Shivani's Journal
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Days -3 - 0
13th June
T-3 days from initial treatment
This room is far too big.
My quarters here are nearly the size of my old school hall, with full glass windows on the south side, looking out onto the green expanse of the Irati Forest. I'm lucky to have a good view, at least - depending on the reactivity of my system with the serum, I could be here for weeks or even months before they let me loose.
Still, it's a weird place to be living. The bed, desk, and lockers are all tucked away in one corner of the chamber, with a bathroom behind a curtain at the other end. The rest is bare tiled floor. They tell me it's meant to give me room to grow.
To avoid what Dr Herrera called "pheromonal conflicts", all the volunteers will be kept in separate chambers like this one once the trial begins. I'll meet the others tomorrow, before the final physical.
My heart is in my throat. I haven't slept properly in days. I'm almost looking forward to the system shock of the first week or so. That ought to knock me out for a while.
***
14th June
T-2 days from initial treatment
We all convened this morning in the central admin building, the converted hotel around which all this infrastructure was thrown up. Compared to the five bright, sterile housing units and the grey concrete block of the security centre, it felt tiny and old-fashioned, almost homey. Apparently most of the actual science staff are working remotely - even Dr Herrera dialled into the meeting from U Navarra a few miles down the road.
I tried to commit my fellow subjects to memory, since this'll be my last time seeing their original shapes, but somehow it just didn't stick. It was like seeing childhood pictures of my parents - that's not the right form, not the one I know. I held onto a few things. Marley was in a punk band. Elias paints. Gwen's a linguist. Nathan would like everyone to know that he is from New York.
Of course, this time, I don't know exactly what the right form will look like. They gave us a few sketches and some digital models, but Dr Callaghan told us we should pretty much ignore them. I've seen the original artist's impressions of the Chaney and Ōshima morphs. It's pure guesswork.
I like Dr Callaghan. She's in her fifties, with a blue-dyed side pony and a deep, earthy laugh you can hear across the campus. She worked on Ōshima, and you can tell. The jargon all rolls easily off her tongue.
I'm glad she'll be doing the procedure. I don't know if I trust the serum, but I trust her. And even if I didn't, it's too late to back out now.
***
15th June
T-1 day from initial treatment
We all had our final medical screening today. It's pretty much a formality - they've already poked, scanned, and photographed every bit of me over the last few months, testing finer and finer points of compatibility to narrow down the volunteer pool. Of course, if this first round is successful, they'll work on adapting the serum for broader compatibility, but, for now, I have what they need.
I was desperate for a distraction this morning, so I got to know the computer in my room. I have Internet access, but it's heavily restricted - the contract specifies that I can't talk about the process publicly, so no email and no social media. I do have access to a private Anansi server, though, with lines to the other volunteers, Dr Callaghan, Dr Lombardo, room service, and the security desk.
I got chatting to Elias a little on there, while I waited for my turn. It was a clipped, strained conversation, like we were both trying to pretend we weren't thinking of tomorrow. I like him, though. He's gentle, and funnier than I think he realises. Hopefully I'll get to know him a bit better once treatment begins.
Then they came to collect me, and for half an hour I lay naked on the exam table while Dr Callaghan and her assistant inspected my body - my original body - for the last time. When I signed up a year ago, I was self-conscious about this part, but by now I've stripped in front of enough scientists and technicians to take the edge off.
It's 2am as I write this. I can't even think about sleeping. My stomach hurts a little. It must be nerves, and there's only one thing now that can dispel them. I'm ready. I have to be.
***
16th June
Treatment day
I suppose I'll always be human to some degree, and, in practice, it'll take a few days for the serum to warp my body and my genome past the legal definition of "baseline". But the end of my old self was a hard thought to escape as Dr Callaghan attached the sticky white pads to my gel-smeared skin: pectorals, hips, hands, calves, and one last pad in the centre of my forehead.
She let me keep that one as a souvenir. It's just inert foam now, but it will always be the original centrepoint of my transformation.
The actual injection was smooth, remarkably so. I barely felt a thing as the pads delivered their roiling biochemical payload, discharging it into my skin and letting it spread through me. Just a faint jolt across my body, like the static you get off escalators, and then... Nothing. Done. I blinked, Dr Callaghan marked the time as 11:25, and my human existence was over.
I suppose I'm a nascent Gygax morph now. I don't feel like one - I look down at my body and see the same one I've woken up to every day for 27 years. My first meal as a new subspecies was an enormous bowl of porridge fresh from the campus kitchen, but, carbs be damned, I'm exhausted, almost deflated, the adrenaline high of the last few weeks yanked out from under me. It's not just me, at least - Elias plays chess, and suggested a PBEM game, but we only got a few moves deep before he said he was too tired to think. It feels odd to end a day as momentous as this by falling asleep to a movie, but I think that's all I have the energy for.
***
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