Ethertravel report #1247, received September 20, 2504, and followups.

I was Tyler Jones, a retired computer programmer on Earth. The story of Mikhail Gregorevich returning from his ethertravel adventure was in the news when I was young, when I was just old enough to remember the event, and the research program to explore other planets had been a thing all my life. While it let the ethertravelers get there instantly, the fact that they had to grow up from childhood and reinvent the communication device meant it took decades to get results. At the time of my retirement, we’d gotten responses from a handful of planets, and it was now possible to be reborn on one of those worlds. They didn’t want to flood them, though, so there was a waiting list, or rather, you could pay a decade’s wages to get on the short list which made it actually possible for a retiree to get sent before his or her death. Of course, people could pay that money and get reborn here, too, and still have the chance to be reborn more times, but some people thought things were starting to go downhill on Earth and were interested in taking a chance elsewhere.

Or you could sign up for the research program and pay nothing, but you’d go to an unknown world, and you were expected to try to report back if you did. If you couldn’t, no big deal; it would eventually get marked as a mystery world where people are unable to report back, and presumed to be at such an early stage of technological development that a report back is impossible. But they subjected you to a battery of tests to try to identify people who were genuine about this, because way too many people were otherwise interested in living a new life, even if it was on an alien world as an unknown species, only knowing it’s got some minimum mental capacity which only humans satisfied on Earth.

I didn’t have enough money to send both me and my wife through the short list. I might qualify for the explorer program, but my wife didn’t have the technical skills to do so. I worked out an agreement with my wife Lorena that I was going to try out for the explorer program, and if I succeeded, she’d have enough money left to get on the short list and go wherever she wanted and still have enough money to live cheaply until her turn came. If I failed, then we’d figure something else out. I succeeded, and spent the couple years in training to learn all that humans had learned about ethertravel and the kinds of things we might find on the target world, and of course, how to build an ether communicator from raw materials.

So I ethertraveled. Short story: I’m a horse-like creature with the ability to stand on my hind legs and use my front legs as hands. But my parents are centaurs! Here’s my report.

Earth Archivist’s note: Tyler sent several reports and those reports have been combined here for your convenience.

Childhood

The first thing nobody told me in training was that I’d remember being born. Nobody had reported it yet, but I awoke to warmth and darkness, and before long, a lot of pressure which was my birth into light and relative cold compared to where I’d lived my first day or two after gaining consciousness. There wasn’t any real way to measure the time.

I had been born, butt-first, from the rear end of what I originally took to be a horse-like creature. Pretty soon I saw that centaur was a better description. The four tall legs of my mother led to a long, horizontal torso with four teats from which I could drink milk. There was no tail, but the end I came out of was clearly the rear end. The front end of that torso had a long penis which was used for urination. Above that end was a second, vertical torso leading to two arms and an elongated head with a snout. The eyes were further down the snout than those of a horse, about halfway down. The arms were very long, with two elbows, allowing them to reach any part of the body with two hands that have 6 fingers and two thumbs each. The entire body was covered in short, light brown fur, apart from the genital areas, the nipples, and the hooves and hands. My father was gray but otherwise of similar anatomy.

I, on the other hand, found myself to be more horse-like, with four legs and merely a head attached to the front end of my torso. My fur was yellowish; you’d call it blonde if a person had such hair. My neck was quite flexible, allowing me to turn my head almost a full 360 degrees horizontally and more than 180 degrees vertically.

I soon learned, from seeing my brothers and sisters, that my front feet were actually hands. They curl up to serve as hooves, with tough skin on the side you walk on, but I can open them to make hands with three fingers and a thumb. My siblings also stand sometimes on their rear legs and walk erect, but I was not able to do that at first. But I could sit and use my hands from a sitting position, with my knees bent and propping up my body.

I was taught to use the toilet within days of birth, though. The toilet was sunken into the floor, only protruding a few inches above the ground. The seat was hinged in two pieces; it could open fully, forming a large round bowl to urinate into while standing in front of it. It could be covered slightly, forming a seat that my parents place their rear ends on for defecation. Or it could be more than half covered, forming a narrower seat that I and my brothers and sisters sit on for defecation and (for my sisters) urination.

Since clothing seemed not to be invented here, I quickly identified the differences in the sexes. I am male and have a penis, between my rear legs in a horse-like configuration. My sisters do not; they urinate from a hole in their body with a bare patch of skin around it, somewhat like human women, but in time I learned that this hole is not inside the vulva, which they also have, but above it. And naturally I did not have a vulva. Both my parents had both penises and vulvas, though, and I learned through my siblings that my father was actually the mother of two of them. My parents had taken turns being the mother.

I eventually learned to walk in the two-legged way; we all still ran or trotted on all fours when we were going longer distances. I started learning the language here, which had some different sounds from human languages because of the elongated shapes of our mouths.

Apart from mother’s milk in the first year or so, we were vegetarians. We lived on a farm which we shared with three other families, and we grew all our own food, a good variety of grasses, fruits, and some root vegetables. There wasn’t one set planting or harvest season; we grew different crops that were planted and harvested at different times, including winter crops that could tolerate the cold weather with occasional freezes once or twice a winter. When there was something to harvest, the older kids helped out on our days off from school and for a short period after school. Otherwise that time was free for us. We actually grew about six times the food that the four families needed, and we sold the rest to pay for other things. So clearly there were other lives available here. That was good if I was going to report back to Earth.

My brother, the oldest sibling, went to school everyday from when I was born, trotting in the 4-legged fashion to get there, wearing what they called literally a backpack in the language here, but it was divided in two and hung down the sides like saddlebags when walking 4-legged. As they got older, my three sisters started school in turn, and finally I did as well.

I should say we went to school almost every day. They measured time in 8-day weeks and there was a single day off at the end of the week, but we went to school for less time each day than was typical on Earth. There were breaks between school terms after 10 weeks, so 70 school days per term. There were three such terms a year, with two extra weeks off between terms, to fill out the year of 288 days. Well, the year was 289 days. The last day was a holiday, with no school or work, and it fell in the middle of one of the terms, so that one had a single day off within it.

One thing I had to learn before starting school was about pubic restrooms. There weren’t separate men’s and women’s restrooms on this world, not exactly. Instead, they had a kind of urinal which boys and adults could use. It was like a long trough and you could just step up to it anywhere and pee, with plenty of space behind it for adults to be able to back out and turn around. There were urinal restrooms and toilet restrooms. So for the kids in school, those were mostly boys’ and girls’ restrooms, except when the boys needed to poop. In the toilet restrooms there were partitions but no doors. Naturally there was no need for privacy when people walked around naked all the time.

The Talk

During the break at the end of my fourth year of school, my parents gathered all five of us for a talk.

My father started, “Today we are here to talk about something that’s happening to Fred soon.”

My brother’s name wasn’t really Fred, but the sounds in the language are too different from human languages, so I’ve just substituted a name to have something to call him. Same for the other names I use in my report.

“Sylvia already knows, because her turn at this isn’t too far away, and we would have told Sally this break anyway so she can start looking for a partner, but the other two of you don’t know at all unless you’ve heard it from the kids at school, and don’t need to go talking about it unless someone brings it up.”

I had heard some of the kids talk about older siblings going away, but that was all I’d heard.

“When you reach a certain age, your body is ready for a transformation. This transformation is going to result in you having a shape like your parents, rather than the shape you have now. It’s a required thing; your body will die if you don’t do it. You can put it off for a little over a year once your body is ready, and school has a two-year break at Fred’s age to allow everybody to get it done and adjust to their new situations.”

I had certainly wondered about that, but it was a subject they simply didn’t talk about around little kids around here. So this was my first glimpse of how it happened.

“The pairing is always one boy and one girl. Polly from Appleton Farm, which you probably know is two streets over from here, is going to be Fred’s partner. They have agreed to pair, and that the pairing is going to take place at her farm. We don’t know when it is going to happen yet. Both Fred and Polly have to be ready, but when they are, they’re going to do it quickly, possibly as soon as the day after both are ready. You’ll have a little notice, as their bodies will start to undergo separate transformations before they are ready to pair, but those transformations can complete in 3 to 7 days, and the exact day might not be known until the day before. Fred won’t be completely gone; he will still come here sometimes, in his new form, and Fred and Polly may both visit before they pair.”

I was a bit confused. It sounded like they were mating. Was that necessary for Fred to complete his transformation?

My parents whispered something for a moment, and my mother took over, using a picture book to accompany what she had to say. The first picture was of a horselike boy and girl, with an arrow pointing to a picture of a centaur-like adult.

“The short story is that Fred and Polly are going to merge and become one adult person. In some ways they won’t be Fred or Polly any more, and in some ways they will be both. But I’m going to show you how the merging happens so you don’t have any questions. If you do have questions at the end of it, you can ask them then.”

Crap! I’m going to merge with another person? How’s that going to work with my knowledge of Earth and goal to report back there? It was a pretty alarming thing even if you didn’t have this secret; every kid has secrets, right? So I hoped any alarm I showed only looked like that.

Fred and Sylvia clearly already knew, and moved behind us and sat patiently, while my other sisters and I were fully focused on my mother, creeping up closer waiting for whatever it was she was going to say. How did people merge here? We all wanted to hear that answer, even if the prospect of doing so was scary.

“When Fred, or any boy, is ready, a part of his back opens up. It’s right here, above his hips when he is standing, and near the end of his back when on all fours. When it starts, it will expand quickly.”

She flipped the page to show us some other pictures.

“Here’s a boy in his first day of the transformation. Here’s one on the third day. And here’s one on the fifth day. This last picture is after seven days and is what we expect a boy to look like when he is ready to pair.”

The four pictures were two to a page on a pair of facing pages. Each one showed the back of a boy from his shoulder blades to the top of his buttocks with a growing hole in his lower back. The final picture showed a deep crater in his back big enough to put a bowling ball into up to its widest point, and it appeared to expand further upward into his body. Then she flipped to a page that had two diagrams showing internal organs.

“The first part of the change happens a day before the impression on his back becomes noticeable. His spine and spinal cord branch. At this stage the branches merge down in the pelvis. The opening runs between the branches. By the time it’s fully open, as shown in the second diagram, the split runs all the way to the end. Any questions about this?”

It no longer looked like mating in the least. I figured what this meant, now, given the fact they were merging and what the finished product looked like, even if it still sounded crazy, but I didn’t want to jump the gun on asking about it. But since I was the only boy here learning, I figured this part was mainly for me, so I asked, “Does it hurt when this cavity forms?”

“It doesn’t really hurt, but it’s a little uncomfortable. Imagine having a pumpkin strapped to your back with a tight band that presses it against your body for several days. That’s the best way I can explain the feeling to someone who hasn’t experienced it.”

Not actually a pumpkin, but a similarly large fruit we have here. When there were no more questions, she went on with the explanation of what happens to girls.

“For girls, it’s different. Your arms are going to retract into your body a bit, and merge with the sides of your neck and head. You won’t be able to walk on them or use them for any purpose anymore, and pus will ooze from them sometimes. Any questions?”

And she showed pictures of this too.

Jenny said, “I’m not worried that’s going to hurt, just that it’s going to be super yucky! And about what comes next!”

Sally asked, “How do they pick each other? I mean, how did Fred and Polly join up?”

That was a good question, since as far as I know, Fred hadn’t gone on any dates. I wasn’t sure dates among kids their age were a thing here. But I knew about Polly, barely. I was too much younger than her to be involved in the same social activities, but I knew of her as one of the kids in the neighborhood.

Fred spoke up to answer, “These transition states are pretty uncomfortable, and the girl is essentially disabled until the pairing. We picked each other partially because our birthdays are only a week apart. This makes it likely our transitions will start at about the same time, minimizing the time I have a hole in my back and Polly can’t use her arms. But we’ve committed. If it goes wrong, and I have to live with that hole in my back or Polly has to live without arms for, say, two school terms, we’ll wait it out. The other part is that we like each other.”

My mother added, “It mostly comes down to friendships. Unless you were born at the very start or end of the school year and might pair with somebody from the other year, you’re very likely going to pair with one of the other kids you know from your grade in school. And if you can’t decide between two candidates, some people at Fred’s age gather in foursomes, two boys and two girls, and agree not only to form two pairs but also to marry after doing so, sometimes not deciding who pairs with who until the transformations start and then the first boy and first girl among them will pair. They can’t actually marry until after finishing high school, but it’s a promise to do so, a promise which is sometimes broken if they feel differently about each other after the pairings.”

“They go back to school?” I asked.

“Yes. The school system provides two years off to allow everybody to complete their pairings and adjust to their new combined minds and bodies, but then there are three more years of school for Fred-Polly after they merge. They will take some tests before they start at the new school to help determine their skill levels, which are usually always at least as skilled as the better of the two before the pairing, and are sometimes enhanced beyond either in certain areas. People sometimes look for a person with similar interests and skills for compatibility in a pairing, but the most ambitious people look for someone whose skills complement theirs, in hopes they can be good in all areas. There’s one important factor for some people. About a third of people have already made up their mind before pairing that they either definitely want to be a mother someday or never want to be a mother. It seems that boys and girls get these opinions in equal numbers, and with an even split among the two extremes. People are usually pretty upfront about this, so a definitely-mother will never pair with a never-mother. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with such a pairing; the combined person will choose one way or the other. They aren’t going to fall apart after pairing over something like that. Pairing is forever.”

Jenny asked, “What if you can’t find somebody? There aren’t exactly the same number of boys and girls in my class.”

“Well, there’s another school whose kids will join with you when you get to middle school. And if you do end up left out, we can call around to the other towns, to find somebody of the other sex who got left out. If you haven’t found a partner by the time you start your transformation, the town puts you on a waiting list. If there is somebody of the opposite sex already on the waiting list, you’re matched up. If you use the waiting list, you don’t get a choice in a partner, but it’s better than dying.”

My sisters had some pretty quizzical looks. I could understand. You’re going to merge your mind and body permanently with this person, and you get assigned someone at random! But only if you can’t find someone else to agree to pair with you. I thought it was reasonable. They let the kids decide, but nobody gets left behind. My mother went on.

“If you’re still on the waiting list a year after your transformation, they’ll send you to another town that has the opposite sex on their waiting list. If they really can’t find you somebody even in another town, which rarely happens, there is a drug they can give you in the big cities which reverses your transformation. A girl taking the drug will have her arms separate and develop the cavity in her lower back, and a boy taking it will have the cavity close and his arms merge. This will allow that person to merge with someone of the same sex. It doesn’t reverse your sex; you will end up as a person with two vaginas or two penises. Those people still manage to get married, because there are people who only want to be a father or only a mother and just don’t care, or they’ll marry another same-sex pairing from another year when the other sex was in excess. But those are really rare and you may never see a same-sex adult.”

Sally asked, “Do you really die if you don’t pair?”

“Yes, you really die if you can’t find a partner to merge with after a while, a bit over a year. It never happens anymore because of technologies I explained. But for a long time, since the introduction of telephones, it has almost never happened, because people could find towns with an excess of the other sex and go there. There are old stories from the time before phones about kids who had nobody in their small town to pair with and started traveling looking for someone. The boys traveled and the girls stayed put because of the way waiting girls are impaired. If you’re curious how that worked, I’m sure you can find some of them in our library, There was one I read in middle school, which may still be in the curriculum, called ‘The Last Journey,’ which is fictional but based on the kind of journey that really happened in the time it was written.”

Fred confirmed that he did indeed read the story while in school.

“Before the drug, it still happened about once a generation that there was so much excess of one sex that somebody died due to being unable to pair, usually several someones because of an imbalance in the sexes of the births that year.”

There were no more questions, so my mother flipped another page and continued.

“The last day before the pairing, the girl’s family will leave the pus on her arms and head. It helps the merge happen. When they get together, she’ll push her pus-covered arms and head into the cavity on his back, as far as she can, and he’ll help by pushing back against her. Because the cavity goes up inside his back a little, there’s enough room for her entire head and forearms to go inside. That will start the pairing and their bodies will do the rest on their own.”

There were four pictures on different pages of a couple pairing, from just touching until her entire head was gone inside his body, and Mom flipped back and forth to let us compare all the stages.

“Now, does that hurt?” I asked.

“Actually, no. The pairing is actually a bit of a relief compared to the discomfort of the transformations. However, pretty soon after this point, the couple will pass out. You pass out shortly after pairing because your mind is busy merging with your partner’s mind. Yes, the minds really merge. You won’t be entirely yourself afterward, nor will you be entirely your partner, but a blend of the two. You will remember being yourself and being your partner growing up. It is kind of paradoxical, and trying to resolve that paradox is one of the things your minds are doing until you finally wake up as one combined mind.”

“How long does that take?” Sally asked.

“Usually they will be asleep for two to two-and-a-half days, and some time on the third day the paired couple will wake up. They will still be pretty disoriented as their new body finishes putting itself together and their merged mind sorts itself out. Around the fifth day, the brain and digestive and urinary systems are connected and the merged person becomes very hungry. They can’t really move the new body yet, though, so they must be fed and use buckets for their excretory functions. On the seventh or eighth day they become able to walk and mostly use their new body. The combined arms are still forming for several more days, though, so they will need help with certain things.”

“If one of a couple dies after pairing, can the other live, or do they both die?” Jenny asked.

“After pairing, there’s really only one person. When a paired person dies, the whole person dies. I heard of cases when one of a couple dies very early in pairing, in the first day. In those cases, the other person survives but still needs to pair. That happens even less often than people used to die due to not being able to find partners, and basically only if one of the couple is dying from not pairing for too long at the time they attempt to pair. Once paired, they are more resilient, because they have redundant organs. If your heart stops now, you die, but if one of the hearts of a paired person stops, the other keeps beating, and they can still live long enough to get help and maybe restart their other heart.”

This was the end of that series of questions.

“Pictures don’t really show the rest of the process well because it mostly happens inside their bodies. So there are diagrams instead.”

And she flipped to the first two.

“Where their skin touches with the pus between them, some of it dissolves, and organs migrate through the body. Her hands and forearms move as shown here and form the third segment of arms you see on adults, as well as the extra fingers. This takes the entire transition time to complete and the third arm segments are the last parts to fully form, after about 15 days. Her brain and skull moves into the cavity of his pelvis, and connects at the bottom of one branch of his spinal cord. The other branch connects to her spine and spinal cord, allowing the two nervous systems to combine into one. Her brain serves to coordinate the actions of the legs, even though two of the legs were his, before, while his brain controls the arms and upper body. But they won’t notice that, because in terms of thinking and doing, it’s a combination of the two acting together. You won’t be able to say Fred did something or Polly did something after they are merged. It will be the newly combined person who does it.”

She flipped the page. The new page was hard to follow, with many lines and arrows.

“Her upper arms and other parts of her head and neck get transformed into various tissues and bones, mostly ones used in combining the two bodies.”

Next page.

“The other systems of the body combine to form single systems. The blood circulates both bodies with both hearts contributing to pump it. The digestive tracts join. Both stomachs merge into a single larger stomach. The intestines join to form a longer intestine and her anus serves as the exit for the combined digestive system. Both sets of kidneys remain in their respective bodies, pulling wastes from different parts of the bloodstream. Her urinary bladder migrates to and merges with his to form a larger one, which receives urine from all four kidneys. Her urinary opening closes up, as does his anus, as they are no longer needed.”

“Good riddance to this female body’s stupid lack of a penis,” Sylvia interjected as my mother was turning the next page. My mother didn’t respond to the comment, but had a facial expression that suggested she appreciated Sylvia’s comment.

“This is the part you are mostly likely to have heard about at school because it’s what kids talk about. His penis will remain functional for urination, but it will also start to grow, and eventually to have its sexual function activated. Her vagina and internal female reproductive parts, which until now have done nothing, will grow and eventually become active as well.”

“How long does that take?” Sally asked.

“I hope you’re not impatient to have sex. It doesn’t happen immediately. The sexual organs don’t develop fully until about 3 years after pairing. When you first pair, your penis and vagina will be the same sizes as Fred’s and Sylvia’s are now. You can’t see much of the vagina because it’s inside. Just trust me that it grows in proportion with the penis. Both organs start growing after the pairing. Once your organs reach their full size, you’ll gain the ability to have erections. I’m sure you have seen adults with erections, though most of the time it doesn’t happen unless you’re engaging in foreplay, which generally means you or your partner is playing with your penis. There is foreplay that gets the vagina ready as well, by manipulating the outside of it. It’s normally pretty small, but it opens up wide enough to let the largest erect penis inside. You won’t be able to see it because it’s behind you, but you’ll feel it and your partner will see it.”

She was right. Because nobody ever wore clothes around here, I had seen how big size an adult’s erection could get; it was every bit as big as a horse’s on Earth, and I think even bigger around. But it was more prominent, because it stuck out in front of the person, rather than lying close to his belly.

She turned the page. There wasn’t a photo of adults actually having sex; this was a diagram, too. The diagram showed the size of erection I’d seen, and that the female parts were wide and deep enough to accommodate that.

“The merged adult will be able to have sex with other adults using either set of organs. Sex occurs when the potential father inserts his penis into the vagina of the potential mother, after some foreplay prepares the organs, as I described. The father ejaculates into the mother. A fluid comes out of his penis which isn’t urine, and it goes deep into the mother. The mother captures this fluid in an internal organ, and can hold it for up to two years. When she wants to become pregnant, she combines it with a special cell from her own body, and this starts creating a new person inside these organs, which occupy the lower torso of the merged body. Any questions about sex?”

Jenny was the first one to jump in and ask the familiar question, “Does it hurt?”

“Sex doesn’t hurt, and in fact it’s pretty pleasurable for a lot of people, and some of them do it as frequently as once every few days.”

I asked, “You said the fluid goes somewhere in the mother and she can hold it. Can you explain that? It sounds pretty important.”

“When your receive your partner’s ejaculate, it goes into a small sac at the end of your vagina. You usually won’t be able to feel that it exists except when there is something in it, and you’ll figure out how to empty it when you do. If you are in a standing position when you empty it, it will go into your womb and will most likely get you pregnant the next time that is possible. If you empty it when you are in a sitting position, such as sitting on the toilet, it will exit the way it came in and go into the toilet, and you won’t get pregnant. Be sure to clean yourself up afterward. And if you don’t do anything with it, the sac opens up into the vagina the next time you get vaginally aroused, regardless of your position, but usually this means it will spill out before you have sex again.”

Next page. Birth.

“Who remembers being born?”

I didn’t raise my hand at first, fearing it was a trick question and people here didn’t usually remember being born, but when I saw Sylvia and my mother do it I followed suit. I looked around. Fred and Jenny had also raised their hands; my father and Sally were the only ones without a hand raised.

“The baby develops inside the mother for about a year and a half, and then it’s born by exiting through the same orifice where the penis went in, which stretches wide to allow this to happen. It’s often the case that the baby becomes conscious a few days before the birth and remembers being born, but it doesn’t happen for everybody. Some only become conscious the moment they start breathing.”

Sally asked, “Does it hurt?”

“Birth sometimes hurts the mother a little, but the mother’s body changes during pregnancy in ways that make birth usually painless. You’ll feel a lot of stretching but your body will handle it. Those changes take a while to revert after the birth, so it takes about a third of a year after the birth for the mother to be able to have sex again that way normally. She can still have sex as the father during this time, though, and it’s possible for two parents to both be pregnant by the other at the same time. We didn’t do that with you, but you already know we alternated. I’m the mother of Fred and Sally and Tyler, and the father of Sylvia and Jenny.”

Next page.

“The nipples on the male body migrate to the lower torso during the merger, but all four of them only become active after the mother gives birth. They produce milk to feed the baby usually for about the first year of its life.”

She closed the book.

“That’s the end of the story. Any other questions?”

Sylvia asked, “Do you and my mother still have sex?”

“Sorry, I’m not going to tell you that.”

“It’s all right, honey, you can tell them,” my father responded to that comment.

“OK. We still have sex sometimes, but I’m the only one of us capable of having an erection anymore, so I have to take the father role when we do it. That is one reason some people stop having sex. The mother parts can get hard in old age to the point it becomes painful for a person to have sex that way, but that usually happens later in life than we are. But if neither of these things happens, it is possible for a couple to continue to have sex and bear children until they die. Usually, though, people have all the children they want within 8 to 16 years after getting married and then only do it as long as they both still enjoy it.”

There were no more questions, so my mother ended with, “Feel free to come ask me questions about pairing, sex, pregnancy, or birth at any time.”