John is brought a strange document to examine. As a board certified document examiner, he has seen more than his share of strange documents but none like this one.

The Document

by

Paula Dillon

John Washburn sat at his desk across from a very distraught young lady. She had to be the most gorgeous lady ever to grace his office. She looked to be in her twenties, stood about five foot eight, had tits of epic proportions but not grossly so, an overly slim waist, generous but shapely hips and legs that seemed to go forever. Her eyes, easily her most stunning feature, were almost hypnotic, and a shade of lavender he had never seen before. Her makeup was smartly done; John would describe it as professionally done. Her hair was straw blonde, waist length and more voluminous than any head of hair he had ever seen. She was dressed in a pink suit that showed off her numerous assets, but still quite business like. The jacket fit everywhere, as did the skirt that hit her below mid thigh. On her feet was a pair of impossibly tall five or six inch pink patent leather pumps. She was all lady, except for the fact that she didn’t seem comfortable in her own body. He couldn’t seem to put into words what made him feel that way.

She stated that her name was Bobbi Thompson and that she was referred to him by a friend who worked in the District Attorney’s office. She opened a brief case and took out a cardboard cylinder and withdrew a piece of parchment or vellum. She then handed him the ancient looking document. He carefully took it in his cotton gloved hands. It appeared to be three and a half, by six inch, piece of vellum, with twenty one tightly space lines of writing, in a dense script, he didn’t recognize. The page was adorned by a single glyph, or sigil. One edge appeared as if it had once been a part of a tome, or book.

John was a documents expert. He was often called upon to verify and authenticate ancient documents, determine validity of questionable documents, examine and compare handwriting and testify if necessary in court.

After questioning the lady, John determined that she wanted to know whatever John could tell her about the document, in a non-destructive manner. Although she did give him permission to snip a small portion of the gutter, of the page and to test minute portions of the ink.

Ms. Thompson would let him have possession of the document for two weeks and would look forward to seeing the results of his analysis in two months. She requested and he assured her, that the document would be insured for half a million dollars against loss or damage. She then gave him twenty thousand dollars and promised him another twenty thousand and expenses, when he gave her his results. Not the highest amount he ever earned for a job, but the most for a single page, in a case where he wouldn’t have to testify in court.

John shook Bobbi’s dainty hand. She gave him a full hand shake, not one of those half hand shakes women normally give. She then stood and departed. John was mesmerized as he watched her sexily swaying backside depart. He was embarrassed to feel himself stiffen in response to her form.

John took the document back into his lab. He put on the voice activated blue tooth headset to his audio recorder, switched on his magnifier lamp and began to make his initial examination. He described the page in as much detail as he could. His initial observations took a little over two hours, as he described everything from the number of stitch holes in the gutter, the size and dimensions of the characters, the color and quality of the page, ad nauseum.

He took a pair of scissors and almost evened out the edge where the stitch holes had been. You could still see where the holes had been, but just so. He bagged and tagged these snippets separately.

He then rolled out the page on a vacuum board and carefully rolled a piece of saran wrap over the page. He hit a button and the page flattened out. Tilting the page up and illuminating it with a broad band white light, he carefully photographed the document, in digital, several fine grain black and white, and color films.

He then set his system to automatically illuminate and record the document, using an alternate light source at wavelengths from 2000nm to 100nm light. This process would take several hours and with his system, he didn’t need to be there to observe it. He decided to come back to look tomorrow, when he had fresh eyes.

***************

Fresh, John took a look at the results of the image scan. As he panned through the images, several areas jumped out. There were places where the text had been changed. John documented where the changes were, what was there originally and what had been added to the document. He then took microscopic samples of the original ink and the ink of the substituted work.

The biggest discovery was the glyph, or sigil. It had parts that had fluoresced at quite a few of the different light sources. He took microscopic samples of each of the areas that had fluoresced.

He took all the samples bagging and tagging them, as he went. He logged all the samples of ink and packaged them with the samples of the vellum, before shipping them off to labs he used.

He printed out the original text and the copy, as edited by whomever.

With all the physical evidence collected that he wanted; John began to try to understand the writing of the document. The language was unlike any that John knew. He had to admit though, he wasn’t a specialist at ancient languages. He had worked on many ancient documents, to determine age and authenticity, without understanding them, but this one intrigued him.

On his computer he selected several areas of text and copied them on his computer screen. He then set his search engine hopping from one language site to another, trying to identify the language.

John looked at his watch and couldn’t believe what he saw. He had spent the better part of fourteen hours studying the document and hadn’t even stopped to eat. He carefully stowed the document and headed on home. It was Thursday, he decided to take a long weekend and get back on it on Monday, when he could expect some preliminary results.

****************

Monday, John checked the results of his computer search. He didn’t find out what language it was, but found it fit closer to some of the ancient Samarian texts. Even though there were similarities, there was enough differences to rule it out, but it could be a derivative of that ancient text. During the day, he received a chemical analysis of the ink and paper, finding some unusual results.

The ink’s composition, at least for the main text, was consistent with vellums from Samaritan fifth century BC except it had high levels KMnO4, or potassium permanganate. The only problem was the format. People back then didn’t write in book format.

The places where the text had been changed, the chemical content was more consistent with European ninth century AD.

The chemical analysis of the vellum itself, was more than unusual. The vellum had been treated with Au Cl3, or gold III chloride.

The gold chloride was unusual, but the presence of potassium permanganate, an oxidizing agent in the ink, was confusing. It most definitely would not be used in the manufacturing of the ink and should have caused the vellum to break down.

The inks from the glyph, were the big surprise. Their chemical analysis showed eight different inks were used. The combination of inks dated that at about the second century BC.

It will be interesting to get the results of carbon dating from the vellum itself. Unfortunately it should take another three weeks before he could expect results.

It was Friday before John had a chance to take another look. John then set about studying the glyph. He started out studying the individual parts of the glyph, since it had apparently been made in eight different stages.

Over the next few days, he isolated the eight separate characters, that made up the glyph. Each part formed a letter that came from Samaritan texts. He started from the one centered upright and made one list rotating about forty-five degrees clockwise and another counter clockwise.

He took the original document and studied the glyph using the ALS. He panned through the different lights, forward and backwards. Suddenly he found himself panning the lights so the images of the glyph traveled counter-clockwise faster and faster till everything was a blur. For how long he had stared at the glyph, he did not know.

Suddenly it was like a light switched on in his head and he knew he could read the document. He checked the document under the ALS so he could read just the words that had been added to the document and then read the words that were originally on the document.

He just looked at the first line of the document and what had been unintelligible script, even earlier this day, was clear to him. For some reason, this scared him. How could an intelligent person like he was, actually believe that something like that could actually happen. It had to be magic, but he didn’t believe in magic.

John put the document away and tried to forget about it. Minutes later he found the document in his hands again and he was reading it. He again put it away and left the room.

Minutes later he realized that the document was in his hands and he was trying to speak the words. He felt that that would be bad, so he locked it up, left the room and made his way to his car.

He was driving away when he realized that he hadn’t locked up the office when he had left. He had millions of dollars worth of documents and manuscripts in the office, so he turned around and drove back. He found himself locking himself up inside, and he had the dreaded document in his hands, vocalizing the words. It was an unbearable compulsion to him.

He tried several time to quit and then to try to read the original words that it had been written in, but he could only verbalize what he could see. When ever he could get himself to successfully stop, he found that he would only start over at the beginning, to verbalize the words. The compulsion to complete the verbalization became too strong and he finally finished reading the document out loud.

As he read the last word, it was like the lights had gone out and he passed out. He lay there unconscious for an indeterminate amount of time.

When John finally woke, the sun was low in the east. He was as weak as when he was when he had had a mild stroke, a few years earlier. He was extremely disoriented, it took him a few minutes to realize he was in his office, lying on the floor. He felt a wave of vertigo as he tried to sit up. His balance was way off and his vision was blurry. He felt somewhat disconnected from his own body.

It took him twenty minutes to sit up. When he did, he felt his chest shift. It was a feeling he never felt before. He discounted that feeling for a second and inched his way to a chair. He grabbed the chair and tried to get up. He was extremely thirsty and uncommonly hungry.

His chest rubbed against the chair as he righted himself. That sent waves of an unfamiliar sensation through his body. His mind hung in a fog that refused to let him appraise his condition. He finally got his body into a sitting position. He set his head down on the desk for a few seconds rest.

His bladder screaming and his bowels cramping got him moving. He somehow stood and staggered without falling to the bathroom. He first took a coffee cup and filled it with water, to help loosen his parched throat. He then managed to drop his pants and shorts, so he could relieve himself.

He sat there for thirty minutes. His mind began to clear. In a flash it all became clear to him. He knew what the weight on his chest was and he knew what to expect as he cleaned himself.

The glyph on the document was a trap and the writing had been a spell. He knew in his heart that he was now a woman. The spell had given him rudimentary knowledge on how to take care of himself at least.

He stood and looked at himself in the mirror above the sink. At least he wasn’t an ugly woman. Where he had sparse and graying hair, he now had a full head of auburn hair that came to his collar. His face, which had begun showing his age and his health, now glowed with youth and vigor. Looking closer he reckoned that he now looked no older than twenty.

He also noticed that his clothes fit perfectly. He unbuttoned his blazer and saw the outline of a bra beneath his blouse. His pants fit at the waist and at his now wider hips. His wing tipped oxfords now were pumps that matched his clothes and had a two inch heel he had seen on many professional women.

He felt his back right pocket, but it wasn’t there. He knew his purse was in his bottom right drawer in his desk. He opened the drawer to his desk, got his purse and opened his wallet. He spoke the name on the driver’s license, even before his eyes could read it Johnnie Washburn, a feminized version of his name. The license listed his height two inches shorter, his weight a hundred ten pounds lighter, and his age at twenty one. He or rather she, had the same address.

Johnnie then began playing her life before, her mind. She was born in the same city, her parents both died in a car crash three years ago. She graduated high school at sixteen and from college at eighteen. She earned her masters in forensic document handling at twenty and was scheduled to begin working on her doctorate this fall. She was a little light in her accreditations, although she knew she had just passed her board certs last month from the National Association of Document Examiners. She had taken over her parents questioned documents business. That was almost John’s life, twenty-five years ago.

She had to get home, she smelled and was a mess. She grabbed her purse and headed out. Outside, instead of John’s massive Lincoln Town Car, there was a sporty BMW. As she drove home, she accessed her memory as John and was pleased to find it all there.

Home, she saw, was greatly changed, as she drove up. It had been her and John’s parent’s home, but she saw she had taken better care of the house. Inside was definitely more feminine than it had been.

She hurried to the bathroom, but took more care with her clothes, than what John used to do with his. Instead of a shower, which John preferred, she took a bath, using bath salts, taking care to wash the stink off of her.

She dried off, put her hair in a turban, pulled a pair of panties on and dressed in a robe. Starving, she called out for a delivery of Chinese.

She then sat down and considered what had happened. She was lost in thought, when the doorbell rang. She quickly wrote out a check for the food and saw she still had a balance just over eighty thousand dollars. She also still had her other investments and was worth a pretty penny. She gave the delivery man the check and took her food to the kitchen to eat.

She had a laptop on the kitchen table and pulled up the work server, as she ate. She looked at the scaned copy and all she saw was gibberish on all the scans. She had to get back to the office.

She dressed in jeans and a blouse. John had never worn jeans out, to go to the office, but it seemed so right for Johnnie to do so.

She entered the office and got the document out. When she looked at it, she could actually read it, and under ALS, she could read what was there before. She tried the computer scans again and they were gibberish.

She reread the spell, although there was no compulsion to do so this time. She began to get an understanding of the spell. The spell under normal light was a permanent transformation spell, that changed the man’s gender and made him a picture of what he liked in women, but left him in a suitable position, where he could survive. In her mind, she thought of the spell with the changes. Originally, the spell only transformed the man for one day. She added one of the changes and saw that it was changed into a malicious attack on a man, the other change made the spell less malign, in effect.

Johnnie was pissed, she was glad for the youth and glad for the good looks, but she felt a part of her life had been stolen from her. This had to stop. She knew in her heart that Bobbi Thompson had to have been a victim of the spell, probably looking for a way to return to what she was. Johnnie was afraid that Bobbi would find other unwitting victims in her efforts.

She desperately wanted to destroy the thing in her hands, but that could affect her professional career. It was bonded for half a million, yes, but who would go to a document examiner who destroyed what he was working on, even if she could prove it was an accident.

Then Johnnie smiled and locked the document up.

Monday, Johnnie was in her office working on another project, when Miss Thompson came in to reclaim her document. She had spent all day Sunday writing a very detailed report on the document, leaving out some details, like the changes to it and ink composition. She had added to it some details, she knew from her experience. It really didn’t answer the question she knew Bobbi wanted, she just didn’t know the answer.

Bobbi read the report and her expression showed her disappointment. She really had been hoping for other answers.

“Oh and one more thing Bobbi. The document is starting to really deteriorate. From its appearance its condition is pretty fair right now, but in a number of areas the deterioration may accelerate. I have a document preservative that will help the vellum last many more years and slow this deterioration down,” Johnnie said, handing her a bottle of preservative. “It has all natural ingredients, lanolin, glycerin, and such, that will keep the vellum from cracking. Just follow the directions on the bottle once a week. I will have a more detailed report for you later and may have a language return, when I receive details from some of my colleagues.”

A disappointed Bobbi signed the receipts for the document and left. Johnnie smiled.

It was about an hour later she felt something inside. She knew the document was gone now. About five minutes later, she received a frantic call from a sobbing Bobbie, she told her that the document burst into flames after she treated it with the preservative. Johnnie told her that she never heard of anything like that happening before and for the life of her she couldn’t understand what had happened.

“I know, I can’t replace the document, but I can give you copies of the scans I made.”

Johnnie hung up, the chain was broken. She was still Johnnie but there would be no more unwitting victims, at least.

The end.

Notes: I am not sure that glycerin would be used as a document preservative. It could be. There are many places John did things a real document handler would not do, like exposing a document to a broadband white light. They do sometimes use alternate light sources (ALS) to examine documents.

KMnO4 (potassium permanganate) should not have been there. It is an oxidizer. Exposed to air it should have over time have been broken down. KMnO4 exposed to glycerin, will ignite and burn quite hot.