Gilbert. Jon knew Gilbert was a sci-fi geek who dreamed of being able to transform himself into a hero and escape his shell of a world.
Jon found just the thing for him: A little Item Called The Morphic Adaptation Unit. Jon knew that the alien aspect would appeal to him. Jon had looked it up on his HD internet ready Crystal Ball and found the following information:
Rules for the Morphic Adaptation Unit, Mark 5
The unit comes packaged for shipping in a seamless metal box,
about 9 inches by 15 inches by four inches thick. It is incredibly
light, and also resistant to virtually anything a normal person could
find to attack it. (This includes blowtorches, hammers, pick-axes,
drills, being run over, etc. You get the picture. This is one tough
little box!) The only thing visible on the box are some alien
symbols, which if translated, would read:
Gamalfi Corp.
Morphic Adaptation Unit, Mark 5
To activate evaluation unit, press HERE
When activated, it stretches itself to a box about the size of a
telephone booth. Three sides are bare; the fourth is covered by a
door on half, with controls on the other half. The door has a
purplish crystal, which causes the door to be opened.
The controls are the picture of perfection in a user interface.
There is a ruby control plate looking like a 3-fingered hand, and
above it, a rectangular display surface. Touching the ruby control
plate causes it to read the mind waves of the user; thereafter, the
system displays the body as directed by the user's thought
patterns. After thinking about a body or change, the display shows
the effects. When a user removes his or her hand, the display
freezes in the last configuration.
On first use, the display will scroll through alien characters; these
are the Gamalfi Corp's standard disclosure, license agreement,
and disclaimer from damage. It also says, very clearly, in perfect
Fwirthian script, that the unit has been activated for a 4-day
evaluation period, and that changes subsequent to that period
would require electronic payment to the Gamalfi corporation.
Pressing on the crystal plate indicates that the user accepts the
terms of the license agreement, including the time limitation.
Changes are limited only by the imagination of the user, but with a
couple of safeguards. Intelligence cannot be reduced, nor can the
unit alter a body to a less-fit state. In other words, it can't
deliberately inflict damage or harm to a user.
When the evaluation period expires, any and all changes are
basically permanent unless and until either payment is made or an
unexpired unit is found.
After the time expires, the following message is displayed, albeit in
Fwirthian.
We are sorry, but your four-day evaluation license has
expired. To continue using the Mark 5 Morphic
Adaptation Unit, please remit 52,495 Fwirthi Rakburs to
the Gemalfi Corporation within eight Febulons. Thank
you for trying the Mark 5 Morphic Adaptation Unit.
The message continues for about 20 hours (8 Febulons), after
which the box restows itself.
Below is some background on the units.
**
Prologue
First Tm'skor was having a bad day. This had started as a very
routine day on another routine freight run on just one more routine
Fwirthian freight ship. He was looking forward to a peaceful
retirement after 84 cycles of dutiful, if boring, service on the
Fwirthian merchant fleet, including the past 12 cycles as First,
commander of a vessel. Of course, as a member of the merchant
caste of Fwirthi, he lacked the imagination to see how dull and
boring his job really was.
That was, until this morning, when his ship was suddenly
surrounded by warp holes, each one spitting forth a M'Platwiri
attack cruiser. Even as the bells rang the alarm of the pirate
attack, bolts of energy splashed against his hull plates. The ship
groaned in protest as his pitiful crew, soft and helpless, shrieked
their terror, dashing about in confusion and abandoning their duty
stations. Even Tm'skor was frightened and confused. Fwirthian
merchant ships were not crewed by the military caste; as such,
they were easy prey for the M'Platwiri pirates.
Rather, they should have been. The fates stepped in, and spared
Tm'skor the fate of being captured by the pirates. As he stumbled
about his bridge, confused and frightened like the other Fwirthian
crewmembers, he collided with his navigator, and the pair
smashed into the navigation controls. Of the buttons depressed
randomly by the flailing captain, one commanded the engines to
engage, and the warp generator to activate. The ship, still
drawing fire, vanished into a warp hole.
Wounded, spewing freight containers from the ugly gashes in the
hull, the ship popped out of its warp hole in a backwater of the
galaxy, an uninteresting, backward system with one nondescript
yellow star and only one reasonably habitable planet. First
Tm'skor and his crew ignored the system. It wasn't on their route,
and as such it held no interest to their unimaginative minds. And
because their orders said nothing about recovering cargo lost from
battle damage (such conditions couldn't have been imagined by
the traders commissioning the cargo!), they ignored the countless
canisters trailing their ship like a ribbon of confetti, each carrying
nearly three thousand cubic meters of cargo . As soon as the
essential systems had been repaired, they swung around the sun,
set a new course, and dropped into another artificial warp hole.
Behind the ship, a trail of cargo canisters, not having a warp hole
as a destination, felt the tug and pull of the tiny sun and its tiny
planets. Some fell almost immediately into the sun. Others were
smashed against asteroids or moons or planets. For centuries to
come, though, most of the cargo canisters would drift through the
system, lost forever to the shipping company and its customers.
Eventually, a few of the cargo canisters, bearing the legend of the
Glamafi Company, skimmed the atmosphere of the third planet.
The canisters broke up quickly, disintegrating in the awful heat,
but the cargo itself was made of sterner stuff.
***
FAQ:
Q. How many units were lost?
A. Hundreds of freight containers were lost; only a few of these
burned up in the sun or smashed into planets or moons. Most
are left circling the sun in cometary orbits. A dozen or so
containers burned up in the Earth's atmosphere, spewing the
units all across the Earth.
Q. How many units were in each container?
A. Given the shipping size and the volume of a container, it is
assumed that each container held over two hundred thousand
MAUs.
Q. Why does the unit leave changes permanent?
A. The Fwirthians are very unimaginative creatures, and they
strongly like their bodies as they are. Consequently, they use
the MAU to perform a task, then they change back. The
concept of a permanent change is alien to them.
Q. How much can the MAU alter thought processes?
A. The MAU can alter the thought processes only to the extent
necessary to make a person comfortable with the change and
to behave in accordance with what is expected. For example,
if a guy changed into a girl, the MAU couldn't change his mind
to that of a bimbo. It could, however, make his libido high -
assuming that was what his pattern was. It cannot make a guy
comfortable mentally being a girl, nor change sexual
orientation.
Q. Can an MAU cause damaging changes?
A. No.
Q. Can a person reuse a MAU after a suitable wait?
A. No. The MAU recognizes the brain waves of repeat users, and
will not open, let alone function. Anti-theft protection for the
Gamalfi Corp's intellectual property, you know.
Q. How long is an MAU dormant after a use?
A. At least a month. It also has to be moved, although that part
hasn't been figured out by anyone yet. The minimum distance
is 80,000 Small Keflecs, which is roughly two hundred miles.
(Remember, this is Small Keflecs, not Great Keflecs.
Otherwise, the unit would have to be transported interplanetary
distances to reactivate!)
Q. Does the government know about the MAUs?
A. Yes. The government has recovered MAUs after expiration,
and has dozens of them in a secret lab. Scientists are
attempting to decipher the Fwirthian script. Users of the MAU
may be contacted by a special set of secret agents who
investigate anything that sounds like MAU use.
Q. When you say that the unit deactivates in 4 days, does that
mean that the transformation wears off in 4 days, or that the
unit's ability to work deactivates, leaving the character stuck in
a transformed state?
A. The device deactivates, precluding further use. The user is
stuck with the last transformation.
Q. Can the booths be used an unlimited number of times or with
multiple people?
A. The booth can be used an unlimited number of times within
the 4-day time span. Other people can use the booth as well,
so long as the time from first use to last use is no longer than
4-days. As an example, say Bob find the booth on day 1. He
does some transforms, and on day 2, shows Phil. Day 3, he
shows Rita. On day 4, they show Brad. All 4 are using the
MAU, but at the end of day 4, it doesn't work any more for any
of them, since the unit was activated by Bob, and his license
has expired.
Q. How could they possibly figure out how to decipher the
symbols, if they are truly alien symbols?
A. The symbols aren't deciphered by the people. That's the joy -
they get stuck because they can't read!
Q. Does it have a countdown sequence like in Independence Day
that sounds like it's counting down - even though the symbols
are unreadable to the protagonists. Or maybe when they get
altered, they remember bits and pieces of the information,
translated to their language, from what would have been the
ingrained instruction manual? And as the story progresses,
they have to piece it together, and see if they can figure it out
before the deadline is met, whenever that is.
A. Good suggestions. Maybe in the Mark 6. Gamalfi customer
service appreciates your suggestions for improving the
Morphic Adaptation Unit. As a way of thanking our customers,
you are entitled to use a Morphic Adapation Unit, Mark 5, for
twice the standard demonstration period with no additional
fees.
Q. Isn't the idea of the unit is to let a potential customer try
something in the hopes that they'll buy it. Isn't it more likely
that, at the end of the demonstration period, the customer
would change back?
A. Remember that the Fwirthians have very little imagination, and
this is more like limited-time demo shareware. Everything
works just fine - until the time expires. Then you have to pay
to continue using it, especially to undo changes which are
currently in place.
Q. Maybe this could be what happens. The system has failsafes
so the users don't mess things up when they initially transform.
But if the system isn't paid in that alien currency, the failsafes
deactivate, e.g.
A human turns into a furry.
Intelligence decreases by 50%
36 C-cups go to 48 EE
Libido triples
A woman in her early 20s reverts to a 12-year old.
Does the subject get a warning of what will happen?
A. The Gamalfi Company appreciates your suggestions. This
was tried with the Mark 2 and 3 MAUs. Negative feedback
from the customers, coupled with an extremely high rate of
purchase of demo units, has caused us to delete this feature.
(The lawsuits were also a little persuasive.) As to warnings,
the unit clearly displays the End User License Agreement at
the time the unit is unpacked, and an additional warning is
given the first time the unit is used with less than 24 hours
remaining on the demo license. What more do you want?
Q. What is meant by 'less-fit-state'?
A. The device uses the mind of the user to extract parameters of
how the bodies of user's species normally operate. This
information is then used to 'bound' the alterations. Age cannot
be significantly increased or decreased, as age-related issues
might cause the subject harm. The normal parameters allow a
- or - 15% change in age, again bounded. An 80 year old
person would not be permitted to add years, as the initial age
is frail.
B. Pregnancy cannot be either created or destroyed by the unit.
C. The mental image being used as a model for the new form
generally conforms to some purpose, e.g. lingerie model or
linebacker. That purpose defines some limits to the system to
assist in deciding what is and is not suitable for
transformation.
D. It might be less of a bother to just refine that to say the MAU
can't introduce disease or decrease intellectual capability.
Q. Is it the case that the device designs the new form at the
genetic level for fitness of design, e.g. it doesn't allow a form
that contains a genetic disease or malfunctioning organs.
A. This is correct. The device, by scanning the user, can interpret
the normal parameters of bodily function, and will not allow
changes that are outside the normal functioning.
Q. What about things like breasts?
A. What about them? The unit knows that breasts are mostly
ornamental, and increases in breast size are merely
decorative. If too large an increase is sought, the MAU will
make corresponding changes in other body structures, such as
muscles and skeleton, to accommodate the extra load.
Q. Anything else?
A. Nothing that I can think of right now.
All Jon had to do was wish for one and it was there.
As Gilbert walked in Jon said "Hello Gilbert, I have something just in time for the convention."
"I'm not sure if I'm going. It's about time I grew up. Hey, Wait! How do you know my name?" Gilbert said flustered.
