Metamorphosis from the Stars - 11

Didn't realize I hadn't posted past chapter ten. Here's chapter 11.

Over the coming days and weeks to follow we settled into a routine. I would take Kiki to the institute in the mornings and head to work. She would work with Elaine, Koko and the other primates while I went over the hours and hours of video footage from the stellaris to try to find anything that could have caused her transformation.

Each evening I’d pick her up and find Kiki in full primate mode. Each evening I’d attempt to get her to calm down, come back to me, and usually it was the little dinosaur that could do it. Something about it still triggered some kind of memory and she’d settle down and hold it awhile, rocking it and cooing softly.

I wish I could say I’d made progress on the origin of her transformation, but there was so MUCH data, it took me forever to comb through.

She and Koko had worked closely. Each “morning” she would tend to Koko’s personal needs, bathing, feeding, dressing, then they would ‘work’ in the lab, with Emily staring into a microscope most days at the slides they’d collected from the sub-glacial environment. Koko would carefully hand her each slide, and take the slides from her when done, storing them neatly in the rugged astro cases. Each evening they would play, with Emily chasing Koko around the small ship to tag Koko, then dashing away as Koko tried to tag her in response.

Each night, Emily would help Koko out of his clothes and into his small sleeping pod, snuggling him in with a heated polymer blanket.

I started bringing home the video files on removable drives so I could watch them in the evenings. Kiki watched them with me, staring at the screen and sometimes attempting to touch the images.

Each day the same thing.

“What’s the progress on studying the footage?” Hank said to me, six weeks after the Stellaris had returned to earth.

I shook my head. “Nothing much to report.” I flipped something up onto the room wall monitor. “She started exhibiting transformative effects three weeks before re-entry into earth’s atmosphere. That puts them somewhere past Mars.”

I played some footage where Emily awoke, and exited her sleeping chamber. I also put up some telemetry information about her heart rate, blood oxygenation, and other info. It was evident she was limping slightly as she made her way into the small bathroom where she gasped after seeing her own face in the mirror. She made a recording then.

“This is Astro-Biologist Emily Anderson. Today is May fifth, mission date 637.09:30. I’ve just come out of the bathroom to brush my teeth and hair and noticed this.” She walked up to the camera, and demonstrated her visage. Her nose had obviously receded, and her jaw had become heavier. “I haven’t noticed any other physical abnormalities. I have notified medical officer Sarah Adams, who will also make her own log entries.”

Hank frowned. “When did they encounter LoveJoy?”

I put up some telemetry data. “Would have been…hmm…three days prior to this recording.”

LoveJoy was a comet they had not taken into account during the planning stages of Stellaris. They had passed within a few hundred miles of the ice ball as it made it’s way through the solar system.

“What about the footage from the passage of LoveJoy, do you have that?”

I nodded, and scrolled through some files. I found the right ones and threw them up on the screen.

Emily and Koko had been in the biosphere, a habitat attached the stellaris that provided fresh vegetables and fish to the astronauts. It had a transparent aluminum dome that allowed sunlight but blocked many of the harsh x-rays and other rays.

Emily and Koko could be seen harvesting beans as the comet passed over head. Koko had become frightened and bounded up to Emily, and she had gathered the chimp into her arms. They could be seen huddling beneath the corn stalks as the comet passed, and both of them closed their eyes against the fierce white light that filled the dome for a few moments, then passed by.

“You okay, buddy?” Emily had said after it had passed.

Koko hooted and gave a nod.

Emily let him back down on the ground. “More beans,” she made the signs with her hands and Koko bounded off toward the bean plants, the passing of the comet already forgotten.

“You think that might have been when…whatever, happened?” I said.

“Some kind of ray penetrated the shielding, you saw that, right?” Hank said.

I nodded, looking at the telemetry. “Most of them were blocked other than harmless UV rays, but…”

I saw something that didn’t add up.

“What is it?” he said.

“That biosphere dome is polarized, and electrostatically filtered to allow low level UV rays and sunlight in while keeping out harmful xrays, gamma rays, and other types of celestial radiation.”

Hank nodded.

“But…something got through.” I pointed to some data points on the telemetry. “SOme kind of…anomalous ray that has the same harmonics as UV light.

That night after Kiki had come back to herself, I played the vid for her. She stared at the screen, occasionally touching the image of herself.

’Emily,’ she pressed into her tablet.

“Yes, hon, that was you.”

’Koko,’ she pressed into the tablet, then touched Koko’s image.

“Yes, baby, that’s Koko. Do you remember that day? When the comet passed over?”

She nodded. She pushed play on the tablet then stopped the moment the comet passed over, flooding the two of them with light as Emily protected Koko.

“Did you feel anything as the light passed over you, hon?”

She nodded then screeched and hooted, waving the tablet over her head.

“Hon, you have to use the tablet, I can’t understand you.”

She tapped away, furiously, her primate black fingers dancing over the tablet.

“It felt warm, and then I felt tingles starting from my feet and going up my body. Do you think this is when it happened, John?’

“Yes, baby.” I took her smaller hand in mine. “Why didn’t you tell us about this before honey? We might have been able to...”

’To do what, John?’ The electronic voice sounded accusatory. ’I’m sorry if my transition into a different species distracted me.’

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

’I’d completely forgotten about it until you showed me this.’

“I’m happy we’ve been able to at least pinpoint the moment and the catalyst.” I pulled her into my lap. “Maybe now they can figure out whatever happened to you and reverse it.”

She turned in my arms, and licked my cheek.

“Eww, Monkey germs!”

She opened her mouth and shook her head, screeching and hooting.

“It’s nice being able to talk to you again,” I said, handing her the tablet.

‘My brain doesn’t’ the electronic voice said. She paused.

‘Hard to brain right. The words go.’

“I know baby.”

‘Hard to remember Emily time.’

She touched the screen with the image of her past human self. Then she stared at her hand, opening and closing it, front and back. While similar to a human hand, her chimp fingers were longer, and the texture was leathery, thick. She also had black fingernails that needed to be trimmed.

I reached over and grabbed the mail clipper and quietly trimmed her nails.

She didn’t like this process, baring her teeth and hooting at times, snatching her hand away.

I stayed patient and continued to clip them until we had done both hands.

’I hate it when we do that.’

“I know, baby, but you don’t want to scratch someone so you?”

She shook her head and crossed her arms.

“You know, this is the most we’ve interacted in weeks.”

She nodded then tapped slowly on the keyboard. ’I’ve had to come to terms with what I am now.’

“I know, Emily.” I ran my fingers through the fur on top of her head. “But you also know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

She tapped away some more. ’when you call me by my old name it makes me angry. Don’t do that.’

Stung, I stared at her. “Why does it make you angry?”

’Because I’m not Emily anymore!’ The exclamatory tone of the tablet cut through my soul. ’I have a monkey’s body, a monkey’s heart! Monkey hands, monkey feet, monkey ass, monkey teats! I walk like a monkey, talk like a monkey, eat like a monkey, shit like a monkey!’

“Yes but only because you have to!” I put my hand in her chest. “In here, you’ll always be Emily to me.”

She shook her head and jumped up and down. ’No, John! No! No!’

“What?” I said, standing up.

She howled and screeched for a time, and I thought I’d lost her to her primate self for the evening, but then she calmed down and sat back on the sofa.

‘I’m not Emily anymore, John. It triggers something inside me to hear you use my old name.’

“Okay, honey.”

‘Please don’t do it anymore. I am Kiki.’

I nodded, clenching my jaw.

‘You are mad.’

I shrugged, sighing. “I’m afraid.”

‘Afraid of what?’

I sat back down on the couch, crossing my arms. “I’m afraid one of these days, you’re not going to come out of it and remember how to talk to me. That you’ll be—“

‘Say it.’

“A primate. Forever.”

She nodded, and scrunched up to me, snuggling her head under my arm.

‘I don’t think it will get any worse, now.’

I looked down at her. “You don’t think you’ll lose anymore of yourself?”

She shook her head. ‘They told me I’m complete, there isn’t any human dna left inside me. I’m a chimp, but still have my human thoughts.’

I nodded, having received the same information. “But you don’t think you’ll lose any more to the primate side?”

‘As long as we keep talking, no.’ She looked up at me and gave me a monkey grin. ‘But I do worry if we were to be separated for any length of time.’

I nodded at that too.