The next day with Chloe is much like the first. We care for the body, eat and attend school. I look forward to returning to her dwelling, where we can speak freely. When we finally separate from her friends, I ask, “Can we run for the remainder of the journey?”
But we stop abruptly. “Aww, look!” Chloe says. “A kitten.”
We observe a small furry being lurking under a shrub. Chloe swerves off the cement path we are following and crouches down beside it. “Hi, kitty,” she coos.
“Does it speak English too?” I ask.
“Not exactly,” Chloe says. “But it can learn some words. And it knows it’s a kitty.” She stretches out our hand to stroke the being. “Don’t you, kitty?”
Kitty reacts by arching its back and emitting a rumbling sound.
“See? It’s purring. Oh”—her voice goes high—“you are too cute.”
Contact with the kitty is pleasing. Its hair is soft, and our palm senses the vibration of its sound. There is something more. As it responds by returning the pressure of our touch, we can feel its life energy. “Do you think I might try operating our hand?” I ask.
“No. Well, maybe. But just for a minute. You have to be very careful. Kittens are delicate.”
She allows our hand to go limp, and I concentrate hard. I tell the nerves and the muscles of the hand to move. At first, nothing happens. Then all at once, it twitches. I did it! I turn it one way and then the other. It’s a fascinating mechanism.
“This is totally weird,” Chloe mutters.
I’d like to master the operation of the hand before placing it on the kitty. I decide to test my control of the fingers. I move one, then another. Then I wiggle them all at once, and the kitten pounces.
It wraps all four legs around our hand and begins to bite. Its teeth are sharp. As if that weren’t enough, it flattens its ears and begins kicking with its hind feet. Its feet are armored with pointed claws. I’m so shocked that I abandon control of the hand.
Chloe laughs as she uses our other hand to gently detach the wicked creature.
“It’s not wicked, Welkin,” she says. “It’s playing.”
“It attacked us,” I point out.
“You asked for it. Kittens can’t resist wiggling things.” Chloe holds out our bitten hand and says, “Look. It didn’t even draw blood. We’re fine.”
She stands and cuddles the beast to our torso. It purrs more loudly than ever. “We really can feel its life, can’t we?” she marvels. “I mean, I remember when my friend’s guinea pig died. When I touched it, it felt so strange, like it was empty.”
“Its energy had departed,” I say.
“Yeah. I guess.” She gazes about. “I wonder where this kitten came from.”
“My guess would be from a mother cat,” I say sourly. My first opportunity to operate our body ruined by a miniature savage!
“Don’t sulk, Welks. Obviously, it came from a mother cat. What I meant was, I wonder where it belongs?”
“Under that shrub,” I say.
“That’s not safe. We can’t leave it there.” Chloe looks at the nearest dwelling. “I’d like to take it home with me, but…” She sighs. We carry the kitten across a grassy area and up to a door. She pushes a button on the wall, and we hear a chime sound within. Seconds later, we hear footsteps approaching, and the door swings open.
“Hi,” Chloe says. “I found this kitten out by the street and I was wondering—”
“Fang!” the human shrieks. “How did you get out there?” It reaches for the kitten.
Our body is reluctant to hand the kitten over, but we do. “Fang sure is cute,” Chloe says.
“Cute, and a whole lot of trouble,” the human replies. But it does the same odd thing Chloe did, raising its voice as it says, “Aren’t you, Fangsy-wangsy? You’re a nuisance, yes you are.” Fang embeds its teeth in the human’s hand. I find this oddly pleasing.
“Okay, then,” Chloe says. “I guess we’d better get going.”
The human squints at us and then looks past our shoulder. “We?” it asks.
“Oh. Ha ha. I mean, me. Better go. Bye.” We turn and scurry back across the grass.
Once we’re back on the path, Chloe says, “This is getting to me, Welks.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I mean you being in my head. Me saying we to that lady. It’s weird.”
“How so?” I ask.
She’s quiet for a moment. “It just is. I’m glad at least my thoughts are private.”
I am not glad about that. But then, I recall the many times when I was unable to cloak my thoughts from others. Privacy of the mind is an incomparable freedom.
“So then you get it, Welks,” Chloe murmurs.
She spends the remainder of the day avoiding me. She does this by staying around other humans. We play something known as a video game with Josh. We watch TV with the mother. We chat at length with her friends, both via computer and telephone.
When the time to sleep arrives, she surprises me by asking, “Why do you have feelings, Welks?”
“Feelings?”
“As in, emotions. I know you have them. But,” she adds, “all you can do is think.”
“Thinking is a powerful force,” I tell her. “Thoughts are a form of energy. They can influence other energies. Our Thought Archives are an excellent example of this.”
“What are Thought Archives?” she asks.
“They are an energy field where we Universals can store and share knowledge from our minds.”
“Huh,” Chloe says. “Sounds sort of like the ‘cloud’ we humans have in cyberspace.”
Before I can fully consider this, she asks, “But what about emotions?”
“Universals have debated the value of emotions for as long as we’ve existed. Some say we should discard them, since they are not logical. Others say emotions enrich the experience of life.”
She rolls our eyes. “What do you say?”
“I haven’t decided.”
Chloe sighs. “Okay. Good night, Welkin.”
By morning, Chloe is lively again. “It’s your last day, Welks. Any requests for a new physical experience?”
“Hmm. I have observed humans being transported via machines and I’ve wondered—”
“No problem,” she says. “We’re taking the bus to the mall after school. I want to get a new top for the dance.”
The transport experience is disappointing. I find it doesn’t utilize the body in any unique manner. We simply seat ourselves in a rectangular chamber and lurch along until we reach the mall. This is a massive structure, holding many objects, where humans wander aimlessly. Chloe is not among the aimless. She finds clothing displays and hunts among them with great purpose.
I pass the return journey by estimating the percentage of human time required to care for the physical form. Feeding, sleeping, washing and decorating the body takes almost half their time. Moving the body from place to place takes more time. Then there’s time spent preparing food and cleaning the tools used for that. I’m still working on my calculations when we reach Chloe’s bedchamber.
“Don’t forget washing clothes and cleaning house,” she says. “We have to do that to prevent stinking and germs. Plus, when we’re adults, there’s more. We have to work so we have money to buy the food and shelter for our bodies. Also clothes.”
She pulls her new clothing item from a bag. “I love this new top.”
We look at the top. I see pink fabric designed to fit our torso. It’s similar to other clothing items Chloe owns. I fail to understand why she wanted to obtain it.
Chloe places the new top on her bed. “It’s sort of like art, Welkin. I’m trying to create a new image of me. For the dance. About that…” She stops.
“Yes?” I prompt.
“I was wondering…” She stops again.
“About what?” I ask.
“Um. Okay. Well, first, I want to ask you something. What do Universals do for fun?”
“We think,” I say.
“Thinking is fun?” Chloe asks.
“Sometimes. It depends on what we’re thinking.”
“I don’t get it,” she says.
“It’s not complicated. You think too. Haven’t you noticed that some of your thoughts bring you joy?”
“Yeah,” she says slowly. “But they can also make me sad. And really, it’s not my thoughts that do that. It’s the things my thoughts are about.”
“But you can decide what to think about. You control your thoughts, don’t you?” I ask.
“Um. Not exactly, Welks. They just happen. Yours do too. I can hear them, remember?”
She has me there. “I must admit, being trapped in a body makes it more difficult to control thought. But it’s not impossible. Some members of your species have understood this for thousands of years. For example, Marcus Aurelius said, Your life is what your thoughts make it.”
“Hmm,” Chloe says. “Guess I’ll have to think about that. But I want to ask you. I mean, I’ll bet you’re tired of being trapped in a body, right? So maybe you might want to, uh, leave class a little early?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Aw, Welkin. I don’t want you to take this the wrong way. It’s actually been pretty cool having you here. But it’s hard sometimes too. And I really like Noah, right? I was thinking about the dance tonight, and it’s just,” she finishes in a rush, “I’d like you to leave before the dance.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Hearing you thinking all those things about my body being electrified around him is distracting. And weird. So,” she takes a deep breath, “I’d like to go to the dance without you.”
She isn’t making sense. Either we go to the dance together or neither of us goes. She can’t very well go dancing when her body is—
“Dead?” Chloe’s voice is faint. “I’m going to die?” Our body sags to the floor. Our heart is pounding in our chest, and I hear our blood rushing. “No. No, no. No.”
“Obviously,” I say. “All host bodies die.”