An unplanned grab bag of stories. Some are set-ups for bad puns. Some are not funny in the least.
The stories center around a cache of alien technology discovered in the old California Gold Rush country,
and the efforts of Isaac van Els and his associates to discover what the alien devices do.
For some reason, people seem to change gender more than you'd expect.
copyright © 2011, 2013 Kaleigh Way — All Rights Reserved
If I felt uncomfortable before, once we passed the midway point... "Let me put it this way," I said to van Els, "If you look up the word uncomfortable in the dictionary, you'll see my picture next to it."
"I'm sure it would be a lovely picture," one of the doctors told me. It might have been a nice compliment if he hadn't had his hand inside me as he said it.
My job is interesting, yeah, but the best part is that I work with an amazing variety of people, all of them top notch at what they do. Some of them are a little — or a lot — weak on their people skills, but that comes with the territory. But truthfully, that sort of thing is generally getting better: scientists, engineers, computer people (like me) are a lot more social, a lot less nerdy.
When I first started here, the really smart guys rubbed me the wrong way, but then I caught on: It was just their insecurity talking: as long as a genius feels that he's smarter than you, he likes you. It's the achilles heel of the super-intelligent, and — hey — if I play off their weakness, I don't really manipulate them. It's just to get along. And I get along pretty well with the brain boys. In fact, I get along pretty well with just about everybody.
And yet somehow, I always find myself eating alone... go figure.
So I'm sitting at lunch, wondering whether it's really a good idea to eat lasagna three days in a row, when Isaac van Els sits down opposite me. I don't know him, but I know who he is... he's some kind of engineer, and he's one of the lucky ones who gets to work directly with the alien technology that was found here in Timbuctoo, California. Most of us only get to work on the data, and never even *see* the alien tech. I'm on the team that works on machine translations of the alien language. It's challenging and interesting, but it is one godawful slog, let me tell you.
Anyway, van Els... he sits down with me and is oh-so-charming. He asks me about my work, shows what seems like real interest, asks very insightful questions, and then he goes so far as to make a couple of interesting suggestions. I get pretty excited, because his offhand remarks might end up giving me a huge shortcut to breaking down the alien documents.
Okay: so he was just buttering me up. I know that now. But oh, he really buttered me good. When he first sat down, I felt okay. I wasn't down or anything like that, but after we'd talked a while, I was really UP. His attention flattered me. His listening was a relief, because most people don't want to hear about my work. His suggestions were so exciting that I wanted to run back to my desk and start pounding out some new code.
But then he turned the conversation around. It was like we were sitting on this huge pivot, and he gently turned the whole conversation and the elation I was feeling — well, he pointed it all in a new direction.
He started talking about what he was doing, and it was fascinating. He wasn't boasting; that was the nice part. He was sharing. He made me feel like this was confidential, like maybe he wasn't even supposed to be telling me, but he didn't care.
"So what does the device do?" I asked.
"In a nutshell, it rewrites your DNA and forces your body to update."
"What do you mean, *update*?"
"Let's say a woman wants to have blonde hair. She steps on the pad, and the program rewrites her DNA. If it stopped there, she wouldn't suddenly have blonde hair. She'd have to wait until her follicles started making new hair before she saw any change."
I frowned. "How long would that take?"
"Who cares?" he countered. "Too long. The thing is, the machine forces your body to do a kind of reboot. It flashes all your cells so that the change is apparent immediately."
"So she'd go from brunette to blonde—"
"—in five seconds."
"Wow!"
"That's a trivial example. The aliens—"
I interrupted. "What's it really for? The aliens didn't bring it here for spa treatments, did they?"
"No," he said. "I was just about to tell you. We've managed to figure out that the aliens weren't human. They were humanoid. They looked kinda human, but not quite. This machine let them go the last mile and masquerade as one of us."
I swore in surprise. "Do you think there might still be some of them still here on earth?"
"No telling," he said with a shrug. He moved his coffee cup and started pushing the drips of coffee around with his fingertip. "So anyway..." he said with studied casualness, "how'd you like to give it a whirl?"
"Me? Whaaa—"
Well, we argued for a while. Or discussed, rather. We talked about protocols and rules (There are no rules if you get results, he said). We talked about safety (absolutely no danger, he said). I mentioned the terms permanent damage and side effects.
"Look," he said. "The thing takes a snapshot of your current status, so you can always revert to exactly what you are now. And the only side effect is that, no matter what, it will take ten years off your age."
"How's that?"
"You know that as you get older, your DNA kind of gets frayed at the ends? After a certain point, the copies degenerate. That's what aging is all about. This machine will knit up the frayed ends. Make you ten years younger."
Well, I'm only forty-three, but the idea of backing off to thirty-three was not without its appeal! Thirty-three was a good year for me, so...
Twenty minutes later, I was dressed in a tank top and shorts, barefoot, standing inside the alien device. A ray of light passed slowly over me and bam! my hair was blond. It was so funny, I had to laugh. A couple of doctors gave me a good going over and after their thumbs-up, van Els asked, "How about another go? Want to see the Japanese version of you? the Kenyan version?"
Well, we tried them both. I stood in the box, the ray of light passed over me, and bam! I became a Japanese version of myself! Bam! I turned into the Kenyan version of myself! It was exhilarating. The doctors checked me over thoroughly after each change, and said I looked better than when I walked in. I felt better, too. I jumped around a little, dancing and laughing.
"Okay," van Els said to me. "Anything else you'd like to try?"
"No," I said, a little taken aback. "I'm all out of ideas. Uh... I guess I'm ready to turn back."
"Hold on there," van Els laughed. "Just because you're out of ideas doesn't mean we are. We've got plenty of ideas."
I felt a little chill. Even though he was smiling, I felt that his inner mad scientist was showing. He noticed my discomfort and said, "Don't worry! It's nothing bad. Maybe a little embarrassing for you, but all in the interest of science."
I hesitated, so he added, "When we're done, you can go back to what you were, or what you were... with more."
"More what?" I asked.
"Whatever you want," he replied. "You name it. Just like in a fairy tale."
That sounded good, and maybe I did have some ideas... I could use some muscles, better teeth, more hair... "But what exactly do you want to do to me?" I asked.
"We want to make a radical change, one that goes all the way down to your bones and inner organs. That way we can really see what this machine is capable of."
"Specifically what does that mean?"
"All the changes we made so far are superficial. Think for a moment: What's the biggest, most elementary change we could make in you? One that involves every system in your body?"
"No," I said.
"It's reversible," he said.
"You're going to take pictures," I protested.
"This is science," he said. "We have to measure everything we can measure."
We went back and forth for a while, until it got late. We agreed that I would sleep on it, and I went to my quarters, still as the blackest man that I'd ever seen.
In the morning I met him in the lab and told him, "Tell me all the details."
"We're going to move you gradually from male to female, talking blood samples, doing ultrasound at some steps, X-rays at others. We'll do a full body scan at the beginning, middle, and end."
"And each step I'll be a little less male."
"And a little more female, right."
"And at the end, you'll change me back."
"Right. With whatever changes or enhancements you like."
"Okay," I said. "Let's do it."
The first couple transformations were not too embarrassing. My facial hair was going away... but once my testicles started shrinking and my breasts started growing, I began to feel pretty damn uncomfortable. I wasn't sure which was worse: being examined or being photographed.
"How are you holding up?" van Els asked.
"Every pass of that ray and I'm less of a man," I complained.
"And more of a woman," he countered. "This is very brave of you," he added. "And the results we're getting are remarkable."
If I felt uncomfortable before, once we passed the midway point... "Let me put it this way," I said to van Els, "If you look up the word uncomfortable in the dictionary, you'll see my picture next to it."
"I'm sure it would be a lovely picture," one of the doctors told me. It might have been a nice compliment if he hadn't had his hand inside me as he said it.
Yes, I said "inside me" — after the midpoint in the series of transformations, they started doing internal exams. During the first examination I joked, "Just like at the airport!" and everyone laughed. During the third exam, I snapped, "Do you dip your hands in ice water before you touch me?"
After the next to the last change, the staff were practically on tip toe, and I was in a total snit. I'd gone from a permanent blush to a state of irritation on a hair trigger.
"I'm sorry," van Els said, trying to look and not look as they examined me. "I know this is difficult for you, but we're almost done."
"If it's any consolation," the doctor said, "you look adorable." I blinked and fumed a little, because after all — and once again — he had his fingers inside me as he said it. Talk about bedside manner!
But still...
Before I stepped into the box the last time, I took a look in the mirror. God, I *did* look good! I'm pretty sure I was hot. I had a skinny little waist, a nice little butt and a pair of perky breasts. And I had one of those cute little faces that you want to kiss and kiss and kiss.
"How much of this is me?" I asked, twisting this way and that, and looking over my shoulder at the mirror.
"Um, if I understand the question, all we did was tweak the male/female switches."
"You mean the XY chromosomes?"
"Well, there's a bit more to it than that, but the short answer is yes. This is how you'd look if you were born a girl, all other things being equal."
"Hmmph," I said, considering, turning one way and another. I saw the doctor standing slack-jawed in the background, but I ignored him.
"Okay," I said. "Let's do the last one."
"Ready?" van Els said.
"I just said that I was," I growled.
"Sorry," he said with a gulp.
I stepped inside the device without bothering to put on the tank top and shorts, and as I stood there naked, the ray swept over me, and I felt the change happen.
I stepped from the box, and van Els whistled.
"Oh, baby!" one of the engineers ejaculated.
"I have to tell you this — and don't get mad," van Els said, "but you were already smoking hot before you stepped into that box, but now you are on freaking fire!"
"Huh," I said, looking into the mirror. "So percentage-wise, am I zero percent male now?"
"Yes," van Els agreed, "and 100 percent female."
"Now that's it: we've finished with the damn less ray, the one that makes me less of a man?"
"Oh, honey," van Els exclaimed, "That's not a less ray, that's a MORE ray."
© 2011 by Kaleigh Way
"Well," I said gruffly, blushing, "I'm not sure that I came up with it, but I call it the Kissing Test."
"Everyone seems to think it came from you; you might as well take credit. It's rather elegant... cuts through self-deception, political correctness, through what people believe that they believe..."
"Basically," I said, chiming in and warming to my subject, "it shows whether a person really considers Sammy to be a woman. While they might like to look at her, while they may want to touch her, while they might even want to have... ah... intimate contact with her, the one thing that *really* shows whether they regard her as a woman is if they say *yes* when you ask, Would you kiss her?"
Not many people knew Sam back when he was still Sam. I've talked to his co-workers in Language Analysis and even they didn't have much to say about him. He was a likeable nerd, got along with everyone. That was about it.
But once van Els transformed him into a... well... into a babe — there's just no other word — EVERYONE on the Timbutoo campus knew who she was, and everybody had an opinion.
Now that Sam was Sammy, she was a celebrity of sorts. A shy, retiring celebrity, but a celebrity nonetheless.
And van Els? Well! Everyone already knew who he was. But now his status was boosted to the rafters. At first he caught a little heat for conducting unauthorized research on human beings — in fact, he got an official, written reprimand — which in the end meant nothing. The fact of the matter... the fact that saved his arrogant ass... was this: no one, not a single one of us, had gotten the alien technology to do anything more than buzz. Then in comes van Els with pictures, and data, and... and...
Sammy!
Sammy was the most visible, palpable, spectacular result you could wish for. She was so beautiful that you'd forget to breathe, and yet she was so quiet, so modest and humble — well, let me put it this way: if she'd been the opposite — if she'd been an arrogant, vain diva, you'd have to hate van Els. But when you'd see her smile, a smile that was so demure and soft and lovely, you spontaneously declare that van Els is a goddam genius!
People say that if van Els died and went to Hell, in three days he'd have a laboratory where Satan himself would come looking for ideas.
But seriously: the man was unbelievable. He could break the most fundamental rules... commit ethical breaches — even crimes that would get anyone else thrown into jail... and yet — not only is he not punished, he comes out smelling like rose, with all the world rushing to pat him on the back and say, "Now that's a job well done!"
It drives me wild. Sends my blood pressure through the roof! So I try to not think about it. About him.
In fact, let's get back to Sammy.
As I said, not many people knew Sammy, the girl, back when she was Sam, the man, but everyone knew that his female gender was only recently acquired.
And everyone had an opinion about that. My lab partner, Vossberg, for example:
"I won't deny that Sammy is beautiful. Sexy, even. I love to watch her lips move when she talks and her hips sway when she walks. And, oh! Let's not forget that swell pair of lungs she's got!" he laughed. "I mean, have you ever followed her breathing? BUT — I can't forget that Sammy was a man until a few days ago. And that fact just stops me cold."
"Are you kidding?" I cried. "You just said that she's sexy and beautiful!"
"Yes," he agreed. "But so what? Nothing can erase from my mind the fact that Sammy was born a man."
I'd often hit this impasse when talking to other men about Sammy. It was just incredible to me that they could acknowledge her beauty, that they would admit to feeling attracted, and then stop. They wouldn't want anything to do with her because she used to be a man.
After a while I developed a very quick test to evaluate people's feelings toward Sammy. I called it the Kissing Test. I'd ask a man if he'd want to kiss Sammy. If he said no, it meant that he still saw Sammy as a man. If he said yes, it showed that he saw Sammy as a full-fledged woman.
I put the question to Vossberg.
"No," he said. "I wouldn't kiss him... her... whatever. No."
"That's ridiculous!" I growled in frustration. "You've just admitted to feeling attracted to her!"
"As you say yourself, Dr. Mahon, attraction is one thing, kissing is another." He smiled, a little wickedly. "Which brings me to an interesting point: you would kiss Sammy, wouldn't you."
He didn't state it as a question, but I answered as if he had: "Yes. Yes, I would kiss Sammy." Then I turned as red as a beetroot. I wanted to kick myself.
"Now, Dr. Mahon, here's the interesting part," he said, leaning toward me, his grin widening. "The question for you is: Would you kiss a man?"
"Sammy's not a man!" I shouted.
He shrugged, pleased that he'd succeeded in riling me. "Maybe to you. But to me... whatever that machine did to him, it didn't rewrite his history."
"What if you didn't know his history?" I blustered. "What if you only ever knew Sammy the way she is now?"
"Well, Dr. Mahon, now you're arguing against fact, and before we take a wrong turn into your favorite place — the world of hypotheticals — I'd like to get back to work."
With that, he turned his back to me and started typing at his computer. Just to tell you what kind of jerk Vossberg is, he's one of those guys who use a standing desk: he doesn't have a chair, although I've caught him sitting in mine.
Well, anyway... I should have gotten back to work myself, but I was troubled and wanted to walk. I wasn't just irritated at Vossberg, I was irritated at myself. Why did I allow the man to goad me?
As I wandered, the anger that burned inside me gradually died away, and my mind began to turn (as it so often does) to Sammy. In my mind's eye I could picture her perfectly. Her hair was still pretty short, but her head was so small and cute, the short hair gave her a spunky, lively, very young look. And her proportions! The curves in her body were practically engineered, they were so smooth and balanced! Her curves were full without being excessive. If I ever had a chance to talk to van Els, I had to ask him: was it just Sammy's genes that made her what she is, or did the alien device do some optimizing? Of course, it could easily be both, because Sammy... well, you couldn't imagine anyone more perfect. Not an inch too tall or an inch too short; breasts big enough to bounce the right way, but small enough to be firm and pert; legs not overlong, and just enough muscle definition to—
Smack! I walked into a doorframe.
"Ouch, Dr. Mahon! Are you alright?" a young female technican asked.
"Oof!" I replied, rubbing my forehead, "Yes, I was just lost in thought."
"I think you're going to have a bump there," she said. "You hit that doorway pretty hard. You're sure you're okay? I can walk you to the infirmary."
"No, no," I replied, getting a little irritated. "Thanks for your concern, but I'm sure I'm fine. I'll just get a cup of coffee to wake me up a little."
There are kitchenettes all over campus, and as I happened to have smacked my head at one, I went inside and made myself a cup of coffee.
As I did, I realized that quite by accident I'd wandered over to the kitchenette nearest the Language Analysis area, where Sammy works. And... coincidence upon coincidence, who would wander in but Sammy herself!
"Oh, hello, Dr. Mahon," she said, smiling shyly.
"Well, ahem! ahem!" I said. Suddenly, all I could do was clear my throat, over and over. It must have been something in the air.
Sammy handed me a throat lozenge, and it helped.
"Thanks," I said, and for some reason I became very red in the face.
"No problem," she said. "You should carry some, it seems you get those ahem-ahem attacks often."
When I couldn't think of an answer to that, Sammy smiled and turned to go. My jaw fell open as I watched her perfect form pad softly away, as if on little cat feet. When she turned in the hallway, I caught for a moment the lovely line made by her back, her derriere, and her legs. Her feet were so tiny, so cute! Where on earth did they make such little blue sneakers!
I couldn't think of Vossberg without getting angry, so I went wandering again until I smacked my head into another doorway. This time it was van Els laboratory. The great man himself was sitting at a table playing with — of all things — a slide rule. He looked up at me with no expression on his face. He regarded me for a moment, then gestured silently to an empty chair. He was inviting me to sit with him!
"What are you doing with that relic?" I asked.
He turned the slide rule over and over in his hands, and pushed the slide up and down. "I'm trying to get it to work," he joked, "but I can't find the ON switch." He handed it to me.
I fiddled with the thing for a bit, remembering immediately the principles, looking to see which scales were on it. "Amazing device," I mused. "I wonder who invented it?"
"A man named Oughtred, back in the 1600s," he informed me. van Els watched me play in silence for a while, then he asked, "What can I do for you, Dr. Mahon?"
"Oh!" I said, "I'm surprised you know my name!"
He shrugged and smiled. "You're the one who came up with the Kiss Test."
"Well," I said gruffly, blushing, "I'm not sure that I came up with it, but I call it the Kissing Test."
"Everyone seems to think it came from you; you might as well take credit. It's rather elegant... cuts through self-deception, political correctness, through what people believe that they believe..."
"Basically," I said, chiming in and warming to my subject, "it shows whether a person really considers Sammy to be a woman. While they might like to look at her, while they may want to touch her, while they might even want to have... ah... intimate contact with her, the one thing that *really* shows whether they regard her as a woman is if they say *yes* when you ask, Would you kiss her?"
"And you, Dr. Mahon, would you kiss her?"
"Me... ah... uh... well," involuntarily I glanced around the room, and seeing no one, I replied, "Yes, yes, certainly. I would like to kiss her."
van Els' eyes twinkled. "Why did you look around before you answered? If someone else were here... say Dr. Vossberg, for instance, would you have answered differently?"
"Ach! That idiot!" I scoffed.
"He wouldn't kiss her, I take it."
"No, damn him, he wouldn't!"
He repeated my damn him with an interested raised eyebrow. "You've got to tell me, Dr. Mahon: Why on earth would you want Dr. Vossberg to kiss Sammy?"
"I don't!" I cried. "The thing is... the thing... the thing is this: *I* want to kiss Sammy. I am wildly, desperately attracted to her. I would LOVE to kiss her."
"But?"
"But," I never knew the rest until now, until van Els asked me, even if it was plain as day. "Knowing that Vossberg — and other idiots like him — well... knowing that they would think I was kissing a man..." and there I broke down and couldn't continue.
When I say I "broke down" I don't mean I cried. I just mean that I couldn't go on. Words failed me.
"I see," van Els said.
"What I wish," I growled, clenching my fist, "What I wish, is that we could take a man, a man's man, and transform him with that device of yours into a beautiful woman..."
"To seduce Vossberg?" van Els supplied. I nodded.
"Ah, Dr. Mahon," van Els replied. "This is your lucky day. Just like in a fairy tale, I happen to be able to grant that wish."
I looked up. "Really?"
"Of course. But you would have to be that man. AND you'd have to agree to let me perform a number of other, unrelated transformations."
"Wha..."
"Of course, in the end, I'd change you back to just as you are now."
"But why?" I asked.
He smiled. "If we're going to stick someone into that machine again, we have to get some serious science done. I don't care what you want to change into, or what you do while you're changed, as long as I get to check off a few tests I've been waiting to do. And of course there will be photographs, examinations, blood work..."
"Oh, I don't think so," I said, shaking my head. "I'm not up for any of that."
"That's too bad," he said. "So far, Sammy's been my only volunteer."
"Really! I'm quite surprised! I thought you'd have people lined up around the block!"
"Oh, sure," van Els agreed. "There are plenty of people who want to get their hair back or lose their potbellies or do some other silly thing, but none of them are willing to let me do a little science on them. And if they won't, then I won't. I got an official reprimand, you know."
"Oh yes, I know about that—"
"The only reason I got away with it is because, in the end, I had some hard science. Real results. The next person who steps into that machine is going to go through seven transformations that I have on a list. The eighth can be whatever they like, and afterward they can go back to what they were. If they like."
"Does Sammy ever talk about going back?" I ventured in a hushed tone.
"Never," he said. "In fact, she asked me to destroy her genetic snapshot, the thing that would allow her to go back."
"Why would she do that?" I asked.
"She's afraid the administration here might force her to change back to what she was."
"Could she?"
"Not any more," he said.
"Well," I said, gathering myself to rise from the table, "I'm sorry for your lack of volunteers, but — as much as I'd like to have the last laugh on Vossberg — there's no way I could do such a thing."
"Ah, that's too bad," van Els said, with a trace of sadness. He picked up the slide rule once again and glued his eyes to it. As he pushed the rule back and forth, he sighed, "Poor Sammy!"
That stopped me. "What do you mean poor Sammy?"
"Well," he said. "Think about it: if you went through the machine, she'd have someone to talk to... you two would be able to compare notes. That poor thing! She's had an experience that literally no human being in the world has shared. She has no one to talk to about it. Oh well!"
Early Saturday morning, I showed up at van Els laboratory. Friday night I'd undergone an extremely thorough physical exam, and I was ready for the transformations.
"Each transformation will take only moments," van Els told me, "but we'll need a good bit of time between each one to take photographs, do blood work, scans if necessary..."
"I understand," I said. "I'm ready."
"Good!" he said. "And your plan is..."
"The last transformation turns me into a beautiful woman; I go to the social event tonight; tomorrow morning you change me back."
"Fine," van Els said. "Remember — as I told you — I can't guarantee that you'll be as beautiful as Sammy. She had great genes on her side. But we'll do our best."
I swallowed hard and said, "Let's get started!"
The seven transformations were pretty awful. I don't want to dwell on them at all, but each one was uglier than the one before. At one point van Els told me that they were trying to figure out what the aliens looked like in their natural form. "The settings we're using on you will help to narrow down the possibilities," he said.
The fifth transformation was so painful that I had to be lifted bodily out of the machine and set on a table. I'd never felt such general, whole-body pain. It was excruciating. I couldn't even speak, it hurt so badly.
"I didn't think it would be *this* uncomfortable," van Els said. "Hang in there."
Hang in there? Did I have an alternative?
At long last, the seven awful changes were done, and he changed me, as promised, into a woman. Frankly, I was more shocked by that last result than the seven before it. Being a woman... well, it was truly alien to me.
"You don't look very comfortable," van Els said. "Are you sure you want to go through with this? I can change you back to your original form right now, if you like."
"No, no," I said. "I didn't go through all that pain for nothing. I've got to show up that idiot Vossberg."
van Els shrugged. "It's your nickel."
"I think it's a bit more than that," I quipped, but it didn't sound as funny out loud as it did in my head.
One of van Els' female techs helped me into a dress and shoes and so on and did my hair and makeup. The experience was quite strange; it reminded me of nothing so much as getting ready for a school play, or Halloween.
"There, done!" the tech said, but she didn't look quite convinced.
"How do I look?" I asked, and gazed at myself in the mirror. "I think I look pretty damn good, if I do say so myself!"
"Uh..." the tech said.
"What's wrong?"
"Could you try smiling a little?" I smiled. "Oh, no! Not like that! A little less... oh, dear." She looked at me for a moment, then said, "Try this: don't smile... just think about smiling."
I did, and felt the corners of my mouth move up slightly. "How's that?"
"It'll have to do," she said.
"Yes, I think it will!" I agreed, looking at myself from various angles. "Thanks so much!" and off I clomped down the hall to the social.
I could feel all eyes upon me as I entered the hall and made my way to the refreshments table. I was sure I was making a hit, and I chattered a bit with random people in passing.
There was nothing strange about a new person on campus. New people were joining all the time, temp workers came and went, so I didn't really stand out for being new.
It took about an hour before I spotted my prey, and another half hour before he was alone. That's when I moved in for the kill. All I had to do was get that shlub to kiss me, and then I'd have the last laugh.
"Hello there, handsome," I said. "Who are you and what do you do here?"
"I don't think so," he replied.
"What?" I said, taken aback. "I'm new here. Wouldn't you like to show me the ropes?"
"Not particularly," he told me.
"Why don't we chat for a little bit, get to know each other? Why don't you tell me a little about yourself?"
"No," he said, and he coughed in a funny way. I was beginning to feel a bit put out. What was wrong with this guy?
"Why don't you want to talk to me?" I demanded with a frown. "Is there something wrong with me? Tell me!"
"Oh come on!" he replied. "I can see right through you. I know who you are."
I scoffed in disbelief. "Who told you?"
"Nobody had to tell me," he laughed.
"My disguise is perfect!" I retorted. "I don't just look like a woman, I *am* a woman!"
"You might be a woman," Vossberg replied, "but you talk like a Mahon."
© 2011 by Kaleigh Way
"I've been told that my face would scare a dog out of a butcher shop."
He tilted his head and looked at my face — as if considering whether it might be so. It sent a chill through me.
"Do you know," he said, "I might be able to help you."
Also note that the Easy-Bake ® Oven is a registered trademark owned by Hasbro.
I was absolutely elated when I was invited to work at Timbuctoo. I was over the moon!
The last thing I expected was to end up in a hospital bed, weak with fever, standing on the edge of a dark ugly well of depression. And yet, there I was.
When I first arrived at Timbuctoo, I was put in charge of a small team. We were given the task of studying one of the alien devices: first of all, to figure out what it does, and then — hopefully — to make it do useful work.
I paid a lot of attention to the device, sometimes spending entire nights just staring at the thing. There's a small amount of writing on the face of the machine. I've got a picture of it in my pocket, always, and I often place it on the table in front of me while I'm eating. I don't understand it, but I keep looking at it, trying to get it into my head, to immerse myself in the problem every way I can.
But the one thing I didn't pay much attention to, was my team.
I'm an electrical engineer, and a damn good one. I've got a hefty academic background, packed with more math and physics than most people take, and my experience in the semiconductor industry is both cutting-edge and very hands-on. I've got an impressive resume and the skills to back it up. Even though I'm a woman in what's considered a man's job, I've always been able to go where I wanted and be respected for what I can do, regardless of my gender.
So when I was put in charge of a team of four men, I didn't expect any problems. We were all professionals, after all. We had a job to do, and as far as I could see the men didn't have any problem with my direction.
But I was SO wrong.
Gender stereotypes, you know? I figured that if the men had a problem with me, they'd come right out and tell me. If they were going to undermine me, I expected it to happen in the open. But that's not how it went.
I guess it began when I mentioned the hum.
It was probably two weeks after I got there. I'd developed the theory that the machine produced alien foodstuffs, and the men appeared to tentatively agree.
But when I mentioned the hum, they all looked at each other.
Sepulveda, one of the guys on my team, said, "What hum?"
I said, "You know, the hum that starts whenever you get near the machine."
The men all looked at each other, and Sepulveda said, "I've never heard any hum."
So we brought in sound equipment, vibration sensors, oscillators, noise generators... any device we could think of, to try to suss out the hum.
"We're not picking up anything," Sepulveda said. "And nobody hears it but you." He smiled at me, and I saw the first hint of his aggressive, even sadistic, side. "Could be tinnitus. When was the last time you had your hearing checked?"
I didn't realize it then, but afterward I knew this was his big moment: it was one of the those asinine alpha-male things.
None of the other men laughed, but I could see them all looking down, not laughing, if you know what I mean.
From then on, Sepulveda never missed a chance to take a crack at me, to make me doubt myself and my work. He was very careful to never resort to open insults... all he did was insinuate things.
It came to a head three weeks ago. It was just after I'd pulled an all-nighter, poring over data, crawling over the machine inch by inch for the hundredth time, looking for the tiniest clue, the smallest trace of light. When the others arrived, I'd gone off to clean up a bit and get some breakfast. When I returned to the lab, there was a presentation in progress.
Sepulveda had convened a group of supervisors and administrators, and he put on a presentation of the work we'd done so far. I have to say, he really knows how to put on a show: he had very slick slides and handouts. The guy is also great at explaining difficult ideas. In spite of the fact that virtually every idea that he presented as his own was actually MY work, I had to admit it was a kick-ass presentation.
I stood there, open mouthed, breakfast in hand, rumpled and messy, and utterly unprepared.
It was a complete coup, in every sense of the word.
Within two days I was demoted, and Sepulveda became the team leader.
At first I was shocked. Then I got angry. Then the very people who hired me, came to tell me — in front of what had been my team — exactly how disappointed they were in me.
I lost my title. I took a cut in pay. I had never been so humiliated. Never. And that is saying a lot.
It completely demoralized me. Some of my findings were (I think) quite remarkable, and came at the expense of many all-nighters. The biggest breakthroughs and the entire direction of our research (which Sepulveda continued) was due to my intuitions and deductions.
But now he had me making coffee, running errands, typing, printing, and collating reports... basically, Sepulveda turned me into his secretary.
I was no longer allowed to speak at team meetings. I could only take notes.
It was doubly frustrating... that in the midst of a very successful career, I was unable to make my voice heard at all. And any irritation or complaint I made was blamed on "hormones" or "that time of month."
At last it reduced me to tears. At least I was alone in my quarters when I cried, but afterward I hated myself for crying.
The next morning I woke with a sore throat. I went to work anyway, but Sepulveda sent me away, telling me in a disgusted tone that I shouldn't have come. "How irresponsible can you be?" He didn't shout, but his voice was unnecessarily loud. "Do you want to get the rest of us sick? Go back to your quarters and stay away until you're well enough to make coffee without sniffling." My face burned with humiliation, but I bit my lip and went back to bed.
The next day I had a fever of 102, so I stumbled to the infirmary and spent the next 30 hours in a delirium. I remained two days after that for observation and recovery... two days of nothingness: I was shipwrecked, washed up alone on an empty shore. I felt utterly empty, burnt out of... well... everything in me, really.
As I lay in bed in that sterile, quiet, pale blue room, I decided that — as exciting as Timbuctoo was — I needed to leave. I could easily return to the private sector, pick up where I'd left off...
Mentally I worked out all the details... where to go, who to call. I mapped it all out in my head. It was simple, really. It was time to cut my losses and go. Of course, I was disappointed, but at the same time I felt a big weight drop off of me.
I would go as quietly as possible. I'd been beaten. I wasn't going to make a fuss.
I started figuring how many boxes I'd need and how much bubble wrap... when the nurse told me that I had a visitor.
Imagine my surprise when Dr. van Els walked in. I didn't know him at all — except by reputation, and I didn't expect him to know me.
But he walked up to my bed and greeted me by name. "How are you, Dr. Kang?" he asked. "I heard you had a terrible fever. Are you feeling any better?"
"Yes," I replied. I wanted to say more, but frankly I was too tired and too surprised. After all, this man was one of the great minds... well, if not of our time, at the very least he was one of the great minds at Timbuctoo. And that was saying a lot.
People say a lot of unkind things about van Els. They call him the Son of the Devil and similar things, but one thing nobody mentions is how charming the man can be! He has a genuine charisma, and an aura of influence that's almost palpable.
Before I knew it, the two of us were talking like old friends. It was wonderful! He told me some of the difficulties and hidden stories of his research — it was fascinating! He related some episodes from his childhood and college years, his work experiences... and I reciprocated. In no time at all I was on a roll, telling him my life story. And he was interested, listening. I hadn't been able to open up like that to anyone since... well, in a very long time.
After a while I began to realize that *I* was doing virtually all the talking. But he seemed to enjoy it; he kept prompting me for more, asking questions... but he wasn't interrogating me. He wasn't pumping me for information or trying to dig out anything in particular. What I was saying didn't seem to matter at all... but I don't mean that in a bad way. What I mean is, it seemed that apart from what we talked about... and we could of spoken of anything at all... All he wanted to do, was to get to know me. It was SO lovely, so welcome, like water in the desert.
Soon I found myself telling him of my experience at Timbuctoo... how excited I'd been to come... the tentative discoveries I'd made... the way my position had been stolen from me... the degrading way Sepulveda had come to treat me...
"Dr. Kang," van Els said in soft, confidential voice, "I hope you realize that you have grounds to file several sexual harassment complaints? No one should endure such a hostile work environment."
I sighed heavily. "I know," I said. "But I also know that it won't do me a bit of good. Especially now. Everyone would think I'd made the complaint out of revenge. After losing my position, I'd seem like a desperate..." I got choked up, and couldn't go on.
He sat in silence for a while. When I was able to stop sniffling, I blew my nose and looked up at him. His expression was impossible to read... but he was still sitting there, next to my bed. He hadn't run away.
"Also... there is another reason," I said. "I'm not an attractive woman, and if I say I've been sexually harassed, people will say it's wishful thinking on my part."
"That would be inordinately unkind," he commented.
"I've been told that my face would scare a dog out of a butcher shop."
He tilted his head and looked at my face — as if considering whether it might be so. It sent a chill through me.
"Do you know," he said, "I might be able to help you."
"Help me?" I repeated in a small voice.
"Yes," he said. "If you help me, I can help you."
He told me about the transformation of Sammy and the more comical experience of Dr. Mahon. He ran though the tests he'd done on them and the data he'd collected.
"And what about the others?" I asked.
"What others?" He looked puzzled.
"The other volunteers," I replied.
"There were no other volunteers," he said. "There are plenty of people who'd like some sort of change... a cosmetic tweak... a medical correction... but I can't do that. I'd be out on my ass in a heartbeat if I started doing that sort of thing.
"However, if a person will consent to letting me put them through a series of transformations of my own AND allow me to gather extensive physical and medical data at each step, then I will be happy to change them into whatever they like."
"And what would I like to change into?" I asked him in a challenging tone. I know who and what I am. I fought with myself for decades until I'd finally arrived at a kind of peace with myself and how I looked. I know I'm not attractive. I accepted it; I long since moved on from there.
"You can be whatever you please," he said. "A newer you, with any change or enhancement you like — or another you, as different from who you are now as night is from day."
"Could I be a man?" I heard myself ask.
He shrugged. "Of course. And if you don't like it, you can always go back to what you are now. Or to a new, improved you. If you go through my seven transformations, I'll make sure that you're happy in the end."
And I did a lot of that. I had a weird mixture of feelings about what he'd said. On the one hand, he was like the genie from the lamp: he could grant whatever wish I expressed, but I had to be very careful what I wished for. On the other hand, van Els definitely had a not very well concealed mad scientist in him. He wanted a guinea pig, a test rat, and somehow he'd hit on me as a likely candidate...
... which I was! The problem lay in deciding what to ask for.
I imagined myself as a man, walking back to the lab and telling Sepulveda to get his own damn coffee and type his own reports. I could ask to be a frighteningly big, strong man, and beat the living crap out of Sepulveda.
But as satisfying as it was to picture him lying bloodied on the ground, I felt ashamed for wishing it. I also knew that if I did such a thing, it would have a very negative impact on my entire career.
So, what else could I be?
An obvious alternative was a more attractive me. I imagined myself as lovely and winsome as Sammy. I could be svelte, sylphlike, willowy. That would certainly be a change!
But the men I worked with, especially Sepulveda, were pigs. Honestly, if I were desirable, my problems were likely to increase, not decrease. He'd probably react to such a change as an expression of willingness on my part, and I didn't want that.
After a lot of serious thought, I decided to not change at all.
I know who I am — at least the way I am now.
Besides, I didn't see how any physical change could alter my work situation.
On the morning of my discharge from the infirmary, I passed the notice board where job listings are posted. I took a quick look through them, and found one that was right up my alley! So I immediately went to HR and put in a request for a transfer. The rest of the day I felt like I was walking on clouds. A transfer! It would certainly be an elegant solution. A new job, a new group of co-workers. The next day I went back to work with Sepulveda and the old crew and waited for news.
Roughly two weeks went by. Then, late one Friday, Sepulveda called me into his office. "Your request for transfer has been denied," he said.
I frowned. "Why?"
"Because it wasn't approved," he replied.
"By whom?"
"By your current supervisor."
"You?" I asked.
"Bingo!" he said, and smiled — the sadistic bastard. He added, "I can't let you go: No one makes coffee the way you do."
I was speechless. I could only blink. He stood up, still smiling, said, "Have a good weekend, my valued subordinate!" and walked out of the room.
Stunned, turned to stone, I remained there for several minutes, my mind an utter blank, long after the echoes of his footsteps had faded into silence.
I turned on my heel and strode to van Els' office. He didn't appear surprised at all. He simply gestured to an empty chair and invited me to sit.
"Look," I told him, "I need help. I don't know whether I need your help, but something's got to change. I'm tired of being pushed around, but I don't know how I could be different. I mean... different in a way that would make a difference."
"Right," he said. "I understand. But you're only seeing this from your own point of view."
I opened my hands in desperation. "What else can I do?"
"Look at it from Sepulveda's point of view for a moment: one big reason that he puts you down is simply because you're a woman. If you show up for work as a man, it's going to throw him off.
"Picture this — and I'm only saying this as a mental exercise, not as a course of action — but just imagine how things would change if you started carrying a loaded pistol in your hand. From your point of view, nothing would be different. You'd never use the gun. You'd simply go about your life just as you did before.
"But for everyone else, things would drastically change. They'd be on edge. They'd start to tiptoe around you and treat you with a new-found something-like-respect. They'd constantly be asking themselves What is she going to do with that gun?
"It's the same principle. If you go back to work as a man, and make no other change, Sepulveda is going to wonder what you're up to. He's going to see the change as your first move, and he's going to wonder what's coming next."
"I guess so," I said uncertainly.
"Listen," he said. "A change is as good as a rest. Why don't you try being a man for a week, or even two. It might give you the perspective you need to see what direction your life should take. Then you can go back to being you."
I smiled, a little shyly, "Or a new, improved me?"
"Absolutely! A new improved you. With whatever changes or enhancements you like."
That night I had the longest, most thorough physical exam I ever endured.
Early the next morning van Els showed me the control console and outlined what he was going to do to me.
"You see, we still don't understand all the controls. Today we're going to concentrate on this section of the console, where there are lots of sliders, see? There are alien symbols next to each, but we don't yet know what they say. What we believe, and what we'll be testing today, is that left is for maximum and right is for minimum. The middle, we think, is some kind of neutral. We'll be running some algorithms so we can test as many sliders as possible, hitting the max and min in combinations of three or four or more. With seven transformations we can test at least nine sliders, but if we're lucky we can get in a whole lot more."
I gazed at the constellation of controls. There were sliders. There were dials. There were balls with markings and numerical displays. There was even a flat part marked off like a crazy chess board and a set of disks marked with icons. "Interesting," I mused. "The machine I'm studying has no control panel at all. No visible interface."
"Really!" van Els said, his eyebrows rising. "That's intriguing. Do you think it's missing?"
"No," I replied. "It seems to be complete. I've got an idea about it, but I'd rather keep it to myself at the moment."
"I understand," he said. Then, rubbing his hands, he asked, "Ready to go?"
I was ready.
The transformations were unpleasant and bizarre. The very first change made me extremely tall and frighteningly obese. I mean, I was terrified, nearly overwhelmed by the fear of what seemed an imminent death. My heart was racing. It was difficult to breathe and impossible to move. I honestly thought I was going to die.
The second transformation reversed both those things: it left me starvation-skinny and bewilderingly short.
Each of the seven alterations featured extremes of human proportion and their opposites.
At the fifth transformation my head grew so large and so heavy that I fell over and couldn't get up.
"Be careful!" van Els called to me. "You don't want to break your neck!"
But at long, long last — and it was a VERY long day, full of photographs, measurements, blood work, scans — at long last he did the eighth transformation: He changed me into a man. Not a remarkable looking guy. Not a bad looking guy, but nice looking, with a good build.
"I look vaguely like... who is it?" I asked myself as I looked in the mirror. "I look sorta, somewhat, kinda like Jet Li. Like Jet Li's younger brother."
"Who?" van Els asked.
"Never mind," I said. "But hey, nice job."
"No thanks to me," he replied. "I had a suspicion that this control here makes it optimize eigenvalues. In simple terms, it produces results that are pleasing. Not movie star beauty. Just normal good looks. I suppose the aliens wouldn't want to stand out when they were masquerading as humans."
During the nine days I spent as a man I never got used to the man-body. I never forgot what was dangling between my legs; I felt it all the time, and boy was I glad to see it go! The body never felt like me; it was just a vehicle, as if I was driving a car. Looking out of its eyes was like looking through a window. And to tell the truth, psychologically I didn't feel any different. At all. I didn't have a single testosterony moment, if I can use that word. I was just regular old me, just like always, doing the things I would have done anyway. But as van Els had said, other people did see me differently. That was for damn sure.
When I arrived at work on Monday, of course I had to explain that I was Dr. Kang. After the initial surprise, Sepulveda said, "Well, then, if you're Kang, go get me a cup of coffee!"
Just coincidentally, as he was speaking, I sat down heavily at my desk. I looked up at him, but I didn't move and I didn't reply. But it didn't mean anything — at least for me. You have to remember that I'd been very sick, and I was still weak. On top of that, the transformations had been no walk in the park. So I wasn't moving for anyone, and I didn't have the energy to respond.
He looked at me for a while, and the other engineers watched him. Sepulveda gave a nervous heh! and his hand twitched a little. I realized that this was one of those asinine "alpha male" moments, but I couldn't have cared less. It was their game, and I was too tired to play.
At last he said, a little too loudly, "Are you going to get me that coffee?"
I sighed in an exasperated way. When I did, he turned and fled into his office.
After that, he left me alone. So did the other guys, and they were all a little nervous the few times I spoke with them.
It was nice! Finally I had a little peace and quiet and was actually able to catch up with myself. Since Sepulveda took over, I'd wasted so much time doing secretarial things! It was wonderful to finally return to real work.
Things ran pretty much that way for the rest of the week, and by quitting time on Friday I felt like I'd finally caught up with everything. It felt pretty good.
Aside from that, being in a man-body was kind of boring. People kept asking me what it was like. Sammy came by to compare notes, and we had a few very friendly, laughing conversations. She was one smart girl! But unlike her, who felt that she was finally right, I felt as if I was hidden somewhere in the wrong body. I was sure I was going to change back, but somehow the moment had not yet arrived.
Then, on Sunday night, after dinner, something struck me. I started thinking about that hum. Ever since I started at Timbuctoo, the alien device I was studying would hum every time I'd get near it. Once I realized that the others couldn't hear it, I'd dropped the subject, but something brought it back to mind once again.
I considered all the controls on van Els' device... He had a complex, confusing array to puzzle out, and I had exactly nothing. I was sure that no pieces were missing; I had no doubt that it had been designed with no visible interface.
No visible interface... the hum... that no one could hear!
It was a eureka moment: the interface had to be neural! It must have been designed to respond to mental commands!
I practically ran to the lab. I actually fought with myself to go slowly, because I didn't want to attract any attention. I needed peace, quiet, and no interruptions. I entered my lab, but didn't turn on the lights. I approached the machine and then, as always, the machine began to hum. I sat down on the floor, cross legged, and tried to clear my mind. I pushed away every other thought and listened to the hum.
After twenty minutes, one of my legs fell asleep. I got up, shook it, rubbed it, and walked it off.
Then, when I sat down a second time, the moment I closed my eyes I heard a soft click inside my head, and I began to see images scrolling. I cried out in amazed, delighted surprise, and the pictures stopped. My heart was pounding a mile a minute. This was a historic moment, and I knew it. I had to stay calm; I couldn't afford to bungle it.
I waited until my heart stopped pounding, then I set my hand on the machine and shut my eyes. Immediately there came the click and I began scrolling through the images again. I could scroll faster or slower. I could go back and forth or stop on any image. I could make the pictures larger or smaller... I could even tell how each one smelled! I was sure, quite sure, that this machine produced foodstuffs. There could be no doubt.
I stopped on one green spongy mass and in my mind "selected" it... I can't explain how. At that, a slider appeared, with maximum and minimum symbols, just like on van Els' device. I moved it to minimum with my mind and...
I heard a new noise, and this one was not inside my head. A space in the back of the machine lit, and after several strange soft sounds, there came silence. I ran back there and found a green lump sitting on a rimmed rectangular tray. It looked just like the image I'd chosen: it resembled a beef substitute formed from a spongy green tofu. The odor was something like boiled corn. I didn't dare taste it.
I removed it, closed my eyes again, and produced four more items. I tried to make them as different from each other as possible. I could have made more, but by the fifth time it had become so easy, I was confident that I could run the machine at will.
Then I slid down and sat on the floor, gasping at my victory! You have to remember that up till now only van Els had succeeded in getting an alien device to work. And I was the second! But one thing was certain: Sepulveda was NOT stealing this discovery from me.
I put the alien foodstuffs on the bottom shelf of a rolling cart and covered the whole with two lab coats. Then I set some random items on top to make it seem like *that* was what I was wheeling. Next, I called my friend Jenn in exobiology and — after swearing her to secrecy unto death — I wheeled the alien foodstuffs to her lab, where she would be able to analyze them in complete privacy.
Monday morning, I called a friend at Chico State and asked for a favor. When I described it, she got very excited and said it was no favor at all. An hour later, Sepulveda received an invitation to come and address the university's entire student body about the work at Timbuctoo. The event was scheduled for nine AM; a previous speaker had canceled, and could he be so kind as to fill in at the last minute?
Sepulveda's vanity was stroked. He scrambled, delighted at the invitation. He pulled together slides, presentation material, videos... One thing was for sure: he was going to give his audience a good show — hell, he'd give them a great show. And they'd learn a lot.
Once that was settled, I went to see van Els.
"Could you change me back tonight?"
"Sure," he said, "We can do it right now, if you like."
"No, I'd like to do it later. Would you mind doing it at six or seven? Or even nine?"
"Ah," he said. "You want to surprise someone tomorrow. Listen, how about midnight? The witching hour?"
"Perfect!" I said. "And could you, uh, turn on that eigenvalue thing when you change me back?"
"Of course," he agreed. "Anything you like!"
"I don't want to be a knockout, like Sammy. I'd just like to be... nice-looking. Just regular. Good-looking, but not breathtaking."
He smiled. "Don't worry. I'll make sure you're happy with the result."
It's a 90-minute drive (at most) from Timbuctoo to Chico, and Sepulveda hated being late, so by seven AM he was gone. At eight-thirty I called a few administrators and supervisors, some other engineers, a few of the physics guys, Sammy, and van Els.
I had to introduce myself again, now that I was a woman once more — and very happy to be so!
The presentation came off very well. I'd actually learned a few things from Sepulveda, and I used them. I explained what had happened; how I'd got it working. Jenn did a bang-up job with her part, which was her analysis of the foodstuffs.
In the end came the demonstration: I closed my eyes, heard the soft click and had the machine pop out a few more alien items. One of the administrators (a man, naturally) actually tasted one of the items. I wish we'd caught the faces he made on video. He was spitting and rinsing his mouth for a long while, but no harm came to him.
In the end, I got my old job title back and my old salary — along with a tidy little bonus.
The new recognition didn't hurt either. Now they had to say, "The only people who've gotten the alien tech to work are van Els and Kang." How about that!
I also got to choose a new project and hire my own team. Sepulveda kept his position; he and the others stayed with the food-maker. I didn't mind; I'd done the hard part, the part that really mattered.
Sepulveda took the change surprisingly well. When he discovered that I had arranged his speaking debut at Chico State, he thanked me! I'm pretty sure he was sincere. His presentation got rave reviews and many thanks, so he became a popular lecturer, and was often absent, speaking in some place or another, and I'm sure his talks were always well done and well received.
As far as I could tell, he was equally happy running the old group, still working on the food machine, even though the mystery had been solved. Some people like that sort of work; to me it's like maintenance, but to each his own.
Funny thing about Sepulveda: after the dust settled, he began to treat me pretty well. He never apologized, and he once said something about no one making coffee as well as I do... but he saw the disapproval in my face and never made a crack like that again.
"Kind of ironic," he said. "After all that, after all those changes, you get the glory and I end up babysitting the easy-bake oven there." It was how we'd come to call it. It was a better name that the Alien Foodstuff Generator.
"Yeah, ironic," I agreed, but the word I was thinking of was justice.
© 2011 by Kaleigh Way
"Do you think he'll be alright?" Tubinger asked. "He argues and objects at every step."
"He signed the release," van Els replied. "As long as he doesn't walk away, or tell us Stop or No, he's deeply committed to the program, as far as I'm concerned."
At that, Tubinger scurried away, wondering how much he could pretend to not know, if the whole thing went sour.
Isaac van Els was massively intelligent and possessed a monumental ego, but he didn't let either of those things blind him to practical realities.
Right now, for instance, when a group of congressional representatives had flown all the way across the country for the sole purpose of chewing him out, van Els bowed his head and listened. Really listened. He was contrite where appropriate, as honest as possible, and as humble and sincere as he could manage. He chose his battles very carefully, sticking to his guns only when absolutely necessary. And he was always respectful.
Any other self-important scientific prodigy would have scorned the legislators and tried to make them feel like idiots. Not van Els.
He knew that they needed to feel in charge. He was well aware that most of what was being said was simply for show. All the real fallout, the true implications, would come afterward. For now, he simply had to watch his words... and avoid making promises, concessions, or — above all — confessions.
Unfortunately, the congressional panel was determined to nail van Els to the wall. They wanted to make an example of him, to flex their congressional might. If they could bring van Els to heel, no one at Timbuctoo would doubt who was really in charge.
And so, armed with piles of documents and a carefully mapped strategy, they called him in and constructed a laundry list of issues, sins, transgressions, and possible crimes.
They accused him of:
The list went on and on.
They pointed out, for example, that Dr. Kang could have died of a broken neck during the big-head transformation, and that he'd made no provision to protect her.
They made much of Sammy's sexual reassignment, as well as the temporary changes undergone by Doctors Mahon and Kang. They made van Els admit that not only did he not follow the established protocols for gender reassignment, but also that he had no idea what those protocols consisted of.
"Sammy is a case that particularly troubles us," one Massachusetts congressman said. "It's my understanding that gender reassignment is meant to be a long, slow, gradual process, in order to give the subject ample opportunity to change their mind."
"Have you met Sammy?" van Els asked. "Have you seen her? She's quite happy in her new body."
The congressman removed his glasses and fixed his eyes on van Els. "Are you a qualified professional in the field of mental health, sir?"
"No," van Els admitted.
"Do you have the professional preparation and experience to assert that these people you've... altered won't suffer long-term psychological damage from what you've done to them?"
"Congressman, I don't know whether you're aware, but the device takes a sort of genetic/somatic snapshot of a person. If they don't like what they've become, they can always revert to what they once were."
"And yet," the congressman pointed out, "in the specific case I've mentioned, you've destroyed Sammy's orginal 'snapshot' — haven't you?"
van Els stopped short. "Yes, that's true," he admitted. "But that was at her specific request."
The congressman smiled grimly. "Then she can't go back, can she?"
The session lasted eight hours, with a surprisingly brief break for lunch. It was followed by a second, and then a third day of interrogation.
During the relentless questioning, van Els found himself compelled to admit — first to the panel and then, more importantly, to himself — that he'd been extremely lucky: lucky that no one had been hurt, emotionally scarred, or killed.
"Good luck is a wonderful thing," the congressman pointed out. "But luck comes and goes. It doesn't carry any guarantee, and if your only strategy is trusting your luck, eventually you're going to come down hard. You're playing with dynamite, doctor, and sooner or later someone is bound to be badly hurt."
On the fourth day, the panel interviewed Sammy. van Els was not allowed to be present.
He sat in his office, sitting very still, replaying the questions and answers in his head, digging out implications and hints... piecing together as large a picture as possible from what was said and not said... and it didn't look very good for him.
The one thing he could not afford to lose was his autonomy. When van Els was brought to Timbuctoo, he was given a unique level of freedom. He could pick his own projects and unilaterally decide how they'd be carried out; he could assemble and disband teams as he saw fit. He was subject only to the overall administrators, but more as an equal than a subordinate.
But in the end, the federal government pays the bills, and the one who pays the bills has the final say.
They want to put me on a leash, van Els thought. And that is something I can not and will not abide.
van Els never closed his office door, and as he silently surveyed his options, he saw the Jackson brothers, Ben and Reuben, walking down the hall toward him.
Ben caught van Els' eye, waved a greeting, and walked in without knocking. "Come on, Rueben," he called over his shoulder, and his brother followed him in.
"Got a moment, Dr. van Els?" Ben asked, taking a chair. Rueben remained standing until van Els, smiling politely, gestured to a seat.
Ben and Rueben Jackson were twins, but not identical twins. No one ever called them "The Jackson Twins" — they were always "The Jackson Brothers" or "The Two Doctor Jacksons."
"And that is exactly the problem," Ben explained. "A lot of people don't even believe we're twins!"
"We were born seven minutes apart..." Reuben began.
"And *I* am the older twin," Ben complained.
"... but everyone thinks I'm a few years older than Ben," Reuben explained.
In fact, the two looked nothing alike. It was hard to believe they were brothers, let alone twins. Ben was a good-looking man, with dark hair and average build, while Rueben was lanky and awkward-looking. He was thin, but there was just too much of him: his arms and legs were far too long; his head, ears and mouth were far too big. van Els tried to not look at the man too much, because he began to see a irresistable resemblance to a ventriloquist's dummy... along the lines of Howdy Doody.
Ben talked on and on, and van Els forced himself to listen. He didn't really care; he wasn't interested, but he wanted to be distracted from his problems with the congressional committee. He pushed it all aside and listened to the self-absorbed man who was sitting in front of him.
"What exactly do you want me to do for you?" van Els asked.
"It's like this," Ben said, "We've heard that you take a kind of snapshot of a person... of how they are... and then — even after you transform them into something completely crazy — you can change them back to exactly the way they were."
van Els nodded. "Yes, that's true."
"So we were thinking," Reuben continued, "That if you took a snapshot of one person, you could kind of... apply that snapshot to somebody else. Could you?"
van Els frowned. He was surprised that the idea hadn't occurred to him already. "Yes, that's true," he said. "It would be a very effective cloning process, although you'd have to find someone who was willing to be exactly like you."
Ben offered, "You could turn that device into a factory for turning out twins."
"I suppose... oh! Now I see what you're driving at!" van Els responded, suddenly connecting. "You two want to be identical twins!"
"Yes! But there's another thing," Ben went on. "We know that you need to do some... some kind of wild transformations to whoever steps in your machine... in the name of science... but, if... at the end, you kind of... stamp me first, and then seven minutes later you stamp Reuben, then we'll be identical twins, but I'll still be seven minutes older, right?"
van Els was so taken aback that all he could say was "Ah!" but after a few moments he said, "Yes, of course that would be right."
"So could you do it?" Ben asked. "Would it work?"
"I could," van Els said, "and yes, I have no doubt that it would work — but I'm under quite a bit of scrutiny right now, and I don't know when I'll be able to put people inside that machine again."
"Oh, come on!" Ben retorted. "You're Isaac van Els! You can do whatever you want!"
"I appreciate the vote of confidence, Ben, but there is a limit to everything. For the present, all I can say that I'll keep you two in mind. I'll do my best to make you two the next ones to step into the machine, but right now I don't have an experiment that could justify the risk."
"What risk?"
"The congressional oversight committee has strong reservations about what I've done so far. They feel I've been reckless with the lives of the people who've been transformed."
"The bastards!" Ben growled. "If we want to take the risk, isn't the risk ours to take?"
van Els looked down for a moment and said, "The congressional committee doesn't see it that way, Ben." Then, Ben's we echoed in his head and he looked at Reuben, who'd been conspicuously silent. Uh huh, van Els thought, and reached out to touch the obvious sore spot.
"Well, gentlemen, when I am able to help you, I will, but when that day comes, there is one thing I'll need to know: Which twin do you both want to look like?"
Rueben — lanky, awkward Reuben — licked his lips and said, "Me!" at the precise moment that Ben replied, "Me, obviously." The twins shot stares at each other.
"I thought we agreed!" Ben cried in surprise. "You were going to look like me!"
"I did agree," Reuben admitted, "but then I changed my mind."
"Okay," van Els said in a pleasant voice. "You two go off and figure out where you want to end up. When you do, come back and let me know." He rose, excused himself, and retired to his quarters. He didn't have a headache, but his brain felt so hot he wished he could take his own head off and soak it in bucket of ice water.
The twins didn't return that day or the day after, but a third Jackson came to visit: Harris Jackson, no relation. Harris didn't beat around the bush at all.
"Dr. van Els, I've heard that the Doctors Jackson were here to see you. They want you to turn them into identical twins."
"Sorry, but I'm not going to comment on private conversations that I may or may not have had," van Els replied.
Harris was undeterred. "Then let me put it hypothetically," he said. "Could you take any two people and turn them into identical twins?"
"Yes."
"And if — just choosing a name at random — the Jackson twins asked you to make them identical, then — again, speaking purely in a hypothetical way — suppose a third person also wanted to be a twin —"
"You can't have three twins," van Els objected.
"Regardless... the question is: could you make three identical people?"
"Physically identical, yes."
"So I could be a third Jackson twin, couldn't I?"
"You couldn't be a third twin: you'd be identical triplets... *if* such a transformation were to occur."
"But you could *make* it occur, couldn't you?"
"Yes, but why would I want to?" van Els asked with a frown. He was finding Harris Jackson to be even more irritating than Ben. "And even more to the point, why would you want to?"
Harris paused for a moment before he answered. He looked into van Els' face, considering for a moment. Then he spoke. "I'm an only child, Dr. van Els. I have no living relatives. Not a single one. I was an orphan, and once I grew up I began looking for my family. What I found was a very bare tree. No brothers or sisters, no parents, no grandparents, no aunts or uncles, no cousins..." Harris shook his head. "No one. Just me. So when I heard that the Jacksons were going to be identical twins, I couldn't help but think I want some of that."
"Listen to me, Harris," van Els told him, "I can't say that the Jacksons are going to do any such thing. But whether they do or whether they don't, it would be unethical of me to make you the twin of another person without their express and written permission." And I might want it notarized, van Els mentally added.
After Harris Jackson left, van Els sat down at his computer and did a quick search: How many Jacksons worked at Timbuctoo? Ironically, or comically, at least memorably, there were exactly five total. The other two were women.
He'd just made a mental note of where the women worked, when Rueben Jackson came creeping up the hallway. Rueben was alone, and literally walking on tiptoe. He kept glancing over his shoulder in a furtive way, as if he were afraid of being followed.
"Hello, Dr. van Els," he whispered. "Can I talk to you?"
"Of course, Rueben, have a seat."
Rueben sat and cast several glances out the door.
"If you sit in the other chair," van Els told him, pointing at another seat, "no one will see you unless they walk into the office."
"Oh, good!" Rueben said, with a huge sigh of relief. He sank into the chair and began wringing his hands.
"What's wrong, Rueben?" van Els asked. "You don't want to do this twin thing, do you."
"No, doctor, no," the poor man replied. "It's all Ben's idea. All our life it's bugged him that we're not identical. Do you know that only one-third of twins are identical?"
"No, I didn't know that."
"Ben says it almost every day. He asks why we couldn't be in that one-third."
"But you, I take it, don't want to be a twin at all."
"No! I don't. Maybe if it were someone else... but Ben! He is so pushy and controling. He's a real control freak. If he knew I was here talking to you..." Reuben shook his head and sighed.
van Els smiled sympathetically and asked, "Do you know Harris—"
Reuben quickly interrupted with a scoff. "Oh yeah! He's worse than Ben!"
"He wants to be a 'third twin' as he puts it."
"I'd be glad to let him take my place, but Ben wouldn't have it. He calls Harris a pretender."
"Hmmm," van Els said. "Do you know there are two more Jacksons here at Timbuctoo?"
"Oh, yes, the girls. They're kind of related... cousins of cousins. But we don't... they don't want anything to do with us. Ben is just... you know. Harris, too."
"Okay," van Els said. Two less possible "twins," then. Aloud he said, "So, you'd prefer to stay as you are, Reuben?"
"Well...," the man said, twisting his hands hard, and screwing his face into a picture of desperation, "that's the thing. I... I'd really... oh, God, Dr. van Els! I want to be a girl! You did it for Sammy, can you do it for me?" Reuben's eyes welled up, and he began to sniff.
"Oh!" van Els said. He was completely and utterly taken by surprise. Unfortunately, the first thing that came to mind was the congressional panel, and their objections to what had happened to Sammy. "Well, Reuben, have you ever seen a doctor or psychologist about wanting to be a woman?"
"No," Reuben replied in something very near a sob. "Ben would never let me. He won't let me talk about it with anyone."
"Ah," van Els said. "I've gotten in a lot of trouble for what I did to Sammy..." he began to say, but Reuben cut him short.
"Yes, but you're Isaac van Els, for Christ's sake! You can do whatever the hell you want! If there was no one else on earth who could help me, YOU could still help me!"
With that, Reuben dissolved into tears. van Els got quickly go to his feet, shut his office door, and sat down next to the crying man. In the end all he could do was wait for the poor soul to cry himself out.
"Listen to me, Reuben," van Els said. "Right now I need to be careful, and the only promise I can make to you is this: If I *can* help you, I *will* help you."
At that, Reuben smiled and began to dry his tears. "I can't tell you what that means to me," he said.
van Els spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Honestly, Reuben, I don't know what my promise is worth."
"Dr. van Els," he said, "It doesn't matter who they send or what they tell you: there's not a person alive who can outwit you."
With that, Reuben left, smiling as if his deepest wish had already come true.
van Els sat, his mind for once an utter blank. He sat there until one of his female techs stuck her head in. "Everything okay, doc?"
"Uh... yeah," he replied, with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "Is there anything you need?"
"Naw." She shrugged and smiled. "I'm just wondering what comes next. You know. Never a dull moment; that's what's great about working with you."
"Thanks," he said, and after she walked away he thought, What does come next? Everyone seems to think that *I* have the answer. Then, unbidden, the smug face of the congressman from Massachusetts came to mind. Was that going to be the face that defeated him? Was that the face he had to answer to?
All of Timbuctoo was holding its breath. The question in everyone's mind was: What will van Els do?
van Els himself was asking, What *can* I do? Then he remembered Reuben's tearful declaration: "You're Isaac van Els, for Christ's sake!"
That silent question What *can* I do? hung in the air for a moment, until van Els leaped to his feet and shouted, "That's the wrong fucking question! I'm Isaac van Els, goddam it! NOBODY tells me what I can and cannot do!"
He went back to the alien device. There was something in there that had been bothering him. It had something to do with the snapshots. He knew where they were stored, he knew how to label them, how to view them, how to delete them, but...
He poked around, typing on the alien keypad, moving controls, clicking, examining, exploring... until at last he realized what he was looking for...
And then, a certain combination of keys... and...
BINGO! He found the hidden treasure! Too excited to even smile to himself, he skimmed over mountains of new data... or old data, depending on your point of view. He scribbled out several sheets of notes, printed a few screen shots, and turned off the machine.
Then he scurried off to Language Analysis to find Sammy.
"No," the congressman from Massachusetts said. "Absolutely, unequivocally, no."
van Els glanced at the man for a moment, but he kept his eyes on Trubinger, the man in charge of the Timbuctoo project.
"Are you sure that's what these are?" Trubinger asked.
"That's what it says," Sammy replied, in a barely audible voice.
"And you're not just saying that to help out your hero here?" Trubinger asked Sammy.
"No, I'm sure that's what it says," Sammy insisted, a little more loudly this time.
"I don't care what it says!" the congressman shouted. "We've got to put a stop to this reckless experimentation."
Trubinger swiveled around so he could look the congressman in the face. "Could you quit shouting? Please? We may be on the verge of the biggest breakthrough this place has ever seen, and potentially one of the biggest steps in the history of mankind."
"Oh, please!" the congressman said in a tone dripping with sarcasm.
"Let me put it this way," Trubinger told him. "If you can't keep your mouth shut and let us work, I'll have security escort you out. And then you can tell your grandkids how you were kicked out of one of the most historic moments in... in... in history!"
The congressman's eyes bulged and he choked for a moment in outrage. But his jaw snapped shut, and he didn't speak again.
Trubinger looked to van Els.
"These are snapshots of aliens," he said. "They took them before assuming human form. Now, there are two things we need to do: one is to apply the alien snapshots to human volunteers. That will allow us to see exactly what the aliens look like. We'll be able to examine them in every way. We can bring in everybody in Timbuctoo, and anyone from the outside that we need. Dr Kang's old group can feed them..."
"... with the easy-bake oven," Trubinger supplied.
"Exactly. *That* discovery was quite convenient in its timing. In any case, I'd suggest that we transform our three volunteers, and continuously evaluate their well-being. We can change them back to humans at any moment."
"Are the three Jacksons willing to do that?"
"Yes," van Els replied, "They're ready for anything, as long as we... grant their wishes, so to speak."
"I don't see any problem with that. Do you, congressman?"
The man mutely shook his head. He was brimming with anger, but there was nothing he could do.
"Then there is the other thing," van Els went on. "I've discovered that the device keeps a history."
Trubinger's eyebrows went up.
"The last time an alien used the device to masquerade as a human was thirty years ago," van Els informed him.
"Hot damn," Tubinger commented. "And did he change back?"
"No," van Els said. "He could still be out there."
After a good deal of discussion and planning, a limit of three days was placed on the alien transformations. As part of the preparations, the three Jacksons were subjected to intense examinations and interviews. They were briefed on every detail of the process, and not only signed waivers and consents of every sort, but their consents were also recorded on video.
Ben Jackson bristled and fumed, but he went along. The three men were kept separate from each other, mainly because Ben had become so contentious.
"Do you think he'll be alright?" Tubinger asked. "He argues and objects at every step."
"He signed the release," van Els replied. "As long as he doesn't walk away, or tell us Stop or No, he's deeply committed to the program, as far as I'm concerned."
At that, Tubinger scurried away, wondering how much he could pretend to not know, if the whole thing went sour.
The Jacksons stuck it out for the whole three days: they lived in alien bodies, ate the alien food, and willingly subjected themselves to every test and exam the doctors and scientists could think of.
During their time as aliens, the Jacksons had no idea who was who, despite the fact that van Els had transformed Reuben into a female of the species. Reuben knew, and was glad, although in the end it was a purely intellectual pleasure.
At long last, when the days were done and every single test concluded, Ben was returned to being Ben. Seven minutes later, Harris became Ben's exact copy, and then Reuben was transformed into a pleasant-looking woman of average height.
"Ooh, my head is so much smaller!" the new girl exclaimed in delight, "and my ears don't stick out like wings any more!" — as though that was the most remarkable change of all!
Although the brand-new twins were perfectly identical, it was easy to tell which one was which: Harris was beaming from ear to ear, while Ben was scowling and grousing and complaining. He kept repeating, "It isn't right! It just isn't right!"
In the end, van Els cornered Ben, and pointed out that he'd gotten his wish: he now was, and had, an identical twin.
"You beat every other set of twins on earth," van Els pointed out. "He is even more identical to you than someone born as your identical twin."
"It's still not right," Ben growled.
"Listen to me," van Els told him. "Do you know what Shakespeare would have said? He would have told you, Some are born twins, some become twins, and some have twins thrust upon 'em. Deal with it."
At that, Ben finally shut up.
© 2011 by Kaleigh Way
"Maybe they’re for an alien Christmas tree," van Els joked. "They have no hooks because of anti-gravity.
Or maybe they’re ornamental. Maybe they’re pretty for the sake of being pretty."
(part one of three)
"Ugh!" Sammy exclaimed in disgust as she lifted down another filing box. "Look at the dust!" She took a breath to blow the film of neglect away. Instead, she gagged on a mouthful of ancient dust, and backed away coughing. After she caught her breath, she blew her nose, and shook out her clothes and hair. "I should have worn a hat or a doo-rag," she whined. "Yuck!"
"Doo-rag?" van Els queried as he frowned at a featureless metal cylinder.
"It’s a kerchief or whatever… that you wear on your head to protect your hair," Sammy explained. She lifted the top off the filing box and discovered about four dozen… things. "What do you suppose these are?" she called to van Els.
"Some kind of ball," he replied.
"I know that," she retorted. "But look, they aren’t spheres. They’re sort-of egg-shaped, and they all look identical. I think they’re hollow; they hardly weigh anything."
van Els sighed and walked over to see. He wasn’t exactly interested, but he wasn’t bored, either. "Who knows? Maybe it’s just alien poop."
Sammy laughed. "Prettiest poop I’ve seen!" She clacked two of them together, but when nothing happened, she put the balls back in the box and the box back on the shelf.
"Maybe they’re for an alien Christmas tree," van Els joked. "They have no hooks because of anti-gravity. Or maybe they’re ornamental. Maybe they’re pretty for the sake of being pretty."
Sammy shrugged and blew the dust off another filing box. "We haven’t seen anything that indicates a sense of esthetics," she commented, and glanced at van Els, who was examining a soft, bendable device that let out very low notes when tipped. "This," he said, "is the aliens’ version of jug-band music."
"Are you okay?" Sammy asked him.
"Why do you ask?"
"You seem like you’re at loose ends. Usually you’re the one who’s driving everything around here, giving everyone ideas and and hints and pushes… And now we’re digging through boxes like... like trash-pickers, and you’re cracking jokes, but you’re not smiling. At all."
van Els didn’t realize his malaise was so obvious. At the same time, he didn’t care. Yes, he acknowledged silently, I’m apathetic and I don’t care. Aloud he replied, "Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just tired. Not physically tired, but…"
"Maybe you need a vacation?" she offered.
"I just need a change. I just need to find something to pique my interest and spark my enthusiasm."
"Okay," she acquiesced. "But I don’t feel like I’m being much help here."
"You are!" he assured her. "I couldn’t go through all this stuff without your help. For one thing, I don’t know the language, but for another, I couldn’t force myself look through this junk if I were alone."
The two of them were slowly making their way through a room full of alien technology. None of it had been cataloged or identified. No one had the least idea what any of it was, or what any of it did. And the room was not only full, it was huge. And as large as it was, the room was only a small walled-off portion of an enormous cavern that sat under the town of Timbuctoo, California.
Sammy, a pretty young woman, had a pretty strong grasp of the alien language, and she knew better than anyone how powerful the alien devices could be. Not long ago, Sammy had been an awkward young man named Sam — until her entire physical being was transformed by an alien machine at the hands of Isaac van Els.
van Els had quite rightly been chastised for being high-handed and careless in his experiments. He was lucky enough to pull some exciting and significant discoveries out of his mistakes, and thanks to him we know a great deal about the aliens’ physiology.
He’d also come to understand the interface to the aliens’ transformation device — the machine that had turned Sam into Sammy. Although he didn’t understand every detail of the machine, he’d worked out the major functions, the general ideas, as well as a test plan that maximized the elements studied in each experiment.
And even though all the testing and the details were yet to be discovered and worked out, van Els was no longer interested. After the big breakthroughs, the work became boring. Working out the rest of it… all the little details… just seemed like clerical work to him.
He wanted — he needed — a new challenge. He had to find something else that no one, including himself, understood at all: a big unknown he could dive into; a new frontier he could feel out and map.
But also, he wanted to be distracted from his disappointment: even though he’d discovered the transformer’s functionality and most of its options, he had no idea how it worked or where it drew its power from. He felt like a caveman who’d figured out how to make a Ferrari run. A caveman could by chance, turn the ignition key and jerk forward a few feet before stalling. The other cavemen would be impressed; they’d regard him as an expert, but if that caveman had half a brain, he’d know he wasn’t doing it right. He’d have no idea what caused the magic to happen. He’d have no idea how to fix it when it failed. In a very real sense, his very success underlined his ignorance.
"Are you looking for anything in particular?" Sammy asked as she pulled out another box.
"No," van Els replied. "I expect that I’ll know it when I see it."
As he said the words, Sammy lifted the lid off a small box. van Els caught his breath and watched Sammy’s delicate fingers lift a device out and set it on the desk.
It consisted of a round, black, disk-like tray, about a quarter-inch high and ten inches in diameter. At the center of the tray, a small platform was attached, three inches high and six inches in diameter. A metal band, a half-inch high and about eight inches across, rested on the tray. Sammy picked it up. "This looks like it goes on your head," she observed. "Probably a neural interface."
"Let me see," van Els said, taking it from her hand. As he lifted it toward his head, he felt a familiar sensation. "Yes, a neural interface," he confirmed. "Let’s see what it does." van Els slipped the band over his head, and as it moved into place, the initial mild sensation that signaled the presence of the alien interface grew until it filled his awareness. He closed his eyes and saw the dark, vague outline of a human body. He opened his eyes, and it was gone. "Did you see that?" he asked Sammy.
"See what?" she answered.
"It must be only in my mind," he told her. "Sing out if you see anything."
He shut his eyes. The figure was still there. It was the vaguest of silhouettes: he couldn’t tell if it was tall or short, male or female. It was shadowy, featureless, indistinct. As he watched, the shape morphed and took on a woman’s gentle curves, and then — as the interface followed the vague, musing inclinations of van Els’ mind, the figure began to take on the photographic likeness of a very specific woman…
"Oh, my God!" Sammy cried in delighted surprise. van Els’ eyes snapped open and followed Sammy’s awestruck gaze.
There, on the tiny platform of the alien device, a tiny figure was dancing. It was a woman, a beautiful naked woman, four inches high, with a lovely face, long red hair, and not a stitch of clothing on her. Sammy gently reached forward to touch her, but her finger passed right through the image.
"Ooh, like a hologram!" she exclaimed. "Except that it doesn’t disappear, the way a hologram would." She turned to van Els, who stood open-mouthed in wonder. "Who is she?" she asked.
van Els blushed. He cleared his throat. "It’s uh, the actress Dana Delaney," he confessed. "I was watching Body of Proof last night. She’s uh… she’s quite a striking woman."
Sammy nodded and poked her finger through the image of light a few more times. van Els took the band off his head and the tiny dancing woman vanished.
In his embarrassment, van Els put the device back in its box and told Sammy they were through for the day.
But when she came to his office the next morning, she found him with his feet up and the band on his head. Another tiny figure of light was dancing on the device’s platform, but before Sammy could make out who it was, van Els whipped the band off his head and the miniature woman was gone.
van Els’ face was crimson. "Sammy, I don’t think I’ll need you today. I want to have a look at this device, and uh… see what there is to see."
Sammy grinned and shrugged. Then she asked, "What do think it’s for? Why do you think they made it?"
"I don’t know," van Els replied. "Maybe it’s just pretty for the sake of being pretty."
"I don’t think the aliens do pretty," she replied.
van Els looked down and plucked a document from his IN box. He pretended to examine it, as though it were very important. "You shouldn’t be so suspicious," he told her.
In spite of his instructions, Sammy gave him a searching, suspicious look. "You're sure you don’t need me today?"
"No, no, not at all," he replied. "Thank you for your help. I’ll call you if some... er... language issue comes up."
Once the sound of Sammy’s departing footsteps disappeared, van Els got up, shut the door of his office, and went back to the alien device. Instantly, a figure appeared on the platform: a miniature Sammy, completely naked, posing with her palms open, facing forward.
van Els ripped the halo off his head and swore silently. He had to be careful; this machine could quite literally read his mind. So he sought his memory for a different woman, and the first woman to come to mind was his ex-wife, Regana. He could see her in his mind’s eye, the way she was on the day they met — wearing that amazing black dress that clung to her curves, and the cowl neck that nearly fell off her shoulders. He’d love to see that dress again.
So he put the halo back on, and in an instant saw a Lilliputian version of Regana, posing, her hair, her body exactly as they were the moment Isaac met her, but she wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing.
van Els tried several times, visualizing as well as he could some of Regana’s outfits — not that he remembered them all that well — but try as he might, she always appeared naked on the minuscule platform.
He tried searching the internet for pictures of famous actresses, but the alien device never rendered their clothes, only their bodies.
Then, quite unexpectedly, another woman popped into his mind. Winona, a girl he dated very briefly in college. Back then, he’d been infatuated, but she couldn’t have cared less. They managed to go on two dates, and he had never seen her without her clothes. Even so, Winona appeared on the alien disk in her birthday suit.
Fascinated, van Els went on experimenting, but at some point his scientific curiosity gave way to a more prurient interest. He became furtive, like a fourteen-year-old who’d discovered his father’s secret Playboy stash. A parade of women appeared in miniature before his eyes: real women, imaginary women, movie stars, old flames, co-workers… and soon he was unable to stop.
He tried to make the minikins larger, but couldn’t. He tried to control their movements, but whatever secret algorithm made them dance or pose or gesture, it was beyond van Els’ power to influence.
His "experiments" were interrupted only when his bladder could resist no longer. Hunger and thirst were ignored. The need to sleep was defied, but at some point the doctor’s body took over, and he slumped into a dreamless sleep.
When he woke, he felt funky and gross. His mouth was dry as straw, but ignoring all that, van Els put the halo back on his head and called up yet another woman from his memory. He spent the day assuring himself that "this will be the last" and "only ten more" and "only until lunch time" but soon the day was gone.
On the sixth day, Sammy was racing down a hallway. Dr. Kang stopped her, but Sammy didn’t want to be stopped. "Let me go, Dr. Kang — I need to find Dr. van Els. I’m worried about him!"
"I’m worried about him, too," Kang replied. "And I know where he’s holed up. First let’s talk strategy; then we’ll confront him."
At that same moment, Dr. Isaac van Els, the guiding light of the Timbuctoo Alien Technology Project, was lying in fitful sleep on the floor of a tiny room above the cafeteria. He hadn’t been to bed, bathed, or brushed his teeth in days. The room was an uncomfortable little box of a place with a low ceiling. Heaven knows what the space was meant to be, but it wasn’t even fit for storing boxes. However, our furtive doctor had sniffed it out and found it perfect for his needs. No one would find him, no one would interrupt him, no one would see what he was doing. No one would know what magical nakedness he was conjuring out of the air.
van Els slept. While he slept, he dreamt. While he dreamt, he wore the alien halo, and tiny figures, quite literally the stuff of dreams, flitted across the miniature alien stage.
Dr. Kang, with Sammy in tow, crossed the cafeteria, heading for the stairs that led to van Els’ lair. Kang was relentless, she was thorough, and she was very lucky, and that was how she found the great man’s hideout.
As the two real-life women ascended the stair, van Els’ dreaming mind pulled up the memory of Marilyn Monroe. Specifically, the iconic nude of her lying on a red background, knees bent, both hands on her head, elbows out. van Els’ sleeping mind remembered hearing that Hugh Hefner had paid $50 for the photo, and become a millionaire, and that Marilyn herself had never gotten a penny. He stirred in his sleep, but he was deep in dreamland. The figure of Marilyn clarified on the alien device.
Sammy and Dr. Kang arrived at the door. They could hear van Els’ heavy, even snores and see the light from the alien device shining under the door. Dr. Kang snorted in disgust, and turning to Sammy said, "Time to wake him up!"
Sammy set her jaw, stepped up to the door, and rapped out a loud rat-a-tat-tat with her knuckles. At the same time she called out, "Dr. van Els? We need you! Dr. van Els?"
Inside the stuffy little room, van Els started with a jerk, shocked into wakening. His sleep was so deep, his mind was so far off, that he barely knew where he was, what was happening, or who was calling him. His heart gave a great wrenching leap. He cried out in surprise, and as he opened his eyes he saw the edges of the tiny platform on the alien device glow, grow bright, flash, and go dark. The figure of Marilyn disappeared.
van Els, Sammy, and Dr. Kang later reported that at the time of the flash, they all felt a sort of wave strike and pass through them, though it seemed to have no effect at all.
In fact, it had no effect on them, but it had a big effect on a number of other people. Sammy and Dr. Kang could hear their confused screams and cries, and even the sleep-dazed van Els heard it, though it barely registered.
Dr. Kang burst through the door and took possession of the alien device. She tore the halo from his head. Sammy looked down at the cafeteria below and couldn’t believe her eyes.
"Doctors!" she shouted, "Dr. Kang, Dr. van Els! Come look! There are four of them… four of her… four…"
"Four what?" Dr. Kang demanded as she approached the railing, then, "Oh, my God!" as she saw what Sammy had already seen.
There below were four very confused and frightened people, each of them the perfect image of Marilyn Monroe.
And from the shouts farther off, it sounded like there were several more…
© 2013 by Kaleigh Way
Trubinger snorted derisively. "That's a rather far-fetched worry to have, isn't it? Let's cross that bridge when we come to it — if we ever come to it!"
"No," the security officer countered in a soft, calm voice. "I've already crossed that bridge. We were searching for an intruder before this happened, and by all indications one of our Marilyns doesn't belong here."
(part two of three)
"You really screwed the pooch this time, Isaac," Trubinger was saying. He shook his head. "You've always managed to pull a rabbit out of your hat and save your bacon, but this time you're going to need a bona fide miracle to get out of this one."
van Els sat hunched over in a chair, his head hanging, his eyes on the floor. "I know," he said. "I couldn't stop myself. It was like internet porn on steroids."
Trubinger paced back and forth behind the downcast scientist. "So what the hell is this thing?" he cried. "Some kind of crazy sex toy?"
Dr. Kang and Sammy stood mute. No one knew what to say, so Trubinger went on.
"But first things first: we have to change them all back. Isaac, you need to shower and shave — you stink, by the way — and then you've got to put them in your transformation machine or whatever you call it, and change them all back."
"I can't," van Els croaked.
"You mean you won't!"
"No," Dr. Kang said, intervening. "He can't. The big transformation machine was made to camouflage the aliens — it just gives them a more-or-less random human appearance. As far as we know, it can't give someone a specific form."
Trubinger huffed and objected, "But it did that for you! It changed you into a man, and then right back to what you always were."
"Yes, but in my case, it took a snapshot of me first. None of the Marilyns have that."
"Exactly right," van Els confirmed with a heavy sigh. "We can make them different from the way they look now, but there's no way we can pop them back to what they were."
Trubinger growled. "Then you'd better find the undo button on your new little toy!"
In the first few moments after the Marilyns appeared, Dr. Kang had sprung immediately into action and took over. She carefully tucked the alien device into a tote bag and slung it on her shoulder. "And that's where it's staying until we know what's what!" she declared.
Next she commanded Sammy, "I'm appointing you the official babysitter. Stay with van Els and make sure he doesn't wander off." Then she descended to the cafeteria and spoke to the Marilyns. She asked each one their name, and wrote that name on their forearm. She calmed them, had them sit down and drink some tea, and then with the help of Security, rounded up the others. In each case, she wrote their name on their forearm, and asked exactly where they were when the change hit.
It turned out that thirteen people had been affected. Three were on the floor above, one was on the floor below, and the others on the same level as the cafeteria. It was strange to see them all together, thirteen identical platinum blondes, each as striking and fascinating as Marilyn Monroe must have been, fifty years ago.
Most of the Marilyns were agitated, some were afraid, and several were plainly terrified. One, Dr. Oriel Paim, was furious. She was the only one who refused to sit or take tea. She ranted and raved and she would not stop, but her new voice, which was soft, high, and sexy, rendered her shouts and fist-shaking more interesting and entertaining than threatening. And that increased her fury a thousandfold.
As it happened, nine of the Marilyns were originally women. Only one was happy about the change, and declared that she wanted to stay that way. The four men all wanted to change back, although they all wanted a day or two "to see what they could learn."
"What do we know so far?" Trubinger asked.
Dr. Kang glanced at van Els and Sammy before she spoke. "Apparently, the device has a range of 200 yards, projected out in a sphere. There were people affected on the floors above and below. And — luckily — there were people who were unaffected on the same floor. In one case, two people were standing in a hallway, talking. The one closer to the epicenter was affected; the other was not."
"And how is it that you three weren't affected?"
Dr. Kang scratched her eyebrow. "Maybe we were standing too close?" Sammy offered.
"No, I don't think that's it," Dr. Kang replied. "I think that Isaac wasn't affected because he was operating the device, but Sammy and I weren't affected because we've already been transformed."
At that remark, Dr. van Els lifted his head. The words already transformed echoed in his mind. He quite didn't know how, but that phrase was important. It was part of an idea... and that idea was key. The key to something… the key to understanding that damn device… somehow.
"We can test that," van Els said softly.
"No," Trubinger said. "You've already caused enough trouble. Another screw-up, and everyone in the place will look like Marilyn Monroe, including me!"
"No," van Els countered. "We can go to Area 51. There's plenty of empty space out there. Dr. Kang and I can draw up a test plan, some protocols."
"Area 51?" Trubinger scoffed. "What is this, The X-Files? No. In a half hour you can drive to Beale Air Force Base. Just knock on the front gate and tell them you want some space to be alone."
As he said the word knock, Trubinger's assistant knocked on the door. "Excuse me, sir, but we have a… a situation. Security found two more Marilyns. They were hiding."
"Hiding? Why were they hiding? And who are they?" Trubinger asked in a puzzled tone.
"That's just it, sir: they won't say."
The two new Marilyns looked exactly like the other thirteen: the same wave of platinum hair, the same bewitching expression, the same throaty voice. What was different about these two was that they were barefoot, dressed only in lab coats. The other Marilyns were found wearing whatever clothes they had on before: ill-fitting, oversized outfits draped almost comically over Marilyn's tiny frame.
"So? Just ask them where they left their clothes!" Trubinger said.
"They won't say," replied the security officer. "We've taken a look around the area they were found, but we think their clothes went down the incinerator chute."
"Then they might still be sitting there!" Dr. Kang exclaimed. "The incinerator doesn't run all the time."
The officer shook his head. "Sorry. We thought of that too, and we checked. Whatever was in there got burnt."
"Why won't they say who they are?" Sammy asked.
The security officer turned his eyes to the lovely young woman before he responded. "Because they don't want to change back."
"That's ridiculous!" Trubinger objected. "They must know that we'll find out who they are."
"Yes, in fact we're checking the rolls right now," the officer replied, "but I'm concerned that we'll only find one name unaccounted for."
Trubinger snorted derisively. "That's a rather far-fetched worry to have, isn't it? Let's cross that bridge when we come to it — if we ever come to it!"
"No," the security officer countered in a soft, calm voice. "I've already crossed that bridge. We were searching for an intruder before this happened, and by all indications one of our Marilyns doesn't belong here."
Ninety minutes later, four people gathered in the center of an enormous airplane hangar. The Air Force had given them permission to use the place, and assured Dr. Kang that no one would come within a half-mile of their experiment.
With Dr. Kang was Sammy, Dr. van Els, and Dr. Paim, who was the Marilyn most anxious to return to normal. They brought two video cameras, some food, the alien device, and a laptop. Dr. Paim carried one of her own outfits and a pair of shoes to wear when she returned to herself. She also brought every photo of herself that she could find.
A medical team waited outside the sphere of the device's influence. Sammy checked that they were in position, and declared that "everything is GO."
"Only one of us needs to be here," Dr. Kang told Sammy.
"It's okay," she replied with a smile. "I'm here as a show of faith."
At that, van Els sat down with a sigh and set the halo on his head. His eyes drifted toward Dr. Paim, and immediately the iconic image of Marilyn, nude, appeared on the tiny platform. Embarrassed and distressed, van Els pulled the halo from his head. In an apologetic tone he asked, "Dr. Paim, would you mind standing behind me? I'm not sure I can do this if I can see you watching me. I mean, if I can see you."
With eyes that burned with loathing, Dr. Paim picked up her bag of clothes and walked in a wide berth around van Els.
Once she was out of his sight, he picked up a photo of her. She was a nice, rather French-looking woman, with a small heart-shaped face and large, light brown eyes.
van Els was nervous. He wasn't good at mental pictures; the device had done all the visualizing for him, except for the women he'd actually known. Even there, the device had drawn from his memory details he hadn't pictured; things he hadn't known he remembered. In Dr. Paim's case, unfortunately, he had never seen the woman before she became one of the Marilyns. He was quite sure of that fact.
Drawing a deep, heavy breath, he put the halo back on, and looked at the tiny platform. There was nothing.
He began flipping through the photos of Dr. Paim. Many of them were shots of her with colleagues, smiling, her body hidden behind a lab coat or a desk. Then he came upon some vacation photos, and then a picture of her in a blue bathing suit. Click. He felt the neural interface engage.
Damn it, van Els silently swore. What the hell did they make this thing for? Is this some kind of extra-terrestrial porn? Then, suddenly, a suspicion of great danger popped into his head: Had anyone told Oriel Paim that the images, the tiny women, were always naked? She was already angry; seeing a miniature version of herself in the nude might be just the thing to send her anger over the top.
"Dr. Paim," he began, but before he got any further, he turned over another photo and saw Oriel the woman: She was wearing shorts, it was summer, and she was stepping onto a bicycle. It wasn't just a perfect picture, it was downright sexy. It caught her from behind, and showed off the smooth curves of her derriere, and her top was tight enough to give a very accurate indication of the shape and weight of her wonderful breasts. Isaac was aroused, and the alien device awoke. On the tiny stage, a perfect rendition of Oriel appeared. The tiny Oriel was dancing. She was completely naked, and her arms were raised high in the air.
Behind him, Isaac heard Dr. Paim's astonished, offended gasp.
"That's her!" Sammy cried, "Make it flash now! Make it flash! Make it do the thing!"
"I don't know how!" van Els replied in frustration. And he didn't: the last time, the device flashed and created the Marilyns when Sammy jolted him out of a deep sleep. "I think I need some kind of shock, something to make me jolt!"
Dr. Kang groaned in frustration. "Boo!" she shouted. When that didn't work, she let out a blood-curding scream, but that didn't do the trick either. van Els drooped, nervous, distressed, anxious to turn poor Dr. Paim back, but to no avail. Sammy picked up a wrench and hurled it against a metal drum. It made a hell of a racket, but Dr. Paim was still Marilyn.
van Els looked at the pint-sized image. His eyes were drawn to her breasts, particularly her nipples. They were so dark, so small, so unusual… so... well, there must be better words than perfect, but that was the only word that came to mind. Dr. Paim cleared her throat as a warning, so Isaac forced himself to look away.
"Now what?" she demanded. "NOW WHAT? What are going to do? Do you have any idea? Do you? Look at you! You have no idea what you're doing! No idea at all! You've brought me all the way to this godforsaken, dirty place. You made me think that you were going to fix this mess, but all you're doing is messing about! You clearly have no plan whatsoever! How do I know that you're not going to make things worse?"
"Dr. Paim," van Els said quietly, "please calm down a moment--"
"Calm down?" she repeated, incredulous. Those two words were like a red flag to a bull. "CALM DOWN? How dare you tell me to calm down, you fool, you jackass, you… you PIG! Look what you do! Is this how you spend your day, making naked pictures of all the women you fancy? Everyone thinks you're such a great man, but you're just an adolescent boy who loves his little naked pictures."
Isaac didn't dare reply. He had to recognize the justice in what she said, even as her accusations ripped into him like knived whips. He twisted in his chair so he could look at her, and as he did, he saw that the tiny Oriel Paim was still dancing naked on the miniature stage. The image was perfect and clear.
Involuntarily, he smiled — a fatal mistake — for as he raised his eyes from the mannikin to the real woman standing behind his chair, he saw something he'd never seen before: the face of Marilyn Monroe, full of murderous fury, of hate, loathing, and fire. Isaac van Els feared for his life.
© 2013 by Kaleigh Way
Stealing his thoughts, Oriel nudged van Els and murmured sotto voce,
"Tell me: have you ever seen breasts like mine? Ever?"
van Els' mouth was bone dry. "No," he croaked.
"Then if you never saw me naked, your imagination is crying out…
calling to a coincident reality, isn't it?" she purred.
(part three of three)
There was good news, bad news, and news that was a bit of both.
The bad news was that the bared teeth and the bloodthirsty, murderous look on Marilyn Monroe's face was something that Isaac van Els would never forget for the rest of his life. He would have nightmares about it. He was never able to look at a picture of Marilyn without a cold shiver running up his spine.
The good news was that those nightmares would be few and very far between, and his dread was fixed to the image of Marilyn Monroe, and not to the lovely French doctor, Oriel Paim.
In news that was more strongly mixed, the fear evoked by Marilyn's nightmarish face was enough to make Isaac van Els' heart miss a beat, and that jolt caused the alien device to glow, flash, and change Dr. Paim back to her original form.
Also — and purely good news this time — Sammy and Dr. Kang, who stood farther off, were once again unaffected by the strange machine's energy pulse.
As soon as her change occurred, Dr. Paim scooted behind the SUV to change her clothes. The medical team arrived, but she waved them off, saying, "Medicine can wait." Those three words were enough to convey the fact that the doctor had recovered her strong French accent. Then Dr. Paim decided that not only medicine could wait, but Sammy, Dr. Kang, and Dr. van Els could wait as well, as the newly restored woman put on her makeup and brushed her hair for a full ten minutes. All told, it was 35 minutes before Oriel Paim decided that she was ready.
Her mood had undergone a radical change. When she stepped out from behind the vehicle, dressed in a pair of tan, skin-tight pants, clunky ankle boots, and a soft knitted top that glorified the symmetry of her breasts, her manner was downright kittenish.
Dr. Kang, anxious to leave, sat behind the wheel. Sammy offered the front passenger seat to Dr. Paim, but to Sammy's surprise, Oriel insisted on sitting in the back seat with Isaac.
She was even more surprised by what Dr. Paim wanted to know.
"You are a naughty boy," she said to Isaac in a tone of playful, teasing accusation. Sammy's jaw dropped. She turned to see Oriel's provocative smile. "When did you see me naked? When? Where did you spy on me? And for how long?"
van Els looked at her in alarm. "I never! No, I certainly… I wouldn't and didn't! That's just the machine— the alien— that's how it operates!"
Oriel smiled in a knowing way. "Oh, yes, I'm SO sure." She laughed a throaty, earthy laugh. "But my breasts, my — how do you say? My bout de sein — my nipples… they are rather… unusual, isn't it?"
van Els rubbed his chin nervously. Yes, her nipples were rather unusual. He could see them in his mind's eye: two small chocolate-colored dots on the miniature version of Oriel. He'd never seen areolas so dark or so small.
Stealing his thoughts, Oriel nudged van Els and murmured sotto voce, "Tell me: have you ever seen breasts like mine? Ever?"
van Els' mouth was bone dry. "No," he croaked.
"Then if you never saw me naked, your imagination is crying out… calling to a coincident reality, isn't it?" she purred.
Dr. Kang, in spite of herself, couldn't help but intervene. "That's a good question, Isaac. How did you know what her nipples look like?"
Oriel laughed, and her eyebrows danced.
"It's the machine," he protested. "It's just how it works."
Oriel scoffed. "Oh yes. Let us call that the official position." She laughed. "Obviously the device follows your inclinations. You see me dancing naked in your brain, in your mind. The machine— what does it do? It simply reflects your desire. It brings it to life. The proof is that your image of Marilyn Monroe is idealized: You did not see her as she was, but as you wished her to be. Everyone knows that Marilyn Monroe was a little fat girl. She was chubby. And yet you rendered her petite."
"No!" Sammy protested.
"Oh, but yes," Oriel returned. "Your Marilyn wore a size twelve American. If she were alive today, no one would be taking her picture or having her sing Happy Birthday, Mr. President." (Or as Oriel rendered it, appy beart day mister prezidann.)
By the time they'd returned to Timbuctoo, Sammy had quietly searched the net through her smartphone, and thoroughly debunked Oriel's claims about Miss Munroe. But she kept the facts to herself until she was alone with Drs. Kang and van Els.
"I thought so," Dr. Kang commented. "And I'm glad. It would have ruined my theory."
"What theory is that?"
"It has two parts," Dr. Kang replied. "I believe that the device used as much of your memory as possible when it rendered the image of Marilyn. We'll compare the measurements of any one of our Marilyns with the measurements of the historical Marilyn, and I'll bet you anything they're exactly the same. If you just think about what it took for the device to get her height correct, it's amazing."
"Okay," van Els agreed. "I don't see why that's important, but I'll grant you that. What's the other part?"
"It's about Oriel's nipples, of course. You swear you've never seen them?"
Isaac blushed. "No, never!"
"It's important, Isaac. It really is."
"No, honestly, I swear. I've never seen that woman before today."
"That means that the device remembered her. You couldn't have; but the device did. It didn't 'reflect your desire' as Oriel put it. I assume you tried to change the figures that you saw?"
van Els blushed more deeply. "Yes, but I couldn't."
"You couldn't make the breasts bigger or the butts smaller or the hair longer, right?"
"No," van Els admitted, shamefaced.
Dr. Kang nodded. "It makes sense. It's completely bizarre, crazy, and way out there, but it makes perfect sense. The device has some sort of memory bank.
"And Isaac," she added, "you really need to go to the infirmary and get a checkup. You look like hell."
"I'll be all right," he replied. "I feel like I've had a heart attack and been run over by a busload of elephants, but I can rest when this is over."
"No," Kang insisted. "Infirmary. Now."
While Sammy went to round up the Marilyns, Dr. Kang reported to Trubinger. "Chief" O'Shaunessey, the Head of Security, joined the meeting.
"I'm pretty sure Isaac wasn't using the device in the way it was designed," Kang said.
"Yeah," Trubinger agreed. "I don't see the aliens as porn-lovers. For the moment, though, that's neither here nor there. Tell me how it went with Dr. Paim."
"Isaac was able to change her back, and she seems in quite happy about it. But something interesting came up… it turns out that Oriel has… a… well, let's say that she has some distinctive—" she paused, reddening.
After a moment's consideration she went on, "Oriel has some anatomical… er…"
"Oh for God's sake, spit it out," Trubinger said.
Kang blushed more deeply and replied, "Oriel has quite distinctive breasts. You'd never guess, and you'd never imagine… you'd only know if you saw her naked."
Both the men straightened up a bit in their chairs. Before they could ask the questions that were written on their faces, Kang pushed on.
"Anyway, the point is that Isaac has never seen her naked, so he couldn't know. That means that the machine remembered her. I'm guessing that it's got some sort of memory in there, and that I can use that memory bank to change the Marilyns back.
"Remember," she added, "that I have more experience with neural interfaces that Isaac, and I'm betting it will be easy and quick."
"Good," Trubinger grunted. "Let's get the thirteen saddled up. You and Sammy can take them back to Beale and fix 'em."
"Thirteen?" Kang repeated. "So you identified—"
"Yes," O'Shaunessey interrupted. "I put the two unidentified Marilyns in separate rooms. We managed to figure out that one of our lab techs was missing, so I walked into the first room, slapped his file on the table and said, I know who you are."
"And?"
"The guy burst into tears, said he didn't want to change back. So that was our lab tech."
"And the other guy?"
"He looked relieved. He would have been happy to turn into the lab tech. It would be a perfect cover. And he knew the lab tech wanted to be Marilyn, and he wouldn't complain. So... he's the intruder. He's the spy. He's the guy who doesn't fit in."
"Okay," Dr. Kang said slowly, processing it. "Well, by process of elimination, I should be able to change him back, too. He'll be in the data bank, if I'm right."
"Naw," O'Shaunessey replied. "Take a picture of it, close up. Get the full face, profile… look for identifying marks. It'll be nice to know who he is, but as far as I'm concerned, he's Marilyn Monroe. He walked into trouble, and he got it."
Dr. Kang paused at the door. "Oh, I nearly forgot: I'm pretty sure I know what the device is made for."
While Dr. Kang and Sammy changed the thirteen Marilyns back to their original selves, Trubinger had an inspiration. He went down to van Els' old group, the group researching the big transformation device.
"This thing has a record of how it's been used, isn't that right? I wanted to check into something van Els told me a while ago. Basically, I'm just looking for some dates."
Once he got the information he was looking for, he went to the infirmary to visit Dr. van Els.
"You look like hell, Isaac."
"Thanks. I feel like crap."
"You look like crap."
"You already said that."
"It bears repeating," Trubinger laughed.
"You're all happy and smiling," van Els observed. "What's that about?"
"Well!" Trubinger replied. "As usual around here, every screw-up carries us forward! It turns out that your making too many Marilyns has had quite a rich side effect that ought to make things easier around here, including for you!"
"Really?" van Els asked, full of curiosity. "And here I thought you had come down here to fire me! So what's the 'rich side effect'?"
Trubinger grinned. "Let me keep that to myself. For once *I* want to be the clever one who snatches the chestnuts from the fire.
"And no, I'm not going to fire you. But I do want you to take a vacation. That's an order, not an option. I want you gone before the day is out. My brother has a house in Hawaii, lovely place, near the beach, and you can use it. Two weeks minimum. Three weeks recommended. Four weeks max. That ought to be enough."
"Sounds great."
"—AND someone has volunteered to go along and make sure you relax, recuperate, and get your mojo back."
"Oh, no!" van Els groaned. "Who?"
"Oriel Paim," Trubinger said, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.
"Really?" van Els asked in awe.
"Really and truly," Trubinger replied. "Miracles do happen."
The reason Trubinger wanted van Els gone was that his nemesis, the dreaded Congressman from Massachusetts was coming. Somehow ("There's no 'somehow' about it," O'Shaunessey commented. "We've got a leak.") — somehow the Congressman had heard, in great detail, about the multiple Marilyns, and his message was, "I'm coming, and I'm bringing a great big hammer, and the name of that hammer is Congressional Oversight. It's time to bring you guys to heel."
Trubinger didn't tell van Els any of that. Instead he said, "Oh, Isaac, before you go: Are there any little tests that you wish you could make with the big transformation machine?"
Isaac was surprised by the question. "Yeah, sure. If I had a test subject and if I had your approval, then, yeah. There are a few little things I'd want to try, but…"
"How about today?" Trubinger countered.
van Els shrugged. "Sure. But who's the subject?"
"Me," Trubinger replied, grinning.
The next day, just before lunch, the Congressman and his staff appeared. ("Looks like an invasion force," O'Shaunessey commented.) The staff was put in a big meeting room with no phones, no internet hookups, and not enough electrical sockets. They were, however, served a huge buffet lunch with lots of desserts.
In the meantime, the Congressman was hustled off to Trubinger's office. He expected to be alone with the head of the Timbuctoo Project. After all, who would want witnesses when he was getting chewed out? The Congressman had noticed, on the other hand, that all the nearby offices were empty.
However, to the Congressman's surprise, a third person was sitting in Trubinger's office. Trubinger introduced her.
"Congressman, I'm sure you've heard of Dr. Kang. She's one of the remarkable scientists we're lucky to have working here. That funny disk in front of her is a bit of alien technology that we wanted to demonstrate for you."
The Congressman eyed the device warily. "This is exactly the sort of hot-dogging I've been afraid of," he declared. "I can't believe you're pulling a dangerous stunt like this, after all I've said! You people play with these things without any safety protocols whatsoever! This is alien technology. It's not a pile of toys!"
"We're aware of that," Trubinger replied in a soothing tone. "But this device is quite interesting. Look here," and he pointed to the tiny platform. Dr. Kang produced the image of the spy, he way he looked before becoming one of the Marilyns.
The Congressman's face registered disgust. "I'm not interested in looking at naked men."
"Well, look at these, then," Trubinger countered, spreading on his desk the photographs that Dr. Kang had taken of the image's face.
The Congressman huffed impatiently as his eyes darted randomly over the photos. "I'm not here for twenty questions," he said. "I'm here to bring the hammer down! You know this."
Yes, I know that, Trubinger thought as he watched the Congressman's face. And I also know that you'd make a terrible poker player.
The Congressman shoved the photos away and said, "I don't know this person. Who is he supposed to be?"
Trubinger smiled and nodded to Dr. Kang. Kang nodded in reply and mentally issued a command. To the Congressman's great alarm, the edges of the alien device glowed, then flashed. A pulse of energy shot through the three people in the room and dissipated in the empty offices around them.
"Thank you, Dr. Kang," Trubinger said, in a quiet voice. "That will be all."
Dr. Kang, with eyes lowered, took off the halo, gathered up the alien device, and quietly left the office.
The Congressman, after he'd recovered from his surprise, managed to bluster, "What was THAT all about? What was the meaning of that… that… reckless demonstration? Were you trying to put me in danger? Rest assured that this foolishness will go into my report!"
"I don't think it will," Trubinger replied. "The point of that demonstration was to change exactly nothing. If it had changed anything, I'd be mighty embarrassed right now. But — just as I expected — nothing happened. You, me, Dr. Kang — we're all the same as we were five minutes ago. Nothing's different; nothing's changed. You see, Dr. Kang has a theory that that little device is a human detector. That if the aliens found a crowd of human-looking people, this device would convert all the humans, so they could be separated out. You see, the aliens wouldn't change."
Although the office was cool, the Congressman broke out in a sweat.
"I'm not so sure about Dr. Kang's theory," Trubinger went on. "But I know why Dr. Kang and I didn't change: we've both been through the big transformation device."
Trubinger smiled. "Maybe Dr. Kang is right: maybe it is a human detector, but for once — and maybe just this once — we've used it to detect an alien. Isn't that right, Congressman?"
© 2013 by Kaleigh Way