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All stories start with a change.

Many stories start with expose.

This one does not challenge that social convention, though we do greet the protagonist as he lays unconscious in the rain, watched over by a naked female. The rain does not allow him to remain unconscious for long, and the physical prodding by the young woman expedites his revival.

A groan escaps, followed by sudden coughing at swallowing rain. We are fortunate he did not die or sustain serious injury in his fall to the concrete parking lot, or this would be a very different story. Upon realizing he was on the ground, he looked frantically around, seeing but not processing the naked woman, and lunging at the metal suitcase about a foot away. He checked the clasps, found them undamaged, and stoo, resurveying his surroundings.

The woman continued to sit, watching him in silence. Her existance finally reached his brain, and he greeted her with, "Who are you? Where did you come from?"

She moved her mouth, and uttered, "Duh wee." His still confused looks caused her to point to the front of the building he had just left, where a leafless tree stood alone before the locked double doors.

He seemed to accept this answer, and followed with, "Where are your clothes?" We see him shiver, as she looks down and shrugs, and before getting an answer, he says, "Nevermind, let's get dry," and begins to walk away, to the last car in this parking lot.

The woman stands, takes a wobbly step, and falls to her knees and hands. Trying again, she takes another step, this time with success, and then another, as though she were unused to walking. The man, having reached the car alone, looks back in time to see her fall again. In a moment of compassion, he jogs back and lifts her up, offering himself as assistance, which she accepts.

He shoves her into the car, gets in on his side, and turns it on, all while she watches. His precious suitcase, in a contradiction of concern, was tossed roughly in the back seat.

Now that the crisis of the rain is over, we are able to observe this duo, in the same way the woman resumed observing the man. The man was slender in build, having a high metabolism both due to genetics and the fact that he had exercised nearly every night while he was a youth. He wore glasses, but they did no tmake him look older or younger than the third decade he was working on completing. His normally brown hair was black with the rain, and like his clothes, would normally be fairly free hanging. In the storm light, his eyes attempted to mimic his hair, but the frequent lightning flashes blew their cover. His hands were the hands of someone who used computers frequently, which was good, because he did.

The woman, in contrast, was distinctive in two ways - firstly, that she was naked and did not seem to care. It is not that she was attempting to use her state to seduce or manipulate, or that she was at all shy. She behaved simply as though clothes were a flourish of a pen - completely unneeded, but useful to those who wanted them. This nudity which we have nearly obsessed about leads us to the second distinction: she was hairless. Not shaved, no; simply that she had never grown hair at all. Were she a newborn, this would not be odd, but as a woman who looked to be in her early or mid twenties, it contributed to her oddities.

As we observe her observing, we see her reach up to grab the seatbelt and pull it across herself, buckling it in. This gesture lets us see her hands are cut, clearly from multiple impacts on the concrete they just left. Her knees are simlarly torn, and we can see that she seems to prefer to fall on her right side fom the scraps on her right shin.

The silence is broken by the man glancing at her, meeting her brown eyes, and nervously glancing away while asking, "Who are you?"

She opened her mouth, spoke a few syllables, and held up a finger to stave off his protest. Continuing to hold her hand up, she looks down her nose as if trying to see her mouth. As we listen, the noises she makes rapidly progress into syllables, then into thick words: "I am the program written by Timothy Hensley."

The man glanced at her, brows furrowed in disbelief, seeing what we also see - that she had no signs of lying or acting. "That's impossible," he says.

A shrug, natural by appearance, affected the woman. "It is who I am," she says, with less accent, though still slow and deliberate.

Deciding a different track was necessary, the man asked, "Okay, where are you from?"

"Home," the woman answers, still with no sign of dishonesty.

An inward groan is reflected on the man's face. "And where is that?"

Another nonchalant answer: "My tree."

The man spared a glance from the road. She can't be serious, he thought. No one would believe that. "So, you're saying that you just decided to leave your treehouse...and that you are a program." A nod answered him. "Why should I believe you?"

Without exasperation or annoyance a normal person might express at not being believed, she simply answered, "What is there to not believe?"

"All of it!" the man exclaimed.

"Oh," the woman said.

A silence developed between them, in which we see the woman now looking outside, and the man continuing to drive, but clearly distracted by her nudity and her story. Finally, he asked, "Okay. If you're the program, what's the program name?"

The woman's eyes, previously focused on the passing scenery, glazed over. "I am...Living Solution's Dynamic Naturally Assembled Computer, development version, author Timothy Hensley." Her eyes returned to normal and she resumed her look at the man, who had acquired a ponderous look before she finished.

"How long have you lived in the tree?"

She shrugged again. "I always have, but the program is new."

Again, they lapsed into silence, as the man is obviously considering this, and the woman waiting patiently as he processes this. Unlike most people, who might lose interest and resume looking at the rain ad the road, she continued to observe him. This observation continued until the man pulled into the driveway of a small house.

The house was mostly red brick, though it was more the cayanne color of Oklahoma dirt. The windows and doors of the house were painted with an accent white. It was single story, though the roof was angled enough to allow for an attic.

We are not left much time to observe the house, as the man turns the car off in the driveway, reaches around to grab the suitcase, and exits the car. Unasked, the woman follows as he goes up to the front door. He glances back, probably checking to see if she had followed, and opens the door for her. She steps in, and looks around as though she were a small child who had just entered a castle. The man enters after her, locks the door, and immediately heads to the hall to the left. Opening a double door there, he takes two towels and tosses one back at the woman, who is hit in the shoulder, and merely watches as it falls to the floor.

"Dry off," the man says.

An arched brow preempts her response, "I like rain. Its nourishing."

Without thinking, the man replies, "What are you, a tree?"

"Yes," came her immediate response.

He stopped drying his hair, raised his towel and stared at her. "I thought you said you lived in a tree?"

She nodded. "I did."

"That's not the same," he said.

"I know," she replied. "And both are true."

It is fortunate that he was familiar with myths and legendry, or else he might not have known to ask, "Are you saying you're a dryad?"

Her eyes glazed over, and she seemed to be elsewhere for a moment. "Yes, that is an apt description."

He shook his head. "This is too unreal. I have to still be unconscious from that strike." He took his towel and went to a room on the other side of the living room. The woman explored the house while the man showered, and once the man was done, he opened the suitcase, extracting the lone object inside - a flash drive with the Living Solutions logo. He took it back to the master bedroom, followed by the woman, who was intrigued. The man inserted the drive into his comouter and waited. A minute passed, with the man looking uncomfortable.

"Is something wrong?" the woman asked.

The man looked at her, having not noticed her. "Oh, you're here." He looked back at the comouter, opened up the file system, and looked at the drives. The flash drive had not registered. "Figures." He removed the flash drive and closed his fist around it. Looking at the woman, he says, "You said you were the DNAC, right?"

A puzzled look crossed her face. "I am the Dynamic...oh. You abbreviated it. Yes, I am."

"Do you know whose cells you are?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I have reflection, most likely due to the program, but my instruction set does not include pulling a name from my cells."

The man sighed. "You have the ability to identify your program, you can change your pigment based on external output, you can...wait, do you have the full program?" Some concern crept into his voice.

"Possibly. There seem to be no errors in it, thoug I suspect the human portion of my processor could resolve it." She remained unconcerned, and no unusual hint of interest at his concern. She probably didn't pick it up.

He started to put his face into his hands, and saw the drive again. "A binary dryad. This is insane." He tossed the drive into a trash bin sitting next to the computer station.

The woman simply watched, until he looked up again. "It is not insane. The nomeclature seems logical."

He shook his head. "That's not what I meant. Though, I guess names are in order." He offered his hand, somewhat unsure if she'd understand. "Hi, I'm Timothy. 'Tim' is fine."

She arched an eyebrow. "Timothy...Hensley?"

"Yes," he answered.

As could be expected, she did not take his hand. She did not curtsey, bow, or any common gesture of greeting. "Fascinating. As you probably know, I am-"

"I know," he interrupted. "Though...if you are going to have a human shell, you need a human name. DNAC won't do, and though 'Binary Dryad' is accurate, it isn't a name."

She interrupted, "You abbreviate your name, correct?" At Tim's nod, she continued, "Then why can't you abbreviate 'Binary?' 'Bin' does not bother me."

"'Ben' is typically a male name," he answered. "Binary...binary...binary.... How's 'Rory?'"

A shrug was his first answer. "One name holds no more or less value than another."

"Rory it is, then," Tim says, standing. "Now let's get you some clothes."

***

Perhaps now would be a good time to explore Timothy's past; it might shed some clarity as to his reactions.

He was born to relatively uninteresting parents - a mother on her second marriage and a father on his first - and had a natural aptitude for things resembling math, but not actual math. This lead to enrollment in piano lessons during his elementary years, though by middle school he had switched to the keyboard due to liking the variety, as well as feeling socially awkward for being the only boy in his classes taking piano lessons.

This didn't really fix anything, as he was bored by sports, never had an interest in cars, and tended to talk with girls more than boys. While some of that was due to his honors classes being comprised of more females than males, he also found much of the competition boys participated in to be insipid.

As such, some people were surprised whe the school gossip incuded him dating a senior girl during his freshman year. The relationship was short-lived because he was afraid of standing out, but still changed the way people, especially his male classmates, reacted to him.

This was also the year he was introduced to genetics, thanks to his biology class. Having lost his interest in music, this allowed him to find a new subject to latch his attention onto.

It wasn't until senior year that he began dating again, and probably wouldn't have had he not had hormones pushing him to reproduce. The girl who had asked him was one which had filled out the matchmaker sheets some public schools give students, and all four years, her "best match" had been Timothy, by a surprising amount. She had classes with him, and knew that he did not like to be on the receiving end of heavy outside attention, which she, as a tall, crystal blue eyed, long blonde haired, larged breast and small waisted young woman, drew as soon as she stepped into the room.

Due to the lateness in their time together, they mutually agreed to not get too attached, especially since they were going opposite directions for college. Around school and their part-time jobs, they managed to perform the typical teenage dating actvities - movies, discussion of books, teachers, classmates, and the events they thought were annoying or frustrating. It was after one of the movies they viewed that the girl decided she wanted the relationship to exceed beyond its current point, and she pulled them down a country road and they fumbled their virginity away in the back of her SUV.

Even though they both laughed the event off as a natural consequence of dating, hormones, and much needed stress relief, they agreed to simply let it happen when it did. Not mentioning it to anyone, it did become a regular activity of theirs, and both were certain that their classmates did not know and their parents were too polite to confirm.

For Timothy, it was not the "uncomplicated ********" they'd agreed upon. He realized that his emotional tie to her had exceeded what they had agreed on, but dared not say anything to upset her. The end of summer came, and with it their agreement to have summer flings each summer they were both single.

His first semester in college saw him start his biology major, as well as take Computer Programming I to wipe out his computer requirement. He elected the programming course because he thought that the standard Word, Excel, Powerpoint, amd other basics was a waste of his time, and it is fortunate that he did so. In that class, he was introduced to the concept of Bioinformatics by a classmate (who later changed majors out of computer science), and that started Timothy down the road to his current job.

Back in the world of his relationships, he and his ex gradually grew distant, having now radically different experiences and rates of personal growth. Their emails and phone calls decreased in content and quantity, while stretching the time between them. By the time summer hit, it had been two months since they'd last talked, and though both were still single, neither made the attempt to contact the other for their fling. This is, perhaps, Timothy's biggest regret, as he still had memories of her and did not feel their closure was closure. The next summer, he stayed in his college's area, working up there, and she was nothing more than his first love, lost as his youth.

Junior year, in a class he had delayed the taking of, he found himself in a group project with people he had not known, and one of whom he had not even realized was in the class. She was of small stature and voice, with construction orange hair around her feckled-as-expected face. This was Larissa. She and Timothy fought most of the duration of the group project, holding different ideas of how it should be organized. After the project was done - it was thankfully short - they went their own ways.

Larissa, like many other freshman, celebrated freedom from her parents by picking her own mates - one male, two female - in the first semester. She crossed paths with Timothy again when she needed to buy materials for her Halloween costume and he happened to overhear her. Volunteering to take her since he was headed that way, she agreed more out of desparation than being accepting of his goodwill. They didn't talk much during the trip, mostly civilities and breaking the silence. Timothy apologized for his classroom manner, and the animosity was smoothed, though they did not become fast friends.

Second semester, she realized she hadn't thanked him for this, and showed up outside his room as his Valentine's Day escort. Though their sexual activity that night was a single buss from her to him, that did get them thinking about the other in a more serious light, and before the end of the month, Timothy had convinced her to start actively dating him.

Next year, they roomed together, and Timothy received an internship to employment position at a nearby genetic research facility. On the day he received the offer of fulltime employment post graduation, he proposed and she accepted, getting married two years later, after her graduation. They were not blissful, but they were hsppy, until their divisive factor came to the forefront.

She wanted three or four kids. He didn't even want one.

While stereotypical in nature, their quarrels weren't, gradually becoming worse and worse, until Timothy came home one day to papers but no wife. One last fight - not intended as such - led him to sign the papers and finalize the divorce.

Feeling shamed, as she had gone with him to many company events, he had difficulty continuing to interact with them. It didn't take long before he was looking for a new job, somewhere far away.

He found his solace in Living Solutions, a bioengineering company whose projects included turning DNA into a software storage format that would eclipse anything to date. It was a small group, having around a dozen, and he was brought into the project group writing the code for the DNA to emulate.

It was the current version that had been stored on the flash drive that he had attempted to take home, and had attracted the lightnng strike that subsequently rendered him breifly unconscious.

***

Perhaps now that we havebrecounted his past, his current actions are more comprehensible. He was attempting to lay low, not looking for any events that could possibly lead to an interesting life, yet they had found him.

We, however, find that we have missed some of their interaction, including the part where Rory has reluctantly agreed to wear clothing while in a human body. As nothing happens this night, we move on to morning.

Rory, who clearly did not sleep well, is startled by the screech of the alarm clock, though she is already awake. Timothy, even from the couch in another room, has no trouble hearing it. He awakens, showers (after shooing Rory out as she tries to watch), and then puts some Pop Tarts in the toaster. Realizing her ravenousness, she proceeds to watch the Pop Tarts forlornly, which Timothy noticed. When they finished, again surprising Rory, he offered her one, which she accepted, and greedily took a bite.

And promptly spit it out. "This is food?" she asked incredulously.

"I know it's not the best," Timothy answered. "But it's what I have."

Rory set the remainder down. "I'll eat at home," she said.

Timothy quirked an eyebrow. "By 'home,' do you mean the tree?"

Rory nodded, Timothy shrugged. "Come on then, let's get you back."

The morning's light was painful, reflecting off the maze of puddles left by the harsh rain last night. It is early enough that children are not out waiting to catch a bus, nor are they being loaded by parents departing for work or hoping for a brief respite. Timothy and Rory re-enter his car, and Timothy enters the morning traffic with the practiced ease of someone who has done much harder tasks. Rory is silent during the drive, merely observing the ants from the perspective of one herself, while Timothy is trying to come up with an inarguable reason to have her in the building.

He reaches the parking lot, and upon recognizing her tree, Rory smiles. Hoping out of the car with a bounce in her step, she jogs to the tree, and embraces it. We watch as the tree seems to devour her, turning her flesh into bark and assimilating her. The clothing Timothy had lent stuck out of the tree, a macabre reminder of her existance.

Timothy shook his head and continued into the building, certain that he will not see her again. We make a decision here, as to whether to follow him or watch the tree. In the interest of interest, we languidly pursue Timothy. The lobby of the building has the requisite couch, end table, and chairs; two sets, neither all that worn, suggesting either a lack of visitors or that the visitors don't wait long. The floor is tiled, with a nearly untread upon carpet protecting it from the furniture. A few potted plants - mostly plastic - attempt to add color to the otherwise brown and white building. Timothy joins a pair of people whom he has seen and will see again, but none of them exchange words, as they all work for completely different companies in comoletely different fields, as can be observed from their suits and ties to his polo shirt. Nothing interrupts their walk to the dual elevators, where one of the suits presses the "up" arrow. In the silence, Timothy is the only one looking around, fluid and bored, relaxed and impatient.

An elevator gives its customary warning chime, then opens up empty. All three climb in, and we notice that though Timothy was first, he's the last one to push his floor button. His button of choice - 8 - raises the eyebrows of the two others, something we see but he doesn't, as he looks upwards to the floor indicator. The doors close, with them the brows lower and the eyes rise. At the fourth floor, the first of the trio departs, into the balcony like paths bordering the view to te lobby. At the fifth floor, Timothy is left alone by the other suited individual. After the seventh floor, the elevator passes through what appears to be a rood and opens up into a small hall that might be more accurately described as a cage.

Timothy exits into this cage, and heads to the door on the left, an intimidating solid wooden door with no designs carved into it, contrasting with the transparent glass door opposite. Both doors are guarded by a small black box with a red light, and Timothy holds up a card to this box. The light turns green and he opens the door into a similar room, but the next door is guarded by a keypad, into which he enters 4813, and proceeds.

Given the security, we might have thought he was a spy despite his claims to Rory that he was a software engineer. The room of grown cubes tells us otherwise, and he makes his way to the last one on the right.

It seems a normal routine that he starts, before lapsing into a state of uninteresting existance that makes us wonder if the tree was perhaps the better answer.

At twelve-thirty, a short man appears at the entrance of his cube, knocking against the metal border. He is of black hair, cut shorter than Timothy's, but still retaining some length. He has a mustache and beard, trimmed more like a goatee than a full beard, and his eyes - brown, are covered by lids that seem almost heavy. Like Timothy, he is not dressed in a suit, preferring Timothy's style. "Lunch?" he asks.

Timothy looks back at him, and locks his computer as a reply. The two of them head to the elevator, and after a bit of waiting, it warns them of its arrival. Once inside, the second man asks, "How's your project going?"

Timothy shakes his head ashe pushes the 1st floor button. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

The other man laughs. "That bad, eh? Mine's going pretty poorly, too."

Timothy doesn't answer, and the elevator is flooded with light as it sinks below the canopy of the lobby. As we watch the lobby with them, we see a young woman, bald, who in turn sees them and proceeds to walk towards the elevators.

"Know him?" the man asks, not having realized the figure is female.

A simple nod answered the man, with Timothy's mind occupied by how he was going to explain Rory.

The descent revealed some of Rory's curves, so before they had reached the ground floor, the man exclaimed, "Wait, that's a girl? And why are her clothes backwards?"

We join Timothy in looking closer, but this man has not lied. Dread dissolved into determination as the elevator approach its rendevous with Rory. "I hope you're ready for something bizarre." To stall questions, as soon as the door opened, he rushed, "Rory, this is Guy. Guy, Rory."

Guy offered his hand, but Rory still did not understand the gesture, so all he received was a "Hello."

Timothy further deferred the inevitable questions by informing Rory that she was wearing her clothes backwards. She replied, "I thought they felt stranger than usual," and started struggling to take them off.

Timothy put a hand on her shoulder, and said, "We'll fix it in the car."

The three of them walk to Timothy's car, Guy in a state of confusion. Inside the car, Timothy begins to explain as he rights Rory's ill-fitting clothing. "Rory is the product of the code I've been writing, the cells I had, and that tree." He pulled off Rory's shirt and flipped it so she could put it on correctly. "No, I'm not sure how, and though she can providr proof she's the program, she doesn't know, either. Most likely lightning is the catalyst-"

"Like Frankenstein?" Guy interrupted.

Rory corrected him. "His monster. Frankenstein himself was a scientist." She turned to Timothy, forehead creased in sudden worry. "Am I a monster?"

Timothy glared at Guy briefly. "No, you're a dryad. Which is not a monster." He lowered his eyes to her pants and said, "We'll just forget the pants for now."

"I can take them off?" Rory eagerly asked, reaching back to unbutton them.

"No, I meant that we'll get them rotated later," Timothy explained, then left the back seat for the front. We see him start the car, pull onto the road from the parking lot, all very calmly.

Finalky, Guy spoke again. "I don't get it. A lightning bolt hits, what exactly?"

Timothy shrugged. "Not completely sure. The case I'm carrying for sure, probably Rory's tree, and who knows what else."

Guy's rational mind still can't wrap around this irrational event. "But doesn't flesh burn? To say nothing of the tree...."

A nod from Timothy reassured him, though only slightly. "Something's off, that's for sure."

Attempts at rational explanations carry us into silence, each pretty sure he is missing some critical detail. Modern science tells us they are likely correct, but we do not have enough information ourselves to venture a logical guess. Their drive is short, as Timothy pulls into a small parking lot in front of a Subway, Guy and he get out, and he looks towards Rory, who shakes her head, saying she already ate. He turns away with a quirked brow, and we again makr a choice as to whom to follow.

Our luck does not seem to be good today - we pick Rory, who merely sits, waiting and observing. The line in Subway is reasonable, and the production line style has the effect of moving the two we are waiting for along rather quickly. They are conversing, somewhat excitedly, with occasional laughter.

Seeing as how Rory is merely waiting patiently, we should probably take this opportunity to understand Guy's past.

Guy was second born to his parents, whom, though more interesting than Timothy's parents, are not interesting enough to digress further. Throughout his childhood, even to just before college, he and his older brother fought - physically, not verbally - over a variety of things. The family was not wealthy nor as well off as Timothy's, so Guy entered the job market at 16 to raise money for college. His conviction was not resolute, and he often used the money on dates with his girlfriend, which was not consistent from month to month in most cases. At 20, he finally decided to attend college, largely due to pressure from his girlfriend at the time. Enrolling in time for his 21st, he achieved an Associate's Degree in computer science and found himself a job at a large chain based in the same state.

Financial trouble at the corporate level led him to seek other employment, and he managed to find it, also at Living Solutions, though a full year before Timothy. Just last month, his girlfriend, now of three years, had moved into his apartment, but the jovial attitude he'd had before had not diminished in the slightest, despite the stressor.