Preservation

It had been hard for Maria to watch her colleague Theodore begin to lose his mind. He was a brilliant inventor in his youth, and his many contributions had brought a countless amount of good into the world. She thought about a way to save his genius while looking over one of her own works in progress.

It wasn’t hard for Maria to convince Theodore to a late night at the lab, getting one of her friends there was a bit more difficult. After a few failed attempts with some of her male friends, she called up Katie, asking if she could come pick her up for some drinking after a late night at the lab. Katie was a bit of a party animal, and always loved to take Maria out for some fun.

But Maria had other plans. She brought Katie inside and knocked her out. Then she used the invention she had been working on, a body swapper. She hoped that switching Theodore into a younger body would help rejuvenate him. It made sense. His neural pathways mapped onto a younger brain; there shouldn’t be any reason for any further deterioration.

However, even in Katie’s younger body, Theodore’s mind continued to slip away. When Maria found him one morning a few days later outside the lab sleeping in a grocery cart, she knew she hadn’t helped. He was just more confused than ever. He wasn’t sure how he got there. He had forgotten the last few days and even the body swap. It was all so weird for him. His brain would forget about the swap, and he’s wake up having to adjust to this body anew again and again. Maria thought about swapping him back, but Katie in Theodore’s body had already been committed to an asylum.