"I'll send you all my dreams Everyday in a letter Sealed with a kiss"

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"You OK there baby?" asked Kalani, Christine's musclebound boyfriend, as he turned round once again to ogle me. I looked away as he stared open mouthed at my breasts, exposed through the many rips on my long t-shirt caused by the desert thorns from our earlier escapades.

"I'm fine," I replied with disdain as I looked out at the window at the traffic on the busy Interstate, extremely irritated by the continuous gawking," how much longer till we get there?"

"Not too long, sexy," he replied before turning to his Hawaiian brother, Makana," can't you drive faster you idiot, the lady wants to change into something more comfortable and I'm volunteering to help her."

"Shut up Kal, you fuckwit, you know we can't afford to break the speed limit," grunted the sibling driving the battered SUV, which was almost as uncomfortable as the tank had been earlier.

It was almost two hours since our fear of recapture had been allayed by the two brothers giving the coded signal on the trap-door. Then followed a scary few minutes while Makana tried to navigate the desert road in almost complete darkness after the moon had set.

After the third time near disaster, when he had avoided dumping the car in a deep gully only by me yanking the wheel at the last second, I had insisted on taking control of the car and, with my newly discovered night vision ability, had easily navigated the way to the Interstate.

"God I'm so hungry," grumbled Bella, sitting on my left, while Yuki slept uneasily with my right arm around her shoulder and her head resting gently on my soft boob pillow.

"Any chance of stopping," asked Bella," we haven't eaten anything all day."

"I don't think there's anywhere on this road," responded Kalani.

"Yes there is I can see what looks like a 24 hour KFC a couple of miles ahead, over there," I countered, while I gently stroked Yuki's arm.

Kalani looked in the direction of my pointed finger while trying to shield his eyes from the glare from the oncoming traffic headlights," I can't see nothing."

"It's definitely there," I said, grateful that my strange ability to see in the dark also seemed to filter out bright lights as I surveyed everything in a ghostly green glow.

"Anyway we haven't got to time to stop, we need to get you off the road as soon as possible, girls, before those army bozos work out you've escaped and follow our tracks," stated Kalani, forcefully.

"Please guys, I need something to eat!" pleaded Bella," and I need a pee too."

"Come on, where's the harm stopping for a few minutes? I really need something to eat too," I asked, " and you know what I've got for Christine and Brenda don't you and I'm sure they'll be pissed if I'm too ill to do it for them asap."

Even though I doubted I would be able to change the men's girlfriends I hoped suggesting it would be enough of an inducement.

"What do you think Mak?" asked Mr Musclebound, sounding less certain.

"Yep, what's the harm and if she can do, what happened to her, to our girls then the sooner the better," he replied and slowed down to move into the exit lane.

*********

Ten minutes later I was refreshing myself in the restroom of the almost empty roadside cafe. Yuki and Bella has already sneaked back to the car while the two men were stocking up on a range of unhealthy food to sustain us for the rest of the journey.

As I tried to wash as much of the desert grime as possible off my face, the door from the eating area opened and two middle-aged women walked in wearing overalls that proclaimed their identity as Edwards air force base civilian staff.

I carried on cleaning myself while one of the other women used the mirror next to mine to freshen her make up. The second woman stood behind me, waiting for me to finish.

"Did you hear about the Martian base, Callie?" asked the woman standing next to me to her companion.

"What's that Brid?" asked Callie.

"The space women and the freaky thing you know the one who used to be a man, well they escaped.............." explained Brid before she stopped in mid-sentence when she noticed me staring at her in the mirror.

"....it's you, you're the one who was on Norah, you're the fr.....sorry the one who changed, you'll have to meet the rest of the gang outside," she continued, before touching my arm gently," come on Callie lets take our brave astronaut to meet Bren and the rest."

Suddenly the fear of discovery so soon after our arduous and perilous escape from certain death formed into strong feelings of anger inside me.

A clear thought filled my mind, shocking me with its intensity, 'I WANT YOU TWO TO FORGET ME,' was blasted into my consciousness.

Suddenly there was a flash as what looked like bolts of green lightening leaped from me to the other two women. Their eyes glazed over briefly and then they looked at each other.

"Funny, I was sure there was someone else in here when we came in," said Callie as she looked around the restroom without seeing me.

"'Course there's not, don't be silly Callie," said Brid," you been drinking on the job again?"

"Maybe, but not when bloody Williams is around, she's such a stickler for stupid rules," responded her companion.

The two of them left and I stood there, for a few seconds, in wonder at the new ability I had discovered, before leaving and rejoining my companions in the car.

Two hours later we pulled up outside a badly maintained town house on a city street which had obviously seen better times in previous decades.

We were all completely exhausted and after a quick round of hugs and kisses with Christine and Brenda, the three of us collapsed on the beds in the so-called spare room, with more junk than space in it, Bella on the single bed and myself and Yuki spooning on the double.

********
I woke up as my mind was suddenly filled with a painful scream in a tone which reminded me of Christine.

'My fucking god she did it she changed me!!!!'

'Is that you Chris, did it happen to you too," came another blast of thought with a Brenda tone.

'Hey you two, not so loud and what's happened? I thought as a response.

'Dunno how, but I just woke up and, well I'm all-girl now," responded Christine.

'Me too,' was Brenda's accompanying thought.

'How?' I wondered.

'You only needed to exchange some DNA,' came a distant, fainter answer, "it only took a kiss."

'What!!', 'Who', 'Where' were the sudden response of the three of us to this new unknown connection.

'Hello earth people welcome to your future,' responded the distant entity.

We are the remnants of the civilisation that once occupied the surface of Mars but over the eons of time, as the environment became harsher and harsher we moved deeper and deeper into the womb of the planet and lost our physical form as a trade-off for an exceptionally long individual existence.

'What are you?' I probed.

'We have a collective and also an individual identity although as our energy resources have been reduced the luxury of an individual existence has been restricted to a few lucky ones,' was the response.

'We have been observing with great apprehension the development of planet destroying weapons by your species, but have been impotent to act until your mission arrived on our planet,' explained our mentor.

'Why couldn't you stop us then?' asked Christine.

'Since we have no physical form it is almost impossible to do anything but with a great sacrifice of individual existence we were able to create the smallest possible physical vector to try and influence your minds. We call this symbiont a word in our base language, which sounds like 'Churinck''throid''foo' in yours. We appreciate maybe some difficulties in recalling this and thus we will shorten it to 'Foo',' was the distant thought.

'We managed to mix it with the dust around your landing base and some of the billions of the dormant motes managed to enter your bodies. We waited until you returned to your planet before activating them.'

'Why did you kill John and George?' I asked.

'We are sorry about the death of your crew members, our weak understanding of your physical bodies meant we weren't sure how you would respond to the initial invasion by the 'Foo' germ cells. Unfortunately for your male colleagues their bodies tried to fight back and they weren't able to receive the chemical precursor which you were lucky enough to have access to, while your female friends seemed to be completely unresponsive to the 'Foo'. We will need further refinement of our symbiont to address that problem.'

The dialogue continued for what seemed many hours as we learned more about the Martian civilisation and the collective entity probed our minds for details of Earth. We all felt their rising horror as they quantified all the planetary indicators to evaluate our nearness to final planet destruction.They formulated an ingenious plan which we had assented to when I felt my body being shaken.

"Wake up Alexa!" I heard the voice of Yuki in the distance as I was shaken vigorously.

I opened my eyes to see my sweet companion looking with concern at me.

"What's up?" I asked a little dreamily as I noticed the filigree mental connections fade a little into the background.

"You've been comatose for the last five minutes," she explained," I thought you were having an absence or something."

"It's OK," I reassured," I've been involved in something much more exciting."

I sat back on the bed while she woke up Bella and then I explained things to them.

"This is all so amazing, I can't believe it, another sentient species in the solar system," said Bella in wonder, after I had finished.

"Not sure about 'another'," I said chuckling a little," from their point of view they're the 'sentient' ones, we're the primitive beasts by comparison."

"But what's the plan, remember the threat to our families, we don't have long," asked Yuki anxiously.

"OK, lets get on, we need a computer to track down someone who's a fan of particular websites." I said before jumping up, rushing to the bathroom and quickly changing into the fresh clothes left out by Brenda and Christine.

*************

An hour later I was driving the battered SUV into a rather more salubrious area of the city. I pulled up outside a pleasantly manicured house and quickly made my way to the front door.

A masculine looking woman in her late fifties opened the door.

"Ann?" I ventured as I recognised the person I had been talking to by web-chat half an hour ago after our Martian enhanced PC had located the nearest user of the MegaCloset website.

"Alexa, nice to meet you in the flesh," she replied," although I must be honest, if I hadn't recognised you from Norah I wouldn't have agreed to meet you."

"I can promise, you will be happy with the results," I said before holding out my arms to give the sceptical house owner a hug and the briefest of kisses.

"Well come on in and explain it all to me," she said," what do I have to do to gain this miracle transformation."

"You don't have to do anything," I said.

She looked at me in puzzlement.

"It's already done, it only took a little touch of our lips and the changes have started," I explained," let me help you to sit down and then you'll fall asleep for a little while."

I took Ann's arm and helped her into an armchair in her lounge.

"I must admit I feel a little tired," she said," can you let yourself out and maybe we can talk later about your crazy notion of a complete gender change."

"We will talk, a lot more than you expect," I said, smiling, before leaving the gently sleeping Ann.

***********************

Two hours later I was pulling up outside Christine and Brenda's house, after completing the last of my five visits, which had all preceded along similar lines to Ann's.

I felt a new presence in my mind, a new link in the collective consciousness.

'It's a miracle, how did it happen?'

I smiled as I left others to gently guide Ann into her new personal and joint reality.

I picked up my CPA to make the call to the odious Fred Hollis.

****************

The camera flashes were blinding and the screams of the paparazzi were deafening as I entered the room. I felt very strange in the close fitting mini-dress, which I had slipped into in the limo which I had come to pick us up while two experienced stylists had made sure I was perfectly made up, ready for my photo-op with the President.

"Ladies and gentlemen let me introduce the latest member of our campaign team, Alexa Dupre," announced President Hassam suavely.

He walked towards me to embrace me. I made sure I responded with enthusiasm to his kiss and for a few seconds there was even more pandemonium in the room as every news outlet tried to capture the President making out with the space-girl.

We finally broke off.

"I think I might be seeing rather more of you than I expected," whispered the President, before we both turned towards the press throng.

Myriad microphones were thrust in my face.

"Any comment, Miss Dupre?" was the loudest question, among the cacophony of noise.

"Anyone who kisses like that should have my vote," I said huskily.

I turned to President Hassam

"Good luck and you may find these useful" I whispered before putting the packet of Premarin in his jacket pocket.

He looked at me with a strange expression on his face before turning away and following his aides.

There was a flicker in my mind as another consciousness joined our growing collective. Soon there would be thousands and then millions and then there would be enough to influence the rich and powerful to end their destructive ways.

'Do you think she will enjoy anagrams after she changes?' I thought.

The ripple of mental laughter spread across the depths of space as we celebrated the gift of the red planet.

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The End