Being a winged Cerebus was increasingly a delight, I thought, as we soared through the sky on a test flight, with our left-most head as our pilot. The wind waving through our fur was luxurious while we admired the world from high above the buildings, valleys, and fields.
I must confess that I think I had the greatest experience out of all three of us. Like the other two dog heads, I gazed awestruck over the stretched-out world ahead of us down below. But, since I also control the snake we have for a tail, I got to admire the inspiring landscapes out behind us, too. Raising the second snake as a periscope to look over our back, I watched the great wings heaving up and down with strength of a powerful engine. It was like watching a TV show where they show you a fighter plane in flight from different camera angles, except we were the fighter plane, and I saw all the angles at once.
At last the left head lowered us, down toward a clear place in the wilderness, until we were once again standing with our four padded feet, which the right head used to walk us out of the meadow into a placid forest. We made some casual small-talk, and then began to discuss our lives before becoming a Cerebus using the Chronovirac.
We concluded that, up until that point, we were all Jeff: the same person, with the same life and the same origin. It doesn't really seem fair to regard any of us as the one true Jeff, since we all remember being him, and we each have a limited but crucial role in our new existence. However, when we became a three-headed dog (well, five if you count the snakes), we did not--as we first thought--just inherit three identical copies of the original consciousness. Rather, our memories emphasize different aspects of our life as Jeff.
For example, the right head vividly remembers about childhood friends, my first day of kindergarten, the day my sister was born, and various early experiences in thorough detail. As the middle head, I prefer to chat about myself and my current family and the emotions I tend to feel in the moment, whereas I only sort of vaguely remember the date I started school and what those friends look like and where I grew up. The left head most clearly recalls aspirations and motivations, plans for the future, and how being a Cerebus fits into this.
"I'm really glad I, um, we decided to pick Cerebus on the Chronovirac. Thrill-seeking as always, just like that marvelous flight here," I mused.
"Well, you know how much I've--Jeff has--always wanted to experience life as someone else, with a different body, especially an animal or mythical creature," the left head said.
"It's probably the role-playing that did that," the right head speculated. "We'd come up with the most the most elaborate and weird characters. Like when we were LARPing with Jacoda Sims in middle school--remember the alien robot centaur?"
A loud growling came from our stomach (or stomachs? I'm still strying to figure out whether we still have just one).
"I'm starving," I said.
"Let's go find something eat," said left-Jeff.
"How do we even eat with all these heads?" I wondered.
"Don't ask me," said right-Jeff. "We've never been a Cerebus in real life before."