They surged suddenly, like a burst dam. Someone else's memories, feelings, emotions. I am John Thompson. An orphan. A student at New York College of Arts. And I'm head over heels in love with a red-haired classmate girl. The very one I caught literally yesterday with another. With a rich spoiled brat who came for her in a shiny Audi whose price exceeded the cost of this rental studio several times over. The realization of this hit John's brain so hard that he couldn't resist and spent his last money on cheap whiskey. Decided to drown his grief in alcohol. And, apparently, drowned himself.
No! No! NO! I am Alexander Cole! A thirty-eight-year-old bachelor freelancer, somewhat jack-of-all-trades in my humble personal opinion, who spent the last ten years living in his native town, restoring from ruins a private house inherited from parents. No stupid teenage infatuations with red-haired beasts, no bohemian arts colleges and certainly no act of senseless suicidal alcoholism that probably ended this damn John Thompson's suffering!
"I am Me, albeit with memories of an inexperienced idiot from the USA!" I declared firmly and clearly into emptiness, cementing this significant fact primarily for myself.
One thing, to simply realize, continuing to get confused in one's own thoughts, trying to separate wheat from chaff, and another, to firmly know that precisely your personality is prevailing. I am Alexander, who somehow ended up in this guy's body.
And for a moment it covered me. Not panic, no. A dull, black, hopeless melancholy. Home. My home. Ten years of life invested in every brick, in every board. In memory surfaced the tart smell of fresh pine shavings when I planed boards for the veranda. The sensation of the familiar weight of my favorite hammer in hand, old, Soviet, inherited from my father, and to him, from his father. The view of crimson sunset from the porch I'd finished just a month ago. All my labors, all plans... All this simply erased. As if I never existed. What happened to my body? Did it simply die in sleep? Is it lying now, cooling in the house that now, in the absence of heirs, will go to the state? From these thoughts a heavy lump rose in my throat, and my eyes treacherously stung.
All that remains for me... is to accept it.
An entity, law of the universe or simply an evil joke of the Universe, whatever stood behind my transmigration, it's beyond my understanding. Not many options for action. Either jump from the roof, ending this absurd story, or... just live.
It was precisely living I intended to do. The "shell's" memories finally settled, arranged into a more or less coherent picture, and now I could separate them from my main personality. They were... dim, like an old faded photograph. Mentally running through John Thompson's biography, I understood the guy I got was maximally ordinary, plain and unremarkable.
At seven years old lost parents in a car accident. Until twelve, orphanage. Then foster family, which in fact differed little from the orphanage, because besides him there were twelve more such children. Obviously, the enterprising guardians lived off substantial social allocations from New York City Hall. John felt no warm feelings toward them, perfectly understanding that for them he was just a business project. Therefore, as soon as he turned eighteen, he went into independent living.
Being an orphan, he received a preferential social loan for education at the College of Arts in the specialty of theater actor. And for a year now he'd been dragging out the miserable existence of a poor student, scraping by on odd jobs, social benefits and eternal torments about the student loan that after graduation would somehow have to be repaid.
And it would seem, well, life is life, especially by American standards. Didn't get hooked on drugs, didn't end up in prison, even tried to study. But as soon as one specific name surfaced in the stream of memories, I understood into what global, universal clusterfuck fate had thrown me.
Mary Jane Watson.
The red-haired honors student, beauty, activist and dream of all the college guys, for whom John suffered so unrequitedly... Such coincidences don't happen. And also the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. And also Stark Industries tower, piercing the sky in central Manhattan. And also the Daily Bugle newspaper with its scandalous and New York-famous editor-in-chief J. Jonah Jameson. Not enough? How about news of the mysterious state of Latveria? Or about the upcoming space expedition that was being discussed in all the news, an expedition of a certain Reed Richards. The cherry on this cake of madness was Spider-Woman, the masked heroine who appeared in the city relatively recently but had already endeared herself to citizens and whom that same mustachioed troublemaker from the Bugle loathed intensely.
I'm in the Marvel world.
In a world where damn mutants fight on equal terms with Asgardian gods. In a world where cosmic horrors flying by can with a snap of fingers erase not just a planet, half the galaxy. In a world where the concept of the Multiverse is so basic that there are literally an infinite number of them... Main thing, not end up in that cluster subject to destruction from the whim of a conditional Phoenix or by decision of the Living Tribunal.
"Yeah... Heavy is my uneasy life, my accursed existence, my bitter fate..." I muttered my late mother's favorite saying, God rest her soul, staring with an empty gaze at the wall.
Existential horror rolled over me in an icy wave, threatening to paralyze my will. To somehow distract myself, I approached the window. The view opened onto a blank brick wall of a neighboring building and a narrow alley piled with trash. From below came echoes of a drunken quarrel, somewhere in the distance a siren wailed. Hell's Kitchen in all its glory.
So what am I supposed to do in this situation?
My gaze again caught on the drying puddle of vomit. There was no sleep in either eye. Instead of burdening my brain with heavy thoughts that would unlikely lead to anything useful, I decided to do what I at least could, clean up.
Finding in the wardrobe something remotely resembling clean clothes, I filled a bucket with water in the bathroom and set to work. I scrubbed the floor with fury, cleaning the ingrained dirt, and this simple physical work helped order my thoughts. Along the way I wiped dust, washed the mountain of dirty dishes in the sink, collected all garbage in bags, but didn't risk taking it out at night to the streets of New York's most dangerous district.
Having arrived at nothing concrete, I sat at the writing desk where lay an old, scratched laptop. Opening the lid and automatically entering the password from John's memory, I was about to start searching for information about the current state of affairs in the world, but the higher Being, or whoever is responsible for logistics for transmigrators, decided this was the ideal moment for a surprise.
Without fanfare, without extra flourishes, right before my eyes flashed a modest semi-transparent blue plate.
[System "Celestial Forge" Activated!]
Oops... Now that's a turn. And what, interesting, did I deserve such an honor? Maybe complete assimilation of memories occurred? Or I received enough information about the world and as a consequence, realized what kind of hole I'm in? Or maybe I'm overcomplicating everything, and simply the conditional eight hours passed after my first awakening? Ah, what the hell difference does it make! Main thing is this, a system. And a system, is a chance. A chance not just to survive, but possibly achieve something in this insane world.