Created Equal

by Ken Jenks

In January, 1999, I took over the world. I didn't mean to. I'm still not sure exactly how I did it. But even though you can ask any adult what happened, I owe it to you to write down the whole story, including the events after the Transformation.

I was getting pretty burned out working on my Ph.D. at the University of Illinois. It wasn't just the hard work; it was hard to make ends meet. To augment my measly graduate stipend from the University and financial assistance from the Air Force, I did odd jobs, including tutoring, flight instruction at Willard Field, and computer programming. I made a little extra money as a test subject in the various kinds of scientific research that go on in little laboratories all over the campus, like psychology experiments, user interface testing, biomedical stuff, even the occasional drug study.

I was test subject #47 in a double-blind drug study that month involving a new kind of tranquilizer and a placebo. I took a little blue pill every night before I went to sleep, then answered a bunch of questions via e-mail every morning. I didn't know whether I was in the experiment group or control group, but I was pretty lethargic all the time. Maybe it was the drug. Maybe it was the placebo effect. Maybe it was just winter in Illinois.

I was older than most students, so I was in demand as a test subject, both to round out the age curve and because I'm reasonably reliable. Sometimes it's hard to get out of bed, but once I'm up, I slog through the day pretty well.

My own research was proceeding slowly, partly because of the time required to support myself. My girlfriend, Katie, had similar problems. Sharing rent and groceries with her helped in more ways than just financial. I planned to propose after we graduated.

On January 14, at 8:09 AM, my computer whined at me so I dragged myself out of bed. I use the computer as my alarm clock. I programmed it to moan, bitch and complain at me until I climb out of bed and do a short, random math problem on the screen. I set up the sound software to simulate an old girlfriend's nasal, scratchy voice. I got the math problems from the Net. Hey, it works for me. As usual, Katie was already gone. She's a morning person. Ugh. I grabbed a cold Mountain Dew for a healthy dose of morning caffeine, the real Breakfast of Champions.

The night before, I'd been awake until 3 in my lab at the Loomis Laboratory of Physics, configuring the lasers on the vacuum optical bench ever so carefully. My dissertation on the effects of gravity on antimatter was in danger because my source of antimatter was drying up. It's produced in minuscule amounts at only a couple of places in the world, and the big ring at Argon was down for the rest of the year after a small explosion. I only had a few picograms left, so I had to make every run of my experiment count.

My mind was pretty cloudy from lack of sleep and possibly the tranquilizer, so I dutifully reported my state of mind to the people running the drug study. Just as I sent in my daily questionnaire, my computer reminded me of my appointment at Dr. Kutyna's lab. It was number 14 in a series of experiments in thought transmission. Yeah, right. I didn't hold out much hope for Dr. K. Even science fiction writers had largely given up on the concept of transmitting thoughts across a distance. Dr. K had a room-sized machine he was testing to capture electrical impulses from a human brain, broadcast them across the lab and impress them on a chimpanzee. It was supposed to make the chimp think like a human. I know, it sounds like a Disney film. It was fun, and it paid $10 per hour with a $10 minimum.

I was a little late getting to Dr. K's lab at the Beckman Institute on the north side of campus. His cute lab assistant, Ricci, was helping with the chimp. It was squirming in its chair at the far end of the lab. I got in my usual chair behind a partition and strapped in. After 13 identical runs, I knew what they wanted out of me. I'd sit in the chair, wait for Dr. K to call on the intercom, then push the buttons which lit up on the panel in front of me. After the button sequence ended, I could go. That was fine by me; I had a lunch date with Katie and a strong desire to sleep. Ricci came down to check the connections on my helmet, smiled sweetly, then went back to the chimp to take notes.

Dr. K's voice resounded from the intercom. We chatted about my research while he messed with the chimp. After about five minutes, he said, "Okay, Mitch, we're going to start the sequence. Same as always, eh?"

I sat up in the chair. "Okay, Doc. Let's go." The sequence started and I pushed the buttons as they lit up. Four minutes later, the sequence ended. I unstrapped and said good-bye through the intercom. I thought it was a little odd that I didn't get a response. Shrugging, I ducked out to the bike rack, unlocked my rusty ten-speed and rode back to our apartment on Gregory. Traffic was weird. There were a whole lot of people running, driving and riding toward the Beckman Institute, and there were even more headed in the same direction I was.

My apartment building was surrounded. There must have been three hundred people there calling Katie's name. She peered out the window, surveying the crowd, looking like a princess in a tower.

I made my way through the crowd, which parted around me. They started calling my name, too. There was no pushing or shoving, and nobody was being rude. It was like a dream. An hallucination. _Too little sleep,_ I thought. _And I've got to cut down on the Mountain Dew._

The stairway was packed, but they let me through. When I opened the door, the nearest people tried to come in with me, but stopped when I told them to back off. Weird.

Katie was waiting. She looked odd, nervous. "Hi," she said. "Are you still Mitch?"

"Yes," I said, "as far as I can tell."

"So am I," she replied. "I think Dr. K's telepathy experiment did something weird. I have your brain in Katie's body."

I put my winter coat in the closet and sat down on the couch by the window. The phone was off the hook, bleating plaintively, and the cat was yowling in the bedroom. Katie took my usual chair. "Hmm," said I, "I suppose you'd know what I'm thinking, then."

"No, I just have all of your memories up until the experiment. I can't really tell what you're thinking now." She paused for a moment. "Let's see. In second grade, you tried to dig a secret tunnel from the back yard to Euclid school. Mom wasn't pleased with where you put the dirt."

"No," I replied smugly, "that's not what I was thinking about."

She smiled crookedly. "But if I were you, and I am, you'd be wondering how to tell if I'm telling the truth." She had me there. She was one step ahead of me, too. Was she smarter, or just better rested?

I thought about the implications for a bit. "So what were you doing when you became me?"

"Well," she replied, "I'm not exactly sure. I was walking down the hall into the bathroom. I thought it was some weird effect from the experiment, like I had blacked out and couldn't remember coming home. Then I saw Katie's face in the mirror. I don't remember anything about what she was doing. The phone rang, and a bunch of people came, all knocking on the door and asking for Katie. I was still thinking it through when you came in."

The crowd outside quieted suddenly. We looked out the window. A small blonde girl with a Fisher-Price megaphone was talking to them from the top of a car. She looked about five years old. "Listen, folks, you all have the memories of Mitch Stevens. I do, too. It was probably Dr. K's experiment. Has anybody seen Katie?"

Katie stood and opened the window. She called out to the assembled Mitches. "I'm Mitch, too, folks. The original is inside with me. Everybody remain calm and we'll come out."

They did remain calm. We got our coats, then Katie led me down the stairs and into the street. They cleared a path to the little girl with the megaphone. She handed it to me and climbed down. I stood on the car and addressed the crowd. Public speaking isn't my strong suit.

"Er, hello, folks." I began. They all listened intently. "I'm Mitch Stevens, and I guess you are, too."

I didn't know what to say next. Katie climbed up, too, and prompted me. "Tell them what Dr. K said after the experiment."

I cleared my throat and triggered the megaphone. "After the experiment, I said good-bye to Dr. K over the intercom. He didn't reply. I ducked out the back door. Then I rode home. That's all I know."

Almost as one, the crowd started to mill about. We all wanted to go to Dr. K's lab to check in with him, but the streets were jammed by people coming to our apartment. A sharply dressed young lady tried her cell phone, but told me the circuits were busy.

Katie grabbed the megaphone. Everyone stopped and looked at her. _Who appointed her leader?_ I thought. I did, I guess.

"Has anybody seen a news broadcast? Is there anything on the radio?" People searched their clothes. One man came up with a tiny TV. He handed it to Katie. Someone else passed up a boom box.

In another twenty minutes or so, the situation became clearer. Radio announcers, TV news anchors and everyone reachable on telephones was me. Most of the stations were off the air as people stopped doing whatever it is people do to keep radio and TV stations working. I didn't know, so presumably they didn't either. One of the early reports was about Dr. K. He was Mitch, too, and so was Ricci, the lab assistant. They were trying to piece together what happened from Dr. K's notes.

We marched against the flow of traffic to the stadium. Word spread out through campus town. Thousands of people met us there. The stadium lights were on, and someone had figured out how to run the sound system. A disorganized tangle of people tried to set up some video equipment, but they didn't have much success. Katie and I were escorted to the 50-yard line.

We stayed there most of the evening, answering questions as best we could. After an hour or so, they figured out the video equipment and patched us through to CNN. It was the most poorly produced television show I'd ever seen. Everyone tried to speak at once, and nobody knew what he was doing. Eventually, Katie took charge. She told the world the situation as we knew it. She had a special hotline set up in the press box, but it never rang. Nobody, anywhere, had any memories except those of Mitch Stevens, grad student.

The University switchboard was overflowing and poorly staffed, I guess, by people who'd never seen a switchboard before, but news trickled in slowly from around the world.

There was no major loss of life. There were a few trucks that went out of control. I never learned to drive a semi. An embarrassing number of helicopters crashed. Thank God I can fly fixed-wing aircraft. Almost all of the planes landed safely, even the big jets. There was a major chemical leak at a refinery in Louisiana, but they seemed to get everything under control quickly enough. Dozens of people around the world died in surgery. My soul felt bruised, knowing I died so many times. Newborn babies struggled with unaccustomed mouths to ask their mothers about Katie and Dr. K.

I really needed to sleep, but they said my apartment was still mobbed. A cop escorted me to Jumer's Bavarian Inn, the best hotel in Urbana/Champaign. He was grinning like a maniac while speeding down Green street with the siren blaring. I always wanted to do that. The desk clerk wouldn't take my credit card. He laughed and handed me the key. There was a fire in the fireplace. Some really cool silk pajamas, a toothbrush and my usual brand of toothpaste were waiting in the bathroom.

Katie joined me in the middle of the night. She just wanted to be held, she said. We ended up making love anyway in the hotel bed with its flowered canopy. Afterward, Katie stretched luxuriously across the bed. "Mmmm," she sighed. "That was the strangest thing I've ever done." She laughed. "Sex _is_ better for women." She snuggled up against me and we slept. As we got dressed, I saw a piece of paper slipped under the door. Addressed simply, "Mitch," it said we had a press conference scheduled for noon at the TV station. Our escort would be waiting.

We got dressed and opened the door. There was a small crowd waiting in the hall for us. People who had been working all night had some recommendations for the press conference and wanted to meet with me. Katie fended them off until after breakfast. They all agreed; they know how I am before I get my Mountain Dew.

Breakfast was superb. I was surprised; I'm not that good a cook.

We met in one of Jumer's conference rooms. The first order of business was names. My new advisors recommended that everybody adopt the name of the body in which they found themselves, if known. That made my advisors Stan, Georgia, Ivar and Anastasia. Anastasia didn't know her body's name. At the Transformation, she had been swimming at a sorority. She would try to figure out her real name later. In the meantime, Anastasia was one of my favorite names, so she took it. There were a lot of Anastasias "born" that day.

The second item on the agenda was Dr. K. The chimp involved in the experiment was still just a chimp named Epsilon. There was nothing Mitch-like about his behavior at all. Dr. K and Ricci had more help than they needed, but they were still no closer to understanding what happened or how to reverse it. Georgia pointed out that it would probably take years of study to get up to Ricci's level, much less Dr. K's.

The third item on the agenda was the state of the Transformation world-wide. Ivar had been studying news reports and organizing research teams all night to gather information from around the world. The good news was that people and animals born after the Transformation were normal. They seemed to have normal minds untouched by Mitchness. The bad news was that every human and animal in the world alive at the time of the Transformation seemed to be Mitch to some extent, with the possible exception of fish, mollusks, crustaceans, insects and Dr. K's chimp. Parrots talked about antimatter physics. Bears wrote questions in very large fonts. Plants were not obviously affected.

That brought up the subject of food. Georgia recommended that everybody everywhere go back to work doing whatever they were doing at the Transformation. This, presumably, would ensure that the world's food distribution systems would be uninterrupted. Meat animals which had already been slaughtered should be properly labeled and distributed. The world economy should continue uninterrupted. Against the day when memories were restored, people shouldn't stop paying each other for goods and services just because the customer was Mitch. They all agreed that the only exceptions, with world-wide carte blanche, would be Dr. K and his team, Katie and me. King Mitch.

Ivar jumped in again to continue his briefing on the state of the world. War had stopped instantly. World peace reigned at last. Crime and violence had vanished. All prisoners were being released. Huge piles of weapons were already being melted down everywhere in the world. Teams were at work carefully disabling all nuclear weapons. Drug abuse and alcoholism were gone, too. So was smoking. There was no more racial or sexual discrimination. Illiteracy was eradicated at last. No more technophobes, either.

Health care was in a shambles. Nobody knew more than basic first aid. There were no more dentists, midwives, doctors or surgeons. People who got sick either got better or died.

Power plants started to go off-line. Chemical plants and refineries were being shut down cautiously. Oil rigs, too. There were major industrial accidents in Germany, France, China and Russia, where the labels and manuals for all equipment were suddenly incomprehensible to the intelligent but suddenly ignorant operators. The trucking industry ground to a halt until drivers could figure out how to drive and where to deliver their loads. Nobody knew how to run a railroad, oil tanker, cargo ship or barge.

Computer networks, radio and television stations and telephone switchboards around the world were a mess. Automatic equipment still worked, mostly, but when it broke it stayed dead unless there was a good repair manual handy, written in English. If I didn't know something, nobody did. Financial markets closed. The infrastructure crumbled fast.

The astronauts were in trouble. Seven on the shuttle and four on the space station were stranded. The seven on the shuttle had enough food for a few more days, but they weren't sure about the oxygen. They didn't know how to land. Nobody knew how to how to launch a rocket to rescue them, either. The four on the station had perfectly clear directions for the emergency escape capsules, but they didn't want to abandon ship yet. They'd never get back up. Space travel was a lost art. People in Houston and Star City were working on it.

Ivar finally ran down. I was impressed, and I told him so. He'd assembled a huge amount of information in a very short time. He just smiled and said that everyone was very cooperative.

* * *

The press conference was odd. Already, I was finding differences in the way people acted based on their roles in the new world order and their experiences since the Transformation. Katie was the unquestioned leader of my loyal following. My group of advisors stood by my side at the WCIA TV studio on Neil Street. People bustled about the station, setting the lights, stage and cameras for the broadcast. The satellites were all working, and folks had time to figure out how to run the ground stations. I was astonished how quickly people learned these new skills.

The station manager, Kiwa, greeted Ivar warmly and kissed Katie's hand. She blushed and I don't blame her. He just shook mine.

Our discussion in the conference room at the hotel had magically turned into a printed timeline for the broadcast. I tried to give an inspirational speech during my ten minutes, but I wasn't impressed with myself. Ivar gave a terrific briefing on the state of the world, with badly photographed video clips and poorly-made audio. He added some information about shipwrecks and people lost in wilderness areas. Anastasia talked about finances, names and job assignments. Georgia talked about the animals and suggested that everybody head to the nearest library and learn a new skill, any new skill, as soon as possible. Then came Katie's turn.

She was dressed in her tailored business suit, you know, the one with the big gold buttons. Her hair was up and she wasn't wearing any makeup. Every eye was on her. She was the planet's sweetheart, loved by everybody on earth. She told about Dr. K and the chimp, then she changed the subject.

"We have to face the possibility," she said, "that none of us will ever recover our memories. We might be partly Mitch Stevens for the rest of our lives. Although it means a lot of hard work and many losses, it's not at all bad being Mitch." She looked directly at the camera as she continued. "Mitch Stevens, you're a good human being. You're bright, you're witty, you learn fast, and you have a respect for life and a capability to love that is second to none, before or after the Transformation. You are all that has ever been good in humanity, and I'm proud to be Mitch Stevens. I find myself changing and growing already, different from the man you were when you sat in that chair. I know that everyone around me is changing, too.

"On January 14, 1999, we were all created equal, but now we're learning and growing. We are not just Mitch Stevens. We are the human race, and we will survive and thrive. We will change, and we will grow. We'll probably even squabble and fight again. That's part of what it means to be human. But you people, everywhere, have now broken the cycle of violence and poverty. You've broken the chains of addictions. You are all literate, educated and highly skilled. In this accident, we have achieved peace throughout the world. But the cost is terrible. We have lost art. We have lost history. We have lost language and music and theater. We have lost every bit of culture but that known by Mitch Stevens, the physics major who avoided humanities classes. We must reclaim them all.

"Dictators and censors for all of history have tried to make all people think the same way, the 'right' way. That horrible goal has been achieved. We all think alike. There is no more variety in humanity. Even if it means the return of war and suffering, we must apply the vast resources of entire whole planet toward reversing this terrible tragedy, the mental and spiritual death of every person on the planet but one. Mitch Stevens is a wonderful human being, but there's so much more to humanity than Mitch Stevens."

"At the bottom of the box, there is hope. People and animals born after the Transformation have minds of their own. Those of you with these children will face special problems, bringing them up in a world full of grad student children. But learn the skills, Mitch Stevens. Learn to be a good parent. Learn to be a teacher. Learn to be a farmer, a doctor, a painter, poet and even a priest. The future of the human race is in your hands." There were tears in her eyes when she finished, "I love you, Mitch."

We all cried and hugged each other in the studio. The cameras stayed on, so billions watched us celebrate.

* * *

We pushed hard in laboratories around the world. We learned some of the secrets of thought transmission, but there were some experiments we didn't dare perform on earth. My mental state, the experimental drug, my antimatter research, and the work of Dr. K may all have combined to cause the Transformation. Maybe even Mountain Dew. We may never know. We're setting up a base on the moon to continue the research. I wonder if a quarter million miles is far enough.

Memories began resurfacing after a few months. In a year, everyone was back to their former selves, but people also retained my memories. Everyone was me plus themselves. (Except for me. I'm just Mitch.) Animals faded back to their old levels of instinct and intelligence. Mostly. Some animals retained a few of my memories and skills and even passed them on to their young. Dolphins and apes are now much closer to sentience. There is no cage in the world that will hold a raccoon. Cats are downright frightening.

After a brief setback, the world economy is booming like never before. The cycles of ignorance, violence, poverty and crime seem to have been broken forever. Universal literacy and the complete destruction of all firearms and military machinery undoubtedly contributed to the lasting peace. I'd like to think that the little part of me still present in everybody also helps.

Aviation and antimatter research both surged forward. When everybody's an expert, it's no wonder. I never did get to finish my dissertation. They gave me my Ph.D. anyway.

Katie finished her research. She's now an advisor for the World Bank. She says she feels like everybody's ex-girlfriend. She finally agreed to marry me. At first, she said that would be redundant. It's going to be a wedding the world will never forget. Five billion of our closest friends are going to throw one hell of a party.

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