Chapter 3

Reinsertion

For the next four weeks, they continued to prepare me for ‘reinsertion’ into my old life. Maria Olivarez worked her medical miracles on me and had me put on nearly 12 kilos of weight, programming my cells to start losing all that weight once I had gone back to the past. First thing, I would have to declare to friends and family that I intended to start exercising and eating better, so that they didn’t become suspicious. She performed all the medical improvements she had told me about, and also drew blood from me and inserted cryptographic codes into my genome before returning the blood cells. Since I teach biology ... Sorry. - Since I was a biology teacher, I suppose is the better way to phrase it, I had no problems understanding her instructions about modified T-cells with infinite lifespan and how she had marked them with a unique Beta-1 integrin so that I would be able to extract them and amplify their DNA once the technology was invented.

More awesome than those modifications, though, were the synthetic antibodies she injected me with. Not only would they give me immunity to a host of infectious diseases that had plagued humanity; they would also make my immune system capable of beating any cancer and kill off any cell that went into cellular senescence. My body would never naturally age beyond the apparent biological age of 25 or so, which meant that I was now in effect eternally young. I was still mortal, of course, but I would never grow old and die from age-related disease.

The modifications that I was most happy about, however, despite the awesomeness of the ones I just mentioned, were the slight tweaks to my brain. I had always had a hard time coping with setbacks and stress, easily becoming depressed and withdrawn when bad things happened in my life. This time ‘round, my brain would be resilient to such stressors, and my mood would be more stable and calibrated to stay at a decidedly higher hedonic set-point. I would need just a few hours of sleep each night, and I would be able to concentrate for much longer than ever before, even when things were not very stimulating. When that was combined with a slight uptick in fluid intelligence and a large improvement in working memory, I got the sense that I would be a very quick study. I had by no means been a dummy last time around - academic achievement always came easy to me - but I was easily bored and could only pay attention when something was truly interesting to me. Dr Olivarez explained that this was due to a slightly too low production of dopamine receptors in a prefrontal pathway that regulated incentive salience and reward, and then she programmed a drop of nanites to correct the issue for me and injected them in my arm.

The nanites were performing many tasks inside of me. They were nano-scale robots with the ability to replicate inside of me, using materials that they took from my bloodstream. I got strict orders to supplement my diet with plenty of iron; eating meat and broccoli was important, but I would need triple or quadruple my normal amount of daily iron intake, which was easier to accomplish with pills. Whenever my immune system and the synthetic antibodies or simple gene therapy did not suffice, the nanites would wake up and deal with the issue that arose. They could cauterize wounds and even help regenerate lost limbs if necessary, and they would be an important first line of defense against unknown bacteria. I got the feeling, though, that the nanites had other functions that the good doctor was not telling me about, but I trusted that whatever it was, I would find out, and it would be something important - not just for me, but for the future of mankind.

Every day, I studied the “keystone events” and historical “pivot points” upon which the future history of humanity hinged according to the best models, and Dr Mangubhai rehearsed with me over and over again how different scenarios could be manipulated to direct history and steer toward a better future than the one we were in. I was very frustrated that the two doctors did not let me interact in a meaningful way with any other people or tell me more about their society and history, but they patiently described that it was important that I did not know too much, and that the information they had packaged in my DNA would make it more clear to me why that was. Perhaps they didn’t want to scare me and give me nightmares?

It wasn’t until the very last day before ‘reinsertion’ that I came to think of a very central objection:
“But ... what about myself? I mean, what about the fourteen-year-old Karl in 1993 that I’m about to be sent back to replace? What happens to him? I mean, he’s me - what happens to that me?”
Maria Olivarez smiled at me and patted me familiarly on the knee.
“If all goes to plan, that version of you will be sent forward in time, down this trouser leg of Everett-Pratchett space. That boy will be thrown 169 years into the future and end up here, and you will end up where he was. You will trade places.”
“But, that’s absolutely horrible!”
“Really? Think about it, Karl. You have already lived his life. That boy is you. Does he have a good life to look forward to, if he just continues down the path he is destined to walk? Was it a happy life?”
I had to think about that for a minute before I answered.
“And you will take good care of him? Will he have a good future here with you?”
“That is the right question to ask. Yes, he will have a good life here. He will get many of the same medical treatments as you have had, and we will teach him how to live in this reality. He will grow up in a society where there is no religion, hardly any sexual taboos, plenty of young and willing women to make friends with. All that is good here in our existence.”
“But ... you want me to destroy this existence.” I objected.
“Yes, but that will not happen immediately. Our timeline will continue to chug along, and then at some unforeseeable time, it will cease to exist in the blink of an eye. One Planck-time, to be exact.”
“Promise you will take care of him?”
“Of course, Karl, we will take care of that version of you even better that we have taken care of you. He will get to meet anyone he likes, have a social life, and most importantly, he will have a sexual life magnitudes better than what he can look forward to in his own timeline.”
“Well, he will like that for sure. I mean, I will like that.”
“Better to think of that version of you as ‘he’, Karl - you are 41 years old, subjective time. He is fourteen. He will adapt and have a good life. You will adapt to his timeline, but your life will take a different turn this time.”
“I need a drink.”
“That is an urge you will need to suppress.”
“I know - it’s just an expression, Maria.”
“Oh. Very good. How about a blowjob instead?” She volunteered with a smile.
“That’s even better than a drink,” I said, and leaned back to give her better access.

During the four weeks that preceded my reinsertion, Maria and Ginny (Dr Mangubhai) had been very friendly. While we worked, they were strictly professional, but once they felt work was done for the day, they had been my friends-with-benefits and showed me what a life without sexual inhibitions really meant. It was really strange and confusing at first to have sex with a girl who looked not a day older than sixteen, and her even more beautiful friend who looked not a day over 25, while at the same time knowing that the two of them were both old enough to be my mothers. At first, my mind sort of shifted between viewing them as young women or as old grannies, but with each passing day, that strange feeling passed. First, the two realities existed in superposition, but then they seemed to merge into the realization that age is just a number, and that what really counts is how you feel inside. Ginny neither felt like 16 or 57 - she was just a very healthy woman with strong sexual appetites and zero inhibitions. The same was true for Maria - she was neither 73 nor 25, just ‘Maria’.

My new body felt amazing. Despite deliberately putting on the pounds of chub, I could feel the well-oiled machinery of a fourteen-year old boy in the midst of male puberty beneath that layer of adipose tissue. My stamina and endurance seemed to have no bounds, and at the slightest sexual stimulation my new penis version 2.0 would jump to attention, no matter how many times I had already ejaculated. As Maria had said, I had been a very average 15.5cm (6.1 inches) and 13cm circumference, but now I felt as if I was hung like a horse. I was easily 8 inches in length and my girth was larger than my wrist. But the real difference was in how easily I could go for another round once I had popped. I had tried Viagra on occasion in my previous adult life, but I had never had built-in nitric oxide boost combined with the neurochemistry of a teenager. So those four weeks were filled with sex that went beyond anything I had ever experienced, and it seemed the two doctors had no reservations about using sex as a means of reducing stress or increasing my motivation. If I got anxious about the future, one of them would give me a quick BJ and a prostate massage. If I lost focus on my studies, they would tell me that if I did well on the next set of exercises, they would let me lick them both from behind. Come to think of it, I almost felt my other self would get the better end of this deal. He would get transported here and get to play with all the beautiful young women of this plane of existence, whereas I would go back to the dreary 1990’s and have to relive secondary education. Little bastard!

As the day of reinsertion arrived, I was something of a nervous wreck, and Dr Olivarez was too busy with her last rounds of medical exams and preparations to take care of my nerves with a quick blowjob. Dr Mangubhai was scrolling through pages of code on her screen and punching numbers on a keypad. Sitting on the corner of my bed in the huge chamber that served as my bedroom, living room and workplace, my mind was so revved up with the nerves that I couldn’t seem to focus on any one thing for more than seconds. One part of my brain was listing off all the pretty girls in my old secondary school, trying to remember names and faces. Another part was thinking of my bullies and how I could defeat them now, with the mind and maturity of an adult man. Another train of thought that kept intruding was that of meeting my parents again. My mother had died from cancer when I was in my early thirties, and my father had already been gone for five years by then - an early death due to a brain aneurysm, possibly brought on by a stressful lifestyle. How would it feel to meet them again? How could I cope with their deaths a second time around? Anna, Marie, Therese, that blonde with the tits ... Helena? That brunette in class 8F, what was her name again? Oh, and Gunilla. Goddamn best ass in town - at least if you didn’t count Katrine, but she was three years older and captain of the senior handball team. Jesus! With this fucking monster of a penis 2.0 on a hair trigger, my first day in school would be difficult. How had I handled it the first time ‘round?

“May 19th ‘93?” Dr M said, intruding on my thoughts.
“Umm ... May 19th 1993. Powerball 12-24-31-35-38 and -8.” I recited.
“Good. Takings?”
“Five and a half million dollars.”
“May 7th ‘94?”
“May 7th 1994. Powerball 21-29-30-35-37 and -9.”
“June 28th ‘93?”
“Look, there’s really no need to...”
“June 28th ‘93?”
“Fine. Lotto. 16-18-22-24-26-28-35”
“Takings?”
“6 million, Swedish Kronor.”
She kept throwing dates at me, but it soon became evident that I knew them by heart, so she switched to the stock market instead. I knew those numbers and dates too, of course, but she kept on digging, perhaps to distract me. I still kept seeing Gunillas asscheeks though.

I was going cross-eyed with weariness before Dr Olivarez interrupted the interrogation:
“There. Final coordinates plotted. We’ll send you off to sleep soon my dear boy.”
“Tell me again why you need to put me to sleep before you put me in the resonator?” I asked. Possibly for the third or fourth time.
“Look, I’ve already explained about the synchronized frequencies of neuronal firing. There’s one thing I haven’t mentioned, though. In order for the resonance to work properly, you need to be at a similar level of wakefulness as your other self. We could make the switch when he and you are both awake, but since it’s only your body and not your clothes ... Besides, would you like to suddenly appear at some location where you were awake? Perhaps in the middle of a conversation? That would be a very confusing situation, wouldn’t it?”
“I think there’s more. Something you’re not saying.” I insisted. My gut told me it was so.
“Well well, look at your intuition starting to work!” Dr Olivares said with a smile as if she was a mother of a child who just said something clever. “Ok. We don’t know how painful or traumatic the experience would be to a conscious subject, nor how well the resonance even works for a conscious mind. We’re not putting you to sleep, we’re going to put you under pretty thoroughly. General anaesthesia if you will. Also, seeing the resonator equipment might give you certain ideas about how it works and we really don’t want you to know that when you appear in the 1990’s.”
“But that information is encoded in my genes, isn’t it?” I asked, knowing it was true before she confirmed it by nodding.
“Yes. And would you like to hazard a guess as to why?”
“I think ... I think you have probably encoded the sum total of human knowledge, ALL scientific advances, into my genome.”
Dr O and Dr M exchanged a long and meaningful glance.
“Ok. Yes, you are right. And you have no doubt figured out why?” Dr M asked.
“It’s what anyone would do. If the world was about to collapse tomorrow, and I could pass on any piece of information to the next flock of humans, I would choose something from science I think. Maybe something about Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism or the table of chemical elements - something to give them a good start in their reconstruction of science?”
The doctors nodded proudly, which encouraged me to go on.
“And now that you want your trouser leg of reality to cease ... Cease existing ... You want to pass on all you know. And I’m your vessel.”
With that, I choked up and was overcome with emotions I didn’t know how to contain. I couldn’t continue speaking. Maria and Ginny cuddled up to me and held me, and another wave of emotions flooded through me when I felt that they were also crying.

“Oh God, you’re preparing to die...” I croaked and hugged them both so hard I was afraid they would break.
“No. No gods are involved,” said Dr O and sniffled, “and we won’t die. Our legacy will be the ripples we send back in time, and forward to that other timeline that we could never reach. We won’t die - we will cease to exist. And maybe, just maybe, there will be other versions of us, born to walk on an earth that isn’t scorched.”
“I will never forget you, Dr O. Or you, Dr M.”
“We know. And we will never forget you, Karl. Just be sure to survive. Gather resources. Spread your antibodies and nanites. Spread your genetic code, even - the more copies there are, the more safe the knowledge of our timeline will be. And remember to have a good time. We put a lot of faith in you, and that creates a mountain of pressure on your shoulders. Suck the marrow out of life and live it once more - with feeling!”
With that, Maria kissed me on the lips with a passion she hadn’t shown before, and I tasted our tears on her lips as they mixed. Ginny hugged me fiercely from behind, and I could faintly hear her mumbling “Make it over. Make it over.”

Soon, our embrace got more passionate. For the first time, the three of us made love. Before, we had only fucked - and it had been glorious - but now we kissed and hugged and made sweet, gentle love, whispering words of affection and encouragement. Knowing that this was the last time I would ever get to see them made it as painful as it was wonderful.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, Maria got up and fetched a small syringe. Ginny, hugging me once again from behind, held me tighter and nuzzled my neck. “It’s time, Karl.”
“Will you take care of me? I mean, the younger me?”
Ginny chuckled.
“Hey, I promise you this. For as long as he exists in this world, we will be there to guide him and care for him. The very first time he wakes up here, will be in bed with the two of us. He will think he has died and gone to heaven.”
“In a sense, that is the truth. This is the afterlife, you know - at least for me it is.”
Maria wiped a tear from her cheek and smiled at that. She touched my face and I barely felt the needle pierce my arm. “Bye now, Karl. I love you, even though I’ve tried not to, and I will grow to love the younger you as well. This time ... Make it count.”
“I’ll make it count, Maria. For you and for Ginny, and for all the other humans, I will make it count.”

With that, she pressed the plunger, and the last thing I saw was her face as she bent closer to kiss me. My vision was the first sense to disappear. I felt them hug me close as I drifted off, never to see them again. “Make it count. Make it count. Make ... it...”

“COUNT!”
I sat up and opened my eyes in confusion. Had I screamed out loud? My room was in almost complete darkness. My room? Bloody hell, this was MY ROOM! Steps outside the door made me hastily lie down again and pull up the duvet. There was a knock, and without waiting, someone opened the door.
“You ok Charlie?” My sister’s voice. Bloody hell, it was my sister! A single heartbeat dumped a ton of oxytocin into my bloodstream and I felt an overwhelming love flood my system. My sister moved to London when I was 16, and I saw her very rarely after that. Then she was abused by her boyfriend and ended up in bad company, eventually dying of an overdose - possibly a sucicide, it was never resolved - before I was 25. Hearing her voice, I immediately choked up.
“Y ... yeah ... I’m ok. Did I shout? I had a nightmare.”
“Oh, ok ... Look, go back to sleep. It’s only 4.30 and I’m off to work in a minute.”
Work? Oh, right. I vaguely remembered she had a cleaning job at a local daycare center, and she preferred to work in the early hours before going to school rather than doing it after school.
“Will you tuck me back in?” I asked, desperately needing to hug her, as if this was the last time I would ever see her. Losing her had been traumatic, and seeing her alive and well was beyond miraculous.
“Aw, Charlie, you’re such a sweet boy. How come you don’t have a girlfriend. Come here...”
She walked up to my bed and leaned down to hug me. As her scent filled my nostrils, another sharp pang of love flooded me and I hugged her fiercely.
“Ow ow ow, you’re hurting me! Let go.”
I relaxed my grip and let her go.
“I love you, sis” I whispered, not trusting my voice to hold steady.
“I love you too, Charlie ... Holy shit, what’s...” Her arm had grazed my cock, which had apparently misunderstood the situation.
“Sorry, I didn’t know.” I whispered, and felt embarrassment battle it out with mirth, which won. I chuckled.
“You little perv. Well, ok, not so little anymore.” She actually giggled! “I’m off to work now, Charlie-boy. Good night and sleep tight.”

As she closed my door, I felt my head spinning. This was going to be hard! I was not at all prepared for the emotional impact of meeting my sister again. I mean, obviously I had grieved her, but by the time I was 25, something inside me was already shut off - trauma piled on trauma, causing my brain to just shut certain things down because they were too painful to deal with. Now those memories came flooding back, and the scent of my sister lingering in my room and the warmth of her body still somehow present seemed to reach inside of me and twist. I barely had the time to slam the pillow over my head before I started bawling my heart out. Before long, I was crying for Maria and Ginny also. Doctor Maria Corazón Olivarez and Doctor Genevieve ‘Ginny’ Mangubhai, who sacrificed their lives - no, their whole world - for this world that I had now returned to. Brave souls - sweet, darling doctors - I’ll make it count. “I’ll make it count.” I mumbled into my pillow.

Not able to fall asleep again, I eventually put my wet pillow aside and gathered myself before I turned the lamp. Looking at my room for the first time in decades was uncanny. I somehow knew exactly where everything was. In the drawer over there were my motorcycle- and moped magazines, and at the bottom of the left pile were my porn mags. I fondly touched my speakers, that I had saved up for and bought when I was twelve. I eventually got rid of them when I moved in with my first serious girlfriend, but seeing them now, I vowed never to get rid of them this time ‘round.