Book One:  "To Each His Needs"
               1952 Communist Russia

“To Each His Needs” is set inside Stalin’s bleak and brutal Russia.  Yosef  Aslonov of the Moscow Police Anti-Profiteering Division encounters the Transmuter in a deserted fallout shelter.  He gives it to his young wife, Svetlana, for her curio collection.  The next morning Svetlana believes that her husband has gifted her a duplicate of her prized crystal polar bear. Yosef suspects the little oddity he found is the culprit.  He is soon proven correct!

Within a few days the young couple is duplicating:  clothes, food, toiletries, medicine, and other necessities that the Russian government cannot provide. They gladly and carefully share their bounty with friends and neighbors.  Even with precautions, it’s a dangerous game where jealousy and betrayal can kill as quickly as bullets.

Yosef is tipped-off by a connected friend that he can expect a visit from State Security soon!  Trapped in their small apartment with their treasures, unable to dispose of them, Yosef and Svetlana wait for a confrontation that can end with them sent to their deaths in a Siberian forced labor camp.

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As in all the Transmuter tales, this story ends on a note of irony (or retribution) in the tradition  of The Twilight Zone and  Alfred Hitchcock Presents.