<We're an old people, older than yours, and so we've developed quite a lot of technology.> He turns a hand over in a shrug that doesn't involve shoulder movement. There's yellowish bare skin on the inside of his palm.

Nothing here is much stranger than anything else that's happened to Alloran in the past few decades. It's hard to get much more inexplicable than that encounter with Crayak and the creature he was testing.

<If I can touch an animal and acquire its DNA, I can morph into it. Humans included. If there's a limit it's in the hundreds, at least. Why? If you want a demonstration I can morph, but I'm not looking to acquire any more humans just yet.>