The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Nine Page 13

  His calmness allowed her to think better!

  The more he spoke, the more her memories came back to her, the more her mind and her thoughts made sense to her. Her past – yes, she had realized she had Transform Sickness, but her family’s place in society had been precarious, because her husband was a union leader, and she wasn’t white, so after writing a cryptic note to her husband and making sure her daughter Ellie had someone to take care of her, she had checked herself into a Transform clinic anonymously. People who had Transforms in their family often lost their jobs, or worse. She had to sacrifice her family to save them.

  She had taught school. Junior high Spanish. She would have preferred to teach chemistry, but, well, prejudice and stereotyping. She had barely scraped her way through college, and she would have liked a real job in chemistry, but, well, female.

  This Zero didn’t even think she understood what he was saying to her. This Guru Shadow person thought it would be weeks and months before she would understand words again.

  Hmm.

  She could use dried shit as chalk.

  She bounded to her feet, scaring poor Zero. She bounded away, found some well-dried shit, and went back to him. On the cinderblock wall behind him she wrote, in shaky and large letters, ‘My name is Sharon’.

  “Holy shit!” Zero said, his voice now high and squeaky. He recovered his aplomb faster than she imagined he would. “Well, Sharon, I think we’re going to have to get you some writing materials. Would you like that?”

  She nodded and said ‘ook eek’, paused, and then wrote ‘yes’ on the wall.

  ---

  “My name is Fred Dowling,” the tall honey-blond haired Major Transform said. “Count Dowling, if I don’t mess this up. I’m a Noble Chimera.”

  Glad to meet you. I’m Sharon, she wrote. She carried the large pad of paper with her at all times, now, and had gone through several pencils. After some prompting, she had convinced Zero to provide her with inch thick pencils. They didn’t break as often.

  Dowling was a good-looking man. In her week with Crow Zero, she had learned much and gotten used to the idea that she was, indeed, a Monster, and that she wouldn’t be able to go back to her family. Dowling smelled sexy, and made her interested, more interested than she ever remembered being, even when she had been a teenager. But wouldn’t that be beastiality? Immoral and forbidden? She was a beast, now.

  She would have to think about the morality of this. Later.

  Crow Zero said you have something important to say to me, she wrote. Something Zero was too scared to say.

  Dowling sat down, back against a wall, and she sat down beside him. “You know you’re a Monster, right?” She nodded. “I – we, the Nobles – can turn you back human. But when we tried this with another recently transformed Monster, she lost her mind and memories, and had to start her life over.”

  Yuck, she wrote.

  “However, when Crow Master Occum did this with an older Monster, she didn’t lose her mind. She kept her mind and quickly relearned how to talk. If you’re willing, we’d like you to stay a Monster for a year or two more, until you grow your Monster metacampus.”

  One of the harder lessons Crow Zero had taught her was that she had been a Monster for eight months, not the few days and weeks she had thought. The fact she had lost so much time, made so few memories in those eight months, terrified her and sickened her. She hadn’t written anything for a day after she learned that lesson.

  Has this ever worked before?

  “No,” Dowling said. “You’d be the first to be part of a Noble household as a Monster for so long a time. We know our enemies, the Hunters, do this, but we don’t know how.”

  They had thought they had killed all the Hunters in the Detroit battle, but they now knew several had survived. These reborn Hunters didn’t attack people like they used to, though, and none of Crow Zero’s friends were sure what to do with them.

  Okay. I’ll take the chance, she wrote. You said there was something else, though.

  “Uh huh,” Dowling said. “Sharon, we’re going to have the occasional help in this project from a top researcher in Major Transforms, someone we call the Good Doctor. He’s helped out the Nobles for years, but he won’t smell like family. The first thing we’re going to have to teach you is not to go berserk when he shows up to examine you.”

  “Okay. I wouldn’t want to harm any of your friends.” She paused and thought. “Do you think he can tell me what’s going on with me? I swear I’m still changing my shape.

  Dowling turned to Crow Zero, who sat with his back to the metal wall. “I can answer that,” the Crow said, quiet. “The Monster transformation never stops. Monsters are always evolving.”

  “A Noble Chimera can take down your juice and stop the change,” Dowling said, “but if we do so, there’s no telling how long it’ll take for you to grow your Monster metacampus. I know it’s painful to have so much juice, but letting you keep all your juice is part of our experiment.”

  I understand, she wrote. Only what Crow Zero said isn’t correct. Evolution doesn’t happen to individuals within their lifetimes.

  Dowling laughed and pointed a meaty finger at the Crow. Zero blushed. “Zero’s well known to have issues with proper terminology.”

  Sharon continued to write. She wanted to make this as clear as possible; she refused to have people thinking of her as a dumb Monster. I am not evolving. We Transforms are evolution. We are the future.

  Author’s Afterword

  Thanks to Randy and Margaret Scheers, Michelle and Karl Stembol, Gary and Judy Williams, Maurice Gehin, Alex Farmer, and as always my wife, Marjorie Farmer. Without their help this novel would have never been made.

  Cover credit for the background building to Adalbertus Fortunatus.

  After I collected many helpful but non-monetary responses from various other publishing venues regarding my novels, I decided the best way to introduce the Commander series to a wider audience was via the ebook market. I have two traditionally published short stories, one in Analog and the other in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine.

  I hope you enjoyed reading this series.

  If you enjoyed this, you can find out further information about the Commander series, the background mythos of the Commander series, and about other fiction, on http://majortransform.com. Interesting and helpful comments are encouraged. Tell your friends. Post reviews.

  My next work, the first book of the “99 Gods” trilogy (not in the Commander universe), I’m tentatively scheduling for epublishing later in 2013. The next series in the Commander universe, “The Cause”, will be released after the 99 Gods trilogy is epublished.

  Randall Allen Farmer