Can anyone think of a far-future technology which would give someone that ability?

Let me clarify what I mean. She has the ability to appear old when she is young or young when she is old. She can appear to be male if she chooses to do so, though this requires much more effort so she doesn't typically do so. The difference is that changing her apparent age isn't as big of a change compared to changing her sex. By the same token, she cannot change her physical size, or not by much. She can't choose to be a bear or walrus or something either.

Am I stuck with using fantasy? Or can anyone think of a possible technology that makes this possible?

Edit after seeing the second post: I did think of holograms, but they wouldn't make the changes real.
Nanotechnologies might conceivably be used to achieve a kind of global reprogramming (the only trouble is that you need every cell to change at once or you face rejection problems by the immune system), if you add an array of nano-memories somewhere so that she remembers things from before the change. You could combine them with holograms for the ageing effects.
Or you could be in the real far-future and have the effects of ageing mapped in terms of cells, so the reprogramming could be completed by forcing some cells to commit suicide (there's a technical term for that, but I don't remember it) to age her, or regenerate cells.
But if you include the last kind of control, she is going to be a superwoman (having that kind of control implies you can regenerate cells at will, therefore speed up healing, etc.).
I'd go for a combo nanobots reprogramming nuclei/leds over her body.

Cybernetic subskin implants could alter her bone structure, it might be painful.

sexual organs, same thing. Male and Female anatomy are not too differnt, inflate this, deflate that, turn the other thing inside out...ok, i might have overstepped, sorry.

Which probably means some muscular changes, I guess. Though again, nothing too significant. She will have always had a pretty active lifestyle, so she'll be in shape despite her age. But, and this is important to the plot, she won't be able to restore fertility once she is past menopause. The man she marries gets very upset with her because she cannot bear children, but he doesn't know the real reason.

Simply controlling the hydration of the skin can make it fuller, giving a youthful appearance, won't do much for age related freckles and coloration but can reduce wrinkles.

Exactly what the cream can do, though, would be up to you.

How much of an age difference are we looking at? 50-20? 90-25? Once you get past 65ish you would have a hard time managing the bones without high tech medicine. Extermemely Good bones are required to appear as spry as a young woman.

Nanobots are tiny robots so small that they can fit inside a cell and alter the chemical composition as dictated by stimuli. This seems the most versatile option.

But, for a society to have developed nanotech that subtle and effective, I'm not sure how I can keep the ability a secret. I'll have to come up with some reason that only one company has the tech, or something.

She could also be someone who is a different race from the community in which she lives. This sometimes shrouds the characteristics of age and gender, though it usually takes a little push to totally confound things.

Clothes are also fairly important. It might help if she has to spend some time with the sort of person she wishes to imitate right before doing it, like her ability to shift is not entirely within her will to do so, and she sometimes shifts without meaning to. I guess that would be the magic price aspect. There could be a sixth sense element to it. And what happens if she is all alone too long?

I have to say there is a large personal aspect of this for me, being a biracial person and also a middle child I tend to disappear. I've often dreamed of robbing banks. Day dreamed, not real dreamed.

The problem I see is that any society with nanotech that advanced would have lesser included technologies. So while only government spies might have nanites that let them change their appearance at will, the general public would have access to "rejuvenating" nanites, for example. (Considering the amount of money spent on cosmetic surgery and other methods to achieve a more youthful appearance, it is likely that the rejuvenation market would be a driving force behind the development of the kind of technology that would lead to the appearance-altering nanites.)

So while being able to change one's appearance to look like an old person would not be something most people would think about, looking far younger than one's chronological age would be commonplace.

Also, for a society with such technology, menopause would not be a barrier to bearing children.

The technology was developed by a secret war contractor who went belly up fast when the war didn't happen leaving only the dozen test subjects with no tech support.

There are technologies in the world today that we don't know about because they are still in testing or still government owned or the professor working the project is a paranoid freak.

She could just have been a test subject of a project that was cancelled due to side effects or too expensive, etc..

Think about what would happen if he could (using whatever technology you go with) expand his mass to become less dense or contract it to become more dense. We're not talking infinite size changing ability, but the character could definitely seem a little shorter, taller, fatter, thinner, etc.

With weight distribution you can also create significant illusions of size/mass. As another personal example...when I'm not pregnant, I'm quite curvy. This, too, seems to stump people trying to guess my weight/size. 150 lbs on someone who carries all their weight in their butt can make them look kind of fat but on me it's about as perfect as I get.

I mention this because I think you've got tremendous possibilities here. Can she change the length/thickness of her vocal chords and therefore the sound of her voice?

Subtle changes can make huge differences. I'd consider studying faces, perhaps from an artist's perspective. Maybe even take a drawing class. (Depending upon how serious you are about this project.) See if you can interview a police sketch artist. The curve of the eyebrows, the lines around the lips, the height of the ears...sometimes such subtle changes can completely change everything.

I wouldn't do holograms, although I think you've settled on nanotech. I just wanted to weigh in on that because I think you wouldn't have the range of possibilities and it wouldn't be as fun as having a technology that makes actual changes to appearance.

X-Men did this as "science fiction" in the character of that blue chick whose name I can't remember...the bad guy. They just call it a mutation that allows her to manipulate her own appearance. IF you want to know how NOT to do it...watch that movie. Seriously, though, she managed to change her pupils to pass through an eye scanner. I don't think so! How does she even know what someone else's inner eyes look like? Be careful with realism here. Make some rules and work within them, just as if this were fantasy.

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Also, for a society with such technology, menopause would not be a barrier to bearing children.

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Can you explain this a little more? Women need more than rejuvination to be able to bear children. They need more egges. We get all we're ever going to get when we're born and they don't last forever. Could nanotech make more eggs? I could see it extending our fertility by keeping the ones we have from going bad (which is another problem).

I'm not entirely sure why they do go into menopause. I think probably because having non-bearing grandmothers in a social group increased survival for the group overall.

It was also probably part of the physiological cost of monthly estruss, rather than semi-annual. If I had to guess.

Here's a link to literature about shamanism.
http://www.shamanlinks.net/Shamanic_Books.htm

While shamanism is an ancient tradition of healing and spiritual investigation, it's an interesting topic when it butts up against what we deem to be 'hard science.' The concept behind shapeshifting in shamanism is that the world is created by our minds and our thoughts. If you think you are a crow, and hold that thought with your entire being, you will metamorph into a crow.

In all seriousness, I think the movement of mountains that occurs is at the will of a greater being. I think there have been individuals this being has trusted to move mountains, but on average most of them actually given the power didn't really feel that was a great thing to do with it. That is to say, if you move a mountain it's probably going to cause some seismic disruptions.

P.P.S. I guess in a similar fashion, the shapes that each of us have at this time are some balance of our wills and the laws of the universe and inherited influences either behavioral or genetic.

P.P.P.S. I think a fantasy setting would be more interesting for being able to change genders, since the future setting is likely to be even more equal opportunity than the present.

P4S Another thought is she can make these changes, but there is a high cost, like she has to sleep for a week after (I think this would apply whether it was a fantasy spell type thing or nanites). Another model is the Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde effect, where the character builds up tolerance to the potion/technology. Also, I can pop my ears voluntarily, which in my experience is a strange talent to have mastered. I also never get heartburn. Maybe she can modulate her testosterone receptors and her essential fatty acid things.

Even today, post-menopausal women can bear children through in vitro fertilization.

Recent experiments in mice have shown it is possible for mammals to generate new eggs in the ovaries.

Oh, and while women do have hundreds of eggs to start with, they go bad usually before menopause even starts. It is also possible that nanotech could repair those eggs or keep them from going bad.

I saw a story on the news last night about thirty something women freezing their eggs so they didn't run out of time, biologically speaking. I wouldn't bank on it, not with a 20$ success rate, but it's encouraging that things are moving that direction. The one issue that I think people aren't thinking of is this: How good are older parents at being parents? Case in point: my mother-in-law got pregnant at 42, an accident. (I don't think she thought she could have anymore.) Her husband is now 50, she's 49, and they're running after a 6-year-old without the same energy they had twenty years ago when they raised my husband. My father-in-law's health is frankly just failing.

Now, in far-future scifi we can argue that nanotechnology has also done some rejuvenation, but in near-future stuff, and thinking about the implications of these current new procedures, I wonder how well a person can parent if they wait until 50 or 60 to start.

Female to male, now that's harder unless she doesn't have to be naked.

My MC, Kore, was sexually abused as a young girl. As a teen, she was apprenticed to a sorcerer (if fantasy) or scientist (if science fiction). She developed the ability to change her physical appearance very convincingly, and for long periods of time without extra effort expended.

Because she was wary of further physical abuse, she chose, as a young woman, to dress, act and appear as a crone. She does this for many years, living in a forest and begging travelers for food in exchange for advice/predictions of their future. I'm thinking of all those fairy tales with the mysterious crone that seems to come from nowhere and knows everything.

Then one day she takes the glamour (or whatever) off and realizes that underneath it, she has actually become old. And she hasn't ever really lived. So she decides to make the most she can of the rest of her life, so she changes her appearance again, this time to appear young. She meets and falls in love with a man, and they marry. She doesn't reveal her secret, and he doesn't find out.

At some point later, they're having major marital issues. She can't have children and she still has a hard time trusting men. He is dissatisfied and looks outside the marriage.

The husband commits some crime, which I haven't decided exactly what it is yet, which has a death penalty.

Magic is easy and you already have your price attached.

The story would work with either one. I personally prefer fantasy, but that's a taste.

Many primates' brains can regenerate cells and still retain memory, science sees this as a potential avenue for the treatment of brain disease/damage in the future.

Perhaps isolating the change factors in animals' genes for use in humans could have some rare, unintended side-effect or using certain animals that can/do transform in some sort of ritual magic could produce a two-way door effect in Kore because the normal matrix of genes that existed in the original species were no longer there to produce the one-way signals. This could also explain why the changes may be faster than in the original species but also not so profound.

Just a thought.

If you are interested see:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/bodychangers/shifters.html

This is the statement that made me think:

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And turning off some genes by blocking their action can prevent some animals from maturing at all, leaving them permanently stuck in their larval forms. Such research is helping scientists understand genetic diseases, and may eventually lead to new treatments.

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I would be interested to know whether this sort of scenario would be helpful to you.

I just find the nanobot line a bit predictable.

PS: Kore is a cool name, at the end of the story can we call her Kouros?

But, yeah. It seems your plot also revolves around the transformation being pretty rapid. And how does he get out of the cell? Does she transfer the spell/technology to him? There is always the Hannibal escape. Ick.

I would suggest that the event that causes her to realize she wants to stop living as a crone is her menopause. There is anthropological research on gender and the post-menopause state. Or at least there was 15 years ago. How older women can do things and go places that fertile women cannot. I'm thinking widows in Crete can go into drinking establishments or something.

This seems as though it's been thought out more as a fantasy than a science fiction story. But then, it sounds very much like you're at the early stages here. What subplots do you intend to include? What kinds of side issues do you want to bring in? If this is fantasy, when and where is it set? If this is scifi, when and where is it set?

Or you can do my personal favorite and combine the two....after a long trip to a planet far, far away where she finally escapes her father and her past she runs into an alien sorcerer who takes her on as his aprentice...

It isn't enough that she assume his appearance and die in his place, he still has to escape and avoid capture. Anyone recognizing him could turn him in and even without knowing how, the authorities would know that a deception had occured and the wrong person executed.

If this is fantasy, perhaps it is a simple enough spell that she can teach it to him or cast it herself (as an old woman, her abilities might have grown, etc.).

If Sci-fi, the technology could be transferable, allowing her to inject him with the nanites (or whatever) and he would be able to escape to a place where he would be safe.

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Because Polymorphed Assassins in Terminator Armor with Assault Cannons suck!

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It sounds like the alterations you're looking for are literally only skin deep. Perhaps some sort of tiny threads (call them nano or metallic or magic material No 5 for all it matters) seeded throughout her skin. Electrical stimulus, which could be activated by her brain, to different threads could alter that skin shape. (I'm thinking something akin to that "parasailing" material in Batman Begins, though I think the same idea has been used before--though never for skin.)

But I still like the magic idea, and particularly the idea not that she is going to die because she is so old, but maybe the cost of the spell to actually resemble another is that she die, or maybe it just can't be reversed.

And again, if this were a futuristic prison, she would have to turn into him and he would probably have to turn into her. I guess there could be some possibilities with the end dangling that way. With the whole "one flesh" Judeo-Christian theme.

P.S. I guess one more thought I had would have something to do with the shamanistic idea where this person can pass into the body of another at the time of death. This was executed somewhat as sci-fi in "Being John Malkovich". Perhaps the woman used to be a man and chose at death to become a young girl, but found out being a young girl can be a pretty tough life. She kills herself and goes into the body of a crone, as you have it, then back into a young woman. In the end it is the first time she does so through trading straight across. Though this creates a problem of what becomes of the "souls" of the bodies she/he takes over in the course of things. But then, toward the end of his life Og Mandino apparently espoused a theory of everyone having a chorus of at least 6 advisors in their heads. Which brings us back to the Dune-tastic goodness.