Synopsis The world was broke. Times were hard. The future was narrowing, darkly. Janie Girard lived alone in her world like others who had become single and frightened. The fact that the now-impoverished government was posturing for an out-and-out war between all peoples was evident. She was a young widow who lived with Captain Johnny, her Cockatoo, and her tenant, Everett Abraham. They shared her run-down Victorian house, in a once-beautiful, affluent neighborhood, full of foreclosed, empty houses. On a bus, Janie discovered that she had a "twin". Dee Mackey, her "other", lived with her husband Tate, a disabled veteran, who was being treated by Dr. Frank Laramy, a court psychiatrist that dealt with the hopeless and criminally insane. He told Tate that he was working on a remedy to cure his ills. He also would replace the eye he had lost in the war by using a serum made from various DNA particles found in human, plant, and animal cells. He promised him a new life where nothing would harm him, and success in whatever endeavor he chose would be possible with his "Mega Mix." Laramy was a lunatic, himself, and an impassioned amateur geneticist. He mixed cell fragments of random life forms to make myriad one-of-a-kind beings. He had no idea what an unstoppable fix he was creating. When his "things" got out of control, his mission became evil; he morphed into one of his own creations, regretting giving being born the first time
