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TG: The Shapers Gift The start of a longer story for me and the first in a universe I hope to write more in over time. I'm also opening this universe up to anyone who wants to set stories in it which I know is rarely taken up. But the offer is there if you want to. I did design the setting so there is plenty of scope for any author to develop their story. I hope to have the next part out in a few weeks, and be a bit more productive than I have been the last few years. This story is copyright 2011 by Stephanie. All rights reserved. You may repost or store this story on your website as long as the work is not altered or charged for. As always, this is an adult story and it should not be read if you are under the age of eighteen or whatever laws are applicable in your country. The Shapers Gift by Stephanie Alex Madden suppressed a sigh. He looked out the window where the Earth was like a blue and white wall to his left. Here he was, orbiting the planet, on a mission of global importance, and yet he felt totally helpless. "Have you managed to talk to Carl, yet?" The link was quiet for a few moments before his wife's voice replied, "He didn't want to talk at first. Understandable, I suppose. He's shaken, of course, but the tranquilizers have helped calm him down. His plane should be touching down at JFK in a couple of hours." "Why did he have to end up in Germany, Linda? Single Swaps don't normally go that far." "It could have been worse. Our son could have ended up in China or North Korea. Then we'd never have got him back in the time limit, or maybe at all." "Any word on his body?" "No," her distress obvious in her voice. She was silent for a moment. "The girl who swapped into Carl's body doesn't speak good English apparently, but she seems to be trying to avoid being caught for God knows what reason. The police are on it though. There's still thirty five hours left until the two day limit is reached." Alex looked up through the reinforced window. Several hundred miles ahead was a bright white star - the alien vessel they were matching orbits with. It had caused his son's swap, like it had caused all the chaos in the several months since its arrival. Single Swaps were one of the many things it did - swapping two people randomly without warning. If they touched each other within 48 hours they would swap back to their own bodies, otherwise it was permanent. "I wish I was down there with you," Alex said. "I know. I want you here too. But the world needs you up there, so you can stop this happening again and again." His wife's words echoed in his mind long after the call had ended. This was where he was the most use, up here on a space shuttle hastily returned to use two years after the fleet had been retired. But he was a father and the desire to be with his son was strong. Why on Earth would a twenty-eight year old German woman want to keep the body of an American boy half her age? "These things are much better co-ordinated now," Anatoly Lebedev said from the co-pilot seat. "They'll find her and get your son back in his rightful body." He had, of course, listened to Alex's conversation. Privacy was just about non-existent in the confines of a Space Shuttle. "Thanks, Anatoly. I'm sure they will." Alex knew Anatoly understood the situation all too well. The Russian was a veteran of several Soyuz missions and in his mid sixties, but you wouldn't know that to look at him. Thanks to another Single Swap he now had the body of a black, slight Nigerian man just out of his teens who looked barely more than a boy. His swap had happened just a couple of weeks after the arrival of the alien craft and it had taken him nearly a week to get home. Far too late to swap back. During the rushed training for the mission, Anatoly said getting his youth back was almost worth losing his old body, but he'd have much preferred a good Russian body. Alex wasn't certain whether Anatoly was joking, or really didn't like being black now. "I'm going to go check on the payload. Let me know if anything happens." "Like I wouldn't call out if anything did," Anatoly replied with a grin. Alex loosened the seat restraints and pulled himself back to the hatch down to the mid-deck. Endeavour was only carrying five people on this mission rather than the maximum seven, but the living sections of the ship were still small and cramped. Alex pulled his way head first through the hatch and saw the three other members of his team. Yiqian Xu was working away at her laptop. She was on board partly because as an international expedition the Chinese had enough clout to appoint someone to the mission. Despite that Alex was happy to have her on board. Her knowledge of linguistics was second to none. She spoke many languages and, more importantly, understood how they worked. The few statements transmitted by the aliens had been in most of the major languages of Earth and each had been grammatically perfect. A linguist was probably going to be extremely useful if a real dialog was to be established. She was in her late thirties and while on the small side she kept herself fit. Brian Walters was already running the checks on the payload. He and Alex had been checking and rechecking the payload ever since they arrived in orbit. Given what it was their caution was understandable. In his late forties Brian was from England and was a world class physicist. He was there to try and understand the aliens technology as well as deploy the payload if, God forbid, it was needed. Much against the national stereotype, Brian had a loud and open personality. The last member of the crew was Gabrielle Hayes, a tall African-American woman in her mid thirties. Like Alex she was in NASA and they'd flown together before, and it was planned they would again, if the replacements for the shuttles was ever finished. "Brian's already checking it. You don't need to as well." "I like to be sure, Gabrielle. I'm not comfortable with the thought I've got a nuclear bomb a few feet away." "You've checked it every five minutes since launch. It's not going to change now. You two are like clucking mother hens." "Maybe," said Brian, "but this is one egg we don't want to hatch before we're ready." Alex insisted on double checking Brian's work, just as Brian had double- checked him before, and ignored Gabrielle rolling her eyes. "How long until we arrive?" Yiqian asked. "We're changing orbits slowly and carefully so we don't look like a threat. At the moment we're in a slightly lower orbit than the alien ship so we're gaining on them. We'll match orbits in about two hours and then we'll park about two hundred meters away from their ship and wait for them to make the first move." Brian jerked a thumb at the payload bay. "Chances are they're going to detect that, you know." "After what they've done they should expect it," Alex replied. Yiqian sighed "I've said it before and I'll say it again - it's a mistake to ascribe human emotions to aliens. For all the differences between cultures on Earth we're all pretty much the same as each other. That doesn't apply here." * * * * * * * * * * * * Brian couldn't help popping up to the Flight Deck every few minutes to see the alien craft grow nearer. This was his first time in space, and he'd never dared hoped he'd ever get the chance to go into orbit. If only it wasn't to go to the alien's ship. He was itching for a chance to explore and learn about the aliens' technology, but he knew as well as anyone the danger they were all in. Like many people he had seen the chaos caused first hand. The aliens became public knowledge months before they made orbit. They had in fact been tracked for far longer, but had been mistaken for a comet until it had changed course passing the orbit of Mars. The whole world had held its breath to see what the visitors would do. Many expected a Golden Age. Many others expected an invasion. Some prayed to them. Brian thought it likely no one guessed what they would actually do. When they arrived in orbit they had made one short announcement. "I bring you the gift of the Shapers. I will guide you to a greater understanding of reality itself." Then had begun the seemingly random series of bodyswaps, transformations and meldings. Brian had been on the edge of one of the very first Block Swaps. He had seen the sky blue glow that marked all the actions of the Shapers. At the time it had looked like a wall of electricity, but he had later learned it was a cube covering nearly a square kilometer of a Cambridge suburb, one of the larger Block Swaps seen. The police and the army had cordoned off the area by the time the glow had dissipated. Brian would have done anything to get inside, to find his sister and her family to see if they were safe. In the end it took several days before he could get to see her and her husband and son. Then he couldn't recognize her. Everyone had swapped bodies randomly over the affected area. Like the Single Swaps, everyone could swap back within 48 hours if everyone touched their rightful body at the same moment. But with so many people it was nearly impossible to do. Everyone had to be found, everyone still had to be alive and everyone had to be honest in saying which body was theirs. Many people who were old, dying or disabled took the opportunity and ran when they suddenly found themselves in new younger bodies. You could hardly blame them. By some quirk of fate, or perhaps design, Brian's sister's family had been swapped with part of another family. All three were now triplets - twelve year-old girls with long blond hair. That first reunion had been awkward. He could easily tell them apart by their personalities, but all knew their lives had been totally changed forever. Nearly everyone knew someone who had been affected if they hadn't been themselves. Whether it was family members like Brian, and now Alex with his son or Anatoly himself thrust into a strange new body. How would the Shapers react when the shuttle arrived? * * * * * * * * * * * Gabrielle watched the alien ship from her seat behind Alex's. Normally she'd be up in the pilot's seat, but in the name of international politics she understood why that had gone to Anatoly despite his lack of experience in a Space Shuttle. She looked over at the Russian. His new young ebony body was quite handsome, she thought. Almost a shame she was married. She grinned, the humor helping lower her tension. In full view through the windows sat the alien spaceship. So far it had made no obvious reaction to their presence. At the moment it was a pearly white cube 200 meters on each face. Its surface, covered in many small bumps ending in starfish like fronds. Whether that was because of Endeavour's proximity or what it was going to anyway was anyone's guess. The ship had been closely observed, of course, since it arrived in orbit and it had been shown to be constantly shifting shape and color and perhaps even mass - though how that was even possible was unknown. "Perhaps they are waiting for us to make the first move," Anatoly muttered. Alex shrugged. "You might be right. Either way they have to know we're here." He flicked the radio on and gave the agreed text, "This is the Earth ship Endeavour. We come in peace on behalf of all mankind." Taking his finger off the transmit button he said, "I wish they'd settled on something a little less clich?d." "Welcome, friends," the voice on the radio said. The same voice as in the initial broadcasts. "You have many questions. Perhaps you should come aboard to talk." A tube began extruding from one of the cube's faces, clearly moving towards the Shuttle's main airlock. "We welcome your offer," Alex replied, "but is it wise to meet? The chances of viral contamination of each other is a risk." "One we have solved long ago. You will be exposed to nothing and nothing on board your ship can harm me." "Is that a reference to you-know-what in the bay?" Gabrielle asked. "I hope not," Alex replied. "Like it or not we're here to make contact, we'll let that tube thing dock with us. Anatoly and Gabrielle, you'll stay here and keep the airlock sealed. If things go bad you know what to do." Gabrielle followed Alex down to the mid-deck. She ran a check on Brian's suit while Alex checked Yiqian's. Satisfied she put her own helmet on and called up to Anatoly to do the same. She ran a final check on Alex's suit as he cycled the airlock door open. There was only room for two people at a time so Alex and Brian went first. As she sent Yiqian through part of her wanted to go with them, while another part just wanted to get the hell away from the intensely alien ship. * * * * * * * * * * * * Yiqian tried to do her breathing exercises as the airlock cycled. Being in space was overwhelming in itself, but she was about to enter an alien spaceship. She closed her eyes and consciously calmed herself before opening the outer door. "Be careful," Alex said over the radio. "There's gravity out here. Only about half a G, but enough to walk about." "How's that possible?" she asked as she carefully climbed out of the airlock. Moving from a zero-G to a half G one was very tricky and she felt slightly dizzy as her inner ear passed into the gravity field. "I'd give at least one of my balls to find out," Brian said. "Be careful saying that," Alex replied. "They might take you up on that offer." The access tube to the main ship was a four sided corridor, slightly wider at the floor than the ceiling. Using a slow careful bouncing walk they moved towards the other end. Just a few meters away was the source of all the trouble she had personally witnessed. Yiqian shuddered when she remembered how close she had come to being a victim herself. She had already been selected to join the Americans mission and had been visiting her family in Zhengzhou. At first she hadn't been aware of the commotion as she moved from stall to stall at a local market. Then she looked up as she saw people rushing down the street towards her. At first she thought a fight was going on and people were trying to get away. Then the crowd cleared and she saw a man, clearly distressed, running in her general direction, looking around him wildly. His hands were glowing, a sky blue glow, the mark of the aliens. At last she fully understood. It was a Chain Swap! They started without warning, one person would touch another in the course of their normal day and suddenly in a blue flash they'd have swapped bodies. The person who had been touched then had two minutes to touch someone else and swap with them or be stuck in the body they were now in. If they touched someone else the swap would happen again and the new person who had been touched would again have two minutes or be stuck forever. A Chain Swap could go on indefinitely; the only restriction was that you couldn't swap with anyone else who had already been swapped in the chain before you. The man had looked straight at her. "I'm sorry," the man cried. "I have to be a girl again! I'm married!" Yiqian had dived behind the stall as the man lunged for her. She felt for him/her. What a terrible dilemma to be in. To keep an unsuitable body for the greater good or to try to get a more suitable body for yourself and pass the curse on to the next person. The swapped woman climbed over the stall and Yiqian turned to ran, crashing into the stall owner, an older obese woman. Both went down heavily, Yiqian struggling to free herself and get clear. She turned over just in time to see the man leaping at her, fiery blue hands outstretched. She rolled desperately to the side and the man landed on the stall owner. There was a blue flash and both the stall owner and the man seemed dazed. The stall owner's body gripped her sagging breasts and fat stomach. "No! Not like this! My husband won't want me now!" she wailed. The man stared at his hands, still blue with alien fire. Yiqian realized the swap had happened. It would only be a few seconds before the stall owner in the body of the man realized what she had to do to regain her womanhood, and perhaps, her long lost youth. Yiqian stood up and ran as fast as she could down the street. She passed the first police men arriving to deal with the problem. She put her hands up as she ran past to show she wasn't the Chain Swapper. They were pulling out their guns; if the Stall Owner didn't stop they'd gun her/him down. Yiqian, to her shame, couldn't bear to stay behind and see the outcome. In America she had met another victim of the Shapers. America, she thought, had a very schizophrenic view to those who had been swapped or changed by the aliens. Half the people did what they could to accommodate and look after those affected while the other half shunned them, afraid or fearful - sometimes both - of them. Those who believed in religion were the most polarized. They either did all they could to help or violently hated those affected. She didn't understand it, and she was thankful again she wasn't deluded enough to believe in any of the world's religions. Bill Davis had been an astronaut, and was to be Yiqian's trainer, but he'd never fly into space again himself. Something he clearly hated, but there was nothing he could do about it. With no warning one day he had been bathed in the blue light and his body had started to change. He had suddenly been ravenously hungry and had gone through a week's shopping in a few hours. When his hunger had died down he had found that while he was unchanged from the waist up, from the waist down he was now all horse. Being a centaur gave him freedoms he hadn't expected, especially being a keen rider, but maneuvering in a world built for standard humans did restrict him, even beyond the fear and loathing some unchanged people displayed. But his biggest regret was that with his new body he'd probably never even fly again, let alone get back into space. Yiqian had had to work hard those first few days to stop herself from staring at the half-man, half-horse, but in time had come to realize he was still just an ordinary man inside. "Wait here," Alex said, returning Yiqian to the present. They had reached the end of the tunnel and a large space opened up before them. He walked into the room and looked around him. "It's okay, as far as I can tell. There doesn't seem to be anyone to meet us." Brian and Yiqian followed him into the room. It was milky white and appeared to be a perfect cube, though the corners of the room weren't that obvious. It was featureless and empty. Turning around to look at the tunnel, she half expecting it to fold up behind them, but it remained open. "You may remove your helmets," the voice of the Shapers said. "It is quite safe." "If you don't mind, we'll keep them on." Alex replied. "But I insist." Without warning her helmet and indeed, she quickly realized, her entire spacesuit vanished. Leaving her dressed in just her jumpsuit. She gasped and turned round to see the same had happened to Brian and Alex. "I'm sorry if I have alarmed you," the voice continued. "That was not my intent." "Show yourself!" Alex snapped angrily. "You can see me now." "All I can see are the walls." "Oh," Brian breathed softly. "You ARE the ship." "Correct!" "You carry no crew?" Brian said, more of a statement rather than a question. "Also correct! No organic being could survive the long journey I have made." "Why are you here and what do you want?" Alex asked. "Both good questions. I am here, because you are here and I am here to help you." "Help us how?" Yiqian asked. "I was... built is not the right word, but you do not have the right word. Brought into being is a better way of putting it, over forty three million years ago. The Shapers foresaw that not every species would have the gifts they did so they set about spreading that knowledge throughout the universe." "And these 'gifts' are the body swaps and transformations you're inflicting on us?" Alex asked incredulously. "This is the way you will learn the Shapers secrets." "Are you willing to share the Shapers technology with us?" Brian asked. "No, not directly. That would make you dependant on me, and that cannot be allowed to happen. You must continue to be an independent species, learn the Shapers secrets yourselves. I merely show the way." "You will not stop these attacks?" Alex said. "They are not attacks and I cannot stop them, nor do I want to. It is my function." "What about the Shapers, can we talk to them at all?" "Their homeworld is over five million light years away, but the Shapers themselves moved on many millions of years ago." Yiqian sighed, "They're all dead?" "I don't know. Their last transmission to me and others of my kind said they were moving to a new level of existence. You have to understand that they continued developing far beyond my capabilities after we were launched. Towards the end it was hard for us to understand each other." "This is irrelevant," Alex said. "We're here as representatives of the governments of Earth. We want you to stop doing these swaps and changes to us." "They must continue. In time you will thank me." "Thank you?! My son is stuck in the body of a woman, maybe forever! What you're doing is insane!" "Comprehension will take time," The voice replied. "Full understanding will take even longer." "We will stop you, by whatever means necessary." "I understand why you feel you must do what you do. But I couldn't stop even if I wanted to." There was silence for a moment. Then Alex said, "I think we need to take a break so we can talk to our governments. Can we have our space suits back?" "Of course," the alien craft's voice said. And without any transition they found themselves dressed in their space suits again. As they left Yiqian turned to take one last of the featureless white room they had been in. And then hurried down as best she could to return to the Endeavour. * * * * * * * * * * "So where do we stand," Anatoly asked. He floated on the mid-deck with the other four members of the expedition. "As far as I can see we're no closer to solving this problem," Alex replied. "Apart from the thing's lifestory..." "Which we can't trust," Gabrielle put in. "Which we can't trust," Alex agreed. "We got nothing." Brian shrugged, a comically odd move in zero-G. "I got no idea of their technology. It'd be like showing a television to a caveman. Wouldn't even be able to begin making sense of it." "It speaks English perfectly," Yiqian added. "If I didn't know better I would have thought I'd talked to a human." "So..." Anatoly said into the silence that followed. "Does that mean Plan B?" "Surely, we're not at that point already?" Brian asked, shocked. "I think we are," Alex replied. "It has been quite clear it isn't going to stop the attacks. It doesn't even see them as attacks. We have to defend ourselves. Let's go get it ready." Anatoly watched as Alex and Brian readied the bomb. Gabrielle moved over and gripped the handrail next to him. Anatoly couldn't help noticing how the skin colors of their hands almost exactly matched. "I can't believe we're doing this," she whispered. "You knew it was a possibility. It's left us no choice." "I know, but I can't believe we can't reason with it. Our first extra- terrestrial encounter and we're going to blow it up. Anatoly had been all for destroying it from the moment they got there. Thanks to that insane alien ship his body of sixty-one years had been lost forever. Yes, he had his youth back, or rather someone else's. But it wasn't his body. His friends were more reserved around him, as if they didn't know him anymore. He didn't blame them. They all knew that it was old Anatoly, but it was hard to get around the instinctive feeling that he was some stranger. Alex turned to Anatoly and Gabrielle. "Go run the checklist. I want the maneuvering thrusters ready to fire as soon as the payload is deployed. While he was second in command, Anatoly let Gabrielle take the lead in the preparations. She knew the shuttle far better than he did after all. He watched the alien ship, which seemed to be doing nothing, though reports from Earth showed the body swapping and transformations were going on as before. Finally, they were ready. Anatoly moved to the mid-deck to talk to Alex. Quietly to him he said "You do realize if we succeed here and your son isn't already back in his own body he might be permanently stuck." "I know. We might get lucky. Maybe all the swaps will be reversed." Anatoly returned to the flight deck. It was time to deploy and the bomb was gently lifted out of the bay. "Okay, Gabrielle," Anatoly said. "Send the message." "Shapers spaceship we would like to leave this docking station so that others can dock more easily with you in the future. Is this okay with you?" "Of course," came the reply. "I will always welcome all visitors." Anatoly watched as the disguised bomb swung into view. He was about to say something when it was suddenly swamped with a blue flash. When his eyes cleared the bomb was gone, replaced by what looked like a giant mushroom. He swore loudly in Russian. The ship's voice came over the radio again. "I do not blame you for trying what you did, but the Shapers Gift will continue." Alex pushed up to the Flight Deck. "Okay, we've outstayed our welcome. Fire the thrusters, let's get out of here." They all felt the push as the thrusters fired and slowly, too slowly, the Shapers ship dropped away. It was going to take several days to get into the right orbit for landing, but at least they could put some distance between them and the alien craft. * * * * * * * * * * * Brian was depressed. Partly at their failure to destroy the alien ship, partly for being pushed into the position of having to try to destroy it, but mostly for having been inside an alien space craft and having absolutely nothing to show for it. Arthur C Clarke was right, any sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic. He looked across the darkened Mid-Deck to see Yiqian asleep in her sleeping bag. He wished he could sleep as easily as her; he hadn't managed more than an hour or so since he'd got into orbit. He needed a piss. Sighing he unzipped his sleeping bag. What an ordeal that was in zero-G! At least he had it better than the women; he shuddered when he thought of the attachments they had to use just to urinate. As he climbed out of the bag he saw a blue glow around the room. Shapers blue! He looked around for the source, and with a shout of horror he realized it was coming from him. His whole torso was glowing! From his the neck to his crotch, he was glowing! "Oh dear God, no," Brian whispered, though he knew nothing could be done. His torso felt like it was being touched by a million fingertips and then suddenly the feeling and the glow was gone. He looked resolutely forward. He was exactly where he had been before the glow, so that meant it wasn't a Single, Block or Chain swap. It wasn't a Melding either. What did that leave? Even without looking he could feel something had changed, something was wrong. He still had his arms and legs and a quick check showed his head was unchanged, but everything else was... wrong. He looked down. He was still wearing the white briefs and undershirt he had worn in the sleeping bag, but they fit differently. His torso seemed smaller, except at the top where it was pushing out into two mounds. Brian tried to refuse what he was seeing, but the proof was undeniable. He'd just undergone a Partial Swap. Flicking on a small reading light he pulled open his undershirt and looked down. Breasts, clear unmistakable breasts. He put one unchanged hand around his new breast, feeling its softness in his hand and at the same time feeling his hand squeezing his flesh. The nipple was much larger, clearly a woman's nipple not a man's one. He felt it reacting to his touch, stiffening, growing. He pulled the hand away as if stung, a strange feeling in his stomach. Not my stomach, he thought with growing hysteria. The skin of his new torso was darker than his and he swung closer to the light to get a better look. A darker slightly olive color. He looked up and over to Yiqian. Was that sleeping bag she was in bulkier than it was a few moments before? He looked down again. It wasn't just the breasts that had changed. The smooth Asian skin ran from the shoulders right across his chest and down over the smooth rounded feminine belly. Below his old legs were attached incongruously to the womanly hips he now had. Was it all gone? Was he still a man? Brian closed his eyes and slipped one trembling hand inside his briefs. He felt pubic hair, sparser than he was used to, and finer perhaps? Then his fingers slipped into a valley where there shouldn't have been one, over the sensitive nub of a clitoris and on to the entrance to his vagina. His vagina. If there had been gravity he would have slumped to the floor in a daze. * * * * * * * * * * Yiqian rose out of her sleep to feel someone shaking her. "Brian? What is the matter?" But her voice wasn't her voice, it startled her and clearly started Brian too. It was deeper, a man's voice. His voice. "I'm sorry," Brian said wincing at the high woman's voice he now had. "We've been Partial Swapped." Yiqian's eyes snapped fully open. Brian's head was his, unchanged. Below that was... was HER breasts! His briefs were tight on the hips, baggy in the crotch, but it didn't look like there was anything there between his legs. She struggled with her sleeping bag, wrenching it open and looking down at her undershirt stretched tight over a larger man's chest. She touched it with her hands that were still her own, feeling the chest hair. A stray memory of her own husband's chest. Not so hairy of course, but similar. She felt a strange stirring of arousal in her crotch. But this was so different, so strange. It was like her clit, but so much bigger, so big it was straining against her panties. She pushed out of the sleeping bag and drifting in mid-air pulled down her panties. Her semi-erect cock sprang free. Both she and Brian looked at it for an eternal instant and then Yiqian bellowed in fear and revulsion with all the power her new lungs gave her. * * * * * * * * * * "They're both sleeping now," Gabrielle said wearily. "They're dosed to the eyeballs on tranqs. I didn't know what else to do." "There's nothing more we can do," Alex said quietly. "It's still three days until we can get into the right orbit to land." "Do you think that thing did that to them deliberately? Because of what we tried to do?" "I dunno," Alex replied. "The Shapers only change or swap roughly a thousand people a day worldwide. On a planet of nearly seven billion that's a very small percentage. But that doesn't mean it couldn't be random. Then again, I don't know." Anatoly stretched in his seat. "Either way, there's nothing we can do." "How very Russian," Gabrielle remarked wryly. "Thank you," Anatoly remarked. "I try my best." Gabrielle turned to Alex, "He's right though. There's nothing more we can do now. Go below and try to get some sleep. We'll take the first watch." They sat in silence for a while after Alex had gone. Finally Gabrielle turned to the black teenager who was really a veteran Russian cosmonaut. "How do your friends deal with your swap? If you don't mind me asking." Anatoly shrugged. "To be honest, I never had that many friends and my closest ones died a few years back. The rest... well, they did their best to treat me as if nothing had changed. It's hard for them. God knows it is bad enough for me and I don't have to look at this new face all the time." "Never mind, Anatoly. You're young again." She made to clap him on the shoulder, but her hand passed straight into him. It felt like pressing her hand into warm jello. Gabrielle rose out of her seat as she tried to pull her arm out of him, but it wouldn't budge. Anatoly looked at her in alarm. He pushed out of his seat and tried to push against her with his knees to get free. But they too sunk into her stomach. "We've got to stop pushing against each other," Gabrielle cried, but it was no use they were a spinning mangled ball. Each time they bumped into a wall they were pushed more and more into each other. Their clothing span away, having somehow fallen through them. Gabrielle finally felt her face pushing into Anatoly's back and her vision and hearing went away. Somehow she still felt like she was breathing. They were stuck, somehow pushed into and around each other. Then a new pressure descended on them and they felt themselves being pulled and twisted and altered. They were being Shaped. Suddenly Gabrielle's head was in the open air again. "It's a Melding. We're being Melded!" "Of course," said Anatoly's head from the left of hers. "But what form are we taking?" The mass of their conjoined bodies started shrinking and Gabrielle was gloriously happy to see her breasts, her body returning. Anatoly's had disappeared. Within seconds it was her body that they shared. Slightly wider across the shoulders to accommodate Anatoly's head, but her body nonetheless. Anatoly swore in Russian. "I'm a girl! I'm a girl." Gabrielle looked at Anatoly's head as best she could. Close up she could see that even his head had altered. It was still clearly Anatoly, but somehow feminized. Like the twin sister of the Nigerian boy Anatoly had become. Her hands rose up and clasped her breasts, giving them a gentle squeeze. "Stop that," she said taking control and moving them away from her chest. "You're the dominant," Anatoly said. "I can move your body but you can override me whenever you want." This was often the way with Meldings. When two, or sometimes three, or, in extremely rare cases, even more were Melded together, one was dominant. Sometimes the other person had no control at all, sometimes it was shared equally, leading to bizarre struggles over where to go. In this case Anatoly could move the body, but she had the final say. At least their melded shape was quite close to human norm. That wasn't always the case. Gabrielle pushed them over to the pile of clothing. Tangled up in it were two rings, which she put back on her ring finger of her left hand. "You're married?" Anatoly asked in a stricken tone. Gabrielle sighed. "We'll deal with that later." She began pulling on her clothes. "We've got to get down to Alex. Yiqian and Brian could have been a massive coincidence, but us as well? This is a response for trying to blow that thing up." Anatoly gave up trying to control their body and Gabrielle pushed down to the mid-deck, taking care to get both heads through without hitting anything. Yiqian and Brian were still out cold in their sleeping bags. She pushed over to Alex in his. "Alex, wake up. Something else has happened." Alex sleepily opened his eyes and looked about in confusion. "I feel so strange? Where the hell am I?" Then his eyes focused on Gabrielle and Anatoly and he screamed and screamed. * * * * * * * * * Alex woke up with a start. He felt so tired still and for a few moments he continued to lie in bed. Wait that was wrong. Was it? He was sure he had been in orbit. Or was that a dream? There was gravity here. He opened his eyes and looked around him. This wasn't his bedroom, that was for sure. A woman's room? It all came back to him. It hadn't been a dream. He had climbed into a sleeping bag and now he was here. Wherever here was. Alex looked from side to side, dreading not being alone in the room, but to his relief he was alone in the bed. He lifted an arm out of the duvet and looked at it. Dark skin, darker perhaps than Gabrielle's. He had been Swapped. Almost certainly a Single Swap. If so, there was a way back, but for now he was almost certainly in the body of a black girl. He looked at the nails on his hand, long and shaped. Yep, definitely a girl. "Don't panic," he whispered to himself in a voice very feminine in pitch if not in its speech pattern. He saw a full length mirror on the side of the wardrobe. He took one deep breath before throwing back the covers and jumping to his feet. He stumbled because of his unfamiliarity to his new body, its center of balance was much different to what he was used to, but then he was there by the mirror. He didn't have to look to know how well endowed his chest was. He had felt them bobbing and sliding as he'd got out of bed. Alex looked in the mirror at the large black breasts constrained in the filmy nightie he was wearing. Then he looked up at the cute face with a scared look on it. He recognized her! She was a little fatter than he remembered, but he was sure he knew her alright. Alex began to build the nerve to lift the front of his nightie up when he heard the wail of a police siren approaching. They couldn't be here for him already? How long had he been asleep, unaware he was now a girl? He walked to the curtain, all too aware of his wider hips and the breasts shifting on his chest. Pulling the curtain aside a fraction he saw a very familiar sight. It was his own house across the street. As he watched he saw his wife, Linda, pulling open the front door. The police walked round the rear door and helped a handcuffed figure out of the back. It was his son! Or rather the body of his son. They'd found the German girl at last! Linda called inside and an unfamiliar blond woman followed his wife outside. She looked very ill at ease. "If it's any consolation, son," Alex whispered. "I know exactly how you feel." When the German woman in Carl's body saw her original one she started fighting, though the cops were ready for it and easily subdued her. They handcuffed Carl's hands together and then he touched his original body. There was a burst of strong blue light and the two handcuffed people staggered. The woman was forced into the car and Carl's hands were freed. Alex sighed as he saw his son hug his mother. At least he had got his body back. Alex let the curtain drop and returned to the mirror. Now he knew where he recognized his new body from at least. Shanice. A newly married cute young woman in her early twenties, with the heavy breasts that seemed to run in her family. With the preparation for the mission he hadn't been home much in the last month and she seemed to have put on weight since then. He lifted his nightie, and he looked at his pantie-covered crotch with an odd feeling in his stomach. He looked up at his brown, plump belly. His frown deepened as he turned to the side. Shanice had gotten heavier, but only around the lower torso. Shock caused him to almost lose his balance and he sat heavily on the bed. Shanice was pregnant. He was pregnant! That was okay, he said to himself, it wasn't forever. Alex pushed his hair out of his face and turned to the clock. Only four hours had passed since he had gone to sleep on Endeavour and it was still the early hours of the morning. That meant at the very least he still had forty-four hours to swap back. "Oh God," he exclaimed in a very shaky voice. Forty-four hours wasn't enough! In forty-four hours the shuttle wouldn't have arrived yet at the orbit needed to even start re-entry. There was no way at all he could touch his proper body in the time limit given. He was stuck as a busty and very pregnant girl! TO BE CONTINUED IN - 'The Shaper's Gift: Alex's Story' Author's Note: I've decided to structure the following chapters following just one person of the shuttle crew at a time (except for Anatoly and Gabrielle for obvious reasons). So the next part of the story will follow Alex's story to conclusion and then we'll see what happened to the others.