Lt. Colonel Sabrina Waters hopped off the personnel truck and took just a moment to smooth out her dress uniform before walking smartly towards the newly established command post. It was a bit unnerving to be both in a newly established forward operating base and ostensibly on native soil, but she knew it was what the situation called for. Everyone knew about the Lakepoint Incident that had occurred two weeks ago, and until they were 100% sure everything was back under control, the whole affected area, roughly ten square miles centered on the modest city of Lakepoint, was under military control.
"Ah, Lt. Colonel Waters," an older man sporting the single silver star of a brigadier general looked up from a report as she stepped into his office in the co-opted town hall. Sabrina snapped off a sharp salute but he waved her off, "at ease, Waters. We've got a lot of work to do and I want to get cracking right away. You've been briefed on what we're dealing with?"
"Somewhat, sir" she replied, "central command informed me that a pathogen caused some bizarre spontaneous physical mutations throughout town radically changing the afflicted's personal appearances." Sabrina was a 34 year old former special forces operative, but nowadays the blonde worked as a propaganda and mental warfare specialist for the armed forces. She assumed she was being brought in to manage the media, who were very curious about what exactly had happened at Lakepoint, and had thus far just barely been successfully kept in the dark.
The general barked a laugh, "that's what the eggheads are saying, but I never heard of no pathogen that could do what's been done here. Look, Waters, this is going to sound crazy, but on an afternoon two weeks ago a good chunk of this town felt the overpowering desire to pleasure themselves. Now, that's strange enough on its own, but what happened next is the reason we're here. Basically, everyone affected then transformed into a perfect physical duplicate of whoever they were picturing while they, well, you know."
"But," Sabrina said slowly, "that's impossible, right?"
The general took his hat off and rubbed his forehead, "I'd a said the same thing but I've seen the footage and met the people, and it damn well seems possible now. You can't even really just explain it as some sort of DNA overwrite, since if whoever they was jacking it to happened to be within the affected area, the transformation went both ways."
"You mean..."
"I mean when Timmy the college dropout cranked it to the pretty single mom across the street, not only did he turn into a her, but she turned into him. Honestly, we're damned lucky that the two way transformations were at least confined like that. I've got two dozen perfect copies of celebrities on my hands, but thank god, no one outside the zone seems to have been transformed."
"It- it seems like you have your hands full," Sabrina half stuttered before recovering and asking, "What exactly do you want me to do, sir? Am I part of the team trying to figure out who's behind this?"
The general shook his head, "no, the pentagon's got every egghead they can trust looking into the how and half the spies in Washington hunting for whoever caused this. Your orders, quite simply, are to cover it up."
"Cover it up, sir?"
"Make it like it didn't happen," the general said flatly. "We can only quarantine this area so long and we don't want anyone knowing what happened here. It could cause a panic, or worse, show an enemy that their new weapon has been effective. Your job is to figure out a way to get everyone affected up to snuff to go back into the world and show folks everything is normal. Look, you said it yourself, this whole situation seems impossible, right? Use that, or don't. I don't really care how you do it, but I want you to get it done."
