Redshirts

thing that will help you achieve your potential, and what I hear is what they won’t say: You need to grow up.
    “I know it because I’m the same way. Of course I’m the same way, I’m you . I’ve been drifting along for years, Matthew. I joined the Universal Union navy not because I was driven but because I didn’t know what to do with myself. And I figured as long as I didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself I might as well see the universe, right? But even then I’ve always just done the bare minimum of what I had to do. There wasn’t much point to doing more.
    “It wasn’t bad. To be honest I thought I was pretty clever. I was getting away with something in my own way. But then I get here and saw you, brain-dead and with tubes coming out of every part of your body. And I realized I wasn’t getting away with anything. Just like you didn’t get away with anything. You were just born, fucked around for a while, got hit by a car and died, and that’s your whole life story right there. You don’t win by getting through all your life not having done anything.
    “Matthew, if you’re looking at this now it’s because one of us finally did something useful with his life. It’s me. I decided to save your life. I swapped bodies with you because I think the way it works means that I’ll survive in my world in your messed-up body, and you’ll survive in mine. If I’m wrong and we both die, or you survive and I die, then I’ll have died trying to save you. And yes, that sucks for me, but my life expectancy because of your dad’s show wasn’t all that great to begin with. And all things considered, it was one of the best ways I could have died.
    “But I’m going to let you in on a secret. I think this is going to work. Don’t ask me why—hell, don’t ask me why about any of this situation—I just think it will. If it does, I have only one thing I want from you. That you do something. Stop drifting. Stop trying things until you get bored with them. Stop waiting for that one thing. It’s stupid. You’re wasting time. You almost wasted all of your time. You were lucky I was around, but I get a feeling this isn’t something we’ll get to do twice.
    “I’m going to do the same thing. I’m done drifting, Matthew. Our lives are arbitrary and weird, but if I pull this off—if me and all my friends from the Intrepid pull this off—then we get something that everyone else in our universe doesn’t get: a chance to make our own fate. I’m going to take it. I don’t know how yet. But I’m not going to blow it.
    “Don’t you blow it either, Matthew. I don’t expect you to know what to do with yourself yet. But I expect you to figure it out. I think that’s a fair request from me, all things considered.
    “Welcome to your new life, Matthew. Don’t fuck this one up.”
    Hester reached over and turned off the camera.
    You clicked out of the video window, closed the laptop and turned around to see your father, standing in the doorway.
    “It’s not amnesia,” he said. There were tears on his face.
    “I know,” you said.

 
    CODA III:
    Third Person
     
    CODA III: THIRD PERSON
    Samantha Martinez sits at her computer and watches a short video of a woman who could be her reading a book on a beach. It’s the woman’s honeymoon and the videographer is her newlywed husband, using a camera the two of them received as a wedding gift. The content of the video is utterly unremarkable—a minute of the camera approaching the woman, who looks up from her book, smiles, tries to ignore the camera for several seconds and then puts her book down and stares up at the camera. What could be the Santa Monica Pier, or some iteration of it, hovers not too distantly in the frame.
    “Put that stupid thing down and come into the water with me,” the woman says, to the cameraman.
    “Someone will take the camera,” says her husband, offscreen.
    “Then they take the camera,” she says. “And all they’ll have is a video of me reading a book. You get to have me.”
    “Fair point,” says the husband.
    The woman stands up, drops her book, adjusts her bikini, looks at her husband again. “Are you coming?”
    “In a minute,” the husband says. “Run to the water. If someone does steal the camera, I want them to know what they’re missing.”
    “Goof,” the woman says, and then for a minute the camera wheels away as she comes toward the husband to get a kiss. Then the picture steadies again and the