“Sir? I mean, Ma'am?” a voice said immediately after the sound of knuckles rapped on the door frame.

Without looking up from the files in front of her, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Martina Sapretti said, “Yes?”

“There was a hit on the Venn-3 protocol that was unusual,” Agent Lisa Cho said.

Martina dropped the file they were holding and stood up, “When? Where?”

“A machine in Westchester,” Cho said following Sapretti out of his office. She continued as they walked to the operations room, “Two men entered the machine a couple hours ago. We have identity on one of them as a missing person from almost exactly three years ago. We're still working on identifying the other man.”

In the operations room were Agents Meadows and Burkes. They were scanning through face recognition software trying to identify someone.

“What do we know about the missing person?” Martina asked.

Cho pointed to one of the monitors. It showed an image of a man stepping into a Venn machine. She said, “Jack Hardigen, age 34, 5' 11”, 170 pounds, dark hair, blue eyes, tattoo of a parrot on his upper right arm. No family. He was reported missing by his place of work, Ryan Holdings, LLC, three years ago. Based on the timeline in the police report, he was last seen yesterday three years ago until he was caught by the Venn-3 protocol entering this Venn Machine.

Martina was in charge of a FBI specialize crimes unit involving Venn Machines. Several months ago his wife had been venned by a criminal who considered himself a mastermind. She was still out there somewhere, trapped as one or more paintings until her probably three year Venn timed out. Martina set up the Venn-3 protocol to monitor all long term venns. When one occurred, agents on his task force immediately checked the surveillance footage and made a record of who entered the machine. Already several suspicious venns had been investigated and a few people arrested for tricking people into long term venns they really had not wanted. The Venn-3 protocol was only active in a few FBI offices for a trial period.

“So this guy disappears for three years and then immediately returns to the Venn machine for another three year stint. This was probably voluntary,” Meadows said.

“Then why didn't he quit his job properly?” Cho said. She hit a few keys on a keyboard and the security footage on one of the monitors rewinds quickly. “Also, you should see how he came out.”

After watching the monitor for a moment, Martina said, “Who's the other guy?”

“We're still trying to find out.”

“Got a license plate in the parking lot,” Burkes announces. “Stanley Lyons, 28, 5'9”, 150 pounds, light brown hair, brown eyes, married. I'm looking up the marriage data. Address is local to the Venn machine.” One of the screens is already showing a satellite view of a decent sized house in a quiet suburban neighborhood on what looks like a sixth of an acre, built-in pool in the backyard.

“We need to talk to Stanley,” Martina said.

* * *

A black car arrived at the street. Several cars were already parked in front of the house and in the driveway. Birthday balloons, pink and silver in color, swayed on the mailbox by the curb.  Special Agent Cho was about to get out of the car when Sapretti said, “We're early. Let's observe.”

After a while, a car arrived and a woman got out of the car and went to the front door. She rang the bell and the door to the house opened. Even across the street they could hear the sound of children laughing and playing.

Stanley Lyons answered the door and they shook hands as she was invited in.

“Plates belong to a Donald Kowalsky. Address is local to the area,” Cho said.

A few moments later the woman was leaving with a little girl, presumably her daughter.

“I believe the birthday party is about to wind down. We'll wait until the other kids are picked up before knocking on the door,” said Martina.

Shortly, the agents knocked on the door of the house. When the door is answered, the deputy director raised his hand and presented an official looking identification card. “I'm Martina Sapretti, we spoke on the phone yesterday. This is Special Agent Cho. May we come in.”

“Oh, the house is a wreck right now,” the owner of the house said. “Let's talk here on the porch.” He directs the two FBI agents to chairs on the porch.

“You are Stanley Lyons?” Cho said.

“Yes. You didn't tell me what this is about.”

“We're investigating a missing person report, one Jack Hardigen, reported missing three years ago yesterday.”

The man eye widened slightly. “And you think I know something about this because?”

“Because you and Mr. Hardigen entered the Venn machine at the Wilcox Mall last night around midnight.”

“I understand. Can we table this for a moment? You really need to speak with Lily. But I don't want my wife thinking there's something unusual going on.”

“You don't think she's going to find out.”

“Not if I can help it. I'll see if I can get Lily away from her mother.” Stanley goes inside.

A few minutes later, a little girl, three years old according to the balloons steps out the door. When she sees the people on the porch her demeanor completely changes from that of a carefree child to the guarded look of someone aware the eyes of the law are upon them.

She sits down on one of the chairs. “What can I do for you, officers?”

“This is Senior Special Agent Cho and I'm Deputy Assistant Director Sapretti of the FBI. We'd like to ask you a few questions about your Venning last night and probably the one before that.”

“Like I told Daddy – Stanley – yesterday. I don't know what happened. But I can tell you what happened to me last night.”

* * *

Confusion.

The bed is much smaller. The room is smaller. Everything is small. Pajamas are missing. Daddy shoes on feet in bed?

“Mom?” a strangely deep voice rumbles forth. “Mom?!” more frantic this time.

The door to the room opens and a man's voice said, “What's the matter, Lily Willy?”

“Daddy?” again the speaking voice is strangely deep.

“Who are you?” The father demanded. “What are you doing in my daughter's room? Where is she?”

“I'm right here, Daddy,” said the adult man laying in her bed. His lip quivered in fear and tears welled up in his eyes. “Oh, god.”

“What?” The man at the door said.

“Daddy, I mean, um, Stanley. Oh, god,” the man in the bed said. “I was venned.”

“Where is my daughter?”

“I was venned, Stanley,” the man got out of bed. “I'm your daughter. I'm Lily. I've been Lily all this time. Oh, god!”

“How in hell can you be Lily?”

“You took me for ice cream last week. You didn't tell Mo- Anna about it because you also had ice cream even though your doctor has told you not to. You even said to me, don't tell Mommy.”

Stanley was confused. “O-okay but you could have just observed me and Lily having ice cream.”

Jack told Stanley of other things they had done. Secrets only a child could witness. After a while they were silent. Jack sat on Lily's bed hugging the plush bear Lily always hugged. “What do we do, Da- Stanley?” Jack asked.

Stanley noticed Jack was hugging the bear exactly how Lily would do so. “Your-- Lily's mother will be devastated if Lily just disappears.”

“I don't know if I even want to be a grown up any more.”

“How did you end up here?”

“I don't remember. I remember going into the Venn machine and then everything being really big. I remember a face picking me up and carrying me out but it gets hazy after that.”

“Anna was pregnant. I don't think she gave birth to you. Someone must have switched you with our actual daughter.”

“Oh, god. Are you going to turn me in to the police? I swear I have no idea how I got here? I want to go back to being Lily.”

“Really?”

“I do,” Jack said with a sniff.

* * *

“We snuck out of the house and went to the venn machine at the mall. It took some time but Stanley finally got me looking right. This feels right,” Lily said.

“And you have no idea how you became Lily in the first place?” Martina said.

“I thought about it last night. I remember meeting a woman at a bar. We talked. She got this idea in my head how cool it would be to reborn. I guess she was convincing. But I really don't remember anything else about her. I wasn't drunk. But I don't remember a lot of things about Jack Hardigen. It's like that life was a dream.”

“You don't sound like a three year old now.”

“When I woke up this morning I'd forgotten all about Jack. Daddy came in my room this morning and said, 'we good?' and I had no idea what he was talking about at first. During the party, I was just Lily. It wasn't until Daddy said the FBI wants to talk to me that I remembered Jack. I'm guessing I'll forget him again once you leave.”

“The machines don't do that to people,” Cho said.

“Don't they?” Martina said. “If Jack, or Lily, wanted to be a child, she could slip into the role easily. When she was in an infant's body was her brain developed sufficiently to maintain both personalities? Apparently not.

“What I don't understand is what this woman got out of doing this to Jack,” Stanley said.

“Well,” Martin said. “If your wife gave birth to baby and Lily isn't that baby, where is that baby now?”

* * *

Martina and Cho returned to headquarters. They managed to get Jack to remember the woman was fair-skinned, dark-haired and wearing a blue dress. The bar called Rico's, located about ten miles from the Venn machine at this mall. Agents were sent to the bar to see if the woman could be tracked down

A few days later there was a group meeting to discuss what had been discovered so far. Burke gave a rundown of what was happening. “The team we sent to the bar came up empty. Rico's had changed ownership two years ago and the staff had completely turned over. None of the regulars remembered Jack's face.

“Memorial Hospital, from where Lily was supposed to be born, has cooperated. We have the

names of all the people in the OBGYN section of the hospital from three years ago. It's a long list and we are still trying to figure out who was on call while Mrs. Lyons was a patient there. Persons of interest include:

“Dr. Sam Embry, ob specialist, 52. He lives in Pittsburgh. He was an attending physician at the birth and he quit the next day for personal reasons.

“Paula Utridge, RN, 31. She was hired a few weeks before the birth. And was fired for absenteeism a week after the patient's time there. Whereabouts currently unknown.

“Ivan Stavosky, janitor, 38. He went missing a few weeks later. The city police believed he skipped town to avoid arrest for working on an expired visa.”

“That's not a lot to work with.”

“It is a three year old mystery that no one noticed at the time.”

“What happened to the actual child?” Martina said. “This is a kidnapping case. Regardless of Mr. Hardigen's willingness to remain with the Lyons family, their child was taken from them and a decoy left behind. Where is the real Lily Lyons?”

* * *

A few weeks passed and most of the leads had gone cold. Martin was watching an interview with someone involved with another long term Venn.

The man in the video was nervous. A voice off-camera said, “Utensils? Kitchenware?”

“Oh yes, it is very fulfilling.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“Where to begin?” The man said sitting up straight in his chair. “Imagine being a spoon, cold from the drawer, being dipped into warm, fragrant soup. Your bowl-head warms with the soup and you are raised to someone's lips. They blow warm air, though colder than the soup, across your surface. Then you slip into their mouth. Their lips clamp down around you and you slide through those lips as the press against your bowl.”

He became more excited as he continued. “But that's just the spoon. You're also the knife and fork. Your tines are warm, deep in the flesh of a steak as the blade parts the meat like butter. You can feel the meat sliding against your front and back sides at the same time. Then the fork takes a journey to the mouth just like the spoon. And someone is spreading butter with you and someone else is licking you clean.

“But the best part is when all my parts are together in the dishwasher....”

“Sir,” Meadows interrupted as he paused the video. “Mr. Arthur just gets weirder from there. We asked the utensils' owner if they were using the 'pleasure' instruction in the Venn machine and they admitted to using it a few times on their friend here.”

“Unfortunately that isn't a crime, yet.”

“No, but we suggested that they go back into the Venn machine and do a shorted-term change that didn't include it to see if Mr. Arthur still wants to be silverware for three years.”

“Keep me posted about it,” Martina said.

* * *

Assistant Director of Venn investigations Paul Jimenez knocked on Martina's office door. “How's the experiment going?”

“Well,” Martina said. “Aside from the occasional 'Sir, I mean Ma'am,' everyone seems to be okay with it.”

“I meant how are you feeling about it?”

“Good. I was trying to use the machines every weekend. But asking someone to venn you each week, the first thing they say is why not set the machine for a month or two? So I finally did that. I feel closer to Claire when I'm Martie. At home I'm Martie.” Martina reached into their purse and dabbed at her eye to stop a tear from running down her cheek. Martina almost chuckled because it was the emotional expression Paul was asking about. It was the chance their makeup might run.

At the mention of Martina's wife, Paul could not help but look at the painting on the wall. It was a painting of Martin Sappreti's wife. One of an unknown number of copies. “At least you know it's only temporary.”

“I do.”

“Any luck on the Jack Hardigen case?”

“Totally dried up,” Martina said, setting aside the purse. “It's a missing child case where the child is not missing at all. Instead we have a second child who isn't a child but is a child.”

“You wanted to form a task force around those machines.”

“Well, I was expecting more cases like the garden post case. The man was turned into a garden post and when his friend planted his tomatoes, he lost track of which post was the man. I have an agent who will be following up on that at harvest time.”

“I'd still like to know where those machines came from.”

“I'll let the NSA and CIA figure that out.”

* * *

A few months passed.

Agent Cho arrived at the Chicago office and after meeting the local investigators was taken to an interrogation room where she met a distraught father.

“Who would want to take our little Sandra?”

“Mr. Hines, can you just tell me once again what happened? I know you've told the fine agents here your story but I'd rather hear it from you than to read some cold report.”

He nodded and told her the same story she had heard several times before. They tucked their daughter into bed, read her her favorite bed time book, and saw her go to sleep. In the morning she did not come down to breakfast and when they searched for her, there was no sign of her. No sign of a break in. Nothing. They called the police. The police took a bunch of fingerprints in conjunction with the FBI agents.

“This may sound odd,” Cho said. “But did Sandra have any weird quirks? Such as learning language early or motor skills early?”

“Oh, yes, she could count to fifty long before most kids can get to ten. She would sometimes use words that we wondered where she even heard them before, let alone using them correctly. She even was speaking in sentences early. She was very gifted. We were very hopeful for her future.”

* * *

Martin was in his office when Cho and Meadows knocked on his door frame. “Sir?”

“Got something?”

“The Hardigen case. We think we found a pair of hits. Two three year old children reported missing within a week of each other, both families live in the Chicago area. Both children were born in the same hospital. The most recent was yesterday. There's no Venn-3 team in Chicago.

“Last week, Tommy Delvecchio, age 3, was reported missing. The parents say they put him to bed and in the morning he was gone. No forced entry. Nothing stolen.

“Yesterday, same thing occurred to Sandra Hines, age 3.”

“There must be some way we can find these adults. We can only assume they freaked out when their Venn ended and they sneaked out of the house. Anything show up on the cams.”

“One lived in a suburban area, no street cameras near the house. The other had a few hits on some store cameras but nothing definitive.

“The good thing is we got another hit on Paula Utridge. She was working in that hospital at the time and then moved on a few weeks after the second child was born.”

“Do we know where she is?” Martin asked.

“Phoenix. She's been moving around the country for the last five years, never staying anywhere longer than three to four months.”

“Could she have been doing this for these last three plus years? Even at only 1 child a month that would be forty or more people she trapped in baby bodies and forty or more couples whose children aren't their children.”

“It's possible, Sir.”

“How long has she been in Phoenix?”

“A couple weeks.”

“Setup surveillance of the Phoenix Venn machines. Get the local office involved. We're creating a Venn-3 branch in Phoenix. I'll talk to Paul about sending some of us to Arizona.”

* * *

Martin and Special Agents Franklin and Dobbs of the Phoenix office were sitting in the security office of Wyndmoore Hospital watching the feed feed from within the nursery. Paula Utridge had triggered the Venn-3 protocol at a Venn machine the night before.

“If she already venned someone illegally, why haven't we arrested her yet?”

“Because we don't know what happens to the real babies yet,” Martin said. “The marks are turned into babies and substituted for the real babies in the nursery. What happens to the real babies? We assume she has some kind of arrangement for illegal adoption. But we don't know how this happens.

“We've got a tap on her phone and found out she's meeting someone at five but the details don't exist.”

A few moments later, Franklin says, “We have Utridge on external camera heading for the staff entrance.”

“Follow her movements, we don't know when the switch will happen.”

“She's not carrying a baby.”

“No, she isn't,” Martin said. “Pay attention to anyone entering with a baby.

An hour later Franklin said, “Got one. I'm sending the image back to HQ to identify the suspect. The suspect, a woman in her thirties went to the cafeteria. A few minutes later, Utridge was in the cafeteria. Utridge left the cafeteria with the baby. Franklin immediately started scanning backwards through the security footage to find out how the unidentified woman had arrived at the hospital.

Meanwhile, Utridge took the baby to a room in the maternity wing and left without it. She traveled to the nursery and picked up a child and left. It looked like she was doing the paperwork for bringing a child to their mother. She went back to the cafeteria and gave the child to the unidentified woman who prepared to leave.

“Dobbs, arrest Utridge. We have her on tape making the switch. Franklin, let's go arrest that other woman.”

* * *

The fake baby was retrieved from the mother. She was rather upset when a bassinet was setup in her hospital room containing the real baby. The baby was no longer allowed in the nursery as it had left the maternity ward area. The fake baby was taken to a Venn machine where it was restored to adulthood. At headquarters, the man who had been venned had no idea what was going on.

Paula Utridge was tight lipped and would not say anything but that she wanted a lawyer.

The other woman was more forthcoming. She ran an illegal adoption agency that was known for its ability to find babies that were known to be clean of drugs. She ratted out her partners and volunteered to help with finding the lost children.

Martin was on the phone to Paul Martinez. “Case is closed but we need to turn this over to social services in about 15 states. There are people who knowingly falsely adopted these children. But some of the children are approaching four and even five years old according to the records. We're still connecting all the dots. But there are seven missing children cases that tie back to this scam and another 26 where the venned victims are still toddlers or younger.”

“Good work, Martin.”

“It doesn't feel like good work.”

“You can't control the fallout of something you didn't know about,” Paul says. “Take a few days in Phoenix before reporting back in. I'm sure Martie will enjoy the weather down there.”

* * *

Martie managed to tour five museums in the last three days. Whenever she traveled, she checked the local museums. Once again she had no luck finding a copy of the painting she really had not expected to find.