In A Quiet Café

It’s not HER, of course, not even one of HER acolytes; just some thing with a long-beaked mask wearing one of HER lesser aspects. But It’s still the closest you’ve ever gotten to HER, the closest you can safely get, and Its presence is intoxicating—

Or maybe that’s just what you Know is inside the slim briefcase sitting on the floor next to It.

It’s tapping Its pen on the table, waiting, the last drops of blood draining from the attached no-longer-sterile lancet—

“Having second thoughts?” It asks.

You blush and desperately look anywhere except It. “No, just …”

“Lost in contemplation?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry, I—”

It chuckles, Its mask’s vast dark eyes sparkling as Its head moves. “That’s pretty common! You don’t need to apologize, there’s no rush.”

You look down at your hands. “Yes, but … I don’t want to waste your time or anything. I’d hate to do that.”

It leans forward, reaches a hand like an oil slick out towards you; you blush even harder as It tilts your face up to look at It, forces your eyes to make contact—

“You did read the pamphlet, didn’t you? This isn’t a simple exchange; you’re not going to get the ampoule and go on your way. Your changes will need a guide, and will take time.”

“I … I only skimmed it.”

“That’s okay. You know you want the end result, you know what it will be; the rest is just Process. But,” it gestures at the quiet café around you, “didn’t you wonder why you were told to meet here?”

You shake your head, and It giggles at you—an actual giggle, undignified and out of place.

“It’s sort of like a first date! Feeling each other out. Figuring out if you’d be better off with another part of HER. But you just care about the result, right? And whatever guidance you need to get there.”

You nod. “Yeah, I just … I’ve wanted this, you know?”

“More than you’ve ever wanted anything before,” It asks, “in a burning way where the knowledge that you don’t have it yet only makes the way you are less tolerable, less sustainable?”

“… yeah.”

“Well. Would you like to start?”

“YES! … yes. Very much so.”

It carefully lifts Its briefcase up onto the small table, and you lift your paper cup of coffee out of the way just before the case would have bumped against it. You can quite see what it does to open it—Its hand flows oddly for a moment, bright colors dancing in the light—

The briefcase opens with a soft Click, and after peering inside for a moment It swivels it around to face you. Inside are row after row of slender ampoules, each carefully tucked into slots in the foam, each swirling with different colors, each promising a different Change.

“Would you like to choose one?” It asks, Its voice pulling you back into yourself. “The differences are mostly aesthetic, and they’re all collected from the same part of HER, but some people do prefer a choice.”

“I … um,” you point at one glittering ampoule, swirling with black and cyan. “The one?”

It carefully plucks it out of the case and offers it to you; you stare in wonder at it, at how warm and heavy it feels against your cold clammy hands. You hardly notice the case closing.

“Take your time with taking it,” It says. “This is the point of no return; you shouldn’t rush through it. When you’re done we’ll start walking, at least up until you can’t any more. That usually helps the process.”

“Should I just snap it open and drink it?”

It nods.

It hardly takes you any effort at all to snap open the ampoule; it almost feels like it wants to be opened, like it’s been waiting for you.

The liquid inside isn’t even a mouthful, and it soaks into your mouth before you can even begin to swallow. It tastes like artificial berries and hot plastic and just a hint of some metallic smell you’ve only ever half-noticed on the days when HER acolytes are out in force, when HER children soar overhead and the entire station cheers their deadly grace.

Across the table Its eyes carefully regard you; slim cyan rings split their sparkling darkness, empty circles slowly thickening as light begins to pool in them. “Perfect.” It rises and reaches out a hand to you. “Would you like to go now?”

“Could, uh, could we wait a bit?”

It giggles again and sits back down; the circles in its eyes fill just a tiny bit more. “Of course! Walking would be good, but there’s no rule which says that you have to. Which guidance you take is up to you, at least up to a point.”

You can already feel the liquid inside you, slowly spreading, filling your veins with sparkling darkness as it flows through them—or maybe that’s just psychosomatic, just hope and longing fooling your senses, but it’s still what you feel. And it’s still what’s happening.

For a time you sit and focus on the sensation while It waits across from you, Its eyes slowly filling; from time to time you consider finishing your coffee, but the idea just feels wrong. What if that would somehow interfere? What if—

Across from you Its eyes flash cyan for a moment, then fade back to their original darkness. It stands, and you stand with It, your body moving smoothly and involuntarily.

“There,” It says, “this is about the point where we Need to get you somewhere. Usually you’d have walked most of the way already, but getting a ride is perfectly fine.”

You try to speak and find that you cannot; even your eyes refuse to move, your face’s muscles refuse to twitch—

It continues talking as It leads you out of the café to a waiting car.

“This part is usually the distressing one; not everyone deals well with it, and it will be a bit until your new modes of communication kick in. You’ll be able to purge the memories afterward, of course, but … you do have to be Here for it in some respect.”

In the car It brushes a few strands of hair out of your face; the thick cyan goo dripping down from your scalp doesn’t leave any trace on Its shimmering hand.

“Just try to relax, okay? No harm will come to you. Just the Change.”

It’s not hard to obey It, not with the slick haze that’s filling you and eating away at your thoughts; panic fades so quickly into warmth and the gentle motion of the car, the soft support of your seat and Its reassuring form carefully regarding you.

As you step out of the car and let It lead you into a building like an upturned bouquet, you could almost forget that it’s not you moving your limbs, not you in control of your body; but even that knowledge is so hard to hold, so hard to remember …

It feels almost like you’re being carried through the lobby and up into the building’s heights, cradled in your own body’s arms and lifted up by the elevator’s steady motion; it feels almost like bits of your senses are melting away to splash on the floor below. You leave a trail of awareness through the hallway, through the click of an opening door—and then It carefully guides you down into a wide and empty tub and your awareness pools back around your body, the bits of yourself you’ve left behind fading away. There’s nothing but the Now, nothing but your body slowly puddling in the tub and slowly reforming into something that feels more like You then you’ve ever felt before, flesh melting away from bone and then coming back together as beautiful darkness shot with turquoise veins—

It (your escort? your guide?) is waiting by the tub when you are finally Yourself enough to clamber out of it, your new body weak and unsteady as your mind slowly finds all the new interfaces, all the ways to control it and move it and Change it—

Its expressionless mask smiles at you, a flow of emotion and sensation echoing through your new senses, filling your awareness with the satisfaction of blooming flowers—

“There! You look so lovely now; isn’t this better?”

There’s a mirror near the tub, not that you need it to See yourself, but you can’t help but shakily pad over to it, to see this new thing that you’ve become—

It really is so much better than what you were before.