Achilles Foot
by Alasdair McPherson
Genre: Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Swearwords: None.
Description: When the reflexologist asked me to empty my mind, this is what crept in!
_____________________________________________________________________
Sometimes you inch forward and then, suddenly, you find yourself falling down a cliff face. It all started innocuously enough. I was lying on my back on a temporary table, my fully dressed body covered by a light blanket. I was in my own dining room but the space had been taken over by a very pretty young woman who had just removed my socks.
She sprayed on something that I hoped would disguise any smell of well-used feet and she was telling me about lines of energy in a soothing voice. She was illustrating her explanation by caressing my feet – actually she was prodding and squeezing but it was pleasant and soothing. She is a reflexologist and she was preparing to analyse my physical well-being through the soles of my feet.
She asked me to close my eyes and take several deep breaths. I could feel my body relaxing and I concentrated on the vaguely eastern music playing on her tablet; you know the kind of thing – all tinkling timpani, meandering without any discernible goal. She wrapped my right foot in the blanket and began to explore my left foot with both hands.
I was following my body to the edge of sleep when the fingers of my left hand twitched; they continued to do so until her hands moved to another area of my foot. After that I began to pay more attention and I soon was able to identify which part of my body she was reaching by manipulating my sole! I hadn’t really believed all her spiel about lines of force but now I wondered if there might be something more to reflexology than just another way of getting a credulous public to part with its money.
The big shock came when I felt her touch my mind. I closed her out at once and instinctively reached out for her mind. All I got was that she is the mother of two children before she shut me out. I left my body relaxing but my mind sat up and took notice. I’ve done all sorts of things in the seventy years I’ve been in this body but nothing remotely like this has happened before.
Twenty years ago I would have known exactly what to do but I have recently been forced to accept that my body is aging. As soon as I felt her first tentative exploration of my mind, I’d have hopped across into her brain to find out how she did it. Now I had dithered and foolishly alerted her with my own probe. I’ve done more than was required of me over the years and I could retire now with honour but I still have the urge to learn more to help my people. While my pretty masseuse switched her attention to my right foot I let myself be seduced into a seriously flawed decision.
I had learned the hard way to let my body get on with its motor and digestive tasks. I’m still ashamed that my interference with kidney function made him seriously ill and has left a weakness in that area. That happened more than sixty years ago but I’ve left him to get on with care and maintenance since then. Well, there is one thing: he has what is known as a ‘sweet tooth’ and I have struggled to keep that under control for him.
I don’t think he’ll suffer if I leave. He’ll be able to look after himself but he obviously will appear a lot dumber than at present. He is seventy-eight so I’m sure people will just put any strangeness down to senility. He was only seven when I climbed out of my ship and found him playing on the banks of Loch Lomond at Luss. He was a bit sickly even before the kidney problem but he has been fine since I stopped interfering with his natural processes.
He’s not the only one who’s aging! While I’ve been reminiscing the girl has finished with my right foot and has wrapped it in the blanket. I found myself quite relieved that my chance had gone without me having to make a decision but I almost immediately felt disgusted with myself for being so unadventurous. I was reluctantly prepared to accept that I had missed my opportunity when she uncovered both feet and began to give them a gentle massage while she chatted to me. I recognised it as her way of breaking the contact so this reprieve would only last a very short time.
I didn’t let myself think but simply concentrated all my power and leapt into her mind. I’ve changed bodies before, of course, and it’s always an uncomfortable experience but this time it was total agony and I arrived completely disorientated. I looked through my new eyes to find that I was on the floor under the table – that’s to say that the body I was now in is under the table.
When I looked up I could see the lovely reflexologist still stroking a foot. She was looking unperturbed. That’s when it struck me that if she is there and a familiar foot is still where I left it, then where the Hell am I? At that moment I felt an itch under my left arm and lifted my left hind leg to scratch it. That’s when I remembered that the dog had been lying under the table.
When I projected my id she must have deflected it at a slight angle so instead of bouncing back into my old body, I had been forced into the dog. I hadn’t a clue how she had shielded herself against me but I needed to report the incident. Before I even thought of myself, I thought of my mission. I’m from what humans call ‘Alpha Centauri’ and I’m on this planet to see if it’s suitable for colonisation.
The very first mission explored the possibility of replacing humans and the pioneers did well at first. They had lived on earth for some centuries before something in the atmosphere caused their fertility to drop and they all died out. That was more than a thousand years ago but they are still remembered in the folklore as the race of giants. My mission is to explore the possibility of a symbiotic relationship with humanity.
All the creatures on this planet have more brain capacity that they use so I had no problem fitting my identity into the vacant space in the brain of the kid I met in Luss. Once I learned to let him look after the bodily functions, he and I got on really well. I helped him in school and university but after that I pulled back a little. I needed him to be clever but not so smart that people would take particular notice of him. I still regret not letting him take a PhD since he was probably clever enough to do it without my help.
In the early days I hopped in and out of his body pretty frequently. I would pop into the mind of someone we met and stay there for anything from a few minutes to a couple of days. Although he didn’t know I was there, he was always happier when I got back. One of the things I discovered at that time was gender identity – the theory is now named after me.
On my home world we do not have male and female but there are two genders that might best be described as creators and carriers. The creators approximate to human females since the new physical being grows in their bodies but the ‘baby’ transfers after about five months to the body of a carrier who has the responsibility for the intellectual development before birth. Conditions on our planet are such that the newly born must be able to fend for themselves!
When I transferred to human females I felt uneasy and restless; I found it difficult to reconcile myself to their wishes as I could when I was in a male. At first I was considered fanciful but the evidence became overwhelming that there is a gender dimension to a successful symbiotic relationship. In the last thirty years or so we have been running a controlled experiment that the humans call ‘transgender’.
Now I was in a dog and wasn’t finding it too bad. His attention is focused on his master and he has a twinge of anxiety when there is any movement. Once my former body had seen the reflexologist out and had settled down in front of the television, the dog relaxed. My id was still smarting and I was finding the spare capacity in the dog’s brain very restrictive – it was like being in a straitjacket, I imagine.
It was interesting to follow the dog’s thought process. At about ten o’clock the master went downstairs and the dog gave several minutes’ consideration to whether he needed a pee; having decided that he was too comfortable to move he pondered on whether he was hungry enough to make the trip downstairs to check his bowl.
His thoughts of food made me wonder what my former body was up to so I nudged my new host downstairs. As I suspected, my body was wolfing a pack of After Eight mints that I had put away for Christmas! He would have been as big as a whale if I hadn’t been constraining him all these years. I barked at him hoping he would sense my disapproval but he just went and opened the back door still shoving mints into his mouth two or three at a time.
I had an insight into canine thinking at that point. My host had already decided not to go out but when his master opened the door he immediately turned and we walked out into the garden. He didn’t want to be there but he was obsessed with pleasing his master. His response wasn’t slavish exactly – I would describe it as a wish to be pleasant if that could be done without much effort. The dog is basically lazy.
I let him sleep while I spent the night considering my position. Sometime in the early hours of the morning I noticed that my id had more room to move about. It took a minute or two for the significance to sink in. Before I left home I was programmed for entry into the human brain. I can function in any mammal at a pinch but it is impossible to carry out all my duties. When I realised that I might already be in emergency mode I had a moment of pure panic that woke my host and set him off howling.
Frantically, I tried to summon up the energy to transfer back to my old body but it was too late. I had lost the ability to transfer upwards into humans although I could probably move to a mouse or a sheep if I wanted to. It wasn’t the end of the world, I thought. All I needed to do was return to my space ship safely hidden in the waters of Loch Lomond and plug into the id restoration programme. When I’m within a couple of hundred metres of the ship, I can activate it telepathically so that’s no problem. I’d hop in the car tomorrow and seven or eight hours later I could be standing on the Bonny Banks.
That’s when the bottom dropped out of my world: dogs don’t drive cars and I’m certainly not equipped to run five hundred kilometres on my four short hairy legs.
I started howling again and I don’t think I’ll ever stop!
Swearwords: None.
Description: When the reflexologist asked me to empty my mind, this is what crept in!
_____________________________________________________________________
Sometimes you inch forward and then, suddenly, you find yourself falling down a cliff face. It all started innocuously enough. I was lying on my back on a temporary table, my fully dressed body covered by a light blanket. I was in my own dining room but the space had been taken over by a very pretty young woman who had just removed my socks.
She sprayed on something that I hoped would disguise any smell of well-used feet and she was telling me about lines of energy in a soothing voice. She was illustrating her explanation by caressing my feet – actually she was prodding and squeezing but it was pleasant and soothing. She is a reflexologist and she was preparing to analyse my physical well-being through the soles of my feet.
She asked me to close my eyes and take several deep breaths. I could feel my body relaxing and I concentrated on the vaguely eastern music playing on her tablet; you know the kind of thing – all tinkling timpani, meandering without any discernible goal. She wrapped my right foot in the blanket and began to explore my left foot with both hands.
I was following my body to the edge of sleep when the fingers of my left hand twitched; they continued to do so until her hands moved to another area of my foot. After that I began to pay more attention and I soon was able to identify which part of my body she was reaching by manipulating my sole! I hadn’t really believed all her spiel about lines of force but now I wondered if there might be something more to reflexology than just another way of getting a credulous public to part with its money.
The big shock came when I felt her touch my mind. I closed her out at once and instinctively reached out for her mind. All I got was that she is the mother of two children before she shut me out. I left my body relaxing but my mind sat up and took notice. I’ve done all sorts of things in the seventy years I’ve been in this body but nothing remotely like this has happened before.
Twenty years ago I would have known exactly what to do but I have recently been forced to accept that my body is aging. As soon as I felt her first tentative exploration of my mind, I’d have hopped across into her brain to find out how she did it. Now I had dithered and foolishly alerted her with my own probe. I’ve done more than was required of me over the years and I could retire now with honour but I still have the urge to learn more to help my people. While my pretty masseuse switched her attention to my right foot I let myself be seduced into a seriously flawed decision.
I had learned the hard way to let my body get on with its motor and digestive tasks. I’m still ashamed that my interference with kidney function made him seriously ill and has left a weakness in that area. That happened more than sixty years ago but I’ve left him to get on with care and maintenance since then. Well, there is one thing: he has what is known as a ‘sweet tooth’ and I have struggled to keep that under control for him.
I don’t think he’ll suffer if I leave. He’ll be able to look after himself but he obviously will appear a lot dumber than at present. He is seventy-eight so I’m sure people will just put any strangeness down to senility. He was only seven when I climbed out of my ship and found him playing on the banks of Loch Lomond at Luss. He was a bit sickly even before the kidney problem but he has been fine since I stopped interfering with his natural processes.
He’s not the only one who’s aging! While I’ve been reminiscing the girl has finished with my right foot and has wrapped it in the blanket. I found myself quite relieved that my chance had gone without me having to make a decision but I almost immediately felt disgusted with myself for being so unadventurous. I was reluctantly prepared to accept that I had missed my opportunity when she uncovered both feet and began to give them a gentle massage while she chatted to me. I recognised it as her way of breaking the contact so this reprieve would only last a very short time.
I didn’t let myself think but simply concentrated all my power and leapt into her mind. I’ve changed bodies before, of course, and it’s always an uncomfortable experience but this time it was total agony and I arrived completely disorientated. I looked through my new eyes to find that I was on the floor under the table – that’s to say that the body I was now in is under the table.
When I looked up I could see the lovely reflexologist still stroking a foot. She was looking unperturbed. That’s when it struck me that if she is there and a familiar foot is still where I left it, then where the Hell am I? At that moment I felt an itch under my left arm and lifted my left hind leg to scratch it. That’s when I remembered that the dog had been lying under the table.
When I projected my id she must have deflected it at a slight angle so instead of bouncing back into my old body, I had been forced into the dog. I hadn’t a clue how she had shielded herself against me but I needed to report the incident. Before I even thought of myself, I thought of my mission. I’m from what humans call ‘Alpha Centauri’ and I’m on this planet to see if it’s suitable for colonisation.
The very first mission explored the possibility of replacing humans and the pioneers did well at first. They had lived on earth for some centuries before something in the atmosphere caused their fertility to drop and they all died out. That was more than a thousand years ago but they are still remembered in the folklore as the race of giants. My mission is to explore the possibility of a symbiotic relationship with humanity.
All the creatures on this planet have more brain capacity that they use so I had no problem fitting my identity into the vacant space in the brain of the kid I met in Luss. Once I learned to let him look after the bodily functions, he and I got on really well. I helped him in school and university but after that I pulled back a little. I needed him to be clever but not so smart that people would take particular notice of him. I still regret not letting him take a PhD since he was probably clever enough to do it without my help.
In the early days I hopped in and out of his body pretty frequently. I would pop into the mind of someone we met and stay there for anything from a few minutes to a couple of days. Although he didn’t know I was there, he was always happier when I got back. One of the things I discovered at that time was gender identity – the theory is now named after me.
On my home world we do not have male and female but there are two genders that might best be described as creators and carriers. The creators approximate to human females since the new physical being grows in their bodies but the ‘baby’ transfers after about five months to the body of a carrier who has the responsibility for the intellectual development before birth. Conditions on our planet are such that the newly born must be able to fend for themselves!
When I transferred to human females I felt uneasy and restless; I found it difficult to reconcile myself to their wishes as I could when I was in a male. At first I was considered fanciful but the evidence became overwhelming that there is a gender dimension to a successful symbiotic relationship. In the last thirty years or so we have been running a controlled experiment that the humans call ‘transgender’.
Now I was in a dog and wasn’t finding it too bad. His attention is focused on his master and he has a twinge of anxiety when there is any movement. Once my former body had seen the reflexologist out and had settled down in front of the television, the dog relaxed. My id was still smarting and I was finding the spare capacity in the dog’s brain very restrictive – it was like being in a straitjacket, I imagine.
It was interesting to follow the dog’s thought process. At about ten o’clock the master went downstairs and the dog gave several minutes’ consideration to whether he needed a pee; having decided that he was too comfortable to move he pondered on whether he was hungry enough to make the trip downstairs to check his bowl.
His thoughts of food made me wonder what my former body was up to so I nudged my new host downstairs. As I suspected, my body was wolfing a pack of After Eight mints that I had put away for Christmas! He would have been as big as a whale if I hadn’t been constraining him all these years. I barked at him hoping he would sense my disapproval but he just went and opened the back door still shoving mints into his mouth two or three at a time.
I had an insight into canine thinking at that point. My host had already decided not to go out but when his master opened the door he immediately turned and we walked out into the garden. He didn’t want to be there but he was obsessed with pleasing his master. His response wasn’t slavish exactly – I would describe it as a wish to be pleasant if that could be done without much effort. The dog is basically lazy.
I let him sleep while I spent the night considering my position. Sometime in the early hours of the morning I noticed that my id had more room to move about. It took a minute or two for the significance to sink in. Before I left home I was programmed for entry into the human brain. I can function in any mammal at a pinch but it is impossible to carry out all my duties. When I realised that I might already be in emergency mode I had a moment of pure panic that woke my host and set him off howling.
Frantically, I tried to summon up the energy to transfer back to my old body but it was too late. I had lost the ability to transfer upwards into humans although I could probably move to a mouse or a sheep if I wanted to. It wasn’t the end of the world, I thought. All I needed to do was return to my space ship safely hidden in the waters of Loch Lomond and plug into the id restoration programme. When I’m within a couple of hundred metres of the ship, I can activate it telepathically so that’s no problem. I’d hop in the car tomorrow and seven or eight hours later I could be standing on the Bonny Banks.
That’s when the bottom dropped out of my world: dogs don’t drive cars and I’m certainly not equipped to run five hundred kilometres on my four short hairy legs.
I started howling again and I don’t think I’ll ever stop!
About the Author
Originally from Dalmuir, Alasdair McPherson is now retired and living in exile in Lincolnshire.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned nine novels and many short stories. His six latest novels – The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark, Swordsmiths, Loyalty and Killing Cousins – are all McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned nine novels and many short stories. His six latest novels – The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark, Swordsmiths, Loyalty and Killing Cousins – are all McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.