Evolution / 19

 

Karen’s eyes opened wide.   “You... and Susan?”

Susan’s mouth opened.   She hadn’t even thought of this; after all, prior to her transformation, Karen had been her only real lover.   Suddenly Susan felt a sense of having betrayed Karen somehow...

“Yes,” Dara said, now much more quietly.

Susan was worried for Karen’s feelings, and her reaction.   But surely she must have figured that something like this would happen, Susan thought, with Dara and herself sleeping in the same room. Karen certainly understood Dara’s “activity” level.   But, apparently, this had been weighing on Dara’s mind since it happened.

Karen just sighed.   It was the reaction that Susan had feared the most; she had been hoping on a long-shot, that Karen would actually be excited by the news and want the details.

Things seemed to change with Karen that night.   It took some time for Susan to realize that things have been “different” for quite a while;   she remembered Karen’s proclamation of love towards her, and fleeting fantasies of spending her life with Karen, as friends and lovers.   It was a dream that even George had aspired to.   The same person, in a different body, had loved and wanted Karen so much.   Now, Karen was pregnant, and would soon be, quite necessarily, living her own life; a life that Susan wouldn’t be ready for, having hardly any of the life experience that Karen had.   Suddenly she realized the problems of “reversing” someone; the responsibility, should a woman carry through as Karen had elected to do, was hardly different from simply having a baby.   Karen’s daughter would be physically dependent, at least, on her for years, especially in a world that wasn’t ready for “babies” that came equipped with a full bank of human knowledge.   It made sense for lovers, as in the story Marcy had related, who planned on spending many years together anyway.   But it was still frustrating; George had several good friends that Susan had been planning on giving an “invitation”, so to speak, someday.   Now she wasn’t so sure.   In either case, the chances of her visions with Karen coming true were fading away quickly.

At first, Susan felt angry with Dara for “spilling the beans”. But, before voicing this emotion, she came to the realization that she should be thankful... for sparing her that task, for surely she would have had to tell Karen sooner or later.   Hardest of all would be leaving Karen tonight, when all concerned knew that she and Dara would likely mate again upon arriving home.   Susan explored this thought for a moment.   Somehow Karen no longer excited her the way Dara did; sex with Karen now would be a betrayal of her new bedmate, wouldn’t it?   Thoughts of it–another night with Dara–started to creep in and excite Susan.

Susan finally shook herself out of it.   Knowing Dara as she was coming to, and having participated with her in a threesome with a man earlier that week, Dara would probably have no complaints about involving Karen in their escapades.   Unfortunately, there was no way to suggest that to Karen tonight.

They ran into Lisa, who seemed very busy, when they returned to the complex.

“Susan!   Dara!   My, you two look fine!”, Lisa said.   She tussled Susan’s hair.   “Very nice.   She looks more like you every day, Dara.”

“I try,” Dara said.   “As long as we can wear each other’s clothes...”

“So how are things going?   I haven’t heard much news lately...”

“Not very well,” Lisa reported.   “That’s what’s been keeping me so busy.   Come with me.”   She headed off quickly to the media center; the other women followed.

“Most of it we’ve expected, of course.   But that doesn’t make it easier.   Almost all of the major organized religions have condemned us for ‘interfering with God’s order’.   Some groups of men, some fraternal organizations, and even some labor unions have expressed the idea that we’re a bunch of militant feminists out to use the equivalent of thermonuclear war on men everywhere.”

“War?   Using our own wombs to simply not create new male offspring...   how can they consider that ‘war’?” Susan asked.

“You underestimate the desire of men to have male children.   Already, the statistics on babies born in hospitals are showing effects.   About seventy percent of babies born in the last two weeks, worldwide, have been female, and the percentage is rising every day.”

Susan worked out the math in her head.   Twenty percent of “extra” females wasn’t much, but it meant...   Hmmm.     Thirty percent of the children born were male, and this number represented about half of the offspring of “normal” women.   So sixty percent of the mothers hadn’t converted yet.   But that meant that...

“Forty percent of the mothers...” she said out loud.   “That means that four out of seven baby girls born are already...”

“Exactly,” Lisa said.   “And that’s scaring people.   Well, men, at least.”

The numbers already raced through Susan’s head again.   Even if not a single additional woman were to convert starting today, the next generation would consist of nearly 60 percent of them, four out of seven, and assuming a consistent birth rate, 80% of the world’s children would be girls, of which 75% would have the new abilities.   Then eighty-four percent...   Of course it was all part of the plan; there was nothing anybody could do about it now.   And, as women continued to convert, and some men got reversed or even sterilized, the rate of change would simply accelerate.

“One of the big problems, of course, is that we’re not getting the fair media access we expected.   Even the newspapers have cut off their female reporters when they submit anything positive about us.   Here, watch this,” Lisa said, handing Dara a videotape.   “I have to get going.   Call me tomorrow, though.”

Karen turned to leave as well.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve already seen it,” she said, “and I’ve got a little someone inside me who is starting to wake up again.   I’ll catch up with you if you’re still here.”   Karen followed Lisa out.

Dara put the cartridge in the player and snapped on one of the monitors.   The tape contained compiled press conferences and news reports that the group had collected.   Most was exactly as Lisa had said, but some was shocking.   The state government was considering emergency legislation that would require identification of any woman with “altered” reproductive abilities, perhaps even by some kind of tattoo, and would make it a crime for any woman, converted or not, to deposit any of her own bodily fluids on any other person, male or female, or even to conspire to do so.

“So continuing to spread the abilities would be a crime,” Susan said as they watched the report.

“So would defending yourself against a male.   But I don’t see how they’d enforce...”

The report continued to say that, while no means of identifying a converted woman was yet available, a urine test was the most likely candidate.   When the politicians were questioned on the enforcement issue, they mentioned that the state might simply have to offer a substantial cash reward to anyone, male or female, who comes forth with information on these “dirty” acts that women were performing.   The women in the audience were outraged; but became much more so when the suggestion was made that “converted” women, for the good of the country, not be allowed to have sex, and be sterilized or aborted should they become pregnant.

“Ouch,” said Susan.   “So if I have a girlfriend, and decide to give her these abilities, she might just turn me in for the cash reward.   It’ll scare everyone away from completing our mission.”

“Don’t count on it.   Say you managed to get someone else to pee on you, because you wanted the cash reward.   If you do get peed on, even if you turn your partner in, you still end up with those abilities yourself.   I bet the state would take the opportunity to tattoo you right then and there.   I don’t think women will fall for it.   What are they going to do, put us all in jail?”

The next recording on the tape was of a public protest to the press conference they had just watched.   There were various people holding signs, of course, but the climax of the protest came when about fifteen women dressed in swimsuits, or shorts and bikini tops, or T-shirts, lay themselves down on the state house steps, and three women wearing skirts stood over them.   The scene was cut by the network editors just as one could barely see the beginning of three streams of urine emerge from the women who were standing; next scene was a close-up of the women lying on the stairs, soaking wet, starting to slowly get up, giving each other high-fives, shaking their fists at the camera, or showing off their soaking-wet bodies.   The woman with the white shorts on made it very clear, in the pictures, that the fluid was yellow.   The next scene showed the three skirted women being dragged away by the police, which only further angered the mob; although nothing like the law mentioned before had passed yet, there was still simple public indecency.

Next we saw a talk show where Lisa was being interviewed.   The host, who of course was male, was ruthless, as were some of the female audience members.   The tone was much the same as the state-house press conference; how dare you make such a change to our natural order, without our consent?   When Lisa tried her best to calmly explain that the new abilities were spread only with consent, she was confronted with the statistics of baby girls being born.   A man in the audience asked her, furiously, how she could use the word “consent”; nobody had asked him if he minded losing his ability to bear male children, which he claimed he had simply because there were “no women out there” who could bear one for him.   Lisa became very upset by this:   “How dare you even suggest that you have the right to any ability of some woman’s body!   What a woman can do, and what she can produce from her own body, is her choice alone.   We aren’t here as baby factories to satisfy your male ego...”

The talk show host cut that audience member off and went to a woman with her hand raised.   “My own daughter has become one of... ‘you people’.   I’ll never have a grandson, now, thanks to you...”

“That was your daughter’s choice!   It’s her body!   You have no more right to it than that guy does...”

“But she was talked into it by her friend!   And now there’s no going back!”

Lisa was frustrated, obviously on the defensive, and losing ground fast.   One of the featured guests was a man who had been sprayed by a woman, and feared never having children again.   He had no interest in becoming a woman himself, and was angry that anyone had ever suggested that.   Lisa found herself furious that his “attacker” hadn’t been invited to the show, to explain why she had squirted this guy; no woman took this action lightly, with the exception of a few women who were simply playing with mates that they planned to reverse anyway.

For Lisa, thank goodness it was only a half-hour show.   The next thing on the tape was entirely different; a private videotape of one of Marcy’s sessions.   It was a totally different picture; everyone there was supportive; even the men in the audience.   Nobody had been kept from the seminar, yet there were were few furious detractors, on whom the same arguments Lisa had attempted during the talk show were effective in silencing.   There was no sensation that the world was coming to an end as the news and talk shows seemed to suggest.   It gave a great comparison to what the media had been saying; and how they had entirely omitted the strong sense of grass-roots support that this movement had in reality.

Dara flipped through an on-line edition of the group’s schedule and log at a nearby terminal.   Performing a few searches, she found the documents–actually articles from a bulletin-board network that was headquartered here–that gave some comments on how women expected to escape this persecution they suddenly faced.   Despite the fact that the gender of the voting population had not changed much, there was a recall vote for certain key politicians planned, including the one who had made those infuriating suggestions at the state house.   Another report showed that there were already enough signatures collected to put the recall on the ballot.

Dara showed the article to Susan, who commented quite easily, “That’s been the whole idea all along, hasn’t it?”

“Sure.   That’s why I was out there,” Dara answered.   “There’s already too many of us for them to fight. They’ll have to cater to what’s happening, not resist it.”

Another article showed that there was support of them by more men than there was dissent by women; or, in other words, the small number of women projected to vote against the recall, and subsequent replacement of that position by a woman, were easily made up for by the number of men would did support this effort.   In fact, there were more than that many men who planned to become women someday, according to poll results in a different article; of course they wouldn’t mind more acceptance of what they planned to become.

The media was a different story.   The problem was, even though in some cases there was enough momentum to simply take over a particular station, or in grander plans, an entire network, the agencies who had to approve such purchases consisted primarily of men who would be opposed to it, having been media people themselves.   Newspapers seemed easy–one local paper had been started up by a group of men and women who saw the bias in the current press, and it was becoming quite successful; but broadcast media would be a different story.   The only solid plans so far was for a strike by the concerned employees of KLXV, ironically the station which first broke the story to the public.

“Enough,” Dara finally said.   “Let’s go find Karen.”

Karen turned out to be asleep, so the two women headed out without waking her.   They got back in the car.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Dara said.   “I think this is my mission.   I’m very glad I got involved.   Very glad I met... you.”

“Me too.   I feel like I’ve been so useless, though.   You’ve had to teach me practically everything.   But I owe everything I am to you, and Marcy, and Karen.   I really want to give something back to it.”

“Maybe we could do it together,” Dara said.   “I think you’d be great.   I think that we’re the only ones–including Marcy–that might really explain to men what it’s like to become female; what it’s all about.   And you’re the only one who’s actually gone through it.   They’ll listen to you.”

Susan smiled.

“You know, it’s funny...”   Dara said.   “All this time I’ve been setting you up to solo–go out on your own, as the woman you are...”

“Really?”

“Of course.   You haven’t been on your own... you’ve been watched every minute since I first laid eyes on you, holding that stupid flat tire in my hands.   Then I shared myself with you, and you became like me.   Now you’re as ready for the real world as I am, Susan; as much of a woman as I am.   But now I’m beginning to feel like I don’t want to let go.”

“Then don’t,” Susan said.   They pulled into a parking lot, but Dara didn’t get out of the car.

“I felt more with you last night than I have with any man,” Dara said.

“It’s like you’re a part of me.”

“I am.   I’m wearing your panties to prove it.   And this body didn’t come from nowhere.”

Susan felt the emotional run-up that she had only felt with Karen.   Her “betrayal” was complete; Dara had elicited feelings that seemed, now, even stronger than Karen had generated.   Perhaps it was because of all the concentrated time that Dara had spent with her; after all, not everybody devotes themselves to not only making someone a woman, but teaching them to be one as well.   It was suddenly obvious that the feeling was mutual.   Feeling a sudden loss of words, the two women finally got out of the car.   They were parked outside the fitness club that Dara belonged to.

It took only minutes for Dara to sign Susan up as her guest.   George had been the guest of one of his friends here before; but now Susan found herself heading into the Ladies’ locker room for the first time.   Dara opened the gym bag she brought, tossed an outfit Susan’s way, and started to undress.   As it was approaching dinnertime, the locker room was nearly empty.

Susan remembered something important when she pulled her panties off; the panties now had a brownish-red stain on them.   Dara figured out instantly what was going on.

“Oops, I totally forgot, Susan.   I’m sorry.   You’ve gone all day without changing.   It can be hard to feel on the first day.   Here,” she said, tossing another tampon to her.   “The toilets are over there.   Then you’ll be fine until bedtime.”

It felt strange for Susan to walk, in her naked, female body, the whole length of the locker room, past several other women in various states of undress.   Two were entirely naked, on their way from the shower, hair soaking wet.   She couldn’t help but think how much George would have wanted to be here; to get a glimpse of what she now saw so easily.   She conceded, though, that the concept was ridiculous; George was here, and there was nothing to stop her, even in her new body, from getting turned on by the sight of other women.   But she didn’t.   It simply wasn’t the thing one did in cases like this.   Had she still been male, she concluded, and co-ed locker rooms been society’s norm, her behavior would be unchanged–except, of course, that she was headed over to change a tampon.   Simply having a male body didn’t cause one to go “ape”, so to speak, over any strange female, dressed or undressed, that happened to walk by.   She felt upset that society didn’t trust men and women enough to be together in such a state; the same society that supposedly made people civilized.   Yet the club had two separate locker rooms.   She imagined what would be happening soon–it would be great to be male, as one would have all the “men’s” facilities virtually to oneself, while the “women’s” equivalents became increasingly crowded.   Eventually both locker rooms would be for women; though one would still have the soft, pastel tile of the original women’s locker room, and the other the bright, harsh colors that someone apparently decided that men prefer.   She suddenly realized that she was one of the few visitors here that had ever seen the inside of both places; an experience even Dara hadn’t shared.

At the toilet, Susan peed first, then fished for the little string that would remove her tampon.   With the change done, she wiped herself a bit and returned to Dara.   Dara was already dressed.   It didn’t take long for Susan to realize that the outfits were similar–same style, different color scheme, and that there would be only one way to put it on.   There were two parts–the bottoms were like pantyhose that ended well before the knee, the rest was like a “tank” swimsuit.   Susan stepped into the bottom section, which was the only thing that covered her bottom.   Dara’s bottom was a soft, pastel color, and the top a matching, but much brighter one.   The bottoms that Susan stepped into were a very shiny black; the kind of thing she often saw Dara in.   The contrast around her pelvis with the bright blue, skintight top was obviously intentional.   It drew ones eyes almost directly to her crotch, and her bottom.   The suit had a built-in bra, which made her shape very, very visible.   All in all, it looked painted on.

“Wow, you can really get away with a lot,” Susan said.

“That’s nothing.   I have a suit–well, we have a suit–that has a bare midriff; but they don’t like that here for sanitary reasons.   But you watch; almost all the women wear really hot stuff here.   Guys just have T-shirts and old shorts.   Never figured that out.”

“Perhaps it’s because they’re here to exercise, not show off.”

“They show off.   Watch.   You’ll see.   Watch the ‘muscle’ shirts, the bulges in their crotches...   It’s like a big game.   Now you’re the one they can look at, but not touch.   It’s actually kind of fun.”

“Fun??”

“Sure.   I don’t mind giving ‘em a little kick when I can.   Watch how many of them get caught looking at you.”

It happened exactly as Dara had described.   Even as early as the warm-ups, it became obvious that a glimpse at her body was a prime treat for many of the men.   While doing leg stretches, she caught one guy who’s eyes seemed locked to that brightly-colored outfit’s crotch.   Dara pointed a few of these instances out.   Susan’s endurance was off quite a bit from what George had done, which wasn’t surprising given her lack of exercise, but then Susan surprised herself with her own strength; having not exercised for months now, she figured she’d be doing less than half the weight that George did last time he was here.   She wasn’t as strong as the men were, and would probably never be so again, but it was certainly more than half.

Dara next took Susan to a ‘beginner’-level aerobics session.   Normally Dara took the ‘expert’ one, but hadn’t been to it in quite a while and, of course, wanted to accompany Susan, who had never done it before.   It turned out to be too easy for both women; the instructor pointed this out at the session’s conclusion.   Finally the two women showered, and got dressed.   Dara had brought clean panties for both of them.   Susan felt great; and was now committed to maintaining the same tone that Dara had.

Returning to the car, exhausted but somehow refreshed, they found themselves looking into each other’s eyes again.   The feeling they had left behind in this spot was still waiting there for them.

“I’m getting you home,” Dara said.