When Life Hands You Uranus : 4 / 9

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

Barfield shouted Wait! one more time, but only the W left his mouth. The rest of the word was caught inside and left behind. At that precise point in time, between the W and the a, the teleport cycle swept Barfield into the void. It took less than an instant -- the most infinitesimal fraction of a second -- for Barfield to become a ball of energy, traverse the void, and be remade on Uranus as Linnea Valerianella. Any physicist will tell you that you can’t use the words time and teleport in the same sentence, but every normal human being is acutely, innately aware of before and after, of then and now, and of there and here. And so, whether the teleport took a time too short to perceive, or no time at all, Barfield experienced it with his whole being. He felt exactly the same sensations that every other teleported person has always felt: first, the intense stabbing pain of being flash-frozen in every part of his body, from the outermost layer of skin to the center of the brain and the very marrow of the largest bones. His breath froze in his lungs and his blood became literal ice in his veins.

But the feeling -- acute and overwhelming as it was -- was followed immediately by an equally instantaneous thaw and warming as the ball of energy that traversed the void became a person once again. That person, as we said, was no longer Barfield Owens. The person who emerged from the teleport cycle was now, in every way possible, the astonishingly beautiful woman, Linnea Valerianella.

Linnea clutched her documents to her chest as she gasped in astonishment. Some part of her brain recognized the presence of the documents and asked: Wait a minute… If the packet full of papers could be teleported with me, why not my clothes?

It was only part of her brain, though. The rest of her brain was staring dumbfounded at her breasts. She lifted the packet of documents and saw the gap between her thighs. Jesus Christ on a bicycle! She was a woman! A woman! No wonder the documents… Linnea fumbled with her packet. What was her name now? She opened the file and took another look. Linnea Something-with-a-V. Oh, lord. Why couldn’t it be a simple, common name, like Mary Jones or Amadea Habsburg? Okay, Linnea V-something. She’d have to make the effort and learn that last name. A new identity indeed!

Naturally, Linnea believed that it was Neeka who had decided to turn Barfield into a woman. It was confusing, surprising, shocking, disorienting… and yet, Linnea had to admit that -- judging from her current appearance -- no one would ever, in a thousand years, guess that she had once been Barfield Owens. She was as far from being Barfield Owens as a person could possibly be.

Still, a little advance warning would have been nice. It was extremely disconcerting, to say the least.

Linnea found herself sitting in a row of chairs exactly like the row of chairs she sat in a few moments earlier in another, far-off corner of the universe. She stood up and tried the door. It didn’t open, so she twisted the knob a little more forcefully. It was definitely locked. After a minute or so, a man came walking up slowly and casually. He was holding a piece of paper -- the manifest from the teleport cycle. He looked from the paper to her several times with a puzzled look on his face. He tilted his head to the side as he regarded her. He was fully dressed, wearing a light blue coverall and a pair of gray slippers, but as far as Linnea could determine, he didn’t find her nakedness at all out of the ordinary. He seemed more confused by her being there at all.

After he’d given her a good looking-over, he opened the door and said, “My my my! You’re quite the looker, ain’t you?”

“Uh, thanks,” she replied. “Could I get something to wear? Or at least something to cover myself with? For some reason they sent me without my clothes.”

As she spoke, his aspect changed abruptly. A moment before, he’d been casually eyeing her up and down, as if her nakedness was a normal, everyday affair. Now, for some reason, he was confused, embarrassed, tongue-tied. In his astonishment, he dropped the manifest to the ground.

“Oh, my God! OH MY GOD! Are you -- are you real?”

“Yes,” she replied, wishing they could fast-forward to her getting some clothes. “Of course I’m real! What else would I be? A figment of your imagination?”

“Uh, uh, honestly, yes! Oh, my God!”

“So…,” she ventured again, “Could I get something to wear?”

“Oh, yeah! Yes, of course!” he replied, his voice cracked like that of an adolescent boy as he bent to retrieve the manifest. His hand shook so much, it took him three tries to pick the paper up, and when he finally held it in his hand, it trembled like a flagpole in an earthquake. “Follow me,” he told her, and loudly whacked his head with the hallway door as he opened it.

“What’s your name?” she called to him.

“Um, Wade,” he replied, rubbing his forehead as he led her to a small multipurpose room. “Here’s a clothes fab,” he told her. “Wha-- wha -- what would you like to wuh-- wuh-- wear?”

“A coverall like yours would be fine,” she replied. “And some underwear and slippers.”

Wade had already punched a few buttons, but when she said the word underwear he broke out in a sweat so copious, it made him blink. The fab beeped incessantly as he made one error after another. He wiped his brow with his sleeve. “Here, you better do it,” he told her as he wiped his neck with his hand, then dried his hand on his pant leg. “Besides, uh, anyway, it has to take your-- uh-- your-- buh-- buh--” He cupped his hands in front of his chest.

“My measurements?” she ventured.

“Yeah, yeah, your breasts,” he acknowledged, then blushed a deep crimson. “No, I meant--”

“It’s fine,” she said, and began punching buttons. The device offered suggestions, and she realized that the absolute last garment she wanted to wear was a coverall. Barfield had worn one for the past ten years. Time to leave the penitentiary behind. She turned to Wade and asked, “Does it matter what I wear? Is there, like, a dress code, or uniform policy? Does everyone have to wear a coverall?”

“Nuh-- naw-- no,” Wade said. “You can wear whatever you like. I wear it because it’s simple. Um-- um--”

“Wade, why don’t you wait outside until I’m dressed? It will be less embarrassing for both of us.”

With a grateful sigh, Wade retired to the hallway. Linnea pulled on her panties and struggled into her first bra. She could feel from the awkward fit that she hadn’t put it on correctly. She’d have to fix it later. Wade called from the hallway, “I don’t see any luggage for you on the manifest. Is it coming later?”

“Uh, no. I decided to start fresh. I think I’ll be ordering a whole new wardrobe.”

“Yeah, uh, good idea. So why did you teleport naked?”

“The tech told me that I had to.”

Wade gave a tsk of disapproval. “It was that Moss guy, right? What a letch! I never liked the guy. Never. He always seemed kind of creepy. I guess you see it now -- he was playing a mean practical joke on you! Everyone comes fully dressed when they teleport.”

“Yeah, I figured as much.”

Trying to be quick, Linnea chose a pair of soft shorts and a t-shirt, both light gray, and a pair of slippers like Wade’s.

“In the meantime, you can always fab up whatever you need,” he said. “None of it’s fashion, really, but it all fits and works.”

When she emerged, fully dressed, into the hallway, Wade smiled and gave her a thumbs-up. “Much better,” he said. “I mean, not that you’re not amazing to look at, but another couple minutes there and I would have had a heart attack, just from the nerves.”

Linnea gave a little smile and nod of agreement. Wade repeated, “Yeah, Moss played a dirty, mean trick on you.”

“So, what now?” she asked. “Do you still need to deal with teleport stuff? Can I go meet the others?”

“Ah, well,” looking apologetic, and squeezing his left hand in his right, Wade replied, “I have a little bad news. Or maybe a lot of bad news. You’re going to have to go into quarantine.”

“Quarantine? For how long?”

“Forty days. That’s what quarantine means. Forty days. It’s protocol, for all new arrivals.”

Linnea shrugged and said, “Okay.” I’ve been locked up for ten years, she told herself. What’s another forty days?

 

---

 

After securing Linnea, Wade called a hurried meeting of the miners. He was nearly exploding with the need to talk about it. He’d already sent a brief high-priority message telling everyone: NEW (FEMALE) ARRIVAL. AVOID NORTH WING COMPLETELY.

Ten miners showed up, which was about right for this time of day: the other fourteen would either be sleeping or working.

“So, it’s finally happened,” Carlus observed.

“It was inevitable,” another miner added.

“Thank God we already discussed it,” Wade said. “If we hadn’t already worked out the quarantine angle, I wouldn’t have known what to do.”

“Shouldn’t management have sent this girl’s documents a week ago? I thought we always had advance warning on new arrivals.”

“Yeah, she arrived with her documents. In her hands,” Wade laughed. “And nothing else! The damn tech sent her naked.”

“I’m not surprised. That Moss guy is really an asshole. I bet he thought he was doing us some kind of favor.”

“Mmm. Maybe he did. She is pretty damn hot,” Wade confessed.

Carlus fixed his gaze on Wade, and stared at him until Wade blushed. “Don’t tell me you’re falling for her, Wade. If it’s going to be a problem we can put somebody else on quarantine duty.”

“No, no, I’m fine!” Wade protested. “I got it. Anyway, she’s locked safely away in the North Wing, all by her lonesome.”

Carlus chuckled. “Three days of that, and she’ll be crying for her mommy. She’ll want to go home on the next teleport cycle.”

“Five days,” another miner called out.

Carlus looked at one of the miners who hadn’t spoken yet. “Jack, will you set up the pool? Thousand dollars for every pick.”

Jack nodded. “You guys are going to have to pick the hour, not just the day. Otherwise, everybody will pick the third day or whatever, and we’ll all just win our own money back.”

 

---

 

Wade had shown Linnea to what he considered a small room. To her, after a decade of incarceration, it seemed like a luxury suite. Everything looked brand new: clean, sparkling, and never been used. Even better, there were no locks or bars, and there weren’t any guards standing around.

After Wade left, Linnea sat for a full minute, marvelling at the silence.

She felt a strange new sensation. She took her time giving it a name. Was it joy? Peace? Tranquility? She tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and once again drank in the silence. In prison, it was never quiet. If someone wasn’t talking or shouting -- or worst of all, singing loudly and badly -- if there wasn’t human noise, there was always the sound of a machine: the machine that cleaned the floors, the machine that washed the dishes, or the low, heavy, roar of the HVAC. Even late at night, when everything should have been still, there was always a low hum. If you put your hand on the floor, you could feel the vibration. Barfield never found out what it was, but it was always there.

Here, on Uranus, the floor didn’t vibrate. There weren’t any machines roving the hallways. She scanned the room with her eyes, following the line where the walls met the ceiling. No cameras. No one watching. For once, no one was there. She was alone for the first time in over a decade: gloriously alone.

Linnea drew a hot bath. On a whim, she fabbed up a skin-softening rose-and-pomegranate bath oil and added it to the lightly steaming water. For the first time in ten years, she was bathing alone, bathing in a tub. What a change from the prison showers! She turned on the jets. As the bubbles caressed every millimeter of her skin, she began to explore her new body. She ran her hands over her breasts, her stomach, her derriere. Her fingers ventured into the new topology between her legs. It was certainly a drastic change, a complete remake, a radical shift. She sighed. There was so much she needed to get used to; so much to learn. First of all, she’d need to get the low-down on feminine hygiene. She’d have to find out about tampons and pads: What kind to use? How to use them? She’d lay in a supply and carry them with her. Who knew when menstruation would strike? She’d have to be ready.

What else?

Mentally, she began making a list. Birth control. That would be number two after hygiene. Number three -- or maybe number two -- would be hair: she’d just gotten her head wet and somehow her hair turned into a mass of tangles. That business of brushing your hair a hundred strokes every night -- was that a real thing? Did it mean a hundred strokes total? Or a hundred strokes on each part of her head?

God, this was crazy! Now she was a woman! Couldn’t have Neeka sent along an instruction manual?

Still, in spite of her abrupt, unannounced, and completely non-consensual gender change, AND in spite of the massive tits mounted on her chest AND the new geography between her legs, she did feel relieved and happy. She’d escaped. Prison was only a bad dream. Uranus turned out to be a good idea, after all.

Of course, she knew she wasn’t on Uranus itself. The mining station was built on one of Uranus’ many moons. Titania, wasn’t it?

Suddenly, she knew what to call her new feeling: it was a sense of Liberty. She was new, clean, unmarked, unsullied; free from every crime and accusation. Barfield Owens was no more. Barfield Owens was dead. Now she was Linnea Val-- Val-something. She needed to learn that name. She had to study her life, and the life of her husband, good old whosit. She’d need to learn his name, too. Why on earth did Neeka saddle her with a husband? Was he a real person? Was he a good person? Was he coming to to Uranus? Was he already here?

“Jesus Christ,” she said, swearing in a soft voice. She tensed up for a few moments. A husband on Uranus? It couldn’t be. Wade was coming back in a few hours with dinner. Was there a way she could ask him? She’d have to find a way.

What else did she need to learn? She’d have to learn about clothes, for sure: how to choose them; how to dress. That was going to be a trip. She’d have to find a way into that world. Maybe something on the interwebs could guide her. The first subject to tackle was how to put on a bra; there must be a manual. She had to admit, she was feeling curious about the world of women’s clothes. Right now, it was like a tiny, barely noticeable itch, but she could sense that the tiny itch was ready to catch fire. Sure, women’s clothes were more complicated than men’s, but that meant there was more variety, more options. More fun? She’d make sure it was fun. The clothes fab was pretty limited; it wasn’t made to satisfy every turn of fashion: it was created to deliver functional clothes in every size. Still, from what Neeka told her, Linnea had a lot of money to work with. Did she also get that sign-up bonus? The extra pay, meant to entice women to join? Even if she hadn’t, a miner’s pay was extravagant; one of her documents would tell her exactly how extravagant.

One more thing: she’d need to learn about Uranus and the mining facilities. At this point, she had no idea what in the world they were mining for.

Thank goodness she had forty days alone to work her way through it all.

 

---

 

When Wade returned with dinner -- actual cooked food, not some fabbed-up synthetic stuff -- she had a few questions to ask him. But first, she couldn’t help but exclaim, “Wow, that smells delicious!”

“Yeah, we do pretty well in the food department,” Wade said, smiling and nodding. “We have real food shipped in each week, and we grow a lot of veggies and herbs and things. We’ve been talking about getting fruit and nut trees… maybe some chickens… start a fish farm…”

“Is there enough room for all that?”

“Oh my God,” he told her, “This place is so big, you can’t imagine. And we can make it bigger if we like, but we are SO FAR from needing any more space, believe me. I mean, we’re in the North Wing of the mining complex. This wing, just this wing, is twenty times bigger than the Nelson Space Station, and we have *five* wings. We really only use one wing, the South Wing, but all the wings generate energy, so... you know...” He shrugged, not knowing how to finish the thought.

“There must be a lot of cleaning to do,” she began to say, but then interrupted herself when she suddenly remembered: “Oh! I found a sign in the closet--” She jumped up and it pulled it out for him to see. It was a white card about a meter long and half a meter wide. In bold black letters it read: PLEASE KEEP URANUS CLEAN. Struggling not to laugh, she said, “Is this typical of life here? I mean, is it Uranus jokes all day long?”

“Oh, God, no, oh jeez, that sign. I thought we got rid of them all. No, no. The Uranus jokes get old so fast. In fact, I should have told you first thing, when you arrived, but I was so distracted by the, uh, by your uh--” he waved his hands vaguely.

“I get it,” she said. “You were distracted. So, what were you going to tell me?”

“Oh, yeah! The jokes. See, if you think that you’ve come up with some hilarious new Uranus joke, BEFORE YOU TELL ANYONE, you need to check the Uranus joke list. If it’s on there, you can’t tell it. If it isn’t on the list, you can add it. And then you can tell the joke to each person, but only ONCE.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “Where is the joke list?”

“Um, it’s in the file system,” he replied, suddenly realizing he’d made a mistake.

“And how do I get to the file system?” she asked.

His face turned a medium red. “I’ll have to make you an account.”

“Oh, good,” she said. “And will I be able to shop and search the interwebs?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said. “Just remember that our interwebs get updated after every teleport cycle. It’s not real time.”

“Right,” she said, nodding. “Not real time. And will I be able to access the orientation materials? There are orientation materials, right?”

“Uh, yeah, right. There are videos and uh-- docs and stuff. Orientation stuff.”

“And will I be able to see a list of the other miners? Everybody’s names?”

“Oh, uh, yeah, sure.”

“Great!” she said. She could see he was uncomfortable and a little embarrassed by the turn the conversation had taken, so she figured she’d better press her point. “When will I be able to log in?”

“I’ll, uh, make you an account when I get to a terminal.”

“There’s a terminal right over there,” she said, pointing. “Could you do it now?”

“Oh,” he said, deflated.

 

---

 

“You gave her a system account?” Carlus said. “I can’t believe it! Are you an idiot? Don’t you get it? She’s supposed to feel isolated in there. We want her to HATE Uranus. Right?”

“Right, yes, I know, I get it,” Wade said, testily. “She just caught me by surprise.”

“You should have put her off. You should have told her that you’d do it right away, and then pretend that you forgot. Didn’t you think of that?”

“Of course I thought of that! I tried it, but she pointed out that there was a terminal in her room.”

“Okay,” Carlus acquiesced. “In the moment, she caught you on your back foot. Still, she’s a woman, and we don’t have live interwebs, so give it a day or two and she’ll be bored out of her head.”

 

---

 

Linnea pored over her own documents and those of Leonard Lessius. She still didn’t understand why Neeka had set her up with a husband. Turning her into a woman was already a huge step; turning her into a married woman -- wasn’t that a step too far?

Leonard, it turned out, was not on Uranus, nor -- as far as Linnea could see -- had he ever been to Uranus. What made it more confusing was the fact that his documents showed him as the miner, not her. There was no work contract for Linnea, although she discovered she had full access to their joint bank account. It was a very healthy bank account already, and she hadn’t even started working.

Linnea searched as thoroughly as she could for her supposed husband, but the interwebs had nothing at all to say about him. Nothing! She cast her net as far back as 100 years without finding a single Leonard Lessius.

Linnea took a break and made herself a cup of tea. As it brewed, she marvelled once again at her new-found freedom. There were so many little things that she couldn’t do in prison, things that now she could do whenever she damn well pleased. Just for instance: making tea. In prison, she could have tea at a meal, but not properly hot tea. It was always tepid, like old dishwater.

Now, she could make fresh tea, as hot as she liked. In the middle of the night, if the fancy took her. It was wonderful.

Then, as she sipped the scalding beverage, it hit her: Leonard Lessius didn’t exist. He didn’t exist! His identity was invented, just like Linnea’s. But why? What purpose was served by having Linnea hide behind Leonard?

And then it hit her. Hiding was exactly the idea. As far as the documents showed, Linnea Valerianella had never set foot on Uranus. Linnea Valerianella didn’t work or live on Uranus. Not officially, anyway. Leonard did. Neeka must have set things up this way to give Linnea a further level of protection, another layer of misdirection.

There was something else: It might have been a sense of delicacy on Neeka’s part. She might have wanted to give Linnea an out if she didn’t want to get involved with any of the miners. Sure, Linnea was a woman now. But that didn’t automatically mean she’d be attracted to men. If things got too dangerously intense in the intimacy department, Linnea could always say, “I’m married.”

Of course, all of her ideas and theories were completely wrong. Linnea’s life wasn’t complicated because Neeka designed it that way. Her life was complex because Moss had intervened. Moss purposely tried to make bad choices, and Moss’ intentions were all twisted, wrong, and evil.

Even so, Linnea had found a way to explain and understand the circumstances in which she found herself. She’d worked out an explanation that made sense to her; she discovered a meaning in the strange set of facts that defined her life now.

Buoyed and inspired by her insights, she greeted Wade with a joyful, positive air. He couldn’t help but smile in response as he set down her tray of food.

“Hey!” she said, in a voice full of excitement. “I meant to ask you: do I have to stay here, in this room? For the entire quarantine?”

“Oh!” Wade exclaimed, once again caught off guard and unprepared. “Uh, no, of course not. You can go all over the North Wing if you want.”

“How will I know where the North Wing ends?”

Wade thought for a moment. “Let me put it this way: it’s okay to go any place that you can go. Or, uh, if you’re allowed to go, you can -- No, wait. I got it: You can only go where you’re allowed. So if you can go somewhere, you’re fine. You won’t be able to go where you’re not supposed to go. You won’t be able to leave the North Wing.”

“Okay,” she said. Once again, Uranus beat prison to sticks. In prison, Barfield couldn’t go anywhere, except for meals and exercise. Now Linnea had a vast world to explore, all her own. “Is there anything particularly interesting in this wing?”

“Well, it’s empty -- I mean, in the sense that no one lives here, but there are a couple of gyms. One has a rock-climbing wall. There’s a soccer field. There’s a swimming pool, trampolines, game rooms, uh --- there are gardens with plants and trees. There’s a library, meditation rooms… Just remember, this wing -- well, all the wings -- are really, really, REALLY big. If you get lost -- and you probably will -- just ask any terminal for directions back here, to your room.”

“Great! Another question. This one’s a little embarrassing… but, uh... is it okay to smoke?”

“Oh, wow. Um, yeah. There are smoking rooms here and there. You can ask one of the terminals. I guess there are fabs that make cigarettes, or you could order the kind you like. I’ve never… so I don’t really know.”

“Cool!”

“Are you a nicotine addict?”

“Oh, no,” Linnea laughed. “It’s just something I’ve always been curious about. I never tried, but I’d like to. Just out of curiosity. Breathing smoke, you know. I want to see what it’s like.”

Wade nodded. “I guess that makes some kind of sense.”

As Wade turned to leave, Linnea called to him. “Hey! Wade, don’t you have a question for me?”

“A question for you? No, I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure?” Wade shrugged, at a loss. So she told him: “You’ve never asked my name.”

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t uh-- I didn’t uh--” He sighed heavily and gave up on whatever he was struggling to say. “I’m sorry. What is your name?”

“Linnea Valerianella,” she replied, grinning. The name came out smoothly, curling slowly off her tongue like a twist of lemon. She’d been practicing.

“Wow,” Wade replied. “That’s one hell of a name!”