Transformation

“Now you know what to expect, Ms Duncan.  The transformant serum may feel a little warm when it infuses into your hand, but that sensation will soon pass.  And once you wake, you’ll be on the ship and a long way into your journey.”

James smiled reassuringly as he delivered his customary speech.  For many years he’d been sending people on the Long Voyage, and there had been remarkably few problems.  In fact, he’d become a little too accustomed to the familiar words and the slight squeeze of the Voyager’s hand that normally accompanied them.  Of course, his clients were wealthy, well educated and in good physical condition.  Pre-screening meant that he saw only the elite. 

He kept a mental scale on which he measured his Voyagers.  Tonight, Liza Duncan scored seven out of ten.  She was almost imperceptibly nervous, but so far she was keeping it nailed down and her fake composure seemed almost genuine.  A slight twitch under her right eye gave it away.  She was a little sweaty of palm too.  He fought the urge to rub his hand on his scrubs when he withdrew from her grasp and moved to finish his arrangements.  

Her hair rustled in her surgical cap as she turned on the pillow.  “Do people ever say anything?  You know, as they go?”

His eyebrows lifted slightly.  He’d been asked this before, of course, and many times.  But seldom at this stage in the process. Trip Counselling was meant to have sorted out these issues during the screening phase.  He was glad to have moved on from having to answer so many pointed but ultimately pointless questions during those years before he could afford to employ a support team.  Trip Counselling was there as a sop to the Voyagers.  In the end you either went on the Long Voyage, or you didn’t.  For James, it was as simple as that. 

“Not at all, Ms Duncan.  Or never that I have heard.  The process is very quick.  The next thing you’ll be receiving is a freshly squeezed juice and a breakfast menu on the other side.”

“That’s something to look forward to then.  Shall we begin?”

Liza Duncan turned to him with a half smile.  James picked up a small alcohol pad, and began to wipe it gently over her translucent skin.  She had delicate fine veins, easy to spot, but probably a little challenging to cannulate.  He selected a juvenile needle set, useful for those whose veins wanted to resist the delicate insertion.  It was a matter of professional pride to him to reach the vein on the first, or - very occasionally - the second, attempt.  

He made the cannula secure on the first approach.  Just as his long elegant fingers had finished taping it down, he heard a strange rasping noise coming from his Voyager.  He looked up just in time to dodge a stream of vomit propelled from her slack lips.  This wasn’t altogether unusual.  Sometimes the fear got to them at the last minute.  James was also a little annoyed.  She should have prepared and purged in readiness for the journey as instructed during her last consultation.  His lip curled slightly at her disobedience and he turned towards his cabinets so she could not see his expression.  

“Please don’t worry Ms Duncan.  Everything will be fine.  Let me get you cleaned up right away.”  

She gurgled once more and vomited again.  Then she sat up and began to pull her surgical gown into a tight ball.  James opened the hazmat bin for her to deposit the gown, then changed his gloves with a snap.  

“Come over to the other cubicle Ms Duncan.  We’ll soon have you on your way.”  James pulled back the curtain to the second part of the room, where a further trolley sat ready for use.  

“I am so sorry.”  The blush started at her neck and began to rise rapidly to her cheeks.  James took out a new gown, being careful to avoid banging her cannula as he moved.  He liked her more than many of the Voyagers, for whom his final routine tap of the cannula would send them on their way with a yelp.  It gave him a strange sense of purpose and an illicit satisfaction.  

Liza Duncan walked slightly unsteadily over to the second cubicle and sat on the paper sheet.  

“How are you feeling now?”  James concealed his impatience with a slow and solicitous question.  

“I’ll be fine, thanks.  Just a little nervous, I guess.”

He opened up the new gown, and as she stood to take it from him, she lurched slackly forwards.  He struggled to hold her up as she fainted.  His head hit the trolley rails as her dead weight fell against him.  James realised that she was much taller than him, and clearly heavier than the dosage weight that was marked on his chart.  His vision started to grow patchy, and little monochrome fireworks began to explode in the corners of his eyes.  He could smell a strange intoxicating scent.  Not hers, as Voyagers were instructed to shower with unscented products before their journey.  Instead the aroma was almost medicinal.  

James wasn’t entirely sure how much time had passed when he opened his eyes to find himself on a trolley.  There were no windows in the room, and soundproofing meant that there were no audible clues as to the time of day.  The metal-framed bin’s plastic liner was still plump with paper products ready for incineration, so he guessed the cleaners had not made their evening rounds yet.  He tried to turn to read the clock on the wall of the Transportation Room behind him.  Movement was impossible, and he realised that his hands were pinned to his sides in a tight garment.  Not just a tight garment, but a transportation suit built to stop Voyagers struggling during the initial phase of their journey. And one that smelled strangely and aromatically of chemicals.  

There was a gentle tapping behind him, and then a slight judder as an impatient foot bounced on the wheel of the trolley.     

“What…?”  His throat was unbearably dry, and it was difficult to get the words out.  “What happened?”

Liza Duncan appeared to his left.  She was wearing a set of surgical scrubs rather than a gown.  And she had an air of authority she had lacked earlier.  

“Mr Mortimer, glad to have you with us.”

“With. Us.”  James was struggling to understand.  

“We are just getting you ready for your Voyage.”  She carefully capitalised the last word as it emerged from her lips. 

“My Voyage?”  James wasn’t sure whether he didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand.  He seemed unable to do anything but repeat her words, despite his brain spinning freely in a whirl of fresh dread. .  

“This journey will be yours, Mr Mortimer, not mine.  You have sent 3,666 Voyagers on to their final destination.  It’s your turn now.  

“You see, Mr Mortimer, you’ve been operating under false pretences all this time.  You’ve been peddling a dream that doesn’t exist.  Yes, the Long Voyage sounds a wonderful concept, to start your life again in a new Utopian society.  But it’s not exactly turned out that way.  

“It’s the human condition, Mr Mortimer.  No matter how much you change the environment, we keep coming back to who we are.”  

A sour taste bloomed in James’s mouth as he began to realise what awaited him.  

Liza Duncan peeled back the alcohol swab and rubbed it across the back of James’ hand.  Then she cannulated him, swiftly and efficiently.  James was grudgingly impressed.  Not many medics maintained such fine motor skills.  

“Did you ever read Lord of the Flies?”  

She flushed the cannula with saline, then opened the box marked Transformant Serum.  

“And that’s before the ship has docked at its destination.  Not everyone makes it through alive.  Yet you take people’s fortunes, and their lives, and package them up into an obscene deal that they can’t resist.  And they’re never coming back to reclaim their old selves.”

James met her steely blue gaze.  “That’s not true.  They’re happy, successful, living new and enhanced lives.”

“They’re not.  Not one person there would make the same choice again.  It took me more than 12 years to arrange a return.  But I managed to get back.  You should never have sent a doctor, you know.”

“I sent you?  I don’t remember you.”

“You sent too many to remember me.  But they will all remember you when you arrive.

“I will be living your new and improved life, Mr Mortimer.  It’s time for you to learn the truth about where you are sending people.  Although I somehow doubt it will be news to you.  If it’s that great at the end of the Long Voyage, why are you still here?”

Her lips thinned as she smiled.  Her power intoxicated her, and James felt a cold puddle of sweat at the very base of his spine.  He watched her draw the serum up into the syringe, peering carefully at the dosage markings as if he were still the Transformant and she the Voyager.  The dose was perfectly accurate.   

“Now you know what to expect, Mr Mortimer.  The transformant serum may feel a little warm when it infuses into your hand, but the sensation will soon pass. And once you wake, you’ll be on the ship and a long way into your journey”

He counted slowly back from ten as the injection reached his bloodstream.  He made it as far as seven.