends, and suddenly he wished he were home, in his own body, in his own bed with his own wife, and that he would wake up and find out all of this had been a long, strange, unpleasant dream. But the images on the television screen continued to dart past his weary eyes, taunting him with the cold, hard reality of the day's events.
There was a different tone to this particular newscast, though, than what Richard had seen previously. Rather than interviews with confused townspeople in the wrong bodies or images of the chaos in town, this appeared to be a segment about the citizens' efforts to help each other through this crisis. The centerpiece of this newscast was a Catholic-run shelter downtown, which was providing food, shelter, and counseling for people who needed it. Richard took in the report, and thought back to the man and woman who had rescued him from the car during the last jump, and the young woman who had foiled his mugging before that, and the support group the hospital had set up. Richard had seen a lot of bad things happen to his down since he had woken up that morning. But he had also seen a lot of good emerge from the wreckage. The citizens of his city were pulling together to help each other out. They were finding a way to overcome the bizarre and terrible events of the day. For the first time during that whole awful day, Richard realized that his town was going to get through this crisis, that it would continue, and that one day it would thrive again, despite everything that had been thrown at it. Richard beamed. Suddenly he felt very proud of his city.
There was a knock at the door. The woman at the other end of the couch said, "Lexi, could you get that?"
Richard waited for a moment, but when no one else responded, he realized he must have been Lexi. Pushing himself up from the couch, Richard crossed the room and unlocked and opened the door. On the doorstep, in the fading light of the late afternoon, Richard saw two men dresed in collared shirts and ties. He didn't know the man on the right, but he recognized the heavyset man on the left immediately. This was Billy, the young boy he had rescued from the fire many, many jumps ago.
"Hi," said the man on the right. "My name is Rebecca Stern. I'm a nurse from the hospital, and I think... this man here... he says his name is Billy, and--"
"Billy?" the woman on the couch was looking up now, as was the boy next to her. "Oh God, Billy?" She leapt up and sprinted to the door. "Billy, is that you?"
Billy looked at the woman nervously. He nodded, but he didn't say a word.
"Billy," the woman said, throwing her arms around the boy. "Billy, it's mommy. Billy, I'm so glad you're home?"
"Mommy?" Billy said. He looked at his mother for a moment, then buried his head in her shoulder. The two of them held each other tightly, and they wept long and hard. Rebecca hovered, pleased with herself, and the teenage boy, who Richard had determined must have been Billy's father, threw his arms around Billy and Billy's mother."Thank you, thank you thank you thank you," Billy's mother said, over and over again.
But Richard. Richard simply smiled.
