I lived with my father until I was eight. My early memories are patchy, with a few brief flashes of lucidity. I would have been almost seven when my "earliest memory" occurred. I am sure I must have babbled something about it to my father, but with the words I had at the time I cannot have made myself clear. At most he might have thought I had had a vivid dream, and in fact I have now and then wondered myself. Which is more probable: that I and at least three other children spontaneously realigned our chromosomes and separately manufactured similar false memories to account for it? Or that each of us in turn met tall, leathery aliens with medical technology far beyond anything conceived by our civilisation?

But I must tell the story as I know it, right or wrong. I and my father were presumably visiting a friend or relative that day. I daresay the standard formalities were observed: the speaking to me loudly, slowly and clearly; the pat on my shoulder whilst expressing a suitable sense of my condition with a gentle sigh and a shake of the head just above my estimated range of vision. At some point I was released into a tidy garden to amuse myself and benefit my health.

I heard someone calling me by my usual name: "Thulie! Thulie!" softly but insistently, and on a slightly strange intonation. I went down the path, away from the house, to a wooden back gate. Someone, of the voice, opened the gate for me and led me through. Tall, is what I remember, with a frontage recognisable as a face but differently drawn. The hand that held mine was hardish and very long-fingered. We walked for a minute or two, then others of the same type met us and began to talk with the first. They gave me something I recognised as a sweet and put in my mouth. I was not unhappy to hear them speaking an unfamiliar language; most talk was incomprehensible to me anyway, and as long as the tone was friendly or gentle I rather liked to hear it happening. I remember a woody sort of scent there, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but something I had never noticed before.

I expected that at some point one of the tall people would talk to me, so when I had finished the sweet I was willing enough to be lifted on to a tree stump upon which my face was nearly level with theirs. It was the first one who approached my face and addressed me.

"I like you," he/she/it said. (Let me choose "she", not for any sense of the gender that I had at the time, but simply because both Fan and Summer later told me their mothers had referred to the speaker as "she". Fan, Tamanna and Summer are like me. They will all come into this story in their time.)

"I want to talk with you," she added.

I was perfectly willing. I waited for her to say more. I don’t suppose I have the conversation word for word, but this is how it shaped up.

"We will talk then," she said. I smiled, hoping she knew how to get me to do my talking; it was not something I could do by myself. She must have done her investigations well, because she certainly started off in the correct pattern.

"What is your NAME?"

"Fooly."

"Thulie, good boy; how OLD are you?"

"Fick."

"Thulie, well done; where do you LIVE?"

"Lohempig."

"That’s nice, Thulie; and which ROAD in Low Hempstead?"

"Bigg go."

"Very good, Thulie; which HOUSE in Briggs Road?"

"Fick!" I squealed, delighted as ever that the same answer came back for a different question.

This is where, if I sustained interest, the game could take a new direction. I could be asked about food, or toys, or Bible stories, or things I could see. And the game would end either when another answer came back a second time or when I was asked what I wanted, and if it was my father I would say "Kugga". I didn’t request cuddles from anyone else.

Alien Lady continued. Was I good? (Yes.) Was I clever? (Yes.) A long pause. Was I big? (Yes.)

Yes and No didn’t count as repeating answers. They could happen over and over again in a pattern of their own.

Did I want to be bigger? (I couldn’t answer.) Never mind; was I strong? Never mind; could I walk? (Yes.)

The game was getting harder. Could I run? (No.) Was that sad? Never mind; did I want to run? (Yes.) Could I jump? (No.) Did I want to jump? (Yes.) Did I get tired? Never mind; did I sometimes get hurt? Never mind; what was that on my knee? (Ow.) Did I want it better? (Yes.) Did I want everything better? Never mind; did I want to feel good? Never mind; did I want to be healed? (Zezus.)

The game paused. Alien Lady conferred with her colleagues, who referred to a flat hand-held device rather in the manner of a grown-up consulting a timepiece, but at greater length.

"Thulie, yes," Alien Lady finally rejoined. "We are like Jesus."

"Give fins," I said, but they said no, it wasn’t about sins, it was about being able to run, to talk, to fly like a bird and to be happy. They gave me another sweet; I took the hands held out to me, letting them pull me up into their vehicle and put me to sleep.

And thus I gave them my consent to the operation. Why was I asked? Why not my father, as Tamanna’s, Fan’s and Summer’s parents had been asked? Had they asked my father, some weeks previously, and been refused? Aunt Emily, years later, remembered something about his meeting a strange-looking doctor who offered to work on me, but he refused because he didn’t trust that doctor. If so, then unknowingly I disobeyed my father’s wishes and received a miracle from someone who could not forgive sins--whatever mine might have been. Perhaps my first memory was also my first real sin, a metaphorical apple in my own little Garden of Eden.

Now I must anticipate the story from Fan that he shared three decades later when we opened correspondence. His mother had been present at his operation, and had repeated this to Fan before she died:

The thin people, who had travelled across water, wind and empty space, saw creatures on the Earth with minds to travel but far too fragile bodies. The very sunlight would destroy our threads of life if we flew too high and too long, and so we would remain isolated, bound to our soil by our own vulnerability. Then they had discovered that the threads of life [chromosomes, Fan and I supposed] could join in threes instead of twos; that a mixture of threes and twos was a great weakness, but that a threefold thread repeated 23 times was stronger, more resilient than twos, could repair itself when damaged and grant long life to the living, whether he chose to travel outside of the sky itself or stay at home.

So this is what it seems they did to me--and to three or maybe five others around the world that year: They anaesthetised me and removed a small number of stem cells. They somehow unspliced the chromosomes, recombined cell nuclei by threes and checked which new cells contained a fully trisomied genome. They enclosed the successful cells in a capsule of growth culture and implanted it under my arm; it would start to dissolve three days later, and armies of new cells would enter my bloodstream, circulate to all body tissues and gradually begin to replace the shorter-lived cells around them. My muscles would grow stronger, my coordination and learning ability would change gear, and my features would develop along an altered pattern whilst still expressing the individuality of my own genes.

I remember waking up with an emotion unusual to me: fear and dread. Possibly the drug they had used didn’t agree with me, or in their hurry they gave me an over-strong antidote. I wanted to get out of the place, but it was circular and I couldn’t immediately see where the door would be. Alien Lady beckoned me, but I would not take her hand this time. She opened a stepped ramp leading downwards to the ground; she had to take me by my clothes to help me down.

Once at ground level I paused, unsure of my direction probably, and she waited for a moment without speaking. Gently she took my hands, and this time I didn’t resist. She held both hands up near my face: left hand open, five digits straight; the other closed except for the thumb.

"Thulie," she said, pointing to my right thumb. And then she pointed to each of the other five in turn, giving them names. I can only remember one of the names for sure: Fan, the first one. I suppose--I almost imagine I can remember--that she included the names Summer and Tamanna, maybe even Peter. But for the life of me I cannot recall the other.

Alien Lady went through my fingers more than once, then she turned me around, pointing me in the right direction. As I started back towards the path and the garden gate she said something I cannot remembeer. It was one of the stock expressions, like Goodbye or Thank you, but I am not sure now, and I think it was Sorry. She had not said that to any of the others she had visited.

I heard my father calling me, but once inside the garden I turned and hid behind a bush. A cat shot out as I stumbled against the foliage. My father could hear my crying, of course, so he discovered me straight away. Briefly he searched me; he found a welt under my arm, and reasonably enough assumed that the cat had scratched me. I don’t suppose anyone ever discovered that I had gone outside the back gate.

But the new Methusaleh cells were multiplying beside Thulie’s ribs, ready to infiltrate my system; my own immune system would never even notice the difference; and yet, technically, I was the embryo of a new species.