Switchback

“Ow\! No, c’mon, stop it, Clem\! I don’t like this game\! C’mon, Clem, quit it\!”

“Oh, Corbin, stop being such a wuss\!”

Clementine released Corbin from the figure-four leg-lock in which he had been writhing, and the two small children rolled apart and glared at each other. Clementine was the niece of eminent biochemist Doctor Rhoda Dendrite, the brain trust behind the mental side of VALentine Complex. She was a short, cute redhead with her hair in pigtails and a scattering of freckles across her face. She was hyperactive, even for an eight-year-old, and she had the wiry musculature that accompanied this trait. Corbin was the nephew of Lance Corporeal, Security Chief and tough-guy-in-residence at VALentine Complex. He was fairly short, skinny, and all-around ectomorphic, and he wore a pair of large, Coke-bottle-bottom eyeglasses at all times. He invariably dressed in white short-sleeved, button-down shirts with a pocket full of pens and a bow tie that made him look a little bit like an underage Malcolm X. He also had asthma. He preferred to spend his time reading books, or tinkering with various ongoing experiments in the capacious laboratory facilities at VALCom. But Clementine, in light of the fact that there were no other eight-year-olds around to play with, was always dragging him away from his serious work and involving him in various “games” of a highly physical nature. Corbin loathed these “games.” They usually hurt, to one degree or another.

“Clem,” he groaned, “don’t you know any non-painful games? Or at least, something in which I get to be the hero, for a change?”

“Nope,” Clementine grinned as she explained. “There aren’t any cartoons on anymore where the boy gets to be the hero. Only girls get to be the hero now. The boy - and that’s you, Corbin, like it or not - gets to be the villain. Or the sidekick. But you can’t be the sidekick, ‘cause then we wouldn’t have anybody to fight and then we’d just stand around drinking coffee or something, which would be a really boring game, don’t you think? Now come on - what do you wanna play next?”

Corbin groaned again, audibly. It was going to be a long Saturday afternoon.

“I was thinking about what you said the other day, Clem,” Corbin said as she examined the curious apparatus in his lab, wide-eyed. “And I really do want to be the hero for a change. But you’re right - a guy has to be a woman to be a hero anymore. So I built this.” He flourished his arm proudly in a showman’s gesture.

“What is it?” Clementine breathed.

“It will allow us to swap consciousnesses,” Corbin explained grandly. “That means, I - or that which constitutes me, anyway, but we’ll not get into that right now - will get to be in your body for a day at a time, and you, of course, will get to be in mine. We get to trade places. I can be a girl, at least temporarily, and then I get to be the hero for a change when we play\! Sound fair?”

“I dunno, Corb…” Clementine was dubious at the prospect.

“Come on\! I never ask for anything - and you gotta admit, it’s more fair to switch places every now and then\!” he persuaded.

“Sure\! Okay\! Why not?” she smiled. “I’ve always wondered what it was like, being a boy.”

Doctor Rhoda Dendrite and Lance Corporeal were having tea together in the VALCom lounge the next day. The steam from her teacup painted her large glasses with pearly gray fog that dissipated in an instant, as if by magic. The partially reflective surface of his bald mahogany head glistened in the track lighting. They were deeply concerned.

“I don’t like it, Lance,” Doctor Dendrite was saying. “Clementine has been uncommonly docile lately. She actually cleaned her room without being told\! She’s never been to bed on time so consistently before. And she seems to have developed a remarkable faculty for lab work. I’m really starting to worry about her.”

“I too share some of your concerns,” Lance said in his rich, Oxford-accented basso profundo. “Corbin has been wearing himself out practicing jiu-jitsu with me in the gymnasium - and this after years of loudly debunking any and all sorts of physical activity\! Now he sweats and strains himself until it brings on one of his asthma attacks. I cannot, for the life of me, understand what’s gotten into that tyke.”

“I think I do,” said Doctor Dendrite. “I don’t have a Nobel Prize for nothing, you know. And an hypothesis has occurred to me.”

“Yes, I think I know what you mean,” Lance said as he sipped diffidently, pinkie finger extended. “It’s quite interesting, sometimes, having a lad as intellectually gifted as Corbin around the house, so to speak.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

They looked at each other and smiled a long, friendly, knowing adult smile into and through each other’s eyes, through the steam of their tea.

“Well, that week was certainly…something,” Corbin said perplexedly as he carefully disconnected his mind-switching apparatus and scattered the parts around the laboratory.

“Yeah,” said Clementine. “I learned a lot.”

“Me too,” Corbin said. “It’s the things that you don’t think that you’re going to find out, that you find out, when you think you’re going to find out other things. I mean…”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “That was so…weird\! I’m sorry I teased you about your asthma, before. I didn’t realize what it felt like.”

“And I’m sorry I’ve needled you in the past for your addiction to physical exercise,” Corbin said, as he looked down at himself. “If I had a perfectly fit body, with no asthma, and 20/20 vision, and good muscles - well, I’d probably be working out three times a day. That feeling of having some sort of direct control over one’s immediate physical environment - well, it’s simply breathtaking\!”

“It must be nice to be able to take your mind with you when you go places,” Clementine said wistfully. “There wasn’t very much for me to do in your body, because your body couldn’t do anything\!”

“My mind in your body,” Corbin said, thoughtfully. “The ultimate human being. Hmmmm…”

She backed away from him slowly. “Don’t look at me like that, Corbin\!” Clementine shouted shrilly. “I know exactly what you’re thinking - and I don’t like it\! Unh-uh\! Not one little bit\!”

He pursued her from the room. They were both laughing.