Maybe I'm just paranoid
I think Michelle is selling my things.

She's being clever, so as not to send me into a real panic. She hasn't posted on ebay as Martin Hartle and started dumping my comics. That would be a big-time signal to me that I'm never getting my body back, and it seems that, for whatever reason, she doesn't want me sure yet. Maybe she's not sure herself. But I digress.

Last night, I found about 20 or so auctions in ebay's "Vintage Video Games" section, from a seller in the Pacific Northwest that pretty closely matches the Atari 7800 and games I bought three years ago in a fit of wanting better Ms. Pac-Man than the emulated version I had on the Dreamcast as part of the Maze Madness game. It may just be a coincidence - they're pretty common games, most in stock at O'Shea's; I imagine a lot of people have similar collections. And it's not like my Sega stuff is for sale alongside it, so it could just be me worrying over nothing. The seller has a long history, so it's unlikely to be Michelle under an alias.

More likely, she's had a yard sale, taken the comics/books/CDs to places who deal in used stuff, and some of the things are entering the marketplace again. Say a collector bought the 7800 as a lot because they wanted my copy of Ninja Golf, and then started selling off the pieces they already had. Her neighbors in this scenario probably find it odd that "Martin" does this after hauling all that stuff cross-country, but it's not something anybody would call the FBI over.

If this is what's happened, though, I have to say that I may resent it almost as much as the stolen body, in a way. The switch just seems so potentially dangerous, outlandish and traumatic (at least on this end) that is seems unlikely someone would do it on a whim - you'd need a darn good reason (or at least one that sounds good). Just selling off the things I've collected or was otherwise fond of - that I'd felt were worth keeping - strikes me as just mean and petty. If you're going to take my body, my name, my life away from me, what's the harm in sending me my toys? I'd say it's the least Michelle could do, except that there's obviously a way to do less.

Or I could just be seeing things that aren't happening. Michelle getting rid of my property is hardly the only explanation for someone on the other side of the country selling a twenty year old gaming rig.

-Marti
- posted 9:05 PM - - (archive use only)