💾 Archived View for tilde.pink › ~nifty › control › diary-of-a-mad-scientist.gmi captured on 2024-05-10 at 12:52:02. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
From the diary of a mad scientist:
by Mark Gooley
23 February:
I went into the laboratory as usual this morning. Imagine my surprise
to find my assistant, Gronk, on the floor, quite dead. I have been
patching it together pretty often in the past few years, and it was
bound to die for good sooner or later, but I was quite taken aback. I
could find nothing of its patched-together body that was worth saving,
poor creature, so I dragged its corpse to my acid vat and covered it
with the best nitric. When it was dissolved, I admit I shed a tear as
I added the slaked lime to neutralize the acid. Into the sewers it
went, except for a flask I kept as a keepsake. I think Gronk would
have wanted it this way. Now to construct a new assistant.
24 February:
I think I know where to get the makings of an assistant. I am an
adjunct instructor at the local university, and when I looked over
today's class of burnt-out graduate students I had an inspiration.
Most of them have tolerably healthy bodies and good brains. If I could
incite a few to suicide, I could construct a replacement for Gronk out
of the bits and pieces. I recall some work I did on a device to
generate despair. If I can find my old notes, I might be able to do
something with this.
25 February:
Very tired. I spent the day building the despair generator. There is
a suitable area on campus -- high dorm buildings and laboratories full
of grad students -- which should yield some useful
self-defenestrations. Tomorrow night I will strike.
27 February:
Success! I installed the despair generator (it works by inducing the
appropriate brain waves in the subjects) atop a high laboratory
building near the graduate dorms. In the evening I started it by
remote control. In a few seconds a feeling of utmost depression and
uselessness swept over me, which I was able to resist only because I
knew it to be artificial (that, and through my iron will). After a
minute or so, windows in the lab towers and dorms started to open, grad
students to climb out, and their bodies to fall to the ground like so
many autumn leaves. I darted out from my hiding place in a clump of
bushes and harvested parts of brain from several bodies, gathering
plenty before anyone else arrived. An entire brain would have been
better, but I did not want to arouse suspicion. The other parts of the
body are less critical, and can be obtained by a little assiduous
grave-robbing.
28 February:
I have pieced together a working brain from the bits and pieces I so
hurriedly harvested. A very nice job I made of it. Now for the
grave-robbing. I wish that people wouldn't waste money on embalming --
it makes these things so much more difficult! I looked at myself in
the mirror today: I'm really getting fat and out of shape. It strikes
me that I had been letting poor Gronk do all the physical work around
here. I must find some way of getting fit again: a device for bodily
metamorphosis? I hate physical exercise. It will not be easy digging
up those parts for the new assistant.
2 March:
Recovered at last from the physical and mental exhaustion involved in
grave-robbing and reviving parts. All last night I was wishing for the
strength of Gronk at my side...but of course, were he still alive there
would be no need to procure body parts. The cold weather had slowed
decomposition, but the ground was still hard, even over the fresh
graves. I was barely able to dig up three fresh young corpses and
harvest the better parts: by the time I had the third coffin open, I
was trembling from sheer fatigue. Somehow I filled in the graves
again, got the parts home and in the proper solutions.
3 March:
A nice leisurely day hooking bits and pieces of bodies together. All
of the parts are from male bodies, and they fit together rather well.
The cranial cavity needed a bit of work to hold the patchwork brain,
but not much. I don't see re-animation as being very difficult in this
case.
4 March:
I started the re-animation this morning. Everything is going well so
far: the old equipment that got Gronk up and about is still in
excellent shape, though it looks a bit quaint. I looked through my old
notes on bodily metamorphosis. I'd forgotten how far I had progressed.
The biggest problem was storing information about the new structure the
body is assuming: making a human or animal into a duplicate of another
was practical, given the presence of the original. But I have no
penchant for impersonation. Had I been willing to prostitute my genius
to commercial ends, and been able to find a discreet clientele, I could
have made several fortunes by changing old women into twin sisters of
their pretty granddaughters, vain women into copies of fashion models,
would-be transsexuals -- bah! Foolishness.
5 March:
My new assistant is definitely alive, already healing with that
unnatural speed that still amazes even me. Its body does not look
scarred or particularly deformed: a good job. It should wake up
within a few days, and given the quality of its brain, it might even be
coherent by then. Training Gronk was quite a task, but I have hope for
better things this time.
6 March:
Altogether an amazing and gratifying day. I went into the lab. today
and found my new assistant sitting up in bed! "What happened to me?"
it asked. "And this sounds crazy, but who am I?" After a moment of
gathering my wits, I told it a carefully-edited version of the truth,
omitting anything that might hint that I had had anything to do with
the deaths of the persons from whom I constructed it. It was quite
grateful, happy to be alive, and oddly excited about being an assistant
to what it calls a "mad scientist." As far as its scrambled brain can
recollect, it was unhappy and "burnt-out" as graduate students,
dissatisfied with its work and its advisors. Most of it was computer
scientists and electrical engineers: not what I would have chosen (why
didn't I check before inducing those suicides?), but it seems
intelligent and obedient, and I admit that my knowledge of computers is
slight and outdated. Not as strong as Gronk, either. We agreed to
call it (or, I suppose I would start saying, him) Fred.
7 March:
Fred is a wonder. Apart from his lack of physical strength (not
greatly stronger than I am, tall and gawky and spindly), he is much
superior to Gronk. We had a look at my bodily-metamorphosis equipment,
which I keep down in the caves beneath my laboratory, amongst my older
apparatus. I explained the problem of storing body-images: how can
you transform a body without an original to provide a template? What
if you want to make only a few alterations? "You need a computer,
Master," he told me. I took him to my computer complex and showed him
my IBM 360. He laughed for an entire minute and said that it would
never do. He says that he can get something running on it, but that I
will have to buy a newer machine if I want to do any serious work.
Fortunately I have vast sums in my Swiss bank accounts, thanks to some
consulting work for various individuals and governments, and the
estimate Fred gives for what we will need is quite reasonable.
9 March:
Very busy, both of us. It's quite different having an intelligent
assistant with the minds of grad students. More expensive, to begin
with: Fred lives on Twinkies and Coke Classic and delivered pizza,
when poor Gronk was satisfied with gruel and the occasional blind cave
fish. The pizza-deliverymen are quite afraid of my house, what with
the permanent fog and thunderclouds I generate around it, and it takes
large tips to keep the pizza coming. Also, Fred does not obey orders
blindly, but thinks first: this could be a problem when I need a
special job done, but it should prevent certain blunders, such as when
Gronk handed me the wrong brain and instead of putting my old-lady
colleague into the beautiful coed's body, I put in an aging prostitute.
The prostitute disgraced the body somewhat before I could put things
right, but eventually I got Julia's brain into that darling, empty
little head: she (now known by her body's name of Tiffany) is still
stunning, publishes voluminously, and is happily married. But with
Fred there everything would have gone smoothly. Fred says that the 360
should be able to handle a small metamorphosis, and that we can store
the body patterns on magnetic tape: about 50 reels of it. "Not enough
memory, too slow, can't do computer-aided design of bodies, Master." I
gave him carte blanche as to equipment, and I have placed the necessary
orders. Seeing Fred struggling with the ancient 360 and still getting
results has given me faith in his abilities.
12 March:
No entries for a few days -- but we have a success! Fred and I are not
strong enough to move the metamorphosis-equipment, so he ran data lines
down into the caves. We scanned a small blind newt native to the
caves, putting the pattern of its body onto magnetic tape (46 reels,
but the tape drive handles only low densities). Then we captured a
cave fish and read the newt's pattern off the tape. The metamorphosis
seemed to work, but when it was complete and we took the restraints off
the new newt, it scurried off down the cave, eventually falling into
one of the cracks in the floor that go down to volcanic fire. When
Fred saw this, he laughed uproariously for a long time, explaining
later that it reminded him of something in some of his former lives.
14 March:
It's amazing what a bit of bribery will do. Our new computers are
already here, to Fred's amazement, and he is hard at work installing
them. He says that we will be able to do computer-aided design of new
body-forms, store and edit body-patterns, and perform remarkable
transformations. I have great confidence in him. The amount of Coke
Classic he consumes is remarkable; whenever I warn him that it may
endanger the health of his re-animated body, he shrugs and opens
another can.
15 March:
Fred is tireless, it seems. Most of the machines are up, though the
machine room is littered with pizza scraps and empty Coke Classic cans.
I sense that he has an ulterior motive for working so hard: is he
unhappy with his body? The scarring is minimal, he assures me that no
part of him is in pain, and he easily could pass for a normal human
being. I decide to let him become whoever he likes once the process is
perfected, as a reward for his assiduous labors.
16 March:
I am rebuilding the metamorphosis-bed while Fred works on software for
design and control. He is using an existing CAD package that I bought
at enormous expense, but he says that it will save him months of work.
17 March:
The equipment is ready, but Fred says that the software will take a
while, perhaps a week. I cannot accuse him of malingering: he is
working up to twenty hours a day, hardly eating, and writing vast
amounts of code. He suggested, over Coke Classic during one of his
rare breaks, that I occupy myself with other things while he finishes
this difficult project. Very bored, I captured a stray dog and
metamorphosed it into a copy of my cat, but my heart wasn't in it,
though the new cat is delightfully confused. I need something else to
work on.
18 March:
Very melancholy. I bother Fred, keeping him from his work. I long for
a wife: typical of me when I am unoccupied. There is a pleasant but
homely young woman, named Catherine, in the course I am teaching at the
University: she appears to be interested in me. When the
metamorphosis equipment is working, I can make my body strong and
attractive, and once she is in love with me, alter her suitably. She
has just the sort of mind, I believe, that would fit nicely in the sort
of body I find beautiful.
24 March:
No entries for a while...I cannot work. I drove to town, car and self
properly disguised, and picked up a whore. She was appallingly stupid
and ill-mannered, and I lost patience with her before we could even
have sex. I took her home, used the proper equipment, and now I have a
second copy of my cat. If she is well-behaved, I will forge a copy of
my cat's pedigree papers and sell her for a good price: with only a
cat's brain, she is hardly in a position to incriminate me. Fred says
that he is almost finished. The bill for delivered pizza is
astronomical, but when I complain, he justly notes that the computers
were far more expensive.
25 March:
"Master," suggested Fred, "why don't you build a portable body-scanner
so that you can copy people without kidnapping them?" Fred is getting a
bit above his station, I thought angrily, but by now I am starting to
see him more as a colleauge than a creature. Of course his suggestion
is excellent. He will have to build the data-storage mechanism, but
today I put the rest of the works into the case of a video camera.
People will think that I am taking videos when in fact I am copying the
patterns of their bodies onto videocassetes as binary data. Most
amusing.
27 March:
A very rewarding day indeed. I went to a downtown park with my "video
camera" and "filmed" several attractive young women as they ate lunch.
One 8mm videocassette stores enough data to let me reconstruct a human
body, and the scanner runs through it in half a minute. Perhaps I
aroused their suspicions, what with changing tapes after less than a
minute of use, but I pretended that the "camera" was malfunctioning.
Back in the lab, I took the copy-cat that had been the stray dog,
strapped it to the metamorphosis-bed, and gave Fred a tape of a lovely
brunette. In a few minutes we had the process going quite nicely, and
in less than an hour the body of the woman lay there, nicely-shaped,
charming with its frilly dress and long dark hair and careful makeup,
all exactly as I had scanned it. The mind of the dog was quite
confused at this second change of form, and incapable of handling the
complexities of a human brain and body. It lay there, a stunned
expression on its pretty face, moaning softly, still an animal inside.
I caressed it in ways that would have evoked at least a severe slap
from its original, but it just whimpered. I was not at all tempted to
have sex with the lovely body the dog now wore, though with someone
like Catherine looking out of those eyes, I would not even have
hesitated. I offered it to Fred, but he declined: strange, because he
seemed aroused by the sight of it. (Something is peculiar about Fred;
I suppose I will soon know just what.) After a quick physical
examination of the body (simply that of a healthy young woman, I
found), we changed it back into a cat's. As for cats, the former whore
makes a superb one. She knows how to use a toilet, likes being
cuddled, and is quite even-tempered. I will sell my original cat and
keep her instead.
28 March:
It was bound to happen: Fred has cracked. I came down to the lab this
morning. Fred was in his quarters with the door open. He had put up
an old mirror he must have found in the caves, and was preening himself
before it: in women's clothing! Once I had overcome my initial
shocked amusement, I questioned him and found that:
1) part of his brain had come from a woman,
2) another part had come from a would-be transsexual,
3) I should be pleased that he could not merely extract clothing from
the body scans, but scale it up to fit him, and
4) he would like to become a woman as soon as possible, and would
have already changed had he considered it safe and practical to
operate the equipment alone.
I was at a loss. A female assistant would be quite distracting, I told
him. Pressure of overwork had caused him to crack; he didn't really
want to be a woman, did he? I forbade him to attempt a change of body
without my permission, or even to wear female garb. He sulked and said
that it was his desire for womanhood that impelled him to finish the
job in a fraction of the time he would normally have spent. I
remembered my promise to myself to let Fred be who he wished, and
reluctantly told him that if he still felt this way in a few days, he
could change. He was grateful, and immediately put on proper clothes
and got to work. The pet store paid an excellent price for my original
cat. The transmuted whore is much superior.
29 March:
Fred furtively fondles a pair of black lace panties, but otherwise is
holding to his cooling-off period. He is improving the CAD software
considerably, and this afternoon designed a body that looks quite like
that of Diana Rigg as Emma Peel on "The Avengers." It would be most
distracting to have such an assistant, but I suppose that I can
tolerate it if Fred does not suggest I impersonate Patrick Macnee as
John Steed. We scanned my body; tomorrow I plan to do a bit of editing
and assume a more-athletic form.
30 March:
[in a smaller, delicate script:] I am greatly annoyed. Fred swears that
it was not his fault, and fortunately for him he is right: I was
careless. Still, I am certain he considers this poetic justice after I
delayed his change of sex. At present I have the body of a tiny but
flawlessly beautiful child-woman, perhaps sixteen: I am too disgusted
at my femininity to give more details. The computer is down, so that
return to a proper form will have to wait until we can get a repairman
here. We had edited a scan of my body, reducing its age by a few
years, removing fat, adding muscle, and so forth. The computer began
giving warning messages on its console about a potential hardware
error, but I, hoping to impress Catherine in class tomorrow with my
physique (wearing, for once, a T-shirt instead of coat and tie),
insisted on going ahead with my alteration. Then I put into the drive
what I thought was the proper tape, had Fred strap me to the
metamorphosis-bed, and let myself be changed. The metamorphosis takes
place with the subject conscious but paralyzed and insensible of pain:
I could tell that I was changing too much, but was powerless to stop
that; Fred was afraid to interrupt the process. When the change was
complete, Fred, embarrassed, handed me a mirror. Though furious and
disgusted, I looked adorable: this made me even angrier. I minced,
damning my new body, over to the console, found the correct tape, and
put it in the drive. Fred ran a set-up program -- and the machine
crashed. Diagnostics showed a major hardware failure which Fred could
not repair, "even if you were willing to void the warranty." I tore my
dress to ribbons in my anger. Fred told me that he had designed the
body for his own occasional use, and offered me clothes from the
extensive wardrobe he had already created for it: they ranged from
little-girl to happy-hooker, but all were intensely feminine and
delicately perfumed. I tried to strike Fred, but he gently restrained
me. Eventually I resigned myself to the situation and a blouse and
skirt.
31 March [still the delicate feminine handwriting]:
Worse and worse. The repairman made a pass at me, curse him, and could
not even fix the machine: a new board should arrive tomorrow. I think
that I could use another cat, and the repairman looks like a good
candidate. Or perhaps poetic justice would require him in my
situation, only irreversibly. Of course I missed teaching my class
today; with the help of a vocoder I imitated my usual voice and called
in sick. Fred suggested that I venture out, hoping that I would see
why he finds womanhood so attractive a prospect. I did go out,
attracting much unwanted male company, so that by the end of the day,
several admirers were dying of slow poisons unknown to (conventional)
science: one bright spot in an otherwise miserable day.
1 April [handwriting back to normal]:
Finally myself again -- actually, the improved version we designed to
impress Catherine. Fred was most trying: "They called and said that
the board won't be ready for a few more days," he said. A string of
most unladylike curses came from my stupidly pretty mouth, intensifying
briefly after he added, "April Fool!" The repairman patted my buttocks
when he arrived with the board: only my iron self-control prevented
his immediate death. With everything up and running, I went through my
metamorphosis. My muscles are now most impressive, and I look and feel
much better. Fred insisted on assuming his Diana-Rigg-as-Emma-Peel
body, right down to the dated Sixties hairstyle and clothing. He
(she?) has talents as an actor, and slipped into the Emma Peel
character at once, duplicating the accent and mannerisms. Fred
addressed me as "Steed," a few times, until I rebuked him. Fred as a
woman is certainly a distraction.
3 April:
Catherine is interested in me! She approached me after class and asked
whether I had time to discuss certain points of the day's lecture at
greater length. Eventually we decided on having dinner together
tomorrow. I hope that I can soon take her into my confidence and put
her onto the metamorphosis-bed. Fred (he wants to be called "Mrs.
Peel" or even "Emma," but I politely refuse) is helping me design
Catherine's new body, which is precisely that of my ideal woman. I can
hardly wait to see it wear her expression on its face. We planned the
revenge on the repairman. Fred will assume a girlish form and entice
him into my van, and we will take him to the laboratory and make a few
changes in him. But not tomorrow.
4 April:
I have fallen in love. Apart from her physical appearance, which I can
quickly rectify, Catherine is the perfect woman. Our dinner went
exactly right, and afterwards...I cannot hope to describe it, so I must
not try. This is simply the best evening of my life so far. I will go
and put some little endearing touches on her new body. 6 April: Being
in love had not slaked my thirst for revenge on the computer repairman.
Fred, reluctantly leaving the Diana Rigg body he now considers his
proper one, put on a child-woman body very like my erstwhile prison,
only with a different face and voice. We simply pretended that the van
had trouble, and stopped it near the man's house. Fred, girlish and
dressed revealingly, lured him out to the van, tricked him into going
inside -- and soon we had him neatly gagged, bound, and blindfolded.
It took only a short while to transform him into a diseased, aging,
alcoholic whore of about 40, with a brain too weak to plot against us
even if he suspected that we were responsible for his metamorphosis.
We drugged his new body and left it in a room in a cheap motel nearby.
Very tidy, I must say. I left a few remote-controlled TV cameras
behind to see what the repairman would do.
7 April:
Catherine says that she is "busy"; she is no more specific than that in
refusing me another date. I love her so deeply...but I have a horrible
feeling that my love is not reciprocated. The antics of the repairman
are delightful. After a few screams upon awakening as a woman, he
pulled himself together and made the best of things. Fred and I had
left a little money and a few bottles of cheap gin in his room: I am
not a cruel man. By evening he was plying the trade suitable to his
body: a fast learner. His body is a slightly edited version of a
whore I had scanned in the park: somehow, the body pattern seems to
retain some of the knowledge and memories of its original. This would
make impersonations much easier.
9 April:
Catherine is going out with another man. How can she betray me like
this? How can the other man find her beautiful? He cannot change her
body the way I can; he would be stuck with her as she is. I am
uncertain of what to do. The campus could use another squirrel,
certainly, but what then? A missing or additional whore or two does
not matter, but I think that the repairman's disappearance is quite
enough for now. Perhaps I could step into the shoes of Catherine's
friend: would his body retain enough memories for an effective
impersonation?
10 April:
A bit of investigation reveals that Brad, Catherine's boyfriend, is
all but engaged to her. I have no choice: I must become him or lose
the woman I love. Too distraught to think clearly, I have let Fred
devise the plan.
11 April [in slightly different handwriting]:
I am now Brad, the original Brad now being one of those reddish fox
squirrels (I have grown tired of all those grey squirrels on campus),
living off popcorn in garbage cans and handouts from coeds who do not
realize that a squirrel is simply a rat with a bushy tail. This diary
is the only thing that connects me with my past life. As I had hoped,
this body retains enough of Brad's memories and persona that I should
have no trouble being him. The changes went well. Fred, though it
pained me, assumed Catherine's form and lured Brad to our van. From
then on it was all routine: a careful scan of Brad's body,
transformation of Brad into a squirrel, transformation of myself into
Brad, and a false Catherine and a false Brad releasing a false squirrel
on the Quad before kissing each other good night. Fred can
occasionally impersonate my former self until the end of the semester,
when it can resign and quietly vanish. As Brad, I find that I am
something of a scoundrel, and have been toying with Catherine though
she is deeply in love with me. I have a little black book of girls who
are willing to have sex: most unusual. Clearly this new self with
Brad's body is a great improvement for Catherine: a man who really
loves her, and can make her beautiful.
12 April:
A date with Catherine. She notices the change in Brad. We kiss deeply
for a long time; I let my Brad-persona do the work. She offers sex:
it's Puritanical of me, but I am shocked and have to hide behind my
false self. I had blocked it out, but my Brad-memories clearly show
that she has had sex with Brad enough times that he had lost count.
Slut! But to stay in character I accept her offer. I enjoy the
result, but she is disappointed at my performance: too much of me and
not enough Brad for her. I am greatly disappointed in her, but still
very much in love.
15 April:
No entries for a few days. Fred has completed my tax return and filed
it; Brad had not even begun his before his squirrelhood, but though I
am now he I have not bothered to complete it. By hours of mental
effort I have been able to access Brad's memories, as stored in this
brain, and the more I know the more disillusioned I grow with
Catherine. Apparently her looks belie a huge sexual talent and
appetite and diversity of taste that I find revolting. Brad found this
titillating, and it seems that Catherine really did love him, but I
cannot bear it. If I let my Brad-self take over, I could marry her,
but I would be condemned to life as Brad with a woman who -- it is too
disgusting. Now what? Having this brain seems to have sapped my
native ingenuity. I have contacted Fred.
16 April:
Fred has come up with a plan. He assumed the form of a young woman and
the clothes of a pizza delivery girl, and came to visit my Brad-self;
the disguise was not really necessary, but Fred thinks of himself as
Emma Peel and loves cloak-and-dagger work. Fred suggests that Brad
commit suicide, leaving a note blaming Catherine for his plight;
Catherine can then commit suicide out of sorrow. Of course, what will
really happen is that first Brad's and later Catherine's body will be
found, suitably poisoned or whatever, but that I will become my real
self again and Catherine will be safe and sound in my laboratory. It
is quite tidy and I agree to it at once; in my gratitude I even call
Fred "Mrs. Peel," give his girl-face a chaste kiss, and do not object
when he calls me "Steed."
18 April [back to the former handwriting]:
Myself again at last! The harder part of the plan is yet to come, but
I feel confident of myself now that I have my original brain to think
with, and very confident of Emma (as I now call Fred out of gratitude:
he -- I mean she -- is very pleased with this). Everything went well.
Still Brad, I went drinking, pretending to get drunk. After a few
hours, I left a bar and collapsed in front of my van (it was suitably
disguised), where Emma, now an Amazon of a woman, picked me up and took
me to Brad's place. Once there, she all-but-carried a mindless,
drunken, and poisoned Brad body into his apartment, along with a
suicide note I had written, arranged them artistically, and left. In a
few hours I was back in my usual form, and Emma was back in her Diana
Rigg body. This settles Brad nicely. Now for that slut Catherine...
19 April:
Catherine is distraught, according to what I can tell from the little
TV cameras I planted in her apartment when I was Brad. Good. She is
not in a mood to see anyone, which is even better: Emma and I had not
hoped for such luck. We are almost ready to strike.
20 April:
Catherine is safe and sound in the laboratory, in an artificially-
induced sleep. The operation went rather well, I think. We had
diverted all her phone calls, with Emma, suitably Catherine-bodied,
answering them all and warning off all friends and relatives (just to
make certain). Meanwhile I did some visiting and scanned a few of her
woman friends. Emma and I became two of the stronger-looking ones,
much as I hate being female, and we got into a copy of the car owned by
my original and drove to her apartment, a mindless Catherine-body in
the trunk. We were most welcome to Catherine in our friendly bodies,
and we even convinced her to come down to my car for a ride. After
that it was simplicity itself to substitute the false Catherine for the
real one and fake the suicide. I'm not certain if the note that Emma
wrote while she was Catherine will pass muster, but we can hope.
22 April:
What to do with Catherine? Probably I should have just left her alone
after Brad's "suicide." (The lone fox squirrel is doing very nicely, by
the way -- quite as well as what is now my cat.) At any rate, I am now
stuck with a woman I no longer love and who never really loved me. The
sentimental side of me is leaning towards making her into a female fox
squirrel; the nastier side, an old hag. The police seem to be quite
unaware of anything out of the ordinary.
23 April:
I finally decided what to do with Catherine. I had cobbled together
the body of a toothless, senile, incontinent old hag, ready for the
nursing home, but unfortunately I am sentimental: I looked at
Catherine's unconscious form, and knew that I could not do that to her.
I considered rousing her and explaining the situation: "As far as
anyone knows, you're dead. Brad killed himself. I can change you into
anyone you like, whenever you like. Can you love me?" But it never
would have worked: within a week she would have wanted menage a' trois
with Fred -- I mean Emma -- there, and inside of a month she would have
been trying every possible form of sex in every possible body.
Nympomaniacal slut. Then I had an idea. Emma, changed for the day
into Linda Thorson as Tara King (I humored her and called her "Tara";
she insisted on wearing a wig even though she could have had any hair
she liked), was very helpful. We designed the ultimate super-normal
stimulus: long platinum-blonde hair, ice-blue eyes, 40"-20"-40"
figure, incredible face, firm limbs, perfect skin: not my type at all,
but the stereotypical Beautiful Woman writ large. The brain we
designed to support an IQ of about 85: if she acted like a mindless
bed-hopper, she should be one. The metamorphosis went quickly and
smoothly. Tara designed and became an intelligent version of the
blonde, and checked into another cheap motel; after nightfall I brought
the new Catherine there. I forsee a great career for her as a whore,
and perhaps a porno star. Let's see how she handles the change.
24 April:
The changed Catherine, as seen through our usual concealed TV cameras,
is very much confused: as with the computer repairman (I saw him
soliciting downtown: he's found his niche), the loss of identity is a
big shock. But the repairman had appropriate memories in his new
brain; Catherine has only her own, dimmed by a greatly reduced capacity
for thought. After a few hours she left the motel; I think she is
visiting her old haunts. Will she try to convince her friends that she
is Catherine? Will she suspect me of a hand in her metamorphosis? I
hope that it will not be necessary to make a squirrel of her as well.
25 April:
I was working alone, and the woman of my dreams -- dark-haired, pale,
slender, intelligent expression on an exquisite droll face -- walked
into the lab. She looked at me, eyes brimming with desire, and said,
"I love you." Of course it was Emma. I fought back my own desires and
turned on her with rage: "How dare you mock me by becoming such a
woman? Go back to your usual form at once!" She broke down in tears
and crushed herself against me, sobbing, "But I really do love you, and
I'm not like that horrid Catherine. Please..." My resolve broke and I
consoled her. But I am a cynical man of science nevertheless, and I
noticed a few things about Emma's body. She redesigned the body that
Catherine was to have worn, attuning it exactly to me: the pheromones
it secretes, the size and shape of its mouth, the pitch and timbre of
its voice, the contours of its figure, and no doubt its sex organs --
all designed expressly to arouse my senses, to fit against my body.
Changing myself would be useless, because Emma could simply make a few
alterations to herself, tit for tat. I explained to Emma that I could
hardly love a creature I had assembled out of corpses: she snuggled
against me and laughed (exactly the laugh I find most attractive, curse
her!), "Does this feel like a corpse?" All afternoon she flirted
delightfully, and very much against my wishes I found myself feeling
more and more affection for her. How did Emma learn to become so
completely feminine?
26 April:
A remarkable day. Emma remains as my dream-woman. She must have
fine-tuned and greatly increased the levels of her pheromones during
the night, because all day she gave off an enticing aroma which stirred
my lustful instincts. I also caught her tinkering with equipment in
her quarters (now a charmingly tidy, feminine place, unlike the lair it
had been for Gronk or the grad-student room of Fred): I guessed that
she had found a way to scan, edit, and alter personalities as well as
bodies, and is transmuting hers into one that I cannot hope to resist.
I should have kept her under tighter discipline when she was Fred.
Early in the afternoon, the transformed Catherine showed up.
Apparently we had not made her new brain weak enough, and she had
guessed my complicity in her metamorphosis. Of course I invited her
in. In her dumb-blonde voice, fighting by sheer will the limitations
of her altered brain, she made her accusations: accurate and fairly
complete. Fortunately, the deductions had taken all her brain-power,
because she had stupidly come alone, and actually expected me to
restore her and Brad (how happy she was to hear me say that Brad was
alive! Of course, his squirrelhood has no doubt damaged his mind
irretrievably) out of the goodness of my heart! I suppressed my
laughter, tranquilized her with a dart from a handy little dart-gun,
and called on Emma. Emma's new device is indeed for alteration of
memory and personality. I praised her initiative, and showed her
Catherine. Emma immediately started editing a persona she had been
toying with: that of a vain, stupid woman, its memories a patchwork of
those of several women she had scanned. A few minutes in Emma's room
with a metal cap on Catherine's head ("It looks like something out of a
cheap horror movie, but it works," said Emma) replaced every last
incriminating memory. Yet another cheap motel, yet another change of
Emma's body into a copy of Catherine's... this is getting repetitive,
and we are fast running out of motels nearby. I trust that we are rid
of Catherine at last.
27 April:
Emma continues to make little changes in her body and persona,
observing my reactions and adjusting herself accordingly. She is set
on being my wife. She has scanned several hundred personable women,
choosing attractive aspects from various selves and making them part of
her own. Should I submit? Emma grows more exquisite every day. Very
little of Fred remains in her, apart from Fred's raw intellect -- and I
suspect her of enhancing that artificially as well. I checked our
archive of body tapes, and every last scan or design that incorporates
part of Fred's body is gone: erased, the label removed, the tape
usually reused. But there is still in me a deep revulsion for her:
she was once a number of graduate students, all male apart from one who
contributed part of her brain, whom I incited to suicide and harvested
bits and pieces from. Could I love that? And what if her persona
shifts radically and she becomes a man again? Unlikely? I fear that I
am beginning to love her. No, not beginning to...I love her madly,
despite my disgust.
28 April:
I have capitulated. Emma came into the lab this morning, reeking of
enticing pheromones, wearing a simple blue dress, unspoken love
radiating from her face. My heart melted and in seconds we were
kissing passionately. The next thing that I can remember with perfect
clarity is being in my bed, Emma at my side, both of us quite
exhausted: it was well into the afternoon. We must concoct an
identity for Emma. Her knowledge of computers should help in altering
the appropriate databases. Once she has an official self, we can be
married.
30 April:
We have done no work at all in the past few days. Emma is everything I
could desire in a woman. She has some wonderful ideas for a honeymoon,
involving portable metamorphosis-equipment in motel rooms, frequent
changes of form for both of us, and a trail of delightful mischief
across half a dozen states. Late yesterday afternoon she altered her
hair, complexion, and eyes, becoming a green-eyed, pale-skinned
redhead, but otherwise unchanged: stunningly pretty.
2 May:
Great fun yesterday. Emma spent the morning breaking into various
computer systems, altering databases to create her new identity. I
tinkered with viruses in the lab. I think that it should be possible
to alter a rhinovirus (such as causes the common cold) to carry and
deliver some most interesting genetic information. After lunch, Emma
came in, changed into a delicate black woman of great beauty, with
cornrowed hair and a frilly white dress. I became a well-muscled young
black man, and we enjoyed a romantic afternoon and evening in town. It
was especially amusing to go to a sleazy nightclub and see a stunning
blonde stripper: Catherine! Emma giggled deliciously and I roared
with laughter as the altered Catherine disrobed, rather clumsily I
thought; the bouncers looked at us strangely, but one does not
interfere with the sort of man I was. As we left for home, a drunken
man took me to task for laughing at Catherine, calling me "nigger." We
had been black for all of twelve hours, but I brook no insults.
Because there was nobody else in sight at the moment, I made short work
of him, and we trussed him up and took him home. Late this morning he
awakened as a pleasant if slightly overweight black woman of forty or
so. Enough of these alterations could end racial unrest forever. I
think that we have run out of cheap local motels, however.
3 May:
Emma has finished creating her new identity, at least as far as
computer records go. She has a driver's license, Social Security
number, excellent credit history, academic record showing a B. A. at a
large but respected public university, and so forth. Forging and
inserting paper documents will take more time, but she now has an
official existence. I think that a civil ceremony will do quite
nicely: just a quiet little affair with the minimum of fuss. Emma,
clever woman that she is, has acquired an excellent understanding of
genetic engineering by scanning the mind of a young woman doing
research at the University. She simply inserted the copied knowledge
into her own brain. I hope that Emma's mind is able to take such
shocks: I myself would find it difficult to endure the degree of
mental alteration that she has undergone in order to become her
magnificent self.
4 May:
Darling Emma is a very great help. Together we decided on a new goal
for our research: viruses that spread metamorphic disease. Emma
agrees that by an extension of our work on metamorphosis, we can
engineer viruses that cause their hosts to undergo drastic changes of
body. A modified cold virus, spread in the usual way, could be
designed to do the following: cause a week or two of cold symptoms,
appear to be gone, but over the period of a month force its host's body
to acquire whatever form it encodes. The metamorphosis might vary from
a change of hair color to an entire remodeling of the body, from the
skeleton out. Thus we should be able to infect as much as we like of
the human race with a virus that changes people into copies, say, of a
particular young woman. Or why not a mass change of race somewhere? I
don't mind being a power for good as long as I can wield power. This
is going to take time. Meanwhile I have some scores to settle with the
university's president and certain members of the faculty. Emma and I
have only some rudimentary plans, but...
6 May:
Not bad for an impromptu caper! Yesterday I hid in the bathroom of the
Administration building on campus, impersonating the President. The
real President came down; he refuses to use his private loo because he
does not want to be thought an elitist. It was a simple matter to
substitute myself for him, leaving the real President to be picked up
by a sturdy young woman janitor (a male janitor would have been less
conspicuous, but I cannot bear the thought of darling Emma as a man; it
might also damage her still-delicate persona). Emma took him back to
the lab and altered his persona heavily; it would have been easier if
he had had latent homosexual tendencies to begin with, but she seems to
have done an excellent job. Another substitution in the bathroom, late
in the afternoon, finished the job. Today the President joined the Gay
Students Group in their protest march. Emma and I, ourselves for once,
watched as he carried a sign in one hand and playfully caressed the GSG
treasurer with the other. Most amusing. Later came a statement to the
press: everything we could have hoped for. I doubt that he will have
his job tomorrow.
7 May:
A miscalculation. Apart from the President's wife, who is distraught,
nobody seems to mind the President's confessions of homosexuality.
They are all too busy praising his nerve and honesty and all that; he
has been offered the Presidency of a more-prestigious school. This is
a poor sort of revenge; worse, his charming wife, for whose sake I
tolerated the old jackass for so long, is the only one wronged.
Perhaps I can make a fine young coed of her and give her another chance
in life. Emma has designed a lovely body for her.
9 May:
Very busy. The Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences was our next
target, and the result seems more promising. This time Emma, wearing
her body and carrying her house key (easier to copy than living flesh),
walked into the old lady's house late at night, used a bit of
anesthetic gas to ensure a sound sleep, carried her into her own dowdy
car...very tidy, especially because she has an attached garage with a
garage-door opener. A few discreet bugs around her office show that
the Dean is already chasing the younger men on her staff. Even it this
never erupts into a scandal, it is most gratifying. Out of curiosity I
dallied a bit with Emma while she still wore the Dean's shape: quite
disgusting; even when Emma used all of her considerable charms, sex was
out of the question. Good progress on the viruses. A few small-scale
experiments in a day or so? Still unsure of how to change Jane, the
President's wife, into a pretty coed. The metamorphosis is the least
of the problems, of course. Can she keep her mouth shut? I don't want
to alter her persona or memories: will she acquiesce in her new state?
Another faked suicide, too...entirely too many suicides on campus.
Perhaps she could "die" of a brain hemorrhage?
11 May:
We went ahead and changed the President's wife. Jane worked for the
data processing department: I scanned her as she left her car; Emma
made a ready-to-die copy of the body, and put it in the janitor's
closet in the proper bathroom. It was a simple matter of anesthetizing
Jane, putting her in a trash can, leaving the false body to die in a
bathroom stall, and taking home the real one. We arranged a false
identity for Jane: a transfer student, about to start the summer term
but hanging about for a month beforehand in order to get oriented. We
gave her her own apartment, a car, a nicely-stocked bank account, a
scholarship and a low-interest student loan. This morning she awoke as
an enchanting green-eyed blonde; on her nightstand was a long letter
explaining her situation. After some bewilderment and fright she read
the letter, which calmed her greatly. In minutes she was posing at the
mirror, stroking her thighs and breasts, delighted with her fine new
body.
12 May:
Jane dropped by. I pretended not to know her, but she said, "I know
you won't admit you're behind this, but I just want to thank you for
making me who I am today." She gave me a hug and a chaste kiss, and
promptly left. Life would be so much easier if only people would be
content with being who I make them. Emma and I infected a cat with a
blood-borne virus intended to change it into a rare type of Siamese.
This could be a tidy little business: infect stray animals and sell
them at a premium once they have changed. It should take a few days to
see whether it really works; after that we can go on to humans. We are
applying for a marriage license. I think that the honeymoon can wait
fow a few weeks.
14 May:
The cat is showing definite signs of metamorphosis. It will take a
good while for its coat to grow out: not really a practical method.
Still, the prospect of being able to transform thousands or millions of
people by simply releasing a virus... A young man has come forward and
accused the Dean whose sexual appetites we augmented of forcing him to
have sex with her at gunpoint. Emma and I laughed ourselves silly.
Emma and I will be married tomorrow. Just a quiet little civil
ceremony. She is making her bridal gown now.
17 May:
A lovely wedding. Emma made a charming bride. After that, home and a
lot of sex. Not much to say: Emma is in every way the woman of my
dreams, and I am overjoyed that she is my wife. I have built a virus
that causes its host to become a young, female version of itself. It
is spread by sexual contact or injection into the bloodstream. Using
the latter method, Emma and I, disguised as beautiful blonde twins,
infected half a dozen sexually-active men in a city several hundred
miles from here. Even with a temporary alteration of my personality to
make myself feminine, I found it even more unpleasant than usual to be
a woman. A prompt return to normal and a marathon of sex with Emma
soon made me feel much better. In several weeks we should see profound
changes in our subjects, and in a few months the epidemic of womanhood
should be well under way. Time to go on a honeymoon while we wait for
results.
19 May:
Getting things ready for the honeymoon. I think that we can set up a
decent laboratory in the van in case we want to do a bit of tinkering
with viruses, and Emma is working on a miniature machine for
metamorphosis: small enough to fit in a few large suitcases. The only
difficulties I see are in disguising the van in case of trouble, and
covering our tracks when we do metamorphoses in motel rooms. But Emma
and I could both do with a little excitement, and I am confident that
we can escape from the police or even, if necessary, from prison.
21 May:
I have covered the van with a thin shell full of embedded electrodes;
at different levels of electric field, the shell changes color from
black to red to the successive colors of the spectrum to white. Also
we have a stock of false license plates and driver's licenses, which
should prepare us for most contingencies.
22 May:
Emma has had a brilliant idea: a car is so much simpler than a human
or even an animal body. Why not store the patterns of assorted cars
and trucks, and have our van metamorphose as well? This will mean
delaying our honeymoon for some days, but we should be much safer: in
a matter of a few minutes we will be able to change from a young couple
in a Porsche to a pair of grandparents in a dowdy Cadillac. That
leaves only the problem of where to change the car.
25 May:
No entries for a good while: Emma and I have been very busy. A few
days ago she assumed a pudgy, plain-faced body and a dull demeanor,
hoping that such a guise would keep my mind off her and on our work.
It helped somewhat, but her delectable self kept slipping out and
inciting me to lust. I think that we have everything working properly:
our car can change in under five minutes, and it can perform a
metamorphosis (much more slowly) on anyone sitting in it. Some
hyperspatial trickery provides a place to stow our equipment and some
extra mass (can't make a VW Beetle that weighs as much as a panel
truck, or vice versa, so that this is essential).
26 May:
I awoke this morning to find Emma her beautiful self again. But I felt
very strange. Something had happened to my mind: my thoughts had
become sharper, clearer, faster...I had also acquired a vast body of
mathematical knowledge that I had no memory of having learned.
Suddenly it struck me that Emma had altered my brain and mind as I
slept. I stared accusingly at her; she took my head in her delicate
hands and pressed it to her bosom. "Now you have a really adorable
mind," she said, stroking and kissing my hair. Incredible ideas course
through my head. Everything I do seems strangely easy. I keep seizing
Emma and giving her passionate kisses, from a mixture of extreme
gratitude and voracious love.
27 May:
Tomorrow we leave at last! I have a little surprise for Emma, who is
annoyed that we can't take much along: a little hyperspatial portal
that provides a doorway from its location back to the lab. This is
also a useful way of escape: we can step through the portal, vanish,
and have the car self-destruct. Very tidy, and I owe it all to Emma's
reworking of my mind.
29 May:
A wonderful honeymoon so far. Emma became a 18-year-old blonde bimbo
with a superficially stupid persona, I became a twenty-ish, muscular
lout, we made a Ferrari of our van, and off we went. The hyperspatial
compartments are very handy when you're driving something with as
little luggage space as a Ferrari. We scanned a few pretty girls at
the gas stations (a Ferrari uses a great deal of fuel), and finally
stopped at a motel for the night. The ugly girl behind the desk was
most gracious, and so we decided to give her a little present: a
lovely new body complete with driver's license, well-stocked bank
account (Emma fiddled a few computers), birth certificate, college
diploma with knowledge to match it, a talent for being seductive, the
lot. Just as she was about to leave for the day, she disappeared, Emma
assumed the form that we planned to give her, checked into the
motel...the rest was easy. Of course we left her the same sort of
explanatory letter we had given to Jane, the wife of the president of
the University, when we made her into a delectable coed. I hope that
the girl enjoys herself. We rose late. The police were around;
somebody had already reported the desk clerk as missing. We saw her
leave her room, resplendent in her fashion-model flesh; the police
asked her if she had seen her former self, and she had the sense to say
that she hadn't. Gratifying. But in general it's so much more
difficult and less amusing to do things that people find pleasant:
making a cat of someone takes minutes, but making a beauty of an ugly
but gracious girl took most of the night. In the afternoon we drove to
the desolate end of a nearby lake, changed the Ferrari into a 4x4 and
ourselves into sturdy outdoor folk not allergic to mosquito bites. We
rigged up a device that sucks up minnows and turns them into grayling,
a rare and exquisitely beautiful fish extinct over much of its formerly
wide range. These grayling are extraordinary: far more tolerant of
dirty water and low oxygen levels than natural grayling, and capable of
spawning several times a season. I predict an ecological disaster
wherever they are introduced, and thousands of ecologists and other
idiots writing foolish papers about super-grayling. We camped
overnight by the lake, the grayling-maker churning out many thousands
of the lovely fish overnight. Emma remained the tomboyish redhead she
had become the afternoon before, and we had great fun in the double
sleeping bag. Emma wants to increase the number of Elvis sightings in
the world. I agree that this is an admirable goal. We changed our
vehicle into a van and went into a nearby town; as luck would have it,
we happened upon the town drunkard, who begged us for "a buck or two
for a sandwich." We offered him a bottle of whiskey instead, and
thereby lured him into the back of the van...apart from his stench, he
gave no trouble, and we en-Elvised him, using a body and persona that
Emma had expressly (exPresley?) designed to be as realistic as
possible, down to the fingerprints. We dropped the new Elvis off a few
miles out of town, changed the van into a 4x4 again out of prudence,
and drove on. As luck would have it, we soon spotted a hitchhiker, a
ragged young lady...it was a temptation we could not resist. Even
before our truck was moving, we had her unconscious, in the space
behind the seats. After scanning her (not a bad body, and a cute
little face), we changed her into another Elvis. Fifty miles further
on we left this second Elvis, still unconscious, in a ditch by the
road. Emma and I had taken a fancy to the hitchhiker's body, so we
changed Emma into the girl and checked in early at a motel. I created
some pretty clothes as she showered. The rest of this evening promises
to be delightful.
31 May:
Emma has a way of bringing out the best in any body she wears, and she
outdid herself last night. Up late again, we had breakfast, made an
Elvis of a man who was trimming the hedges, and drove off without
paying the motel bill. Good luck to the police, I thought. We found a
sheltered spot amongst trees, and became an attractive young black
couple in a Mercedes. Not a moment too soon, either: the local
sheriff drove past in a great hurry just as we regained the main road.
Hitherto we have kept clear of the police by careful planning, careful
execution of plans, and avoidance of needless risks: it was quite
foolish not to pay the bill, considering that I am remarkably wealthy.
Yet the thrill of it all! Presently a deputy's car stopped us, and two
deputies, one a muscular but attractive woman, got out and asked us if
we had seen our previous selves. Emma and I, thinking as one, had them
unconscious in a moment, scanned them, turned them into gophers and
ourselves into them, superficial personae and all. Emma, now Billie
Sue, asked me in her lush new voice about our car: what should we do?
I showed her a remarkable feature of it: it can transform itself into
a nondescript little box that fits into a shirt pocket. Deputy Jim
Nurke pocketed the little box, and he and Deputy Billie Sue Billings
got into their patrol car and drove off. We spent the day as the
deputies, living their lives rather as they would have done. The
people we have become are married but not to each other, and they were
not having an affair -- until today. A spot of lovemaking in the back
seat early in the afternoon was very pleasant, but we had to part and
go home to our families. Perhaps we can stay this way for a while. As
Jim, I am married to a pretty but shrewish woman named Crystal; we have
four nasty little brats who would make excellent piglets, I think.
Crystal, it appears, periodically and baselessly (until today) accuses
Jim of infidelity; she herself appears to be a nymphomaniac. Tonight
should be most interesting.
1 June:
Crystal would not let me go to sleep until we had had sex, sex
accompanied by a few rough blows she demanded from me, sex criticized
in detail after the fact. A horrid, perverse woman: I am trying to
think of an appropriate revenge. After a heavy breakfast of
badly-prepared biscuits and gravy, I joined Billie Sue at the patrol
car and we started to drive about. Emma's expression appeared on her
face and Emma's tones crept into her voice as she told me of her
husband Joe: a wimp whom she had no difficulty in denying sex. She
laughed over my troubles with Crystal, and told me that she didn't mind
that I had to have sex with her to stay in character. Apart from my
problems with Crystal, it is great fun being who we are. One of the
Elvises we had made turned up, and, suppressing our laughter, we
questioned him and held him until the state mental hospital sent
somebody to take charge of him. Won't they be amazed when they find
that he has Elvis' fingerprints? More backseat sex with Billie Sue:
very nice indeed. We also indulged in a little police brutality: if
we get into too much trouble, we can always change selves again.
4 June:
Too busy being Jim for any entries. My brats are being quite nasty: I
have beaten them a few times for misbehavior, which was satisfying but
resulted in Crystal demanding the same treatment before sex. Billie
Sue and I have been called on the carpet by the sheriff, who at length
decided to suspend us beginning tomorrow. I think that he doesn't
approve of our physical approach to law enforcement. Time to move on.
We have a little surprise planned for our families this evening.
5 June:
I will miss Billie Sue, but of course we have her pattern on tape and
Emma can always put her on. Yesterday evening I took Crystal and the
brats for a ride. We stopped at a lonely spot in the country, and I
anesthetized them all with my little dart gun. Billie Sue and an
unconscious Joe showed up a few moments later. I took out that little
box, put it out the ground, and changed it back into our car. What to
do with these people? More disappearances would cause too much of a
stir. Eventually we decided to swap their bodies around a little:
Crystal's body with Joe's, and my two girl brats with my two boy brats.
We had our last sex as Jim and Billie Sue, then changed ourselves into
the black couple with the Mercedes, and drove fifty miles and slept in
a motel. We relaxed today. It is a great strain wearing someone
else's persona over your own, unlike wearing an unfamiliar body. We
did manage to make an Elvis of a passing jogger.
6 June:
5 Another relaxing day. I thought I heard the motel maid mutter
"niggers" at us under her breath. A potential Elvis, I think, or
perhaps she deserves worse: animalhood or planthood, yes? We strolled
about the town trying to decide what to do next. Being sheriff's
deputies was fun, but we hadn't had very much power, and got into
trouble merely for handling a few suspects roughly. Emma suggests that
we find some prominent couple, rich and powerful, and replace them with
ourselves. With care we can cause a vast amount of amusing trouble for
which they will be blamed; we can keep the originals in suspended
animation and revive them so that they, not us, will have to account
for our mischief.
7 June:
Very early in the morning we got up, checked out of the motel, and
altered the car and ourselves. We had grown rather fond of our black
bodies, but decided that a change of race was in order: we became
white again, an ordinary thirtyish couple. A bit risky, perhaps, to
change in a parking lot, but our infrared detectors showed nobody
nearby. I wanted to wait for the maid, to wreak some nasty
metamorphosis on her, but Emma wanted to put a plan of hers into
action. I was about to argue when I remembered the hyperspatial portal
I had made, the one that provides a gateway from its location back to
our lab. She was quite pleased with it, and gratified to learn that it
was the fruit of her alteration of my mind. With it she could use our
lab while I used the car. This city is the state capital. I had a
pretty good idea of what Emma had in mind when she had me drop her off
at the Capitol building after an early breakfast. Meanwhile I drove
back to the motel and waited for the maid to show up for work. It was
quite easy to render her unconscious and put her into a little
hyperspatial bag that, folded up, fitted neatly into my pocket. Back
in the van, I changed her into a fully functional hermaphrodite dressed
in unisex clothing. Won't she be surprised when she wakes up! A phone
call on the mobile phone. An old lady, the Governor's secretary, said
that she has made an appointment with the Governor in the afternoon for
her niece, "a lovely young blonde." I thanked her for letting me know.
Of course the secretary was Emma wearing the old bitch's form, and the
appointment a way of letting me replace the Governor. I cursed
inwardly at having to be a woman, but I showed up at the Governor's
office a few minutes early, in a striking young female body with long
golden hair, playing the part to the hilt. Emma fought back her
laughter until tears came to her old-crone eyes: her amusement made my
degradation almost worthwhile. When she recovered, we went into the
Governor's office together, and she introduced me as her niece Laura.
The man, though a politician, was stunned speechless by my beauty,
giving us plenty of time to anesthetize him. Emma opened the portal
back to the lab, where I scanned the Governor, assumed his form, and
left him in suspended animation next to his real secretary. Boring
government business, appointments, and so on for a few hours: I did
nothing unusual. Emma and I stayed late, Emma changing into a female
janitor and leaving the real secretary asleep on the office couch.
Then I went to the governor's mansion by chaffeured car and had dinner
with my wife: very pretty for a fortyish lady, but prone to nag and
rather a fool. Imagine my relief when I saw Emma's unique and
unmistakable expression on the face of our cook. Of course I promptly
steered my wife upstairs to our bedroom, rendered her unconscious, went
down and brought back the cook...within half an hour Emma was my wife.
A fine body, really, and I look forward to the rest of this evening.
8 June:
Well, the fun began today. Emma really made the most of her body last
night and early this morning. Then we demanded a lavish breakfast of
our cook, though she was still stunned after missing a few hours of her
life yesterday. I went to the office, vetoed a few bills that the real
Governor would have signed without a thought (the looks of horror on
the faces of my aides!), insulted a few legislators, and accepted a
bribe. Then a speaking engagement, accompanied by my wife, at lunch.
Emma had taken her prim political-wife body to the sleazier sex shops
in town, in a chaffeured car, no less, and bought quite a collection of
kinky goods, taking one of the Governor's credit cards to the limit.
So much for his anti-porn campaign. We showed up at the luncheon: a
meeting of an environmental organization. I had helped myself to the
contents of the whiskey decanter in my office, and was a bit drunk. I
could not resist the chance of a bit of fun, and threw away the fruit
of the speechwriter's toil and spoke impromptu. I went into rhapsodies
about strip-mining and unrestricted hunting seasons and tax breaks to
promote the chemical industry within the state and atomic waste dumps.
After the initial shock I was roundly booed; Emma came up to the
platform, bless her, and announced that she proposed to start and take
charge of a voluntary effort to educate children about the joys of
littering and water pollution. Soon the audience began to throw food
at us, which we deftly dodged as we ran from the platform, laughing.
After that Emma and I went to my office and ordered pizza, which we ate
while I conducted state business. A group of Japanese businessmen
arrived; the Governor had been trying to cajole them into building a
large factory in the state. I was rude, flippant, did my best to make
them lose face, took breaks from our conversation in order to feel up
Emma's cute if aging body (the memories of my body record an affair in
progress: why? Probably the persona of the Governor's real wife), and
ruined months of flattery and diplomacy in an hour. After that one of
my senior aides came into the office to complain about my recent
actions. Emma inobtrusively altered his persona so that he would
accept my orders blindly; we repeated this for my secretary and several
other aides and assistants. My mistress, Tiffany, called. Emma and I
will visit her tonight. I think her form will look exquisite on Emma.
These entries grow too verbose. Having a politician's brain doesn't
help.
10 June:
A lovely evening. Emma and I went to see Tiffany: a fine young wench,
rather stupid-looking. What with the hyperspatial link back to the
lab, it wasn't long before Emma was she. We had a night out on the
town, kissing passionately in public, bringing the affair into the
open. Around two this morning we went to her apartment and slept
together in both senses of the term. Later in the morning Emma
reluctantly became my wife again. We decided to keep the real Tiffany
in suspended animation for a while; Emma can become her again when
necessary. Off to the office again. All the important members of my
staff now do exactly as I tell them, so that I dictate insulting
letters, veto bills, make absurd proclamations (next week is Zoophily
Week in this state, by the way), and so forth, and nobody near me
complains, although the reporters are about to put my office under
siege. Emma spoke at a luncheon meeting of professional women. She
made a tape-recording of her speech: hilarious. She told them that
they had no business having careers, that they should all stay home and
keep house and produce babies, that they were undermining civilization
and adding to human misery for the sake of useless ambition -- all
beautifully sarcastic and vicious. A few of the weaker sisters wept,
but most of the women present were justifiably enraged and literally
chased her out. Then, at an afternoon meeting of an upper-crust group
of matrons, she gave a panegyric on the joys of perverted sex. The
lieutenant-governor is becoming a nuisance. We must do something about
him, preferably something nasty. Emma is starting to work on viruses
again, changing into a fresh body at night and taking the hyperspatial
link into our lab. I think I'll join her.
12 June:
Busy. The press is getting very hostile. I held a press conference
yesterday, at which I began by calling the reporters crazed hyenas and
went on to somewhat more picturesque terms involving the habits of
their parents. Not well received. I pardoned several
recently-convicted state officials, as well as several dangerous
criminals. There is talk of impeachment. This afternoon I opened a
juvenile detention center. I noted in my speech that it could become
an excellent source of high-grade meat for the poorer citizens of the
state, and suggested wider use of the death penalty, with the remains
being earmarked for human consumption. Emma assumed the blonde-bimbo
shape I had worn on my first visit to what is now my office. The
lieutenant governor has an eye for the trim ankle, so that it was easy
for her to ensnare him and take him to our lab, where Emma changed him
into Tiffany and Tiffany into him. That should keep them both busy for
a while. Also she gave the attorney general an overriding, obsessive
penchant for young boys. At night we go to our lab and become our real
selves, work hard on the metamorphic viruses, and at dawn become the
Governor and his wife again. There are reports of a strange
sexually-transmitted disease that causes its sufferers to change into
young women: one of our prototype viruses! Most gratifying.
15 June:
At last I am safe and sound and can write about the last few days. I
went to the office as usual on the 13th, to be met by a group of
doctors and orderlies from the state mental hospital. Really I had
thought that they would give me another week or so of fun before they
tried this, and I must admit that I was unprepared. Emma had the car
and the link back to the lab, so that I had no means of escape: the
few miniature anesthetic darts I carried would not have been enough to
stop all of my captors. I went quietly and behaved rationally and as
much like the Governor as possible, hoping that they would let me go.
No such luck. I gently but repeatedly protested that I was quite sane;
nevertheless I found myself under moderate sedation, not yet at the
state hospital, but in the mental ward of the most luxurious hospital
in town. The next day I bided my time, talking affably with
psychiatrists. Apparently the Governor's political party wished to be
spared the shame of a demented Governor, and had acted quickly to avoid
something worse than what had happened in a certain Southwestern state
not long ago. Finally, late in the afternoon, another psychiatrist
showed up and spoke with me alone. She was a pleasant young woman.
After about ten minutes her posture and manner and expression suddenly
changed into Emma's! She took the hyperspatial portal from her
lab-coat pocket, activated it, went into our lab, and took out the real
Governor, dressed in clothes just like mine and heavily sedated. I
went through the portal into the lab, where I was not surprised to see
the original of the lady psychiatrist. I became myself but was too
perturbed to get much work done. After a few hours Emma, still in the
psychiatrist's body, led me out into a hotel room. We made love, had a
room-service dinner, watched stupid programs on TV, made love again (a
darling body which I will have her wear again), and went to sleep.
Early this morning we assumed nondescript new forms, left the
psychiatrist and the Governor's wife together in the double bed, and
drove our car out of the hotel's garage. We plan to stay around for a
few days and enjoy the fun. According to the nastiest of the local
tabloids, the Governor is deranged, as is the lieutenant governor (he
insists he is really the governor's mistress trapped in the wrong
body), the governor's wife is having a lesbian affair with a rising
young psychiatrist -- all very juicy and gratifying. But already we
were too far from the action. Emma dashed off, promising to meet me in
a few hours; sure enough, she returned as a vivacious woman reporter
from a local paper. Using the equipment in the car I became one of her
(male, fortunately) colleagues; they are having an affair already,
which makes things easier for us.
17 June:
Being a reporter is hard work but great fun when you're covering a
story like this one. I had an exclusive interview with a person who is
supposedly the Governor's mistress Tiffany, but really the Lieutenant
Governor wearing her body. He has already integrated himself with the
residual Tiffany-persona of the body, and is fast becoming an
intelligent, well-adjusted young woman: this is gratifying and very
funny. She gave a lurid, largely invented account of their affair, and
has tentatively hired me as ghostwriter for her memoirs, which should
sell like hotcakes. She professed amazement that the Lieutenant
Governor could be so insane as to claim to be her. Emma interviewed
the Governor's wife, savoring every bit of the irony. The woman is
remarkably quick on the uptake: she claims that her strange behavior
was in accordance with her husband's wishes, so that she did it out of
love! Such disloyalty masquerading as loyalty revolts us both: Emma
wanted to change her into something quite hideous, but I pointed out
that we have done enough mischief already, much as the woman deserves
such punishment. Emma and I are living together at her apartment: the
woman she is wearing has admirable taste in decor, food, and drink. My
wife calls me at the office, but my secretary has shielded me quite
well so far.
18 June:
I interviewed the attorney-general, who was quite confused with the
turn of events and no doubt distracted by the obsessive desire we had
planted in him. I concluded the interview by asking him if there was
any truth to the rumors of his pederasty. To my amazement he broke
down and confessed it all to me, giving me permission to publish
everything. Like a weakling I was moved to pity, and had Emma
impersonate his secretary and expunge the desire from his self. I
really must avoid such sentimentality in the future. My wife came to
my office, having learned of my affair with Emma. Fortunately Emma
left me the link to the lab, and I somehow got my wife into a closet,
into the lab, and under a persona-alterer. She now does my will
without question. A stopgap measure, and inelegant, but the amalgam of
Emma with Julia (the reporter whose form she wears) is delightful and
we want at least another few days together as we are. Out of sheer
spite I am having my wife dress as a housemaid and wait on Emma and me
in Julia's apartment; as I write, I am in bed, Emma murmuring
endearments in her Julia-voice and caressing me with her slender
Julia-hands, while my wife cleans the rest of the apartment. Good
vicious fun.
20 June:
Everything is settling down. The Governor and Lieutenant Governor (the
Governor's mistress still hasn't the sense to realize that if she's
trapped in the Lieutenant Governor's body, she should try to behave
like the man) are simply considered insane, the Governor's wife says
that she was just humoring her husband, the aides still act a bit like
zombies but nobody notices, and Emma and I are beginning to get bored.
The scandal generates little new news, so that we are back to reporting
the routine. Commendations from our employers are gratifying, sex is
great in the bodies we have assumed, and my now-docile wife waits on us
hand and foot: pleasant but dull. Time to move on.
21 June:
Emma became the Governor's cook again, and with a little clever use of
the hyperspatial link back to our lab, we swapped the forms of my wife
and the Governor's. Not a really satisfying solution; so much time
wearing other people's personae as well as their bodies has dulled our
minds. We left our originals together in bed, and for a change Emma
became a pretty but matronly woman of about thirty and I became a boy
of eight. We unfolded our vehicle from its little hyperspatial box and
made it into a station wagon. Being an innocent-looking little child
is really quite pleasant, although sex will of course be out of the
question. The motel is letting me stay for free: another little
advantage. I have an idea...
22 June:
We started another impersonation today. Emma and I, with only a vague
plan, bought supplies for a picnic, changed the station wagon into a
van, and went to a local park. We had quite a large amount of junk
food, and Emma invited some of the children in the park to join us.
With great skill she culled them down after some minutes to a brother
and sister, thirteen and twelve respectively. They helped us clean up
the mess afterwards, and I felt just a slight pang of regret when we
lured them into the van...Finding a place to compress the van was our
only difficulty; with their originals in suspended animation in the
lab, Jennifer and Jason, ourselves in their forms and the van and the
hyperspatial link in their pockets, walked home, said hello to their
mother, and proceeded to their well-furnished treehouse. They are both
rather well-developed for their ages, and I suppose that it doesn't
really count as incest because the selves in their bodies are really
husband and wife. It seems that we are well-behaved children though
our parents give us very little supervision. Many of our peers and
even playmates cordially dislike us. Our originals deserve to have
their enemies put down a little, and of course if we are living their
lives their enemies are ours. Our parents are amazed that we didn't
want to watch TV tonight. We spent some time together in my bedroom,
talking and feeling each other up.
24 June:
As brother and sister we can spend a lot of time together, but of
course we can show no intimacy in public. Emma's persona, even though
largely masked with Jennifer's, makes her unformed body most
delectable. Nocturnal traffic between our bedrooms is out of the
question, and we make do with brief but passionate encounters in the
treehouse. It is also hard to get work done when we aren't in the mood
to be children. We need a place to hide the hyperspatial portal, which
must remain open as we work. At night our parents, light sleepers
both, come into our bedrooms and check on us, perhaps out of guilt for
supervising us so little during the day; being absent would require
some explanation. I fear that we will have to tamper with their minds:
no doubt wearing the body of their son makes me sentimental and
therefore reluctant to change them.
25 June:
We took our first action against an enemy today. A fat but strong lad
known as the Pig, the neighborhood bully, now has the persona of an
excessively feminine little girl, but not the wits to dissemble. We
waited until his mother drove off in the morning; then Emma assumed her
shape and made our vehicle into her car. She drove to the house,
claimed to have lost her house key, and altered the Pig's persona
utterly. She left a concealed microphone, and when his real mother
returned we listened to the goings on from our treehouse. Delightful:
the boy behaved as if everything was normal; his mother was first
amused, then annoyed, then horrified.
27 June:
Our mother suspects that we are a bit more intimate than a brother and
a sister should be. She gave Jennifer/Emma a good talking-to. Last
night we drugged them into a sound sleep and took them to our lab. In
future they will always sleep soundly at night, and no longer question
our activities. This does take some of the thrill out of our lives,
but we have a need for intimacy and a number of projects to complete.
Today we went over to the house of Crystal, a spoilt girl of twelve who
considers Jason and Jennifer not so much friends as associates before
whom she can flaunt the tribute that her doting parents render to her.
We sat through a video tape of a stupid film, played on her own VCR
onto her own large television, in which a mother and daughter exchange
bodies for one day. This is evidently her favorite film, and she
wishes that such an exchange would happen to her. We intend to oblige,
although one day seems much too brief a time. Indefinitely, on the
other hand...
28 June:
Crystal's idiotic wish has come true. It was quite easy to break into
her house, anesthetize family and dog, and take her and her mother back
to the lab for a bit of re-embodiment. Crystal called Jennifer up to
tell her of the change, but Jennifer simply humored her and refused to
come over and see. We have a large number of metamorphic viruses to
test on the brats of this lovely neighborhood. Today we began to
distribute a fine new product of our lab: a fashionable candy bar
infected with a virus, spread only by ingestion, that quickly and
irrevocably alters the eater's metabolism so that he will become and
remain grossly obese except on the most stringent diet. Off we went to
the park, the same place we became our present selves, with two big
boxes of these goodies. We announced to the greedy children that a
kindly uncle who works for the manufacturer had let us have four boxes,
and that since we couldn't possibly eat that much in a reasonable
amount of time, we were giving away half of what we had. Any
suspicions they had were allayed when we ate a few random bars. Of
course we had immunized our bodies beforehand. Soon the little swine
were swarming and fighting for the tainted treats: delightful. They
should start gaining weight very soon.
29 June:
Crystal called on us, still, of course, in her mother's body. We
refused to believe that she was not her mother. She was screaming at
us, clawing at me...it was not just spite that led Emma to call the
mental health authorities. Crystal's mother, on the other hand, whom
we visited at her house to break the sad news of Crystal's insanity, is
impersonating Crystal effectively, though inaccurately: she is calm
and gracious. I think that secretly she is very pleased to be young
and potentially beautiful, and rid of her demanding, spoilt daughter.
Our parents pay no attention to our sharing a bed: usually Jennifer's,
which is for some reason a double bed. As I write this, Emma has just
come back from the lab in Crystal's body, which should make for an
interesting night.
30 June:
Crystal's body wasn't quite as nice as Jennifer's, and Emma assumed her
Jennifer-flesh shortly after waking up, seeming relieved. Spend enough
time in a body and it begins to really become yours, the one you
consider your proper one. Both Jennifer -- I mean Emma -- and I are
starting to think of ourselves as the children we see in the mirror.
Emma admits to being tempted to spend the rest of her life as Jennifer,
and I have an analogous temptation. Of course that would never do: if
we were really who we seem, we would be practicing incest. Strange how
quickly we have grown accustomed to these bodies. Time to move on.
1 July:
Adults again. A little after midnight we restored our parents' proper
personae, and then moved the real Jason and Jennifer from suspended
animation to drugged sleep and from the lab to Jennifer's bed. Let
them wonder about it all. We walked to the park, which was
conveniently dark and quiet, got out the car, and began to change. I
became a man closely resembling my real self, and Emma the red-haired,
green-eyed version of herself that I find so attractive. We checked
into a hotel like an ordinary couple and slept late. In the morning we
missed our brother-and-sister bodies; I was tempted to go to the lab
and assume them, but Emma wisely dissuaded me. "It's like an
addiction," she said, "you have to break it off quickly." Her own
lovely form helped bolster the argument. Over a room-service breakfast
we read the newspaper. The Governor may be turned loose soon, but his
political career is over. The false Lieutenant Governor still insists
that he is the Governor's mistress in the wrong body. The real
Lieutenant Governor is doing nicely in the body of the Governor's
mistress: he has combined his intelligence with the intense femininity
of the body's residual persona to create a charming woman in a stunning
body; she has her own TV talk show already, which will soon be
syndicated. No news about the woman in the body of the Governor's
wife: dissembling adequately, I suppose. A leisurely day...just
letting ourselves be ourselves again, I suppose. Still ourselves, and
trying to think up some mischief for July 4th. Today a large number of
high school bands and cheerleading squads are arriving here in the
state capital for parades on the day itself. The thought of all those
fine young bodies makes us both desire to do something to them. We
have had quite enough of impersonation for now, although spending a few
weeks as high school sweethearts might be most enjoyable. Emma is
looking longingly at some delectable wenches; I am certain that I will
find one or another of these pretty creatures in my bed now and again,
Emma gazing at me out of her eyes. We checked out of the hotel,
changed into a fiftyish couple, and checked back in -- no point in
looking too much like ourselves if we plan to do any mischief.
Swapping the bodies of two marching bands or groups of cheerleaders
seems much too tedious, though the confusion resulting from it might be
worthwhile. What else might we do?
5 July:
A good deal of activity in the past few days. Emma impersonated the
cuddly little desk clerk for long enough to find out who was in what
room. Two nights ago we were very busy: Emma and I went, disguised in
suitable forms, to a few little parties given by members of several
marching bands, and spiked the drinks with a little virus, again one
spread by ingestion but otherwise not really infectious, that causes
rapid aging. The little wenches, especially, will be quite pleased to
find themselves blossoming into mature women, but horrified as they
soon become older than their own mothers and grandmothers. After
several rapid changes of body we were quite exhausted. After a few
hours rest, we broke into a few rooms, anesthetized a few coaches and
bandleaders, and swapped their bodies about a little, exchanging when
possible persons of differing talents and sexes. Then Emma became the
cuddly clerk again and we had a very pleasant time until morning, when
we cheated fatigue by re-assuming our fiftyish bodies. We had planned
merely to watch the parade, but soon we began to fear boredom. We went
to the huge parking lot where the floats were being made ready. One
float caught Emma's eye: it had several seats on which winners of
beauty pageants were to sit and throw candy to the screaming brats
along the parade route. Emma saw two of the beauty queens head for a
trailer that contained the women's bathroom; she followed them and was
back soon. "I've got both of them in the lab: one body for you, one
for me," she said. "You know I hate being female," I muttered, but of
course there would be trouble if one of the girls were missing, so I
sneaked into the women's trailer with her, we set up the hyperspatial
link in a stall...a few minutes later the two girls left the trailer,
carrying a big box of candy which they inobtrusively mixed with that
which they were supposed to throw. The extra candy had a nice
assortment of ingestible viruses with various effects: obesity, aging,
change of race, change of sex, increase of intelligence (the country
needs more scientists like me, after all). Oh, the agony of that
parade! Only the knowledge that I was, from behind the mask of an
innocent girl's flesh, spreading strange infections -- only that made
it bearable. (Also the sight and sounds of an uncoordinated band in
front of us, which a cheerleading coach, trapped in the bandleader's
body, was trying to conduct.) There I was, molded into a pretty wench,
big breasts nearly popping out of a strapless gown, vapid grin fixed on
my heavily painted face, waving with one hand and tossing candy with
the other, mile after slow mile. If the usual wearer of my form had
not been an aerobics buff, my frail-looking arms could never had
endured. I stole glances at Emma: she was plainly enjoying herself,
if only because of my discomfiture. She wore her body with real
panache, and I was nearly overcome with lust. At last it was all over;
we went back to the trailer and got out our two originals, injected
with enough alcohol to put them in a drunken stupor. Still raging with
lust, I had Emma retain her borrowed form and remain there in the lab;
I became the middle-aged woman that Emma had been that morning, went
back to our hotel room, went into the lab, and became myself. I tore
the gown off her beauty-queen body and took Emma right there on the
floor; the floor was cold and hard, and her body tired and sweaty, but
it served her right for having tortured me all afternoon. Middle-aged
and respectable again for the fireworks, and again today. This sort of
adventure can be very tiring; again we relaxed, apart from making
another Elvis. Emma is wonderful even at fifty.
6 July:
We checked out of the hotel. The cuddly little desk clerk (Denise,
according to her name tag) was rude: patronizing to us and overly
familiar. We waited until her coffee break, then hustled her into an
empty room and made her unconscious. Two quick metamorphoses, and Emma
was Denise and Denise had a very ugly face. Half a dozen
plastic-surgery operations might give her some semblance of her former
beauty. We left her to her fate, and drove off, Emma snuggling
Denise's body and pretty face against me. Any woman as nasty as Denise
shouldn't be allowed to be beautiful. On a deserted side road we
changed the car into a nondescript Japanese model and me into a young
man again. Emma insisted on retaining Denise's flesh, changing only
her hotel uniform for a frilly dress. Her persona seems natually
sympathetic to the girl's body, though not to the residue of
Denise-persona it retains. We stopped for lunch in a town of about
twenty thousand. The food at the local restaurant was awful, and the
townspeople either surly or artificially friendly; we decided to give
them something to remember us by. Off we went to find the local water
supply: a group of wells at the edge of town, managed by an
intelligent young woman of a quiet country-girl beauty. Emma scanned
her, but no impersonation was necessary; we used a charming little
device to make her become dizzy and faint; I rigged another little
device to the water mains, and when I was done we revived her, with
fussing and many expressions of concern. Over the next few days one of
our viruses will be released into the water supply; it can survive only
in clean water, a careful laboratory culture, or a human body. If
present in the latter, it transforms its host into an exact copy of a
particular person: in this case, the young Audrey Hepburn. Everyone
who ingests the town water, or even gets a bit in the eye or up an
orfice whilst showering, will be mildly ill for a few weeks to a few
months, during which his or her body will change, aging or becoming
younger, shrinking or growing, becoming female if necessary. An entire
town of Audreys...and we have viruses of several dozen actors and
actresses already. At the motel in the next town, Emma became Audrey
just for fun, but is becoming Denise again as I write. I find Denise
delectable, but if Emma insists on being her in public we may soon be
tracked down.
7 July:
Today we wandered through town, stopping periodically to kiss
passionately. Unfortunately Denise's uncle and aunt live in this town;
they recognized her body immediately. One of the disadvantages of
suppressing the residual persona of borrowed flesh is that you also
suppress knowledge useful in case your body is recognized: had Emma
let herself be Denise, persona as well as body, unpleasant to both of
us as that would have been, she would not have had us come here.
Denise is married, and her family has old-fashioned ideas about
marriage, and I did not resemble her husband, and Emma did not recall
at first that Denise even has such relatives. The old fools insisted
that Emma was Denise (the real Denise had not told them of being, ahem,
defaced), and assumed she had abandoned her husband and run off with
me. They were furious; her uncle was almost furious enough to kill.
Somehow Emma charmed him into letting us come to their house. Once
inside, we were alone with them: their children are grown and live
elsewhere. What to do? We could have become them, or simply
anesthetized them and ran. Instead we changed them into Denises. Emma
still refused to become someone else. We left -- and Denise was
recognized again, by a spinster friend of her aunt's. The woman gave
us a good lunch in her cottage; we rewarded her hospitality by giving
her the body of one of the cheerleaders we had scanned at the hotel
(much cheaper than paying for a bad lunch in a local beanery). By this
time I was ready to force Emma to change form, but she smiled her
lovely smile -- very pretty on Denise's face -- and said, "Let's see
how long we can get away with it." I let Emma have her way. She was
promptly recognized yet again: she had stayed with her aunt and uncle
for several summers, and many people recognized her and spread the word
that she was there. Several more acquaintances showed up. Emma had
let her Denise-persona express itself more and more in order to play
the part, to the degree that she found herself liking these people and
wanting to spend the night. Just then the transformed spinster, her
lovely cheerleader-face the proverbial mask of horror, ran out
screaming that we had stolen her body -- what ingratitude for a second
chance at life! She tore at us and made a scene; I knocked her out,
bundled Emma into the car, and drove off. A few miles out of town I
changed the car into a van, and gave myself a new form, but Emma
refused to be anyone other than Denise. Another motel in the next
town.
8 July:
When I awakened this morning, Denise was sitting next to me in bed,
smiling unpleasantly. Denise: not a hint of Emma's expression was on
her face; she was entirely the hotel clerk we had come to dislike. I
was somewhat rough in knocking her unconscious, hauling her back into
the lab, and putting her into Emma's body again. Presently Emma came
to -- or was it Denise in Emma's body? Fortunately it was the former.
She had panicked and let the Denise persona take control of her. Back
we went to the motel room. There was a knock on the door, and I let in
two policemen, or, more accurately, a policeman and a policewoman.
They were looking for Denise: someone had the idea that I had
kidnapped her, or something equally absurd. I might have been able to
bluff things out, but they had seen Emma in her real body, and we were
under suspicion, after all, and the policewoman was pretty even if she
had dyed her hair an unlikely shade of yellow. We anesthetized them,
the policewoman drawing her pistol just too late to fire it; I am
getting sloppy. We made the policewoman Denise and the policeman the
current me, then assumed their forms. I convinced the motel manager to
let me drive our van into a closed garage, where, safe from public
view, I compressed it. Off we minions of the law drove in our patrol
car. We played police for a few hours, then drove to an abandoned
garage where we left the car, uncompressed our vehicle into a plush
Cadillac, turned ourselves into a pair of well-to-do senior citizens,
and drove off.
9 July:
We spent last night in our sixty-ish bodies: not bad, surprisingly. A
long drive today; we stopped only for lunch and enElvisment of a
hitchhiker. Late in the afternoon we passed a billboard advertising a
"faith community and theme park" run by a TV evangelist. About ten
seconds later Emma and I looked at each other: there was no need for
words. Finally Emma said, "His wife looks grotesque." "She wouldn't if
she were you," I replied, and we laughed. We checked into a motel near
the park.
11 July:
Emma and I are getting quite good at stepping into other people's shoes
-- or bodies, rather. It was slightly tedious but not at all
difficult. A huge contribution from a bogus bank account gained us a
tour of the place: just the two of us led by Rev. Sam's personal
assistant, the lovely Sue Anne. Need I add that Sue Anne was not
herself when I returned to the office with her, or that the woods had
gained a lovely new squirrel? And of course she obligingly gave me an
immediate personal meeting with Rev. Sam, which left him a changed man
and gave the woods a possum as well. Emma was delighted at becoming
Sue Anne, and once in her luscious form refused even to consider
becoming my wife Loretta, who is indeed grotesque. Fortunately Rev.
Sam and Loretta are estranged, and keep up the pretense of a marriage
only for the sake of business. Sue Anne is Sam's mistress, whilst
Loretta consoles herself with our construction supervisor, a burly
fellow named Cliff. I will have to show a plausible degree of
affection for Loretta in public, but no more than that. Cliff has even
gone to the farcical measure of building our houses on adjacent Faith
Community lots and connecting their basements with a tunnel! This
still leaves a bit of difficulty for Sue Anne and me, but my back
office has a very nice bedroom (with a huge waterbed) and a bathroom
complete with Jacuzzi, and it seems that I like to work nights, my
loyal assistant at my side. Tch, tch, tch. Well, all this should be
most amusing to reveal to the general public once Emma and I are
finished with things here. Getting settled today. Tomorrow is Rev.
Sam's first TV taping with me inside him. Sue Anne and I are working
late tonight.
12 July:
I did nothing outrageous today for the folks on TV. I found myself
wishing that Emma was inside Loretta rather than Sue Anne, if only to
keep some of the makeup off that face and some of the howl out of that
singing voice. My requests for money were a bit more extreme than
usual, implying that giving to Rev. Sam is exactly like giving to God
Himself...and of course Loretta cried mascara-stained tears. The show
is a mixture of talk show with revival meeting with fund-raising
telethon. I was polite to the guests: a creation-scientist (I could
have shown him a thing or two) and a woman who had had one of those
near-death experiences (Emma knows how to fake real beauties). Sue
Anne remained off camera, snickering when I kissed Loretta's
over-painted face: making love to latex paint. Sue Anne and I are
about to have another late-night conference; among other things, we
will discuss how to have fun without alarming my, ahem, flock too
quickly. Satan-worship is right out, I think...what can we get away
with? One of my colleagues presented a death threat from the Almighty,
after all; by that standard, we should have a lot of latitude. Perhaps
I can sell indulgences. The Bible (I seem to have a lot of it in my
Rev. Sam brain) does warn against those claiming to be Christ, but
that hasn't stopped people trying it...
13 July:
I see problems ahead. According to articles in prominent national
news-magazines, the strange plague resulting from our experimental
virus is changing several thousand men into attractive young women.
Foolishly we introduced it only a few hundred miles from our home.
Once people see that a complete metamorphosis is possible, they will
start to come forward with their claims of having been changed -- and
others will believe them. A bit of investigation, certainly not beyond
the abilities even of dimwitted F. B. I. men, will show a trail of
alterations and disappearances beginning a few months ago, within a
stone's throw of my laboratory. We have been careless. One altered
person even knows that we are responsible: Jane, formerly the wife of
the University's president. If she, until now happy and lovely in the
form of a coed, realizes that we made her husband into a homosexual...
and I am loath to harm her. Any fun that Emma and I have here we must
have soon. Eventually someone will connect that Governor's strange
behavior with impersonation by metamorphosis, and will suspect any
public figure who appears to have gone mad. Today Sue Anne visited our
Golden Years Home and infected the aged inmates with two viruses: one
for youth and the other for increased sexual drive. In a few months
all the old geezers and crones will be young and attractive and banging
away at each other: a pleasant thought. But we must be gone from here
before the alterations become obvious.
14 July:
Taped another broadcast today, in which I guaranteed forgiveness of
sins to anyone who contributes "a reasonable quantity of his worldly
substance to the work of God that we are carrying on here." Of course
the Catholic Church does it for free, but they ask for real repentance,
which Rev. Sam does not. Going a bit far, but not really scandalous.
My creativity is blunted because I am too worried about what will
happen to Emma and me: will we have to destroy our lab? No more
ill-considered metamorphoses or spreading of disease? Entirely new
identities, indefinitely? Prospects are bleak. Emma says (in Sue
Anne's lush voice, with its soft Alabama accent) that with me she could
enjoy even a prosaic life, with no need for metamorphosis or
impersonation. "Perhaps we can just become a wealthy couple somewhere,
with a lab hidden beneath our house, and not do anything to anyone for
a few years," she tells me. Yes, but doing things to people, making
them who I want them to be, has become almost an obsession. This is
real power, and I am reluctant to let go of it.
16 July:
A few hours of hard work in the lab, and the result was a splendid
gimmick for the TV show: faith healing by partial metamorphosis. Of
course it irks me to do good, but the reaction of the studio audience
(what else can one call it? the congregation? hrmph!) was
remarkable. We rigged a sort of altar with the equipment inside and
Emma manning the controls, and altered damaged or ailing parts of
several dozen people. To be sure, most of the cured had insidious new
ailments afterwards, such as the paraplegic girl whose ovaries now
secrete testosterone, the man who had a brain tumor but now has a leaky
heart valve instead -- just a few little drolleries so that we might
have a measure of fun. The phoned-in contributions are rolling in
already, and I am calling myself the Modern Apostle. Loretta,
disgusting creature, is attracted by my new powers and wants to be a
proper wife again. A bit of persona-change for her?
19 July:
My, what a lot of work! The hospitals around here are being emptied,
we are taping two shows a day, and the cash is pouring in. I am
discreetly transferring it to Rev. Sam's Swiss bank accounts, from
which I will later transfer it to mine. Of course I could just as well
create gold or uncut diamonds and sell those, but I like money better
when people give it to me. The adulation is most amusing, especially
now that we are creating a few cancer cells as well in most of the
people we cure...little time bombs which may never go off, or then
again may explode years from now. Emma altered Loretta's persona a bit
so that she should go back to Cliff now and leave me alone.
21 July:
Even with sundry tricks for cheating fatigue by changing form, Emma and
I are getting tired. In retrospect, it seems that this faith-healing
racket was not such a good idea: I think we chose it because it was
unlikely to suggest a connection with our earlier activities.
Metamorphosed people are starting to turn up, selling their stories to
tabloids; soon reputable journalists will start to believe them, and I
fear that our days of fun are numbered. We have started to spread a
few more of our favorite engineered viruses amongst the crowds who cram
the place. These are mostly of the type that make their hosts into
copies of some famous individual in the prime of youth. Actors and
actresses, opera singers (let's see what average Americans can do with
truly superior vocal equipment, eh?), a smattering of politicians and
the like: a good assortment. Still no word on the town we are
changing into Audrey Hepburns, but we haven't had time to investigate.
By now some of the young women should be almost Audrey, and even the
men should be fairly effeminate.
23 July:
Enough is enough. Emma and I are preparing for our getaway. We are
forging some truly disgusting photographs involving the Rev. Sam and
Sue Anne, showing them engaged in...well, it involves animals and
strange rituals that might be some sort of devil-worship. We are
preparing a scene for the bedroom, complete with notes in Sue Anne's
handwriting, that points to some sort of diabolical abduction of the
happy couple: lots of scorch marks, a partly-obscured pentagram, and a
powerful smell of brimstone for starters. Yet more hopeful sick folk
and yet more money rolling in. We are quite exhausted. Emma feels,
and I must concur, that we have not exploited this impersonation at all
effectively.
24 July:
Early this morning we changed form and prepared the weird tableau in
the bedroom next to my office. Our vehicle again a van, we drove off,
stopping at a mailbox to drop in some anonymous packets of our dirty
photos, addressed neatly to the editors of several major newspapers. I
had gotten rather used to Emma as Sue Anne, but the Nordic blue-eyed
blonde in the passenger seat was a more-than-adequate replacement; she
also seemed to like my golden hair and beard. Finally a good look at
some national newspapers and news magazines. I was wrong about the
infected town: an Audrey Hepburn, natural-blonde hair and eyebrows
both showing dark roots, eyelashes still pale, gazed at us with a
haggard expression from the cover of one magazine; a deliciously pretty
girl, the expression of an angry man on her face, her hair cut
mannishly short, a bit of razor stubble on her chin, glared from
another -- above a caption with a man's name! Delightful. The
pictures inside of the half- changed, particularly one hulking giant of
a man with an Audrey face and two little breasts sprouting atop a
powerful chest, sent us into gales of laughter. A sidebar to one
article mentioned people who claim to have been transformed suddenly;
that of another attempted to show a pattern for the strange happenings:
fairly accurate, as far as they went.
26 July:
Today is my creator's birthday: July 26th. The rest of this entry is
a letter to him: anybody else may read it, but nobody else need
bother.
Dear Mark.,
Many happy returns of the day. It isn't July 26th in your
world, but it is in mine. It was Chesterton (why must you
have such saccharine tastes in reading?) who told of his
youthful spell of nihilism. he and his brother were
discussing the general miserableness of existence, and his
great-uncle overheard and said, "I would give thanks to God
for my existence even if I knew I was a damned soul." Well,
you will probably bring me to some moralizing Catholic end,
like poor Don Giovanni getting dragged off to hell just
because he wouldn't repent, but I thank you anyway. Thank
you for a happy life and amusing adventures and the perfect
woman to share them with, and I hope that you don't cut them
off too soon. you nearly did, and it took a chorus of
readers to bring me back. I wish I could do something for
you in your present woes. we both know that your situation
is not especially painful as these things go, but my help
would be most useful. If I could only send you duplicates of
some of the equipment Emma and I have created! You could
give yourself a bit more nerve and a healthier body with a
better physique, attract a fine young woman and sculpt her
into the girl of your dreams. I would even send you Emma --
not mine, of course, but a form-altering, persona-altering
costume (haven't told the readers about those, have you?)
that you can slip onto some woman you pick off the street.
it would change her irreversibly into your very own Emma.
But then again, you'd never do such a thing to anyone, prude
that you are...and of course there are heavy duties involved
for shipping things from fiction into fact, and not even my
huge Swiss bank accounts could pay for them.
Really you should have more faith in your God. (No, I am not
being hypocritical. I have complete faith in you. You have
given my universe a set of moral laws -- very well, moral
anarchy -- which I follow exactly, no need for you to get all
self-righteous just because your God has higher standards for
you than you for me.) If you know how to give a creature
like me such good things, will He not do better for you?
(Yes, the Devil may quote Scripture for his own purposes, no
matter what the Muslims say.) Maybe not instant physical and
mental health, nor yet the love of an intelligent woman with
a kind heart and a perfect body, but things more important in
the long run.
Yes, I can hear the net.atheists snickering. Let them. Were
they within my power, they would be net.squirrels promptly.
Hang in there.
Your loyal creature,
The "mad" scientist.
P.S.. Really I'm not mad. You are, slightly. Shouldn't you
let your readers know my name?
27 July:
We are staying at a comfortable motel about a hundred miles from Rev.
Sam's place. From our room we used the hyperspatial link to get back
to the lab. For the first time in months we went upstairs...no sign
that the place has been searched yet. To me, anyway, we seem to be
obvious suspects should anyone trace the metamorphoses back to this
area: Emma and I rigged some gadgets to detect intruders, and made
ready a hundred-kiloton thermo-nuclear device in case we need to
destroy the place. The only entrances to the lab and the caves are
secret and well-concealed, but we cannot rely on that indefinitely. We
changed into yet another attractive young couple, and left the lab by a
secret exit in order to see whether we are suspected here in our own
town. Why, oh why did we not show up here every few days so that
nobody would think that we might be behind all that lovely mayhem? We
visited the University, picked up on the gossip...the President has a
professor of English as his homosexual lover, the lady Dean has found a
Toy Boy to slake her sexual thirsts, and nobody seems to suspect us of
being behind the changes of body and persona. We scanned a few
personae and confirmed this. A trip to the porn district shows that
Catherine is a minor star in dirty videos: a much better career for
her than science, the slut. Why am I so worried? Back we went to the
lab, then back through the link to our motel room. The tabloids this
week are full of articles on our fake Elvises and other metamorphosed
folk. One reputable magazine has an article about what happened to
that Governor and his associates... people are starting to believe
that the Governor's mistress really is trapped in the body of the
Lieutenant Governor, though the real Lieutenant Governor, happy and
successful in the woman's body as a TV talk show hostess, is brushing
off such absurd speculations. Emma and I fear that within a few weeks,
whenever we change anyone we will have to change ourselves and move on
immediately: people will grow wary, re-embodied folk will grow bold
and tell everyone of what we have done to them, and the authorities
will take an interest...
28 July:
Still at the motel. It's in a lovely area...we take walks in the state
parks and try to decide what to do next. Should we go back home but
prepare an escape route in case we are found out? Why not wander
around having as much fun as we can, then, when capture is imminent,
slip into the forms and lives of some wealthy couple? Emma says that
any prolonged stay in both borrowed shape and borrowed persona could
result in our becoming who we impersonate, as she became that cute
hotel clerk she insisted on remaining for such a long time. Once
people start to believe in the things we have been doing, the sudden,
radical change of self necessary to prevent such a fate might be taken
as evidence of our activity. The best we can hope for might be an
amalgamation of selves, which is what happened to the Lieutenant
Governor. Not a pleasant prospect in my view. For amusement we
sprayed some fruit at a grocery store with an ingestible virus that
changes people into Marilyn Monroe -- only with real blonde hair,
features not needing plastic surgery, and so on. Very slow-acting,
this one: changes shouldn't be obvious for another month or two.
30 July:
The desire to transform people has gotten the better of us yet again.
What made matters worse is that one of the doctors in this town is
married to his nurse-receptionist, and they are a charming pair: a
strapping young fellow and a cuddlesome little redhead. Emma feigned a
medical complaint yesterday after office hours; the doctor,
kind-hearted idealistic fellow that he was, agreed to see her while his
wife chatted with me in the waiting room. Becoming them should have
gone off without a hitch, except that Emma swapped the tapes so that
she became the doctor and I his lovely wife. Emma thought this
terribly funny, as she usually does when she tricks me into being
female, but we promptly put things right and went back to the office.
Fortunately our new selves have no children. Today we started treating
patients, giving them that little something extra that their hometown
doctor never provided before. I have long regretted that there are no
such things as vampires and werewolves, but thanks to our assiduous
research, there will soon be quite a few in this town and its environs.
We have a lovely little blood-borne virus that makes its host into a
vampire, causing photophobia, a need for blood (and hollow fangs for
getting it), pallor, unnatural strength, aversion to
garlic...unfortunately it is impossible for the virus to provide the
ability to change to and from a bat at will. The lycanthropy virus
causes cyclic changes (unfortunately not tied to the phases of the
moon, though in women to the menstrual period) of the host to a
somewhat lupine form: temporary elongation of the jaw, alterations to
the hands and feet, hirusitism with exceedingly fast growth of hair,
behavior better suited to a carnivorous animal than a human. Every
injection we give a patient will include one or the other of these
viruses.
1 August:
House calls aplenty. One old lady dying of cancer is now infected with
a Sophia Loren virus that should make a healthy new woman of her in a
few months. An ill-behaved hypochondriacal boy is on his way to
girlhood, and several new werewolves will eventually show their shaggy
muzzles. Emma, or rather Linda, as her new incarnation is called,
supervised the local blood drive today. People are generous in these
smallish towns, and she infected several hundred donors, as well as
their blood, with the vampire virus...and the blood drive lasts two
more days, with excess blood going to nearby cities.
3 August:
We are experimenting with voluntarily melding our personae with those
of the people we impersonate: I am letting my self merge with Jim, the
doctor; Emma is letting hers merge with Linda, his wife. We are
acquiring their tastes in food and entertainment and other things that
do not matter, while retaining our own wills in things that do. We
watch television, go to the local movie house, associate happily with
people our original selves would scorn -- just as if we were really Jim
and Linda. This evening we had dinner with Linda's parents: dull,
unimaginative people, I would have thought just a few days ago, but
being Jim and Linda made them pleasant company. Of course this didn't
stop us from infecting Linda's parents with an Ursula Andress virus, or
scanning her kid sister Tammy and then making her a vampire. Now I see
how that Lieutenant Governor, caught in an impossible situation, made
himself into such a well-adjusted young woman. Linda is Tammy for now,
just blossomed into womanhood at sixteen. It promises to be a pleasant
evening.
5 August:
Tammy reluctantly became Linda again, and we looked over the results
for the blood drive: nearly five hundred pints, or over one person in
twenty! Very little of the blood can be used locally, so that nearly
all is now at the nearby regional hospital, spreading vampirism. My
Jim self masks my original persona completely, just as Linda's masks
Emma's. I love Linda for being Linda; she loves me for being Jim. Yet
we retain the beliefs and knowledge and desires of our real selves. We
used the hyperspatial link and spent a few hours in the lab just now
(no one has searched the house above it, fortunately), in our Linda and
Jim bodies and selves. I lovingly caressed the hair of the original
Linda, and Linda kissed the original Jim: they lay there in suspended
animation. As we had expected, we had no trouble working or planning
new diversions. This may be the disguise we have been seeking: the
innocent couple, with family and friends and unassailable identities,
the same selves that everyone has known as far back as they can
remember, the malevolent core hidden entirely. The only drawback is
that when the viruses start to manifest themselves, we will probably
have to move on...will we be able to? Linda -- or rather Emma -- is
afraid that although our original personae are safe, we may find that
changing back may be exceedingly difficult: like an unwilling suicide.
7 August:
Still infecting people in the course of our duties. Also, Linda went
over to the next town and helped do an inventory of supplies at the
hospital, contaminating quite a lot of them with a generous assortment
of our viruses. A national newspaper reports that federal authorities
now suspect a single source for all the strange metamorphoses of the
past few months. The F. B. I. has traced their origin back to the area
of our home, and suspect a man and a woman, description varying
greatly, as the culprits. Apparently many of our victims have
recovered their memories quite well; Emma and I should have tested her
persona-and-memory-alterer more thoroughly before putting it to general
use. Further, we should have given all of our subjects animal bodies:
a spate of missing persons would have raised far fewer suspicions than
a whole chorus whining about their bodies being changed. Our house
(the one above the secret lab, not Jim and Linda's) has yet to be
searched.
8 August:
We are potentially in grave trouble, which would be worse if not for
the press. At least we have fair warning. The F. B. I. is reportedly
furious that yesterday's article gave the game away by showing us how
much they know. We will have to move on soon. Today a girl of sixteen
came to me with an unusual complaint: her thick brown hair, which
grows very quickly, has blonde roots! Not two weeks have passed since
we infected that fruit with the Marilyn Monroe virus, supposedly so
slow-acting, and already it is showing itself. Somebody searched our
house today. We are suspected. Hindsight is wonderful...we should
have shown ourselves around home every few days, we should have tested
things better, we should have left more squirrels and fewer girls, we
should have worked more modest metamorphoses. Should have, should
have, should have. Too late. Time to go.
10 August:
It was hard. Still Jim and Linda, we went to the lab and assumed our
true bodies. Our Jim and Linda selves were intact. We used Emma's
device to, so to speak, pry them off and replace them with the missing
parts of our real ones. I screamed in agony...my very self was being
torn in two. Linda seemed to fare somewhat better in becoming Emma
again. After a few hours of rest we altered ourselves superficially --
new faces, voices, fingerprints, and complexions. We drugged the real
Jim and Linda and dragged them back into their house. In their garage
I opened up our vehicle into a nondescript car; we got in and drove
off, well before dawn. We drove all that day. We bought a tarpaulin,
drove to an abandoned quarry, and under the tarpaulin changed car and
bodies. Refreshed, we drove all night, decided on a middle-sized city,
and checked into a motel there.
12 August:
We have been relaxing, and studying (in a leisurely manner) the local
population. There is a wealthy, cultured, and somewhat idle young
couple here who appear to be good candidates for the new us. We can
only hope that they are as compatible with each other as were Jim and
Linda: again, we are going to merge their personae with ours. Already
I am itching to release some viruses, make passersby into Elvises or
hermaphrodites, impersonate local bigwigs -- but of course we must not.
We must lie low for at least a few months. Emma seems to have less
difficulty resisting these temptations. She admits that exercising
such power really doesn't matter to her: all she wants, she claims (as
she snuggles her delicate body against me and gazes on me with her huge
green eyes), is to be with me and see me happy.
14 August:
Really it was too easy for words. The couple we have become lives in a
large new house with a long drive that connects to a country road. In
the nearby woods we collapsed the car, pocketed it, and walked up the
drive; a quick scan of their house showed that they, and only they,
were at home. We knocked at the door and claimed that our car had
broken down on the main road. They let us in...well, the rest is
obvious. I am now Fred, and Emma is now Catherine. An odd
coincidence: Emma was once my assistant Fred, assembled from corpses,
until she changed herself into the exquisite woman I love. I was
infatuated with a slut of a woman named Catherine...we changed her into
a mindless wench...was it really only a few months ago? Names aside,
we seem to be just the sort of people we were hoping for: intelligent,
independently wealthy, deeply in love. I hope that I can control my
desire to transform people: we will not be safe in this guise for
long, though we have all but assumed Fred's and Catherine's personae,
if we keep working mischief.
15 August:
Our lab is at risk. It is only a matter of time before the police find
one of the secret entrances. Catherine and I used the hyperspatial
link and fetched some disintegrator-ray machines: ingenious little
gadgets that I thought up a few months ago as curiosities. They break
bonds in matter and dispose of the fragments through a hyperspatial
portal. With these, by the light of banks of sodium-vapor lamps fed by
a miniature power plant, we cut a sloping tunnel down from our basement
into the solid granite underneath our property (no, we did not choose
this area at random). From the living rock we cut a series of huge
chambers. Tiring work.
17 August:
We spent yesterday and most of today moving equipment from our lab to
the huge granite rooms. Forklifts, carts equipped with winches, and so
on were very helpful, but there is some old apparatus down in the caves
that was not practical to move. By assuming monstrous forms we
probably would have been able to bring it along, but we want to remain
our new selves.
18 August:
There have been no further searches of the house. We decided to change
that. We set up our equipment in its new location, and without much
difficulty created mindless copies of our former bodies, unconscious
and in fact nearly dead from poison. We arranged these artistically in
our former house, with a somewhat vague suicide note that might be
interpreted as an admission of responsibility for our doings. Then we
made an anonymous phone call to the local police, went back into the
lab, and armed our thermonuclear device. Should anyone try to enter
the lab...
19 August:
The lab, the house, the caves, and a good deal of the surrounding
landscape have been destroyed. I think that they found the bodies
before that...of course, considering that they know of our expertise in
altering bodies, I doubt that anyone was fooled. It was worth a try,
anyway.
22 August:
Catherine is a darling woman. Not my dream-girl, not even now that I
am essentially Fred, but beautiful and witty and charming and very nice
in bed. And we are wealthy, even without the Swiss bank accounts of my
former self. And we can enjoy either work or leisure, and we have
rescued all of our important equipment from what is now a pile of
rather radioactive rubble. Our new selves are all that we could have
hoped for. Even if the lawmen don't believe in our faked suicides, we
are safe. Yet I am unhappy. Catherine and I went to visit friends in
town. Pleasant people, good food and conversation. We were the
Catherine and Fred they had known for years, and we enjoyed being them.
I accompanied Catherine on the piano as she sang in her incredible
soprano voice: thrilling, exquisite, good enough for opera. Everyone
applauded. Still I was not satisfied. We bought the major news
magazines and newspapers. The infamous mad scientist and his wife
appear to be dead, they say. Yet new outrages are being discovered.
They finally have noticed the super-grayling. The strange case of Rev.
Sam and his mistress: someone has noticed that the old folks in the
retirement home are growing younger. New plagues, new cases of changed
forms, swapped bodies. Some of these they may never suspect, I miss it
all. It has been only two weeks since we last did anything, but I miss
it: that feeling of power over others, the knowledge that I can make
them who I want them to be. I must do something to someone.
23 August:
Catherine stopped me from doing a foolish thing. I was in the lab,
preparing a little spray bottle with a suspension of one of our
ingestible viruses: I was driven by a mad desire to rush to the
nearest grocery and spray it over the lettuce. "Darling, you can't,"
she said, starting to weep. "It would ruin everything we've done here.
They'd start to hunt for us again." Of course I knew she was right, and
I capitulated immediately. But the desire is already welling up in me
again.
24 August:
I asked Catherine what I should do. I cannot continue like this,
desiring such power over others, technically capable of exercising it,
but held back... Her suggestion seems drastic: we should forget
ourselves for a time. "Let's seal up that tunnel in the basement," she
said, "and I'll make a little device that will wipe out the memories of
our old selves for a while. We'll be just Fred and Catherine for a few
years. Then, one day, another little device will restore everything.
By then, the hue and the cry will have died down, and we can have a bit
of fun again." Like suicide. But Catherine thinks that even if we
aren't restored, we would still be happy as our new selves. Perhaps I
would be happy if I had no great frustrated desire...
26 August:
We sealed up and disguised the entrance of the tunnel leading to the
granite rooms. Catherine has made her "little devices," and I am
prepared for oblivion. Perhaps we will really be restored, perhaps
not. I am mailing this diary to an acquaintance who will be surprised
to find that he is my executor and principal heir. Our thermonuclear
bomb was rather "clean," as such things go; the land he will inherit
won't really be that dangerous. There are also some of my older
notebooks, containing things still unknown to conventional science, in
safe-deposit boxes. As for the Swiss bank accounts...yes he'll have to
see for himself.