Hard on the Nerves

Today I have another short story for you, like those posted when I first switched to this format. Before I get into that though, I have to talk to you all for a moment about horseshoe crabs.

A few days ago, I arbitrarily stumbled across a picture of a horseshoe crab, and it disturbed me greatly. First off, I had COMPLETELY forgotten that horseshoe crabs even existed. Second off, when I was little, I used to see half a dozen or so pretty much every time I went to the beach, but haven't seen a single one in over a decade.

Now, here I have to wonder. Why? Did something wipe out the horseshoe crab population around here? Were they only such a common site on a particular beach I haven't been to in years? Have I just stopped looking for freaky monsters by my feet when walking along the beach?

I suppose it's also possible that I live in a strange town where everyone's memories are rearranged by aliens who can't stand horseshoe crabs.

Anyway, on with the story.

So there I was, sitting at the bar, with my bright red hair and matching dress. The beer I'd ordered wasn't doing the trick, so I ordered a scotch. There were quite a few creeps giving me winks and smiles, I just gave them the finger and kept trying to get enough booze in my system to handle my situation. You wouldn't think a girl with such a small frame could handle this much liquor. I just chalked it up to a fluke of genetics or something.

My situation was not beyond the realm of imagination. Hell, I don't think there's a single sci-fi series which hasn't played this card at one point or another. Heck, it even happened to Kirk in the last episode. I figure if he can keep a nice macho image after this sort of thing, it's more a short term annoyance than something that marks you for life.

The shock when it actually happens to you though is pretty damn sobering though, so much so it seemed that the scotch wasn't doing the trick. Sure seemed to be running its course quick enough though, so I had to hit the lady's room before I could try and talk the bartender into giving me something stronger.

For those of you who've been living under a rock and haven't heard this sort of story a dozen times before, let me give you a quick rundown. I'm a research scientist. Every day I have to go to work with this... how do I tone this down for the journals... this woman whose general attitude and actions get under the skin of those around her. She'd always be droning on and on about how everyone treats her like dirt because she's a woman and bla bla bla bla bla. The truth is, she'd get as much respect as everyone else if she didn't just sit around bi- sorry, whining, all the time.

Anyway, it turns out she found out some way of switching people's minds around. We both end up working the same shift one night, she makes a food run, and evidently drugged my order. Either that or the fast food joints have sunk to the point where the special sauce knocks you out cold if you taste it. So long story short, I come to in her body, she's evidently hijacked mine and ran off. So I head over to the bar down the road a ways to try and get a better perspective on things with the help of some serious inebriation.

So eventually the bartender decides to cut me off, and I still don't even have a noticeable buzz. I walk out since the fu- sorry, there I go again. Since my bodyjacking associate had stolen my car too. I hailed a cab but not before regurgitating a good deal of the ineffective alcohol on the sidewalk. This was a really wonderful experience, let me tell you. All the effects cheap booze have on your digestive system were there in full swing, but I still wasn't getting the lovely carefree attitude I was hoping for. So anyway, I get in the cab and head for home, wondering about those stories I'd heard about the liquor tolerance of the Irish.

I make my way inside just fine. Sure she stole my wallet but I had a spare key stashed away where I could find it. Once inside I took a bottle of vodka I'd gotten for Christmas into the bathroom with me, so I could continue with my quest to bring my blood/alcohol and stress levels closer together without needing to rent a carpet cleaner the next day.

After a while of this, I got a phone call. Evidently "I" had been seen staggering around the pharmacy, asking for aspirin, and sounding like I'd spent the evening at the bottom of a bottle. Eventually my swaggering form passed out and was rushed to the hospital. I called some of the other guys from the lab, and got a lift.

First of all, let me just see that it's very unsettling to walk in on your own body lying on a hospital bed. Still, between the events of the night, and the freshly treated wound on the back of my body's neck, it was pretty easy to piece things together and explain them to my colleagues.

It's shockingly simple how she did it. Heck, the technology has been around since what? The late nineties? You remember reading that story where some people at MIT or someplace rigged a remote control to a roach's nervous system? Then of course people have been working on new ways to send data to the brain for the blind and such. It doesn't take that big of a leap to combine the two.

So basically, my brain was still in my body. It's just that there were a few chunks of complex electronics wedged into my spinal cord, and a number of other key points in my nervous system that sent all the signals going out to her body and through the info from her senses back to my brain. There's a number of other flaws in this setup besides the obvious issues with alcohol I stumbled on. Various other things work directly on the brain like that, if we didn't stay within range of the radio signals we'd both probably go comatose, and let's not forget that neurosurgery is a tricky thing. I don't know who she got to assist in wiring up my head, and I don't even want to think about how she got her own equipment in place. I still have all this hardware in my skull too by the way. Too risky to take it out, and you can't exactly sew nerve tissue back together either.

Oh, and if you're wondering how our little red headed hijacker is doing, last I checked she was still in pretty serious shape from all the alcohol poisoning I left her with. I feel a little guilty, but hey, fair warning. If you try to steal my body, it's gonna cost you a liver.

Oh yes, the last of my required 4 non-rant updates for this month is more anime reviews. It feels like a cheap cop out to do that, but if it's worth anything, A- I'm working on all the other stuff too, just not getting an update's worth of material a week from'em. B- Anime reviews probably appeal to a whole lot more of you than bad drawings and whatnot, and C- I passed the non-rant updates mark again this month, so odds are I'll have reviewed all the anime I can by Halloween, and then I'll have one less one-eyed... whatever those things are called... staring at me. You know, I seriously need to write it down. I know their significance, I know they're in Alex Kidd and Spirited Away, but I can never remember the name. Rar.