MASS

Seven Everson

You humans all think you’ve got the deal on shapeshifters.

You see a girl in a movie shifting (for some reason its always a girl). One moment she’s a horse, then a cat, then a bird. Then she turns into water and slides under the door. Now she’s a moth, fluttering asway.

Well, that science is wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong.

Don’t even get me started on how wrong that science is.

The physics on your planet is the same as on mine. As it is anywhere in the multiverse. Mass has weight, and weight is gravity’s bitch. So, in the real world, where physics actually works, if I’m a human one moment and then turn into a bird, I’m going to be one hell of a heavy bird. That bird won’t be flying anywhere.

I can become an elephant, but I’m going to be stretched pretty thin, I can tell you. My atoms will be bound with the very loosed of bonds. It’s really not worth the effort to turn into a giant creature because I simply won’t have the strength that actual creature would supposedly have. Size is for effect only. There are people back home who do like to be bigger creatures, and they specifically overeat so they can offload their Mass into storage systems, then collect it all together to turn into something the size of a hippo.

Blurgh. It’s gross. I’m definitely not one of them.

So how do I turn into a bird, or a cat, then? Am I stuck being a human or a large dog or a deer forever?

Of course not. I can be that bird, but first I have to lose some Mass.

Mass is the lump of matter Shifters don’t need when we turn into something smaller. You morph part of you into the bird and separate the other part out to leave it behind.

But it’s not as simple as assembling a pile of congealing cells: the Mass still needs to respire to stay viable. It needs a lung or gill system, it needs fur or scales or skin to keep it intact and warm, or cool, whatever. It needs almost everything a living creature needs, but without a digestive system, or eyes. And it’s not sentient - at least, no more sentient than a pile of amoeba. It can tactfully withdraw from heat, but it’s not a conscious decision, just a survival instinct. If someone wants to mess with your Mass while you’re off having fun, there’s not a lot it can do to defend itself.

Now on my planet, that’s never a problem. We have specially built Mass deposit buildings where you can safely leave the bigger part of you behind while you go off to have fun. Want to swim with the fish? Pop your Mass in the airconditioned unit on the beach. Want to be a bird? Knock yourself out.

Obviously, we don’t have fish and birds like earth - I’m just using them as a comparison to make things simple.

Anyway, back to my issue of Mass, which is always an issue on your planet. It’s never so easy to just leave it anywhere; I have to be careful that none of you are going to stumble across it.

So why am I hanging about on your planet, if it’s such a drama? Why not go home, Shifty?

Because I’m here by accident. Literally, an accident. I caught a ride with a few non-shifter friends from out of the neighbourhood and we ducked into Earth for snacks. We got snared with a high-flying weather balloon and crashed in Nevada.

I’m sure you heard about that crash - you people are still talking about it. Some of my friends died in it. The others, I never saw again.

Shifters do great in crashes - we quickly reproduce multiple organ and satellite brains in the hope that at least one survives.

I survived and walked away into the desert.

And I’ve been walking ever since.

But now I have a Mass problem.

I thought that leaving my Mass in a huge lake on the edge of a tiny town in the middle of nowhere wouldn’t be an issue. There was like, one boat out on the water. I turned my Mass into what looked like a huge congealing dead fish, gave it some gills and wedged it underwater in a partially submerged tree, about a hundred feet off the shore.

Then, as a raven, I popped into the tiny town for a reconnoitre.

Mostly, here, I represent as a female human. I find that overall, it leads to less confrontation. It has its own challenges, as I’m sure you girls know, but I can handle myself.

In a small town though, in the middle of nowhere, I prefer to reconnoitre as a bird, rather than draw attention to the fact that I’m a single girl who has just walked in out of nowhere.

I don’t do cars, or possessions. I don’t have a social security number, so it’s hard for me to settle and find work. Mostly, I keep moving. Sometimes I pick up a cash job here and there.

I found discarded hamburger scraps in a garbage can next to a gas station, snatched them up and flew down to the parking lot for lunch. An actual raven tried to challenge me, but I flipped into a small dog and the raven flew away, startled. I decided to finish lunch as the dog, and then trotted around the town to get a feel for it.

A gas station with an auto repair shop attached, a general store and a few houses. A boat ramp. I saw three people in total. The place was too small to stay in, but I was hoping to find some way of getting another snack before I left. I really hate catching and eating raw animals in the wild . . . it’s disgusting.

There was great potential in the large garbage bin behind the gas station. I could smell fried foods, probably leftovers from the previous day. The lid was heavy though. I would have to come back as a small bear, or even as the girl.

I flipped into the raven and flew back out to the lake to fetch my Mass.

Only to find that my Mass was gone.

Fighting back sudden fear, I flipped into a fish and darted about looking for it. Even as I searched, I knew I wouldn’t find it: your Mass is a part of you, and you know when you’re near it. You can feel it.

I could feel that it was no longer in the lake.

I shot up into the air, already a raven.

WTF? A 100-pound lump of non-sentient flesh doesn’t just get up and walk away.

Over on the shore, the single boat from the lake had been drawn out of the water and connected to a pickup. Now the pickup was driving away. A little hurriedly I thought.

Frantically, I flew after it.

The pickup curved into the gas station and backed the boat into the auto repair shop. I landed on a gas bowser to watch.

Two burley, hairy, excited men leapt from the pickup and hurried to the boat. I watched in horror as they pulled out a sack and dropped the contents into a large fish tank.

My Mass plopped into the tank with a gloopy splash. It floated there, pale and translucent.

The men stood back, hands on hips, and stared at the rest of me.

“What you think it is?” The taller one asked.

The shorter one shrugged. “Jellyfish?”

“Not in fresh water.”

Short Man shook his head. “If you hadn’ spotted those gills, I’d still be sayin’ dead deer.”

Tall Man stepped in for a closer look. “No eyes, no mouth, no arse. Don’ make much sense.”

Short Man said: “Best turn the pump on - might need air.” He walked around to the rear of the tank. Something hummed into life. Bubbles squirted into the water.

Tall Man was thoughtful. “Might be money in this.”

Short man eyed him.

Tall man held out his hands, as if he were directing a movie. “Mysterious creature from the lake. No eyes, no mouth, no fins. Guess what it is and you win a hundred dollars.”

“We don’ got no hundred dollars,” Short Man said.

“We will when we start chargin’ ten dollars a look.”

Short Man and Tall Man looked at one another and grinned.

“Brother,” Shorty said, “you always was the ideas man.”

Tall brother closed the glass lid on the tank, sealing my Mass inside. He pulled out a phone and took a picture.

“We post this everywhere and bring ‘em in here to look.”

Short brother jumped in the pickup and drove it out. Tall man closed the garage doors behind him.

I watched them from the gas bowser, distraught.

How was I supposed to get myself out of a closed tank?

Tall Man saw me watching and waved his hands at me. “Hey,” he said. “Git.”

I got.

After they drove out, I flew around the shed, looking for entry points. There was a high window, open a crack. Too small for a bird.

Hating to do it, I left a little more Mass behind in the crook of a tree and scurried back to the shed as a rat.

Inside, I climbed up onto the tank and surveyed the situation. My Mass bobbed into the water below, breathing calmly in and out. It would be okay in that water without food for a few days, but sooner or later, like all Mass, it would need energy.

But how to get into the tank? Raven was the biggest thing I could be, and it could never lift the heavy glass lid. Rat was going to be hit with a shovel the second they saw me. Neither forms would get into the tank.

I could possibly turn into something very tiny, like a bug, and go through the air intake to be sucked into the tank, but that was risky. When your sentience dies, you die, and being a tiny bug in a filter system seemed a likely place to die. That would have to be my very last option.

But turning into something small enough to hitch a ride on a human who might open the tank was a possibility. Sooner or later one of those brothers was going to want to touch the Mass.

When he did, I could drop in there and get back into myself.

A fly, then.

I would wait. I’d been trapped over seventy years among humans. I could wait some more.

The brothers didn’t come back that night. I thought they’d might, but since it had been close to sunset, I guess they went home to crack open a couple of beers and celebrate their new business venture.

I gave up waiting and went out the back to check out the large garbage bin. The lid was now slightly ajar, allowing me space to crawl in and fossick for dinner.

Options for rat food were limited, so I dragged cold chips out and dumped them in a pile. I went back to my mass, became the raven, and flew down to eat. When I was done, I flew up into a tree to wait out the night.

I don’t like being a bird, or a rat. It’s unsafe. Being a person is not always safe either, but at least the number of things that can and will kill you is less. As a bird, almost everything wants you dead. It isn’t like I can die so easily, but you never know. I only need a second of conscious thought to restructure, but a second is never guaranteed.

It was a long night. I don’t mind leaving my Mass behind on my planet, in a safe climate-controlled environment, but I’ve never liked leaving for long here on earth. And to have it kept from me was dreadful.

Was it getting enough air? Was the water clean enough? What if the water leaked out and my Mass dried out? I didn’t want it to hurt.

When morning came and the brothers came back, it was a relief. They drove their pickup into the car park and walked into the gas station with a folder. I flew down and watched them chat with the guy behind the counter, whom they seemed to know very well. They shook hands. The counter guy set up a picture frame with a picture of my Mass.

MYSTERIOUS CREATURE FROM THE DEPTHS. The sign said.

FIRST TO GUESS WHAT IT IS WINS $100.

$10 TO VIEW.

The brothers left the garage door down and propped opened the smaller side door. They brought chairs outside and sat down. They lit up cigarettes.

I watched them with contempt. They were selling me. It made me feel cheap.

Tall Guy spotted me on the bowser.

“Git!” he waved his arms.

I stayed where I was.

“Damned bird thinks it owns the place,” he grumbled. He picked up a rock.

I flew off.

I thought it more prudent to be the rat, so I stored my Mass in the tree, and crept inside. If someone came to see the weird thing in the tank, it was possible that the tank might be opened.

Throughout the day, seven different people paid to come see my Mass. I don’t think they cared about winning any competition, they just wanted to see if they were smart enough to guess what I might be. I watched them take photos, ask questions, stumble over suggestions.

The fact I didn’t appear to have a mouth or eyes freaked them out, a little.

Cave fish seemed to be the popular theory: that I’d been washed out of a local cave system into the lake. The brothers took great delight in letting them talk about it, then shutting them down by pointing out there weren’t any caves for hundreds of miles.

Everyone had a great time with it. The punters were fascinated, the brothers were smug and getting richer.

Everyone was having a good time except me, the rat, perched up in the rafters. waiting for the slightest chance that someone might open the tank.

But the brothers didn’t open the tank. Maybe they thought someone might accidentally harm the Mass. Maybe they thought someone would sneak a DNA sample and blow their magic.

What they couldn’t know was that a DNA sample would make them millionaires.

I watched and waited for two days. Dozens of people came, including a county newspaper reporter.

On the third day, three people came in a van, just before sunset. Two men and a woman. They said they were biologists from Michigan who were keen to see the local lake fauna. They took photos and begged for the chance to take a sample. They offered the brothers money; five hundred dollars, then a thousand. The brothers said they’d think about it and told them to come back the next day.

I didn’t like those three people: the dark haired man, the blond man, and the dark skinned woman. They seemed very keen and very rich for random biologists with an interest in lake fauna. I followed their car when they left, tracking them a mile down to the local motel.

They parked, and I landed in the parking lot nearby as night fell.

“Fuck those rednecks,” the woman grumbled.

“You’d think they’d take the cash,” Dark Haired man said.

Blond man shrugged and heaved a suitcase out of the back seat. “Hundred dollars or so a day and they’ll make it anyway. We take a sample and we might blow their story.”

“They don’t have a story.” The woman opened the back of the van. Inside was another tank, filled with water. There were pieces of machinery that made no sense, and a plastic bag. A bag large enough for a Mass.

I stared at the collection in horror.

The woman pulled out a small black bag. “They don’t know what they have and neither do we and that’s a problem.”

“Do we wait?” Dark Haired man asked. “Or let them take the offer?”

The woman paused. “If we offer higher and they say no, and then that thing disappears from their shed, they’ll know it was us.”

“We don’t need that heat,” Blond man said.

“Like they’ll ever find us,” Dark Haired growled.

“Yes,” the woman agreed. “But you know how Griger hates cleaning up our messes.”

She paused, looking at me.

I froze, and then casually started pecking at a stick.

She wasn’t really looking at me, she was thinking.

She closed the van door firmly. “We get a sample tonight. We test it here, and if it’s the kind of thing the department is interested in, we’ll go back the next night and take it.”

The men nodded.

They went into their motel room. I flew to the safety of a tree and considered my options.

In order to take a sample, they would have to lift the lid. I could sit above them on the rafters and then drop into the tank the moment it was open.

After that, I’d wing it. I certainly wasn’t going to let them take any kind of sample. I already knew my Mass would reveal elements not found on earth, quite apart from the problematic revelation that every cell was the same cell, capable of complete transformation, similar to human stem cells.

If I had to turn into something capable of taking them all out, I would.

Leave no cell behind. The rule of the Shifter when away from homeworld.

I went back to the garage to wait.

The brothers left just after sunset. I sat in the rafters as the rat and watched them go.

Off to drink their beer and count their takings.

Much later in the evening, I heard the sound of a car as it pulled silently around the back of the garage. Car doors opened and closed quietly. The next sound was the small front door of the garage, snicking open. They must have picked the lock.

They came in with only a small torch, which they kept pointed at the ground. They’d done this a few times before. Dark man set down a black bag. Above them, I began to shed my Mass to turn into a small fly.

The problem with moving into ever smaller forms is that you have to give up a degree of sentience each time. A rat and a raven are fairly clever creatures, but they’re not capable of quantum physics.

Going down to an insect means you have to give up almost all sentient thinking. You’re not capable of listening in to a complex conversation and creating solutions. Mostly, you can take in the big picture: you know who means you harm, you know basically what you have to do. Bugs are for getting into small spaces and learning one simple thing while you’re there. Not so good for detailed surveillance work.

It’s one of the main reasons people on my planet aren’t worried about creepy perverts turning into bugs to spy on people having sex - insects can’t really understand much.

As the fly, I knew that I had to make it into the Mass. I knew to stay away from the people as all flies do. I knew that once in my Mass, I had to become something bigger again.

I flew about the room, waiting. Dark man opened the bag and took out a small scalpel. The woman took out a sample jar.

Blond man opened the tank.

I don’t know how fast flies can go, but I went it.

I plunged into the tank, straight through the inch of water and into my Mass. Instantly I rejoined it, feeling it, becoming it. It becoming me.

Outside the tank, the room exploded into light. I didn’t so much see it, as feel it in my cells.

I fashioned an eye and saw the brothers in the doorway, holding a shotgun. I added a hearing tube against the glass to hear them exclaim:

“What the fuck? Get away from that tank.” The words were dull through the water, but audible.

Tall brother cocked the shotgun.

The lid banged down above me. I watched the intruders backed away.

“Take it easy,” Dark Haired man said. “We don’t mean any harm.”

I swivelled my eye back to look back at the brothers.

“We can shoot you and no-one can say it wasn’ self-defence,” Tall brother growled. “You tresspassin’ on our property.”

The other brother smiled. “Ain’ no cameras in here.”

The three intruders glanced at each other uneasily.

I considered my options. If the intruders backed down and went, the brothers would probably sit in the garage, or outside it, all night. I could wait for them to sleep and transform into something that could break the tank and slither out through the window. A snake, most likely.

Unfortunately, the woman had other ideas.

She pulled a gun: smaller, and more deadly. “You prepared to die for this thing?”

Tall man didn’t flinch. “Are you?”

I tensed, ready for anything.

“Hey,” Short brother said. “That thing didn’ have an eye before.”

All five of them turned to look at me. I held my eye perfectly still.

Just a residual eye . . . nothing to see here, folks.

The woman snorted. “You didn’t check it very well.”

“We checked it plenty well,” Tall brother snarled. “No eyes, no mouth.”

“No arse,” Short Brother added.

The woman thought for a moment. Then she said: “Five grand and we walk out of here with that thing.”

Tall brother flicked his head towards the door. “Git.”

“Ten. “

Short brother looked across at his sibling.

Tall brother snorted. “We’ll make that in a month. They take that thing and we got nothin’.”

He motioned towards the three. “Get out or I start shooting.”

Calmly, the woman pointed her gun at the tank. At me.

“Give it to us, or I kill it.”

Inside the tank, I rapidly manufactured a bunch of nervous systems and spread around some residual hearts and brains. Shit was about to get real.

Tall brother scoffed. “You wouldn’ dare.”

The woman shrugged. “You need it alive to make money. We just need the pieces.”

The brothers snarled at her.

Inwardly, I sighed. I’d been around humans long enough to know there was going to be no deal here. Someone was going to get shot and it would probably begin with me.

It’s an unwritten code among more intelligent life forms in the multiverse not to interfere with or reveal oneself to lesser beings or planets. It’s partly a law, but it’s mainly just common sense.

Most humans will tell you that this rule has been broken a few times. Sometimes actively, by non-human biologists being just as nosy as these three intruders, who come to earth to test humans even though its universally illegal. Scientists just can’t help themselves. (And yes, no offence, humans, but you are very much lesser beings. You still have wars, for goodness’ sake).

But despite the unwritten code, sometimes, as an outsider, you just have to take things into your own hands. Or flippers, or whatever.

Bracing myself, I channelled all my energy and thought.

The tank exploded. As the water and glass blew outwards, I shaped myself into an upright mass. The same translucent, congealed look, but with an added twist. Into my shape, I formed the five faces of the humans.

They drew back in horror at the sight of their own visage staring at them from what I hoped looked like an unholy terror.

Simultaneously, I sent a tentacle up and deftly extracted my furry mass from the beam above.

I lurched the faces suddenly out towards each of the humans. At least two of the men screamed.

I fled through the door.

Outside, I diverted to the forest edge and flicked another long tentacle up into the tree to retrieve my feathered mass. Then I grew feet and headed for the lake. I had no real shape; I was just flight.

Behind me, the shed erupted into confused and frantic shouts. The door flung open. A torch light swept across me.

I could have fled into the forest, but the lake made the best sense. They would think I’d gone back to it and they’d spend months searching the water.

In truth, I’d swim to the other side and get out.

I hit the water as the humans came after me, shouting directions at one another. It was funny how they could band together when they all wanted the same thing.

The water embraced me, cold and dark. I became an eel, sleek and fast, with excellent night vision.

And I was gone.

And you know what? I’m done here, on earth. For the last seventy years I’d thought that random chance, or nosy non-terrestrial scientists might result in a ride home, but I can’t wait any longer. I’m off to Bradshaw Ranch. If that doesn’t yield results, I’ll head to San Clemente, Chili. Maybe even down to Wycliffe Well.

I know what, or more importantly who to look for. I know who will pick me up if I send the right signals. Up until now I’ve just wandered about in vague hope, but now it’s time to stick out my thumb, so to speak.

I’m going to pack up my Mass and go home.

Meantime, if you’re ever out and about and, in some tucked-away hollow, you find a strange, breathing shape; a shape perhaps coved in fur, or scales, or feathers, a shape with no eyes or ears or arse…

Please, just leave it alone.

I’ll be back for it.

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