"What am I supposed to do be doing here?"
"Touch it."
For a minute I considered hitting Erek again. It couldn't make my hand worse but I might have felt better on the inside. Especially since, instead of taking me to the infirmary, he took me to the farm section of the petting zoo.
The building smelled of manure from the goats, sheep and pigs. Children fed the goats pellets from vending machines and tried to pet the chickens that ran away. Erek led me to the wild turkey pen.
"You want me to touch a turkey?" I stared at Erek, mentally ticking off the reasons not to walk off in a rage.
"Do you remember exactly what happened yesterday?" Erek asked. "You tripped and fell. You touched something that may have felt like an electrical shock. Do you remember that?"
"Yes," I said, annoyed. "You asked me that all ready. Yes, I touched some box thing. It wasn't the most important thing on my mind at the time, but yeah, I remember it."
Erek didn't let my annoyance stop him. "Well that thing you touched was a piece of Andalite technology. We're not sure what Elfangor was doing with it, or why he landed at that particular construction site in the first place, but what we are sure of is that it was fully functional when you touched it."
I wanted to ask him what the hell he was talking about. But after seeing him turn into a metal, robotic, talking dog thing it was kind of hard to act like I was the one with all of my marbles.
"What was it for?"
"It's called a morphing cube." Erek said, simply.
"Feel free to start giving me information in larger doses." I said. I was trying not to sound more frustrated than I all ready was. "You just told me my Dad was under the control of some alien slug and you showed yourself to me, which is raising more questions than it is answering. If I'm losing my mind I'd say I'm handling it pretty well, so why don't you just give me the whole story instead of these little bites of information."
"I'm sorry." Erek turned to the turkey. "Fair enough. As I said before the Andalites are the enemies of the Yeerks. What the Chee know is minimal. We only infiltrate and we learned what we could, but not all of us are in high ranking positions."
"They don't know what you are?" I said, summing up what he told me.
"No. As is I'm taking a huge risk telling you what we are," Erek said, giving me a serious look. "If they capture you and infest you, the Yeerk will know everything you know."
"Which isn't a lot," I pointed out.
"True. But even what you saw would be very valuable to a Yeerk. They're largely self-serving and like John told you, they'll do anything to get a leg up in their Empire."
"How do you know what happened at the site? Did John tell you everything?"
"The Chee are connected by an advanced network. So while I was busy organizing a cook out for the Sharing, I was also watching your encounter with the Yeerks through John's eyes. At the moment, I'm being read the riot act by a few others just for having this discussion and even more are weighing in and understand why I'm taking this risk." Erek continued before I could interrupt again. "The Andalites are extremely advanced and powerful, but the Yeerks are elusive and have the advantage of numbers. They can get lost in a population while vetting a planet for enslavement and watch the Andalites slip by them, oblivious. And even if the Andalites put down an invasion on one world the Yeerks could be consolidating control on ten more.
"The morphing technology gives the Andalites the ability to infiltrate. To take the form of any person or animal and walk freely among the enemy populations."
"Sort of like the Navajo with the Japanese," I offered.
Erek smiled, and nodded.
"Kind of," he said, apparently glad to see that I was keeping up. "Only in this case, the Andalites have a disadvantage. Eventually they do have to return to their natural forms or they remain trapped in the morph forever."
"And this 'morphing' technology…I have it?"
"That's the theory." Erek said. He nodded to my hand. "How's the fist?"
"A mere flesh wound," I said, trying to do my best Black Knight imitation. It wasn't as sarcastic sounding as I had intended it, but then, I was slowly starting to be less angry with Erek and more at myself. He was only trying to tell me the truth – even if I was convinced that I was hallucinating now - and I hit him for it.
"If you acquire the turkey and morph, when you morph back, the damage to your fingers should be repaired."
Oh well, I thought. One of two things would happen. I would "acquire" the turkey and morph into it or I wouldn't and I would snap awake in my bed at the hotel room, or at home, or in the mental hospital I had been committed to whenever my break with reality occurred.
"Okay," I said. "How do I acquire it?"
"Touch it."
"Of course." I couldn't fight the urge to roll my eyes. When I got home, or snapped out of this delusion, I was going to scour every dream dictionary possible to find out what touching a turkey was supposed to symbolize.
With my other hand, the one that wasn't still throbbing, I reached for the turkey closest to the cage. It was a fat black thing. A tom, or a male, with thick black feathers and a large red caruncle (that red fleshy bit below the neck), it reminded me of the wild turkeys you can see in the rural areas around my home. It continued to peck at the ground as I touched its back, apparently used to people reaching out and touching it.
"Now concentrate on it," Erek said.
"It's kind of hard to-" I stopped midsentence as the turkey looked up and then seemed to go limp. I yanked my hand back. "What's happening to it?"
"Relax," Erek said, putting his arm on my shoulder. "It's a failsafe to keep Andalites from being hurt while they acquire dangerous animals. It wears off shortly."
I wasn't so sure. The turkey seemed to be asleep at first. I took it as a good sign that it still appeared to be breathing and I heaved a sigh of relief when it got back up and resumed looking for food.
"Now, concentrate again," Erek instructed. "Try to imagine what it's like to be a turkey."
Is this the part where the camera crew steps around the corner? I wondered. But I played along and focused. At the very least it was a story to tell the grandkids later in life.
"Okay, I'm imagining I'm a turkey." I closed my eyes for a minute and then opened them. I was about to make some gobble, gobble joke when a sudden spasm went through my body. It wasn't painful, but there was an uncomfortable sensation as something inside me felt different. "What was that?"
Erek placed his hand over my heart as I began to choke and gasp for breath.
"Your heart and lungs have started the morph. You have to keep going. Keep focusing on the turkey."
It made about as much sense as everything else, so I didn't see what I had to lose. As I focused on the turkey, the strange sensations and sounds happened in my body. Out of the corners of my eyes, which were sliding to the sides of my head, I saw a group of kids being lead by an adult.
"They can't see you," Erek assured me. "I'm projecting an image of two kids feeding the turkey.
I tried to respond, only to find that my throat and esophagus were shrinking. The skin grew tighter and rougher around my throat and over the rest of my body. The hairs on my arms seemed to "suck" into my skin. My muscles became flabby and smooth as the bones in my hands and arms twisted and contorted.
The strangest thing was there was no pain. And even though I could feel my brain getting smaller and my head shrinking I didn't feel anxiety or fear.
It was stranger, having Erek helping me out of my clothes. As my feet grew smaller and began to contort, for example, he gently helped me out of the shoes and socks.
Though my eyesight was becoming weaker I could see him placing the shoes on the floor and folding the rest of my clothes and placing them in a neat stack. I suppose I could have felt as freaked out as when he asked me to go to the bathroom with him, but frankly I couldn't stand to have any more clothes damaged and in any case no one was that thoughtful—or no one my age anyway.
My waist and my belly exploded all around me. My legs became thicker and fuller and my feet became skinny and hard. Five toes melted into three smaller toes. As my flesh became thicker and fuller I could feel something sprouting from behind me. I cocked my head to one side and saw several thick, black feathers forming a kind of fan all around my backside.
A hard yellow beak replaced my lips and mouth and my human nose was now two narrow holes right beneath my carnucle.
Something was in front of me. I looked up. The figure wasn't moving so it wasn't a threat. I looked at the ground and began walking.
"Sean? Can you hear me."
Three more larger figures were moving around the edge of the wall. My brain recognized them as living things. I could hear their chatter and to some degree I could smell them and make out the color of their clothes and hair. But since they weren't making a move to attack me they didn't bother me.
I turned attention to the ground. Something moved.
"Sean?"
A bug was crawling on the ground. I pecked at it three or four times before grabbing it in my beak. In two quick snaps the bug was in my belly.
"Mom look!"
A smaller figure, just a few feet above me approached.
"Oh, honey be careful."
"Careful kiddo," someone else said.
"What's it doing outside of the cage?"
"Somebody call a zookeeper."
The smaller figure approached me. Light bounced off of something on its wrist and I moved in to investigate. I pecked at it.
"Ouch!" The kid started screaming. Agitated, I started flapping my wings and freaking out.
Moments later, someone grabbed me. Panic! I continued to struggle.
"Are there supposed to be two males in this pen?"
"Sir, wait!"
I was placed back on the ground. But the worse of my problems were not over. Suddenly I was confronted with another male. Its plumage stood out in my vision and as it puffed up, I took the gesture as a threat.
"Warble, warble."
I puffed up my chest and flapped my wings. The intruder did the same.
"Look, they're about to fight!"
"Awesome."
More commotion agitated me. Loud noise meant a threat and the intruder was only making it worse by attacking.
"Sean, stop it!" Something grabbed me and carried me away. My struggle was futile but I didn't care. Something bigger than me was trying to take me and I didn't want to die.
"Sean, its Erek. Listen to me!"
Something in my mind snapped. I remembered that I was Sean, a human boy on vacation with a man that was no longer my father. I stopped struggling as I recognized Erek, who sat me down and knelt down to face me eye to eye.
"Now think on me," he said simply. "Speak to me. What is your name?"
Sean, I said…or didn't say. Erek…can you hear me?
"Yes," Erek said, sighing with relief. The gesture seemed strange coming from a robot, but it was such a small grain of rice on the big scale of strange things today. "And so can other people if you're not careful, so you must always remember to direct your thoughts at me."
Erek…I'm a turkey.
"I know."
Did I just eat a bug?
"Er, well…you didn't have control of the turkey's mind," he explained. "It wasn't your fault."
The thought should have disgusted me. But as I focused on the turkey's thoughts, I was actually kind of fascinated. Though I for certain knew that Erek was an alien android thing, my turkey brain only thought of it as another creature. If he wasn't being a threat, or making an attempt to attack, the turkey was simply curious.
Where are we? I asked, looking around. I saw what looked like broom on the wall and some shelves.
"In a maintenance closet," Erek said. "You walked outside of my projection and caused a bit of commotion so I had to get you out of there. Two other Chee are working on spinning it out of control. Uh…the bright side is we were right about you being able to morph."
Yeah, I said, sarcastically. That's the bright side all right. Did I hurt that kid?
"No. You just pecked at her watch. She was more scared than hurt."
Thank God.
"Are you read to be human again?"
I think so. You said the Andalites have a two hour limit?
"You do too," Erek pointed out. "If you remain in any morph for too long you'll be trapped. Now, focus on yourself again. Imagine looking in a mirror and just think of being that boy. Being Sean again."
I get it, thank you.
Morphing back to human form was easier, but it didn't happen the same way. I actually grew to my normal size before any of the turkey's features began to change.
Wow, can you imagine eating a turkey this big? I joked.
"As long as it's not you, of course," Erek countered.
Good point.
The image of a steaming hot turkey on a plate, stuffed with homemade bread and seasoned with herbs made the process quicker. To say nothing of having my long neck stretched across a cutting block and decapitated with an axe.
My feathers were the last thing to go as they melted into my skin. The darker shade (dark meat) seemed to shimmer and flow like a river dousing a fire as my natural skin color returned. And I was naked.
"Um…"
Erek handed me my clothes and turned around. As I got dressed I checked my body to make sure there were no more turkey parts. Everything was in order and, as Erek promised, my hand was no longer throbbing from when I'd hit him.
"You were right," I said. The realization hit me harder than…well, harder than I hit Erek. "You were telling me the truth about everything. I mean…my Dad?"
"He's a controller," Erek said, calmly. "And tomorrow you are going back home with him."
"But…"
As I got my shoes on, so many questions raced through my mind. But the funny thing about me, about the way Dad raised me, is that I could see more answers than questions. I looked at Erek and took a deep breath. I had to start with at least one question.
"What am I supposed to do?"