Word Count: 55,187

He wanted so desperately to find the courage to tell her where he’d been, but it never surfaced. Jenna could sit and wonder where he’d been, what he’d done, but it would never come out of his mouth – not as long as he was who he was. And soon Walters would have the location of the man whom the genetics belonged to. He would find this man and strangle more information out of him. If he couldn’t succeed in doing that, he would find those related to the man, or find those who were friends with the man – anything to purge this form. It was imperative he do so.
 
The couple of days he waited anxiously, unaccompanied by the spirits of Reedy or his wife. They were lonely days of impatience and misery as the shapeshift finalized itself. He knew that he no longer looked like anything resembling himself, yet could still not find the courage to take the pin away. Giving it away for a single day had been hard enough on him, but now he was doomed to cling to it for the rest of his life, however long that was. It was a horrible fate that he wished he didn’t have to share with a metal pin-Genome, but inevitable.
 
As the days continued he began to feel slightly out of sync with his life. Some new development he had not foreseen. It couldn’t have possibly been a side-effect of the transformation, but something he had done in his own, whether it was the alcohol he’d began drinking in his off-hours or the rancid food he ate every night for dinner cooked by his wife. More and more he began to loathe the life he was living, yearning for something more – or rather not wishing for something more, but wishing for a change. The standard of living was beginning to annoy him.
 
He wasn’t becoming liberal – he still opposed shapeshifting and everything connected to it, but he felt that his experiences in the last few weeks had changed him slightly, not just physically but mentally as well. He realized that there was something beyond getting up and going to work. Whether he liked it or not, he couldn’t be sure.
 
As the days passed, the feeling of uncertainty and discomfort grew until he felt it was his obligation to leave the house and venture out. He came home later, saw Jenna less, saw the people of the streets more. He assumed now that it was his extreme impatience in Carpenter, waiting for work he wasn’t paying her to do, but wanting it as soon as possible.
 
And then the day arrived.
It was an unexpected way of receiving the information. Walters had not been home when it was received, meaning that his wife had been there to take the call, and she was quite displeased with what was going on as Walters expected she would be. What she was most upset with was that he had not told her in the beginning, something which he felt might also come back to harm him if she ever found out. Now that she had, Walters expected some type of punishment.
 
It never came. Instead, Jenna seemed happy that there was progress. More so did she feel that he was lucky to have the genetics of an actual person, not created in a laboratory or in a factory, meaning that this person could be found. She told him that Carpenter wanted to speak with him the next day after work – not after his hours, hers, which were usually between four and seven in the afternoon. She slept during the morning and worked from noon till four, went home and rested, then returned. As demanding as her job was, she found it simple to leave and have nobody notice it, but felt her employees were stupid enough to screw up while she was gone. She hired those people to maintain a store personality. Those employees gave a good impression on anyone, even if they weren’t the brightest. They could work a cash register, and that was all that mattered.
 
This proved fortunate for Walters, who was not as flexible with the time schedule and would rather have met with her later than sooner, since his own work took up quite enough time. They would meet at 7:30, then, at his apartment. Jenna would not be home, but still working, so she wouldn’t have the time to hear what was going on. This actually pleased Walters, who would have rather seen Carpenter in private.
 
When the visit approached, it was not as spectacular as he’d imagined it. Carpenter silently knocked on the door. An extra sense told Walters that she would be especially prompt, prompt enough to be ten minutes earlier than she was supposed to be.
 
She waved to him, said hello, and smiled. Without talking thereafter she placed a large stack of papers on his living room table. These were the files of the man whose genetic material matched the lapel pin’s. It was incredible how much information there was. It must have been a record of the man’s entire life – his story, in a ream of paper.
 
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You’re thinking that this man has had quite a life to have so many files on him. But you’re wrong.” She picked up the pile in a precise location, knowing by instinct and much practice where to grab the papers, and lifted up. There was a second name atop these files. “You can see we have two people. What really matters is who the original is.”
 
Walters looked at her; he had sat down on the couch beside the table as she stood pointing to the papers. “I can see why it would matter, but then why print out both files?”
 
“Because,” she said, “the real man is dead.”
 
Horror struck Winston. He had not counted on the real person being dead – perhaps missing, perhaps another person entirely, but not dead. It had only been so many years since the development of shapeshifting technology. Could someone die in so little a time being as young as this form was?
 
It occurred to Walters that a person could very well die at any time. It did not matter the age or health of a person. People were susceptible to death at any point in life; in their own home, in front of a large moving vehicle, at the hands of another person. There were endless superpositioned states of death. Suddenly, contemplating how this man might have died felt more like a physics experiment than an actual dilemma, and he knew not what to think to do.
 
It was obvious that Carpenter wanted him to see this other man, but what good would it do? What good would it prove?
 
“Rumor has it that this man had the same condition that you are now experiencing.” She was speaking in a much more formal tone; it must have been the blazer she was wearing, Walters thought. “He is alive, but does not live nearby. You’ll have to fly to see him, but you can call him to arrange anything. Better make it sound convincing.”
 
Convincing, Walters thought. He had a hard time imagining how his situation could seem convincing to any outsider. His situation was seemingly impossible. He had his doubts about Dr. Reedy believing him, but another! Another was a leap forward in faith in humanity, which had all but dried up by this point. The world’s humanity was dried up. Humanity had been but a small oasis on vast desert plains, doomed to dry up and be forgotten. The few centuries that made use of it did not know how to use it wisely. Now their chances were gone.
 
Still, it would be a good idea for Walters to know everything he could about the person whose DNA was now bonded with his own. The man must have been important, he thought. As he flipped through the pages, with Carpenter looking onto him with great interest, he found that the man was indeed important. He had been one of the higher ups, a former station manager, and, as he read further, possibly even the founder of the GSS. But for some reason, nobody recognized the form in public. Such an important figure couldn’t possibly be totally unknown. He read more and more, flipping and skipping pages, reading scattered thoughts. The history filled his mind.
 
The man’s name had not been stated on the front page. Instead, his name was not anywhere to be found in the entire packet of paper. Almost 250 pages on this man, and he had not a name. Where was his name, then, or rather what was was his name? Carpenter did not know the answer – or would not let him know the answer – claiming it was unimportant. Walters disagreed and became frustrated, more easily than he normally did. He began to feel dizzy again, out of sync.
 
Carpenter was looking at him like this was normal. Like she had expected it. But Walters couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see anything for a moment, as though he’d been knocked unconscious a third time and would wake once again in the halls of the Hospiten. In that second his body screamed for mercy and his mind gave the body up. He awoke from this since second loss of consciousness feeling oddly stricken, knowing that he was forgetting something, but not knowing what it was. What had he just been doing?
 
The files. He saw them in front of him and remembered.
 
“Is something wrong?” Carpenter finally asked. It came out with a smug attitude; she was confident in herself that something was wrong. She wanted to know what it was, whether it was because she genuinely cared for Walters’s safety or because she wanted to fuel her own ego – it didn’t matter to him, much less to her. Walter had almost forgotten who she was.
 
Before he knew it, Carpenter was next to him on the couch. This was made further awkward by the fact that he was disillusioned, feeling extremely tired. This seemed to make her happy.  The files were second to her; she was the true important figure in the room. Her face glowed, the icy blue and green eyes melted into a blurry mass of perfection. Walters wondered how many shapeshifts it had taken to get that face the way it was.
 
He shook his head, not to say no, but to wake himself up. It was obvious why she was sitting next to him, looking at him curiously like that, fiddling with the papers she had brought in. her blazer had been left on the chair across the room – he hadn’t even notice her take it off and put it there. And now she was next to him, miraculously, with informal clothing. It was quite a transformation from how she’d walked in the door, and it changed the mood entirely.
 
She put one of her arms around him while he commenced looking at the files again, and he paid no mind to it. He was trying to ignore her, to do what she’d asked him before and just look at the files, but neither of them really wanted to read a person’s life history. Carpenter hinted at him even more, until she politely turned his head.
 
Staring him straight in the face, she leaned forward and kissed him. He returned the favor.
 
It felt inherently wrong for someone with morals like Walters to accept what was going on, but something inside him couldn’t resist the temptation of it. Within minutes they were embracing, not saying a word to each other yet speaking in a language they both understood. Then a pause. He retracted his lips from hers.
 
“Why?” he asked, wondering if it was just his new body that caused the sudden change in Katrina’s attitude toward him. “You’re so young. Doesn’t this bother you?” How he’d let his ethics get a hold on his mind was beyond him. He was having an affair with a strikingly beautiful woman, and he was about to complain about it. She must have thought he was not in his mid sixties, but rather five years old.
 
“Does age really matter that much to you? You don’t look that old to me.” She wanted to continue, to seize the embrace that she had longed for, that she had been deprived of since founding her shop. She had been without a partner for so long, and Walters was the perfect candidate. There might have been something special about him.
 
It was in this fashion, and several other fashions, that the night proceeded until Carpenter made her leave in joyous occasion, not carrying the files with her but leaving them on the table where they had been for quite some time. Walters was left alone, contemplating like he had done so often, more often than he normally did. She had told him that she would send him letters. Walters was afraid that, even in the first night, things had gotten too far, but at either this point or ten more points after this, there would be no difference. It was all the same, the first step and the last one. 

What shocked him that night was the non-appearance of Jenna, who ought to be upset at what had just happened. For some reason Walters didn’t care. His general disgust with his own life was now gargantuan; the excitement in being with Carpenter, even just being near her, did not match living his own drab life with Jenna. Going to work and coming home was no longer the normal routine for either of them. He wondered whether or not Jenna felt the same way – that she, too, was becoming tired thinking of the life they were living.
 
He quickly tossed the thought away, accepting that there was no possible way she could dislike her life. She was the most liberal person he knew, and yet had never shapeshifted a single time, much like him up until recently. But she was smart – she should have known how to fix the problem instantly. If another shapeshift would have fixed it, Jenna would have known to do it and ordered a Genome just for him. Perhaps she knew his interests, and that he would not want a formal shapeshifting done to correct the problem.
 
There, however, lay the flaw. She didn’t know the depth of his hatred for the system. He would do that formal shapeshifting if it would fix him, just to negate the existing one, which was far more painful than living with the transformation. He had never known any other body than his own. Why should he be forced to learn the mechanics of a new body? What was wrong with his old one that would have left him dissatisfied? She did not know this. Because she had never shapeshifted, she could never know this. He didn’t want to explain it to her, but then again he couldn’t explain it to her.
 
He was bound by analogy again. How do you teach someone with perfect vision exactly what it is like to be blind? Must you ask them to look out of the palm of their hand? He held his own hand out and looked through it, to the ceiling, as he lay in his bed that night. The ceiling was where the palm saw, but it really saw nothing. He could see through his eyes. He could not comprehend what “nothing” was.  At the same time, he couldn’t quite understand what he was seeing either, and how he came to see it. The body had chosen, of all places, the eyes to see out of, and had put them in a very specific place. It was remarkable that this was the only place to see out of, but needn’t be.
 
There were still the multitudes of shapeshifters with three eyes, four eyes, and five and so on to infinity – perhaps there was someone, somewhere, who had put a working eye onto their palm, even at the risk of constant irritation of the eye. He fell fast asleep with his arm in the air. When he awoke, he felt different again, as thought he had forgotten the night before.
 
Nothing had happened, his mind told him. But his body begged to differ. He woke himself up and looked around the room. Jenna was still missing – where was she? The phone rang and he immediately picked it up, hoping for Jenna. Instead, it was Carpenter on the phone. Her tone was the same formal tone it had been when she had first entered his apartment the night before. She was telling him to read the files, to look at them again. “Get a good feel for what’s in them,” she said, “because we’re flying to MARS.”
 
The both of them? Together? Walters was unsure of this. He was still trying to gather the details of the night before, but his mind wouldn’t retrieve the memories. Somehow, nothing had happened that night. But something had happened – something significant, possibly damaging, and he couldn’t remember it. Why, at a time like this, must his mind fail him? The very woman on the phone was the same haunting his vacant memories.
 
Something inside him, as much as it normally would have repressed the feeling, told him that it was alright to travel alone with her. He didn’t know what it was, but there it sat in his mind and body – the one thing they both could agree on at this time.
 
The man of morals picked himself up and began to talk to Carpenter about taking the trip. He made no mention of his missing wife, or of the strange curiosity he had about the night before. It was completely unfounded – he could not state it to Katrina without being called insane, no less. He didn’t want to ruin his chance to find this person, who was apparently stationed at the Midwest Alteration Research Station. He was a normal worker who lived on the outskirts of the village, which had not been entirely transformed by the industry just yet, even though MARS was quite a significant research station for those interested in the shapeshifting aspect of shapeshifting.
 
Carpenter warned Walters that this man would look exactly as he did, and that he should not be afraid upon approaching him. However, this man might get quite a shock, not seeing his own face in the mirror but in real life. Walters quickly agreed to everything she said. Again the reason why he said yes to everything eluded him. Now that his body was obeying him his mind was not. This was impossible, however, because he knew that there was nothing left in his body to change.
 
If anything he could not imagine getting on a plane without bringing at least Dr. Reedy along, who had been polite enough to aid in the search and to revive him when he needed it. It might  have been the safest route for him to take, bringing a doctor along, but Reedy wouldn’t have it – as much as he wouldn’t like to admit it, his home was in the Hospiten, treating hopeless patients such as Walters.
 
And since Jenna was missing, that left just Walters and Carpenter to head off to the Midwest. MARS was not north or south from where they were, but only west, straight west. This nameless city would house some of the oddest people on the planet. The townspeople had never been keen on shapeshifting before MARS was built. In fact, much of the population had been conservative. After the building was finished and more scientists began to populate the city, which grew yet remained in a comfortable rural and suburban state, the normal citizens began to pick up an interest in the dreaded art of shapeshifting. With this came more applicants to MARS, and more shapeshifts. The townspeople began to change in appearance. Seeing one no longer meant seeing all, and clothing was not the only thing that created individuality anymore. Instead, it was how radical one could make oneself look. A local hospital similar to the Hospiten but smaller due to the smaller city performed these surgical procedures for years, until the recent development of the ATC’s and pin-Genomes. With this sprung up the most recent development: Genome stores.
 
Though Walters’s city already had the shops beforehand, they were an incredibly new development nearby MARS, and within the few weeks’ time citizens flocked to them, purchasing Genomes and ATC’s as though they were simple and cheap items. The stores were able to spring up so quickly because the buildings already existed. The strip mall that was hardly used was bought out and turned into a hub for genetic material. Eager entrepreneurs rented the buildings of the mall and set up shop, hiring employees to sell their merchandise which they purchased directly from the GSS at very low bulk rates.
 
The business thrived, especially in the days following the release of the newer Genomes. Rumors began to spread of the next project that the GSS was working on, but there were still not details. It seems as though these rumors were popping up around the country, as though the GSS had deliberately said they were developing something new, but would not disclose what it was. It was incredibly suspenseful and would turn out to be the perfect marketing technique for a nation addicted to changing themselves.
 
The housing style changed along with the attitude of the citizens. Traditional designs were tossed away in favor of odd dome-shaped homes, created with the fairly expensive yet less-expensive help of ATC-aided construction work. Creating a dome shape proved to be far less complicated than shapeshifting a wall, making these new houses quick to make and easy to sell. It was a win-win situation for both side – a perpetual motion device of product supply and demand, easy to sell and easy to make.
 
Among the citizens most interested was a man who had supposedly come across a pin-sized Genome before the actual release of the product. He was admitted the local hospital a few days later, and dispatched after three more days. He was one of the lucky citizens with the cash to live in one of the newer dome-shaped homes on the edge of the city, and he took pride in it despite his new appearance. In fact, he was not upset at all that he had shapeshifted, but whether he had abridged to it or not was a mystery, as well as whether the pin activated on its own or had been taken to the hospital and activated there.
 
From what Walters read of the man, he didn’t seem like he was really going through the same thing he was. Instead, it had seemed more like this man easily consented to being transformed, or had even bought himself an ATC and done it that way. Whatever he had found on the ground or in a store must have been a regular Genome, nothing special – not like Walters’s. The question still remained, however, how the genetic material in Walters’s pin matched the material in this man’s pin. Because only two men also had this DNA – the original and the man they were visiting – it could not have been a commonplace model of Genome. It had to have been customized, or specifically requested. Walters knew neither of these, and assumed that Carpenter also did not know, or else they wouldn’t have been on the phone with each other at that very moment discussing flight times next day that were leaving for MARS.
 
 
The next day came and their plans were put into action immediately. Walters, however, did not want to completely leave Reedy behind, and so called him up to let him know where they were going. Reedy asked them both to keep in touch and submit their findings, although it was unknown what he would actually do with these findings if anything. Also before leaving Walters made sure that the entire NSGR staff knew that he was henceforth taking the final week of his vacation, confirming that he would be getting paid during the time he was off trying to cure himself. He threw down his lab coat, apron and gloves, and cheerfully exited the NSGR – something he had never done before. Normally he would exit that building, no matter what the occasion, with a scowl on his face and in his heart, still not loving what it was he did. But this case was special: he was leaving. At this point there was nothing more to look forward to than seeing Carpenter’s face – though he still did not know why he was so overzealous about seeing her – and travelling on the plane with her.