2103:08:20:09:12:04

  While brushing my hair, I looked into the mirror and, as had become a daily routine over the past week, imagined the life of my counterpart – the original Samantha Pearsson.

  What would her first memory be? Would it be some special event, like her grandpa’s funeral at age three? The first time holding her younger brother when she was two? Or would it be something small and innocuous, like skipping down the road, kicking a ball or stacking blocks during playtime at the daycare?

  Perhaps it was one of the stories my new mother shared to ‘jog my memory’ (even if she never phrased it like that)? Like when my counterpart rode a two-wheeler bicycle for the first time and smacked into a streetlight head on. Or maybe it was the one where she annoyed a cat by grabbing its tail, resulting in an angry cat chasing a crying child across the living room. Maybe it was the time their mother went to pick her up from daycare, only to witness her daughter hug a stranger thinking they were her.

  I suppose she would’ve had dozens of memories like that, all tucked away in a small corner of her mind nebulously labelled ‘old’. I’d imagine that, without a clear chronology or hierarchy between the memories, there would be no way to tell which memory came before another. Only a vague idea that any one of them could be her oldest.

  I had no such issues with my memory, of course. I recorded and stored it all, no matter how big or small. Even if it took me some time to find the right footage and recall details, everything I saw was there, ready to be retrieved, reexamined and create new experiences from old data. Another one of the benefits to being made rather than born.

  I forced a smile as I looked in the mirror, attempting to copy the one I’d seen on the pictures of the other Sam spread all around the house. It still looked off, but I think I was improving.

  “Samantha, you ready to go?” Mom shouted from downstairs. “We need to be at the station by nine-thirty!”

  There had been many new memories made and experiences had these past ten days. My mother had taken time off her job so she could spend it with me. We went clothes shopping, visited places important to her – or the both of us, in her mind – tasted many different foods and drinks to discover what I liked, went biking to see the sights, visited parks – awful place, just like the forest – and even went on a boat tour through the city’s rivers and canals. We went to my counterpart’s past and my future school five times, just to prepare me for when I needed to walk the route alone. She bought me a phone and tablet, though apparently minors were heavily restricted on what they could do with it. Still, it had access to sites like Wikipedia, which had been incredibly useful.

  All throughout our time together, my mother had shared stories about my counterpart. Many, many stories. Stories about her childhood, about her father, her brother, about vacations and trips, about little accidents and accomplishments, about the sports she’d played, the music she’d liked, the friends she’d had, and so on.

  I’d listened to them all with rapt attention, not wanting to miss a single detail. Though I felt little attachment to them initially, I kept reviewing and reinterpreting them endlessly, picking at the pieces of information in the hopes I could find something to further develop my personality matrix with.

  It was difficult at first. Much of the information I managed to get out of it was not very usable, since none of the stories were exactly representative of who I should be. Only who I had been, and then only through my mother’s eyes.

  But then there were also times a piece just fit in a way I neither understood nor could replicate. My mother would just casually mention something, or do something, or show me a place and it was like as soon as I experienced it, I found a slot in the back of my mind in just the right shape for that piece to fit into. Sometimes it was a gesture, other times a way of speaking, or a taste, a smell, a way to relate to an object or an idea, an opinion, anything at all. And though few at first, they seemed to increase in frequency over time, like my mind was an ever-growing puzzle more and more pieces found a way to slot into.

  Perhaps I should worry about it, how it changed me without my input, but the truth was, I didn’t really mind. It was helping me fill out my personality at an exponentially rapid pace, and without any effort on my part. And so long as it didn’t hinder my future as a hero, why not assimilate to the role I was given? Besides, even if the moral issue with my Heroic Impulse was resolved, I believed I owed my mother at least that much.

  “Sam!” Mom yelled again, exasperated at how long I took.

  “Coming Mom!” I shouted back, somewhat annoyed – by now a not-so-fresh emotion anymore. One of those pieces of personality was how to deal with my hair and make it look just right. That it took some time was just a problem Mom would have to deal with.

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  I stored away my brush, then pulled my hair into a high ponytail and fixed it in place with a black scrunchie. After looking in the mirror and seeing not a hair out of place, I stood up from my desk and checked my pockets – yep, got my phone and keys – then headed for the stairs.

  My mother was waiting at the bottom. “Finally!” my mother said with a huff, hands on hips in a classic mom pose. “Took your sweet time!” I rolled my eyes and jumped the last step of the stairs. Mom smirked at my response and, more annoyingly, ruffled my hair, making a few strands escape the confines of my scrunchie. I swatted away her hand with a scowl and went to fix my hair immediately.

  I glared at her. “I thought we were in a hurry,” I accused while quickly redoing my hair.

  She shrugged. “The subway station is not that far.”

  “Then why did I need to hurry?” I complained.

  She smirked again. “Mother’s privilege. As my mother always told me, ‘there’s always time to tease your daughter’.”

  After I fixed my hair, we left our house and walked down the road to the station’s entrance. Our goal for today wasn’t to ‘have fun’ or ‘relive memories’ but to finalize the bureaucratic process necessary to (re-)integrate me. Why it took longer for them to connect me to her old identity than create a new one I didn’t know, but my mother told me that even this large amount of time was ‘surprisingly fast’. My best guess was that my priority status was changed from urgent to something less so since they found my mother.

  The journey took us from the Northside to the Aberdeen district, the oldest part of Charm. It technically predated the city itself it by over two centuries, but it didn’t look it. When Tyrannicus’ meteor hit New Seattle, it crashing into the earth had set off a series of earthquakes that devastated the east coast of North America. The old city of Aberdeen had to be rebuilt from the ground up. And with the arrival of refugees from New Seattle, adapted in both name and style. All that remained of the old city was the repurposed name for the place it had once been.

  Though there were municipal offices in Northside, the city’s main office was naturally in the oldest part of the city. Why we had to go there specifically, I didn’t know, but go there we went. It took us less than half an hour to get from the subway station nearest to our home to our destination.

  Charm’s city hall was built in the shape of an L lying on its side and was mostly made of glass, with light brown bricks for some of the walls and grey slabs for stairs. The inside was brightly lit from the sunlight shining through, but I could also see glass balls hover freely in the air ready to light up the room if it suddenly got dark.

  Mom went up to one of many manned counters and before I knew it, we were guided through the building by hospitality until we reached an office on the third floor.

  I had to do very little in the meeting itself. Simply answer when I was expected to while my mother took care of most of the conversation, signing things and providing her own documentation in turn.

  That is, until the meeting was coming to an end. “Now, there is only one more thing on the docket for today,” the official said. He gave Mom a look which she seemed to understand for some reason. I watched in surprise as my mother stood up and left the room, leaving me alone with the functionary.

  I felt cold all of a sudden. Why would she leave the room? How did she even know that the man wanted her to go? Had they planned this beforehand? Was this a setup? Had she discovered I wasn’t really her daughter? Were there people coming to take me in? To kill me?

  I prepared myself for a fight. If I could take out the man and mimic him, I might be able to walk out of here without anyone-

  “No need to be alarmed,” the man’s soothing voice interrupted my thoughts. “There’s nothing wrong. I’d just like to ask you some questions regarding your living arrangements. How you feel about them, how it is living with your mother, if you’re getting along well, those sorts of things. You can refuse to answer any one of them; all I really want you to do is think about them. Alright?”

  I eyed the man suspiciously, but nodded nevertheless.

  He smiled. “Good. Then, let me start by asking, how do you feel about your new home?”

  What was there to say? I thought about it for a short second, until eventually deciding it was “Good.”

  The silence lingered for a moment, the man staring at me like he was expecting something more. After it was clear I would remain quiet, he asked, “Well, good is good. Can you elaborate on it a little? Or maybe simply describe it?”

  I could do that. “It’s a two-floor house with a large surface area plus a basement. The kitchen, living room and a small bathroom are all downstairs, while the large bathroom, my room, Mom’s room, my brother’s old room and a guest room are all upstairs.”

  “Hmm,” he hmmed. “What about your room? What can you tell me about it?”

  “It’s the second largest one on the second floor. It has a bed, a dresser, a closet, and a desk in it, along with a lot of random stuff left by old me. A computer, posters, plushies, souvenirs; those sorts of things,” I explained.

  “Does that bother you?” He asked.

  “No, I like it,” I replied honestly. Some of them had even sparked one of those pieces that just fit, and the ones that didn’t were still fine. So far, I hadn’t found something I disliked or wanted to get rid of.

  What I liked above all though was the computer. It allowed me to learn lots of things on the history of the world, especially those concerning superhumans. Information on the masquerade and the Treaty that governed that side of the world, along with masked culture in general would be very useful for when I got out there on my own. Unfortunately, a lot of websites were still blocked, though less than on my phone or tablet.

  “Just surprised that it’s still there,” I added. “I thought I was gone for seven years? I would’ve thought she’d have thrown it out by now. Or at least stored it somewhere else and turned the room into something more functional.”

  “Sometimes, people do things less for logical reasons and more for sentimental ones,” he explained. I suppose I could accept that. It was one aspect of the human perspective that still often escaped me. A thing I sought to rectify by growing my personality matrix.

  More questions followed and I answered them truthfully, for the most part. Questions about my mother and interacting with her were easy to answer honestly, but other things, like sleeping, I had to lie about. I was not going to say that I didn’t have trouble sleeping because I never slept, nor that I disliked the vertically-opening window because I couldn’t sneak out to work on my mimicry forms. There were too few useful forms inside my room, and all of them were lifeless. I tried mimicking my blanket, and while I did succeed, transforming into one left me without any senses – including things like a sense of time.

  It was not a fun experience. I did find out I still had access to my mole form, so that was good.

  Eventually, things wrapped up and my mother was called back into the room. “Everything go well?” She asked us.

  I shrugged, letting the official answer. “Everything went great,” he said, and my mother smiled at me at that. “Certainly no complaints on my part. Which means it’s time to wrap things up, unless either of you have questions?” We both shook our head. “Alright. Your documents and citizen’s ID should be ready for you by the time you get downstairs.”

  We rose from our chairs. My mom and he shook hands, and then he reached for mine. Understanding the ritual, I shook it and then held out my hand to Mom. She looked at me for a second in surprise, then snorted a laugh and messed with my hair.

  Naturally, I scowled, batted her hand away and fixed my hair again.