Chapter 3

Monday, 26^th of November, 2035

Mandy

After my sister left for work, I was still a little perturbed. It wasn't just the anxiety from the stone-throwing incident. That had sparked something in my mind, some idea that I couldn't put my finger on. In the meantime I did what little washing up there was to do in the flat's small kitchen, tidied up a bit, and then sat down on the sofa-bed to think.

I tried to work back through the events of the day to put together what had sparked this idea, and maybe work out what it was my subconscious was bugging me about.

I had seen the fight, and it had sparked memories of my tussle with the group of men. Then there came the stones, and I hid under the desk. I had been thinking how if only I could be normal looking, I wouldn't have the problems I had. But there was no way I could hide my face. I might possibly get away with wearing gloves all the time but my scaly face and odd eyes would mark me out as someone who had undergone MORFS. I had tried using make-up to hide the scales a few times; it didn't really work, since they were too different to the texture of skin. Even if I could cover the colour, the pattern would still show through. Maybe a mask would work, but what sort of mask could I wear that wouldn't be obvious?

I was getting nowhere. I decided to have a cup of tea to try and relax a bit, and see if that would help the idea simmering in my brain become clearer. I was just putting the kettle on and getting out the tea bags, when I realised what I had been thinking. I couldn't wear a mask, but I could project one with my illusion abilities. It wouldn't need to be that complex, as long as it made my face and hands look "skin-like." If it worked, I would look like a normal girl, and hopefully wouldn't get too much flak from the anti MORFS crowd.

I left the tea and rushed into the flat's bathroom, where there was a mirror. I focused on creating a mask over the sides of my face. Soon, I had formed two patches of invisibleness on the sides of my face and neck. The invisibility was the default option for my power. It was a bit odd looking, but I was moving in the right direction. I focused and tried to make the patches a sort of skin tone, but it still looked a little fake. After some experimentation, and tweaking, I had covered the patches on the side of my face and neck with a realistic-looking skin pattern. I tried turning and moving my head to check if it was consistent from any angle. It looked pretty good. I then tried speaking, and the 'skin' bent in slightly exaggerated ways, that made it look like the skin on my face was stretching too much. After some adjustment, I had corrected that. I could now speak, without giving away my secret.

I then went to work on my hands. My damaged left hand was a bit of a problem. It was nearly healed, now just slightly smaller than my right hand, still regenerating. I decided to leave it as is; if anyone mentioned it, I could say it had always been that way or make some reference to a childhood injury, which was only partly a lie. After twenty minutes or so of tweaking, I had some convincing skin gloves to hide my hands. I now wondered whether I should do something about my eyes. It would be the most complex part of the illusion, as I couldn't just hide them under a flat layer. I would have to match my eye's motion and eyelid movements. Blinking wasn't so much of a problem, since I didn't tend to do that anymore, relying instead on my nictitating membranes. Still, I might have to fake it now and then, and I would definitely have to cover up the membranes. They just scream out freak if anyone saw them. I would have to see out, but that seemed to be a property of my illusions' one-way light transmission, as Sarah put it.

It took another hour to work out the eyes to my satisfaction, but at the end of it a blue eyed normal looking girl stared back at me from the mirror.

It was a bit startling. I was only just getting used to my standard reflection; now, the subtle alteration of skin where there were scales, and blue eyes made me look surprisingly different. As I watched the blue eyed girl in the mirror, I realised I would need an even more complete camouflage for any instance where I had to get undressed around other girls. Since my timetable said PE was not till Thursday, I had a few days to get that ready.

I worked hard to memorise the illusion I was generating. I seemed to be able to imprint a pattern on my field, and then somehow store it for later use. Anna said this was some sort of aspect of the way I generated images. The bit of my brain that consciously controlled my abilities could store patterns, if I worked at memorising them. It was a bit like training something to perform a certain action; you repeatedly trained the action till you could do it without thinking. The more I used a certain pattern, the easier it became to retrieve it, and conversely the less I used something the quicker it would fade, till I would have to almost start from scratch to generate it.

This was, by far, the most complex pattern I had tried to memorise, so I spent extra time concentrating on it, then switching it off, and back on again, in quick succession. Soon I could turn on blue-eyed Mandy with a few seconds of concentration.

I went back into the kitchen and reboiled the kettle to make some tea to celebrate my success, pleased as punch at my own cleverness. I switched off my cover for a bit, just for rest. The act of maintaining the illusion, as well as memorising such a complex illusion, had really worn me out. I needed some time as standard Mandy to recover and maybe a bite to eat. I had a rejuvenating cup of tea, a sandwich or two, and read a bit.