The Shape-Shifting Cowboy, Part Ii

“You've probably figured it out by now, I am not really a human being, my home is three whole galaxies away, and the form that you now are seeing “is due to the fact that my species can sample and replicate strange DNA, but every few weeks I have to recharge, I'm sorry that you saw me that way. “This image once belonged to an old man, I touched his corpse at a funeral home, didn't want to copy one of the living, so I adopted his form as my own. “I made myself look like his young self though, felt it would be easier to fit it, and in this form, I feel all that men do, I know it's enough to make your head spin...” Jenna just gasped, her mind still was reeling, Calvin said,”Come on babe, please talk to me.” Jenna shook her head,”How...what? No...how...why? What you're saying...it just cannot be!” Calvin nodded sadly,”Yes dear, it is, but if you give me a chance to explain, I think you'll see we're not so different, that what drives me is a common refrain. “You see though my people can change their shape, most of them feel a strong need to conform, it's even written into their own genes, go-along-to-get-along, it's the norm. “But I'm a genetic aberration, excessive individual traits, one-in-a-thousand, they lock us away, put us down as a dangerous mistake. “I knew once they figured what I really was they would all be coming for my head, rather than wait to be jailed or cut down I stole myself a spaceship and I fled. “I wandered the stars for three hundred years, where I could live freely, anywhere, but there's little life in the universe, and intelligence is incredibly rare. “I search to other whole galaxies, found sentient life on time within each, both were as tyrannical as my home, fear no safe-haven would I ever reach. “And when I came here to the Milky Way, I admit I was running out of hope, this galaxy hes less life than others, despite the vastness of size and of scope. “But then in a backwater spiral arm I stumbled upon radio transmissions, traced them back to their source, this planet, and found a world that was truly a vision. “I'd never seen so much life on one world, and a species just entering space... I landed in the ocean near Long Island, I just had to go explore the place... CONTINUES IN PART III.