I wrote this over ten years ago. It was essentially finished, but I somehow never considered it ready for posting. Or, at least, it had gone as far as I was inspired to take it. It kinda begs for a sequel, but it's fine as it is.

It's big. It took some time to edit. Especially since I needed to change the dates so that it wouldn't be so... well... dated.

Much thanks to Terry Volkirch for test reading it way back when. She might even remember the story.

One fine day, Joe wakes up and finds that his whole life has been turned upside-down.

There is some violence in this installment. It is brief, off-stage, and resolves well.

Friday, November 5, 2021:

I had a really strange dream last night. The strangest part is that I remember it so clearly. Dreams normally fade very soon after we wake up, but this one stayed with me.

I was looking at my Tiffany body. Somehow, I could see it from all sides at once. I could also see the internal organs, and even some of the programming of the brain. I could focus in and see anything I want in detail. Then, I saw my Joe body the same way. The brain was mostly identical to my Tiffany brain, except for some gender-specific programming or, rather, neural pathways.

Then I saw, or rather sensed, my soul. My soul was male, but it also had some female characteristics. Those characteristics have always been there, but my recent experience has made them come out into the open -- making me a more complete person. None of my maleness was muted. I am no less male now than I was in the past. Still, I have grown, and become more balanced. This experience made me sad for those who are stuck with one identity. When I thought of Myra, I became really sad.

Later, I noted that I could move my soul to one or the other body. After that, I woke up.

I stood up and shifted to my Joe body briefly in lieu of a shower. When I did that, the vision of moving my soul to my Joe body came to mind. When I switched back, the vision came to mind again.

Saturday, November 6, 2021:

The dream returned, but this time it was followed by another. Instead of my own body, I saw Myra's. I didn't see her current body, but a fully female body with all of the appropriate plumbing and neural pathways. Next, a male version of her appeared. It wasn't the hormone-modified body that she now wears, but an idealized male body that was in no way modified by female hormones.

Then, I saw the body she now wears, but it was faded and imperfect. Inside that body is her soul -- a truly female soul. She is, indeed, a female trapped in a male body. I tried to move her soul into her idealized female body, but a voice that isn't a voice stopped me. "Not yet. Soon, but not yet. It will happen, but it can't happen now."

Monday, November 8, 2021:

Myra looked on the verge of crying today. I did my best to be there for her, but she was really focusing inward. It wasn't until we got home that I found out what happened.

The divorce is final. Myra's mom and dad are no longer married.

Without so much as a "good bye", Myra's mom left for Oregon. She had already sent all of her worldly belongings there. Everything was moved into her boyfriend's house. In the courthouse, she took the check for her part of their joint property, walked out, and took a taxi to the airport. She didn't even look at Myra, let alone say "good bye".

That must have hurt.

Myra's father drove her home in silence. When they got there, she saw a for sale sign on the front lawn. Her dad will be moving to New York City in a week to start his new job. Myra is being enrolled into a military school about five hundred miles from here. It is costing her dad a pretty penny -- much more than the child support payments that will be sent by her mother. Still, it is worth it to him to not have to worry about raising his daughter who was his son.

She tried to put a bold front on it, but was soon bawling on my shoulder. I tried to console her, but what could I say? Soon, she cried herself out and just slumped on to my bed. I pulled her shoes off, rolled her all the way on to the bed, and covered her up. She was soon sleeping.

I found Jan and talked to her about it. She was appalled as I was. An all boy military school? What is this man thinking? Does he think that they'll somehow turn her female soul into a male soul?

It didn't take long for us to understand that we had to act. We both agreed that Myra is now a part of the family. The guest room that she used a couple times can now be hers. We hatched a plan, then called her dad. When we pointed out to him that he could save lots of money by fostering her to us, he was only too happy to sign her over.

Tuesday, November 9, 2021:

Jan called our lawyer just as soon as he got into the office. He took it from there and made an appointment for us all to see the judge and get everything straightened out. He had to point out to the court that Myra's dad would be moving to New York next week, so the appointment had to be soon. Fortunately, the judge is very familiar with the case, and has a good heart.

Thursday, November 11, 2021:

I had to use up a few hours of Joe time today. As Tiffany, I walked the boys to the bus stop, but I turned around and left before the bus came. I hid out in my office as Jan prepared Myra for the appointment. Then, when it was time to leave, I shifted to my Joe body, put on a suit, and drove us all to the courthouse. Myra's dad, the two lawyers, and we sat in front of the judge and explained our case. The judge was pleased that we were willing to take care of Myra.

Much to the consternation of Myra's dad, the judge ordered him to pay child support based not on his current income, but the income he would be receiving as a Wall Street stock broker. Myra's mother is also paying child support to us, and it is based on her income as a lawyer out on the west coast.

It actually didn't take that long, and we considered taking Myra back to school to finish off the day. Instead, Jan drove us to Myra's old house. Under the watchful eye of her dad and a court officer, we removed all of her stuff. Her father didn't want her to take her computer or video games, but Myra stood her ground and pointed out that they were gifts. When I pointed out to him that he would have to move anything that Myra didn't take, he loaded us down with a bunch more stuff.

As we left her old house for the last time, her father didn't even look at her or say good bye. That had to hurt a lot, but she put on a happy face when we moved all of her stuff into her new room.

There will always be a mom and dad sized hole in her heart, but we will do our best to fill it for her.

Saturday, November 13, 2021:

I guess I should join the church youth group. John will do much better if I am there with him. Also, if I can get Myra involved, she will be sure to make lots of new friends. When it comes to loving someone into the fold, our church is the best.

We had just finished with our science homework when I broached the subject. I told her that we would be going to church this Sunday, then John and I would go roller skating with the youth group. She looked touched, but very nervous. She looked like she had just been invited to a place where she clearly doesn't belong. "If I were to set foot inside a church, it would cave in on me!"

OK, so I know where she's coming from. She isn't used to unconditional acceptance, and she feels sinful and dirty.

"Why?", I asked.

"Why? You ask why? You know what I am! The church hates my kind! I'm a freak! I'm a pervert! How can God love me? How can I ask those people to love me?"

Then, she put her head down and sobbed. I walked around the table and put my hand on her shoulder. I let her go until she had pretty much cried herself out.

"I love you and accept you. Jan loves you. Joe loves you. What makes you think that God won't love you even better?"

I know the answers. I know how she will answer, too. So, I ask the questions, let her come out with it, and then talk to her.

"But... I'm such a sinner!"

"So am I."

"You know what I mean! I'm trying to be something that I'm not! I'm polluting my body, and I plan to mutilate it just as soon as I can."

Yes, that pretty well sums up the standard attitude that all too many have about gender disorders. Still, the Bible has a different story to tell. I sat back down, then reached across the table and brushed a lock of hair from her face. I lifted her chin and looked at her. "Who am I? Who are you? Are we just bags of biological goo wrapped in a skin, or is there something else there?" There was a distinct lack of comprehension on Myra's face. "You don't have to study much biology or biochemistry to figure out that what we call life is little more than a very complex bunch of chemical reactions. As you study the more complex multicellular organisms, you see everything from the rudimentary control systems of things like worms and bugs up to the more complex control systems contained that are the brains of mammals."

Myra asked, "Are we studying science now?"

I continued, "Most behavior can be attributed to nothing more than a complex control system. Many say that even our most complex human behavior can be attributed to that, but others see our appreciation for beauty, our ability to write a symphony, or our ability to design a jet or computer as proof that there is something else there -- something that can't be explained away by a gob of gray goo that was originally designed do little more than your typical industrial robot's control box."

"What do you think?," I asked.

"We have a soul," Myra replied.

"I think so, too. So does God. Here, let me lay a little scripture on ya.

I googled up the scripture on my tablet:

1 Samuel 16:7 New International Version (NIV)

7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

See? God agrees with you! Those who disagree can tell you that your gender is determined by what's between your legs, but anyone who believes that you have a spirit or soul has to agree that there is more to it than that."

"And those who go to church have to believe that I have a soul!"

I smiled. "Right you are! We Christians believe that we are spirit, and that we just wear this flesh while we are here on Earth. One day, we will cast off this imperfect flesh. Then, who cares what was attached to it?"

"But they're going to see things differently," Myra pointed out.

"They might -- it depends on the person. Still, it's not like you're going to strip down to your altogether in front of them. They'll see what you want them to see. What do you want them to see?" I looked straight at her. "What are you? Are you a boy who is trying to be a girl, or are you a girl who is trying to be the person that she was meant to be?"

She looked a bit shocked that I would ask that question, but then a smile slowly came to her face.

"To gain any level of peace and happiness," I told her, "You have to come to love who you are inside, and be totally convinced in your own mind that you really are the person you are trying to portray. It's OK to have doubts and concerns about how others see you, but you must have no doubts about who you really are inside."

"I was born with a boy's body. I had all the hormones and body parts of a boy. I tried to be a boy, but it just didn't fit. It would have been so much easier if I could have been what my body was born to be." There was a tear in her eye.

"Instead," I said, "You are what your soul was created to be. Our bodies are products of this fallen world, but our spirits are the breath that God has breathed into us -- our true essence."

"So I really am a girl..."

"Myra, if you listen to the people who don't know you, and try to change what's inside to match what's outside, you're doing it backwards."

She looked up at me as if a new light had just come on.

"It's not a lie! I'm not a lie! It's not me that's lying, it's my body!"

I held her as she sobbed uncontrollably. This was the kind of breakthrough I was looking for.

"God doesn't make mistakes, but this fallen world produces things like birth defects, cerebral palsy, ADHD, autism, Down's syndrome, and yes, gender dysphoria."

She had a hard time taking all of that in, but she's a smart girl. She understood enough to see that she isn't condemned. You could almost see a load being lifted off of her back. Yes, Jesus does carry our burdens for us.

It is our custom to pray over all of the children once they are put to bed. I changed to Joe to do that, as is my custom. Jan and I prayed over Myra, too.

It just happens that my room and Jan's room are not visible from the other rooms. That made it possible for me to sneak in to sleep with Jan once everyone was tucked in.

Sunday, November 14, 2021:

Myra did come to church with us. She was very attentive in Sunday school, and seemed to understand what was going on. That is probably Ron and Rosie's doing

She did well in church. That is, she sang with us. She has a lovely voice. She listened attentively to the sermon and even enjoyed talking to everyone afterwards. When we went to youth group, we all had a good time. A few of them privately commented to me that they were glad to see me finally join.

Monday, November 15, 2021:

The strange dreams are back. I'm beginning to wonder if they are really dreams. It looks like I am being trained. I am learning about the technology that our mysterious benefactors used to turn me into Tiffany. I'll try to explain what I have learned. It's difficult because some of the concepts don't translate readily into words.

Imagine some of our ancestors rubbing amber with silk to create static electricity. How much of a jump in imagination would it take to imagine that the stuff they are playing with would eventually lead to the computer, or even the light bulb?

There is a kind of a potential that acts like a pattern. We aren't even at the level of rubbing amber with silk, but they have a full-blown technology based on it. They use those fields or potentials to pull some formless matter/energy (dark matter? dark energy?) from somewhere and form it into the bodies that I wear. To actually create the pattern requires a bunch of computing power, and the supervision of someone with the equivalent of a doctor's degree. There is no way that I am going to be creating any patterns anytime soon.

Also, it turns out that we are actually three-part beings. The real 'you' is your spirit. Little is known about that, since there is really no way of imaging or detecting it. The only thing that they could tell me is that God is a spirit, and that a spirit is necessary for a sapient and self-aware soul to exist. The soul is kind of a wrapper for the spirit, or an interface between the spirit and the body. It is the soul that contains (or perhaps expresses) a lot of what makes us what we are. It is our soul that is male or female. All souls contain a combination of male and female traits, and it is the balance of them that makes one male or female (or, maybe somewhat androgynous). Souls can change. Souls can grow.

When I switch from one body to the other, I am pulling my soul and the pattern together. The pattern sends the matter from the old body into the void, and uses the dark matter or whatever to create a new body. That is why I always end up with a fresh, new body when I shift. The mysterious voice that isn't an audible voice taught me how to shift someone else, and warned me that it might be necessary in the future.

After school, I decided to do some research. Some of the information that I received last night sounds vaguely familiar. I looked up information on things like NAET, Homeopathy, accupuncture, accupressure, kinesiology, Morphogenetic fields, naturopathy, and other metaphysical and alternative medicine information. I also read some essays written by the skeptics.

It was amusing, in a way. There is a fine line between a crackpot and an innovator. For instance, tectonic plate theory was definitely considered to be a crackpot theory until a mechanism was found, and other evidence was discovered.

That's how science works, of course. A scientist will form a theory, devise a test, sort through the data that comes from that test, and attempt to come to some kind of a conclusion. The cycle is then repeated. Other disciplines are not so rigid. In general, you go with what works, and maybe devise an explanation later. If bread mold helps cure infections, and you have no idea that there is a chemical called penicillin, you may come up with an explanation that involves spirits or humors or something.

So, when I started reading about energy flows and life forces, I had to remind myself that they are not rigorously applying the scientific method, but are simply trying to explain the unexplainable.

But the nay-sayers are just as amusing. On the one hand, they discount the idea that the mind can have an effect on the body. On the other hand, they blame the placebo effect for any cases where the treatments seem to work. What is the placebo effect, if not a rigorously documented example of the mind's ability to affect the body?

Anyhow, after a bunch of study, I still couldn't tell how much of the alternative medical methods work due to the pattern potentials, and how much is pure crackpottery. Homeopathy looks like a good bet, though.

Wednesday, November 17, 2021:

There are three boys in school that are harassing Myra and me. They are accusing us of being lesbians, of being boys in disguise, and a number of other things. They are miffed because neither of us are interested in dating them. I told them that I'm really not interested in a junior high romance. Myra is following my lead.

I'm starting to get worried. They are getting angry, and I worry that they might get violent. I'm confident that I can take care of myself, but Myra could get hurt badly. The hormones that she is taking don't do good things for her strength.

Thursday, November 18, 2021:

There has been a lull in my business, so I decided to do more research on gender disorders.

While the clinical studies and dry reports are informative, it's the stories that really hit you in the gut. I read the true stories of boys who grew up confused. They tried to do what was expected of them, but always envied the girls and their pretty clothes. I read story after story about the agony of being in the wrong place. Some decided at an early age that they needed to change, while others fought it and even went as far as to get married and raise a family -- only to later realize that their attempts to be male were nothing more than a sham. Some gritted their teeth and kept going, while others finally succumbed to what they felt to be their true selves, and started on the hormone treatments.

The fiction was equally telling. The fantasies of being given the gift of femaleness by Santa or a genie or some machine indicated the depth of their despair and desire.

Friday, November 19, 2021:

Myra had to stay after school to make up a test. She assured me that she can walk home, and that the three mile walk would do her good. Why am I such a worry-wart? She's not a little kid, after all. She's older than John by a few months.

I was lounging in the over sized sweats that I wear when I want to shift easily when that voice that's not a voice spoke to me. "Myra needs your help!" I sprung up, pulled on the thick slippers that I use for padding, and then pulled on my Joe-sized running shoes. I grabbed a large hooded jersey and bolted out the door.

"Where?"

The voice led me down the driveway and toward the bus stop There, in the secluded area where we wait for the bus, I saw three people kicking something on the ground.

I shifted to my Joe body on the run. I have never tried it on the run before, and nearly fell. My feet hurt because of the slippers, and the bra constricted my chest. Still, I wasn't about to try to fight those three as Tiffany.

They saw me coming and ran off. I shifted back and knelt down. Myra was laying naked in the snow, bruised and bloody. Her groin area was nothing but a mass of raw hamburger. I felt for a pulse. Her body suddenly went into convulsions. I fought back the tears. I have seen those convulsions before when butchering animals. I have seen the final death throes of an animal that has just lost the last of its blood.

What can I do but pray? As I put my hands on her head, the image of her new female body appeared. The voice said "Shift her now!" I did so. Her new body appeared, naked in the snow. All she had on were her shoes.

The voice said, "Take her home. You have email."

Myra woke up, shivered, started to cry, and passed out. I could tell that she was OK, though. I pulled off my hooded jersey and put it on her.

As Joe, I was able to lift her and get her dressed. I took a little time to pull my shoes and slippers off, stuff the slippers into my pocket, and then put the shoes back on. I lifted her and cradled her just like the sheriff had done for me at the car wreck. She opened her eyes again and I smiled at her, assuring her that she was safe. I carried her home. She was still shivering when I laid her on her bed. "Don't leave me!", she said as I went to walk out the door.

"I'm getting Tiffany." When I saw her frightened look, I added, "Don't worry. You're safe here."

I dashed to my room and pulled off my shirt. I shifted, redid my bra, and put on one of my Tiffany shirts. It took all of thirty seconds.

Myra was in rough shape. I let her cry on my shoulder and talk about what happened.

Apparently, the same three boys that were harassing us in school followed her home. As soon as they got to the secluded area by the bus stop, they jumped her and started to call her a wimp, girly-boy, and a whole bunch of unprintable names. They ripped her clothes off while beating her up, then started to kick her in the groin as soon as it was exposed. By the time I came by, she had passed out from the pain.

She looked at me. "Your foster dad is such a dreamboat! He came and rescued me and carried me home and brought me my best friend to help me."

"He's your foster dad too, you know."

It still hadn't sunk into her head that she was OK.

After she had cried herself out, I led her to the shower and pulled the jersey off. She stepped under the warm water and soaped herself as if trying to wash away all the pain and humiliation. What does she have left? She can't even go back to that school.

There was a gasp, then an excited cry. "Tiffany! Tiffany! Look! I'm a girl! I'm a real girl! It's a miracle!"

That wasn't quite the same reaction I had when I found myself changed. I couldn't help but to grin.

She rinsed off, grabbed a towel, and ran to the full-length mirror in her room. She just stared at herself, not really allowing herself to believe it.

"Yes, Myra, you really are a girl. You're a girl down to your very soul, and now you have a body to match."

I didn't know where to go from there. What should I tell her? Then, I remembered that the voice had told me that I have email. I ran to my room to get my laptop, and was back in a jiffy. Myra was still staring at the mirror when I booted up and synchronized my email through the wireless network.

Dear Tiffany:

Your compassion has brought another person to the team. Though she was an unplanned addition, she is none the less very welcome. You appear to have great taste in friends.

You should let Myra know everything. In fact, after briefing her, you might want to let her read your journal.

She will be staying in her new female body for a while, but will eventually need to try on her male body. She will never be forced to stay there, so she need not worry.

Also, don't worry about any future attacks from the three boys. We will take care of them.

When I was done reading the email, I noticed that she was still looking in the mirror with an expression of disbelief.

"Yes, Myra, it's really true. I have been living it for the better than half a year, and it isn't going away."

She looked at me questioningly.

"Last April, I woke up to the shock of my life. I had been changed into a little girl as I slept. It took me months to truly become the Tiffany that you see before you."

"You mean, you're not really Tiffany?"

"Yes, I am really Tiffany! I wasn't born that way, but I'm Tiffany now -- just like you were born Mark, but became Myra. The difference is that I can go back to my old identity. You will be able to go back to your old identity if you want to as well."

She shook her head. "No. I don't want to go back. Please tell me that I don't have to go back!"

I smiled at her. "You don't have to go back, Myra. Then, I showed her the email. After that, I stood up and removed my top and bra. "I'm not one to do strip shows, but we can pretend that it's just us girls in the locker room."

The "us girls" part made Myra smile.

While I had her attention, I shifted to my Joe body. She reflexively grabbed the towel to cover up. I shifted back. "I have already seen both of your new bodies -- inside and out."

After she put on her night gown, we sat and chatted for a little while. She was still somewhat in shock, but she also had a level of peace and happiness that I have never seen in her before. She finally yawned and crawled between the covers. I shifted to my Joe form and prayed over her. She was asleep before I left her room.