SHIFTING CARBON

Earth, many hundreds of years in the future. Most of the population has congregated into five supercities known as meccas. Each of these meccas has a different specialization, and all five have considerable populations of robotic constructs along with the humans.A young man named Quetzal lives in Ulteca, which is the hotbed of change. You can change what you look like or give yourself armored skin or get attachment points built into your bones to support any number of external modifications. The choice is yours, and the only limits are your imagination and your wallet. However, there is a deeper cost. The more you change and the further you get away from your base body shape, the more likely you are to experience physical and mental breakdowns.Quetzal wakes up one morning to find he has gained the ability to change whenever he wants into a form vastly different than his own, and there is no cost. While he is still learning to deal with this strange development, a lone delivery construct drops off a package that contains a suit specifically made for people like him. Who is watching him so carefully as to make the delivery happen, and how did they know in advance that he would even need the suit?