For those only halfway through their novel, I salute you for keeping up. For those people ahead like I am, and even finished, awesome job. I might write more later and add onto this day’s writing, but I’m also posting it here early for backup purposes. If I do choose to write again tonight, it will probably be another thousand words.

Word Count: 31,015

 

He let her get away. She walked right out without another questioning from Walters. How stupid was he? He had just let a complete stranger walk inside his apartment and examine it – without a warrant, no less –letting them freely walk out thereafter. And yet, there was something about her aura that suggested power and control, something which he himself could not comprehend, and it made her ever more suspicious. He would, the next day, go and see her in her store. There was but a single problem – he did not know which store she was in, nor did he know her name. She was a complete stranger.
 
Chances were, Walters thought, that he would be able to find her by once more pacing the pedestrian road, perhaps the final time. He would try that afternoon, but if he was unable to perform the act he didn’t mind waiting a little longer out of fear. Yes, he was indeed afraid of this woman now – her having so easily walked over him and all of his possessions, right in front of him no less! This left him not outraged but absolutely terrified; terrified of her return. What was she looking for? He probably didn’t have the nerve to ask her that question either. With this in mind he left his apartment, realizing that he had been standing in his own doorway for far too long contemplating his thoughts. That had become a current bad habit – he had been thinking far too much. Perhaps he should have stopped.
 
As he walked his way to the office, he couldn’t shake the odd feeling that came from seemingly nowhere. He felt woozy, as he had not too long ago. It was not overcoming, but it made his walk increasingly odd. He struggled for a moment to keep his balance. That morning he did not traverse the pedestrian road, much less go near it, for he came to think that it was the source of his odd condition. It was definitely not, nor was it the city air or the city’s demeaning disposition towards him if it had one, nor the shop lady who had appeared at his door, and especially not the workplace he was heading to. The source of his grief was far smaller and even more insignificant. At the workplace he would find this out, that even though his dizziness had duly subsided, he was not the same. It was not a major aspect of him that was different, or anything that was cause for alarm. He wouldn’t have noticed it either way had he not passed by a simple hallway mirror. He did not pass by this mirror until far into the work day, and his coworkers did not day anything because, and simply because, it was not anything out of the ordinary.
 
The day began with an orientation on what was about to happen. They were given packets of information and data analysis of the new Genomes. The packet also contained detailed error analysis of the system, and the expected rate of error as ordained by the Genome Surgical Society. He sat in the far end of the auditorium with his fellow coworkers who were trying to make heads or tails of the detailed diagrams and error analyses. Of course the higher ups explained this, for they understood it well. Walters assumed that they, too, had known about this technology for quite some time. They knew about its insides and its outsides and its in-betweens. They could have probably taken Walters’s lapel pin Genome, which he still had safe in his pocket, and ripped it forcefully apart, then afterwards tell him whose genetic information was in there, or where the false genes were synthesized and by whom they were designed.
 
It took about an hour for the higher ups to give a quick run-through to the staff of the mechanics of the new Genomes. On a projector screen was an image of an example pin. Walters instantly noticed the significant differences between it and his own lapel-Genome. The first, most noticeable difference was that the backing had been changed and was no longer covered gold. The lapel-like surface had been demolished and the clip on the back was now nonexistent, replaced by what looked like some sort of input. It was barely a pin at all, more like a small flash drive. This was strange, and looked like a downgrade from the pin he had found. But he hadn’t known his pin to work in any ATC, either, so couldn’t be sure that the pin he had found would even work to shapeshift a person.
 
After the long explanations and techno mumbo-jumbo, they were sent off. Surprisingly, he understood a good variety of the technology – it really was not different from a flash drive. It plugged into the side of an ATC and fed it genetic information. The ATC then altered the patient’s DNA, just as the doctors had edited Michael Rainer’s DNA, but with a far more efficient procedure that no longer need penetrate the skin. After this the body part was shapeshifted according the information in the “pin” – though it could hardly be called such anymore. His first assignments were supposedly fairly simple, yet mind-numbingly mundane. He had been testing a culture – actually, testing six of them at once, which was about the average amount of problems that each worker was receiving – for a genetic defect that could conflict with the new pins. At least, that’s what the thick packet told him. It was interesting how the packets seemed to know a lot about what could go wrong with the new Genomes, which should have told one that the Genome Surgical Society knew how to fix them and should have had them fixed on launch, but for one reason or another they were not fixed.
 
This was largely in part to a very rushed deadline. The GSS had pushed their employees and engineers to churn out new technology like clockwork, disregarding some major problems with quality for quantity. These had been planned to be replaced within the first month of launch. However, it was not the GSS who would do the fixing, but the workers in the specialized stations around America. Each specialized station would take place in repairing one aspect of the pins – in the NSGR’s case, the problems with people’s own genetics, more specifically what types of nucleotide arrangements could be conflicting with the code in the chip and the ATC.  Various people were experiencing problems, and while this was not the majority, it was enough to cause a commotion. Considering that a good portion of the nation had already purchased massive amounts of the new Genomes as well as a fairly large amount of ATC’s, and the manufacturing power of the GSS was never questioned, only a small percentage actually experience dire consequences from shapeshifting with the new technology.
 
It depended where one was shapeshifting themselves. It was not yet possible to do full-body, so it was limited to specific parts. This actually made it easy to target places of error. Perhaps a certain tendon was not shapeshifting properly with the ATC. Perhaps the device itself was malfunctioning, and the serial number could be sent off to one of the other research stations for circuitry analysis, and to another for process analysis to find where, exactly, the process had faltered. Even still, at the NSGR, they could determine what body part had been subjected to the supposed change, and determine what it was about the genetic structure that could have caused it all to fail.
 
Meanwhile, Dr. Reedy was having a field day with a mass of patients who were requesting faster service. Another mass of patients, fairly new, were asking for help after their own shapeshifting experiences with the new technology had failed them. Reedy wondered what Walter was doing to cope with the stress of this new release, and both were praying that the chaos would only last a few days longer, pleading that it would be less than that, but knowing it may very well be more.
 
As Walters finished his sixth DNA test, running electrophoresis to get a clean fingerprint of the genetic data and marking it down on his charts and forms to secure an identity for the patient, he felt woozy once again, but this time as thought he may vomit. He stomach lurched back and forth, his insides twisted around themselves several times. He did not know why he felt this way, but it was the second time in a single day, and without a doubt the worst time to become sick. He was about to rush to the bathroom to vomit when into the room came another pile of manila folders. When he examined the titles of the papers inside the folders, clutching his aching stomach the entire time, he was relieved to see that they were all minor cases. Someone’s fingernail was shorter than it was supposed to be; the procedure had not started at all; the procedure never stopped and the ATC would not come off. All trivial events that were the most common, yet most user-specific, problems. It was like catching the common cold. One never knew when the illness would hit, but it was a sure thing that it would leave soon enough. All one had to do was wait.
 
Subsequently, he found that all many of these people had to do was wait. Wait – and the fingernail would grow. Wait – and the procedure would start. Wait – and the ATC might come off, but if not, see your doctor. These were the types of things that Walters wrote, paper after paper, case after case. Insane and dramatic hypochondriacs were the most common of cases. Nothing was wrong with them, save the fact that they were extremely skeptical about the new technology. Walters had the urge to walk up to one of these “patients” and proclaim, “Why, why buy the Genome if you think it will do you in?”
 
Alas, there was no time for such actions. But something miraculous – Walters had completely forgotten that he felt like vomiting. It was left as quickly as it came. By the time he had finished looking at the manila folders, it was gone. He had not noticed it leave because he had kept to his normal work. In came more piles of folders, and the wooziness returned. There was something amiss that made no sense. He had never heard of a sickness that so quickly came and went. He had heard of stomach viruses, but not stomach viruses that jumped from the gut to the leg, and then from the leg to the eyes, and then to the fingers, and all around the body. It was leaping around him, playing tag with his body parts. Which one would catch the pain first and proclaim it “it”?
 
And then it was gone once again. Walters ignored it every time it came and left, continuing work. Eventually it stopped coming completely, and for many hours and many cases it was gone. During this time he had his lunch break, and was startled to find what he did. While walking in the halls down to the cafeteria, he inevitably passed by the NSGR’s hallways mirrors, which covered a good portion of some walls. What he saw was nothing dramatic, but something curious.
 
His hair color was slightly darker. Towards the root it became increasingly black – his old hair color before it had greyed. It was never entirely grey, but it certainly was not as dark as this. It might have been the time spent in the laboratory that was doing this to him, or it might have been something else that was affecting his hair color. It was probably a case best left for another one of his coworkers to figure out. He did not need another bothersome, trivial case to work on – especially when it involved himself. He stuck to the idea, quite firmly, that it was because he had been indoors for so long under interesting lab lighting conditions. He knew, however deep inside him, that this was not the case. Lighting did not cause hair to change color, nor did shampoo products. The only thing that could have done it without him knowing was a quick shapeshift, but he had not come into contact with any Genomes, ATC’s, or shapeshifting equipment, not directly in any case.
 
Though he had been working with Genomes all morning long, they were not likely to affect him in any way. Genomes were designed to only act while attached to an ATC. Rather, they could not act without one, for the technology was far too limited. Once again Walters thought of them as a flash drive – hardly of any use unless a computer was around to plug it into. So there he was, completely stumped.
 
He asked a nameless coworker he had once done a project with if they thought his hair looked any different. They politely said no, it did not, and walked off. This most perplexing and trivial change in his appearance bothered him for the rest of the work day, and although the pains had ceased, Walters could not help wondering if the pain he had experienced was strangely connected to the change in his hair color. As the day progressed beyond the lunch hours and beyond the busiest hours of the morning, Walters had time in between cases to allow it to bother him even more, when it really should not have. He spoke quietly to himself, touching his hair often to see if it felt different, wondering if he was crazy yet again because the coworker had said that his hair hadn’t looked any different.
 
But what did his coworker know? He hadn’t worked with them in weeks. But Walters was most afraid of asking someone he did work with. In this dreary building it was hard to find a truly friendly face, especially with the influence of the higher ups, always prowling the halls for potential scientists to admit into their special league of genetic information, a bottomless well of knowledge shared only by the most important people and never by the normal specialists like Walters. Again overcame him the sense of helplessness and powerlessness that had recently ceased. He had not felt it since that morning, when the strange woman had examined his apartment. And now he remembered to visit that very same strange woman. In the rush of the launch day he had nearly forgotten that he was to roam the pedestrian road to find her. It seemed so mundane, now – he had been going through the repetitive process each day, of waking up, of leaving for work, of coming home by way of the pedestrian road and staying there for hours on end. It was so incredibly routine, and yet a break from the ordinary. But this break from the ordinary had become routine.
 
The work day soon ended, giving him the chance to flee to the pedestrian road. It would not be an easy task on this day to find her, because every other shop was crammed with customers waiting to buy their fill of Genomes. Stores must be running low on stock, Walters thought, but they must not have been, for every store seemed to happily be doing business as usual. Now there were just lines twenty times as long, which reached outside of the stores themselves. This had to be the curse of living in a center for genetic technology – everyone was enthusiastic about this release. A smaller city, or a rural area, would not have had this much turnout on this day. They most likely did not. However, Walters did not live in such a place and could not be concerned with whether or not GSS affiliates across the globe were receiving as much business as the stores in his humble metropolis.
 
He could not see inside each store, and was too cowardly to walk into each one having been eyeballed by the clerks and owners so very recently. He was prepared to enter the larger stores and find out information about her, or if he was lucky enough find her in one of those stores. The clothes she had been wearing – mostly formal, dress clothes, including a red blazer and dress-pants, not a skirt – suggested that she managed one of the higher end stores. At the lowest and of the spectrum of stores, ranked by quality, were the casual shops that were unaffiliated with the GSS, and so on this day received no business. These stores were the ghost towns of the pedestrian road. No customers came nor went, and the casual nature of them suggested that they didn’t care. In fact, a few of those shops had closed on that day knowing that they would be beaten by the GSS-affiliate stores that inevitably dominated the day.
 
Unfortunately, Walters had little information to give about the appearance of this woman, much less her character, but by identifying the red blazer he received some insightful responses. All led him to one shop that was in the very center of the road, with large neon lights that could be seen from either end of the street. It was the most well-known GSS-affiliate store, and one of the only stores that had previously sold Genomes before this launch day. Such Genomes could only be taken to a hospital and used in their larger, full-body shapeshifting boxes. The store had also been known to sell custom Genomes. Walters recognized the store mostly, however, because he had seen its lights from afar that first day he had walked the road. It was the busiest store, and had received the most new Genomes by far, which naturally attracted flocks of customers. The wide variety of new Genomes that the store possessed outranked all the others. This was only what was visible from the outside of the store. Walters experienced true chaos only after his first step inside.
 
There were countless numbers of people rushing around the inside, looking for Genomes fit specifically to their needs. Many were ordering custom Genomes, but ones that came as the new lapel-size pins, as opposed to the custom ones that were simply genetic information given to the hospital of one’s choosing. Walters noted that every Genome had a picture on the front that reflected what it would shapeshift the person into. For example, if someone wanted to shapeshift their hand to have six fingers, there would be a generic person with a six-fingered hand on the pin, or rather, creating the shape of the pin. The surface was rough and also defined by the picture, which really more created a miniature sculpture than anything. Walters noticed a couple people purchasing the six-fingered Genome, which was actually a special subset of Genomes that worked differently than some. Genomes which simply grew extensions of one’s already existing body contained no genetic information within them, but a computer chip with a powerful algorithm. This was used to analyze the patient’s already existing genetic information, and the regurgitate it back out for the predicted scenario – in this case, a sixth finger.
 
Within the mass of people clamoring for Genomes were store employees and, finally, a manager. The manager was not the woman he had been looking for, but he was able to catch a word with them to further his search.
 
“Hello – yes, excuse me!” he beckoned to the manager. “I’ve been searching for a woman in a red blazer with long, curly brunette hair, and a bit of a robust attitude. Do you know if a person like that is around here?”
 
“Of course,” said the manager in a quite sophisticated fashion, “she’s behind this door in her office.” She moved her arm, covered in the familiar red blazer, to point towards a door in the back of the shop. Walters thanked her and moved towards the door, wading through the mass of potential customers. If the woman he had seen this morning was truly inside there, she must have been hiding from the customers, who surely would have trampled her to get more Genomes.
 
He opened the thick, heavy, windowless door to find the young woman at her office desk, hair drooping down onto the veneer surface causing her face to be quite literally buried in her work. Walters knocked on the surface of the desk to get her attention, which was a tough objective, because she was asleep.
 
After shaking her and waking her up, he asked for her name. She was reluctant to give it and would not do so right away. In fact, she was hiding as much possible information from Walters as she could. All she said was that she desired what he held close to him, and Walters knew, from her profession, what she thought that probably was. If she had wanted the lapel pin, she wasn’t going to get it, and Walters would make sure to avoid that topic at all costs.
 
“I need to know who you are,” Walters said. “You see, the problem with what you did this morning is quite simple. People don’t just barge into the apartments of others. Much like how you probably wouldn’t go into someone’s house when they deliberately lock the door on you, you don’t enter someone’s apartment right when they’re about to leave for work, and snoop around. If you want this to be quick and easy, I’d like to know who you are, and why you were snooping around.”
 
“You’re quite restless, aren’t you?” She yawned and smiled, lifting her head up and pushing her hair back. “My name is Katrina, and you have something that belongs to me. Actually, it’s something that doesn’t really belong to me, specifically. It belongs to the GSS.”
 
Walters immediately thought of the pin in his pocket. “What I have is none of your business.”
 
“Oh, but you see,” she said, getting out of her chair and moving wards Walters, “it is my business. In fact, I’m quite certain it’s my job.” Walters could tell that she knew where the pin was. He had been clutching it tight the entire time, subconsciously, giving away its location. She looked in the direction of his pocket. “What’s in there?” she asked.
 
“Nothing,” Walters proclaimed, and said not a word more for a good ten seconds, until he coughed out the words, “You’re looking for a Genome.”
 
“Actually, no, I’m not.” This was a shift from what he had originally thought – she was not after the lapel pin! Suddenly, he regained confidence in himself. “You studied a case a while back that I was informed of. Apparently that person was one of my own customers, and I’m responsible for their well being. If I don’t get the case files, I’m liable. I came to your apartment to see if you had those files.”
 
This was a strange justification for her actions – Walters kept none of his case files in his apartment. They were always turned into the NSGR at the end of the day, and picked up the next morning. If Katrina knew as much as she seemed to, she would have known that most employees do not opt to take home their cases unless absolutely necessary. Walters did not want to show up his opponent in debate, so politely answered that he never kept any records or case files in his apartment for these reasons. If he did keep them simply lying around, people like Katrina could come and find information about patients as often as they wanted, which was not only a liability, but a breach of patient-doctor-scientist confidentiality, an unspoken but understood concept.