Making her way down the hall to the living area, Val had
mixed feeling; since her change her family had made allowance for her over
active appetite but insisted on trying to feed that appetite only with
“healthy” food and only within certain limits; while Valeria could appreciate
the intent and even understand why they’d feel compelled to do so, from her
stand point they were essentially starving her.
She could apparently eat crates of fruit and vegetables and
it wouldn’t even make dent in her hunger, which simply seemed to ignore
anything that wasn’t sticky, sweet or swimming in grease, to the extent that
Val had started to wonder if she was even capable of actually getting any
nutrition out of “healthy” food anymore and it wasn’t all just passing straight
through her. On the other hand her bottomless pit of a stomach instead food was
food, even if it wouldn’t slow down her hunger, and she’d found there was
something pleasurable about just chewing and swallowing all on its own, so
she’d eat everything placed in front of her then go raid one of her stashes of
junk food so her hunger pangs wouldn’t send her woozy.
However as she made her way down the hall, enticing smells,
composed of equal parts grease, starch and cooking meat began to waft down
towards her, as did the faint sound of sizzling, and busy kitchen activity.
Rounding a corner, Val could see the kitchen area where a
hulking and totally unfamiliar figure moved between the counters. Valeria still
able mind quickly skipped over a number of scenarios, before landing on the
correct one.
“MOM!?”
###
*Late Last Night*
Susan Richards aka The Invisible Woman, strode into her
husband’s lab “So, Reed where are we with the chamber?”
Reed look up from his work bench and passed a weary hand
across his eyes “It’s fully reassembled here in the lab, and I have run a full
breakdown and diagnostic of every facet of it...and I can honestly say it’s a
work genius”
Sue simply raised an eyebrow encouraging Reed to continue,
which after settling himself more comfortable he did “The central core of the
device contains ridiculously extensive bio-scans of every baseline human on the
planet, equalling the equivalent of over a trillion Yottabytes of data, making
it the single largest conventional database known to man. Every aspect of a
person, from a biological sense, is logged in minute detail; when a target is
placed inside the chamber they are matched with biologic components harvested from
the entire human race, allowing an entirely new biological matrix to be crated
that is at one and the same time completely harmonized with and yet whole distinct
from the original.”
Reed leaned forward now, becoming animated “Yet exactly what
components are chosen is determined by an algorism, not totally dissimilar from
ones used to ‘Photoshop’ celebrities photographs, however this one operates on
the basic principle, that between one choice or another, all options being
equal, it will always go for the option that...for want of a better term,
produces the ugliest results.”
Sue interrupted her husband “Reed, all I am getting from
this stream of techno babble is that you don’t know how to fix what happened to
our daughter...”
Reed seemed to collapse in on himself and dispiritedly
nodded.
“I am also told that all you really need is to see the
device in action on a live subject?” Reed gave a dispirited shrug, and in response
Sue gave a much more definite one “Well then let’s get started shall we...”
For a moment there was no response, then Reed’s head snapped
up “Sue no, we can’t do that...” she just waived Reed off “I am volunteering,
there isn’t anything unethical about it...” once again Reed went to interrupt,
but Sue ploughed on “...and it’s the only way anything is going to get done;
from what I understand you can examine this machine from now until doomsday and
it won’t tell you anything you don’t already know, only live data from someone
being transformed by it is going to do that.”
Seeing the defeated slump of her husband’s shoulders, Sue
went on more gently “Reed, honestly what are the odds of you NOT being able to reverse
transformations produced by this machine?” Reed brought his head up and looked
his wife directly in the eye “As close to 0% as is conceivable; I can’t talk
for any of the other methods I have heard the Uglifier using, but the very
perfection of this device means that Val’s transformation is as far from what happened
to Ben as is possible. This was an intentional physical alternation, perform
with pin point precision via artificial and wholly quantifiable means; once I
have the correct data reversing the process should be child’s play...” this
time it was Sue who went to interrupt and Reed that overrode her “...BUT it may
take more than one live human subject to get the data and there is also no grantee
in these situation, no matter what I THINK I know, you go through with this and
you may get stuck!”
Sue shrugged ruefully “If I get stuck I get stuck, its only
my looks on the line not my life; I can also only volunteer myself, if more
live subjects are need then we will just need to deal with that as it comes and
at least this will give you a place to start working...”
Walking forward she placed her hand atop his “And this isn’t
just about the data; Val has barely been out of her room since it happened. She
hiding thing from us, like her new eating habits and what has changed beyond
her looks; she need to KNOW right down to her bones that someone in the family
can empathise with her...my little girl needs me to be there for her Reed, are
you going to help me do that?”
And to that there was nothing Reed could say.
###
The figure turned towards Val.