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As soon as Marla opened her eyes and saw the patch of sunlight on the wall of her bedroom, she knew that something was amiss. The light from the east-facing window above her bed had fallen in more or less the same place the morning before – low on the wall, stretching partway across the floor – so if she’d woken at the usual time again, there was nothing about its location that should have surprised her. But after a moment she realised that the illuminated surfaces were glistening, catching the sunlight and casting it back with an uncharacteristic sheen. It was as if she’d mopped the floor and the linoleum was still wet – except that she hadn’t, and even if water had leaked into her room from a spill elsewhere, the same slickness continued up across the wall in a thoroughly gravity-defying manner. So it was more like a layer of varnish than water, but that made even less sense.
Marla turned beneath the sheets and began to rise, steadying herself with her right hand on the mattress. As she sat on the edge of the bed, prepared to step off it, she looked down and saw that her left arm was absent from elbow to fingertips, and her left leg had vanished from the knee to the toes.
In a world where the cells that make up our bodies are not committed to any one organism, Marla is confronted by the fickleness of her cytes, and resolves to understand them with help from Ada, a centuries-old Flourisher. Swappers like Ruth embrace fluidity, and meet with others to exchange cytes, seeking the perfect mix. But Ruth faces her own crisis, and as the technology to manipulate cytes advances, all three are drawn into a struggle to shape the future of life.
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