"There are two million card-carrying reshapers in the country, and even more abroad. They want to change themselves, no matter what, just for the challenge of it. The purists and the reshapers are at each other's throats. There's literal fighting in the streets. Both sides justify the violence as the means in their struggle for the future of humanity. The purists are up in arms; there will be parliamentary hearings now. I've already received my subpoena. I'm so tired of all the committees, delegations, inspections. I just don't like them. But I have an idea—before they issue some new law, we should release a universal appearance adjustor onto the market. Let's call the drug 'Perpetual Motion.' It should elicit a constant change in the user's body, so his skin can be polka-dotted one day and flower-patterned the next. Every morning a surprise, every day a celebration, eh? The reshaper party has already approached me requesting such a drug."

  I was stunned. "Why do we need this?"

  "If everyone is in a constant state of flux, the connection between our drugs and the side effects—and between our firm and the epidemics—can never be proven. Cause-and-effect will lose all meaning in the chaos. This universal adjustor will undoubtedly be banned in time, but by then the case will be closed. So, all hopes are on you. Will you rise to the challenge?"

  "Wake up, Boss. As it is, there is no normal person left. Except, perhaps . . ."

  I thought about you, dearest.

  "Even you didn't resist the temptation," I told him. "You've lost weight with our patented 'Feather' powder, haven't you?"

  "It was convenient." The lightness in his voice sounded forced. "Brother, I've been trying to lose weight for fifteen years. 'Feather' took care of it in one shot."

  "You knew the price of this convenience. Should have spared yourself—now you have to medicate constantly. No, it's time to put an end to all of this. Let's close up shop, split the money, and disappear."

  "Don't even tempt me, Brother. This company is my life."

  Dearest, Sergey Nikolayevich wasn't merely a swindler. He was a swindler with principles.

  "It isn't just my life tied into this company," he said. "It's yours, too. Don't even think of getting out. Your main goal now is to develop 'Perpetual Motion.' Don't let me down."

  You were on the couch, playing virtual squash. The ball flew across the room between your avatar and the hologram of a popular blond actor. Perhaps it was actually him, taking a break between shoots to flirt with you from across the ocean. You've recently become a prestigious contact as the wife of the millionaire pharmacologist who was five minutes away from winning a Nobel Prize.

  I shut off the computer.

  "I was in the middle of a game," you said, with indignation.

  "Pack up. We're leaving immediately. Forever. They won't catch us."

  You stared at me with gorgeous, indifferent eyes. "I pretended to ignore the fur on your heels. I tolerated it when spikes protruded from your back, like a porcupine. I acted as if nothing was wrong when you grew gills. But your tic is driving me nuts. I'm not going anywhere with you. And from now on we'll be sleeping in separate bedrooms. I've had enough of you, messing up the kitchen with your vials. So be a doll, turn the console back on, and go make me a milkshake."

  I assessed the situation. There was no chance of moving you from that couch. Before me lay a perfect, self-satisfied creature. You didn't have a single fault. You chewed all day, yet your waist remained a perfect sixty centimeters. You had no use for pills or powders—there was simply nothing that needed fixing. Your perfection was gifted by nature and required no sacrifices in return. I'd committed sins for you, but you remained detached, as simple and unapproachable as the day we met. The neurotic outside world was becoming rapidly filled by freaks in pursuit of beauty while you, the main cause of this madness, rested blissfully on the couch. I'd outdone myself, even taken my own poison, to earn a moment of your favor. And for what? Separate bedrooms?

  I seethed, but I also knew that I would love you no matter your appearance—your self-satisfied nature had imprinted itself deeply upon my psyche. Whereas, no matter how much I polished my appearance, you would always see me as a puny egghead who'd been granted the privilege to serve you. You had to be made to share the suffering of the world—to share my suffering. And, if anything went wrong, I could always fix it with a pill.

  I went into the kitchen. No matter how many times we moved houses, I always turned the kitchen into my laboratory, out of habit. My state of mind brought inspiration: the new drug took only twenty minutes to create.

  "I'm still waiting," you shouted, your voice filled with impatience. "Can't you do anything fast?"

  "I sure can," I answered cheerfully, and splashed my new concoction into the strawberry milkshake.

  Your perfect, beautiful long legs shrunk by ten centimeters.

  For two days I waited for you to notice. On the third day you decided to go for a walk and tried to put on jeans. For fifteen minutes you gawked at the extra denim hanging from your feet. Then you took off the jeans, put on shorts, and went out. You returned with the delivery robot in tow, carrying a heap of new jeans. A week later, you threw them out because your legs returned to their original length.

  I figured that I made a mistake with the dosage.

  I worked on the next drug more diligently. You gained fifteen kilos overnight, but remained indifferent to this unfortunate metamorphosis.

  "You should get off the couch more often. You gained a lot of weight." I decided to direct your attention to the problem. To be honest, the few extra kilos looked great on you.

  You shrugged, bit into your pizza slice, and resumed browsing the yacht catalog.

  Two days later, the extra kilos had disappeared without a trace. I knew with absolute certainty that you didn't take any pills, didn't diet, and didn't torture yourself with strenuous exercise. I deployed a mobile camera to spy on you. It silently followed you like a fly, and it recorded everything. All you did was lounge around, browse the web, occasionally fiddle with the climate control remote, and raid the fridge. Your weight loss was pure magic.

  I took a radical next step. The new powder, mixed into your cola, caused blue mushrooms to grow in your cleavage.

  "This is peculiar. We sleep in separate rooms, and I still caught something from you," was your comment.

  The mushrooms withered and fell off by the end of the day. All of my efforts were defeated by your unassailable perfection. I decided that all this stress was making me lose my touch, and took a time out.

  With all these experiments, I completely forgot that Sergey Nikolayevich had asked me for a universal adjustor. When he took to reminding me about it twenty times per day, I quickly threw together his "Perpetual Motion." By then I was an expert at designing these drugs. The creative process took only a few days, and the spirit of irresponsibility nurtured within me by Sergey Nikolayevich really unleashed the mind.

  "What are the side effects?" asked Sergey Nikolayevich, businesslike.

  "No idea," I said indifferently. "Does it matter? People who take our drugs aren't concerned with side effects."

  A revolutionary never-before-seen drug with no stated side effects was marketed in three forms: pills, a mint-flavored mixture, and an aerosol spray. A hundred top activists from the reshaper movement received "Perpetual Motion" treatments free of charge. The rest had to pay through the nose, which stopped no one. After a week, our factories had to increase output.

  This time, the side effects surprised even me. Transmutations occurred spontaneously. They could happen anywhere—at work, at home, en route, in the bath, or in bed. Typically a transmutation caused a discharge of airy foam, colored a pleasant shade of green. It was odorless and flavorless (someone had dared to taste it). The foam was difficult to wash off sidewalks, walls, objects, and the skin of nearby people. I thought we'd surely catch hell for that, but many consumers found this side effect amusing. After all—green is the color of optimism. The beginning of a transmutation could be anticipated by the refreshing tingling of the nose. Some people sneezed. That's how those nearby knew it was time to run. I thought society got used to all of this rather quickly.

  But we'd jumped to that conclusion too soon. People dressed in civilian clothing showed up at our offices. Their true affiliation could be easily deciphered by the seal of government authority stamped on their facial expressions. Their leader was a tall gentleman by the name of Colonel Zverev, clearly a purist. He showed us a warrant with stamps and signatures from so high up I still can't recall it without shivering.

  "If you fail to cooperate, we'll shut down this racket by morning," he cautioned.

  "I was just about to offer our services," replied Sergey Nikolayevich.

  "Your drugs make it impossible to maintain national security. To catch criminals, spies, or extremists," said the colonel.

  "Can't you still identify them by fingerprints, smell, retina prints or brain wave patterns?" asked Sergey Nikolayevich.

  "Your universal corrector changes all of those physical characteristics, not to mention the smell."

  That was a revelation for us.

  Colonel Zverev hated us with a passion. "If you fail to invent a new way of identifying people . . ."

  "I've got it. Gorsky—inventions are your department," Sergey Nikolayevich competently diverted the heat on to me.

  Zverev stared at me sternly.

  Damn it, Zverev, I'm a pharmacologist, not an engineer. For a moment, I felt like I should make up an excuse and just get out of there. The colonel must've read my thoughts. He must have known through experience that flight was the usual psychological response to meeting him.

  "Don't even think about it," he said.

  "There will be no thinking, sir." I tried to lighten the mood with a joke.

  "Here's what we're going to do. I'll assign you a few competent specialists. You're going to work night and day, and you better create a device to arm the secret police with. If you don't, I will personally smash your head in, and the issue of thinking will resolve itself naturally. Were it up to me, I would—" and then he went on an angry rant reciting all the purist talking points.

  That's how I became involved in creating the genetic decoder. I came up with the methodology for identifying the original genetic code in a transmuted body. The resulting prototype was bulky and resembled an oversized paintball gun. Not sleek, but effective enough for fieldwork. Which was great, except whoever it was used on suffered unbearable agony: bone aches, ringing in the ears, high blood pressure. The pain was severe enough to potentially kill someone.

  "We'll work on improving it," said Colonel Zverev. For a time, his people left us alone.

  I managed to steal one of the first genetic decoders. It hung on the wall of our living room. It was nice to feel a sense of accomplishment not only as a pharmacologist, but also as a gunsmith. I wondered whether I should pursue a career in that field.

  So, my dear, don't toy with the genetic decoder. It can easily leave you a widow, and I still plan on being useful to you. Besides, in my will I bequeathed everything to a charitable fund for victims of pharmacology. How would you maintain your lifestyle without me? You'd have to get off the couch, and that's an inconvenience.

  While I was researching a way to change your skin color into something funny, the outside world was spinning out of control. Our gates were being picketed by protestors, who carried signs like criminal pharmacologists must pay. Reshapers countered with signs which read freedom to be anyone we can become.

  Purist hackers attacked our e-commerce sites. Reshaper hackers invented a virus which plastered our banner ads all over the web.

  Purists burned a warehouse full of our products. Reshapers found the culprits and force-fed them the universal adjustor, which turned out to cause a bit of a scandal.

  Some purist-owned firms began firing employees who took our drugs. Reshapers boycotted the products of those companies.

  Both sides filed constant lawsuits against one another.

  The war escalated when we released a special variant of "Perpetual Motion" which allowed users to change their gender weekly. I was against this initially—some things are better left alone—but the consumers accepted the latest offering with surprising enthusiasm.

  I realized the end was nigh when reports began coming in of our consumers randomly and chaotically transmuting even without taking "Perpetual Motion." Was this a side effect? You could argue about the terminology. By then, it didn't even matter. Millions of consumers' bodies had reached a tipping point. They kept changing in strange ways, even when they didn't take the drugs, even if they didn't want to change anymore. We had created a new species of constantly transmuting beings, who didn't even know what they might become next. Beings who, incidentally, were no longer capable of conceiving or giving birth to children. Oops.

  Then came the parliamentary hearings.

  "I intend to prove these so-called pharmacologists are conspiring against humanity itself," shouted the professor whose wife had slipped him our powder.

  Sergey Nikolayevich smiled meekly at the panel from his seat. Behind him, famous experts and pricey attorneys who were no longer certain of anything shuffled papers.

  "Changing one's face doesn't absolve one of their responsibility to society, doesn't give them a carte blanche," preached the professor.

  The angry old man was right. Crime was off the chart, robberies and looting especially. Cops ran around with genetic decoders in hand and tried to figure out who was who. All systems of identification and control were shattered. The government suspended the sales of our drugs, until the panel could reach its decision.

  It was during the hearings, on live TV, that the idea of gathering all the reshapers and resettling them into restricted zones was first voiced. There were riots. Purists and reshapers fought each other openly. The conflict threatened to become global at any moment.

  I navigated the streets in my Jeep, trying to reach our offices. Yesterday I'd rented a private plane. I was going to lure you out promising a sightseeing tour of the city skyline at night, but I planned for the plane to carry us far away to some nice and—most importantly—uninhabited tropical island. But first, I wanted to shred some files and flush some secret reagents down the toilet.

  It was surprisingly quiet near the office entrance. A dirty, ripped shopping bag danced in the wind above the deserted parking lot, which was spotted with green discharge. I stopped the car and looked around. Deep in the alleyways behind our office building I could make out the shapes of police cars. At that moment the sky became filled with noise and a helicopter landed in front of the building.

  Agents escorted a pale Sergey Nikolayevich outside. Our director of sales followed, his expression muted. Several agents ran my way.

  Impulsive decisions aren't always the right ones. Perhaps I should have reconsidered. I reached for a vial of the latest "Perpetual Motion" variant in my pocket and, without thinking it through, drained half of it. That's a lot. The transmutation began immediately.

  I jumped out of the car, covered the agents in green discharge, and ran as fast as my seven extremities would carry me. I should have made for the rented plane, but the thought of leaving you behind was unbearable.

  You were on the couch—remember?—eating donuts and leafing through some catalog.

  "Look what you've gone and done." You raised your gorgeous, ruthless eyes from the page. "There are people here to see you."

  Camouflaged soldiers armed with genetic decoders poured from every door. I was so surprised that my glasses fell off my face. But then, I no longer needed glasses. Transmutation had made me eagle-eyed.

  "Gorsky?" asked Colonel Zverev, who led the unit. "Don't pretend that you aren't Gorsky, that you wandered in here by accident. Admit it's you, or we'll use the decoder."

  "You don't even have handcuffs in my size," was all I could say.

  "Will you be home for dinner?" you shouted, as they led me outside.

  I wondered how long they'd jail me for. Thirty years? Fifty? They'd likely confiscate all my assets, too. I didn't bother asking Colonel Zverev where we were going. For the first time in a long while, I felt rather certain of what would come next. Somehow, this made me feel a little better.

  The helicopter carried us out of the city. It landed on a manicured lawn in front of a tall, featureless mansion. A row of identical blue spruces lined the path to a massive porch. If this was prison, it looked to be a very comfortable one.

  Plain clothed agents escorted me up to the second floor and into a lavishly decorated office. Behind a Louis XIV desk sat a furry cocoon with strangely familiar eyes.

  "I could kill you right now," said the cocoon.

  "Who are you?"

  "Didn't you see my name on the door?" The cocoon shifted unhappily. "No wonder you don't recognize me; I took your stupid drug."

  "Why did you do that, Mr. President?" I asked. "You were perfect, body and soul. We all looked up to you. I understand why others swallow my pills, but not you."

  "Hold your tongue, smart guy. Don't presume to lecture me. Look, here is the deal: a week from now I must attend an emergency summit regarding this mess with the purists and the reshapers. I can't show up looking like this. So think, kid, think. There's an underground lab here. We'll keep you locked in there until you figure out a way to return me to normal."

  I realized that I would spend the rest of my life in that lab, with only my guards for company. My nose itched and I sneezed.

  "Watch out!" shouted Colonel Zverev and bravely covered the president with his body. His action was timely—green discharge splashed his back.