“I went through online videos and for each pin I picked out fifty people who looked similar enough to each of the people I’d be giving pins to, then averaged it out. When the average was too close to you guys, I pushed it out away from the norm.”

It was so close to being me, to the point that I could believe someone could get a witness description of me and think this face fit the bill, and it was wholly not me at the same time. I changed my expression in the mirror, seeing how the face moved. Moving the hand with the pin one way and moving my face another created a brief visual distortion, like what happened when trying to take a panoramic picture that included something moving.

Reminiscent of things, enough that it got my heart rate going.

“And—yeah, Victoria, you don’t want to do that. It helps if you actually wear the hair clip, duh. You shouldn’t run into problems if you do. And Sveta, I put together two options, but I’m not sure how well option two will work. I didn’t have you with me to try it and test it, so I had to guess, based on things. Let’s try smooth.”

“Smooth?” Sveta asked.

“I made this one a necklace. Here. Bend down and I’ll put it on.”

Sveta bent down, leaning hard into the sink for balance as she did. As Kenzie fiddled, Sveta looked up at me, her eyes searching my face.

“There. Double-tap.”

Sveta did, moving her whole hand to tap, instead of moving fingers as someone else might.

As had happened to me, the white-black checkerboard pattern overlaid her, loose and hovering over her skin. It slowly moved to the appropriate surfaces, and then settled. The change was minor, but it was because Sveta was bundled up in a huge coat. Her face had more skin tone, the features less different from her usual face than my current face was from mine. Her hands looked normal. She stared down at them.

“Maybe take that off, so we can be sure,” Kenzie said, poking at Sveta’s coat.

When Sveta nodded, I helped her out of the coat, folding it over my arm. The necklace took a second to adapt, the checkerboard wrapping around her arms and hands.

When the checkerboard map was settled, it became skin. Flesh, from shoulder to fingertip, tattooed heavily down the arms in a design similar to the forest green backgrounds with orange animals that Sveta had painted onto her arms. Unlike the paint, however, they’d faded out as any-year-old tattoo might.

“Can you move your hands around? I’m wondering if the smoothing works.”

Sveta turned her hands over, looking at the palms. She didn’t move her hands.

“Svettaaaaa,” Kenzie said. She gave Sveta a bit of a push. “Come on! I want to know if this worked.”

“Oh. Okay. What did you want?”

“Move your hands. Do stuff.”

Sveta did. The movements of her hands didn’t have the mechanical quality.