[One, Later...]

"We'll have one, and they can transform once we're all at home in our bedroom." Al said. It had been decided that as the biblical head of household he should be the one to answer, even though he and Zoey made almost all major decisions jointly, it was the appearance of the thing.

"Very well, move along." The guard said, checking their names off on his list, and the vaguely humanoid but nearly featureless Gharibo followed them to their car. They had offered to take Anna and Martin in with them in Zoey's minivan, but their neighbors had declined, a rare event, saying they planned to get there bright and early and be as close to the front of the line as possible.

The ride home passed in very awkward conversation, as the Ghirabo, not having vocal cords at the moment, had to answer with it's translation unit, but they learned a lot.

Apparently their new family member/sex-toy had been a forensic-accountant on the Ghirabo colony world of Abluz Minor, keeping track of the various attempts by Shlechrith mining consortiums to pad their margins by cooking the books. When this trial run was announced there had been billions of volunteers, but as the town had only just over 5000 residents of legal age for the test there had been a lottery. Their new Ghirabo partner had won by the skin of her teeth, 'her' (though in their typical stable form Ghirabo were genderless 'she' already knew her form for the McManus's would be female,) ticket being only ONE digit off from that of her next door neighbor.

They talked about the Ghirabo empire, which was by all accounts one of the most stable in the galaxy. Ghirabo are all telepathic, and eager to please, so they sort of acted like a hive mind. Each was an individual capable of acting alone, but greed, hate, pettiness, and so forth were largely absent. Oh, sure, they could be greedy: wanting to expand, develop, advance, and triumph: but more as a group than as individuals. It was ever so much harder to see your fellow sapients as worthless scum when you could hear their cries of anguish inside your own skull: you HAD TO help, or you couldn't live with yourself. This was why almost all Ghirabo were submissives, you never really developed the sharpness of individual personality to dominate your fellows when you felt their pain as your own and suffered whenever they suffered. That said, they also could be unbelievably heroic at need, human instinct was to run away from the disaster: Ghirabo ran towards it and worked like demons to save everyone. (It also helped that they could turn part of their body into a sledge hammer, pry bar, axe, or saw if one was required...)

That brought up another thing: there were only three classes of tools the Gharibo bothered manufacturing: Electronics, anything with independently moving parts, and anything that had to be left in place somewhere. Cross Cut Saw? Change an arm. Hammer? Transform a hand. Wedge? Morph a foot.

Pulley...? That's got independent parts so it has to be manufactured, they can only turn themselves into contiguous objects of some ilk.

Retaining wall...? Has to be left in place: can't have someone stand there being a retaining wall forever, if nothing else they'd get bored.

Cell Phone...? They couldn't control their morphology finely enough to duplicate circuits and even if they could passing that much electricity through themselves would scramble the psychic fields that served them in place of a nervous system.

Eventually they got home, 4444 Oakhurst Lane, and went trooping up to the bedroom. Today was a wednesday so the kids were in school: there would be a final special delivery of Ghirabo volunteers at 11:00 PM for the teachers, coaches, bus drivers, principles etcetera-and-so-forth. That meant they had the house all to themselves...

"Alright: Let's meet the new you..." Zoey said, and their Ghirabo began to transform...