The Curio rolls from its side, onto its back, stretches its limbs to the shivering point, then rolls on its stomach, gets on all fours, and stands up straight.
A male voice offscreen says, “Here. Don’t forget the mirror.”
“Thanks,” says the first voice. “I almost forgot.”
A hand, gloved in white latex, sets a square mirror flush with the outside of the terrarium. The cure approaches the mirror, strikes poses in it, sticks out its pink tongue, inflates its cheeks, makes laughing sounds.
“They love that stuff.”
“They do. Okay. Let’s start.”
A hand, gloved in white latex, reaches into the terrarium, fits the hook of a mini peppermint candy cane on the shoulders of the cure. Pink and white blotches arise on its body and spread. As the blotches grow together, their color and contrast intensify. Within fifteen seconds, the cure, with the exception of its pupils and claws, is countershaded in the colors of the candy cane: red on the top of the head, the back, and the backs of the limbs; white on all other parts.
The cure stands before the mirror, head tilted one way, then the other. It turns to the right, looks in the mirror, then turns to the left and looks in the mirror. It does a couple jumping jacks.
“What a goof!”
“Adorable. Okay. Now the chair and the ottoman.”
A hand, gloved in white latex, lowers a cure-proportioned green plastic chair and black plastic ottoman into the terrarium, in front of the mirror.
The cure, candy cane still over its shoulders, sits in the chair, puts its feet up on the ottoman, and observes, in the mirror, the white of one eye turn green and the other turn black, while egg-shaped black spots arise on its red parts and egg-shaped green spots arise on its white parts. The cure turns its head, licks at the candy cane. Its tongue is white with a thin red line running down the middle, black dots on one side, green dots on the other.
“You get a picture of that? The tongue on the candy cane?”
“We’ll take a still off the disc.”
“Yes! I can’t wait to show Ragnar. Man, that was adorable!”
“Totally adorable. And now, last but not least…”
A hand, gloved in white latex, reaches into the terrarium and drapes a blanket-like square of raw denim over the Curio’s outstretched legs.
Near instantly, little hills of swelling appear upon the cure’s face. It clutches at its face, as other such little hills arise on the rest of its body, including its eyes and its palms and its tongue, which, mid-lick, is maximally extended.
The cure throws itself onto the floor of the terrarium, kicking off the denim, stands up, painsinging, and begins to revert to its original pallor, as the hills, swelling further, burst and burst.
A retching sound is heard, followed by a splashing sound.
* * *
—
A pale, entirely depilated cure is sleeping on its side, in the center of an empty, cubical terrarium, covered in a denim blanket. “Sub F21, Cham 6.3” is scrawled in black marker on the front of the terrarium’s lower-left corner. A man offscreen says, “So to review: The previous subject F20, after being dosed with Chameleon 6.3, was given the same sequence of colored objects to assimilate as F19, up until the denim blanket, which we replaced with a denim-colored polyester blanket. F20 assimilated the denim-colored polyester blanket without incident, and very adorably I might add, but when, after that, we replaced the denim-colored polyester blanket with the denim blanket, F20 experienced the same adverse reaction as F19 had to the denim blanket. So we thought: ‘Well, we definitely have a problem with denim and Chameleon 6.3, but how big a problem?’ The question we’re trying to answer here, with F21, is whether the problem is denim qua denim, or if maybe it’s more like denim as a fifth or sixth material to assimilate. So with subject F21 here, as you can see, the denim blanket will be the first material the subject’s body will try to assimilate.”
CUT.
Twelve minutes later. The cure rolls onto its back, stretches its limbs to the point of shivering, then bucks to all fours and rises to its feet, throwing off the denim blanket and painsinging. Its body is covered in swelling hills that, shortly, burst.
“Well, so…” says the man.
“Yeah,” says a woman, offscreen.
“Denim qua denim,” the man says.
“Yeah,” says the woman.
* * *
—
A pale, entirely depilated cure is sleeping on its side, in the center of an empty, cubical terrarium, covered in a denim blanket. “Sub G03, Cham 7.0” is scrawled in black marker on the front of the terrarium’s lower-left corner. The cure rolls onto its back, stretches its limbs to the point of shivering, then bucks to all fours and rises to its feet, throwing off the denim blanket. The cure is covered in what appears to be acne vulgaris. Singing its painsong, it stumbles over to the mirror, examines itself, purses its lips, and with the rounded sides of two of its claws, squeezes a carbuncle on the side of its throat, causing the carbuncle to rupture cloudy fluid.
“Oh, yuck. Just…yuck!” says a man, offscreen.
“Well that’s a bummer,” says a woman, offscreen, “but try and try again, I guess, right?”
The cure throws itself against the wall of the terrarium, exploding other carbuncles, spreading more cloudy fluid, falls, rises, throws itself again, and appears to be poised to rise a third time, when a fist, gloved in white latex, reaches into the terrarium and crushes its head against the floor.
* * *
—
A pale, entirely depilated cure is sleeping on its side, in the center of an empty, cubical terrarium, covered in a denim blanket. “Sub J87, Cham 9.13” is scrawled in black marker on the front of the terrarium’s lower-left corner. “Well,” says a man offscreen, “we’ve heard from on high that 9.13 is Team Chameleon’s last shot. After this, we’ll all be moving on to other projects, so I’d like to take a moment here, before J87 awakens—I’d like to take a moment to say that, even if we’ve failed here, and Chameleon goes the way of Antennae, Beardo, Cyclops, and, I don’t know, any of the other PerFormula dreams that have proven to be too far ahead of current science for us to fulfill…I’d like to say I’m proud of all of us, of the work we’ve done here these last few months, and although it’s highly unlikely that any of the teams of which we become a part in the future will ever have the same exact composition as Team Chameleon, I believe with all my heart that anytime two or more of us do end up on the same team, the Team Chameleon spirit we’ve all developed here together will infect—to its benefit—the team on which the aforementioned two-or-more of us find themselves having been assigned to. In the meantime, our hopes are high for Chameleon 9.13. We’ve got the bubbly at the ready, and whatever happens, we’re gonna drink that stuff. In fact—let’s uh…Why don’t you pop it, Dr. Jennings.”