Isabelle followed her to her office and jumped up on the window sill, looking for birds, but there was no motion in the tree. Even the caterpillar Margaret had watched spin its cocoon was no longer visible. The fuzzy oblong shelter that hung from the underside of a leaf hid the miracle of transformation going on inside.
That’s what I need, she thought. A complete makeover. Rebirth into a younger, more sensuous body. One capable of feeling something again.
She sat down at her desk and leafed through her files. Notes for a paper on gender-specific behavior patterns, recommendations for using the Tilbey Transfer process in psychoanalysis, speculation on why intelligence and “quality of life” seemed to be inversely proportional—as if either quantity could be measured objectively. Even so, she could get a dozen papers out of the data, gain notoriety, maybe even win awards.
Oh joy.
It was nearly dark when she returned to the window, reached out, and snapped off the branch.
Fitting the electrodes onto a cocoon was easier than attaching them to a moving, struggling insect. Margaret was glad of that; she didn’t have the experience the technicians had. Putting the helmet on herself proved hardest, and pulling the chair around so she could reach the switch. But she eventually got it.
She hesitated with her hand on the switch. Sweat beaded her forehead, and not just from the exertion. She didn’t know how long it would take for the metamorphosis to occur, nor how long a butterfly lived once it emerged from the cocoon, nor how her body would handle a weekend in a couch with a caterpillar in control. The caterpillar might actually do OK; it was ready for a transition, after all.
So was she. She would try to return if she could, but some part of her that she was afraid to examine too closely didn’t really care if she made it back. Not after Isabelle.
She had considered shouldering aside the cat again, this time permanently, but she couldn’t subject such a free and happy creature to the trade. Besides, she was an aging, frumpy, depressed woman who knew she ought to seek professional help, but she was still a scientist, and there was another world waiting to be explored.
She threw the switch.
Inside the cocoon, a spark of consciousness blossomed. Margaret was self-aware only in the way that the universe is self-aware through its creations. At the moment she was the universe.
But as time passed she began to understand that there was a boundary, and she felt an undeniable urge to push beyond it. She struggled, became aware of unfamiliar limbs, and learned to control them until she could tear away the threads that held her prisoner. Emergence brought blessed relief; unfurling the wide, flat wings brought joy.
Vision took a moment to comprehend. It was segmented, gridlike. Different than… than what? Than not seeing, apparently.
Cold, sterile machinery, dappled with blinking lights and festooned with wires, stood all around. A mound of pale flesh, incomprehensibly large and ponderous, lolled in a chair nearby. But across the laboratory, beyond the open window, evening sunlight bathed the trees and flowers with its warm, beckoning light, and the scent of nectar and pollen tugged at her as well.
Margaret fanned her wings until they dried completely, then she flapped them harder and lifted into the air. She didn’t need to think about how to do it; instinct guided her motions.
Her wings were works of art. The world around her was an endless sea of delights. The rapture she felt as she fluttered through the air into it all was indescribable.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to try.