"Doctor Jacqueline Stevenson recording, May 30th, 1995. The hypothesis of my experiment: Use radiological techniques to alter a subject's brain wave oscillations in order to induce a trance state. This procedure has many potential applications, from greater clarity in police interviews, to helping victims of violence to overcome resulting negative psychological effects. With additional work, it may also assist in absorbing knowledge more effectively. This is human trial #1, attempting to create an alternate mental state."

The pretty ash blonde woman placed the microphone onto a nearby table, clambered into a customized dentist's chair, and lay back. Her assistant, a dark-haired man of average height, strapped a metal helmet to her head. Wires extruded from the helmet, running up to a hook on the ceiling and then down to a large machine in the back corner of the small room.

The man looked uneasy. "Are you sure, Jacqueline? We could run some more mouse trials first."

She sighed. "Damnit, Gabe, I'm tired of waiting! The mice responded as expected when we used the machine on them." She was referring to how the mice had forgotten their memorized path through the test maze. "They were perfectly fine afterward. Let's get going."

Gabe Utterman secured his boss's arms to the chair using the attached belts and buckles. "At least let me..."

"No, Gabe. We don't have FDA approval yet, so this is my choice. Just hand me the control."

He placed the plastic remote in her hand and activated the microphone again.

"What I'm about to do is of my own volition," she recorded. "I am not being coerced in any way. Dr. Utterman is following my orders to simply observe." Then she gave Gabe a smile and activated the machine.

A faint cyclical 'Worb worb worb' sound emanated from the machine. Jacqueline closed her eyes.

After a few seconds Gabe spoke: "Jacqueline?"

She opened her eyes. "Fuck! It's not working." She thumbed a dial on the remote, but with her hands restrained it was awkward. The faint background sound increased in pitch and intensity. "Shit! Still nothing..." She flicked her thumb and the dial spun wildly, increasing the sound dramatically. She dropped the remote and closed her eyes.

Gabe rushed forward. "Jacqueline!"

She didn't respond.

"No! Shit..." He reached for the remote but it had fallen under the chair. In the small room he had to lie across her slacks-covered legs to try to access it.

"Who are you?"

Gabe pushed back to regard her. "Jacqueline?"

His boss was looking at him curiously. "Your name is Jacqueline? Kinda odd, but okay."

"No, it's Gabe."

"Gabe," she repeated. Then she looked down at her restrained arms. "Hey, why can't I move?" She strained at the straps. "Let me go!" She seemed angry now.

"Jacqueline, stop! You asked me to do this." Gabe didn't know what to do, and now she was flailing her legs so that he couldn't reach the control!

She stopped kicking and looked at him. "Please let me go." She looked like she was about to cry.

"I will. Just let me grab the control..." He circled around the front of the chair. As he ducked forward to reach the device beneath it, the last thing he saw before the blackness of unconsciousness was the sole of one of her sensible shoes rushing at his face.

---

Gabe Utterman woke to a throbbing pain in his chin and head, and the sound of a woman humming. "Ohh...fuck..." He was on the cold tiled floor, and he could see the remote, just a bit beyond his reach. He raised his head, but not so high that the restrained woman could kick him again. "Jacqueline...oww...why did you do that?"

She stopped humming and looked down at him. "That's not my name, Gabe."

He was confused. "It's not? What's your name?"

She thought for a moment. "I don't think I have one. How curious. Everyone should have a name." Then she considered for a moment. "How about Heidi?"

"Heidi? Why Heidi?" He was inching along the floor toward the control, trying to keep her distracted by talking.

She closed her eyes. "I see names, all in a row...I don't like Anne, or Nancy, but I like Heidi."

She opened her eyes again, and Gabe realized that the person in the chair wasn't the woman he had worked with for the last five years. He lunged the last few inches and hit the red failsafe button on the remote. Immediately her head slumped to the side as the background whine faded.

He got to his feet. "Jacqueline! Dr. Stevenson!" He felt her neck; there was a strong pulse.

Her eyes fluttered open. "Gabe? Damnit, it didn't work!"

He looked at her closely. "What's my middle name?"

"What?"

"My middle name, Jacqueline...what is it?"

She looked confused. "How should I know? Oh, wait...it was on your application...I want to say...James?"

Gabe let out the breath he'd been holding. "Phew...yeah." He started to unbuckle her hands and then looked up at the clock on the wall. "Oh shit!"

She followed his gaze. "The machine was on for an hour-and-a-half? What the hell happened, Gabe?"

He finished unbuckling his boss and explained the bizarre encounter. Then they reviewed the digital recorder footage. After Gabe had been knocked out, "Heidi" had yelled and thrashed around for a bit, and then fell into humming some tunes.

Jacqueline turned the recording up, concentrating. "That's 'Rubber Ducky', Ernie's song from Sesame Street."

Gabe considered. "Not exactly a song you'd hear on the radio these days." He shook his head, then winced. "Ohh..."

Jacqueline caught Gabe as he sagged. "Looks like you might have a concussion, Dr. Utterman. Let's get you to a hospital."

---

Gabe did indeed have a concussion, and the attending physician sent him home for the rest of the week. This did not please Jacqueline, but it had been her foot that had injured him, so she couldn't complain.

She returned to the lab and looked at the chair and equipment. The bonds were only there to keep her from hurting herself in case she had an epileptic fit, but she had been in the chair for well over an hour with no ill effects...

She climbed into the chair again, but didn't fasten the helmet on this time. If she moved forward or thrashed her head then it would slip off and she'd be out of the wave field and back to herself. She had to figure out what was going on. She reached over, grabbed her pad and pen, and wrote, 'Hello, I am Jacqueline.'

Then she activated the machine and ducked under the helmet.

Suddenly she was sitting up. The machine was still thrumming but the helmet had fallen away. She looked down at the pad. No additional writing. She wrote, 'Please write what you want to say to me' and then ducked under the helmet again.

Again, she found herself sitting up without the helmet. There was additional writing on the pad, and the handwriting was similar to her own, but there were noticeable differences: 'I'm Heidi. How the fuck are you doing this?'

Using this bizarre note-passing method, going in and out of the wave field, a conversation formed. Jacqueline wrote down a layman's version of her theory.

'Bullshit,' Heidi responded.

'Then how do you explain this?' asked the doctor.

Then there was no response when she came back out of the field. She went back in, but when she came out again her arm hurt. She found four gouged lines along her forearm, which matched the blood under her other arm's fingernails.

She turned the machine off. "Well, that's enough of that."

After treating the scratches, she went home.

---

She woke in the morning extremely tired, her muscles aching. "Ohh..." she groaned. She had been neglecting her exercises, concentrating instead on work, and this was the result. "Heidi" must have really been working at getting loose of the restraints the previous day.

She tied her hair back, donned her cardio outfit, and admired herself in the mirror. The tight yoga pants showed the ass of a thirtysomething woman that at one point you could have bounced a quarter off of, but not so much anymore. Still attractive, though. Her sleeveless t-shirt showed off nice, round boobs that she felt actually looked more attractive than when she had been more fit. She decided she'd do some leg and butt work.

After she exercised, showered, and dressed, she left for work. The next door neighbor's apartment door opened and the Russian lady who lived there gave her a smile and wave before she closed it again.

Weird, Jacqueline thought. She had never even talked with the woman before.

---

The previous night:

As Jacqueline entered her apartment building she could hear the next door neighbors screaming at each other in Russian again. When she got to her own doorway, the neighbors' door flew open and the wife burst out, crying. She ran past Jacqueline on her way to the stairwell, the skin around her eye red and swelling up.

Her husband, tall, dark, and definitely not handsome, ran after her, his hands balled into fists. His intentions were clear.

Jacqueline didn't even think about it; she stepped in front of him.

The man barely looked down at her before he backhanded her out of the way.

"Oh, you shouldn't have done that, big man."

The husband paused, confused, and turned back to the woman he had struck. She was rubbing her face where he had hit her, and her eyes...

"What--?" he managed to get out before the blonde pushed herself off of the wall with her foot and rammed her fist into his throat.

"Ukghhh!" The man grabbed at his neck, unable to breathe. He tottered at the edge of the stairwell.

Her kick took out his stair-side knee. Unable to hold the 200-plus pounds of Russian beef, it buckled and he fell. After the sound of several sickening impacts, he came to rest on the landing, his eyes staring at his wife, now his widow, watching from a few steps further down, while the rest of his body was twisted around the opposite way.

The newly widowed woman looked up at her savior. "I take care of this. You go!" she hissed.

Heidi nodded and picked up the purse and set of keys that had fallen to the floor. She unlocked Jacqueline's door and went inside.

"Very nice..." she commented as she locked the door behind. It was an open concept studio apartment. While it was fairly sparse, Jacqueline had made an attempt to make it look "homey".

The first thing she did was have a look at herself in the bedroom's full length mirror. Older than she remembered, though she didn't know how she remembered a younger version of herself, or this "Jacqueline" person, for that matter. She undressed and examined "the goods". Not bad, she thought, though she'd have to work on that ass before it got away from her.

She looked at the scratches she had left on Jacqueline's arm. She didn't even feel them. She had also barely felt the slap earlier, and her face felt fine now, though in the mirror she could see a fading red mark where the big man had hit her.

She remained naked as she investigated the rest of Jacqueline's things. She found some notes on the experiment that had brought Heidi to...life? Back to life? She definitely remembered things from before today -- flashes, impressions -- but she couldn't understand much of what was in the notes.

How long would she remain like this? she wondered. In the lab it seemed that she could only "exist" while the helmet was on her head. The neighbor's attack had somehow caused her to surface again, and Jacqueline was nowhere to be found.

She had an urge to just run away, to get the hell out of town, but no, she wasn't going to run away again. Again? Had she run away before? She didn't know.

She found some leftover sushi in the fridge and devoured it. She liked eating. That would be unfortunate for her ass if she didn't keep a handle on it, she realized.

There was a knock at the door. When she opened it a crack she saw a male police officer standing there.

"Evenin', ma'am. May I speak to you about the incident?"

"Incident?"

He looked over toward the stairwell and back, confused. "You didn't hear the screaming and thumping?"

She looked the cop up and down. Young, probably a rookie or not long since, in pretty good shape. "I hear screaming all the damn time from the neighbors," she nodded toward their door. "Thumping too. I tune it out."

He nodded slowly. "Well, there's been a death. UM!"

She had opened the door wide, revealing her nakedness. "That asshole finally kill his wife?" she asked, unconcerned. "Hope you fry him for that."

The cop, bless him, was looking above her head now. "Ma'am, you might wanna put a robe on or somethin'." He waited, but she stayed where she was. He continued, "And no, it was the husband who died, fallin' down the steps here."

She smirked sexily at the officer, whose voice seemed to be showing some Southern twang now that he was flustered. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Do you want to come inside?"

At the suggestively worded question, his eyes couldn't help but scan her sexy body before looking away again. "Um, no ma'am! If you say you didn't see nuthin' then that's fine. Can I just get some ID, though?"

She turned to the purse she had dropped just inside the door and bent down to rifle through it, showing off her bubbly butt to the cop, who gave a little "Eep!" at the sight. Then she turned back and handed him Jacqueline's driver's license.

He wrote the information down and handed it back, struggling not to look below her eye level. "Thanks, ma'am. You have a good evenin'." Then he turned away, trying to hide an obvious erection as she closed the door.

She watched some Xena: Warrior Princess on TV and then felt tired. She brushed her teeth and slipped into the luxurious queen bed. While she lay there, her hand snaked down between her legs. The action from earlier had left her feeling antsy. She thought about the cute policeman, one of only three men she had seen in a long time, other than Gabe and "Mr. Neck-twist-ov", and thought about the cop taking her from behind.

"Oh, yeah..." she moaned, dipping a manicured finger inside her pussy as her thumb stimulated her clitoris. Soon she reached her release, cumming hard on two fingers as she arched her back, gasping. Her breathing slowed, and then she fell asleep.

---

Jacqueline was blocked in her research. She worked alone with Gabe, and needed him to secure her hands so that her alter ego wouldn't damage her body again, since Heidi wasn't going to be forthcoming otherwise.

She reviewed her notes. The mice hadn't shown alternate personalities, but of course if they had, how would you tell? They were mice, and couldn't talk. The experiment had shown that they couldn't access their memories while being affected by the wave field, which wasn't what she was ultimately trying to achieve. She thought about people who got incredibly drunk and blacked out, or were given rohypnol, "roofies" in the more common parlance...was this more like that? An altered mental state due to the broadcast wave forms instead of through chemical means?

"Great, I've invented a date rape machine." She sighed and dropped her head into her hands.

---

After work she headed home again. Not finding the sushi she thought she had left in the fridge, and feeling restless after changing out of her lab clothes, she decided to head down to the local pizza place for a slice or two.

As she walked along the sidewalk she kept her eyes down. The city was full of people that you just didn't know how they were going to respond these days. Crime was up, taxes were up, health care costs were up, and people that would normally have been kept in mental institutions were put out on the street due to budget cuts. The world was going to hell.

An unkempt man quickly strode out of an alley and bumped into her. "Oh!" she exclaimed as she recoiled.

"Watch where you're going, bitch," the man uttered as he continued up the sidewalk.

"You talking to yourself?" the woman called out after him.

He turned back. "What?"

"Bitch," she said, pointing at him, "watch where you're going."

He stomped back up to her. "You..." Then he looked into her eyes. "Um..." He suddenly felt afraid of this little woman. "Sorry, lady." Then he turned and walked very quickly away, not looking back.

Heidi didn't remember leaving the apartment, having just suddenly found herself angry and on the sidewalk. She was hungry, though. She spotted a bar up the street offering Wing Night and went in.

It was definitely a "rough and tumble" looking place, with even the older patrons looking like they used to be Hell's Angels back in the day. She found a booth, sat down, and perused the stained menu.

A waitress who dressed for the body she had lost 20 years ago approached. "What can I get'cha, hon?"

"Wings, every flavor, and lots of 'em," Heidi replied. "And beer, whatever's on tap."

The woman nodded and headed to the back. Heidi looked down at her own button-up shirt, shook her head, and undid the top 2 buttons. Much better! Let the girls out to play.

After filling her belly, Heidi sat back and sighed. Clearly she wasn't going to stay in charge of this body, but how long would it last before Jacqueline took it back? When she fell asleep, like last time?

She looked over at the pool tables. Might as well enjoy myself while I can, she thought.

One man was clearly "sharking" the competition, a ruggedly handsome dark-haired guy she guessed was about thirty. Heidi noticed that he purposely flubbed a couple of his shots against her so she won the first game for $5. "Double or nothin'?" he asked as he flashed his flashy smile at her.

"Why don't we make it more interesting?" she asked.

After she beat him for the fourth straight game, "Stu the Shark" shook his head. "Can't fuckin' believe it..." he murmured. "So what's my tally?"

"Really big," she replied, moving up and grabbing his package through his tight jeans. "Just like this. Give me what I want and we'll call it even."

---

Stu's apartment door burst open as he and Heidi, practically stuck to each other at the lips and hips, barely kicked it closed behind them. Clothes flew in every direction before they ended up on Stu's bed, he on his back and Heidi already lining up his hard cock with her very wet pussy.

"Condom?" Stu asked, but Heidi answered by sinking halfway down his thin seven incher. "Okay, guess we're not doin' that." Then he grabbed her hips to help get himself all the way inside her. As he bottomed out, she shook in her first orgasm.

"Fuucckkk..." she moaned.

Stu looked up at her beautiful face, and then down at her gorgeous round boobs. "Goddamn..." he said, lifting his head up to suck on one of her nipples.

"Mmm..." she purred, and started to ride him. When her nipples got too sensitive she pushed him back, grabbed his hands, and held them down on the bed as she fucked his cock.

She leaned forward and took his lower lip in her teeth, gently biting it.

"Aah! Shit...you are so fucking hot, Heidi..."

She stopped bouncing and rotated her hips, grinding the root of his cock and swirling the shaft around inside her. "Oohh..." Then she started to ram her hips up and down again.

"Oh fuck...gonna cum," he moaned. She didn't stop. "You gonna pull off?"

Heidi redoubled her movements. "This is my first time, so you better fuckin' fill me right up, stud. Uhhh...yeeahhh..."

"Unnhh! Unhh!" Stu thrust his hips up into the wanton woman as he blasted her insides with his cum.

"Ohh...ouhh..." Heidi gasped as she felt her unused pussy being inundated with Stu's hot seed, and came again. Then she collapsed on top of him, breathing heavily.

"You are amazing," Stu said.

She climbed off of him, watching his cock retreat like a turtle into its shell. "Oh, we're not done yet," she said before she took his spermy cock into her mouth.

As he felt his cock revive, Stu asked, "You said first time...you're a virgin?"

Her lips smacked as she pulled her mouth off of his cock, which was now ready again. "Long story," she shrugged and clambered into a reverse cowgirl position.

After Stu deposited two more loads of cum inside her, Heidi finally left Stu sleeping, exhausted, though not before she left him a note with very specific instructions. Feeling his seed squish about inside her, she headed back to Jacqueline's place.

---

Jacqueline woke in the morning. "Ohh..." she groaned at the soreness in her vagina. Pushing back the blankets, she found her vibrator between her legs, crusty with her juices, its batteries dead due to it being left on. Well, no wonder I'm sore, she thought, thinking back to the last time she had used the plastic cock. It had literally been months.

She struggled to remember the previous night. She had walked to get some pizza. She was pretty sure that she had eaten. Nothing else. She shook her head. "I'm working too hard."

She exercised, puttered around the apartment for a while, ordered some Chinese takeout, watched TV, and finally went back to bed. As she stretched her extremities under the soft sheets she thought about her vibrator, untouched for so long before last night. What had prompted her to use it? She considered grabbing it again, but then remembered that she was out of batteries. Finally, she fell asleep.

---

Ring! Ring!

Jacqueline woke up. Who the hell was calling her in the middle of the night? Well, it could be Gabe, she thought, and picked up the phone. "Hello?"

A man started screaming obscenities at her, threatening her life...

"Thanks, lover," Heidi said into the receiver. "That really gets me going. Same time tomorrow night." And then she hung up.

She hadn't been sure it would work without being slapped or bumped like the other times she had emerged without the helmet, but it seemed that all it took was a fright. "The night shift is mine, bitch," she said to the absent Jacqueline.

Heidi dressed in Jacqueline's jogging outfit and went out. No time like the present to get this ass under control, especially if I want to eat whatever I want, she thought to herself.

She wasn't familiar with the area, but made sure to keep her bearings as she went down one street, up another, and down a park trail, before finally ending up in a cul-de-sac. She saw a dark footpath leading from the edge of the closed-off street to...where? She was going to find out.

She emerged from the path to find herself in a trainyard.

"You lost, lady?"

She turned to find two rough-looking men blocking off the way she had come. "Nope!" she responded genially. "Just exploring."

The men stepped forward. "Dangerous out at night," the taller one said, "you maybe want some company?"

She smiled. "Sure, if you think you can keep up." Then she took off running deeper into the yard.

"Hey! Goddamnit..."

She heard the sound of pursuit as their feet crunched the gravel behind her. She had a good head start.

The men rounded the corner of an empty boxcar. The woman was nowhere to be seen. "You go that way," the taller man said to his companion, pointing toward a nearby warehouse. He then headed toward a second boxcar, this one with both of its sliding doors open.

He heard the sound of something shifting from the boxcar and smiled. His buddy was too far away to signal now, but he could handle a small woman by himself. He'd have some fun with her before his companion rejoined.

"Ha!" he grunted as he jumped into the boxcar. He pulled out a small flashlight to find...nothing.

Heidi, on the roof, grabbed the edge of it, twisted, and swung down, her feet smashing into the would-be rapist's back. The impact knocked the wind from his lungs and him from the boxcar. He landed face first, the gravel of the yard lacerating his flesh.

He took a whooping breath, trying to replace the air, but it was again crushed out of his lungs as Heidi landed hard on his back. There was the sickening sound of cracking bone.

The other man had come up empty, and headed back to where he had last seen his friend. He could hear a train coming. He searched, but neither his buddy nor the woman could be found.

Finally, as the train approached and its light shone onto the track ahead of it, he could see the slight figure of the woman there, pulling something large and man-shaped. "Shit!" he hissed, and ran toward her.

Once she saw him she ran in the opposite direction. He sprinted harder toward his friend, unmoving on the tracks. He had to make it! He had to! He...

...couldn't.

The train went over his friend as if he hadn't even been there. A severed arm tumbled to the ground a few feet away as he stopped running and fell to his knees. "Aw, shit..."

As the man gulped for air from his mad dash, the train finally passed, revealing the woman, standing on the other side of the tracks, looking at him intently. "Fuck..." he groaned, scrambling to get to his feet and losing his balance on the gravel.

Then she was upon him, grabbing his head and smashing it back into the ground. He saw stars. She did it again and he couldn't think, his eyes rolling up into his head.

"Looks like the train driver was asleep at the wheel; didn't even slow down," she commented. "Let's see what we have here..."

He could hear her through the haze of pain and shock. He felt her unfasten his belt and pull down his pants.

"You know, Willy -- I'm gonna call you Willy -- Willy, I was hoping for better. Hope you're a grower and not a show-er..."

Then he felt her hand on his penis, stroking it. Despite his dazed state, it responded.

"Ah, there we go..."

Then she was straddling him, and he felt his cock enter something warm...her pussy? She was...raping him? But they were going to rape her! His head lolled, and he saw her riding him, a shapely shadow framed from behind by the glow of one of the trainyard's tall light poles.

Soon she was ramming her hips down hard onto his fully engorged cock. "Yeah...yeah...almost..." she gasped, and grabbed his chin and hair in an insanely strong grip.

"YEAHHH..." she cried out, twisting the man's head and cleanly snapping his neck as she orgasmed.

The man ejaculated deep inside Heidi in his death throes, though he never felt it, his brain having been completely cut off from his body by the internal decapitation.

"Ohhh..." Heidi moaned as she felt the dead man fill her pussy with hot sperm.

When she recovered from her orgasm she patted the man's cheek. "Thanks Willy. What a great workout," she told his unseeing eyes as they gazed off into the distance the train had receded into.

---

Heidi hid the little money her victims had on them in an envelope in the back of what seemed to be the least-used drawer in Jacqueline's desk. She didn't want Jacqueline to notice money missing from her wallet if Heidi decided that she wanted to go get a bite to eat or something.

She washed and dried her jogging clothes while trying to watch some TV, but that late at night there were only infomercials or test pattern. She really had to figure out a way to come out during the day, but how could she hide it from Jacqueline? It was a conundrum.

---

The next night at 2 AM, Jacqueline got another phone call. Once again, she answered it.

"See you soon, Stu," Heidi said as she hung up the phone. It seemed that Jacqueline wasn't remembering Heidi's emergence triggers, so the phone calls were going to work fine as long as she kept Stu happy enough to keep those going.

And he was definitely happy as Heidi rode his cock to another shattering mutual orgasm. He noticed that she always wanted to be in control, fucking him from on top and never letting him take her from behind. That was fine by him...he could lay back and let her do all the work.

After a few hours of hot sex and three more loads of his cum inside her, she left, declining to stay the night. He wondered if he was just a side piece, and then wondered why he cared. Hot sex and none of the responsibility? Heidi was a dream girlfriend!

---

Heidi considered her recent adventures as she walked home. She had snapped a grown man's neck with her bare hands, and outshot a pool shark...how was she so physically adept? She theorized that due to her limited existence and the consequent lack of distractions that most everyone else in the world experienced, she could focus her mind and body more sharply than the average person, kind of like a child prodigy who dedicated all of their brain power to learning a skill.

She blinked. Had she thought that? That seemed more like Jacqueline. She shook her head. How did she know what Jacqueline thought like?

---

On Monday, Jacqueline went back into the office to find Gabe waiting for her in the lab. She explained her solo attempt to get info out of Heidi.

He looked at her, exasperated. "Jacqueline, that was really dangerous! Please tell me you won't try anything like that ever again."

She nodded. "Okay, strap me in and we'll see what you can get out of her."

Gabe knew better than to argue. After she was secure, he held out the remote control so she could press the activation button, and then Heidi was looking at him.

"Oh, it's you again."

"Yep, me again." He moved forward, making sure not to get too close. "You mentioned some names: Anne, Nancy, Heidi...what more can you tell me about them?" Gabe watched her carefully.

"Gabe..." she smiled at him. "Why not unbuckle me? We can have some...fun." With that, she licked and then nibbled on her lips, looking at him demurely. Most men would be turned on by such a sight, but Gabe was not most men.

"Well, if I had any doubts that you weren't a completely different person from Jacqueline, that put it to rest," he said. "I'm gay, darlin', and she knows it."

"Oh," Heidi replied, disappointed.

They sat there for some minutes, Gabe waiting patiently.

Finally, Heidi harrumphed. "Hmp, fine. Those names were on books on my shelf."

"What can you tell me about the shelf, or the room it was in?"

She closed her eyes and thought for a moment. "I remember a mural of puppets -- no, Sesame Street characters -- a small record player in a wooden box, and some stuffed animals. It had a beige carpet and a fluffy pink bed. And then..." She stopped.

"And then...?" Gabe prompted.

Heidi had opened her eyes again and was looking into the distance. "Well," she stated flatly, "that explains some things."

"What did you remember, Heidi?"

She closed her eyes and sat back. "I'm bored with this game. Get me out of this stupid contraption, Gabe."

Gabe tried to get her to reveal anything else, but she just started humming "Rubber Ducky" over and over. Finally, he deactivated the machine.

Back to herself, Jacqueline reviewed the recording and thought for a moment. "I loved Sesame Street when I was young. Back then I had a bookshelf in my room. It had Anne of Green Gables, Nancy Drew, and Heidi, among others."

Gabe nodded. "Anne...Nancy...Heidi. But I wasn't talking to a child, Jacqueline. Other than the personality change, she spoke like an adult."

Jacqueline rubbed her temples. "Maybe she can only access some of my memories. You said she didn't remember you, but she didn't have a child's mind, so...what? What is she?"

Neither of them knew. As Gabe went back to his desk he caught himself humming "Rubber Ducky". That damn song was stuck in his head for the rest of the day.

---

After her nightly "wakeup call", Heidi went through Jacqueline's desk. Finally, she found what she had been looking for: a letter with a return address for someone she was dying to speak to.

She called Stu. "Road trip, stud. Meet you outside the bar in half an hour."

Soon they were driving out of the city. Once they were on the highway, with no curves in sight, Heidi had Stu teach her how to drive his old Chevy convertible and then he sacked out in the back seat while she drove.

---

"Stu, you take over now." He woke to find the car pulled over at the side of the road and Heidi joining him in the back seat. The sun was coming out.

When she saw the look in his eyes and the growing package in his pants she said, "Well, in a bit. Let's take care of that 'morning wood'."

---

"What's...what's happening?"

Stu had been driving for a few hours and looked back to find what he thought was Heidi waking up, confused. He quickly pulled over.

She was looking at him now, her eyes full of fear. "Who are you?"

SLAP! He had given her a full swing with his open palm across her face, just like she had asked. His was not to question why...

She smiled at him. "Nice..." she said, rubbing at her reddening cheek. "Why don't you get back here and wake me up with that cock?"

---

Robert Stevenson was puttering with the house wiring in his basement. His new toaster had broken a circuit, and so he was upgrading the breaker to handle the increased amperage. Then he heard something upstairs. He lived alone.

"Goddamnit..." he murmured to himself as he crept up the stairs. He grabbed a sharp knife from the kitchen and tiptoed into the living room.

His daughter was sitting in his favorite chair. "Jacqueline?" he called out, confused.

"Hi Daddy." Then she noticed the knife. "Oh, getting ready to poke me with something else you shouldn't?"

He stepped back. "What?"

She stood up and walked toward him, very unlike how he remembered his daughter; she seemed like a cat stalking its prey.

She stopped in front of him and looked down at the knife. "Well?"

He put it down on a nearby shelf. "What do you want?" he asked, dour.

She looked at him intensely for a minute. He felt his back prickle as he started to sweat.

"Just to tell you that I forgive you, Daddy. Without your...inappropriate behavior with me so many years ago, I wouldn't be the woman I am now." She moved forward and gave him a hug.

He stood there, uncertain. "Um, okay, then...?"

She stepped back. "Bye, Daddy." Then she strode out the front door and closed it behind her.

Robert shook his head. After a moment he returned the knife to the kitchen and walked back to the basement door.

"Changed my mind!"

He felt a kick, square in his back, and heard a crunching sound. Then he was tumbling down the stairs, unable to stop. More cracks and crunches and pain. Finally, as he landed on the concrete, his arm produced the final snap as it fractured. "AaaAAHH!!"

Thump! Thump! Thump! He could hear his daughter slowly descending the steps behind him. He tried to move, but his legs weren't responding and his arm was screaming pain into his head.

She moved over to the switchbox. "Oh, electricity...so powerful, and yet so dangerous." She grabbed two cables and ripped them free. The lights went out.

Sparks flew as she lightly touched both cables together a couple of times. Then she touched them together against the wood of the wall. After a few seconds it started to smoke, and soon caught fire.

"Jacq--Jacqueline," he gasped.

She looked at him. "That's not my name. You don't even deserve to know it." She dropped the cables and walked back over to him, the flame dancing up the wall behind her covering her face in shadow.

She considered him. "No legs and one good arm. You still might make it up the stairs." Then she stomped down on his other forearm and he felt that bone snap as well.

"Aaahhh!!" He collapsed forward, spent.

She turned her back, went up the stairs, and closed the basement door behind her.

She and Stu watched the house from a distance as it burned. He handed her a box of Milk Duds.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Oh yeah," she replied through a mouth full of chocolate and caramel.

---

Jacqueline woke up to a huge pain in her head. "Oh!" She opened her eyes to see that she was on the floor of her apartment.

She took stock of her body. Her sweat pants were wet; she had peed herself! She stumbled to the bathroom and found a cut surrounded by a nasty bruise on the side of her temple. Hobbling back to where she had woken up, she found some dried blood on the edge of her coffee table.

Her phone rang and she answered. "Hello?" she groaned.

"Jacqueline! Thank God...where have you been?" It was Gabe.

"Knocked myself out on my coffee table, Gabe. Going to the hospital now."

"You've been unconscious all day?"

Her blood went cold. "All...day? What time is it?"

"Almost 6 PM. You never came to work...I've been calling for hours. Even went to your building at lunch, but there was no answer on the intercom either. Damnit, I should have gotten the building manager to open the door!"

"Not your fault, Gabe. I'll call you after I've had this looked at." Then she hung up the receiver.

---

The hospital discharged her after a day of observation to make sure she didn't lose consciousness again. In the meantime she had called Gabe to let him know she'd be taking the rest of the week off. However, she couldn't stop thinking about it. Did she pass out as a side effect of using the helmet? They had kept an eye on the mice after using the wave field on them, but could you really tell if a mouse had passed out versus just falling asleep?

---

She got home to find a voice message from the coroner from her old home town. When she called them back, they explained that her father had perished in a fire that had destroyed her childhood home. As near as they could tell, her father had been working on the house's electrical system and might have accidentally started it himself, and then had fallen down the basement stairs while trying to escape. His will left everything to her, his only child, but without the house there wasn't anything but the insurance settlement. She thanked them, hung up, and cried.

---

Stu's calls brought Heidi out to play every night. Jacqueline kept trying to determine Heidi's origins, but the woman just wasn't cooperating. Then an unexpected development occurred and everything changed.

---

Heidi opened her eyes. She was sitting in the lab chair again, and Gabe was there. When had he had time to grow that beard? she wondered. Then she realized that something else was different.

She looked down at her distended belly. She was pregnant, and very well along! Also, both her arms and legs were restrained this time.

"What is this?!" she yelled. "How long has it been?"

"Since you last took over Jacqueline's body? About seven months, when she started throwing up, had herself tested, and realized that you'd been getting out on your own. Did you even use a condom? How many men did you have sex with?"

"None of your fucking business, Gabe," she spat. "How did she keep me down?"

He held up a halo-like object with circuitry running along it. "We created a smaller, less powerful version of the wave field machine and made some adjustments. When this detected the waveform that we've been using to bring you out, it generated an inverse wave to cancel it. Who was the guy screaming obscenities on the phone, Heidi? That the father?"

She smiled at him. "Maybe." Most likely, though there had been Willy, she mused.

Then she noticed a spent syringe on the table. "What did you inject me with, Gabe?"

He looked at it. "Something to speed the birth along. Should be taking effect pretty quick."

Then she felt it: her abdominal muscles spasmed and she gritted her teeth in discomfort. After about 30 seconds it calmed down. She was left breathing heavily.

Gabe wrote something on his clipboard. "You seem to have a lesser pain response. Jacqueline was screaming and barely coherent during the last contraction. She has a message for you: 'Since this pregnancy is your fault, Heidi, it'll be your responsibility to carry it through.' You are going to birth this baby."

Heidi screamed, but not in pain.

---

In the end, Doctor Jacqueline Stevenson closed down her experiment and gave Heidi's baby boy to Gabe to raise with his partner. Then she left town, never to return.

One day, 16 years later, Gabe received a package that contained the halo and a USB drive with all of Dr. Stevenson's notes about the experiment. He didn't know what it meant...was Jacqueline dead? Did Heidi finally take over? He hid the devices away, but nothing stays hidden forever.

But that is another story.

---

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