McMilllan Tech Industries, former office of Marketing Executive Martin Stragey
Dr. Anissa Fairlane's next session was with Roman Coakley, the president of the Lake Point Mutual bank chain. What had formerly been a 61 year old man was now a young female ninja dressed in the black outfit often associated in popular imagination with ninjas. She had, however, removed her headpiece earlier, revealing a 23-year old Asian woman with long dark hair.
"I guess I was in the wrong place at the wrong time." Coakley began. "The truth is, there wasn't a Board meeting scheduled today. I was only here to speak with Mr. McMillan and Mr. Quarterson about the company's current financial situation, and the meeting scheduled for Thursday."
Coakley sighed. "I guess it's for the best there wasn't a meeting scheduled today. If the other outside directors got caught up in this mess, the whole situation could have been a lot worse. Every Board needs a good number of outside directors to supply the objectivity and outside experience that the inside directors just don't have. Not that I'm saying the inside directors aren't important. I'm glad Mr. Sallow and Ms. Brewster and the others weren't there, either."
"The others would include Mr. Adaway, I presume?" Dr. Fairlane asked.
"I can't say I know him very well. He's a newcomer to the Board, only appointed Department Head of Marketing the past week. Mr. Stragey didn't take it well, but I'm sure you know that by now." Coakley said.
"Tell me what happened at the meeting." Anissa said.
"As I said, there wasn't a meeting scheduled, but we called this impromptu meeting once Transformation Guns began appearing all over the building. So it was just the five of us: Mr. McMillan, Mr. Dankworth, Mr. Quarterson, Ms. Stallsworth, and myself. Mr. Adaway and Mr. Sallow were in the building, but they didn't answer the call to attend. For the best, I suppose."
Anissa nodded, and allowed Coakley to continue.
"Anyway, Mr. McMillan locked the meeting room, so that we could wait out the Transformation Gun chaos, and have a smaller impromptu meeting discussing it. I kept in touch with the Bank via my phone, and heard about the bank robbery at the west branch. And the reports of the Transformation Gun chaos spreading to the rest of the world." Coakley said. "When we heard the reports giving the time all guns in the world turned into Transformation Guns, we knew that the mess started here."
"How did you know?" Anissa asked.
"At precisely the same time the news reports gave, this building experienced a surge. The lights flickered for a moment. And there was this ... ripple ... that we all felt." Coakley said. "Like a tiny earthquake or something. It also coincided with reports of some sort of explosion or some other disturbance in one of the basement labs in what I'm told is the Research and Development department."
"Put that all together, and we knew that some experiment or something in the lab caused this worldwide Event. We didn't know what exactly happened, but we knew that whenever the media found out it originated here, McMillan Tech Industries would have a lot of explaining to do." Coakley concluded. "Granted, the Event already has done a lot of good in the world. You know about the bank robbery?"
Anissa nodded. "I've heard about it."
"Thanks to all those weapons being replaced with Transformation Guns, that whole situation was resolved without anyone getting hurt." Coakley said. "Still, the whole world is going to be demanding answers. So we met to discuss our options. We were planning on reaching the heads of the PR Department and the Legal Department via video conferencing later on, but then Mr. Stragey showed up and ... you know."
"I have heard the accounts of the others." Dr. Fairlane said. "Can you tell me what happened from your point of view?"
"Well, I'm sure the others have told you all about why Mr. Stragey did what he did. Just bursting in there like that made it clear to all of us that the Board made the right decision in not granting him the position of Head of Marketing. But I suppose he thought that the Transformation Gun he was carrying -- the thing Dr. McLewis called a Random Gun -- was going to make us more inclined to see things his way. He zapped each of us once with that thing: Mr. McMillan, Mr. Dankworth, Mr. Quarterson, Ms. Stallsworth, and myself."
"In that first round, everyone changed sex except me. Had it ended there, I'd have been the only one who didn't change sex even once. I turned into a much younger man. I had no interest in anime or coplay - that was all younger people's stuff - but after I changed, I knew right away just what shonen anime was, and that I was cosplaying as a composite of a number of male shonen anime heroes." Coakley said.
"I looked ridiculously out of place in that setting. Most of us did." Coakley said, with a brief chuckle. "But even though we had some mental changes to go along with the physical changes, we all knew who we were, and most of us knew right from wrong. Except Mr. Dankworth, that is. I always suspected he'd go too far one day."
"Anyway, Mr. Dankworth was in the form of one of those scheming night time soap opera female antagonists from the 80s, and apparently saw the opportunity to do a hostile takeover. I think she might have whispered the words 'This is my time now', or something like that. The woman Mr. Dankworth had become fought with Mr. Stragey over the Random Gun, Mr. Dankworth got turned into a man resembling an escaped mental patient, Mr. Stragey got turned into a scared little girl, and then..."
Coakley paused. There was a haunted, pained expression on the female ninja's face. "I ... I don't know if I can do this. It... you do know what happened next, right?"
"The others told me that in his new form, Mr. Dankworth used the Random Gun to transform all of you over and over again seemingly for the joy of doing it. What are your thoughts on the matter?" Anissa asked.
"Yes. That's a good way to describe it." Coakley said. "He was screaming "CHANGE! CHANGE!' over and over again at the top of his lungs. He didn't care any more about the company, he'd gone completely and totally mad. The screaming made it so hard to focus. I kept changing, over and over again..."
"Do you remember what you changed into?" Anissa asked.
"It all happened so fast. So many came and went. I can tell you at least some of them, but I can't be sure which order they came in." Coakley replied. The female ninja closed her eyes tightly for a moment and paused for a moment before resuming.
"Let's see. First came my first sex change - I got turned into a nun. But I had no time to even think too much about it before I was turned into, I think, a roaring 20s flapper, kind of similar to the young lady Mr. Quarterson is now stuck as. I didn't have much time to think about that one either, as I kept changing race and sex and age over and over. I was a nurse at one point, a female nurse - I'd like to think I could have helped Dr. Elaine and the rest look after the others if I stayed that way, but I'll never know because I got changed into so many other people."
"Let's see, A Pacific Islander man, a black male hip hop artist, a cowgirl, an Asian man, a cheerleader, a wrestler, a brooding fellow wearing a hockey mask, a young female figure skater... I don't think they came in that order. So many different forms, so many personalites. It's all I can do to remember that much. Don't ask me to tell you which order they came in."
Anissa nodded. This was similar to what others had told her.
"I couldn't focus. All I was aware of was my own changes, and the screams and laughter. And then the explosion. I didn't know what happened until later. I think I blacked out just as something splattered on me." Coakley said, with a shudder.
"I found out later that the Random Gun overheated from Mr. Dankworth using it too many times in three minutes without giving it a chance to cool down, and it exploded, taking him with it. That accounted for the splattering - it was his entrails flying all over the place. Anyway, when I woke up, I didn't know who I really was. I thought I really was this female ninja on some sort of assignment, though I couldn't remember who hired me or what the mission was."
"I could still speak English, though. A truly skilled ninja often works undercover. Contrary to what popular fiction would have you believe, dressing in dark clothes isn't the only way for ninjas to blend in. Ninjas also employ disguises, and some may go on missions requiring them to know other languages. So I know English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, French, and Spanish, even though I didn't know some of them before these changes." Coakley explained.
"Anyway, I was confused. I didn't know what I was doing here - I might have been here to steal something, or take someone out, or ... I don't really want to think about it. Suddenly, it was as if I was splashed with water or something, and I came to my senses. I remembered who I was. Roman Coakley, a 61 year old white male bank president, about as far removed from a kunoichi or any other type of ninja as you could get."
"Do you still have thoughts and feelings associated with the ninja persona?" Anissa asked.
"Yes." Coakley replied. "Sometimes I have the urge to sneak into places unseen, place poison in people's drinks, or sneak up on people from behind. Or fight people with stereotypical martial arts weapons like sai, staff, or shuriken. And it scares me. I don't want it."
"Do you believe you can control these urges?" Dr. Fairlane asked.
"I think so." Coakley said. "At least, I'd like to think so. Still, I don't want to find myself sleepwalking and wake up to find I've snuck into my own bank's vault and robbed it in the middle of the night, or done something worse. Don't get me wrong - this new body has its advantages. It's younger and healthier than my old one, but if it comes with these kinds of thoughts, then I'd rather be restored to my former self."
"Are you certain about this?" Anissa asked. "Are you sure you won't change your mind about this given a few days?"
Coakley sighed. "I do think I can get this under control if I tried hard enough. But I think they might still get in the way of my duties as head of the bank. A ninja's life is more exciting, yes, but now that my normal self is in charge, I find I don't really want a life of adventure. I'd rather have a quiet life as a bank president."
"Have you been told about the Restoration Guns, and how they work?" Anissa asked.
Coakley nodded.
"I do feel it necessary to remind you that if what Ryan Leeson and Randall Jeffries told me is accurate, it will take several of what they call 'zaps' with the Restoration Gun to restore you to your original form. Dr. McLewis calculated that you and the others may have been transformed at least twenty times each. That means that you will have to go through each transformation again, one at a time, until you finally arrive at your original form." Anissa said.
"And that means that given what you have already experienced, plus the nature of the transformations, you risk serious psychological effects." Anissa added. "You need to decide if it is worth the risk."
"I understand." Coakley said.
"I have a session with Mr. Stragey next, and then we can talk about the Restoration Guns some more." Dr. Fairlaine said. "We'll need to discuss this with Mr. Leeson and ---"
She stopped speaking at this point, as she and Coakley turned toward the door. There was a commotion in the hall outside.
