Life and Pickles

“Come in, Ms. Fletcher.”  I moved from behind the desk and pulled up the comfortable chair.  “Would you like something to drink?  Water, coffee, pickle wine?”  I walked to the coffee bar underneath the window.  The window made the wood-paneled office cheerier, but it tended to fog up at times because I still used one of the old manual coffee makers.  Easier to make it to your liking, in my mind.

“No, thank you.”  The woman glanced around the office and sat down, not really looking at me in particular.  “Well, I suppose some coffee would be nice.  I’ve been in a bit of a rush today and didn’t have my usual cup this morning.”

I put back the pickle wine that I’d started to pour and filled a mug with coffee instead.  It was one of the good mugs too - had an image of Will Wheaton printed on it.  “Caffeinated then, I assume?”

“Yes please.”

I handed it to her, along with a couple sugar packets should she want them, and seated myself behind the desk again.  “Now, what can we help you with?”

I made my fingers into a point, rested my chin on them, and studied her as she gathered her words.  She was your average middle-aged woman.  Hair done up out of her face, dressed in business casual, and wearing lipstick.  She carried a purse, and I thought I spied the lanyard of a name tag sticking out of it.  Possibly an employee of one of the neighboring government offices, or maybe a businesswoman from the corporate district.  Government employee was more likely.  At this hour, workers would either be logging off work at home and starting dinner, or would have just left the office if they had to be there in-person, and she looked like she’d just left the office.  Which made her presence here one of the more intriguing things to happen while working for this firm.

“I’m pretty sure you know why I’m here,” she said.

“I can guess.  But I try never to make assumptions, especially when I have limited information.  I need the details.  What specific services are you requesting, and why?”

“I need a new personality.”

“What would you like us to do with your old one?”

“Store it for now.  I want it back later.”

I’m pretty sure my eyebrows went up at least a quarter of an inch.  “That’s a bit unconventional.  Most people don’t actively plan to switch again.”

“I know.”

“May I ask why?”

She looked me in the eyes.  I looked back and we stared at each other down for an undetermined amount of time.

“That’s a personal matter.  But it will come to light soon.”

“How long do you want us to store it?”

“Not for long.  Just a day or so.”

I finally broke her gaze and pulled out a folder from one of my desk cubbies.  “Ah, I see.  Have to endure the annual dinner with the extended family, perhaps?  You’ll have to fill out these forms.”

She smiled and held up the pen she’d taken from my desk while we were locked in a stare contest.  “I don’t have to be home for a bit.  The kids can wait.”

“You have children?”

“I do.”

“Depending on how many changes you plan to make, reworking your life with kids is a bit of a liability.  We’ll have to ensure the kids aren’t negatively impacted.”

Her smile turned icy.  “Since when was that important to you?”

I shrugged.  “Company policy.  I don’t feel like getting fired today.”

“You would be one to only care about people if it serves yourself.”

I leaned back in my chair.  The scene would have been even better if the window was backlighting her, but I supposed it was decent.  I slowly smiled.  “Is that it?  You stole a mind-reading device from the government office where you worked, and now you’re scared they’ll catch you, so you want to forget it?  Just because they’re illegal doesn’t mean you’re going to be in that much trouble if you confess and turn it in again.  Or do you not like people who follow the rules?”  I had no idea if that was true, but I was curious to see her reaction.

“Nowhere near the truth.”  She pulled out a notepad and wrote a name on it, then slid it towards me.  “Remember this name?”

I looked at it.  “Should I?  It looks like your husband’s name.”  I doodled a penguin on it next to the name just for kicks.

She just shook her head.  “Well... are we here to conduct business or not?”  She took the forms out of my hands, skim-read and signed them, folded them in half - just why, we were never supposed to fold those - and handed them back to me.  She stood up.  “If that’s all, I’m ready now.”

I put the forms back in my folder and stood up too.  “Then I suppose that’s all we need to discuss.  Follow me.”  I opened the door semi-concealed in the wall.  “You first.”

She entered the other room, and I followed.  “Kaleb, this is Ms. Fletcher.  This is only a temporary measure, so package her old personality carefully.”  I handed him one of the papers.

Kaleb saluted and then held out his hand.  “Of course, mi amice, and mea amica.”  He gestured to the apparatus on the other side of the well-lit room.  “This will only take a little while.  I trust ‘ole Crynn here got you your coffee?”

No one ever wanted the pickle wine.  Not even Kaleb.  Oh well, saved more for me I supposed.

Ms. Fletcher shook his hand.  “He did.  Shall we get started?”

“Don’t get your socks in a knot, we’ll get there.  We have one important detail first, and that’s picking a replacement.  We have several stock options, but you can also design a few aspects yourself if you like.”

“Just pick one for me.  I don’t plan to need it for long.”

Kaleb looked at me.

I shrugged.  “It’s what she wanted.  Who am I to argue with a client.”

“‘Kay then.  Each to their own.  How about…”

I shut the door and returned to my desk.  I got up again and poured myself some wine in the Tori Higginson mug, then sat down and pulled out her file.  No info on her except what I’d learned today.  Huh.  I’d worked here for years, and gotten a lot of weird people, but not many hostile clients.

I reached into the hidden compartment of my desk and touched the box containing it.  Could she be?...no, that never happened.  It wasn’t what you did.

But still.  I locked the door to Kaleb’s room, and went back to retrieve the box.  I unlocked and opened the lid and brushed my fingers against it.  The life-capsule that I should have thrown away but kept, simply because I could.  Could it be that this Fletcher woman was from my own past?  I could take a peek to find out.

No.  That was too dangerous.  I’d left that life for a reason, and it would be stupid to reawaken it.  I closed and locked the box again, put it back in my desk, and polished off the last of my wine.

I looked around the office.  Nothing to straighten, since I always kept it straight, so it was time to go home.  Before I could leave though, Kaleb came back.

“Hey, Crynn?”  He entered the room, followed by Ms. Fletcher.  “Sorry to keep you over time, but she wanted to wrap something up before leaving.”

I nodded.  “Understandable.  Did you change your mind about the wine?”

She grinned.  “Nope!  I need to discuss one final matter though.  Do you mind, dearie?”  She waved Kaleb out of the room.

“Not at all, m’lady.”  He bowed and shut the door.

Well, I had to hand it to him, Kaleb picked one of the good ones for someone with a family.  At least as far as I could tell; I had examined several of his wares while bored, but not all of them.

“This is for you.”  She held out her box.

I blinked.  And blinked again.  “Why?  You said you wanted us to store it for you?”

“That was a lie.  I wanted you to be able to borrow it for a hot minute.”  She plunked it on my desk in front of me.  “Have a great day!”  She sailed out the door, leaving me staring after her.

This had never happened before.  I didn’t even think it was in the company handbook how you were supposed to handle something like this.  Oh well.  I guess taking it home was the only option I had now - I couldn’t just leave it on my desk.

Fifteen minutes later I flew my car into the garage and descended the stairs of the apartment complex to my floor, carrying my bag and the box.  I set them both on the kitchen counter.  What the hell was I supposed to do with this?  I poured myself a second glass of alcohol - sadly I’d taken all my best mugs to work, so I was stuck just using a normal wine glass this time - and paced the living room.  Why did she want me to have it?  I looked out the window and wiped a smudge of dirt off the pane with my sleeve.  It was starting to rain outside.

There could only be one answer.  She knew the old me, and thought I should experience something.  And she was going to make me break all the rules of my job on the way.

But why do that?  What did I do in a past life?  Either I screwed up, or I was some sort of government spy and an old nemesis wanted to mess with me.  I went back to the counter, set down my still-full glass, and opened the box.  I took out the capsule, turned the dial to approximately the time I got my new life, and broke the seal.

I saw the last two years of my life flash before my eyes and then turn into a pale swirl of mist, mingling with the reddish swirl emanating from the capsule.  The world around me started swirling too, and morphed into a larger, family apartment.  This was sort of like undergoing the original transformation, but not quite - you didn’t fully lose yourself this time, you were just an observer.  I kept my hand on the reseal button in the real world, so I could return again.

“For the last time, I will not.  Why can’t you see that you’re the one being unreasonable here?”  I was Ms. Fletcher.  Apparently I was arguing with the man opposite me, who didn’t look happy.  He looked familiar though.

“I don’t care.  This isn’t going to work if we stay like this.  One of us needs to change, or leave.”

“So you’re leaving?”  Mingled with the woman’s anger, I felt surprise rising.

The man sighed.  “Are you that serious?”

We nodded.  We were furious now, but I could tell it wouldn’t last.  Ms. Fletcher had strains of shock, grief, and good riddance increasingly slipping into the mental brew.  We would be much more upset later, but also relieved in a way, I predicted.

“Then I guess I’m leaving.”  The man stomped upstairs and came back down shortly with a suitcase and backpack.  “Goodbye.”

“Let the door hit you on the way out.”  We glared at his back as he exited.  Then we sat down at the kitchen table and cried.

I felt for the dial and turned it in what I thought was the right direction.  I could handle anger.  It was amusing, because it didn’t bother me and that just made others angrier if I was the target.  But sadness, I had no interest in.

We skipped ahead who knows how long.  Ms. Fletcher and the three kids seemed to be doing well - we were in the kitchen eating dinner.  I still felt the pain in the back of her mind though.  She wasn’t the same as she was before.  Right now we were...worried about grades.  The kids' grades weren’t very good.

Okay, this had nothing to do with me.  Time to move on.  I turned the dial again.  Now we were in Ms. Fletcher’s room, sleeping.  At least she was sleeping.  I was thinking about her sleeping.  I tried to prompt her to wake up, and somehow it worked.  We stirred, and sat up.  We glanced at the nightstand.  There was a picture of her and presumably her husband on the nightstand.  Except her husband looked a little different than when we’d seen him leave.  His hair was a different style.  I couldn’t look any further because we turned our head and got up to make the bed at that point.

I hit the button and the mists separated.  Hers returned to the capsule, and mine to my head, returning me to my kitchen counter in my apartment.  Now I knew why she seemed to be harboring animosity towards me.  She did know me, and I knew her.

I was her husband.

I picked up my wine glass, then set it down again and went back to looking out the window empty-handed.  I guess it made sense why she would want me to know how she felt.  What for, though, aside from vengeance maybe?  I was an entirely new person, one who had programmed a mind that wasn’t very emotional.  Was she trying to make me feel remorse?  And after refusing to change herself, she’d done just that.

Of course, she’d said it was temporary.  That was good.  Looking back from an intellectual standpoint, I seemed to be the problem, at least in those memories.  And I had in fact made a change.

The issue was, I’d wiped all memories of her when I’d made my new life, so I didn’t know whose fault it was over the long term, and to recover those was to recover my entire previous life, which I wasn’t in the mood to do.  If only...well I could, actually.  Kaleb was the closest thing I had to a friend, and he wasn’t the kind of person who balked at breaking rules if it benefited someone.  Perhaps I had a moral duty to get more info and see who should apologize.

That settled, I finally consumed the rest of my wine and decided it was time for bed.

Precisely eight hours and twenty minutes later, I woke up, had my morning coffee among other morning formalities, and headed back to work.  I took the capsule with me.  Ms. Fletcher would be back sometime today.

It was a slow day, and she didn’t show up until late afternoon.  I held the door for her.

“Hello, hello!”  She sailed into the room, this time with her hair down and wearing a casual outfit.  “How are you today?”

“I’m fine.”

“That’s good to hear.  I have a wee favor to ask of you.”

“You’d like to swap lives again?”

“Yes.  You did what I asked right?”

“I did.”

She smiled, a genuine one this time.  “Well?”

“I seem to have an interesting past.”

“How so?”  She raised an eyebrow.  New personality or not, she seemed like she wanted to get full value out of this interaction.

“I take it I was your husband?  As far I can tell from the few memories I saw anyway.”

She nodded solemnly.  “Thank you.”

“My problem or yours?”

She nodded.  “Both our problems, but mainly yours.”  She surveyed me from head to toe, or at least head to my desk.  “Although your personality is an improvement.”

“Why did you contact me?”  I stared into her eyes.  People couldn’t read others’ thoughts in such a primitive manner, but if the old fashioned way worked for coffee, I might as well give it a try.

“I wanted you to know.  You ran from the problem, erased it from memory.  That’s not a good way to handle issues.  I wanted you to remember what you did, even if you tried to hide.”

“I don’t have emotional memories.  All I know is the little bit I saw - there’s a difference between that and remembering.  And I don’t know whether I was at fault or whether you’re gaslighting me.”

“Why didn’t you dig deeper?  You had all night.”  She looked hurt.  “Look into your own life then!  You have all the time in the world to study that.”

I looked at the clock.  It was acceptable to drink at this point in the day.  I went to the cabinet and poured myself a glass of pickle wine.  “Then I don’t see the point in further conversation for now.  I could be an awful husband; you could be deceiving me.  And I won’t let someone else determine my moral character without my knowledge.”

“Get your own memories back.  That’s what you need to do.”

“Memories are faulty.  But you like the new personality?”

“As I said, it’s an improvement.  Still a bit cold, but a step up from your anger issues.  I wouldn’t have tried to contact you again otherwise.”

“I like it.  Skipping the emotions and relying on intellect makes life easier.”

She laughed unexpectedly, and stood up.  “My mission is complete; I should get home.  Now, dearie, would Kaleb object if I just popped in?  You did bring my capsule back right?”

I picked it up and plunked it on the desk in front of her.  “I’ll look into it, and that is all.  If I find that you’re being honest, then we’ll talk.”

“Life is never simple, Crynn.  Take your time.”  She picked up her purse and the box and started to leave, but turned and looked at me almost forgivingly.  “But perhaps you have some of your famous pickle wine to spare?”

I gave her a bottle to take with her.