Gradually, Sek began taking me with him on his supply runs to the local market place. Whenever we were in the market, I would catch sight of this gigantic steel-grey compound on the outskirts of the city. Sek didn't know much about it.

(The city council resides there,) he explained to me in his customary mind-talk. (Every cycle they take some of our products and export them. We do not find out to where they are sent, nor do we care.)

I sort of shrugged and left it at that. We finished our purchases and went for home, whereupon I was set upon tinkering again and assembling more gizmos. Sek disappeared into another room and shut the door. It was the only room that even had a door in the first place, I realized.

What could be in there that he wanted to hide, I wondered? He went there every couple hours, every day without fail, and presumably slept there. I didn't want to really pry into his business, but the Kelfiirian culture didn't seem to be one overly concerned about privacy, dealing with everything openly. The marked contrast piqued my curiosity greatly.

So, this time, instead of continuing with my chores, I decided to check it out. Removing my ratty tennis shoes, I crept over to the door silently on the adobe-type floor to the closed doorway. No doorknob, I noticed. I poked at it a bit, and it swung inward. Like those doors they have for waiters in restaurant kitchens or something, I realized. I pushed it open the rest of the way—and yelped.

Inside the room was this…creature. A horrifying, melting shifting mass of red and blue and tan, extra legs, random appendages poking out at odd places, and a syrupy mass of scales and fur. It was this crazy mutant, a sickening meld of Kelfiirian and who-the-hell-knows-what. As I watched, two horse like legs shot out of his lower back as his butt—yes, sorry, his butt—just began to grow, extending straight backwards like a crazy shelf. It took a little bit for my perspective to shift, but I realized that it was forming the back half of some kind of weird animal thing. His torso remained mostly the same, but was shifting subtly. The bonelike upper plate slowly shifted inwards with a shlooping sound to form an almost-humanoid chest. His fingers split and fragmented, again and again and again, multiplying the digits from 3 to about 6 or 7. His head remained physically mostly the same, although like the chest, the bony plate-thing retracted inwards, looking vaguely more humanlike. But the mouthless face and the eyestalks stayed on, so any human resemblance was fleeting at best. His legs ground and cracked, reversing direction. I could hear the boned scraping together into their new position, and I'm afraid that at this point I kind of lost my lunch.

When I wiped my mouth and looked up, whatever transformation thing had nearly completed. The reddish scales dissolved completely, replaced by motley blue-and-tan fur. The final creature was almost like a centaur, actually. Deer-like lower body, humanoid upper body. The crazy head was still unmistakably alien, as was the gigantic muscled tail sprouting from the lower body's rump.

The weird centaur-thing that Sek had become, noticed me as I tossed my cookies, so to speak. With a whiplike FWAPP, that evil-looking blade was just a couple millimeters away from my throat. I didn't dare to swallow, and just sort of gave him this bug-eyed stare of absolute terror. His eyestalks stared at me almost accusingly.

(I told you to remain out there with your duties,) he said in a low voice.

I licked my lips. "Woah, woah, Sek, um, jus'-just holdonasec here," I gibbered. My mind didn't even totally comprehend what was really going on, so I sort of dumbly blurted the first things that were coming to mind. "Uh, y'see, I, uh, I'd been noticing that you kinda like vanished and went in here every day and well I got curious and I poked my head in here and Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick what the hell was that about?" I said all in a rush.

He ignored my babbling. (Why are you here?)

I swallowed again, and began to actually recollect myself. "Well, I'd noticed that you were going away for a little while every day, so I wondered what you were up to, so I came in here and…" I trailed off nervously, eyeing the razor tail blade hovering near my jugular. He turned around and faced me fully, waiting for me to continue.

Aw, screw it, I thought to myself, might as well jump in with both feet. "Look," I began, trying to power my way past the worst of it, "just what the hell was that about? That…weird…shifty…changey…thing…?" I made little morphy gestures in the air with my hands, trying to articulate. In truth, although it creeped me out at first, now that my brain was actually working, it actually was pretty cool. Shape-shifting was another thing that came up often in the books I used to read. "Can I learn it?"

Sek The Amazing Blue Centaur sort of gave me a fish-eyed look, and then removed his tail from my throat. I breathed easier. Sort of.

(To answer that question,) he began slowly, (you need to know a bit more about what is happening on this world.)

"Huh?" Not my most intelligent response ever.

(There is a race,) he explained, (who views the galaxy as their battleground. Insatiable, they conquer their way across the stars…)

"That song sucked," I muttered to myself, remembering the second Star Wars prequel.

(…ruthlessly enslaving all they come across,) Sek finished, ignoring my little geeky interruption. (They are a race of parasites. Small grey creatures, resembling protoplasms, they are able to enter a host body through its ear canal and synchronize their neurons with the synapses of the host brain, effectively controlling all physical functions.)

I nodded, and was VERY glad I had stayed awake in biology class. "They take over your body?"

(Precisely,) he answered. (They are called the Yeerks.) When he said the name, there was a palpable surge of hatred and slow-burning anger in his telepathic voice. I blinked at the sudden rise in intensity. (To rob a creature of its very body is one of the greatest crimes in the galaxy,) he glowered. (They have used this ability to infiltrate and conquer countless species in this arm of the galaxy alone. They have infested the local leaders of this species, and have installed a puppet government. It is this government that I am observing.)

I raised my hand like I was asking a question in class. "Can I go a little off-topic? What the hell are you?"

(I am of a race called the Andalites,) Sek responded. (We are the only technologically advanced race that knows of the Yeerks and are able to combat them effectively.)

"How? Guns and stuff?"

(Guns, yes. But our greatest weapon, you have jus witnessed. We have a technology that allows us to absorb the DNA of a creature and absorb it into our bloodstream. We then use that to reconstruct the original creature, and essentially become a perfect genetic clone of the original.)

"Cool."

He looked nonplussed. I pressed on. "Can I learn it?" I repeated.

Sek's main eyes widened in surprise. (You would fight them as well?)

"Hells yeah. Better than making your damn gyroscopes."

He beckoned me closer, and I obliged. Turning to one side, he picked up a small blue cube form a nearby table. No more than a couple inches in diameter on each side, it seemed to glow faintly with its own inner light.

(Press your hand to one side and concentrate,) he instructed. I did so, and was surprised when a sort of electric tingle passed from the cube into my hand, and spread throughout my body. It only lasted for an instant, and when I blinked it was over and I felt no different.

"Is that it?" I complained, half-disappointed. No light show or anything. Kind of anticlimactic.

Sek made a gesture with his eyestalks that I had come to interpret as the equivalent of a nod. (Yes. However, be warned: This technology is not flawless. It--)

Suddenly, there was a pounding at the door outside. Sek spat out a curse that my mind translated as something I really shouldn't write down here. (The Yeerks!) he exclaimed. (I had suspected they had monitoring systems in place, but…)

I looked around, feeling kind of helpless. (Listen,) Sek commanded urgently. (There is not much time. I arrived on this world through a crash landing, so I cannot give you my own ship to use.)

"Wait, give me your ship? What the—what are you talking about?" I stammered, confused and a little overloaded.

Sekpidar Xiloscient looked at me gravely. (It seems the Yeerks have been watching us,) he said tersely. (They have seen me, and have seen me reveal myself to you. You will be killed or infested as an accomplice. Therefore you must flee the planet.)

My heart soared at the prospect of finally getting off this slime ball, but my joy was tempered by run-for-your-life terror. "What about you?"

(I shall destroy my possessions here,) Sek responded seriously. One look into his eyes, and I could tell he meant Business. (This technology can never fall into their hands. I will destroy this room, and myself, before falling into their grasp.)

I stood, dumbfounded. "But then—what about—"

Sek places his strange, thin alien hands on my shoulders. (I cannot be taken alive,) he told me gently. (You will be on your own from now on.)

My stomach squirmed. I'd usually been happy to get out from any parent's thumb, but this guy was the only relation or acquaintance I had on this strange world. If Sek got torched I would be a hobo, a homeless street dude. Or something.

The front door finally crashed in, and heavy feet began to clomp in the halls, storming towards the room. Sek snapped alert. (There is no more time,) he declared, and handed me a small object. (This has access codes to a small shuttle that I owned under my local persona. Now, flee!)

"Uhm…" I looked around. If the bad guys were coming through the door, how would I get out? The answer came in the form of a small window on one wall. It looked a little small, but with Evil Dudes of Doom at my heels, you'd be surprised how effective adrenaline can be. A quick running start and I vaulted through, landing and tumbling on the ground outside.

I picked myself up from the dry, dull red earth as I heard the door burst on. The whiplike FWAPP of Sek's tail sounded again, and alien screams of agony filled the air as he fought whatever goons the Yeerks had sent.

I winced and bolted. Okay, Scott, think man, think, I ordered myself. You've got bad guys on your ass, first things first you gotta lose 'em. Best way to lose pursuers…? I thought back to the billions of movies I had seen. Cheesy, yeah, but I couldn't think of anything else to call on at the moment. What was it the main character always does…? Oh. Duh. He hides in a crowd.

I swerved, and began to sprint down the rows of dwellings. Everything was within walking distance, since their society or whatever hadn't exactly invented Toyota.

In under a minute I reached the marketplace, and dove into the crowd of aliens, no questions asked. Sliding in between the creatures, I was so concentrated on taking cover and getting away that I didn't notice the first guy I shoved past jerk slightly and slump where he stood.

I crouched down in the tangle of reverse-jointed legs, and hoped I wouldn't be noticed by whatever Yeerk goons came after me. I realized that I hadn't actually seen the guys who burst in the door, so I didn't know who to look out for.

I hunkered down into a ball on the ground and squeezed my eyes shut and did something I hadn't done since I was a little kid: I concentrated on being invisible, with the if-I-can't-see-you-you-can't-see-me philosophy.

It was then that I noticed a weird gummy sensation in my hands. I looked down—and nearly shrieked. My hands! The fingers had begun to fuse together in the weirdest way, flesh sort of hanging like stringy cheese between them. It was the creepiest and most disturbing sight I had seen in almost my entire life. There is nothing to describe the horror of seeing your own hands melting and shifting and freaking out, the same body that you had lived with and known for more than 18 years, changing so drastically.

The moment I noticed it however, the fusion stopped. I flexed my fingers slightly, it was a bit like a permanent Live Long And Prosper salute. Very weird. Suddenly, it clicked. What was it Sek had said? "a technology that allows us to absorb the DNA of a creature…and become a perfect genetic clone of the original"? That guy I had brushed back there…I must have "absorbed" his DNA, however the hell I did that, and started the process thingy.

Sweet. I shrugged to myself. If you're trying to be inconspicuous, what better to do than blend in? I closed my eyes and began concentrating like I did before. And then, I felt the changed begin. I convinced myself it was all some freaky special effect or something. That helped. Only a little.

The first thing to change were my hands, as the fingers finished fusing together, then bulged out slightly at the tips to form the nutrient-absorbing things. From the tips, a coat of reddish scales began to wash up my arms like water, or like a pitcher being filled up with Kool-Aid that's got glitter in it. The scales spread up my arm, then flooded out across my entire body. I felt as dry as a bone, and all the moisture in my mouth vanished. My mouth actually vanished at that point too. Like the fingers, little strings of flesh sort of filled in the opening until I couldn't feel my jaw move anymore. I tried to move it, but it took me a second to realize that I just couldn't do it, those muscles just weren't there. Literally gone. A sudden panic overtook me. It was like the worst gag in the world, as I couldn't even make sounds in my throat.

Not that I had a throat anymore, either. That had sort of filled in without me noticing, and another wave of fear washed over me. I couldn't breathe! Couldn't swallow, talk, scream, nothing? I was totally and completely mute.

So it was with total silence that I felt my legs crunch together and lock rigid. Not a sound escaped me as I could FEEL my bones grinding together to create the reverse-jointed predatory legs. It was really weird. You could totally feel them shifting, your very internal organs themselves moving around, but none of it actually HURT. Like getting a cavity with heavy Novocain, you could feel the vibrations, but the actual pain wasn't there. MY feet changed as well. My toes sort of diverted to each side like parting hair, and then stretched out and hardened. My heel also lengthened and solidified, all forming three sharp talons that kind of shredded my tennis shoes. Dammit, those were some of my favorite shoes. I had really liked them.

My pelvis changed in some pretty shocking ways, too. No details here, folks. This isn't that kind of book.

Then, from the bottom of my lower back, I felt this massive sort of lump. It exploded out of the base of my spine like some kind of monstrous snake, shredding my jeans without a thought, this massive, coiled, thickly sinuous tail. I swear it was like 7 feet long, but it felt about a bazillion feet longer than that.

The ground seemed to drop away, and it took me a second to realize that I was growing a full foot taller, or more. Cool, I thought to myself. I could feel the rest of my limbs fill out accordingly in proportion.

My upper chest sort of hardened and bulged outwards, into the breastplate bony thing that I had noticed on the other Kelfiirians.

Finally, the top of my head prickled, then, sproot! Sproot! Two long tentacle-things shot up from my skull, as my hair sort of got sucked into my scalp like spaghetti. The ends of the tentacles split and opened slightly, and for a long, frozen moment I didn't even know what I was processing.

Eyes! Two new eyes! I could see from two different viewpoints at the same time! And they moved, too! Up, down, left right, backwards, diagonal, anywhere I pointed them, I could suddenly see. I could see in three directions at once. I could curl them over and stare myself in the face like a mirror. I could look at people behind me. I could look into the sky without moving my head an inch. It was insane. Insane!

My eyes sort of widened, then kept growing, roughly doubling in diameter as my vision sort of changed. Colors suddenly faded into the background, as other ones leapt forward. In a flash of insight, I understood. My eyes were partially seeing in the infrared spectrum. Kick-ass.

Finally, the changed were complete. With my eyestalks, I looked over my new body. My t-shirt, jeans and sneakers were not totally shredded and ruined, of course. I wrestled the scraps off, but it didn't feel all that weird without them. Suddenly tall, hulking, powerful, and so totally not anything from around Earth it wasn't funny, I was a far cry from the human I had been before.

And the crazy thing is, I wasn't the slightest bit concerned. I was overjoyed. Ecstatic! I had always dreamed of going beyond my boring human boundaries as a kid, and reading all my science fiction had only re-doubled my dreams of becoming something more than I was. Yet these were all just fantasies…daydreams that were now being realized.

Bumping against some of the other aliens around me, I was suddenly and forcibly reminded of my predicament. The Yeerks were still out there, and still looking around for the human Scott. Thankfully, they weren't looking for the creature I had become.

Nevertheless, I stayed low for a few hours. My watch band hadn't snapped, so I kept it on. Search parties of aliens came and went, searching the crowd. When they found my clothes, there was a great hubbub, and the search only doubled in intensity. Night began to fall, and they were still at it. Given the fact that they had the time to concentrate on me, I had to assume that they had already dealt with Sekpidar. And since he had vowed not to be taken alive, I had to assume that my guardian was dead. I didn't really grieve, though. Everything was still too unreal, like I was watching a movie or something.

Remembering the object he had given me, I had fished it out from my jeans pocket before the Yeerks found my clothes. I now took a look at it. It had a tiny screen, like those Game Boy Micros, but I could make out a string of weirdly alien characters. Trippy. No reason to assume these guys had developed the Greek alphabet, anyway.

Over the next hour or so I felt my way around to that big metal compound Sek had showed me earlier. In my new body, I felt like I was wearing a disguise. None of the guards gave me a second look as I walked through the gates. I don't know if "walked" is the right word to describe a gait that's sort of half-stalk, half-chicken-strut. These reverse-jointed legs looked funny to move around with, but really moved me quite fast over distances. Not bad.

In the compound, I found my way to a spaceport, obviously characterized by the ships lifting and landing everywhere. It was the same spaceport, actually, where the grey alien dudes had initially landed with me. I poked my way around, and eventually found the right ship through trial and error. Thankfully the stuff on the card corresponded to a little keypad on the outside. I punched in the access code, then poked random buttons inside until I found the "close the door" button.

I've always been a fiddler type of person, meddling with this and that. When fixing things, I tend to just press buttons until the thing does what I want it to do. And in the cockpit of a spaceship, there were so many buttons I didn't know where to start. Most button system s are designed with some sort of logic to them, like if you want to get to a DVD function you hit Menu)DVD. But here, with everything in literally alien letters, I had no clue where to start.

Eventually I found the "on" button. After a good while of fiddling more, I discovered that there was a sort of logbook type of thing, with coordinates of different planets set in.

This was totally right out of a sci-fi book, and I was acutely conscious of how cliché this all was. But hey, I'm a human-turned-alien on a planet in the middle of nowhere, how much more storybook can you get?

To cut a long story short, I searched around until I found a star system with 9 planets and a single yellow star for a sun, in the galaxy that I recognized as the Milky Way. If that wasn't our solar system then I was screwed. But I had burnt my bridges a looooong time ago, so there was no real reason not to go forward with the plan.

The flight itself was long and boring. No in-flight movie, no peanuts, no little pretzels. But on the plus side, no crying babies or cramped Coach-class seats. Hey, you win some, you lose some. The ship itself was almost organic in feel, all rounded and softly pinkish, with quiet sort of lighting and gizmos and doodads of unidentifiable purpose scattered in little rooms here and there.

As navigated by the ship and counted by my watch, the journey took about 5 days, 3 of which were spent in a weird whitely-shifting mass of who-the-hell-knows-what. Maybe it was like that light speed stuff in Star Trek, maybe I was just hallucinating, who knows. All I know is that it made the ship go a LOT faster.

Anyway, I got to Earth, living off of the nutrient bar things. Once in orbit, I realized I didn't have the first clue how to land one of these things. I mean, I had seen Apollo 13 about the re-entry burn, so I knew that you had to go in at a certain angle. But I was stuck in an alien body in some spaceship from the planet Whatever. I couldn't exactly call up Houston and ask them to walk be through it.

So, I just blindly aimed it at an angle that looked good, hit the engines, and hoped for the best. Soon, fire began to rage and burn around the outside of the ship. But this ship was made for entering and exiting atmospheres, so it handled the atmospheric burn nicely, even though I'm pretty sure Apollo would have gotten kinda toasted.

Then there I was, flying over North America in an alien spaceship. My four eyes stung with unshed tears. I was home! Sort of. Had to actually find where I lived, first.

Thinking back to Geography, it wasn't too hard. I found the right state, and took a stab in the dark as to what part of it held the city I was in. It was night-time, 3 AM according to my watch that I had kept through all of this. So there wasn't much chance of anyone seeing me. That's good. Didn't want to pop up on X-Files or whatever as the newest candid celebrity.

The actual landing itself, wasn't as much of a landing as it was a controlled crash. I knew absolutely zero about flying a ship or a plane or anything before. I looked for a runway or something, but the only long stretches of land were highways or the meadows close by them. So, I just trusted that the alien designers knew what they were doing, and just arced in to a meadow by a nearby forest.

Then, finally, with a crumple of branches and a final WHAMMMM, I smashed into the ground, creating a long furrow in the earth as the ship slid to a stop. I popped the hatch and stepped out. The cool night air revitalized me and brought a fresh wave of nostalgic emotion with it. I was finally home again, after all those long weeks and months on planet Whatever.

But…now that I was home, what could I do? I couldn't go back home, since the appearance of an alien would kind of cause a stir. I had an advantage in that I could absorb the nutrients out of things, so I didn't need to hit Safeway or whatever to get a decent meal.

But in the meantime, I had to assume that somebody would find the crash site, which meant I had to abandon it and make myself scarce. So, with only a tattered wristwatch to my name, I set out into the woods, and did not look back.