Body/Experience

It was chained up by the wrists and feet to the metal table, struggling and pulling violently against the restraints. Clanking and fighting the metal repeatedly, I noticed it was truly me. It's...my body. It looked exactly like me. 

I wasn't tied down but felt a pounding sensation on the back of my head. It felt like a voltage shock constantly pulling at my brain cells. My wrists and feet were burning. The room only had two metal tables and a single iron door. The entire room was white.

Small bumps began to form on my arm. For some reason, chills ran throughout my body. I only felt this way whenever I was in the hospital. Did someone take me there? Where was I? All I could remember was being attacked by the man with those violet eyes and seeing double...after that, it's all blank. 

I pulled on the lever to the door and it wouldn't budge, turning my hands into pixels. This was likely to be an image projection, but it was illegal in the city. Who has enough power to do this and where could it be? Think, think, think.

The body on the table kept getting louder and louder, struggling against the chains ever more fervently. I felt its pain, the chains felt suffocating and binding. I looked at it from across the room and became disgusted. It turned to look at me with those pleading eyes and I just couldn't bear to look at it. The resemblance was scary. It was already bad enough looking at myself in the holograph. 

Growing up, I knew of the kids who could fly and teleport, project light images. One time, these two boys were fighting each other, and I remember so vividly how after each hole they put into one another, it instantly went back to normal. Nothing ever damaged them. The strangest part was that in the very next moment, they stared blankly at each other and walked away. As if it never happened. Everyone was like that. 

But I had never heard of a body double. 

I quickly turned my head to the door as I heard it open, creaking slowly and revealing a man in a grey suit and frizzy white hair. He shut the door behind him and walked over to the body. He silently undid the chains on the wrist, then the feet. In an instant, the body lunged at me, leaving me no time to react. I fell over the table with the body standing over me, waiting for me to stand up it seemed like. It took a step back as I got up. The purple hair, sagging skin, jagged lips, my green eyes. Somehow it looked even uglier than it usually did.

The man stood in the corner, carefully observing the reaction of the body double. He didn't outright attack me, but he also knew where this place was. I couldn't know his true motives and he may very well be with that man from last night. 

Without noticing the body double had gripped me, wrapping both of its arms around me. The embrace felt warm, yet so cold at the same time. It let go of me, stepping back to look me in the face as I turned away, unable to return the gaze. It was piercing. Through the corner of my eye, I noticed some form of liquid streaming down the face of the body double. The man in the corner perked up, amused at this revelation. Maybe he knew what this strange liquid was and why it made me feel so empty and hollow. 

Then it was gone. I looked around frantically, searching and wondering where the body went. It disappeared. Had I lost my mind? No, it was just there on the table. Fighting and clawing in chains. The man undid them. Was this his projection? There was no trace, sound or anything.

"The more I come to understand Experience, the less I seem to know. 1000 years of research, for what? Now, there's seven cases, all so different. That liquid," he turned towards me. "You saw it too, right? That liquid. The facial expression changed, and a liquid came from the eyes. That liquid, you saw it right?"

Experience. That word again. The doctor mentioned it, the strange man from last night and this one too. 

He sat on the table and sighed. "You know, I've done this for a long time. It never gets old, you know? That liquid, man that shit was weird. You can only know so much with no funding, right? The government has all the hot shot researchers and equipment. The nerve of them to kick me out, right? Said I wasn't "fit" to be a researcher. Said that I was too curious. Imagine that? They hired me to investigate and said I was too curious! The stupidity!"

I'd never met a person who acted this way. Such strange mannerisms. 

"And last night, floating home from work as I always do, I found you. If there was an element of chance, then it must exist. Oh shit, I'm Vex. Dr. Vex. Or well, formerly Dr. Vex. They took that too. I'm stuck working in a light packaging warehouse. The stupidity! Someone of the likes of me, working the-"

"You remember me?"

He looked at me curiously, puzzled even. "Of course. It was only a day ago. How could I forget?"

I walked towards him and waved a hand in his face. I touched his jacket, and it still was pixeled. Everything went pixeled again. 

"Ah, I found these." He placed something in my hands. My glasses. I noticed that body double wasn't wearing them and hadn't realized I wasn't wearing mine either until it disappeared. I put them on, turning on the [light mode]. His features became clearer again.

"Where did that body go?" I asked. There was a body. I saw it. The one that looked just like me. There was a body, no?

He continued to sit there, looking at me. But he wasn't staring at me. Why? Didn't he notice me? The way I look? I turned away from his gaze.

"You must be Experience II. I've wondered how your behavior would manifest, I see now." He got up and approached me, but I stepped back again. He put his hands up in defense. "Woah. I mean to do you no harm, it's just, man. You don't even know, do you? How special you are."

Special? Impossible. I kept looking around the room, hoping to find the body I had just seen. I saw a body, didn't I?

"Where did the body go?" I asked again.

"Well, if I'm correct in my assumption, it went back inside of you. I tried to treat your wounds as best as I could, sorry. You were just lying on the grid, well the both of you were. Then I created an image to make sure that guy wasn't coming back, creepy. Now we're here." 

He drew a line in the air, and we were back in the middle of the city. He said it returned inside of me, and he remembered me from last night. And that man with the violet eyes. 

"Well, we're going to be late. Let's go." He turned towards me and put his hand on my shoulder. 

"Where?" I had no reason to trust him or believe a word of what he said, but that image of that body, the one who looked like me burned in my mind. I couldn't get rid of that liquid that ran down her face. Maybe he knew how to find her again. 

"The neon train above ground. It departs to the next city in a millisecond. I assume you've never been." He smiled. "You know so little about yourself."

Hm. Is that so?

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