VAPOUR TRAILS By Touch the Light I'm not sure if this qualifies as a tg story or not. I'll warn potential readers now that it's basically a conversation between two brothers in a pub, and makes no reference whatsoever to the transition process as an individual might experience it. Those of you who care to investigate further may think, like I do, that the story's saving grace is its brevity.

Andrew Nicholls paid for his pint of bitter and carried it across to the table where his brother Keith was flicking through the football section of the Sunday Mirror.

“All right?” he said, pulling out a chair.

“Not so bad,” replied Keith as he frowned at one of the match reports. “Think they’ll go down?”

Andrew’s eye caught the headline dominating the paper’s front page. Another celebrity relationship had turned sour, it seemed.

He took a sip of beer.

“They’ve got a chance if they beat Oxford next week,” he suggested.

“For me it’s the Crewe game,” said Keith. “That’s the one they can’t afford to cock up.”

Andrew murmured his agreement. The truth was, he’d started losing interest in football. The sport was under a death sentence. The same players, all getting that little bit slower with every season that went by. The crowds were dwindling too; youngsters had better things to do with their money these days.

He allowed his gaze to wander as he waited for Keith to finish reading. They both liked drinking here. Staincliffe Park was a relatively affluent estate, built in the late 1980s to house middle-income professionals with young families and high credit ratings. The Kittywake, situated on the edge of the development closest to the sea front, reflected the optimism of that era. The décor was tasteful, the marine paraphernalia that blighted so many of the area’s other pubs kept to a minimum. The piped music was soft and unintrusive. There was a carvery, and a spacious beer garden. The range of single malts available at the bar was a feature Andrew found specially appealing.

Finally Keith put down his newspaper.

“Fancy coming back to ours after we’ve had a couple more?” he asked. “Bev won’t mind. She always makes far too much for the two of us anyway.”

“Another time, maybe,” said Andrew.

“You mean you’re just going to sit in that empty house for the rest of the day with the headphones on and a bottle of cheap plonk beside your elbow?”

Andrew thought about answering, then reconsidered. Keith still didn’t know about the affair.

Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife.

It was an easy enough rule to follow — as Angela had reminded him when she was packing her bags.

Give it a couple of decades and for the vast majority of women that kind of problem would be a thing of the past.

He lifted his glass once again, gulped down a good third of the rich, ruby liquid. Through the door at the opposite end of the pub entered two couples; between them skipped five little girls, all in ribbons and pretty dresses.

“That’s who I feel really sorry for,” said Keith. “They haven’t a clue what the world’s going to be like when they grow up.”

“They’ll just have to adapt. It’ll be better than if it was the other way round.”

“You’re not kidding. There’d be bloody carnage!”

“I was on about the sperm banks,” Andrew said after they’d stopped laughing. “I saw an article the other day where they reckon there’s enough stored up already to keep us going for more than a century. And there’s what…thirty or forty years before the donations stop coming in?”

“It’s still just a stay of execution.”

“Yeah, but where there’s life…”

Keith shook his head.

“We’re being cleansed from the system, Andy. We’ve infected the planet, left our shit all over it and now it’s decided to flush us down the pan before we can do any more damage. Isn’t only us either. It’s dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, fish, the lot. The entire food chain’s about to be fucked, simply because we’re at the top of it.”

“You make it sound like nature’s doing this deliberately.”

“How do we know it isn’t? We’ve had nearly twenty years to find a rational explanation for what’s happening. The finest brains in every country working their socks off, spending billions upon billions, and they’ve got precisely nowhere. Maybe they’re not supposed to.” Keith drained the last of his beer and got to his feet. “Going for a tab?”

Andrew followed his brother outside. He lit up, shielding the flame of his lighter from the freshening breeze. Overhead, two vapour trails sliced through the near cloudless sky. Their clean geometry was a testament to humanity’s mastery of its environment, visible proof of its ability to overcome the most daunting of obstacles.

Suddenly he felt a chill. He’d always believed that his life formed part of an ongoing story, that no matter how insignificant his achievements may have been, they would add to those of a species destined for greatness. He couldn’t accept that the whole of human history was just another evolutionary cul-de-sac.

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered far and wide after he had sacked Troy’s sacred city…

That’s one small step for a man…

That it had all been for nothing.

Could there be a spark of hope in the theory that was gaining popularity on certain web sites, where an increasing number of people subscribed to the idea that mankind was being given one last chance to mend its ways by becoming womankind?

Or were they merely clutching at non-existent straws?

Andrew glanced back at the sky. The trails were slowly dissipating, their definition diminishing.

They didn’t belong there.