Now that the air is clear.

A beat passed before the two collapsed in laughter.

Bill wiped his eyes and looked at Amber/Bill. "God, I needed that. To be honest, I'm getting a little overwhelmed."

"How do you think I feel?" Amber/Bill asked. "I have a cunt!" They broke out in laughter all over again at this. Hearing the edge of mania in his own voice, Bill realized that the laughter was more about tension relief than humor. Still, it felt good to let it it out.

Then he had an idea. "Wait, dude, do you even have a brain?"

"Indistinguishable," she said with a perfectly Bill-esque eye roll. "Now imagine if the coroner cracked open Amber's skull to find an IOU."

"Do you think you could, like match my physical brain state? Like, exactly?"

Amber shrugged. "Yeah, although it might get kinda weird."

Now Bill rolled his eyes. "As if it hasn't already. Go for it-"

"BARG!" She cut him off and sprung forward. She slammed forehead-first into the wall and there was a dull crunch of drywall crumbling. Amber was flailing her right arm wildly and gagging. Her left eye was staring at him with terror and her right had rolled completely back. When he saw the rivulets of blood coming from her nose he had tunnel vision.

"Amber, stop! Back to the way you were!"

The flow of blood immediately stopped and she looked at him with amusement. "Told you."

"What the fuck was THAT?" he cried, his hands shaking.

"Shit, sorry dude," Amber said as she sat up. " I didn't think that much would freak you out that bad."

"You don't think at all!" Bill sputtered!

"Well, yeah." The blood all over her body was gone. Had she been bleeding? "But I'm emulating you not realizing that original you would see this body that I'm being emulated in-"

"What the fuck was that seizure?"

"Your brain is about 0.07cm larger than mine. I guess that's a lot," she chuckled, then stopped herself when he glared. "Probably what you meant was to emulate your emotional or cognitive state, or even your entire mind. But you said physical brain state, meaning exactly your brain. This isn't Frankenstein, dude. You can't just plug it in like a VCR."

"Christ, I'm old " The sound of a twentysomething of referencing a VCR was unnerving. "But yeah, emulate my whole mind from moment to moment. Unless it'll make your... heart, uhh..."

He was distracted by the perfect harmony formed by his and her voice. That, and a strong, overwhelming sense of wonder. He started at his buxom neighbor's expression of shock.

"What is this... feeling?"

"This is a memory," he said sadly and studied her shocked face.

"How am I talking?" he said, his voice pitching up on the first syllable of talking in uncanny harmony.

"When I emulated your brain state exactly, something... overlapped. A sort of merging of perspectives," it told. "For that time you both inhabited this body and that one in a very loose way."

"I thought that's what you're doing now," they said in unison. Bill felt oddly detached, like he was floating. He squinted one eye as he stared at himself. He needed a shave.

"It is and isn't," he said with a sigh. "You're more than just your mind. When I made my brain state match yours, both of our brains were sort of attached and to you. Not that body or brain, but you. But memory is different, it's all physical. So you remember the feeling, this intense rush of hormones and deep sense of wonder as you have this metaphysically profound moment. You can't remember the actual experience of seeing from four eyes at once."

Her breath caught in her throat. "But I'm havingal a physical reaction that my body remembers." They reached out and touched fingers. Each shed a tear. "It's like seeing 3D when your universe has always been flat."

"Or maybe you slipped us a huge hit of LSD," they said in unison.