Prologue

I have been asked to write my story and I have done my best to do so. Others have added their points of view as they wanted to explain their actions when I either didn't care for the reasons or was kept in blissful ignorance.

From an Earth point of view my life has become very strange and not what most people would want or enjoy. Despite all that has happened to me, I can now say that I am content and I know that there will be a small portion of the Earth population that would like to be where I am. This book is for them.

One of the reasons I have been asked to write this book is to find those who would like to come to Arrat. If you follow my story you will know what awaits you and you need to be very certain of your decision. It is not for the faint hearted or those who are insecure in their idea of self. My own beliefs about gender and sexuality have been under extreme pressure causing me severe emotional distress. I have eventually overcome my demons and allowed myself to feel happy, but it was a struggle, far more than I can put into words.

Considering all that, if you still wish to take the irreversible step of following my footsteps you need to visit the website xxx.xxxxxxxxx.xxx or email [email protected]

(The website and email have been removed due to concerns for public safety. There are ongoing investigations into various missing person cases relating to this information.)

Chapter 1

My story really begins when I was 53 years old, but I had better give you a glimpse of my life up until that point. It might explain some of my actions and reactions.

If someone comes up to you and asks you to describe yourself, most of us will begin with our job title. Doctor, Dentist, Carpenter, Plumber. You certainly wouldn't state your gender or sexuality. My first response would be Musician. Not that I ever earned that much money from it, but I loved the guitar. I never had a good singing voice so I specialised in backing up others or playing classical music. I wrote songs but couldn't manage to sell them for someone else to perform. I did teach guitar mainly for the love of it since it certainly didn't pay well.

I met my American wife when I was travelling through the USA after I finished high school. There is another element of your identity, your nationality. I was originally English, but I have spent most of my adult life in California. I don't think I would classify myself as American though.

My wife and I spent several years visiting each other until we couldn't stand to be apart any more and I moved in with her. She had a great job as a real estate agent and since my music career never took off I ended up as the house husband. I learnt photography once Karl our only son was a bit older so that I could help her with clients. I did a fair amount of maintenance work on houses. Karl joined the military and we lost him in Afghanistan. Mary never really recovered from that and was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer at the age of 48. She was gone within 12months.

So my description of myself would be something like this. Musician, Father, Husband, Widower, Englishman, Heterosexual man, Househusband, Odd job man, Photographer. At the age of 53, I was sad and alone. Not suicidal, but definitely thinking that my life was pretty much over.

I decided to travel and I ended up travelling a lot further than I intended. I took a flight to Cancun. I was half asleep when disaster struck. I felt a brief but intense pain going through my legs, my head hit the seat in front of me and I blacked out. The next thing I knew, I found myself sitting in a classroom feeling very small staring at a stern looking woman. She was at least six foot tall, looking very buff, short hair, wearing trousers and a shirt, neither of which hid her clearly female features. She was pointing to a large screen that had letters on it, but when she spoke it was a language I had never heard.

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Thea's explanation

It was actually a very unfortunate and unlikely accident. I have spoken to the scientists involved and they told me what happened. They were experimenting with dimensional travel and had deliberately opened a portal high in the air to make it extremely unlikely that we would hurt any of the inhabitants. Almost none of the worlds we have come across are technologically advanced enough to have air travel.

As soon as the portal was opened material from your world entered ours at extreme speed and even though we immediately shut down the device the majority of the people who passed through the portal, died instantly. There was only one survivor and he was close to death. He was not the first displaced person we had dealt with though. In other worlds we have taken residents who were dying or close to death and integrated them into our society, so, although his circumstances of arrival were unusual, his presence in our world was not. We followed our normal policy for displaced persons.

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As she went through the letters of the alphabet I realised that they were slightly different from what I was used to. There was no y or z, but there was a separate letter for ch sound and th sound. The words sounded Spanish, but I knew enough Spanish to know it didn't fit.

How long she tried to teach me her language I do not know. I couldn't feel my body, I couldn't make any sounds or any movement. There was no obvious way to measure time, all I could do was concentrate on what this lady was trying to teach me. It went from letters of the alphabet to pictures with words and finally to sentences and children's books. There were a few words that they emphasised and tried to make sure I understood.

It all ended very abruptly. The classroom and lady teacher blinked out leaving me with pure blackness, with a white dot blinking in the centre. A word appeared above the blinking dot. Press it said in their language. It took a while to work out how to mentally press the dot and, as soon as I did, the dot disappeared and reappeared up and to my left. I then had to spend time playing the press the dot game.

Once I had become proficient with that I was back to my language lessons again but now I could be tested to see how my comprehension was progressing. It was eventually explained to me that I now had a computer integrated with my brain. Even before they told me I knew that my brain power had significantly improved. My memory for sounds has always been excellent, but now it was an order of magnitude better. I was powering through learning the language, remembering the sounds and meaning so much easier than I ever had before.

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Thea's explanation

I cannot talk about our technology for obvious reasons, but I will say that installing the interface is mainly a way of allowing people to connect to the computers and technology around them. Sort of like having a screen, keyboard and mouse with a WiFi connection to the internet. Except the interface encompasses all the senses, has an ability to store information and a limited processing power that works with the brain.

Normally there is no increase in intellect, but in rare cases, the brain, processing component and the storage facility interact in unexpected ways.

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Once I passed a level of comprehension, I was given a tutorial on the interface, which was the name they called my internal computer. The first thing I accessed was a dictionary. Reading the dictionary was boring but with my increased understanding, by the time I had finished, I knew the language. Although I knew the language, it wasn't my first language and I still thought in English and then translated and likewise, translated into English to properly understand. This meant I was a little slow, but my comprehension was pretty complete.

I was hoping that now that I could speak their language I would be able to ask all the questions that were pounding through me. Where was I? What had happened to me? Why couldn't I feel my body? Unfortunately, my access to the technology around me only gave me limited access that was to education material only. No science allowed, but history, culture and entertainment.

My first inquiry was into the music industry. Good news; they had guitars and singers. It was a bit hard to translate the lyrics quickly enough and a lot of content required payment that I didn't have. The one oddity was that I only found female groups, no male in sight. Nor could I find any classical music. They had meditation type music that was purely instrumental, but nothing involving a full orchestra.

I decided to go to the free entertainment section. Again no men. Clearly, I was missing something so I decided I needed to start studying history to see if I could work out this mystery.

Chapter 2

Studying history was very different to how I thought it was going to be. The same lady who had taught me my letters sat in an armchair facing me. I would ask her a question and then she would pause, then answer. Her answer was a combination of verbal explanation and visual aids. The visual aids were spectacular. If she was talking about war, I would find myself on a battlefield simulation, if she wanted me to hear a speech I would be a member of the crowd in clear view of the orator. It was fascinating and I could stop her at any time if I needed further clarification.

She was clearly a computer simulation and if I asked her something that was outside her programming she would tell me that she would ask for clarification and then continue as if I hadn't interrupted her. Then later the answer would come through.

I would later find out that I spent 8 weeks recovering and I think I spent most of that time going over this world's history and modern-day culture. It was presented so well that I found it fascinating. If I wanted to tell everything that I learned there would be multiple books on nothing but history and the evolving culture. I needed to study the evolving culture to understand why it was the way it was and how I was going to find my place in it.

There were a few specific developments that I think were key to this world, Arrat, turning out the way it did. To start with I should mention that Arrat is one huge continent. There is a large ocean and a few minor islands, but all the major land masses are connected which is possibly why the wars tended to escalate and become world wars.

About five thousand years ago their technology was similar to what Earth is today and they were dabbling in genetic engineering without really understanding what they were doing. They were trying to create super soldiers. The world at that time was mainly male dominated and it was the men who went to war and the scientists didn't want to create babies that would grow up as super soldiers, they wanted to transform the soldiers they already had.

They eventually succeeded and found a process they could use on men that would make them significantly stronger, with faster reflexes. This was a long time ago so some of the details are missing but the general idea was that this development caused another war. Spies managed to steal the process and soon there was a big war with these super soldiers fighting other super soldiers. The nations that won or lost are meaningless now; what was interesting was the result of this genetic meddling.

All the men who had been altered by this process, survived the war and had children, produced super soldier children, but only the females carried this trait. The girls became taller, stronger and faster. This resulted in the start of The Gender War.

History is written by the victors so how much of the atrocities that they claim was committed by the men is true is debatable, but nothing that they mentioned was outside of what I had heard of happening on Earth. What they said occurred was that the men, finding themselves at a disadvantage physically, forced their dominance on the women more and more, to keep them in their place.

The women's rebellion resulted in a horrific war with brother against sister, mother against father. To cut a long and awful story short, the women eventually won and wanted to make sure they were never raped or dominated again.

For a few hundred years after that, I don't think men were treated very well at all, but if you fast forward a thousand years you find a much happier picture. Technological advances also had a big effect. Within a hundred years of the Gender War, the Interface was developed and could be used to completely control the human body. In the case of men, it meant that there would never be a successful male rebellion and sexual function including release was now completely in the hands of the women.

Another hundred years or so after the interface came the regeneration technique, that became known as Regen. Regen was a process that used the interface and some other technology that allows you to reverse ageing, I'm guessing nanotech but as a male, I am not allowed to know or study any science or technology. It rapidly encompassed cosmetic changes as well.

There are now two types of Regen. Basic Regen which is mandatory every ten years that reverses ageing with any desired soft tissue changes. This takes about a week and means there are no old people! Almost all sicknesses are resolved and damage that has been done to the body is repaired. They don't necessarily live forever but they are not allowed to die until after they reach 100. You can set a two-week timer for the interface to shut down the body, but it will not activate unless you have reached 100.

Advanced Regen, also known as Poshgen was originally only available to the really rich, but over the centuries has come down in price and the middle classes can easily afford it now. Poshgen allows you to make skeletal changes as well as soft tissue changes. That process takes 8 weeks.

There are lots of consequences to all of this. Some of which is the complete opposite to the world I was used to. Women passed over child rearing to the men long ago. Possibly as a result of that or part of what I call the short haircut syndrome, men now look like women. Let me explain, in order to get a decent job on Earth, you are encouraged to get a decent neat haircut, dress smart and polish your shoes. If you turn up like a slob or even with a preference for long hair, which I think is totally unfair, by the way, your chances of getting hired greatly diminish.

On Arrat, with the women dominant and in all the authority positions, if you wanted to be hired, men probably found that if they looked a bit feminine they had a greater chance of success. Then fast forward a few thousand years and you have a culture where men have breasts and breastfeed babies. If men cut their hair short they are ostracised and they are looked down on if they wear anything but skirts and dresses. From my look at the entertainment available, all those who look particularly feminine are actually men and the tall strong, short-haired women in trousers are the women. I think of them as Amazons and wonder if Earth has interacted with them before.

Another technological innovation which has had a major impact is the artificial womb. Women and men no longer produce children naturally. Or, at least, that is how I thought of it, they would consider a woman giving birth as horrific. This also made it easier to choose certain characteristics in their offspring, in particular, the child's sex. It was a woman's world, so who would choose to have a male child? The government intervened and offers monetary rewards if you don't choose the gender and leave it to chance. They tried offering money to have male children but it didn't work. This means nothing to those who have money so the rich and famous only have female offspring. A consequence of this is that there are far more women than men and the normal family group is between 2 and 3 women for every man. To have children you need both the government's permission and a laboratories help. Since people can live to whatever age they want, the number of children allowed is carefully managed.

The system of government is somewhere between a democracy and a meritocracy. If you want to have a say in how the government manages its finances, for example, you needed to take tests to show that you are an expert in financial matters and understand the question being posed. You also have to be female, of course.

The one exception is a constitutional monarchy. Similar to Britain, one country had a queen ruling during the Gender Wars and although the main family was killed during the war, a distant relative was crowned. That family exists to this day. They are incredibly rich, pay no tax and are generally loved by the people. They decided after Regen arrived that each queen would abdicate after 100 years of ruling, so there would always be fresh ideas available. No kings allowed.

I was seeing a pattern suggesting men are essentially second class citizens in this world and worrying about my place in it. I managed to confirm my guess that I was in Regen and was told that it was Advanced Regen as they needed to make some skeletal changes as well as soft tissue changes. I thought that meant I would have some input in how I would end up looking but no. Apparently, the matriarchal head of the household has the final say in how any male is treated. Normally, this means your mother, wife or female guardian. Usually, the male's wants are considered. In my case, the female technician in charge of the Advanced Regen made all my decisions for me.

In order to fit into society, my body was going to be scaled back to a sixteen-year-old just going into female puberty. Since I have never had breasts before they thought it would be best if they arrived slowly and naturally. However my face was far too masculine so it was being altered to more feminine norms, my pelvis is being converted to the female version and my hands and feet will be reduced in size. There are some other changes relating to my shoulders and waist, but I didn't really understand the medical terminology.

Because I come from a different culture the technician decided that the lesser genital reconstruction was appropriate. That meant my balls would be internalised and something would be done to my penis, re-routing the urethra so I will be peeing out of my arse. Erections were not permitted unless a female with the relationship 'lover' allows it. I released a mental sigh of relief when I realised that I wasn't going to be completely neutered. I was informed that men are generally happy and one of the reasons for this is an enforced orgasm that they call release which occurs everyday at 10 pm and 7 am. The interface is connected to our nervous system and can have a ridiculous amount of control over us.

It was a lot to take in. It helped to understand the reason why, but I wasn't looking forward to waking up. My job prospects also looked pretty bleak. Men had menial jobs on the whole and usually stopped working after having a baby. They were paid significantly less than women, but since any money they earned went into the female matriarch's bank account anyway, it didn't really matter. Men could own personal items like jewellery and clothes but were not allowed to purchase property and they had the gall to tell me that men and women are equal.