Speaker 1: A couple of years ago, I was dating a woman
named Lynn. She was deeply enthusiastic about alternative medicine. It
was such a strange obsession. In every other aspect, she
was insightful and critical. Hell, she was a paralegal. She
just had this one blind spot that I could never
figure out, and it was a big part of a life.
We were together for two years. During that time, she
had me try all kinds of strange treatments and experiences,
things like acupuncture, spirit healing, crystals, reiki, rolphing, and even
a seance. I may or may not have been asked
to do aiahuasca. I went along with it because I
cared deeply for her, but the cracks in our relationship
had started to show. Turned out we wouldn't last in
the long run. But I don't want want to talk
about that relationship. I want to talk about this one
treatment she took me to and how it has shaped
the life I'm living today. It's a bit complicated. I'm
gonna talk about step minding. It was an early Minnesota
morning and the last session that Lynn and I would
attend as a couple. We pulled into a nondescript parking
lot and Lynn led me by the hand. We had
an insane fight that morning about something I can barely remember.
I think it was the order you put in your
yogurt when eating musli. Of course you put musli in first, right,
it's like cereal. We entered a stale waiting room. The
AC must have been off for days. I could taste
the air. The only other person there was a short,
balding man who spoke to us in a vaguely European air,
barely looking up from his iPad Stevenson's. He asked overexposure's
room for no Ah, that's not us. I said, we're right, right, Sorry,
he sighed wrong day. He tapped the screen a couple
of times and nodded, step minding couple's treatment. Still room four,
thank you. He wandered off, and I noticed he didn't
have any shoes on. I pointed it out to Lynn,
who elbowed me. She thought I was being judgmental. I
just thought it was strange. I didn't want to start anything.
She vehemently disagreed with my assessment. As always, we walked
up to room four. The door was already open. It
was a plain, windowless room with a small coffee table
surrounded by four basic office chairs. There was a vase
with a single blue flower. There was a naked light
bulb overhead with nothing covering it. Before was covered in
a plain gray carpet. There was a little note on
the door that urged us to take off our shoes.
Lyn just smiled at me as if this explained everything.
I rolled my eyes. We sat down across from one
another and waited. It didn't take that long before a
woman wandered in. She was in a forties wearing a
sort of knitted white wall caftain. She had a combed back,
flat elvia looking hairdoo and covered herself in rings, chains
and bangles. She took her hands, smiling widely. I'm doctor Bogan,
she assured us, but please call me Jane. I wasn't
feeling all too confident about what we were about to do.
Jane described the procedure step minding was a way to
connect to one another in a new way, giving a
better understanding of what it was like to walk a
mile in their shoes. There are a couple of rules
to remember before we started. For example, once the treatment started,
we couldn't get up from our chairs if we did,
we'd get horribly nauseous. Also, we had a sort of
safety noise. If someone were to snap their fingers three
times in a sequence, that a trigger a fail safe
that brought us right back. All in all, it seemed dard,
but not like nefarious. Then we began. Jane rhythmically snapped
the fingers like someone tapping their feet to a slow song.
She spoke in a monotone voice, asking us to look down,
look at your feet, She said, imagine the feeling of walking,
the way your muscles contract and your knees bend. Think
of how it makes you feel, and imagine the sound
you think your body makes. I don't remember the exact
wording of what she told us next, but I remember
how it made me feel. Without moving, we were supposed
to imagine standing up, stepping across and through the coffee table,
and sitting down on the chair of the person on
the other side, our spirit passing through them, occupying the
same space. We were to imagine looking at ourselves through
the eyes of the other. There was a breathing exercise
following the rhythm of a finger snapping. We joined our
breaths and Jane made us focus on each part of
our body, leading from our toes up to the top
of our heads. She called it materializing. We kept our
eyes on our feet, except slowly they weren't my feet anymore. Now, look,
Jane said, look at yourself. I was looking down at
Linde's feet, but not through my eyes. I have a
hard time describing the first sensation of step minding. Jane's
finger snapping stopped, and all of a sudden, I was
looking up at well myself. I was sitting in Linde's chair.
I was, for all intents and purposes, experiencing the world.
Is Lynn. I was Lynn. My hands were smaller, more delicate.
I was colder, and my clothes are uncomfortable. Smell and
taste felt different, and I had this gnawing hunger in
the back of my stomach. My back ached, and I
could feel my long hair reaching halfway down my back.
I was Lynn. I can barely remember what I did.
We talked and touched each other's hands, reassuring one another
that we were actually experiencing this. Lynn was repeating the
same thing over and over. That's me, she said, I'm
looking at me, You're me, I'm you. We had a
long discussion. I could feel a reverberating through my throat
in a strange way. I spoke in Lynd's voice and
it made my neck strain. Had to settle myself in
her body, and there were so many details that just
didn't click. It was so hard to focus on what
was being said when all I could think about was
the way my earrings swung back and forth when I
moved my head. But after about an hour, Jane snapped
her fingers three times and I was back in my
chair in the blink of an eye. This is how
I realized I was shortsighted. Lynne's vision had been perfect.
I also felt bigger, heavier. Her world felt so different
from mine, and while it didn't explain our disagreements, it
gave me some insights into just how different we really were,
and I made a note to get new glasses. Still
reeling from the experience, Lynn and I thanked doctor Bogan
and stepped out. He had a strange dis to talk
in the parking lot and broke up. It was oddly amicable,
as if we both understood that we were fundamentally incompatible.
That was it, no drama, just that's it. I thought
about that day for weeks. It was so surreal. I mean,
how do you go from a literal out of body
experience and back to work on Monday morning. You can't
pretend nothing happened. I wanted to understand it, like, really
understand it. I'd been to countless nonsensical treatments with Lynn,
but this one had been the real deal. There was
no denying it, even though I desperately tried to. A
couple of weeks later, I returned to doctor Bogan on
my own. I wanted to talk to her about it,
the science behind it, how it functioned, how it was
performed anything, and of course how I had never heard
of step minding before I met her. On a rainy
Wednesday afternoon. She sat me down and had her assistant
offered me a cup of coffee. She explained it as
calmly as she could. It was complicated, but essentially she
explained it as something based on Raskin identity theory, the
transfer of thought pattern through vocal meditation, exchanging vibrations and
adapting electrical patterns in the brain. Every word sounded like
nonsensical pseudoscience, but it didn't change the fact of what
I'd experienced and at the end of the day, that
was the only thing that really mattered. I have to
see again, I said, I need to understand this funny
you should say that. She smiled. I think we can
work something out. Jane offered me a quid pro quo.
She had a couple of patients who could benefit from
a step mining session, but she needed a neutral third
party to act as the recipient. I seemed to be
a good fit, and I was skeptical. But she had
a little bonus to sweeten the deal. She'd pay me
a handsome sum of cash for each session. There's a
kind of consultation fee. I was a bit hesitant, but
I agreed. One week later, I was sat on a
session with Jane and one of a patients. The patient
had a dissociative issue and needed a step minding session
to alleviate a strange obsession she seemed to have with
what sounded like a houseplant. I didn't pay too much attention.
I was nervous. I couldn't figure out why. Maybe it
was the thought that what I'd experienced was real and
how that would force me to change the way I
viewed the world. If a thing like step minding exists.
Who's to say there aren't ghosts or wizards? So I
sat down with this stranger and Jane started snapping her fingers. Now, look,
she began, look at yourself. Jane used the same words,
the same sequence, the same rhythm, stepping out of my
body and into another. The difference was palpable. This time.
Lynn had been calm and collected, but this woman was
the opposite. Sitting in her body, my pulse was higher,
my legs were shaking, and my breathing was shallow. I
was physically exhausted, but mentally wired. Thoughts rushing a hundred
different ways at once, and I didn't even know why.
A single second in that body looking across my table
back at myself, and I could tell they were a
troubled person. I was to sit there for a while
as Jane had a discussion with the other patient. Instinctively,
I stood up to leave the room to give them privacy,
but I had to sit back down. My head started
spinning as all these unfamiliar muscles reacted to my input,
and I couldn't get very far. Perhaps the sitting down
rule was there for a good reason. I sat there,
trying to calm down while the two of them had
a discussion. I was asked to put on headphones for
a bit, and I didn't mind. It was hard hearing
anything through my pounding post anyway. As the session came
to an end, Jane snapped her fingers and I was
back in my chair. My heart rate was slower, I
wasn't shaking. I was nervous, but compared to the other patient,
I was an obelisk of relaxation. For a moment, looking
across the table, I could see her taking a deep breath.
She was still shaking, but not as much as when
we started. Perhaps that session gave her a new perspective
on things. As the patient left, I got a moment
to talk to Jane alone. I explained to her that
if we had wheelchairs instead the other patient could be
rolled out during the session, that I'd be more effective
than using headphones. She really liked that idea and suggested
we'd try it at the next session, which inadvertently and
my next question. There was going to be more sessions.
I worked on and off with doctor Bogan for a
couple of months. I usually did about three to five
sessions per month, netting me a bonus income of about
four hundred dollars per session. Jane ended up getting two
wheelchairs and having her assistant Jonathan, wheeled me out while
she had a conversation with the other patient. I grew
accustomed to it and started to enjoy the sensation. It's
sort of a pleasant ego death. You feel more connected
to the world. It was becoming a steady source of
secondary income. Taking an afternoon off to get paid for
something that I ultimately enjoyed. Yeah, not a bad deal.
Over the upcoming weeks, I got a couple more opportunities.
I joined Jane on a couple of out of town sessions,
meeting some clients she was following up on, mostly folks
who needed privacy for one reason or another, Folks with
all kinds of strange afflictions. I could probably write a
book about those people alone. Coming back home, Jane contacted
me about doing a couple sessions where she wasn't personally involved.
I was also asked to be the guide a couple
of times, seeing as how I step minded so many
times and could recite the guiding words by heart. The
pay was more than double, so I agreed. I had
three guiding sessions on my own, one with a hippie
couple who wanted to experience a sort of intimacy. Let's
just leave it at that. Another session with two brothers
performing a trust exercise. The third one was a group
of college kids who wanted to debunk the whole thing,
and they left sort of befuddled. All in all, things
were going well. Then I got a call about being
a neutral third party. I was going to perform a
switch with a patient, but this time Jane wasn't involved
at all. The customer went straight to me. It was
a group of people who contacted me. They described it
as their dad having a disorder and they wanted to
try step minding to sort of reset him. That arranged
their own guide, so they just needed me as a
neutral third party, some one who wouldn't freak out about
the process, as it might take a couple of hours
to get through to him. It would be my longest
session yet, but the pay was good. Then I'd tried
a lot of things up until that point. I was ready.
I met a client, Harold, at his home in southern
Saint Cloud. Big place, three floors, gated property with both
a pool and a tennis court, modern architecture and heated
floor tiles. The guide for the evening was a cheery
woman in her forties. She gave off a bit of
a college professor kind of vibe. Apart from the client himself,
there was a group of four other people who seemed
to be close relatives, and of course, there was Harold himself.
The man I was supposed to work with. Harold was
surprisingly upbeat. I couldn't see anything obviously wrong with him,
which surprised me. From what I understood, he was in
dire need of this treatment. He was a man in
his early sixties but could easily pass for fifty. Hell,
the man had better teeth than me. I could tell
he must have been a salesman at some point, he
can tell by the smile. I was introduced to the others,
who introduced themselves as friends and family. We hurried to
the living room, where a space had been prepared. We
were all seated as a group. The guide had prepared
everything and offered me a reassuring smile. She took her hands,
something that Jane usually didn't do. I just want to
make sure we're all feeling good about this, She said,
were good? Were good? I nodded, We're good. Harold agreed,
and with that the session was on. The guide snapped
her fingers, lowered a voice, and took us down the
mental road and across the table. By then I knew
the process, the right words, with the right cadence at
the right time. I sunk back in my chair, looking
at my feet, and felt the world shift. After a while,
my shoes looked different, they were nicer, and my pants
fit me better. Slowly I started to feel the reality
of my borrowed body, the various aches and pains, the
thinning hair, the wrinkles on my cheek when I blinked,
I'd aged about thirty years in a couple of minutes,
and it would take some time adjusting. Looking up and
seeing myself in the opposite chair, I got this anxious
sting in my chest. The thought crossed my mind, what
if I never returned? The Guide excused herself and left.
She'd done her job. The rest was up to Harold
and his associates. But as soon as I heard the
front door close, the air in the room shifted. Harold
was sitting there, looking like me, stretching his arms. The
others joined us, making a circle. One of Harold's associates,
a young woman who'd introduced herself as Hope, spoke to
the both of us. She could easily have been his daughter.
How are you feeling, she asked? Everyone. Okay, yeah, I nodded.
You do what you gotta do, so this works, Harold
asked this, This is it. It's done, It's done, Hope smiled.
Harold pulled out a gun, a well polished revolver. I
was the only one who reacted, flinching at the sight
of it. The others didn't seem to care. I did
know what to do. Should I be scared? If so,
why was no one reacting? So then we just cut
the cord. Then he said, and we're good to go. Wait,
what are you? They were tricking me. They put me
in that old body and had no intention of putting
me back. I held up my hand and snapped my
finger two times, but before the third snap, I had
a gun pushed against the back of my head. That
won't help, Hope said, We'll just kill you when you're
you again. It's hard to describe what I felt in
that moment. The fear was real, but there was also
a longing to go back. Being out of your own
body is like sleeping outside, you feel exposed and maladjusted.
If you know it's for a while, it's not that bad.
But if there's a chance you can't go back, it
becomes terrifying, like getting lost in the woods. That's not
even counting for the primal terror you feel from having
a gun pointed at you. Harold seemed a bit confused,
which made me realize that no one had explained the
rules to him, that we couldn't get up, and that
three snaps of a finger would cancel the effect. I
got the impression that he thought this was somehow permanent.
Looking at him, I could see a worry spread across
his face. My face. You said this was permanent, he said,
looking at Hope, it is, as long as you don't
do three finger snaps. How's that gonna work? When we
cut him off, You're gonna have to make sure you're
never around someone who snaps their fingers, Harold, She smiled,
that's not too much, is it. Do I have to
remind you that I got the tapes to put you away?
Harold smiled back, and that if anything were to happen
to me, you're done. Nothing's gonna happen, Harold. Hope chuckled. Look,
you're right there, safe and sound. She pointed at me.
It was as if a light turned on in Harold's eyes.
He was being double crossed, just like me. In a
desperate moment, he raised his hand gun at me. I
recalled so hard that I fell out of my chair,
feeling my heart skipper beat. Cold sweat spread across my arms,
clinging to the thin inner fabric of Harold's expensive blazer.
But there was no gun shot, just a click. His
gun was empty. That click was the loudest sound I'd
ever heard. I came crumbling down to the floor, feeling
the effects of the first rule, don't get up. I
was immediately nauseous. I felt like a bobble head as
my head went one way and my body another. I
collapsed in a pile, trying to find the magic number
of blinks to make the world stop spinning. You'll never
get past the safety checks, Howard screamed. You'll never get
the backups. You hit all fingerprinted, hop side, fingerprinted, bio coded,
voice checked. Sorry. A man raised his arm. There was
no second click. Instead, there was a bang. I looked
up with my ears ringing, watching a reflection of my
dead self on the other side of the coffee table.
Bullet to the brain, nothing but blank eyes looking back
at me. My face didn't look dead, It just looks
sort of tired, like I was sleepy. I was expecting
that face to blink, but that blink never came. Blood
pulled at the corner of the mouth, running down from
the open wound at the temple. They pulled me up
and dragged me over to Harold's work station. They used
my hand to log in. I had to do a
voice recognition check as Hope's associates went through two laptops
and a smartphone. While they did, Hope sat down across
from me. My head was still swimming. They're gonna need you,
she said, and as long as you play along, you'll
be fine. But if you mess with me, she snapped
her fingers twice. Eyes filled my veins as I gripped
my seat. I can't imagine something good would happen if
we tried this, she said, lowering her voice. So how
about we just really really pay attention. Hmm, She explained
it to me. I was done for anyone in her
crew could snap their fingers three times and I'd be done.
This also meant I couldn't perform step minding again, as
you need a rhythmic finger snapping as part of the process.
She explained the plan. They needed Harold alive to slowly
transfer his company shares to someone else without it looking
all too suspicious. They needed access to his files, both
immediate and over a long term. They explained that they
needed me around to make it appear that everything was fine.
In return, I yet to live in this amazing place
with whatever comforts I could ask for for the rest
of my days. But if I slipped up, Snap, snap, snap, done,
fade to black. It was so surreal watching them wrap
up my own body in black plastic, men in tailored
blazers scrubbing the floors and walls, with Bleach Hope sitting
across from me, rubbing her fingers together. Where do you
think you'll go? She asked? If I snap my fingers,
where do you think you'll go? I? I don't know,
I stuttered, I don't. Maybe you'll be fine, she shrugged.
Maybe there's something nice and warm on the other side,
or maybe the snapping doesn't even work anymore. Want to try? No, no,
she smiled, No, you don't, You're smarter than that, and
maybe you're not the gambling type. She tapped the barrel
of the gun on Howard's mahogany desk. You can have
all the parties you want. You've got a big bank account,
she sighed. But maybe be careful about inviting musical people
those who stamped their feet or snap their fingers. And
that was that. I was left there. I had keys
to a place I didn't know, a phone full of
numbers I didn't recognize. I just stood there in the
chlorine smelling house of a stranger. I didn't know what
to feel. Ever since I started step minding, I had
never considered this. It was unreal. I remember looking down
at my own hand, not being sure if I could
snap myself out of it, what would happen. Over time,
I got used to the nausea. Nowadays it's gone. I
can walk around like anyone else, but I have to
avoid crowds. I can't risk hearing those three snaps. I
watch videos with the sound off and subtitles on. I
only watch movies after checking the soundtrack, making sure there
are no snapping in the songs. Radio is out of
the question. You never know what you might hear. And
even if you do, does it work hearing it through
a TV or in a song? Would you risk it?
I won't. I can't. I don't think I can ever adjust.
I've thought about contacting people from my old life, but
I wouldn't know where to begin. How do you explain this?
I have to be careful not to draw any attack
to myself or Hope and her cronies might return. And
if they do well, I don't know how far I
could push my luck. I mean, I'm comfortable. Harold made
close the six figures a month on passive income. I've
learned most things about his life. He never married, he
has no children, and most of his contacts are passing
acquaintances at best. He was a lonely man, and now
that's me. I spend most of my days considering my options.
I've thought about destroying my hearing as a safety measure. Yes,
going death is awful, but you have no idea what
it's like living with the thought that a sound that
can be done at any time by anyone can kill you.
It's exhausting, and you end up ice relating yourself. I'm
Harold now screaming into the void that I used to
be someone else. I'm sipping on a drink from a
glass with my initials on it. And when I go
to bed at night, I will do the same thing
I do every night. I will take a long look
at myself. I got better vision now Harold isn't shortsighted.
But I can't look at myself. I'm not there anymore.
It's just Harold.