_ENTRY COMPLETED. QUERY, DOWNLOAD, OR EXIT?_
Vertigo caught her again as she entered the mind. Immediately she asked the two most important questions.
"Query: Am I human?"
_CHECK_
"Query: Am I alive?"
_CHECK_
She sighed, glad to get that out of the way. If either had been negative, she would have left this mind and tried again. She had lost track of the number of minds she had already been through, universe after universe. She didn't know how she had gotten caught in this trap, only that she had to find her way home, back to _her_ body, _her_ life.
The only trick was that every mind was her own...but only in the infite sense. This mind, these memories she was borrowing were herself but of a different world...maybe. When she had first started, was still learning, she had just started sifting through memories instead of asking questions. A few times of rifling through saurian memories had caused the first question. A few traveling memories of drinking blood or decaying as she left her grave had prompted the second question. She steadied herself to start down her checklist again....
*Why are you continuing?*
"Go _away_." Not the voices again, please not the voices...this could be the one, _my_ home.
*Still trying after all of this time? Why don't you just take this life?*
"Because it's might not be _my_ life. Then it'd be someone else's...it'd be _her's_." A beat passed. "Shut up."
*You're afraid....that the life will be worse than your's. You're afraid to see..."
"Shut _up_."
More voices, all whispering. *No, she's afraid...*
*afraid....*
*that the life will be better than her own...*
*Wouldn't you like a better life, dearie?*
*To be prettier...
More popular... richer...
*Just find it and it is your's...*
"_Shut_ _Up_!"
*Aren't you tempted just a little tiny bit?*
"Shut up ShutUp SHUTUP!!!" The voices got louder. "No, no, NO! I won't take someone else's life! I have to find _my_ life!"
*But it'll take so _long_...
*One little difference won't hurt....*
*Won't hurt...*
"NO!!!!!" Her throat hurt. "When will you realize I don't _want_ a different life?! I want _MY_ life! _My_ family, _my_ friends, _my_ history!" She gasped for breath. There had been a few realities that had been close. Here a missing person, there a missing event.
It was like 'It's a Wonderful Life' only you had to look over each and every second of every day up till her falling into this...trap, test, whatever you wanted to call it. A person complemented her in her real life. She had seen realities where he hadn't and it had led to her own despair, her joblessness, her death, and worse, the deaths of so many others. She didn't want that to happen. Who was to say what would happen if she chose the wrong life? Would her memories be erased and replaced by the new her's, never to remember the difference? Would she have all of her old memories to torment her with the differences between the worlds and what had been? The voices drew breath to begin another assalt.
"You don't understand." Her voice was quiet and raw. "Every day builds upon the day before. Evey event upon the last. A compliment today may be all that stands at your side tomorrow when despair crushes you. Courage learned from a friend may be all that keeps you alive for your family. Every moment, every decision determines who you really, mentally, are, just like very bit of DNA gives who you physically are. You can have an exact duplicate of your genes but never of your true self. For they would have had to live your life with you, looking out of your eyes, listening with your ears, feeling with your feelings, thinking with your thoughts. And I don't think anyone can do that yet..." The voices were silent as if she had given them something to think on....this was the first time she had tried to put into words of what she had learned from her journeys. She decided to contiue on this one...
"Query: Name equals 'Teresa Margaret Greeley'?
_CHECK_
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