It was late that night, and with immense and wheezing effort, that I crept along the crooked path to where a warm, orange light shone from the single window of a canvas yurt. The thing I’d made swung at my side in a fat metal briefcase. The sandy wind blew up and nipped at my naked legs under the hospital gown, and my heart pounded less steadily with every step I took. I doubted for a moment that I had it in me to make it all the way to that door. When I did, I let myself consider that this was my last chance to turn back.
I didn’t. I knocked. I pounded on that door until the man who lived there answered.
“Luther? What’s wrong? I thought you were bedridden.”
“Can I come in, Jackson? I need something.”
“Anything,” he said.
I didn’t have to wait long for him to turn his back on me. When I rendered him unconscious, and even when I rolled him onto his back and installed the crowns over his head and mine, it was with the clarity and resolve of someone who had already rehearsed this procedure many times in his mind.
I never imagined I’d perform it again so many times to come. I never imagined it would become the essence of me.
“The hell is this?” our latest captive asks. He bears the marks of a low-ranking Medusa. He is very strong and in perfect health. Barely stifled grins flicker across all of our faces: we all yearn to assume this vessel, but that pleasure will be mine. We rolled a die to decide.
“Who are you?” my vessel-to-be demands to know as my alpha copy puts the crown on his head.
How many times have I been asked this? Freshly caught flesh always asks me this, and until this moment I’ve never fully thought out my answer. For seventy-two years I’ve never told anyone who I was at the outset, never breathed the name Luther—but more than that, I’ve never confided to anyone my present identity. Only recently has it occurred to me that such an identity exists—that my use of this machine has transformed me into something greater than Luther could ever have imagined—but this vessel is staring at me now with an unprecedented bewilderment. He sees how all of my copies and I have the same gaze, the same eager smile. He has grasped that the truth of what I am can’t be seen with mere eyes.
“Who are you?” he asks again. His voice is trembling.
“Borrower,” I respond, and my voice as I hear it is no longer that of some old man. “Bodysnatcher. Possessor. Lich.” My voice isn’t Luther’s. It doesn’t belong to any of the hundred-odd people I’ve become since I was him. It’s the voice of the being I’ve become: a new life form, born from this glorious machine. I transcend all flesh, and I never kill. I merely borrow.
“What does that mean?” he asks, in appropriate terror.
“Demon,” I respond, through a mouth now watering as if in an ecstasy of hunger. This hunger is not for food, but for life. For being itself.
“What do you want from me?” the vessel asks.
“Wait,” the alpha copy warns me. “First we need what he knows.” But his mouth is watering too. All of our mouths are watering. This is intolerable. To hold myself back now is almost more than I can take.
“Sybil,” we hiss in a jagged chorus. “Danae. Where is she?”
The vessel glances at the wires trailing from the patterner crown secured to its head. The vessel must think the crown is some sort of torture device. Quite the opposite.
“Some . . . some bounty hunters have her,” the vessel says. “She’s alive. We’re on our way to collect.”
“Where?” we ask.
“Somewhere out in the wasteland. I don’t know. I don’t have the exact coordinates. I’m telling the truth.”
We’re breathing heavily. I can hear the sound. The vessel’s eyes are open and wide with unknowing fear. The status light is a steady green, and the button is slick with my sweat. But I hold back from pressing it for as long as I can stand to, savoring the energy of that moment like the brink of some violent orgasm—before at last I tip over the edge and plunge into that long tunnel of unconsciousness which stands between the old flesh and the new.
On a cold black night, seventy-two years ago, I ran.
I moved like the wind over the dry hills. I was tall and undeniably handsome. My muscles were taut and capable of any feat, my skin spotless and clean and richly tanned. I climbed trees and scaled the walls of the water tank and stood on its lid and looked out across all the glittering lights of the reach (all so clear through these new eyes) and filled my suddenly healthy lungs with cool air. I dug a shallow hole out in the weeds, and there I buried a hideous and disease-ridden body in a hospital gown as it drew its last, shallow, mindless breaths.
When it was all done, I ran back the way I had come. When I reached your door I was so overwhelmed by the pleasure of my new strength that I had to stop myself from breaking it off its hinges. I had to cover my mouth to stop myself calling your name, so rich and beautiful were the tones of my new voice. Inside, a light flickered awake. The sound of your feet on the floorboards made me ache with anticipation.
“Jackson?” you asked me when you opened the door, squinting. “What the hell is going on? It’s four in the morning.”
I took you then, Sybil. I wrapped my strong arms around your frame (now delightfully slight by comparison to my own) and pulled your body against mine. I kissed you, first softly, then with force. You didn’t quite resist at first, but when you began
