Entanglements 2
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Aggie yawned and stretched to get a kink out of her back.  Phil's bed wasn't the most comfortable she'd slept on, but it was worth it to wake up next to her fiance for the first time.  She smiled as she watched him sleeping.  As if he felt her gaze, he stirred, and blinked blearily at her.

"Good morning, lover."

Phil grinned broadly.  "Wow.  I wish I'd known what I was missing."

Aggie chuckled throatily.  "You didn't do so badly yourself.  For a first-timer."

Phil blushed.  "I... um, had a good teacher?"

Aggie chuckled again.  "I suppose.  I know what I like.  Still need to teach you the finer points...  though that might be easier if you were in the right body."

Phil blinked owlishly as he digested that.  "Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?"

"I hope so.  Otherwise I'm going to be bringing back too many sets of clothes after my morning jog.  How long is your Mom going to be gone, anyway?"

Phil took several moments to change gears, and blushed again while doing so.  "Um... today's the second, right?  She's back Friday, so three more days."

"Cool.  I'll grab a few day's worth of clothes, and some for you, too.  Want to come with me?"

"Yes please!  Um, but I don't really run.  Or jog."

Aggie gave him a wicked smile.  "Wasn't expecting you to... just for you to be... supportive."

"You..."

Aggie nodded.  "Let's get you down into that lab, and turn you into something for *me* to wear.  I guess I can wear two sports bras home - both have to be near the ring, right?"

Phil nodded, eyes getting that distant look again.  "Doesn't need to be two."

"No?"

"Nah, if I loop the pod back, we'd end up with only one of whatever it grabbed.  Hmm, and with more pods, we could do triplets or more in one shot.  I'm going to need more conduit."

"And more pods," Aggie added.

"Yeah.  I think I have spare pods for the grain-sized set, I could test with that..."

"Later.  Can you do the one-pod thing quickly?  Say, by the time I've finished making breakfast?"

Phil nodded.

"Go!  To the lab!  Shoo!"  

Phil laughed, and scooted.

Half an hour later, Aggie and Phil were eating waffles in front of the two pods.

Aggie finished her last waffle, and set her plate aside.  "Hey... could we clone waffles with these things?"

Phil chuckled around his last mouthful, then swallowed.  "Probably.  I'm not sure what'd happen when you ate one, though.  I mean, when it collapses, either you've eaten it or not - mostly not, given the way the apple restored.  So you could end up with an unchewed waffle in your stomach."

"Ow.  That might not be fun."

Phil nodded.  "Yeah, not so much.  Worse for other foods, though.  Hm... though with duplicates, it may not work that way.  We should test."  He put an apple in the pod, then sighed.  "Except I've got it set up for loop-back mode.  Drat.  I need to make some quick-connects."

"Later, madboy.  So loop-back is working?"

Phil sighed.  "No.  I haven't exhausted all the options, but I can't get the resonance mode going on just one pod.  Needs to be two, at a minimum.  Possibly a maximum, too - I'll do some tests with the grain-sized version later to see how that works out."

Aggie pouted playfully.  "Fooey.  Can you at least get the pair working again?"

Phil nodded, and set to work.  Aggie watched her friend - now fiance - work with an admiring eye. She rolled that word around inside her mouth a few times.  "Fiance...  Hm, I like the sound of that."

Phil looked up at her, with a blank expression for a moment, then grinned.  "Oh!  Yes, I hadn't thought of that...  It's going to take some getting used to."

"Less talk, more fixing."

Phil looked down at the conduit in his hands.  "Yes, ma'am!  Almost done, though we should do a test fire or two to be sure."

"To be sure of... um, what can go wrong, then?"  Aggie asked, uncertainly.

"Mostly the entanglement destabilizes immediately.  I used to get cases where the apple and pear swapped places, though.  Wish I knew what caused that."

"So no strange hybrid mutants like in 'The Fly'?  No ap-pears, or orangatoes?"

Phil laughed.  "No, it doesn't really work that way.  Plus, I've worked very hard to ensure the system only ends up with a single version.  Pity I can't predict which."

"Ah."

"What, you want to turn into a half-person half-spider thing?"

Aggie was quiet for a while.  Phil didn't spare a look to see just what her reaction was, and instead focused on getting the conduit properly aligned and calibrated.

"OK, I think we're done here.  Hand me a pear and an apple, will you?"  He yelped when something soft and furry ended up in his hand instead.  It squeaked when he nearly dropped it.  "A mouse?  Well, OK, we could go mouse-pear instead, sure.  Why?"

"Can you *try* to make it blend again?"  Aggie asked curiously.

"Uh... sure, if I shut off the heterodyne discriminator it'll muddle up the waveforms.  It's going to drop the yield into the floor, though."  Phil walked over to the equipment rack that contained the entanglement generator, and flipped a large power switch on one of the modules.  Several lights went dark, and two potentiometers dropped to the bottom of their scales.

Phil sighed as he walked back to the console.  "I don't think you're going to get what you think, though."

The first three firings were a bust, the entanglement collapsed immediately.  The fourth time, the successful entangle lamp lit, but the pods were both empty.  "Oh, I forgot about that.  The discriminator also feeds the peak detector, which usually prevents this state.  We're going to have a bit of a wait while the capacitors charge now."

"Only four shots?  Fooey.  How long does it take to charge?"

Phil shrugged.  "About 7 minutes per shot.  It used to be worse - I had to fire the whole bank at once, and it would take half an hour to charge."

"Still.  Erasing can be handy too, I guess."  Aggie peered into the pods.  "They'll come back if you break the entanglement, right?"

"M-hm," said Phil, distractedly.  Aggie knew that sound, and waited for Phil to finish chewing on whatever idea it was he was working on.  Until he started to pull open the panels on the machine fifteen minutes later.

"Wait!  I still want to see a mouse-pear."

Phil stopped.  "Uh... OK."  He peered at a dial on the capacitor bank.  "Two more shots, OK?  Then I've got something I want to try."

The next attempt was a failure like the first three.  But on the last shot, it worked.  Aggie was peering into the nearer pod as soon as the door swung out of the way, then frowned.  "What's wrong with the mouse?"  She picked it up, skritching the fur between its ears softly.  The mouse didn't react at all.

"That's Dolly's body, but the pear's mind, I suspect.  Used to get that in the mouse-mouse experiments at times, too.  It was funny to watch.  I put Dolly there in her cage with Betty, and since she had Charlie's mind, she tried to... well, you can guess."

"Oh," said Aggie, softly.  "Will she be OK?"

"As long as she's still breathing, her body should be fine."

Aggie peered at the mouse closely.  "I'm... not sure she is."

"Ack!  That's not good."  Phil slapped the big red abort button, and the mouse in Aggie's hands turned into a pear.  From the other pod came the shrill squeaking of a very upset mouse.

* * *

"OK.  That's a ten trials with the heterodyne discriminator enabled, and nothing strange has happened.  See, it's working fine!"

Aggie still didn't look convinced.  "Sorry, I just can't get Dolly's squeaking out of my head."

"She'll be fine by tomorrow.  Their memories are fairly short."  Phil sighed softly.  "Look, why don't you just go for that run anyway, and I'll keep testing while you're out."  He gave Aggie a hug, and then pulled her toward the stairs that led outside.

"But I was looking forward to wearing you..." Aggie pleaded.

"I know.  But do you want me to get into one of those pods right now?"

Aggie shook her head.

"Go run.  Get those clothes you mentioned.  I've got another idea to work on here, that may solve the problem of too many copies."

Aggie nodded, and padded up to the top of the stairs.  "I love you.  Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone, OK?"

Phil laughed.  "I'm not getting into those pods without you at the console, don't worry.  There's a reason I haven't built a timer circuit yet."

Aggie laughed, and nodded.  "Keep it that way, then."  

As she was going out the door, Phil called after her.  "Love you too."

* * *

Aggie returned several hours later with a bulging backpack on her back, and knocked loudly on the 'lab' door.  "Hey Madboy!  Open up!"

Phil was looking a bit unkempt when he opened the door, but he was grinning.  "It worked!"

"What worked?" Aggie asked, grinning with curiosity as she pulled Phil into a hug.

"I can erase things reliably."

"Oh?  That's... why would you want to do that, again?"

Phil shrugged, pulling back a bit from the hug so he could look Aggie in the face.  "We clone you, merge the clone with the slip... two slips.   You put one on, and then we erase the other.  No more lonely slip."

Aggie nodded along with Phil.  "Gotcha.  Or the same with you and my," she drew her finger over her hip, "running shorts."

Phil squirmed a bit as Aggie rubbed her hips against his, but also grinned.  "Yup.  I just have to make it more convenient to switch modes, now.  I've installed a new switch in the console, I just need to finish the new program that runs the system in the appropriate mode."

Aggie laughed, and stepped away from Phil.  "You're awfully hard to distract.  So... which mode is it in, now?"

"Erase mode - I was tweaking it until I was happy with the reliability.  Better than 83%, anyway.   The odd entanglement failure may slip in, but it should be rare."  Phil explained as they walked down the stairs.

"Cool.  I could use some meditation time, anyway."  Aggie dumped her backpack beside the console, then ducked into one of the pods, fully clothed.  "Go for it."

"But... I..."

"You can bring me back just fine, right?"

Phil nodded.

"And I'd just be a distraction while you finish up."

Phil nodded again.

"So erase me."  She folded her legs into a tinker's pose, her knees almost touching the walls of the pod.

"It might... be a while.  Half an hour, maybe an hour...  Are you going to be OK for that long?"

Aggie didn't answer - she appeared to already be in a trance.

Phil shook his head, and hit the button.  The cycle was exactly the same as before - the hiss of the doors closing on their hydraulics, the click of the power relays, the gentle siiigh of the doors re-opening in synch. When it ended, Aggie was gone.  He padded over to the pods just to be sure, on the unlikely chance just a bra or shoe had been copied.  Both pods were quite empty.

"Well, one more data point."  He quickly scribbled an annotation in his log, noting the time of erasure as well.

* * *

"Aggie?  Earth to Aggie, come in Aggie!"

"Mmmmrh?"

"Are you OK in there?  I'm sorry, it took longer than I thought."

"Mmmm fiiine."

Phil sighed with relief.  "Good.  Fine enough to get out of the pod?"

Aggie almost poured out of the pod, and took a few moments to steady herself on her hands and knees before trying to stand.  "That was very, *very* relaxing.  I feel at absolute peace with ... everything.  How long was I in there?  It felt like... hours.  Long enough time had no meaning any more."

Phil bobbed an apologetic nod.  "Yeah, it was about two hours.  Took a bit longer to get things set up just right."  He waved to the console, where a little green rocker switch now perched, with two neat labels beside it.  'Copy' and 'Erase'.

Aggie languidly drifted to the console, and ticked the switch back and forth once.  "Cool.  So what do you want to do tonight, Brain?"

"The same thing we do every night, Aggie - try to take over the world!"

Aggie giggled.  "I wouldn't want the world.  Too much like work."

Phil laughed.  "Bah, what would we know about work, anyway.  Well, other than classwork.  Did you ever finish your triple-major, by the way?"

Aggie shrugged.  "I'm going for a quintuple-major, now.  Three more classes this fall, then one single one in the spring and all five finish at the same time.  It's not like I'm really going to need it, though.  Dad's insurance pays more than I'm ever likely to need."

Phil nodded.  "I know.  They both had the same plan from their company, after all...  Getting the transporter working has been my only 'work' for so long now, I don't really know what to do next."

"Transporter?"

Phil laughed.  "That was the original idea, after all.  Quantum teleportation.  It's just gotten... a bit off track."

"How'd that paper go, anyway?  You must have enough for dozens by now."

Phil slumped down to sit on the bottom step of the stairs.  "Nobody has touched it.  Nobody thinks this is even remotely possible, no matter how much of a 'bright star' I might have been at Uni.  One scientist did try to reproduce the results, but... nothing.  It's depressing, really."

"You should go see what he did, maybe there's something simple he missed."

Phil nodded. "You're right.  He's up at Washington State, it wouldn't take too long to go up there.  He has my mouse-scale set, it was working here."

"So.  That covers next week.  What do you want to do tonight?"

Phil grinned at Aggie, and leaned in to kiss her.  Then a bit later he whispered into her ear, "I want to clone you, turn you into the slip, and have a repeat of last night."

Then his stomach growled.  "But maybe some dinner, first?"

Aggie laughed a bit too loud to hide her disappointment.  "OK.  Food, then Mad Science!"

* * *

Normally, Aggie would have spent some effort on cooking a dinner for herself and her new fiance.  But tonight promised to be anything but normal, so dinner was just spaghetti with sauce from a jar.  Once Phil's stomach was no longer rumbling, Aggie practically dragged him back downstairs.

Phil watched in bemusement as Aggie stripped naked and clambered into a pod.  "You're... quite keen on this."

"Yes!  Now flip the switch, madboy!"

Of course, the first attempt just erased Aggie.  She was starting to worry that they'd run out of charge before she got slipped, but the next try yielded two Aggies emerging from pods.  After a brief exchange of glances, the one from the 'receiver' pod stepped out.

"Wait... you're turning the original you into a slip?"

Aggie-two nodded.  "Remember the last time?  She's still convinced she swapped places with her slip."

"Ah.  Wait, you don't think so?  You're her..."

"I'm a copy of her.  Different perspective."

Phil just shook his head, and started the firing cycle.  The pods opened on two slips.

"Yay!  I don't think I could have waited through a recharge."

"Note to self: get a bigger capacitor bank.  Or find a way to reduce energy per firing cycle."

Aggie laughed, and picked up the slip in the 'transmitter' pod.  Phil chuckled when he noticed.  "So you'll be wearing the original?"

"That's what she was so frantically looking forward to."  Aggie shimmied into the slip, making a slow, sensuous dance of it.  Phil stared transfixed.

"C'mon, madboy.  Pick up that jaw, erase the lonely slip, and we can go upstairs, right?"

"Uh... right.  Yeah."  Phil's hand jabbed for the engage button, pulled back, toggled the erase, then started the cycle.  "Almost ended up with three slips, there."

"Ah well.  We could have made love on top of them.  Ooooh, we'll have to try that one.  Satin sheets."

Phil stumbled a bit as he heard that suggestion.  "I'm starting to think I'm not the creative one here."

"Nope.  Just the mad genius that makes it all possible.  What are you waiting for, let's go."

Phil popped Aggie's diamond ring out of the entanglement matrix.  "Just this. Otherwise it'll be a short trip.  Careful not to touch the stone or everything goes back to normal...  Um, how would we know?"

Aggie dragged Phil up the stairs.  "Trust me.  I'll know."

* * *

Phil flopped on his back, exhausted.  "That was incredible.  Even better than last time."

Aggie-two grinned at him.  "Let's see what Aggie-one thought of it."  She rubbed her hands over the rumpled black satin slip that she was still wearing.  "Or maybe I should wash her first."

Their eyes met.  "Naaah," they both said at once.

Phil reached to where the ring was sitting in its box on his nightstand.  "Ready?"

Aggie-two just grinned in anticipation.  Phil touched the stone, and yelped with surprise as Aggie collapsed back on the bed, twitching and moaning.  After a few moments of panic, he recognized the sound, it was the same erotic moan that her clone had been making a few minutes ago.

The first thing Aggie said after she regained her senses and sat up was, "I wish you had washed me."

Phil blushed and looked down.  "Oh.  You did get a bit messed up."

Aggie put a finger under his chin, lifting his gaze to hers.  "Not that.  I was really getting into being just a slip.  I was actually disappointed when I heard her say you weren't going to wash me. We are *so* doing that again.  Except for longer."

"Well, I'll try to work on my endurance..."

"No.  Well, that too.  But I want to be worn for a whole day, maybe even longer."

"But the ring is too easy to touch accidentally..."  Phil trailed off and his gaze went distant.

Aggie figured she'd have plenty of time to shower while he was working whatever-it-was out.  When she returned to his bedroom naked but for the towel turbaned atop her head, she was somewhat surprised that she had Phil's undivided attention.  After some cuddling, it was Aggie that brought the puzzle up again.  "Did you figure out how to let me stay a slip for longer?"

Phil nodded.  "All it would take is a hinged case around the diamond."

"Like a locket?  You want to turn my ring into a locket?"  Aggie tried not to let too much worry into her voice.

Phil still heard it, though.  "No!  I wouldn't do that, I know what the ring means to you.  I got three diamonds the same size with matching cuts, I'll use one of the other two."

Aggie grinned.  "Cool.  So you're going to make a custom diamond locket for me?"

"Well, get it made. I'm no silversmith. Or would you prefer gold?"

Aggie curled up next to her love as they both drowsed toward sleep.  "Either is fine."

* * *

The next morning Aggie cooked them both a proper breakfast, and they enjoyed a quiet, cozy morning together.  Inevitably, however, they ended up back in the lab.

"So what are we going to try today?" asked Aggie, eagerly.  She was almost bouncing with anticipation.

"You talked about wearing me as your pants.  But there are some tests I'd like to try, first," temporized Phil.

"Such as?"

"Well, for example - if we entangle an apple and a pear, getting two pears,"

"Or two apples," Aggie interjected.

"Yes, yes.  Or two apples.  But assuming we get two pears, and erase one of them, how far can we carry the other pear and your ring from the pods before it unentangles?  Where will the apple reappear?  And more importantly, what are the odds of the various outcomes?"

Aggie sighed.  "That sounds like a lot of test firings."

"Yes, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.  What if the apple just stays erased, permanently entangled with the pear?"

"Is that even possible?"  Aggie leaned forward, interestedly.

"Ah... well, no.  At the very least, erasing and unentangling the pear should fix things.  Hm."

"Ah," Aggie said.  Then she perked up a bit.  "Well, it's probably for the best - I'd hate for you to get stuck as my shorts and not be able to change you back."

"Exactly."  Phil looked over at his disappointed fiancee.  "How about this.  I'll do the range tests with your ring first, then you can have it for the rest of the morning as I finish up the other tests."

"What am I going to do, then?"

Phil shrugged.  "Go for your run, or show the ring to your friends...  Or maybe you could stay here and take notes while I run experiments?"

Aggie grinned.  "Ooh, I get to be promoted from victim to assistant?"

"It seems only fair, now that we're engaged and all."

Twelve firings and most of an hour later, Aggie complained, "I didn't realize that mad science involved quite so much paperwork."

Phil shrugged.  "Details matter.  They can matter a lot - you should see the volume of data the particle accelerator guys generate these days.  It's insane."

Aggie laughed.  "That's saying something, coming from you, madboy."

Phil laughed along with her.  "I guess."

After another dozen firings it was pretty clear that erasure was working reliably.  The missing object tended to appear either next to the ring, or next to the remaining object, with close enough to 50-50 odds (5 vs 7) that Phil figured it was pretty likely to be just that, once again.  Interestingly, the erased object never swapped with the remaining one.

Aggie sighed with ill-concealed irritation as Phil put the apple and pear in the pods again.  "We've run a dozen tests.  Isn't that enough?  It works."

"More data is always a good..."  Phil trailed off at the look he was getting from Aggie.

"You're afraid, aren't you."

Phil blushed, and stared at something fascinating on the floor beside his foot.  He mumbled, "maybe."

"You've had me in those pods a bunch of times, and who knows how many times you've entangled the mice."

"Eleven and one hundred seventy-three.  For you, and the mice collectively.  If you count per experiment, that is."

Aggie just rolled her eyes at Phil.

"Proper note-keeping is important.  What?"

"You're stalling.  Strip, and hop in."  Aggie tossed a pair of her running shorts in the left-hand pod.

Phil did as told, but hesitated at the entrance to the pod.  "You're sure you know how to run the panel, right?"

Aggie sighed.  "You let me do three of the runs with the apple and pear.  I remember.  Engage, take one out, set to erase, engage again."

Phil peered at the capacitor bank.  "Make sure there's at least one green light on the caps, too.  Otherwise it won't fire."

"I know!  We've been slaves to those lights the whole morning.  Get in!"

Phil hopped in, then huddled his arms around his legs to keep warm.  "I need to heat these..."  He stopped.  The door had closed.  That meant that in a moment, he'd become the subject of his own experiment.

There was no transition.  One moment he felt cold, the next he felt cold and oddly flat.  It didn't take very long to realize that it had worked - he was now a pair of Aggie's running shorts.  Well, one of two pairs, he couldn't tell which one.  He was a little surprised to hear the door of the pod open - he wasn't aware that clothing could hear.

Then... nothing.  He heard Aggie say something, but the echoes from inside the pod made it hard to say what.  So he just lay there.  Waiting.  He started to get bored, and began to realize just what Aggie had meant about not leaving a lonely slip behind.  It was almost a relief to hear the door shut again... until he realized it meant he was about to get erased.

Oh!  So that was what it felt like to be worn.  It took a little while for Phil to sort through both sets of memories, Aggie had put the other pair of running shorts on before erasing the lonely one.  This was so much better!  He could feel every curve of her body pressing against him everywhere.  It took a few beats before he realized that meant Aggie wasn't wearing panties.  There was a faint snicker from the back of his mind - the other half of his memories had already noticed, after all.

Phil continued trying to figure out where his senses mapped onto the shorts, but it didn't seem to work that way.  His sense of touch wasn't mapping to a hand here, or a face there.  It just...  Moving!

His whole body was moving and stretching without his volition, every fiber slipping against its neighbour.  He could feel every stretch, every slip of every fiber.  It was overwhelming - his mind tried to categorize the experience, but there was nothing to compare it to.  And it just didn't stop!  Move, flex, bounce.

He gathered his thoughts slowly.  Aggie had stopped moving, and he could feel warmth against his side - they must be outside, in the sun.  His hearing had been somewhat muffled since she put him on, but her voice resonated through him when she spoke, "Ready for the run?"

All that mind-melting experience had just been her walking up the stairs?  What was the run going to be...

Moving!

Every flex of his fabric drove home the overwhelming power of Aggie's legs.  He tried to marvel at it, at how she could bend him without even noticing the effort, but the thought slipped away.  Move, flex, rub.  He tried to cling to the notion that he was human, but the sensory input denied it.  Every flex of his fibers described his shape, and that shape was defined by his owner.

He grasped for something to define himself as not-pants.  Math!  Six times nine is... move, flex.  Six plus nine is... bounce, rub.  Counting?  It could count the bounces, each of those was a … nevermind.  One, two, three, four, bounce, five, bounce, um... bounce, bounce, bounce.  Ounce, ounce, ounce.  One, one... oh.  Oh, oh, oh.

A very long time later, the pants felt cold and lonely.  They were empty, lying on something hard, not moving.  There was a strange rushing sound in the distance, and something in them remembered that it was the sound of falling water.  Then the most amazing sounds drifted over the pants, an angelic choir singing.  Their owner wasn't far away, and her voice kept them content in her absence.

Aggie was singing cheerfully in the shower after her run, re-wording an old Cyndi Lauper song.  "Girls just wanna go run... with their boy clinging to their bum."  She giggled, and kept singing.  After the shower, she ran her fingertips over her running shorts lovingly.

"Oh, Phil.  That was such fun.  I do hope you won't mind if I wear you a little longer."

The pants hadn't really sorted language out, though it was making progress.  They could tell that their owner was addressing them, and the encouraging tone of her voice made them happy - their lonely isolation was going to end.  Warmth touched them, and swung them about.  Then they were full again, and warm.  All was well.  Moving!

Bounce, bounce, bounce.  Oh, oh, oh...

Time had little meaning when you're being worn, the pants reflected.  They weren't now.  In fact, something was very odd indeed.  They weren't pants-shaped any more.  They were... moving under their own power?  Well, not very much, just flexing about the middle a bit, making a faint sort of noise near the top.  There was another noise, a concerned one.  The pants opened its eyes, reflexively focusing on the worried face of its owner.

Aggie asked again, low and concerned, "Are you OK, Phil?"

Phil... that seemed familiar, somehow.  He knew two things for certain.  This was the person he loved, and she was worried about him.  He tried to figure out how to communicate, but had trouble with the concept of words.  So he kissed her.  That seemed to make her happy.  Then he worshipped her body much the way he had as pants, and her ecstatic noises made him happy, too.

Aggie tried her best to be quiet, but it was nearly impossible.  Once she'd come down a bit, and cuddled up next to Phil, she had to ask.  "Where did all that come from?"

Phil struggled for words.  "I … love … you.  You were... sad.  No speak.  Kiss."

Aggie shushed him.  "Not so loud," she whispered.  "We're in my bedroom.  I hope Mom didn't hear."

"Oh she heard, alright," same a stern voice from the door.

"Oh crap."

Phil was unceremoniously deposited on his Mother's doorstep in a pair (the pair) of Aggie's shorts and an ill-fitting T-shirt.

* * *

The next morning, Aggie called and apologized for her mother's behaviour.  Phil knew Aggie's mother was strict, and if he'd known they were at Aggie's place... ah well.  He was a bit surprised when Aggie asked to come over, though.  

"After all that, she didn't ground you?" Phil asked when Aggie met her at the lab door.

Aggie laughed with a hint of bitterness behind it.  "I've had full access to my share of the insurance for a year now.  If she pushes too hard, she knows I'll leave - I could afford a place of my own.  But that's sort of cutting off my nose to spite my face - staying at home is a lot easier when I'm studying.  She's way better at cooking than I am, too.  She did mention a curfew, though...  If I'm not home by dinnertime, no dinner for me."

They had walked downstairs while Aggie was talking.  "Ouch.  She has you there - she's a great cook.  Still, we have the afternoon.  What do you want to do?"

"Go shopping!  We need to get you some nicer clothes."

"Sounds fun," Phil said, unenthusiastically.

Aggie walked over to the entanglement controls.  "I think I can find a way to keep your interest."

Phil grinned.  "Do tell."

"Strip, and hop in.  I need to duplicate you first.  You haven't messed with it, have you?"

Phil was shucking off his clothes, and shook his head.  "Took me the rest of the evening to get my head on straight.  I didn't want to tinker while I still had trouble with words.  The math came back pretty quickly, though."

"You were really out of it at the end.  Are you sure you're OK?"

Phil clutched his shirt defensively in front of his naked body.  "As far as I can tell.  I even did an IQ test earlier, and it came out around the usual.  It's hard to be sure, though.  Do I seem normal to you?"

Aggie laughed.  "Normal is so not a word I'd use to describe you.  You're acting about the way I expect you to, so I guess you're OK.  Any ideas why it hit you so hard?"

"I'm not sure.  I spent longer as shorts than you did as a slip, but my mind seemed to go pretty much as soon as you started moving."

Aggie sighed wistfully and her gaze went distant.  "That was the best part, yeah.  When the person wearing you moves your whole being moves with them, and you know you're just a bit of fabric.  I just went with the flow, let myself be the slip."

Phil grinned.  "That does sound familiar.  Except I tried to fight it and failed.  You have a very distracting bottom."

Aggie turned a bit and waggled it at him.  "Don't I just."

Phil thought for a bit.  "What about language.  You said after being restored that you'd heard us talk about washing you.  I couldn't understand anything you said after 'Ready for the run?'"

"I... huh.  It's hard to tell.  I remember hearing it as Aggie-two, but I'm not sure the slip could tell more than tone of voice.  I just remember feeling disappointed that I wasn't going to still be..."

"Useful?"  Phil supplied.

"Close, yeah."

"Hm, memories.  That might be part of it - Aggie-two never lost her language skills, so when you recombined you were fine."

Aggie tilted her head thoughtfully.  "Makes sense.  I'll have to try it your way some time.  But for now, I have a different plan.  Get in the pod, already."

Phil nodded as he ducked into the pod.  "So just what is the plan, then?"

"You'll see."  Aggie pressed the button, cutting off Phil's questioning.  When the doors opened, the pods were empty.  "Drat."

The next try came up empty too, so they were down three charges by the time two Phils emerged.  They looked at each other from the doorways, and nodded.  The right-hand Phil spoke up.  "This is... huh.  Actually, it doesn't seem different at all.  I can just see another me."

"No fair, you planned ahead."  Aggie grinned.

"Well, yeah.  Seemed to work for you.  So, now what?"  Both Phils stood in the doors of their respective pods, hands protectively over their groins.

"You get dressed, your copy goes back in the pod."  By the time Phil was done, Aggie had stripped and was getting into the other pod.

"Well.  This will be interesting," Phil quipped.  "Engage!"

Two Aggies peered out of the pods, with slightly disappointed looks on their faces.  "I'm just me," the right-hand one said.  "I thought you'd be, I don't know... somewhere in there."

Phil shrugged. "Your body, you're the one in control.  Unless we turn the heterodyne discriminator off, then there's a slight chance of reversing that."

"That's what got the mouse so upset - I'll pass.  Do you think you're properly entangled with me, though?  You'll see what I see, and all that?"

"Should be, yeah.  Only one way to find out for sure, though," Phil said, reaching for the big red abort button.

"Wait!  I don't want to have to wait half an hour to get this set up again.  We'll find out later.  For now, it's time for me to get dressed."

"And for me to get erased," chimed in Aggie-two.  "Unless you wanted to go out as twins."

Phil and Aggie-one exchanged glances.  "Might attract a bit too much attention.  We'll have enough charge to erase you in a minute or so."

Aggie-two slinked up to Phil while he was trying not to watch Aggie-one dress, and gave him a big hug and kiss.  Phil gleeped softly from the surprise, then quickly got into the swing of it.  

"All right," Aggie-one said with a grin, "Knock it off you two.  We have a green light, time to erase my sneaky twin."

"Sneaky?  I just wanted a good memory to send back to you."  She grinned back at her duplicate.  "And maybe for Phil, too."

Aggie-two hopped into the pod.  "Catch you on the flip-side."

Phil set the erase switch, and one button-press later both he and Aggie got distant looks on their faces.  Aggie recovered first, and was watching Phil as he came out of it.

"I take it you got a chunk of memory back, too?"

Phil blushed a bit, and nodded.  "It was... interesting.  I couldn't do anything, but I could see what you saw, feel what you felt.  I couldn't hear your thoughts, but I could sort of feel your emotions.  Feeling turned on when I looked at me was a bit disorienting."

Aggie grinned.  "What about the kiss?  That was a good one."

Phil wrapped his arms around himself.  "That was really nice.  It's fascinating to have the memory of it from both sides, now."

"Hm.  We'll have to try that the other way around so I can see.  But that can wait.  For now, shopping!"

Phil extracted Aggie's ring from it's mount in the entangling machine.  "Don't forget this, or it'll be a short trip."

At the mall, Aggie tried to go easy on Phil.  She already had a few stores in mind, so she wouldn't be dragging him all over the mall.  Their first stop was to get Phil some shirts that fit - his shoulders had broadened a fair bit this summer, and his shirts were showing the strain.  Phil was able to concede that the shirts Aggie wanted him to buy looked quite nice, and felt more comfortable to boot.  While his 'Mad Science' budget was tapped out, he had quite a bit left in his personal goods budget, so he bought all five shirts, and a couple pairs of pants that Aggie claimed would go well with all of them.

Buoyed by this early success, Phil was quite patient with Aggie as she hunted for some nice dresses.  "For future dates," she claimed.  Aggie made sure to show off each one that fit, and Phil quite enjoyed the show.  He even applauded softly at a shiny red dress that hugged her figure like it was made for her specifically.  Aggie bought two of those, one in purple.

After a lunch break spent chatting idly about clothes and colour, Aggie dragged Phil off to the raciest lingerie shop in the mall.  Phil blushed brightly when she pulled him inside, and it only got worse as she collected a variety of outfits, asking him what he thought of each one.  Most of his replies were incoherent, but still gave Aggie a pretty good idea which ones had the most impact.

That was nothing compared to what happened next.  Aggie carried her armload of satiny treasures to a changeroom, and the limited radius of the entanglement gave Phil no choice but to follow right up to the door.

"What are you doing, Aggie?" Phil asked in a desperate whisper.  "The other me will see everything..."

Aggie poked her head out of the door, grinning wickedly.  "Sweetie, that's the point.  I get to give you a peepshow in the mall, and nobody will notice anything.  Don't go anywhere, this'll be fun."

Phil sat in the chair by the changeroom, staring out at the store and trying to ignore Aggie's comments as she tried on this outfit or that.  His cheeks were on fire, of course.  At one point he felt a surge of arousal, just before Aggie commented, "Ooh, this one's a keeper.  It's even turning me on..."

Once Aggie had bought the three outfits she'd decided on, they were off into the mall again.  She gave Phil a solid kiss just outside the store.  "That's for being a good sport."

"Thanks.  I'll get used to this, I'm sure.  Somehow."  Phil grinned.

"And now, our next quest - the washrooms!"  Aggie announced.

"Um..."

Aggie shushed Phil, and dragged him down the side hallway that led to the nearest washroom.  Once they were away from prying eyes, she stopped.  "OK, this will have to do.  Obviously, you can't come in the washroom with me, which means we're going to have to break the entanglement."

Phil looked relieved.  "That would be a bit too intimate, yeah."

"Besides, it has been such a pain to keep from touching my ring.  I nearly messed up twice at lunch, and again while trying on the outfits."  Aggie touched the diamond of her engagement ring.

Phil got shaken from his memory-integration reverie by uproarious laughter.  He looked over at Aggie, and frowned.  "Why are you wearing a shirt...  Oh.  That would explain the sudden tightness around my chest."

Phil started laughing as well.  "That's a new one.  I'm glad you were wearing a loose dress."

Aggie wiped the tears from her eyes.  "But you look so cute in a dress."

Phil's gaze went distant for a bit.  "We did, didn't we?  But it's better on your body than mine.  Hopefully nobody's going to catch us."  He tried to pull the dress over his head, but got tangled up in it instead.  "Um, a little help?"  Aggie's laughter burst forth once again, but she did get her fiance untangled and undressed.  

Phil was slow to hand over her skin-tone panties, running his fingertips over them gently.  "These feel amazing, almost like skin.  How'd you get such a good skin-tone match?  You looked amazing just in these, to be honest."

Aggie grinned, and took them out of Phil's hands, exchanging them for his shirt.  "Special order.  And they feel even better than they look.  You should try being them sometime."

Phil grinned back.  "I'd like that.  It'd feel like I was almost a part of you."  

Aggie vanished into the women's washroom, and tossed the rest of Phil's clothes out at him shortly thereafter.  He took his time dressing, often wandering off into the memories of the past few hours riding in Aggie's body.  She felt amazing, moved so easily... maybe he should start exercising more, if that's how it made you feel.

For all his protests, he spent most of his time recalling the way Aggie looked in her sexy outfits.  The pulse of lust that the one outfit had triggered was interesting... he'd felt it at the same time in both forms.  Perhaps there was more than just forms entangled...

"Earth to Phil, come in Phil."

Phil laughed, and accepted a hug from Aggie.  "Sorry.  Lost in memories."

"I can guess which ones."

Phil's blush was more than adequate answer.

"Soo... was there anything you wanted to buy at the mall, sweetie?" asked Aggie.  "I've had my fun."

Phil took a moment to get oriented, then nodded.  "Actually, there is.  We need to find you a locket."

So off they went to the jewelery store.  Aggie took her time looking over the display of silver lockets, asking to see a few.  Phil had to reject a few as being too shallow - there had to be room to enclose a modest sized diamond without touching the front or back.  Once they found a workable locket, Phil asked to see the store's jeweller.

A somewhat wizened gentelman emerged from the back and came out to shake Phil's hand.  "Phil!  And I assume this is the Aggie you were speaking of.  I see she's wearing my handiwork.  Congratulations!"

"Thanks Mr. Tyg... er Trig...."

"Just call me Otto.  So, do you have another interesting job for me?"

Phil handed him the locket.  "I need this socketed for another diamond like the one in the ring, with the same sort of insulated setting.  It can't touch the lid of the locket when closed."

"The princess cut pale blue..." Otto trailed off.

"Yes, the boronated synthetics, like the other."  Phil wondered why Otto was shaking his head.

"I'll have it ready in a few days.  Can you bring the stone in tomorrow?"

"Of course."

Aggie practically dragged Phil out of the store.  "The diamond in my engagement ring is synthetic?"

Phil looked a bit worried.  Aggie had never taken that icy tone with him before.  "It's a real diamond, just created in a lab.  The boron gives it that pretty blue tinge, and some really nice electrical characteristics."

"But it's a fake diamond!"  Aggie protested.

Phil shook his head, brow furrowed in puzzlement.  "No, it's chemically the same as a mined diamond.  No flaws, either."

"It's not the same thing."

Phil cast about for a way out of this mess. "Uh... think of it as a mad science diamond?"

Aggie tilted her head a bit and considered that.  Then much to Phil's relief she grinned.  "That is so sweet!"

Phil smiled back.  "I'm very glad you think so."

On the drive home, they chatted about their day, mostly comparing how various events had seemed to Phil-as-Aggie and how they'd seemed to her.  There had been a sort of convergence toward the end, at least until the lingerie store.  Phil had started feeling Aggie's intention to move before she moved, and it had given him the illusion that he was actually moving Aggie's body under his own volition.

Once they got to Phil's place, they found a wrinkle in their plans - Phil's mother's car was in the driveway.  Aggie sighed as she got out of the car, "I guess that ends our experiments.  Fooey."

Phil took her hand, and led her up to the front door.  "Come on, we at least have to say hi."

They found Phil's Mom, Judy, puttering in the kitchen.

"Mom, I'd like you to meet Agatha."

Judy looked at him like he was crazy.  It was a well-practiced look.  "I know who Aggie is."

"She's my fiancee."

Judy embraced the younger woman fiercely.  "So he finally figured it out, huh?  About time.  Congratulations!  I guess you'll be wanting to sleep over from time to time, then?"

Aggie nodded uncertainly.  "That would be OK?"

"Of course!"

"Best mother-in-law-to-be ever!"