This is a try at MELANIE EZELL'S BIG CLOSET ULTIMATE WRITER'S CHALLENGE, the February challenge:

February: Where No (Wo)man Has Gone Before

Idea: It is 500 years in the future, and mankind has finally begun mass exploration and colonization of our surrounding stars. What kind of adventures does our kind have, and what changes must we face to survive in this harsh new environment?

Length: 1500 words or more.

Limitations: The story must take place outside of the confines of planet earth. TG content must be based on either the ideas of a changing social structure or some other reason that can be attributed to man's expansion into the wider universe.

Probably not quite 500 years into the future, don’t know how far really, but it’s no longer the 21’st century.

This might be a disguised political critique of the folly of affirmative action and enforced quotation of traditional minorities into positions in government or other large organisations. But shhh! don’t tell anyone! After all, this story ends better than those situations do…

Leaving Mars

― Damn Earth, damn all politicians and those blasted feminists, damn NASA for doing this, damn those bioscientists that developed the body replacement system and most of all, damn my own insistence of never demanding of my crew something I would not demand of my self as well! the Commander was swearing into his glass of — as he had asked the bartender for “something with enough punch to launch my brains out into orbit again” — and drank it all down in one swoop before he asked for another one.

― I take it you have issues with the affirmative action legislation being enforced in space now as well as on Earth, sir? the bartender said in a voice reminiscent of Stephen Fry’s valet character in Jeeves and Wooster — a twentieth century comedy show that had made Mars’s TV networks because of the unlikely similarity between the colony’s governor and Bertie Wooster in the series.

― I have to “volunteer” forty percent of my crew — over seventy crew members! — for acquiring new female bodies because of some feminist lobbyists back on Earth. NASA saying that because the new brain pattern transfer system is so reliable, and the new biodesign bodies can overcome the physical problems with women’s bodies not being able to fill the fitness requirements for astronaut positions, there is no longer any excuse for skewed sex balances among their astronauts. What they fail to tell us is that they are in their right to just change future recruitment policy, not transform nearly half of their current corps! But no, a one time cost like this is so much cheaper than recruiting once again the size of the current corps of women who wants to enter space. Oh no, they have to change us to fit the quota right now, even though they already have about sixty brand new, never sailed ships in dock on the moon because they don’t have enough staff to crew them, and several of my colleagues tell me they are making do with barely enough staff to keep their barges from falling apart!

― I imagine the atmosphere is rather loaded among the crew members since the news arrived, sir?

― You have no idea! Two of the heavy haulers had mutinies already when the commanders decided to try to just appoint who gets changed and who doesn’t. Word is getting around, any commander that doesn’t device a method of choosing that is agreed upon by the crew is likely to be forced to walk the long walk out through a short airlock.

― May I suggest something, sir?

― Go ahead.

― It strikes me that since you are already resigned to being transformed yourself, sir, that you think about it from the perspective of designing a really good body for yourself, to become a woman you will enjoy being. Not just being assigned a random body. If you and your crew are actively doing something to make the situation as pleasant as possible to live with, then your crew might look at the situation in a more favourable light.

― Designing a woman you will not hate being instead of just being thrown into a random body? Some of my men might be able to take that as a challenge, yes. I think I will have to think more on this, barkeep. Good night to you.

― Have a pleasant night, sir!

Walking back to his dirtside quarters in Tharsis One, Commander Gordon Blaze was considering just what type of woman he wanted to be, as he soon had no other choice than to be a woman. Or rather, trying to put his mind into the perspective of being a woman, what would he like his body to be like? Of course, one of the large differences between sexes being the mode of sex, sex was on his mind. He knew from bitter experience that abstinence from sex could be a very hard thing on a man, particularly when coming back to Earth after more than a year and finding his fiancé in the bed of another man. And he knew scientists had proven women to be just as sexual as men, just in a different mode. He had a gut feeling that it would be best to give up any thoughts of maintaining any “manly” sexuality and attitude to sex. If he was going to be a woman, he was going to make sure he was as comfortable in a female sex and with female sexuality as he was right now with male sex and sexuality.

But how much of that was a property of his future body, for which he could at least give serious input on the design, and how much was a property of his current brain patterns which would be imprinted in the new body? Could he control that? Maybe he needed to have a very in–depth look at the process, so that he could present a proposal to his crew.

As he reached the spacer quarters he mulled over what possible things he could or could not affect regarding his future body, and once he had gotten in the door and out of his off duty suit, he fell fast asleep without even getting under the linens.

In his rather confused dreams, he took just about every shape a woman, or man, could take; he repeated the process of being transferred into his new body hundreds of times; and eventually he took a more or less stable and very sensual form which stayed for some rather erotic dreams, most of which he still remembered when waking.

* * *

― As I’m sure the entire crew is already aware, some disturbing orders have reached us from Earth. These orders concern the quota of women in the permanent crew of our fine vessel. We are the largest ship in NASA’s fleet, and as such, going against those orders, despite their all too apparent idiocy, would be seen as desertion and most certainly would result in a mass mutiny of other vessels in the fleet. Earth has this last century turned entirely dependent on our mining and trade and will not be able to tolerate such a turn of event without turning to war, dirtsiders against spacers. I do not see a positive conclusion for us in such an event. Therefore I am sad to conclude that we will have no option other than follow these orders.

The assembled crew was lethally quiet during their commander’s speech, surprising their commander by not even arguing in the pause he had added for just that.

― Now, the entire crew is aware of my stance on “volunteering” — I will not demand from my crew any actions that I would not myself be prepared to do. One of those things I’m not prepared to take is being thrust into a new body not of my choosing!

There were some murmurs from the crew at this, but nobody raised their voice high enough for the commander to hear their words.

― For this reason I spent the entire day yesterday in consultation with the Mars branch of Copperfield–General Bioengineering and Medical. It is through them NASA has organised the execution of the transformations to take place. For the moment they have enough unused biopods at Tharsis Three to grow custom bodies, after individual input and design, for the entire portion of the crew that is to be transformed. We have a narrow window of no more than forty hours until that option closes, which means that we will have to do the selection of crew members today in order for all to have time to give input on, or even custom design their new bodies during tomorrow and the morning after.

― A description of the technologies behind the transformation may be in order. The body will be grown in a biopod during a time of between eleven and thirteen days. This body will have genetic sequence based in a sample of your own morphed with a baseline from NASA, with some standard health improvements and some genetic improvements that are randomised for genetic variation as well as custom ones available in the design process. This body will have optimal environment and stimulation for growing motor control and sensation, meaning that even a lower muscle mass body is likely to have better responses to your intentions and better condition than any born body. Once the body is grown to the level of imprintability, it will be almost complete in every respect except higher cortical functions in the brain. That means a lot of lower functions such as emotional response patterns, sensory and motor aptitude and talent, speech patterns, and sexuality, will be partially or entirely a property of the body. This means those properties will take natural feminine patterns, but also that you will be able to affect them in the design process. The problematic side is the construction of the imprint. This process is invasive and sadly destructive to the donor brain. You will never be able to return to your original body.

The formerly so quiet crew was at this point chatting amongst themselves. Commander Blaze decided decided it was time for a break for coffee.

― All right, let’ s continue where we left off. I said some features of the brain would be partially or entirely decided by the body. Exactly how much can be regulated in the design process. Copperfield–General recommends letting as much as possible of the emotional parts and the entirety of the sexuality related parts go with the body. Results when large parts come from the donor, as they call the original body, have never been quite satisfactory. There is also the issue of male pride and built–in prejudices. And don’t make any mistake, there is male pride in all of you that will make you intellectually wary of female emotional and sexual behaviours, and this pride will b e harmful for your final body if you let them govern the design. Likewise all males have prejudices against women as a group just as all women have prejudices against men as a group. These are very different between individuals, but they exist and they too will do their best to make you resist becoming a happy and healthy woman. As a general rule, those that went slightly overboard feminine and left the masculinity behind were happier about the transformation than their more restrictive colleagues. That is not to say that you couldn’t be a successful, happy tomboy, but with overlarge male baggage you are more in risk of being unhappy about the change that way than if you take less of your gender identity with you in the transformation.

― But one of the reasons I stand here in front of you today is to be a role model and inspiration. I have put some thought to my form already, and when on–site I took the opportunity to design my own future body. Some considerations I had was my personality — I’m rather internally motivated and internally validating. I’m not using other’s opinions of me affect my self image much, and validating my own actions and appearance through largely personal values and not those of the people around me. Suspecting this is largely an effect of the wiring in the emotional parts of the brain, this was my first point of design. I wanted my new body’s emotional drive to be similar enough to my own that it wouldn’t lead to me losing my personality. Staying with the brain structures responsible for emotional aspects, I decided that one thing in particular was going to be entirely driven by the new body. I will let the new body define it’s sexuality. I’m going to totally abandon my masculine drives here. I asked the technicians to let her natural sexuality develop, I will do nothing to impose a design or a direction to it. My male self would most likely be embarrassed by any reactions she will have in any case, I will not let those impulses of a male who will no longer exist when I am she to override the natural impulses of the female that I will be then. Well, that was the part of the body that I think you all would do best to consider, because with this transfer technique, it truly is a part of your body, not your mind. The reason I’m saying this is because I don’t want to see my crew members to be unhappy because they failed to address a part of their new bodies that is not obvious but hidden deep inside the brain. There were more minor tweaks and guards in the emotional centers that the technicians wanted my input on, but you will not have the benefit of as rigorous design process as I did because of time constraints — the whole part of the crew that needs new bodies will have to do their design work during the same day, and Copperfield–General can only process six new body design processes in parallel at this facility. You will have to have thought about these things already and come there with a clear idea of what you want.

After this the commander brought up a series of graphs of different emotional aspects up on the screen behind him. The decided point, or rather diffuse area, where his new female body would end up, as well as readings comparing his current body’s position as well as the female and male normal intervals, and explanations of what the extremes mean. During this part he simply let the data talk for itself, and the crew members discuss amongst each other.

― Continuing on, both NASA and Copperfield–General have custom designed some particular aspects that either will be part of your new bodies, some of which on an arbitrary basis for reasons of genetic diversity and for reasons of susceptibility to biological weapons, or that will be offered to you. NASA enforces properties that will make sure your new bodies will be able to clear all the physical requirements for astronauts. Mostly you will like this. Your new body will have a strength exceeding an unmodified human of once again your muscle mass, through simple rearrangement off the protein mechanisms involved and through having a benefit evolution never had — they can remove artefacts and structural designs that are suboptimal but remains because of way evolutionary and embryonic development works by gradual improvements based in survival and reproductive ability alone. Nature doesn’t throw things out and start from scratch from a better foundation. NASA does. You will find your sense of smell improved in ways that will help with the running of the ship, such as being sensitive to leakage products from the engines that are odourless to you today. Some of this will also be of inconvenience because there is no way to entirely remove some smelly processes but it is still vital for you to be able to sense when the processes causing them are running amok. There is no change to your sense of taste or hearing. Your sense of vision will be improved by copying various tricks from other animals and putting them together in a total redesign of your eye and retina. Expect to be visually disoriented for a few hours after transfer. There are considerable changes to your sense of balance to improve your ability to navigate yourself in a different gravity and with inertial forces working on you, notably zero gravity and accelerating vessel. Radiation tolerance will be increased substantially, as will survivability in low pressure, low temperature environments. Your tactile senses will also be improved — expect greater sensitivity to touch, vibration, pressure, temperature differences. Luckily for you, they predicted a few problems in pain sensitivity increasing, so they have designed increased pain tolerance. You will not feel any stronger pain from damages than you are today, in fact probably less, but you will be able to feel much finer distinctions. Copperfield–General will have options for genetic or structural modifications to you. For example, our maintenance and engineering crew might want to opt for manual dexterity and ambidexterity. However, there is only a certain amount of brain cortex area to use, only a certain amount of neurons can be thrown at a problem. When you opt for one of the structural modifications, it will come at a cost of less area available for other systems. Please don’t put all your brainpower into manual dexterity but none into your speech centers, you would be sorely disappointed at how clumsy your tongue is at forming words and how bad your brain is at putting together intelligent speech and complex sentences. Detailed information on this, and a simulator of the design software, will be available to you through the ship’s computer network.

The commander stepped back a bit and brought up a naked woman walking, the image centered on her and slowly rotating. Beside that were rotating a detail image of her head and face, and under that a few interesting body statistics.

― Didn’t expect your commander to be put up on the screen naked, did you? Yes, that is my future body. As you can see, one point where I did let my current male sexuality affect her was just this, the shallow surface of her body. She might be a bit busty, but in my defense, the technicians have added underlying stability that will not be felt from the outside, but will remove a lot of the inconveniences of the design. And it’s hot! Likewise I’ve always had a thing for slim ladies, and the waist may be a bit on then constrained side. But again, the technicians are able to make sure it will be of no inconvenience and lead to no health problems for her. She is also quite small. While I do know that strength is a positive for astronauts, so is being nimble and graceful.

The woman on screen was now doing gymnastics and showing just how nimble she really was.

― Her neck, throat, mouth cavity, nose, tongue and lips are specially designed for one of my opt ins, voice control. The natural voice of hers before I did that sounded a bit more like an excited little girl than I was willing to accept, when simulated. So I decided to spend a little extra brain area and body design on her voice apparatus.

A graph of her voice range and waveform diagrams sampling her voice was now showing instead of the vital statistics table that had been showing before.

― All other aspects of her that you can see on screen are merely cosmetic. When we leave Mars next time, that is the body I will wear, so I thought it appropriate for you to see her face now.

At that, the image of her naked body disappeared and in place she was displayed standing at ease in her commanders uniform. It was still rotating, but her face stopped rotating and now looked slightly to the right of the onlooker.

― Being among the transformees is not without perks. NASA has declared they will pay a lump sum to all transformees for the inconvenience and to cover any unexpected expenses related to the transformation. They will also give all transformees a modest raise. All transformees will be issued two new formal uniforms. Three work uniforms appropriate for their assigned position, two thermal radiation suits for spacewalks, new helmets, a set of exercise clothes of various types, and a new wardrobe of ten full outfits for off duty use and extra sets of underwear and sleepwear. They offer to expedite the paperwork involved in the identity change, though if you are not an Earth citizen you can choose to do that through Mars or Lunar authorities.

― So, to the final matter at hand. Deciding who will be transformed. The first thing I tell you is that any volunteers, I will take. The technicians tell me they can nearly guarantee your will feel comfortable in your new body as long as you don’t do something they recommend against in the design process. Go against their recommendations at your own risk. The second is, I will conscript no family father, nor will I take a married man from his wife. There will not be any record of who has chosen to volunteer, but a rough number of volunteers remaining to fill the quota will be listed. Not exact because I will allow you an hour of considering your choice after having signed up, allowing you to draw back if you change your mind. If the percentage is not filled by the morning I will be forced to conscript some of you, which will be done by an entirely random process among those men that I did not just exclude from conscription. Is there anybody among you who find this process of selection unacceptable?

The crew’s silence rang out through the room.

― Then I leave you all to consider the future of your life and the rest of the crew. Remember, the consequences for going against NASA on this would be dire. I hope that by the morning, I will find myself with enough volunteers to not need to conscript any of you. Thank you.

* * *

That was a hard night for many of the crew, the following two weeks, nerve–wracking for the volunteers, and the days of brain transfer more than a few crew members needed badly to be calmed down. Finally came a period of two weeks in which the crew learnt to deal with their new bodies and how that changed their execution of various tasks, dynamics within the crew and figuring out new dual gender arrangements to things that had previously been nearly entirely single gender.

As it left Mars for a transit to Luna before it’s next four years long survey of the inner asteroid belt, The Decider flew the first female–majority astronaut crew in NASA history.