Decisions

by Mel Todd

  The theories, arguments, and people freaking out, kept her completely distracted on the drive in. No one else had shown up yet as she pulled in, which made her smile. It meant her day should be quiet and productive. With her wireless headphones on connected to her phone, she tuned out the world around, her lost in her slides, microscopes and the discoveries that waited for her to find them.

  She’d been in the lab for about two hours, working with creating a distillation of the bacterial aspect of the lichen chain. If her theory proved correct, she needed to combine two of the three lichen to create the drug. It currently moved towards cancer cells. She needed to buff up the effectiveness but that would take another hour or two of processing in centrifuge to extract what she needed.

  A touch on her shoulder had her spinning in surprise even as she pulled off her headphones.

  Another researcher, Simon Lamore, stood there. She’d talked to him once or twice, but he’d struck her as very awkward and uninterested in anyone or anything. She had a private bet with herself that he watched his bacteria colonies via remote cameras when at home.

  "Sorry you didn’t hear me. Chuck would like to talk to us and he is extremely agitated. That impression is based on previous encounters with him."

  "What now?" She knew the lab was doing well, and really just wanted the man to stay out of her way.

  "From his comments it is probably about the shifter stuff going on. I know he said everyone had to be there for this meeting."

  Cass arched an eyebrow, even as she put her headphones away and shut off the music. "What all six of us?"

  "Yep. Though I do not understand how a meeting is more efficient than a memo." Simon had a puzzled look on his face, and she wanted to pat his shoulder, but touching and Simon didn’t go together.

  If she had to guess she’d say he qualified as high functioning Asperger's. His need for order and patterns made her look like a free spirit.

  "Okay. Let me note where I am with this sample."

  "Of course." He stood there patiently looking at nothing, at least as far as she could tell. With quick movements Cass finished making her notes. She wanted to bitch and complain at this interruption, but Simon had nothing to do with it, so taking it out on him would be unfair. She followed him out, pulling the hair net off. She always felt ridiculous wearing one. Everyone was gathered in the small break room which held a refrigerator, sink, two tables and the vending machines she’d raided the other day. With all of them in there the room felt claustrophobic.

  "Finally." He sneered at her and she ducked her head so he couldn’t see her annoyance. "Now that the last of us have deigned to show up I wanted to talk about the shifter thing. While I’m sure it is a massive hoax, our owners feel differently. They are offering a substantial bonus if any of their employee shift and would like to allow them to run some tests." his sneer made her shrink back. "While I am sure that none of our employees here would be so low class as to change." His eyes drifted across the people in the room.

  Cass cringed.

  Is he looking at me? Why is he letting his eyes linger on me? He can’t know.

  "If they did, be assured the bonus is generous." He sneered again. "But if you do, please don’t bother coming back here, just let corporate know. I don’t want your type polluting my environment. Health hazards you know. All that fur would violate lab protocols." Chuck sniffed. "And I would know. I’m highly allergic to cats and dogs. I’d think a wolf would be the same. Dismissed."

  There was a grumble, but people started to disperse. As the centrifuge still had another twenty minutes to run, Cass headed to get some soda. She figured she could afford the sugar though she still needed to test the caloric hypothesis. As she put her money in the machine, two of her other coworkers were chatting and she felt her stomach clench as the words filtered into her awareness.

  "God, can you imagine turning into an animal? I’d be horrified and never tell anyone. To be a filthy creature? I heard some of them can turn into hyenas and jackals. Carrion eaters. How awful. I’d die first than allow myself to be an animal and eat dead creatures." The speaker was a strict vegetarian and preached it often.

  "I know. I watched the weird cop change and had to throw up. The way her body distorted and then she killed those men. I heard the cat ate them. Can you imagine eating people? I bet she starts craving human flesh."

  "Oh, I didn’t even think about that. I’d kill myself. How can she live with herself? I hope they start locking people like that away from the rest of us, so they can’t hurt us." The voices were getting fainter as Cass swallowed and pushed the button for a soda, even though she didn’t have a desire for anything anymore. Walking back towards the room where the lockers stood, she drained the soda and let the caffeine and the sugar try to wash away the fear and stress that ate at her.

  I can’t ever let anyone know. They’d lock me up. This has to be my secret. Even if that lady cop doesn’t get punished I would be. I won’t let that happen. It’s my secret and no one else ever needs to know.

  Her thoughts were still whirling when Simon tapped her on the shoulder and she almost screamed as she whirled around.

  He flinched backward away from her, his face paling. "You did not hear me when I called your name. I did not intend to scare you."

  "No, it’s fine. I was lost in my own thoughts. What’s up Simon?"

  "Your lichen experiment. I noticed that you were utilizing the centrifuge to a large percent. Are you trying to filter out the various aspects of the lichen?" He seemed interested and anything that didn’t have her stomach in a knot sounded good to talk about.

  "Yes, and -" she fell into science talk that didn’t stop until the alarm on her watch went off. Cass looked down and cussed. "Sorry, Simon. I have to go. The samples should be done and given the amount of time left in the day I’d like to finish processing them."

  "Of course." He gave her one of his odd smiles and stepped back. She quickly put back on her hair net and slipped into the lab, heading directly to the centrifuge. With her samples done spinning, she pulled them and set them on the pre-prepped slides. On the slides she had an ovarian cancer strain and leukemia. Common strains for most labs. She put the extract on the slide, slipped them under the microscope, and looked.

  Her shriek of glee could have shattered a wine glass if there had been any in the lab. The extract attacked the cancer cells, infiltrating and destroying them from the inside out.

  "Yes, yes, yes." She did a little gig standing there. Three hours later, four more tests had been performed and all of them were successful.

  With a happy heart, which helped to push back all the stress and fear that had followed her into the lab, she collected all the information she would need to enter a request for a preservation of the lichen species. It only existed in one place which is why she’d been rushing so hard. She needed to make sure she could verify and duplicate the results. If she needed to get a protection order in, it had to happen before any scheduled construction.

  After jotting the information down in her notebook, she shut down everything. The familiar routine helped soothe out some of the discomfort the meeting had created, though she didn't know if she dreaded or looked forward to listening to the news on the way home. The news was full of shifters and she sometimes felt like she wore a scarlet S on her forehead.

  Stripping out of her lab coat, she dumped it and her headphones in the locker then headed to the tiny cubicle that stored her work computer, her notebook clutched tight in her hand. They all had a cube with a cubicle and computer that let them update experiments, file reports, and do time reporting. Sitting down she pulled up the government system this stuff had to go through. Typing quickly, her happiness almost bubbled over as she entered in all the information required, citing ‘significant medical advantages’ to prevent any alteration of the environment that these lichens lived in. Her fingers hit submit, and she grinned.

  "I am good. With this I might get yet another patent." The smile that split her
lips stayed until she finished her administrative tasks. Cass usually stayed late figuring it let her avoid most of her coworkers and especially Chuck who left at five minutes to five religiously. Email was the last thing she reviewed, confirmation of her request to provide a protected status to the lake had been received.

  Doing a little happy dance, she logged off and shut down. The late afternoon sun still baked the ground and she opened the door to her car to let it air out and cool down a minute before she got in. Sure enough, the news brought more incidents of people shifting and the odd tide of mixed reaction. When Harvey Klein came on she shut it off, unable to handle his brand of obnoxiousness.

  Her apartment welcomed her with coolness and quiet that pushed everything else away. Her attention lit upon her notebook and the idea of testing some of the theories made her smile.

  "Hypothesis one: the shift can be voluntary. Hypothesis two: it is fueled by calories and burns upwards of kilojoules to achieve." Head tilted to the side, how to test hypothesis one?

  "Hypothesis two: weigh self and then shift. Repeat multiple days in a row. Test that all physical motions are still possible." It had occurred to her there was the possibility that the shifting might be cannibalizing other parts of the body and that would be very bad.

  She didn't have a hypothesis as to why they had shifted in the first place though the idea still poked at her. There had to be a reason why. If her work wasn't so closely tracked she'd be tempted to take her own blood samples and run them at work, but people would question why she changed the parameters of her testing. How you worked with blood differed a bit from the tests and equipment she used for her plants. Not worth the risk, regardless of the curiosity factor, though she could always rent a private lab for a few days.

  Cass sighed. Too expensive. Private labs cost big money. She made good money but not that sort of money. Since she didn't want to expose her secret, she needed to test what she could. Control and energy.

  "First things, first. Get some food the wolverine can eat." Standing at her fridge she pulled out some apples, salami, and some rotisserie chicken she'd already pulled apart.

  Standing in the middle of the kitchen she looked around trying to think. "Timer. I don't know what my time awareness is and I really can't spend more than an hour or two doing this." She set a timer on her phone, made sure her door was locked with the privacy lock, and all the windows blinds were closed.

  Taking her notebook into the bathroom she stripped and stepped on the scale. "Huh, 154.6, interesting that it is almost four pounds less than yesterday. That amount of weight loss is not normal." She noted it in the notebook as she headed to the bedroom, chewing on her lip. "Now how do I become an animal again?"

  Tossing the book on the bed she sat on the floor, falling over hadn't been fun, and thought. "I don't think there's a magic word, so maybe I need to think about being the animal?"

  It seemed to be a valid an option. Cass closed her eyes and thought about the claws, the sharp scents that exposed themselves to her as an animal, and there in the back of her brain lurked the wolverine. Mentally she reached for the creature she had been and almost laughed as it moved towards her, into her. She braced herself for the pain but this time, while it wasn't comfortable, she couldn't qualify it as overwhelming pain. More like physical therapy where it hurt but you knew the pain would mean better things down the road. And her body changed.

  5

  Experimentation

  The cutthroat world of scientific papers is the hidden dark side of being a scientist. If you aren’t publishing, you’re nobody. But how does that work for a scientists in small private labs, who don’t own what they are researching or discovering? Many labs have an open publish agreement. This means that you can publish your discoveries and file the patent with your name as the discoverer, but they own the patent. Though this sounds unfair many labs offer hefty bonuses for every patent you file. ~Science Advisor.

  Cass opened her eyes to find the world different.

  I did it. I turned into a wolverine again.

  She scurried to the mirror. It even felt like a scurry, the four limbs working in concert the way she'd expect her legs to work. As she thought about it, they quit moving in sequence and she fell. Granted as she was on all fours, she didn’t fall very far, but still.

  Humph, note to self: I can’t think about having four legs or I get confused. That is interesting. Something is automatically adjusting for my movement, but not consciously.

  Something pinged in the back of her mind at that idea but she had too much to play with to chase it down. This time she got up on her feet and paid attention to everything, moving through a series of exercises.

  This is too easy. How in the world can I know how to wag my tail? I’ve never had a tail. How does my mind know how to wag my tail? Mind…

  Her thoughts trailed off and she started running equations and other facts through her head, thinking through proper names for the all the species of bacteria she worked with, then climbed the evolutionary tree to moss and fungi. But all the names came to her head without effort and the calculations were there as crisp and clean as ever.

  No obvious brain damage. And I never could play a musical instrument so if that is gone it’s no loss. At this point I can’t find any proof of mental instability. First the weighing and then I can get to the other senses.

  She moved to the bathroom. It still felt like scurrying when she had four legs; she got on the scale. Like last time, she had to balance precariously but she managed and grinned at the numbers she saw. The grin felt odd on her face, her animal face, and distracted her to the point she almost fell over.

  Huh, 154 interesting, again a drop in weight and even given my stress, I don’t think you normally lose weight like that. But the final test still needs to be run.

  She already knew her nose worked but she was still curious as to what she could detect. With her eyes shut she made walked into the living room where she had put the food on the coffee table. The scents, ones she knew, wrapped around her pulling her with more power than she’d ever had food smells exert before. They were richer, deeper than what she normally associated with smells. Standing there she lifted her nose and realized she could smell a lot more than just the food. Her bathroom emitted a confusing combination of lavender, mint, bleach, urine and her deodorant. She wrinkled her nose before trying to sense other things. But the scent of food overpowered everything, more because of the importance to her body than the strength of the scents. Giving in, she moved over to the table. She kept her eyes closed and let her nose decide what to eat. The chicken called to her first and while her animal form didn’t get the nuances of the spices that she knew were there, the meat flavor and the salt hit her cravings and before she realized it, the plate had been emptied, licked clean even.

  The food drives are higher in this form, but I needed the food more when I was human. Why? Calorie burn? I mean it tasted good, but I didn’t think I was about to die if I didn’t eat now.

  The fruit tasted good, but she wanted the meat more and that struck her as interesting.

  I really need to research wolverines and their dietary habits. Now what? Ah, hearing. What can I hear?

  Cass felt her ears twitch and shivered a bit, it felt strange yet right. Closing her eyes, she focused on her hearing and realized she must have been subconsciously blocking it because noise exploded in her head. She sat in her nice apartment listening to her neighbors arguing next door, the dog two apartments down barking, and all the appliances in her apartment buzzing away like crazy.

  Huh, and I always thought my apartment was relatively well sound proofed.

  Shaking her head, she tried to block out the noise.

  Note – design a test to validate hertz ranges for my hearing, because this is crazy.

  It took a few minutes, but she figured out how to shut out the outside world again and come up with a way to test hertz next time. Done with that test she wandered back to the mirror and looked at hersel
f, this time not freaking out but paying attention to what she saw. She still looked like a wolverine though she realized the fur was the color of her hair. That was interesting. Her eyes were blue as a human, but they looked amber brown here.

  I need to get out a color chart and see if my color interpretations are different now. So, I did taste, smell, sight, and hearing. That leaves touch. But I haven’t noticed anything odd while I walk. Not sure how to test touch with all the fur.

  The urge to go sleep with a full belly tugged at her; underneath the bed would be really comfortable - nice and dark and protected. She had taken two steps when the alarm jolted her and she shook her head.

  Fascinating. Animal urges are strong, but I can control them. Okay back to human. I think I’ve had enough for one day.

  Her breath caught in her throat for a minute as she couldn’t find her human self, but she took a deep breath and reached for Cass, the Cass that played with microscopes, drank wine, and read romance novels.

  Her human form came bubbling up and she moved into it like a new skin, finding herself laying on the floor a bit tired, relatively hungry, and with a huge smile on her face.

  "Holy fuck. I can change into an animal. HEEEE." The squeal of joy slipped out. She slapped her hands over her mouth and giggled. It took three minutes for her giggling to stop, but she managed to pull herself up, put clothes back on, and go weigh herself.

  "Ha! Proof it uses the body mass to fuel the change." She wanted to dance some more as the scale read 151. "About three pounds per change, so that would be what, forty-three thousand kilojoules." She blinked. "That is a hell of a lot of energy. And a lot of food to make up. Damn. Trying to restore over ten thousand calories and not be eating pure sugar would be hard. So noted." The numbers kept drifting through her head, amazed at the amount of energy.