Extracted - Chapter 4 – Increasing Warp Speed – Part 1 of 2

 

Extracted

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 4 – Increasing Warp Speed – Part 1 of 2

 

It was late in the day before the Philadelphia police detectives came into Stephen’s room.  As the city D.A., Stephen’s father was annoyed that it should take them so long, but at the same time, his son was still complaining about the room spinning, with or without his eyes open.  What had those drugs done to him?  According to the doctors though, he guessed his son was lucky that he had as much memory as he did.  Drugs like he had been given often caused memory loss.  Sometimes for quite a while.

Henry Marsh listened carefully as the detectives questioned his son, but as he already knew, Stephen remembered nothing, and it wasn’t just due to memory loss that the drugs could cause.  From what the doctors had said, it looked like they had fed him those drugs since the moment he had been abducted.  Four days!  They never once gave Stephen a chance to wake up.  Henry figured that was most likely so they wouldn’t have to deal with him.  His son played football and lifted weights…a lot!  He was strong.  Not someone anyone would want to mess with.

When the detectives finally left, Henry moved closer to his son again.  “How’s your head?”

“Still spinning,” Steve replied, “but not quite as bad…I think.  I wish it would stop.”

“The doctors explained that you’ve probably still got a lot of those drugs in you.  They kept you doped up for four days Steve.”

Steve shook his head.  “I barely remember going to bed last night.  Or, whenever it was.”

“Five days ago now.  And your mother and I have been going crazy trying to figure out why we were sleeping just down the hall, and we never heard anything at all when they took you.”

“Who knows,” Steve replied.  “Maybe they drugged you too.”

Henry nodded.  “Maybe.  Or they could have gassed us or something.  That sounds more likely.  Whoever it was, went out of their way to kill not just the power and internet connections, they even shut down our backup generator.  They might have simply gassed everyone in the house to make sure we’d stay asleep.  You as well.”

Steve shook his head.  “Don’t ask me.  I still can’t think, and everything is still all confused in my head like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Give it time son,” Henry told him.  “It’ll settle down.  Soon, I hope.”

Steve nodded, as memories that belonged to someone else flashed through his head.  Memories of being a girl named Nancy.  Weird!  Especially since they felt so real!

 

--- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

 

Nancy’s New York hospital room was visited by a single investigator.  A woman.  Since Nancy was the daughter of a U.S. congressman, that woman was part of an FBI team that was investigating the abduction.  Nancy’s mother moved away from the bed, but she and her husband stayed close.  Nancy’s sister, Emily, was in the room now too.  She stayed further away.  Nancy was glad Emily was there.  The two of them had always been close.  Special!

The FBI woman sat in the chair Nancy’s mother had been using.  “Hi Nancy,” she said with a smile.  “I’m Ellen Rosenberg, with the FBI.  How are you feeling?”

“Awful!” Nancy replied.  “Everything is still spinning around.”

“I understand,” Rosenberg replied.  “So…can you tell me what you remember from when you were abducted?”

Nancy shook her head.  “Abducted?”

“Kidnapped.  Taken,” Rosemberg explained for the twelve year old girl.

“I don’t remember anything.  I don’t even remember going to bed last night.”

“It was a few nights ago now,” Rosemberg corrected her.

“Not for me,” Nancy replied.

Rosenberg nodded.  “I understand from the doctors that it looks like whoever took you probably kept you drugged and unconscious for the entire time.  We just can’t figure out why you were taken since no ransom note was ever sent.  Whoever did it, simply took you, then dropped you off a few days later where you could easily be found.  They had you for three days.  The question is, why?  Not to mention who.”

Nancy shook her head.  “Don’t ask me.  I don’t know.  I don’t remember anything at all…except all these weird things running through my head that don’t make any sense, especially since my head still won’t stop spinning.  Even keeping my eyes open is difficult.  The room keeps going all around and it’s making everything so much worse.”

“Weird things in your head?” Rosenberg prompted.  “Like what?”

“I don’t know.  I can’t make sense of anything.  All I know is that I’m completely confused.”

“So when you were taken,” Rosenberg said, “you don’t remember seeing your abductors at all.”

“Not that I remember.  Like I said, I don’t even remember going to bed that night.”

 

--- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

 

The doctors for both Nancy and Steve were very concerned about their spinning heads issue.  It was the only reason they both were still confined to their respective hospitals.  Since their kids seemed to be doing well, other than their still spinning heads, the families of both Stephen and Nancy decided to go home for the night for some much-needed rest.  Both families, at both hospitals, promised to be back again as soon as they could tomorrow morning.

Without the constant stimulation to the needed areas of the brain by the family members, the process of overwriting the memories and personality traits in the brain was able to access those areas easier instead of mostly seeping through other areas and memories that hadn’t been needed.  Neither Steve nor Nancy would realize it, but while they slept, not only did the head spinning decrease somewhat, but so did their memories of their old lives.  Those memories being overwritten by other memories that had been in the souls they now possessed.

 

--- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

 

In the New York hospital, once again it was Stephen, not Nancy, who first opened his eyes the next morning.  The first thing he realized was that his head was still spinning, but not nearly as bad as it had been yesterday.  The nurses checked on him, but otherwise barely talked to him at all.

As his eyes did their best through his still slightly spinning vision to follow one of the younger and more attractive nurses around the room, something immediately bothered Steve.  Something strange.  His hand quickly reached up and swiped at that something that kept brushing strangely against his head.  It wasn’t a bug like he first thought it might be.  Whatever it was felt strange and his hand immediately grabbed it hard and pulled…and it started to hurt.  What the heck?  He pulled again and felt the tugging to the top of his head.  It felt like….  No, it couldn’t be!  He pulled it around where he could see it and nearly fainted.  Hair?  Long hair attached to his head?  And he was holding a bunch of it in his…what?  His hand looked so small.  Why?  Long hair?  Nuisance long hair!  And small hands?  Yeah, his head spinning was really getting the better of him now.

As doctors usually do, one of them came in to assess how Nancy was doing.  “How do you feel today Nancy?” the doctor asked as he stood next to the bed with a clipboard in his hands.

Nancy?  What the…  Steve started to grow angry at the insult.  “I’m not….”  And then some of the old remaining memories finally hit him…her!  She was Nancy, not Steve.  No wonder she had long hair and small hands.  It was what she was supposed to have.  She breathed a sigh of relief.

“You’re not what?” the doctor asked, waiting for her to continue.

“Sorry,” Nancy replied.  “Yeah, my head is spinning still, but it’s not nearly as bad as it was yesterday.”

The doctor was concerned about that, but…  “At least it’s improved,” he told her.  “Still, I’m concerned about it.  Other than that, any problems?”

Not wanting to tell him about the weird things going through her mind, Nancy shook her head.  “No.”

“Good,” the doctor replied.  “I’ll check on you later.”  With that, he walked out.

What was going on with her head?  At least things weren’t spinning as bad today as they had yesterday, but they were still spinning.  She really wished her sister was there just then to be with her.  Emily always knew just what to do to make her feel better.

 

--- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

 

In the Philadelphia hospital, things were remarkably similar to the way the situation was in New York.  Just as Stephen had woken up first in Nancy’s body in New York, Nancy woke up in Stephen’s body in Philadelphia.  Like with the person in New York, Nancy was quick to notice that while her head seemed to be a lot better today, things were still spinning around.

“Good morning,” one of the nurses said as she went about her duties in the room.  Nancy didn’t say anything.  She just watched as the nurse did this and that, then simply left.

Lying there alone again, Nancy sat up in the bed to be more comfortable for a while, hoping the spinning would stop altogether.  It didn’t.  But once she was in the new position, she bent her head forward a bit, expecting to feel the usual pull from her long hair, except there was no pull.  Her hand unconsciously reached around to grab her hair and run her fingers thought it…and discovered practically no hair on her head at all.  She panicked!  What happened to all her beautiful long hair?  Both hands now groped all around the top of her head.  What was going on?  Where was her hair?

A man walked into the room  It took her a moment to realize he was a doctor.

The doctor noticed her agitation.  “What’s wrong?” he asked immediately.

“My hair!” Nancy replied, immediately realizing her voice was all wrong.

“What’s wrong with it?” the doctor asked.

“It’s not there!” she told him.  “What happened?”

The doctor shook his head.  “Your hair looks just fine.”

“No it’s not.  I have long hair.  Long brown hair that feels like silk.  Not this…whatever it is.  And why is my voice so bad?”

“Bad?” the doctor asked, fully concerned now.

“Yes!  Why do I sound like this?  Like a…I don’t know what.  Like a man.”

“I don’t understand,” the doctor said.  “Why wouldn’t you?”

“What’s going on?” Nancy yelled.

“Okay.  Settle down,” the doctor told Stephen’s body.  “I think we’re having a bit more of a reaction to those drugs than we expected.  I’m going to get you something to help calm you down.”

“Calm me down?  Just tell me where my hair is!  What happened to me?”

“You know what happened,” the doctor told her.  “You were abducted and kept drugged for days.”

“But where’s my hair?” she cried as her hands came off her head and started waving around in front if her to accent her question.  It was then that she noticed her hands and her arms.  They were huge!  Really huge.  And there was hair on her arms.  She stared in disbelief at them.  “What the…” she managed to get out as she continued to stare, not understanding anything.

More people suddenly walked into the room.  People that for some reason Nancy vaguely recognized, even though she couldn’t quite place who they were.

“Oh doctor,” Agatha Marsh, Stephen’s mother said.  “We were hoping we’d get here early enough to see you.  How is he?”

“Very confused!” the doctor replied quickly, his voice full of concern.  “Excuse me.  I’ll be right back.”  He hurried out.

Stephen’s mother and father moved over to the bed.  “How are you today Steve?” his mother asked.

Steve?  “Who are you?” Nancy demanded.

Both of Steve’s parents were aghast.  “Steve,” his father said.  “What’s going on?”

Nancy looked at the man.  “And who are you?” she demanded.

“Steve, what do you mean?  I’m your father.  Don’t kid around!”

“Who’s kidding!” Nancy yelled.  “And what happened to me?”

“Steve, you know what happened,” Henry told his son.  “You were abducted and kept drugged.”

Nancy shook her head.  “That’s what the doctor said, but what happened to me?”

“We don’t understand dear,” Steve’s mother said.  “What’s going on?  Don’t you remember us?”

Nancy stared at them.  They did look familiar.  Very familiar.

“Steve,” Henry said.  “Wake up!  Get your head on straight.”

Nancy wanted very much for her head to be on straight, but it was still spinning, just like the entire room.  Steve?  What the…  And then something finally clicked within her head, and she nearly blacked out.  It wasn’t the first time she had to deal with this problem.  She wasn’t Nancy, she…no he…was Steve…Stephen!  Not Nancy.  And they were his parents, Henry and Agatha Marsh.  He closed his eyes and shook his head, oddly still missing the feel of the hair he thought should be there.  He opened his eyes again and looked up at his parents.  “Mom.  Dad.  What happened to me?”

“That’s what we’d like to know,” Henry Marsh told his son.  “Do you remember us now?”

“Yeah.  It’s just that…everything is still all weird.”

“Is the room still spinning?” his mother asked.

“Some.  Not like before,” Steve told her.  “But it is still spinning.  It’s driving me crazy!”

Why was he suddenly having thoughts of a…sister?…named Emily?

 

--- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

 

Extracted - Chapter 3 – Scotty, Engage Warp Engines

 

Extracted

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 3 – Scotty, Engage Warp Engines

 

Nancy’s mouth felt like it was filled with cotton…or wool.  Horrible.  But worse, her head was spinning around and around.  She felt absolutely miserable, even asleep, where she just wanted to go back to.  Moaning miserably, she opened her eyes.  The room around her was swimming, which only made her feel sicker than she had felt before.  She quickly closed her eyes again.

“Steve!” a woman’s voice exclaimed.

It was a moment before Nancy could open her eyes again.  Her head was spinning so badly that nothing was making sense, especially the strange woman hovering over her.

“Steve.  You’re awake!” the woman said.

Nancy closed her eyes again, not knowing or realizing what the woman was talking about.  Everything about her just felt and seemed all wrong.  Nothing felt right.  Her head wasn’t even together enough for her to wonder what had happened to her.

“Steve.  Come on, wake up honey,” the woman’s voice came again.  “Open your eyes for me.  Come on Steve.”

Who was Steve?  Nancy didn’t know and didn’t care.  She just wanted the woman to go away and leave her alone so she could go back to sleep, where maybe, hopefully, her head wouldn’t be spinning so much and she would feel better.  She felt someone grab her hand.  Ugh!

“Come on Steve.  Come on honey.  You can do it.  Wake up Steve.  Wake up!”

Steve?  Wanting to keep her eyes closed and go back to sleep, Nancy had no choice but to open her eyes again.

“Steve!  Stay with us.  Stay with us honey.  We’ve got you.  You’re alright now.  You’re just fine.  Everything is just fine.”

Nancy had a different opinion about that.  Who the hell was Steve?

“Steve!”  A man’s voice this time.  “Come on son.  Stay awake.  Can you talk to us?  Say something.  Say anything at all.  Steve!  Steve!”

Her bleary eyes showed her a man now hovering over her next to the woman.  She had no clue who they were.  She had no clue about anything.  All she knew was that her head was spinning horribly…and it made her want to puke.

“Steve, son.  Are you with us?” the woman asked desperately.

Nancy’s eyes closed as she tried to get her mouth to form the biggest question she had.  “Who’s…Steve?” she barely managed to whisper through her woolly tasting and dry mouth.

“Steve?” the man said.

But Nancy’s poor rattled and drug infested brain couldn’t cope with anything else.  She passed out again.

“You saw it Henry,” Agatha Marsh exclaimed.  “He was awake.  He spoke to us.”

“Yeah,” Henry agreed.  “He was awake.  Barely, but he was there.  But now it looks like he’s gone again.”

“But he talked!” Agatha said.

“Yeah.  Obviously though, the drugs have him confused.”

“Yes,” his wife agreed.  “But still, it’s a good sign.”

“It’s a great sign,” Henry Marsh agreed.  “I’d just feel better if he would wake up again.  Soon!”

“Me too,” Agatha agreed.  “Come on Steve.  Wake up honey.  Wake up!”

 

--- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

 

Several hours away, in a New York hospital, Stephen’s head was spinning so badly he didn’t know what to do.  He didn’t want to wake up, but somehow he knew he had to.  He just needed to find the strength and willpower to open his eyes.  But finding those muscles to open his eyes wasn’t easy.  It took him several head spinning moments before he managed it.  The light assaulting his eyeballs hurt, so did the sight of the badly spinning room that he saw.  Nothing was making sense.  Nothing was helping him figure things out.  Not even how to move any part of his body.

“Nance!” a woman’s voice exclaimed from right next to him.

For the first time, Stephen now felt that someone was gripping his hand.  That grip grew much more firm as that person stood up over him.  The sight of some woman over him, spinning all around like the rest of the room, nearly made him black out again, but something made him struggle to hold on.  He was a tough kid.  He knew that.  He could do it.  He just didn’t feel so tough just then.

“Nance!  Nancy!” the woman said.

But all Stephan could do was watch the woman and the room beyond her spinning in circles.  Come on head.  Stop that.  Settle down.  Please!

“Nancy darling.  Please look at me.  Please say something.”

It wasn’t until then that something in what she said reached through to him.  Nancy?  But it was just one more thing on top of everything else that didn’t seem to be working.  Especially his eyes.  He closed them again, hoping the spinning would go away, so maybe, maybe, he could start to make sense of everything else.

“Nancy!  No.  Don’t go back to sleep darling.  Stay with me.  Nancy!  Nancy!”

 

--- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

 

The spinning inside Nancy’s head was finally beginning to slow down.  Slow down, but not stop.  She could feel someone holding her hand, but that’s all she could tell.  She just wanted her spinning head to stop.  Hoping it would help, she chanced opening her eyes again.

“Steve?” a man’s voice said.  “Steve?  Are you awake again?  Stay with us Steve.  Please stay with us.”

Steve?  A faint memory of the last time she opened her eyes somehow came back to her.  But it made no sense at all.  Steve?  With a huge effort, she managed to somehow focus her eyesight on the man hovering over her.  And then a woman joined him.  Who were they?  She had no idea.

“Steve,” the woman said.  “Are you alright?”

It was hard to speak, but she tried.  “Who?” she managed to get out.  Her voice sounded weird.  Probably because of the way her mouth tasted.

“Steve,” the woman said desperately.  “It’s me.  Mom.  Steve, do you remember?”

Mom?  But an image of a different mother swam shakily in her head…before it was lost again.

“Who?” Nancy managed to say again, annoyed that her voice wasn’t any better.

“Steve!” the man’s voice said.  “She’s your mother.  And I’m your father.  Remember?  Please remember?”

Remember?  She couldn’t even think…at all!  Nothing was making sense, and with everything spinning around so much, she didn’t even care if it made sense.  But with the continued sight of the man and woman hovering over her, urging her on and calling her Steve, something within her finally snapped into place.  They were calling her Steve because she was Steve.  But that wasn’t right, she was Nancy.  No, she was Steve.  She was so confused, and the room was still going around making her feel worse than she was.

“Steve, say something,” the man urged again.

The memories locked a bit firmer into place.  He was Steve, not Nancy, even though Nancy felt right as well.  And those people were….  “Mom?  Dad?” he said, finally recognizing them for who they were.

The relief both Henry and Agatha felt was huge.  “Steve,” Henry said.  “You’re alright.  You’re alright,” he repeated gratefully.  “For a moment there we didn’t know if you’d remember anything.  How do you feel?”

“Awful.  The room won’t stop spinning.  And it’s bad.  Real bad.”

“It’s the drugs in your system,” his father explained.

“I’ll find a doctor,” his mother told him.  She leaned over and hugged him.  “I’m so glad you’re back.  We were so worried!”  With that, she left and hurried out of the room.

Henry Marsh had been Philadelphia’s District Attorney for some time now, and old habits died hard.  “Do you remember what happened?” he asked his son.

Remember?  Remembering was too difficult  Nothing was making sense.  He knew these people were his parents.  He knew his name was Steve, but at the same time, they weren’t his parents, and he wasn’t Steve.  Everything was just too confusing.

“Steve, do you remember what happened to you?”

Steve shook his head.  “I can’t remember anything.  Nothing is making sense.”

 

--- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

 

In the New York hospital, Stephen was aware that his head was still spinning horribly.  He opened his eyes again and the room spinning like his head only made things worse.

“Nancy!”  That woman’s voice again.  He felt her grip on his hand tighten and she stood over him.  Who the hell was she?

“Nance!”  The man’s voice.  Stephen didn’t know him either.  He closed his eyes because the spinning room was simply too much for him to keep looking at.

“Nance!  Stay with us.  Wake up!” the man’s voice said firmly.  “Stay with us!”

“Wake up darling,” the woman begged.

He opened his eyes.  Who did they think they were talking to?  And why the hell did they keep calling him Nancy?  Was this some kind of joke?

“Go…away,” he managed to get out of his mouth.  But the act of speaking had been weird.  Not just the sound that came out, but the entire process felt all wrong.

“Nance!” the man exclaimed.

“Nancy, darling,” the woman said desperately.  “We’re here for you baby.  Right here.  Please wake up.”

Steve did his best to focus his eyes on the weird people.  “Why are you….”  And then it was like something inside his head broke free and things seemed to align themselves a bit better.  He wasn’t Steve, she was Nancy!  “Mom!  Dad!” she finally recognized them.  “What happened?”

“Don’t you remember?” her father asked.

“Uh-uh,” she managed to say, closing her eyes again to the spinning world around her.  “Everything is going around, inside my head and the room.  It…hurts.”

“Must be the drugs,” her father said.  “I’m sure it will pass soon.”

Nancy had a feeling it wouldn’t though.  And why, why, why did she still think that her name was really Stephen, and that these weren’t her parents?  Why?  Nothing was right.  Nothing was making sense.  If only the room would stop spinning, maybe then she could think.

 

--- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

 

The Nature of Souls

 

Whether or not you believe in souls is entirely up to you.  I’m not here to argue the point one way or another.  But the truth is that all living creatures have some kind of soul.  There is one subject about souls however that is generally ignored when anyone discusses the point, and that is the subject of memory.  And the strange truth is that souls have a memory.

The first thing we need to consider here is the strange subject of ghosts.  What are ghosts but the remains of poor living souls who for some reason or another have needs that keep them tied to this earth.  Needs so strong that they can’t move on from it.  This has been documented by ghost hunters around the world for many years.  The ghosts seem to remember things from their past living existence, and they are so affected by those things that they can’t leave after their bodies have died.  Memory.  Ghosts also tend to stay in one particular area that they find to be the most meaningful to them, never really leaving to travel or do anything but stay in that comfortable place that they remember.  They remember, because those souls contain their past living memories.

The other thing we need to consider is the subject of instinct.  The way so many creatures, from the moment they are born, have the knowledge of how to do things.  Horses and cattle know how to stand and walk within moments of being born.  Birds know how to flap their wings and as soon as they have sufficient feathers, fly.  Geese know their migrating routes automatically, even though it was their forebearers who last flew it.  Other creatures have other traits that seem to be inborn in them from the moment they are born.

It is entirely possible that each of those traits that are pre-embedded into their brains comes from a soul that enters into each of their bodies while still inside the womb.  Once there, the information that is needed is simply written from the soul into the physical aspects of the brain, ready for the creature to use the moment it is born.  It is this effect that is the most important here.

From the moment that both Stephen and Nancy received their new souls, the memories residing in those souls began to slowly work their way into the physical brains of each of them, overwriting the memories and personality traits that already existed.  The process is slow because humans have many memories and much information stored in the crevices of their brains.  The older a person is, the more memories they have that need to be overwritten, so the process takes longer.  But still, the soul takes precedence, and little by little the old information is destroyed and replaced with the new, making a hard copy in the brain of what the soul had stored.

No matter what, the soul wins out.  The brain and the soul must exist in harmony as one, and both the brain and soul strive to achieve that point as quickly as possible.  Until that point is reached, confusion reigns supreme within the living person, because otherwise the body and brain have to contend with being two people at the same time instead of only one.

For Nancy and Steve, being kept unconscious for an entire day while their bodies were returned to where they could be found gave the process a head start in overwriting each of their memories, but when they each woke up, the process was far from complete.  As mentioned, the human brain contains a lot of memories.  It would eventually take days for the process to fully complete itself, with Steve taking slightly longer than Nancy because he was older.  No matter what though, it's out with the old, and in with the new.

Like it, or not, the soul is the person, not the brain.

The soul always wins.

 

Extracted - Chapter 2 – Accidently On Purpose

 

Extracted

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 2 – Accidently On Purpose

 

(Five Years Later)

 

“Henry Marsh!”

Doctor Judith Rameriz looked up at her best friend and lover, Doctor Benjamin Folley.  “What?”

“The answer to your problem,” Ben replied.

“Marsh?” Judith asked.  “Marsh is my problem!”

“Yes.  But what if we could also make him your solution?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your idea.”

“What idea?”

“To use the soul capture system for revenge.”

Judith looked at him for a few moments, then sighed.  “Yeah, I’d really love to get back at that ass.”

“So do it.  We’ve been talking about doing another experiment with the system anyway.”

“Yeah but…”  She stared at him again for a moment before she said, “What exactly are you suggesting?”

“Just like you yourself said.  Marsh took your son and threw him in prison where he doesn’t belong, and he’s not letting him go.”

“Despite the fact that Josh is innocent!” Judith threw out.

“Exactly!” Ben agreed.

“But all I said,” Judith reminded him, “was that I’d like to take his son away from him and lock him away where he couldn’t see him anymore, just like I can’t see my son.  Revenge!”

“That’s not all you suggested,” Ben reminded her.

Judith considered that.  “Yeah.  I did say it would be fun to take his son and switch his soul with someone else so that Marsh got back something he wouldn’t be expecting.”

“And that he would probably never figure out,” Ben added.

Judith nodded reluctantly.  “True,” she agreed.  She held her hand up.  “And yes, before you say anything else, it would serve that sanctimonious asshole right.  We all know Josh is innocent.  There was no credible evidence at all that tied him to that murder, but Marsh still managed to get him declared guilty and sent away for the next fifty years!”  Her anger flared.  “I want to murder him so bad!” she shouted.

“Hence…” Ben said softly.

Judith considered it for a moment.  “Hence, we somehow kidnap his son, remove his soul, and replace it with someone else.  And then I guess, give his son back to him…or give back whoever, or whatever, that person…or thing…winds up being.”

“At the worst, as far as everything we know, his son would wind up in a coma.”

Judith nodded.  “Yeah.  His son would be there…but not there.”  She considered that again.  “Like Josh.  He’s there, but not so that anyone can really see and talk to him easily.  There, but not there.”

Ben nodded.  “You wanted to look for an experiment.”

“Yeah, but to duplicate what happened to Hector first.  One subject.  Pull his soul, then put it back again.  With lots of testing!”

“We can test,” Ben told her.  “All you want.”

“But what you’re suggesting, we wouldn’t be doing it to just one person, we would be doing it twice, to two different people.  And worse, we’d be trying to put each soul we collect, back into the wrong bodies!  What kind of disaster would that bring?  It could kill them!”

Ben shrugged.  “Maybe.  But most likely not.  Not from what data we were able to collect.”

“What little of it there was,” Judith reminded him.

“True,” Ben conceded.  “But still, the possibility is there.  For both the scientific study, and…”  He stopped, waiting for her to catch up.

“Revenge,” she finally said.  “Yeah, I seem to remember that Marsh has a son, and he’d probably make an excellent candidate for the experiment.”

“Not to mention, it’s all about getting revenge on him as well.”

“Yeah, of course,” Judith agreed.  “But who would be the second candidate?”

Ben shook his head.  “That of course, would be the bigger problem.”

The two of them spent the rest of the day discussing it.  Who would be a good candidate for the second person.  And more importantly, what type of person would be the best to swap with Marsh’s son.  Again and again, in order to get back at Marsh for what he had done, they discussed the best type of person to abduct.  Kidnapping a city gang member, a criminal mind, was high on their list.  It would be the perfect revenge solution for the overly righteous asshole that Marsh was.

It wasn’t until after dinner that Ben suddenly came up with a different solution.  One that might even be better.  “I know!” Ben suddenly said.

“Know what?”

“Who the second candidate should be?”

“Who?”

“Congressman Michael Stiller’s daughter.”

“Stiller?  He did everything possible to try and get the government to stop our water system from being approved and sold.”

“And in the end, we proved that there wasn’t one single thing wrong with it,” Ben reminded her.  “But he was still our biggest obstacle to getting it on the market.  And look where we are now.”

“A lot richer than even we expected,” Judith admitted.  “And yeah, Stiller was a real asshole in trying to get everything launched.”

“So…” Ben said.

Judith considered it again.  “Congressman Stiller has a daughter?” she asked.  “I didn’t know.”

“I think he has two,” Ben told her.  “I think one would probably be in her teens now, and the other a few years younger.”

“And how old do you think Marsh’s son is?  From the one time I saw him with his family, I would guess he was in high school somewhere,” Judith said.

“Ben nodded.  “I’d guess a junior or senior by now.  I’m not sure.  But if we’re going to go the kidnapping route, then we kidnap Marsh’s son and Stiller’s older daughter, and then make the switch.  Their ages would be similar enough.”

Judith considered that, but another possibility came to her.  “Or…” she said.  “We kidnap Marsh’s son, and Stiller’s younger daughter.”

“The young one?”

Judith nodded.  “Wouldn’t that make a more drastic statement for Marsh?”

Ben nodded.  “Probably.  If anything happens to them at all.”

“True,” Judith conceded.

Judith and Ben discussed it for several days before finally deciding to explore going ahead with the plan.  The biggest discussion revolved around whether they should bring in the rest of the original team to help them.  The team working on the water system had been expanded now, but the original members were the only ones who knew what had happened to Hector, and they all wanted to keep it that way.

While the new, larger team worked on improving the water system, trying now to make it smaller so it could more easily be used for villages where not as much water was needed, the original members now met twice a month to discuss what they should do about the soul extraction problem.  The original machine that had extracted Hector’s soul now resided in the basement of Judith’s new mansion.

The only original member who was no longer with the team was Hector himself.  After the process left him in a coma, his family argued against him working on it anymore.  The team still awarded him his share of the money they now brought in for the process, but Hector had quietly retired.  He was never told what happened to his soul.  He only knew that the wave generator had malfunctioned, and it put him in a coma for three months.

The biggest item on the original team’s discussion list now was if they should bring in a new member to their team to aid in their scientific testing for the soul extraction.  They all knew that having a medical doctor or at least a psychiatrist on the team, or both, would be a good idea, but the problem was, like with everything else about the project, did they dare let anyone else know?  The situation was simply that sensitive.

As to Judith and Ben’s plan for revenge however, in the end, Judith and Ben both agreed that they didn’t dare tell anyone else on the team what they were planning on doing.  Ben decided they would have to hire someone to kidnap both subjects for them, then he and Judith would handle the soul exchange themselves.  Then those same men could return the kidnapped kids to where they could be easily found.

One further development they decided to add was the addition of a ransom demand for the return of Marsh’s son.  If Marsh got Josh out of prison and had him declared innocent of the crime like he really was, they would do nothing but return Marsh’s son safely back to him…unharmed.  In the back of their minds, both Judith and Ben really hoped that Marsh would give in and free Josh, and none of what they planned on doing would take place.  But if not….  Neither of them knew what would happen when they tried it.  They could only hope.

Finding information on the kids they planned on kidnapping was easy.  Philadelphia’s District Attorney Henry Marsh had only one child, a son named Stephen who was seventeen years old and would be entering his senior year of high school.  U.S. Congressman Michael Stiller had two daughters, Emily who was sixteen, and Nancy who was only twelve and going into the seventh grade.  Finding that information was the only easy thing that Judith and Ben needed to do.

It took Ben almost a month to find someone who was willing to kidnap both kids for them, and he had to go into New York to find them.  It was going to cost Judith a lot of money, but because of their water system, money was no object.  After another two weeks of planning, they were ready.

 

--- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

 

They were professionals.  Not just criminals, but mercenaries who had spent a good part of their lives in the military.  Now the kind of jobs they hired themselves out for were a different kind of dangerous, and often illegal.  As long as it paid well, they didn’t care.

In the dead of the night, outside of Philadelphia, one of the three men picked the lock on the back door to Henry Marsh’s house and all three of them entered silently.  They had already disabled everything they could, so they weren’t overly worried about alarms.  With guns drawn and ready, they crept through the kitchen and found the stairs.  Silently they went up.  Henry Marsh’s son’s room was easy to locate since it had a large sticker pasted on the outside showing a rock band.  The door to his room was unlocked like they expected.  Still making no sound, they opened the door and went inside.  Stephen Marsh was asleep, as he should be.  In moments, there was no chance of him waking any time soon.  A hand was placed over his mouth to stifle any kind of scream, and a needle was plunged into his neck containing a drug that left him sound asleep for the foreseeable future.

With one man keeping his gun out in case of trouble, the other two carried Stephen’s large muscular body out of his room and down the stairs.  In moments they were out of the house and soon had him loaded into the back of a van.  They drove him to the specified pickup location where they transferred Stephen’s sleeping body into the back seat of a car.  Ben paid them the first installment and wished the men good night.

Ben drove back to Judith’s mansion where he and Judith struggled to get Stephen safely down to her basement where the water treatment system/soul extractor was located.  Stephen was put into a small room where his wrist was chained to the wall.  The chain was hopefully unneeded since they planned on keeping him asleep for the duration.

With that much done, Judith and Ben retired to her bedroom for some much-needed rest.

The next morning, Ben made a phone call, and the ransom note for Stephen went out to a server in the Bahamas, where it was then sent on to Philadelphia District Attorney Michael Marsh in the form of a simple email.  The note explained that his son Stephen would be returned in good shape if Joshua Rameriz, one of the founding members of the Planetary Eco Alliance group, was released from prison in the next two days and all charges against him were dropped.  To all appearances, the email looked like it might have been the work of the activist group that Josh did indeed belong to and that was responsible for a number of ecological scandals around the world.  Nothing in it tied it to Judith or Ben in any way.

That night, the abduction process was repeated.  This time, outside of New York City.  Several hours later, the mercenaries delivered U.S. Congressman Stiller’s twelve-year-old daughter Nancy into Judith and Ben’s clutches.  Nancy’s drugged and unconscious body was placed in the same basement room and chained to the wall where Stephen was.

Judith herself made sure that Stephen received injections every few hours to keep him unconscious.  Once Nancy was delivered into her care as well, she made sure that Nancy received the same drug to keep her asleep.

For the next two days, Judith and Ben studied the news.  They also had no choice but to talk with some police detectives who considered that they might have kidnapped Stephen since Josh Rameriz mentioned in the ransom demand was Judith’s son.  The police had no proof that Judith and Ben had done anything at all, so they were soon left alone, especially since it looked like the activist group was the real responsible party.  Nobody talked to them about Nancy at all.  Why would they?  Nancy’s abduction was a New York problem and had nothing at all to do with Philadelphia.

While they waited, hoping that Judith’s son would be released from prison, both Judith and Ben did as much of a thorough physical examination on both Stephen and Nancy as they could.  Both of them wished that they had gone ahead and brought a medical doctor into their special soul extraction team, but at the same time, they both knew that because what they were doing was so illegal, they could never dare tell anyone else.  Judith and Ben made very sure however that the drugs to keep both subjects unconscious were administered regularly to make sure neither of them ever woke up.

After two days, when it looked like Josh was going to remain in prison, the decision to move forward with their experiment was made.  Ben and Judith were both in complete agreement that they should do it.

Seventeen year old Stephen Marsh was placed naked into the water/soul extraction machine first.  His unconscious body was laid down in the final chamber and when everything was double checked and ready, the machine was turned on.  It took only seconds before Judith herself switched the machine off, but by that time, just as it had done with Hector, the machine indicated that something was in the small extraction canister, despite the fact that once again, there was no mass and nothing at all for the spectrometer to read.

Stephen’s comatose body was dragged from the machine and Nancy’s smaller body was placed into it.  A new collection canister was put into place, and the process was repeated.  They had now captured not just one human soul, but two.

Feeling the monstrous weight of what they were about to do, the canister containing Nancy’s soul was removed from the machine and the one containing Stephen’s soul was put in its place.  It took only minutes for them to reverse the magnetic field.  When all was ready, Judith looked to Ben and softly said, “Here goes.”

As before, when they had done it with Hector, only five seconds elapsed between the time that Judith switched the machine on and when she turned it off.  When they pulled Nancy’s body from the machine, they both heard her let out a small moan of distress before she lapsed once again into complete unconsciousness.  Judith and Ben looked at each other, then continued removing Nancy’s body.  They took it all the way back to the room where they had been keeping her and chained her to the wall again.

When they were done, they put Stephen back into the machine and put the canister containing Nancy’s soul in place.  As before, the machine was only on for five seconds before it was turned off.  Stephen’s body made no sound at all as they dragged it from the machine back to the room where they chained it to the wall.  The fact that Stephen had made no type of sound was something that neither Judith nor Ben commented on, but it concerned each of them.

For the next day, Judith religiously kept the drugs going into both Nancy and Stephen to keep them unconscious.  Neither she nor Ben knew what was going to happen with the switched souls.  They only knew for sure that both subjects were alive.  The drugs made it impossible to know if they were in any kind of coma as Hector had been.

Would Nancy and Stephen remain in deathlike comas for the rest of their lives?  Or would they both awaken as Hector had done and be perfectly fine?  Or, the thing both Judith and Ben were the most interested in learning, would either subject show any changes because of the swapped souls?  And if so, what would those changes be?

Only time, and waiting, and watching from a distance would give them any kind of clues as to what would happen.

 

--- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

 

That night, the mercenaries were back.  In a secluded meeting place, they collected the unconscious bodies of both Stephen and Nancy.

An hour later, Stephen’s unconscious body was found outside of a Philadelphia restaurant, still in the same pajamas he had worn to bed when he had been abducted.

It wasn’t until several hours later that Nancy’s body was found outside of a New York restaurant.

There was no security video of the return of either child.  Nobody had seen anything at all.  Both Stephen and Nancy were picked up by ambulances and transported to hospitals, but they were hospitals in two different cities and no connection between the abductions was made.

The next day, Judith and Ben watched carefully, but the return of both abducted kids barely made the news at all.  The only thing Judith and Ben learned was that as they expected, both Nancy and Stephen had been found unconscious, and that both kids were still unconscious when they reached the hospitals.  But then with all the drugs they had kept them on, it was going to be some time yet before either of those kids was going to wake up.

The only question was, what would those kids wake up to?  That is, if they woke up at all.

Extracted - Chapter 1 – I Was Just Joking

 

Extracted

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 1 – I Was Just Joking

 

(Five Years Earlier)

 

The first time was an accident.  Their process had proven to be far more dangerous than anyone had considered.  Afterwards, it had taken three months of careful scientific study before anyone came up with the slightest clue as to what had happened…not to mention achieved.  Even then, the solution had been made in jest.  It was nothing but a small joke.  Until they had tested it.  No one was jesting about it now.  No one!

The system was supposed to be the most advanced water treatment process on the planet, and it was certainly that.  It not only worked, and well, but the entire development team now wondered if maybe it didn’t work a bit too well.

They tested the system with all types of water, mostly seawater, but hundreds of tests had been done on dirty and contaminated water of all types and from all parts of the world.  Each time, the process quickly pulled out every single contaminated particle, separated and collected those particles, and then spat nothing but perfectly clear, clean, drinkable water out the other end.  What’s more, those collected contaminants from the original water could often be kept and either used for something else…or sold!  It’s amazing how many different elements are dissolved in seawater alone, including very minute trace amounts of gold and rare earth elements.

Substances like common salt were easy to extract and the process didn’t even break the salt down, it simply pulled the sodium chloride particles out of the water and collected them.  The salt was pure enough for your kitchen table.  From there the water went through a series of other chambers, each time subjecting the water to the altered frequencies and magnetic fields that made up the process.

The treatment chamber of their development model was basically a large pipe about thirty inches in diameter, allowing huge amounts of water to be treated quickly as it passed through the various chambers.  In each chamber the water was subjected to not just a specific soundwave frequency, but also a massive magnetic field.  The combination of the two powerful forces was enough to break down anything.  The process simply changed the wave frequency the water was subjected to as well as made slight variations in the magnetic field to target the combination of desired molecules and elements that could possibly be in the water.  One by one, those elements were pulled out and transferred into collection chambers for each of the targeted processes.  The final process targeted those elements that were the most rare, usually collecting nothing at all, or almost nothing.  Still, it was part of the entire process, guaranteeing pure, clean, drinkable water in the end.

The problem with the system didn’t show up until there was an accident.  A very unforeseen accident.  Hector, one of the developers, had crawled into the pipe and was working on the final chamber, trying to make some last-minute adjustments that would pull any possible gold or rare earth molecules into the collection system, which in this case was the smallest collection chamber in the entire system.  He finally finished installing a new, and hopefully improved sonic wave generator into the chamber.

“Okay,” he yelled.  “Switch it on.  See if it works.”

As he laid in the pipe, one of the other team members turned the system on, activating the entire process.  It was something they had done not just hundreds, but thousands of times before.  Nothing was different, except the new wave generator.

Judith, the leader of the team and the woman at the control panel, saw the LED lights come on indicating that everything appeared to be working perfectly.  Two seconds later she heard a short scream.  Not knowing what had happened or what the problem was, she looked around.  The other team members appeared to be just as confused.  She quickly shut the machine down to check further.  It took them only seconds before they discovered that Hector, inside the pipe, was unconscious.  Nothing they could do seemed to bring him around.

Hector was taken to the hospital, where eventually the doctors declared him to be in a coma.  They ran test after test on his unconscious body, but never once found anything the slightest bit wrong with him.  All tests showed him to be physically in perfect health, except he was unconscious, and it looked like he was going to be staying that way, possibly for the rest of his life.

The team fretted horribly over the problem.  What had gone wrong?  They had all been inside the pipe many times at various stages of the development, including doing exactly what Hector had been doing.  But what had gone wrong this time?  Nothing at all that they could see.  Since the final section where Hector had been only targeted gold and a few rare earth elements, nothing should have happened to Hector at all.  It didn’t make sense!

The strangest thing however was that close examination of the system showed that something had been pulled out and stored in the collection canister for that final extraction chamber.  However, all measurements of that something indicated that whatever was in there was nothing at all.  The spectrometer sensor inside the canister was completely flat showing that there was nothing at all there, yet the pressure had gone up indicating that something was there.  But what?  Until more testing could be done to figure it out, the collection canister was left sealed and simply removed from the machine.

The new sonic wave generator was removed and tested, and found to be defective.  The signal that it emitted wasn’t what they had programmed it to put out.  The generator was emitting a much higher frequency than it was supposed to, and the wave was completely out of phase with the rest of the wave generators in that section.

A new wave generator was installed and tested, and the defective one was put on a shelf and carefully marked as defective.  Now they were left with a machine that could do exactly what the world needed, yet they didn’t dare put it on the market or do anything else with it until they solved a few problems first.  One, since that chamber only targeted gold and rare earths, what exactly had happened to Hector in there?  The second thing was something that really confused them all.  What had they extracted when Hector had been injured?  Nobody still had a clue.  And finally, why was Hector still in a coma when the doctors could find nothing wrong with him?

They worked and studied everything they could for three months, finding nothing that could give them any answers at all.  And that’s when the jest was made.  The joking comment that not only solved it all, but sent shivers of horror through each one of them.

The joke had suggested the impossible.  Yet as time went on, all five remaining members of the team began to wonder if it was indeed possible.  Had they done that?  How?  The existence of such a thing had never been scientifically proven.  It was one of the world’s greatest debates.  But had they now actually solved that debate and come up with proof?  If so, it would radically affect every known fact of mankind’s existence.

But they were scientists, every last one of them.  They had to know.  No one wanted to believe it was possible.  It didn’t even make sense, yet they had to test it to find out.  But how?  How do you possibly, scientifically, test for such a thing?

There was only one answer to that.  It was the only experiment they could conceive of to find out.  But if it worked, they would have their proof…without a doubt.

What they proposed to do was illegal.  No doctor, lawyer, or anyone else would condone such a thing, but they saw no other way.  The implications of what they might discover, or not discover, were simply too huge for any of them to ignore.

The first step was to carefully measure once again everything they possibly could.  But it was the second step that began to move them into illegal territory.  In the dead of the night, a plan was implemented to smuggle Hector’s unconscious body from the long-term care facility he had been placed in, and bring it back to the lab where they were working.

Most of the team had doctor degrees, PhDs, but none of them were medical doctors.  Still, they checked Hector as thoroughly as possible.  As a final safety precaution, Hector’s hospital gown was removed along with all the wires and tubes that had been attached to him to help keep him alive.  Hector was as naked and pure as they could make him.

Very carefully, they placed his body in the center of the final chamber of the pipe.  To further help the process, both ends of the pipe were sealed tightly.  The team had made two other changes to the process.  The original defective wave generator had been put back in place to duplicate the original wave signal, and the final piece of the puzzle was that the magnetic field that was generated in that chamber was reversed, so that instead of pulling at the desired particles, it would remove them from the collection canister and insert them into whatever was in the pipe instead.  In this case, Hector.

When they were ready, all five team members looked at each other.  Nobody knew what was going to happen.  Would they cure their beloved friend and colleague, Hector, or would they kill him instead?  Or…the most likely outcome…would nothing happen to him at all?  That’s what they all expected.  That’s what they all hoped would happen.

With one final prayer, Judith, the head of the team, turned to the control panel and switched it on.  Five seconds later, she switched it off.  As soon as the rest of the team deemed it safe, the end of the pipe was opened and all five of them crowded around.  Hector’s body was just as they had left it.  Unchanged.  Just what they all expected.  For a moment, they were all silently relieved…until Hector let out a small moan.  They all stared in both wonder and horror.  But the body in the pipe continued to lay there, completely unconscious.  Hector appeared to still be in a coma, yet they had all heard him moan.

As carefully and quickly as possible, Hector was smuggled back into the facility they had taken him from only hours earlier.  The ones who carried him back into his room didn’t see any sign that anyone had even noticed he had been gone.  As they laid him in his bed however, Hector let out another slight moan, yet he didn’t wake up.  Frightened, the men left him and hurried out, reporting the second moan to the others as soon as they were safely away.

The care facility discovered that something had happened to Hector when the morning shift came in to check on him.  They discovered that the wires and tubes had been removed from his body, but more than that, the moment they began hooking him up again, Hector moaned a third time, and then opened his eyes, scaring the workers.

“He’s awake!” one of them shouted.

Hector was immediately transported back to the hospital.  Several hours later, the doctors declared that the only thing wrong with him was that his muscles needed a bit of exercise to get them going again.  The three months of coma he had been in had weakened them somewhat.

Hector’s entire family was ecstatic.  The entire scientific team that he had worked with was ecstatic as well, although not one of them let anyone else know what they had done, even though they had done the absolute impossible.

What was that absolutely impossible thing?  Something no one had ever imagined could be done.  They had not only proven the existence of the human soul, but they had captured that soul, stored it, and then put it back where it belonged.

The implications of such a thing were incomprehensible!

But more than that, those implications were nothing but frightening.  So frightening that they all had to wonder, did they dare tell anyone?  To a person, they all decided that for now the answer had to be no.  No one else in the world could be told anything at all about what they had done.  They would all have to discuss it for a long time before they even dared let any such knowledge out.  The implications of such a thing were simply too staggering.

To capture a human soul and return it to the body.  It was a godlike process.  What dangers could it possibly bring?  The answers to that were too numerous to count.

The very idea of it was…frightening!