by Phil Geusz Text ©2006 Phil Geusz; illustration ©2006 Cubist

   Editor’s Note: As the title implies, In the Beginning deals with the genesis of the Lapist faith, which Mr. Geusz has written about in several previous stories, including Drama Class and Full Immersion, in Anthro, and Schism, in TSAT. This story is about Sweetgrass, the founder of Lapism—or, more precisely, the man who would become Sweetgrass—and it sheds light on several interesting points of Lapist doctrine.

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   Shredded tree bark is not the breakfast of champions. It has a sour and bitter taste to it, especially when consumed dry. And, worst of all, the texture is tough and unforgiving. Still, I spent many long minutes chewing on the stuff before the tiny spots of daylight trickling in through my front-yard shrubbery finally woke me up enough to groan and roll over. “Ungh!” I commented intelligently, spitting out the bits of garden-mulch that had found their way into my mouth after I’d passed out. “Phooey!” I was terribly thirsty, which was only natural after a long night’s drinking. My head was about to split open, and I felt sick at my stomach every time the wind blew and the little dapples of sunlight went dancing across the ground. But at least it was warm and safe under the bushes, I decided. It was warm and safe, and the ground was plenty soft. So why bother getting up? I asked myself. I’ll just lay right here and sleep some more…
   I must have laid there for a good hour passing in and out of consciousness before the steadily-growing pressure in my bladder won out over my hangover. “God damn it!” I finally cursed, after tossing and turning for the hundredth time, and climbed unsteadily to my feet. The motion made my head throb and my stomach lurch; worst of all, the bright morning sunlight felt like nails in my eyes. “God damn it! Why can’t a man’s bladder be bigger, for Christ’s sake?” In the middle distance a bird chirped a cheery little morning song; “Fuck you, too!” I roared back as I unzipped my fly with clumsy fingers and staggered towards the dead shrub in the center of the planting. “And the horse you rode in on, cocksucker!” Wisely, the bird shut up and made no further argument. Then I was done fumbling, and the urine fell like toxic rain. I sighed aloud, feeling my first satisfaction of the day…
   …just as a small voice spoke from very close behind me. “Hello, Doctor Aaron!” it called out. “What’cha doin’?”
   God damnit! Couldn’t a man piss in his own hedges in privacy these days?
   “Hello, Anne,” I replied patiently, not letting my irritation show as I cut off my flow and refastened my pants. Anne lived across the street, in the only other house in the area. She was ten, and small for her age. Cute as a pin, too. “Just getting up, is all. What are you doing?”
   “Getting ready for church,” she answered solemnly. “Uncle Ben says it’s not nice to go to the bathroom outside.”
   I sighed and nodded as I closed my lab coat over my now-raised zipper. “It’s not, really,” I agreed. “Your uncle is right. Just like he’s right about almost everything.” Anne’s Uncle Ben was the local handyman. He worked for me a lot. Long ago his house had been the servant’s quarters for mine, and three hundred years later things apparently hadn’t changed so much. Except that he owned his place outright while I carried a mortgage the size of the Nippon Tower. “So,” I continued, smiling weakly and changing the subject. “How’s your noggin?”
   Anne reached up and fingered the large scar that ran across her forehead. A year and a half or so back, I’d found her lying trapped under Ben’s utility trailer; she’d been playing, and had knocked out the tongue support. “Not so bad today,” she answered. “But I still get headaches.”
   I frowned and reached out with my right hand. “Let me see,” I ordered, and the little girl stepped forward. Gently I probed the fracture area, closing my eyes and feeling the places where the bones had knitted back together like I’d learned back in medical school. I didn’t play attending physician very often any more, but Anne was a special exception. Her chest had been crushed as well as her head; when Ben came bursting in I’d already called the ambulance and was administering CPR. It had been a very near-run thing. “Everything feels okay,” I said after a moment. “Though maybe you’d better come in and have another scan done.”
   Anne pulled away, gracefully avoiding the shrubbery despite the frilly church-dress she was wearing. “Maybe,” she said.
   “Maybe means ‘yes’ in this case, little lady!” Ben Stovers declared as he came striding up. “If the Doc says ‘jump’, you ask how high on the way up. You get me, child?”
   “Yes, sir,” Anne replied, looking properly chastised.
   “Good! Now, you go get in the truck and wait for your ole Uncle Ben.”
   “Yes, sir,” she answered. Then, smiling again, she curtsied and ran off.
   “What a wonderful little girl,” I observed for about the thousandth time.
   “Yep,” Ben agreed. “She shore is.” No one knew exactly what the relationship between Ben Stovers and Anne Callie might be, but it certainly wasn’t one of blood; she was light-skinned, while her ‘uncle’ was very dark indeed. But with Ben being who he was, one of the most respected figures in the area, no one ever asked. He tilted his head to one side slightly. “I don’t suppose,” he suggested, “that those headaches might come from her having to listen to you yelling all night at your wife?”
   I shook my head and looked down at the ground. Vaguely I could recall staggering around in the darkness and making a total fool of myself. “Please take me back, Peg! I lo-o-o-ove yo-o-o-u!” I’d cried out over and over again, but the windows had never lit up even once. “I’ll never touch another drink, honey-pie! I swear! You’re the only woman I’ll e-e-e-ver love!” Ben never called the cops on me because I’d saved his daughter’s life; why my soon-to-be ex never did, I hadn’t a clue.
   Maybe she did still care about me? At least a little?
   There was mulch stuck to my lab-coat, I suddenly realized. So I took it off and gave it a good shaking. The garment was made of smart-cloth, and turned snowy-white and sharp-creased in seconds. “I’m sorry, Ben,” I said after I was done. “I mean…”
   “You still love her,” he finally said for me. “Hell, Tom, I can understand that. But… It was three in the morning. A little girl needs her sleep. She’s got school tomorrow.”
   “Right,” I agreed, looking away again. “And, you’re late for church.”
   He nodded. “Right.” There was a long pause. “By the way,” he said. “That re-wiring job we discussed? It’s not just the two rooms. The whole place is shot. None of it will pass inspection.”
   I frowned and looked up at what had once been Peg’s and my dream home. It had eight bedrooms, four baths, and more building code violations than most home inspectors had ever heard of. The only thing Peg and I were still cooperating on was fixing the thing up, in her case with the intent of selling and in my case because I still had a dream. Ben was doing most of the work. He was utterly trustworthy as well as competent, a rare combination indeed. Plus, Peg liked him almost as much as I did. That helped a lot, too. “How bad?” I asked finally.
   “I’d say twenty grand, if you call in contractors,” he estimated. “I’ll do it for five plus materials. But, it’ll take me a few weeks. I’m not sure yet how many.”
   “Right,” I agreed. The longer it took, the longer it would take to get the divorce settled. Which suited me just fine. It’d cost me more in lawyer fees, but that was just money. Nothing important. “Do it. I’ll cut you a check Friday.”
   “Friday,” Ben agreed, his teeth flashing brilliantly in the sunlight as he smiled. “That’s mighty fine, Doctor Aaron. Do you need a ride back into town? We’re going that way.”
   I pulled out my cell phone and checked it; the charge was still good. “No,” I answered. “Thanks, but I’d rather call a cab.”

   “It’s all about rev-e-nue,” Josh was explaining from across the bar. He often broke the word into three separate syllables when he used it and was also drunk, which was surprisingly often. “Rev-e-nue. That’s what I’m talking about. You ought to consider doing more investing, Doctor Aaron. I offer some excellent plans. And for you, the deals I could make…”
   I nodded and smiled, trying to hide the fact that my head was still aching and my stomach heaving despite the wonderful little pills I’d prescribed for myself. They didn’t work nearly as well as they once had. Perhaps it was time for something more powerful? “Rev-e-nue,” I repeated, to save myself the effort of actual thought.
   “Rev-e-nue,” he agreed brightly, completely unaware that he was being mocked. Josh was enormously fat, and his multiple chins waggled as if to emphasize every word he spoke. Looking at him you’d never guess his net worth, which to be fair was in fact quite considerable. Any day now, he’d need to go in for a body-swap; I wondered how long it would take him to ruin the new one? “What you invest in doesn’t matter; the return is what matters. It makes the world go around, re-ve-nue does! It makes the wheels turn, greases the palms, opens the doors—”
   “Been to another positive-thinking sales seminar, Josh?” a new voice interrupted.
   “Ned!” I cried out, instantly feeling a little better. I was very glad indeed to be relieved of Josh’s company. Next he’d be showing off his expensive watch and waving around pictures of his many well-paid mistresses. Salesmen, even successful ones, could be such bores. I picked up my half-empty rum-and-coke and raised it in salute. “Father Ned! Come and share a booth with me!”
   “Of course!” my cousin agreed. We’d hardly known each other growing up; it was the purest of coincidence that both of us had found our way to Mikhail’s Round-The-Clock Bar and Grill. And, it was even more pleasant to discover that we actually enjoyed each other’s company. “I can only stay for a drink or two; have to make the noon service.”
   “Right,” I agreed. Father Ned always felt that he gave a better sermon about half-plowed. Which didn’t surprise me any; I’d always been able to bullshit better drunk myself. “How’s your Mom?”
   His face fell. “Not good,” he admitted. “Her heart’s weaker than ever. Yours?”
   I frowned as well. There was a maximum age beyond which radical whole-body treatments were no longer possible, and our mothers were both well above it. “Her blood-sugar is horrible. She has to carry a glass of orange juice with her whenever she tries to walk around the block, or she blacks out. She’s got practically no pancreatic function at all. I’m trying to get her into a home, but…”
   “Right,” Ned agreed, his face still glum. Our mothers were sisters, and very much alike. Neither was particularly easy to live with; probably, this was why they’d not been very close as adults. We’d consumed much alcohol together during the period when his own mother had fought entering the nursing home, and now it looked like I was about to be faced with the same struggle on top of everything else. The very idea made me take another long, deep sip of rum.
   “How’s the parish?” I finally asked to break what was developing into an awkward silence. “Did you have your vote?”
   “Yes!” Ned replied, his face brightening a little. “The results are in. We’ve reversed ourselves. The American Catholic Church is now once again against all chemical, but not physical, means of birth control. Pills bad, condoms good.” He shook his head and sighed. “It’s the stand I favored personally, but still… We’ve reversed ourselves six times now on this issue in as many years. Harold laughs every time I mention the subject.”
   I nodded again. Harold was Ned’s Life Partner, and a really nice guy. I liked him a lot. “Well,” I observed. “That’s democracy for you. If you wanted long-term moral consistency, you guys should have stuck with the Pope and a theological dictatorship.”
   Ned sighed and looked down into his drink. “Everything changes, week by week sometimes. We’re redefining morality by counting noses. I was looking over some old sermons last night, getting ready for today. Sermons that I once stood up and gave in the service and name of God. And you know what? They’re totally against today’s doctrine! I should just wad them up and throw them away.”
   “No,” I replied. “Don’t do that! Wait another few weeks, and they’ll be Gospel again. Just you wait and see!”
   I’d meant for my words to be funny, but Ned winced as if I’d sunk a knife into him. “Some things ought to be eternal,” he said. “I understand that. But… But… I love Harold. And he loves me. Other priests love their wives just as much. How can that be bad, or wrong? We had to break away! Over that and many other things, as well.”
   I sighed and looked up at the bust of Lenin that peered out solemnly over our booth. Mikhail’s was decorated in the Soviet motif. Socialist Realism permeated the place; even the bathroom fixtures featured hammers and sickles. “You can’t have it both ways,” I said eventually. “You just can’t.”
   “Amen,” Ned answered. He lifted his drink, a fruity concoction decorated with plastic leaves and fake apples, and drained half of it in a single draught. “Amen.” Finally he raised his eyes again to meet mine. “What are you up to today, Thomas?” he finally asked. “Sunday is your day off.”
   I half-snorted. “Are you kidding? Gengineers don’t get days off. I’m supposed to be in the office right now, actually.” I sipped at my rum-and-coke again. “But I needed a little hair-of-the-dog first.”
   “Right,” Ned agreed, looking away again. We both drank far too much, and we both knew it. But, we were also both too conscious of the glass-house thing to ever say anything out loud. “What’s your current project?”
   “You’d never believe it,” I answered, smiling for the first time all day. I liked gengineering, damnit! The rest of my life might be going to hell, but at least I still had one last thing I could still smile about. “I’ve got a customer who wants a rabbit’s body, of all things. Honest to God! It’ll be the most fun I’ve had in years!”

   The clinic was relatively quiet on Sundays; this was part of why I tended to show up more often on the Sabbath than on any other day. As a gengineer I wasn’t often directly involved in patient care; rather, I specialized in design work and cutting edge research. So far I had forty-seven patents and eleven trademarked and royalty-producing new gengineering procedures to my name, comfortably more than anyone else in the field. So many, in fact, that it was virtually impossible for anyone anywhere to undergo a procedure without employing at least one of my techniques. This was probably the main reason no one had worked up the nerve to fire me yet.
   That, and the fact that I owned a third of the place. Or maybe even more.
   “Doctor Aaron!” the weekend receptionist greeted me as I strode in the front door. “How nice to see you! What a rare treat!”
   If that wasn’t the politest way I’d ever been chastised for missing so much work, I didn’t know what was. “And you,” I replied, smiling through a mild alcoholic buzz. I’d never, ever do any patient-care work while intoxicated. That, however, was not at all the same thing as saying I’d never do any other kind of gengineering work while buzzed. In point of fact, I’d come up with five of my best patent-making ideas while drunk off my ass. “Is Agnes here?”
   “Yes, Doctor. She got your call.”
   “Thank God,” I replied, my smile widening as I weaved my way across the lobby to the waiting elevator and punched the big number seven. Agnes was my personal secretary, and I depended on her like no other living being.
   My office was on the corner of the top floor, which was supposed to be a big-time perk. I hated the location, however; there were twice as many sunshiney windows that had to be covered up when I was hung over. And, even worse, the elevators were centrally located, which meant that getting to my door required a long, public stagger down the corridor. This was bad enough in and of itself, but sometimes, on Sundays in particular, I ran into my patients before I was quite ready for them.
   “Doctor Aaron!” a young man called out as I rounded a corner. “How good to see you!”
   I glanced down at my watch; it was a good half-hour before I was supposed to see young Daniel. He was an early-bird, damn him. “Why, hello!” I responded, trying to smile wide enough to hide my stubbly beard. Somehow, I hadn’t thought to pack a razor on my way to serenade my soon-to-be ex. Or any deodorant either, for that matter. “Good to see you!”
   Daniel smiled back. His was better than mine. My future bunny was a smallish guy, maybe twenty-five and lightly built. He was attractive enough; in fact, his Significant Other was a wealthy stockbroker that until recently had been rated high on Gay Life Magazine’s Hundred Most Eligible list. “I’m a little early,” he admitted, looking down shyly. “This whole thing is so exciting, I just couldn’t wait.”
   “Of course,” I agreed, nodding and holding my smile. “I just have to take care of a little business in my office first…”
   “Right!” Daniel agreed, his head bobbing up and down amiably. The trained gengineer part of me observed the motion critically, imagining how the patient’s natural motions might be recreated and enhanced in a new musculature. “I understand entirely. Like I said, I’m early.”
   My smile became more genuine. It was impossible to dislike Danny, I decided. He was a very polite young man. That would help make him a good bunny. “The waiting room is the first door on the left,” I explained, pointing. “There’s a holo unit inside; feel free to turn it on. Or, there’s books and magazines and such. I’ll be with you just as soon as I possibly can.”
   Agnes was waiting for me in her alcove just outside my office, still wearing her church dress. “Thank you,” I said to her, first thing. “Thank you so very much.”
   She sighed and closed her eyes. “Don’t mention it. My bank account is grateful.” Then she looked me up and down. “You didn’t…”
   I nodded slowly, letting my head hang. “Yes,” I admitted. “I did.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out my new pill bottle, then swallowed another thousand milligrams of my new had-too-much-to-drink prescription. It was twice the recommended dosage, but then I suffered from twice the usual hangover. I could almost feel my liver dissolving. It burned.
   Agnes shook her head disapprovingly. She was an old friend of Peg’s; the one who’d introduced us, in fact. “Doctor Aaron…”
   I held up my hands, palm out. “I know, I know! I need to let her go, need to move on, need to find a new life.” I sighed and looked down at my feet. “Honest to God, Agnes. I don’t know how I keep ending up out there so late at night. I honestly don’t remember.”
   My secretary’s face softened somewhat. “You’re still in love,” she acknowledged. “That forgives a lot.” Then she shook her head again and stood up. “You’re a wreck, Doctor. In no condition to see patients. Go take a shower. Shave. And I’ll lay out some fresh clothes for you.”
   I nodded, relieved. The simple truth was that Agnes had always been at least as essential to my existence as Peg had been. Maybe even more so. And, best of all, she knew it.
   My office had all the trimmings: Private bath, steam cabinet, shower, a workout machine I never used, and even a little cot that I called home nowadays, when I wasn’t off sleeping under the shrubbery. I turned the water up all the way hot for a time to get everything nice and steamy while I shaved, then soaped myself and rotated solemnly under the sprayhead for a long, dreamy time until I felt better. Then I hit the dryer button and let the hot air blasts have their turn. By the time I stepped back out to where my clean clothes awaited me, I felt almost human except for the liver-burn.
   I was still adjusting my fresh lab coat as I strode out to my office, feeling confident and professional for the first time that day. Daniel’s file was waiting for me on my oversized, overly ornate ‘public’ desk; I did my real work at a little stamped-metal computer station in a tiny back room, but people seemed to need the reassurance of seeing me sitting behind something more expensive and substantial when seeking my services. I paged through the medical records quickly to ensure that my memory wasn’t playing tricks on me. It wasn’t; there wasn’t anything to be found there except ‘healthy young male’. Then I picked up my phone and asked Agnes to see Daniel in.
   “Well!” I greeted my patient, rising to my feet and extending my right hand. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”
   Danny smiled back and shook my hand. He had a warm, firm grip despite his relatively short stature. “You’re right on time,” he countered. “It’s me who was early.” His expression faded slightly. “I hope I didn’t intrude on something…”
   My smile slipped a little. He’d noticed my beard. Or perhaps my uncombed hair. Or something. “I was out all last night,” I explained. “Very urgent matter.”
   “Right,” Daniel agreed, looking satisfied. Most likely he figured that I’d been out doctoring, which suited me just fine.
   “Well,” I said again, lowering myself into my seat and getting down to business. “So you want to become a bunny rabbit?”
   Daniel blushed, then nodded.
   “It’s all right,” I said slowly, picking up his file and examining it, even though I knew everything in it. “You’ve come to the right place. I’ve done more animal transformations than anyone else in the world, though I’ll admit I’ve never done a rabbit before.” I lowered the file back onto the desk. “But… You’ll have to tell me why.”
   Daniel’s blush deepened, and he stared down into my desk for a moment before speaking. “I’ve always wanted to be a rabbit,” he explained. “As long as I can remember. I’m just glad to live in a time and place where my dream can come true.”
   I nodded; it was common enough. A whole ‘furry’ subculture had developed and even begun to gain acceptance in recent years. “And,” I added, “it’s also just as well that you live in a time and place where you’re not seen as being nuts.”
   “Heh!” Danny replied, smiling again. Once again, the gengineer in me took over, and I filed the smile away in my memory. I’d recreate it as best I could, maybe even make it better if I could find a way. Though that would be difficult indeed; the original was very fetching. “A lot of folks still do think I’m nuts. Especially my Mom.”
   “I can imagine,” I answered, observing the way that Danny’s left foot twisted up under him as he squirmed slightly in his seat, and making more mental notes. The foot-twisting was clearly a habitual gesture; with bigger feet it would be magnified, and help make him more personable still. “But… Why a rabbit, Danny? I’m hardly a stranger to the field; the big cats are far more popular in the furry scene. I’ve made dozens myself.”
   “I… Uh…” Danny bushed again, then met my eyes firmly for the first time since entering my office. “It’s what I’ve always wanted, like I said. But…” I waited patiently while Danny squirmed some more. “I don’t like cat-furries,” he said at last. “I mean, they’re really pretty, and all that. Soft. Huggable. But… They get all nasty. They start out as meat-eaters, and then they start to want to hunt. Kill things. They enjoy it.” He shuddered.
   I nodded. “So you want to be a herbivore?”
   “Yes,” Daniel replied. “Absolutely! But… There’s more.”
   I raised my eyebrows.
   “My last boyfriend, Jaggers, was a housecat.” Daniel smiled his so-attractive smile again. “We loved each other very much before he had the work done, at another clinic. But… He changed afterwards.”
   I frowned slightly and leaned forward, propping my chin in my hands. “Mr. Patten,” I said bluntly. “Everyone changes when their bodies are radically altered. It’s the way of things.”
   “I know,” Danny answered, looking down. “Believe me, I know. But, well… I’m from New York. Greenwich Village. I know a lot of furs.”
   I nodded; this was one of the major centers of the furry subculture. “Yes?”
   “They all change. You’re absolutely right about that. But…” He frowned again. “Jaggers turned all selfish and cold. He wasn’t like that before. We broke up.”
   I blinked slowly. “And you think you’ll do better as a rabbit?”
   My potential patient nodded eagerly. “I know so!” he answered. “I mean, a cat is expected to be cold and selfish, right? Hedonistic, even. But a rabbit is supposed to be warm and caring. That’s how I want to be! Warm and caring and full of love and contentment.” Daniel’s eyes sparkled. “If people expect me to be like that, it’ll help me to truly become that way. Provide guidance, sort of. Being a better person is what’s most important to me of all. I even want you to alter my brain. As much as the law allows.”
   I blinked again. “That’s… unusual.”
   “I know,” Daniel replied. “I know. But…” He sighed and looked down again. “Look, Congress is all over the place on gene-splicing. You know that far better than I do.”
   “Right,” I agreed. The clinic kept three lawyers busy full time just keeping up on what was legal during any given week and what was not. It was hell when a long-term experiment had to be dumped. Especially when a month later the lawmakers reversed themselves again, and everything had to start all over again. It happened much, much too often.
   “We’re on the three-country standard right now,” Daniel continued. “Anything that is legal in three other industrialized, gengineering-capable nations is permitted in the United States, so our research won’t lag behind like it did at in the ’teens. And, last week, South Korea legalized significant human brain alterations.” Danny leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Which, along with China and France, makes three. You’re the best, Doctor Aaron. The best there’s ever been. And my lover has promised me a new body as a wedding gift. He can afford the best.” Danny folded his arms and cocked his head to one side. “So, I want an altered brain as part of the package. A better one, kinder and more loving. And I think you’re just the man to give it to me.”

   “Better. Kinder. More loving.” I murmured the phrases over and over again to myself as I sat and played games with anthro-lapine musculature patterns on my computer. It was late, and the last of the alcohol had long since burned itself out of my system. In fact, I’d have been suffering a terrible case of the DTs were it not for my wonderful new liver-burn pills. Each new motion-simulation got better; I was still in the very early stages of designing Daniel’s new physique, making the grossest of metabolic and anatomical decisions. The body would be a relatively simple job; in fact, since a lot of the earliest research had been done on lab rabbits, in some regards I had more of a database to work with than any other species I’d ever done. But the brain, now… I felt myself smiling gently, as I always did when facing a challenge. That was new territory entirely! “Better. Kinder. More loving.”
   “Who’s more loving?” a deep male voice interrupted.
   I sighed and slowly closed my eyes as Ben Davis sashayed into my private office as if he owned the place. He was a partner, sure. But then again so was I, and I didn’t treat his office like public property! That was what I got, I supposed, for leaving the door open, even on a Sunday. “Hi,” I greeted my fellow gengineer quietly. “No one’s more loving—yet. But in a few weeks, who knows?”
   Ben frowned, the expression unnaturally forceful on his million-dollar-work-of-art face. Every line was perfect and considered, every pore thought out and located unerringly where it would do the most good in projecting the ideal image of an intelligent, concerned doctor; I wanted to crawl under my desk and hide, Ben’s frown was so powerful. “Brain work?” he asked, disapproval resonating in his perfectly-designed voice. “That’s not legal.”
   “South Korea,” I countered, turning to face my partner. “South Korea legalized substantive brain work on willing and informed volunteers last week. That makes three nations, which makes it legal here too. Our pet lawyers haven’t confirmed it yet, but you know how lily-livered they are. I’ve done a little homework on my own, and it looks clear enough to me.”
   “But…” Ben frowned again, the very image of a displeased god. He specialized in beauty work for Hollywood and A-list types, and felt with some justification that he needed to be a walking advertisement for his own skills. Three weeks out of the year he was in a Tank, having this or that subtle imperfection touched up. “Tom, I know you’re supposed to be cutting edge. It’s why we offered you the partnership here. But the publicity on this—”
   I leaned forward and interrupted. “Look!” I exclaimed, pointing at the monitor. “He wants to be a bunny! A better, kinder and more-loving bunny! What can be so terrible about that?” I smiled. “And, like I said, it’s legal now. Or, it will be any day now, once the new rules take effect in Seoul. If it’s legal, I can work on it. That’s what our agreement says. No other restrictions. Or else I’d never have signed it.” I grinned like a little kid. “I haven’t been more excited about a project in years! This is new territory, Ben! Not just simple species-melding! Even in France and China, no one’s really taken off and run with human brain work. They’re too superstitious and afraid. It’s my chance to go someplace first again!”
   This time it was Ben’s turn to close his eyes slowly, then re-open them. “But Tom! Brain alterations?” He sighed. “Look, we didn’t mind the cats or the horse, or even the full-morph bear that can’t talk. Hell, we all three posed with the bear; it made for great publicity! But I don’t know…”
   I shrugged and let the silence stretch out for a time, then turned back to my monitor. Ben didn’t take the hint, however. “We had a staff meeting Friday,” he pointed out.
   I nodded. “I’m sure there’s a memo floating around somewhere covering the main points.”
   My partner’s lips thinned. “Attendance was mandatory. We discussed emergency evacuation procedures and storm shelters. No one was supposed to be exempt.” His eyes narrowed. “We needed you there to set a good example for the employees.”
   I shrugged and turned to face my accuser. “Me? A good example? Brother, are you barking up the wrong tree! I was drunk off my ass at Mikhail’s, just like I am almost every afternoon. If you expect me to be at a stupid staff meeting, hold it there.”
   Ben’s face reddened. “Your reputation as a renegade did precede you, yes. Pat and I were not entirely naive. But still, even a scientist and practitioner of your undisputed caliber—”
   “—can be a total and complete jerk,” I finished for him. “With shitty work habits, to boot.”
   My partner stood up, his fists clenched. “Tom…” he began. Then he made a clear effort to relax, and opened his perfect, sculpted hands. “Tom, I happen to like you. Believe it or not, I really, honestly do. I also know what this divorce must be doing to you; I’ve seen you with Peg, and know how much you loved, and probably still do love her. But…” He shook his head. “Tom, this can’t go on. Pat agrees with me. You’re not pulling your weight. I’m not even sure if your patients are getting proper care, what with the state you’re in. You need help.”
   My eyebrows rose. “I’m not pulling my share?” I asked. “Tell me, have you checked the books lately? How much revenue are my forty-something patents pulling in? More than both of your patents put together, I’m quite certain. Probably even more than your all day, every day stable of Tank-addicted movie stars who demand expensive gengineering treatments every time they gain three pounds or generate half a wrinkle.” I sighed and shook my head. “God damnit, Ben, I’ve been through three Clinics and three sets of partners already in my career, all because no one wants to believe I really mean it when I say that I’m going to do anything the hell I want to in terms of office hours and lines of research.” I looked directly into my partner’s eyes. “Don’t make me go for Clinic number four. For the most part, except when people come and interrupt my work to hold little talks like this one, I like it here.”
   For a long moment Ben met my eyes, and I thought I really was going to have to find someplace else to practice. Finally he looked away and grudgingly nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said. Then his face hardened again, and he met my eyes once more. “No, damnit. I’m not sorry, Tom! You’re right, in that you’re carrying your share financially. You could never show up at all, and we’d have no complaints on that score. I was wrong to put things that way. But…” He shook his head. “Tom, you’re the best in the world. Or at least, you once were the best in the world. An artist, not just a gene-chopping technician like me. You’ve always been hard to work with, by reputation at least. But it used to be because you were a perfection-demanding workaholic, not a… a…” He screwed up his face, working up the courage to use the word I knew was coming. “A drunk.” He shook his head. “A drunk who’s now talking about gene-chopping someone’s brain. Tom, when I became your partner, I was so proud. I felt like I’d finally made the very top level, at long last. And now, every time I see you I feel like I’m attending the funeral of a once-great man. For God’s sake, for the sake of your talent, even. Get yourself some help!”
   I sighed and looked away, not really knowing what to say. “Ben, you’re right. I’m a drunk. The booze is eating me alive. It’s killing off my brain cells by the million. Every day I fade away a little bit. But I just don’t care. Why should I? There’s nothing but this big empty spot inside of me where I ought to give a shit. When eventually I die, that empty spot will be all and everything that I am. Nothing matters.”
   Ben shook his head. “Everyone else cares about you. You’re an asshole, yes. But in your unique way, you’re the most respected asshole I’ve ever met. Hell, even the public cares about you. You’ve seen the gossip columns. Especially the recent ones. They wouldn’t write about you if people didn’t care. It wouldn’t sell any papers.”
   “Heh,” I snorted. Then I shook my head and looked away. “Thanks. Really. But…” I worked my lips a few times, trying to find the right words. “I’m doing exactly what I want to do with my life, Ben. Exactly! It’s mine, not anyone else’s. And there’s no sense trying to stop me.”
   Ben had a lot more to say after that. “Self-destructive,” he said, among many other things. “Endangering your license. Hell, endangering our licenses!” And more. But in the end, I knew he’d leave me to live my life and alter brains in peace.
   Why? Because no matter how much he hated the fact, I was most of his firm’s rev-e-nue. And that was what really mattered in life. Or, at least, that was what seemed to matter to everyone else.

   Liver-burn pills could not make up for lack of sleep, but benzedrine worked absolute miracles. I’d always had a bad habit of losing track of time while working on challenging projects, and the problem had only grown worse since I’d discovered a pleasant twenty-four-hour bar. It no longer really mattered to me whether it was day or night, except when I had appointments to keep. I’d been at my comp for almost sixteen hours straight, doing the broad-brush work on Daniel’s new physique. But it had only seemed like a few fleeting moments. One minute I’d been grumbling about my colleague’s rude interruption Sunday evening, and the next bright sunlight was shining into the corner of my eye through a crack in my heavy blackout curtains. A whole night, gone in a seeming instant!
   It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t been scheduled to go out to the house and meet with Peg, like I did every Monday morning at nine. I had barely enough time to call a cab, dry-swallow a stay-awake pill, and go racing across town against traffic, promising my driver stratospheric tips all the way.
   He seemed satisfied enough with my gratuity as he smiled and pulled away; my life might be in ruins, but that was no reason to break my word. Peg was like that too, I mused as I walked down the little sidewalk I’d had built through the centuries-old hedgerow. It was in full bloom, and a thousand undersized sweat bees busily pollinated a million tiny white flowers. Her word was still good as well, despite our troubles. Or else we would have passed beyond the stage of active cooperation long since.
   “Hello,” Peg greeted me at the door, looking down at the welcome mat we’d picked out together in Honduras on our honeymoon instead of meeting my eyes and then throwing her arms around me, as she once had.
   “Hi,” I replied, eyes downcast as well, where once I would have smiled, lifted her off of her feet, and twirled her around the entry foyer. “How are you?”
   “Well enough,” she answered dully, opening the door the rest of the way and letting me in.
   “Me too,” I answered, following her down the hall and trying not to let my eyes wander to the dozens of watercolors that lined our entranceway. Peg was a moderately talented painter, and each frame captured a time and place we’d once shared. Our marriage had lasted over twenty years, and had been extraordinarily happy. Until… Until…
   “Have you been praying to Jehovah-God?” Peg asked as she pulled out a chair for me at the kitchen table. There was a large window there that looked out over a huge flower garden; we had almost never eaten in the stiffly-formal dining room. “Have you read those tracts I sent home with you last time?”
   I frowned and looked outside. A hummingbird was sipping nectar at one of my feeders; I’d always loved hummingbirds, and apparently Peg enjoyed them too. At least enough to keep the feeders full. “No,” I answered, my drugged heart pumping as fast as that of the little winged creature outside. “Peg, I never lied to you the whole time we were married, and I won’t lie to you now. I think this whole Witness thing is nonsense, pure and utter nonsense. I love you very much, but still can’t see how you were taken in.” That was the truth, the literal, whole truth. One day I’d left my home for the Clinic, and kissed my loving wife goodbye. When I got home, the door was locked and a Watchtower magazine featuring an article on the evils of gengineering was taped to the knocker.
   Peg pressed her lips together and shook her head. “You just won’t believe,” she replied. “Deep down inside of you, your heart is crying out for Jehovah. You’re too proud to give in to Him.”
   Thumpthumpthump my heart went for an endless time as I looked my wife in the eyes. Then I sighed and looked out over the garden. “I love you more than anything,” I said finally. “You know that.”
   “But you’re an unrepentant sinner,” she answered. “A horrible, horrible sinner even worse than I was before I found God. A gengineer, Thomas. One who thinks he is greater and wiser than Jehovah. And now, the way you’ve gone to pot and ruined the beautiful body you were given as a temple for your soul…” She shook her head in disgust. “You never could sing, you know. Not a single note, even when you were young. What makes you think you’re any better now, drunk and in the middle of the night to boot?”
   This time, my contrition was genuine. “Peg, I’m sorry. I really don’t know—”
   But she wouldn’t let me finish. “Ben tells me he’s talked to you about the wiring,” she declared, ending all meaningful personal contact of the kind I was so starved for. I knew from experience that once we began discussing the house and estate, everything would be all business no matter how I protested. “As you know, we can’t even legally put up a ‘For Sale’ sign until all the building-code issues are resolved.”
   “Yes,” I agreed, my voice dull and dead. “It’ll take him a few weeks to get things sorted out. Even he’s not sure how many yet. Or, at least he wasn’t sure yesterday morning.”
   “The house will remain habitable at all times,” Peg added. “I won’t have to move out; there won't be any extra lodging expenses.”
   I nodded. Peg was being scrupulous with every dime, even while I plowed through the thousands like a drunken sailor. Perhaps I should have felt ashamed, but I didn't. “After the wiring work is done…”
   “Then everything will be done,” my soon-to-be-ex replied brusquely. “Everything. And we can finalize the papers.”
   I nodded, even though finalizing the divorce was absolutely the last thing I wanted to do. I’d never been happy for a moment in my whole life, save when I was married to the only woman I’d ever loved. “Peg,” I began, my voice a near-sob, “I—”
   “I guess that’s everything,” she interrupted, standing up to indicate that our meeting was over. “As time goes on, we have less and less business to discuss. The divorce is going quite well, I must say, and I thank you for your cooperation. This could have been far, far worse for both of us.”
   It could have? I asked myself silently as I stood up to leave. How? It was hard to imagine.
   “Let’s skip next week,” Peg suggested. “The ladies' group down at the Kingdom Hall has been inviting me to join them in a fellowship group, but I’ve been unable to go. And surely a man as busy as you are must have other priorities as well?”
   All through my marriage, I’d been a busy man. But never too busy for Peg. Not once. And now… now…
   My entire universe was shattered, and had been for months. Every single effort I’d made to rebuild had come to nothing. There were only two things left to me, gengineering and my dignity. I was determined to preserve as much of the latter as I possibly could. “Right,” I agreed. I even managed to force a professional smile. “A week from next Monday, then. We’ll have the progress on the wiring to discuss.”
   “I’ll keep all the receipts,” Peg promised as she ushered me through the front door. “Goodbye.”
   And then I was outside, alone with the shrubbery again.

   My house was a good thirty minutes or so outside the city limits, and I’d never had a cab arrive at my front door in anything less than three-quarters of an hour after being summoned. So, after snapping my cell-phone shut, I decided to take a little walk in the garden. Peg wouldn’t mind, I knew, or at least she wouldn’t say anything. She never did.
   Long before we bought the place, our home had been famous for the variety and richness of its flowers. Since then, I’d spent a little of my spare time gengineering all-new hybrids; snap-lilies, for example, and peri-lions. Plants weren’t my specialty, or even within my field, strictly speaking. But Peg planted my seeds nonetheless, and they grew straight and tall and beautiful…
   …until this last spring. Then, Peg ruthlessly weeded out every last unnatural hybrid, root and branch. There were large gaps in the garden now, areas that featured nothing more beautiful than naked earth and a sprinkling of weeds. I frowned at one such area, then bent over and examined the ground carefully. There were tiny wildflowers blooming among the more mundane growth, violets and something with purplish foliage and miniature red blossoms I couldn’t identify. It was as if the mutilated garden were determined to heal itself, whether Peg cooperated or not.
   “Hello!” a small voice said from behind me.
   “Hi, Anne!” I replied, turning around and smiling with a lot more sincerity than I’d felt a couple days back, when she’d interrupted me urinating on the shrubbery. “How are you today?”
   “Fine,” she answered, smiling back. Anne was dressed in her playclothes today, denim overalls with great big smiling daisies sewn on them here and there, and a yellow shirt. She held up her doll. “Mrs. Gladstone wants to know if you need to use the bathroom. If so, we’ll leave. Uncle Ben told me it wasn’t nice for me to interrupt you the way I did last time.”
   I laughed, despite myself. “No, Anne. I’m not out here to use the bathroom. I’m just waiting for a cab.”
   “Oh,” she answered. Then her face lit up. “You’re here to see Mrs. Aaron?”
   I nodded.
   “Was she happy to see you, this time?”
   “I’m afraid not,” I answered, looking down at the tiny wildflower blooms. “I’m afraid Peg doesn’t like me nearly as much as she used to.”
   “Oh,” she said again, her face falling. Then, as if a switch had been thrown, it lit up again. “I’m going to be in a play!”
   “You are?” I replied. Peg and I had been attending Anne’s school productions since she’d been in kindergarten.
   “Uh-huh!” she answered brightly, spinning a happy little circle with her doll cradled tightly against her breast. “I’m going to dance as a green fairy, in fact! Would you like to come?”
   “Wow!” I replied. “Of course—” I began, then cut my words off. “Well,” I said slowly. “I’d very much like to come. But if Peg is going to be there…”
   Anne stopped her happy spinning. “She isn’t coming,” the little girl answered, her voice heavy and sad. “She says fairies are creatures of Satan, and it makes Jehovah-God unhappy when we pretend to be one.” Her lips pursed. “Who is Jehovah-God?” she finally asked. “The minister at our church doesn’t ever talk about him.”
   “Well…” I began, looking off into the distance and trying to find words. Damn Peg anyway! Couldn’t she leave even a child in happy, blissful peace? “When is your play, Hon?” I finally asked, changing the subject.
   “A week from Thursday,” she replied. “At seven. In the auditorium, like always.”
   “I’ll be there!” I swore, pulling out my appointment book and typing in the information on the spot. My memory was growing very spotty, of late. “I promise!”
   “Yay!” she cried out, hugging Mrs. Gladstone to her chest once again and spinning, spinning, spinning through the garden. “Yay!”
   “And don’t you sweat what Jehovah-God thinks, either!” I added. “He never has any fun at all! Honest injun!”

   Anyone could have predicted that my next stop would be at Mikhail’s; I’d already been away for much longer than was my habit in recent months. Willy had my rum-and-coke ready for me before I even stepped up to the bar, and I nodded my thanks as I handed over an even larger tip than usual in gratitude. My hand trembled slightly as I raised the glass to my lips and sipped at it; I needed the drink, worse than I needed anything in the world. It was a little frightening, how badly I needed it. My liver-burn pills had finally worn off; I swore never to let that happen again.
   “Have you heard?” Willy asked as I took a long second sip.
   “About what?” I asked.
   “Josh,” he answered, indicating an empty stool at the head of the bar. “Josh Gibson.” He made an overly-serious face and lined up three fingers under his chin. “‘Rev-e-nue.’ That guy.”
   “He had a stroke,” someone at the bar added. I didn’t know him. “In the shower. No one found him for hours. He’s brain-dead.”
   My fingers were still trembling, so I took another sip of my drink. “Is that so?” I answered. In truth, I hadn’t cared for Josh very much. None of us had.
   “They’re gonna pull the plug,” the stranger continued, shrugging. “Fat bastard was too cheap to buy a new body; kept putting it off. Now he’s a vegetable.”
   “Not much rev-e-nue in that,” someone else observed.
   “Or in being fertilizer,” a third stranger added. “That comes next.”
   “Whatever,” I answered, downing the rest of my rum and gesturing for another. I’d been a physician before going on into gengineering, and doctors saw far too much of death to find much humor in the subject. Willy shrugged and mixed, I handed over a wad of bills, and then I found my way to my usual booth in back.
   Unlike most people, I was perfectly happy to do my drinking alone. The bust of Lenin gazing down on me was all the company I needed. “Well, Vladimir,” I said once I’d finished my third drink and the pain of it all was starting to fade a little. “You’re dead. Josh is dead. And, eventually, I’m gonna be dead too. What do you think of that?”
   Lenin didn’t answer; probably because the question was a meaningless one in terms of Dialectical Materialism. But Father Ned chose just that moment to join me, and he filled in the gap. “Damned if I know these days,” he answered, sliding into the seat opposite me and loosening his clerical collar a little. “Damned if I know.”
   I smiled. “But you’re supposed to know!”
   He sighed and shook his head as Willy delivered his usual fruit-filled drink; I didn’t even know the name of the thing, I realized suddenly. “Hey!” I asked the bartender before he could leave. “What’s that my friend is drinking?”
   “It’s called a ‘Poison Apple’,” he answered. “Evil thing, full of fire. Don’t let the looks fool you; it takes a real man to drink one. You want to try your luck, Doc?”
   “Sure!” I answered, feeling happy and bold like I always did when getting drunk. “An Apple, that’s what I want.”
   “Right,” Willy agreed. Business was picking up; I knew it would be a while. But that was okay. I still had plenty of rum.
   “So, cousin,” I said to Ned. “What’s got your tail in a knot?”
   He shook his head and sipped at his drink. “Everything,” he answered, gesturing widely, as if to include the whole world. “Everything, and nothing.”
   I looked up at Lenin, then back down at Ned. “Come on,” I urged him. “Spill. Unload. It’s good for you.”
   He took another pull of Poison Apple, then nodded. “All right. You’ve heard about Josh, I guess? Rev-e-nue?”
   “Yeah,” I answered, looking away.
   “Well… A long time back, before you started coming here, he told me he was Catholic. Though he wasn’t sure which kind yet, and hadn’t been to services in years. So I gave him my card, in case he wanted to come on down to St. John’s Parish. I thought he might be more comfortable, knowing one of the priests.”
   I nodded encouragingly.
   “So, he never showed up. But apparently he never tossed the card out, either. This morning, after he was hospitalized, his son called me.” Ned shook his head, his mouth a flat line of disgust. “His father wasn’t even dead yet, but he wanted to know how much I’d ask to officiate at the funeral. ‘I know another guy who’ll do it for two-fifty,’ the little snot warned me before I could even answer. ‘So that’s your upper limit.’”
   “Heh!” I snorted. “Rev-e-nue.”
   “Exactly!” Ned snapped, his fist slamming onto the table. “Exactly!” He sipped again at his drink before continuing. “I told him I’d do it for free, out of my own pocket. That’s not what we’re supposed to do, mind you, not even for friends. But he’d pissed me off, you see. So I made the offer.” My cousin shook his head sadly. “He seemed so happy about my not charging anything that I thought he was going to start dancing or something; it was positively indecent. I did tell him that donations would be accepted, but I don’t expect to see a dime. Not that it really matters.” Ned shook his head again. “Here’s this kid’s father, brain-dead, and they’re considering pulling the plug, and…”
   Ned let his words trail off into nothing as my own Apple arrived. I sniffed at it; the thing smelled like cider gone bad. “Some people are like that,” I answered. “I don’t understand them, mind you. But it’s how they are nonetheless.”
   “Do they even have souls?” Ned wondered aloud. “Sometimes I wonder if any of us do.”
   I shrugged. “You’re asking the wrong guy, cousin. All I can tell you is that souls don’t show up on CAT scans.”
   Ned sighed and rolled his eyes. “And then there’s something else, too. Which bothers me even more.”
   “What’s that?” I asked. Ned had listened to me pour out my heart for hours about losing Peg, and would probably do so again more than once before all was done and over with. I owed him a little turnabout.
   Ned sighed and stared down into his drink for a while before answering. “Remember a couple days back, when we had that vote on birth-control doctrine?”
   I nodded. “Pills bad, condoms good.”
   “Well…” He sighed. “The losing parties have already filed again for another vote. It hasn’t been forty-eight hours yet. Even Jesus stayed dead longer than that.”
   I blinked. “Wow!”
   Ned shook his head and took a long pull of Poison Apple. I’d decided not to drink mine; it smelled too nasty. Apparently, I wasn’t enough of a man for one after all. “They’ve already filed with the New Vatican in Boston! Already! And there’s more.”
   “Really?” I asked.
   “This time, the drug companies are bankrolling the pro-pill position. It’s all over the front page of the American Catholic Review.” My cousin’s face turned cold and hard. “There’s going to be an actual organized political campaign this time around, complete with signs and speeches and dirty money. To determine the true will of God.”
   I winced. “I’m sorry, Ned.”
   “Me too, Tom,” he answered softly. “Me too.”
   I’d allowed my rum-and-coke to go empty; I shoved my unwanted Apple to Ned’s side of the table and gestured to Willy. Presently, my new drink arrived.
   “I still don’t see how we went astray,” Ned said after a very long time. “I mean, we were right to create a schism. The Roman Pope was drifting more and more towards the right; he was practically a fundamentalist. The churches were emptying. And, most of all, he was wrong. So we took away his authority and freed ourselves.” He shook his head. “But what have we created? A mockery, is what! A Church where people are about to vote on right and wrong based on rev-e-nue.”
   I couldn’t think of much to say, so I just sat and held my peace and gazed up at Lenin. Is God dead yet? he asked me silently. No, I answered back. Just a vegetable, so far. But we’re getting there. Finally, Ned lowered his head into his arms and began to sob. “What have we done, Tom? What have I done? All we wanted to do was to make things better!”
   I sighed; as an unbeliever, who was I to offer an opinion? But, as a human being, it clearly was my place to offer comfort. So I reached out across the table, and clapped my hand on Ned’s shoulder. “Come on,” I said. “You did the best you could do at the time. You did what you thought was right.” My words didn’t seem to help much, so I went on. “You can’t have it both ways, Ned. A man can either accept moral doctrine from what he believes to be a higher source, or he can make up his own rules either alone or as part of a group. Both ways have their drawbacks. What you’re facing is nothing new; it’s just an issue that few religious people ever have to confront. It’s new to you, but not new to mankind. We agnostics confront it every day, I can assure you. As a gengineer, I can doubly assure you.”
   Ned nodded, though he didn’t raise his head. “I hear you’re getting ready to alter a human brain. For real, I mean. Not just trivial stuff. Soul-surgery.”
   I pressed my lips together. Several of my staff were Ned’s parishioners. “I might be,” I allowed.
   Ned raised his head. “Well,” he explained, reaching for his last Apple and draining it to the dregs. “Better you than me, cousin.” Then he stood up and raised his empty glass in salute. “Forgive me, but I have to go hear confessions now. Today is my turn. And you know what? It’s the damnedest thing. I haven’t heard about a new sin in years. Human nature never changes. Same old nonsense, over and over and over again. Boring creatures, we are. No wonder God needs the day off.”

   It was time for me to sleep, once I got back to the Clinic. So I took some sleeping pills along with the liver-burners, then doubled the dose when the recommended amount didn’t do the trick. It was growing harder and harder for me to get to sleep, I noted, even when seriously soused. That was probably a very bad sign of something, but I really didn’t want to think about what. Being a doctor, I might just guess right.
   I woke up fourteen hours later with a dry mouth, a full bladder, and a surprising aura of well-being about my person. Probably, this was due to the fact that it had been who knew how long since I’d been alcohol-free for an entire half-day. That was the first thing on the agenda, I decided; even before visiting the bathroom, I dug a can of Coke out the little office ’fridge that Agnes kept stocked for me, bless her, then poured it into a plastic cup and topped it off with two fingers of rum. “Breakfast of champions!” I mumbled to myself as I stirred the concoction with my right index finger, then I gulped the whole thing down and belched. Presently there was a small fire burning in my liver again, and the world was a warmer and happier place for it. What a perfect day!
   It was five in the afternoon when I finally finished showering and shaving and dressing and such, just barely in time to catch the busy day shift folks as they finished up their day’s work. So, I sipped at another rum and Coke for half an hour in my little bedroom to be sure that most everyone was gone, then quietly emerged into my working office.
   I’d promised Dan some definite answers on his new body in a week, and though I could probably let the deadline slide without him complaining too much, something deep inside of me resisted this last small step into total decrepitude. A doctor or a gengineer owed his patients his full attention and dedication; nothing less was acceptable. I wasn’t playing games with Daniel, I was designing him a new body, one which in many ways would be him for, hopefully, a period of many years to come. Even if he hadn’t come to me seeking custom work of the very highest caliber, offering me top dollar along the way, it would have been my duty, my sacred obligation even, to give him my best. Any gengineer who felt otherwise wasn’t worthy of the title. In fact…
   I looked at the remains of my drink, then frowned and tossed it in the trash. No more, I told the little monkey that lately had been spending more and more time on my back. No more pills or potions of any kind. Not until later.
   It was my habit never to shut my computer off; when I sat down the e-mail icon was blinking insistently at me. “You have Five Hundred and Thirty-Six Unread Messages!” read the bubble over the little cartoon postman’s head. Even as I watched, the counter turned over to five hundred and thirty-seven; I snorted, then brought up my inbox.
   Most of the messages were pure crap, each little envelope representing a bill left unpaid or some other obligation I had no intention whatsoever of honoring. It hadn’t always been like this; even as recently as six months back I’d prided myself on keeping my financial life neat and well-ordered. Someday, I knew, my accountant was going to kill me for what I’d become. But that day lay waiting far, far off in the future, of no concern whatsoever to me today. I whistled a happy little tune as I deleted bill after bill, thereby ensuring that the day of reckoning lay just a little bit further off with every keystroke.
   There were a few letters of consequence waiting for me, however. Ferguson, my very first anthro-job, had dropped me a note commemorating his five-year anniversary as a cat. I smiled and typed back a warm reply reminding him to take his supplements; back then we gengineers hadn’t been nearly so good with biochemical details as we were today, and daily supplements were a fact of life for the first-generation species-benders. I’d had a lot of reservations about species-work before meeting Ferguson, but seeing with my own eyes how happy he was with the new look had settled every last doubt and put my conscience totally at ease; I’d been pushing the limits ever since.
   Ben, my contractor, had also written me a note. The wiring job, he explained, was going to take about five weeks. Once he got a check, that was. Plus, he’d brought Anne into the Clinic like I’d suggested. The scan had shown some bony ridges developing along the fracture line in her skull, putting a bit of pressure on the brain. What did I think he should do next?
   I frowned and opened up the attachment. It didn’t take long for me to find what the technician had apparently pointed out to Ben. Sure enough, a small, mishealed part of little Anne’s skull was growing into her brain. In another time or place, it might eventually have proven fatal. But nowadays…
   “Ben,” I typed into the little ‘reply’ box. “This is not nearly as serious as it looks. In a year or three we’ll have to be thinking about finding our Green Fairy a new body to dance in, is all. Yes, I know there are all kinds of difficulties at present when working with growing kids, but the field is progressing by leaps and bounds. Plus, when the time comes I’ll make a special study of the subject beforehand. We’ll make sure everything comes out right as rain. You know that I’m a man of my word; everything will be fine.”
   I paused and checked my bank balance; it was stratospheric, naturally enough, given that I’d quit paying my bills. “Attached find a bank draft for five thou. And while you're at it, if you can find a way to rewire Peg's brain so that she’s sane again, I’ll swap you even for the work Anne needs to have done on hers.” Then I frowned and erased the last sentence; it was gallows humor, was all. “Be seein’ you!” I typed instead. “Bye!”
   The most recent flurry of e-mail to hit my box was centered around my new patient. There was still nothing from the legal department, unfortunately, so I couldn’t really begin any brain-design work. There were other things to keep me busy in the meantime, however. Agnes had already sent me the packet of routine stuff I always asked for from a new patient; complete medical history, certification of mental competence and the like, all of it in hard-copy format. But before doing an anthro, I always wanted more. Daniel had complied, in spades. “Hi, Doctor Aaron!” his e-mail read. “I’m writing from my mom’s place; she’s come around now, and is absolutely DYING to see me as a bunny rabbit! I’m sending copies of every home movie she has of me, just like you asked, plus all of her photos. There’s so much of it that it’ll take several mailings; Mom has tons of stuff lying around here. I was an only child, and she was a real movie-maker.”
   I nodded and smiled as I typed a pleasant reply. One of the secrets to designing a truly superior anthro body, I’d discovered early on, was studying and then matching the patient’s childhood movement patterns and habits. Adults were stiff and inhibited by comparison; if you wanted to truly capture the personality, you used footage of the subject running around being silly and having fun like it was most natural thing in the world. I called up the first frame of a home movie entitled ‘Beach Birthday, Fourteen’, then spilt my screen and opened my working folder, where everything on the new bunny-body was kept. Daniel had specified that he wanted to be a sort of smoke-colored gray, with black eartips and paws. I’d added a white belly and tail on my own initiative; if my patient didn’t like it, fur coloration was easy enough to fix. With a single keystroke I brought the animation to life; the new Daniel blinked and smiled at me from the other half of the screen, exactly as he was programmed to do. Then I started the movie, slaved the bunny-figure to the boy-Daniel, and sat back and watched as my bunny aped every single motion and facial expression of the real Daniel, down to the tiniest detail. He played volleyball for a long, long time, then giggled with friends, blew out candles, and ran flat out across the sand. All in all it looked like one heck of a fourteenth birthday, much happier than my own had been; Mom had made me spend it handing out leaflets. Right at the end I couldn’t help but laugh out loud; during the group photo, some young prophet had made bunny-ears with his fingers over Daniel’s head.
   I hadn’t done too badly, I decided as the home movie ended. Not badly at all, for a first effort. But there was still so much to do! I peeled bunny-Daniel’s skin back, something much easier to do with a mouse than with a scalpel, and adjusted the tone of his eyelid muscles and softened the cartilage underpinnings of his ears just a tiny bit. He blinked much better the next time through, I decided, but the ears were now too floppy…
   It went on for hour after hour, and home movie after home movie. I had to send out for Chinese twice, and the second time had to settle for pizza because every single Chinese place in town had been closed for hours. But, eventually, I got Daniel’s body right, more right, probably, than any other gengineer in the world could have. Or would have, I corrected myself. There were others every bit as capable as me and more, but they tended to rush through their cookie-cutter patients one after the other in search of rev-e-nue. Me, I was into perfection. That was my drug of choice, setting liquor and benzedrine aside for the moment. What did I care for rev-e-nue, anyway? At least I wasn’t that kind of fool…
   “Hallelujah!” I cried, rising up out of my swivel chair for the first time in more hours than I really cared to think about. I was staggering badly, not drunk for once, but simply a little unsteady from sitting in one place for much, much too long. “Hallelujah! I’ve nailed him! Today the body, tomorrow the mind!”

   I was overdue for more sleep after such a long and successful work session; in fact, I didn’t even need any pills. Since I didn’t know what time I went to bed, save that there was sunlight peeking around the corners of my curtains, I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep when Agnes came in and shook my shoulder. The only thing I could be utterly certain of was that it hadn’t been nearly long enough.
   “Doctor!” she was saying as I finally became aware of my surroundings. “Doctor Aaron! Are you all right?”
   “Eh?” I asked intelligently. “Wha?”
   Agnes shook her head. “You were practically in a coma,” she explained. “I’ve been trying to wake you up for ten entire minutes! It’s like you were totally sleep-starved.”
   I probably was sleep-starved, I thought to myself as I threw my legs over the side of the cot and sat up. People didn’t rest properly when they took sleeping pills, and this was the first shut-eye I’d gotten without chemical assistance since I didn’t know when. “Sorry,” I mumbled vaguely, still not very alert. “What’s wrong?”
   “It’s your mother,” Agnes replied, her face suddenly hard. She didn’t like Mom; almost no one did. “She called and insisted that you ring her back immediately.”
   I nodded my understanding. My mother was such a difficult person that I’d long ago instructed my secretary to refer anything to do with her directly to me. This wasn’t out of mere kindness to Agnes, though that was definitely a factor. Mostly, it was because Mom was the most intelligent and able human being I’d ever met, on top of her being so unpleasant. If Mom even suspected that I’d tried to put her off on an underling, there’d be so much hell to pay that no one involved would ever see the end of it. Therefore, it was best to deal with anything to do with her personally and up front. “Right,” I agreed. “I’ll call her in a minute or two. Thanks.”
   “No problem,” Agnes replied, her smile warm and motherly. Then her face hardened again. “Really, Doctor Aaron. I’m worried about you. Your color has been off for days. You’re not eating right. I keep finding empty prescription bottles in your office trash; while I’m not a medical professional like you are, I’m not stupid, either. I recognize the names. You’ve always kept odd hours, I know. You’ve also always had the most eccentric work habits I’ve ever heard of. But lately you’re not on any kind of schedule at all. Your patient load is down to nothing, where before you were busy all of the time. And whenever I run into any of the medical staff they ask where you’ve been; none of them have seen anything of you in weeks. You sneak in and out of here like a thief, even though you practically own the place.” My secretary shook her head. “Doctor, you’re not just my employer. You know that. I consider you a friend as well. And as a friend, I’m telling you that you need to pull out of this. You need to find someone who can help you.” She shook her head again. “Doctor Aaron, you’re a good man. Deep down where it counts, you really and truly are. You don’t have to do this to yourself. Not even over Peg.”
   For just an instant my mouth formed a hard, thin line and I nearly snapped at Agnes; what right did she have to bring up Peg? Then I remembered all the things my secretary did for me, all the ways in which she went above and beyond the call of duty. She was a friend, and as such had every right to be concerned. “I’ll get over it,” I reassured her, even though I didn’t believe a word of it. “Once the divorce is final, I’ll be fine.”
   “You’re rich,” Agnes reassured me. “You’re famous. Near the top of your profession. Life is too long for you to throw everything away over a broken relationship. Especially now, with all the new treatments. Who knows how long you can live?”
   Why would I want to live? I asked myself even as I forced a smile. What is the point of wealth or success, without love? Without any kind of happiness or joy? “I’ll be fine,” I reassured my secretary. “I promise.”
   “Good,” Agnes replied, smiling and looking as if she wanted to pat me on the head like an obedient little boy. “I’ll call down to the commissary for a breakfast tray for you, then. Scrambled eggs and bacon. That used to be your favorite. All right?”
   “Sure!” I answered. So it must be morning, if they were still cooking eggs. “Thank you, Agnes! For everything, as always.”
   She blushed a little. “I’ll be back in half an hour or so.” If my secretary hadn’t already been married to a very fine man named Douglas, Agnes might well have been the answer to all of my problems. As things were, though, we were merely co-workers of many years standing. Which was too bad, really. For me at least.
   But not for Agnes. She was better off without me. I’d made quite certain that my loyal secretary was mentioned rather heavily in my will, and even after all of my recent fecklessness my estate would still be worth quite a tidy sum indeed. Who could know when I’d take one pill too many? Surely it couldn’t be long now. And as a doctor, I ought to know.
   For a long time I stood and stared down into the rum-and-coke that somehow magically appeared in my hand as soon as Agnes was out of sight. Soon, now, I thought to myself. Very soon. Then I drained my cup to the dregs, belched, and picked up the phone to call my mother.

   “How am I feeling?” Mother demanded over the top of her menu; she’d exacted a promise of dinner from me, dinner at her favorite Italian restaurant. At least the food was good. Or would be good, I corrected myself, if we ever got past the ordering part. The waiter had already been by three times, but Mom hadn’t decided yet. Instead her water glass had been inadequately iced, her placemat soiled, and one of the legs on her chair too short, in that order. “How in the hell do you think I’m feeling? I’m sick, Tommy. And old. In a world where no one else is ever going to get old.”
   I sighed and looked down at my placemat. It was best to say as little as possible, I knew from long experience. The more long, awkward silences, the better. Yet, polite conversational habits were hard to break. Besides, in all fairness, my mother was old and sick. Terminally so, in the case of the latter, though she might linger on for years of progressively increasing misery, if she were careful. And, it could be said in justice, terminally ill in terms of age as well. She was far too old for any kind of meaningful gengineering work; we’d fitted her with new eyes and reduced her arthritis pain, and that was pretty much all there was to be done. The real infirmities were much too deeply-seated to touch.
   “So, now that I get to see you for the first time in three months, all you’re going to do is sigh?” Mom shook her head and frowned. “Why do I bother, I sometimes wonder. Why do I bother at all?”
   I looked over Mom’s shoulder; the waiter was approaching again. If I handled things just right, I might be able to distract her. “I’m sorry you’re not well,” I said, trying to make my voice sound as sincere as possible. After all, I reminded myself, I was sorry. “If there were anything in the world that could be done, you know I’d get you to the front of the line.”
   Mom’s mouth opened, then slammed shut again as the waiter appeared at her elbow. “I deeply regret that everything has been so unsatisfactory,” he explained, smiling a fake, oily smile. “My manager has asked me to let you know that everything will be fifty-percent off tonight, because of our mistakes.”
   Mom blinked, then blinked again. Apparently she could find no fault with the offer, though clearly she was making a mighty effort. “All right,” she acknowledged, sounding vaguely disappointed. “I’ll have the veal parmesan, with a large side salad and the spaghetti marinara.”
   I waited for our server to finish scribbling, then ordered a simple spaghetti and meatballs with salad for myself. Mom frowned, then tore into me anew once the outsider was gone. “You’ve been ordering that same dish ever since you were a little boy,” she complained. “Won’t you ever grow up?”
   My eyebrows rose; we’d had this argument a million times when I’d been younger. I’d thought we were long past it. “I like spaghetti,” I explained. “I like lots of plain, ordinary foods. Why should I eat things I don’t like?”
   “That’s always been your problem, Thomas,” she replied. “You’ve never aspired high enough. When I think of all you could have been and done, had you properly applied yourself…”
   I sighed and looked down at my placemat again; there was a tiny red stain on it, about five times the size of the one Mother had complained about on her own setting, but still so tiny as to be insignificant. I’d known Mom longer than I’d known any other human being, and yet I still didn’t understand her at all. Why did she get so worked up about insignificant trivia?
   “Not that you’ve done all that terribly badly,” she admitted grudgingly, as she always eventually had. “I mean, you did make it through college and so forth. Not that you didn’t have your moments. Especially over that stolen car thing.”
   My hands were safely under the table; I clenched them both into fists for a moment, then willed myself to relax them. There was something wrong; Mom hadn’t mentioned the incident that had earned me a few months in reform school since I didn’t know when. “That was done and over with twenty-five years back,” I countered, holding my voice as calm and level as I could. “I was a kid. I was stupid. The kids I was with were even stupider for bringing drugs along. The American legal system erases the criminal records of minors, and is wise for doing so. Why can’t you give me the same break?”
   Mom smiled and shifted triumphantly in her seat; she’d scored, and she knew it. “It’s all water under the bridge, I suppose,” she acknowledged, not meaning a word of it. She reached over and touched my cheek. “You’ve done well, I suppose, considering how badly that one slip hurt you. I’ll have to give you that.”
   I smiled back, the expression every bit as sincere as Mother’s loving caress. “It’s only because you’ve been behind me all the way,” I countered. “After I had my troubles, I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without you.”
   Mom’s face froze; a point for me. The fact of the matter was that I’d gone into full adolescent rebellion at age thirteen. Instead of trying to help me along, Mom practically disowned me; she’d never so much as lifted a finger for me from that point forward. I’d paid my own way through college, through med school, then a third time to become a gengineer. Plus, I’d bought my own cars, my own clothes, even paid for my own lawyer the one time I’d actually been caught doing something illegal. That had taken a very, very long time at minimum wage. If Mother felt guilty about any of that, it was her problem, not mine. My hands became fists a second time, then unclenched as the waiter brought us our salads. “Thank you,” I said with a smile, grateful for the interruption. “That looks delicious.” I hadn’t eaten any greens in weeks; my mouth was literally watering at the prospect.
   Mom and I ate in silence for a time; apparently she was very hungry too. “So,” she said eventually, when we were about halfway done. “How’s Peg?”
   Suddenly my greens didn’t taste so good. “Okay, the last time I saw her. She’s still a Witness, if that’s what you mean.”
   Mom nodded. “God-damned brainless idiot,” she observed. Mother was a notorious atheist of the angry and meddling sort; she’d taken me to anti-religious demonstrations long before I could walk. “I can’t believe that such an intelligent-seeming woman fell for such a line of crap.” She met my eyes. “In this, I am genuinely sorry for you. What Peg has done to you is beyond all rational comprehension. At least Buddy Boy left me over another woman. That, at least, I can understand.”
   So could anyone else who really knew Mother. I’d hated my absent father for many years, once I was old enough to realize that he should have cared about me and spent time helping me grow up. Then, later, when I finally reached true maturity and developed a genuine understanding of what must have happened between my parents, I found it in my heart to forgive him. By then he was long dead from a car wreck, but at least I felt better about our lack-of-relationship. “I know, Mother,” I replied. “I know.”
   Our main courses finally arrived, and I frowned at Mom’s platter. It was piled high with cheese and starchy spaghetti, far higher than usual. Apparently, management had taken her complaints to heart and was trying to please her. Ordinarily this would have been innocent enough, but… “Mom,” I said rather timidly, watching her tear into the cheesy veal. “Uh… Should you be eating all of that? I mean, there’s your condition…”
   She smiled and finished her first bite of meat before replying. “I’ll take an extra balance-pill,” she promised. “Besides, what’s the point anyway? I’m going to die. You’re going to die. We’re all going to die. It’s all a pointless waste of time. Let everyone else lie to themselves about it; I won’t. It doesn’t matter at all when or how I die. Nothing matters.”
   I nodded again, then tore into my own meal. Life probably was totally pointless, or at least it certainly had been pretty pointless for me ever since Peg had locked me out. Besides, I was actively and knowingly drinking myself to death. So who was I to object?
   “I went to a protest last Sunday,” Mom declared proudly, interrupting my thoughts. “The first one I’ve felt well enough to attend in months! I wish you’d have been there. It was so wonderful! We walked in on a church service shouting ‘God is dead’, then handed out pamphlets on all the factual errors and logical contradictions in the Bible. Sure woke the stupid idiots up! They called the police, and then prayed for us. What utter fools!”
   I nodded as if interested. “Really?”
   “Some of us got arrested, but I was using my walker. Cops hate arresting old ladies with walkers, so they let me go.” Her face lit up. “Though for a few minutes there I thought they were going to bust me, too. If they had, I planned to let my pills fall out of my purse. That way, I might have died in jail. Wouldn’t that have been something? Imagine the headlines! ‘Mysticist congregation causes death of pro-rationalism demonstrator’.”
   I nodded. “That would’ve done it.”
   Mom smiled proudly, and reached over again to caress my cheek. “I so miss these little get-togethers,” she crooned. “Let’s do it again next week. Please?”

   I was at Mikhail’s within minutes of dropping Mother off at home; she’d always had that effect on me. After one of her heart-to-hearts, I invariably wanted to either go out and steal a car, shoot myself, or get shit-faced drunk. All three responses, I was wise enough to realize, were variants of the same basic drive.
   Ned was waiting for me at our favorite table when I arrived. “Hi!” I greeted my cousin, grateful for the distraction of his company. Neither of us usually frequented the bar during peak evening hours; what a happy coincidence that both of us should be there! I let myself smile, something I rarely did these days. “How the heck are you?”
   My cousin looked up from his Poison Apple, eyes utterly dead. “Okay,” he answered in a voice equally lifeless. “And you?”
   “I’ve just come from dinner with Mother,” I explained, smile fading away to nothing.
   “My sympathies,” he replied, not bothering to look up again. “If you need to purge, the stall in the men’s room was open a few minutes back.”
   I half-smiled. “It wasn’t that bad,” I allowed. “At least she let me leave a tip for once, instead of complaining about how the waiter didn’t deserve a dime.” There was a long pause as I took in Ned’s defeated posture, the pallor of his skin, and the way his right hand was trembling. “All right,” I said at last, after another long pause. “What’s wrong?”
   “Nothing,” he replied. “Nothing at all.”
   Just like there’s nothing wrong with me, I thought to myself, looking at my own right hand. It was trembling, too. Had been for weeks, off and on. We’re all going to die, Mother’s voice whispered in my ear. All of us, every one. Nothing matters. “I see,” I said eventually.
   Ned sighed, took a long pull of Apple, then met my eyes again. “I’m a fraud,” he said at last. “I have been for years. I don’t know why it’s taken so long for me to admit it to myself. But I just can’t run away from it any longer. I’ve lost my faith.”
   My rum and coke arrived, unasked-for. I raised it in salute to the attentive barmaid, then returned my attention to Ned. “Lost your faith, eh?” I answered. “Well… Forgive me, Ned. In all honesty, I realize that this must be a major emotional tragedy for you. But I’m hardly the man to talk to about such a thing.”
   “Heh!” he grunted, his face taking on a semblance of life for a moment. Then he shook his head and stared down into his drink again. “Maybe you are, and maybe you aren’t. Tell me, how exactly does one live without faith in God, anyway?”
   By telling one’s self a different set of lies, I didn’t reply. Or by becoming my mother. Either way works just fine. “It’s not easy sometimes,” I answered.
   “Heh!” Ned grunted again, smoothing out his cassock. “They teach us at seminary that God is the First Principle behind everything, the Uncaused Cause. The center and arbiter of all ethics and morality. The ultimate meaning of life, even. Heaven is living in the acknowledged presence of God, hell is defined by his absence. He is the root of all love and hope.” Ned sighed and shook his head. “Now, nothing makes any sense. I don’t know what’s right or wrong. Except that it's definitely wrong to vote on God’s will, and that it’s also equally wrong for an old man in Italy to sit there and tell me that it’s not all right for me to love Harold either as a priest or as a gay man.” He slammed his fist on the table. “Not right! Neither of them! And yet if they are both wrong, then the whole house of cards tumbles away to nothing.”
   I shrugged and sipped my drink before replying. “Mom taught me that right and wrong are illusions, and that there is no purpose to anything. There is only what is expedient, and what is not. I try not to think about it too much. It makes my head hurt.”
   “Heh!” Ned replied. “I imagine it would.” Then he leaned forward. “But really, Thomas. Truly.” He shook his head. “You’re getting ready to operate on a man’s soul.” There was a note of wonder evident in his voice. “On his soul, the very essence of who he is. And you don’t think anything more about ethics than it makes your head hurt?”
   Predictably, my head began to throb. “We gengineers adhere to a strict, carefully-thought-out code of ethics,” I explained. “Of course, said code changes every time another country passes a new law. We Americans then immediately scramble to keep up lest we lose too much patent revenue or have to pay foreigners for something valuable that we could have invented ourselves. Then a few years later, the ethics people get around to justifying why the new path was the morally correct one all along. Expediency, just like Mom says.”
   Ned frowned. “Rev-e-nue,” he said slowly.
   “Exactly!” I replied, lifting my glass in salute. “To rev-e-nue!”
   “To rev-e-nue,” he replied. “His plug is being pulled right about now, incidentally. The funeral will be Thursday afternoon. If you want to come.”
   “I have a date already,” I answered. “To see a fairy dance.”
   Ned nodded sadly and looked around the bar. “No one from here is coming. Not a single soul. A man is dead, and nobody gives shit one. Yet these were the closest friends he had.”
   I shrugged. “He was a small man, in all honesty. Small of both mind and spirit. All he ever cared or spoke about was money.”
   Ned’s eyebrows rose. “Isn’t money expedient?”
   “For some people it is,” I allowed. “Me, I can’t stand the stuff any more. All it does is make everyone around me treat like I’m not a total piece of shit, when the reality is that I am.” I shook my head, then spoke again. “Hell, who am I to put money-worship down, now that I think about it? If it made the poor bastard happy, why shouldn’t he have been obsessed with the stuff? There’s never enough happiness to go around in this cold, cruel, miserable world.” I waved my drink in the general direction of the dead man’s seat. “Sorry,” I apologized to his ghost. “I was wrong. Nothing personal.”
   Ned shook his head again. “I… I was so wrong about you,” he said slowly. “When you and Peg were still together, you were the happiest man on earth. I thought you had everything worked out, all the i’s of life dotted and all the t’s crossed.”
   I leaned back my head and laughed. “I did! That’s the funniest part of all!”
   “How so?” Ned asked, his head cocked to one side.
   “I was happy,” I explained. “Happy as a clam. I loved Peg for all she was worth. Still do, really; a man doesn’t fall out of love overnight, divine intervention by Jehovah-God excepted. And that’s the secret of it all! Just being happy! That’s all that matters in the entire universe!” I laughed again, so hard that I had to wipe a few tears from my eyes before continuing. “Loving Peg, and being loved by her, made me happy. Who gives a damn, in the end, about anything else? And now that I’ve lost her, I don’t give a good Goddamn about anything!” Ned was looking at me as if I’d gone mad; he might well have been right, but it didn’t really matter. Nothing mattered, which was the whole ultimate point of things, as Mother understood so very well. “Look. You mentioned soul-surgery.”
   Ned nodded. “I did. The Church hates the idea, by the way.”
   “And why should that matter to you, Mr. Lost-His-Faith?” I countered. His bringing up Peg had brought my cruel streak to the surface. “Look. This kid Daniel. He wants to be kinder, and more loving. That’s all.”
   Ned blinked. “Really? I figured he wanted to become a superman or something.”
   “Really,” I answered. “And, I think I know how to make it happen. Altering brains is nothing new, really. We do it every time we make an anthro. Take, well… Rabbits, for instance. Because this particular kid wants to be a rabbit.”
   Ned nodded. “All right.”
   “A rabbit’s got highly mobile ears,” I continued, pointing towards the air over my head. “And, they act as radiators, too. That’s how a rabbit’s body is cooled, mostly. Very different from human physiology.” I smiled. “The human brain doesn’t have the right hardware to handle this sort of thing. A little coarse ear-wiggling, yes. But beyond that, nothing. So, what do you suppose we gengineers do to create a viable organism?”
   The priest blinked. “You mean…”
   I slapped my palm on the table, startling everyone in the place except Lenin. “Of course! We incorporate rabbit-tissue into the subject’s brain!” I replied. “How in the hell else do you think we can eliminate sweating, which is what a human brain is programmed to do? And with rabbit brain structure comes rabbit sensations and experiences. And, eventually, rabbit thoughts and viewpoints. On a small scale, I mean. Most of the brain remains human. Though less than you might think, after one makes adjustments for nose-wriggling, managing a non-human digestive tract, a tail, new reflexes for hopping… And then, of course, the whole thing has to physically fit in a part-rabbit skull. Which means further large-scale morphing towards a bunny-type brain-plan.”
   “But…” Ned’s mouth dropped open, then closed again. “I’ve never read about this! Not anywhere!”
   “You probably never will,” I answered smoothly, sipping at my drink. It was almost empty; I gestured for another. “It’s not like the information is top secret, mind you. But it squicks people out so badly that we gengineers rarely speak of it.” I half-smiled. “Congress knows, but they don’t speak of it very often either. It’s not expedient to stir up opposition to gengineering at any level, when other nations are continually poised to run ahead.” I shrugged. “Besides, most shrinks think the secondary shaping effects are stronger than the actual rewiring.”
   Ned blinked again. “Secondary effects?”
   I nodded easily, the alcohol warm and glowing inside of me. “When a guy loses an arm in an accident, it will probably change his whole life. Not just by making physical things more difficult for him, but in far more subtle—and far more important!—ways. For example, he might begin to think of himself as a cripple, unable to help himself. One result of this could be that he quits seeking promotions on the job, even if his missing arm has nothing to do with what he does for a living. So his career stagnates. He might begin to doubt that his wife still finds him attractive; this could end the marriage, reducing his self-confidence further still. Which in turn could lead to drinking…” My new rum-and-coke arrived as if on cue; I raised it and smiled. “Pretty soon, we have ourselves a bitter, broke, lonely and very angry one-armed man living under a bridge, all purely due to secondary shaping effects.”
   Ned nodded. “Fascinating!”
   “The same thing happens to anthros,” I continued. “I’ve done a lot of cats. Most opt to become pure carnivores. So they’re permanently on a feline diet. They have feline noses, feline fur, feline muscles, and their brains are in part feline as well; they have to be, in order to control the non-human functions. Plus, most of these guys—and for some reason, it’s almost all guys—identified heavily with cats to begin with. So, over time, as they come to see themselves more and more as cats, they tend to become vain, high-strung, somewhat cold and distant…” I shrugged. “Not all of them, mind you. But an awful lot. My bunny-client noticed this as well; he’s a sharp kid. Gonna make a fine rabbit, I bet.”
   “But…” Ned shook his head as if to clear it. “You’re saying you’ve been altering human souls for a long time now. That this is nothing new after all.”
   “Right,” I agreed. “Doctors have been doing it for centuries, with every amputation. We are our bodies, Ned, in a very real way. There is no such thing as an immutable soul; ask anyone who’s ever worked with a patient brain-damaged in the personality-forming regions. Even a tattoo changes who we are, just a little bit. Though the way I play God as a gengineer is a little more direct. And much more through.”
   “Then what’s the big deal?” my cousin demanded. “Didn’t you say that you’re able to do this now because South Korea passed a new law?”
   “Yep,” I agreed, leaning back and grinning. “Absolutely.”
   “Then… What changed?”
   “Up until now,” I explained quietly, “We could only make changes when our redesign work absolutely required it. Now, I can make brain-changes at will, so long as my patient approves. In other words, I can sculpt his mind as freely as I previously could his body. I can change him more than absolutely necessary, in other words. In regions I was previously not free to touch.” I leaned forward. “And you know what? He wants to be kinder, gentler, and more loving. He would have ended up that way anyhow, most likely, just by becoming a rabbit. Because people expect these traits of bunnies. And in time, he would have come to expect them of himself.
   “But now I can take him further down the rabbit hole than he could ever go before. And I plan to do just exactly that.” I finished my drink and stood to leave, suddenly eager to get back to work. “So long as he pays cash up front, of course. Our Clinic requires that. We don’t do charity work.”

   I wanted to get right back to work, but it didn’t quite work out that way. While waiting outside for my cab I suddenly found myself lying on the sidewalk. “Are you okay, Mister?” a teenager was asking me when I came to. “It looks like you just sorta blacked out.”
   I was fine, I assured him, as I regained my feet just in time to climb into the arriving taxi. It was the liver-burn pills, I decided; I’d just taken two in order to clear my head enough to work on the new Daniel. According to the instructions I was never, ever supposed to take more than one a week; perhaps I’d been hitting them a little heavily. When I got back to my office I was still feeling quite woozy. So instead of doing any real work I drew a little blood from my arm and left it down on the lab’s receiving desk, marked “Patient Timothy Leary, standard preliminary workup required, Doctor Thomas.” The results of a standard preliminary workup would cover everything really important, and be ready in a few hours. Then, I went to bed. Or I almost went to bed. But not quite. Instead, I passed out again while taking my pants off, so that I actually slept on the floor instead of my mattress. This wasn’t so bad, I decided as the world spun in ever-tightening circles around me, dimming all the while. My office floor was much more comfortable than the heavily-mulched earth under the shrubbery in front of my house.
   It was daylight when I woke up again, feeling very weak and nauseous. I could tell it was daylight by the sunlight trickling in around the edges of my blackout curtains. It took me perhaps ten full minutes to climb up off of the floor and into my cot, and once there I had to lie still and rest a little while longer before the black spots in my vision cleared enough for me to even think about standing up. The room stank badly; I’d vomited in my sleep, and had been remarkably lucky not to choke to death on the stuff. “Well,” I croaked through the foulest-tasting mouth I’d ever known, looking down at the congealing mess half-soaked into what had until recently been a very nice carpet. “It doesn’t really matter, I suppose. Nothing does.”
   No matter how much a living human being might want to simply lie in peace and never move again, eventually some internal need forces movement. In my case, it was a sudden cramping in my stomach. Black spots or no, I leapt to my feet and rushed into my little bathroom, making it just in time. This time I vomited mostly clear fluids, but they carried a crimson tinge that didn’t bode well at all. This second draining left me shivering and covered in cold, sticky sweat; I barely made it back to my bed before collapsing yet again. At least this time I didn’t quite pass all the way out, and actually managed to make it all the way to the cot.
   A long time seemed to pass before I began to feel human again, or at least human enough to sit up, remove my soiled garments, and reach across to my little office fridge for a coke. I almost splashed a shot of rum into it, then grimaced at the very idea and put the bottle back on the shelf where it had come from. Drinking myself to death was all well and good, yes. That was indeed the plan. But later, when I felt a little better.
   I was halfway through the coke when my phone blinked at me; I’d set it on ‘silent’ months back. “Yes?” I croaked.
   “Hello, Doctor Thomas!” a familiar voice replied. “It’s Nicky, down in the lab. We’ve got two sets of results in for you; a preliminary for a new patient named Mr. Leary, and the full, final detailed workup for your bunny candidate.” He paused. “We’re all so excited about the rabbit down here, Doctor. We can’t wait to meet him. Do you have a date in mind for the procedure yet?”
   The Clinic lab staff did much more than just blood tests; in fact, simple workups like the one I’d requested for myself were almost an insult to their capabilities. During a procedure, it was they who did the day-to-day monitoring and routine chart-reading that made gengineering possible. While they always worked under supervision, in point of fact they were the workhorses of the operation. And Nicky was one of the best. “Not yet, Nick,” I answered, trying to sound as eager and hopeful as my underling. “Though I bet it won’t be more than a week or two.” I paused and tried to think; the wheels turned just a little before freezing up solid once more. “Tell you what. I still haven’t done the final brainwork yet. The biochemistry isn’t set in stone, either. But the broad-brush work is complete. So, I’ll send you what I’ve got in a few minutes, and you can start the program whenever you like. Okay?”
   “All right!” Nicky answered, the enthusiasm in his voice genuine. He’d confided to me once that he wanted some fur-work done on himself someday, once his parents passed on. Something about a raccoon. “I’ll start loading the data as soon as I get it, then. I’ll stay over late, even; it’s been a long time since anything we’ve had to do down here sounded like so much fun! We can begin the in vitro in the morning.”
   Stay over late? I activated the clock on my phone; my heavens! It was four-thirty in the afternoon! I’d slept at least twenty hours!
   Or perhaps been in a light coma…
   Lab workers, in theory, were not qualified to interpret blood tests. In practice, they did so every single day. “How about Mr. Leary?” I asked, trying not to let any concern show in my voice. “What do his numbers look like?”
   Nick sighed. “Pathetic, is the best word for them. He’s about your age, Doctor, but not in nearly as good a shape as you are. He’s a chronic alcoholic, and there’s so little liver function left that… Well…” He sighed. “I doubt you’ll approve him for gengineering at all. He might well never come out of the Tank alive. The man’s let things go much too long. Plus, he’s got all kinds of funny stuff going on in his bloodstream. I’m not qualified to say exactly what, but it looks to me like a crazy mix of drug interactions. I’m purely guessing, mind you, but I suspect it was the drugs that ruined his liver more than the booze.” There was another pause. “You want me to send hard copies up to your office?”
   “Right,” I agreed, still forcing a note of cheer into my voice. “Leave them on my formal desk; I’ll pick them up later.” I smiled, despite the sick feeling still emanating from my gut. “I admit it; I’m enjoying working on the rabbit, too. This is going to be fun.”
   “Yep,” Nick agreed. “A lot more fun than rebuilding a wreck of a patient like this Leary guy at least, who did it to himself and would probably do it to himself again even if we did manage to get him out of the Tank in one piece.” He sighed. “Sometimes I just don’t understand some people. Here we live in a universe full of beauty and wonder, and all they care to see are the bottoms of pill and whiskey bottles.”
   “Isn’t it awful?” I agreed, meaning every word. “What a terrible waste.”

   My life might have been a terrible waste, but my patient Daniel’s wasn’t. After spending a few minutes going over his and my blood tests, I shrugged and got back to work. I was going to die, because I wanted to die; he was going to live, because he wanted to live. It was as simple as that. I was bound and determined, as his gengineer, to make his new life as wonderful as I could possibly make it. My own existence no longer mattered.
   I was pretty familiar with the anatomy of the brain, and of the importance of the vastly-complex chemical balances therein. My computer was more familiar still; within seconds of my sitting down to work, my monitor displayed a three-dimensional rendering of Daniel’s new gray matter, surrounded by a host of complex pie charts, line-graphs, and numerical matrixes representing both his current brain chemistry and suggestions for improvements. I looked things over and frowned; my program was designed to maintain as fully as possible the original personality of the original patient. Based on what I could see, Daniel’s brain structure and chemistry revealed that he was highly intelligent, very gay, childlike in many aspects of his personality, and probably a bit of an idealist. He was also very greedy, narcissistic, and emotionally cold; the latter surprised me quite a bit, at first. Then I recalled that he’d just married a rich stockbroker who’d been featured on a well-known gay ‘Most Eligible’ list, and things made more sense. There were no pure saints in the world, not as revealed by brain-scan. Almost certainly, Daniel had worked at getting married to someone so desirable. That was human enough, and certainly forgivable given that he very sincerely wanted to change, now that he could.
   I frowned again, then split my overlarge screen and brought up a typical male rabbit’s scan on the other half. Rabbits were not nearly such nice creatures as they were made out to be in tradition and myth, it was obvious for anyone to see. While bunnies were indeed soft and snuggly creatures capable of developing deep friendships with one another, they also sometimes fought cutthroat dominance battles among themselves, nigh unto death. Their love-lives consisted of what among humans would be considered serial aggravated rape, often followed by abandonment. Nor were they very bright. I didn’t have all that much to work with.
   Rabbit-Daniel already possessed some limited lapine mental characteristics, courtesy of those parts I’d had to bring in to make things work at all. In order to give him full tail-control, I’d also had to import the tail-raising startle reflex, and with it a reduction in overall aggression; it was all a single, unbreakable package. This same brain-structure had also biased his ‘fight-or-flight’ bias more towards flight and avoidance of danger, though only by a few percentage points. While I’d pulled in other bits of bunny-brain here and there as well, my software indicated they would have little psychological effect. In the past, under the old rules, this would have been the limits of Daniel’s true, hard-wired rabbity-ness. But now, it was to be only the beginning.
   “Kinder,” I mumbled to myself. “Gentler. More loving.” Wonderful things to aspire to; the human race had sought to make these changes in itself for millennia, through religion, education, and most recently the science of psychology. While these methods had had some isolated successes, overall their record was one of tragic, overwhelming failure. Gengineering, I fully expected, would prove to be a better answer.
   Where do the roots of kindness and gentleness lie? I asked myself. And love? In the physiological sense, that is? While kindness could be learned and unlearned, ultimately it, like all other behavior, was derived from physical brain-structure. In rabbits, we’d learned in early studies, the brain-structures most closely related to the raising and nurturing of young also deeply affected socialization at all levels. Evolutionarily, this probably meant that social-grouping of adults had developed from child-rearing brain structures. On a practical level, it meant that if I tweaked those areas in Daniel’s new brain, then based on the graphs and charts I painstakingly produced into the small hours of the morning, he’d feel impelled to do more to get along with others. Obligated, even.
   Which translated very nicely into kinder, gentler, more loving.
   There was more to do, much more. As I worked the clock around, I did a particularly neat job of translating a bunny’s urge to snuggle into the new brain; this involved my working out a complex translative-technique. I’d never come across anything remotely similar to it before. Patent number forty-eight, I realized slowly, if I bothered to file for it. Snuggling, I reckoned, would serve as an alternate form of secondary behavior-modification; after all, how could you not be kind and gentle to someone you wanted to hug for hours at a time? And Daniel would feel a subconscious urge to hug and rub up next to everyone; not a strong or overt urge, but just enough to make him want them to like him a little more than the typical human would. Besides, I reckoned, with the soft, luxurious fur I had planned for him, Daniel would be continually hugged anyway; he was going to be absolutely irresistible among the furry crowd, and probably outside of it as well. It was a kindness to make absolutely certain he would enjoy the experience.
   The hardest part, in the end, proved to be deciding what not to alter. It was highly tempting, for example, to further reduce Daniel’s capacity for aggression. I’d already cut it a little, as a side effect of all the other work. However, I made no radical changes even though it would have been as easy as playing with his testosterone level. Rabbits, I was shocked to discover, were almost as violence-prone as humans, under all the playful fluff. The world was a cruel place; if Daniel was ever unable to run, I wanted him able to fight. If he wasn’t satisfied with that, then he could go find someone else to play God for him. I’d learned in reform school what happened to the helpless, no matter how kind and loving they might be. My patient had to be able to survive, not just snuggle.
   Suddenly, an endless time later, there was nothing left to do. I was finished. It always snuck up on me that way, the end of a project-stage, and left me feeling cold and empty inside. This was the sensation I hated more than any other; it reminded me of Mom, somehow. I got up out of my chair, joints creaking and protesting from disuse, and paced for a little while, making sure I’d forgotten nothing. Then I sat down once again and forwarded my now-complete design to the legal staff, to my partners for their review, and to Daniel himself along with the urging that he seek a competent second opinion before making the final leap. Almost as an afterthought, more out of habit than anything else, I also wrote my patent attorney about the new translative-technique I’d used; maybe my heirs might make a few dollars off of it.
   When all was finally done, I sat in my upholstered easy chair and drank three rum-and-cokes, to ease the joint aches and fill the emptiness. The liquor never really did all that much for the emptiness, but at least the stuff made me not ache so badly. Then I went to bed, only at the last minute remembering to set my alarm to wake me up so that I’d not sleep forever and a day. Tomorrow—no, today!—was Thursday, and I was scheduled to see young Anne dance.
   I smiled at the thought, just before sleep took me, and suddenly didn’t feel so empty. Anne, it seemed, was a much better cure for emptiness than rum-and-coke had ever been.

   Anne’s elementary school was located onl