Ms. Novacek gave me a sympathetic glance when Mom ignored what I’d said about my name and pronouns.

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Pioneers

part 4 of 15

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story is set, with permission, in dkfenger's Trust Machines universe. It's a prequel to his stories, however, and I've written it to stand alone for readers who haven't read them.

Thanks to dkfenger, clancy688, MrSimple, Karantela, Icaria, and JAK for feedback on earlier drafts.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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It had taken me so long to fall asleep that I had trouble getting moving in the morning when my alarm went off, and wound up not having time to ask Sophia for help with makeup. I did manage to quickly ask her before my shower which hair products I should use.

When I’d dried off and gone to my room, towel wrapped around me girlwise, I realized I had a very feminine problem. I didn’t have a thing to wear. All of my old clothes would look baggy on me, and I only had one bra and pair of panties, the latter of which I’d slept in. I knocked on Sophia’s door after my shower and asked her if I could borrow something, and she said sure, but her stuff didn’t fit that great, either. It was better than my boy clothes, though, so I tried on several of her dresses and wore the one that fit best, a pastel green sundress that went well with my transformed sneakers. I was reluctantly wearing jockey shorts under it, after taking a sniff of my only pair of panties and deciding I couldn’t wear them again without washing them, though the bra seemed passable.

But when we went to the kitchen for breakfast, Dad took one look at me and said, “That’s Sophia’s dress, right?”

“Yes, she loaned —”

“Sophia, you are not to lend clothes to your brother. Tyler, go change clothes.”

I thought for a moment about arguing, but knew from the look on Dad’s face that it wouldn’t do any good. I went to my room and changed into a baggy T-shirt and jeans, hitching the belt up several notches more than I was used to. I still wore my only bra under the shirt, though.

“That’s better, Tyler,” Dad said when I came back and sat down to eat.

“I kind of forgot to mention it,, what with everything going on last night,” I said carefully, “but I’d like to go by Meredith now.”

Mom and Dad looked at each other and didn’t say anything directly in response to that.

“I’ll drive you to school today,” Mom said to me a few minutes later, “and talk to the administration. Sophia, you’re riding the bus, as usual when grounded.”

She nodded sulkily. Caleb shot us a sympathetic glance, but didn’t say anything.

Not long after we finished eating, Mom and I were on the way to school. We wound up sitting in the office for a good fifteen minutes before the secretary called us back to see the assistant principal, Ms. Novacek.

“Good morning,” she said. I’d kept my head down and never gotten in serious trouble, at least since I reached high school age, so I’d never had to deal with her or the principal much; she was a little younger than Mom, with short black hair in a bob cut. “How can I help you?”

“I’m Erin Ramsey,” Mom said. “This is my son Tyler... He used that machine at the library and changed himself into a girl, and I wanted to be here in person to tell you that’s him. I understand you had some problems earlier in the week with verifying that some changed students were who they said they were.”

(It hurt a little to hear Mom continue to use ‘he’ pronouns for me, but what with everything, we hadn’t even gotten into the pronoun issue last night, so I couldn’t really fault her for that specifically.)

“I’ll send a note to Tyler’s teachers,” Ms. Novacek said. “And... how long is this change going to last? If it’s going to be more than a day, I’ll need to get a new photo for his files... or should I say her files?” To give her credit, she looked at me when she said that, not Mom, and I said:

“I’d like to use ‘she’ pronouns and be called ‘Meredith,’ please. And we set the machine for three years.” Ms. Novacek started typing something on her computer, probably updating my database entry.

Mom frowned and said, “Tyler and his sister set the machine for three years, that is. This was a surprise to me and their father.” She didn’t say anything about grounding us or getting me a counselor, and I remembered what she’d said about not punishing us in public.

Ms. Novacek gave me a sympathetic glance when Mom ignored what I’d said about my name and pronouns, and kept typing for a few seconds more. Then she asked: “Your daughter Sophia, also a student here? Or another sister I don’t know about?”

“Sophia,” I said.

“I’ll need a photo of her new appearance, too.”

“She didn’t change,” Mom said. “At least, not that I could tell?”

“I didn’t program in any change for her at all,” I said.

“All right. I’ll send a note to all of Meredith’s teachers, and I’ll print out a copy for Meredith to carry with her. I should warn you that Mr. Moffett” (the principal) “is talking with the school board about setting a policy for the use of those machines by students and staff, and they’re leaning toward forbidding their use entirely, but I’m sure there will be an exception for transgender students.” She didn’t sound as confident of that as I would have liked.

She took a photo of me with her phone and then plugged her phone into her computer, saying: “I’ll have the note ready for you in a couple of minutes.”

“Do you need anything more from me?” Mom asked.

“Not just yet. We’re working on a form for parents and guardians to fill out when their child changes their appearance long-term, but it’s not finished. Shall I mail it to your home address, or email it to you when it’s ready?”

“Email would be fine.”

“And of course, whenever the court processes Meredith’s name or gender change or both, let us have a copy of the documentation.”

Mom pursed her lips for a moment before saying: “I don’t know that we’ll be doing that. We’ll be consulting a counselor for ourselves and for Tyler.”

From the rapidly changing expressions on Ms. Novacek’s face, I guessed that she was weighing her principles against the political trouble she could get in for telling Mom what she thought. If so, her principles lost. She simply said, after a silent minute of typing and mouse-clicking, “There. I’ll go to the printer and get your note, Meredith, and then you may go on to homeroom.”

We left Ms. Novacek’s office. “I’ll see you tonight, Tyler,” Mom said, giving me a hug. “Please be careful. Some of what I read last night, about the bullying that... ‘transgender’ children experience... It was terrifying.” I could hear the scare-quotes, but I was also touched by her concern for me.

“I’ll be careful,” I said. “I love you, too.” Even though you don’t understand me.

---

After going to my locker and getting my textbooks for my first couple of classes, I showed the note Ms. Novacek had given me to my homeroom teacher, Ms. Buckley, who raised her eyebrows but didn’t say much. The note had side-by-side photos of my old and new faces, a sentence or two about my change, and a short paragraph reminding the teachers of the school district’s policy on transgender kids, which sounded pretty good, if they enforced it.

I found a seat and looked around. With Mom and I coming in early to do administrative stuff, several of the buses hadn’t arrived yet, but of the people who were already there, nobody else in my homeroom had used the machine yesterday. Most of the kids who’d transformed in the last few days were juniors and seniors, and I found out later on that a lot of kids my age, and even more Sophia’s age, couldn’t get the machines to work for them. The going theory is that they judge how mature you are, similar to the way they won’t work for someone who’s drunk or high, or someone with a severe learning disability.

Ms. Buckley didn’t have assigned seating, which made it a little easier to slip under the radar at first — I didn’t sit in the same place I’d usually sat this year, and at first people didn’t connect me with Tyler. I took out my Biology textbook and started reviewing the chapter we were supposed to cover today. But of course, once more kids showed up, it wasn’t long before one of the girls sitting near me asked, “Hey, are you new here, or did you transform with that machine at the library?”

“I’m Meredith Ramsey,” I said. “I used to go by Tyler.”

Her eyes bugged out. “Tyler? The, uh —” I could tell she was trying to find a description that didn’t sound too insulting.

“Yeah, that Tyler.”

“So you’re finding out what it’s like to be a girl?” she asked, looking both fascinated and creeped out.

Another girl, whose name I thought was probably Emma or Emily, chimed in: “My sister is trying to talk her boyfriend into swapping sexes this weekend, but he’s not having it.”

“It’s not like that,” I said. “I’m transgender, and I set the machine for three years — as far as I know that’s the longest you can set it.”

“Cool,” said Lily Bannister, a girl whose sense of style I’d noticed and envied. Having her notice me, I felt even more ashamed of my ill-fitting boy clothes. “My cousin’s best friend is trans. She and my cousin spent a couple of nights with us while they were on a road trip last summer.”

“Who did you get to change you? And what did you change them into?” Emily or Emma asked.

“My sister Sophia. And I didn’t change her, I just let her change me.”

“You can do that?”

All in all, the rest of homeroom went better than I could have expected. Fewer kids than I expected had a problem with me being trans, and they mostly muttered about me behind my back rather than getting in my face. But despite my hope that I might have made some new friends, I was tied up in knots over the thought of seeing Andrew. Inevitably, the bell rang, and I hauled myself out of my seat to go on to Biology and face him.

He was already sitting in his usual spot when I arrived, and I had a couple of minutes yet until the second bell rang and class would start, so as soon as I showed the note to Mr. Collins, I worked up my courage and went up to Andrew’s desk.

“Hi,” he said with a devastating smile. “I don’t think we’ve met? I’m Andrew Patton; are you new here, or did you change with that machine?”

“Just transformed,” I said, smiling nervously. “I’m Tyler, but I’m going by Meredith now.”

He was gobsmacked, and didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then: “Whoa.” Then more silence. Other kids sitting nearby were looking at us and whispering now.

I filled the awkward silence. “So I was going to wait until the weekend and go over there with you, but then Sophia and I got to talking yesterday while I was helping her with English homework, and one thing led to another...” I realized I was wringing my hands and forced myself to stop and drop them to my sides, all nonchalant-like.

“And she changed you into a girl? Did you change her into a boy, or what?”

“No! No, it wasn’t like that. I, uh, I asked her to change me, and she said she didn’t want to change, so I didn’t push any buttons on my side, and it just timed out after a minute or so and opened the doors...”

His eyebrows raised a little more, if that was even possible, and a moment after I trailed off, he said: “Cool... I’d ask what it’s like, but I’m guessing you want to have that conversation with fewer people listening.” He looked around — several more students had come into the room while we were talking.

“Oh, yeah. Good idea. Let’s talk after class.” I scooted over to my assigned seat, a couple of rows back from Andrew (Gabriel Peters and Kaitlyn Pratt were between us in alphabetical order).

All through the first part of class, I berated myself for losing my cool and babbling about irrelevant details instead of getting to the point. Andrew probably thought I’d made a short-term change out of curiosity. But Andrew was so hot now that I couldn’t seem to think straight or talk sense around him. I’d felt tongue-tied like that several times earlier in the week, and had responded by letting Andrew and Evan (who’d been eating with us almost every lunchtime since he and Andrew transformed each other) do most of the talking. Now there was another complicating factor: did he think I was pretty? And could he possibly have any interest in a girl who was born with boy bits, somebody he’d known for years as a boy? In a way, it had been easier and less complicated when I knew it was hopeless.

Finally, I managed to get my mind focused on the lesson, thinking only occasionally about what I was going to say to Andrew after class and how. When the bell rang, Andrew glanced over his shoulder and waited for me while the people sitting between us got up and hurried past him. I came up to his desk and he stood up, towering over me even more than the day before.

“Wow,” he said, just standing there for a moment. “I’ve been thinking about changing into something a little offbeat this weekend... something with a sharper sense of smell or that can see in the dark, maybe... but I wouldn’t have had the guts to try being a girl. Way to go, Tyler. How long did you set the machine for?”

“Um, yeah, about that...” I glanced around and saw a couple of people listening to us. “Let’s walk and I’ll tell you.”

Once we were out in the hall, surrounded by a crowd, I raised my voice a little to be heard over the buzz of conversations but hopefully not so much that anybody besides Andrew could hear me. “I set the machine for three years. I’m transgender, and I’m going by Meredith now.”

He was quiet for two or three seconds, long enough for my heart to sink as I thought I’d lost my best friend, and then he said: “Huh. I never would have guessed. But aren’t your parents... kind of... I bet they freaked out, right?”

“Yeah. Dad wanted to drag me down to the library and force me to change back, but they talked it over, and they said they’re going to ground me until I’m willing to change back. So I guess I’m grounded until I’m eighteen, because I’m not gonna change back.”

“Bummer. Well... congratulations on coming out, I guess? Is that what you’re supposed to say?”

He looked a little uncomfortable, but he was being more supportive than Mom or Dad or Caleb, so I’d take it. “Yeah. Thanks. I don’t know if I could make it through the next three years if I lost you.”

“Well, your parents aren’t going to listen to me and un-ground you, but if there’s anything else I can do, let me know.”

Ask me on a date. But we couldn’t go anywhere while I was grounded.

“Thanks. I can’t think of anything specific right now, just... keep being my friend, please?”

“Of course. I’m not going anywhere.”

We had to go our separate ways to different classes, but I had a lighter heart and a more focused mind when I walked into American Literature.

The next couple of classes went pretty well. A few people pointed at me and whispered, and some more people (mostly girls) asked me if I was new in town or just transformed, but most of them seemed reasonably okay with me being trans. In some of my classes I wasn’t the only person who’d transformed since yesterday, but all in all I think only three or four other sophomores besides me, Andrew and Evan transformed that first week, and I was the only one who’d changed sex.

I was looking forward to seeing Andrew again at lunch, but kind of dreading talking to Evan and his friends. I served a tray of unidentifiable gloop and went to our usual table, where Evan and a couple of his friends were already sitting, but Andrew wasn’t there yet.

Evan’s buddy Wyatt was talking as I sat down: “...thing wouldn’t work, man. We did everything you said, but when we went inside, the doors didn’t close and — Hey, nice to meet you. I’m Wyatt.” He waved to me and Evan nodded, swallowed a mouthful of food, and added:

“I’m Evan.”

“I know,” I said, bracing myself. “You know me as Tyler. I’m going by Meredith now.”

Evan and Wyatt were still spluttering when Andrew walked up with his tray and sat down next to me. Evan’s other buddy Ian said, “Who’d you get to change you into a girl?”

“My sister.”

“Maybe you can help me and Wyatt figure out what we did wrong? We pushed the button in the middle of the logo, put a quarter in the slot, and then pushed the button that had a one-third pie slice of the Earth, and the other button again, and the doors opened... but when we went inside, the doors didn’t close and we didn’t see any alternate pictures of each other like Evan and Andrew talked about or anything.”

“Huh,” I said, furrowing my brow. “It sounds like you did everything right. Oh, wait. Maybe there was an ant crawling on your shoe or something?” I told them about how the door wouldn’t close on the jar with the earthworm.

“It can’t be too sensitive to that,” Andrew pointed out, “or the skin mites we’ve all got on us would stop it from working. I read where some people online are saying it doesn’t work for a lot of kids — the younger you are, the less likely it is to work.” He shrugged. “Maybe try again every couple of months until it starts working for you?”

“Hang on,” Evan said. “I get that it sucks for Wyatt and Ian not to be able to buff each other up with the machine, but everybody realizes that the real news here is that Tyler’s a girl now, right?”

Ian shrugged. “People have been changing each other into way weirder things than the opposite sex. Me and Wyatt were gonna try being centaurs or some shit for an hour or two before we turned into hotter versions of ourselves, but — oh, well. I’d like to know what it’s like to turn into a girl, but I know better than to just ask her straight out.”

Andrew looked at me. “How much did you tell them before I got here?”

“Just my new name,” I said, and then, looking back at Evan and his buddies, “I told Andrew earlier, after Biology — I’m transgender. I’m not changing back.”

Wyatt said something incredibly crude that I’m not going to repeat. Ian and Andrew verbally dogpiled him and tore him a new one, and even Evan belatedly added, “Dude, not cool.” I was so shocked and hurt by what Wyatt had said, and then so giddy with delight at Andrew coming to my defense, that I couldn’t say anything for a while. Finally, Wyatt gave me a grudging apology, and I stammered out an acceptance — trying to keep the peace, since I knew Andrew was becoming closer friends with Evan, and Evan wasn’t likely to drop Wyatt’s acquaintance just because he’d insulted me. That may have been a mistake.

“So,” Ian said, trying to change to a less volatile subject, “have y’all seen or heard about any other kids changing since yesterday?”

“There’s a guy in my Trig class that still looks recognizable, but he got his acne cleared up and he has cat ears now, and I think he’s a little taller,” Andrew said. “And I saw somebody in the halls that seemed to have scales, though I didn’t get a good look at them.”

Evan and Wyatt mentioned some other obviously transformed people they’d seen, mostly in the halls or around the cafeteria rather than in their classes, and soon the conversation turned to what we’d read on the Internet about things people were using the machines for. That reminded me painfully that I was grounded from using the Internet for anything except researching school projects, and I asked if I could borrow someone’s phone to post on a couple of forums and tell my online friends that I’d be offline indefinitely while grounded.

Andrew and Evan said they still hadn’t replaced their phones after getting them turned into incomprehensible alien devices by the machine. “My mom’s taking me into Greensboro this Saturday to get a new one,” Evan said, but Andrew’s parents were making him pay for his out of pocket, and he didn’t quite have enough money saved to afford the one he wanted yet. Ian pulled his phone out and slid it across the table at me.

“Thanks,” I said, smiling gratefully at him. I started the browser and logged into Discord and then Reddit, posting a brief message on a couple of forums for trans teens about what had happened:

“...I’m doing pretty okay — great, in some ways — but I’m grounded from using the Internet because of using the machine without permission, and I don’t know when I’ll be online again. I’m borrowing a friend’s phone to post this, but I can’t make a habit of that. I love you guys so much and I hope I can talk to you again before too long, but it’s probably gonna be a while. hugs”

If I’d had regular Internet access, I would have gone into more detail about how Mom and Dad and the staff and kids at school were treating me, but since I was about to disappear from those forums for weeks, months, or years, I didn’t want to leave them worrying. I was pretty sure the upcoming months would be full of inconveniences and annoyances, but I could handle them.

I cleared the browser history and cache and then gave Ian his phone back, thanking him again. While I’d been posting that, the conversation had turned to the way new machines were still appearing in more small towns, and how nobody had ever seen one appearing or caught it on camera, even in areas with constant surveillance. One guy had said he worked as a night security guard at a mall, and when they did their hourly patrol and found the new machine right next to the ATM, he’d looked at the security camera footage and found it had appeared between frames.

Soon lunch was over, and I said goodbye to Andrew and the others and headed to my next class, which I was dreading more than most: P.E.

I found Coach Wilcox and showed her the note; she glanced at it and said she’d seen it in her email that morning.

“I’ve seen a few kids that’ve used that machine,” she said. “Did it make you all girl? I know that might sound like a rude question, but I need to know if I can put you in the girls' locker room or if I need to arrange something private.”

“I’m all girl,” I said, “at least as far as I can tell. I haven’t had a doctor look at me.”

“You look like you haven’t got a new wardrobe yet,” she said. “Do you have gym clothes that fit you?”

“No,” I said, embarrassed. She was the first teacher who’d commented on my baggy clothes. “I was going to borrow stuff from my sister, but my dad said she wasn’t allowed to lend me stuff — Mom and Dad aren’t okay with me being trans, though they aren’t being abusive or anything, they’re just... unhelpful.”

“Let me see what we can scrounge up in the lost and found. And I guess I’ll need to send one of the male coaches to the boys' locker room to get your stuff out of there?”

“Yes, please, but I don’t guess I’ll need it until I shower after gym. I can’t wear my boy gym clothes, but I’ll need the towel and shampoo and stuff.”

We went back to the coaches' office and looked through the box. I found a couple of things that looked like they might be about the right size, but they weren’t enough to make a complete outfit.

“Go try on the sports bra and the shorts, and wear this T-shirt, even though it’s obviously too big. If the bra and shorts fit well enough, you can participate today. But you need to get things that fit by Monday. I’ll send your parents a note, if you think it would help.”

“Yes, please.”

I gave her my locker number and combination to give to one of the male coaches, and, armed with the items from the lost and found, I headed for the girls' locker room. Coach Wilcox caught up with me just before I walked in, jogging after me and calling out “Hang on a second.” I paused and turned.

“I’d better talk to them,” she said. “Tell them what’s up.”

“Thanks,” I said. None of the other teachers had made an open announcement about me being trans, or my new name or pronouns, but this was a special case.

So we walked in together.

“Listen up, girls,” she said. “This is Meredith Ramsey. She’ll be changing and showering with you, and I won’t hear any argument, or anybody calling her by her old name, or there will be consequences. Understood?”

Most of the girls just looked bewildered, but some who’d been in my homeroom or earlier classes and knew who I was either nodded sympathetically, or glared at me hard enough to light me on fire. Nobody said anything while the coach was there, though. She left, and I looked around for an unused locker to stash my jeans, T-shirt, and regular bra in.

“What did she mean about your ‘old name’?” one girl asked me, and another, who was also in my Geometry class, said:

“She was a boy until yesterday. I guess I’m not supposed to say who she was, but she’s Caleb Ramsey’s geeky little brother — you can see a resemblance if you squint.”

“Wow,” another girl said as I took off my T-shirt, “it looks like that machine did a pretty thorough job. It must have, or the coach wouldn’t have put you in here with us, would she?”

“Yeah, I’m all girl,” I said, “but I don’t have any girl clothes yet except what the machine gave me when I transformed, and what I just pulled out of the lost and found.” I took off my bra and tried on the sports bra I’d taken out of the lost and found. It wasn’t exactly loose, but it wasn’t as secure and supportive as a sports bra was supposed to be; it was made for a bigger girl. I might be better off with my regular bra.

“What do you think?” I asked the girls near me. “Should I wear this sports bra that’s too big for me, or my regular bra?”

“You won’t want to go around the rest of the day in a bra that’s sweaty from exercise,” one girl said, and another added: “The sports bra is probably better for exercising in even if it’s not quite the right size.”

“Thanks,” I said, and put on the other T-shirt. Then I unbuckled my belt and took off my jeans.

Several of the girls were staring now, looking at my boy jockey shorts that clearly didn’t have the thing in them they were designed to have room for. I blushed hotly. “I said I didn’t have any girl clothes yet,” I mumbled in a small voice. “It was this or wear yesterday’s panties again...”

“You going to buy clothes after school today?” someone asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, pulling on the gym shorts from the lost and found. “I hope so, but...”

The gym shorts were a little too tight on me, and the jockey shorts bunched up uncomfortably under them even worse than they had under my baggy jeans.

Most of the girls had already finished changing clothes and left the locker room. I put my sneakers back on and headed out to join them, and the girls who’d been giving me advice (or staring at me) followed moments later. I joined the other girls where they were doing warm-up stretches, and despite the discomfort from the tight shorts over the loose underwear, I was delighted to discover how limber my new body was. I had pretty decent stamina, too, as I found when we started running, although the sports bra was definitely too loose for strenuous exercise, and my breasts were a little sore by the time we got done. I’d run more laps in the twenty minutes than I could before, and I didn’t feel nearly as tired as I would have before.

The kids who were seriously running didn’t have breath for chatting and gossiping, but there were some who were walking or jogging pretty slow and chatting with their friends as they did, and I overheard snatches of conversations as I passed people. Most weren’t about me, of course, or the machine at the library or other people who’d used it — but some were.

In retrospect, it’s obvious that the majority of students who didn’t care about me being transgender were the type to say something like: “You hear about Caleb Ramsey’s little brother? She’s transgender; her new name’s Meredith.” — “Oh, good for her,” — and move on to another topic. Whereas the few who did have a problem with me would go on talking (or ranting) for much longer, and I would be much more likely to overhear them. So, despite the mostly favorable or neutral reactions I’d gotten from the girls in homeroom, or in the locker room, or the guys I ate lunch with, I got pretty upset about the things I overheard during that run. I was brooding over that as we did our cool-down exercises after the run. Coach Wilcox gave me my padlock, toiletries, towel, and gym clothes from my boy locker after we finished, and I followed the other girls to the showers.

Our high school was built in the sixties, and hadn’t been renovated much since the late eighties, so it had communal showers with no separating walls or curtains. I was more than a little apprehensive as I stripped off and walked into the shower, extremely aware of the looks from the other girls, especially the ones I’d seen glaring at me when Coach Wilcox introduced me, or gossiping about me during gym. But nobody got in my face about it, or played any nasty pranks on me or anything. I made my shower a quick one and got dressed again, hurrying off to my next class.

The rest of the day was less stressful than that, but I still had a few bad moments when I overheard mean gossip about me. I got on the bus and sat down next to Sophia with a feeling of relief that the day hadn’t gone any worse.

“How was it?” she asked.

“Not too bad,” I said. “Some people said mean things, but only one of them to my face, and nobody actually did anything bad.”

She hugged me from the side. “How did Andrew take it?”

I smiled. “He was pretty cool about it. He tore into another guy who said something rude to me.”

“Go, Andrew!”

“So how was your day?”

---

---

My new collection, Unforgotten and Other Stories, is available now from Smashwords in epub format and Amazon in Kindle format. (Smashwords pays its authors better royalties than Amazon.)

You can find my earlier ebook novels and short fiction collection here:

The Bailiff and the Mermaid	Smashwords	Amazon
Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes	Smashwords	Amazon
When Wasps Make Honey	Smashwords	Amazon
A Notional Treason	Smashwords	Amazon
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories	Smashwords	Amazon