Chapter 4

"Ok, Angel." Lena was saying. "Now think of going to the pool tomorrow. Good. Now think of eating breakfast next Monday. Good. Now think of starting school. Good. Now, think of waking up next Christmas morning. Good."

"What the heck are we doing, anyway?"

"One of the ways you sort out the 'meaning' of mental images is how and where you represent them. We're finding out where you put the past and the future. With that, we can put things there. We won't really change your memories or reality, but you will think about some things differently. And that's what we are trying to accomplish - making it easier for you to accept your new life, on your own terms."

It had been a weird morning for Angel. Lena was doing her thing, trying to help Angel realign his self image to reflect his new reality. Trying to make his life easier. The setup worked well enough, "mapping" his "timeline", "Calibrating" this and that, visualizing one thing or another.

But when she pulled it all together for him, it didn't work. He could - briefly - think of himself as a girl or a woman, but not this girl or woman. And without addressing the mystery element, the whole thing fell apart. Some part of him wouldn't let it work.

They both started to get frustrated, which didn't help. Before they gave up for the moment, Lena looked at Angel and, with complete conviction and sincerity, said "You want to do this. I'm not sure whether those parts of your mind that have your best interests as a focus will find a way to let us know what the issues are and how to successfully address them this morning, or tomorrow morning."

Angel sort of mentally crossed his eyes at that, but the two of them moved on to other things. He went to his computer and checked his mail. One of the people on his watch list was out of bed. Angel's cousins sent him a picture and description, and he was a little confused.

He had the general kind of changes Angel had seen, but not to the degree he had seen. He had the strength, and certain suggestions of canine features. But he mostly appeared human. From their description, he was larger, much stronger, had a stronger (but not apparently distorted) jaw, and the same general kind of thick nails as Otter. While not visible in any way, he also had an enhanced sense of smell. On the down side, his color vision was less acute.

After thinking about it for a while, it made a certain amount of sense to Angel. He saw the form, but could not yet recognize the degree. He was confident that, with practice, he would be able to recognize and integrate some indication of degree. But he needed a lot of samples.

This was a job for an expert. You busy?

Not really. What's up? Lena sent back.

After a brief exchange of images and thoughts, Angel asked Where would a wide range of Morfs hang out, on a day like this?

The pool or the Mall. You've already seen a lot of the talent at the pool.

Angel flashed on earlier problems with the mall, but Lena reminded him that was a different mall in a different State. And that he was confident about his ability to be female in public.

Conceding the point, he cleared it with his mother. She had her own shopping to do, and decided it would be a good idea for him to start looking for some more school clothes. Lena could advise him, and he could use the exercise as cover for his real mission. And if he found something appropriate, Lena could "call" her to come and either veto it or pay for it.

Don't get your hopes up too high, Lena warned his mother. He still hasn't really learned the fun of shopping for shopping's sake. One step at a time.

His mother sighed briefly, then got them into the car. Once at the mall, they split up. They had cells and Lena for keeping in touch, so she went her own way and let Angel and Lena go theirs.

The expedition was a success. In addition to learning about the feeling that seemed to indicate the degree of the transformation, he learned some practical aspects of the school dress code.

Over the last ten years, the strict and oppressive dress codes of earlier times had all but vanished. Their earlier successes had faded, and been shown to owe more to the famous effect of making any significant change in an institution than to any inherent merit of the strict dress codes themselves. That wouldn't have been enough to force a change by itself, given the usual inertia of school districts and the like. The real killer had been the lawsuits on behalf of intersexed and other sexually nonstandard students. Some failed, but many succeeded. And the costs to the schools was enormous, win or lose.

Like most districts, theirs had mostly reverted to the earlier dress codes. Those were based on health, safety and disruption, and were largely immune from such lawsuits. Some of the skirts his aunt and cousin had foisted off on him would not meet the new standards, being too short. And much the same was true of some of the blouses. But he was left with a very wide range of choices.

In the end, after pressure from both Lena and his mother, he got a few things.

On the way home, he was forced to admit that he had a good time doing the shopping and just hanging around with Lena. Nor was it wasted in any sense. In addition to his purchases, he had spotted a number of impending Morfs, and had notes about them. He noted their names, the image he got, and the impression of the degree of change. He didn't have an objective scale for the degree of change, but he could tell the shades of gray apart. He would watch them over the next couple of weeks.

Dinner that night was a nice confirmation of his earlier feeling: he was home with his family. After helping with the dishes, he went upstairs to (as he put it) "do my homework."

He explored the websites he had bookmarked. He learned more about the MORF viruses, and what had been learned about his own personal variant. The first thing he learned was that his version wasn't a virus. It was three different ones, which interacted. The best guess among the researchers was that sooner or later the three would uncouple, and spread separately. The medical community was working on prevention and cure, but were not particularly optimistic.

In the process, he also learned a lot more about microscopic life and pseudo life than he ever knew there was to learn. And the biggest thing he learned was that he had more to learn. A lot more to learn.

His head was swimming as he got ready for bed. Too many facts, but too little understanding. In one of his early computer classes, the instructor made a big deal of the difference between data and information. That came prominently to mind while he was trying to get to sleep.

He spent a restless night, filled with strange dreams and nightmares. Most of them came and went, leaving little more than an unpleasant emotional texture behind. But two stuck in his mind. The first was an old nursery rhyme he knew, about a centipede trying to become conscious of how he walked, and becoming hopelessly confused. First, he saw the poor critter as a cartoon style beast. Then, he was the centipede.

He woke up, with a feeling of urgency. He grabbed some paper and a pen, and wrote what he could remember. He just hoped that the next morning, when he woke up, it wouldn't say something like "Life is a peach pit."

The other was even stranger. He was trying to sculpt a toasted marshmallow. But every time he shaped it, the brown, outer part cracked and leaked, and the effort just ended up a shapeless glob. Then he got an idea. He turned it inside out, and shaped the brown part on the inside. The white outside kept its shape, and formed a new skin. He woke up knowing this was the answer to something important. But he had no idea what.

He wrote it down as well.

It was a little early, but he couldn't really get back to sleep. He went to take care of his morning business - including the unpleasant new bits - and take a shower. This time, the extra time he spent cleaning between his legs really was for cleaning.

That done, he dried himself and took the necessary precautions. Then he went back to his bedroom to get ready for the day. While he was combing and brushing his hair, he looked at his notes. While not quite down to the peach pit standard, they were puzzling. After each, he had written and underlined "IMPORTANT" in large letters. He just wasn't sure what was so important about a bug laying distracted in a ditch, or a gooey sculpture.

He got to the kitchen first, for a change, so he decided to make breakfast. Especially because that gave him the choice of what to make. He put on the "helper" apron, out of self defense, and got started. He knew better than to use his mother's apron. Even his dad wasn't safe trying that.

He put on the coffee, then decided to take a long term approach to breakfast. He had learned a way to make pancakes which reheated very nicely. They weren't as good as his mother's best, but they were better than most. He could make up a batch, serve some for breakfast, and put the rest away for a quick meal.

With the griddle heating, he was just finishing the batter when his mother appeared. First, she made a bee line for the coffee. He knew better than to say anything before the first half cup or two. She turned a bleary eye at what he was doing, and nodded. After the elixir of life had done its work, she joined him at the counter.

"Your quick snack specials, hmm? Want me to do bacon and eggs to go with it?"

"Sure. Got enough room?"

"I'll manage. What got you up so early?"

"Some weird dreams. After the second Earthshakingly Important Missive from Dreamland, I couldn't get back to sleep."

"Journal?"

"Got 'em."

"Peach pits?"

"Too damned close."

"Language! Want to talk?"

"I don't think it would help. I just need them to rattle around until they decide to make sense."

They worked side by side, talking about trivia, while they cooked. With a practiced timing, honed by years of experience, his dad showed up just when the food was almost ready to serve. He got out plates, forks, and glasses, and poured himself some coffee.

They talked about work and plans. His dad would be working late again. His mother expected a call from the school district, about the job. He was going to hang out with his new friends, and get to know the area a little better.

You're up early!

Bad dreams. Want some breakfast?

Sounds better than my usual bowl of cereal. I'll be over in a minute.

"Lena's coming over. I just invited her to breakfast."

"How did ... oh! Ask her if she wants some bacon and eggs with the pancakes."

His father looked at the two of them like they were crazy. While Angel asked Lena about the food, his mother explained.

"She's the telepath from next door. Seems to have taken Angel under her wing, since we arrived."

He nodded his understanding, then craned his neck as though he was trying to look at Angel's back. Another old family joke.

While Angel and Lena cleaned up, his dad left for work. His mother went out to "pick up a few things," and told him to refer any calls to her cell. When they were done, they went up to his room to talk.

Lena asked about the dreams, and then helped him interpret them. She didn't suggest interpretations so much as ask leading questions to help him understand them himself. She said it was more of the stuff she learned in self defense.

The centipede dream was the simplest. She asked what he was doing just before he went to sleep. He told her about the research. She asked what the bug in the poem was trying to do. After some prompting, he decided that it was trying to do something consciously that he had been doing perfectly well without conscious thought. In the poem, walk.

He decided that his subconscious mind was trying to tell him to stop trying to consciously manage his powers at the detail level. Looking back, it seemed obvious.

The other dream was more difficult. It brought up things he didn't like to talk about. When Lena asked him about the image of a toasted marshmallow, she caught an image of a large crowd of giant, angry, taunting latino youths yelling insults and threats.

When he saw her reaction, he knew what she had seen. It was actually a conglomeration of several incidents, reduced to their essential commonality. It was horrible and painful. He was upset that she saw it, and upset at reliving it.

After helping him to calm down a bit, she asked "Why were they so angry?"

"They thought I was a traitor to my race."

"I don't understand. Was this after you changed?"

"No, before. They said I was like a toasted marshmallow: a thin layer of brown - latino - on the outside and a whole lot of white - anglo - on the inside. They said that under any pressure, the latino part of me would go away entirely. They said I was only pretending to be what I looked like. And they were angry about it."

Lena recognized something else, but had to make him come up with it. "Why didn't you just blow that off? If it was so obviously false, why did you let them get to you?" she asked, gently.

"Because it wasn't," he wailed. "Wasn't obviously false. My pride, my heritage, my family ... we really were more anglo than latino. We were and are middle class Americans first, and everything else a distant second. It was true, but I didn't want it to be true. Who I was and what I was were closely tied to many things, but my ethnic history was a big one."

She let him cry it out, and comforted him when he was done. When she had him calm again, she asked him what that information said about the dream, and what the dream said about changing him.

"If I try to stay who I was, a thin layer of a proud, ancient culture over a core of middle class white bread American, trying to change who I am won't work. It will only destroy what helps define me."

Just then, the phone rang. He was about to go answer it, when it stopped after one and a half rings.

"Your mother's home. She got the phone."

They had been so involved in what they were doing that they had not noticed her return.

"She needs to talk to you." Lena smiled.

Angel got himself together and went downstairs in search of his mother. She was just hanging up the phone.

"Oh, hi Angel. I was just about to go looking for you. That was the school district. I got the job! I have to go down to fill out some more paperwork and talk to some people. Could you finish putting the food away while I get ready?"

"Sure." he assured her.

"I'll be there all afternoon. Will you be ok?"

Angel rolled his eyes. "Yes, Mommy. I'ze a big ... girl now."

His mother caught the pause, even in the middle of the sarcasm. She just shook her head, then dashed upstairs to get ready.

Angel and Lena put the stuff away, then Angel fixed them a snack. They were sitting in the living room, munching away, when his mother rushed out the door. Somehow, they both found her hasty exit funny.

They were just coming down from their bout of laughter, when Lena stiffened. She nodded a couple of times, then turned to Angel.

"Mind a little more company?"

"No, why?"

"Someone's on her way over, and I suspect it has something to do with you."

"That sounds ominous."

"In a way. How's your mythology?"

"Huh?"

"What does the name Cassandra mean to you?"

"I assume you don't mean the singer or the actress?"

"Right"

"Wasn't she some kind of prophet? Under a curse from some goddess, so she only saw bad stuff?"

"Close enough. We have our own version here. We call her Cassandra, or Cassie, but her name is really Penny. She's a little bit of a precog, but her main ability is a weird one."

"What else is new, these days?" Angel observed, wryly.

"I mean weird by our standards."

"Ok, that's impressive. What is it?"

"She seems to be subconsciously hooked into everyone in the region who has a perceptive power. Like you and me."

"She knows everything we see?"

"Not consciously. I heard that she tried to make it conscious, and nearly ended up catatonic."

Angel whistled.

"What it does now is feed into her subconscious. For some reason, she becomes aware of impending disasters and the like and, unlike the original, possible ways to avoid them. If any exist."

"Useful, in a backhanded way. What a way to spend your life." Angel shook his head.

"Yeah. She was kind of a genius before MORFS, and seems to have gotten smarter with all this. And she was already dealing with the darker side of things, which seems to have helped her. She helped me get through my introduction to the nasty side of the human psyche."

"And she's here now."

Angel went to the door, and watched the approaching girl. She was tall for a girl, about 5' 10", he estimated. She looked a little older than them, probably about to be a senior. She had black hair, which made her skin look paler than it was. And she had a look of urgency.

"Hey, Cassie. What's the problem?"

Angel looked at the two of them, and rolled his eyes. "Would you like to come in and get a little more comfortable?"

They looked at each other, then at him, as though the idea had never occurred to them. Then they shrugged and moved inside.

"Want something to drink?" he offered. "Iced tea, soda, water... ?"

"Tea would be great. Thanks."

As Angel went for the tea, Lena gave Cassie the public version of his life and powers. He got back in time to catch the end, including the description of the tan and the healing of the scar. When Lena was finished, Cassie drank a moment, and thought.

"She must be the one then."

"What one?" Angel asked. "Am I some kind of walking disaster or something?"

"I see Radar gave you the condensed version. Probably about as complete as what she said about you." She arched an eyebrow. Angel always wished he could do that, but never got the hang of it. "You're not the problem, but you may be the answer."

"Ok," Lena prompted, "All you've said is that someone's in danger, and someone I know can help. Spill."

"Ok. One of the boys from my school..."

"Your school?" Angel asked.

"I go to Smokey Hills. Anyway, Jerry Anderson, a sophomore there, is about to go through MORFS. But he won't survive it."

From his research, Angel knew that some transformations were fatal. And so far, there was nothing Medicine could do about it. Apparently, Jerry would be one of those cases.

"Unless... ?" Lena prompted.

"That's where you come in, Radar. It's a little confusing, but from what I can make out, someone you know can complete his ... her ... that's one of the confusing parts ... can complete hir transformation with your help, then can transform Jerry's transformation. I wish I could say it more clearly, but it's all jumbled. I could guess at some things, but my guess would be no better than yours, and might just confuse things more." She stopped and took a breath.

"Jerry's a nice guy. Nobody deserves to die like that, but especially not someone like him."