I’m a princess and I demand that glass slipper.

Finally! I’ve made a decision. Perhaps that was the problem all along, I couldn’t decide while at lower elevations and simply needed to be at thirty thousand feet in order to do it. I’m going to go for it and become a woman. I may never really be complete but at least I’ll be able to live with and accept my body as a female. Then too, I’ll eventually be married to Tan and go into training to become a spy. At least I think I’ll be a spy.

 © 2010 by Lilith Langtree & Rénae Dáºmas. This work may not be replicated or presented in whole or in part by any means electronic or otherwise without the express consent of the work’s Owner (copyright holder), with the exception of the private and non-commercial viewing by the reader who is also the end purchaser. ALL Rights Reserved, including but not limited to ownership of Characters, final content decision, and more. This is a work of Fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this story are fictional and any resemblance to real people or incidents past, present or future is purely coincidental. Any and all images which may be shown within this work are taken through license under Corel with the exception of the title image which is Photo Credit to Irina Sheik. No affiliations, involvement or gender assignations through the use of these or any images of the subject or subjects contained within those posted images is to be implied, intended or inferred.
An Aldoennetti & Langtree Original.

Then again I may be totally incorrect since I don’t have any idea what being a spy entails. Oh Drat. I haven’t been studying my Russian these past two weeks. I wonder how many semesters of Russian this course is equivalent to? Or maybe two of this course equals one semester of Russian. Perhaps I could get Tan to purchase the next course so I may continue to study when I complete this one.

What did he say?

“WHAT? If you think I’m going to be married before I’m complete you’ve got another think coming, Mr. Hamersley. But it may be a while, since the little research I’ve done on the Internet seems to indicate I must live like this for at least a year after I begin seeing the doctors about it. They won’t approve the operation until then.”

“Not even if you know some people in high places?”

Looking at him with consternation showing on my face, “Oh probably especially not if those people in high places are like you. They might even add an extra year to my requirement.”

“You certainly do know how to make a guy feel needed and loved.”

“But you are needed and loved. I’m just saying the doctors might not feel the same way about it that I do.”

“I think we might talk about this with my sister and with Tony. I’m sure a little pressure could be brought to bear which might speed things up a bit.”

“That’s all well and good but I likely can’t pay for it for a while yet. I may need the year just to earn part of the money needed for the operations and I will need to go on hormone therapy which costs a pretty penny as well if the research I’ve managed to accomplish is correct. I’ve done a bit of reading about this and it isn’t so simple as you might think. Then too the expense is pretty high. I think it would take me at least my first year of well paying modeling to even earn a portion of it after all my other expenses. I pretty much had figured it would take two years to earn enough to make the switch one way or the other.

Now that I think I’ve made the decision which way I want to go, I’m going to go broke just trying to pay the doctors for all my psych and medical evaluations, repeated blood tests to monitor the hormone therapy and more. And all that is before my operations which are the most scary part of this whole thing. I think talking with your sister is a good idea. She may have a lot of legal input and may know doctors who would be a bit more sympathetic to my cause.”

“Okay Kat. When we get home I’ll give her a heads up that we need to talk with her. That okay with you?”

I lean over and kiss him on the lips for a moment which turns into five or ten seconds before a slight ‘speed bump’ in the atmosphere causes us to part and then crash into each other causing Tan to bite his lip drawing blood.

“Kat, you didn’t tell me you’re a vampire.”

“I didn’t do that, you did it to yourself.”

“Is that why I felt the pain before the turbulence?”

“All I did was a little nibble, I didn’t bite. Your own teeth did that when we crashed back together after we were knocked apart.”

“Uh huh.”

“Besides, I thought vampires went for the arteries in the neck.”

“I think it’s the veins they go after, Kat.”

“Tan, why would they go after the veins? That’s the used blood, the fresh oxygenated stuff is in the arteries.”

“I rest my case. Seems to me that a vampire would know about that better than I would.”

“Oh Tan, don’t be silly. I can’t be a vampire, you can see me in a mirror. And if you haven’t noticed, I don’t have any blood on my lips.”

“You could have licked it off.”

“I think I want Pam sitting here again.”

“What, you don’t like big old lovable me anymore?”

“Not when you’re being a petulant child. The Tanner I love is a grown intelligent man, although sometimes I think that is a contradiction of terms.”

“What contradiction of terms?”

“Intelligent and man.”

“Ouch. Okay, I’m going. I’m going. I’ll send Pam back.”

I reach out and grasp his arm, “Not before you give me that kiss which was so rudely interrupted.”

“Promise not to bite? Just kidding,” he says quickly as I give him an exasperated stare.

We kiss for a few seconds as I try to be careful of his lip then he goes over to his own seat and Pam returns to hers next to me.

A few hours later we are landing and the fun begins. Customs and Homeland Security. Once again a valiant attempt is made to separate me from my notebook computer and camera despite the ATA Carne and, once again, Tanner pulls one of them aside and shows his card or identification or whatever it is he is hiding in his wallet and they protest. Finally out comes a supervisor arriving at about the same time as Tan has Tony on the phone. The supervisor tells them to take the camera and computer and Tan tells him that in less than a half an hour he will be under arrest.

“You can’t arrest me, I’m Homeland Security.”

Tan replies, “So am I, and I think I outrank you. Not only that but I know Tony outranks you.”

The bureau-nut goes off to make some telephone calls and returns about twenty minutes later to tell those watching me with eagerness, “Back off. Let her have her things and go on.”

The disappointment in them is palatial.

“You two need to have your passports coded.”

“Now that would just about end our usefulness as agents wouldn’t it? We might as well wear signs around our necks... Look at us, we’re trying to abscond with all your secrets.”

“You could have a chip under the photos.”

I look at him, “If you could detect and read it then so could anyone else. Thanks but I don’t plan on residing permanently in some other country. If you like the idea so much why don’t you try it?”

The supervisor still has a chip on his shoulder, “There’s no need for that. All you needed to do was identify yourselves and this whole mess would not have happened.”

“Uh huh. Then you would just steal from others returning home?” I ask as I see Pam going through the same problems.

“We don’t steal from anyone.”

“Then why are they trying to impound her camera?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“You made it our business. She’s one of our group.”

“Yeah, right.”

“And so is the woman in line next to her.”

“Are you going to claim everyone who got off the plane?”

“No. Only those who are members of our hit squad. I’m certain the ladies would be very happy to give you a personal demonstration. And if they won’t, I will.”

“You guys are crazy. Okay, take them both and get out of here.”

The agents are once again disappointed at failing to obtain an obviously nice but simple camera. They don’t even check Kaitlyn’s luggage and curtail the inspection of Pam’s very quickly, releasing us all to pass intact.

Kaitlyn goes on to the taxi stands to return home while the three of us take everything along with a porter to our connecting airlines. Pam heads on home and Tan tells me we have a meeting with Tony scheduled tomorrow morning so we are headed down there.

At the ‘Hotel’ I’m assigned the same room I had the first time I came here. I’m probably reading too much into it but I can’t help but wonder what that means. After all, Tanner is right across the hall from me.

We finish our unpacking since Tan said we might be here a couple of days and then meet in the hall to go to eat something before we retire for the night.

The cafeteria/ restaurant/ whatever is much the way it was when I was here before. There’s a couple of things available for consumption which weren’t here the last time and I’m looking longingly at some of the desserts. I could forego the milk sticking with water, and maybe only eat the fruit and lettuce but not the cottage cheese, then maybe I could have that dessert and it wouldn’t affect me badly. Oh, to hell with it. I take it all; milk, salad, main dish and dessert. All he can do is complain and I’ll just ignore him. Which he did and I did. See, we can compromise.

Returning to our rooms he waits until I’m inside then goes to his own room. There was a wee pause for light fireworks prior to going into the rooms but there were too many people wandering the halls for it to last long.

I made it to bed pretty quickly and slept well for a change. That damn phone still gets to me and I repeated my performance of knocking it to the floor in my attempt to answer it while successfully tangling myself in the bed covers. I finally make it to the phone but whoever called has hung up by the time I made it there.

The clock on the night stand says five thirty so I’ve got roughly an hour and a half to get ready before we go eat, assuming we have an eight o’clock with Tony. I’m ready a little early so when Tan calls me I’m more than ready to go for breakfast.

“You’re looking very nice this morning, Kat. Not trying to impress the boss are you?”

I shrugged my shoulders, “What could it hurt? He’s already seen my nasty side.”

“And unlikely to forget it either. Ready for breakfast?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

“MiLady.” He holds out his arm and I wrap mine around his then we are off to see what they have available for our repast.

“They better have something good or I’ll have them hang the chef.”

“You are so hard on chefs. Please allow him to survive into the evening as he must prepare the King’s banquet later and it’s so difficult to find a good chef on short notice.”

We are both laughing as we enter the dining area which otherwise was silent as a tomb. We finished breakfast with the tomb still silent. I would even have been happy to hear bad elevator music in the background.

“Okay, Kat. I’ll meet you here in the hall in fifteen. Bring your computer and the camera. Tony wants to see your ‘if and view’ program.”

“Irfanview. It’s called Irfanview.”

“Whatever.”

I was ready to go in about ten minutes and so was Tanner. He must have called twice, the first time I was in the bathroom.

“You ready to go?”

“My gosh, Tanner. It’s only been eight minutes.”

“So? I’m ready. I just wondered if you were.”

“Yes. Let me grab my computer and purse.”

“Don’t forget the camera.”

“It’s in my purse.”

“Okay. Meet you in the hall.”

A few seconds later he was knocking on my door. Talk about antsy. I thumbed the inside sensor and he came into the room even as I was picking up my purse. He grabbed the computer case, shouldering it, and headed for the door again.

“Tanner, unlax or something. You’re acting like you’re headed for a funeral.”

“That good, huh?”

“Just stop right there. You have been acting strangely ever since we got here. What’s this all about? Why are you so upset? Does it have something to do with the camera?”

“I told you once before that you’re entirely too smart for my own good.”

“Tann...”

“Just relax, Kat. We’ll learn more at Tony’s office and it’s a secure location.”

“Me, relax? You’re the one that needs to relax. You’ve been on eggshells ever since we got here.”

“You ready? We need to get going.”

“Lead on, MacBeth.”

“That isn’t funny.”

“Tan! I don’t know what the story is here, but we haven’t done anything wrong that I know of; so instead of being part of the problem, try being part of the solution.”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Mr. ‘Life of the Party’ leads me out to where a car is waiting and once more we take that short journey from the ‘hotel’ to another building where we are more or less ceremoniously dumped at the doorstep, having been released to enter the building and face whatever is going to happen, alone.

“Tan, since you are acting like Louis headed for the guillotine and I suppose I’m the Marie Antoinette to your act, don’t I have the right to know what is going on?”

He gave me his twisted up ‘I don’t want to talk about this and maybe it will all just go away’ face. Finally he sighed as I continued to stare at him.

“Okay. After we are inside, we can find a secure room and talk for a few minutes but we’ve got to see Tony promptly at eight so there won’t be much time for talk.”

Partially mollified I turn and we enter the building where he shows his ID and I get a temporary badge. In big bold colour stripes and letters it says:

VISITOR — ESCORTED ONLY — areas A-C and R; whatever the heck that’s supposed to mean. Oh, I understand it means I can’t even go to the powder room without someone attached to me, but the areas part of it means absolutely nothing as far as I’m concerned.

Tan leads me into the bowels of the building and finally, after checking several rooms, escorts me into a small conference room where I learn a little of what is going on or coming down or whatever you want to call it.

“Okay, Kat. Quick synopsis. You were right, that isn’t your camera. Yes you were going to receive one but not like that one. The camera you were supposed to receive was much like the one in the stores with a slightly upgraded optical pickup and some vastly improved software to run it. You would have had good pictures but not as good as the one’s you were taking.

The camera you’ve been using has the same pickup in it as some of our military spy satellites. At a guess the camera is probably worth somewhere around ninety or a hundred grand and the lens is worth another thirty or forty. Even your rechargeable batteries which power it are special.

We are going to return it when we reach Tony’s office.”

“Then what happened to my camera?”

“We think the partially destroyed camera which was found in the damaged lab was probably the one you were going to receive. There’s still a few thousand question being asked and at least two very intensive investigations still going on. We’ve got to get going. We’re due.”

“What about my computer?”

“That’s yours.”

“And the processing program?”

“Also yours. You would have needed it to deal with the images from your own camera anyway. Come on. We’re late.”

We hurried out and down the hall another dozen doors or so before Tan opens one and as I enter I notice we are in the lobby for Tony’s office. I hate this building, all the hallways look the same and I never know where I am.

Tan checks in with Tony’s gatekeeper, who reprimands us for being two minutes late then tells us it’s okay since Tony is running a little late as well so he’ll ‘never know the difference’.

I noticed a little light began to blink on a small strip of such lights to the right side of the gatekeeper’s desk and she says, “Okay, you can go in now.”

We do. I, with my head held high and Tan with his tail between his legs.

As we entered, we noted three other gentlemen already occupying some of the chairs around the room but the two just in front of Tony’s desk are empty and waiting.

“Tanner, Katrina. Come in and have a seat. Jim? Could you go out and call the lab? Let them know we will get the device down to them in a few minutes for them to take it through it’s paces. I appreciate it if they could hurry the results.”

One of the men gets up and goes out, closing the door behind him.

“So, how did your trip go, Tan?”

“About like we expected. I think you’ll be pleased with the results and I shot some of the more valuable data at you from the London office.”

“Yes. We got that. There was some question about a few of the photos. I presume they were take with the new camera?”

“Yes. The results of those were a bit of a surprise and that’s what caused us to bring up the questions we did. As it turned out, it was fortunate we asked them.”

“Is the device here?”

“Kat. Give the nice man your camera.”

I look at Tony like I think he’s a snake oil salesman but remove the camera from my purse and hand it across the desk to him.

Tony gets on his intercom, “Tell Jim to come in here and rush this down to the lab. I want the results last Xmas.”

Agent Jim comes through the door like he was a Jack-in-the-box on a coiled spring just outside. He grabs the camera and is back out the door almost faster than I could think about it. The other two, one on each side of the room, now get up and depart as well.

Tony looked at us, rubbed his face then pushed a couple of pieces of paper across the desk at Tanner.

“Ever seen either of those documents before?”

Tan examined them, “I can’t say as I have; but those look like my signatures so I guess I did at one time or another.”

“Take another, closer look. Be absolutely sure.”

Tan gets a funny look on his face and more carefully examines the two documents.

“Okaayyy... I’ll bite. Who’s this Agent VanDerholt from Section Eight? There’s someone else here who has the same last name as Kat? Next question... What’s a QR31j?”

“Good questions. No, there is no Agent VanDerholt in Section Eight. There’s only seven people who know who is in that Section and you aren’t one of them. That document is a forgery.”

“A what???” Tan take another even closer look, “Hell. For a forgery that certainly looks like my signature. Somebody’s pretty good.”

“Oh that’s your signature all right, Tanner. That isn’t the part of the document that’s the forgery.” He pushes another piece of paper at Tanner, “Compare this one with that one.”

Tan takes the new document and spends about a minute in silence.

“I remember this one. That was a while back, though. Maybe somewhere around a year and a half?”

“Twenty two months.”

“So someone dragged up one of my reqs from twenty two months ago, altered it into a request for this QR31j thing and submitted it?”

“Looks that way.”

“So, again I ask. What the hell is a QR31j? Of even greater note, why would anyone think I had authority to request that item, since I don’t even know what it is?”

“It’s the camera which Katrina has been happily using during the trip. We are testing it now to see if any of it’s hardware or software has been duplicated while it was out of the compound. Someone wanted it out of here very badly. Who would want to implicate you enough to involve several others in this scheme?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. You said others were involved? Do you know who they are?”

“We have several people under surveillance.”

“Probably including me.”

“Including you.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Don’t mention it. The next question on our agenda is: how did Katrina get her hands on it?”

I immediately interrupt, “It was UPS’d to me.”

Tony turns a little pale, “The camera was UPS’d as in the shipping company UPS?”

I nod my head and he turns a little more pale.

“I can prove it. Some of the first pictures I took with it were of the UPS shipping documents and the bill of sale.”

Tony is suddenly very interested, “Show me.”

I’m digging out my notebook so I may retrieve the photos when he suddenly seems to remember something.

“Tanner happened to mention you have a photo viewing program which is capable of reading the special files created by that camera. Is it loaded on your notebook and are there any of the special files on there that you could show me the results?”

As I continued to set up my notebook on his desk so I could enter my passwords and go to the photos I answered him, “Yes, and yes.”

Another minute later and I have the images of the shipping documents.

“There. These are the documents that came with my camera, as well as the opened package in which it arrived. The shipping/sales document even had the serial number of the camera on it.”

Tony spends a little time looking at the documents, “I can’t really make out very much.”

“Here, let me show you. You can magnify the image like this and then move it around so you can see any part of it. On the other hand, if you are interested in a particular portion of the image, we can crop to that portion and so long as we don’t save the image over the top of the original then we can always go back to the original if we want to examine a different portion. What part do you want to see?”

Tony points to an area of the screen as Tanner comes around the desk to watch over Tony’s other shoulder; “I want to see that area full screen. I’m interested in knowing the name of the shipper.”

I draw a rectangle on the screen then confirm it encompasses the portion in which Tony is interested. He confirmed it and I tagged the crop command. Now I enlarged the image to fill the screen. The detail is fantastic, I’ll bet I could continue enlarging until I could see every drop of ink used to print the bill of sale.

“Greybeard Imaging Equipment Resources, Inc. Humpf, that’s obviously going to be a fictitious name.”

Tanner begins musing, “Greybeard Imaging... I think I’ve heard of that company somewhere before. Not that recently but it rings a bit of a bell for me.”

I try to be helpful, “Greybeard is a commonly recalled word. It was a reference to a man or group of men who were scholars long ago and who did not spend the time to shave or opted not to do so, thus developing a beard which as the scholar became older and even more learned the beard turned grey from which derived the name.”

They both look at me like they are trying figure what merit my comment has to the problem at hand. They’re probably right in their thinking and it has no merit at all. Am I the comic relief yet?

Tony continues to ponder then asks me to show him some of the images I showed to Tanner when I was questioning my camera not being the correct camera. That also reminds me, “Since that camera wasn’t my camera, then where is my camera? I paid for a camera and memory and that was the camera I was sent. Since it wasn’t mine then where is mine?”

Tony looks at me in slight confusion, then glances at Tanner who gives him an explanation, “remember about two months ago I mentioned producing a slightly better than normal camera which could be “sold” to Kat so she could take pictures of slightly higher definition with what would seem like a more or less normal digital camera?”

Tony purses his lips, “Vaguely.”

Tan continues, “The model she selected was one she saw in WalMart and we offered to sell one to her for about twenty percent less than their price. What we finally wound up doing was downgrading one of our early models we had been playing with so it was more in keeping with high end consumer grade toys and then we were going to sell it to her along with a memory card.”

“Which you did.” I threw into the mix.

“Which we did. Except somehow our prototype whatever the hell it was called is what was shipped to her.”

“So she wants her original purchase? I’ve got some bad news for you, young lady. I think that might have been the camera which was destroyed in the lab explosion.”

“Oh. My camera?”

“We’ll get you another. You’ll have to be happy with it though because it won’t have the capabilities of the one you were using. I still get chills up my spine thinking about that camera wandering around Europe where it could so easily have been stolen. You were going to show me some photos?”

“I what? Oh, Yes. Look at this one, it’s my favorite, looks like a nice picture of some of my friends. But now we crop to Pam’s eye and enlarge a few times then crop to the reflection in her eye and enlarge that and bingo; we are looking at the room and people behind me. See where that man is bumping into the lady? And the other man is picking up his carryall so he may leave? Now watch, I’ll apply the automatic color correction and it will remove the average amount of any color which is present throughout the whole area in the scene. There. Now it’s almost as though I had turned around and taken the picture of the part of the room which was behind me. Oh... here let me reverse the image left to right since it was a reflection... there. Now we can even read the signs.”

Tony sits back as he looks at the screen.

“And what is the name of this program?”

“Irfanview. I have all of the plug-ins and several patches or upgrades. It’s a really nice program and it’s been around for, oh, ten or twenty years I guess. I don’t remember when I first discovered it but there have been a lot of plug-ins developed for it and quite a few upgrades made since then.

It’s shareware and free to use. If you think it’s worth purchasing then you can purchase it. I think there is even a commercial version or commercial license available, but I don’t really need that. It can also do some light editing and convert between several different file formats. I like ‘jpg’ but it can read the motion .gif files and even some movies.”

to be continued