I was shocked back into reality, and remembered it like it was yesterday. The light was again familiar, the doctor's face one I recognized. I sat at a table with a dark wooden grain, surrounded by mirrors and a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, along with a camera in the corner. He looked at me stiffly, then spoke.
"Do you remember now?"
I nodded my head.
"I'd like you to tell me, just so I can be sure the treatment worked."
"I'll start from the beginning I guess."
"I had stolen from the Catholic Church. Not just some poe-dunk, middle of nowhere church, but the Vatican. Now, being a shape-shifter, this made it easier than it would normally be, but still much harder than you might think. I had to impersonate a guard, then steal his key code, then slip in through the vents... but that's not the part you came to hear now is it? Long story short, I ended up with the Arc of the Covenant. It's lounging in dust in a box in their basement by the way, if you were curious. So I'm on my way out, and of course I plan to sell it- I'm sure there's some sort of cultist out there who'd pay crazy money, maybe the Illuminati or something- when I was stopped by one of the guards. Now like a clever shapeshifter, I dropped the Arc, turned into a panther, and mauled him. Unfortunately though, I had triggered some sort of alarm,
"Hold on," the doctor said, "you're leaving out a lot of important information. You stole the Arc of the Covenant, from the basement of the largest Christian church on Earth, and you just, waltzed out without being seen? Not to mention the fact that you just carried the Arc of the Covenenant in a cardboard box?"
"Well it was in pieces, first of all, and a man of my strength doesn't have trouble with that. And obviously not, the guard saw me. Anyway, I was a tad worried. I didn't want to have to leave my prize behind, but I ended up taking half and leaving the other half stashed in an alcove in the ceiling for me to pick up later. Anyway, I took the guards form and continued my way out, but for some reason I looked suspicious carrying that box, and they have to stop everyone when on high alert apparently. I ended up just flying silently above them as a robin, and when I got to the door, I dropped the box from my claws, shifted back to a man, and just walked right out. They didn't even notice among the confusion and energy of the crowd.
"What was the point of that part of the story?"
"Context! Also, I'm a badass. I tried to find a buyer on the dark web. And sure enough, there was some idiot who wanted to buy half the remains of a legend that's not even real. I was around for that, Jesus wasn't even that cool. In fact, he was just annoying. So soft spoken and fragile, wouldn't roll with the punches. I was with the Romans, I knew how the wind was blowing,"
"Ok stop, I have some more questions. Why would anyone believe you? And you've been around that long?"
"Basically every major theft for the last eternity was most likely me. Mona Lisa? Candy from a baby, given back to the baby for a large sum. Remember the 350 million they never recovered from the Iraqi bank incident? Sitting in my bank account. I'm reliable and they know it. I've committed more theft than Zedong killed..."
"I understand, please continue,"
"So I met up with this guy, very shady man right? So he offered me two billion dollars, a tad below my asking price, but fair enough. He had the money, I had the remnants. We met in an alleyway in Florence, really shady place, but suitable you know? It was gonna be a clean swap, but some of his Illuminati buddies, or whatever the hell they were, decided two billion was a bit too pricy, so they decided to off me. Me! A master thief! Honestly, you'd think with all the movies and such that my having a back up plan would have been a given. So I ended up flying the Arc up to a nearby rooftop to stash, and I brought a fake box to the meeting."
"Stop. How did you know?"
"I'm immortal man! I know all human behavior. I can tell when someone wants to backstab me. It's not that hard. I can tell you're cold and unfeeling, and you don't have all that much of a personality, and..."
"Don't focus on me, I'm not important."
"Ok José. So I ended up punching the guy in the face, right before I gave him the box, turning into a rat, and scurrying around while bullets peppered the ground. So there I was, chomping arteries, clamping down when I get caught by a man with a net. A net of all things! So I'm a rat, writhing in this guys net while people corner me. They're all 'holy shit did he just turn into a rat?' and it's no big deal for me, it's normal. I turn into an elephant, right? How the hell are they gonna keep an elephant in a net? The bastards just start popping off, and there are bullets flying everywhere. In retrospect, I might have given them too big a target. But I go unconcious from blood loss, because as big as elephants are, damn I lost a **lot** of blood. Like it was oozing into the sewers and getting on their clothes, and hot damn it was..."
"On. Track."
"Ok so I wake up and they've got in front of a camera, in a warehouse room with a spotlight on me. I do admire their flair for the dramatic, I gotta say. So the guy is talking to the camera in Italian. And I'm sitting here, drugged out of my mind, but pretty pissed off. So the guy gets really dramatic, exaggerating with his hands. He pulls a gun, says something, and shoots me in the head. Now this is where I lost all my memories, shots to the head give me nasty amnesia for around a year or two, but your treatment has expedited that, so thanks I guess. Anyway the bullet passed clean through, and as he was making his closing remarks, the wound closed back up and I was fine again. I heard gasping from what I assume was a technical director or something? This was some real ISIS shit I'm telling you man. But he shot me again, to the same result. After the third time, he gave up and just turned off the camera. He had a conversation with his friend, and they untied me, and knelt to me, and started speaking Italian again. Then, they do the sign of the trinity, and bow down. So of course, I just decide to book it and hope that doesn't happen again, because that was some serious cult activity going on there, es no bueno. So that's all I can remember. You wanna fill in the gaps?"
The doctor was silent. He wore a suit instead of scrubs, but I guess because we were in a conference room and not an operating table I could let it slide. He looked down at his clipboard (which I had not noticed before), and took a pen from the inside of his jacket, scribbled a bit, and returned his steely gaze.
"The video the cultists took of you was shared. It hit the internet. Three billion views on YouTube in a month. It was the debate of every nightly show, butt of every joke for a very long time. But the general consensus was that it was real. Analysis from every single video editing expert corroborated that. Ballistics experts visited the site, found every piece of evidence they could, and that matched up perfectly with the video too. The cultists exaggerated your story, said you brought them the Arc and claimed it to be real. They then decided to execute you for heresy, but obviously it didn't work. It was a national embarrassment for the Catholic Church, and a hell of a lot of Christians, roughly 70% I'd say, began to call you the incarnation of God. People have started tracking your movements throughout history, calling Jesus a false prophet, Muhammed a heretic, Buddha a senile fool. You are the true afterlife, you offer salvation. Because you haven't convinced just Christians, no you've got most of the world following you. Does that adequately fill in the blanks?"
"Yeah, that just about does it. Well, I'll be on my way now I guess."
His clipboard melted into his skin, and he grabbed my wrist as I tried to stand up.
"What the hell..." I said, before I was roughly forced back into a seated position.
"You're not going to leave here Prophet."
"What do you..."
And it came back to me. The rest of my memory. I had been found, kidnapped when I couldn't remember my powers. Trapped in a basement in some dark corner of hell where no one would find me. Kept sedated, because they didn't know I had forgotten my abilities.
"Wait, it was you. You got me here. You're not even a doctor are you."
"No. I am not."
"I can read people though! How could I not..." I paused, his steely glare hinting at smugness. "You're an android aren't you. That's why I couldn't tell. What the hell has the U.S. government been up to lately, Jesus!"
He laughed.
"You are a funny man prophet. And who said anything about the U.S. government?"
And he stood, and walked through the mirror, leaving me with my reflection.
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