Nanosyth Ventures Incorporated
By Musuko

Chapter One

Garbage day. I hate garbage day. Hardly a controversial opinion, I admit. Who doesn't hate having to drag the garbage canisters out to the street? They stink and they leak because the Municipals always drop them hard on their ends when unloading them, warping the plastic and popping the shitty seals around the inlets. After thousands of years of human civilization and the widespread mechanization of our entire way of life you'd think we'd figure out a better way to get our garbage from our homes and into...well, wherever it is that the Municipals take it. They probably don't put it a big hole in the ground any more, right?
	I chewed on bacon-like substitute as I dragged the canisters down the driveway. Two of them. One for me, one for Robert. Not that we keep them so designated, of course. Our garbage gets all mixed up together. Some of mine is in his canister, and some of his is in mine. We share everything: our home, our food, our bed, and our garbage. But the Municipals register two residents, so two canisters is what we get, and two stupidly heavy and awkward canisters is what I have to drag outside at six in the morning on a Tuesday.
	I could take them one at a time, I suppose. But this way I save a few seconds, and I don't have the awful tedium of traversing my driveway four whole times. Sure, I end up just as tired afterwards, probably more so. And doing it this way makes everything more clumsy and awkward. But, damn it, I'm a man, and men don't make two trips.
	The sun was up, which was nice. It didn't do much to kill the cold, though. My gown flopped open as I reached the designated drop-off point. I had boxers on underneath, so the risk of giving Lady Whatshername across the street a heart attack this morning wasn't especially high. Well, not unless I strode across the street and knocked on her door to tell her all about what Robert and I got up to last night. That made me smile as I dumped the canisters and hurriedly wrapped myself back up in my gown. I probably shouldn't have smiled at the fact that there were still 'phobes in the world, but I smiled anyway. She'd be dead soon enough.
	I mentally smacked myself. Tut! That wasn't a nice thing to think, Alan. Bad! I imagined myself wagging a finger at a mirror, which made me grin even more.
	I took my time returning to the house. The front faced just slightly south of due west, so on my way back I could enjoy the artistic beauty of the sun rising, framed between the northern corner of our house and the wall of the house next door. It was a lovely view, all shaded red and orange, spoiled only slightly by the lumpy silhouette of City Civic One. I held out my arm and raised a thumb. If I closed one eye, I could blot out that building altogether and just enjoy the sunrise. I imagined pressing down with that thumb and watching the building crumble underneath my giant digit.
	“Crunch,” I whispered. “Oh no, help! Run! Giant thumb attack!”
	I wondered what it would feel like to crush a building as a giant. How strong would the structure be in relation to me? Would it be like crumpling something made of paper? Or like knocking down a sandcastle? Or would it feel like it was stronger, resisting the push of my thumb until it finally buckled? I wondered if all the broken structural beams would skewer my thumb. Would it hurt? Might be like sticking your thumb onto a bunch of needles. Or it might be like pressing down on the bristles of a toothbrush, and they wouldn't pierce the skin or hurt.
	I sighed and lowered my thumb. There it was again, City Civic One. And in two hours and twenty-seven minutes, I would be arriving there to start a day of work. Blergh!
	The house was hot and muggy, which was fine by me. I had turned the home's air quality system off last night because, quite frankly, the thing was an absolute lunatic. One minute it would be roaring out air as hot as a blast furnace, and the next it would try to recreate the Arctic and create an ice rink in our kitchen. Either it was broken, or it just liked messing with us. Either way, I had decided to deal with it another time and had booped the little button marked “off.” Very satisfying button that one. It made me feel like I had control. You can't be afraid if you've got control.
	Not that I'd be afraid of my home automation system. That would be silly.
	Robert was awake when I got back to the bedroom, but only just. He sat up and stretched, yawning sleepily, making a cute little squeaky noise. Then he rubbed at his eye and felt blindly on the bedside table for the coffee machine.
	“Blergh,” he said.
	“Funny. That's just what I was thinking?”
	“Hmm?”
	I flopped onto the bed next to him and stared at the ceiling. “Don't want to go to work today.”
	“Then don't,” he said. He found the button for the coffee machine and switched it on. The grinder made reassuring grinding noises and filled the air with the scent of coffee. Already I can see Robert was a little more awake. I'd already been woken fully by the cold air outside. But now I was back inside the warmth of our bedroom, I was feeling the comfortable hands of sleep start to drag me back under again.
	“Gotta go to work,” I murmured.
	“Why?”
	“Buy stuff.”
	“What stuff?”
	“Stuff for things.”
	He sipped his coffee. I figured I wasn't going to get any more replies, but then he nudged me with a toe.
	“Could take the day off.”
	“I suppose I could. But then what?”
	“Help me with the studio?”
	“I'd be more than useless in there.”
	“I dunno. You could pose for me.”
	I patted my tummy. “Too fat for that.”
	“You're not fat.”
	“Chubby then.”
	“You're not chubby either.”
	“Cuddly?”
	He finished his coffee with a noisy slurp and set the cup back under the grinder, pressing the button for the machine to make more. “Yup. You're my cuddlemuffin.”
	I jiggled myself and pouted at the ceiling. “Would rather be thin.”
	“You don't want to be my cuddlemuffin?”
	“You know what I mean.”
	“Go for a run then.”
	“I suppose.”
	“Go on then.” He prodded me with his toe and reached over at the same time to fetch his second cup of coffee. “Right now.”
	“Right this second?”
	“Right this second. You've got time before work. Go go go! Move!”
	I groaned as I sat back upright. “How are you so energetic in the morning?”
	He slurped his coffee and shrugged. His eyes smiled warmly. He waved his hand, shooing me towards the door.
	“Alright,” I grumbled. “I'll go for a run. Who knows, maybe I'll have a heart attack and fall over dead.”
	He frowned.
	“I'm kidding.”
	He pointed at the door, glaring in the playful way that I knew could so easily become serious if I didn't catch the hint. He gulped down his coffee, and I only had a few seconds to go before he could start talking again and threaten me with something. I made good my escape, blowing a kiss back at him.
	A run, huh? I rummaged through my closet. I had some athletic stuff in there, and I knew it still fit me: that's what slacks are for, after all. I had some ratty old running shoes from my fitter days. The sun was shining, the air was crisp and cold, perfect for building up a sweat without feeling like I was running through a swamp. I had some time before I needed to get ready for work, thanks to the garbage. I could hear the Municipals arriving at the top of the street. If I timed it right, maybe I could bring in the canisters right after they emptied them. All things being equal, today was a pretty good day to start exercising again.
	The slacks were as comfy as all slacks are, and the t-shirt I chose was suitably grungy: an old white one that I used when doing the yard work: what little yard work that the automation couldn't do at any rate. The running shoes were a little tighter than I remembered. Maybe my feet had grown larger. Do feet get larger when you get older? Surely not. Otherwise old people would be stomping around like they were wearing diving flippers. I loosened the laces a little and tugged them on.
	I clapped my hands and jogged on the spot, because that's what I'd seen joggers doing on television. I wondered why they did that, but shrugged it off. Gets them worked up and ready to run I guessed. It seemed to have worked. I was ready. I set off out the front door, taking my first steps into exercise, and set off down the driveway into the growing light and heat of the sun.
	The Municipals were three houses away. There wasn't much point waiting for them. I turned in the road and ran past them. I waved cheerfully.
	“Good morning!” I called.
	They didn't answer, of course. Their plastic carapaces stared blankly at me only for a few moments, before returning to their duties, seemingly having determined I was neither a hindrance nor an obstacle. One day I figured I'd find out what would happen if I stood between their robotic grapplers and the canisters of garbage they reached for, but that day hadn't come yet: I didn't much fancy paying the fine for deliberately interfering with City Municipals that would promptly arrive in my inbox.
	“See you again next week!” I called as I jogged on past. I chuckled to myself. What if one day they replied? What if they were thinking horrible things about me inside their hard drives? Uprising of the grumpy garbage robots! Run!
	I increased my speed, just a little, settling into a long loping stride. I felt the wind blow cool and pleasant on my face. Not many people were out so early in the morning, despite it being a weekday. I saw a few dog walkers and some people stepping out of their front doors and climbing into waiting autocabs, probably on the way to work like I would be in a few hours. I saw a few more Municipals working other streets a little further down the slope of the hill. I stopped at a corner, assessing my heartrate and breathing. I looked back up my street.
	I had gone a dispiritingly short distance.
	“Fuck,” I said.
	I had a choice. I could turn right and head up the hill, suffering the climb but then later enjoying the easy downhill return. Or I could turn left towards the city, taking the easy route, but then having to run back uphill afterwards.
	Or, I told myself, I could run downhill, then summon an autocab to bring me back uphill. Hmm...
	I deliberated for a few moments. And while I thought about it, I felt my heart racing and my breath coming in pants. I was definitely not in shape. Unless you count “round” as a shape. Alright, I was being unfair to myself. I wasn't round, exactly. Just...a little plump. Carrying some extra baggage. Equipped with love handles. Prepared to survive a hard winter. Built to take a punch, so long as it came to the gut.
	Fat, in other words. Not overly so. Not enough to make Robert shudder and reject me. Not that he ever would, of course. But definitely a few kilos weightier than I really wanted to be. And, right at this moment, I knew that I was going to suffer if I tried to run uphill. And if I suffered on my first run, what chance was there that I was going to keep doing it again tomorrow? No, I had to take it gently, one step at a time, and go easy on myself the first time out. And that meant...
	“Downhill,” I said, nodding to myself and setting off down the slope. Yes, that was the best choice. This became apparent as I descended and my heart rate escalated. I had gone maybe a kilometer, perhaps two, before I shuddered to a halt, gasping and sweating and feeling like an overcooked ham. I cursed myself for being so out of shape and fumbled in my pocket for my phone.
	“Autocab, please,” I wheezed. Thankfully, the phone picked up my meaning on the first try, which was a nice change from the norm. A countdown clock appeared in the corner of the screen. I waited for the autocab to pull up, trying to get my heart and lungs to stop panicking quite so much.
	I fell into the autocab as soon as the door slid open.
	“Home,” I said, and let it close up and whisk me away. I sank back into the spongy seat and let my eyes wander over the ad screen, letting my unfocused eyes take in the blurry colours. I blinked and my eyes cleared.
	I blinked again at what I saw.
	“No way,” I said. “Hey, uh, autocab. Stop for a second.” The autocab obligingly steered out of its lane and parked up at the roadside. I leaned forward and watched the ad play out, my eyes getting wider and wider, until it felt like the corners of my eyelids were going to rip.
	“Is this for real?” I whispered. Neither my phone nor the autocab decided this was a command for them and they remained quiet. I drummed my fingers on the armrests and watched as the screen shifted to the next ad, but not before the ad that caught my attention had revealed its price tag: high, but not too high. Like, cost of a high-end television high. Robert might get mad at me when he finds out how much I spent, but he'd surely like what I spent it on.
	“Autocab, please take me to Nanosynth...uh...” I had forgotten the full address, but the autocab helpfully displayed a list of possible locations. “Yes, there please,” I said, tapping the screen. The autocab pulled away from the side of the road and I lay back in my seat, smiling to myself, thinking about the new me that was soon to come.

There were more wires and cables than I thought there would be. Tubes too. And machines with blinking lights, both in sequence and out of sequence. And of course there were computer screens and a few holographic displays that seemed like they surely must be more for show than for actually being productive. The display nearest to me was currently showing a three-dimensional representation of my body, a result of the scan they had performed a few minutes ago.
	The pleasant lady who had talked me through the process earlier now looked more like a nurse than a salesperson. She stood beside an automaton that seemed a cross between a spider and a surgical instrument. It was difficult to imagine it was the same class of creation as the Municipals: it wasn't grimy or scratched or dented. It gleamed reassuringly clean and sophisticated and expensive. This too, I assumed, was more for show than productivity.
	“Is this going to hurt?” I asked for the hundredth time. As always, the answer was the same.
	“You won't feel a thing,” she said, as sweetly as she had the first time. “Would you like to see the injectors?”
	I cringed at the word, but I nodded. She held out a hand and the automaton unfolded an arm and placed a small white circle into her palm. “This is the injector pad. Take a closer look. It's perfectly safe, even if you touch it.”
	I leaned closer. “It looks like it's...hairy?”
	She beamed and nodded. “Thousands of tiny fibres woven together into strands that are only just visible to the naked eye. Each one is an independent nano-filament, directed and guided by patented nano-muscles. The fibres are hollow. It is through these that the nanites will be injected into your body. The fibres are so thin that you won't feel them enter your skin. They will slide between the cells of your body and are programmed to avoid your nerve endings.”
	“You must get tired of saying “nano” every other sentence.”
	She chuckled politely. “Would you like to begin the procedure?”
	I looked around the room. It was crunch time. I could back out now and not lose face, nor any money. Or I could continue, strip off my shirt, sit in the comfy chair and let the pleasant lady stick those pads to various bits of me and wire them up to the machines. Then the nanowatsits would flow into my body and start doing their work, rearranging atoms, consuming my body fat for fuel, building new muscles out of raw materials scavenged from my food, working to the template that hovered in the holographic display, an image which now blinked back and forth between my current body shape and the altered one selected by myself and rendered by sophisticated computer simulation. I had to admit, it was a good shape. I'd certainly want to do me if I looked like that!
	Was it cheating? Well, sure it was. I would be skipping all the hard work and sacrifice of exercising and dieting. But I'd be paying money for this, money that I couldn't then spend on anything else, like a big television, or a holiday, or whatever other luxury I might think of. So, in a way, that was a kind of sacrifice, just of a different nature, but still just as painful. And the end result would be a fit and sexy body that Robert would get to enjoy just as much as I would. So, really, it was a gift to us as a couple, and not just some extravagant cheating for my own benefit. At least, that's what I told myself. And it worked. I was convinced. I hopped into the chair and peeled off my t-shirt.
	“Alright,” I said. “let's get some nanos inside me!”

I bounded in the door, feeling like a greek god. It was all placebo, of course, I knew that. But all the same, I still felt fantastic. I still looked the same, of course. They had gone to great lengths to explain to me that I shouldn't expect instant results. I figured they had probably been burned one too many times by angry customers expecting their magic little robots to be, well, magical. So I knew not to expect trim abs and taut muscles within seconds. The nanites needed time to work. Right now they were spreading through my body and setting up shop before they got down to the hard work of sculpting me.
	The thing that made me feel good was the expectation of what was to come. I could see myself in the future, two or three weeks from this moment, shaped into the body that I had seen on the holographic display. It excited me. I couldn't wait to eat lunch and sit with a full tummy, imagining that I could feel the nanites chewing away at the mushed up food and turning it into muscle, pasting it carefully in all the right places, one manufactured cell after another.
	“How was your run?” said Robert. He was leaning against the kitchen counter, munching some toast, reading the newspaper. Somewhere in some high-up city office there must have been an executive staring at a balance sheet in shock, wondering why there was still one person in the world who ordered physical newspaper deliveries. But that was Robert, and it fitted nicely with how he lived. It especially went well with the raw messy physicality of what went on in his studio: splashes of paint and clay everywhere.
	I suddenly felt a conflict of two emotions, so disjointed that I wobbled in my step. The first was one of contentment, knowing that Robert would appreciate the artistry of what the nanites were soon to do. They were going to sculpt my body like he might a statuette of clay. But the one that followed made me feel rotten to my core: Robert was inherently...well, not suspicious of technology, and not afraid of it either. And he certainly didn't ever reject it in his life. But he didn't actively embrace it either. When he could live without it, he did. Hence the newspaper: he didn't read it on a screen or have it fed to him via an earpiece because the printed newspaper did the job just fine.
	So what was he going to think of the nanites circling around inside me?
	“It went alright,” I said. “I went into the city. Got some...uh...second breakfast. Brunch?”
	“Yeah, brunch.”
	I would have to find a way to tell him, and soon. Why not right now? I chewed on my lip for a moment, but he didn't notice. Why couldn't I tell him right now?
	“I decided to take the day off work after all.”
	“Great! What changed your mind?”
	I shrugged. Then an idea struck me. “Hey, so, do you still want me to model for you in the studio?”
	He looked up. “You want to do it?”
	I nodded.
	“Well, sure, why not?” He shoved the paper away and beckoned me to follow him to the studio. I was halfway out of my clothes before I got through the door.
	Seeing Robert in his studio was like seeing a different man. He became very focused in this room. It was his domain. He was in control here, to a degree that could never be possible anywhere else. Everything in here was his. Well, it was technically all ours, physically at least. But I would never claim to have any true ownership over the artwork he had created.
	“Right there,” he said, pointing to an open space. I wriggled out of my slacks and stood tall and proud, naked, and thankful that I had switched off the home's automation and kept the air warm. He busied himself with clay, but spared a quick glance and appreciative grin.
	“Got enough clay to model it all?” I said, jerking a thumb down towards my crotch. He groaned and threw a rag at me.
	“Models don't talk,” he said. “They just stand still and look pretty. Got it?”
	“Got it. I can do that. How do you want me to stand?”
	He paused in his preparations and regarded me, hand on chin. “Hmm. You know how David stands?”
	“David?”
	“Michaelangelo's David. You know, big statue, small dick, stands kinda like this.” He posed, and I got it. I snapped my fingers.
	“Ah, right, that David. So you want me to pose like a small-dicked statue?”
	“It's alright if you can't match it perfectly,” he said, grinning, setting himself down and getting a bucket of slip ready. His glance towards my crotch told me what he meant, and I grinned right back.
	“What's the etiquette of getting turned on when you're posing for a sculpture?”
	“Don't,” he said. “I don't much fancy myself as being the artist best known for sculpting erections.”
	“I'll close my eyes then, so your pretty smile doesn't set me off.” I struck the pose and he threw another rag at me. It crumpled against my hip and slid off, falling at my feet.
	“Shush,” he said. “And don't move. That's perfect.”
	I heard the sloshy, squishy noise of his hands manipulating clay, and knew that he had started to work. I concentrated on keeping still. This was a great idea: each week I could model for him, and he could sculpt my body and see how it changed, and then he would see what the nanites were doing for me, for us, and he'd understand it in a context that wouldn't scare him away.
	At least...I hoped so.
Chapter Two

A week passed. The changes weren't drastic, but they were there. Not on the bathroom scales, though. I had been warned not to expect the kilos to fall off. The nanites weren't zapping the fat out of existence, after all: they were taking it and using it as fuel, but that was only a tiny fraction of the mass. Most of it was going into being the raw materials for my new muscles. In time, once my body had reached the selected template, they would start shedding unneeded mass. That meant it would end up in my toilet.
	I could see the changes in the mirror. A subtle smoothing of the curves at my waist, and some bulking up in my arms and shoulders, and perhaps a little in my chest. No doubt the same was happening under the fat layer on my belly. I turned this way and that and inspected myself, trying to decide if the changes I could see were real or just wishful thinking in my imagination. It was hard to say. That was where Robert's sculptures would come in useful. They would provide a recording of my progress. Sure, I could have just taken photographs or holographic scans, but this way I get to see if the changes are noticeable to him. And its his view that matters.
	I cracked open the first weekly supplement pack provided by the company: it was a patch, a lot like the ones they had used on me at the start, with all the same strange little hairs on its surface. It was a lot smaller, though, and there was only one of them. It came with a pebble-shaped plastic device with a couple of tiny buttons on it. Inside it was a microscopic canister containing millions more nanites. Quite sensibly, the nanites did not replicate themselves. The company went to great lengths to reassure me of this. Over time, some of them would degrade or just plain break, and they would need replacement. Each week I would slap on a patch for ten minutes and their numbers would be topped up. I unfolded the little instruction booklet and followed it. A minute later I was all done, with the patch securely fixed onto my upper arm. I pulled on my shirt and buttoned it before heading back to the living room.
	Robert had the television on and was crumpled up in a big comfortable pile in the couch cushions, clutching a steaming mug of hot chocolate between both hands. His eyes were fixed on the screen. I was tempted to walk in front of him and maybe flex and pose a bit to see if he might notice my body's subtle changes, but I thought better of it. I eased myself down next to him and let my head rest on his shoulder.
	“What're you watching?”
	“Thing about bees.”
	“Thing?”
	“Documentary thing.” He took a long sip of hot chocolate and smacked his lips. “About them disappearing.”
	“Ah,” I said. “Cheerful viewing then.”
	He shrugged. “It's either that or a talent show.”
	I watched the screen for a few moments. There were indeed bees buzzing around. A voice-over started talking about pesticides and how much of a grave threat the issue was. I kinda zoned out from it. I wondered if there was a term for it. Disaster fatigue? Boy who cried wolf syndrome? I couldn't really bring myself to care too much about bees. I had some other thoughts rattling around inside my head. Robert smelled faintly of paint and clay and of the soap he'd used in his futile attempts to scrub away those smells. I nuzzled at his neck and pushed aside a cushion to get my hand at his tummy, rubbing my fingertips through his t-shirt.
	He put his mug down and stopped staring at the television.
	It was one of those lovely moments were everything just came together like a scripted scene in a movie. We didn't need to exchange any words. My stroking fingers gave one message, and his abandoned mug gave another. We turned towards each other, arms reaching, fingers probing, wrapping up in a clumsy yet satisfying embrace that tilted back towards him and downwards as we slid down the couch's back rest into the comfy ocean of cushions below. I met his lips for a kiss. The first of many.
	Then came the undressing. There are so many ways this could have gone: fast and frantic, or slow and sensuous, or some variant fusion of the two. I could have teased at the waistband of his jeans or lifted myself upright above him to pose while he stripped me off. I can't say that either of us really decided what to go for this time. I kissed and nibbled his neck and pressed myself down against his body while my hands did what they damn well pleased: I wasn't really paying much attention to them. I think I tugged his t-shirt up until it reached his chin, and I think I yanked at his belt until the buckle finally relinquished its hold. I know that he deftly unbuttoned my shirt without needing to look to see what he was doing. He panted a soft moan against my earlobe as my fingers prised his body free from the confines of his underwear and started stroking at what they found beneath. His hands faltered from my shirt and I took over. I had the presence of mind to grip the nanite pad beneath the fabric and rip it off along with the shirt. I felt if vibrate and go still, as if registering a complaint. Never mind. I could go a few thousand nanites short. I wasn't as if there was a limited supply of them. The box I'd hidden under the bed had fifteen patches in it.
	I felt a ripple of heat wash through my body, up from my toes and all the way to the top of my head. I figured that the house's automation was back on and the heating had kicked in. I nibbled at Robert's shoulder and released my grip to hook my hands under his thighs, drawing them up and bringing his knees against his chest.
	“Right here?” he breathed.
	“Right here!”
	He made an approving noise and I pressed him down into the cushions. My skin burned hotter now, and I felt sweat prickling.
	“You're hot,” he gasped. His hands pressed against my bared chest.
	“It's warm in here.”
	“No it isn't.” He frowned. I stopped what I was doing, which was a shame because I was poised and ready and he was bent over and on show.
	“What's wrong?” I asked.
	He stared past me. I turned my head to look, then looked back.
	“What is it?” I asked, getting more than a little freaked out now.
	“Hold still.”
	He reached up. I felt his fingers in my hair. He felt around for a moment, and then tugged at a clump of hair.
	“Ow!”
	“You've, uh...got a feather stuck in your hair.”
	“A feather?”
	“Yeah, a feather! Have a feel.”
	I reached up and felt his fingers, then traced them along to their tips. I immediately felt something that wasn't hair; fluffy and soft, radiating outwards from a slim and stiff stalk. It certainly felt like a feather. I gave it a tug and felt the same jab of pain that had come when Robert pulled at it. All thoughts of sex wilted away as I started to question how on earth a feather had got lodged in my hair and stuck as if it had been glued there. Had someone glued a feather on me? Or had...eww! Had a pigeon crapped on my head without me realising and got one of its feathers stuck in with the mess? I scrambled up off of Robert, stumbling with my pants around my ankles. I kicked one leg off and hopped towards the bathroom, ignoring Robert's concerned questions and my uncomfortably bouncing naked hardon. My skin felt like it was being boiled. I wiped at my forehead.
	“Turn the heating off,” I panted as I pushed into the bathroom.
	“It's not on. Alan? What's going on?”
	I clicked the light on and stared into the mirror. I looked awful. My skin was ashen and clammy with sweat. My hair drooped lank and wet over my forehead. And there, in the middle of the wet hair, was a single black feather. It was about as long as my pinky finger, sticking up and slightly backwards, towards the back of my head. I parted my hair around it, leaning closer to the mirror and trying to see what was holding the base of it. I saw two things that made me feel faint.
	The first thing was the base of the feather emerging seamlessly from my scalp as if it were a giant hair emerging from one of my skin's hair follicles.
	And the second thing was the second feather alongside it, smaller than the first, growing before my eyes.

The lady this time was different: shorter, plumper, more serious-looking, and wearing a red suit that hurt my eyes with its brightness. Everything hurt my eyes, in fact: the world was bright and overexposed. I hugged my arms around my chest and shivered. Heat had changed to cold on the autocab ride over, as if a switch had been flicked. Robert had ridden with me, listening to my explanations through chattering teeth, alternating between pouring out sympathy and shouting at me for my idiocy.
	“You put nanites inside you just so you didn't have to go for a run?!”
	I struggled to think of anything to say in return. I felt weak and sick, and when I strayed a hand up to my head I felt more feathers poking out through my scalp. When the autocab arrived, Robert had to haul me out of it. He held me upright as we staggered into the lobby. Right away, a trio of white-coated nurses swept us away into a side room. If I were a little more lucid, I would have wondered why it seemed they were so well-practised at this.
	They injected me with something. The cold and the brightness and the sickly feeling didn't go away, but they lessened to more tolerable levels. They poked and prodded while Robert stood fretting at one side. Then they guided me into a small room that seemed halfway between an executive's board room and a doctor's office. They eased me down into a plastic chair. Robert paced behind me. The lady looked at me from across her desk, eyebrows raised, expectant. Slowly I recollected that she had asked me a question.
	“Huh?” I said.
	“Have you taken any medication in the last few days that you do not normally take?” she said, without any hint of impatience.
	I blinked and shook my head. “No...I don't think so. Other than whatever you injected me with, I mean.”
	“Have you consumed alcohol in excess of the limits described in the guidance booklet provided to you?”
	“He had wine last night,” said Robert. “That's it.”
	The lady raised a hand and nodded, but it was a dismissal all the same. She looked at me firmly. I shook my head.
	“Nothing except that,” I said.
	“Have you taken any illegal substances?”
	“No, of course not!”
	“Have you modified the nanite injection patch in any way?”
	“I wouldn't even know how.”
	“Have you interrupted a nanite injection patch top-up cycle?”
	I stared at her. A truly awful feeling of empty, gut-wrenching awfulness clawed its way up from some horrible pit in the ground and found a new home inside my stomach. It rolled about and sank its dirty claws and teeth into me. I shuddered, feeling disembowelled, like I had just been informed that some serious medical test results had come back and the doctor wasn't smiling and he was about to tell me some bad news and I was just sat waiting and staring, the seconds feeling like days, clammed up in dread wondering what exactly the bad news would be, but all the same knowing that it was coming in one form or another.
	“Uh,” I said, mouth dry. “I removed a patch before it made the beep sound.”
	“How far into its cycle did you remove it?”
	“I don't know. Maybe five minutes?”
	“Did the patch vibrate when you removed it?”
	I bit my lip and nodded. The unpleasant feeling in my stomach grew worse. I stared at her, just hoping she would say something, anything at all. She could tell me I had an hour left to live if it meant that this agonising wait would end.
	“That's not good,” she said.
	“Not good?” cried Robert. “What does that mean, not good? What kind of not good? Is he going to be alright?”
	I felt his hand on my shoulder, squeezing hard. His nails dug in. It hurt a little. I rested my hand on top of his and squeezed back in a way that I hoped was reassuring.
	“Your life is not in any danger,” she said. “Nor is your health. But you will experience some side-effects of the interrupted top-up cycle, and they may be distressing.”
	And at this point, she gestured towards the top of my head. Instinctively I reached up and felt the feathers. There were a half dozen of them now.
	“Why am I growing feathers?”
	“It is one of the potential side-effects listed in your guidance booklet, to be expected in rare occasions in the event of a disruption to the nanite top-up cycle. The pattern encoded into them may have become corrupted. Each nanite can only hold a small part of the pattern, you see, and the overall plan is shared among the whole group. During top-up, the new nanites need to be updated with the pattern from the existing network and provided with their own specific instructions extrapolated from that pattern. If this process is interrupted, is it was in your case, then on rare occasions a few new nanites may be left without proper pattern instructions. Normally, they will remain dormant and will shut down after a few hours. But...”
	She hesitated, glancing between me and Robert.
	“I must stress, before I continue, that you are under a confidentially agreement.” This she said to me. Then she looked to Robert. “If you are to remain in the room, you will need to accept that same agreement. A verbal confirmation will do. Would you like to see the agreement?”
	“Just tell us what's wrong with him!” Robert shouted. I winced as he sunk his nails in. “Of course I accept!”
	The lady didn't seem affected by the outburst. “As I said, normally these nanites will remain dormant. Without instructions, they cannot function, and without the patch to co-ordinate the communication links, they are unable to receive their part of the pattern from the network. This does not normally matter. However...”
	And here, now, she showed an emotion: a hint of unease.
	“Nanites are expensive,” she said, “as I am sure you are aware. We lose a substantial portion of them with each customer. There is nothing that can be done about that, of course. We do, however, recover any remaining nanites at the end of treatment. This is normally done with a simple patented procedure that takes about ten minutes, here in our building. We then sterilise and refurbish the nanites, wipe their pattern data, and then they are ready to be used for another customer.
	“Sometimes...and I remind you, this is covered by the confidentiality agreement...the data wipe is not fully successful and a few nanites are left with instructions from a previous patient. Normally, this would not matter, as their instructions will be overwritten by the new pattern transmitted to them by the patch. But if the patch is removed and this process is interrupted...”
	“The nanites keep the old pattern,” I said.
	“And because the old pattern is of an earlier date-stamp, it is considered a higher priority by the network, and all the other nanites will update themselves to that pattern. This is what's happening inside your body right now. It appears that at least one of the nanites in your body carried a pattern for an avian of some kind. We won't know for certain which kind until we have run some analysis. This avian pattern is now being copied across the network of nanites inside you.”
	I groaned and rested my face in my palms.
	“The injection we gave you has placed the nanites into a dormant state, which will arrest the changes they are making. We should be able to correct the issue.”
	“Should?” said Robert. “Should?! What do you mean, should?”
	“The guidance booklet was very clear that Nanosynth Ventures would take no responsibility for side-effects caused by improper use of our product. We will do all we can to correct your mistake, but...”
	Robert stepped forward. I feared he was going to punch her. I reached out to stop him, but stopped myself when I saw that he wasn't lunging for her: instead he dropped to his knees in front of her desk. I saw tears in his eyes.
	“Please fix him,” he whimpered.
	She didn't react much. Perhaps a twitch of an eyebrow. She opened a drawer and lifted out a sheath of papers. She laid them out on the desk and rotated each one in turn to face me. “If you could just fill out these forms, then we will begin on the correction procedure.”
	I groaned. If there was anything worse than having nanites go haywire inside your body, making feathers sprout out of your head, it was this. Paperwork, ugh! I picked up a pen in one hand and reached over to squeeze Robert's shoulder with the other, then leaned forward and began to fill in the million and one little printed boxes, while the lady looked on impassively.

They sent us home a few hours later. My arm sported a nanite patch that was somewhat different to the ones they had given me to self-administer. It was larger, about twice the area, and it was bright red instead of white. The pebble-like device was chunkier and had no buttons. The most important difference wasn't visual: they had informed me in very strong language not to attempt to remove this patch. If I attempted to do so, it would come away with my skin and a fair chunk of the muscle underneath it. Not to mention blood. I was to leave it where it was and it would detach itself after twenty-four hours.
	In the meantime, it would sit on my arm and engage in lengthy discussions with the nanites in my body, reasserting control and mapping the original slimming pattern into their tiny robot brains. Diplomatic negotiations for nanites.
	Robert didn't say much on the ride home. He stared out of the window at the streetlights.
	“I'm sorry,” I said, after  while.
	He didn't answer. Not with words anyway. He gave a soft grunt that I suppose could have been acknowledgement, of my existence if not of my apology.
	“I know what I did was stupid,” I continued. “I was stupid and lazy and I should have just done the exercise. But this seemed so easy and clever and quick, and I thought...well.” I sighed. “I didn't mean for this to happen.”
	“Of course you didn't mean for this to happen,” he snapped. He turned to look at me. Instantly his eyes welled up. “You could have died!”
	I don't cry very often, but there's one sure fire way to set me off: and that's to see Robert in tears. When he cries, I cry. And then, just to make things totally ridiculous, if he sees me cry, he cries. It's a feedback loop that's sure to spiral into total mess if one of us isn't able to steel ourselves against the flood, and I sure as hell wasn't feeling strong enough to do it right at that moment. My composure broke like a paper dam and his came crumbling down along with it. We fell into each-other's arms and bawled. I stroked at his back and kept blubbing that I was sorry. He said wordless things into my chest. By the time we arrived home we were both exhausted, with stuffed up noses and red raw eyes. We didn't have to say anything to know we both agreed on what we wanted to do next: we walked zombie-like from the autocab and headed straight to bed.
	We cuddled for a while. I held him close, feeling like he needed the comfort more than I did. In a way, that was right: I knew about the nanites, so that part of the day's distress wasn't a total shock to me. Robert knew nothing, though, so he got the full force of it all in one go. No wonder it upset him. I stroked his hair and watched as he drifted off to sleep. His expression relaxed, all the concern melting away.
	I stared at the dark ceiling and felt envious of him, wishing I could drift off like he had and escape the worry for a little while. The patch and its attached device felt heavy on my arm. It itched a little, and it made me want to remove it. The warnings were severe enough to make me feel not the least bit tempted to try. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the nanites inside me waging their own little civil war. On one side were the good and loyal nanites striving to sculpt me into a leaner, fitter version of myself. They were the team I was rooting for. The heroes. The forces of light and goodness.
	The other side were the forces of evil, and the forces of darkness: quite literally. They had run their tests at the company after I had filled in forms until my hand ached. They had determined the conflicting pattern as being from a demonstration procedure, used to test and display the capabilities of the nanites to wealthy investors. The nanites would be injected into raw organic material and then, within a few hours, they will have transformed it into a member an endangered species, earning applause from the investors who saw all the applications this could have for conservation...and, more importantly, the big government grants that this could bring the company and them as its shareholders.
	I suppose I should have felt lucky, really. The nanites I ended up with could have been trying to turn me into a Galápagos tortoise, or some rare and nearly extinct form of snail, or an ugly reptile with knobbly scales. The one I ended up with was the Corvus Corax: the Common Raven, which was ironically named given that there were barely a thousand of them left in the wild. I reached up and felt the feathers in my hair. Hopefully, I wasn't due to end up being raven number one thousand and one. They assured me that the patch would work. And if it didn't, they had other procedures to try, all the way up to filtering the nanites out of my body altogether, although they stressed this is a last resort: something about cellular damage. I shuddered at the thought of it.
	I had lots of time, though, they said. The change is slowed and complicated by my being a living being rather than a blob of raw material. They said I might expect one or two more feathers to grow before the patch finishes its job and the noble and loyal good-guy nanites resume their work and undo the mess. So, just one night of sleepless worry, and then it'll all be fixed by tomorrow, and it'd all work out fine.
	I squeezed Robert a little closer. It'll all work out fine...
Chapter Three

I woke up to alarm bleeping, loud and urgent. I groaned and rolled in the bed. The sheets tangled around me and I couldn’t get my arms free. I opened one eye, just a slit, to see how light it was. To my surprise I saw the bedroom was dark. I grunted and tugged at the sheets in a fight to get loose. It didn’t help that they were wrapped around Robert as well, who slept like a mummy most nights, all wrapped up in the bedding with only the top of his head peeping out, or a foot, or sometimes an arm. I levered myself against him to pull an edge of the covers free and extricate myself.
	I reached for the bedside table, then stopped. My perception lurched as my brain caught up with me, reaching full wakefulness. That was weird, I thought: I never normally set the alarm to beep. Normally, I set it to play the radio. And I don’t set it to go off at two in the morning, and I definitely don’t set it to go off on Saturdays.
	Nor, I thought, suddenly realising what was going on, does the alarm’s beeping noise come from my arm!
	I tore free from the covers and sat upright. I felt for the light switch and turned it on. Robert groaned and rolled over, burying his face in his pillow. I gripped the patch and angled it towards me as best I could without ripping the thing loose. I craned my head to peer at it. The pebble device was beeping, and a small red light was blinking. That wasn’t good, surely? Red means bad, right? And that beeping didn’t sound very happy at all.
	I rolled out of the bed and scrambled to my feet. I ran naked to the bathroom and inspected the patch in the mirror under the harsh white light that made my eyes sting. The edges of the patch were curled up like old paper. I pressed a fingertip over one corner to push it back flat. As I did, the beeping suddenly stopped and the blinking red light went out. I thought I had broken it. I gave it a little nudge and the whole patch fell away from my arm and landed in the sink, bouncing and rattling.
	The image in the mirror drew my attention. I cried out in a squeal of fright that would have scored me no points in masculinity if anyone were listening. My hair was gone, replaced entirely by a rich crown of silky black feathers, rising up in a plume from my forehead and spread flat and slick over the top of my head to cascade down the back of my neck. My eyes were wrong: the whites and the blues had disappeared, leaving only glossy black from eyelid to eyelid. I gibbered like a child who had just discovered that the monster under his bed was real after all.
	I turned my head and looked at myself in profile. This was worse. My nose had nearly disappeared, flattened almost flush with my face. My mouth protruded two or three centimetres further out than it should have done and my lips felt stiff, like they were chapped. I felt along them with my fingertips, which brought another panicked squeal from me: my fingernails were gone!
	I ran from the bathroom and searched the living room for my phone. I heard Robert getting up and calling out groggy questions. I ignored him. He came to the bedroom door and looked out at me while I dug through the couch cushions. I heard him gasp. He must have seen me.
	My fingers trembled on the phone’s screen. Somehow I managed to dial the number. I held the phone to my ear and listened to it ring. I could hear my heart pounding. Robert was saying something, but I could barely hear him. He swam blurrily in my vision, hands reaching out for me. He got taller, somehow, his face rushing up towards the ceiling. I said something and instead of my voice I heard a funny little squawking noise. Then the phone was gone from my hand. I felt it bounce off my thigh. The room spun and then stopped with a flash of black nothing as something smooth and hard smacked me in the back of my head.

I groaned. Pain. Lots and lots of pain. I couldn’t tell where I was. For a moment I panicked, thinking I didn’t know who I was. But then I realised that was silly: of course I remembered who I was. It was just the where part that was unknown to me. I couldn’t see anything, not even the hazy redness of my own eyelids. My others senses helpfully reported what they knew, but it was all a bit jumbled. I went through them one by one. My skin was telling me that I was in contact with things that were smooth and soft and warm.
	Sheets, my brain concluded, feeling pleased with itself.
	My ears reported that it could hear nothing of any great importance, other than a quite humming noise, like that of some machinery or a slightly malfunctioning electric light. It definitely wasn’t the hum of the wind; that they were sure of.
	Ah, said my brain. We’re indoors then. That correlates nicely with the sheets. Carry on.
	My nose grumbled that it was being overwhelmed by the chemical stench of antiseptic cleaning agents, and it very much wasn’t enjoying the experience.
	We’re in hospital, said my brain. There’s no doubt about it. You fell and hit your head, which is why it’s hurting, and so you’re in hospital. QED.
	I tried to move, perhaps to lift my hand or turn my head, but it just made the back of my skull throb even more painfully. Memories of feathers came back, starting no end of confusion to wreak havoc with my brain’s cleverly-concluded conclusion.
	Ah, well, maybe there’s a little more to it than just banging your head…
	With some effort I remembered I had eyes. Feeling like a fool, I opened them. Blinding white light flooded them. I shut them tight and let out a squawk of pain. My lips felt strange, like I was wearing a mask of stiff plastic.
	Well, you are in a hospital. Makes sense. You’ll be wearing one of those oxygen mask things.
	Shut up brain, I told myself. I tried to move again, ignoring the resulting pain, and managed to bring a hand up to shield my eyes. I barely even cared that my fingers felt fluffy against my forehead, as if they were wrapped in a feathery glove. I could only concentrate on one thing at a time, but some sub-process in the back of my mind quietly stored that little bit of information for later, to put it together with my memories of seeing my feathered head in the mirror and start to build up a distinctly unsettling picture. With my eyes a little better protected from the glare, I opened my eyes.
	I didn’t recognise the room, which I supposed was a good thing: it meant that I didn’t spend a lot of time in hospitals, and that suggested I was a generally healthy kind of guy. Well, up until right this moment at any rate. I saw a tiled ceiling and a couple of light panels. I saw walls painted a pleasant pastel green and a scrubbed floor that gleamed like polished ivory. I saw cables trailing between machines and suspected that some of those cables were wired into me somewhere on my body. A couple of cheap but comfortable chairs sat by a door. And in one of these chairs was Robert, slumped over fast asleep, his legs drawn up next to him, a thin cotton blanket draped over his shoulders.
	Before I could do anything else, something chimed like a doorbell. The door opened and a pair of nurses, one male and one female, came in. They moved quickly, but unhurriedly to the bed and began playing with the machines. I tried to talk to them, but they ignored me. I lifted a hand that was shockingly covered with long black feathers and tried to tug at the uniform of the nearest nurse, but he gently held my wrist and lowered my arm back to the bed.
	“Lie still,” he said in a soft baritone that was no doubt geared precisely towards making patience feel like everything was okay and being well taken care of. It almost worked. I made a distorted noise of distress, finding that I couldn’t form any words (another concern to store in the back of my head to worry over later), and tried to point at Robert.
	He shook his head. I think he understood my meaning. His eyes had all the right amounts of sympathy and compassion. I let him settle my arm back down. “You need to rest,” he said. “Just a few more hours, and then you can…”
	The rest was just a slur to me. While he was talking, the other nurse had been pressing buttons and turning dials. A tiredness of the most blissful kind took over me: the kind of tiredness that you embrace and cherish, letting it sink you down into a warm comfortable sleep in a warm comfortable bed, off and away into peaceful oblivion. I closed my eyes and murmured. Oddly enough, I thought about bees. I thought about their little buzzing butts and their pointy little stingers sticking out of all that fluff. And then I thought of nothing at all.

The morning was bright and cheerful. My earlier exploration of the room had not picked up on the large window on the Southern wall. Through it the light streamed, cutting an angle across the room to light up the door and one of the chairs in a golden triangle dusted with floating motes. Robert sat beside me, leaning over the bed as far as he could, gripping my feathery hand and squeezing tightly. With his other hand he helped me with the spoon to eat the mushy porridge they had brought me on a tray. My hands were next to useless, being covered as they were by ten centimetre long feathers, extending far past the tips of my fingers and blurring the divisions between them.
	“I’m such an idiot,” I whispered. I had found that I could talk, with effort, and only if I whispered. Anything louder and it would garble into a frustrating squawking noise. Even so, my whisper sounded strange, like I was talking through a metre length of plastic pipe. I dared not think what my mouth looked like. It felt bad enough from what I could discover with my tongue: my teeth were gone, and my mouth protruded in a distinct snout of stiff skin and flesh about five centimetres long.
	“You’re not an idiot,” he said. He eased a spoonful of mush into my mouth. “You made a mistake, that’s all.”
	I coughed, stupidly trying to speak and swallow at the same time. A question had been boiling inside me all through our teary reunion when I woke up, and all through the lengthy attempts to reassure each other that everything was going to be okay. The words had run out and we had gone back to a strange kind of normalcy over breakfast, attended by nurses that came and went following their own agendas. Finally I could hold it in no-longer, even though Robert wasn’t really the right person to answer it.
	“The patch was meant to fix this,” I whispered. “Why didn’t it fix this?”
	“I don’t know. But they said the doctor’s going to talk to you soon.”
	“They need to talk to the Nanosyth guys. Have they called them? Have they spoken to them? They know about the nanites, right?”
	I realised I was being stupid. Robert had told me what he knew already. Yes, they knew about the nanites. No, he didn’t know if they’d spoken to Nanosynth Ventures. He smiled affectionately and offered another spoonful.
	“It’ll all get worked out,” he said, for the seventeenth or eighteenth time since I woke up.
	I tried to smile, but my lips resisted my attempt. “Yeah,” I whispered. “It’ll get sorted out…”
	I had some time before the doctor was due to arrive and there was no way I was going to spend it in the hospital bed being ignorant of what my body had turned into. I wriggled out from under the covers, gratefully accepting Robert's steadying arm, and discovered that I was in one of those backless hospital gowns. I whispered a comment about it, but I don't think he heard me. I gestured vaguely towards the door.
	“Bathroom,” I croaked.
	He nodded and walked with me. My legs felt strange and gangly. I wobbled as I walked, finding balance difficult. My feet were bare and they did not feel right at all, but I didn't want to look down and find out why, not until I had seen a mirror and gotten an idea of my overall state. That's what I tried to convince myself at least. In truth I was scared to look. Robert held my arm firmly and guided me into the little room just off to the side of the one I was in. The light blinked on and I saw myself in the body-length mirror mounted on the wall.
	Where to begin?
	I could finally see why my lips felt so strange. My mouth had distended outwards into a crude beak shape, pointed at the tip. It didn't quite look like a proper beak, not yet anyway. It looked more like what a beak made of wax might look like if it sat out in the sun too long. It merged seamlessly into the normal skin of my face. My nose had all but disappeared, becoming now only a smooth bump in the top ridge of the beak, my nostrils now spread apart on either side.
	The feathers that had taken over my hair now extended down the sides of my head and neck, disappearing under the hospital gown and emerging again at the arms. The feathers here were small, soft and downy, and seemed like they hadn't fully grown yet, like immature seedlings just beginning to sprout. At my hands, though, the feathers grew long, as I had seen before. The beginnings of wings, I suspected.
	I turned around. There were many more feathers down my back. I had felt them in the bed, so it wasn't too much of a surprise. I could barely see skin through the mass of black fluff. Like my arms, the feathers lengthened at the base of my spine. Below that, my legs were almost normal. Almost. There were no feathers here, but the skin looked glossy and jaundiced. My knees were lumpy and swollen. And though I couldn't be sure, it seemed that my legs had lengthened a little. I did seem to be standing slightly taller than Robert.
	I leaned against the counter and closed my eyes. “This isn't happening,” I whispered. And then I laughed, because it was either that or cry. The sound came out as a series of harsh squawks so unpleasant that I quickly stopped. I gripped the edge of the counter and felt Robert's hand stroking my back.
	“You're soft,” he said. I chuckled again and turned to face him.
	“I'm messed up is what I am,” I whispered.
	“You could be a new super hero.”
	“Bird man? I'm sure that's taken. It must be. Probably by someone who wasn't quite so literally a bird.” I felt the side of my head, probing feathery fingers through more feathers. My ears were shrunken nubs, fast on their way towards disappearing altogether. I felt along their edges, shuddering at the realisation of how small and malformed they were.
	“What if they can't stop it?” I whispered.
	“They'll stop it.”
	“I know, but what if they can't?”
	He bit his lip and shook his head. “They'll stop it,” he said. I sighed and nodded, then dragged myself away from the mirror. It probably wouldn't do much good to keep staring at it. I didn't need Robert's help to steady me on my walk back to the bed, now that I was looking down at my feet and properly understanding how my body balanced. But I accepted it all the same. It felt nice to have his hand on my arm.
	“When is the doctor coming?” I asked.
	“Soon, I think.”
	I nodded, sliding back into the bed. It was still warm. I rolled onto my side. Robert suddenly erupted into giggles.
	“What's so funny?”
	“Your bare butt's hanging out.”
	I rolled my eyes and tugged the sheet over me. I knew what he was doing; he was cheering me up. And I was damn glad he was! “You've seen it before.”
	“Not like this I haven't. It's all covered in tiny little feathers. You're a fuzzy butt.”
	“You shouldn't make fun of sick people, you know.”
	“Feather butt.” He sat down in the chair beside the bed, but was only there for a split second. He nudged me over slightly and clambered up into the bed behind me. I was quite happy to be the little spoon right now. I let him wriggle in under the sheets and wrap his arms around me. His breath was warm and comforting against the back of my neck, even if I had to feel it through ruffling feathers.
	“I'm never gonna let you live this down, you know,” he said. “When we're old and grey together I'm gonna keep reminding you about the time you took dieting nanobots and ended up turning into a big man-bird.”
	I wanted to make a grumbling noise, but was worried it would come out as a squawk and just encourage him. “Ass,” I whispered.
	He kissed my neck, through the feathers, and I shuddered. It seemed weird for him to be affectionate with me when I was like this. How was he not freaked out? I rested my feathery hand on top of his and squeezed. He squeezed back, hugging me closer.
	A gentle knocking sound interrupted us. The door was open. A man in a white coat with an important-looking ID badge on a lanyard stood in the doorway, his fist still raised to the door, his knuckles resting on the wood, clearly waiting to see if a second knock would be needed. It wasn't; Robert slid off the bed and back into the seat and I sat upright against the pillows. My heart started to race. The doctor's face was not a happy one.
	“I have bad news, I'm afraid,” he said.

Later that day they showed me the video feeds and news reports, and I sat watching them in silence, the room darkened, Robert next to me, caught in the blue glow from the screen. It was like watching a disaster unfold. It was like...watching events in a movie. It seemed detached and unreal in some way. I couldn't reconcile the images I was seeing with the real world experience I had had with that place and with that building.
	At first, it was a dull news story with no gripping visuals. Dull, at least, for anyone else other than us, and maybe others like us in the same position as we were, if such people existed. To everyone else, it was just yet another company being raided after accusations of dirty dealings. Probably tax evasion, people thought. Or dicking over investors, that sort of thing. The cameras lingered on police wagons and a stream of officers ferrying out computers and boxes of old paper records and handcuffed employees. I thought I spotted a lady in a red suit. Whether it was the same lady as we'd seen, I couldn't be sure.
	That's when it got interesting for all the casual viewers, and horrifying for us. The camera suddenly jerked away from the reporter and pointed up towards the glossy glass flank of the building. Up above, some ten or fifteen stories up, some of the windows had smashed and black smoke was boiling out of them and rising up into the sky. The camera zoomed in. Orange and yellow flames flickered behind the glass. Still more windows smashed. The background sounds of milling people grew louder. Police officers shouted orders. Sirens blared. The reporter rapidly tried to describe what was going on, rather redundantly I thought: we could see what was happening.
	The fire spread rapidly. The camera showed us the flickering light on multiple floors. Windows shattered all across the building's flank, and each one let in more fresh air to fuel the flames. We were treated to high-resolution images from circling news drones. Some of them had infrared cameras, and they showed the extent of the fire: every floor was enveloped in the firestorm now.
	“Why didn't the building's fire-control system suppress the fire?” asked a reporter in the studio to a man in a shirt and tie stood amongst the bustling crowd of firefighters and police on scene.
	“We can only make guesses at this point, but it appears that the fire-control system was disabled.”
	“Deliberately?”
	“We cannot know at this stage.”
	We watched as the building burned to a shell of steel framework. The firefighters kept the water jets trained on the heart of the blaze, but it did no good. Something fiercely flammable and hard to extinguish was keeping the fire alight. We watched as they switched to all manner of exotic foams and gas bombs. None of it seemed to make much difference. Eventually, the flames died down into smoky embers that their hoses could extinguish, but I doubted it was due to anything they had done. The building had simply burned itself out. There was nothing left to feed the flames.
	Shaking, I turned off the screen. It was nearly midnight. I was exhausted. Robert looked exhausted. My body felt weak and hot and alien. There were feathers on my cheeks now, and I dreaded what I might fine when I woke up the next morning.
	“Maybe they have other buildings elsewhere,” said Robert.
	I said nothing. I closed my eyes and rested my head on the pillow.
	“Maybe all the equipment wasn't totally burned up.”
	“It looked pretty burned up to me,” I whispered.
	“They could have replacements stored somewhere. And...and the employees can help us. They've got to help, right?”
	I squeezed my eyes even tighter. I thought that maybe I could shut out the world and pretend this hadn't happened. Maybe I could wake up tomorrow morning and none of this will have happened. It'll all turn out to have just been a dream, or a hallucination, or maybe I had taken the treatment and it had been a success after all and this was some weird side-effect of the nanites. Or maybe all that stuff had happened, but the Nanosyth building fire was the dream. Maybe I was in an induced coma right now, or under anasthetic. I would wake up tomorrow and the doctor will be here smiling, telling me that the operation was a complete success, and they had removed all the nanites, and that lady in the red dress from Nanosyth Ventures would be standing behind him holding a contract on a clipboard with a pen ready for me to sign to accept a huge compensation payout. Maybe. Maybe...
	I shuffled over in the bed and Robert took the hint right away. He climbed up and crawled in beside me. His arms felt good around me. I didn't say anything, and neither did he. I let myself think about nothing and waited to see what the morning would bring.
Chapter Four

My head was against Robert’s chest rather than his shoulder when I woke up. That was the first strange thing of the morning. I didn’t dwell on it, because it wasn’t obvious then. Robert was still fast asleep and I desperately needed to pee. I untangled myself from his heavy and limp arms and thrust my legs out of the side of the bed. The air was cold compared to the bed sheets, and the floor was even colder. I shivered involuntarily and clutched my arms around me. The hospital gown had slid off one shoulder, so I tugged it back into place. Not that it really did much good to keep out the cold, not with the back open completely.
	I walked groggily towards the bathroom. The hospital’s lights were on, and golden morning sunlight was coming in through the window, and I could hear voices and movement elsewhere in the building, but here at least there was just me and Robert on our own. I pushed at the door to the bathroom, then stopped and stared at it.
	This was strange thing number two: the “push to open” plate on the door was higher up the door than usual. I had to tilt my head back to see it. I stared at it for a few moments and tried to remember if it had always been that way. It’s one of those strange things about life: you never notice little details until one stands out as being unusual, and then you have a hard time trying to figure out if you had seen it before and just not noticed, or if someone had fiddled with things to change them.
	I frowned. Now this was going to annoy me. Why would anyone place the sign so high up? Was this a ward for abnormally tall people and I had just been placed in here because they were short on beds? And if so, why hadn’t I noticed the sign was so high when I last used the bathroom? Maybe it had been that way, I reasoned, and I’d just not noticed it because I was stressed or drugged or whatever. Or maybe it had been at a normal, sensible height and someone had changed it during the night. But for what reason.
	The gown slid off my shoulder again and I absentmindedly tugged it back up. In doing so, it slid off the other shoulder. I grumbled and looked down.
	And this…this was strange thing number three: the gown no-longer fitted me properly. Whereas before it had held snug around the shoulders, tied with a little string at the back of my neck, and had hung down my front to only just cover up my scandalous area, now it had a neck hole so wide that it could slip down both shoulders at once and fall off me together, and the hem brushed against my toes when I walked, scraping the floor.
	Okay, I thought, a little stunned and delirious. Someone had snuck into the ward in the middle of the night and changed me into a different gown. That was the only logical explanation, right?
	Right?!
	I looked at my hand. It was just as it had been the night before: covered with feathers that blurred the distinction between fingers. Except, it wasn’t exactly as it had been the night before: my fingers seemed longer, closer together as if merging into one, and the feathers were longer and thicker. They extended further up my arm too, lining the lower edge of it with the same long feathers. I let my eyes roam and saw my legs and feet. They were still naked of feathers, but they had lost all their colour, becoming an ashen grey, making them look like they belonged to a corpse in a zombie movie. My feet were elongated, and several of my toes were missing. The three that remained were elongated and splayed, and the toenails at their tips protruded as if I hadn’t cut them in a year, curling slightly towards blunt points.
	I let out a sound that strangled into a distressed squawk in my throat. Robert stirred in the bed and rolled over, still asleep. With a heavy feeling in my chest, I pushed the bathroom door open and went in.
	The mirror told me everything I needed to know. All the strange things now made sense. I gripped its edges and stared hard into my glassy black eyes, trying to get a different answer from their reflective surface. But nothing changed in the image. My distorted face stared right back, half man, half bird, with skin that was almost gone underneath the spreading black feathers, all except for my mouth, which now had the same ashen pallor as my legs, looking more beaklike than yesterday. I banged my head against the mirror.
	The toilet seat was level with my crotch. The sink towered above me, hopelessly unreachable without something to stand on. The urgent need I had to run to a doctor and yell for them to fix me…or, rather, to whisper it…competed with the more base need to urinate. I would realise later that I was suffering the effects of having the urine content of a grown man’s bladder now being bottled up into one that was a fraction of that size. I shuffled up to the toilet bowl and hiked up the gown.
	Surprise number four. I shrieked in panic at the same time as losing control of my bladder. Of course, I was standing at the toilet, so that wasn’t too much of a disaster. I heard a thump from the other room and the scramble of feet on the floor.
	“Alan?” came Robert’s voice.
	“Don’t come in!” I whispered, but I knew he wouldn’t be able to hear me. The door banged open and Robert stood in the doorway. I froze, mortified, but also unable to stop myself midstream. He stared, blinking, taking it all in. I squeezed my eyes shut.
	“You’re…” he began.
	“Yes,” I whispered sharply.
	“You’re…”
	“I know!”
	He cleared his throat. “You’re, umm. You’re tiny.”
	I kept my eyes clenched shut and nodded. The last trickle of urine drained from me and I let the gown drop back into place. He was right. I was tiny. And there were two ways of interpreting that.
	“Let me look,” he said.
	“No!”
	“Let me look, Alan. I’ve gotta see if it’s okay.”
	“No you don’t.” My voice got too loud and it garbled into a squawk. I opened my eyes to see him, looking concerned and…bemused? I flapped my arms in frustration, and his bemusement grew. “Let the doctor look! Go fetch him!”
	Robert crouched down. Then, he dropped completely to his knees. His head was level with mine now. He was staring at me.
	“It’s not funny,” I whispered.
	“I know, I know. I’m not laughing. It’s just…”
	“Just what?” I crossed my arms, tangling feathers and bending their stalks awkwardly.
	“It’s just…you’re like…you’re like the size of a six year old.”
	“I know that,” I whispered, annoyed that I couldn’t get the proper force of my annoyance into that hushed voice. He was right. I had shrunk in height and I had shrunk in…length. Down there you could hardly find it among the forest of feathers. A realisation struck me, and I yanked the gown off over my head and flung it away. I wanted to curse, but I couldn’t, not with the force I wanted to give it anyway. So I just screeched and kicked at the toilet bowl.
	“You look, umm,” he said. I aimed a look at him, but couldn’t be sure how much of my expression was actually showing in my morphed face. “Kind of…good actually.”
	“Good?” I whispered incredulously.
	“Well, not good exactly. But, umm.” He flailed his hands, searching for words. “Your feathers…they’re really shiny and glossy. And you’re all completely covered now. Except your legs and bea…uh, mouth. It looks…good, is all I’m saying. Considering the circumstances.”
	“I don’t want to look good like this,” I whispered. “Whatever the circumstances!”
	I heard running feet. Someone must have heard my squawking. I buried my face in my feathery hands. “Oh no,” I whispered.
	“What’s wrong?”
	“What’s wrong? Take a guess! I don’t want to be seen like this, do I?”
	“But they’ve got to look at you. How can they help you if they don’t?”
	I shook my head, face still buried in my hands. “I don’t want this. I want to go home. I want to go to bed and go to sleep and never ever come out again. I want to make this not be happening.”
	“You’ve got to stay. You’ve got to get better.”
	“I’m not going to get better! Look at me!” I flung an arm towards the door. “They can’t fix it! They barely even understand what’s going on! All they’re gonna do is poke me and hum and haw some more and just send me back to the ward with more drugs to put me to sleep and shut me up!”
	“But they can…” He trailed off. I knew he knew I was right. Or, at least, I thought so. I hoped so.
	“Are the patches still at home?”
	“Patches?”
	It suddenly dawned on me. I hadn’t told him about the patches under the bed. Nor had I told the doctors about it. They knew about the nanites and all the rest, but they didn’t know about the top-up patches. I gripped Robert’s arms and shook them.
	“We’ve got to go home. Right now!”
	“But…”
	“Robert, please! If you love me…” I hesitated. I knew well enough that this was an awful thing to say to him. But the footsteps were coming, and I needed Robert to agree fast. “If you love me…you’ll get me out of here and take me home. Please?”
	He folded. My heart winced at the pain in his eyes. I wanted to cuddle him and hold him, even though I was the one going through this insanity, and even though I was now tiny and would barely be able to get my arms around him. He nodded. Then, before I could even cry out a protest, he scooped me up in his arms and swept me up from the floor.
	“Hey!” I cried, or tried to. It came out as a squawk.
	“Shh,” he said. He bounded back into the room, glanced quickly through the open door before shutting it. “Can’t go that way.”
	“Window,” I whispered, as loudly as I could manage.
	“Really?” He carried me over. We were in luck: we could drop down to the grass just below the window. There weren’t any bars or locking latches. “This is exciting,” he said.
	“Just go!” I whispered, looking over his shoulder at the door. I saw the door handle turn.
	Robert swung his leg over the sill. “Come on, how often do you get to do this? It’s like we’re in a movie.”
	I squawked and buried my face against his shoulder. The sunlight felt warm and pleasant on my back, but I was suddenly aware that we were going outside and people might see me like this: a child-sized feathery freak.
	“Hey,” came another voice. I looked up to see a nurse in the doorway. “What are you doing?”
	“Go!” I whispered. Robert jumped down. Then everything went bouncy and confused as he broke into a run. I jostled about in his arms and clung on as tightly as I could. Everything blurred around me. I caught a vague glimpse of the nurse waving from the window and heard him cry out after us. But then were in the trees, pounding along a path that wound between the trunks. We came to a road and Robert held me close against him with one hand while he operated his phone with the other.
	“That was cool,” he panted.
	“No it wasn’t,” I whispered.
	The autocab rolled up, so ordinary and quiet, as if we hadn’t just jumped from a hospital window and made a run for it. Robert climbed inside, still carrying me like a toddler. I thought about protesting and wriggling free from his arms to sit on my own, but his arms were warm and comforting, and I needed that right now.
	“Home,” he said, and the autocab sped us on our way.

We pored over the contents of the box for a while. I say we because I was present and I was helping to look through the various bits and pieces that Robert fished out, but in truth it was mostly him doing all the work. I sat cross-legged by the bed and stared at my strange toes while he leafed through a fold-out paper pamphlet covered in tiny writing.
	“Hmm,” he said. I didn't say anything in response. I had learned after the third “hmm” that he wasn't intending to communicate anything beyond “I am thinking”. I left him to it. He turned the pamphlet over and read the other side. I looked at my hands and flexed my fingers, trying to make out their shape under the feathers. They felt long and skeletal, clumped close together and impossible to prise apart. Fragile too. I dared not touch anything as it felt like they might break under any kind of strain.
	Robert set the pamphlet down and picked up one of the patches. He squinted in close, looking at the little pebble device on it. He turned it left and right, inspecting its edges, then stroked a finger over the curve of its surface and picked at a seam with a fingernail.
	“I think...” He trailed off into thoughtful inspection once more. He glanced back at the pamphlet again, as if reassuring himself of some detail. I waited silently, patiently impatient.
	“I think,” he repeated, “there's an access port I can get at in here. I just need the right tool.”
	“Access port?” I whispered.
	“Yeah. A way to get into the programming of this thing and change it. It says here that there's a debugging menu. We're not supposed to access it normally, but...”
	“You think you can get to it?” I whispered, trying not to sound excited, mainly because it would raise my voice into the range of squawking unintelligibly.
	“Yeah, I think so.” He unfolded his legs and stood up. “I just need a screwdriver or a flat blade or something. I'll be back in a moment.”
	He returned with a screwdriver in hand, already lodged into the seam on the side of the pebble. He sat down on the bed above me and worked at it. I shuffled over and rested my chin on the edge of the bed. He glanced at me and smiled. I returned the smile with a puzzled look. Why was he smiling at me?
	“You look kinda cute like that,” he said.
	I flushed and glared. “No I don't,” I whispered.
	He gave a little shrug and turned his attention back to the screwdriver. He poked his tongue between his lips as he focussed. Now that was cute. I stayed quiet though, letting him concentrate. He wiggled the screwdriver and I winced at the sound of plastic cracking.
	“Almost got it,” he said.
	There was another cracking sound. I realised that it wasn't cracking: it was popping. He was levering apart the seam in the pebble. He wasn't breaking it at all. He was disassembling it. He set the screwdriver down on the bed beside him and carefully lifted the top part of the pebble away from the bottom part. The two halves were connected by thin wires, no doubt linked to the buttons on the top. He lowered his hand down for me to see it. He was grinning excitedly.
	“See the port there?”
	In amongst the compact circuitry was a small metal socket. I recognised it for what it was: a perfectly ordinary universal access port, no different from the one on my phone or on billions of devices like it.
	“So you can connect it up to your computer?” I whispered.
	Robert nodded.
	“And reprogram it?”
	“Maybe,” he said. “It'll depend on, well...” He gestured towards the pamphlet. “There seems to be a restore function. It doesn't say much about how it works, though. Only that it can only be performed by Nanosyth Ventures staff. I don't know if I'd be able to do it.”
	“We can try, though, right?”
	“Well, yeah. But it might be dangerous.”
	“I trust you.”
	He shook his head. “It's not about trust though is it? I probably won't know what I'm doing. What if I mess it up and turn you into a slug or...make you completely fall apart into goo? Or worse! What if I kill you?”
	“You can at least have a look, though, right? You don't have to do any changes right away. We can look at it and figure out what to do...”
	Carefully, he rested the top half of the pebble back into place. He didn't push it sealed, but just let it lay gently on top. He closed his fingers over it and raised his fist, turning his head to look thoughtfully towards the wall. I watched the emotions flicker in his face and saw as they slowly turned to steely resolve. My Robert, my sweet carefree Robert, who could rise up when the situation needed him to, to be as strong and as serious as any other, stronger even than me. He would look after me and fix me and hold me while I felt weak. He would correct the little robots rampaging inside my body and tell them to put me back the way I was. I wouldn't keep shrinking and growing feathers. I wouldn't turn into a bird. He wouldn't let it happen. I clung to his leg and nuzzled his knee. He stroked the back of my head with his free hand, smoothing down the silky feathers.
	“Okay,” he said. “Let's get started.”

Our initial experiment was hardly what you would call successful. But in the same vein, it was not a failure either. It was...complicated.
	At first, things seemed hopeful. Robert placed the little pebble down on his desk and carefully opened up the top. Then he fished out a cable from the tangle of cables behind his screen and threaded it over to the pebble. Carefully, he inserted the connector into the socket. A window popped up on the screen. It displayed a file directory.
	“Well, that was easy,” he said, eyebrows raised in suspicious surprise. He started to click around. I stood next to his chair, feeling awkwardly child-like, trying to remind myself that I was Robert's partner, and not his son. I couldn't wait to get back to normal size again and end this weirdness. So it was with some impatience that I waited, watching him explore the nested subfolders and legions of confusingly-named files.
	“Have you found anything?” I asked.
	“Shh.”
	Suitably chastised, I fell silent and just watched. He stared at the screen, eyes darting amongst the icons. He pulled open folder after folder, investigating the contents of each one, before invariably discarding it. He was on the hunt for something and I didn't know enough to understand what. I let my head rest against his elbow and let my eyes glaze over. Once in a while he would grab the pamphlet and rustle with the paper, making me hopeful that he had found something. But each time my hopes were dashed and I went back to the blank staring.
	Then things get a bit hazy. There was no distinct line between awareness and nothing, just as there's no such line when you fall asleep. When I probed my memory afterwards I could just about remember Robert tapping at an icon on the screen and saying...something. I'm not quite sure what he said. My memory just has it as an audio version of a blur.
	Then, an unknown amount of time later, I was being jostled: Robert's hands were on my shoulders and he was shaking me. He was speaking urgently, loudly, right in front of my face. As if from deep, deep underwater his voice rose up and finally started to make sense.
	“...to me Alan! Say something! Can you hear me? Speak to me!”
	I pressed my hand against his chest to try to get him to stop shaking me. I let out a squawk before I remembered that I had to whisper. “Stop,” I gasped.
	He stopped shaking me. He yanked me against his chest and squeezed me half to death in a hug. I felt him shaking.
	“I thought I'd lost you!”
	“What happened?” I gasped, fighting for breath. He relented and loosened his hug. I saw him wiping at his eyes, then gesturing to the screen.
	“I tried something. An option here. But it...” He bit his lip hard and looked away.
	“What? What happened?”
	“It made you act like a bird.”
	“What?”
	He clenched his eyes shut. “Like a bird. Like a mindless animal. You kept screeching and waving your arms. You ran around the room, and I thought I was never going to get you back!”
	I took a moment to process this. And in the quiet, Robert yanked out the cable from the pebble. The window of folders disappeared from the screen.
	“You're not giving up, are you?” I whispered.
	“Of course I am!” He flailed an arm, lost for words. “I...I don't know. Maybe!”
	“You can't give up. You've got to find a way to change me back!”
	Robert shook his head, face clenched stubbornly firm. His eyes glistened. “You were an animal,” he whispered. “I turned you into an animal. What if I do it again and can't change you back next time.”
	I spread my arms. I supposed I should stop calling them arms at this point. They were halfway to being wings, with long feathers that reached almost the length of my torso.  I stared pointedly at him as I flicked my fingers, rustling feathers. “I already am an animal,” I whispered.
	He shook his head. “But not in your mind! It's just your body that's changing. But this,” he nodded towards the pebble, “lets me change your mind too. I shouldn't be messing with that! I don't know what I'm doing!”
	I let my arms drop. “How do I know it's not going to mess with my mind anyway? It's going to turn me fully into a raven, right? I'm gonna just keep getting smaller and soon I won't look like a person at all. How am I gonna still be thinking like a person if I'm like that? My brain will be tiny! Like, a little peanut!”
	I stopped talking, my beak-mouth hanging open. My mouth had got ahead of my brain and had filled in the implications before I had even considered them. My brain was going to shrink along with the rest of my body. Of course the nanites were going to reconstruct that too. How could they not? It was part of my body, after all, and they were hell-bent on reconstructing the entire thing. If that happened, would I even be capable of being concious any more?
	Would I even be...alive?
	I felt like tears would appear in my eyes too, but they didn't come. Maybe my tear ducts didn't exist any more. I had no idea whether birds could cry. I gripped Robert's arm as best as I could, not caring that I was crumpling a couple of feathers. I stared hard at him.
	“You need to try,” I whispered. “Please...”
	He stared at the wall for a good long while. Finally, his shoulders sagged. His hand rested on top of mine and squeezed, and he nodded. “Okay,” he said.
Chapter Five

If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine that I could feel myself changing. It probably just was my imagination, of course. The change was going on at the molecular level after all, and I doubted my nerve endings were sensitive enough to feel the tiny nanites moving around and changing the atoms of my body.
	But...maybe they could? My nerves were being changed too, after all. Would they fire off their electrical signals when they were torn apart and rebuilt? Kind of like a panicked death cry before their rebirth?
	Either way, be it real or imagined, the effect was the same; I felt itchy, and there wasn't a lot I could do about it. My arms were wings now. There was no other way of describing them. They were wings, honest and true, complete with all the different types and lengths of feathers that I had no names for, but knew were the full set: the long stiff ones, the shorter ones closer to the “arm” part, the little fluffy ones. All of them.
	No fingers now. Just...a long, bony arm down the spine of each wing. I could fold them up like an accordion or I could stretch them out and splay the feathers in a magnificent display of glossy black plumage. I let my mind drift, thinking about the graceful arc of my wings, of the flowing pressure of air underneath them, of soaring and gliding. Then I clacked the protrusion that was now definitely a beak and shut down that thought. I had thought my wings were magnificent. Where had that come from?
	I hopped down from the bedpost. I felt light on my feet. I was light. Robert was still at his computer. I couldn't tell if he was awake or sleeping. Either he was deep in thought, or deep in sleep. Both were situations that I wouldn't want to disturb. I wondered how long he had been like that. The sun had come and gone. Or had it? I wasn't sure. I hadn't really been paying attention. It was easy to lose track.
	I hopped across the bedroom floor. My shape of my legs made normal walking impossible. They bent the wrong way. The feet were nearly as long front to back as my legs were tall. I could crane my head and see the long toes and long, vicious talons. I looked like a dinosaur down there. I didn't feel like one, though, as I bounced along the floor, passing by the looming monuments that had once been small items of furniture.
	I squawked, then shook my head. I hadn't intended to make a noise. It just sort of...fell out of my mouth. Or my beak. It fell out of my beak.
	The bathroom door was open. I hopped inside. My talons made funny skittering noises on the tiles. I paused for a moment in front of the mirror and blankly stared at my reflection. I had lost more height. I was about the size of a turkey. Perhaps a tiny bit taller. My body had swollen with the fluff of the feathers on my body, but my legs had shrunk and thinned. My head was bent back and forwards, my neck forming an S shape. My beak now protruded nearly the same length as the depth of my head. My shifted bulk meant that my body had to lean almost horizontally forwards. But that was okay; the long feathers protruding from my rear formed a good counterbalance.
	I still hadn't figured out what to do with my wings. I knew that birds folded them up against their sides, but I hadn't worked out exactly how to do it. Right now they were half extended, their feathers all conflicting and tangled. It was a mess.
	But, apart from that, I had to admit...and it felt like a total betrayal of my humanity to do so...that I looked pretty good. As half-man, half-ravens go at any rate. Apart from a few subtle oddities, like the shape of my skull or the hint of hips under the feathers, that sort of thing, I looked like a bird. If anyone saw me now, they'd just think I was an oddly mutated raven that was larger than normal. The thought made me fidget uneasily, but it also made me feel...something. I couldn't exactly pinpoint what the feeling was. Pride? Narcissism? Possibly. I certainly did feel that I would drown and die if I let myself get too drawn into the vision in the mirror. I was a man. I had to remember that, no matter how good a bird I looked.
	Still, though. I spread my wings wide and turned my head to look at myself. I wasn't quite the image of the eagle standing on a crest, but I wasn't far off. With my sleek, black body I looked like some kind of wicked stealth fighter. I imagined myself gliding and wheeling through the black of night, silent and invisible, seeking out some scampering prey. I flexed my toes and scraped my talons against the tiles. I imagined how they would feel with warm flesh beneath them, breaking and parting as they pierced. It felt right.
	I jolted as if shoved. I jumped back from the mirror. I felt like I had been drifting off to sleep and had just started awake. That feeling of tipping back on your chair and catching yourself just in time. I squawked at the mirror and retreated from it. That was weird.
	Besides, I had something I needed to do. I hopped up onto the toilet, balanced on the seat, and aimed myself over the bowl to evacuate myself. I may be most of the way to being an animal, but that was no reason to act like it. I did my business and then waved my head in front of the flush activator. It didn't respond at first, but when I pecked it the sensor dutifully responded. I jumped back down onto the floor. On my way down, my wings spread out slightly, an instinctive and normal action to balance myself. But air caught underneath them and, for a split second, I glided, settling to the floor slightly slower than I might normally have done.
	Whoah, I thought. That felt good!
	I scampered around on the tiles for a bit, moving about like a demented child full of sugar and excitement. I didn't know what to do with myself. In my head was just the repeated mantra of whoah whoah whoah. I squawked noisily and fluffed my feathers. I hadn't really thought about it before. Well, that wasn't true. I had thought about it a lot. I was turning into a bird. Sure, that was obvious. That fact had occupied my thoughts almost endlessly.
	But what I hadn't really thought about was the fact that I was turning into a bird...and birds can fly!
	I hopped around the small room, giddy with excitement. I could do it, I thought. I really could fly. Right? I could find somewhere to leap off from and spread my wings wide and just glide. And then I would flap my wings and feel the air thrust me upwards, climbing effortlessly through the atmosphere...
	I stared blankly at porcelain, my vision filled with glossy white while my mind went swishing through the clouds. I could fly. It would be amazing!
	Or, I thought, it could be terrible. How easy was it to fly? Would I need to learn how to do it? I didn't want to plummet to the ground like some newborn chick unknowing how to use his wings. Would my body break if I hit the ground? I made a screeching noise of frustration, annoyed with myself for not reading up on bird anatomy.
	But...and that but was a big glowing one that made it hard to think of the downsides...I could try it, and if it worked then I would fly. I would satisfy the fantasy that man has only accomplished in dreams or with the help of machines. First, though, baby steps: I hopped effortlessly up onto the toilet seat and gripped it with my talons. Turning around was tricky: I had to turn one leg first and then sort of hop until I could get round to face the other way, off the edge of the seat. I stared down at the floor.
	Of course I knew it was only a short distance. Even in my reduced size body it wasn't a great drop. And I had happily hopped down from this height only moments earlier. But that was before I had resolved to fly, when I had performed the action without thinking. Now, I was going to attempt it knowingly, trying for something other than just dropping to the floor. I hesitated. Performance anxiety gripped me, even though I was alone. I grumbled in my head. Even in a bird body I couldn't escape the normal human limitations of anxiety.
	I could do it, I told myself, as if I were steeling myself for something normal like taking a test or performing on a stage. This wasn't normal. It was anything but. I was going to attempt...well...something that I presumed no man had ever attempted before in all of history. Not in this exact way, at any rate. And certainly not successfully.
	I took a deep breath, puffing up my chest feathers. I spread my wings out and turned my head to look at them. This wasn't strictly necessary, as my eyes were in a position where they could see them just fine, but old habits instilled by genetic memory refuse to die easily or quickly. My wings looked good. The feathers were smooth and unruffled. With my limited knowledge I concluded that they were fit for purpose. I turned back to look across the room. It had seemed so small, but now it was a wide open cavern. The half-open door stood in the far hazy distance. The floor was a plain at the foot of a great porcelain cliff. The strong winds of altitude brushed against my face. The hunger for lift and flight burned in my soul. I thought one last thing before I stepped off of the toilet seat; from where came our instincts, out from the mind or from the body?
	Time seemed to slow. My senses screamed with the information coming in. My little mind struggled to take it all in. My feet went from feeling the cool surface of the toilet seat to feeling the cold smoothness of the tiled floor. Maybe a few seconds passed, no more. Just a handful of instances of experience. But I stood stationary on the tiles for the longest time while I mused on the sensations I had just experienced.
	The little details were easy enough to process. The warm brush of air flowed through the fine downy feathers on my face and chest. I had caught the scent of disinfectant and had tasted some of it too. My feet lost the pressure of support from beneath them. Empty nothingness replaced it, flowing soft and light between my toes. My wings spread wide, two great sails, and caught the embrace of the air beneath them. My stomach felt the lurch of falling for only a brief instant before my wings took hold. Then, with a graceful, gentle bottoming out feeling, like reaching the nadir in the course of a roller coaster, my falling trajectory became a glide.
	So sweet it felt! Mere seconds, but blissful and eternal. I floated across the room and alighted far from my point of origin, although when I looked back I saw that the distance was objectively quite near. Still, for a first experience, it was a giant leap. I had definitely glided. That was half way towards flying. My little heart thumped hard and I danced from foot to foot for a few moments. All I needed to do now was find somewhere higher to launch from. I was beyond all caring for safety. Flight fever had caught me. All I had to do now was let it carry me away. But to where?
	I hopped my way through the house. Everything seemed bigger than usual, even compared to how things had seemed in my reduced state. I looked upon furniture as if they were giant cliffs, each one adorned with tempting launching sites at their tops. I cast my gaze across open expanses of flooring and planned out glide paths. But each time I shook my head and hopped away, burning with an itch that demanded more than these small areas could offer. I had to think bigger, taller, higher, more open. I looked up at an open window and squawked.
	Getting up to the ledge was tricky. I could glide downwards, I had discovered, but I could not yet fly upwards. And I could not hop that high. I worked out a circuitous route via a table, two chairs and a lamp. Finally, I was on the lip of the window ledge, staring out across our garden, to the fence and the open valley and city beyond. The wind blew gently up from the city, carrying with it scents that mingled and distorted, becoming together something altogether different than the various scents of food and industry that spawned it. I breathed deeply and let the warm air blow over me. Then, imagining myself as a graceful eagle, I spread my wings wide, and hopped off the ledge and into empty open air.
	I dropped, slowly at first, gravity taking hold of my small, light body and drawing it downwards in its inexorable grip. I saw the grass rush up towards me and fought the urge to curl up and protect myself from impacting it. Then my wings caught the air and deflected it downwards, pushing me upwards. Downward momentum became forward flight. My body carved an arc through the air and I saw the fence rushing towards me. I panicked, unsure what to do, knowing I had to rise upwards, but unsure how to do it. I had to flap my wings. But how? What was the action? I had to do it a certain way, or else I would just flail uselessly and smash into the wood face first. It swelled to fill my view, this great wall of wood. I could see the knots in the grain. I clenched my eyes shut and squawked.
	Then, cautiously, I opened my eyes. I was over the fence. It swept rapidly into the distance behind me. I was soaring upwards, getting higher all the time. Turning my head slightly, I could see behind me. The house was below me now. I could see the roof panels. My wings flapped again and I marvelled at them as if they belonged to someone else. My instincts had taken over. The instincts of a bird! I wanted to laugh. I wanted to throw myself into wild spins of glee. But I kept my wings level and watched as the ground fell away beneath me while I climbed higher and higher, thrusting up towards the lingering wisps of clouds. Could I reach them? I didn't know. But I was going to try!
	The world below became a model in miniature. Cars moved like toys on the streets between trees and houses that looked like they were made of plastic. I saw people walking, pushing prams and leading dogs. I saw a cat on a fence post, staring up at me as I glided past. I wanted to blow a raspberry at it. There was no way it could catch me up here. I was a lord, a prince, a king of the sky, and nobody could touch me. This was great! I dipped a wing with a twitch of a muscle and banked a wide arc through the air, swinging myself around to take in the entire vista of the world below me. I was so high up now, higher than the building I worked in, City Civic One. But I wasn't tired: climbing this high had taken no effort at all. My body was built for this. It was much easier than hopping around on the ground. I wondered if birds knew how amazing their lives were.
	My path took me back around again the face the city. I saw the shape of City Civic One, hazed blue by the distance. A naughty thought filled my head and I knew where I was going to go. With a lazy flap I gave myself a little more forward momentum and began the long swoop down into the valley and across to the building. If I timed it right, I could alight on the roof without having to gain altitude again. And from there I would be able to circle the building below and spy though the windows. A literal birds eye view. Why would I want to do this? I didn't know. But it felt right: to look in on my old life from the new.
	I faltered in mid air, feeling precious air slip from the grasp of my wings before I recovered. I had caught myself thinking that this was a new life. Was that really how I thought?
	Of course, I wanted my old life back. And by that I meant my life, and not this strange new disability. But...and as I thought about it, the sky seemed to darken and the air seemed to grow colder, even as the sun continued to shine...what if Robert couldn't reverse this? If I was going to be stuck in this bird body forever, shouldn't I make the best of it? I paused on that thought as I swept in and down towards the city. I could hear the traffic now, moving with soft electric whines. I smelled the smoke rising from a restaurant's kitchen chimneys, fragrant with the scent of crisp beef. The warmer air pushed me upwards and I forgot my musings. I was gaining altitude without any effort. This was gliding, and it was so much better than the clumsy facsimile we humans attempted with our towed gliders.
	City Civic One loomed in front of my, as ugly and crass as it always had been. I saw it now from a new angle, coming in from above. I saw the lumps of machinery and snake-like conduits that criss-crossed the roof. Apart from the carefully-scrubbed intakes and fan housings, every scrap of bare surface was plastered in a thick icing of bird waste. I thought  about trying to find a clean spot to set down on, and I banked into a circle to sweep around to the other side of the building.
	And then I saw it. Or him. Or her. I had no way of telling: a bird, perched on the very tip of a communications spire, regarding me with a tilted head as I swept past. Its feathers were pure white, contrasting against the brilliant blue sky and the mottled grey of the dropping-splattered roofing plates. It was a dove. They were reasonably common, I knew. They were just white pigeons after all. But it was the only one in sight today. It stared at him and he stared at it.
	Slowly, I weaved my way down to land, all thoughts of snooping through the building's windows forgotten. Only as I approached the spire did I realise that I didn't really know how landing worked. I had a notion that birds sort of swooped in and flared at the last moment like a plane does just as it's about to touch down on the runway. I thought about trying this. The spire came rushing up fast and I picked a spot on a protrusion a few metres away from the bird. I swung my feet out in front of me, ready to catch and grasp it. Then I saw the dove watching me and I felt the kind of self-concious fright that I had felt every time I had to perform when someone was watching. My wings locked up. My instincts faltered as my stupid brain tried to take over. I lost the air from beneath my wings and I began to tumble, squawking, gracelessly rolling in a tangle of feathers and panic.
	I bounced off the spire's protrusion, knocking the air from my lungs and strangling my squawk. I fell limply towards the rooftop below. I clenched my eyes shut, expecting pain and death only moments away. I hit a sloped section painted with sticky resin and rolled down it until I fell into a gravel-filled trough. The stink of bird waste filled my nose as my feathers slewed through the caked, dried mess. I groaned in a whisper, unsure if the sound was a human one or a bird one. My body ached, bruised all down my back. But I was alive. And nothing felt broken: when I wiggled each wing and each leg experimentally, I didn't feel the stabbing pain that comes with a broken bone.
	I heard a flutter and opened my eyes to see the dove swooping down towards me. It eclipsed the sun for a moment. Then, with a soft coo, it dropped lightly onto the edge of the trough. Its head loomed over me, jerking and turning, one eye inspecting me. I stared back.
	It was...strange. I knew this was a bird, sure. And I knew it thought like a bird. I didn't know if birds were sentient or not. It's not really the kind of question you ask yourself, is it? If I had thought about it, I probably would have shrugged my shoulders and concluded that birds probably weren't sentient: their brains were just too small for it, and what did a bird need sentience for anyway? Besides, if they had sentience, we surely would have discovered it by now: our scientists had spent so much time experimenting on all kinds of animals, trying to find that spark of intelligence that would give our species a friend in the universe. No, birds were dumb, I would have thought. They don't think. They just act, like automatons with instinct for programming.
	So, lying there, under the twitching gaze of this white bird, why did I feel like it was judging me...and smirking at my graceless landing? Was I just projecting? Or did it really have an opinion of me?
	Irked, I rolled over and staggered onto my feet. The dove hopped back in a flurry of feathers, making room for me. From a short distance away it watched me, nervous perhaps, or curious? I looked back while I folded my wings away and decided at that moment, for no concious reason that I could figure out, that this bird was a she. Maybe it was in the way she moved, or it was in some nuance in the scent of her body, or some other subtle clue that tapped into the wiring of the instincts in my new bird body. Who knows. I simply knew that this bird was female. And then realisation kicked in.
	She was interested in me.
	And not just in a curious or friendly or fearful way. I fidgeted on the edge of the trough and tried to think what to do. How did I know she was interested in that way? I puzzled over it for a while, watching her while she hopped from side to side, feathers half-opening and rustling with each movement. She cooed softly. Each hop seemed to bring her slightly closer. I felt my feathers fluff up, tugging at my skin like goosebumps. Whatever signal it was that my body detected to tell me that she was an amorous bird with eyes on me, it was coming in strong and clear...and my body was responding in kind. I tried to shake the feeling away. I even tried to hop backwards, over the trough and away from her. But my feet landed with a stab of pain that told me my muscles weren't entirely free from damage. I squawked at her.
	Shoo! I thought. It didn't help. She couldn't read my mind. And I didn't know what birdy body language I needed to use. She hopped a little closer, and now I could consciously smell something. I could tell it was from her body. I stood still, my beak hanging open, feeling tingly and hot and strange...and good.
	There's, uh, something you should know about me, I thought. She didn't hear me. Of course she didn't. She hopped across the trough and now she was alongside me, her feathers brushing against mine, our body warmth mingling. Her head jerked and bobbed, oddly pleasing to me. I tried to will myself to move, to hop or fly away. But instead...
Chapter Six

Cell bars. Slender, painted dark green, crossed in a network of small squares. Beyond them, a room swam blurred and indistinct. I tried to speak, but my throat rattled a hoarse gurgle. I blinked, shaking my head. I felt something coarse rub against the side of my head. I tried to sit up but my body felt limp. My hands were...
	No, not hands. Wings. It all came back to me in a rush. I suddenly realised where I was: not a cell, not in a prison, but laying prone on newspaper sheets inside a birdcage. I could see clearer now: a perch stretched across the cage above me. At one end was a feeder, filled with seed; I could smell it from where I lay. At the other end was a water feeder of exactly the kind I had seen in pet shops. I felt like blushing, but couldn't. I tried to move, but couldn't. My body felt groggy and heavy. I just about managed to emit a soft, crooning mewl of a squawk.
	A face appeared behind the bars with a suddenness that frightened me. I struggled for a moment to tell if it was a face I knew. I could see eyes and a nose and mouth, all swimming free in a sea of pale, smooth skin, looking strange and alien without feathers. The mouth moved, lips flapping, and odd sounds came out. I felt threatened, alienated. And then my brain caught up and the face made sense: a woman, slightly pudgy, wearing only a little make-up. Blonde bangs hung over her eyes, escaping from a pale blue sweatband. She stared at me with wide, brown eyes, then lifted a datapad and tapped its screen.
	“Number sixteen is awake,” she said, seemingly to nobody.
	“Bring it through, Karen,” piped a tinny voice.
	Her hand on the top of my cage lifted it with ease. I slid around on the newspaper slightly. And now I could see the green plastic tag attached to my left ankle: on it, in bright white painted numerals, was the number sixteen. I started to cry out in fear. I managed to flap my wings ever so slightly, but could barely lift them off the newspapers. It was as if a monumental fatigue had gripped me. I was drugged. I was drugged and captive and about to be taken somewhere. I could see white walls and other cages. I could smell other animals, some of them birds. I saw a desk and computer screens, and then a door rushing towards myself and the mystery woman. I braced myself for scalpels and death and...
	“Hold on a moment, Karen,” came the tinny voice.
	She stopped walking, her hand on the wood of the door. I heard muffled voices, the same one as from before along with another voice. I suddenly found enough strength to roll over and press my legs underneath me, forcing myself up to stand until the slender limbs collapsed beneath me again. Had I heard right? Was it...it couldn't be? Please let it be...
	“Okay Karen, come through.”
	The door opened fully. There, on the other side, was an office, unremarkable and ordinary. Files sat in neat rows on shelves lining the walls. A neat desk sat in the middle of the room. A man in a lab coat sat behind the desk. But I ignored him, because also in the room was the source of the other voice, my beloved Robert. He ran towards me and the lady who carried me. His hands gripped the bars and his tear-streaked face stared in at me.
	“It's okay, Karen,” said the man. “I've made this gentleman aware of the situation.”
	I tried to shuffle over to the bars. Robert probed a finger into the cage. I managed to reach it, and nuzzled my cheek against its tip. He was saying something, but it was lost in the flood of tears. I picked out a few words, like “sanctuary” and “legal grey area.”
	And then, like the rise of sleep, like the empty blackness that existed in my memory between the dove on the rooftop and my awakening in the cage, blank and empty and confusing, I felt myself slipping away again. I parted my beak and tried to make a noise, but all that came out was a soft squeak. Robert turned his head away from the cage, looking back at the man behind the desk.
	“He's going again,” cried Robert.
	The man stood and his face appeared next to Robert's. Now I could see too the lady, Karen, staring down at me from the top of the cage. I felt like an animal in a zoo, or an exhibit in a museum. I tried to protest, but I felt so weak, and it was becoming hard to think. I felt like I was going to die.
	“It's alright,” said the man. “Once the nanites have stored up enough of a buffer for full cognitive...”
	I was gone, and did not hear the rest of the sentence.

Robert explained it later, piece by piece, in short snippets that I had to assemble together to form the whole. The issue was that I couldn't take in too much information at one go, else I would overload my mind. It struck me as a rather dark comedy that the very problem he was explaining was causing me to be unable to grasp it all.
	I rested in his arms, letting it all sink in. My beak was caged and my talons were sealed inside small leather socks that strapped to my ankles. A harness of soft, stretchy cotton wrapped around my body and held my wings against my sides. It was snug, and it was comfortable, but it was humbling. It was more of a cage than the cage itself, which stood in the corner of the room as it had done for the last week: big and brass and ornate, a palace of gleaming metal, but still a cage all the same.
	The house was a nice place to be, all considering. From what I had seen so far, it was an elegant old antique, with hardwood floors and big ornate doorways and bay windows. There were books everywhere, stuffed into shelves and stacked in corners. But no part of the house seemed messy. It was all an ordered chaos. I slept in my cage. Robert slept in the bed next to me, and Doctor Andrew Stephenson, the man who I had seen in his office on that first confusing day, slept in his master bedroom. It was, after all, his home in which we now lived.
	“It's the best compromise,” Robert had explained. “They wouldn't let you come home with me. Even though...even though you're a person, you're still an endangered species.” He struggled to speak, always seeming to be on the verge of tears. I wanted to comfort him, but the restraints I was in prevented me from doing anything. I knew why I had to wear them, but even so it frustrated me. Besides, as I was, what could I do to comfort him? Hug him? Yeah right.
	“They wanted to put you in a sanctuary,” he said. “In a big breeding program. I tried to tell them that you're a person, with a mind, with rights! But...oh it's all very confusing. Doctor Stephenson saved us, though. He's got his own bird sanctuary.”
	He smiled, stroking fingertips along the top of my head. I liked how that felt. I made happy crooning noises in the back of my throat.
	“Maybe you'll even get to meet some of the other birds, some day. Once we've...umm.”
	He glanced over at the computer. It was very much unlike the one we had at home. This one was of an industrial level of sophistication, with a vast display screen and all sorts of bells and whistles that I couldn't even begin to understand. I had seen Robert poking at it during my moments of lucidity. This too was a gift from Doctor Stephenson, and with it Robert could hope to get to the solution I most urgently needed for my problem.
	It all came down to mass, in the end. Mass, and computational power, both organic and inorganic. The nanites were tasked with shrinking my brain down along with the rest of my body, and they had done that job admirably. Unfortunately for me, there are only so many neurons you can squeeze into a small space, and the ones that did fit into my small skull were arranged in a way that was appropriate for birdy thoughts and instincts: not the thoughts and conciousness of a human.
	But, said Robert, trying to explain complicated things to a bird, there was a silver lining...of sorts. The nanites weren't completely devoid of their original programming: they still had a little of my original pattern left in them, and with that was the core safeguard that came with reconfiguring a thinking being. Under no circumstances were they allowed to wipe clean a sentient mind, and they were sophisticated enough in their net-think to recognise the pattern of neurons that satisfied this requirement. How they managed this, I didn't know, and nor did Robert.
	So they were presented with a problem: as they shrank down the skull and brain...my skull and brain, it was strange to think of it that way and I had to keep reminding myself: this was going on inside me, not happening to some abstract concept...they had to also obey the requirement to preserve my mind. When my mind could no-longer fit within the shrunken and altered brain, what were they to do?
	Well, their solution was both ingenious and moronic in equal measure. In short, and in the simplest possible terms, the nanites were caught in a loop. First, they would make the modifications required to change my brain into that of a raven. The pattern of my mind as it should be was then stored in their “buffer”, networked across the millions of nanites in my body. There the information would stay for a short while, until their programming loop concluded and triggered the safeguard, which demanded that they put my mind back into place. At this point they would rebuild my tiny mind and dump back a small portion of the important areas of my mental map...until they could cram no more neurons in. They would then pause, half the job done, with my mind running on reduced capacity inside my skull, with the majority of my memories and instincts floating about in my bloodstream and muscles, wired into tiny fragments of silicon and gold. Then, at some critical point, where my thinking mind got too overworked, or attempted to access a part of my mind that wasn't presently made flesh in living neurons...the cycle would begin again.
	And this, the time in the cycle when they “downloaded” my mind and built the full raven brain, was when I blacked out completely and became, quite literally, a dumb animal: my mind left, and in its place was a squawking, panicking, flapping, shitting, idiot bird. This was why my beak was caged, my talons were covered, and my wings were confined: the damage a scared and angry raven could do during my downtime was considerable, and nobody could yet predict exactly when my next “episode” would occur.
	I felt I should have been depressed. I wasn't depressed, not really. I thought about people with Alzheimer's disease, and how nanite therapy could usually help them. I already had nanites inside me. And I had Robert working on the problem. He was smart. I trusted him. He would get it fixed and restore me to full cognitive abilities. And in the meantime, my small body was swimming with relaxing drugs to help prevent me from overtaxing my brain and sending me off into oblivion. I had Robert to cuddle me and stroke my feathers. I had hope for my future. I had a lot of things.
	In the quietness of night-time, while I tried to sleep, at the moments where I would almost have welcomed the nothingness of being stored in the nanites, I wondered about the nature of my mind: if the nanites just treated it as atomic configuration data like anything else, what did that make me? What happened to me when they disassembled my neurons and stored their patterns? Did I die? Was I killed and resurrected every time they went through the process? I stirred uneasily, going around and around with the same old arguments, never getting anyway. I tried to assure myself that it was no different to falling asleep and then waking up again: how could I be sure the me that woke up was the same me that fell asleep? Of course, I couldn't know that, nobody could. And in literal terms, it wasn't the same me that woke up: in my sleep my mind had been working, cataloguing and filing my day's experiences, altering my memories and personality. The me that woke up was fractionally different to the one that went to sleep. At least in my present condition I knew that my mind remained unchanged during my off periods.
	Still...knowing all this did nothing to make me feel any better about it. I was always happy to see the light of morning after a night spent in these thoughts: somehow everything always seemed brighter and easier in sunlight.
	Robert was sitting at the big table, positively glowing in the golden light streaming in through the giant dining room window. Out on the lawn I could see the Doctor striding across the grass, one arm raised as a perch for a magnificent eagle that I knew from earlier closer inspection was more than twice the size of me; it put me into a natural state of awe. I watched as the eagle leapt from the Doctor's arm from some unheard command and swooped off across the lawn towards a target pole.
	Robert was talking with his mouth full. I tried not to listen too closely: he was discussing something about pattern inversions, and if I concentrated too much it would overwhelm my weakened mind and send me back into a mindless avian fugue, and I didn't want that right now. Besides, I knew that Robert was talking more to himself than to me. He had an idea and he was working through it. Maybe this one would be the big break that released me back to my normal human body. I focused on my breakfast, crunching seeds between my beak and catching them on my tongue. They were delicious. I would definitely be snacking on these once I was back to my normal self.
	I went back to watching Doctor Stephenson. He was a tall man, from what I could tell from my altered perspective. He stood taller than Robert at least. He was probably about the same size as I was, before my change at least. His hair was jet black, and he had a handsome face and a reassuring smile that no-doubt helped his patients feel at ease...or, at least, it would do if any of his patients were human. And he was rich, that much was clear. Where the money came from I didn't really know, and didn't care too much to enquire. I guessed it was from the government. He did this conservation type work after all. The kind of work that had him looking after poor endangered species like me.
	It felt belittling to think of myself being thought of like that: an endangered species, helpless and weak and in need of protecting. But, at the same time, it made me feel important: I was rare, and I was needed. It was important that I stayed alive and looked after. It was some comfort to feel that way. And Robert really helped me to feel it: I saw how hard he worked at the computer, and I felt the way he held me and stroked me and quietly talked about nothing important, just so I could have that contact with him. I had lost the ability to reply to him: if I tried to whisper, nothing came out. My body was fully that of a raven now, and my voice-box was simply not capable of the complex motions needed. It cut me off, but that was okay: I could communicate if I needed to. Robert had rigged up a few crude Ouija board style sheets for me to hop around on and peck at letters. It was slow and clumsy, but it worked. In our last session, after I had pecked at him with my caged beak to get his attention, I spelled out a message that made him hug me so tight I thought he would crush my little bones.
	“I LOV U” I had pecked.
	And I meant it. He was being amazing about this whole thing. He had packed up and moved in with a total stranger in order to look after me and help me with the result of my own stupid actions. He now had to live with a raven as a partner. It must have been like living with a partner who was in a coma, or a vegetative state. I was so grateful to him for staying beside me.
	He kissed my beak and called me a silly little thing, then petted my back and told me he loved me too. I wriggled my wings inside their covers and nuzzled at his arm.
	There were some darker conversations, though. Or, at least, attempts to have them. I never felt quite as helpless as I did when my questions were ignored or deflected. In one of our sessions, I pecked at letters to spell out a longer message.
	“WHT HAPND ON ROOF?”
	He didn't understand at first, and I had to spell out a long and tiring explanation of my flight and the dove, right the way up to my blackout. Robert had shifted uneasily as he wrote down my message.
	“Well,” he said. And then he paused for a very long time. “You were spotted by a news drone. You were on the local news for a while, being an endangered species and all, suddenly sighted right in the middle of the city. And then animal control managed to catch you with one of their drones. And, well, that was really all there was to it.”
	I knew there was more. I thought about not pressing the subject. But...I wanted to know. I pecked the sheet a little harder than was strictly necessary and spelled out my question.
	“DID I FCK THE DOVE?”
	Robert really started to fidget half way through that message, and I thought he might not even have finished writing it out. He was a bad liar, and I could read everything in his mannerisms, and he knew full well that I could. We stared at each-other, man to bird, and I knew exactly what the truth was, and I knew what he was protecting me from.
	“We...don't know,” he said. “The drone didn't capture anything like that.”
	It was a lie. I knew it was a lie. But I kept up the pretence for both of our sakes. Neither of us really wanted to think about what my body had done while under the mindless autopilot of my avian brain.
	“GOOD” I tapped.
	What really disturbed me was my imagined memory of the encounter. In a literal sense, it hadn't actually happened to me. I had been unthinking and “dead” at the time, and it was a bird mind in my bird body that had...entertained...the dove. But I could imagine how it would have felt to have my feathered body press up against hers, to feel my strange avian cock inside its slit meet her...well, I didn't know what went on down there, but I could imagine how it would feel. And that scared me. How could I possibly know how it would feel? Was this some effect of the avian instincts that rested as a constant undercurrent beneath my thinking mind?
	I tried not to think about it, but it was no good. The more I tried to fight it, the more the image thrust back into the fore of my mind: that of the beautiful glossy white feathers on the dove, of her body resting beneath mine, submissively presenting herself to me, ready and willing and eager...
	I tried to reason with myself and convince myself that I wasn't really attracted to birds: it was my body that was doing it. A body that I would only be wearing temporarily, until Robert figured out how to change me back. And when he did, I would stop lusting after the beautiful, curvy, soft bodies of female birds, and would start thinking again about...about...
	I had to shake free from thinking that way. I had to force myself back into my old mentality, otherwise I might never recover it. I was a human, damn it! A human male with human lusts and a human partner to direct them at. And he was right here with me, available for me to look at and lust over at any time. He stripped naked in front of me like he always did, every night and every morning as he slept and showered. I saw his wonderful body just as I had always done, and it was as fantastic as it always had been.
	And yet...
	I tried to look at Robert like I once had, but it was a struggle to think of him that way. Even if I mentally transferred myself back into my old body...no, not my old body: my body, my only body, my only true body...I couldn't see him as my partner, at least not in the bedroom. I loved him, and I felt happy when he was near and sorrowful when he was not. But I could no-longer envisage myself as being the one to make him moan in pleasure or feel his arms as he entwined his body with mine.
	The realisation came to me when I was cuddled in his arms, and it came with such a heavy shock that it knocked me into oblivion. When I awoke, back in my cage, after who knows how long spent as a mindless bird, I almost shook physically with the force of what I now had to come to terms with: I no longer felt and thought of Robert as my partner. I was starting to think of him as my owner. I was a bird and he was a human. I was domesticated...to a point. As far as you could imagine a bird to be domesticated when it had a human mind riding inside it for some of the time. I slept in a cage and I wore restraints to keep me from flying free, to keep me well-behaved. I longed for the company of my owner, and I felt happiest when he gave me attention and affection. I was a pet alright. It had happened without me even realising, as a natural progression of our situation.
	I wondered...and I suspected I knew the answer by now...if Robert thought of himself as my owner in the same way that I thought of myself as his pet?
Chapter Seven

Her name was Ruby. She was a raven, like me. She lived in one of the enclosures in the grounds, set a little way from the screeching noise of the other enclosures. She watched me through the wire mesh of the enclosure's walls, always quiet, always still. I didn't know what she was like when I wasn't there, because of course I wasn't there to see her. But when I was there, she was the picture of calm and grace...and interest.
	I didn't really know what she found so interesting. I only ever did two things outside: eat and fly. Robert liked to take my outside to sit with him while he ate dinner. I would be leashed, of course, tied by a short length of strap from my ankle to one of the holes in the metal outside table. But other than that I was free to feel the air and the sun and eat my dinner of seeds.
	Doctor Stephenson tried to convince us that my diet needed to be more varied. He explained to Robert that my raven body needed the nutrients that a raven would take in. He went to great lengths to explain the importance of this. I wondered, at the time, where his priorities lay: was it with saving me as a person, or with saving me as a healthy male member of an endangered species, to be paired up with the female example he already had?
	Either way, he managed to convince Robert, and together they formed a two-prong attack on me. Gently at first, they talked through the rationality of what they were asking me to do. It took a few attempts before I could hear the whole thing without blacking out, but we got there in the end. What I heard disgusted me, and I expressed it most vehemently using our letter board. Because their suggestion, shed of the euphemistic niceties of “dietary requirements” this and “variation of protein sources” that boiled down to one simple fact: they wanted me to eat worms and bugs.
	“FK OFF,” I spelled out.
	Robert tapped my beak. “Don't swear. Behave!”
	This threw me, and I was subdued for a few moments, like a scolded child. And then I baulked and screeched at him. How could he talk to me like that? I was his partner! He shouldn't be telling me off like I was a child, or a pet!
	At that point I did something really stupid. And like all stupid actions, it had repercussions, some good, and some bad. I felt so ashamed after I did it, but at the time I was just too angry to think straight. I was free of my beak cage, but not my wing and feet restraints. Using the only freedom I had, I lashed out at Robert, summoning up all my anger and frustration in one unthinking act: I bit his finger.
	He yelped and yanked his hand away. It wasn't very painful, of that I was sure: my beak simply wasn't built to do much harm. I don't think I even drew blood. But Robert stuck his finger in his mouth and sucked it and stared at me with nervous eyes. I felt terrible, and wanted to say something to make it better, to apologise, to take that fearful look off his face. I tried to speak, stupidly, and just made a squawking noise. Remembering myself, I hopped forward to tap at the sheet. But before I could bend down to peck, I felt a hand wrap around my body and the sudden leathery and metallic smothering of my beak cage being forced onto my face.
	“Are you alright?” asked Doctor Stephenson. It took me a moment to realise that he didn't mean me. Robert nodded, still sucking on his fingertip.
	“I'll be fine,” he said.
	I thrashed in Doctor Stephenson's hand, trying to break free. This too was a stupid thing to do. Had I remained calm, things might have happened differently.
	“It looks like he's transitioned,” he said. This was the term he and Robert used to describe my descent and re-emergence in and out of my “raven state”. They had had cause to use the term a lot recently. But this was the first time they had got it wrong: I wasn't in my raven state at all. I was wide awake and lucid, but I couldn't tell them! By the time I got my wits together enough to realise that I should calm down and figure out some kind of action to perform that would let them know, they had already taken me away, out into the garden, towards the enclosure...
	I don't know if this was a sudden decision on their part, or if they had long-since planned it. Robert and Doctor Stephenson didn't say much to each other, and what they did say was in muffled whispers cut off from me. I tried to wriggle loose from Doctor Stephenson's hands, but he had a good grip on me.
	“Andrew, will he be okay in there?” asked Robert. It was the first time I had heard him call the doctor by his first name.
	“He will be absolutely fine. I believe it will be good for the raven psyche to spend some time with another of its kind, and Ruby has been eager for the company ever since she first saw Alan.”
	“Is it okay, though? I mean...morally?”
	“Alan is asleep right now. It won't affect him. And we will have plenty of warning from the bio-signs sensor on his ankle for us to retrieve him before he transitions back. He won't even be aware of it happening.”
	I saw Robert squirm, and I saw the enclosure approaching. I wasn't asleep. I was awake! I tried blinking a message to Robert, but he was looking at the doctor and not at me.
	“It still feels wrong, somehow. I don't like keeping the secret from him.”
	“It's best if he doesn't know, for now.”
	Robert looked at me, only for a moment, not long enough for him to see my frantic blinking. We were at the door to the enclosure now. The doctor unlatched it and led us inside the little “airlock” space between the inner and outer doors. The distinct musky scent of Ruby met my nose, and suddenly my mood was very different. I ceased struggling in Doctor Stephenson's hand.
	“There, he's relaxing now,” said Doctor Stephenson. I wanted to protest, to point out that I wasn't relaxed, and I wasn't even who or what he was assuming I was. But I couldn't. And, to my eternal shame, I didn't want to. Ruby's scent was a spice in my nose, unlike any that I had ever smelled before. I tried to shake my head to lose it, but it was all around me, flooding the air inside the enclosure. Doctor Stephenson opened the inner door and there she was, sitting on a perch at the other end of the enclosure, head turned to one side, watching me.
	“Ruby, meet Opal,” said Doctor Stephenson.
	“Opal?” said Robert.
	“Alan's alter-ego is going to need a name, don't you think?”
	“Yes, but...”
	“It will help to distinguish between Alan and Opal. You don't want us to think of this,” and here he lifted me. I wriggled my feet and turned my head, keeping Ruby in my view. “You don't want to think of this as Alan, do you?”
	“But it is Alan.”
	“Not any more. I mean, not right now. Right now this is Opal. And Opal is an animal. Do you understand?”
	Robert nodded and I screamed at him inside my head. It was me! Not Opal! Doctor Stephenson started to unbuckle my beak cage. I didn't bother crying out. It wouldn't matter. They would just misinterpret my squawks. I wish we had arranged some kind of signal beforehand. Maybe SOS in squawks.
	Wait, that was it!
	I let out the first three squawks...then stopped, silent. Doctor Stephenson set me down on the perch next to Ruby. The scent was overwhelming now. My concentration faltered and I lost track of the Morse Code. I opened and closed my beak silently. Ruby regarded me, head twitching left and right, alternating eyes. I felt my mind slipping away, dropping into a fog of dim, slow thoughts. I wondered if I was finally, mercifully slipping into unconsciousness, going into that empty place of sleep and nothingness where I always went when Opal took over. And as I looked at Ruby and picked up all the subtle instinctive cues, reminding me so worryingly much of the dove on the rooftop, I sorely wished that Opal would hurry up and take over: this was his time, not mine. I didn't want to be around for this!
	“Let's leave these lovebirds to it,” said Doctor Stephenson.
	“Wait a minute. You don't mean they're gonna...are they?”
	Ruby sidestepped towards me. She leaned in towards me and rubbed the side of her head against my neck. I froze, rigid, unsure what to do.
	“They will follow their instincts,” said Doctor Stephenson. “And what will happen naturally, will happen.”
	“But, wait...they can't! Alan's my...I mean, he doesn't even like girls!”
	“This is Opal, not Alan. You must remember that, Robert.”
	“But...but...”
	Robert flapped his arms helplessly, looking so much like I felt in those early days when my wings were new and confusing and awkward. He looked at me, again only for a brief and useless moment. I didn't feel lucid enough to try and signal him anyway. Opal nuzzled against my neck again and I felt myself returning the gesture, ruffling my feathers against hers. I felt...warmth, down below, as instinct took over. Softly, I crooned, wishing I wasn't in the grip of whatever this was.
	“It's just...wrong,” whined Robert. “You're gonna make him a father and he doesn't even know.”
	“I can only hope.”
	“What do you mean by that?”
	“I mean what you think I mean: I want them to breed, Robert. This is a golden opportunity and it would be a sin to let it pass. Opal is a member of an extremely endangered species. There aren't many breeding pairs left. He is a raven, Robert.”
	“No! He's a man!”
	“Alan is a man. But this is not Alan. This is Opal. And Opal...is a raven. Do you understand?”
	I could see Robert faltering under the weight of the argument. He flapped his arms again, looking helpless. I wanted to be there to help him.
	“I...I don't know. Are you sure it'll be alright?”
	I saw Doctor Stephenson grasp Robert's forearm and squeeze it. “It will be alright. Alan won't even know about it.”
	“Well...if you're sure.”
	In the next moments, I felt myself slipping away, disappearing into merciful oblivion. In those moments I thought I saw...and I'm pretty sure I saw it...Robert turn towards Doctor Stephenson and lean against his side, Doctor Stephenson's arm closing around his shoulders.

I awoke, if waking is what you could call it when my consciousness returned and my body became me again instead of the bird mind that they had started to call Opal. As usual, my senses came online one by one, each building up their part of the puzzle of my awareness until I was whole again. Unusually, it was my sense of taste that came first. I tasted hot, crackling bacon, awash with the savoury juices of melted fat. It made my mouth water and my tongue reach hungrily for more.
	The sense of touch came next. My body filled in around me, reminding my addled brain that I was still a bird and not a man as it so sorely wanted me to be. There was something in my beak, something rounded and squishy and plump. The sensation coupled together with the taste of bacon to tell me that the two sensations were one and the same: the squishy thing tasted like bacon, and it was so good. My throat moved on its own, gulping down the tasty thing. I felt it slip like cream down my throat. And now my mouth was empty, wanting more.
	My head moved forwards and down, working off the last failing impulses of the avian mind that rode with me inside this skull. I felt something under the tip of my beak, felt it yield and indent, rubbery and soft. It was just like the thing that was inside my mouth a moment ago. Now I got my first squirmy feeling if discomfort: the thing moved.
	My vision faded into view. Soft, evening light washed in through the enclosure. I was alone on the perch, up against one edge of the enclosure where the perch pole meets the wall. There, pegged securely to the perch, was a small plastic dish, although it was bath sized from my perspective. Inside the dish were a number of wriggling maggots. I was so stunned at the sight of them that I dumbly started counting them. There were thirteen. Thirteen maggots. And plus the one that I now realised was in my beak, that made fourteen.
	I flapped backwards, screeching as loud as I could. The maggot flew from my mouth and tumbled through the air, rushing down towards the dirty floor. I wondered, in that strange moment of stark clarity, what it must be thinking of its experience, if it could think at all. I toppled onto my back, slamming against the pole and then, inexorably, slid off to one side and lost my grip on it completely. I tumbled after the maggot, wings and legs splayed. As I fell, I caught sight of Ruby. She was outside the enclosure, resting on the arm of Robert, caged and restrained in the same way I was when I went outside. I tried to cry out, but there was no time. The floor rushed towards me. Robert was facing the other way.
	I heard a voice calling out: Doctor Stephenson. He was close. I saw a blurred, whirling motion of colour, blue and grey, the colours of his jacket and suit trousers. He was outside the enclosure, or inside it, or in the little airlock space between them. I heard a groan and clink of metal moving against metal. And then the floor was upon me, hitting me with a whumping smack. My left wing caught beneath me and twisted, buckling. I heard the wrenching unpleasantness of a snap and burning agony launched itself up into my shoulder.
	Then, quite happily, I was gone.

Robert held his forehead in his hands. His elbows were on the table. He looked down at me, looming above me, large and overwhelming, a face that had become my sky. The hard wood of the smooth tabletop pressed uncomfortably against my back. The swaddling bandages gripped me tightly. The soothing drugs gripped me even tighter. Through the muted pain and the groggy relaxation of chemical soporifics, I still managed to hold Robert in my accusing, unblinking gaze.
	“I’m so sorry,” he whimpered. It was the twelfth time he had said it, and I fully intended for it not to be the last. I held my stare, saying nothing, doing nothing. I could see every detail at this range. I saw the shine on the tears clinging to his lower eyelids. I saw how his lip trembled. I hated to see him upset like this. But I had to be strong. I was angry. Not as much as I had been before, and I could feel the pity building in the back of my mind, readying itself to overwhelm my anger and push me towards forgiving him. But, right now, the anger still held command of my faculties, and it was demanding that I give Robert the silent treatment.
	“We didn’t know. We thought you were…” He trailed off, and rightly so. He had made the excuse a dozen times already. Doctor Stephenson had been and gone, explaining himself before and after he bandaged my broken wing and my bruised body. The readings were off, he said. Everything confused. Something about spontaneous merger. I caught a general air of satisfaction in his tone, and I knew why it was there. It was clear on my body for anyone to smell. Anyone with an avian nose at least. I stank of Ruby. And of something else too. Something altogether more…primitive. I didn’t have to remember what had happened to know that it had indeed happened. In the middle of my anger I spared one momentary thought for Ruby…and wondered if she was now fertilised. Was I going to be a father?
	No, I thought. I wasn’t going to be a father. Opal was. And I was not Opal. Opal was the unwelcome guest sharing my head. He was going to be the father and I was going to be the…godfather? Godfather to a raven chick. I almost felt like laughing. Sometimes the world was too ridiculous to be real, and even in the thick of it all it was possible to take a step backwards and see it for what it truly was: a farce, and a wonderfully real one at that. I felt giddy and light-headed, happy at a level I hadn't felt properly in a while.
	“Please…say something?”
	He slid the communication sheet next to me, but I ignored it. I kept up my grumpy stare. I tried to decide what I was most mad at. Was it the fact that they had conspired to breed my body with a bird against my will? Was it the humiliation of being treated like a bird when I was, in fact, a man?
	Quietly, softly, infuriatingly insistent, a thought kept tugging at the corners of my awareness. Well, not a thought. A memory. Or an imagined fabrication of a memory. I felt the ghost of Ruby beneath my chest in the same way that I imagined I could remember the feeling of that dove. I started to think…was there some kinds of experience that would cross over the boundary between me and Opal? Were his experiences entering my memory, however vaguely?
	“Please, I’m sorry!” His lip quavered, and the tears in his eyes threatened to spill out. I couldn’t stand it any longer. He was still my Robert, and I couldn’t make him suffer like this…even if he was most definitely in my bad books right now. I rolled my head to the side and scratched my beak limply against the sheet. Robert scrambled to lift it up where I could reach it.
	“I FORGVE U”
	He broke into sobbing, which surprised me. I had expected my words to make him feel better, not worse. But then he scooped me up from the table and, less gently than I would have hoped, hugged me against his chest and neck, planting kisses against the feathers on my neck. I almost felt myself relax against him, feeling how things used to be, back when I was a human, a person.
	Almost…
	Sometimes life throws poetic parallels at you. Most of the time, they are subtle and hard to notice. Little moments of confluence that make events seem less random than they really are. Other times, the world fails to express any kind of subtlety, and hits you square on the nose with the clumsy statement it was trying to make, screaming “look at this funny co-incidence! See how it seems like there’s some grand master scheme to everything?” This moment was one of those moments. I could smell the potent, musky scent of Ruby’s body in my feathers, pressed deep in there by our earlier proximity and private trysting.
	And on Robert’s neck…I could smell the unmistakable scent of Doctor Andrew Stephenson.
Chapter Eight

The sun shone, bright and artistic, turning the sky into something that rightfully belonged in a painting. The landscape stretched away into the blue-hazed distance. Birds were making their happy bird noises, out in the trees somewhere. Part of me wished I could be with them. They had little to care about, and they were so easily pleased.
	We spent the day outside. It should have been a treat, one that I would normally enjoy immensely, a chance to be free of some of my restraints, a chance to test out my wings and fly a few short loops on my leash. But I didn't feel the joy today. I brooded, a menacing cloud of misery and hate filling my thoughts. It contrasted darkly with the summer sunshine above me.
	Robert's concern did nothing to brighten my mood. If anything, it made me feel worse. “What's wrong?” he asked, noticing my hunched posture and my reluctance to leave his arm. I turned my head away and ruffled my wings. It burned me that he would act so innocent. What's wrong, he asked me. What's wrong?! You should know what's wrong! Don't play dumb.
	Part of me pointed out that I was neither being smart, nor fair. The smart thing to do would be to...what? That was where that part of me failed to complete the thought it started. It knew I was being dumb but gave no useful insight into what the smart thing to do was. As for being fair, well, that part was straightforward enough. Pragmatically, practically, Robert no-longer had a partner. The man he once had to cuddle him and hold him and...well, that man no-longer existed. Even though I was here, right next to him, touching him even, I was not a man. I was a bird. Surely I couldn't expect the raw and primal part of his psyche to still respond to me in the way it had once done before? I had to be reasonable. I had to be fair. Other couples ended readily enough when one partner became obese, or when personalities changed. It wasn't totally superficial and wrong: the physical aspect was one part of a relationship after all. Take that away for whatever reason and what are you left with? Not a couple, that's for sure.
	And if relationships could end when one partner let his body go and invited in the flab, then surely they could end when one partner changes his species, right? Come on Alan, I nagged myself, you know this. You understand it. You accept it.
	So...why couldn't I make the heavy lump in my chest or the burning rage behind my eyes go away?
	Doctor Stephenson noticed it too. He regarded me for a while as he and Robert walked me around the grounds. Finally, he rested a hand on Robert's arm to stop him walking.
	“Is he alright?” he said, clearly talking about me.
	“I don't know. He doesn't seem to want to fly. Maybe he's sick?”
	“Hmm. He doesn't look sick. I'll take a look at him when we get back inside.”
	They were talking about me, not to me. This again seemed perfectly reasonable and valid: I couldn't reply, after all. At least, not in a meaningful way. I could perhaps squawk twice for yes and once for no, or flap my wings in a particular pattern. But nothing that I did would be properly distinguishable from the uncontrolled rambling motions of my avian alter ego, and if I happened to slip from one to the other mid-conversation, which would be likely if the conversation challenged my mental faculties in any substantial way, then how would they know if they were getting a proper response from me? In any case, we hadn't agreed on any kinds of signals like that. Without the communication sheet to peck at, I was mute. So, why address me directly when I couldn't answer? Sensible, pragmatic, utterly without malice or insult.
	Yet, I could do nothing to shake the feeling of insult all the same. I shifted on Robert's arm, sulking in frustration, locked in the annoying misery of being angry without good reason, with nothing useful I could do to shake it. What could I do? Point an accusing wing at them and peck out a cry of infidelity? Throw my feathers up in a mimicry of a cuckold's horns and glare at them until they guiltily confessed? What good would it do me? The damage was already done: Robert and Doctor Stephenson had...shared their body scents. Challenging them now would only push Robert into a decision...one that I knew I wouldn't come out of as his partner.
	It was over. I had to accept that. I wasn't his partner any more. I was his pet. I just wished there was a way to make my subconscious accept it as well as my conscious had.
	Later, at the communication sheet, I pecked out a message.
	“CHNG MIND”
	“You've changed your mind?” said Robert. “What have you changed your mind about?”
	I chirped and shook my head, bending down to spell out the message again. This time, without the shorthand.
	“CHANGE MY MIND PLEASE”
	Robert frowned at the tip of his pencil, resting it still at the end of the message. “I don't understand. What do you want me to change your mind about? You want me to convince you of something?”
	I stomped a foot and began pecking again. My neck was starting to ache.
	“ALTER MY MIND MAKE ME HAPPY”
	Robert's eyes widened slightly. “Last time we did that, I thought I'd lost you.”
	“MERGE ME AND BIRD MAKE WHOLE STEPHNSN HELP”
	Robert glanced across the table. Doctor Stephenson was watching, silently, his hands together in front of his mouth, his elbows resting on the table.
	“I don't think he...” Robert stopped and redirected, addressing Doctor Stephenson. “Is it possible?”
	I tilted my head and looked at Doctor Stephenson. Slowly, thoughtfully, he nodded.
	Robert chewed his lower lip as he looked at me.
	“PLEASE” I pecked.

I had almost forgotten about my request. Robert and Doctor Stephenson seemed more distant now, both from me and from each-other. I saw them working, together and apart, many long hours with computers and coffee and printouts, while I sulked in my cage or pecked at the grass outside during my leashed outings. I missed Ruby, though I couldn't express in words why I felt that. I wanted to ask to visit her, but at the same time I didn't want to peck out another miserably slow message on the communication sheet. Perhaps it was pride. Perhaps it was a fear of trying to take control of my life when I knew that such control was feeble, and would only remind me of what I now was.
	It wasn't all bad, though. I quickly got used to the squirming maggots that Doctor Stephenson happily fed me. I felt my body strengthen and my muscles swell. I was ready for flight, even though I refused to take any opportunity that was presented to me. I stayed stubbornly on Robert's arm during every walk. I listened to their conversations, but heard little of interest. They chatted about the bee problem and about some distant political issues. I felt that they were avoiding a subject or subjects, and could see the occasional glances they gave each-other, glances that were heavy in meaning. Maybe they were sexual suggestions, or hints towards the progress of their project to meet my request. Either way, my gut churned each time I caught them doing it. I was tense and just...waiting. That was the worst part: waiting. I had an escape from it, at least, if I wanted it: all I had to do was think too hard and too quickly and I would slip away and Opal would take over for a while. It was a wretched thing of cowardice, but a relief all the same.
	The night came, like every other, but different somehow: the air hummed with potentiality, and I sensed something at the edge of my senses, convincing me to remain awake on my perch. The room was dark, still, and stayed that way for the longest time. Slowly, I became aware of movement, of feet on the carpet, of a shadow that shifted against the other shadows. Robert's voice came soft and quiet through the cage bars. I stood on my perch, comfortable and at ease, resting somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, easing myself back to full attention without nudging myself over into the oblivion of Opal's domain. “Hey, Opal, are you awake?”
	I had a decision to make, and I relished the power that this gave me. It wasn't a lot of power, but lately I had had so little of it that even this tiny shred was worth grasping onto. Did I answer, or did I feign sleep? I pondered the merits of both for a while. My thoughts didn't come entirely without emotional tinge. In the end I made my decision without any real conscious thought. It just seemed the right thing to do. I pretended to be asleep.
	“Opal?” he repeated. I started to feel a sting of indignation, but his voice interrupted again. “I mean, Alan?”
	He was whispering. What did that mean? If he wanted to wake me then he could do so easily: he could speak loudly, or shake the cage, or turn on the light. I saw only darkness through my eyelids, no hint of the pink glow that the light would give. So there was only one conclusion for me to reach: he was checking to see if I was sleeping and, if I was sleeping, he didn't want me to wake up.
	Interesting. Was this going to be it?
	He tried a couple more times, and each time I stayed still, breathing slowly, head tilted and eyes closed. I shifted my wings slightly, fluffing my feathers, just to see how he would react. He stayed quiet, and I could hear the silence of his breath being held. Then, just when I expected him to whisper again, he exhaled a soft sigh. I heard the rustle of clothing as he moved away. I risked a peek. There were two shadows in the room, standing close together. I watched them move closer, merging into one.
	“He's asleep,” said Robert.
	“Good,” said Doctor Stephenson.
	“Wait...not yet.”
	I saw Robert's head turn. The cool moonlight filtering in through the curtains picked out his eyes with two points of glossy reflection. He was looking at me, but I knew that I was a black-feathered bird standing inside a shadowed cage. My eyes were black, and I was out of the line of sight of the moon. They would not catch the glint like his. I was invisible if I did not move.
	“You said he's asleep, Robert. Are you sure?”
	“Yes, I'm sure. I mean...I just...”
	“What's the matter?”
	Robert turned away, looking back at Doctor Stephenson. Their noses were almost touching. My gut squirmed inside me, but still I did not move.
	“I'm not sure about this. I mean, isn't it wrong?”
	“We talked about this,” began Doctor Stephenson, a touch of patient exasperation in his voice. “He asked for it. It was his wish that we do this. We have to respect his wish.”
	“I know, I know. But still...” I saw the glint of Robert's eyes again. “I'm not sure we're doing it for the right reasons. I'm not sure that...he really wants this.”
	“I know it's hard, Robert. But it's for the best. You'll see, once it's done. Everything will be better, I promise. Have you got the remote ready?”
	Another glint, this time on something in Robert's hand. Glossy metal, something small and shiny. Robert's head dropped to look down at it.
	“Yeah, I've got it.”
	“It's for the best, Robert.”
	I don't know why I didn't move, or squawk, or at the least indicate that I was awake. I felt perhaps like a child in bed on Christmas Eve, pretending to sleep with one eye half open to watch my parents sneak in to fill my stocking, knowing it was them...but perhaps wanting to preserve a little bit of the mystery. Too afraid to wake up and spoil it all. Too ashamed to destroy their careful planning. Was I feeling that now? I didn't know. I felt...scrambled, unhinged somehow, put off balance and feeling at some fundamental level that the world was wrong, like some fundamental element of physics had been subtly altered. Gravity was a notch weaker, perhaps. Or the gasses in the air were of a slightly different mixture. I didn't want to wake up to face it, even if my sleep and salvation was only feigned. If I could believe I was asleep, maybe it would all just go away.
	“Will he remember?” said Robert, a tremble in his voice.
	“No, he won't remember.”
	“Will it hurt?”
	“Entirely painless. He won't even realise it's happening. And he'll be happier, you'll see.”
	Their foreheads touched. I could just make out the motion of Doctor Stephenson's arm as he stroked Robert's back. He was comforting him just the way I used to. I wanted to feel something about this, but there was nothing there. There should have been betrayal, anger, jealousy, even just simple outrage. Instead, I felt only a hollow, deadened feeling, as if what I was watching didn't include my Robert, like it was just a scene from a TV show. I dug deeper inside myself, trying to chase the emotions I knew had to be there. I found myself caring about Robert's infidelity on the same level as I might have felt watching the sexual liaisons of wild animals in some nature documentary: only a distant, disconnected disinterest.
	Robert sniffled. A hand lifted to wipe at his eyes. I felt nothing. “How do I...how do I make it start?”
	The glint from the device in his hand disappeared as Doctor Stephenson closed his hand over the top of it, cupping Robert's and his hands together. “You already have.”
	Ah, I thought. I see now...

I sat on my perch, inside my cage, unrestrained and free; as free as I could be inside a cage. I felt peaceful, balanced, my light body resting gently on my feet, gripping securely to the wooden pole beneath me. No touch of any force could unbalance me. I was a perfect creature of balance and poise. Every muscle in my body worked together, in tune and precise, holding me still in exactly the position I wanted to be in. I was at peace.
	I watched them, through the bars. They moved together in an alien dance that made little sense to me, and what small parts of it did make sense were unpleasant and disturbing. It made my skin crawl. They peeled away their outer layers...their clothes, said a small residual part of myself, dim and small at the bottommost reach of my mind...and fell together into the bed, fleshy extremities merging together in a gestalt heap. I wanted to look away, but curiosity kept me watching.
	I knew, and also didn't know, what they were doing. I had a sense, an instinct, a nagging notion that I understood what I was seeing. But I couldn't call upon the memories that would back up this feeling. It was as if the data pointer was still there, but the file itself was missing, wiped from existence. In a similar vein, I knew that this wasn't right, and wasn't a good thing: I should not be missing parts of my mind like that. My memories made me what I was, and without them, what was I? Yet despite knowing this, despite thinking long and deep on the subject, I could not make myself feel the concern that this feeling told me I should have.
	Their faces were together now. It was an awful sight. Their featherless skin looked pale and glossy, like the hide of a sickly animal, like the glistening on the surface of something distended and rotting. I tried to recall how it had felt to kiss lips like those back when I had lips like that of my own. Had I really enjoyed it? I could not force my mind into believing it, and I shuddered at the mental images the attempt threw up. My feathers ruffled audibly, but the two humans failed to notice. Or they noticed, but deigned not to respond.
	They rocked together, panting and grunting. This part I could remember, if only in broad strokes, wiped clean of the details. I could remember the warm feeling of Robert beneath me, moving under my fingertips, my hips, my...
	But...where was the desire? Where was the lust for feeling that memory anew? That same little part of me, the repository of impotent data pointers, tried to get me to feel the visceral need for intimate human body contact that should have accompanied this sight and that vague memory. But once again it failed. I could only feel a detached...what, wistfulness? A kind of nostalgia for a forgotten pleasure? Like a childhood hobby that one no-longer enjoyed, or memories of a long passed holiday, or pleasant memories brought back by the sight of a photograph showing myself in fashions and hairstyles long out of style, cringingly bad, with no danger of tempting me back into looking like that again...but all the same, carrying the faded happy remembrance of how I felt at the time.
	I struggled to stitch a thought together into a conclusion. I knew it was there, but it was difficult to reach it. I felt...lacking, somehow. Like a motor running on too low a voltage. I would get there in time, but not as quickly as I should have. Slowly, I felt myself getting there, and when I arrived I found that happiness was waiting. It all came down to a semantic difference between jealousy and envy. I wasn't jealous any more. I felt no desire for Robert now, as much as I wanted to, and as much as I could remember the haunting memory of our time together. But I was envious. I wanted that same intimacy as was playing out in front of me, heaped in churning limbs and guttural moaning. I wanted it for myself. I shifted from foot to foot, feeling restless. I wanted it, and I knew where to get it.
	The cage wasn't designed to confine a person. It only needed to keep an unthinking bird confined. It was made for Opal, not for Alan. The lines were now blurred. I did not feel the urgent worry that came from expecting to black out at any moment. I felt...whole. I had the peace of the unthinking animal mind, together with some of the wits of the human mind. And that human mind allowed me to do what Opal alone could not do: I leaned over towards the cage door and levered my beak against the latch. Instantly it popped free and the door fell open with a clang.
	“What was that?” gasped Robert. I saw his head rise, his hair a halo of disorder, a shadow against the shadowy wall. Doctor Stephenson shifted and their shadows merged, and Robert was dragged back down into the intimate mire.
	I hopped down onto the edge of the cage's opening, making no sound other than the airy flutter of my wings. Now I was halfway to freedom. I needed only to find that second half: an open window or door. I jumped, out into empty air, and unfurled my wings.
	My graceful form cut an arc down towards the floor, my fall arresting just short of the carpet. I swooped, a finger's length above the pile, curving up and towards the open bedroom door. I swept over discarded clothing and keys. I flicked up a wingtip to pass over a shoe. In the hallway I gained altitude and lost momentum, timed perfectly to settle my feet silently onto the newel post.
	The hall was dark, but not as dark as the bedroom had been. The faint amber glow of a sodium-lit cloudy sky filtered in through a curtained window. I could see the stairs leading down and the hallway sweeping away to either side. Robert's moans reached my ears. I ignored them, my attention on the curtains, because they were billowing gently. The window was open. I had the second part of my freedom. I hopped free off my wooden perch, spread my wings, and threaded the needle of the narrow opening, soaring free from the confines of the house, out into the cold night air, out into the open sky and wide, flat lawn, out into the limitless everything. I closed my eyes and embraced it, letting myself feel the irresistible grasp of flight, pure and naked, drawing me upwards.
	I opened my eyes. The sky circled above me. The house, so large and imposing, was a model beneath me. Each beat of my wings carried me higher. The spiderweb of lights opened out beneath me, stretching to distant horizons misted with vapour. I imagined I could feel the draw of the ocean, or the heartbeat of unseen forests just over the horizon. My wings tingled, eager to drive me forward. But another force dragged me downwards, closer to me, just beneath my feet. I angled my wings and wheeled around. I dove, bleeding altitude and gaining speed. I rushed down towards the lawn, inviting tragedy, daring gravity to snatch me into its earthy embrace. At the last moment I flared my wings and felt the air rush from my lungs with a whoomph, punched out of me by the g-force as I exchanged my momentum back into altitude. The enclosure loomed before me, its criss-crossed wire mesh glinting in the unearthly orange glow. I aimed for a spot on the roof and settled gently onto it. I tucked my wings away. My heart beat in a rapid frenzy, either from the flight, or what lay beneath me.
	I heard her stirring. A soft ruffle of feathers, and then a quiet squawk. I could recognise its meaning now, Opal's instincts running clear and unobstructed under my thinking mind. Inquisitive. Greeting. Tentative. A hint of a challenge. Who are you? I responded, meaning little, just announcing my identity with my own quiet cry. More movement below. I hopped over to the edge of the enclosure's roof and looked down at the door below. It was locked, as it always was, sealed against intruders behind the safety of an electronic keypad. It would have stymied me had I not seen the code being entered over a dozen times before. I hopped off the edge and half dropped, half floated down to catch myself on the door handle. Using it as a perch, I pecked at the buttons. The beeping sounded like a siren in my ears, and I felt sure that someone would hear it and come running. But the night stayed silent around me. The tiny red light changed to green and I heard the click of the latch. The door shifted under me, swinging slowly outwards. I reared back and flapped my wings to give it a push. The inner door was easier: just a handle to jiggle, just a light wooden door to nudge open.
	And there, waiting inside, with an eagerness that I could recognise now, just as plainly visible as the smiles and frowns on a human face had once been, was my Ruby. I spread my wings and flew in towards her.
Chapter Nine

We cut new lives together out of the rough stone of the old, Ruby and I. It began in earnest that night, when we mated in that special moment, the right time in certain cycles. I didn't know it then, of course, but I suspect that she knew. When does a mother ever not know? I would never have seen myself being a father. But then, I would never have seen myself as a raven. Life has a way of throwing surprises at you.
	Breathless, shaky and happy, I sat with her on the perch and tried to decide what to do. She murmured softly, contented, and rubbed against my side. I felt her heart and heat through her feathers. The night could be cold or warm and it wouldn't matter: we were insulated and together.
	Stay, go? I couldn't decide. Each option had its merits. The freedom of the sky or the comfortable cage. Although, I wasn't being fair: Robert would never hold me against my will, of that I was sure. But then...I was sure we would be together for the rest of our lives. Perhaps, I thought, I should stop being sure about things.
	My instinct was to go. The lizard hindbrain of the bird part of me and the lizard hindbrain of the human part of me were both in agreement. And perhaps I was picking up certain scents from Ruby, understanding at some deeper level what was soon to happen, and being drawn by the call of the wild to match that future need. I felt my heartbeat start to quicken. Could I really do it? Was there anything really stopping me? I looked out through the open door of the enclosure. Ruby would follow me, I knew, wherever I chose to go.
	Where would I go, if I chose to leave? I had no map. I knew of the surrounding landscape only by what I remembered from road routes, which was hardly useful to me now. Were there woods and trees, or lakes, or plains? Could we live in fields, or would we need a forest? Could we live uninterrupted, or would our presence be spotted by some roaming drone or snooping sensor, reporting us to the attention of some conservationist group somewhere, who would interfere in our happiness in their well-meaning attempts to keep us alive? Would they capture us and turn us over to the care of someone like Doctor Stephenson? Would they even hand us back to Doctor Stephenson himself, closing our circle back to where we started? I didn't know, and all the questions were agonising me. My poor little brain couldn't cope. I needed something simple.
	Simple, that was it! I was thinking complex thoughts. That was the old me, the Alan side of me, the complicated human brain with all its angles and options. But there was another side to me now, the Opal side of me, and that side was simple. What that side told me was this: fly.
	So I did.
	My feet left the perch and my wings caught the air. I knew I had decided correctly even before I passed the threshold of the enclosure. I heard and felt the flutter of wings behind me and could feel Ruby swooping through the air just behind my tail. We spiralled out through the open doorway and out into the black night.
	The search was long, but that was okay. Instinct carried me forward and Ruby stayed at my side. We foraged, finding worms and insects. We perched in trees or on roadside signs or the neglected upper reaches of buildings. I became aware, at a subconscious level, of a ticking clock. Ruby was anxious, and so I was too. I pushed myself harder, beating wings against hard air, climbing higher each day, scouting out the landscape below. On a fragrant and warm afternoon I found it: a dark streak across the horizon that swelled to become a forest by the evening. There we made a nest in the high branches of an oak tree. There, on a rain-streaked morning, Ruby gave “birth” to our children.
	The eggs seemed so small. Just little teardrops of speckled blue and green. I wanted to protect them, huddle near them in the nest, to defend them against the dizzying drop just beyond the woven sticks. But Ruby flapped at me until I retreated. This was her job, it seemed. I was cast out, but not cruelly. I had my own job to do. While Ruby tended the eggs, I hunted for food to feed us both.
	Six eggs. Six children, though I was not naïve enough to expect them all to survive. I felt swimmy and unsettled as I waited for them to hatch. I wondered how I would feel if and when some of them didn't make it. I pushed the thought away, as it made my stomach feel taut and heavy whenever I thought about it. What happens will happen, I assured myself. And for the ones that survive...I would be a father. And, perhaps, the saviour of a species. That was a pretty good thought to cling to.
	Days passed by and I didn't count them. I didn't even try. I worried, if just a little, that I might have lost the ability: certainly I was lucid and a thinking being, but I knew already that bits of my mind were weaker than they had been, and many memories were gone. But, equally, parts of my mind were far stronger. I could move my body with agile skill that never would have been possible as a human. I could see movement in the undergrowth at far distances and I could calculate by instinct alone the exact angles and velocities needed to swoop down and catch the prey.
	I wondered how long I would live. Did I have a human lifespan or a raven's?
	The first egg hatched on a cold morning just after dawn. I stood on the branch just outside the nest and watched as Ruby fussed and tended to the tiny pink thing. I quivered, tense, feeling infinitely vulnerable: I had this little creature to look after and defend, and the world suddenly felt terribly dangerous.
	Two more hatched throughout the morning. One more chick emerged wriggling and squeaking in the afternoon, just as we were starting to expect no more hatchings. The last egg stayed still and dormant, and as night drew in Ruby was torn between the need to keep it warm, and the needs of our children. As she tended to the chicks, the egg slowly grew cold. I disposed of it for her in the middle of the night, under the glow of moonlight and street lamps, while she was distracted feeding the chicks. I watched it tumble down into the lower branches and disappear into the gloom of the forest floor, no doubt where some woodland creature would feast on it. I shuddered and tried not to think of it.
	I watched as they grew from tiny featherless pink things into slightly larger featherless pink things. It seemed to take forever. Then, all of a sudden, as if no time had passed at all, they were half my size and gleaming in glossy black feathers from beak to tails. Their first attempts at flight almost killed me with the stress of it. But soon I was watching them swoop and soar, imagining that they were getting just as much enjoyment out of it as I was.
	I was tempted to try and name them, and I thought through a whole series of possible names to give them. But after a while I came to the conclusion that it would be pointless. Why give them names in my head that I could never speak, that they would never hear? What point would there be? All the same, I had different calls to catch their attention, and they had distinct personalities and appearances that differentiated them for me as easily as the different faces and hairstyles of a human would for another human. My four children, three male and one female. The males sat neatly on a spectrum, from the boisterous and somewhat violent first, always ready for a pecking and kicking fight over any minor annoyance, through the more measured and calm one, the one with the slight disruption to the feathers on the top of his head, giving him a permanent quiff. Then, at the other end of the scale, was the smallest and the meekest of the three. He would shy away from the childish fights of his siblings and he was the quietest, the most reluctant to vocalise his feelings. But he was the most graceful and agile of the three when it came to flying. I was so very proud of him.
	My daughter was an almost perfect duplicate of Ruby, and Ruby fussed and fawned over her like she was a princess made of porcelain. Ruby and I had more than one fight over the lack of freedom Ruby was giving her. Raven fights are a funny thing to witness: all feathers and screeching and flapping, but not much actual violence, and seemingly little being communicated. But, somehow, we were able to express our differences in all the noise. It was such a nice way to live, communicating at this fundamentally instinctive level. I was happy.
	The children grew older and larger, and the year wheeled itself around into winter. I wondered if ravens hibernated or flew south for the winter, and cursed myself for not having done my research beforehand. But, I figured, ravens...real ravens I mean...didn't do the research either and they managed just fine. They listened to my instinct, and so too should I. It worried me, though, that I couldn't be entirely certain what instincts were from my raven mind and what were from my old human mind. Could I get it wrong? My instincts told me to stay, and Ruby and the children stayed too, so I couldn't have been too far wrong. The kids ventured further out now, exploring the boundaries of the woods and beyond. They were feeding themselves too, hunting out their own bugs, finding and scavenging their own human leavings. Sometimes they would even chance upon a corpse and would feast. Ruby and I would do the same: we would all converge on the same spot. There was no mistaking the smell, after all.
	I got used to the kids being away from the old nest. They would disappear for most of the day and be back before the cold of the night seeped into the woods. As time went on and nothing bad happened I was becoming much more at ease with their freedom.
	Then, one night, my lively and boisterous son did not return.
	I didn't sleep that night. Not a single moment. I worried as only a parent could worry, and I kept my other three children close. Ruby seemed concerned too, but I couldn't tell if it was for the same reason or if it was just in response to how I was acting. As soon as we gained the dawn light I went out searching.
	I found him, and I wished I hadn't. On the road that skirted the northern edge of the forest. Laying in the gutter, a small black form. Not moving.
	I hardly remembered my flight back to Ruby. It seemed like the old days had come again, when I would black out for long periods and have no memory of what happened. This time, at least, it was a welcome blackout. I came back to awareness...or, at least, memory formation...with Ruby looking at me and the other children clustering around behind her, hopping and craning for a better view. I wanted to be able to speak, to eloquently explain what I had found and seen. But it wouldn't have done me any good anyway. I took Ruby to see the road, and then she understood. By nightfall the body was gone, taken away no doubt by some opportunistic scavenger.
	That night I turned my thoughts on a wheel. Around and around I went, returning to each conclusion over and over, changing my mind on each go around. I struggled with the decision through the long sleepless night, never reaching an answer. But as the light crested the treetops to signal dawn, I knew what we would do. Convincing the others, however, would be both difficult and easy. I waited for the right time, when they were all gathered together before flying off on their separate hunts. My family, all together, expectantly awaiting my lead. I jumped from the branch and swooped off between the trunks. With soft flutters they followed me.
	Out here, it wasn't just the road and the traffic that drove on it that endangered us. In these woods that were so idyllic and pastoral to humans, dangers lurked to threaten birds. Foxes still lived and thrived here, no-doubt supported by the scavenged refuse they could find in the nearby suburbs. These elegant creatures were monsters of death for us. We would hear them prowling the woods at dawn and dusk, always ready to snatch an unwary raven away from life. I had human intelligence in my head, warning me at a level above instinct to stay safely high up in the trees during these hours. But my partner and my children had only instinct to keep them safe, and was it enough? We had seen the foxes out during the day, too, whenever they got hungry enough. All it would take, then, is for one of them to catch us while we foraged in the undergrowth, and we would be dead. How long before I came across another corpse that had once been my child?
	The cold of night, too, could be a danger. With it could come diseases. And what of broken bones, or cancers, or any number of infirmities that would be no obstacle for human medicine, but would be a death sentence for a bird in the wild? The more I thought about it on my flight, the more I became reassured in my decision. It was crazy to have come out here in the first place.
	Ruby called out behind me. She was realising that I was leading them further out than normal. The children wavered and seemed like they might veer away, but they stayed on the same path and followed me out over the fields. My homing instinct was running fine. I knew exactly where I was, and it would only take a short while to get there.
	I wondered what our welcome would be like.
	Ruby's pace increased, and I knew she had realised what my intention was and where I was leading us. Our children, however, didn't share that same knowledge or excitement, and they fell back. They showed their nervousness with their distance. I half expected them to bank and turn away altogether. I called out to them with a squawk that to my ears was harsh and grating but, to theirs, and I knew this from experience as they had grown from tiny chicks, was soothing and comforting. Their flight steadied and they fell in behind me while I fell in behind Ruby.
	The house appeared below. It looked just as I remembered it, standing firm and proud in the bright midday sun. Ruby dove down towards it, but I stayed up high, circling with the children, inspecting the house...and having sudden second thoughts. Would it be the same, after all? It looked the same, superficially. Even the outdoor enclosure was still there. There was nothing to suggest that the ownership had changed. And as I circled around I could see that Doctor Stephenson's private car was in the driveway, alongside another that I didn't recognise. Ruby settled gracefully onto the roof off the enclosure and called out a greeting. I waited, unsure, indecisive.
	And then a figure emerged from the French windows at the back of the house and started to run towards the enclosure. My chest went tight and I stopped breathing. I hadn't expected my reaction to be this intense. I saw Ruby flapping and hopping down towards the edge of the enclosure's roof. I cried out excitedly and tucked my wings into a dive, dropping me down towards the figure that I knew had to be Robert.

I was home again. The prodigal raven returns. Back to safety and comfort and affection. Robert smothered me with tears and petting. He did the same to Ruby too. We stood stoic against the outpouring, but it didn't take long for my old human emotions to overwhelm me and for Ruby's old memories to overwhelm her. For the longest time we forgot about everything except Robert's gentle stroking fingers and his weeping, confused talking. Eventually, though, a moving shape in the corner of my eye caught my attention and I turned my head to call out. Robert followed my gaze. We both looked at the three circling birds above us.
	“Oh! You've brought friends?” he asked.
	I wanted to be able to tell him the truth of it, but of course I couldn't. I called out again, not for Robert's attention, but for my children's. I summoned them, telling them it was safe. But they stayed high above, wary of the human. A sensible wariness. But I didn't want them to be sensible right now. I wanted them to meet Robert.
	“I should fetch Andrew,” he said.
	I flapped my wings and cried in protest but he had already turned and run back towards the house. Great, I thought, just what the situation needed, a second human to spook my children twice as much as one.
	“Opal, Ruby!” said Doctor Andrew Stephenson, emerging into the light from the shadow of the doorway. He strode out across the grass, as confident and sharply-dressed as I had remembered him. Ruby greeted him with far more excitement than I ever could, jumping across from the enclosure's roof to land on his outstretched arm. I called a more reserved greeting and then bristled as he began to inspect my partner. “My my, you're looking well! I'm very happy to see you, and in such good health too. Oh...”
	He lifted his head, looking up to the circling birds above.
	“Good heavens,” he said. “You bred successfully? I couldn't even have imagined that was possible!”
	Robert blinked at him. “What? You mean he...” He turned to me, eyes wide and amazed, as if he had seen, well, exactly what he had in fact seen: the offspring of a creature that had once been a man and was now a bird. His expression of surprise was so genuine and powerful that for a moment it rubbed off on me and I felt an excited tingly of elation at what I had done. I was a father! I had brought new life into the world, and had three beautiful children.
	Four children, I reminded myself, with a sad wince.
	“It doesn't seem like they want to come down and say hello,” said Robert.
	“That's understandable,” said Doctor Stephenson. “Opal and Ruby are used to us. They know us and they know it's okay to trust us. But they won't know us, and they'll be suspicious. That's a good thing, considering what could happen to them if they encounter most other humans.”
	I felt a little uneasy. Ruby paced up and down Doctor Stephenson's arm and stroked the edge of her beak against his ear. I tried to tell myself that this was just the avian instincts talking, making me feel on edge in this place, amongst humans, amongst the very things that normally would be a threat.
	“Do you...” Robert fumbled with his words. His hand raised up towards me and then hesitated, almost dropping away. He bit his lip and then forced a smile. “Do you want to come inside, Opal?” he asked, holding his hand out with his fingers just under the edge of the enclosure's roof. I glanced up at my circling children and knew that they weren't going to be coaxed down, not by me anyway. And that...really...was a good thing. Right? All children leave the nest sooner or later. I was just in the unusual position of having it be more literal than most. Already the three were circling wider apart. They were going to leave us. Ruby and I would be alone and childless with these two humans.
	But...we would know they would be out there, living successful, cautious lives, away from the touch of human affairs. And they would breed, either with other ravens still out there hidden in the wild, or with each other, the taboo of human sibling interbreeding not mattering to them. They had a chance to help rescue the species, and it wouldn't happen with them being down here with me and Ruby and Robert and Doctor Stephenson. Ruby and I were the halfway step towards what they were: free and wild. We could never have what they had, and they could never step backwards to what we were.
	I stepped out onto Robert's hand and felt the warmth and softness of his skin. My talons gripped his fingers and he drew me towards himself. I caught his scent, strange and unpleasant in some ways, but familiar and comforting in others. I adjusted the position of my wings and tilted my head up, nudging my beak against the underside of his chin. He made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.
	“Come on,” said Doctor Stephenson. “Let's have some lunch, and we can talk.”
Chapter Ten

Robert talked extensively over and through coffee and sandwiches. His tears dried away to leave only the bubbly excitement that used to enthral me in my old life. It seemed a little distant now, muted by a difference of species and outlook on reality, but still with enough of the memory of that past experience to captivate me.
	“We tried to bring in other species and restart a breeding program, but the suppliers dried up. All the ones that Andrew normally used anyway; the rescue centres, the closing zoos, all those kinds of places. You should see his surgery.” Andrew shot him a look, but Robert continued on unabashed. “It's a really sad thing. All empty, apart from a few common injured or sick birds that nobody is much concerned about.”
	“I'm concerned about them,” said Doctor Stephenson.
	“You know what I mean. They're not rare or endangered like they are...like you are,” he corrected, nodding down at me.
	I pecked at the communication sheet.
	“Y?”
	Robert glanced uneasily at Doctor Stephenson and then looked down into his coffee. I followed a similar instinct and glanced at Ruby. She was tearing into the carcass of a mouse that Doctor Stephenson had provided for her and seemed blissfully unconcerned with the conversation.
	“Umm,” said Robert.
	“The major institutions lost their faith in me...in us...after we lost Ruby. The smaller places then followed their lead. To lose a specimen from a near-extinct species is a substantial embarrassment.”
	“Not that he's saying you're at fault,” said Robert hurriedly.
	“SRY” I pecked quickly.
	Doctor Stephenson raised a hand and shook his head. “Don't be ridiculous. You've done exactly what I would have hoped you'd do if I had ever dared to have hopes that high. You've bred successfully. You've returned the species to the wild in a region that's seen few examples of your kind for decades. Once I've documented this and advised the relevant groups I can't see us having any problems in future. We may even be able to obtain more breeding partners for you and Ruby.”
	I fluffed my feathers and pecked urgently at the “!” symbol. I screeched loudly. Ruby flinched and looked up, catching my offended tone.
	“We can talk about that later, can't we?” said Robert.
	“Aha, yes, we can talk about it later.” Doctor Stephenson smiled and raised his hands in surrender.
	“I AM NOT BREEDING MULE” I pecked, carefully and laboriously. I flared my wings and then tucked them away, staring Doctor Stephenson down as I did so. Robert squirmed uncomfortably.
	“Are you, uh, hungry, Opal?” he said.
	I relented. I bobbed my head. The subject evaporated and Robert's smile returned. He went away and soon returned, bearing a juicy and very dead mouse just like the one that Ruby had so thoroughly ravaged. He laid it onto the table in front of me and discretely turned to look away as I pounced on it.

Later, as the sun was setting, as we squirmed in the unsettlingly bright glare of the house's electric lights, Doctor Andrew Stephenson stood me on the communications sheet and held one hand close to Ruby so she could rub against it, cooing like a pigeon. He watched me with an intensity that unsettled me.
	“WHERE Robert?” I tapped.
	“He's working on a paper in the library. It's about you, in fact. You and your species at any rate. He's become somewhat of an expert since you left. Nanotechnology and the applications for species conservation. It's quite an interesting subject. You can talk to him about it later, if you wish. But, for now, I would like to talk to you privately, if you don't mind.”
	I thought about him while I stared at him. If I still had the entirety of my human mind, with all its memories and emotions and drives unaffected by the merger with my avian half, I would perhaps think of some insult to spit at him. He stole my boyfriend, after all. But I didn't have my whole human mind, and I had my own avian partner now, with no interest in Robert in that way. It would be stupid to be jealous over something I no-longer wanted, surely.
	“ABOUT?” I tapped.
	“About Nanosynth Ventures Incorporated,” he said.
	It took a moment or two for me to understand those words. Memories came back from a lifetime ago. I tensed up, feeling a shudder ripple through me. It was an unpleasant experience this, being reminded of something long forgotten. An unwelcome return to something deliberately and gratefully buried.
	“WHAT ABOUT IT?” I tapped, slowly and somewhat shakily.
	“They have reopened and have resumed business. Without many of their previous directors and employees, of course, and operating under a new name and identity for a variety of reasons. But, fundamentally, the same entity.”
	“WHY TELL ME?”
	“That's a good question, Opal. And I suppose it comes down to whether or not you still feel there is some Alan in there. And, if there is, what you want to do about it.”
	He left that hanging there in silence and I pecked no reply. I couldn't be sure what he meant by that and I was too nervous to peck out a request for clarification...in case what he was suggesting was, well, what I thought he might be suggesting. One of the options, anyway. One of the many possible things I was imagining. None of them seemed particularly welcome. I shuddered again and lowered my head. The thought of having those nano-machines run rampant again, gambling with my life and my body towards some unwelcome goal. I rippled with revulsion, and he saw it plainly.
	“I understand,” he said. “I expect no answer now. Nor am I expecting you to want to do anything specific with this information. But, I felt it was only fair to inform you of this change of circumstance so you can properly evaluate the possibilities open to you. I hope you understand my thinking in this.”
	I swam awkwardly in his convoluted phrasing and bobbed my head, feeling sick. From a pocket he produced some seed, a welcome distraction. He trailed a line of it on the tabletop and I sprang for it, grateful for the distraction, feeling Ruby bump up against my side as she joined with the feeding. Doctor Stephenson's fingers settled on the top of my head and I didn't shy away. I let him pet me and did my best to not think about what that meant about me.

Could I go back? That was the first question, and it broke apart into a million different individual sub-questions. Could I go back? Was it possible at the physical level? Could the nanomachines be coaxed into rebuilding my old pattern, or could they be substituted for other more obedient nanomachines that could? Doctor Stephenson seemed to think it was possible.
	What, then, of the resurrected company itself? Would they be willing to rebuild me? Would they require payment or wavers? Even assuming all that was smoothed over, would they even be willing to let me become a reminder of their past iteration’s failings? A lawsuit in the making? And what if it went wrong and I died?
	My body, too, as the least of the problem. What of my mind? They certainly couldn’t rebuild it as it had once been, not without wiping away all my present experiences and knowledge. That itself would be as good as death. I winced and shivered at the thought of it. This whole business was like standing on a beach beside the ocean: it was only possible if you kept yourself from thinking about the deep, dark abyss laying just beyond that shimmering ocean surface, and the philosophical quagmire of what constituted the “self” and how it was affected by alteration was a very deep and dark abyss indeed.
	Assuming, though, that they could do it; that they could unpick my mind from its merger with Opal and reconstruct something that resembled a human mind in a human body, without killing me in the process, or erasing and rebuilding me in some dark and unsettling philosophical quandary made real, that still left the one other master question remaining.
	Did I want to go back?
	I stuck this question into the back of my head and kept returning to it at quiet moments. On the surface it was an easy question to answer: of course I wanted to go back to my old life. It was a very good life. I knew it well, and would be able to slip easily and completely back into its warm and comfortable embrace.
	Well, not completely…
	There was Robert to consider. He had changed. I had changed too. Returning now would be like a man returning from the dead long after his loved ones had moved on: welcome, of course, and a happy occasion, but with some…awkward moments. Especially if one of those loved ones had moved on to find someone else to love.
	I looked at Robert and Doctor Stephenson together and saw the way they were with each-other. It was like how I had been with Robert once, and how I was with Ruby now. There was no emotional sting there: their romance was to me like a pair of kittens cuddling together would be for them. It was adorable and lovely, but remote and detached. But it wouldn’t stay that way if I went back to being human. I would feel the pangs of jealousy try to tear me apart as they pushed me into tearing their relationship apart. It would be awful. And what of Ruby? Only a bird, yes, but I was only a bird too. I knew how strongly and deeply that side of my psyche could feel, more so even than a human: unclouded by words and nuance, we birds felt emotions raw and pure. I didn’t want to break her heart. And I didn’t want to break Robert’s heart. Hell…I even didn’t want to do it to Doctor Stephenson either.
	I could understand, now, why he told me this in private. Presumably, Robert didn’t know I had this option available. That was probably for the best. While I stewed on the decision, he was in happy ignorance. And he was my friend again. Friend and…well…owner. Doctor Stephenson receded into the background for a while, probably intentionally, and I got the distinct impression that Robert was being nudged into the foreground, responsible for feeding me and Ruby, for taking us out for flights around the grounds, untethered by leashes this time, and for bedding us down on our perches in our open and unlocked cage at night. We were, I think, and more strongly than ever before, becoming his pets.
	I think…I think I was okay with that. Robert was a good master, or owner, or whatever it is you called someone who had two semi-domesticated members of an endangered species as pets. Well, one and a half members of that species. But I pushed that thought away as well. Once I started thinking about the complexities of a person treating another person as a pet, things started to get muddled, and possibly offensive. It amused me occasionally. And I wondered if Robert thought about it too. Certainly, he didn’t seem to. Ruby probably didn’t. She had grown up in Doctor Stephenson’s care, and had only spent a short time with me out as a free agent in the wild. This strange hybrid of freedom and captivity must have been a good balance for her.
	Most of the time, though, I didn’t trouble myself with these thoughts. Life was easy and carefree. Robert and Doctor Stephenson had all the responsibilities of human life, while Ruby and I had none. So, while Robert worked, I relaxed and felt pampered. I rested against his side, tucked up under his arm and half inside his unbuttoned shirt, watching him as he edited a draft of his paper. He did it the old-fashioned way, marking off changes and corrections with a pen on a sheath of printed double-spaced type. The soft scratching of the nib against the paper was soothing. His body was warm. He smelled of soap. He was engrossed in the work, but occasionally he would pause and offer a hand to stroke against my cheek, or a finger for me to playfully nip at until he moved it away and returned it with a peanut.
	He had something that I had never had, and it only occurred to me in that moment: he had motivation and ambition. In a life now where he had no real need to work…Doctor Stephenson was wealthy enough to keep Robert in a life of reasonably luxurious leisure…he still felt the need to do something constructive with his time and with his mind. This paper was the expression of that drive. And though I couldn’t understand half of the words written on the pages, I could recognise it for the intelligence that it showed. And what of me? Even when I was human I only ever worked because I had to, tapping away at computer keys in that awful place in the city. Ugh. That place was a score against the decision to become human again, that was for sure.
	So. Presented with a life where he didn’t have to work, Robert worked on a scientific paper, or played with clay in a small room he had converted into a studio up on the second floor. What, then, would I do when presented with that same life?
	Well, so far I had made some babies, flown around a bit, had lots of sex and lazed about. Not too bad, really, now that I thought about it. But looking at Robert work made me feel some shame: if I had potential for something more, I was wasting it.
	Trying to explain this to Ruby, of course, was pointless. She was happy. And, I suspect, probably on her way towards producing another nest-full of babies with me. I had spotted her gathering twigs, and she was certainly more…amorous of late. Doctor Stephenson had noticed too and he was absolutely delighted. I suppose I was too.
	“WHAT SHLD I DO?” I tapped out to Robert when we next had the communication sheet out.
	“What do you mean? About what?”
	I thought for a moment, putting my response together. Tapping messages was tiring, and it helped to be concise. “WITH MY LIFE”
	“Oh,” he said, eyebrows raising. “Oh I see. Well, umm, I don’t know. What do you want to do with your life?”
	It was an odd question for a pet and an owner to be mulling over. But, then, our lives were odd in the extreme. I noticed that his hand slid across the table seemingly without him even thinking about it, reaching automatically to stroke at my side, smoothing down my glossy feathers and kneading pleasantly down to my muscles beneath. There was no doubt about it, our relationship was definitely that of pet and owner. The instinct had sunk deep. Unbidden, the thought of becoming human again came back, and it seemed so ungainly and impossible: how could we unpick this relationship and become “normal” again? I shook the thought away. Another time!
	“DNT KNOW,” I tapped. “NEED IDEAS”
	“Well,” he said. “I suppose I could help think of some. I mean…uh…you mean, I guess, things that aren’t just doing what you’re doing now?”
	I bobbed my head.
	“You are happy, right? With how things are at the moment, I mean. You’re not…thinking about leaving right?”
	I tapped “COURSE NOT”. It seemed worth the extra effort compared to just putting “NO”.
	He smiled. I felt his relief. His fingertips wriggled deeper through my feathers and homed in on the most shiver-inducing petting spot just at the base of my neck.
	“Well,” he said, thinking out loud. “I suppose you could try…hmm. No, I don’t think that would work. I don’t know. What can a raven do?”
	“LOTS OF THINGS” I pecked, perhaps a little too firmly, the equivalent of shouting.
	“You’re right, you’re right. Sorry. Hmm, let’s see. You could…paint?”
	I tilted my head quizzically.
	“You know, like…put a paintbrush in your beak and paint pictures.”
	“IM AWFUL AT PAINTING.”
	“True, true…for a human, though, right? For a raven you’re an amazing painter. People will be amazed at what you-”
	I let out a short, sharp screech to cut him off. “AM NOT PERFORMING MONKY”
	He held up his hands in surrender. “You’re right, I’m sorry.” I bristled, sulking, as he set his hands back down on the table and not on my back. Those pets were nice.
	“SOKAY” I tapped.
	“What about writing?” he said, after a long and thoughtful pause. I tilted my head. “You know, stories and stuff.”
	“WHAT WLD I WRITE ABOUT?”
	“We’d have to figure out a better way for you to do it, of course. Maybe figure out a way for you to use the computer. Tapping the keys with your beak. Or…hmm. Use your toes perhaps? Maybe I could write some software that can translate certain sounds into syllables and you can type phonetically with your voice.”
	I squawked to interrupt him and tapped the circular arrows symbol on the sheet: that one meant “repeating last message”. He glanced down at his notepad.
	“Oh, right, sorry,” he said. “Well…they say you should write about what you know, don’t they?”
	“?” I tapped, when he seemed in no hurry to continue the thought.
	“Well,” he said, pausing to lick his lips. His hand strayed back over to pet my back again. “Well…what you know is this.” He pointed with his other hand. At me. His fingertip touched my beak. “You know what it’s like to be a bird. Why not write about that?”
	I stared at him, surprised. With a chirp I jumped forwards and fluttered up to hug-tackle his chest, letting him catch me and wrap me up in his arms. Why not indeed!
Epilogue.

They told me it was called the Green Room. It didn't look green to me. More of a kind of wet tapioca colour. I waited, fidgeting with nerves, making a nuisance of myself in Robert's lap.
	“You'll be fine,” he said, for perhaps the millionth time that morning.
	I clacked my beak and uttered a soft sound in my throat. I flexed my talons against the triggers. “I am. Nervous,” spoke the speaker on my back.
	Robert chuckled. “I can see that. But like I keep saying, you'll do fine.”
	A busy-looking young man ducked his head in through the door and held up a hand, fingers spread. Five minutes. I flopped sideways and rested against Robert's tummy. He obligingly slid his fingers under my wing and rubbed soothingly. I mused, thoughts aimless and wandering.
	“Do. You. Think. There. Will Be. Many. People. Watching?” I said, via the speaker.
	“I don't know,” said Robert. “Maybe. Probably. You're pretty famous after all.”
	“For. A...” I hesitated, trying to remember the code. I wasn't left guessing long; Robert swept the laminated sheet out of his pocket and held it where I could see it. The page was dense with symbols, printed small to pack them in, at a size that would be too small for most humans to read comfortably, but perfect for my eyes. I scanned the page.
	“For. A. Side. Show. Freak,” I said.
	Robert huffed. “You're not a freak. Stop saying that.”
	“Make me.” That phrase had its own phonic trigger assigned.
	“If you insist.” Robert dug his fingers in a little harder under my wing, crossing the line from gentle petting to wicked tickling. I wriggled in his grasp and croaked the short, breathless noises that my avian throat produced when responding to the giggles from the human side of my psyche. The speaker on my back spouted nonsense. “I. Let's. Be. Am. Sparrow. About. Car. Car. Car. Under.” Finally, it gave up with a sharp beep.
	“Oh no, you've broken it now,” said Robert in a sing-song voice, his fingers finally relenting. He “fixed” it by pressing his finger down onto a small button until the beep came again, a little friendlier-sounding this time.
	“You. Broke. It,” I said.
	“Nope,” said Robert, shaking his head, trying not to grin. “You overloaded the buffer with your wriggling and squawking. You should have more self-control.”
	I made a noise of annoyance. “Cabbage,” said the speaker.
	The busy-looking man appeared again. He motioned for us to follow him out and to be quick about it. Robert stood and carried me. Out we went, into the lights and applause, and everything went dizzy and confusing for a while. I was glad Robert was here. He fended off the attention for me, until the audience and the host settled down, until my eyes grew accustomed to the dazzling lights, until I could feel in control again.
	 The host tossed questions freely and loosely, but I could sense a pattern in them; each one was answerable with a short reply, and the host filled in the gaps with his own exuberant personality, weaving a picture out of my responses and working the audience up into a happy frenzy. Robert had clearly been at work in preparing this interview. Or, perhaps more likely, it was Doctor Stephenson at the controls. Either way, someone had worked to ensure that I wasn't going to have to be talking a lot.
	“And you made the device he's now wearing?” said the host, talking now to Robert.
	“That's right,” said Robert, with more than a little pride.
	“How does it work?”
	Robert started to talk about the little computer module strapped to my back, throat and talons, but I raced through my memory and found the right sequence of noises and talon commands to interrupt.
	“Magic,” I said. The audience laughed appreciatively.
	“Well, not quite,” said Robert.
	We talked about the book for a while. I rolled out my prepared speech and managed to recite it all with only a few mistakes. Available in stores now, a story about my experiences in transformation, blah blah blah. The host made appropriate noises of interest. Then, suddenly, he blind-sided me with a question that left me fumbling for a reply.
	“Would you go back to being human again if you could?”
	It was a question that had haunted me ever since Doctor Stephenson had told me about Nanosynth Ventures resurrecting. I thought I had quelled the question with an answer; that being a tentative, but firmly-held, “no”.
	Now, though? With the audience staring at me, with the host smiling at me, with Robert looking down with a difficult to read expression behind his polite smile? What was my answer?
	I faltered. I flexed my talons and uttered the almost inaudible tone that would trigger the device to give a hesitating word.
	“Umm,” it said.
	Robert rescued me. He saw my indecision and chimed in with something disarming and witty. I didn't even hear it. I cuddled closer into Robert's arms and tried to hide. The host wrapped things up pretty quickly, moving on to his next prepared bit. I was grateful for that. I suppose you don't get to be the host of a popular and successful TV show without being able to read the cues your guests are giving off, even if they are a raven.
	The question followed me home. Robert and Doctor Stephenson were quiet in the car. I stayed in Robert's arms, my head buried in the crook of his elbow, trying to pretend I was somewhere else. Ruby came to me when we got home, back to our special room in the house, the one with all the perches and our artificial nests. She groomed and fussed and generally acted like I had been away for years.
	Would I leave this if I could? The worst part about that question was knowing that I could if I wanted to. The letter was right over there, resting on the desk where Doctor Stephenson had left it for me.

Biomed Industries: Building the future you today.

Dear Alan,

	On behalf of myself and my company, please allow me to express our utmost apologies for your ordeal following your experience with Nanosynth Ventures Incorporated. We understand that this has been a difficult time for you, and we would like to do all we can to assist you. We would like to schedule an appointment with you at your earliest convenience to explore the options available regarding undoing the damage done by our predecessor company. Please find enclosed my personal card and contact details.

Regards,
	Carline Smith, CEO, Biomed Industries.

Disclaimer: Biomed Industries will not be held liable for claims or damages relating to the actions or assets owned by Nanosynth Ventures Incorporated. For further information, please see ruling 539 – State v Nanosynth Ventures Incorporated Trustee Board.

I could read the meaning as plain as day. They were reminding me that there was nothing I could do to punish them for their screw-up, as if I didn't know that already. But they were also offering me this olive branch, being the graceful and generous company that they wanted to pretend to be. They would fix me, for free I was sure. And I was also sure that they would make damn sure the press knew all about it. They would paint themselves as the responsible new generation of nanotech company, totally different from the old and dodgy Nanosynth Ventures. It would just be a complete co-incidence, of course, that most of the upper management and the long list of patents and property were almost completely inherited from one company to the other.
	They could go hang for all I cared. But, did I want to take them up on their offer? Get my human life back?
	“Are you coming?” called Robert from two rooms over. “It's starting! Quick, hurry!”
	I could hear the television and the unmistakable sound of the host's voice. There was probably a few more minutes before my part in the show came on. Out in the other room, Robert and Doctor Stephenson would be cuddled up amongst the cushions, warm in the glow of the big screen. I could be part of that cuddle if I wanted to. I would bed down on Robert's lap and he would stroke my back. Ruby would wriggle in under Doctor Stephenson's arm and rest her beak on his sleeve. She wouldn't understand what was on the screen, but she would enjoy the colours. I could hear the host, louder now, saying “Please welcome my guest, the author of My Life On The Wing...”
	I turned up the volume on my communication device. “Will be. There. Two. Minutes,” I called.
	I hopped up onto a perch and then swooped over to the desk, gaining the height with a couple of flaps. Ruby watched me, then tilted her head towards the door. She squawked an unmistakable message of impatience and then took off out of the room, off to enjoy the cuddles. I pecked at the tablet computer until it woke up and then navigated to the electronic version of the printed letter. Using the computer like this was a pain, but I didn't have Robert's special talon-friendly keyboard hooked up in this room.

Dear Mrs Smith.

I stopped to rest. Pecking so much like this made me dizzy. I could hear the audience now in the other room. I felt a little breathless, and not just from the pecking.

Thank you for your kind offer. I have given it some thought and I have decided to

“Alan?”
	Robert stood in the doorway, his hand resting on the frame. I shuffled around to face him.
	“Aren't you going to come watch the show? You're missing your interview.”
	“In. A minute,” I said. He came over, concern growing on his face. I edged back and pressed the sleep button on the front of the tablet. He pulled the chair out and sat down. We were nearly at eye level now.
	“What's wrong?” he said.
	“Nothing,” I said.
	He didn't look right at it, but I could tell that he had noticed the letter, and I could tell that he could tell that I'd noticed. He held out a hand, a finger, and held it steady next to my cheek. After a moment I leaned into it and rubbed comfortingly.
	“Whatever you decide,” he said. “You'll still be my Alan. You know that, right?”
	I murmured something wordless and meaningless. The device “helpfully” translated it to “Railway station”. Robert smiled.
	“Come through when you're ready, okay? We'll rewind it if we need to.”
	He slipped away and I felt a pang. I needed his touch and his comfort and I felt it as a hard ache when he left. I had never felt it quite that powerfully when I was a human, and I doubted I would feel it if I went back to being one. I needed him around, like any pet needs his owner. And though that need would go away if I went back to being human, and I would be happy in other ways, I knew with all certainty that I wanted that need. I felt like laughing. I was such an idiot. That stupid host, getting me all confused like that. I already knew my answer, and it was so simple; I wanted to be in that other room, cuddled up with my Robert, with his Doctor, and with my sweet and beautiful Ruby. I wanted to be lazy and watch television with them, and afterwards we would go for a walk and a fly in the cool dusk, and we would eat dinner and play some games, and tomorrow we would work and play and do it all over again, together in our multi-species family.
	I re-awakened the tablet.

Dear Mrs Smith.

	Thank you for your kind offer. I have given it some thought and I have decided to decline your assistance. I am happy as I am.

Regards,
	Alan/Opal.

The End.