Oh yeah, Lucy thought.

I am gonna trick myself out.

A screen had opened up before her like she was customizing a car in a video game, only instead of a car, it was…her.

Is that really what I look like?

Lucy had thought she had a pretty good idea of her appearance from her Awareness skill, but in the rotating display of the shop, she was much more vibrant green than she expected, and somehow more…blobby. Maybe she shouldn’t have given that spiky organism such a tough time about its appearance after all. Of course, her form did have a rather pleasing amorphous, lack of symmetry thing going on that on second thought she decided was very…distinguished.

Besides the rotating display of her body, the only thing on the screen was a small box of text in the upper right that listed her “Evolution Points,” of which she currently had 9. There was also an icon she didn’t recognize in the top left.

She was a bit disappointed, until she mentally hovered over part of her body. A pop-up message appeared at the end of a line pointing to her outer membrane, asking if she wanted to spend 4 EP to upgrade the sturdiness of her bilipid membrane. When she focused on the inner part, it offered to increase permeability control for a single EP.

She assumed that would make abilities like Oxidize Sulfur a more efficient way of gaining points/energy, along with any other benefits of increased control. She was excited to see that she could afford something, but she wasn’t sure it was what she was looking for right now. She needed something that would increase her survivability immediately. Increased sturdiness would work as a back-up, but she hoped for something that would directly improve her combat capability.

Next she moved inside her body and the interface highlighted her cytoplasm, the liquid that filled her cell. For 2 EP she could gain the ability to temporarily increase production of a certain enzyme, allowing her to break things down faster once they were inside of her body.

It would probably be a more useful ability than it seemed at first glance, since she figured there was a pretty good chance she’d end up fighting against viruses or other organisms that could poison or infect her some way or another. But still not the best right now.

Lucy expected to see two more areas she’d be able to upgrade: her strands of RNA and the bundle of proteins she’d felt inside her when she’d activated Protein Spike. But as hard as she looked, she could only get the interface to highlight her RNA. Eventually she gave up and just selected the floating strands.

To her surprise, the shop interface closed, and a completely new image replaced it.

She saw a zoomed-in view of her RNA, a multicolored single-helix strand stretched out and enlarged before her. It was only a tiny fraction of her total genetic makeup, she knew.

The interface highlighted five segments of RNA and labeled them: Awareness (Meta), Gene Stealer, Protective Barrier, Reform Body, Protein Spike.

One for each of her skills.

Ah, so her skills were “stored” in her strands of RNA.

Interesting, she thought. Apparently, the System didn’t count using the Spike as a skill, only producing it. She assumed this meant that skills were more related to the physical makeup of her body than anything else, and how she made use of those abilities was up to her.

For example, she assumed she couldn’t just learn the skill “Shoot Spike”, but she could use a more advanced form of Reform Body to build a structure in her body that would allow her to shoot spikes anyways.

It was a fitting system, she thought. The mutations that led to evolutionary change affected organisms physically, but it was up to her to decide how to use the structures of her body to her advantage.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

She looked back to the zoomed-in strand of RNA spinning before her.

The segment for Awareness shimmered with an emanating golden light, and she remembered the message about (Meta) skills transferring between evolutions. Did that mean she would lose all the others? As she considered what she knew about nucleic acids, she wondered if perhaps she would be able to recombine the sequence according to her will when she Evolved.

If so, Evolving would be extremely powerful. Most species had to rely on chance mutations over millions of years to end up with anything useful for survival, but if she could choose what to evolve, designing her body however she saw fit…

She selected the Spike Production genome and saw a detailed breakdown of which proteins the skill used, along with what looked like a blueprint of how a spike was assembled, built up by enzymes on a protein scaffold until it was solid enough to kill. She briefly looked through the others, but there was nothing she could change right now. The diagram for Awareness was far more complicated than she could make sense of and involved what looked like mathematical equations, while Reform Body was far simpler, showing only her body stretching in various ways as it was pulled by little groups of motor-proteins.

Gene Stealer was what she expected: a two-in-one enzyme that acted as both scalpel to separate genetic material and sutures to stitch it into her own sequence.

Not bad, for a one-celled organism! It functioned basically like CRISPR, as far as she could tell, and like the genome-sequence scientists used to edit genes, it would give her some serious options.

She wondered if she might be able to use that particular enzyme to alter her own genome without inserting new information. Could she just rearrange what she already had?

That felt like dangerous territory for her first steps. Lucy didn’t want to end up accidentally slicing off some crucial gene sequence. She could picture Jade’s head shaking in disappointment as Lucy’s membrane suddenly disappeared and she dissolved into the water with no enemies even in sight.

She carefully exited the Gene Stealer sequence like she was putting down a loaded gun. She would mess around with that when she was a bit more experienced. And bigger. Since she only had the one cell, if she messed something up now, it was over. In the future she could try it out on only a certain segment of her body.

Finally, there was Protective Barrier, the diagram of which showed little green molecules rushing out of her RNA strand into a thin layer outside of her outer membrane. In the diagram it glowed like some enchanted shield, though Lucy hadn’t experienced anything like that yet, or been able to use the skill at all. Now that she understood which segment of RNA needed to activate to produce the green molecules, she hoped she’d be able to make use of the skill, though from the diagram she got the sense that the skill only created the molecules, and she’d have to learn to use the proteins from Reform Body to bring them to her membrane, then allow them to pass through, then get them to form a shield somehow.

Overall, she was…

Overwhelmed.

She felt like she had when she’d first started accumulating notes for her PhD dissertation. This was a small amount of data in comparison, but it was all so…strange.

Lucy was used to reading about and observing this stuff, not putting it into practice.

She took a deep inhalation, feeling the molecule exchange with the warm water around her and allowing the sensation to reassure and calm her mind.

She had written her dissertation, and she had defended it. She would make sense of her new situation the same way, by breaking it down into small, manageable parts and working through it.

The Shop made sense. It was a simple interface for purchasing upgrades, with more structures available in the future.

The RNA interface, on the other hand, reminded her more of when she’d opened an old classmate’s binder by accident instead of her own. It had been full of engineering blueprints, and for a long moment Lucy had stared at the blueprints and numbers trying to make sense of them before her brain caught up and told her they weren’t her notes. It had been like trying to read hieroglyphics.

Lucy got the sense that she might have some control over the system in the future, but for now it was way way over her head. She might have been tempted to try anyways, but the interface gave her no option for moving things around or inputting new blueprints at this time.

She satisfied herself with the knowledge that altering her skills might be an option later on with some version of Gene Stealer. Taking a deep breath, Lucy exited the RNA menu and opened up the Shop again. She still had those 9 Evolution Points to spend, and she intended to make as good a use of them as possible before she had to fight again.

This time, she selected the icon she hadn’t recognized, and it opened a drop-down menu. As she saw what it contained, Lucy’s worries eased a great deal. Her crinkled membrane relaxed and she let out a deep rush of water molecules in relief.

She might have to work out the complexity of her RNA system in the future, but for now, Lucy was going shopping.