However, these products are costly, and they don't always provide quick and lasting results. We are impatient. We hate the waiting and the hard work. We want results here and now—that's our nature. We want a single pill to help us grow a swan's neck or to run like a deer. And even if we do manage to overcome some imperfection, we immediately discover another one. This is a never-ending process which offers tremendous commercial opportunities.

  While tinkering with tubes and vials in my home kitchen and experimenting with water from the river where twenty-eight different factories dump their waste, I'd stumbled upon a formula that is capable of turning the pharmaceutical industry upside down. In theory, products based on this formula would be capable of causing nearly instantaneous localized changes in a person's appearance.

  "What kind of changes?" asked Sergey Nikolayevich.

  "A pill that can turn anyone's hair platinum blond," I said.

  "There are plenty of hair products that do that already."

  "This pill works within half an hour and the color change is permanent. No dark roots to worry about. You become blond forever."

  Sergey Nikolayevich scratched his nose. "Not bad, not bad. But, why this? You think that becoming blond is the consumers' ultimate dream?"

  "According to research, blond is the most popular hair color. There are fewer and fewer natural blonds, too. But the important thing here isn't the color, it's the formula. This is only the beginning. Down the line we can adjust it to produce pills capable of changing eye color and ear shape."

  Sergey Nikolayevich brushed back a strand of his straw-blond hair. "What about a pill for turning hair brown?"

  "For now it's just blond," I said carefully, afraid to lose his interest. "But potentially . . ."

  "Fine," he said impatiently. "I'm convinced. How many pills do you have?"

  "So far, just two grams of the powder," I admitted.

  The tube with the powder was in the inner pocket of my jacket. It was enough for two doses, if my calculations were correct.

  The boss frowned, but he hadn't given up on me yet. "Are you sure it works permanently and in thirty minutes?"

  That was the second weak link in my plan B.

  "Theoretically," I said.

  It had worked on my neighbor's hamster. But then the dumb animal had run away.

  "Theoretically," I repeated, with enthusiasm. "I'll need a lab, research assistants, a raise in salary, and a title of Chief Technologist or perhaps Vice President of Innovation. . . . I'll also need funds for preliminary research, computers to calculate dosage and run projections, equipment to produce an experimental batch. And lab rats or hamsters for the experiments, as well as some budget for appeasing the animal rights crowd. Then we'll need chimpanzees and finally human volunteers for clinical trials. These days that's expensive—even volunteers want to be paid. But, what are you going to do? We have to run tests and make sure there are no side effects."

  "That's a hell of a lot of money," stated Sergey Nikolayevich gravely.

  "A standard investment into developing a new product line," I said. "A bribe to get an untested drug certified would cost even more."

  "Much less, actually," admitted Sergey Nikolayevich. "Look, Son, you've got one chance, and that's to produce a concrete result. A flesh-and-blood proof so impressive, it would make my jaw drop. You get a result—you've got a deal. No result—no deal. No one is going to invest in a theory and a vial of tooth powder."

  "Maybe your competitors will feel differently," I suggested. No good negotiation is complete without a touch of blackmail.

  Sergey Nikolayevich gave me the look of a drunken Santa who lost his bag of presents on the way to a Christmas party.

  "No one will bite," he said. "The doorsteps of every corporation are lined with hundreds of self-taught inventors like you, every day. Son, I see you are a persistent sort of fellow. How about this: impress me, then we'll talk about the money."

  You lay on the couch and flipped through the virtual catalog of the Adriatic Riviera real estate. Our marriage was already a year old and you felt it was time to search for a comfortable seaside villa. I fed your delusion with lies about the impending promotion. You smiled, and ate the last sandwich in the house.

  I wasn't hungry anyway. I went to the kitchen, put on a teapot, and pondered my vials and the fate of innovation in the modern world.

  All I could think about was this: in another month or two you'd see through my lies. I poured the powder from the tube onto a saucer, and separated it into two tiny piles with a butter knife. I scraped one pile back into the tube, then licked the other one off the saucer's surface.

  Half an hour later the roots of my hair began to itch. I walked over to the mirror and saw a platinum blond in the reflection. You always preferred blonds, but I had dirty brown hair, an unforgivable sin from your point of view. I had been afraid to try my own creation before because I'm no hero, but circumstances had forced my hand.

  I entered the bedroom to show off my new 'do, but you were fast asleep and smiling like a baby. You were probably dreaming about some famous blond.

  I spent all night laboring in the kitchen. By morning, I had no less than ten grams of the powder.

  Sergey Nikolayevich pinched and examined my head with the critical attention of a savvy shopper picking out the season's first watermelon. Then he sent a strand of my hair to the lab for testing. He pulled the hairs personally. We drank cognac while we waited for the test results. Sergey Nikolayevich squinted at me suspiciously and smoked a cigar. Despite the air-conditioned comfort of his office I felt hot, like a soldier crawling through a minefield under enemy fire.

  Sergey Nikolayevich studied the test results. They said that the sample was natural, and had never had a hair color product applied to it. He cheered up and brushed his hand through his own straw-colored hair.

  "How much powder do you have left?"

  "I made half a tube. That's all I could manage from the base materials I had."

  "That's great, Son. We'll work well together."

  "We need money for initial research and testing," I reminded him.

  "Everyone wants money and no one thinks about the bottom line. What testing? The result is on your head. I'll take the risk and spare the money for a small production run and some marketing.

  "There's a pair of brunettes in Accounting who wanted to color their hair blond. Let's issue them some powder. We'll call it a bonus for their hard work. Let's do this: if in two weeks' time you're still alive and still blond, we'll begin production."

  He tripled my salary, and we shook hands.

  Two weeks later, I didn't die. Upon discovering my new hair color you suddenly became much nicer to me. We still couldn't afford a seaside villa, but we rented a fine house in an affluent suburban neighborhood favored by insurance agents and web designers. Sergey Nikolayevich switched from calling me "son" to "partner."

  At first, no one paid much attention to our product. But, after a few days, we had some tentative sales. And then the demand exploded. Streets became flooded with blonds. We sold a huge batch to China. Sergey Nikolayevich gave me a lab, and ordered me to "cook up something else." Inspired by the initial success, I made modifications to the product and we released pills that turned hair brown, black, and even red.

  One day I fainted right in the middle of the lab. My assistant dragged me to the couch and splashed water in my face. Once I came to, he went off in search of something stronger than water.

  I felt a strange stretching sensation around my navel, as though someone had spilled glue onto it and the glue had spread on my skin, drying instantly. I ripped off my shirt. My torso was covered in a rose-colored chitinous crust.

  The crust spread all the way up to my neck. I knocked at the shell it had formed. There was no pain. It was attached firmly and its rose-colored surface was stitched with a complex beige pattern.

  My assistant returned with an expensive bottle of vodka he'd liberated from Marketing. Ever since the sales had picked up they always had something to toast. He touched my shell reverently and asked, "What is this, a new kind of tattoo?"

  I'd handpicked an obtuse assistant. It wouldn't do to have a clever observer at my side when creating new formulas. I assigned some busywork to keep him from butting in with questions at the wrong moment, and called Accounting.

  As I suspected, both employees who had sampled the prototype had called out sick. Rumor had it they developed some unusual allergies.

  The chitinous shell wasn't too bothersome. I threw on a sports coat over my shirt, bought flowers, and went to visit the sick women. They'd figured things out, too, and you can guess what sort of words I heard from them that day. Nevertheless, I managed to convince them to hold off from acting on their accusations.

  Sergey Nikolayevich was in a great mood. Lately that was the norm. Without saying a word, I lifted up my shirt.

  "Looks like we shouldn't have moved forward without clinical trials," I said. "The girls from Accounting are suffering from similar complications. A chitinous bosom isn't a sight for the faint of heart. That can derail any relationship. The girls plan to sue. In a month or two, the first wave of customers will be doing the same. As they say, the greedy man pays twice."

  "Slow down, Partner," said Sergey Nikoloevich. "It's unlikely they'll connect this crust to our product right away."

  "Perhaps not immediately, but they'll figure it out," I said. "And I was just beginning work on drugs that can adjust nose shape and lengthen legs."

  Sergey Nikolayevich perked up. "That's excellent, keep it up. What about the crust—can you do something about that?"

  "I've got skin in the game on this one. I'll create a fix. But what about the hundreds of thousands of consumers? We should recall the drug immediately. In the future, we must proceed with more caution. It takes five to ten years and millions in hard currency to legitimately bring a new drug to market."

  At first, I thought Sergey Nikolayevich had fallen into a trance-like state. Later I understood—this was merely the boss's process for coming up with business strategies.

  "Partner," he shouted in a fit of mercantile ecstasy, "everything is great. Much better than I thought! This drug has side effects? Perfect. The world is our oyster. We won't recall anything. We'll give people what they want, for as long as they want it. Side effects merely mean there will be demand for more products. We've got them on the hook! When they are all covered in shells, they'll come to us for an antidote. The important thing is to have the solution ready by then."

  "That's cynical," I said. "They'll hate us."

  "Only if we admit fault, which we'll never do. In the long term, it won't matter what caused the problem—they will only care about the cure, and they'll thank whoever provides it, which will be us. The key is to divert any negative attention elsewhere. Tomorrow I will have the tabloids write about the new epidemic brewing in, let's say, the Congo. We'll pay some experts to write articles, spread some misinformation through the blogosphere. A hot talk show wouldn't hurt, either."

  Sergey Nikolayevich was in his element. He zigzagged across his office in a fit of nervous energy, rubbed his hands together, and giggled. "We'll say the Congolese fishermen were the first to become sick."

  "Are you sure there are fishermen in the Congo?"

  "There are fishermen everywhere. Don't sweat the small stuff, partner. We'll figure out the details later. I'm saving your skin and your reputation, and you're dissatisfied! Instead of arguing, help me come up with a name for this new disease."

  I drummed my fingers against the rosy shell. No good ideas came, but deep in my heart I knew Sergey Nikolayevich was right. I didn't want a scandal either, because I was afraid to lose you.

  "I feel like a shrimp," I said.

  "Shrimp, eh? No, that doesn't sound very good. . . . Ah! Lobster flu. That's what we're going to call the new epidemic. First the lobsters got it, then the fishermen in the Congo caught it from the lobsters."

  "Are there lobsters in the Congo?"

  "When people become covered in crust they won't care whether or not there are lobsters in the Congo. They'll feel better knowing where to place the blame."

  It was clear that Sergey Nikolayevich was prepared to invest millions in spreading this tall tale. He seemed ready to spend lavishly on anything other than clinical trials.

  "Do your part and create the antidote," he said. "Don't let me down, Partner. The drug for adjusting nose shape is a good idea, too. You should also work on something that gets rid of cellulite, and for weight loss. Summer is coming—these remedies will sell like hotcakes."

  "I demand twenty percent," I said firmly. "Not a penny less."

  "The rules remain the same, Partner," said Sergey Nikolayevich. "Impress me. Then we'll talk about the money."

  The chitinous shell flaked for hours. I picked up its brittle shards all over the house. The pill worked, but I felt uneasy. The papers, Internet, and TV covered the lobster flu for the third straight week. On the screen, Congolese fishermen with stoic expressions on their long-suffering faces talked about the multitudes of sick lobsters. It was a safe guess as to where the news programs had found them.

  You lay on the couch and watched me scrub my belly raw with my fingernails.

  "You poor dear," you said. "You caught this bug, too?"

  We eradicated the lobster flu within a month, but it was soon replaced with the Arizona scabies.

  My photo graced the cover of Forbes. The European Pharmacologists Association granted me their Man of the Year title. The World Congress of Epidemiologists awarded me the "Savior of Humanity" medal. Every day I was approached by headhunters from the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. Sergey Nikolayevich began calling me "brother" instead of "partner" and raised my share to thirty percent. He could afford to be generous, his company had become the world leader in the corrective pharmacology market.

  My success was soured only by the fact that I grew a third kidney. Two weeks in the lab and a new pill later, the kidney had dissolved. Right after that, fur grew on my heels. That took three weeks to fix. I slept in socks so you wouldn't discover the fur, and waited with trepidation for whatever nasty trick my body would pull next.

  The next side effect was surprisingly positive. My muscles bulked up on their own, turning my naturally wimpy body into a rather impressive specimen. I studied the process and forwarded it for Sergey Nikolayevich to monetize.

  Unable to hire me away, the world's top corporations went after my assistant. He fled, and I was happy to see him go. I was tired of the bumbling idiot. I replaced him with the two girls from Accounting. Since they were witnesses to my mistakes, I wanted to keep them close by. In terms of the side effects we were in the same boat. They had become medically dependent on me, and wouldn't be betraying me anytime soon.

  I avoided taking any more of my own drugs, but by then it was too late. I was so saturated with chemicals that they permeated my body, became a part of my metabolism and took on a life of their own, surprising me with all sorts of unplanned mutations. I kept inventing and using new powders, pills, ointments, and injections. I knew this couldn't go on forever. I was losing control. Soon I wouldn't be able to keep my own appearance, wouldn't recognize myself in the mirror. It's not that I was ever in love with the way I looked, but I wasn't ready to give up my individuality. I was like a man who chose to take his own life and experienced regret too late, in the brief moment after he had already pulled the trigger.

  In those days I was too concerned with my own problems to notice how slowly, irrevocably, the world was changing around me.

  "Have you heard about the purists and the reshapers?" asked Sergey Nikolayevich.

  He'd invited me to a business dinner at a very expensive restaurant. Lately I'd been leading the life of a lab hermit. This was the first time I had been out socially since getting rid of the heel fur. We drank fancy red wines and dined on organic venison.

  On the stage, the gypsy band (half of them now blond) sang ancient love songs. It wasn't just the performers who looked strange. Every person in the restaurant exhibited some small imperfection. Some had ears hanging down to their shoulders, the side effect of the nose adjustment—our latest pills would cure the symptom within a month. Others were bald, and while some experienced that condition naturally, for others it was the side effect from taking our fanny-firming pill. We introduced an ointment that would begin to re-grow hair in just three days. Wrist scales were more difficult to remedy, requiring four months of injections and mandatory sunbathing. The scales developed whenever our corrective drugs for eye color, breast size, and hip curvature were taken at the same time, and afflicted only women. They were recorded in the medical books as the primary symptom of the Amsterdam fever. Some ladies hid the scales under bracelets, while others painted them with nail polish and showed them off proudly.

  "The purists and the reshapers?" I repeated, absentmindedly. I was trying to figure out how to get rid of my tic. It was a relatively minor side effect, but a very inconvenient one.

  "Purists advocate maintaining one's natural appearance," explained Sergey Nikolayevich. "It started out as a grassroots movement, but quickly found powerful supporters. They've launched a parliamentary investigation into our company. They found some well-respected professor who believes we're connected to lobster flu and Arizona scabies. I tried to reach an understanding with him, but the old man is unbribeable. He's angry at us over that remedy for impotency. You remember . . ."

  "So, he isn't without sin."

  "That's just it—his young wife gave it to him without his knowledge. And when the side effects manifested, she confessed. He's out for our blood."

  "This was to be expected," I said, melancholically chewing venison. My tic made me wink at Sergey Nikolayevich.

  "There's no reasoning with the purists," he said. "So far, no one is taking the professor seriously. My goal is to muddy up the waters. I've helped organize the party of reshapers, individuals who are actively interested in altering their appearance. I hired a young PR specialist to head the People's Reshaper Movement. My expectation was to merely remind the public of the pluralism of opinions, and that there is no accounting for taste. In reality, the movement has exceeded even my greatest expectations.