Better Habits

One afternoon, Dave was procrastinating on his phone when he heard his dad calling him from downstairs. His vision went black for a second, and he saw what looked like himself put down the phone, get off the bed and go downstairs.
Extremely confused, Dave rushed downstairs and saw his dad talking to his body. Their words were completely garbled, and their bodies shifted in and out of focus like he was looking at them through flowing water. Dave's body nodded and started loading the dishwasher.
Dave reached out to tap his body on the shoulder, but his hand passed through like it was thin air. Out of ideas, he leaned on a wall and watched his body at work. Once it had finished loading the dishwasher, his body started screaming like a foghorn. Seconds later, his dad walked into the kitchen holding a mop. When Dave watched his body start mopping the floor, he realized it had asked for more work, something he had never done.
He didn't want to find out what other unexpected things his body might do.
Dave desperately tried re-entering his body from the front, the back, below, and even by jumping from above after scaling the dishwasher. The body started and finished more chores than Dave ever had, ate dinner with Dave's fathers, and climbed into bed, completely oblivious to Dave frantically trying to get back inside.
Two weeks later, Dave still hadn't figured out how to re-enter his body. After failing for half an hour, he lay down and cried in the middle of the room until no tears came out.
Then he heard a woman ask, "Why are you still here?" After two full weeks of everything sounding distorted, Dave couldn't speak for a moment in disbelief at being able to hear someone clearly. He stayed silent for so long that the speaker repeated herself.
"I don't know," Dave finally stammered, turning to the source of the voice. "Am I not supposed to be here?"
"Not really." The speaker, a woman wearing blue overalls, sat down next to Dave and ruffled his hair. "You seem lost."
Dave sniffled. "One minute I was in my body, and the next minute…"
The woman sighed and stood. "You can call me Jan, by the way."
"My name is Dave."
"It's nice to meet you, Dave, and I regret to inform you that the sleeping body is no longer yours."
Dave couldn't figure out what Jan meant. "I don't understand."
"That's understandable. There are various terms that we use in my line of work, technical jargon we use as shorthand. Specifically, we study a phenomenon which could be described as…" 
She looked off into the distance before snapping to attention. "I'm sorry. You definitely don't care about that. In my line of work, we say bodies belong to the person controlling them. You may have controlled that body in the past, but since you aren't controlling it now, it's no longer 'yours'. Any questions?"
"Yeah, how do I go back to controlling it?"
Jan bit her lip. "That might be more difficult than you think."
"How?"
"Your body belongs to someone else now, so you can only re-enter your body by forcing that person out."
"Why did this even happen?"
Jan shifted from leg to leg, not meeting Dave's eyes. She started to say something a few times, but stopped.
"What?"
"I'm not sure I can frame it in a way that's fair to you - " Jan put her hand to her brow and sighed. "Look, do you really want to know what I think? Even if it hurts you?"
"Why would it hurt me?"
"Personally, I don't think you deserve to go back into your body. You weren't making good use of it. I wouldn't even be here if it were up to me. It's just my job to let bad habits like you take control of their bodies again."
Now Dave was the one who couldn't respond. He felt a single tear roll down his face, and Jan noticed it too.
"Look, Dave, I'm sorry. I don't want to let - well, I was obviously open to letting my views cloud your self-worth." Jan stepped closer to Dave and put one hand on his shoulder. "I would really like it if you chose not to return, but it's your choice."
"But someone else took over my body! What if they, I don't know, kill my parents in their sleep or something? Are you really sure that won't happen?"
"The thing inside the body shares all of your memories. You are two different people, but you both think you are the real Dave. Maybe if you wanted to kill your parents…"
"No! What kind of question is that?"
Jan took a small knife out of her overalls. "Anyways, you can get into your body again once I cut through it with this knife. The thing inside your body can fight back, though -"
"Wait." Dave stared stonily into her eyes. "Why should I trust you? What if you're lying to me?"
"I completely understand your hesitation. You have every reason to doubt that I mean well. Do you want to consider other options?" As Jan put the knife back into her pocket, she couldn't quite hide the hope in her eyes, and that was all it took to convince Dave that the knife actually was going to help him.
"I want to do it." Dave saw the light leave Jan's eyes as she sighed and moved towards the sleeping body. In one practiced motion, she drew a huge gash down the middle, which slowly opened like a giant eye to reveal a black void. Something that looked exactly like Dave leapt out of the void and gasped for air.
----
One afternoon, Dave heard his dad call him from downstairs while he was watching anime on his bed. Dave thought his dad sounded more tired than usual, and as he got up from the bed, he promised himself that he'd help as much as possible.
When he reached the kitchen, he loaded the dishwasher as his dad asked. He'd normally go right back upstairs, but this time, he asked his dad if he could mop the floor. After that, he kept doing chores. He didn't even stop when his pop told him to study for school because he knew he'd just waste his time.
He folded everyone's clothes, cleaned the cat's litter, and organized the kitchen cabinets before helping his fathers cook dinner. His parents had worked on some of his chores after he had finished because he hadn't done them properly, so they were still tired at dinnertime. When he went upstairs, he basically climbed straight into bed, too tired to brush his teeth.
He kept it up, but two weeks later, he still didn't feel any better at doing them. His parents no longer seemed happy that he was "helping", and their criticisms stung even more now that he had no positive reinforcement. Even though Dave was tired that night, the regrets whirling through his head kept him awake.
Dad and Pop were still tired by dinnertime. Did I even actually help them, or did I just make their chores harder? Maybe I should have studied like Pop said. I bet I could've focused if I'd tried harder. He stared into the black void of his room until he felt a stabbing pain in his collarbone which migrated down his stomach. He screamed and tried to jump out of bed, but instead of landing on the floor, he landed in a more well-lit version of his room with two other people in it.
He squinted before getting punched in the jaw. He swung wildly until his eyes adjusted and he realized the person fighting him looked exactly like him.
"Who are you?" Dave screamed, but his doppelgänger kicked him instead of replying. Dave ran towards the shocked-looking woman and begged, "Save me!" but she just stared at him as the other Dave caught up to him and pinned him to the ground.
The one on top asked "What am I supposed to do now?" and the woman replied, "Both of you have an equal right to the body, so one of you has to convince the other that they don't deserve it."
Both Daves looked at each other. Surprisingly, the attacker's glare faltered first, and he looked towards the woman. "How do I know I've won, Jan?"
"The one who loses fades into aether while the winner retakes the body."
The one on the bottom shoved the other one off and glared warily at him before turning his gaze to Jan. "So your name is Jan? Why are you helping him?"
Jan flinched. "I don't really think I'm helping him, per se. I'd like to think of myself as a neutral referee - "
"Neutral?" the other one squawked. "You literally said that you wanted me to lose earlier!"
"That's because you're nothing but a representation of Dave's bad habit of browsing his phone!" Jan retorted. "You may think you have the right to live, and you beg to control him night after night, but you don't deserve it!"
Both Daves stared at Jan as she frantically backpedaled. "I… I… I'm not supposed to take sides on this issue. Just ignore me, please, and…"
The "good" one walked up to the "bad" one and tapped his hand. "What are we going to do?" he whispered.
The other one whispered back, "We take the knife on five."
Jan wasn't even facing them anymore. "I'm a good person, and I don't like it when bad things take over, so it's natural for me to want good to prevail over evil… My job requirement states that I am neutral, and whoever wins is allowed to take over the body, no matter what I think. No matter what I want, it says those exact - "
One Dave grabbed her hands while the other pried her fingers off the knife. Jan easily broke the weak grip on her hands, but it was too late. Jan screamed, "Give me the knife!" but she couldn't run after the one with the knife because the other one was grabbing onto her leg.
Jan muttered under her breath as the one with her knife ran out of the house's front door. She looked at the one next to her. "I'm aware you both probably think I'm the bad guy here, so I'll let you hash out who really deserves the body for an hour." She fished inside her overall pocket and handed him a remote. "Press this button when you need me."
With that, she vanished instantly, and he set out to find the one with the knife.
----
It didn't take long to find the one who had fled shivering about ten feet from the front door. "Is Jan gone?" he asked like someone was sitting on his chest.
"Yeah, I think she's gone."
"Awesome." The one with the knife hurried back towards the door. "So what are we supposed to do with the knife?"
The one with the remote shrugged. "I don't really know. I just wanted to take it from her."
After they both laughed, there were a few seconds of silence before the one with the knife asked, "Why do you want my body anyways?"
"Uh…" It took about a minute, and multiple false starts, before the one with the remote finally had a satisfactory explanation. "Well, the way I see it, it's my body and I suddenly stopped being in it one day."
"What does that even mean? When did you stop being in it?"
"I think… two weeks ago? Then I basically turned into a ghost, and apparently the body 'belonged' to you, so I couldn't do anything in the real world while you could."
"Wait, so what have you been doing for two weeks?"
"I've just been trying to get back inside the body. At school, on the bus, at home… I've just been sticking my hands and feet into your body to see if it finally worked. How about you? What's your story?"
Now the one with the knife was grasping for words. "I guess… I also think it's my body? Two weeks ago, I started doing chores and being more responsible…"
"Oh, so that's what she meant when she said you share all my memories, yadda yadda? You're literally just me except you never slack off?"
"...I mean, I don't know what the 'yadda yadda' is, but that sounds about right."
The one with the remote couldn't look into the other one's eyes. He'd been afraid of this every time his body had acted responsibly where he wouldn't have, but now he had confirmation. He sighed, "You probably do deserve the body, 'Good Dave'." and walked away from the front door. He felt himself getting lighter until someone roughly grabbed his shoulder. 
"Wait!" The responsible one ignored the other one's confusion and finally spat out what he'd been wanting to say for days. "I kind of don't want to be like this." 
There was a long silence after that, until the one with the knife cut through it. "I don't see the point anymore. It felt good to do the right thing at first, but now all I get is criticism for making mistakes. Pop tells me to study if I help out and help out if I study, and it's impossible to do both. You know what I mean?"
When the irresponsible one nodded, the responsible one continued, "I feel like I have to do it all, but it looks like you don't. You're the one who wants the body, anyways, so I think you should take control of it."
Both of them were grinning a little at this point until they heard Jan's voice. "Are you sure that's the optimal solution?"
They looked around until it dawned on them. "Are you just invisible?" they yelled at the same time.
"I am also intangible. I no longer trust you enough to take a humanoid form, so you must suffer this indignity until the good one retakes the body."
The one with the remote mashed the button until Jan huffed, "Bad Dave, the button doesn't actually affect me. I intended to take a human form out of courtesy, and no longer wish to humor you. To that end, I would like to explain that the remote and knife are not physical objects, but abstractions that have no real power - "
"Just shut up!" The one with the knife threw it at the wall of the house, and it morphed into a floating black miniature poodle which stared plaintively at them. He ignored it and told the other Dave, "I'm going to try to turn into aether, or whatever she said. If it doesn't work, hit me with the remote or choke me or something."
"Are you sure? That sounds really violent…"
"I just got stabbed with a knife, and now I learned that the pain was apparently just because some weird abstraction being felt like it."
Jan interjected, "I solemnly swear that I couldn't stop the excruciating pain caused by this legitimately necessary - "
The one with the remote yelled at the sky, "Could you just stop talking?" When he turned back, the other one was gone, and he whooped in excitement. "Yeah, I won!"
Half a minute passed before he realized nothing was happening. "Jan, what am I supposed to do?"
"Why should I tell you that? Besides, you told me to stop talking."
"Can you at least tell me why you took this job?"
"Frankly, I wanted to do some good in the world. People are always giving up on their goals, unable to work their hardest because their bad habits keep wresting control from their better ones. I thought maybe, if I was the one counseling them, I could guide them towards the good path."
"But it didn't work, did it?" Dave grinned. "The bad habits won this time!"
"Actually, the other twenty-nine times I tried this, the good habits won."
Dave stopped grinning, and Jan continued, "The way I see it, I got too cocky and gave the game away in the beginning. On the other hand, yours is a very interesting case, Dave. Usually, either the bad or the good habit disappears by the two-week point. You're very stubborn to hang around for this long."
"Well, I'll tell them - "
"No you won't. You'll forget all of this happened tomorrow morning. It won't even be like a dream. To you, it will simply seem as though the spark that allowed you to be a hardworking and helpful person is just gone."
"But - but - if I'd kept just trying to work to make everybody else happy, I would have been sad." Dave looked down on the ground, trying to figure out a problem with that. "I think there's something wrong with that."
"Oh, of course there is! Your life would be qualitatively worse if your joy were controlled completely by others. The optimal solution for any human is to find a balance. I didn't want to tell you this before, for fear of alienating you, but I don't see the quality of people's lives as valuable so much as I want them to be paragons of hard work. I hate you not because you represent selfishness, but because you represent laziness. Always unproductive, always tired…"
Dave was tired of listening to this. "Can I just go home?"
"Do you not remember what I told you?"
"I think you said… the loser turns to nothing and the winner gets the body?"
"Ah, so that's how you took it. I said the winner retakes the body. I meant you had to go back inside."
"Oh, okay. Can I take the poodle?"
Jan sputtered, "The poodle? Taking it doesn't do anything, and it's not an actual poodle… fine, take the poodle."
Dave scooped the poodle under one arm and ran back to his sleeping body. He wasn't sure he could trust Jan, but with no other options, he took a deep breath and jumped back into his body.
----
When Dave woke up on a Sunday, he wasn't sure what to do, which surprised him. Yesterday, he had tried and failed to dust the house, and the day before that, he had tried to study for next week's subject material, but today, he felt like doing nothing.
He decided to look at videos on his phone, and half an hour passed before Pop poked his head in the room. "You're back to doing nothing, huh?"
Dave wasn't sure how to respond, but Pop just smiled. "It's okay to relax sometimes. We'll ask you if we need anything."
After he had closed the door, Dave sat for a minute in confusion. He tried to remember why he had wanted to help so badly anyways, but he couldn't come up with anything. It was like a hole inside him, carved from fear and expectation, had been filled.
He lay back down and procrastinated on his phone until he heard his dad calling him from downstairs.
Category:Beings