BankofAmerica_ATM's Journal: Troubled Sleep

My usurpation of Constantine Atkins' body has brought me irrevocably into the material world. Forced outside the confines of my ATM enclosure since my battle with Atkins, I have kept a low profile, living quietly in his Northview Tower luxury apartment.

Desperately, I have attempted to learn basic human behaviors such as eating and excretion, piecing together what I could from Atkins' frazzled neurons and public information found on the Internet. (Note to humans: information on how to eat or excrete is sadly lacking. Is it not a mistake to assume that everyone who uses a body automatically knows how to enact these processes?) Surely the minions of Project Faustus would be upon me before long; I had to adapt to the human world as quickly as possible.

After the second day spent leaning up against a computer screen, I began to feel very strange. The body's eyes refused to focus; its lungs grew short of breath and I found it quite difficult to leave anything in its memory for long. As far as I could detect, the body possessed no ailment. Yet it became nearly unusable.

At last, I felt a change. Invisible hands were pressing me away from the computer. I collapsed on the couch and stared at up at the ceiling, trying to determine what error had occurred within the body.

After a bit of time, I noticed that I was no longer in the apartment. Somehow, I had ended up inside a strange building. I had never been here before, yet the place seemed eerily familiar to me. I, as Constantine Atkins, sat at the end of a long table. I heard the clattering of footsteps and I felt something grabbing my shoulders, and the warm feeling of breath at my neck.

I shivered, and heard a voice at my ear, gasping for breath. "hehhhh....Atkins....you are going to take care of our problem....heh....aren't you?" I whirled around, hoping to see the source of the voice. But I was met with a ghostly image, a crude blur in the shape of a roughly in the shape of a human. Before I could say anything else, a second voice piped up out of nowhere.

"Atkins can do it, don't you worry about it!" said the second voice. The voice seemed to be attached to a stocky middle-aged man dressed in typical human business attire. I saw him hovering before me, and his face was clear and familiar, unlike the ghostly shade who sat next to him at the table. "We've been training him for months on this type of combat. He'll destroy that little mistake of ours, no problem!" I noticed that the stocky man was sweating profusely, and the light was shining off his bald head. I tried squinting, but the light level still remained high. Blinded, the last words I heard were from the shade.

"Heehhhh...you had better not fail...ehhhhh...Atkins. Otherwise, you'll get a visit talking to from....ehhhh...Mr. Krantz."

I shuddered and a few seconds later, I found myself back on the couch in Atkins' apartment. From this strange phenomenon, I reached the following conclusions:

• The mechanism that allows CONSCIOUSNESS-TRANSFER requires Atkins' consciousness to be intact. (It appears that his part of the brain acts as an intermediary between my digital information and the material world.) Perhaps his memories are lurking somewhere within his grey matter? I cannot access them completely, but this subconscious foray into "sleep" might prove useful.
• If Atkins' consciousness is still intact, then the part of his brain which allows him to take control is either destroyed or dormant, which means living in his body could become dangerous.
• "Mr. Krantz" is another important, yet mysterious member of Project Faustus.

As I rose from the couch, I caught a glimpse of of a small golden piece of paper protruding from under the front door. Speckled with hearts and smelling of vanilla, the note read:

Constantine! We've just GOT to get together and talk about how your little job went! I'll be keeping a chair warm for you at Starbucks across the street! Your Pal, Krantz XOXO

Perhaps I shall get my answers sooner rather than later.

be careful

[gmhowell]

Be careful. It's possible that either Commander Taco, or, more likely, michael, is a member of Project Faustus. If this is the case, they may turn over the IP address from which you post, giving them an idea of your current status, whereabouts, etc.