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MINDBOMB by BobH (c) 2012 - Prologue - HEATHER CONNOR: "Look, Mommy, it's Santa Claus" said Lily, tugging on my sleeve excitedly. I looked in the direction my daughter was pointing and had to smile. With his white beard, his round face and rounder stomach, the elderly man standing near the main entrance to the mall certainly looked the part. He had to be in his seventies or even his early eighties, and had obviously stepped outside to smoke his pipe, its ornately carved bowl and yellow stem identifying it as a Meerschaum. "Are you Santa?" Lily asked the man as we drew level with him. "No little lady, I'm not," he chuckled. "But he's a good friend of mine and he's inside in his grotto, giving presents to boys and girls who've been good." "Can we go see Santa Claus, Mommy, can we?" pleaded Lily, as we passed through the door and into the welcome warmth beyond. I sighed. This trip to the mall was one of the last chances I'd get to do a significant amount of shopping before the holiday and I didn't really have time to wait in line to see a shopping mall Santa. I was about to tell Lily "no" when I paused. remembering what it had been like to be eight years old and still that excited about Christmas. Shopping or no shopping, that was what it was all about. "Of course we can, sweetie," I said, smiling down at my daughter and allowing myself to be pulled over to the store. "Good morning ma'am," said the bespectacled teenager at the entrance to 'Santa's Grotto' - he was wearing the grey trousers, tie, and waistcoat required of the mall's male staff and his name badge identified him as 'Gary Warner'. "Tickets are $10 each." I handed him my credit card and he swiped it. He handed it back to me with the ticket. "There you go, Mrs Connor," he said, having read my name on the card, "have a nice day!" We joined the line for Santa behind a dark-haired teenage girl holding the hand of another girl a couple of years younger than Lily, presumably her sister. "He's really here, Sarah," squealed the little girl. " 'Course he is, Eliza," said the older girl, "all the way from the North Pole." She turned and smiled at me. "It's lovely to see them so excited, isn't it?" she said, and I had to agree. Fortunately, the line wasn't too long and within ten minutes Lily had seen Santa and we were heading out with the gift he had plucked from his sack for her. "Can we open it now, Mommy, can we?" asked Lily, excitedly. "Well, it really ought to go under the tree at home with the other gifts," I said, smiling, "but I suppose just this once we can let you open a gift early." Lily ran over to the bench in front of the mall's central fountain, sat down and immediately began tearing off wrapping paper. As I followed after, so someone behind me announced through a megaphone: "Ladies and Gentlemen, can I have your attention please." I stopped and turned. The speaker was a surprisingly tall, powerfully built Asian guy in blue fatigues and heavy boots, a gun holster strapped to his right thigh, He was wearing a kevlar vest bearing the letters 'FBI'. Next to him, clad indentically, stood an only slightly less formidable-looking guy, red-haired and alarmingly freckled. Their name tags identified them as Lee and Kerry. "We need for you all to leave the mall immediately, so could you please all head for the exits in an orderly fashion," Lee continued. I turned back towards my daughter just in time to see Lily taking the cardboard lid off her gift. In that instant a huge flash of light burst from it, throwing me to the floor, and I knew no more. JAKE CONNOR: - 1 - "So, do you think the threat is credible, Jake?" asked Jamal Smith, eyeing the crowds behind the barriers along State Street and absent- mindedly stroking the ugly mass of burn scarring on the right side of his face. Having seen him in the showers, I knew this extended all the way down that side of his body. "Doesn't much matter what I think," I shrugged. "The brass say it's credible so we have to treat it as if it is." "Yeah, but when was the last time a bomb threat against a US senator turned out to be real?" said Jamal. "No, my friend, I faced real roadside bombs in Afghanistan, and this is bullshit." This time I merely grunted in reply. I didn't think it communicated anything but, hearing something in my voice, Jamal's attitude softened. "Hey man, I'm sorry," he said. "I should rein it in." "No, it's not your fault," I said, "it's mine. Not begging off this detail was a bad idea." With all this talk of bombs it was impossible not to think back three years to the bomb that killed two dozen people including my beautiful daughter, and ended my marriage. Lily's death was still unbearable, a constant aching wound, but what hurt almost as much was Heather refusing to see me after the explosion and not even turning up at our daughter's funeral. I'd tried to find her but I was warned off by her new lawyers. They made it plain that she did not want to see me and that any attempt on my part to seek her out would result in a restraining order being slapped on me. A year later her lawyers sent divorce papers through, which I refused to sign. For three years I hadn't known where she was or what she was doing. Three whole years. Until today. At the morning briefing at our New Sudbury Street police station, me and my brother cops were told a plot had been uncovered against the state's junior senator and that we'd be briefed on the threat by members of a special task force from Washington DC. Two agents had then entered the room, both dressed in blue fatigues, their kevlar vests proclaiming them to be FBI. The first one was an Asian guy whose nametag identified him as 'Lee'. I hadn't needed a label to identify the second. It was Heather. I barely heard the briefing, so focussed was I on my wife, but the few times her eyes scanned the room she looked right past me as if I wasn't there. Afterwards, as the briefing broke up, I tried to fight my way across the room to talk to her, but I was deliberately blocked by agent Lee, who ushered her out. "You're thinking 'bout Heather aren't you?" said Jamal. "I can see it in your eyes. Whatever shit is going down there is not your fault. Don't beat yourself up over it, man." "Easier said than done," I said, giving a bitter smile. The FBI. How had Heather ended up in the FBI? She had never really approved of me being with Boston P.D. and had often urged me to find a less dangerous line of work, so what on earth could have possessed her to join the FBI? Had the death of our daughter changed her that much? Did she perhaps see the Bureau as a way of finding the maniac who had planted a bomb in Santa's sack, one that Lily had been unfortunate enough to be given? I wanted to find the bomber and strangle the life out of him with my bare hands, but never in a million years would I have imagined the same impulse siezing my gentle, peace-loving wife. Maybe grief really was powerful enough to change anyone. "You're doing it again," said Jamal. "What?" I said. I'd been miles away. "That finger thing you do when you're nervous." I had the habit of rapidly tapping together the thumb and middle finger of my left hand when I was nervous or worried about something. I didn't even realize I was doing it most of the time. "So, what do you think that codeword stuff was all about?" asked Jamal. "Beats me," I replied, "but it's fucking weird, whatever it is." After the briefing, we were called into the Captain's office one-by-one and told to memorize a codeword which he then jotted in a ledger next to our names. We were told not to share the codeword with anyone, not even family. My codeword was 'cantaloupe'. Whatever was up with this detail, there was definitely something we were not being told. That's why all the questions from Jamal. He was fifteen years older than me, with a lot more experience and more finely-tuned 'street smarts'. It hadn't taken him long to get back into the groove when his National Guard unit got back from Afghanistan. He could tell something wasn't right here. It wasn't just the detail itself, it was everything. "You know when you're not being told something important," Jamal said, "you get an instinct for it. Every instinct I've got is telling me those codewords will turn out to be some important shit." I merely nodded in response. It was a hot day to be standing out in the open like this, watching crowds, and I'd have been just as happy to pass the time in silence, but Jamal was in a strange mood and far more talkative than usual. Something about all this was unsettling him. "There's a story I've never told you about this one time in Afghanistan," he said, "never told anyone, actually. My unit had ended up a long way from where we were meant to be. We'd been in a firefight and our GPS and communications had got shot to hell and back. So anyway, we come up on this hill overlooking a small village in the valley below. Knowing there are supposed to be insurgents in the area, we stay low and scope it out through binoculars. We see people lying in the streets everywhere - men, women and children. The buildings all appear to be undamaged, so there hasn't been any sort of attack on the village that we can see, but everyone looks dead. We're about to go down and check it out close up when we spot someone on a hill the other side of the valley, so we stay low. He's not wearing a uniform but appears to be caucasian so we figure he must be a 'civilian contractor', 'cos Lord knows there was no shortage of those fuckers over there. Next thing we know, there's an unmanned drone flying in low down the valley, and it's pretty obvious the guy on the hill is directing it. It fires a couple of Hellfire missiles into the village and the whole place goes up in flames." "Why would anyone blow up a village full of dead people?" I asked. "Exactly," said Jamal. "The only reason for doing that is because you want to cover something up. Our Captain realized that too and told us we needed to get the fuck out of there and hope we hadn't been spotted. No such luck. When we get back to base we keep quiet about it, but we get called into the base commander's office anyway. Waiting inside is this suit with a military buzzcut and a Z-shaped scar over his right eye, the guy from the hill. Turns out he isn't a civilian contractor but a spook, CIA or one of those other fucking three-letter outfits, and that he *had* spotted us. He demands to know what we saw, and not having shit for brains we know enough to say we got there just as the village went up in flames. Admitting we'd seen anything before then would've been stupid. He seems satisfied and tells us the village was controlled by Al-Qaeda and that taking it out with a drone had prevented an imminent attack on US forces. Which is total B.S., of course. Only way a village full of dead people is gonna attack us is if they're fucking zombies. So anyway, that's the last we hear of it, but you have to wonder what went down in that village and why all trace of it had to be obliterated." "Huh," I said. "Weird." "There's always something you're not being told," he repeated, "always. Even when you really, really need to know some shit they'll figure you don't need to know it." That was certainly true about this operation to protect the senator. Then there was Heather. I had no idea what was going on there. Shortly before we headed out, I happened to glance out the window at the street below. I saw them down there together, Heather and agent Lee. They had stepped out for a smoke and were sharing a cigarette. Nor was that all they were sharing. At one point Lee pulled Heather to him and they shared a passionate kiss. My heart sank on seeing this, but if anything I was more disturbed by the sight of Heather puffing away happily on a cigarette. Lung cancer had claimed her father, a lifelong three-packs-a-day man, and Heather had always been vehemently anti-smoking. "Eyes peeled, Jake," said Jamal, bringing me back to the present. "The senator's motorcade is comin' through." Our task wasn't to watch the senator but to watch the crowd, to keep an eye out for anything suspicious, any sign at all that someone was about to attack him in any way. This was a high-profile PR event and Burstein was expected to be a front runner for his party's nomination for President next time round. He was generating a lot of excitement and the crowd that had turned out to cheer him was about as diverse as you could imagine. Pretty much every ethnicity was represented, male and female, from age three to age ninety-three, able-bodied and wheelchair-bound alike. Even looking back on it later, I'm not sure what it was about the rucksack that drew my attention, why I immediately realised it wasn't owned by anyone near it. I called Jamal and indicated it with a nod. He gave a nod back and we slowly converged on the rucksack. Then it exploded. - 2 - Someone was shaking me awake. "Do you know who you are?" he asked as I opened my eyes. It was agent Lee. He was looming over me and he looked huge. "'m Jake Connor," I slurred, my tongue feeling too big for my mouth and my voice sounding strange. "What's your codeword, Jake." "Cantaloupe," I replied with some effort, because I could neither feel nor move my body. Agent Lee checked this against the clipboard he was carrying then nodded. "OK, bag him and tag him," he said, and a woman in a white lab coat moved in from somewhere with an aerosol syringe. Before I could protest, she had pressed this to my arm and sent a blast into my bloodstream, something I heard rather than felt. I wanted to protest this treatment, to demand to know what the hell was going on, but I was asleep before I could utter a word. When I came to I was lying on a bed of some sort. I felt groggy, real groggy, and I knew it wasn't just from the explosion. There was a strange taste in my mouth and a pain in my right arm. Had someone injected me with something? Yes, I remembered, yes they had. But why? Something wasn't right here. without opening my eyes I did a quick inventory, almost imperceptably wiggling first my toes and then my fingers, all of which seemed to be functioning, though they felt a bit...off. It was when I ran my tongue over my teeth that I got my first shock. Their contours were totally unfamiliar to me, which could mean only one thing. In that moment I became hyper-aware of every part of me I could feel without moving. These were not my teeth. This was not my body. I sat bolt upright then, looked down at my body, and almost fainted. I was a girl, a little girl, and I was wearing a pink dress, white ankle socks, and pink sandals with heart-shaped buckles. For a moment, paralysed by shock, I couldn't move. This was not possible. It couldn't be, it just couldn't be. I looked around the room wildly, desperately wanting to flee, to run as far away as I could from this impossible thing that had happened to me. That's when I saw the full-length wall mirror. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, only to discover they didn't reach the floor. I had been a six-three man; now I was a little girl whose feet didn't reach the floor when sitting on the edge of a bed. Annoyed, I dropped the final few inches and padded over to the mirror. That's when I discovered I was also Chinese. I stood there staring at my reflection, my jaw dropping - just as that of the little girl in the mirror did. I had straight black hair, cut into a geometrically precise fringe along the line of my eyebrows, and terminating in an equally geometrically precise line about an inch below my ears. I studied that unfamiliar face in disbelief, fingers tracing the lips, the eyes, the small nose, only to be startled out of this examination by the sound of a key turning in the door lock. The door opened and a woman strode in. She was tall (insofar as I could still judge such things given my own much reduced height), slim, beautiful, and dressed in a sharply tailored dark skirt suit with similarly dark stockings and heels, her chesnut brown hair pulled back from her lightly made-up face. The whole effect was one of both professionalism and authority, one only slightly spoiled by the tray she was carrying. She placed this on the table and turned to face me. "Hello Jake, I'm Doctor Summers," she said, effortlessly picking me up and placing me back on the bed. "I imagine all this has come as a big shock to you." That was an understatement. Among other things I was appalled by how casually she had lifted me. "Where am I?" I asked, eyeing her warily. "What day is it and what happened to me?" "It's still Friday, and you're at a facility currently designated Camp Alpha, in the shadow of the Colorado Rockies. It's a former army base that was mothballed during defense cuts in the nineties, now reopened and repurposed as a place to deal with mindbomb victims." "'Mindbomb'?" I winced at my voice. I had been a baritone; now I had the high, shrill voice of a little girl. "Yes. It's the device that went off in Boston, the one whose blast you were caught in. We don't know how, but it swaps around the minds of anyone caught within its secondary blast radius. You ended up in the body of a four year old girl." It sounded both fantastic and ludicrous. I'd have dismissed it as pure fantasy if not for the inescapable fact of my body switch. Something occurred to me. "You knew it was going to happen," I said, the penny finally dropping. "That's why the codewords, so that afterwards you'd know for sure we were who we said we were. That means this has happened before. How many times?" "Almost two dozen. In most cases, fortunately for us, we've been able to disguise these as gas explosions or other such accidents. The first was three years ago, at a mall outside of Boston." "Three....? You mean the blast that killed my daughter..." "Was the first, yes. The initial explosion is small with a blast radius of about three feet. Not very big, but lethal if you're caught within it. Mindbombs are the shape of a gridiron football but around half the size. They have a thin aluminum shell. The initial explosion ruptures this, which allows the second, non-concussive energy wave to spread out and do its work over something like a seventy yard radius. Generally speaking, a mindbomb blast kills one or two people, but the official death toll is always much higher. That way we can spirit away those who have been mind- switched and relocate those we need to without anyone knowing. Fortunately the mind-switching knocks you out for a good ten to fifteen minutes while your brain reboots, so it's easy to sell this as a mass killing to any witnesses before we're able to get in and close off the scene." I considered this, then glanced around the room and asked the obvious question. "Am I a prisoner?" "No, but you won't be allowed to leave until you agree to keep quiet about the mindbombs and have learned how to act convincingly as a four year-old girl. Your training starts tomorrow. You should eat the meal I brought you then retire for the night. You'll find nightclothes in one of the drawers. It's seven pm now, and the light will go out automatically a half hour from now - the proper bedtime for someone your age. We'll talk again tomorrow." With that she turned on her heel and left, locking the door behind her. Before being brought food I wouldn't have said I was hungry, but now it was here I was suddenly ravenous. So OK, it was only a ham sandwich, a soda, and a bowl of jello, but I still wolfed it all down. Afterwards I took off my clothes, laid them over he back of a chair, then donned the long flannel nightgown I found in the bedside drawers. I didn't examine my body, not then, in fact I deliberately ignored it. The thing is I am - or rather was - a grown man and this body belonged to a small child. I might be 'wearing' it now but the idea of touching it, of touching *her*, really made me feel uneasy. Yeah, you could argue this was dumb but it was something I couldn't get past, not on that first day. If there was any chance of it being returned to her then I would be treating it as respectfully as possible. Through all this my mind was racing, which helped keep me from obsessing over my transformation and maybe completely losing it. Now that I knew about the mindbombs and what had really happened on that day at the mall three years ago, all manner of things were falling into place. I woke the next morning knowing the questions I needed to ask. - 3 - By the time Doctor Summers returned I was already up and had brushed my teeth, and dressed. In the absence of any other alternative I'd had to put on the same clothes I had been wearing the day before. "Good morning, Lisa," she said, "did you get a good night's sleep?" "No, not really, but...Lisa?!" "Your new name. 'Jake Connor' doesn't really work for you any more so we've created a new identity for you. You're now Lisa Liu, an orphan." "So who was I before," I asked, "the owner of this body, I mean? From what you told me yesterday I gather I'm here to be taught how to be a four year old girl, but then what? Someone adopts me? What about this child's parents?" "She was with her grandmother, who didn't survive. Her parents have been told she was also killed. As recent immigrants they would soon realize you weren't their daughter - for one thing you don't speak Chinese -and we can't have that. I will talk to you as an adult when we're alone, but I'm the only person who will. After this you will be treated as a child and be expected to act your new age. You're lucky: it's far easier to teach an adult to be a child than a child to be an adult. You've already been a child, but they've never been an adult. We've developed techniques to accelerate maturing in such cases, but the equivalent of around three years maturing for every one that passes is about the limit to how much it can be speeded up. It's going to take many years to deal with the bigger disparities. In the most extreme cases it might not even be possible. They may have to be permanently institutionalized." I was a twenty eight year old in the body of a four year old. I shuddered when I tried to imagine what it would be like to be a four year old in the body of a twenty eight year old. As for those who had been dealt an even worse hand.... "The body switches are not entirely random," continued Dr Summers, "but we don't know enough about the process to even begin understand why that should be." "How do you mean?" "Well to begin with there are more transgender switches than there should be if it was random. Also, where a family is caught by a mindbomb then something like ninety percent of the time the body-switching stays within that family, which suggests that shared genes somehow factor into it. For example, take close friends the Andersons and the Baileys, two families who were together at an event last year where a mindbomb went off. You'd expect there to have been some mixing between the two but there was none. The Andersons had a teenage son and daughter. Their switches were father to mother, mother to son, son to daughter, and daughter to father. The Baileys had three daughters aged sixteen, ten, and six. Their switches were six year-old to ten year-old, ten year-old to sixteen year-old, sixteen year-old to mother, mother to father, and father to six year- old." "What do you do in cases like that?" "Where possible we try to keep such families together, just relocating them since anyone who knew them before would notice big changes in their behaviour. We also supply any academic and professional accreditation needed so that those still adults can still work in those fields where they have the skills. As long as they successfully adapt they keep their family names, too." "And did they?" "Yes, they did. Somehow they made it work." "Do you know how?" "We prefer not to pry too closely in those situations." "I don't understand." "This is the most difficult aspect of the whole mess. There was a lot of debate about the ethical and moral dilemmas thrown up by switches, about how those affected should be regarded, both legally and practically. Despite the obvious problems, it was decided that everyone would not only be the physical age of their new body but that this would also be their *legal* age. However, we recognized our responsibility to protect those who had the minds of children and the bodies of adults until such time as we judged them able to fend for themselves. It's not a perfect solution, but it's about the best that anyone could come up with. In the case of stable, loving familes caught up in this mess we give assistance if it's requested, but otherwise we let them work it out. The Andersons and the Baileys are now nighbours on the other side of the country to where they used to live, and they've sorted out things together, re-shuffled the relationships between their two families, and appear to be doing OK." This was all very interesting, but I had something else on my mind, something I'd intended to be the first thing I asked Doctor Summers. "I now understand why Heather wasn't at Lily's funeral and why she wanted a divorce," I said. "There's someone else in her body now, isn't there?" "Yes. There were two FBI agents caught in the mall blast: Lee and Kerry. Kerry ended up in Lee's body and Lee in Heather's. That was one of the instances where it was convenient to let transferrees assume the original identities of their new bodies." "Were Lee and Kerry lovers?" "Not that I'm aware of, no. What makes you ask?" "I saw them kissing," I said, "outside the police station." "Ah, I see. The former agent Lee now has Heather's body. Heather was a heterosexual woman, which means the former agent Lee now is, too. You get the sexuality of the body you end up in." "And Heather," I said, "the real Heather? Who did she end up as?" "I can't tell you that," she said. "Policy forbids it." "Policy? What policy?" "We don't know who is behind the mindbombs and we don't know why. They always plant them in venues where there will be crowds in order to affect the maximum number of people, but beyond that we can find no pattern or logic behind the targets they choose. However, one thing we can be sure of is that if word ever leaked out as to what these devices actually do it would cause a widespread panic. We've gone to quite extraordinary lengths to ensure it doesn't get out. Hence this facility and its sister establishments, Camps Beta and Delta. Where we can't keep them together, we split people between the three such that in most cases you won't encounter either the person who now has your body or those with the bodies of any loved ones caught in the mindbomb blast with you. These are places where we teach you how to be the person you appear to be before giving you a new identity and letting you back out into the world. Taking on a new identity means giving up your old one and all your old relationships, hence the policy I mentioned. If you don't know who someone ended up as after being hit by a mindbomb you can't seek them out later, and we don't want you to. In that respect what we do is like preparing you for a witness protection program. Buildings have been added to the camps and others altered so that, as far as possible, they now resemble genuine small towns. They're peopled by mindbomb victims learning how to be the people they now are and by genuine civilian workers, all of whom live on base. The latter know nothing about the mindbombs, and mindbomb victims have no idea who's a civilian and who's a fellow victim. Since we want them to learn and adapt that's the way it has to be. However, while it may contain a town this is still essentially a military base. It has a fence and the gate is manned by soldiers with orders not to let out anyone who doesn't have a valid pass." "So this is a prison camp?" "What? No, you weren't listening. It's a training camp. We keep you here until you're ready to rejoin the world and have agreed to keep quiet about the mindbombs. And before you say anything - yes, this does mean you're stuck like this. That will be your body for the rest of your life. A mindbomb blast affects you once, and thereafter you're immune. Should you get caught in a second blast it will have no effect on you." So this was permanent. This was now my body and I would be this girl until the day I died. Something struck me. "That's why agent Lee and Heather mark two were there with us in Boston," I said, "you knew it was a mindbomb and you knew they'd be unaffected." "We *suspected* it was, that's all. The codewords and the presence of Heather and agent Lee were precautions. Law enforcement personnel who are immune to the blasts are an invaluable asset." This was all almost too much to take in, but I needed to know everything. "So what happens next?" I asked. "Do I stay locked in this room?" "For tonight. Tomorrow you start your new life as Lisa Liu. Eventually, when you've learned how to convincingly pass as a four year-old girl you will be adopted by a couple in the outside world and, I hope, live a normal and happy life. First, however, you'll be assigned a guardian here on the base she will be a foster parent in all but name and will treat you as her child. Should you misbehave, you will be spanked. Her name is Penny Scott and she's nineteen years old. She's working here as a nursing attendant to earn as much money as she can for when she starts college in a few weeks time. Her neighbour Amanda has a daughter, Chloe, who is genuinely your age. She will be your new best friend and you'll learn how to be a four year-old by watching and copying her. Right, now we have to go shopping. You need some changes of clothes." So saying, she took my hand and led me outside. Standing in front of the building was her vehicle. "A golf cart?" I said, unimpressed. "The soldiers have jeeps but this is what the rest of us use to get around the camp. Now hop on board and make sure you have your seatbelt done up." I did as she asked, then she climbed into the driver's seat and we took off. This was my first look at the camp and I scanned my surroundings with interest. Except for the guard towers, every building was a low, single level structure, all painted in drab military colours. There weren't a lot of people around, but those that were looked pretty much like a cross-section of individuals you might see on the street of any US city. Outside the camp perimeter, maybe ten miles to the west, I could see the snow-capped Rockies. They were as magnificent as everyone says they are. The store we went to was basically the camp's PX, and what it lacked in modern display design it more than made up for in scope. Doctor Summers led me stright over to the childrens' clothing area and soon had me trying on various shoe and dress combinations. "What, no trousers?" I said, as I stood before her in dress number six and she fussed over the fastenings having already tied a matching ribbon in my hair. "No," she replied, "no trousers, nor anything else that might let you forget you're now a little girl. You have to learn how to play that role - how to *be* a little girl - as swiftly as possible, so it has to be total femininity all the way. The 'girlier' something is the better." So much for my hope she'd let me be a tomboy. On the way out, carrying several bags of clothing, we stopped in the toy section and picked up three dolls, some alternate clothing for them, a book of fairy tales, and a toy tea set. "You expect me to play with those things?" I said in disbelief. "When Chloe comes over for a playdate, yes. And I expect you to carry this Raggedy Ann doll with you at all times," she said, handing it to me. "A girl your age often has a favourite doll she uses as a sort of security blanket. She'll be yours. You need to give her a name, Lisa." She looked at me expectantly. "Mary," I said, somewhat reluctantly. "That'll do nicely. Any reason you chose that particular name?" "My family were Irish catholic," I said. "Half my female relatives were named Mary, so it's the first name that popped into my head." Back at the clinic, in what I was coming to think of as my cell, Doctor Summers sat down on the bed and patted it to indicate I should climb up beside her. This I did. She then pulled out the book of fairy tales. "You're going to read me a story?" I said. "Really?" "Penny almost certainly will, so let's have less of the attitude, young lady." "I can read a book by myself," I said, folding my arms and pouting sullenly. "Oh, really? Then you go right ahead, missy." She handed me the book, and I threw it open at random, preparing to read a passage from whatever story was revealed. But there was a problem. I stared at the words, first in puzzlement and then in horror. "I..I can't read!" I whispered. "Another interesting consequence of being in that body," said Doctor Summers, retrieving the book. "She hadn't yet learned to read so you can't either. It's something to do with the right neural pathways not having been formed yet. But don't worry. The fact that you could read in your old body means you'll pick it up far quicker in this one than she would have. Right, time for your first lesson." She read me 'Cinderella', very slowly, running her finger across each word as she did so. I followed along as best I could, but it was slow going. I realized anything more difficult than "the cat sat on the mat" was going to be beyond me for a while. - 4 - The following day - Sunday - I got dressed in some of the clothing we'd got from the store. That meant a dress, ribbon, ankle socks and Mary Janes of course. It was also the first time I was able to bring myself to examine this body in detail, my previous qualms now banished by the revelation it would now be mine until the day I died. I was four years old, I was female, and I was Chinese. Any one of these changes would have been a shock; to have to deal with all three at once was almost overwhelming. At the moment the hardest to cope with was the age regression, but I was sure the others would have their moments. I still had the first sexist or racist remarks directed at me by some moron to look forward to. Oh joy. Doctor Summers brought me breakfast about half an hour after I got up. When I'd finished she told me to gather up all my belongings as I wouldn't be returning. She then led me out to her golf cart and drove us out to one of the many identical, small, single level houses on the base. Waiting for me inside was the woman chosen to be my temporary foster parent. "Hello, Penny," said Doctor Summers, "this is Lisa, the little girl we've chosen for you." She was maybe five-ten in height, slim, pretty, had center-parted long dark hair and was wearing black jeans, cowboy boots, a white tank top, and dark eye make-up. There was a chain tattoo around her right bicep, and she sported large hoop earrings. She smiled when she saw me, and leaned down to greet me. "Hello, Lisa," she said. "My name is Penny and you'll be living with me while you're here." She seemed a little nervous. I guess this was as big a deal for her as for me. "Hello, Penny," I said, lowering my eyes and feigning shyness as Dr Summers had suggested I should. Shyness was an excuse for me not talking too much at first. Had we gone the 'chatterbox' route that would have increased the chances of me accidentally using my adult vocabulary. According to Doctor Summers, Penny was one of the civilians on base who didn't know about the mindbombs, and she wanted to keep it that way. Penny gave me a quick hug, kissed my forehead, then straightened up and took my hand. "C'mon, sweetie," she said, "let's show you your room." My room was at the end of a short corridor. It was small, with a single bed, and had been freshly painted, the walls papered with images of 'my little pony'. I recognized that wallpaper. It was the same wallpaper I had put up in Lily's room. Unable to stop myself, I started to tear up. "Hey, hey," said Penny, picking me up and hugging me, "no need for tears. It's only wallpaper." She thought mine were my tears of happiness. I let her believe that. "It's so pretty!" I said. "I'll leave her in your capable hands," said Doctor Summers. "You behave yourself, young lady, you hear?" I nodded. "Good girl!" she said, ruffling my hair. Then she turned and left. "Let's get you settled in," said Penny, putting me down. She put all my clothes away, put all my dolls on the bed except for my rag doll Mary, which I'd been clutching to my chest throughout, and then sat down and opened the book of fairy tales. "I'll read you one of these at bedtime tonight. Which story is your favorite?" "Cindyrella," I replied, choosing at random and deliberately mispronouncing it. "Good choice. What little girl doesn't love a story about a princess?" She showed me around the house, what little there was to see of it, and we'd just returned to the kitchen when the doorbell rang. It was a young woman a few years older than Penny, and a young girl my age, both of them blonde. "Hi," said the woman. "I thought we'd come over and welcome our new arrival." "Lisa, this is my next door neighbour Mrs Baines and her daughter Chloe. Say hello to them." "'Lo, Mrs Baines," I said. "'Lo, Chloe." "My, aren't you pretty?" said Mrs Baines, leaning over and ruffling my hair. All this hair ruffling was getting really old really fast. "We c'n be frens," said Chloe, looking at me shyly. "Yes you can," said Penny. "Why don't you go and play in Lisa's room while the grown up have some coffee?" "OK. C'mon, Chloe," I said, taking her hand. "Leave the door open so Chloe's mommy and I can see you from the kitchen, OK?" "OK, Penny," I said Once in the room, I pulled out my dolls and tea set for us to play with. I let Chloe set things up and lead the way, which she happily did. I listened to her carefully when she spoke, pitching my own speech at the same level. There was an awful lot of giggling, but I managed that too. None of this was difficult. It was only a few years since I'd seen Lily at play at this age, after all. Chloe noticed nothing odd about me, accepting me as another child her own age. This was a huge relief. It looked like I was going to pull this off after all. Through the door I could see Penny and Mrs Baines - Amanda - sitting at the kitchen table, deep in conversation over coffee and cigarettes. Whatever they were talking about seemed very intense, though they also laughed frequently. That sort of talk between females had always been a mystery to me, but I suppose I'll be engaging in it myself when I'm their age again. I knew nothing about being a woman, yet I would grow up to be one one day. This led to the odd thought that if I had to be female then perhaps starting off as a little girl was a blessing. This way I'd have time to learn rather than being dropped in the deep end and having to immediately cope with finding myself suddenly an adult female. The visit lasted most of the day, with Penny and Amanda making lunch for us and Chloe and I playing hide and go seek when we tired of the tea party. I let her beat me at this. Over the day we all bonded well and Chloe and I cuddled together for a while, best friends already. By the time they left it was my bedtime. Well, almost. "Get undressed," said Penny, "and I'll run the bath." Being bathed by someone else was a strange but not unpleasant experience, as was being towelled down by her afterwards with a big, fluffy towel. When I'd put my nightgown on and brushed my teeth, Penny put me to bed, tucked me in and read me 'Cinderella'. "Good night," she said when she finished. "I've got a lot of studying to do now, but I'll see you in the morning." "G'night, Penny," I said. I was asleep within minutes. - 5 - Breakfast the next morning was a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice for me, while Penny had a crispbread and a slice of grapefruit, followed by a cup of coffee and a cigarette. She was dressed in what I recognized as a nursing assistant's uniform. Doctor Summers had told me this was her job but I hadn't thought to question her on the matter. Now I found myself wondering just what it was Penny did but I couldn't think of a polite way of asking. Then I remembered that I was a kid now and kids my age are nothing if not direct. "Are you a nurse, Penny?" I asked "No, I work at the old folk's home as a nursing assistant," she said. "That's where I'll be going after I've taken you to kindergarten. You should make lots of friends your own age there, Lisa." Parked outside our house was a golf cart - everyone was assigned one, so far as I could tell - which Lisa used to drive me to the kindergarden, which was in one of the larger buildings. Inside it was decked out with all the things you'd expect, and was run by two smiling young women who introduced themselves as Mandy and Buffy - seriously! I was one of about a dozen boys and girls who were all around my age. I wondered how many were genuinely children and how many were adults in the bodies of children. Short of asking outright the only way to tell would be to watch carefully and see if I could detect an adult intelligence behind any of their eyes. One person I knew was definitely a child was Chloe, who was delighted her new friend had joined the class. Mandy and Buffy led us in various games, in singalongs, and showed us DVDs of children's cartoons and old Teletubbies episodes. After lunch - pizza, jello, and a milkshake - we were all allowed to take a short afternoon nap which, to my great surprise, I found I actually needed. An infant metabolism was going to take some getting used to. When Penny turned up to collect me I was astonished to realize how much time had passed. I thought I had identified a couple of of children who were really adults during the day, but I wasn't sure. Like me, they were doing their best to blend in and pass as infants, and if they were really adult then they were doing a pretty good job. "How was your day?" asked Penny, as she fastened my seat belt. "Did you have a nice time?" "Yes, " I said, " we played games, saw cartoons, and I played with Chloe." I would have said more, but Penny's pager chose that moment to go off. She read the message and frowned. "Sorry sweetie, but I have to deal with this. We have to go back to the old folks' home." The old folks' home was in a larger building than the kindergarten and varied from it in one important respect: it had barred windows and guards on the door. When we arrived, Penny showed the guards her security pass then led me through to a comfortable lounge in which there were a bunch of old people sitting in armchairs and watching the TV in the corner. "Just wait here and I'll be back in a minute," said Penny. And with that she was gone, leaving me in that room full of old people. I looked around nervously. For some reason, this startled one of the women and she beckoned me over to where she was sitting, her walking frame parked next to her armchair. She was short, maybe five foot, with permed and blue-rinsed curly hair, thick glasses, and a hearing aid. She was one of the more ancient of those in the room, looking about ninety. I went over to her, whereupon and with some effort she picked me up and sat me in her lap. "Hello, Jake," she said, in her croaky, old woman's voice. "You know who I was?" I said, surprised. "How?" "It was that finger thing you do when you're nervous." "Jamal?" I whispered. "Is that you?" "In the flesh. The lot older flesh. When that rucksack exploded I went from thirty-six to eighty-seven, and from a black guy to a white woman. Hell of a thing to go through." "I...I don't know what to say." "Last thing I expected was to end up as a little old Jewish lady," she chuckled, "but then I never expected to survive Afghanistan either. That IED should've killed me, so I figure I've been living on borrowed time ever since. Looks like that time is almost up now." "What do you mean?" "Esther Rubinstein had terminal cancer, which means I have it now. The docs say I've got a month or so left, if that." "I...I'm sorry." "Don't be. I've got no regrets. They won't tell me where Esther ended up, but I hope she's young and healthy. She deserves that after what she went through." "What did she go through?" She turned her hand over to show me her wrist. Tattooed there, faded but still visible, was a row of numbers. "Oh," I said. "Yeah, she can only have been a kid at the time." We were both silent for a moment. "So," she said, "you got to be a little girl. What do they call you now?" "Lisa Liu. They've got me learning how to be a four year-old." "Guess you got the better of this mindbomb deal." "I guess so," I said, "but it could just have easily gone the other way. The whole thing seems to be pretty random." "Yeah, maybe. What do you think they're doing at the camp they're not telling us about?" "What camp?" I said, puzzled. "C'mon, Jake," she said, "surely you noticed? Doc Summers told me they have camps named Alpha, Beta, and Delta, but the Greek alphabet runs Alpha, Beta, Gamma and then Delta. No way they missed a letter out. That's not how the military mind works. No, there's a Camp Gamma associated with this stuff out there somewhere. And they don't want us to know about it." I would have questioned her further about her suspicions, but that was when Penny returned. "Lisa!" she said. "You haven't been bothering Mrs Rubinstein, have you?" "She was no bother at all, dear," Jamal/Mrs Rubinstein replied, pinching my cheek. "What a delightful little girl!" I climbed down from her lap, then she reached into her purse and pulled out a shiny new quarter. "Don't spend it all at once," she said, winking at me. "Say thank you to Mrs Rubinstein, Lisa," said Penny. "Thank you, Mrs Rubestein," I said, making it sound as though I couldn't quite pronounce the name. As Penny took my hand and led me away, I looked at the quarter and shook my head. Don't spend it all at once, indeed! Very funny, Jamal. That evening was a bit different to the previous one in that after she'd gotten me ready for bed Penny changed into heels, stockings, a sexy little dress, and put on full make-up before coming to read me my goodnight story. "You look very pretty," I told her. "Why thank you, sweetie," she said. "My friend Paul is coming over later and I want to look nice for him." With that she kissed me on the forehead, said goodnight and left, turning out my light and closing the door after her. I didn't get to meet Paul, not that night, but I certainly heard him. The walls in these homes were very thin so it wasn't difficult to follow the action as they made love in the bedroom next to mine, or to miss it when Penny climaxed. It also wasn't hard to imagine myself in her position fifteen years from now, lying back as my boyfriend slid his penis into my pussy and loving it. The thought of this made me feel queasy today, but if I was a heterosexual female - and there was a very high likelihood I was - the teenage me was going to feel very differently. I shuddered at the thought. - 6 - I had hoped I'd get another chance to see Jamal, but it never happened. Penny continued to drive me to kindergarten every day and then on to her job but she never got another out of hours call out and so never took me by the old folks' home again. Eventually, in the middle of my second week at the camp, I broached the subject. "C'n I go an' see Mrs Rubestein again, Penny?" I said. "I like her. She was a nice lady." "Oh sweetie," she said, "I'm afraid you can't. Mrs Rubinstein is dead. She passed away in her sleep two days ago." I was momentarily stunned by the news, then - to my surprise - I burst into tears. "There, there," said Penny, picking me up and patting my back. "It's sad but Mrs Rubinstein was very old, and it was her time." She was trying her best to comfort me but I could hear the puzzlement in her voice. So far as she knew I'd only met the old lady that one time, so she couldn't understand why I was so upset. "Wanna see Doctor Summers," I sniffled. "OK, sweetie," said Penny. As it happened I had an appointment with Doctor Summers that very afternoon for my weekly assessment. When Penny dropped me off, Doctor Summers' assistant told me she'd be with me in a few minutes and had me wait in a chair outside her office. The door was slightly ajar and I could hear laughter. Unable to resist I peered through the crack. It was Doctor Summers I'd heard laughing. She was in the arms of a tall, powerfully built man with red hair and freckles, smothering his face with kisses. Her blouse was undone and her left breast exposed, the man fondling it with his right hand and caressing the nipple with his thumb. Not wanting to intrude on such a private moment, I returned to my chair and sat staring at the floor until the door opened about ten minutes later. The man strode by without looking down at me and Doctor Summers called me inside. She was buttoning her blouse and smiling, looking flushed. "Who was that?" I asked, taking the seat in front of her desk. "My husband, Steven," she said. "And how have you this week, Lisa?" "Getting along pretty well until just now," I said. "Why, what happened?" "I heard that Jamal died." "Jamal...? How did you..." "He recognized me the one time I visited the old folks' home," I said. "There's this nervous tic I have." "I see." "So what happens now? Does he get buried as Esther Rubinstein?" "Yes. It's been less than two weeks since the mindbomb that caught you both, so we can still plausibly claim she was in isolation where she died and so return the body to her family." "And no-one knows Jamal is dead?" "No, only us. But a part of him is still alive. She's using a different name, but there's a woman living on in his body." "A woman? The real Esther Rubinstein?" "No. If more than two people are caught in a mindbomb blast you never get a direct swap like that. We don't know why." "I'd like to go to the funeral, " I said. "I'm sorry, but you can't. Even if we could come up with a plausible reason for Lisa Liu to have known Esther Rubinstein, we wouldn't let you. I know it sounds harsh, but I'm afraid you're just going to have to put this behind you and move on." I didn't like it, but I could see it from her point of view. That was the last thing of note that happened during my remaining time at Camp Alpha. I continued to attend kindergarten, play with Chloe, and be a model foster daughter to Penny. I even got used to wearing a dress every day and having a ribbon in my hair. It came to seem almost normal. At the end of four weeks my little girl act was sufficiently polished that Doctor Summers declared me ready to be adopted. However, the day before this was to happen was Penny's last day at the camp. She was enrolled in a college back east and it was time for her to go. Every night I'd been with her Penny had hit the books after I was in bed, except for the two evenings a week that Paul came over and stayed the night. Their final time together had been the night before, and from what I'd heard through my bedroom wall it had been a tearful and emotional farewell. The morning after was cold but sunny. Both of us having packed our stuff, we were in the kitchen waiting for the jeep that was scheduled to come and whisk Penny away to the airport. I was sitting at the table while Penny paced up and down, nervously smoking a cigarette. She jumped when the silence was abruptly broken by a knock at the door. It was Chloe and her mother come to say goodbye and to take charge of me. I'd be staying with them until my own departure tomorrow. Penny and Amanda stared at each other for a moment, then they had closed the distance between them and were hugging each other fiercely. Penny tried to say something but couldn't. "I know," said Amanda, patting her friend's arm, "I know." Which was when we heard the jeep pull up outside. It was time. Penny stabbed her cigarette out in an ashtray then picked me up. "I''m going to really miss you, Lisa," she said, tearing up. "Me, too," I sniffled. And it was true. In our short time together I'd grown really fond of her. I hoped I'd like my soon-to-be adoptive parents half as much as I liked Penny. She smiled at us all, teary eyed, and then she was gone. I approved. She clearly didn't believe in long goodbyes, and neither did I. And that was pretty much it for me and Camp Alpha. I spent the rest of the day and that night with Chloe - we shared a bed and slept cuddled together - and said my goodbyes to her and her mom the following morning. She had been my friend, the first friend from what was now my own age group , but it had been impossible for me not to also see Lily in her. Doctor Summers greeted me cheerily. "This is it, Lisa," she said, "the big day. Are you ready to meet your new parents?" I nodded. "Good, then I'll take you to a room where you can see them but they can't see you." She was talking about an interview room and an observation room, the two separated by a two-way mirror. I'd been in them hundreds of times with Boston P.D. I wondered what was going on and why we'd need such a room. When we got there and I looked through the mirror I understood why we were doing it this way. "Heather and Agent Lee?!" I said. "What...why?" "Because they want to adopt and they're uniquely suited to parent someone in your situation. That's not the Heather you knew, not really, but this new Heather is her in body. If you want it she's a link to your former life, the only one still available to you. Do you want it?" "I....yes, yes I do." And I did, more than I'd realised. "They don't know who you used to be, of course, and you can't tell them. They will treat you exactly as the little girl you appear to be, and you have to be that little girl. It's the only way this can work." "I understand," I said. "Oh, and one other thing. In a few months time you'll get to be the flower girl at their wedding. Heather's former husband had refused to divorce her for the longest time. Recently, however, he seems to have had a change of mind...." * - Epilogue - DR CAROLINE SUMMERS: I watched through the window as Lisa and her new parents climbed into their car and drove off, feeling oddly sad. Behind me the office door opened and someone entered. "So it's done." I turned to face my visitor. He was middle aged but straight-backed, with a military buzzcut and a Z-shaped scar over his right eye. "Yes," I said. "She'll bond with her new parents, and a few months from now we'll put the proposition to her. I'm almost certain she'll go for it. Naturally, her adoptive parents are already on board." "Of course she'll go for it," he said. "She's exactly the type we want, a straight arrow, pro-establishment, chain of command type who now that she can convincingly act as a four year-old girl will make a unique and valuable operative. People won't have their guard up when they see her." "Do you ever have any doubts about what we're doing?" "None. When the mindbomb effect was discovered we had to decide on the best way to utilize it. I know you were opposed to us ensuring law- enforcement or military personnel are present whenever we set off a mindbomb but, for obvious reasons, we need to build up a stock of people immune to them. In any situation where we use mindbombs to disorient the enemy, anyone with that immunity will have the advantage. When they get switched, the enemy will be unconscious for several minutes, giving our troops a major advantage. Still, battlefield use of mindbombs is years away. In the meantime those law-enforcement and military professionals who end up in the right bodies are an intelligence asset that no other nation has access to. If we could control the process, have the right people end up in the bodies we want them to we might have come up with another way of using it. But we can't so this way, having everyone believe they're random victims of unidentified terrorists, was always the best way to go." "If you say so." "Don't go getting cold feet now, Doc. After all, you were one of those that set up the protocols for the mindbomb program, and by making sure you were there when the first operational bomb went off you certainly lucked out. You ended up with a much younger - and hotter - body. Like you knew you would." "I was the oldest person at the mall, so I was always going to end up in a younger body. Which the committee authorised, remember? With how important I was to the project they wanted to ensure I'd still be around for years to come. I just got lucky with how much younger I got, and how attractive." "Do you ever miss it?" he asked. "Being a man, I mean?" "Not really, no. I sometimes miss my Meerschaum pipe, oddly, but not being a man. There was always a fifty percent chance I'd end up a woman so I was prepared for that possibility. Still, the shift in your sense of self when the mindbomb drops you into a female body is truly remarkable. I'm a happily married, entirely heterosexual woman now, one who loves her husband and is eager to have a baby." "Huh. And that happens to every guy it puts in a woman's body?" "If the woman was straight, then yes. Every one. My husband was originally a teenage mall employee named Gary Warner. He ended up in the body of an FBI agent named Sean Kerry. When we first met the attraction was immediate. I was his psychologist, but I was also a beautiful young woman. He was shy and awkward at first - also tall, handsome, and seriously ripped. I damn near swooned when I first saw him. I knew being in this body meant I was probably going to be attracted to guys, but I didn't understand how strong that attraction could be until I experienced it for the first time. If a mindbomb ever put *you* in a female body you'd feel the same way too." "That's hard to believe, but I'll take your word for it. Would've been a real pain if it had dumped you in a kid's body." "Yes it would, but we'd have made it work somehow. Too many resources had been sunk into the project to have a little thing like that derail it. Did you manage to avoid Esther Rubinstein - the former Jamal Smith - before she died?" I asked, changing the subject. "Yeah, but hell that tells you what a small world it is. I mean what are the odds there would be someone here I'd met in Afghanistan?" "Pretty long, I'd imagine. And since you brought up Aghanistan, what *did* happen to your test subjects over there? I understand the need to test the process out somewhere out of the way before we started using it in America, but wasn't there always a risk word would leak out? It would only take one person who'd been switched to convince others of what had happened to him after all." "I wouldn't worry about that. I'm pretty sure they won't tell anyone what we did to them." "So you paid them to keep quiet?" "Something like that, yeah." Later, after the Colonel had flown back to Camp Gamma, I took Penny Scott's file from my desk and studied the contents thoughtfully. She was one of our success stories, no doubt about it, but I still remembered our first meeting three years ago. We were both new to our bodies, both disoriented, but I had to be the adult and calm her down. She now had the body of Sarah Coates, who had taken her sister Eliza to the mall to see Santa, in actuality a moonlighting fifty six year-old mailman named Ed. Sarah had ended up in the body of a middle-aged housewife, Ed in Eliza's body, and Eliza in the body of a boy her own age. We had decided it was best to keep Sarah and Eliza together, but where they had been sisters they were now mother and son. They also knew who each other had once been, which wasn't always the best way to go. Penny would go out into the world now as a confident young woman. Thanks to the pioneering techniques that allowed us to accelerate maturity at something close to three years per year, her mental and emotional age now almost matched her physical age. What a difference to the confused and distraught eight year-old who back then had found herself in the body of a sixteen year old. She had wanted her mother of course, but she had died in her daughter's body, a body fatally wounded in the explosion but that lived long enough to be part of the great switch around that occurred in the mall. I wasn't sure why I had put Jake Connor, now Lisa Liu, in the care of his daughter Lily, now Penny Scott. Had it been an experiment, or had it been guilt? I didn't know. Given their situations it would not have been a good idea to let either know who the other had been. Without that knowledge there was no scientific or sociological reason to believe this would have created a deeper bond of affection between them. But I hope it did. * The End