Charlie tried his best to stifle a yawn, yet failed miserably as he pushed open the door to the campus library. The bags under his eyes were enough to require checking at an airport, the eyes themselves were on the border between ghostly gray and bloodshot, and he felt he was one last caffeine dose away from collapsing where he stood.
‘Damn night classes,’ Charlie thought, making his way past the checkout desk and several study tables, where other students were busy pouring over thick textbooks or obscure rented texts. ‘And I still have a book report due Monday... It’ll be a miracle if I don’t fall asleep in class.’
Past antique book displays, the old microfiche room, and numerous other accumulated minutiae the university refused to either maintain or throw out, Charlie at last ventured downstairs to the basement computer lab. It was usually vacant this time of day, and though the dim lighting and low, steady hum of the building’s old electrics had pushed him to snooze many a time, it was also the best place to do some research in relative silence. Charlie sneered at the thought of how he hadn’t had a proper night’s peace in his dorm room since the year started, as his roommate rarely had a care as to why the other person who lived there would have a problem with several random hookups and loud, raucous sex during pivotal exam weeks.
However, Charlie inwardly groaned again when he saw that the computer lab was not its usual unoccupied self. Three or four other students sat scattered about at various terminals, one at the back in particular, his eyes deeply focused on whatever was on the monitor screen, facing away from the front entrance. Even worse, Charlie recognized the other student. He was just about to turn around and hope for a speedy exit before the other student stood up with a wide grin and announced, “Charlie! Just the techie I wanted to see. Get over here, I have something big to show you.”
The other students looked briefly up at the two of them, but quickly lost interest, returning to their studies.
“Not now, Tom,” Charlie sighed. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you after you roped me into your last ‘scientific breakthrough’. I’m still not allowed in the cafeteria!”
“Okay, admittedly, the synthetic compound did end up making the meatloaf smell worse rather than better, but only after an hour or so,” Tom chuckled. “If people had just gotten on with eating, there never would have been any stink. And I couldn’t have synthesized the compound without your number-crunching!”
“Goodbye, Tom,” Charlie said, opening the door to leave.
“Fine, fine, if your scientific curiosity has truly left you, then I won’t keep you,” Tom sighed dramatically. “I’ll keep the prizes and awards to myself.”
Charlie froze, his hand still on the doorknob.
‘Don’t fall for it,’ Charlie warned himself. ‘He’s just goading you. This is how he always gets you. He has no real science to offer you. Just more prank ideas. You’re better than that... Even if it was pretty funny seeing my roommate screaming from all the laxatives we put into that meatloaf...’
Knowing he was going to regret this but unable to resist, Charlie made a big show of grumbling and headed over to Tom’s terminal.
“That’s my little genius partner-in-science,” Tom said.
“What have you got?” Charlie asked.
“You know Laura?” Tom asked in a whisper, making sure nobody else was looking their way or listening, which they didn’t seem to be. “I think she’s in your advanced engineering class.”
“The really intense, kind of scary scholarship student?” Charlie asked, earning a vigorous nod. “What about her? You tried asking her out? I’ve heard she’s got pretty high standards, no offense.”
“No, and none taken,” Tom laughed.
Tom wasn’t exactly bad looking, simply fairly average. In fact, Charlie mused, they shared that trait pretty evenly among them, even if in completely opposite ways. Tom was slightly stocky, with a short but robust build, a full, dark beard, and a crazy amount of hair he claimed women ‘loved to run their fingers through,’ not that Charlie had ever seen him with any. Charlie, on the other hand, was as tall and thin as an underfed beanpole, a sparse shock of pale, reddish hair on his head that matched well with his similarly pale face.
“In fact, the less she knows about this, the better,” Tom whispered with a conspiratorial grin. Charlie felt a cold pit growing in his stomach, that familiar glint in Tom’s eyes that always ended with him getting demerits at best or facing suspension at worst. “You see, she was studying at the coffee shop on campus a week or so ago and I took the liberty of reading over her shoulder from the next booth.”
“You mean looking down her dress?” Charlie said. “Come, Tom. You’re better than that.”
“Okay, fine,” Tom laughed, caught red-handed. “But then I did sneak a peek at what she was working on. Her notebook was full of drawings of this weird watch; I think she designed it herself, and there’s loads of high-level math and even bioscience involved. Some of it’s beyond me, but I think I managed to get a working replica.”
Grinning giddily, Tom withdrew something from his backpack. At first glance, it looked like an ordinary watch one might pick up at any supermarket, a low-end plastic thing with a digital display that would tell the time and not much else. However, there were buttons and settings Charlie didn’t recognize, things such as 'Seeking Mode' and ‘Subject Lock’ and ‘Activate Fusion.’
“You stole her blueprints?” Charlie asked with a disapproving look. “Blueprints for what, even? I can’t tell what I’m looking at.”
“Put simply, it’s a fusion device,” Tom explained. “You use this display, here--” He tapped on the watchface, the time disappearing to be replaced by a readout of ‘Two possible subjects present: Charlie Schroder, Tom Wilks’ “--And it allows you to pick nearby people to fuse into a single person! For some reason, the result always seems to be a woman, though, even if the two subjects were a man and a woman, two men, or other identities. And even though there's supposed to be an 'unaware' function, the new personality always remembers their past lives. Some kinks I haven't quite worked out, yet.”
Charlie stared at Tom’s wide grin for a good long while.
“And?” Charlie asked at last. “I don’t get it. Where’s the punchline?”
“There is no punchline,” Tom protested. “It’s real!”
“Prove it,” Charlie said, rolling his eyes.
“Fine,” Tom said with a grunt, his eyes scanning the computer lab. “Who to test it on...”