Nancy recommended a couple of hangover cures, which required ingredients the dining hall didn’t have, but I made up a makeshift with orange juice and hot sauce, which took my mind off the hangover if it didn’t cure it.

“Are you regretting changing schools and majors?” she asked.

“No. I still think this is the right thing to do. I’ve been volunteering at the hospital when I have time to spare from studying, and the more I do that, the more sure I am that I want to be a nurse.”

I was distracted all afternoon, worried about the fallout from last night’s disaster. Would Alice tell anyone, and if so, how would the rumors mutate? How would Emily react?

“We know they like being us, or they wouldn’t keep taking jekyllase. We just have to point out that they’ll get more benefit from being us if they change at a convenient time for us to meet up.”

“If you could be Jennifer all the time, would you want to?”

 

“I’m not sure. I don’t think so. I like being me, too, but if I had to choose between never being Jennifer again, and always being her... I think I might choose Jennifer.”

“Then maybe it’s something else. Some feminine side that you’re not letting yourself express... could you maybe be a transsexual?”

 

“A what?” The term “transgender” wouldn’t be coined for decades yet, and “transsexual” wasn’t exactly a household word. I’d never heard of it.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m, uh — I’m fixing to turn into Jennifer, okay? So if you could not look this way while I’m changing clothes, that would be good.”

 

“Sure, man,” he said. “You got some chick threads at some point?”

Another thing I liked a lot was her healthy lungs, her ability to breathe so deeply and easily and go for hours without feeling the need for a cigarette.

Jekyllase is in the news again as several states are considering decriminalizing its possession; some referenda, such as Proposition 118 here in Oregon, would go farther, making it effectively an over-the-counter drug. It occurred to me that I could dust off a memoir I started writing some time ago, edit it to focus more closely on my experiences with jekyllase, and offer it to the public (anonymously, by necessity, as these propositions are not law yet) as a contribution to the debate.

I wondered if she was asking the impossible. She had no work experience she could talk about, no references, and was a rank beginner at English writing and modern technology. Maybe there weren’t any jobs around here for someone like that that would also pay for transition care – insurance policies that covered it were rare enough as it was.

“Please tell me more about Chris,” Permelia said as she followed me down the stairs to the parking lot.

 

“He’s like us,” I said, “except that he was assigned female at birth. And he was lucky enough to have understanding parents who helped him get HRT in his early teens, before he finished growing… and I understand both the men and women in his family tend to be tall. Anyway, he’s a big guy, and can be scary-looking if you don’t know him. I don’t think anybody will bother us with him escorting us.”

“Really. You’re asking me to believe that somewhere in the multiverse, a language almost exactly like English independently evolved? And not in an alternate England, but somewhere that sounds completely unrelated to England?”

“If the multiverse is infinite, that’s not a far-fetched claim, is it?” I said.

Robots swarmed over the field, prepping the rockets for takeoff or unloading cargo from those that had recently landed.

Essie didn’t linger long on the wedding photos, just long enough to tell me a funny story about how her great-uncle had forgotten his best man speech and after stammering for a few moments, had instead — I don’t know what. I wasn’t listening at that point. I was staring at the older man posed with the groom in one of the pictures. He was a good few years younger and less wrinkled, but he was unmistakably the creepy old man from my dreams.

“May I ask what exactly Essie’s disability is? I ask because it’s possible it might affect how I need to accommodate her learning —”

 

“You’ll find that out in time,” she said, “if you stick with the job. Suffice it to say that she can’t go to school with other children.”

By the time Stella comes to visit again, the changes are pretty much complete. Daddy, Stella and Quindy go out shopping, and Daddy buys Stella a couple of things too, although the trip is mostly to get new underwear and a new swimsuit for Quindy, and some new pants, too.

“Yeah, we can only stay about an hour 'cause I’ve got a freshman orientation thing to go to at four o’clock, and I want to allow time to unload the car and do some unpacking first.”

When I’d taken a shower on Friday morning, I found out the hard way that moss is even harder to dry than fur. It took me a long time to blow-dry the moss enough that I could put on my work clothes without getting them damp, and I was nearly late to work.

Dad and I went for a short walk around the halls near his room with the nurse’s aide. He was tired out after going one lap around the nurses’ station. After we got back to the room and the nurse hooked his heart monitor leads back up to the larger machine, he told me, “I’d like to talk more about the transgender thing, if you don’t mind.”

“Last time Brenda and I played backgammon,” Grandpa said, “we talked about venning into little bitty bodies, maybe two or three inches tall, and seeing how the board would look from that angle. Big enough to roll the dice and move the pieces, but small enough that it would be as good a workout as an hour at the gym.”

“Have you tried to talk to him about rejuvenating?” Grandpa asked.

 

“He won’t listen,” Mom said, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “I’ve almost given up trying. I bring it up every few months, still, but...”

 

We heard a door open somewhere, and changed the subject.