By Lora Guy

Lenny is a cross dresser out for a public stroll when he is caught up in a sudden, massive group transformation.
The effects of a far-off war send his life spinning in directions he could never imagine.

The premise for this story is based on the "bubble" concept created by AJ James in the novella
The Long Strange Journey of Seth Gates

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He usually didn't notice the hum. The constant sound coming from the overhead lighting was always there, as normal as the sound of his own breathing. So when the timbre of the white noise changed, it was all the warning he needed. Without any conscious decision being made, he flicked down and tapped the save button, just as the power died. Just in time. Again.

Life during wartime. Life on the losing side during wartime. A quiet, nervous laugh escaped his throat. A thought like that, spoken aloud, could have him executed for crimes against the state. He rolled his eyes at his own folly. The new reality was that the state was rapidly losing its ability to enforce anything. And if he didn't finish his work soon, a bullet in the brain might seem like a blessing.

The alienplague. Planet by planet, star by star, they had swarmed through the heavens. Nothing stopped them. Shit, nothing they tried had even slowed them down. These outer colonies were their final stand. The weapon system he was working on was really their last chance. Two years ago, when he first proposed it, no one took him seriously. But as the alienplague spread, their options dwindled. They took him serious now. Any port in a storm as they say, and the alienplague was a hurricane.

"Doctor Embel, are you okay in there? The power went out again." The corporal had a penchant for stating the obvious. It was his way of dealing with the stress.

"Yes Corporal, I can see that. Is there anything you can do to get it back on?" Being next-to-useless in a crisis situation was what had had the corporal assigned to this backwater outpost in the first place. But he did have his strong points. Making broken things work. And scavenging. Very valuable skills under the present circumstances.

Embel leaned back in his chair, massaging his forehead. What he wouldn't give for one good night's sleep. In his own bed... sleep. The dim glow of the emergency lighting, the silence and his exhaustion all worked together to push him into a fitful slumber.

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"Doctor Embel, I've read through the outline you provided to the members of this committee. I have to say it seems somewhat far-fetched. Transporting a weapon anywhere using this technology just doesn't seem possible."

Embel found it difficult to keep the exasperation out of his voice. "Doctor Melia, that's correct. This technology could not be used to transport solid matter."

Melia nodded. "And you write here that the limited energy that could be directed through this device couldn't possibly be strong enough to do any significant damage to anything. Could you explain to us then, if we did provide the necessary resources to build this system, how could it possibly be of any use against the alienplague?"

Embel took a deep breath. "Doctor Melia, I agree that the energy directed through this system would only be capable of causing minor changes on a molecular level. At first glance, that might appear to render this system useless as a weapon. But its weakness is actually its strength. The low power involved allows for extremely accurate control. Control in not just three dimensions, but four."

None of the four panel members seemed to understand the significance of Embel's words. He knew he was losing them, so he dumbed it down. "Gentlemen, we would be able to manipulate matter on a microscopic level, anywhere, any time."

The bureaucrat on Melia's right spoke for the first time. "Doctor Embel, how could that affect the course of the war? This technology might be able to make some of the enemy ill. It might even kill some of them. But we couldn't possibly mass produce enough of these things to equip even one percent of our forces.""

Embel was finding it difficult to remain calm. Government types... they think along such narrow lines. It's amazing anything ever gets done. "Gentlemen, we would only need one device."

Melia looked up from his scribbling. "Doctor Embel?"

Now he had their attention. "Research conducted on enemy corpses has revealed that they propagate in a rather unusual way. The alienplague actually consists of two distinct species, and successful reproduction must begin with a coupling between two individuals; one from each species." He paused, expecting an interruption, but it never came. "The two species, although distinct, are actually very similar. In fact, without careful examination, they are almost indistinguishable from each other. Post mortem tests have shown..."

Melia was losing patience. "Could you skim past the anatomical details, doctor, and explain how constructing one device could help us?"

"Certainly. We could use that one device to rearrange a few molecules in the alienplague chromosomes, and almost instantly, they would all be the same species. They would no longer be capable of reproduction. They would age without bearing young, and eventually they would go extinct."

The room grew silent as Embel's last words echoed off the stark walls. Melia gathered himself and asked the obvious. "Doctor Embel, do we know the lifespan of the alienplague?"

"It has been estimated at somewhere between eighty and one hundred years."

Melia spoke slowly, as if talking to a simpleton. "So if we approved construction of the device, and somehow managed to succeed in altering the species of billions of the enemy at the same time, we would still have to struggle against them for another one hundred years, until they all died off?"

Although he appeared stoic, Embel was giddy. He had been waiting for Melia to ask that very question. "Gentlemen, the beam generated by the weapon is not chronometrically restricted. We can aim it anywhere, any time. We can target their home world, two thousand years in the past. Long before they learned to leave their tiny planet. They would become extinct many centuries before they could become the menace they are today."

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Embel was aware that he was being nudged. He was in that place between dreams and reality, where the two blend together. He was at home, having dinner with his son. But it was odd... he didn't understand why his son was calling him Doctor Embel. And his voice had changed. He sounded just like the corporal.

"Doctor Embel, wake up. Doctor Embel." He slowly opened his eyes to see the corporal. He looked worried. "Doctor Embel, you fell asleep. I have the power back on."

"Yes, I can see that corporal."

"And Doctor Melia is here." The corporal lowered his voice. "He doesn't look happy, sir."

The cobwebs were suddenly gone from his mind. "Melia? He's here? Now?"

"Yes sir. He's in your office."

This couldn't be good news. Melia had never set foot on this colony before, much less in this lab. Things must be moving faster than he thought. Without a word to the corporal, Embel got up and hurried toward his office.

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Melia was sitting behind Embel's desk, stone faced. "Ah, Doctor Embel. Come in, close the door please." The room was small; Embel couldn't help but notice that Melia hadn't bathed in days. "Doctor Embel, how long before your weapon is ready?"

Blunt. No political doublespeak. Things must be very bad indeed.

"The weapon system itself is ready for testing. It has been ready for a few weeks now. The only hold up is the constant power interruptions. The corporal is doing his best to stabilize the situation, but..."

"Doctor Embel, we need to use the weapon as soon as possible. Today. Now."

"That's not possible! Without the proper calibration tests, it could..."

"Doctor. Stop. Listen to me. I just came here from Angor Prime. It's gone. The entire planet, destroyed."

Embel didn't notice himself sitting down. "That means they'll be here..."

Melia finished for him. "Yes... in hours." He paused just long enough to let Embel hitch in a breath. "Now, Doctor Embel. We need to go down stairs and do whatever needs to be done to fire the weapon now."

Embel slowly lifted his gaze to look Melia in the face. The clarity of thought that comes with routine suddenly washed over him. "Yes, Doctor Melia. You're right, the weapon." Without another word, they both rose and made their way down to the lab.

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Embel surprised himself. His voice was steady and clear. "Doctor Melia, there is a good chance that this will work... if the power remains stable." Glancing past Melia, Embel made eye contact with the corporal. His assistant was shaking his head. He went on anyway. "The beam depends entirely on the power supply. If it fails before the weapon is charged to full capacity, we'll still be able to get off a shot. But it won't be wide enough to affect their entire home world."

"I understand, Doctor. I've read the reports. Even a partial hit might change their history enough to stop them before they get started." Melia looked directly in Embel's eyes. "Now let's fire this weapon and force the alienplague... what do they call themselves?"

The corporal spoke up. "Hu-mans. They call themselves hu-mans."

"Thank you, corporal. Let's push these hu-mans into extinction."
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It never got old. The completely mundane things in life became absolutely thrilling, simply by tossing in a little cross dressing. If I had been wearing my "normal" clothing, nothing about the interaction would have seemed memorable. The scruffy looking man with the long greasy hair had no idea that he was part of a moment that I would remember for the rest of my life. He only did what panhandlers do; he asked for money.

"Excuse me Miss, I'm stuck downtown and I need bus fare to get home. Could you help me out?"

Dozens of thoughts raced through my mind, competing for dominance. Do I turn and walk away? Do I run? No, that would only make things worse. Women just do not run along the streets of downtown Boston in a skirt and three inch heels. Stay calm, stay calm... Wait a minute, he said "Miss". Is it possible he hasn't read me yet. Maybe. Just act like you would any other day. You should be able to get off one word in a woman's voice. Okay, here goes.

Shrug shoulders. Make eye contact. Raise eyebrows.

"Sorry." Keep moving girl... that's it, one foot in front of the other.

"Thanks anyways, Miss."

Calmly walking away, I was screaming inside my head. I can't believe I'm pulling this off. He didn't read me. In broad daylight, no less.

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I knew that I was a cross dresser before I was old enough to know the word. Some of my earliest memories involved wanting to be like my sisters. I didn't want to be a girl, I just wanted to be pretty like a girl. In my teens, whenever I was alone in the house, I would be going through wardrobes, trying things on. It was amazing that I never got caught. Occasionally my sisters would notice something had been worn, but they would always accuse each other of stealing their clothes. I would just keep my head down, grin to myself and watch the fireworks.

When I got my own apartment, that's when I started getting serious. It wasn't just stolen moments in borrowed clothes. Wigs, make-up and full body shaves became a big part of my life. Leaving the safety of my own four walls began with drunken two a.m. stumbles through the hallways of the apartment building. I would wake up the next morning hung over, still dressed and furious with myself for going out looking so awful, always muttering "never again."

After dozens of such episodes, I realized that there would be no stopping myself. If I couldn't stop "Lora" from going out, I might as well accept it and stop "Lora" from going out looking like a drunk guy in a wig. That meant lots of practice with make-up, losing some weight and buying a few outfits which were a little more situation-appropriate. And no liquid courage.

Living on the sixteenth story of a busy downtown complex meant that getting Lora in and out of the building unseen was probably not going to happen. So that left one option: Halloween. Months of preparation went into that one magical evening each year. Not once did anyone bat an eye as Lora rode the elevators, walked calmly through the crowded lobby and into the night.

Each little success built my confidence. Stops at lonely ATM's, mail boxes and public telephones led to window shopping and the ocassional stroll through the local malls.

After several years of this, I started feeling that one night of being Lora each year was not enough. Seeing as my living arrangements were the problem, I moved. A house on a quiet street in the suburbs suddenly gave me the ability to come and go as I pleased. Sometimes I would spend an entire week of vacation in drag, going out at night and filming myself doing run-of-the-mill things. And everything filmed went straight to youtube. The feedback there gave me almost as much of a rush as getting dressed and going out. Almost.

I got dressed and went out so often, it started to become routine. And routine led to boredom. The thrill was fading. I decided to bump it up a notch. Daylight. That was the next frontier to be crossed. Downtown Boston in daylight. The light of day was just the thing to spice up what was becoming ho-hum, and doing it downtown meant that Lora wouldn't look out of place in a skirt and heels. Looking forward to that sent a chill up my spine.

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I was no more than ten steps away from the panhandler when it happened. The world around me went white. It wasn't like a flash of bright light that would make you squint. No, it was more as if everything in the world suddenly changed color, everything became the same shade of white. The sidewalk, the people, the buildings, the sky; every single thing became indistinguishable from everything else.

It's funny how your mind can take in information it doesn't understand, and then instantly make up a story to explain it. My mind told me "Oh, I've gone blind. So this is what it looks like when you're blind. Strange how it's all white, not dark." And as quickly as that thought was finished forming in my mind, it was over. The white was gone, like nothing had happened. No spots in my vision, no moment for my eyes to adjust back to normal. To tell you the truth, I was actually wondering if it had just been a trick of my eyes.

I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed it, or if it was just in my head. I looked back toward the panhandler, but he was gone. Standing in the spot where I expected to see him was a confused, scared looking young girl. She was dressed like he had been, but the clothes were far too big for her. Where the hell did she come from?

She was trembling, looking at me with a question on her face. The cross dresser in me began to worry... what if she starts yelling? A young girl standing on the sidewalk screaming was just the thing to attract a lot of attention. I began to feel a panic coming on. All I could think about was moving away from her before she started causing a scene.

Two steps was as far as I got; my feet walked right out of my shoes. Wasn't that the damdest thing? I had bought those shoes on-line, and the first time I tried them on I was disappointed to find that they were tight. Not crippling tight, just uncomfortable tight. But they were the perfect match for the business-type skirt suit I had on, so I wore them anyway. And now there they were, standing there on the sidewalk .

Squatting down to pick them up, I saw these little glossy pink flakes scattered around. Seeing my hand as I reached to pick up one of the flakes, I managed to put two and two together. The polish was gone from my finger nails. It had just fallen right off, and there it was in little finger nail shaped pieces, lying on the cement.

Sitting on my haunches, looking at my shoes and nail polish, I didn't really notice that people were starting to wander out of the buildings. The hush that had frozen the world was starting to melt. Someone across the street started screaming. That broke me out of my daze.

Panicking cross dresser's mission number one took over: get back to my car. I just left my shoes standing there on the sidewalk and made tracks. Get to the car, get to the car... that thought crowded everything else out of my mind. The two minutes it took me to walk-jog-trot back to the car were surreal. The urgency I felt was difficult to keep under control. I didn't even notice that I was barefoot.

Everyone everywhere had been affected. A courrier was on the curb next to a bicycle, blood trickling from a gash on her forehead. She was just sitting there, staring at the blood on her hands. A young woman with a shaved head was on her knees beside a hot dog cart, staring at her reflection in the chrome. An oriental girl in a very large T-shirt was standing on the corner with her jeans in a pile around her ankles, unashamedly examining herself. Dozens of cars had rolled into things or each other, the drivers mostly oblivious to the damage.

Once I was safely inside the cocoon of my car, my approaching panic began to subside. I took a deep breath and that's when I noticed that my bra was unusually tight. In fact, it was down-right painful. A quick glance down at my chest answered the question of why. Through my blouse and jacket, I could see that my silicone breast forms looked massive. My bra was bursting. I undid the top two buttons on my blouse, reached in and pulled out the forms.

Even though I instantly felt much more comfortable, it dawned on me that I didn't feel normal. One more undone button and my blood ran cold. There were breasts in my bra. Real, honest-to-goodness breasts. I reached into the blouse and poked the left one. Poked it hard. It hurt. When I pulled away, there was a white mark on the skin where my finger had been. As I watched the white mark fade to pink, I was snapped back into the real world by the sound of an approaching siren. Several approaching sirens.

My mind kicked into high gear. Something big is happening here, and the police are on their way. They're going to be stopping people, looking for witnesses, asking questions. Like any cross dresser who has ever ventured out in public, I had a knee-jerk reaction. I did not want to be stopped by the police while wearing women's clothing. The knowledge that I had just discovered a pair of flesh and blood breasts in my bra was forgotten. Instinct took over. I pushed up my sleeves, started the car and put it in gear. With my stocking foot trembling on the gas pedal, I started to move.

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The drive home was a blur. To this day, I can't remember a single detail about it. I might as well have been riding in the trunk of my own car. One moment I was in the parking lot downtown, and the next thing I knew I was sitting in the car with my garage door closing behind me.

A lot of what we do is based on superstition. Hockey players won't shave during the playoffs; baseball players have a routine about stepping into the batter's box. Me, I always uttered the same phrase while that garage door was closing... Well Lora, you made it home safe again. So in spite of the lunacy of the past hour, habit kicked in and I began "Well Lora."

That's as far as I got. Three little syllables were all that came out before I stopped. That wasn't my voice. Over the years, I had worked hard at being able to sound like a woman, with some success. But on my best day, I didn't sound anything like the voice that had just come out of my throat. That shocked me into taking inventory.

I pulled down the sun visor, opened up the mirror, and looked into the eyes of a very surprised girl. As if it had a mind of its own, my hand reached up and rubbed her cheek. It felt greasy. I looked down at my hand and saw the tips of my tiny fingers were smeared with pressed powder and blush, mixed in with a healthy dose of nervous sweat.

Since that day, a lot of people have asked me about that moment. I like to think that I have a well rounded vocabulary, but I've never really been able to do it justice. The best I've ever come up with is this; it was like looking at myself wearing an extremely life-like mask, except I didn't have a clue I was wearing that mask until I saw it in the mirror.

I'm proud of the fact that I can keep my cool in a crisis. I once gave CPR to a co-worker while the other ten people in the room just stood there looking lost. But that was training kicking in. This was different. My mind had no frame of reference for this situation. I just sat there looking at that young girl's face staring back at me from the mirror.

After what must have been five or ten minutes, a coherent thought suddenly burst through the confusion and rushed to the front of my mind... maybe the face and breasts weren't all that had changed. And along with that thought came the realization that the ever-present discomfort of tucked genitals was no longer ever-present. Denial took over. If you don't confirm a truth, then it's not yet a truth. I reached over for my purse, got out of the car and padded into the house.

Once in my living room, the sight of the television spurred a train of thought. There'd been a lot of commotion going on downtown. Maybe this didn't just happen to me. The white flash, the screaming, the sirens... there had to be something on the news about all this.

Plopping down on the floor in front of the couch, I pulled my knees up under my chin and turned on the TV. I shouldn't have been surprised to find them reporting it on the first channel that came on. I was right; this was a big deal. They didn't have much in the way of details, but what they already knew was enough to make them interrupt whatever they had on.

They were showing footage taken from a camera perched at the top of their broadcast tower. My god, the flash looked like a small nuclear bomb exploding. Slow motion showed it starting in one place and then expanding until you couldn't see a large chunk of downtown. And then it was gone; it just popped like a soap bubble. There was no damage, no debris in the air, not even any smoke. Nothing.

After running a loop of that a few times, they showed a shot of the national guard setting up a road block on Congress Street. The announcer was saying that an "unknown event" had occurred involving a ten block area of downtown Boston. Until the nature of the event was discovered, all people inside the affected area were being quarantined and were being asked to make their way to city hall.

The phone rang, scaring the begeebers out of me. Muscles that I wasn't accustomed to having went loose, letting a few drops of pee leak out of me. I ignored the phone, deciding that now was as good a time as any. I had to bite the bullet... I had to get out of these clothes and find out... find out... I didn't know what I was going to find out.

Forcing myself to get up and walk down the hallway to my bedroom was hard; real hard. But I don't really recall doing it. What I do remember clearly is the sound of the little spark that zapped me when my hand touched the doorknob. I remember thinking "well, Lenny, I guess that proves you're not dreaming."

Directly across the bedroom from the door was my full length mirror. (I know, I know... single guy, full length mirror? I was a cross dresser, remember?) My first impression of the reflection in that mirror was "she looks like a girl trying on her mother's work clothes." I walked up to the mirror, reached up and pulled off my wig. I knew it would be easy to freeze up, to start losing it, if I kept staring at her, so I turned my back to the mirror and got busy undressing. Jacket, skirt, blouse... that was as far as I got before I let myself peek over my shoulder at the mirror.

"Oh shit oh shit; just don't look." Without looking down, I peeled off my pantyhose, padded panties and bra. At that point, I didn't really need to confirm anything, but I did need to look. I sucked in a deep breath and turned to face the mirror's brutal honesty. A terrified young girl, wearing nothing but too much make-up, was staring back at me.

"Oh shit oh shit ohSHIToh shit... how the hell is this even possible?" After a quick scan from head to toe, I tumbled onto the bed and curled up in a ball.

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Okay folks, first time author here. How am I doing so far? I proof read it a couple of times, but I'm sure that I missed a bunch of lulus.

In AJ James' novella The Long Strange Journey of Seth Gates, he didn't explain what caused the "transformation event" in downtown Boston. In fact, at the end of the story, he invited other authors to create their own explanations. This story's prologue is my humble attempt to do just that.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you'll continue reading... amazing things happen to Lenny as he learns to live as Lora.

Please take the time to comment once is a while. You wouldn't believe how something as simple as "Thanks, good story" can brighten up an entire day for a writer.

If you're at all curious about me, I wasn't kidding about filming myself and posting it on youtube.
You can check out my videos by clicking here.

Feel free to drop by and say hi!