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Skin Deeper By Bryony Marsh The burly U.N. troopers and the lab technicians glared at each other, neither group bothering to conceal their loathing of the other. The lab staff were under no illusions as to their status: they were prisoners, and their samples, their equipment and every notebook was forfeit. "So. You're seizing private property now." Although the U.N. force hadn't begun any interrogations yet, their leader already understood a great deal about the setup. The tall, dark woman who had spoken: that would be Dr Alderton. She was clearly the one in charge. Trying to stand up to the troopers was stupid, but she did it anyway. Things must be peachy indeed, here is what had once been Switzerland, if she thought she could count on any kind of rights. "This isn't private property," the officer growled. "You were notified: Intelligenetics is being nationalised." Dr Alderton regarded the leader of the squad. She didn't know U.N. rank insignia, but assumed he was an officer. His name, it appeared, was Gudin - unless he'd scavenged the uniform from its original owner. He regarded her with a dangerous glint in his eye. Like all his troopers, his skin was partially crusted over, painfully cracked and oozing. Virtually everybody now had the skin cancers, but despite the condition being so very common it still made them look threatening, like beast-men. "Nationalised, Mr... Gudin?" Dr Alderton frowned. "And yet, the U.N. is not a nation." "Don't make this any more difficult than it needs to be, Doctor." The officer quite deliberately sought to intimidate his opponent, thrusting his scarred face too close as he dared the woman to resist. "I have my orders. You hand over all your notes, your formulae, samples and whatnot, and when we're satisfied that you've left everything functioning, you can be on your way. Or you can get on your high horse about your so-called rights and liberties... in which case I'll put you in chains." He scratched absently at a lesion on his neck, then wiped bloody fingers on his battledress. "Can you imagine how uncomfortable these are?" he asked, indicating his ruined face. "You really don't want to put me in a worse mood. I'm told you've got the cure for this. If you try to withhold information - any of the information we need - I'm going to take it personally." Dr Alderton lacked the physically bravery to obstruct the troopers. There had been a time, some years ago, when she might have attempted to resist... but no longer. "Alright," she sighed. "Congratulations: you've stolen a research facility. Now... what are you going to do with it?" "We're here for the cure. The epigenetic enzyme." "There are lots of epigenetic enzymes," the scientist countered, raising an eyebrow. "And you know the one we've been sent for," the officer countered. "Don't play games with me." "Assuming you mean the experimental substance we call Onconel... what will you do with it?" "That's not your concern." "I suppose you're right: checkmate. You're the ones with the guns, so let's assume you now run the place. What makes you think you can make Onconel work, where we've failed?" "Failed?" Gudin leered as he ran a rough, scabbed hand over Dr Alderton's cheek, and down her neck. Her smooth skin couldn't be a greater contrast to his own, ruined flesh. It had been years since he'd seen anybody who looked as wholesome as this woman. She wasn't beautiful; in truth she was a horsey, overgrown sort... but her perfect skin more than made up for any other inadequacies. Gudin regarded his prey with a mixture of awe and lust - mixed with more than a little jealousy at the thought that she was free from the cancers that afflicted him. He admitted to himself that he hoped she would continue to be difficult, so he would be justified in being... persuasive. The doctor shuddered. "Yes. We failed. Now, would you please throw me in a cell somewhere, or are you going to just keep on pawing at me?" +++ In July 2016, the radiation from a stupendous series of solar flares on Cor Caroli reached the Earth. These caused widespread damage to electronic systems, wrecking machinery and effectively shutting down communications, but this inconvenience was trifling when compared to the sustained wash of ultraviolet that accompanied the magnetic interference. In its aftermath skin cancers became the norm, largely going untreated in the chaos that had done so much to wreck civilisation. There followed a time of terrible hardship. The harvests that year were ruined, and economies geared towards global trade crashed as conventions such as banking and trade faltered, their dependency upon electronics rendering them impotent. Out of the ruins there arose at last a new superpower, which had its origins in the United Nations system. While communications were all but impossible and troops everywhere were uncertain how they should respond to the emergency, the U.N. offered certainty. It took control of arsenals, and used troops to establish order through martial law. Meanwhile nations faltered and slid helplessly into bankruptcy. When rumours of a cure for the skin cancers reached the Secretary General, he moved to add the New Swiss Confederacy to his empire. There weren't any real countries that could stand up to the United Nations; it expanded at will, establishing 'protectorates' as it went. The Swiss alpine troops inflicted a heavy toll upon the U.N. invaders, but they were few in number and were ultimately pushed back until only a guerrilla resistance remained; U.N. troops entered St Gallen in April 2025, and seized Intelligenetics the following day. +++ The Secretary General himself came to St Gallen. Mindful of his own safety, he wouldn't normally have gone into an area that had so recently become a U.N. protectorate, but St Gallen held the promise of a cure for the cancers (including his own) and this provided sufficient enticement. Escorted by troops, he entered the facility as a conqueror. If the people he found there did not share their secrets, and participate willingly in this latest grand project of the United Nations, they would be compelled. Dr Alderton found the Secretary General to be a complex character, apparently obsessed with how future generations would perceive the actions that he took. He didn't so much talk as make speeches. He was passionate, but sociopathic. His refrains about "saving humanity" were obviously self-serving. The geneticist was surprised to find that she wasn't afraid of him. She was afraid of his lieutenants, who had beaten her savagely upon several occasions, but their leader mostly bored her. She recognised him for what he was, and despised him: a fat man at a time when so many were hungry. At their first encounter, over a meal with a number of his officers, the Secretary General had spoken at length of their obligations to mankind, to re-establish order and to care for all, ensuring in particular the health of children. He spoke in measured, grandiose bursts, while a stenographer made a record of everything. He lectured on how dangerous the world had become, and how he feared that "some priceless piece of knowledge might be hijacked or destroyed by some petty warlord" in the chaos that still prevailed in many places. Eventually, he wound down, and Dr Alderton was surprised to be shown back to her cell (actually a basement store room in the laboratory) with no questioning having taken place. +++ "Doctor Alderton: we meet again!" The Secretary General's apparently effortless bonhomie was as insincere as anything else about the man. He had been a career politician before he became a conqueror. "Mister Secretary General." The beatings had ensured that Dr Alderton understood the consequences of any impoliteness towards the man who controlled most of Europe and North America. He came close, and looked her over. He hadn't seen flawless skin such as hers in almost a decade - at least, not on an adult. Some parents tried to keep their children in cellars while Cor Caroli was above the horizon, to reduce their exposure to the radiation that still sleeted through the Earth's atmosphere. "I see my men are looking after you well," he observed. Knowing better than to make a complaint, she didn't dare reply to that, but her silence didn't seem to satisfy him. "What?" he challenged. "I haven't had any contact with my team. I hope..." she faltered. "May I... inquire as to their wellbeing?" "Nobody's been hurt," he dismissed the question. If that was true then her technicians and subordinated had been treated a lot better than she had. "What can I - we - do for you, Mister Secretary General?" She sought to emphasise that the team were an important part of the operation. It might keep them alive. "Well, that ought to be obvious: I'm here to take the cure for the cancers that you have developed, and share it with the world." Sell it to the world, more likely, the doctor thought: or use it as a tool to ensure control over the ruins of the world. "It's not ready," she blurted. "I'll be the judge of that," he replied. "You scientists are always perfectionists. John Harrison completed his marine chronometer in 1735, but kept on tinkering with it for another quarter of a century. Who knows how many people were shipwrecked in the meantime? No: I won't tolerate any pussyfooting about in this crisis. If you have a cure for the cancers - and your own skin suggests you do - I want to know about it." "My team and I can tell you everything we've learned, but it's not enough. Despite everything the people of St Gallen have done for us - providing us with electricity and even two working computers - we simply can't perform genetic research the way we used to, pre-2015." "I'm sure we're all indebted to the people of St Gallen, but this is a problem on a scale that only the United Nations can address. You want computers? I can get you ten. Twenty, even. I can bring in more scientists. Future generations will not thank us if we fail to devote ourselves to this task..." Here we go again, Dr Alderton thought. Another grand speech aimed at ensuring his place in history... but the Secretary General performed an uncharacteristic shift, and brought himself back to the here and now. "Doctor Alderton, what would you need to make this enzyme of yours ready?" She had to think about that. Eventually: "For one thing, I'd need a detailed map of about three percent of the human genome. It was still being refined in 2015, and that was an international effort. There were teams all over the world, all using automated equipment to perform their experiments, and sharing what they learned via the Internet. Neither the gene sequencing machines nor the Internet function anymore, and many of the people who worked in the field must be dead, or scattered. To get the scientific base back up to a point where you could begin to research a cure for the cancers would probably take a generation. After that, you might need ten years - and some luck..." The Secretary General had become more and more impatient as she spoke, shaking his head in consternation. At last he stopped her: "How dare you stand here, the only healthy person in a room full of those who all have the cancers, and say you don't have the cure?" Spittle flew as he raged. A terrible silence followed. "Please understand," the doctor warned, "that Onconel has side effects!" "Everyone in this room," the Secretary General waved his arm to encompass all his troopers, "Everybody in this city, except for your clique of scientists, is dying of cancer. Everybody is in pain, all the time. Some may suffer this way for decades; others find it goes terminal much sooner - and you survive!" Dr Alderton had known this was coming. She just shook her head sadly, eyes downcast. "You and the other scientists have lived like parasites on the backs of the people of St Gallen long enough. What gave you the right to live here in good health and plenty in this scientific nunnery of yours?" he demanded. "People are dying!" He signalled to a trooper, who seized Dr Alderton's braided hair in his clenched fist and kicked at the backs of her knees, forcing her into a kneeling position. The Secretary General punched her hard in the face, splitting her lip. It was nothing compared to what his soldiers were capable of, but he found it satisfying to deliver the first blow himself. The bitch had no business being obstructive while she flaunted her good looks in a world where virtually everyone else endured painful lesions. "How do you explain your smooth skin?" he inquired, almost pleasantly. "It... worked on me," she admitted. "After a fashion. I knew it wasn't ready, so I decided upon self-experimentation. I didn't feel it would be ethical to ask somebody else to go first." "If you want experimental subjects," the Secretary General sought to project the voice of reason, "I can give you them. Criminals, gypsies... if you're going to get all ethical about it, I can send you the terminally ill. There's plenty of them around!" Dr Alderton probed the swelling lip with her tongue. "There's nothing to test. The current enzyme hasn't been perfected, and we've been reduced to a snail's pace in our efforts to produce an alternative enzyme." "Explain." "If we'd had another decade or two in which to work, I imagine that some derivative of the epigenetic enzyme would have revolutionised the beauty industry. It might even have been a first step towards clinical immortality... but then those solar flares on Cor Caroli kick-started a new dark age." "Wish in one hand and shit in the other, doctor: see which fills up first. I didn't ask you what might have happened. I'm asking you why you think the enzyme is a failure, when you're a living, breathing advertisement for it." The doctor regarded him levelly. "How much do you know about epigenetics?" "How much do you know about governing a quarter of mankind?" he countered. "Incidentally, I resent your assertion that this is a new dark age. We've taken a hit, certainly, but the Flare was also a tremendous opportunity, to sweep away the conceits of the twentieth century, and unify mankind for its own good." And so the Secretary General began his speechifying again, quite overlooking the fact that he had never asked about the side effects of the enzyme. +++ Captain Gudin wasn't only scarred where it showed. He had been present at the fall of Valletta; he'd taken part in the Sicily Campaign, fought his way up through what had been Italy, and on into the short-lived New Swiss Confederacy. He'd seen a lot of terrible things - done a lot of terrible things - but he'd never really imagined that the stories were true; that there were people who were free of the cancer. Now, he knew it was true... and yet this scientist seemed determined to put obstacles in their path. He had been tasked with getting the truth out of her, and he enjoyed the task, because it had given him an excuse to spend time with her. "Imagine a substance that can alter how genes are expressed without altering the underlying DNA sequence," the doctor was saying. "I could tell you about repressor proteins and how they attach to silencer regions in the DNA, but just assume that I'm telling the truth, for the sake of argument." "Your life depends on telling the truth, doctor," he interjected. "How kind of you to remind me. Now, remember that what has gone wrong in a cell - a skin cell, bombarded with harsh radiation, say - is an epigenetic change. A new range of cancers is expressed. These epigenetic changes last through cell divisions for the duration of the cell's life, and through successive generations, even though they don't necessarily involve changes in the underlying DNA." "Meaning?" Gudin looked unimpressed, although secretly he had to admit that there was something enticing about Dr Alderton when she enthused about the science that fascinated her. Gudin wondered if was going to have to rape her as a part of the process of breaking her resistance. The prospect was not altogether disagreeable to him. "Meaning," she responded, "that if you had an enzyme that mimicked the way cellular differentiation works during morphogenesis, it could read the undamaged, underlying DNA, and produce healthy cells instead." "So... you're sitting on a cure for cancer?" Dr Alderton shook her head. "Not exactly. Remember, Onconel was a beauty product, designed to rejuvenate skin. It was never meant to be anything more ambitious than that. We never had the skills, nor the funding, to achieve anything like that." Gudin came uncomfortably close, and peered at the doctor's skin. "This isn't just a skin graft we're talking about. I know what those look like." Gudin thought of some of the futile early attempts to treat the cancers that he and his men suffered. "Not a graft, no: Onconel grows new skin cells in situ." "Okay. How do you administer it? How much can you make per week? And how quickly can you ramp up production?" Gudin's enthusiasm for the miracle was understandable enough. He was in pain, all the time. "Not so fast. Remember the side effects?" "Tell me." The accompanying glare warned that this had better not be an excuse for more obstructiveness from the doctor. "Firstly, morphogenesis means you're making brand new skin. Think baby skin. A person who undergoes treatment with Onconel finishes up with no calluses. That means the recipient is going to be acutely sensitive, at least for a time." "It can't hurt as much as these cancers," Gudin reasoned. "So I'll accept that as the price of a new skin. What else have you got against your enzyme?" "My second point is related to the first. Remember, baby skin: that means more susceptibility to ultraviolet. So either you go and live in a cave afterwards, or you've got to expect to burn more readily. In other words, the risk from cancers is actually increased." "But if I got the cancers again, I could just get more enzyme," the Captain objected. "Is there a limit to how much enzyme I can take?" "Good question," Dr Alderton was reluctantly impressed with the Captain's ability to think things through, as well as to threaten people. "And as far as I know, there isn't. Although we haven't performed clinical trials." "Is there a limit to how much enzyme you can make?" "Not really. It multiplies more-or-less like yeast. Just shield it from the radiation, and keep it in a tank with moisture, sugars and starches." "The Secretary General isn't going to like that!" "What? Why?" "Never mind." The trooper tried to dismiss the problem. "So, he doesn't want a cure for all mankind," Dr Alderton deduced. "He wants a cure that he controls!" "Not your problem, doctor," the Captain warned. The interview ended soon after. That suited Dr Alderton, who still hadn't revealed Onconel's major side effect. Knowledge is power, she had decided, and sought to delay the disclosure of any information until she was forced to reveal it. +++ They produced a child with terminal cancers. Dr Alterton didn't understand the girl's language, although from her looks it seemed she might be Roma. The kid was clearly terrified, and kept trying to hide under a table, mewling in terror. "Cure her," the Secretary General demanded. "I want to see a demonstration of this miracle enzyme of yours." "Very well," the doctor replied. "We must begin by sedating her." "Why is that?" "I'm going to have to immerse her in a vat of Onconel for three days If she was awake, she'd probably panic, pull out the breathing tube and drown." "Alright," said the Secretary General. "Do it." He indicated to his henchmen that they should capture the terrified girl and hold her. This they did. They held her while she tried to pull away from Dr Alderton, who prepared a syringe, and delivered its contents. The girl rapidly lost consciousness. Dr Alderton had the soldiers bring the girl to what she called the "tank room" where she set up a drip and also fitted the girl with a breathing tube. "That's it," she said. "Next we raise a mesh bed up out of the tank, and fasten her to it. She indicated a pulley arrangement, and directed one of the troopers to operate it. A fine metal grid rose up out of the liquid in the tank. "Put her on the bed - gently! Then we can fasten her in place, and lower the mesh back into the tank." The Secretary General regarded the large tank of fluid. "Wait!" he commanded. "If you treat this girl, will it use up a significant amount of your supply of Onconel?" "No. We'll filter it, but most can be used again." "Proceed," said the Secretary General. Already, he was thinking about his own skin. He had Dr Alderton raise the girl out of the tank several times during the three days. What he saw was astonishing: the cancerous scabs sloughed away, replaced by skin that was puffy and a reddish-purple colour, but obviously far more healthy. "Why's it that colour?" he asked. "Well, it's basically baby skin," the doctor replied. "You were probably a similar colour when you were a newborn. It'll become a natural enough colour once she's been out of the tank a few days." "Astonishing." The Secretary General shook his head in wonder. For once, there were no speeches. The Gypsy girl lived for a little over four weeks. Dr Alderton saw quite a lot of her, and they achieved a kind of rapport, although their communication was only rudimentary. It soon became clear that the cancers had spread and although her skin was now pristine, there was nothing that could be done to save her. It was "cancer of the everything" as one of Dr Alderton's colleagues called it. They buried her in the garden, watched closely by a group of U.N. troopers who did nothing to help. The Secretary General wasn't at all disappointed. He still regarded the enzyme in the vat as a miracle. If anything, the fact that the girl had died from a secondary cancer made him want to accelerate the process, and secure treatment for himself. Still, he was no fool. He didn't offer himself as the very next test subject. Instead he asked for a volunteer from among his troops. One of several who volunteered was a sergeant by the name of Kieffer. Dr Alderton said that of all the volunteers, he ought to be treated first, because his cancers looked as if they were particularly advanced. This wasn't true, but it provided a pretext, and allowed Dr Alderton and her team a small measure of revenge. Kieffer had raped one of the lab assistants, Charlotte Gosselin. Not as part of an interrogation; the girl was only a technician and knew very little about Intelligenetics' research; it was simply that she was young, and pretty... and he was in a position of power. And so, he had taken her, and used her. Dr Alderton trusted neither Captain Gudin nor the Secretary General to deliver justice in this matter, so she had chosen not to raise the matter with them. Instead she had bided her time, in the hope that she might be able to secure justice on her own terms. Kieffer wasn't drugged, but sat upon the mesh and allowed himself to be lowered into the 'soup', as they called the contents of the tank. They pulled him up from time to time, but never for long enough to allow his skin to dry out. He complained of boredom, but said that the process was quite soothing. He asked if he could simply go in a tank from the neck down, but since this would leave his head untreated, it wasn't an option. "It might someday be possible to make the Onconel into a thick cream," Dr Alderton pondered, as she had done many times. The Secretary General wasn't particularly interested in such refinements, though. On the second day, Kieffer complained that he hadn't been able to sleep, for fear of drowning. It was decided that he should be sedated. Already, healthy reddish patches of skin could be seen between his scabs, so he knew the miracle was working. He agreed readily enough. When he was revived at the end of the third day of treatment, he was astonished to find that all his cancerous scabs had floated away, leaving him unscarred. "Baby skin," Dr Alderton explained: "It doesn't scar anything like as readily as the skin cells you grow later in life." Kieffer marvelled at his new, healthy skin, but there was something that concerned him. It was some time before could bring himself to speak about it: his penis had shrunk to a tiny nub, as if he'd jumped in a freezing cold lake. That was the way he described it. The Secretary General chuckled and left the room, claiming he had "matters of state" to attend to. "I imagine that your scrotum feels very tight as well?" Dr Alderton inquired, and the soldier agreed. "Yes, it's to be expected," Dr Alderton confirmed, enjoying the rapist's discomfort as she explained. "When you grew that new layer of skin - what I call baby skin - you weren't in the womb, and you weren't undergoing foetal development the same way that you did the first time around. There was no opportunity for your SRY gene to encode the transcription factors the way they originally did, about six weeks after you were conceived." Kieffer shook his head, indicating that he didn't understand. "Basically, your skin cells are in their undifferentiated state. And in mammals, the default pattern for development is female. If you were a bird, you'd have defaulted to male, but that's another story." "It's... a woman's skin?" Kieffer looked alarmed. He prodded himself. "It's very sensitive." "It's bound to be sensitive because it's only a day old. Give it time. But yes - it's a woman's skin. Although it's also your skin." "You never said anything about this!" he accused. "You never asked." Kieffer felt murderous. He didn't understand much of what the bitch was talking about, but it seemed that he was the victim of some kind of trick. He wanted to knock her about: to wipe that smugness off her face... but at the same time, he knew he couldn't. His skin and his fingernails felt soft, and paper-thin. Every part of him was acutely sensitive, and it seemed that he would struggle to throw a punch without hurting himself. He was naked, and unarmed... and he felt unmanned by the contraction of his gonads. He asked for some clothing, but when they gave him a bathrobe he found that it chafed immediately. His new skin really was raw. Gudin was regarding him with dispassionate interest. The unspoken thought: rather you than me. "You knew this would happen?" Gudin challenged the scientist. His hand was resting on the butt of his pistol, as it hadn't since the earliest days after the U.N. troopers forced their way in. "Yes." Dr Alderton didn't try to deny her part in the process. "Is it inevitable?" the Captain pressed. "I think so. Given that all the laboratory equipment had gone to hell and we had to sequence the genes with nothing more than pencil and paper, I think we did an astounding job to get it working at all..." "Specifically, what did you make it do?" "The epigenetic enzyme was meant to promote new skin growth, edging out senescent and damaged cells in the process, but every cell produced was undifferentiated: they were female. We'd seen during tests with mice that this produced a massive antibody response when it was used on a male: basically all your leukocytes acted as if any of the new cells was an infectious disease." "Leukocytes?" "Sorry," the doctor conceded that she was getting too technical. "White blood cells." "That sounds nasty." "It was. Like giving somebody a blood transfusion of the wrong type: the cure was worse than the disease." "But you solved that." "Yes. The enzyme is epigenetic, remember? I found a way to make the enzyme work in such a way as to colonise the host body, instead of fight against it. Basically, it slips around the body's defences: it's no longer seen as an enemy." "So... what's the catch? Kieffer can't grow a beard anymore?" "I'm afraid it's a little bit more complicated than that. The skin is the largest organ of the human body, and Kieffer's is now definitively female. Its also a lot younger than the rest of his body. Its cells are currently acting as if they are part of a foetus in the late stages of development, and soon they'll work as if they're part of a growing child." "Meaning what?" Sergeant Kieffer was becoming angry at being talked about as if he wasn't there. "I imagine it means you're going to look very youthful for a few years, Sergeant." Gudin raised an eyebrow at the doctor. "Youthful? Yes, he certainly will. But there's more to it than that: those new cells are going to keep on multiplying. As far as they're concerned, they've been instructed to build a healthy body. They're still undergoing a growth phase, while the rest of his cells have slowed right down to a maintenance level of activity. Except perhaps for some that've been mutated by radiation. They grow like crazy and we call it cancer, as you know." "Slow down. You're losing me," Gudin objected. "You're losing both of us." "Okay," the doctor's brow furrowed as she thought hard. She wasn't a natural-born teacher. "Cells divide, right? That's how we grow, and how we heal. Okay?" "Okay," Kieffer and Gudin chorused. "Virtually all your cells contain two copies of your twenty-three chromosomes, each composed of a DNA molecule. During cell division, each chromosome - the organised structure of most of your DNA - is duplicated, but the copy is imperfect. With each duplication, a chromosome's telomeres are shortened. Think of telomeres as spare DNA, acting as a safety margin: when they're all used up, the chromosome itself gets shortened instead, and the resulting cell is no good. Crudely speaking, it's why we age and eventually die." "I don't understand," Kieffer wailed. "Can't we just shoot the bitch?" "No, let's hear her out," Gudin ordered. "I think she's saying that she's found the fountain of youth." He looked at the doctor anew, and wondered how old she was. If her own body had undergone this treatment... that was intriguing. He'd expected to die from the cancers within a few years, like everyone else... but how long might a person live, with their body renewed through this arcane science? "The fountain of youth?" That's an interesting way of looking at it, the doctor conceded. "What I'm really getting at is that the cells rebuilt by the epigenetic enzyme, being brand new, are not only far more vigorous than the rest of the body's cells, they actually identify themselves as better qualified to be a part of the body. Over time - and I'm talking a number of years here - they can be expected to edge out much of the old material." "But a fast-growing collection of cells is a cancer," Gudin objected. "No." The doctor shook her head. "It's only a cancer if the cell division process tricks its way past the management and control mechanism we call apoptosis, and with the telomeres of the new cells as long as they can possibly be, Kieffer has every chance of remaining healthy for many years." The doctor couldn't help but smile as she said that. "What's the catch?" Kieffer asked, waiting for the other shoe to drop. "Well, obviously, you'll be youthful and healthy... but you're going to have to go through puberty again." Kieffer opened his mouth, and closed it again. He frowned. "As a girl," the doctor added. Rage carried Kieffer across the room, thought his feet protested at every step. When he clawed at the doctor, it was his own skin that tore, not hers. He sobbed in pain, although the doctor never raised a hand against him. "You really shouldn't have raped Charlotte," she said quietly, so that only he could hear. Kieffer's bathrobe had fallen open as a result of his mad dash across the room. "What about my cock?" he demanded, grabbing at the little nub, and scrutinising it. "It's being reabsorbed, over time. It's not a normal feature of a healthy female, so as far as your body is concerned, it doesn't belong." "He's becoming a woman from the outside in?" Gudin was appalled. Dr Alderton shrugged. "I suppose so. Although It'll be a long, long time before he develops characteristics like womanly hips. Certainly I haven't, yet." She enjoyed the sergeant's discomfort, and relished the sense of power she had over him as she rammed home her point. "I doubt that people like you and I will ever be able to reproduce, Kieffer, but if you're anything like me, you'll acquire a functional vagina over the next couple of years. I've managed to x-ray myself from time to time, although the film is hard to come by. I don't seem to be developing a womb... but I suppose that's a long way in from skin deep. Who knows what might happen in another ten years?" "You..." Kieffer regarded the doctor with fascination, and horror. "Why?" That was Gudin. The doctor replied frankly, relieved at last that she wouldn't need to keep any more secrets. "As I told the Secretary General, we needed an experimental subject. You can only learn so much from mice, and I couldn't ask anybody else, because I didn't know if it was safe. It's bad science, but I had to fall back on self-experimentation. Also, I had the same motivation as Kieffer, here: I had skin cancer. Just like everybody else." Kieffer was weeping, and Gudin summoned some men to take him away, and put to bed. Then he returned to his questioning. "Were the rest of the staff here male as well?" "No, no." Dr Alderton laughed at the notion. "Remember, this lab was working on a beauty therapy. The great majority of Intelligenetics staff were women to begin with. In fact, just four of us were men. As soon as the Flare happened, one set out to get back to his family in Portugal, and I haven't heard from him since. Another was killed in the food riots, the first winter. My colleague Dr Damien Marsh died of cancer before the therapy was ready, and that left me. My female colleagues were sympathetic, and took care of me during the early stages of my metamorphosis - just as I took care of them when they needed treatment, although their own experience with the epigenetic enzyme was less debilitating. They've been covering for me ever since." "So. You were right: Onconel isn't ready for use." Gudin shook his head, sadly. "It's as ready as it ever can be, as far as I can tell," Dr Alderton replied. "Meaning?" "Unless there's a breakthrough in retroviral DNA resequencing, of a kind that I can't even begin to imagine, the epigenetic enzyme is always going to produce a female -" Dr Alderton indicated her own body, "Or a close approximation thereof." "The Secretary General really isn't going to like this," Gudin observed, grimly. +++ "You lying shit! You bastard! I'll have you killed!" the Secretary General roared. He came so close that his spittle sprayed on the doctor. She regarded him impassively. "I've got people who can kill you so slowly, you'll be begging me for days to finish you," he promised. "You'll lose your mind, and I'll still be there laughing at you, all the way to the end." "Hmm. A slow death?" Dr Alderton smiled. "Not possible." "Young lady," the Secretary General gloated as he chose his words, "I very much doubt you're about to be rescued." "Indeed. But I expect to die within the next few minutes." "What? Why? How! This place has been swept for explosives..." "Stop worrying about your own precious skin, Mister Secretary General. You're safe. But I can I just take a moment to say what a vile, petty and self-serving little asshole you are? Because I think it needs to be said." "Brave words, doctor. But I warn you: Sergeant Kieffer is very keen to pull your intestines out and show them to you. He likes to do that to people, and you've upset him more than most." "Hmm. But Sergeant Kieffer is indisposed," Dr Alderton said dreamily. "For a few days at least. Believe me, I ought to know." She giggled. "What? Why are you laughing?" the Secretary General demanded. "God damn it: why are you laughing at me?" Dr Alderton withdrew her hands from the pockets of her lab coat. She opened them to reveal a syringe in each, both empty. "I just gave myself a massive overdose of barbiturates," Dr Alderton threw her head back and laughed. "You've already had me beaten several times. I didn't think another round of torture would be a good way to round off my life. So I decided to take care of it myself. Goodbye, you dumb shit," she laughed. She collapsed just a few seconds later, and cheated the Secretary General of his chance to hurt her. Even as he seized Gudin's pistol and shot her in the stomach (usually a guarantee of slow and painful death), she expired, still smiling. +++ Despite the "failure" of the epigenetic enzyme, word of it got out - and samples, too. As Dr Alderton had said, the substance could be made to multiply like yeast. Countless people had a wife, a girlfriend or a daughter that they wanted to spare from the cancers, and it was simple enough to make a vat of the 'soup' from even the smallest sample. Within a year, it had been smuggled to every city in the world. Anybody who could brew beer already had everything they needed to make Onconel. In addition to the women, there was always some male who was sick of living with the painful cancers, or worried that he might develop a terminal secondary cancer. There was no shortage of men ready to do the "three-day sleep" as it became known, and set out on a new life that would see him transform into a female. Captain Gudin absconded, and underwent the treatment. Like most deserters, he was never found. Lucas del Pozo, the self-styled Secretary General of the United Nations was paralysed by indecision. Some say he went mad. A lifelong chauvinist, he hated the idea that he idea that he would be 'lessened' by the transformation that Onconel would force upon him. He stayed in St Gallen for nine years, always close to the miracle cure in case he should need it, but fearful of the change it would force upon him. The remote and inaccessible St Gallen was a poor place from which to govern an empire, and he proved unable to quell the rebellions that began during this time. The United Nations fragmented, and its troops deserted in droves - many because they wanted the epigenetic cure for their cancers. Eventually the Secretary General commenced treatment with Onconel, but he had left it too late, and the cancers that had occupied his thoughts killed him. History did not remember him kindly. +++ The human race didn't die out as some alarmists had predicted, but by the time I was born in 2398AD, society had changed a great deal. Male-born children like me were faced with a stark choice: live for most of our lives far underground in order to avoid the radiation, or risk the cancers. A girl who got the cancers was easily cured with a "three-day sleep", but a man or boy similarly afflicted would have to surrender his maleness, or live on in pain and die young. Few, over the years, had chosen to do that. In 2372, Dr Petra Alderton was declared a saint by Pope Joan III. It was perhaps an unusual choice, given that she was known to have taken her own life, but the modern Catholic Church was very different from its predecessor. There had been a schism, with those who rejected treatment with Onconel remaining in Rome, while the new Papacy returned to its ancient roots in Avignon. The progressive "sister institution" thrived, while its Roman counterpart dwindled to almost nothing. The recovering science base had developed enough to permit the freezing of sperm, so I chose to deposit some as soon as I was mature enough. That done, I made a pilgrimage to St Gallen, and there I underwent the "three- day sleep". Several of my classmates did the same. Like most boys my age, I didn't want to leave it too late, and develop my male characteristics before I made the change. An earlier transformation meant better bone structure, in a society that had come to view feminine looks as the norm. A census of West Europe in the year of my birth estimated that 86% of the population were female "for all practical purposes". The few men who sought to shelter from the radiation for their entire lives were referred to disparagingly as "cave worms". In some parts of the world it had already become the fashion for mothers to arrange an immediate immersion in Onconel for their newborn sons, so as to save them a difficult decision later in life. In Stuttgart I met and fell in love with Lilli. We married on St Petra's day, twelve years ago now. Since she was female-born we were able to have children, using some of my stored sperm. We now have three, and although she bore them, a little help from a hormone therapist meant that I was able to join her in feeding them at the breast. The last of our three was male-born, but I had unhappy memories of my subterranean childhood and I wouldn't have wished that on the young fellow. We had the little angel treated at once: as Helene she's the prettiest little thing you ever saw. I don't deny that there is much wrong with our ravaged Earth, but life goes on. === Please leave a review; your feedback means a lot to me, and I'd love to know that you've read one of my stories.