Transformations

It's a pretty common staple of fiction to have characters change gender or transform using DNA-based magic. Sometimes it's called science, but it's always magic. Books like Animorphs, comics like El Goonish Shive, a bunch of anime all revolve around transforming characters. El Goonish Shive is the best example and my favorite, because author Dan Shive describes the mechanics of it in minute detail. Whether this is to fend off Nerd Criticism or simply love of describing it is unclear, but it gets me thinking. Lots of things get me thinking. Of course, my thoughts on the matter might not be as smart as I think; I'm not a biologist and my understanding of genetics is mostly limited to National Geographics articles I've skimmed, a couple of bio lectures in college, and the very material I'm discussing here.

Generally in these pieces of fiction, a character will imitate someone's DNA and they'll produce a mirror-image clone; the original and the copy look identical. Animorphs was pretty unique in its recognition that DNA does not store physical injuries and as such a DNA clone would not share any scarring or injured limbs. That means that a magically generated copy made purely from DNA would not share any injuries the original has. On the surface, that means obvious things aren't imitated; tattoos, the various nicks and scars people go through life getting... but there are other things. Some are definitely going to be noticeable in the correct context, others I'm less sure about. Most American men are circumcised, to start, so a completely genetic copy of a man would have an easily identifiable turtle neck. Belly buttons are another example: the size, shape, even presence of the belly button isn't defined genetically.

DNA is not a blueprint for the body, only it does not have a lot of power to specify the materials used. Nutrition vastly impacts the way your body is built from DNA. Malnutrition can and often does have a permanent effect on the way your body looks--someone who did not have enough calcium growing up is going to have different bone structure than someone who had enough. Muscle and fat aren't genetic, either. In the last year my weight has fluctuated about fifteen pounds in either direction of 170. On any given week my weight changes by five pounds depending on how recently I've been to the gym.

The Tiles

I was sitting in the bathroom, which is never a good place for a story to start.  It was a small personal bathroom--really just a toilet and a door; the sink was outside. It was like a closet, I guess, with a toilet in it, tiled with what I assumed was meant to be a masculine mix of baby blue and mint green.

With nothing to distract me, I sat quietly, minding my own business. I fiddled with my phone for a minute--it was 10PM. I couldn't believe I was still at work. Zero bars; I couldn't text anyone. Sitting quietly, I finally resorted to looking at the tile to pass the time. I made patterns; there's an S tetris block. There's another a straight skinny Tetris block. There's a Z tetris block. I'm not very creative. The patterns blurred into a kind of zen meditation, with the patterns becoming part of the wall, then the wall become a lattice of burning black points.

That's completely normal, of course. Watch bathroom tiles long enough and an optical illusion will start to happen as the rods and cones in your eyes struggle to keep up with the sustained images. Pulses raced between the dots and slowly the lines pulled out of focus and seemed to rise up off the floor. The blood was starting to pool in my brain, I suspected. Slowly I shifted my perspective, blinking, then closing my eyes to clear away the visions and adjusting my posture to try and normalize systolic pressure in my head.

I sat, eyes closed, watching as the black points shifted to white to remain visible against the inside of my eyelids. That was when the noises started. A soft scraping; a normal bathroom noise. I listened to it curiously, wondering who had walked into the bathroom. Probably somebody hitting the urinal. The scraping was joined by a faint sigh, like the shift in pressure that happens in a partially opened breezeway. Somewhere little columns were being tallied and I realized that there weren't any urinals, or other toilets, and there was nobody in the bathroom.

I opened my eyes. One of the tiles had come loose and lay on the ground beneath a square, tile-shaped hole. The stall filled with scraping noises as another tile came loose, hovering an inch off the wall, then slid sideways and clattered into a corner. All the tiles were moving now, shifting. Some jerked forward and spun horizontally, others impressed themselves into the walls. They moved in a pastel tide, exposing a rapidly growing hole.

The moving tiles were so fascinating that it took me nearly a minute to realize that the hole wasn't right. Rather than cracking grout and wood base separating the bathroom from the hallway and external sink, a shaft of warm sunlight fell across my lap. I stared through the hole at rolling green meadows and a golden sky full of fluffy pink clouds.
 

The Augmented Reality Day Planner

Sid woke up with the angry buzzing from his nightstand. Feeling around in the dark, he set down the silent cellphone and unplugged alarm clock. The AR glasses buzzed again, tiny gyroscopes shaking it noisily against painted wood, its lenses flashing. Groggily, he put on the glasses, wrinkling his nose to get them to the comfortable place high on the bridge of his nose. For a moment, he squinted in the darkness.

He held his hand out in front of his face, and flashed the hand gesture to activate the heads up display. A glowing tablet popped into existence, offering three icons bearing the time, date, and weather. He tugged on the bottom of the weather icon, and it rolled up with a flap-flap-flap, displaying a window onto the street outside. He tilted his head back, looking at the clouds; it was raining. He waved his hand and the display vanished, then flashed the hand-sign for "directory".

Glowing tablets representing his suite of apps lined up in his room. He tapped on one, his "Stiki" app, then closed the directory. A softly glowing note hung on his wall: "Buy eggs."

The Hall of Human Experience

Kingsley hauled himself up onto the ledge, and took a minute to catch his breath, surveying the fresh hell he'd stumbled into as the coppery taste began to leave his mouth. The zombie that had chased him stood on the edge of its balcony for a moment, its arm raised as it shouted. The piles of paper served to muffle everything, and the only audible sound were the stacks of green-bar paper slithering in streams where Kingsley had disturbed them. Apparently satisfied with its lecture, or resigned to its fate, the zombie let its hands drop, then it shuffled dumbly away.

Feeling comfortable and relaxed, Kingsley surveyed his surroundings. The zombie, the mysterious machines, and the hole he had entered from were all in a single structure at the far end of a courtyard, which was hemmed in with unremarkable mouldering buildings. Banners of continuous-feed paper fluttered from inward-facing balconies, and as he looked Kingsley could see eyes glowing orange in the gloom. Whatever the building was, it was staffed entirely by zombies.

Kingsley picked up a scrap of the paper and regarded it curiously. It was covered almost exclusively in easy-to-recognize Eblonian numbers, which Kingsley could not read but which he also suspected would not have been helpful anyway. A sheet full of numbers wasn't exactly a novel, after all. Pocketing the sheet, he decided that perhaps finding a new exit was his biggest priority. Zombies were naturally unpleasant, but the idea that they had been enslaved postmortem... he found the idea disquieting.

The Prophecy

Celie awoke with a start. She had had an epiphany, a dream of an echoing sound so familiar she was sure she'd been hearing it her whole life. A sound that made her want to listen closely. For a moment she forgot where she was and stood, mystified as she reached for the journal on her nightstand.

In the darkness, Kingsley's wide open eye reflected the moonish half-light, his body tensed and taut. He watched her for a moment and, sure that there was no cause for alarm, sank back onto his jacket, his arms cradled around his ruined eye. Past him, a narrow column of tobacco smoke and a barely-arched eyebrow insinuated that the Kark was awake. The cigarette shifted momentarily, and he nodded. The eyebrow uncreased and his chin tucked slowly to his chest. 

Celie sat then, alone in darkness, trying to recapture the sound. A deep two-note followed by a pause beat over a wavering, dull whistle. She pulled her transceiver from her bag and sat with it in her lap, the antenna extended. Slowly, she turned the dial and held the headset to her ear, surfing through a universe of garbled hums, broken signals and useless noise. She clicked through the higher broadcasting frequencies, although of course there was nothing to hear. There wouldn't have been, even if she'd been on the other side of the mountain; the broadcasters had only recently begun building towers even in Kinsbourne. She dipped into the communication channels, but the towers in the camp were incomplete and most of the crew had died back in the mine. There would be no chatter on local communication frequencies until they could be replaced with new conscripts in Kinsbourne.

She signed, turning finally to the command frequencies that necromancers used to control their zombie charges, scrolling through them. Squeals and clicks parted the static, but nothing