Will Wheaton (0:00)

Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney. Let's go get ready for a new case.

American Express Announcer (0:05)

We're gonna crack this case and prove we're victorious partners of all time.

Will Wheaton (0:08)

New friends. You are Gary the Snake and your last name the Snake Dream Team hid new habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home. You're clearly working at Zootopia 2, now available on Disney. Rated PG.

Seth Schachner (0:31)

Have you ever wondered why songs on the radio are popular? Why do certain movies get made even though the premise seems completely random? Why are concert tickets costing you $3,000 but nobody makes any money touring? Well, on my podcast Breaking down the Biz, we answer all those questions and more. I'm Seth Schachner. I have over two decades of experience in the entertainment and the music industry. And every week I talk to insiders that lend insight and expertise on the media you know and love past, present and future. Subscribe now on your favorite podcasting platform or watch us on YouTube so you never miss a beat. Let's make sense of this industry together.

Will Wheaton (1:28)

Foreign. Hi, I'm Will. Before we get to storytime today, just a little bit of podcast housekeeping that I've been neglecting. First of all, I'm really glad that you're here. If this is your first time, welcome. If you're coming back, that is awesome. I'm so happy we've earned a little bit more of your time and attention. I have been neglecting to ask you to please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps the show grow. Your endorsement to people who, you know, who trust you carries way more weight than me going listen to me, listen to me. So I would love for you to help us out that way. I also want to tell you that we have a Patreon if you would like to listen to the show with no ads and and if you would like access to just so much behind the scenes glimpses into how we bring this podcast together. There are just these recordings that to me are very interesting of Gabrielle and me figuring out what a character sounds like and trying out kind of different things. It just sort of takes the curtain back and it gives you this sort of DVD commentary. Look at how we pulled the show together. I know that's not everybody's jam, but if it's your jam, I believe you will enjoy it very much. I also do monthly AMAs and we even have some special Only for Patreon episodes coming up that I'm really excited about. So if that sounds interesting to you? You can find us@patreon.com storytime finally, everything you ever wanted to know about this podcast lives@willwheaton.net podcast okay, that's everything that I wanted you to know before we get started. So thanks so much for being here. And now it is my extraordinary pleasure to narrate for you to carry you Inside you By Tia Tashiro. I grew up in the entertainment industry. Not by choice, so I had a front row seat to the abuse and exploitation of child actors like myself. I grew up absolutely terrified of upsetting anyone on the set, robotically doing whatever I was told so I could just get through it and have one of the precious and rare hours of my childhood where I got to be just a kid before I was ripped out of childhood and thrust back into a place I never wanted to be. Today we're gonna visit a future where child actors are still exploited, still used up and discarded, facing an adult life without purpose that they were never prepared for because nobody cared what happened to them past some arbitrary age. We will meet a young woman who is doing her best to assemble the pieces of her stolen childhood into a fulfilling adult life. It isn't what she wanted or would have chosen for herself, but she's doing her best, which is all any of us can do. This is to carry you inside you. To carry you inside you by Tia Tashiro in your head, the dead man wakes up crying. He stutters into awareness just as you manage to staunch the tears welling in your eyes, a response to the pressure of his presence on your limbic system. Your fingers brush, irritated against the port at the back of your neck, catching at the ridges of the drive that carries his consciousness. He's confused, lashing out to wrest temporary control of your limbs from you in quick, staccato bursts before you can yank them back. Stop that. You snap, and then, remembering your client, soften the message with a please. Your right pinky twitches and you lasso it in, exerting your will over its movement. You splay your hands on your desk and watch them carefully, pay attention to your toes, lest they start off on unwelcome dance routines. But in your head the dead man quiets and you know you. He's beginning to understand. Your mother agreed to the port as a condition of your first job as a child actor. There were age limits, maximums after which it was no longer safe to install you at your most neuroplastic, in the midst of synaptic pruning and rapid neurogenesis were the perfect age to receive the augmentation. You were six at the time. Your agent, who had taken one look at your dimpled smile and long soft hair and big hazel eyes and signed you on the spot, explained the procedure to your mother, couching it in platitudes to comfort and thinly veiled threats of the loss of representation, to insist you remember your agent's office, the furry orange couch your legs dangled off of, and the contraption of wires and wooden balls he kept on the coffee table for kids like you to play with. But you only have the vaguest of impressions of a hundred conversations he and your mother carried on in that room while your attention was held elsewhere. You have no sense of whether you were present when she actually signed the waivers. Later, as a teenager, you would root out the original documents, swiping through page after page of risks and liabilities regarding the installation of your port. But at 6, you only listened to the voice of your agent explaining to your mother in a smooth and comforting baritone that all the best child actors were getting ports these days. It made line memorization a breeze. These new kids, you heard him chuckle, can spout off whole monologues, carry scenes all by themselves. Anna has what it takes, the looks, the temperament. All she needs is that extra push. Casting directors will be falling over themselves, I swear. So your mother signed and you were taken to a clinic with white walls and pictures of zoo animals on them, and you wore a papery hospital gown and lay down on your stomach on a table with a hole for your face so you could see the smooth lacquered floor. They put something in your arm and it only hurt a little. When you woke up, they had put something on the back of your neck and that hurt a lot. You cried, but you healed, and by the follow up visit the clinicians confirmed that the port had taken you got a lollipop in blue raspberry, your favorite flavor every time you went to that clinic, which mostly balanced out the bad memories. When your port was cleared for use, your agent confirmed the job, a speaking role on a procedural TV drama with potential to become a regular guest star. Your mother was over the moon. You soaked in her happiness and made it your own. You met the dead man's daughter in a cafe, her partner by her side. The frisks had matching wedding rings, smooth gold with what you assumed were lab grown diamonds pricking the design. You were pretty sure you had seen those twinned rings in a catalog a few years back, proudly advertised for the way one would heat to a comforting sun warm temperature when it neared the other. The client's hands were folded over each other's and you wondered if the rings ever got hot enough to hurt. Thanks for waiting, you said, swinging into the seat they left open on the other side of the table. Did you get a chance to order? The Americano here is great. You were no longer nervous about these meetings, though you'd been so anxious with your very first clients that you'd barely been able to string together a coherent sentence. Oh, no, we thought we could order together, the spouse said, giving you a nod with equal notes of respect and apprehension. We're really grateful you were willing to meet with us, Anna. Of course. Your posting said you were looking for a bi weekly visit. Yes, for our children, the daughter filled in. She glanced at her spouse and they gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. We lost my father about seven months ago. We kept his remnant when the hospital offered, but we hadn't considered hiring, well, someone like you. No offense meant. It's just that the kids, they've started to forget and. And I. She choked up, the fingers of her free hand drifting to ghost against her lips. I completely understand. You will say one thing about a childhood spent acting. It gives you a hell of a social skill set. Your face was folded into a mask of empathy, only some of which you actually felt. You hear a lot of sob stories in your line of work. The terms you listed in your posting seem amenable to me. I've just had a spot open up on my regular schedule. Is there anything you'd like to ask me before we continue? The spouse shook their head. We just wanted to meet you in person, they said. Get a sense of whether you'd be a good match. There are so few surrogates on the market. We were worried about scammers or, you know, crazies. But your reviews are all stellar. Do you think? The daughter sniffled, you'd be willing to wear a likeness veil? I just. You look very different than he did. Fair enough. Not many mixed women in their 20s look like wrinkled white septuagenarians. Of course. You smiled solicitously, removing your tablet from your messenger bag to place it on the table between you. Shall we review my rates? The couple shared a glance, like clients always do when they consider putting a price on family. The daughter was the one to nod and turn back to you. Yes, she said, certainty settling in her voice. It's what he would have wanted, you thought, but didn't say. If you'd like, you can ask him that yourself. So I'm dead. Your lips move with his words, and you let them. Ceding a little control you've found, helps to establish rapport with the Remnants you choose to host. Yes, Mr. Frisk, you reply, keeping your tone even. It's nice to meet you. My name is Anna. Your daughter and her spouse hired me as a surrogate. This is an acclimation period before you're reunited with Bah. Surrogate, the late Elias Frisk spits. Spending all that money on me, idiots. Take me to Ivy Wild Hospital. I'm filing a complaint. They said it was a routine surgery. You don't usually interrupt Remnants, but you make an exception when they're getting caught up in the events of their deaths. You've learned through much trial and many errors that letting them get up ahead of steam makes your frustration and theirs rise in tandem, an unfortunate side effect of temporarily sharing an HPA axis. Better to risk reactive anger than deal with a cortisol spiral. Mr. Elias Frisk, you say gently. You are a guest in this body, and I would appreciate a modicum of respect. He quiets. You feel a wave of sorrow crest in your chest and easily identify it as his and not your own. You are used to this, all of this. Some scream, some fight you for control. It's why you always charge your clients for an acclimation period, so you don't end up with an unpleasant surprise when you first plug in a remnant drive. Like the angry dead spewing vitriol at their bewildered relatives, clients do not usually pay for the privilege of being reamed out by their late loved ones. You are in your office, a space you have carefully cultivated by removing objects with which an out of control remnant might attempt to hurt yourselves. The desk's corners are rounded, the floor covered in a thick patterned rug. There is a reflective sheet built into the wall, unbreakable, unlike a mirror, and you stand and move over to it. Now you find this, too, helps remnants to settle into their role as guests, seeing themselves through your eyes. You are short and plump, a woman of xlts and jeans that never quite fit right. Though you don makeup as a regular practice for clients, you eschew it at home, so the flush in your cheeks is natural, a side effect of your adjustment to your new passenger. Your dark hair is cropped to your chin in a haircut you think suits you, though you stopped dyeing it when you realized it was costing you clients. You're glad you never got a tattoo. A lot of clients don't like body modifications. You find this ironic, given that surrogates only exist because of the most invasive body modification ever available on the market. Oh, Mr. Frisk says, watching your mouth move around the syllable oh. The word sounds like he's packing many thoughts away behind it, but those sensations pass through the edges of your brain in a slurry, as blurred and fleeting as your thoughts must be to him. You may be splitting a body, but thoughts are hard enough to find and hold when you are the one to initiate them. You have come to expect some level of privacy in your own mind, even when sharing it. I'm going to bring you to say hello to your grandchildren this week, you tell Mr. Frisk. Your daughter paid for an hourly visit twice weekly. I'll be wearing a likeness veil so we look more like you for the kids, and I'll be allowing you limited body control for the duration of the visits. Does that sound good to you? It doesn't matter if he says no, you won't change your limits. You have hard boundaries. Most surrogates do. Yes, he says, and the fingers of your right hand flex just once before you get them back. You can't tell if he was testing your control or did it instinctively, and you try not to read too much into it. Excellent. You reach up to your neck. I'll see you then, Mr. Frisk. You pull his drive and are alone in your head once more. I'm really excited that Quints is sticking with its story time. If you've seen me on your television, probably figured out that my uniform is a black T shirt, black jeans and Converse. I'm very predictable in what I wear. Ann, my wife, is far more stylish and put together. I love the clothing from Quint's so much that when it was time to buy Ann some clothing for the holidays, I went to Quint's and got her cardigans and T shirts. And I can tell you that it did not cost what I thought any of it would. Here in Southern California, winter is really on its way out. So I walked outside this morning and realized it's spring and it is time for your spring wardrobe staples. And this is where Quince shows up to take care of you. Think 100% European linen shorts and shirts from $34 Clean 100% Pima cotton tees with a softness that has to be felt. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're getting premium materials without the markup. Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.com storytime for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. You get to have this thing and if you're like, you know what, it's day 364 and I've decided I really don't like it, send it back and Quince will be like, I got you, boo. Now available in Canada. Hi, Canada. I love you. Elbows up. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com storytime. Back in the early days of your acting career, port technology was new. New drive capabilities untested. A distracted on site tech who'd gotten an online certificate in ports taught you how to insert the drives you were given into the back of your neck by touch. You learned to find your port with the fingers of one hand and slot the drive in with the other. Eventually you'd be able to do it one handed, the same way your mother put in her glittery hoop earrings in the mornings. The early script drives were basic. This was before legislation required that drives be closed circuit. So yours were hooked up to the set system manager's tablet. You would plug the drive in and it'd sync with the rest of the set. As you ran a scene, the drive would feed you reminders of where to stand and who to look at. Coach you through your lines you didn't memorize, you repeated. When you got a line right, you'd receive a spike of dopamine prompted by the drive. This was criminalized when you were 10. Though a few studios kept doing it on the down low for a year or two, it tended to produce excellent performances. Your life was a tapestry of doing what other people said. Your director, your script drives, your mother. You smiled and laughed and cried when you were told. And at the end of each day, your mother would take you out for a fast food baked potato with fake butter and chives and tell you how wonderful you were. What a fantastic little star. She had big dreams for your career. So did you. You thought most, maybe all of them might have been her dreams first. But that didn't make them sparkle any less. You dress in neutral baggy clothing for your first session with the dead man's family. Grays and blacks that mask if not fully conceal your form, so different from Elias Frisk's own. The pictures your clients uploaded in their initial posting portray a thin man, veined hands with savagely short fingernails clutching the arms of his wheelchair. You clip back your hair so it won't interfere with the fit of the likeness, veil and survey your reflection. Some people revel in a sense of style, you revel in in this, the blank canvas of your body, perfect for the role you've fallen into as a surrogate. You are a disappearing act. Elias Frisk's remnant drive sits on your dresser next to your jewelry box and a pile of takeout receipts. When you agreed to surrogate for the frisks, they took your port specifications to their remnant bank for a custom drive download, a specialized process fine tuned to justify the exorbitant cost. Your port is second generation, so it accepts bigger, thicker drives than the slim, cracked eyelid 6th generation ports that came out only 5 months before new implantations were outlawed. 6th gen surrogates set absurdly high prices. Not because they're better at their jobs, but because but because clients assume scarcity and quality equate. There were few 6th gen recipients in the first place, and fewer still made the jump to your chosen career. The ones that did now enjoy the golden glow of exclusivity. You reach for the likeness pail and fit the projection circlet gently over the crown of your head. It rests snug and warm against your brow. You slide your finger along the right side of it and activate the likeness. And suddenly your features are gone. Subsumed by Elias Frisk. Hollow cheeks, pale forehead, watery blue eyes with wrinkles pinched at the corners. His eyelashes are so light you can't see them, his brows thick and white. You purse your lips and watch his move. Once you plug in his drive, you'll become a croissant of personhood, a kaleidoscope of mishmash being your port, his drive, your mind, his remnant, your body, his face. Even after all this time, the thought still unsettles you. Even after all this time, you can't wait. You grew from an adorable, ethnically ambiguous child into a chubby mixed tween. And you learned the hard way there were far fewer roles for the latter. Your acting career petered out like the last drops from a closed faucet. A few final gigs at age 13 before your agent notified your mother that he would regrettably be unable to continue offering representation. He called it parting ways. Your mother called it asshole, dick wad, industry fuckery when she thought you couldn't hear. At first you didn't understand. You had basked in the glow of your mother's approval throughout your acting career, which at that point had constituted more than half of your life. You had the leg up in the industry. Everyone else wanted your port. You had sat with your mother in waiting rooms next to other parents and other Little girls stealing glances at the backs of their necks. You sized up the competition by a port's presence or absence. You were equal parts proud and insufferable. Over the line, your mother added to your resume. Script drive compatible. You once beat out an Academy Award nominee's kid for a movie role because you had a port and they didn't. It helped that you were willing to endure what the industry called twitches. Clumsy pokes through your port to stimulate genuine laughter, anger, tears. It was better than crying on command. You could feel on command. You learned to ride the wave of being twitched, to spit or blubber or scream your lines through the tsunami of neurotransmitters flooding your synapses. Your contracts had bonus clauses for twitching. Your mother wrapped you in her arms and stroked your hair when a twitch went wrong, sending you into a state for the rest of the day. That happened more often when you were younger. At age 8, you landed a role as the protagonist's daughter in Moonrise Dandelion, Oscar bait about a pregnant single mother making ends meet in prohibition era Louisiana. You were twitched out for the entirety of the lauded emotional climax. A scene critics agreed clinched your well deserved best supporting Actress nom. You twitched into tears so often for the sequence, guzzling 16 ounce bottles of water to stay hydrated that you couldn't cry naturally for a month afterward. As you grew, you learned to love the same twitches you'd once dreaded. There was a purity to the emotions, a freedom you were not accountable for the way they rose up in a drowning surge. You did not need to tamp them down. When you were 10, your mother wrote to the governor of your state, urging him to veto a bill banning twitching and severely limiting dopaminergic reinforcement. You co signed her letter in the autograph you'd already perfected. The bill went through anyway. The bill was the beginning of the end. You could still use script drives, still replicate your lines to perfection, but you couldn't conjure the same purity of despair that had gotten you your Moonrise Dandelion nomination. A critic that had called you authenticity crystallized in the Louisiana bayou, reviewed your role as a plucky sidekick in a YA book adaptation, your last big performance as missing a quintessential spark. It was a confluence of factors you knew, but it felt like it came down to two Suddenly your pudge went from cute to unworkable. And suddenly your port wasn't enough. You pause on the doorstep of the dead man's daughter, squaring your shoulders, your fingers find the Remnant drive in your messenger bag. You reactivate the likeness veil. The Frisks have a nice suburban home of the type that would have been middle class when you were growing up and has inflated to upper middle in the years since. It's painted an unassuming beige. There are spurts of flowers in the raised beds on either side of the porch. A child's tricycle is tipped over by a tree bearing a mix of apples, pears and cherries, one type of fruit per spliced limb. It's the kind of house your mother wanted, and to avoid the painful twang of her memory, you slot the Remnant drive in. Elias awakens in a firework of neuron firings, sodium channels opening action potentials, propagating 100,000 receptors welcoming neurotransmitters across synapses. You lean back in your own body, shifting yourself around in the not space of your thoughts to give him more room and ring the doorbell. Oh wow, you hear your client announce through the door, false cheer heavy in her voice. I think that might be Grandpa. Tiny feet pitter patter against the floor. You hear high pitched giggling. Elias's excitement rises in your chest, a bolus of oxytocin hitting hard, and your own contentment responds. Anticipation, happiness, love. The source becomes irrelevant when he's in your body. His emotions indistinguishable from your own. You're awash in what yourselves feel a borrowed joy, an unborrowed joy. Someone wrenches the door open from the other side and squeals. The kid. Jay. Elias's thoughts insist, and you realize you've known his name since you first held him in your arms in the hospital waiting room is missing no less than three teeth. This means what should be Grandpa exits his mouth as guapa, letting Elias guide you while still retaining primary control. You bend down and scoop him up, grinning. Hello, squirt. You pinch his cheek at Elias's behest and Jay squeaks, half indignant and half overjoyed. Miss me? You sound different, says another child still in the doorway. Jenna. That's right, Jay and Jenna. This girl whose body is more band aid than skin was the first of your grandchildren. You used to berate her for skateboarding so much, covering herself in scrapes and cuts, but you can't bring yourself to scold her now. She's examining the strange curves of your surrogate's body, your body with suspicion. You look different too. I know, darling, I know. But it's your old papa frisk. Hey, how's your kick flip Gotten what to show me. Her expression flits away from uncertainty, grin spreading. She's too young to care about the difference between the surrogate's high voice and the scratchy tones of the body that once carried you, too excitable to notice your face's flickering facade. You better strap in, Grandpa. I'm gonna blow your socks off. She pushes past you and Jay, beelining for the garage. Jen, your daughter calls from inside, stepping forward in the foyer. Don't forget your helmet. Melissa's eyes shift to yours, her doubt stronger than Jenna's. Oh, bug, you say, the nickname for your daughter, an exhalation, more than a word. It's me. When you were 14, your mother stopped homeschooling you. You'd had a few tutors on set New York Times tables and read voraciously between takes. But public school was a rude awakening. You discovered that casting rooms weren't the only places that would exclude you for your weight. The cafeteria was just as ruthless. You ate your lunches outside, made extra copies of your homework in case of bullying, and pretended you didn't catch the comments made just loud enough for you to overhear. You learned to treat school as a set, playing your role, quiet, inept, unthreatening to perfection. At first, when you labored through the rare social interactions you couldn't dodge, you found yourself mentally reaching for your script drive prompts, at a loss. When appropriate responses didn't materialize in your brain, you lost the habit quickly. You wore your hair long and down to cover your port, because Ellery Yin had one, too, and people were always trying to stick things in it, making fun of him for being a machine. You weren't a machine, and neither was Ellery. You showed him your port the same year the two of you went to prom together. A brief relationship struck like a match and extinguished when his family moved. Sophomore year, he drew up your hair with one hand and kissed the spot, the skin around its edges tingling to his touch. You found out later that he'd gotten his port for medical reasons, an experimental cure for seizures. The treatment didn't work, but it wasn't a total loss, unlike your port, which often gaped empty under the waterproof cap you clipped on it to keep it free of dust and debris. He kept a customized alert drive installed. It couldn't avert his seizures, but like a service dog on steroids, it could warn him, send a spike of impending doom into his system in time for him to lie down and and minimize damage. Your port had never been medical, but it had helped you in its own way. Food on the table, money in your college savings, supplementary income when your father's child support payments arrived late, your joy mirroring your mother's, you thought you probably couldn't have pulled off Moonrise Dandelion without being twitched. You wondered if your port had made you better or only more true. You told your mother about Ellery, whom she immediately dubbed the Sweet One. She approved of the relationship and this made you bloom. Your alarm rings a five minute warning, jolting you out of the synchronicity of yourselves. It's like you've fallen asleep in an old fashioned coach, your hands on the reins of your body but the dead man guiding you from a dream. You've lost track of time on the visit, watching Jenna's skateboarding attempts and building a castle in the backyard with Jay, but the alarm, with its distinctive buzz vibrate pattern, tells you it's been almost an hour. Elias's displeasure poisons both of you for a moment before you respond with an automatic singe of disapproval. He knows the rules. You begin to extricate your consciousness, a painstaking process. You're such a good surrogate because you're excellent at piggybacking your body, letting your remnants take control without losing it yourself. Still, the longer you've got a remnant drive in, the more you intermingle with the remnant and doing a cold turkey drive pull will give you a migraine for half a day. You much prefer easing into the split despite the extra effort. You let Elias be the one to beckon over your his daughter to whisper in her ear that the visit's almost up. You catch a glimpse of unshed tears sparkling in her eyes, but she winds the kids down and ushers them inside without complaint. Thanks. You think to Elias and one of his thundercloud thoughts passes your awareness, quicksilver and impossible to pin down. You're annoyed. He's annoyed to have to vacate, to say goodbye to his family until the next visit. Sorry, you think targeted. See you next time. You pull the drive, your client comes back outside, hesitating at the top of the steps. It's Anna again, you say with a wave, reaching up to deactivate your likeness veil. She nods, descending until she's level with you. Technically this was a trial visit. She's not locked in on paper, but you've seen clients like her. This will not be the last time you surrogate for Elias Frisk. Are you doing okay, Melissa? You're gentle, sincere. I know it can be a lot talking to him again. She shakes her head. It wasn't just talking. The way you moved, the way you laughed. He was here, in you. You laugh, diverting the awkwardness that could have been. It's part of the job description, you say. Then carefully, will I be seeing you again on Thursday? Her lips tremble. You catch a glimpse of her spouse over her shoulder, watching through a window. Yes, she says. Yes, please. After high school chewed you up and spat you out, you tried community college, sampling classes like appetizers at a buffet. You took chemistry, literature, history, acting. It was the first time you'd tried to act without a script drive, and you were shocked by how much you loved memorizing. You'd sink into a scene, drilling lines back and forth with your classmates and leave yourself behind. The ease with which you slipped into character impressed your professor, but this surprised you less. Taking someone else's emotions, struggles, life, and accepting them as your own. This was second nature to you. You had special accommodations for your port, temporary fidelity caps you had to wear when you took tests to prove you hadn't cheated via drive. The fidelity caps weren't as comfortable as your own, and you found yourself itching your neck with one hand and writing your answers with the other. You skated through two years of college at the exact middle of every curve. Paying attention in most classes was difficult. Sometimes, secretly, traitorously, you wondered if your port had screwed your neurodevelopment, rerouted the connections in your brain to crave external internal stimulation of the sort only a drive could provide. Acting remained the only subject in which you excelled. You called your mother every night, without fail, for the first year of college, reeling off the events of your day, and waited with bated breath for her response. A low hum or a cheery laugh from her end of the call would lift your spirits or drop them. You took your cues from her, outsourcing the responsibility for your feelings. And then your mother died. After the second week of visits, the frisks upgrade to your premium package, three sessions a week of the dead man in you. At first, Melissa Frisk asks for longer visits instead, but you nix that idea. You try not to surrogate any one remnant for more than an hour a day, two if you must. Your field is fairly unregulated, and you're sure she could find a surrogate willing to do an eight hour session for double pay, but you're not certain you trust yourself with such a commitment. It's hard enough to relinquish Elias and his your emotions. As it is, you're glad for the extra premium fee. One of your other clients recently dropped you, switching to a 6th gen surrogate who just joined the freelance market. You tell yourself you aren't jealous, but you're good enough at identifying your emotions to know it's a lie. Elias grows used to your body. You grow used to his remnant. You are companionable. Every so often he oversteps his boundaries, accidentally overriding you for a moment to reach for Jay's hand or clap for Jenna's impromptu magic performance. But he always retreats in a shameful rush, and you can't blame him for that. After three months as a surrogate for the frisks, you trust Elias to be part of yourself. With little supervision, you allow yourself to seep into his emotions more deeply than you normally do, reveling in secondhand sensation even when it means flashes of inseparability, vulnerable moments of deindividualization. You permit him to learn the contours of your brain. This is a mistake.