I, Gideon Gorsky, stand with my back against the brick wall. My hands are up in the air, my body is covered from head to toe in the green byproduct of the unplanned transmutation of some passerby. The world is ending, and there is no escape. You’re aiming the genetic decoder at my forehead. Your twitchy finger strokes the trigger.

My dear, it may be time to talk about our relationship.

I admit—our marriage is undergoing something of a crisis at the moment. I suppose you mistook my wild gesticulation for an attempt to choke you. Not so! That is merely how my current form expresses its biological reaction to the physical proximity of a loved one. It’s not easy to control seven extremities. I promise to reduce their number by Tuesday.

Besides, have you looked in the mirror? A woman with perpendicular eyelids and a third eye in the back of her head shouldn’t be so demanding when it comes to her husband’s appearance.

Fine, fine, I take it back. Just don’t get angry. You tend to act rashly when you’re angry.

I shouldn’t have said that. You think it’s easy to hold a forked tongue? It lets words slip before I have the chance to think them through. But you should know that all my thoughts are about you, about your well-being and comfort. It may sound strange, but the entire world came apart only because I was always so concerned with providing for your needs.

Our therapist used to say there are as many crisis triggers in a relationship as there are people involved in that relationship. That’s before he transmuted and moved away. I heard he pole dances somewhere in the Caribbean now, under the name of Zara. But I digress—that has nothing to do with our marriage.

Our marriage is in trouble for two key reasons: you and me. Let’s try to reestablish the chain of events that led us here.

I’m no Mister Universe, but I’m very smart. No one ever understood or appreciated this fact, especially since I failed the standardized school tests. That’s because the only subject that truly excited me was pharmacology. Except pharmacology wasn’t on the curriculum; even biology and chemistry were taught only as electives in my municipal school.

Between the low test scores and my parents’ lack of funds, I ended up in a third-rate technical college. The nearest thing they taught to pharmacology was food science. This degree could land me a comfortable job at some factory mass-producing frozen dinners, but I wanted more. Especially after I met you.

You come a lot closer to the Ms. Universe standard, except you’re far too lazy to buy a pretty bikini and head to casting. Your ceiling was even lower than mine. You only made it through middle school. Teachers threw a small party when you left. In a way you had it easier—you knew that your parents couldn’t afford a decent education for their only daughter. The fact that they couldn’t provide for the lifestyle you wanted was more difficult to accept. That’s where I came in.

I understood that my physical characteristics weren’t sufficient to match up to a beauty like you, and I was too poor to buy your affections. So I made wild promises about how—in a year or two—I’d become a famous inventor in the field of pharmacology, conquer the world, and earn enough dough to keep my wife in the lap of luxury.

Everything that happened afterward was a panicked attempt to find my way out of an uncomfortable situation. As such, we’re equally responsible for the demise of the world in general and our marriage in particular. The fault lies in our pairing of an ambitious ugly duckling and a slothful peacock.

The characteristics I loved about you were ones I lacked myself: beauty and pathological indolence. You, on the other hand, were ready to pair up with anyone who would enable you to spend half of every day shopping and the other half resting on the couch with a gaming console in your hand. Your parents were thrilled for me to take you off their hands.

We rented a humble apartment, where you were willing to advance me regular sex and an occasional breakfast for a year or two, until I became rich and famous. A year or two, but no more. I read the verdict in your brown eyes, pretty as beach pebbles and indifferent as the executioner’s axe. I had to do something.

All the major pharmaceutical conglomerates in the country turned down my resume. I didn’t even bother to apply abroad as I don’t speak any foreign languages. I had to lower my expectations and take a job with a medium-sized firm that produced dietary supplements. The firm was at the brink of bankruptcy—supplements had gone out of fashion. The company remained afloat thanks to a dwindling number of loyal customers who’d been taking these additives since before I was born.

I was assigned to perform quality control over the balance of ingredients in the capsules. That’s when I found out that they contained more than just chalk and gelatin. As to the quality of the other ingredients? It was dumb luck these pills hadn’t killed anyone yet.

I wasn’t going to strike it rich performing QA. It took two months, but I managed to secure an audience with the company president.

Sergey Nikolayevich was a thick man in his fifties, with hereditary cynicism in his eyes. I found him in an office-induced stupor. He stared at the wall while his fingers shuffled the holo-files.

I launched into a speech, quickly laying out my plan to save the company. I told him how I’d always dreamed of improving people’s lives through pharmacology, and about the successes I’d achieved in the area of developing mild hallucinogens. Being a true humanitarian, I’d dismissed the illicit opportunities available in the recreational drug trade, and brought my talents to his more-or-less legitimate firm instead.

I offered Sergey Nikolayevich an opportunity to diversify his product line with new mood enhancers that would improve the consumers’ dispositions to the degree of optimistic hallucinations. The ingredients of this special mix were complex, free of long-term side effects and, of course, proprietary. There would be some initial expenses. This wasn’t chalk and gelatin. This was quality merchandise, and we could get started just as soon as we negotiated my cut of this enterprise.

“Huh? What can I do for you, Son?” Sergey Nikolayevich blinked rapidly. Apparently he’d been dozing the entire time. I had to repeat everything. Fortunately, I’d memorized the speech the night before.

Sergey Nikolayevich leafed through the pages of my proposal without enthusiasm.

“We’ve done this before,” he said, ruefully. “We’ve done all of it. You’re simply too young to remember the good old days. Ah, the market share we held! We sold supplements like ‘Satyr’s Dream’ and ‘Amazon’s Ecstasy.’  Now those enhanced the consumer’s mood, let me tell you. I almost went to prison, along with the chemist who created the formulas. When law enforcement burned down the warehouses full of ‘Satyr’s Dream’ I shed tears for the last time in my life. Since then I’ve had nothing precious enough to cry over losing. Have you got anything else?”

I had indeed. A product with the working title of “Plan B.” You must always have a plan B if you wish to impress your boss. I had a pair of intriguing formulas in reserve, ones I didn’t want to let go of cheap.  Originally, I was hoping to pitch those after I reached the kind of standing within the firm that would allow me to negotiate better terms.

“Just a moment,” Sergey Nikolayevich stopped me. “Before you show me anything else, consider this: this office has seen any number of pharmacologists, both accredited and self-taught like you. All of them thought they were pitching me revolutionary products. Back when we had the funds, I occasionally even brought some of them to market. Sometimes they sold, sometimes not. But there were no revolutions, nothing earth-shattering.

“I thought about it for a long time and realized that a product could be truly revolutionary only if it fulfills the consumer’s ultimate dream. The difficulty is in figuring out what that dream is.

“We’re a mid-level firm. We can’t compete with giants of industry that deliver truckloads of medications to every corner pharmacy. We can only hope to challenge them by offering some paradigm-shifting product. It needn’t be a cure-all. People seek more than a cure from their pharmaceuticals. That sounds like a paradox, but I deeply believe it to be true.

“Unfortunately, many of the concoctions that might accomplish this lofty goal are considered unlawful. We have to create something that’s both effective and legal.”

He and I were of the same mind. At the age of twenty I already understood that every person has a warm corner within their heart. In that corner lives a hidden dream—to change. There are precious few people who are entirely satisfied with their looks and their body. Personally I only know one such individual—my wife. The rest of us are dissatisfied with at least one little detail, be that the color of our eyes, our girth, our height, or the shape of our heads. Not to mention the wrinkles. We complain about our freckles or lack thereof, and about the size and shape of certain body parts. Some of us curse genetics and despise our entire bodies. Bodies are our prisons. Medications are half-measures, the tools we use to file at the bars of our cells, never achieving tangible results. Medications treat the symptoms but not the disease, it being the perpetual dissatisfaction in one’s self and the envy we feel toward those who have what we lack. Pharmacology, cosmetology, and plastic surgery have all made significant inroads toward correcting our perceived faults.

However, these products are costly, and they don’t always provide quick and lasting results. We are impatient. We hate the waiting and the hard work. We want results here and now—that’s our nature. We want a single pill to help us grow a swan’s neck or to run like a deer. And even if we do manage to overcome some imperfection, we immediately discover another one. This is a never-ending process which offers tremendous commercial opportunities.

While tinkering with tubes and vials in my home kitchen and experimenting with water from the river where twenty-eight different factories dump their waste, I’d stumbled upon a formula that is capable of turning the pharmaceutical industry upside down. In theory, products based on this formula would be capable of causing nearly instantaneous localized changes in a person’s appearance.

“What kind of changes?” asked Sergey Nikolayevich.

“A pill that can turn anyone’s hair platinum blond,” I said.

“There are plenty of hair products that do that already.”

“This pill works within half an hour and the color change is permanent. No dark roots to worry about. You become blond forever.”

Sergey Nikolayevich scratched his nose. “Not bad, not bad. But, why this? You think that becoming blond is the consumers’ ultimate dream?”

“According to research, blond is the most popular hair color. There are fewer and fewer natural blonds, too. But the important thing here isn’t the color, it’s the formula. This is only the beginning. Down the line we can adjust it to produce pills capable of changing eye color and ear shape.”

Sergey Nikolayevich brushed back a strand of his straw-blond hair. “What about a pill for turning hair brown?”

“For now it’s just blond,” I said carefully, afraid to lose his interest. “But potentially . . .”

“Fine,” he said impatiently. “I’m convinced. How many pills do you have?”

“So far, just two grams of the powder,” I admitted.

The tube with the powder was in the inner pocket of my jacket. It was enough for two doses, if my calculations were correct.

The boss frowned, but he hadn’t given up on me yet. “Are you sure it works permanently and in thirty minutes?”

That was the second weak link in my plan B.

“Theoretically,” I said.

It had worked on my neighbor’s hamster. But then the dumb animal had run away.

“Theoretically,” I repeated, with enthusiasm. “I’ll need a lab, research assistants, a raise in salary, and a title of Chief Technologist or perhaps Vice President of Innovation. . . . I’ll also need funds for preliminary research, computers to calculate dosage and run projections, equipment to produce an experimental batch. And lab rats or hamsters for the experiments, as well as some budget for appeasing the animal rights crowd. Then we’ll need chimpanzees and finally human volunteers for clinical trials. These days that’s expensive—even volunteers want to be paid. But, what are you going to do? We have to run tests and make sure there are no side effects.”

“That’s a hell of a lot of money,” stated Sergey Nikolayevich gravely.

“A standard investment into developing a new product line,” I said. “A bribe to get an untested drug certified would cost even more.”

“Much less, actually,” admitted Sergey Nikolayevich. “Look, Son, you’ve got one chance, and that’s to produce a concrete result. A flesh-and-blood proof so impressive, it would make my jaw drop. You get a result—you’ve got a deal. No result—no deal. No one is going to invest in a theory and a vial of tooth powder.”

“Maybe your competitors will feel differently,” I suggested. No good negotiation is complete without a touch of blackmail.

Sergey Nikolayevich gave me the look of a drunken Santa who lost his bag of presents on the way to a Christmas party.

“No one will bite,” he said. “The doorsteps of every corporation are lined with hundreds of self-taught inventors like you, every day. Son, I see you are a persistent sort of fellow. How about this: impress me, then we’ll talk about the money.”

 You lay on the couch and flipped through the virtual catalog of the Adriatic Riviera real estate. Our marriage was already a year old and you felt it was time to search for a comfortable seaside villa. I fed your delusion with lies about the impending promotion. You smiled, and ate the last sandwich in the house.

I wasn’t hungry anyway. I went to the kitchen, put on a teapot, and pondered my vials and the fate of innovation in the modern world.

All I could think about was this: in another month or two you’d see through my lies. I poured the powder from the tube onto a saucer, and separated it into two tiny piles with a butter knife. I scraped one pile back into the tube, then licked the other one off the saucer’s surface.

Half an hour later the roots of my hair began to itch. I walked over to the mirror and saw a platinum blond in the reflection. You always preferred blonds, but I had dirty brown hair, an unforgivable sin from your point of view. I had been afraid to try my own creation before because I’m no hero, but circumstances had forced my hand.

I entered the bedroom to show off my new ‘do, but you were fast asleep and smiling like a baby. You were probably dreaming about some famous blond.

I spent all night laboring in the kitchen. By morning, I had no less than ten grams of the powder.

Sergey Nikolayevich pinched and examined my head with the critical attention of a savvy shopper picking out the season’s first watermelon. Then he sent a strand of my hair to the lab for testing. He pulled the hairs personally. We drank cognac while we waited for the test results. Sergey Nikolayevich squinted at me suspiciously and smoked a cigar. Despite the air-conditioned comfort of his office I felt hot, like a soldier crawling through a minefield under enemy fire.

Sergey Nikolayevich studied the test results. They said that the sample was natural, and had never had a hair color product applied to it. He cheered up and brushed his hand through his own straw-colored hair.

“How much powder do you have left?”

“I made half a tube. That’s all I could manage from the base materials I had.”

“That’s great, Son. We’ll work well together.”

“We need money for initial research and testing,” I reminded him.

“Everyone wants money and no one thinks about the bottom line. What testing? The result is on your head. I’ll take the risk and spare the money for a small production run and some marketing.

“There’s a pair of brunettes in Accounting who wanted to color their hair blond. Let’s issue them some powder. We’ll call it a bonus for their hard work. Let’s do this: if in two weeks’ time you’re still alive and still blond, we’ll begin production.”

He tripled my salary, and we shook hands.

Two weeks later, I didn’t die. Upon discovering my new hair color you suddenly became much nicer to me. We still couldn’t afford a seaside villa, but we rented a fine house in an affluent suburban neighborhood favored by insurance agents and web designers. Sergey Nikolayevich switched from calling me “son” to “partner.”

At first, no one paid much attention to our product. But, after a few days, we had some tentative sales. And then the demand exploded. Streets became flooded with blonds. We sold a huge batch to China. Sergey Nikolayevich gave me a lab, and ordered me to “cook up something else.” Inspired by the initial success, I made modifications to the product and we released pills that turned hair brown, black, and even red.

One day I fainted right in the middle of the lab. My assistant dragged me to the couch and splashed water in my face. Once I came to, he went off in search of something stronger than water.

I felt a strange stretching sensation around my navel, as though someone had spilled glue onto it and the glue had spread on my skin, drying instantly. I ripped off my shirt. My torso was covered in a rose-colored chitinous crust.

The crust spread all the way up to my neck. I knocked at the shell it had formed. There was no pain. It was attached firmly and its rose-colored surface was stitched with a complex beige pattern.

My assistant returned with an expensive bottle of vodka he’d liberated from Marketing. Ever since the sales had picked up they always had something to toast. He touched my shell reverently and asked, “What is this, a new kind of tattoo?”

I’d handpicked an obtuse assistant. It wouldn’t do to have a clever observer at my side when creating new formulas. I assigned some busywork to keep him from butting in with questions at the wrong moment, and called Accounting.

As I suspected, both employees who had sampled the prototype had called out sick. Rumor had it they developed some unusual allergies.

The chitinous shell wasn’t too bothersome. I threw on a sports coat over my shirt, bought flowers, and went to visit the sick women. They’d figured things out, too, and you can guess what sort of words I heard from them that day. Nevertheless, I managed to convince them to hold off from acting on their accusations.

Sergey Nikolayevich was in a great mood. Lately that was the norm. Without saying a word, I lifted up my shirt.

“Looks like we shouldn’t have moved forward without clinical trials,” I said. “The girls from Accounting are suffering from similar complications. A chitinous bosom isn’t a sight for the faint of heart. That can derail any relationship. The girls plan to sue. In a month or two, the first wave of customers will be doing the same. As they say, the greedy man pays twice.”

“Slow down, Partner,” said Sergey Nikoloevich. “It’s unlikely they’ll connect this crust to our product right away.”

“Perhaps not immediately, but they’ll figure it out,” I said. “And I was just beginning work on drugs that can adjust nose shape and lengthen legs.”

Sergey Nikolayevich perked up. “That’s excellent, keep it up. What about the crust—can you do something about that?”

“I’ve got skin in the game on this one. I’ll create a fix. But what about the hundreds of thousands of consumers? We should recall the drug immediately. In the future, we must proceed with more caution. It takes five to ten years and millions in hard currency to legitimately bring a new drug to market.”

At first, I thought Sergey Nikolayevich had fallen into a trance-like state. Later I understood—this was merely the boss’s process for coming up with business strategies.

“Partner,” he shouted in a fit of mercantile ecstasy, “everything is great. Much better than I thought! This drug has side effects? Perfect. The world is our oyster. We won’t recall anything. We’ll give people what they want, for as long as they want it. Side effects merely mean there will be demand for more products. We’ve got them on the hook! When they are all covered in shells, they’ll come to us for an antidote. The important thing is to have the solution ready by then.”

“That’s cynical,” I said. “They’ll hate us.”

“Only if we admit fault, which we’ll never do. In the long term, it won’t matter what caused the problem—they will only care about the cure, and they’ll thank whoever provides it, which will be us. The key is to divert any negative attention elsewhere. Tomorrow I will have the tabloids write about the new epidemic brewing in, let’s say, the Congo. We’ll pay some experts to write articles, spread some misinformation through the blogosphere. A hot talk show wouldn’t hurt, either.”

Sergey Nikolayevich was in his element. He zigzagged across his office in a fit of nervous energy, rubbed his hands together, and giggled. “We’ll say the Congolese fishermen were the first to become sick.”

“Are you sure there are fishermen in the Congo?”

“There are fishermen everywhere. Don’t sweat the small stuff, partner. We’ll figure out the details later. I’m saving your skin and your reputation, and you’re dissatisfied! Instead of arguing, help me come up with a name for this new disease.”

I drummed my fingers against the rosy shell. No good ideas came, but deep in my heart I knew Sergey Nikolayevich was right. I didn’t want a scandal either, because I was afraid to lose you.

“I feel like a shrimp,” I said.

“Shrimp, eh? No, that doesn’t sound very good. . . . Ah! Lobster flu. That’s what we’re going to call the new epidemic. First the lobsters got it, then the fishermen in the Congo caught it from the lobsters.”

“Are there lobsters in the Congo?”

“When people become covered in crust they won’t care whether or not there are lobsters in the Congo. They’ll feel better knowing where to place the blame.”

It was clear that Sergey Nikolayevich was prepared to invest millions in spreading this tall tale. He seemed ready to spend lavishly on anything other than clinical trials.

“Do your part and create the antidote,” he said. “Don’t let me down, Partner. The drug for adjusting nose shape is a good idea, too. You should also work on something that gets rid of cellulite, and for weight loss. Summer is coming—these remedies will sell like hotcakes.”

“I demand twenty percent,” I said firmly. “Not a penny less.”

“The rules remain the same, Partner,” said Sergey Nikolayevich. “Impress me. Then we’ll talk about the money.”

The chitinous shell flaked for hours. I picked up its brittle shards all over the house. The pill worked, but I felt uneasy. The papers, Internet, and TV covered the lobster flu for the third straight week. On the screen, Congolese fishermen with stoic expressions on their long-suffering faces talked about the multitudes of sick lobsters. It was a safe guess as to where the news programs had found them.

You lay on the couch and watched me scrub my belly raw with my fingernails.

“You poor dear,” you said. “You caught this bug, too?”

We eradicated the lobster flu within a month, but it was soon replaced with the Arizona scabies.

My photo graced the cover of Forbes. The European Pharmacologists Association granted me their Man of the Year title. The World Congress of Epidemiologists awarded me the “Savior of Humanity” medal. Every day I was approached by headhunters from the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. Sergey Nikolayevich began calling me “brother” instead of “partner” and raised my share to thirty percent. He could afford to be generous, his company had become the world leader in the corrective pharmacology market.

My success was soured only by the fact that I grew a third kidney. Two weeks in the lab and a new pill later, the kidney had dissolved. Right after that, fur grew on my heels. That took three weeks to fix. I slept in socks so you wouldn’t discover the fur, and waited with trepidation for whatever nasty trick my body would pull next.

The next side effect was surprisingly positive. My muscles bulked up on their own, turning my naturally wimpy body into a rather impressive specimen. I studied the process and forwarded it for Sergey Nikolayevich to monetize.

Unable to hire me away, the world’s top corporations went after my assistant. He fled, and I was happy to see him go. I was tired of the bumbling idiot. I replaced him with the two girls from Accounting. Since they were witnesses to my mistakes, I wanted to keep them close by. In terms of the side effects we were in the same boat. They had become medically dependent on me, and wouldn’t be betraying me anytime soon.

I avoided taking any more of my own drugs, but by then it was too late. I was so saturated with chemicals that they permeated my body, became a part of my metabolism and took on a life of their own, surprising me with all sorts of unplanned mutations. I kept inventing and using new powders, pills, ointments, and injections. I knew this couldn’t go on forever. I was losing control. Soon I wouldn’t be able to keep my own appearance, wouldn’t recognize myself in the mirror. It’s not that I was ever in love with the way I looked, but I wasn’t ready to give up my individuality. I was like a man who chose to take his own life and experienced regret too late, in the brief moment after he had already pulled the trigger.

In those days I was too concerned with my own problems to notice how slowly, irrevocably, the world was changing around me.

“Have you heard about the purists and the reshapers?” asked Sergey Nikolayevich.

He’d invited me to a business dinner at a very expensive restaurant. Lately I’d been leading the life of a lab hermit. This was the first time I had been out socially since getting rid of the heel fur. We drank fancy red wines and dined on organic venison.

On the stage, the gypsy band (half of them now blond) sang ancient love songs. It wasn’t just the performers who looked strange. Every person in the restaurant exhibited some small imperfection. Some had ears hanging down to their shoulders, the side effect of the nose adjustment—our latest pills would cure the symptom within a month. Others were bald, and while some experienced that condition naturally, for others it was the side effect from taking our fanny-firming pill. We introduced an ointment that would begin to re-grow hair in just three days.  Wrist scales were more difficult to remedy, requiring four months of injections and mandatory sunbathing. The scales developed whenever our corrective drugs for eye color, breast size, and hip curvature were taken at the same time, and afflicted only women. They were recorded in the medical books as the primary symptom of the Amsterdam fever. Some ladies hid the scales under bracelets, while others painted them with nail polish and showed them off proudly.

“The purists and the reshapers?” I repeated, absentmindedly. I was trying to figure out how to get rid of my tic. It was a relatively minor side effect, but a very inconvenient one.

“Purists advocate maintaining one’s natural appearance,” explained Sergey Nikolayevich. “It started out as a grassroots movement, but quickly found powerful supporters. They’ve launched a parliamentary investigation into our company. They found some well-respected professor who believes we’re connected to lobster flu and Arizona scabies. I tried to reach an understanding with him, but the old man is unbribeable. He’s angry at us over that remedy for impotency. You remember . . .”

“So, he isn’t without sin.”

“That’s just it—his young wife gave it to him without his knowledge. And when the side effects manifested, she confessed. He’s out for our blood.”

“This was to be expected,” I said, melancholically chewing venison. My tic made me wink at Sergey Nikolayevich.

“There’s no reasoning with the purists,” he said. “So far, no one is taking the professor seriously. My goal is to muddy up the waters. I’ve helped organize the party of reshapers, individuals who are actively interested in altering their appearance. I hired a young PR specialist to head the People’s Reshaper Movement. My expectation was to merely remind the public of the pluralism of opinions, and that there is no accounting for taste. In reality, the movement has exceeded even my greatest expectations.

“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.

Agents shrunk away from me when I transmuted. That was my one chance to escape. I smashed the window and flew out. My latest transmutation had given me wings—not very powerful ones, but strong enough to glide like a flying squirrel, jumping from tree to tree, from roof to roof.

I lost the helicopters that chased me by the time I reached the edge of the city. My pursuers clustered above the forest, apparently thinking I was hiding in the trees.

From the bird’s eye view I saw the city burning. Flashes of gunfire and green vapors of transmutations. Purists and reshapers fought each other fiercely. The fate of the world was being decided by fisticuffs.

My transmutation was short-lived. I barely reached home. The wings withered and fell off just as I broke through the window and onto the floor of our living room.

You were still on the couch, a slipper hanging off your toe, your thoughts somewhere very far away.

“Back already?” you asked.

“There’s a plane waiting for us on an airfield outside of town. It’s dangerous to stay here; people are rioting and knifing each other in the streets. There are helicopters after me. You don’t need to pack. You can even come wearing your robe and slippers. All you have to do is get off the couch.”

You stretched. The slipper fell off your toe and hit the ground with a thud.

“Gideon, I don’t recognize you lately,” you said.

“I understand.”

“We’ve drifted apart.”

“There’s something to that.”

“We’ve become strangers. We have nothing in common. It’s time for us to live apart. I’ll live here and you . . . somewhere else.”

I had no time or patience left to argue with you.

“Dearest, perhaps you should think this through. Maybe you’ll realize I’m right once you’ve calmed down.  Do you want your favorite strawberry milkshake?”

You’ve never said “no” to a milkshake. The agents failed to search me, so I still had the vial half full of the latest iteration of “Perpetual Motion.”

You gulped the milkshake down quickly. Perhaps you were hungry, since I hadn’t been around to serve you a meal. You winced at the empty glass. “It tasted strange.”

“You finally noticed,” I said.

A huge dose of the drug caused an immediate transmutation. Your eyelids turned ninety degrees, your lips swelled up, and a third eye on a short stalk grew in the back of your head. The eyestalk turned and you looked at yourself.

“What happened? What did you do to me?”

“Like Romeo and Juliet, we drank of the same poison. Fair’s fair.”

Clearly I shouldn’t have been so flippant.

“The blue mushrooms in the cleavage—that was also you?”

“It was,” I said, proud as an artist showing off his latest painting.

“You were poisoning me the whole time!”

You ripped the genetic decoder from the wall, and we ran. Or, to be precise, I ran. You chased me, screaming and waving the gun.

Let’s call things what they are—this is a relationship crisis. Statistically, crises are experienced by over ninety percent of married couples. It is only possible to overcome such a crisis and salvage the relationship by working together.

During the last two hours I had a lot of time to think while you chased me across the city. We made a lot of mistakes. We based our relationship on cash and aggression, whereas we should have based it on unselfish love and optimism for the future. This became clear to me, and I found the way to save our relationship, and the world.

Put down the decoder. Let’s forgive each other all of our transgressions. This is the moment of truth. Your immunity to my drugs, your ability to shrug off side effects and return to your original—perfect—form, is unique. Your body contains some sort of element capable of thwarting any attempts to change you. There is no other explanation. You’re special. You’re the chosen one. The salvation of the human race is within you.

We have to drop everything, and study this phenomenon. I’m absolutely sure that your body will soon get rid of all the changes caused by the transmutation. Your lips, for example, are already back to normal. I must solve this mystery.

What? You say it’s enough to simply love yourself? Love yourself the way you were born? That’s antiquated romanticism, my dear. I didn’t expect that from you. Fine, let’s suppose that’s true. But all love (including the love of self) is a chemical reaction. I will distill this chemical agent from your body and use it to create a vaccine, for me and for the rest of humanity.

Once I do this, they will have no choice but to award me the Nobel Prize and then leave me alone. Then we can leave for lush, tropical islands, and live out the rest of our days there the natural way, as God created us. We can bring your couch, too.

I just thought of something. What if, given your habits, the vaccine based on your chemistry will also have side effects? What if humanity will fall in love with itself like Narcissus, plunge onto couches, and refuse to get up even to feed themselves?

As ever, I’m afraid there is no time for a medical trial.