Casting Call

by Miranda Epidote

Miss Calliope Tamworth smiled up the dashing gentleman that handed her out of his steam launch. Mister Robert Pendleton is the name he’d given her, and though they’d hardly had a proper introduction, they were otherwise observing the forms as best they may. He offered her his arm, and thus entwined, they’d moved off the quay and onto Chandler Lane, toward her cottage.

As they walked up the lane, Caliope thought back to their meeting, earlier that night, at a salon on the new carriages fitted with electro-dynamic engines that were now appearing on the streets. There was some concern over the newfangled devices, and the local garden society had held a gathering where interested people could learn of the changes being wrought by such exuberant adoption of new machines.

Mister Pendleton had been at the meeting to. Like many people there, including Cali, he seemed at least as interested in the social aspects of the meeting as the he was in the putative topic, and they had both chatted with several new people, though had particularly enjoyed each other’s company. At the close of the meeting, he’d offered to escort her home in his launch, which was hardly worth the effort it took for the short distance of walking they saved. He did seem taken with the boat, though, and she appreciated his enthusiasm as he showed off his toy.

Sooner than she expected, she found herself at the walkway to her cottage. They paused there to chat a bit more, while she debated inviting him in. Not feeling ready to do more than chat socially with him, she felt it best to end the evening here, for now, and bid her escort good night. Walking up the lane and into her cottage, she thought it might well be worth pursuing that acquaintance in future visits here. But that would be another day, and as the circle with the pie wedge options appeared in the air in front of her, she chose “Exit.”

David Rourke let a melancholy sigh escape as the window on the virtual world disappeared, exposing his computer’s desktop, and it’s links and reminders of the world he had to live in most of the time. He wondered what Mister Pendleton would think of Miss Tamworth, if he could see David behind the screen.

His job was represented by the spreadsheet with his department’s budget for next quarter. His task was to make sure all the numbers came in below their expected grant income, though he had little enough power to alter things if they didn’t, beyond alerting the people with the actual authority. It wasn’t exactly a dream job. Not much in the way of excitement, responsibility or respect. Perhaps it was time to find a new job. Again.   

Or move.

Or do something else to change his life is some drastic way so that he could, perhaps, forget that he hadn’t changed it in the way he knew he most needed to. His gaze shifted to icons that had been on his desktop much longer than the spread sheet. Links to sites where he could research transsexuality, or to chat-rooms where he might talk to others that seemed to understand. Maybe even review the list of therapists in the area that were known to deal with the issue, so he might take his first steps at fixing the problem he’d lived with his whole life.   

Or not, he thought, as another yawn came upon him. It was time to finish up the spread sheet for work, and get to bed. He now realized that the problem wouldn’t go away if he simply wished hard enough, but that first step in the real world looked like a cliff. If he thought he might have any chance of looking like a normal woman, it might have been easier. Or so he told himself, while wondering if that was just another excuse. And yet, with his build, and his face, the best he felt he could hope for was to resemble a fairly hideous man in a dress.

David woke with a bit of a start. Normally, he wasn’t a morning person, but a sense of oddness caused him to try to be more alert than usual. He was reclined in a char. Had he fallen asleep at his desk last night? No, he remembered shutting down his computer and going to bed. After that, things were garbled. He opened his eyes and saw the ceiling and upper walls of a room that didn’t seem familiar to him. It was as he sat up to take in more of the room that he got a bigger shock–his body was different!

Or, perhaps it would be better to say that her body was different, since it soon became clear that this body didn’t belong to a male. Tipping her head down, David felt hair shift on her shoulders and brush along the sides of her face. Most prominent, from this vantage, were her breasts, sticking out from her chest in a way they’d never done, before. The rest of the body he could see, beyond those, didn’t alter the picture. Wide hips, long legs, slender arms and delicate fingers. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto,” she said to the empty room. The higher register her voice came out in only added confirmation of her observations.

David was, at this point, fairly convinced he was dreaming. He seemed way more lucid and alert than during a dream, but how else could he explain this. No matter how many times he went to bed hoping to wake up as a woman, it wasn’t the sort of thing that actually happened. Taking in her clothing, David thought “Okay, a fashion plate, I’m not.” She was wearing a camisole, with spaghetti straps, that seemed to have a tighter band of fabric built in to help hold her breasts, and a pair of soft sweatpants. Running her hand along her thigh, she felt the softness of the material, and let her hand drift higher and to her groin, pausing only long enough to confirm that this body was, in fact not male. Her hand flinched away as her mind sought to understand how this came to be.

Before she could really process what was happening, the door opened following a short double-tap knock. A short man with close-cropped brown hair stuck his head in the door, looking at her, “Come on Cali, it’s time to get you down to makeup and wardrobe.”

David turned his head to see if anyone else was in the room that he might have missed, before turning back to the newcomer with a puzzled expression, “Er, what’s going on? How did this happen?”

The man in the door rolled his eyes while giving an exasperated sigh, “Have you been drinking again? I thought we’d agreed there’d be no more of that.” He took big sniffs of the air and looked around, looking for signs of alcohol, but not finding any. “Don’t let the director catch you at it. You’re a pretty girl, Cali, but you’re hardly the only actress who knows HMS Pinafore, and if you crawl back in a bottle, I wouldn’t count on him not finding another Josephine. Makeup is waiting, so come on!”

Shaking his head (her head?) David tried to sort out what was happening. She’d used the name Cali online, but was a bit troubled by the coincidence. Still, it seemed best to go along with the guy in the door, at least until she could figure out how this happened. As she pushed her way out of the chair, her body seemed to move differently than she was used to, and she felt like an ungainly colt for a bit. The feeling quickly left her, though, and by the time she reached the door, she was already feeling in control of this very different body.

She followed the man, who her mind insisted was named Philip, though she couldn’t recall ever meeting him before, down the hallway to a door marked makeup, where he turned to usher her in. Cali entered the room, noting an elderly woman standing by a counter with a wide range of cosmetics. The man who’d led her here spoke to the other woman, “She’s all yours Janet, drop her in wardrobe when you’re done.” He mimed tipping a bottle back, by way of warning.

Cali was getting frustrated with his fixation on drinking that she didn’t feel the effects of, but thought it best to not disabuse him of his notion, yet, since it easily explained her confusion, and would hopefully give her time to suss out what happened.

Janet patted the back of a chair, her smile not completely masking some trepidation, and Cali settled into it. As she did, she noticed the mirror facing her, and got her first look at her current face. How can that be me? It was a pleasant face, oval shaped, with a hint of dimples, even before she smiled. Large blue eye and dirty blond hair filled in the details, and she turned a bit while Janet was still fiddling with stuff on the counter to see a cute upturn on the end of her nose. A wide mouth showed off unnaturally white teeth. Pretty, even without makeup.

Janet turned back, gathering Cali’s hair up in a net – she’d late find it covered with a wig for the stage – and said, “I hope you don’t have to review your lines, since it’s not easy to do makeup on someone that’s trying to read.”

Lines? Oh, right, the guy had mentioned something about HMS Pinafore. Thinking about it, Cali realized she seemed to know the whole thing cold. Even staging and marks for a production filled her head. She couldn’t recall that she’d ever read the play, and she certainly didn’t think she, as David, had ever acted in it, yet part of it all seemed familiar in a way she couldn’t understand. Philip had mentioned Josephine, and so Cali continued to verify that all the lines, songs, and cues seemed to be in her head. Okay, whatever this was, this wasn’t a nightmare, since now would be the time to panic over not knowing her role if it were. With a smile, she’s said “I’m sure I’ll manage,” as Janet set to work on her face.

Cali dipped her head in a nod to the audience as she dropped a graceful curtsy. The corset she was laced into, beneath the Victorian seeming gown helped ensure her posture was good, though really, she’d confidently handled her role well. Hanging on the arm of the actor playing Ralph Rackstraw, they both gestured to the orchestra pit to direct some of the applause that way. It was hard to believe the play was over so soon. Once she’d hit the stage at her first cue, all worry had vanished, and she’d thrown herself into the role, playing to the audience, and with her fellow performers.

It was fun and exilerating, and now that the rush was over, perhaps she could puzzle out how a guy like David ended up in Calliope’s body. Walking offstage, still glowing from the performance, she wasn’t any closer to answering that question, though perhaps now she’d have time. She was puzzling how she might find street clothes when Philip approached her, “Cali, it’s time for your treatment.”

She blinked. Of course, she couldn’t neglect that. She’d get her answers later. “Lead on,” she said to Philip, and followed him out…

David woke as one often does from the midst of a dream, with a sense of disorientation. He blinked his eyes, resolving an acoustic tile ceiling, with soft lights placed so as not to shine directly in his eyes, and realized he was in what felt like a dentist’s chair.

“Welcome back, David. Relax, you’re safe here, and we mean you no harm.” Words, spoken in a pleasant sounding woman’s voice came from beyond the foot of the chair as he was raised to a sitting position.  

As the chair reached its upright position, Dan assessed the woman who belonged to the voice. Pretty, with her blonde hair neatly styled in a layered cut, and wearing a smart navy blue skirt suit with a cream silk blouse. Nothing about her seemed cheap or sloppy. He could now also see more of the room they were in, and it added to the sense of opulence.   

Looking down, he first noticed that he was back in his old, male, body. It had seemed a prison to him for most of his life, trapping him in the wrong sex. After whatever he’d just experienced, it seemed a hundred times more so. The body was at once intimately familiar and so very wrong. He still wasn’t sure how he’d recently been a woman, or even if it was real, for how could it be. Yet real or not, the experience had increased his dysphoria with his body to new heights.

Blinking back the urge to cry, he set his mouth in a grimace and looked up at the women who’d spoken to him.

“Wouldn’t you like to be Calliope all the time,” she asked.

“What?! How? That was real? What did you do?” the questions tumbled from David in his turmoil.

“Good. No denials,” she said with a smile. “You may well be ready to hear my offer.”

“What offer?”

“Simply put, we can give you a woman’s body.”

“But that can’t really be done. It’s just the stuff of dreams.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, “Have you ever had a dream as vivid and real as the experience we just gave you? That wasn’t a dream, but the actual body you were in.”

David barely nodded, unable to argue with how real it had felt, “Go on…”

“I represent an organization known as the Dollhouse. We provide people that can be tailored to provide very specialized services through implanted personae and skills. Normally, we build a complete personality customized to the task, though as you experienced, we can limit it to particular knowledge, such as how to sing and act in a musical you’ve never even read.”

After giving him a moment to digest that, she continued, “While we actually are very good at building the personae we need, the bodies we install them in must be flesh and blood made the old fashioned way. So, we record what makes you, well, you, and save that for when it needs to be restored. In the meantime, you’re body is a tabula rasa into which we can pour a person tailored to our needs.”

“Lest you imagine some vast conspiracy of body snatchers, all of our actives are volunteers. Most need a break from their lives. After five years, they get restored to their body, and get a new start.” She paused, giving him a meaningful glance before continuing, “And for some, a new start in a different body might be more enticing.”

“Wouldn’t that leave that person without a body, though,” David asked.

“You aren’t the only one who wants a change of body. As long as we balance those that wish to switch sexes, it all works out.”

“So, what happens to my personality during those five years? I twiddle my thumbs,” David asked.

“You won’t notice the time. You cease to exist for all intents during that time. It’s like sleeping, without dreams.”

“So, I go to sleep, and five years later I wake up in the body I was just in?”

“Well, not that exact body – her five years will be over well before yours, and she likes her body just fine. But if you’re switching, we’ll try to pair you with one that’s close to your preferences and about your age, from those that would like to cross the other way.”

“And legally? I imagine I can’t exactly pick up my old legal identity with a twist,” asked David.

“Well, no. But we’re not without contacts among influential people. You’d have a new identity to go with the new, to you, body, and a clean history, with qualifications that match what you can do.”

David wondered if this was too good to be true, “And what is this going to cost me?”

The woman glanced at him reprovingly, “I thought I said that – five years use of your body.”

“And if I say no?”

“You wake up tomorrow in your own bed, and never hear from us again.”

“You’re not afraid I’ll mention this?”

“Who’d believe you?”

David frowned, “Good point.”

“Do you need some time to think about it?”

David’s first instinct was to shout “No,” but he held back, looking for a downside. His denial had still recently been arguing that he could continue living as a man if he had to, but this experience had killed that notion. His own body was now foreign to him, and the sooner he could make it right, the better.

“When do we start,” he asked.

The woman smiled, and gestured to the door, “We have details to arrange, but there’s no time like the present.”

Disclaimers: First, this is fanfic based on the concept, if not any of the characters and details of the Joss Whedon show Dollhouse. The TS aspect is something that seemed worth exploring against the backdrop of the show, though is not represented by the released episodes.

Secondly, if the research linking transsexuality with physical brain development is accurate (and I think there’s some evidence there), this wouldn’t work. Moving a T2F personality into the body of a T2M woman (and vice versa) would solve the problem for neither of them, as they’d both be TS the other way, in the end.

Thirdly, constructive criticism is welcome, but this is my first story, so please be gentle.