Back Flow - 2 (Patreon)

Welcome To Your New Timeshare

Larka sat her roommate down at the kitchen table, not sure who was inside right now, but being reasonably confident about how they got there. Though she was a bit surprised that, going off the voice, whoever it was was probably female?

Or a child?

Maybe Jacob had accidentally gone in at the start of a character’s life story.

“Can you tell me who you are?” she asked, since the direct approach was often best.

“My name is Izumi,” they said. “W-where am I? This…”

Their eyes drifted over to the window. A view that showed a few newer condo buildings with the mountains just barely visible behind them.

“Are we in Tokyo? Or Osaka? Those buildings look very tall.”

An anime. Whoever this was was definitely from an anime. Larka had found a lot of the ones Jacob watched… odd. Very heterosexual, and strange about both monogamy and polygamy.

“Vancouver, actually,” she replied, deciding to stay focused on the issue at hand.

“Oh… that’s… where’s that?”

“Canada,” Larka replied. “But… where do you think you should be?”

They blinked. “At Ichiro’s house… um… the Yamagawa family home?”

Larka nodded, pulling out her Kobaroic PDA and tapping it into the human internet. She typed in the names ‘Izumi’, ‘Ichiro’, and ‘Yamagawa’ into the search bar. The first result was the digipedia page for a series called That’s Not What I Meant When I Wished For A Fantasy Harem. A result that caused her to let out a sigh. Had Jacob really decided to use the VR system she’d set up for him to flirt with 2D ‘waifus’?

Scrolling to look at the list of characters, she did have to admit the art style seemed cute, but…

Jacob really needed to accept he wasn’t such a lost cause when it came to romance. He was kind, thoughtful, and a good listener. If he just had a bit more confidence she was certain he’d do fine on the dating market.

Instead he’d gone and done this.

“So,” Larka said, after reading the paragraph on Izumi. She was still practically a kid… and, more unusually, “You’re a… kappa?”

“Mhm! For an underground river that feeds the Yamagawa family’s koi pond,” the girl in Jacob’s body replied. “H-how did you find out?”

Larka found herself grimacing while her tail went rigid, sticking out and up, the club hitting the toaster (another appliance she’d have to replace due to her clumsiness). She didn’t want to have to pull the rug out from under this poor girl, but… there wasn’t any good way to get around it.

“I… I’m not sure how best to tell you this, but… you’re… you’re from a cartoon,” Larka said, turning her PDA to show the article to Izumi.

The girl stared at the screen, reading everything on it as her eyes went wider.

“N-n-no. No… that… what does that… how can I be…” she stammered in that falsetto she’d been maintaining.

“I set up a virtual reality system for my roommate, Jacob. He must have digitized your series and then entered it. There was a malfunction and… your identity data must have left the system with his consciousness,” Larka replied.

It wasn’t a common event. At least not in those who weren’t already showing some level of plurality. For those who were… the mainframes sometimes got confused, so you needed extra firewalls in place. Ones that probably would have covered for the malfunction Larka had accidentally caused.

But she hadn’t bothered with those, since Jacob hadn’t seemed to be from an at risk demographic.

And now she had some poor anime girl blubbering in her kitchen while stuck in Jacob’s body.

“Is there any chance I could talk to Jacob?” Larka asked.

She wanted to explain the situation to him sooner than later. Plus, she wanted to know just how disconnected the two of them were.

“Jacob? Who’s…” Izumi began to say, before looking around. “Wait, who said that?”

“Who said what?” Larka asked.

“S—someone… I heard someone say ‘me’… if you didn’t hear it, then… am I hearing voices? Am… am I going crazy?” the girl asked, looking quite terrified.

“Going…” Right. Earth was still rather backwards with regards to how it treated neurodiversity. So much stigma.

Also, scrolling back up, Larka saw the series was nearly 30 years old now, dating back to the previous century. Which probably left the poor girl in even worse fear about the concept.

“There is nothing wrong with how you are, do not worry. That is likely just Jacob trying to take control,” Larka said, trying to offer a gentle smile. “It would be best to let him.”

Well, she hoped it was Jacob. She supposed there was a slight chance more of the cast had been brought along.

-

Blinking, Jacob slowly processed that he was indeed in the kitchen. Larka had been saying his name, and he’d been trying to reply, but hadn’t because… because…

It was weird. He remembered waking up. That he’d gone to the washroom mirror. That he’d followed Larka out here.

But… it felt so abstract?

Like he’d been watching someone playing a video game while he was falling asleep?

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Jacob?” Larka replied.

He stared at her for a moment. “Uh, yeah? Who else would I be?”

“Umm… maybe Ichiro?” Larka said, looking back at her alien tablet-thingy.

“I—Ichiro? I… how did you—I mean, what are you talking—actually what are you talking about?” he replied.

Larka blushed slightly, her ears and eyes falling as she did so. “Uh… it seems my little mix up with connecting technologies did more than just make the VR system crash.”

Feeling a rising sense of dread, he only managed one word. “Explain…”

“Uh… the personality matrix of one of the characters followed your own mind out of the computer. Generally the one you had entered the simulation as… I’m surprised you would have chosen her, but when it happens that’s pretty well always how it goes, so…” Larka said, eyes still studying the floor.

“I—that… the menu glitched when I tried to pick the main guy and so I clicked the wrong name,” Jacob blurted, cheeks going red. “I wouldn’t have picked Izumi on purp—what does that bit with the matrix mean, though?”

“That you’ve got a new… what’s the Earth term for it,” she said, checking her tablet again with a few moments of rapid typing. “Ah. A headmate. You have a new headmate.”

“A what?” Jacob replied, still lost.

“Er… alter? That seems to be the other term I’m getting.”

“I still have no ide—wait. Are you… she’s in my—is that how I got from my bed to the kitchen? Did she… was Izumi in control?” he asked, feeling his heart sink as he asked.

“Mhm. She was quite confused and mildly distressed,” Larka replied.

“That’s… do I need to go back in the VR then?” he asked.

Larka blinked. “Pardon?”

“To, like… re-upload her back into the system or whatever?” he said.

“N-no. There’s… the VR processor wouldn’t be able to handle that,” Larka replied.

“What do you mean? She was in there before?”

“Yes, as a basic identity matrix, running on some pretty significant data compression for the processor to handle everything while faking a full personality. Now that she’s been a flesh and blood person, though, it’s… well, it’s sort of like having unzipped a compressed data file? Especially with her having been conscious,” Larka explained.

“Oh,” Jacob said in a quiet voice. “W-well, what about just deleting her from my brain, then?”

Larka stared at him with horror in her eyes. “Jacob. She’s a fully sentient being now. You can’t ‘just delete’ her.”

“She’s a stray computer program in my brain?” Jacob replied, feeling a bit defensive after Larka’s reaction to what he saw as a reasonable request.

“If we’d caught her data packet in your brain before she’d woken up then it would have been an option, but… even in the cases where a headmate has committed a crime that the others are innocent of it’s incredibly difficult to remove them to place them in a rehabilitation mainframe,” Larka said. “And that’s with brains that are understood. Human brains are still basically brand new to galactic science.”

He froze, staring at her while he desperately hunted for a way out.

All while wondering about the strange feeling of fear lurking somewhere in his brain. Sure, he was a bit unsettled by all this, but this? Whatever this fear was felt primal. Like a fear of death. Which really didn’t—

“Izumi?” he whispered to himself.

He swore he then heard the weakest whisper in reply. A soft voice in a begging tone, asking him, “Please don’t hurt me.”

A wave of guilt washed over him. He suddenly felt a full understanding of Larka’s earlier disgust.

That was… that was Izumi. The precious ball of sunshine. The cute young character who you wanted to protect.

And he’d been talking about…

“Alright. I don’t know how I feel about sharing a body with her,” he said. “But I’ll let her stay until we find a way to let her out to be her own person with, like… an android body or something? That’s a thing, isn’t it? The new queen has an android wife, right?”

“Good, good,” Larka said, letting out a sigh of relief that he hadn’t realised she was holding. “Now, I have to get to work, but I’ll take you out to get some off world equipment to help with your new condition when I get back.”

-

Jacob had been a bit slow to get started that day. He was especially glad to work from home as a freelance web designer because he was not feeling functional just yet.

And, when he did finally get the ball rolling on work he was stuck with an odd energy in him. An inability to concentrate.

The joy of having a teenager inside his head, apparently. Even if she was sort of asleep right now.

She. Because Izumi was a teenaged girl. In his head. In his body.

His out of shape and male body. That was hairier than you’d probably expect (which he firmly blamed on his Greek grandfather on his mother’s side). That was… well, ok, so there were a lot of bad things to think about his body, but focusing on them too long probably wasn’t great. He’d long ago decided it was best to just try to ignore all that.

Either way, he did have to figure out some way to make Izumi’s stay less terrible.

There wasn’t much he could do, but… maybe he could shave his legs and chest? Would that help? Even if it was weird for a guy to do, he had an excuse right now, right?

“A shell.”

He blinked. What was that?

“You don’t have a shell,” Izumi’s voice repeated in his mind.

“Well, obviously,” he muttered to himself. “Why would I?”

“It’s weird not to have one,” her voice whispered.

Right. She wasn’t just a teenaged girl. She was a kappa. A turtle-y Japanese water spirit.

Making her feel comfortable in his body was probably impossible.

“Wait. Can you understand Japanese?” he asked, while staring at the progress bar on his compiling code.

There was a pause before he heard Izumi’s voice again. “Aren’t we speaking Japanese right now?”

“Uh, no?” he muttered back. “We’re speaking English.”

“What? Don’t be silly. Izumi doesn’t know English,” her voice replied. “I tried, but all I remember from what Countess taught me is ‘这是一支笔’.”

“… that was Chinese,” he said, leaning back in his office chair.

It was also about the limits of what he remembered from the childhood lessons his parents had made him take.

Izumi, however, did not feel convinced. So, accepting today was going to be less productive than average, he pulled up a few videos of subtitled Japanese on his computer for Izumi to watch.

Which led to him experiencing the waves of disorientation and confusion that washed over her as a result. He wasn’t sure if it was the most productive thing to spend time on, but… it seemed like information she needed to have properly ingrained in her head.

Before he knew it, however, there was a knock on his bedroom door.

Sticking his head out, he saw Larka waiting for him, asking if he was ready to go.

He asked for a moment, then scurried off to replace his sweatpants with actual jeans. After that it was a simple matter of pulling on a coat and stepping out into the rainy cold of a Vancouver December.

Or, well, a Surrey December to be most specific. Either way, though, it was a short enough walk to the nearest bus stop from their small apartment building. Then a ride to the Skytrain. Followed by a transfer to the Frasier Line in New West. Before, finally, they got out at one of the quieter stations in Richmond.

Walking through the mixed office park and light industrial area around the station, Jacob had to admit to feeling a little nervous. Gang issues were getting a bit worse in the city lately, especially with it being one of the new main hubs of alien imports. Everyone and their mother wanted access to the new technology, and lots of people weren’t wanting to wait for governments to give their official approvals on import licences.

At least sticking close to Larka felt safe. Most folks were smart enough not to mess with a female Kobaroian. Even if Larka was on the short end for a woman of her species. She was still over six foot, built like a brick, and had natural weapons to defend herself between her horn and tail club.

After a few long industrial blocks they reached the plain looking building that was their destination. Stepping inside of a building that seemed to be not too different from a building supply store, they found themselves in a dimly lit shop almost overflowing with strange alien artifacts. Jacob couldn’t begin to guess who had made most of the things here, let alone what they did.

He could sort of recognise Kobaroic technology, since his roommate brought plenty of that home. And he guessed some of it looked maybe Issiod’rian, since a lot of the alien tech filtering into Canada these days came from those feline looking folks. But most of it?

He kept his hands to himself to be careful.

“Ah. Mizz Larka,” a buzzing voice said, drawing Jacob’s eyes up to the ceiling.

The being up there was some sort of a mix of an insect and a gecko in a way that Jacob tried very hard not to find unsettling.

Izumi also seemed surprised somewhere deep in his mind. Though she didn’t seem as unsettled. Which, he supposed, made sense. She lived in a world where yokai and fey and other monsters were real. There was a vampire in her story, who also walked on walls and ceilings.

Sure, the Countess was a busty bad-girl vampire that Jacob had something of a crush on, but still a vampire.

“Gzanzik,” Larka said in a tone that showed she’d pretty much expected the shopkeeper to be on the ceiling. “I’m looking for a switch bracelet.”

“Oh?” they replied, scurrying down a nearby pillar before standing up on ground level. “For you or for the human?”

“The human,” Larka replied.

“Mzm… I think an Izziod’rian brazelet may be bezt,” Gzanzik said, leading them deeper into the shop. “They’re fairly zimilar on a biological level, and their technology is eaziezt to find here.”

Larka nodded, while Jacob continued to be a little lost. What was a ‘switch bracelet’ anyhow?

Well, it seemed he was about to find out, since they’d just arrived at the shelf they were being led to.

“I’ll let the human try it on, to prove it iz genuine. Then you pay. Five thouzand dollarz,” the shopkeeper replied.

“Five thou—I’m not some clueless Earthling, Gzanzik,” Larka replied, sounding offended. “I know these are covered by the Issiod’rian medical system. And that one is definitely used. Five hundred is more reasonable.”

“Oh? You think you can go to another shop and get one? I am the only one in thiz region with one,” the shopkeeper countered.

“I could fly to Hammer City, find one there for a reasonable price, and fly back for less than what you’re charging, Gzanzik.”

“… one thouzand,” they replied, with a tone that made it clear they enjoyed this as much as a human liked getting a tooth pulled. “Take it or leave it.”

“Very fair… Jacob, if you’d like to try it on,” Larka said.

“Uh… what does it do?” he asked, staring at the silver bracelet with a couple of lights on it.

Larka blinked. “Right. You wouldn’t… it lets you control who’s… fronting. That’s what they call it here, I think? It also improves memory sharing.”

Jacob nodded slowly, before turning to look at the device again. It would…

Why did this feel like such a plunge?

Larka had already talked to Izumi. He’d already sort of talked to her. But actually acting on her existence was… it somehow made the strangeness feel so much more real.

Despite the nervousness, he slid it on. Looking at it on his wrist, as an actual bracelet, he worried it looked a bit feminine. He’d always worried about the way people would react if someone like him started acting too girly.

And then the feeling got worse as the small light on the device lit up purple.

“You should be able to hand control over now,” Larka said.

He nodded, decided to ignore the weird feelings the bracelet was reminding him of and instead wondering how to make the changeover happen.

“Oh,” Izumi said, her voice sounding more real, though, also a bit rougher.

As Jacob processed that it had also come from his mouth, rather than somewhere in his mind, he also felt like he’d been pulled away from his sense of vision. Like he was sitting in a theatre, the sights before him a screen to be watched rather than his own vision.

It was strange. Yet… less disconcerting than he’d have expected.