Ask for proof

As much as you want to believe the scientists, so many weird things have happened to you that you distrust everything.

“How can I believe anything you say to me?”

Dr. Burbank nods and says, “I understand your concern, Justin. And I doubt if there is anything I could say that will satisfy you. Perhaps there is someone you will listen to, though.”

As he speaks, he reaches for a device on the end table. You fight the panic building in you and resist the urge to lash out or to run. Thankfully, the device is nothing more sinister than a television remote control. He points it toward the screen on the wall, and it shortly comes to life.

“I have a recorded message from someone who thought you might need some reassurance,” says Dr. Burbank, pushing another button on the control. You warily look toward the screen and then blink in confusion. The face staring back at you is your own.

“Hello, Justin.” You hear your own voice coming from the speakers, and it is your face that is doing the talking, but it is such an out-of-body experience that you that you momentarily forget about running from the room. Instead, you half-lower and half-collapse into a nearby chair and focus your attention on the screen.

“If you’re watching this, then I can only imagine that the worst-case scenario everyone warned me about has come true. You probably have no memory beyond the past few hours, or even worse, you have a head full of false memories. No doubt you are confused and scared. I’m making this video now to try to fill in some of the gaps and hopefully ease your fears.”

You take your eyes off the screen long enough to look at Dr. Burbank and Dr. Hotstetter. Both men are studying you carefully, but they keep a respectful distance and say nothing as your image on the screen begins its explanation.

“I don’t know how much you remember, so let me start from the top. My name — and yours, too, of course — is Justin Jones. I am 24 years old, but have been blessed — or cursed, depending on how you look at it — to look like I am younger than I really am. I was recruited straight out of high school by the Central Intelligence Agency and trained in espionage. I volunteered to be a test subject for Project MindClone, a top secret initiative designed to rewrite memories and identities. The potential for such technology in my field is unlimited.”

You rub your forehead, trying to chase the headache away and to make sense of what you are hearing. You already have a ton of questions, but before you can ask anything, the explanation continues.

“Animal testing of MindClone was promising, but we needed a human test subject, so I volunteered. The objective was to rewrite my memories, temporarily, to those of a college freshman. We chose that scenario so we could test whether implanted memories of childhood, parents, and life experiences, would take root and be acted upon. Since it is common for college students to live hundreds of miles from their homes and families, it allowed us to do a complete rewrite of my memories without having to come up with a substitute home, family, and friends to fit the package.”

You open your mouth to protest. None of this makes sense. You have clear memories of your childhood, your parents, and boyhood friends. This has to be some big mistake or an elaborate ruse.

Your face on the screen continues. “One of the risks of the procedure was that my memories could be wiped altogether and that I would have no idea who I was. Another risk was that the memories would hold, but slowly become unraveled, resulting in sundry mental disorders, including full-blown insanity. And, of course, since this has never been tested on humans, there’s no telling what other complications might arise. Anyway, Justin, if you are at all confused or frightened about what’s going on, I hope you’ll trust yourself, because I am you. And I’m telling you that these good people are here to help you, if you will just let them.”

You see your face smile confidently, give yourself a wink, and say, “That’s all for now. I hope we’ll be seeing each other real soon.” With that, the screen goes dark.

You look down and study your long, slender ebony fingers. Absently, your mind goes back just a few hours to that dark, moonlit spot where you were making out with the cashier and saw those long, dark fingers wrapped around his Asian cock, stroking him and getting him nice and hard in preparation for giving him his first blowjob.

You shake your head, driving the distracting thoughts from your mind. “Maybe I am going insane,” you tell yourself. “Here I am, having just be told that I’m really a secret agent who has been given false memories, and all I can do is think about a hookup with some guy I had known for only a couple of minutes?” You refocus your attention on the scientists and wait for further explanation.

“I know you must have a lot of questions and doubts, Justin,” says Dr. Burbank, “but just consider for a moment what you have heard. You believe yourself to be a college student in his first year away from home, right? You are rather shy and awkward, and you have difficulty making friends. Your parents surely know that about you, of course. That being the case, why haven’t they come to the school to visit you? Why haven’t you had any trips back home? For that matter, when is the last time you actually talked to your parents on the phone?”

You let his words sink in. That really does seem odd. No, it’s not odd — it’s freakin’ insane! As you let your thoughts go back, you have many happy memories with your family, but Dr. Burbank is absolutely correct; it hasn’t even occurred to you that there was anything strange about not making contact with anyone from home.

“In reality, Justin,” says Dr. Hotstetter, “one of the reasons you were recruited right out of high school is because you are an orphan. Your true memories of your childhood are a series of foster homes, where you learned how to put up a good front, guard your feelings, and even how to fight. You were a perfect prospect to recruit because you had no connections to sever. That also made you perfect for this project. The only complication in that regard was your girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Agents are discouraged from getting involved in serious relationships. You, like so many of your peers, compensated for that with a number of one-night stands. This seemed to meet your needs until you were assigned to a case along with another agent, Tava Lacreesh.” Hotstetter pauses at the mention of the name, studying you carefully to see if it invokes a reaction. Seeing no sign of recognition, he continues. “Despite regulations against such things, you and Tava began seeing each other regularly and became romantically entangled. When it was discovered, both of you should have been dismissed from the Agency. It is only because both of you have proven yourselves to be extraordinary agents that an exception was made, and you have been allowed to continue your relationship, provided that it does not interfere with your work. Truthfully, I believe that is the primary reason you volunteered for this assignment, so you could prove that you were willing to risk your memory of your girlfriend in order to do your job.”

Dr. Burbank says, “We could not, of course, have guessed that one of the side effects of the experiment would be the powers you have acquired, Justin. A couple of weeks ago we began to notice some personality disorders showing up in your behavior. We should have brought you in sooner, and for not doing that, we apologize. I was assigned to keep a close eye on you, and when I noticed the problems developing, I sent for you to meet with me in my office. Before we could meet, you went into a complete meltdown. That’s when your powers manifested, and you’ve been on the run ever since.”

“No...” you protest. “It was that clinical study I volunteered for that did this. Those graduate students of yours — Jeff and Amy — they fucked up in giving me the wrong treatment, and —“

“No, Justin,” says Dr. Burbank. “I’m sure that’s how it seems in your memory, but there was no clinical study. Yes, I have two graduate students by those names, but they have nothing to do with the Agency. They just happened to be in the vicinity when things started going terribly wrong in your head. I don’t yet know how we’re going to fix the damage you caused to them and to who knows how many other people along the way. You’ve left quite a trail of victims who are desperately trying to figure out what happened to them.”

You feel your head spinning. Much of what you have just learned would fill in the gaps, but most of it just makes your head hurt even more.

“This can’t be real. This all sounds like the plot to a movie I saw one time where Arnold Schwarzenneger kept saying, ‘Get your ass to Mars.’”

“I know this is all confusing, Justin,” says Burbank. “But you have to believe me when I tell you that if we don’t act soon, your body — and, in all likelihood, your mind — is going to die. I need you to trust me.”