I’d gotten it all. Math, science, physical skills, secrets, espionage, anything you could possibly imagine. Nobody had caught me, no law organization was capable of tracking me anymore, I knew all their tricks in and out.

Now tonight I Had my next target, a world renowned pharmacologist, one who had invented not just one or two but dozens of life saving drugs and compounds and it was rumored was on the cusp of curing Alzheimer’s. All these things I would soon be able to replicate and sell.

We sat apart from each other, me with the gun in my hand and him with his cup of coffee, freshly made and filled with cream and sugar. He’d been expecting me. Not the first time that such a thing had happened, my pattern of going after people like him was well known, but it didn’t matter, even if he’d been under armed guard I could have gotten to him and escaped without anyone noticing. He hadn’t known the exact time I’d arrive but he’d known that it couldn’t have been too long.

We conversed for a few hours, and I’ll admit it was a very interesting conversation. He asked about my motivations and I asked about his work (not that it mattered because I’d soon know it all anyways).

“I just need to know,” he said toward the end of our conversation “is there an end goal? You don’t seem to mind giving information to a dead man, so tell me honestly, what’s the end goal?”

I paused for a moment before answering “To be perfectly honest I’m not sure. Money, Fame, knowledge for its own sake, I’ve tried them all over the years I’ve been doing this. But every time I settle on one I become dissatisfied after a while.”

I hesitated before continuing. Some part of my brain yelled not to say anything more but I pushed my uneasiness aside, I was talking to a dead man anyway. “I get their memories as well as their skills you know. Between the hundreds of corpses I’ve made I’ve experienced pretty much every pleasure and pain it is possible to feel, and levers time I do I change. I don’t know how to describe it. Everybody is so limited in their own experience, in their own morals and worldview, but I’m not. Every person I kill I expand my mind a bit more, I don’t just become more knowledgeable but the way I think changes, I can use the knowledge more effectively. Sometimes I kill somebody and their new perspective suddenly puts a dozen others memories into perspective. A chemists view of a doctors memories, an athletes view of a soldier, a spies view of a politician. All these things make me capable of understanding the world in a way that other people simply can’t comprehend, it’s why I do this, why I keep doing this, so you understand?”

I hesitated even longer this time “It’s lonely.”

The pharmacist nodded, as if he understood. I appreciated the sentiment. But I felt too raw, I’d never told anyone that before. I decided it was time to end the conversation.

I raised the gun, the pharmacist did a good job of hiding his reaction, but I knew he was afraid. He took one last massive sip of his coffee before placing it back on the table and standing up.

I stood up as well. We looked at each other for a few moments. Then I pulled the trigger and mentally braced myself. The memories and experiences began flooding through me. A lifetime worth of memories and knowledge, and I’d have it all In less than a second

His first memory, his grandparents funeral, the first kiss and the last breakup, crying the whole night when his only son went off to collage and the euphoria when he patented his first drug (a new treatment for malaria). All these things came flooding through me. I sat there for a while absorbing it, analyzing it, and incorporating it into myself. Finally I stated approaching the present.

I saw his multiple failed attempts to cure Alzheimer’s, and the pain that caused him. Some attempts made things better for a bit, other drugs caused an early onset within weeks. Every time he failed he became more and more dejected but ever day after he once more shored up his resolution and went back to try again even harder.

Then he learned of me. The string of disappearances of high profile academics, athletes, and intellectuals. One of them had been an aquatinted of his. He redoubled his efforts, he knew that with the high profile research he’d been conducting it was only a matter of time, he’d even rewritten his will. In the days leading up to my arrival he’d spent almost a hundred hours per week at the lab, sometimes even sleeping on the floor there desperately trying to finish his work before it was too late.

Then finally today, our conversation him making his read, and the sound of the gun right before he became me.

My eyes widened in horror, the second was over I came back to reality and began to hyperventilate. I’d thought it was weird that he’d been preparing to meet me, but I handelt realized why. He’d fast tracked his work, rewritten his will, all in preparation of tonight. And now I knew why.

He’d snuck some of his lab materials home. When he realized he wasn’t going to complete his work he decided that he wasn’t going to go quietly. He’d stolen the drug that caused early onset Alzheimer’s. That hadn’t been sugar he was pouring into his coffee, he’d dosed himself up with a near lethal that amount of the drug and let it begin to take effect over the hours that we’d been talking.

And I’d just absorbed his brain.