In today's story I imagine a world where somewhere down the line a mutation occurred allowing a small percentage of people to alter their form in any which way the please. But there has always been one thing in fiction dealing with shapeshifters that has always bothered me: conservation of mass. Mystique for instance can change her form from a little girl to an overweight politician but where does all that mass go? It has to go somewhere. So I made a few alterations as if shapeshifters existed in our world with working physics.
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| Seriously, where does it all go? |
This story is about a STAG unit's everyday case with these shifters. STAG , which stands for Shifter Tracing & Administration Group is a UN Initiative to control and detain any shifter deemed a menace. Here is their story:
A shifter’s value is determined by the amount of shit they leave behind, or take in. No matter how many cells you rearrange to take on the form you want, you’re always going to shit out pieces of yourself into woman’s restroom of a local Goody Mart for an hour just to become that trophy wife with double D breast and a slim midriff; or maybe you’ll make a trip to Lil’ Kim’s chinese super buffet spending only upwards to thirty bucks over the course of three days to assume the form of an NFL player. It’s physics one-oh-one, conservation of mass.
It’s a dangerous life to get involved in, too. Back in the old days con-men would have to fake professions to take money from the naive. Easy work: pretend to be a confident businessman, sell a product or property that doesn’t exist, and presto, to the persuasive goes the spoils! Faking a profession is easy, faking an entirely new life is difficult. Try pretending to be another human being with their own imperfections, their own emotions, and personalities for more than a minute; it’s fuckin’ difficult unless your address is in Hollywood, California. As a kid I could pretend to be any profession I wanted to be, sometimes a police officer, other times a maritan cowboy, easy as cake especially with the right clothes, but once I joined theater in middle school the role of Sherlock was beyond me.
Everyday since the dawn of the mutation spawned its way into the human gene pool years ago we’ve arrested hundreds of shifters throughout the globe. Mostly it’s the petty criminals who impersonate their acquaintances to rob a bank or frame their boss by sleeping with their secretary in with their boss’ skin. We’ve gotten everything from white middle aged women living on the edge of poverty taking the form of their slightly more fortunate neighbors to rob a bank all the way to pigs on Wall Street taking the forms of other CEOs to eliminate competition. Then there’s the most pathetic, celebrity impersonators. Oh god they are the scum of scum.
Which reminds me that just three weeks ago we brought in a family of shifters, mom, pa, teenaged son and daughter into STAG. We found them leaving their hotel room at the Freeside Resort wearing the skins of the Marilyn Girls, and boy their act was pathetic. The Harrison’s that is, not the Girls, I love their song “We Live or We Die,” I even jammed to it with Martin on the way to arrest.
The father, Jim Harrison, wore the skin of Michelle Ohmer, being the leader of the house I guess it came naturally to him to take the form of a tall and dark amazonian woman, she is the front woman after all so it makes sense I guess. I don’t know why he didn’t shape himself into Car Malla, she’s the one who everybody cares about. Maybe his wife didn’t let him become the essence of sex.
His wife, Harriet, showed her lack of creativity by wearing the skin of Harriet Reeds, shows for a lack of skill if you were to ask me. Taking the one member with the same pale white skin as yourself and name is like an actor playing himself, an easy roll to fill. Avery disagreed, naturally. He reminded me once again of his early days where he would only take the form of people who resembled him, like his brother to get with his girlfriend. Avery’s too damn forgiving, I mean I get a noob shifter taking the form of somebody close to them but Harriet Harrison is forty-one.
Their daughter, Jamie, a larger girl in her birth-skin, must of shat out the most of her organs since she wore the face of Franni, the fuckin icon of anorexia skin was worn by a fuckin heavy weight. If I were to guess how long a two-hundred-and-eighteen pound sixteen year old girl spent on the toilet to become a ninety-eight pound asian woman I’d put a hundred bucks on a week at least. That’s more patience and dedication than turning a cinder block into a feather. Why she didn’t shed all that weight before their little get away beats me, most shifters like to keep on a little extra weight just incase its needed, but she was a good seventy pounds over the average.
And finally there was Matt, the youngest at the age of thirteen. Like a typical thirteen year old he took the form North America’s sexiest woman for two years straight, that’s right Sandra Regalado, or more commonly known as Car Malla. A woman with more looks than talent if you ask me, a body any woman would kill for (any plenty of self conscious shifters out there have worn it), and any man would instantly drop their pants if they were to even be touched by her. What most didn’t realize during their stay at the Freeside Hotel was that Car Malla’s skin worn by a thirteen year old boy. To Jim and Harriet, you two are disgusting parents allowing a boy whose balls just dropped a few months ago and just discovered the strange feelings between his legs whenever he spies the slightest hint of cleavage the fact that you allowed him to wear the body of a modern day sex symbol is atrocious. I hope the judge sentences those two to a long stay in prison.
They were a clever bunch though, doing way more homework than most impersonators ever do. They certainly did their homework, fake ID chips implanted with up to date information on the Girls. Down to the very last meal each member ate the day before the Harrisons arrived at Freeside. Jim and Harriet’s vocalization was perfect, fooling the sonic sensors, Jamie’s was alright but could be altered, a prodigy Avery called her. Avoiding their car from being scanned the Harrisons took a limo instead, the Marilyn Girl’s very own chauffeur service too. Online data was planted two months in advance across smaller forums in the net to announce the Girl’s secret vacation to the Freeside. Why go through all this trouble? Well if you were to ask Jim and Harriet themselves they’d say it was too take a harmless family vacation for free. Bullshit, I know something else is up, I just don’t know what yet.
After all their homework and decoys planted, all that attention to detail and the Harrisons failed where every goddamn shifter fails: playing the part. It doesn’t matter if you have every detail down from the color of their eyes to their hair follicles on your form's ass, if you can’t play the part, it’s over. Jim did alright, he radiated Michelle’s confidence like a lightbulb filling up an empty room, which was good for all the small talk he had to make with her lips. But like the light bulb, once it’s brought from a confined space to the outside the light is blinded by the sun that is the real Michelle. Michelle has a thing for looking content in no matter what context she could be held over a pit of broken glass by a deranged fan and still look like she was in control of the situation. Jim couldn’t walk like her or sit the way she sits without looking a bit akward.
The rest of the family did even worse: Harriet drank the drinks that only Harriet Harrison likes, not the Harriet she was pretending to be. Reeds’, the face of Kissinger Light, only drank Kissinger when she was out in public because her contract said so, Harrison would always go for the margaritas. Jamie ate more than Franni does, even hitting up the hotel buffet once. And finally there’s Matt.
Matt, oh man I feel so sorry for that poor kid, he never spoke when they family left the room; when he did he would whisper to his family and no one else. Sure he could dress himself up in the way any way a teenaged boy dreamed all girls dressed: high heels and a bikini on all the time, push-up bras for every other occasion, but if a man ever looked at his breast or directly in the eyes he would shy away behind a towel covering up himself. There are even accounts of Car Malla hiding behind Michelle and Harriet whenever the quartet walked down the beach holding their hands.
At the scene I spoke to a witness who told me the funnies thing. After a few drinks he went to break the sea when he had his mind blown: Car Malla walked straight into the mens room, and stood directly up to the urinal next to the one he was using.
“My heart stopped pumping all my blood to my brain,” the witness said, “and diverted directly between my legs. I didn’t know what to do, right next to me was the woman that every man would kill to even touch, I didn’t even find it weird she was attempting to use a urinal. I’ve had dreams about this, Car Malla walking into a room with just me and her, not her using a urinal though, that’s some fucked up shit. Anyways, I nearly lost control of my legs because they were trembling so much. Once Car Malla, well I guess the shifter, realized he no longer had a penis though is when she - he - gave me a look of embarrassment and dashed out the door. I had no idea just happend, so I did what every man does when he gets close to a dream girl: I told all my buds at the bar.”
Poor, poor Matt. If it wasn’t for that simple mistake the Harrisons might have spent at least another night or two at Freeside before my unit at STAG caught them.
As I mentioned earlier, Matt never spoke a single word. Initially I thought it was because he was shy and self conscious. Most teenaged boys aren’t used to having breast perkier than a cheerleader’s personality, and an absurd amount of attention twenty-four-seven. It was the bartender who called us in that night, and in thirty minutes the family was in cuffs in the back of a STAG van. Matt broke down, whining and throwing a fit, apologizing to us and his parents all with the voice of a prepubescent boy. I won’t lie and say I kept a straight face during their apprehension. I tried my best, but like remembering a joke in the middle of a church service it was impossible to contain, the voice of a boy going through puberty was coming out of America’s biggest sex symbol, completed with the crackling from low to high. The irony was so much, once Martin and me hopped into the van’s cab we let it all out between Freeside and dispatch, even Avery chuckled a bit too.
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