Scott sat there, brooding, her mood not helped by the fact that she had to focus on cautiously hovering a few inches above the toilet in the girls' bathroom. She'd had to deal with this already since unexpectedly becoming a girl yesterday, but it was still weird and awkward and she wasn't that good at moving around like this and kept periodically dipping down and making direct contact with cold ceramic and her pants and underwear kept slipping over her ankles and dropping to the floor so she'd had to fold them up and set them on top of the toilet-paper dispenser and...and...
...and really it was just a minor annoyance compared to the disaster that had been this morning. Just getting into class and slipping into the background without attracting attention had probably never been a realistic goal, not when she was an alien now, and definitely not when she was an attractive girl-alien, but did it have to go like that? If only she'd gone in with a better plan...if only Dennis hadn't-
No...part of her still wanted to be mad at Dennis for spilling her secret, but if she stopped and thought about it, it was inevitable that her identity would come out, unless she'd done something drastic like abandoning her own name and pretending to be an entirely different person...she grimaced at the irony of it. She'd literally had that exact option already and rejected it because she wanted to hold onto everything that linked her to her former identity as a human male...
...and if she thought about it, she didn't regret that decision. She was Scott, and she always had been and always would be. But if she was going to cling to that, there was no getting around the awkwardness of people realizing who she'd been and what had become of that person. But it was so unfair...she hadn't asked for this, but people were going to jump to weird, embarassing conclusions, treat her like some kind of freak, spread rumors...
But what were the alternatives? She already knew she wasn't going to give up on her own identity; she could run away to another place, maybe transfer to another school, but if she wasn't going to change her name, she'd just end up in the same position (why couldn't she have been named something gender-neutral? But no, dammit, she was Scott and she was going to stay Scott.) And if she couldn't hide and she couldn't run...
...well, that only left one option, didn't it? She'd...she'd just have to learn to deal with it. Endure it. If...if she did that, if she made it out of school...would it stop, then? If she really had to live the rest of her life this way, would it ever become not awkward and uncomfortable?
Her musings were interrupted by a sudden rumble from her stomach. Sighing, Scott cleaned up, put her pants back on, and drifted out into the hall and down towards the cafeteria.
The lunchroom was typically noisy and busy when Scott floated through the door, doing her best to stay close to normal human standing height and in a semi-vertical position. She'd hoped that doing it this way might allow her to slip into the lunch line relatively unnoticed; unfortunately, that was not what actually happened. Scott entered the room and almost instantaneously the crowd of students fell silent. You could hear a pin drop, she thought. It was like some notorious character walking into the saloon in a cartoon Western; she half-expected a tumbleweed to go rolling by.
Fortunately, nobody was going to suddenly go for their gun here, though she did notice that one girl - Laura? - clutching her instrument case rather protectively. But still, it was awkward and unnerving to feel every eye on her as she slipped into line. The girl ahead of her looked back at her warily for a moment before turning her attention back to the food. Look, she thought to herself, I just want to get something to eat...!
As the initial novelty of her appearance wore off, most of the students gradually returned to talking amongst themselves, although it was noticeably quieter than before. Scott made it through the line and got something vaguely resembling chili and cornbread without too much trouble, pausing for a moment to consider and then grab a couple packets of hot sauce before making her way over to the tables. She wondered briefly where she should sit, but...if she was still Scott, she still belonged with Scott's friends.
Scott drifted over to the little table in the corner where Dennis was sitting; it was trickier than she'd anticipated trying to do this while carrying a bowl of something. This body and its peculiar form of locomotion tended towards free-form swooping and diving and floating around without any particular orientation to Earth gravity, which would've been manageable with something like a sandwich, but was just inviting disaster with anything soup- or stew-like. She slowed to a halt next to the table, eyeing the chili warily, but it was behaving. She could feel her long pink hair billowing out around her head as it came to a stop slightly after the rest of her did; somehow, it seemed to obey the laws of gravity and momentum at its own discretion, always managing to end up artfully arranged without any effort on her part.
Dennis looked nervously over at her as she slid in next to him, weakly trying to crack a smile. "H-hi," he stammered. She nodded absent-mindedly. "Hey."
Neither of them said anything much for a long moment, while Scott settled in with her lunch; she sampled the chili and found it even blander than she was used to, and ended up stirring in all of the packets she'd grabbed before it finally got to the point of seeming right to her. After a small eternity, Dennis finally spoke. "Um...'m really sorry."
Scott sighed. "It was just a matter of time, I guess. Kinda inevitable, really..."
He nodded. "I guess...but I shouldn'tve let him get to me like that."
She shrugged. "He's just good at that. Though it'd probably be harder if you were less insec-" She bit her lip, cutting herself off; that was maybe an unnecessary comment, but it was already out of her mouth. She sighed. "Sorry. Guess that's easy for me to say..."
Dennis felt a little embarassed, because he'd just been about to retort with the same thing, but it sounded a lot more sullen in his head; part of him was glad that Scott had said it first. "Yeah...you're not wrong, though. I wish I weren't, but..."
Scott glanced over at him. "Eh, zheda xin..." She frowned, realizing she'd slipped into Dalzin again. Another weird thing she was going to have to get used to... "Er, it is what it is, I guess." She managed a smile and reached over to genially slug him in the shoulder. "Hey, you'll get over this eventually, right?"
Dennis felt like he'd really prefer to just be over it now, but he appreciated the sentiment, anyway. He was about to thank her when another voice cut in.
"Aww, how sweet," said Mary, who had appeared apparently out of nowhere. She moved in close to Scott. "Listen, what happened to you...I'm sure you're still processing it, but once you're ready to talk about it..."
Scott stared at her. It didn't take a genius to see what she was getting at. "I'm not giving you an interview about it, if that's what you're thinking," she said firmly. "There's not really anything much to tell, anyway. It just happened."
She seemed taken aback. "Well, uh, I suppose it probably seemed pretty sudden to you, but any insight you could provide...from what I'm reading, there's hardly even any official confirmation that this is a thing, let alone actual details. Humanity needs to know about this, Scott."
Scott frowned. "From a school paper...?"
Mary bristled visibly. "Hey! This is the age of the Internet - people will listen to any source if they can't hear what they want through official channels. And believe me, there are plenty of people who want to know anything they can about alien technology." She nodded in the general direction of Dennis. "Just ask your boytoy over there."
Scott flushed with equals parts embarassment and irritation. "Caizho!" she spat, grateful for once that she'd slipped into her new mother tongue when swearing, but a little surprised that Mary had managed to get under her skin as quickly as she did. She glanced over at Dennis, who was blushing even more brightly and attempting to vanish into his chair, then grabbed her tray from the table. "Listen," she said through gritted teeth, "I don't care what you want to find out about alien technology or whatever, but leave me and my friend out of this." She vaulted smoothly to the ceiling of the cafeteria, set her tray on top of one of the long fluorescent light fixtures, and continued eating, crossing her legs underneath her in mid-air. Suddenly the entire crowd was staring at her again; she was glad she'd worn pants today.
Mary watched her go, fuming internally. That last crack had been a mistake; she'd known it as soon as it left her mouth. Normally she was better about gauging precisely the right things to say to people in order to elicit a desired response, but Scott's dig at her paper had left her flustered and annoyed. Damn it...well, nothing she could do about it now but try another approach. There was a story here, she knew it, but she'd have to get her information a little more indirectly.
Greg was making his way towards the school entrance to catch the bus home when he noticed Mary standing off to one side of the hall, looking very deliberately casually disinterested in his presence. Did she want something? He felt a little wary; while it'd been plenty of fun using her as a sounding board to embarass Dennis in front of the class, she had a reputation for stirring up trouble for pretty much anyone if she thought there was something juicy in it for her little paper. Still, he didn't really have anything to lose here; it wasn't like he harbored any deep personal secrets she could dig out of him and blackmail him with or anything. He sauntered over to her, trying to match her air of feigned indifference.
"That was quite a bomb you dropped on the class this morning," she said. There was a note of admiration in her voice, and he thought it might actually be sincere. He grinned. "Wasn't it? Freakin' hilarious."
The diminutive Asian girl nodded thoughtfully, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose with her index and middle fingers. They caught the light and glinted ominously. "Heh, yeah," she said. "Interesting, though...I wouldn't have pegged you as the type to be interested in other people's love lives. Makes a person wonder why you were paying so much attention to this particular case..."
Greg looked at her, suddenly wary again. "Huh? Nerds like him just bug me, that's all. Plus, it was funny."
"Mm-hmm." She sounded very deliberately not-convinced. "You're sure? It wouldn't be because of anything like, say, jealousy, would it?"
He stared at her in mixed trepidation and annoyance. "What are you getting at?" Nobody passing by was listening to this, were they?
Mary smiled devilishly. "Just seems like it'd be a lot more plausible for someone to try and torpedo their awkward little romance if they had a stake in it themselves, right? You know, like if they'd already taken notice of the new girl?"
Greg bit his lip. This had been a grave mistake. "The hell are you talking about?" he stammered. "I'm not into that freak!"
"No?" She moved forward, just into the edge of his personal space, like a cat stalking a bird. "So you weren't trying to grope her chest earlier? Because I have multiple sources that can corroborate that..."
For being in a wide, open hallway, Greg was feeling very, very backed into a corner. "Look, that was just, y'know, to mess with her! Him! Whatever! It doesn't mean I'm into...!"
"I see." She nodded thoughtfully to herself, pausing to make a show of noting something down in the little wire-rimmed notebook she carried around with her. "So if you're not trying to break them up to keep Scott for yourself...let me see, didn't you say at that time that you'd been alone with Dennis earlier that morning?"
He suddenly realized what she was getting at; a queasy feeling crept up in his throat. "Oh god, don't even joke about that! You cannot go around telling people...making up-"
Mary raised a finger to silence him; to his amazement, he actually complied. "Mister Wilkins," she said sweetly, "I don't make up anything; I collect testimony, find facts, and draw conclusions. I'm just trying to discover the truth about an incident you started, which even the teachers would have to admit is 'of general interest to the student body,' if I may quote the school paper's charter."
Greg stepped back, and she pressed in. This was a new experience for him - despite the fact that he had fully a foot and probably thirty or forty pounds on this girl, he was the one feeling outclassed and intimidated. Why had he even engaged her in the first place...!? No, no, it was obvious she'd been plotting this out, it wasn't like trying to dodge it would've done any good... He stared daggers down at her. "Look, what do you want?" he asked, teeth gritted.
She smirked. "Me? I want to find a story, of course." She took note of his expression, and the smirk widened. "Or do you mean 'what do you want to not talk about this?' As a journalist, I'd have to decline..."
His eyelid twitched and his teeth gritted harder. "What. Do. You. Want."
She smiled casually. "Weeeeeell, obviously it would be a breach of professional ethics to engage in any kind of quid pro quo in exchange for not publishing a story. However...we do have to prioritize. Believe me, if we ran every story we dig up, our printing budget would run completely out. So if, say, some other much more important story were to crop up, obviously we'd have to consider dropping or trimming the lesser material in order to give it the coverage it deserves - if you follow me?"
That was it - she had something she wanted him to do, some scheme to cook up a story for her little paper that she wanted a flunky for. And he'd gone and stumbled right into her trap...much to his own chagrin, he nodded a sullen yes to her question. She brightened. "Right, I'm glad you understand."
Mary made a furtive glance up and down the hall, then moved in close. In most other circumstances Greg might've assumed that she was about to try and put the moves on him, but as it was he would rather have been this intimate with a snake; at least he'd know where he stood.
"Now," she said quietly, "on a completely unrelated note, I've been meaning to tell you about this thing I found out about the UFOs. Ever get a look underneath one?"
Greg shook his head. "Just in photos. It's usually kinda like the underside of a mushroom, with a big hole in the middle, right?"
Mary nodded. "Right. And what I've heard, and I've got very reliable sources backing me up on this...would you believe there's no actual screen over the hole?"
He frowned. "What, nothing at all? How do they keep, like, birds out?"
She shrugged. "Good question. One of my sources thinks it's got something to do with magnetic fields messing up their homing instinct, or something. They just stay away. But for anybody who's not a bird-brain, you know what that means, right?"
Greg nodded thoughtfully. "As long as you can get up there, it's open, right?" He paused. "I dunno, they probably have laser guns or something set up inside..."
Mary shook her head. "Apparently not. I've got video - some guys tried tossing rocks up into the hole to see what happened. And a cat. Came back down without a scratch on them. Cat was pretty pissed-off though." She leaned closer, grinning wildly. "And once you're inside...you know what we've gotten from them technology-wise in the last few decades, right? Imagine what the stuff they're not sharing with us is like!"
Greg imagined. It was an enticing prospect; humanity had gotten some pretty neat stuff from the aliens (he remembered how his mom used to complain about the heating bill every winter,) and it seemed only natural that they'd save the best stuff for themselves. If he could snag even one good example of that and bring it back for Earth scientists to figure out...what would that be worth to the right people? His mind reeled at the thought. But...if that were true...
He eyed Mary warily. "So, wait," he said. "If there's all this super-valuable stuff up in there, what do you need me for? Just go get it yourself." It wasn't that he wasn't intrigued by the prospect, but it was obvious that she had an ulterior motive...
She laughed. "Me? Our dog is bigger than I am. If, hypothetically, somebody wanted to haul whatever advanced spaceship engine is up in one of those things down to the ground safely...I wouldn't even be able to lift it." She shrugged. "Besides, my family isn't really hurting for money. What I want in life is a story. The discovery of advanced alien technology that they've been hiding from us this whole time? That's what I want to be in on."
She stepped back, arms folded over her smallish breasts, shoulders casually canted to one side and grinning like the Cheshire Cat. "So you see, this is really mutually beneficial. I've given you a valuable little bit of information, and now you have the means to do...whatever it is you want to do. All I ask in exchange is that, if you do stumble onto some impressive alien discovery while you're doing things that I'm sure will be totally legal and ethical, I get the rights to the story."
Greg pondered this. It was obvious that she expected him to try and act on this while maintaining plausible deniability herself, but then he did like the idea of getting rich off some crazy alien discovery...but then again, was it really worth the risk...?
"Oh, speaking of UFOs," Mary said with a smirk, "I'm pretty sure the nearest one in the area belongs to that alien lady who married a human guy recently...the one whose stepson just turned into a daughter? Seems like that might be a good opportunity to get back at the girl who's coming between you and your friend...?"
Greg blanched. Anything was worth it if it got this complication out of his life.
If there was one merciful aspect to Scott's suddenly altered school life, it was that there was no longer any need for her to take the bus. Today had gone wrong enough as it was; having to end it sitting in a tin can with two or three dozen of her peers for thirty minutes would've been intolerable. Instead, when the bell rang she was able to simply slip through the halls, glide above the crowd, grab her things from her locker, and swoop out the door and into the sky.
In a better world, she thought, flying should be pure euphoria, an experience that totally disconnected you from the cares of the world; it just seemed like it fundamentally ought to be so. And in fact there was something pleasurable and giddy about soaring above buildings and swooping around curves as she followed the road towards her house.
But the problem with being a sentient creature, especially one on the cusp of adulthood, is that no matter where you go or what you do, it's impossible to get completely away from your own mind (at least until chemical influences start to become a factor - and she was nowhere near any kind of "flier's high.") Instead, she was occupied bodily and alone with her thoughts mentally; it was a bit like being stuck in the bathroom in the wee hours of the morning.
Why had this happened to her? How was she supposed to live her life now that she was so completely different - a girl, an alien? She no longer had to walk along the ground, getting caught up in the crowd; she would never be a man again, never even have the choice to look like a man again, not with these curves and these breasts and this cotton-candy pink hair; if she cut it, she wouldn't look like a guy, she'd just look like some kind of punk-grrl or something. If she ever wanted a family, she'd have to be-
She shook her head, cutting that thought off abruptly, or trying to; it kept trying to reach a line or two of thought around her mental block. Would...would she like guys? She cringed at the thought of what everybody had been whispering in class that morning, after that asshole Greg had started his rumor, but she honestly couldn't tell if she was reacting to the general idea of being involved with a male, the idea of being involved with Dennis specifically, or just the general hideous embarassment of having the entire classroom tittering over their imaginary romance. In any case, she was doing everything she could not to think about it in detail...
Scott rounded the bend and saw her mother's flying saucer hovering over the yard and knew she was home. She swooped over to the door, wanting just to get inside, kick off the shoes she wasn't wearing, and crash on the couch and forget all about the day. She wanted to barrel through the door in one smooth motion, but she misjudged her elevation, couldn't reach down to catch the knob, and just managed to pull back on her forward velocity and drift gently into the door shoulder-first. Sheepishly, she dipped down, opened the door, and sailed through.
Layka was floating down at knee-height in the living room, lying on nothing and busily doodling with paper and colored pencils laid out on the coffee table. She looked up when Scott entered and immediately came soaring over to greet her. <Welcome home, big sis!> she cried happily. <How'd it go? 'Dja have fun at school? I bet you're the prettiest girl in your class now!>
Scott paused for a moment, collected her thoughts, and proceeded to burst into tears. Her little sister seemed taken aback for a minute, then wrapped her arms and legs around her; it was oddly soothing. <It's okay, big sis,> she said, a little confused but doing her best to sound comforting and reassuring. <I guess it's kinda hard to get useta, huh? It'll be okay...>
Scott didn't actually stop crying, but she did feel a little bit better. Really, she thought, more than anything else she just wanted to go to bed...
The neighborhood was about as dark as it could get in the suburbs of a large city. In the wee hours of the morning, none of the houses still had their lights on; the only sources of illumination were the light-pollution that suffused everything within twenty miles of the city center, and the sickly yellow glow of the sodium streetlamps buzzing overhead. The distant sound of freeway traffic had died down to an occasional low thrumming as some long-haul trucker passed through on their way to wherever it was they were going; beyond that and the occasional barking of someone's dog off in the distance, it was quiet.
The gears on Greg's bicycle clicked softly as he stopped pedaling and gently came to a stop in front of Scott's house. Under normal circumstances, he'd probably have had to "coax" someone into telling him where the loser actually lived, but even before Scott's sudden transformation, an alien moving into the area tended to attract a lot of attention - and it wasn't hard to figure out which house was hers, what with the flying saucer parked out front.
He stared up at the craft. Even after all these years, there was still something eerie about them. His generation was probably the last for whom there was a time in living memory when Earthlings generally thought they were alone in the cosmos, for whom the iconic images of UFOs represented galactic menace or unfathomable mystery. Despite his own rational mind telling him that there was really nothing to fear, he found himself on edge anyway.
Of course, part of it was the way in which it hung there; aside from its own leisurely rotation about the hub of the disc, it was completely motionless. It didn't sway with the gentle night breeze or shudder with the vibrations of some unseen engine; it might as well have been fixed at that point in space by God himself for all he could tell. Indeed, Greg almost got the feeling that if he stared at it too long, he might start thinking that it was the true point of reference and all the rest of the world was pivoting around it. The way it seemed to be brighter than its surroundings didn't help much either; it didn't actually cast any light on the yard, but he almost thought he could detect a soft, pulsing glow in its smooth surface.
Well, anyway! Greg thought to himself, trying to pull his scattered thoughts together. Creepy or not, it was just an inanimate object, right? Nothing but a funny-looking car or helicopter or whatever, when you got right down to it. And he wasn't here to ponder its mysteries; he was here to see if whatsername the alien lady had left any valuables in the glove compartment. Granted, that would've been easier if it hadn't been hovering twenty or thirty feet above the ground, but he'd planned for this. He turned his attention to the extension ladder he'd brought with; it had been an ordeal to get it here (he'd had to hang one rung off the handlebars of his bike and lash another to his waist,) but with this he was confident he'd be able to get up to it.
Cautiously making his way up to the grass below the center of the craft (and shaking off a sudden wave of goosebumps,) he glanced up at it; as Mary had explained it, the usual point of entry was on the underside, which was simple enough for people who could fly and generally prohibitive for anybody who couldn't. Sure enough, the bottom of the UFO tapered into a conical shape, the point of which was cut off and left open, looking sort of like a volcano, or those weird tropical mega-flowers that smelled like dead bodies or whatever it was. Greg considered his next step carefully; even if it was just a dumb machine, what if there were some kind of burglar alarm or trap? Even humans put those on their cars, sometimes...
After a couple minutes of thinking about it, he settled on what he figured was probably his best bet. Extending the ladder out as far as it would go, he left one end planted on the ground and hefted the middle section up so that the far end was just below the hole in the saucer; from there, he threw his entire weight into launching the ladder up and forward, and dove out of the way as soon as it was airborne. There was a clatter, but no sound of explosions or sparks or screaming alarms; Greg recovered from his tumble in the grass to find that the ladder was sitting neatly in place with the end resting against the rim of the entry portal, conspicuously not on fire or melted or glowing in a radioactive manner.
Chuckling to himself, he sauntered over to the ladder, regarded it for a moment, and tentatively reached out to touch it, yanking his hand back as soon as he made contact, just in case. Nope...no zap, no nothing. However smart the aliens thought they were, they didn't even lock their cars! Well, served them right, he guessed; who'dve thought that a species that could cross the gulf of space on a whim wouldn't have heard of the ladder? Filled with a renewed sense of confidence, as well as more than a little self-satisfaction, he mounted the ladder and made his way up.
As he climbed up towards the alien ship, Greg found himself experiencing a sense of vertigo; like before, it almost felt like his point of view was shifting and he was climbing head-first down into some mysterious pit. Shaking his head, he looked back down at the ground to re-orient himself, suddenly surprised by how high up he was. The saucer was definitely closer to thirty feet up; thinking about it, he was glad the ladder was long enough to reach. Just a little farther now...thinking about what kind of valuable stuff might be waiting inside, he scampered up the last few feet and poked his head into the opening.
Greg yelped in surprise as he cleared the portal and was suddenly assaulted with a rush of sound. As eerily silent as the saucer had seemed from the ground, now that he was inside, the ship was alive with a strange, alien soundscape. Ringing, hollow metallic sound swelled and collapsed, like some great sleeping beast that had church bells for lungs; little pings and beeps of pure tone pattered along in curious non-rhythms that added up to something like a gentle rainstorm of synthetic noise; low, gentle rumbles ground away like the idle cycle of an engine and sharp electric sparking sizzled along at the upper limits of his hearing and probably beyond. He was almost overwhelmed for a moment, but as his ears adjusted, he found himself able to focus again, and clambered off the ladder and into the interior of the ship.
He had never thought all that much about what the inside of a UFO would be like, but if movies and TV had given him any indication, it was probably supposed to be featureless and inscrutable, with all white surfaces and piercing blue light that blinded the camera and illuminated the dry-ice fog just exactly so as to obscure the deficiencies of whatever cheap alien suits the actors were wearing. What he was actually seeing was something else entirely. The interior of the craft was large, but densely cluttered with all kinds of miscellaneous things-he-didn't-know-what-they-were, strewn across most of the available surfaces. One entire side of the ship seemed to be taken up by a stack of cardboard boxes and plastic bins containing even more miscellany; it looked like nothing so much as someone's garage or attic.
(Of course, there was also the fact that the...apparent?...control surfaces were more earth-toned and vaguely-organic-looking than ultra-minimalist Apple-Store whiteness, and the soft reddish glow of the backup lighting cast everything in warm, fleshy colors and made the whole thing feel almost like the inside of a living creature, but that was honestly less of a surprise than the fact that they were apparently using this unfathomably advanced spaceship as a glorified storage area.)
Still, that was a good sign for him, right? Who knew what kind of exotic alien treasures might be stashed away in here? Just one of them might be enough to make him rich, and if the place was this cluttered with stuff, surely they'd never miss it, right? But which of the hundreds of objects in here would actually be the best choice to take with him? It was almost frustrating the variety of it all; there were so many things here that he didn't know what they were that it seemed impossible to choose. He found himself getting a little irritated with these aliens; why did this have to be like rummaging through the garage looking for something someone else packed away in a pile of boxes? Why couldn't there be some big glass case with a-
Greg's train of thought came to a screeching halt. On the far side of the room, just visible behind a stack of boxes, was a big glass case with a...something...in it.
Forgetting any concerns about what else he might encounter in this strange place, he scrambled over to it, nearly tripping over boxes more than once, and shoved the nearest stack aside to get a better look. It was a glass box about the size of a small refrigerator, on some kind of pedestal that had a display in some language he couldn't read. Thread-like wire filaments densely criss-crossed the glass, like the old-style safety glass in some of the older buildings at school, but the wires seemed far too thin to actually provide any reinforcement. Atop the pedestal, sandwiched between it and the bottom of the case, was a glowing blue coil like the heating element on an electric stove. And inside...
The thing in the case was some kind of living creature, that much was obvious. He could see its chest rise and fall ever so subtly, and it was far too lifelike to be fake. It was hanging by the shoulders from a metal stand, its feet propped up at the base. It had a roughly humanoid body structure, but the proportions were all weird; the arms were somewhat long and gangly compared to the torso, and both the upper and lower legs were shortened while the foot was extended. On top of that, a tail - thick at the base and still almost the size of the creature's spindly wrists at the tip - hung down between the legs. Both the hands and feet had three digits; chunky, bulbous toes at the end of the long feet, and long fingers with thickly-padded tips on the hands. One of the three fingers on each was an opposable thumb. Neither the toes nor the fingers had nails.
The neck was a bit on the long side, though still within range for humans (or, for that matter, for the type of aliens Greg was accustomed to seeing on the news.) The head, however, was noticeably larger, though not grotesquely so. It, too, was roughly humanoid, but the features were greatly simplified. The general facial structure was almost human, but the lower half of the face and jaw protruded out more; not quite to the extent where it could be called a muzzle, but enough to give it a noticeably animal quality. The lines were very rounded; there was no clear pronouncement to the chin or cheekbones, though the brow line was discernable. The mouth, at least when closed, was small and the lips pursed, though they weren't pronounced like human lips. There was no nose that he could make out, and the ears were simple holes in the sides of the head.
The eyes were clearly large by comparison to humans; not tarsier-grade, but even with the lids closed Greg could tell they were big. Between this, the rounded simplicity of the face, and the proportionally large head, the creature almost felt child-like, in a weird and mildly unsettling sort of way. The face was framed by...well, it wasn't hair exactly, not in the usual sense, but rather several layers of broad, flat ribbons, translucent and mint-green and about an eighth of an inch thick; they seemed to grow from the top and sides of the head and hung down to a bit past shoulder-length. The skin on the body was chalk-white, with just a hint of pink on the thin lips and on the gripping side of the finger- and toe-pads.
On the whole, it wasn't an unpleasant or ugly creature to look at, maybe even kind of cute in a weird sort of way, like some sort of bizarre Pokemon knockoff, but it was strange seeing something humanoid enough to be recognizable as such, yet much more alien than the...well, the aliens. He wondered what on Earth (or off it) this thing was, and why he'd never heard of it before; sure, it wasn't like he was big into the whole alien thing the way some of the nerds at his school were, but if these things existed, they should've been covered in class at some point, right? Were they being kept secret? That'd make this even more valuable than just being a new and unknown species of alien!
With that thought in mind, Greg began to think about how to get it home. He was a little leery of trying to open the case, in case there was an alarm on it or something, but he could hardly haul that entire fridge-sized thing down the ladder himself, even if it wasn't bolted to the floor or anything. And he hadn't brought any kind of a sack with him, or anything to tie the creature up with; really, he'd never expected to find a living thing in here in the first place. But...he couldn't just leave it here - not with the next Find of the Century staring him in the face.
Cautiously, he reached out and touched the front of the case. No zaps; good. Sure enough, it was a door, though he couldn't see how the hinges worked since the whole thing appeared to be a single continuous piece of glass. To his surprise, he found that it wasn't locked or anything; he opened it and reached inside, then drew his hand back with a startled yelp when he felt a sudden tingle. Well, really more of an un-tingle; it was like the sensation of suddenly not having sensation. Cautiously, he reached in again, and the feeling returned, but only to the part of his arm that was inside the case. Yes, that was it; his muscular nerves still worked, but all external sensation was deadened. Maybe this was some kind of sensory-deprivation thing, some kind of...sleep field? Nerds like Dennis and Scott probably had a word for it. Maybe this was why the creature hadn't left the case despite it being unlocked.
Working carefully, Greg reached into the case and took the creature by the shoulders. Actually finding and grabbing it took some work; he had to do it mostly by sight, since he couldn't even feel its body with his hands, although he could feel the heft of it in his muscles once he began to lift. He grunted; it was heavier than he'd expected. As he lifted it out of the case and the field within, sensation returned to his arms like a limb coming back after "going to sleep;" he gasped at the sudden prickling fire, nearly dropped the creature, yanked it close to him in an attempt to avoid that, and ended up tumbling backward to the floor with the alien landing atop his chest. He scrambled to his feet, having just enough time in contact with it to note that its skin was just slightly leathery and its body temperature a little below human before he was out from under it and the creature slumped to the floor.
As Greg steadied himself from the sudden adrenaline rush, he realized that the creature was stirring. He hadn't planned for anything like this, and really didn't know how to respond; he simply watched in silent curiosity as it shifted, blinked, propped itself up on four limbs and gave a long and almost feline yawn-and-stretch, and rose upright, looking around with an idle, uncomprehending expression. The creature stood about three feet tall, but this was mostly because of its posture; the natural stance had it standing on the balls of its feet, ankles raised high, with the legs drawn partly up towards the body, the shoulders forward, and the arms dangling, like a kangaroo or the old depictions of T-rexes with their tails dragging along the ground. The tail here was indeed almost dragging, but lifted up just enough to glide an inch or two above the floor. If the creature had been standing fully upright, it probably would've been about four feet tall; no wonder it'd been so heavy!
He could see its eyes now; they were indeed large, with glimmering pinkish-red irises that took up much of the visible surface (though the white wasn't hidden altogether like a horse's or cow's eye.) The eyes flicked from side to side periodically, but there was no intelligence in them; despite the humanoid body structure, it felt like this was nothing more than an animal. Similarly, the movement of the head from side to side was just idle instinct, merely checking its surroundings on waking up, softly panting as if sampling the air. Greg was almost a little disappointed by this, but while he was still thinking on the question of what he wanted the creature to be, he was distracted by the spectacle of the "hair" ribbons lifting up and spreading out of their own accord, gently drifting around the head and poking this way and that. It was alarmingly like the depiction of Medusa in some old movie he'd caught on TV once.
Greg watched this for a moment, wondering what he should do; had this been a terrible mistake? Was this thing actually dangerous? The expression was too bovine to seem plausibly threatening, but something about the serpentine motions of the ribbons was instinctively unsettling, and...was that one pointing at him?
He was just about to lurch out of the way when the creature pounced. Suddenly everything was a tangle of limbs and lashing hair-ribbons; the alien was clinging to his chest like a baby koala, pinning his arms to his sides, and the ribbons were wrapping around his head as he tried to pull free. It was no good; they were stretchy, but much stronger than they seemed like they should've been. In mere moments, he was trapped in a cocoon of ribbons with the creature's face just inches from his. As terrified as he was, he couldn't help but notice that nothing about its expression was aggressive or menacing, not even in the way that a stalking animal is; it was as if it was simply holding him like this because it had to, for God knew what reason. It continued its shallow panting, and he could smell its breath; it was odd, but not odious. As it held him, wrapped in its own "hair," two of the ribbon-ends poked around to the sides of his head, then pressed firmly into his temples.
Greg tried one last time to free himself from the creature's grip, but there was a sudden flare of heat from the ends of the ribbons, and the entire cocoon flickered to life as surges of light lanced through the ribbons. The heat increased and he was afraid that the thing was trying to burrow into his skull, but there was no pain; instead, he was awash in a sudden, rapid, and confusing jumble of pure thought, massive and complete and directionless, like someone was trying to cram every memory he'd ever had through a drinking straw. He was conscious, but overwhelmed by the torrent of information thundering past him; this went on for what felt like a small eternity, and then suddenly it was over. Just as suddenly, the creature released its grip, unraveled the cocoon, and dropped to the floor.
Greg panted in sudden exhaustion from the mental deluge he'd just been subjected to, and staggered back, nearly collapsing into one of the stacks of boxes. He stared at the creature in astonishment - what the hell was that!? Wondering if it really had been trying to suck his brain out, he took a quick mental index of his memories and decided that they were all there, or at least as many of them as he could remember...which was less reassuring the more he thought about it, but if he wasn't a drooling vegetable and could remember his own name, he had to be doing alright, right? But that...that thing...
That thing was looking pretty shell-shocked itself, actually. The shallow panting had given way to a combination of labored, heaving breaths and sharp, strangled noises of confusion. The creature was regarding its surroundings with an entirely new expression of bafflement and shock; considering the placid, empty-headed gaze with which it'd regarded the room earlier, this was enough of a stunning development to put Greg back off his guard and get him busy just watching what the thing did.
The alien turned its attention to him and gave a startled squawk. There was something different about it now; an intelligence behind the eyes that had formerly been empty. Its expressions were much more readable now, though the simplified features made it still a little weird. Suddenly it seemed much more like a person than a dumb beast, which was simultaneously comforting and alarming. Then it spoke.
"Wh-wh-why am I th-there!?" it yelped, raising a trembling finger to point at Greg. The voice was quiet and rather high-pitched; the pronunciation was off, like the creature wasn't used to forming words with that particular mouth and tongue. "Why are y-you me!?"
The words hit Greg like a brick. Not even stopping to consider this madness, he turned and sprang for the hatchway; grabbing hold of the ladder, he scrambled to the ground as fast as he could, slipping a couple times and only just catching himself. He tripped outright when he was on one of the bottom rungs, and slammed into the lawn; he lurched to his feet, but his foot was still caught, and bottom of the ladder went with him for a few feet until the far end pulled free from the entry of the saucer, and the entire thing fell to the ground with a deafening clatter. He yanked his leg free and dashed to his bicycle, leapt on, and took off without even stopping to put the kickstand up.
Greg watched in astonishment as the doppelganger he'd suddenly found himself face-to-face with turned and bolted for the hatch, disappearing out of sight so fast he honestly thought it might've just fallen straight to the ground, but after the sudden crashing of the ladder, he heard the familiar zizzz of a bicycle speeding off. What had just happened? One minute the alien had had him wrapped up like a straightjacket and was breathing in his face, then the world had gone blank for a minute and the next thing he knew, he was staring up at himself...! Was it like the old movies? Had the thing actually copied his identity? Was it trying to take over his life?
But...that didn't make a hell of a lot of sense. If it really were trying to surreptitiously steal his identity, why leave him alive? Actually, why steal his life in the first place? Why not someone with money or power? What did it want him for? He groaned softly and put a hand to his forehead.
He froze. The hand...the hand was not his. The voice was all wrong, as well; in fact, he realized both things had been this way when he'd called out to the doppelganger too. He was panting softly and somehow he could smell things in his mouth, and there was green at the fringes of his vision...
Slowly, and with a growing sense of dread, Greg removed the hand from his head and held it in front of his face. It was chalk-white, with slightly leathery skin on three fingers with thick pads on the tips. He looked down at his body and was met with long, dangling arms and drawn-up, oddly-shaped legs. He could feel the weight of a tail suspended behind him, and one thin green ribbon poked its way into his field of view, idly investigating a stray bit of...wave?...energy?...travelling through the air around him. He felt a chill go down his spine, from the top of his head to the tip of his tail. He had become the creature!
The realization was staggering. How had this happened? It must have swapped bodies with him...! It had stolen his body, and left him in its own! It was already out there, going home to his life! He dashed for the hatch, or tried to; unused to moving on these legs, he performed a graceless face-plant on the floor of the saucer. He managed to get up on all fours and stagger his way over to the entryway, only to be stopped by the realization that, with the ladder gone, it was a thirty-foot drop to the ground below. Unless this creature could float like the "normal" aliens...unless it could do it so naturally that he didn't have to learn how, he was stuck up here...
Greg looked around at the interior of the saucer in despair. This was supposed to have been his big opportunity...! Now, instead, he'd had his own body stolen from him, been thrust into this strange and unfamiliar one, and been left trapped here...this wasn't how it was supposed to go! He couldn't even leave...in a surprisingly human gesture for such an alien body, he began to cry. Was he going to be trapped here forever? Would they take him into space and he'd never be seen again? Was that better or worse than starving to death or breaking his neck falling out of the saucer? Would he-
His fugue of morbid speculation was interrupted when a figure sailed up through the entryway and struck as much of an intimidating pose as a middle-aged woman in a silver nightgown could. "Dasta!" she barked. "Idra numoki!"
Greg glanced up at her in surprise and fear. He'd seen Scott's stepmother before, back at last year's graduation before she'd married Scott's dad, but he'd never seen her angry. Despite the fact that she was in her pajamas, her hair was a mess, and her eyes were bleary, he actually found himself a bit intimidated; of course, the fact that she was the better part of twice his current height probably played a part in that.
Lalaxi looked around the room as if to see whether anyone was hiding behind the boxes, waiting to attack or make a dash for the exit. Then she looked down at the small figure before her. Her eyes went wide; then she rolled them and gave a tired groan. "Ahhh, dama...kiu esti..." She shook her head as if to clear her thoughts and leaned down towards Greg. "Tell me," she said in English, "what is your name?"
"Wait," Ida Wilkins said, staring down at the scene before her - her son on the one hand, a child-sized humanoid-salamander sort of critter on the other, an alien woman she'd seen around town between them, and a bleary-eyed, confused-looking pink-haired alien girl hovering cautiously in the back. "Let me get this straight. You're telling me this is Greg?"
"It's the truth!" Greg said, pointing at the imposter that had stolen his body. "That thing trapped me in its body and tried to take over my life!"
"Don't listen to this thing, Mom!" Greg yelped, staring daggers at the alien creature. "It assaulted me and now it's trying to frame me!"
"Both of you, shut up!" Greg's mother snapped. "I was asking the nice lady whose spaceship you broke into, young man. We're going to have a talk about that after we get this cleared up." She turned back to Lalaxi, who was floating before her in something of an apologetic manner. "Please just tell me what's going on here. Is that my son, or not?"
"Er, well," the alien woman responded, "specific terms...if 'your son' means the boy-child you gave birth to, then obviously not. But if you mean that this creature has the mind of the person you know as 'Greg,' then yes..."
The human woman stared at her. "But how can that be Greg if this is Greg?"
"Ah, let me explain," Lalaxi said, taking a moment to think of how best to put it in a language that was not her native tongue. Looking over at Scott, who was still in her pajamas but had agreed to come with in case she had trouble explaining something, she was glad she'd at least taken the time to straighten out her hair a bit before coming over; she already felt off her game and under-prepared for this conversation as it was, but she knew it would be best to get it over with before things got out of hand....
"This creature," she said, "is a species native to Deneb IV. The locals call it miwi-miwi; it means something like, how do you say, 'monkey-sees-monkey-does?' It has a large brain for its size, but it never develops any higher brain function by itself, only simple instincts. What it does is it seeks out the most intelligent creature in its surroundings and copies that mind for its own."
"Copies...?" Ida repeated in astonishment. Lalaxi nodded. "The head-tentacles are very sensitive to electrical impulses. Any creature with the kind of electrochemical neural system that most complex lifeforms in our part of the galaxy have will emit patterns that it can read and copy. Once these are recorded into its own brain, it effectively has a copy of the other creature's thoughts and memories."
Greg stared up at the alien woman, fuming inside but knowing his mother too well to want to interrupt. Was she trying to say that he was just a copy? That...that the being he'd thought was an impostor was actually the real Greg? How could this get any worse!? It'd been bad enough to have this all happen to him, and having that freak Scott see him like this and having the alien woman insist on dressing him in her youngest daughter's hand-me-downs didn't help things either (he had to be clothed to go out, she said, and the skirt was necessary because there were no pants to suit this body's tail, but did it have to be this weird baby-blue lamé stuff?) but to be told on top of that that he wasn't even the real him?
His mother frowned. "So what you're telling me is that they're both Greg."
"Yes," Lalaxi said, glad that she was getting through. "They are two branches of Greg's mind from the point where the copy was made - one which continued on in his original body, and the other which has found itself in the body of the miwi-miwi. Both have the same thoughts and memories before that point."
Ida frowned. "But why haven't we ever heard about these things? I mean, your people have been sharing information and technology with us..."
Lalaxi glanced aside for a moment, trying to think of how to approach an awkward subject. "They, er...trade in them is banned," she said. "They are a protected species...they're sought after in the underworld. Being able to copy someone's mind into a creature that you can keep to do what you like with has many...unpleasant creative uses. This one was only here because someone tried to smuggle it onto Earth; the embassy was keeping it in my craft until it could be sent back to its homeworld."
"Yeah, I'll bet." Greg's mother looked over at both of him. "Is...is there any chance that this 'miwi-miwi' can, I don't know, copy something else? Someone else? I have my hands full with one kid..."
The alien woman shook her head. "It is possible," she said. "In the wild, they do it often, when they encounter a better choice for a 'guest' mind. But once they copy a sentient creature, they almost never change; the copied mind resists it very strongly, because from its perspective it would cease to be...like dying."
She thought on that for a minute. "I suppose it would be, wouldn't it...? We definitely don't want that..."
Greg stared at his mother, unable to keep his mouth shut any longer. "Mom, you can't possibly be thinking of keeping that...thing with us!?"
She fixed him with The Look. "Gregory Philip Wilkins, this entire thing was your fault, so don't go telling me what I'm supposed to do to clean up your mess. You were the one who went and got another of you loaded up in this creature's brain; I'm just looking after my child, even if there's two of him now."
Greg felt heartened by his mother's defense; at least she saw him as really him and not just some copy. He opened his mouth to fire back at human-him, but his mom cut him short with another Look. "You're not off the hook either. If you're really Greg, you made the same decisions he did. Both of you are my kid, so you both better listen, got it?"
Both of them nodded; they knew that tone.
She nodded sharply. "Right." She turned back to the other woman. "Is...is there anything we need to be concerned about, with a...miwi-miwi?"
Lalaxi thought for a moment, floating in a pensive posture, then shook her head. "Not really," she said. "They're quite harmless in themselves; even the copying process is non-intrusive. And they're fairly omnivorous. As far as the legal side of things goes, I think the embassy staff can help get that sorted out. Beyond that, it's your child's mind in there; you know that better than anyone else, I expect."
Ida chuckled dryly. "Don't I just. At least that simplifies things...I thought one son was a handful, now I've got another little one on top of that..."
Lalaxi laughed and grinned. Finally, some good news she could offer! "Oh, don't worry," she said brightly; "despite the size, this is a mature young female."
Behind her, Scott's eyes went wide; ahead, the human woman stared at her. "Pardon?"
