vicarious introspections have produced nothing except a lingering feeling of foolishness at having undertaken
them in the first place.
Plainly I inherit something of the character of the person whose being I usurp. That must be where the OCD comes from, and
one’s sexual inclination, as does the taste for, variously, coffee, tea, chocolate, spiced milk, hard liquor, bland or spicy
food, or prunes. I have found myself, over the years, surveying the reality I find myself in with the eyes of somebody who
is plainly a general medical practitioner, a surgeon, a landscape designer, a mathematician, a structural engineer, a livestock
breeder, a litigation lawyer, an insurance assessor, an hotelier and a psychiatrist. I seem to be at home amongst the professions.
Once I was a sewerage system designer who was also a serial killer. (Yes, I know, but I would beg the indulgence of being
regarded, rather, as an assassin. I will even accept Paid Killer, so long as it is understood that I do what I do through
informed choice rather than due to some grubbily psychotic urge. Though I’ll allow that the importance of this distinction
might escape my victims.) On that occasion I had to suppress the urge to strangle prostitutes in order to carry out my mission,
which was to track down and kidnap (ha! You see? Not kill) my quarry.
On the other hand, I have never been a woman, which is slightly odd and even a little disappointing. Obviously there are limits.
And are these bodies I inhabit ever used more than once? I have never visited the same body twice – indeed, I rarely visit the
same reality twice.
These taken-over persons will have had perfectly full lives before I invade them. They have pasts, careers, networks of relationships
both personal and professional; all that one would expect. I have had “my” wives, partners, girlfriends, “my” children and
“my” best friends greet me without a trace of discomfiture or any sign that I am behaving oddly or out of character. I seem
to know how to behave when I am somebody else, as naturally as the most gifted actor, and when I search my/their memories
I find no trace of earlier exposure to the Concern – or whatever it might be called locally – or preparation for what has happened.
I extract my little ormolu pill case from my coat and study it. I shall probably next take one of the tiny capsules it contains
while ten kilometres above the Atlantic, or over the Alps, or while looking down at the Sahara. Or I could wait until I arrive
wherever it is I decide to go. In any event, how do these little white pills – small enough for one to fit three or four on
the nail of one’s smallest finger – actually work? Who manufactures them, where? Who invented them, tried and tested them? I
work the sweetener case conventionally, causing it to produce a perfectly normal sweetener such as any diet-conscious person
might slip into their tea or coffee (while often, of course, tucking one’s snout into a glistening cream bun). It is almost
identical to the special pills, lacking only a tiny blue dot – scarcely visible to the naked eye – in the very centre of one face.
I slide open the end of the ormolu case and replace the sweetener.
The little case itself is quite an exquisite piece of work. Used as one would expect it to be used it will happily dispense
sweeteners and nothing but sweeteners all day until they run out; only by holding and pressing it just so may one access the
small compartment concealed within that contains its real treasure, so that it releases one of the little pills which lead
one to flit, bringing about a transition, flicking one into another soul and another world.
Questions, questions. I know how I am supposed to think. I am supposed to think that one day I might rise to the level of
Madame d’Ortolan and her ilk, and discover some of the answers. Eliding everybody on the list my orders contained might well
them in the first place.
Plainly I inherit something of the character of the person whose being I usurp. That must be where the OCD comes from, and
one’s sexual inclination, as does the taste for, variously, coffee, tea, chocolate, spiced milk, hard liquor, bland or spicy
food, or prunes. I have found myself, over the years, surveying the reality I find myself in with the eyes of somebody who
is plainly a general medical practitioner, a surgeon, a landscape designer, a mathematician, a structural engineer, a livestock
breeder, a litigation lawyer, an insurance assessor, an hotelier and a psychiatrist. I seem to be at home amongst the professions.
Once I was a sewerage system designer who was also a serial killer. (Yes, I know, but I would beg the indulgence of being
regarded, rather, as an assassin. I will even accept Paid Killer, so long as it is understood that I do what I do through
informed choice rather than due to some grubbily psychotic urge. Though I’ll allow that the importance of this distinction
might escape my victims.) On that occasion I had to suppress the urge to strangle prostitutes in order to carry out my mission,
which was to track down and kidnap (ha! You see? Not kill) my quarry.
On the other hand, I have never been a woman, which is slightly odd and even a little disappointing. Obviously there are limits.
And are these bodies I inhabit ever used more than once? I have never visited the same body twice – indeed, I rarely visit the
same reality twice.
These taken-over persons will have had perfectly full lives before I invade them. They have pasts, careers, networks of relationships
both personal and professional; all that one would expect. I have had “my” wives, partners, girlfriends, “my” children and
“my” best friends greet me without a trace of discomfiture or any sign that I am behaving oddly or out of character. I seem
to know how to behave when I am somebody else, as naturally as the most gifted actor, and when I search my/their memories
I find no trace of earlier exposure to the Concern – or whatever it might be called locally – or preparation for what has happened.
I extract my little ormolu pill case from my coat and study it. I shall probably next take one of the tiny capsules it contains
while ten kilometres above the Atlantic, or over the Alps, or while looking down at the Sahara. Or I could wait until I arrive
wherever it is I decide to go. In any event, how do these little white pills – small enough for one to fit three or four on
the nail of one’s smallest finger – actually work? Who manufactures them, where? Who invented them, tried and tested them? I
work the sweetener case conventionally, causing it to produce a perfectly normal sweetener such as any diet-conscious person
might slip into their tea or coffee (while often, of course, tucking one’s snout into a glistening cream bun). It is almost
identical to the special pills, lacking only a tiny blue dot – scarcely visible to the naked eye – in the very centre of one face.
I slide open the end of the ormolu case and replace the sweetener.
The little case itself is quite an exquisite piece of work. Used as one would expect it to be used it will happily dispense
sweeteners and nothing but sweeteners all day until they run out; only by holding and pressing it just so may one access the
small compartment concealed within that contains its real treasure, so that it releases one of the little pills which lead
one to flit, bringing about a transition, flicking one into another soul and another world.
Questions, questions. I know how I am supposed to think. I am supposed to think that one day I might rise to the level of
Madame d’Ortolan and her ilk, and discover some of the answers. Eliding everybody on the list my orders contained might well
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