Quoted By:
"No. You'll run. Actually, you'll try to stab me again, won't you? I told you it'd never work, Charlie. Idiot move. Not my real body. Still, clear thinking under pressure, etcetera." He sighs, pushes his glasses up again. "I wish I could say this was a new situation."
You utilize your mental energies to rain a thousandfold curses upon him.
"Frankly, though, it isn't. This has <span class="mu-i">happened</span>—" He tilts his head back, pulls a pen off his lapel. "—before. Don't demand specifics; I don't have them. But those three years, Charlie? Three wasted years? It's you who wasted them. You cottoned onto the whole deal, and it made you angry. It in fact made you ungovernable. You refused to work with me in any capacity. As you might imagine, this is typically grounds for immediate termination." He points the pen at you. "Translation if you're slow: you should be dead, and I should be recycled. Which is to say elsewhere. I negotiated it down for both of us, Charlie. Said that you were indispensible, and frankly so was I. Got them to sign on to a semi-cycle. Which is not the same thing as a— a bicycle, Charlie. Attempt to take this seriously. I am."
You utilize your mental energies to project the image of a bicycle running over a snake, over and over, directly into Richard(?)'s brain.
"Well, I see you haven't changed." He taps the pen against his teeth. "A semi-cycle is an incomplete recycle. Which is to say those years were wiped from you and from me, in the fervent hope it'd play out better the next time. The only reason I know any of this is from a notice on my, er, my snake desk. Otherwise, my first extant memories are six months old. I am telling you all of this because, if history repeats, you <span class="mu-i">will</span> be disposed of, and I <span class="mu-i">will</span> be wiped and reassigned, and neither of us wants that. You don't have to like me, care about me, or forgive me. I don't care if you want me in a hole in the ground, Charlie. But you do have to cooperate, now and in the near future, or we are royally fucked. Do you understand?"
You glower. Richard(?) assesses your glower, then reaches across the table and touches your jaw, which buzzes nastily and unclamps. You exercise it, then speak. "You're lying."
"I couldn't be telling more of the truth, actually."
"Yeah? Like all the other truths you've been telling me? You're— you're literally— you're in somebody <span class="mu-i">else's</span> body! Who'd you possess this time, huh? Some poor schmuck?" You clench your fists. "Did you kill him yourself, or did you make me do it? You know, while I was out."
"None of the above. This is me."
"You," you spit. "Sure."
"Apparently so. I'll be more specific. This is what you've seen fit to replace the previous body with. After trapping me in <span class="mu-i">that</span> one for several weeks, you deemed it newly unsuitable."
"You mean I stabbed you," you say. "To death. Then I set you on fire."
(4/5?)
