The Ego Collector
Fiction — A tale from the Cavalcade of Rejection
The morning greeted me as it always does, in a strange room surrounded by strange things and a strange face staring back at me in the mirror. I know that I am now Heather, and by the end of the day I will know much more about Heather, and tomorrow it will no longer matter. I learned a great deal about Tyler, whom I was yesterday, and plenty about Cassandra, the self I was before that. But what I know about them doesn’t matter at all to Heather, the me of today, and it will matter less to the me of tomorrow — whomever that will be.
The situation is a shame, really — I enjoyed being Tyler a great deal, and on a deeper level I hoped that perhaps I could stay as Tyler, if only for a little while. Which isn’t to say that being Heather won’t be enlightening in its own way, and I doubt it will be horrible. I feel very healthy, I have lots of pictures of people who I’m sure I’ll discover are family and friends, I’m obviously not wealthy but neither am I impoverished. Even so, I harbor doubts that I’ll enjoy Heather as much as Tyler, or for that matter Grace, or…what was his name? It’s eluding me for the moment. His was my favorite thus far, one I’ll never forget, but it was hundreds of selves ago and the name is just a fuzzy blot in my memory now. I’d been thinking that this was an early me, but maybe I’ve simply…
