"I have no idea," conceded Tara. "But how else wouldn't everyone know by now?"
"I always thought maybe nobody discovered it here until now, but...we know that can't be it," said Alyssa. "I mean, her grandpa knew about it." She gestured to Sophia. "Who knows who else does? Why else would he want to keep it secret?"
"Maybe he was worried about the same thing," suggested Tara.
"Actually, I have an idea why some people might want it to stay a secret," said Sophia.
Everyone gave her their attention.
"Well, I mean, I've thought about it a lot since I was a kid, and...well first, how powerful is this exactly?"
"What do you mean?" asked Kat, who had jumped back out of the stereo not long before.
"Like what can you do when you possess...imprint on something?"
"Oh, we use it for all kinds of stuff where I'm from. It just becomes your body. Then you control it however you want just like your regular body." Kat waved her arm around to demonstrate the type of "control" she was comparing it to. "Real nice thing to have. Course until I found myself here I always just took it for granted like everyone else."
"How did you get here exactly?" asked Sandra, joining the conversation. "You said you're from another dimension, right?"
"Yeah," answered Kat. "I wish I knew how it happened though. All I know is I was driving home, then there was this big flash, and suddenly I didn't know where I was. I crashed my car 'cause a tree appeared out of nowhere."
"Oh my god, were you okay?" asked Sophia.
"Yeah, of course. I was imprinted on my car; my body was safe."
Sandra idly gazed upwards as she thought about the possibilities for using imprinting to protect people from injury. That, and the wealth of knowledge and technology to learn from that was sure to exist in other dimensions, if only someone would discover a reliable way to travel between them.
"Oh, that's what I was going to ask!" exclaimed Sophia. "So you can imprint on cars?"
"Yep, certainly the best way to drive," said Kat. "And until recently I never knew any other way...hey, wait, didn't your grandpa imprint on a toy car?"
"Yes," said Sophia. "But a real car's a lot bigger..."
"Eh, it's pretty much the same," said Kat. "'Cept I can go much faster of course, with an engine and everything."
"What's the biggest thing you can do it with? Can you become the whole Earth?"
"No, that would be cool though!" Kat laughed.
"And dangerous," added Sophia. "What if you accidentally—or intentionally—caused some disaster? Something apocalyptic?"
"Eek, true," said Kat.
"Then I'd understand people wanting to keep it a secret," added Tara.
"Yeah, that would be a problem if people could do that and knew how," said Kat. "Course if the only thing stopping anyone who wants to from destroying the whole planet is that they don't know what they can do...I dunno, I think that would be the real problem."
"What do you mean?" asked Alyssa.
"I'm just saying it would be kind of stupid to rely on that, like what if someone finds out? What are you gonna do? It's their own ability; until they actually use it for something bad they really aren't doing anything wrong just by knowing about something that's theirs. They have every right to know regardless; some might even say they should know."
"What other options would there be though?" questioned Tara. "What else would there be to rely on?"
"Nothing," agreed Kat. "That's why there'd be a problem. We'd have to protect against it, so it wouldn't be a problem if people know."
"Don't we kind of have that problem right now, just on a smaller scale?" noted Sandra.
Sophia smiled. She had been waiting to make this point.
"Do we?" questioned Kat.
"Well, think about it," suggested Sandra. "Maybe the planet's safe, but if someone imprints on a building with people in it, they could probably do some bad stuff there—is that even possible?"
"Or if you can drive a car by imprinting on it, what about an airplane?" added Sophia with concern. "It sounds like anyone in a plane could instantly take control of the whole thing if they wanted, right now. They just don't know they can."
"Oh god," muttered Tara.
"That would not be good," said Alyssa, stating the obvious. "Actually I just thought of another thing," she continued. "Didn't you say you emailed yourself here? What if you were someone on the Internet up to no good who wanted to find me? You could have hacked my computer like that too."
"No way," said Sophia as soon as Alyssa mentioned Tara's method of transport.
"Actually I was meaning to ask you about that," said Kat. "I've never heard of anyone doing that where I'm from, and we have email too."
"Kat, what do you think?" inquired Sandra. "You're right that there's already a problem. And you know the most about imprinting out of any of us. How would you solve it?"
"Well in my dimension there's these things that make imprinting on certain things real difficult. They generate some kind of field around whatever needs to be protected. Except I don't know how exactly they work, and I really doubt anyone here does. I guess I could ask someone in my dimension to look it up though."
"Wait," beamed Sandra. "You can go there and back?"
"I wish," sighed Kat. "It's strange, you'd think I'd be worried I'm stuck here forever, but I'm pretty optimistic."
"Then how are you going to ask them?"
"Oh yeah, one of the many benefits of imprinting," started Kat. "I can explain later, but long story short, I can sort of leave part of myself in someone else's mind, and then we're mentally linked. And from what I've seen, it seems to work across dimensions."
"Now that's interesting," remarked Sandra. "Maybe if we look into how that works, it'll give us hints for how to travel between dimensions," she theorized. "Of course that's not my specialty; the only science I really know is medical science...but actually what you're talking about isn't even known to science here yet. Not every day you see something like that."
"Hold on," interjected Sophia. "Even if we find out how these devices work...how will we get people to set them up without telling them about imprinting?"
"Let's just do it ourselves," joked Kat. "We'll go to every city on Earth and put them in every single place they're needed; it'll be fun!"
"Great idea Kat," groaned Alyssa, smiling.
"That won't look suspicious, right?" continued Kat. "Just a bunch of people traveling around, putting strange devices on all the world's sensitive equipment."
"Hmm...maybe we can show the people who need to know, but keep it hidden from everyone else until it's ready?" suggested Sandra.
"Yeah, but depending on who we tell, organized conspiracy or not, that might be a problem," warned Tara.
"But you're addressing the risks," objected Sandra. "Why would anyone have a problem with it?"
"Oh, there's no telling how people will react to something as crazy as that," said Sophia.
"Like when the two of you ran away screaming?" laughed Kat.
"Well it's not like you gave us any preparation!" Sophia laughed as well. "I was so scared I didn't even realize what was going on; if I did you bet I'd have been asking you about it right away!"
"Actually, that reminds me, what was that exactly?" asked Sandra. "Did you imprint on another person? How does that work??"
"You got it," answered Kat. "Then I can control her body with her, share thoughts—it's the closest connection there is."
"What if she didn't want you to?" asked Tara.
"You think I'm a monster?" retorted Kat. "That would be terrible! Like worse than rape!"
"People here might not realize that," warned Sophia. "We'd need to educate people about that...or actually, Kat, could those devices you mentioned protect a person's body?"
"Yeah, they could. People sometimes use them for that if they think they're in danger."
"That works," agreed Sandra.
"What do you think we should do though?" asked Alyssa. "If we tell people, they won't believe us, and if we show them...like Tara said, who knows what will happen?"
"And we can't not let the world know—this has got to be the most amazing discovery ever, and there's so much potential," added Sandra. "To think this has been ignored for so long...we can't just let it continue to go to waste. Plus there's that problem Kat mentioned, where the danger is technically already here. We ought to fix that anyway just in case."
Everyone nodded in agreement, except for Sophia, who was busy thinking about what her colleague said. "...Why?" she said after a brief pause. "Why has it been ignored?"
Everyone looked at her, expecting her to go on.
"Think about it. People aren't prepared for it now...but what about in the past? Instead of keeping it secret, why didn't everyone just embrace it, starting back when there weren't any planes or computers or whatever to take over, and build everything up around it?"
"Huh, that's a good question," commented Sandra.
"Probably religion," groaned Tara. "I've actually read stories about it, real obscure ones that I normally wouldn't believe. It was a secret kept by religious leaders for some reason, and it never got out."
"Actually that sounds familiar," said Sophia. "I think I saw that once when I was trying to figure out what my grandpa did."
"Or maybe nobody discovered it until it was too late," suggested Kat.
"So anyway here's my idea," Sandra presented, having waited for her turn. "How about you show me how to do it—"
"Me too!" interrupted Sophia.
"—and then I'll show it to some scientists at my university in private, and see what they think," Sandra finished. "I won't say anything about any of you just in case, but I doubt it'll be a problem. Either way, I'm willing to take the risk for the sake of science."
Everyone seemed to agree. "Sounds great!" said Alyssa.
"Here, I'll explain how you do it," said Kat to a very excited Sophia and Sandra.
As Kat began her explanation, Alyssa idly got out her phone and checked her email.
"Uhh, Tara?" started Alyssa after about a minute's pause. "What's this? Are you trying to scare me?"
"Umm, no...what's going on?"
Somewhat concerned, Alyssa turned her phone toward Tara and showed her the screen. On it was an email from Tara. "I think someone hacked your email or something," she said.
The email read as follows:
Date: Sunday, October 9, 2016, 9:37 PM"I assume that's not your real number?" asked Alyssa.
From: Tara Kassidy <[email protected]>
Cc: (none)
Subject: HELP! CALL ME ASAP
I'm locked in a dark room filled with machines, phone says I'm in California
I think spies found me
555-759-8272 call me!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Is something wrong?" asked Kat, pausing her explanation.
Tara was just staring at the message, scared. "That's my number..." she said. "Call it, I want to know what's going on!"
Alyssa nodded, exited the email app and dialed Tara's number.
Unsurprisingly, Tara's phone started to ring. She pulled it out of her purse to decline the call, relieved to see it was still working properly but disappointed to not have an answer about the email. Before she could, however, it stopped ringing on its own, much sooner than it was supposed to. "Error: Call Lost" read the screen, along with a warning about her phone possibly having been "cloned" by criminals, suggesting she call her carrier.
At that same moment, Alyssa gasped, and put her phone on speaker so everyone could hear. "T...Tara?" asked Alyssa.
"Oh thank God! Please, you've got to help!" Tara's voice cried on the phone. "They're monitoring people's emails and they found me!!!!"
"What the—" shouted the real Tara. "What's going on here? Who the hell are you???"
"No, they didn't..." they heard Tara say under her breath on the phone. "Don't listen to her! She's not the real Tara! She's a spy or something! Please, you've got to listen to me."
"What in the world...this is a joke, right?" said Kat.
"No, I swear it's not," said the Tara on the phone. "I figured out how to do imprinting, I was having so much fun with it, and I felt like trying to email myself to you...but I got sent here instead, there's computers here filled with people's emails they're spying on. I felt them copy me, I guess to make the fake Tara you're with...and then they tried to delete me!!! I escaped just in time but now I don't know what this place is and I'm scared!!!"