Angela

The face in the mirror was not mine. But it did look familiar. I squinted my blue eyes and ran my hand through my shock of pale hair, which stood straight up. My face was hairless. My face?

"Andy. That's your name," I told the strange face in the mirror. The voice was wrong: too deep, and raspy. I struggled to remember back. The girl!

The bathroom was spotless, but I didn't recognize it. The eyes in the mirror looked at me accusingly. Outside I could hear the sound of traffic passing by. There was a faint smell of incense--jasmine. Her name?

"Angela," I said aloud, as I backed out of the bathroom and into the hallway of the small apartment. I turned and walked down the short hallway into the living room, which was sparsely furnished with a leather couch, a glass table, and two lamps. The couch faced a flat-panel display which hung on the wall. It was displaying a slowly undulating blue image, like a thick fluid with slow waves--or something alive.

"I am Angela," the display on the wall said. "Do you like your new face? Your new body?" The voice was very familiar. As if I had known it all my life--perhaps longer. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

"You're not Angela," I said. "Angela is a girl: blonde, 5' 10", curvy."

"Something happened Andy," said the blue viscous creature. "Do you remember the experiment?"

I searched my memories. Experiment? I couldn't even remember this morning. I moved closer to the screen, and watched the hypnotic undulations. "What experiment?" I asked her. "What happened to you? What happened to my body?"

"We had everything set up perfectly: tachyon field stabilizers, plasma injectors, crosswave magnifiers, neutronium power cells: the works," said Angela. The blue fluid shimmered with quicker waves as her voice rose. The room smelled like roses now: old roses.

"Then Dan showed up," said Angela. "He wanted you to evolve him first. You know, make him smart like in Outer Limits." As she spoke the blue fluid rippled.

"Did I?"

"No. Yes. Well, kind of," said Angela. "You said you would go first, to make sure it was safe, and showed me how to run the controls."

"Something broke."

My mind raced. I could remember the lights flashing and pain. Turn it off! Turn it off! I had been thinking. The control lights were all wrong--all wrong. And then darkness.

"The Darwin Tach accelerated around you," said Angela. "We couldn't stop it. You evolved into pure energy and took over Dan."

"My body?" I asked reeling.

"Gone. Disappeared. When the field collapsed, you were not in it."

"Dan?"

"I don't know. You took over. Maybe he's in there with you."

"And then?"

"Then you put me in the DT field stabilizer and reset the power breakers. You wanted me to catch up to you. Evolve into something--more."

"I'm sorry baby," I said.

"I know you are," said Angela. Her fluid thinned and became translucent. "I think I know a way."

"A way?"

"That we can be together," said Angela as she turned deeper blue. "Come to the lab, it's in 418. I will be waiting."

I ran out into the hallway of the apartment building. I was on eight. Dan's place? I scrambled down the stairs two at a time and burst through the door on four, moving quickly. The carpeting in the hallway was red and blue diamonds. I remembered it well. Even the smell of the hallway was familiar. Halfway down the corridor I found 418, and turned the handle. It was unlocked.

Angela was in a big tank near the center of a vast array of electronics. Large mechanical arms, with DT projectors mounted in place of hands, pointed at her. And a blinking camera was looking at her too. "Angela!" I said, as I ran over and placed my hands on the tank. She was still warm.

"I'm here," she said with no mouth. "In your mind; you can hear me. Join me."

"Join you?" I asked.

"Get in, and I will absorb you," said Angela wistfully.

"But I will die," I said.

"You won't," said Angela, as she extended protoplasmic tendrils over the rim of the tank toward me. "Do you love me?"

"I--I think so," I said, as the room began to spin. Angela's tank seemed huge, taking up a whole wall of the room.

"Then come to me," said Angela, beckoning. "You killed Dan."

I climbed up on a stool, and looked down into the vat of gel.

"Please," said Angela. "I want you."

I stepped off the stool into the tank, and she wrapped me, lovingly, in her embrace. There wasn't much pain, as I sank into her deeply. She folded me in her arms and I didn't need to breathe. She consumed all that I was, and we became as one.

Seventeen days later, the power ran out, and Angela dispersed.