Two Annies

  by Keith P. Graham

Mayhew was not a strong guy. He struggled under the weight of Annie’s body that he carried over his shoulders. Too many years of bad living and too many cigarettes had taken its toll on his strength.  

“Stay with me, girl,” he said, more to himself than a plea to the unconscious woman he carried, “stay with me, Annie.”

He could still feel her breathing, he thought, as he trudged through the slushy February snow. He left droplets of the red in the snow behind him as Annie slowly bled out. He could see the brownstone apartment building up ahead. He only hoped that the Professor would answer the door at this late hour. He might still be up.

Mayhew tried to move the girl’s body up higher with a jerk and he heard her gasp. He hoped that sound was a good thing.

There were nine steps up to the landing and Mayhew’s calves hurt as he climbed up them. The door was broken and off its hinges. He squeezed through the opening, trying not to disturb the woman on his back. Prof. Rumbata lived on the third floor. Mayhew moved Annie up as high as he could on his shoulders and continued the climb up the steps, catching his breath at each landing.

Mayhew’s breath came in painful gasps by the time he reached the 3^rd floor. There was a typed card thumb-tacked to the door that said Prof. and Dr. Rumbata. It seemed much colder inside the stairwell than it had been outside. He kicked on the door with his foot and yelled, “Professor, it’s me, Mayhew. Let me in.”

There was stirring from inside the apartment. He heard a bolt slide open and a chain move into place. A pale eye peered out from the doorway.

“I told you, Mayhew, that I didn’t need any more subjects. Go away.”

“This is not a subject. This is a friend of mine and she needs help.”

The professor looked at the girl and then back to Mayhew. “She needs a medical Doctor. I can’t do anything for her.”

“She’s dying,” Mayhew said, “I need you to save her. You said you could do it.”

“Out of the question. If I get caught doing this, it is jail time for me. I don’t do this anymore.”

“You have to, Professor!”

“Go away. There is a night hospital on 14^th Street. Perhaps they can do something for you.”

Annie groaned.

Rumbata looked away and started to close the door. Mayhew rammed against it with all of his strength, breaking the chain and pushed into the room.

“Get out! Get out!” the Professor yelled.

“Look Prof, you are going to do this.” Mayhew pushed by him into the bedroom on the left. There was a hospital bed in the room surrounded by computer equipment. Mayhew gently laid Annie onto the bed.

“With what I know about you,” Mayhew told the Professor, “I can put you away for years.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” the Professor Rumbata protested, “If they seize my records, you would go away, too.”

“Right now I don’t care. Annie’s dying and you are the only one who can help me.”

A woman appeared in the doorway. Mayhew had never seen her, but she looked like he would’ve imagined a Mrs. Rumbata would look like.

“Do it and get rid of them, Inesh” she said.

“Go back inside, Ela,” the Professor said, “I can handle this.”

“Do it,” she said. She walked by the men, and looked at Annie. She went to a closet and came out with a packet of lactated ringers, found a vein and tied the bag to a pole on the bed.

“Don’t let her die here,” she said and left the room.

The Professor turned around and looked at the woman on the bed.

“OK, OK,” he said, “Let’s make this quick.”

“No,” answered Mayhew, “Let’s make it good.”

The Professor removed Annie’s clothes and placed adhesive sensors on her arms, legs, face and chest. He took off all of the hair on her head with an electric razor. He then carefully placed adhesive patches on her head so they covered her skull. The patches each had a small white lump in the center with LEDs that glowed red as he moved them in position.

Rumbata booted a laptop computer. He started a program. One by one the LEDs on Annie’s skull turned green. The Professor waited a little for the process to finish and then he pressed a key and all the LEDs turned yellow and then again turned green. Rumbata seemed satisfied.

The Professor pressed a button on the screen and a holographic joystick appeared above the keyboard. He moved it around slowly. As he did this, Annie’s left leg kicked and then her right leg. Her arms shuddered in turn. She breathed in deeply and let out a little moan. Annie began to repeat the words “testing 1,2,3” softly. Her eyes opened and looked around the room and then they closed again. The Professor repeated the words, “testing 1,2,3.”

When the Professor had finished, he pushed the joystick down to the keyboard and tapped a button on the screen. A holographic billboard jump up from the laptop and numbers flashed from it. As he watched, the numbers would hesitate for a moment and then start again at a lower number. Sometimes this would happen a few times and Rumbata would lean over and look at the woman’s face, open one eye and move a small flashlight around in front of it. The number could would then become unstuck and the count would proceed.

Mayhew found a chair in the corner and sat down. He watched the Professor work. The little man seemed careful and competent. Mayhew had worried that he would rush the job just to get him out of his apartment, but it seemed that this was not the case. Whatever the Professor’s sins were, he was scrupulous in his work, and this was the only place that Mayhew had ever heard of, outside of an expensive clinic, that could clone a person’s mind.

“I don’t know how this will come out, Doc,” he said, “but in any case, I appreciate your effort. I am sorry that I bullied you into it. I would never tell anyone about our involvement in your research. It’s just I was desperate and that Annie...”

“Shut up, idiot! I am working,” answered Rumbata, but Mayhew could see that he appreciated the comment.

Mayhew dozed in the chair as the Professor continued the procedure. Once Mrs. Rumbata came in and gave him a cup of coffee. They talked to each other in Hindi and he could tell that they were looking at him. He assumed that she did not have a positive opinion of him.

Mayhew woke up suddenly. Rumbata was tapping him on the shoulder. “Wake up, man, wake up,” he was saying. Mayhew looked around a little confused and then he saw Annie Number 1 in the hospital bed. All of the connections had been removed from her. And she had been dressed. The computer was off. Annie was breathing slowly. The lactated ringers bag was nearly empty.

“You must get her out of here. The emergency door at the hospital will take her. She may yet live, but I doubt it. I think that you waited too long.”

“What about the file?” Mayhew asked.

Rumbata pressed a small data key into his hand. “This is it.”

“Is this the cloud key?”

“No, it is the data. It could be traced through a cloud transaction. This is the compressed file of her brain scan. More terabytes than you can think of. More bytes than there are cells in your head.”

“I owe you, doc,” Mayhew said.

“You owe me to never even think of me again. This the end of our relationship.”

Mrs. Rumbata came in and fussed over Annie. “You must get her to the hospital, now,” she said.

Annie seemed lighter as he went down the stairs. At the end of street he turned right on Avenue A and then left on 14^th street.

The hospital was really just a small clinic that could handle emergencies while waiting for an ambulance to arrive from a real hospital. Mayhew knocked on the glass. The guard saw Annie on his shoulders and buzzed him in. He laid her down on a gurney and said, “Be good to her. She deserves it.”

He turned away, and ignoring the guards questions went out on the street. He thought that he would never see her again. He turned west towards the subway station.

As Mayhew put his hands in his pockets for warmth he could feel the essence of Annie Number 1 in a key in his pocket.

The money Mayhew needed came three days later in the form a cash card. He had resorted to a cryptocurrency scam that had been perfected 20 years before. He figured that everything old was new again, and he received the card on the first try. He immediately converted the cash card into coin and cut up the card before throwing it out in a dumpster near his apartment. He may only have enough for a down payment, but that’s all he would need.

The next day he heard from a friend that Annie had died. The police were looking for him, but they did not know who he was. It was possible that they had found his DNA on her clothes or body. Mayhew sent a text to Dr. Rumbata, warning him, but the text bounced. It looked like the good Professor had moved on.

Mayhew ordered a body from a website in Queens. There was a ten day delay while the body was configured. He had to pay extra to have a port for Annie’s key, and they argued with him about it. The file is not safe unless it is on the cloud, they said, and the automatic backups won’t occur until you open a cloud account. Mayhew had to check boxes several times indicating that he understood the risks. He settled for starting a cloud account for her backups.

For two weeks Mayhew did what he did best. He made money from people too stupid to handle their own money safely. He found it incredibly easy to make money this way, and people rarely complained, or even knew what had happened.

The body came in a cardboard box. It was lighter and much smaller than he could have expected, but when he cut open the box, the body unfolded onto the floor, the flesh expanding as the limbs straightened out. It was like one of those queen sized mattresses that come in a small package delivered to your door. He lifted the naked body onto the bed, rolled her over and found the key port. There was a little door that you could open with your thumbnail. He opened the door and placed the key into the port and stood back. Nothing seemed to happen. Maybe he had to charge the battery or something. There was a pamphlet with instructions in twelve languages. He would read it when he got back. In the meantime he had to get Annie some clothes for when she woke up.

Mayhew had ordered a body that wore a size 2 dress and size 4 shoes. He thought that this might please her. The new body had no hair, so he’d have to get her a wig or two. Finding clothes this size in a city of fast-food restaurants was harder then he thought. People did not seem to come in size 2 with relatively small feet anymore.

When Mayhew returned to his apartment, Annie was sitting on the bed with her hands across her small breasts.

“What happened to me,” She asked, “What have you done to me? Where are my clothes? What happened to my hair?”

“Here,” answered Mayhew, tossing her the bags of clothes. “You died.”

Her mind seemed focused on opening the bag to see what Mayhew had bought her, when she stopped as though finally hearing what he said.

“What do you mean, I died?”

“The Brothers Band jumped you on your way home. They wanted money for the cocaine scam you pulled. They killed you.”

“Yeah, I sort of remember, now,” she shook her head, as though trying to clear it, “They killed me? How?”

“I got there at the end. I got your text and I was upstairs waiting for you. They are dead now, I made sure of that, but they got a knife into you, and you lost a lot of blood.”

“But if I am dead…”

“I got you fixed with the Professor I told you about. He made a copy before you went out.”

“A copy!”

“Hey, you’re alive, right?”

She thought about it a moment and said, “And this skinny white body is all you could get for me?”

“Look, I had to hurry and I thought you might like being a size 2 for a change. You can change it to something else later, when things settle down.”

“Size 2! Are you calling me fat? I am not…I was not fat!”

Mayhew smiled. There was no doubt that this was Annie.

She liked her new clothes. She liked the new wigs. She liked being size 2. She liked the sex and so did Mayhew. The new body worked very very well.

The Brothers Band did not know that Mayhew had killed two of their number, but they might guess. They would never recognize Annie. Besides, she was technically immortal as long as her cloud backups worked and there was someone to buy her a new body. In any case, Annie had a cousin in Philadelphia and the two of them might decide to move.

About a week later, there was a key in the door.

In walked Annie. It was the original Annie, not Annie Number 2. She had a boyish crew cut and her clothes were obviously from some good will bin, but it was Annie.

After one look she screamed “You bastard!” and then a streak of Spanish invective that would curl you hair even if you didn’t speak Spanish. She put up her hands like cat’s claws and came for Mayhew. He grabbed her arms and held her away in order to avoid a bloody encounter, and she spit at him.

“Here I am in the hospital at death’s door for a month. You don’t come to see me, and I come home to find you shacked up with this skinny whore.”

There was more invective that even Mayhew couldn’t follow. He just kept repeating “Baby, baby, baby. You don’t understand. They told me you were dead.”

She did not seem to listen. She just struggled in his grip, trying to draw blood.

She slowed down for a moment and said, “Dead? I was in a coma and nearly dead, but I pulled through. I wasn’t dead.”

“I brought you to the hospital after they stabbed you. You nearly bled to death. I saved your life. I killed the two brothers. I saved your life.”

“You could have come to see me instead of bringing this skinny white girl into my bed.”

Annie Number 2 was filling a plastic bag with her clothes and bits of things. “I think I should get going,” she said, “I don’t belong here.”

“You sure as hell don’t, bitch,” Annie Number 1 said.

“Wait, Annie, I can explain,” he said, and both of the women looked at him. Mayhew looked back and forth between them, thinking of what he could possibly say.

“You were dying. You were nearly gone. After I killed the Brothers Band goons, I brought you to the Professor dude who could clone people. You remember I told you about him. I figured that was the only way I could save your life.”

“Well, I wasn’t dead,” said Annie Number 1. “You would have known if you had just called the hospital.”

“They told me you were dead, so I got you a new body. I got you a nice thin girl body.”

Both girls yelled at the same time, “I am not fat!”

This seemed to trigger a response in Annie Number 1. She looked at Annie Number 2, seeing her for the first time.

“You mean this little whore, is… is me?”

Annie Number 2 said, “And you are beautiful chiquita, you will look much better when you get some nice clothes and your hair grows back.”

Annie Number 1 said, “You know, I lost 15 pounds in the hospital.”

“And it looks good on you, girl, but you are going to need some new clothes,” Annie Number 2 said.

Just like that, both women relaxed.

“She can’t stay,” Annie Number 1 said at almost the exact same moment Annie Number 2 said, “I can’t stay.”

“But wait,” Mayhew said to Annie Number 2, “where will you go? How will you make out?”

Annie Number 1 took Mayhew’s face between her hands and kissed him gently.

“Don’t you worry about her, my man,” she said, “With my brains and that body, she can go anywhere, and do anything she wants.”

Annie Number 2 blew Mayhew a kiss, went out the door, and out of his life forever.

Annie Number 1 and Mayhew moved to Philadelphia near her cousin. She went to a gym and worked out every day. Then she left him for a rich guy she met there.

Mayhew did a few hustles for money now and then, but mostly spent his days at home watching YouTube videos. He thought about going out to the clubs and picking up a girl, but it seemed pointless.

Life would never be the same without his two Annies.

 

~ fin ~

         Thank you for reading

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