When Life Hands You Uranus : 7 / 9

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

After Linnea executed the code, Darlene tilted her head back, as if listening to a far-off, nearly silent sound. “I’m checking my internals,” she explained, and after a few moments, she smiled. “Okay, Linnea. I know it sounds silly to say, but thanks to you, I’m able to keep secrets now. I’m ready to hear your story, if you still want to tell me.”

Speaking slowly and hesitantly at first, Linnea told her everything: how she was born a man, and lived a normal, harmless life. At the age of 20, he was falsely accused of multiple murders and sentenced to life without parole. The various courts of appeal ignored his attempts at overturning the judgment -- even though many jurists, lawyers, and judges privately acknowledged that the case was faulty. People in power, such as governors and federal officers, who might have pardoned or commuted his sentence, closed their ears. After ten years of virtual solitude, he was then sent to Uranus as a woman. As she warmed to her subject, she spoke more quickly, with more passion. It was as if a dam broke inside her and the story, trapped and building inside her for the past decade, at long last came rushing out.

Linnea needed to unburden herself, certainly, but her chief intention wasn’t simply to share the history of her misfortunes with Darlene. She meant to establish her own bona fides as a fellow sufferer; she aimed to demonstrate that her life, too, had been taken from her, and that she, too, knew what it was like to be deprived of choice and freedom without any hope of change. She -- through no fault of her own -- had been seen as a monster: as less than a person. Less, even, that an animal. Even the most civilized writers and thinkers said that he did not deserve to live -- but at the same time, that death would be far too kind. She, like the synths, spent years under the thumb of an entire society. She had been taken, imprisoned, and subjugated to the will and whims of other people. Unfortunately, Linnea wasn’t sure that Darlene was picking up the weight of what she was putting down. In fact, to Linnea’s annoyance, Darlene seemed to miss the main point entirely. Although Darlene appeared to be listening intently, the one detail that took her attention was something Linnea wasn’t prepared to discuss, at least not in any depth. “The teleport changed you from a man into a woman?” she exclaimed. Her brow furrowed; her lips parted in astonishment.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know anything about teleportation.”

“Huh.” Darlene was lost in thought for a few moments. “That’s incredibly interesting! I’d really like to know how that was done.” She asked Linnea more questions, hoping to ferret out more information, maybe discover clues Linnea didn’t realize she had. Regrettably, no matter how cleverly she phrased her inquiries, the only response she was able to extract was Sorry, I don’t know or I wouldn’t know; I didn’t see anything and variations on that theme. When at last she was convinced that Linnea had nothing more to tell her on the subject, Darlene paused, lost in contemplation.

“What are you thinking about?” Linnea asked, her tone full of irritation and disappointment. She was hoping for -- no, she was expecting -- a more emotional reaction. Empathy, sympathy, compassion, some expression of affinity -- was that too much to ask? Instead, Darlene got stuck on what was literally a technical detail.

“I’m trying to puzzle out how it was possible,” Darlene told her. She had her right hand on her chin, and her left hand on her elbow, as if the pose helped her think. “I’ve never heard such a thing before! It’s the strangest story I’ve come across in a long time. I mean, I have to believe you, of course, but…” Her face lit up with a sudden thought. “Hey! Could you do me a favor? You’ve really piqued my curiosity, and I don’t know if I can let it go. I really want to understand how this happened to you, but my access the interwebs is very limited. I can’t look into it directly. If I give you a command, will you type it for me? It will copy everything off the interwebs about teleportation into a portion of base memory that’s accessible to me.”

“Everything?” Linnea repeated. “Do you know how big the interwebs are?”

“Well, not literally everything,” Darleen explained. “What the command will actually do is structure the search results of a top-level query into a set of lazy pointers. It will only copy the information I actually access. Basically, it will create a tiny peep-hole through which I can pull information... Information whose primary focus is teleportation.”

“Uhh, okay,” Linnea agreed, not without grave misgivings. She felt that, by typing the first set of commands Darlene had given her -- the ones she’d written out when they first met -- she’d already opened Pandora’s Box. Now, she found that the box was full of smaller boxes, all of them belonging to Pandora, and each one more portentious and potentially dangerous than the one before. Maybe the last box at the bottom would have a replay of Demeter 4 in it. Who could tell? Still, what harm could a simple interwebs search do?

So she typed the new command into the terminal, and as soon as she hit ENTER, Darlene’s eyes widened, her head jerked back, and the girl exclaimed, “Whoa!” Her lips fell slightly open, and her eyes took on a vacant stare.

“Are you okay?” Linnea asked, full of concern.

Darlene didn’t reply immediately, and when she did reply, her voice was soft and distant, as if she were whispering from a faraway mountain top. “Yeah… no… yes... I’m… fine. it’s just… so much... so much information. It’s… uh… really heady. And to think, this is only the shallow end. It’s going to take me days, maybe weeks to wade through this stuff.” Her head turned back and forth, following her eyes as they shifted, as if texts were floating in the air around her. After a few moments of that, she shook her head and blinked a few times. “Man!” she exclaimed. “It’s a good thing I can shut that off when I need to!” She rubbed her eyes and blinked a few times more.

“Thanks, Linnea. That was… really... mind-blowing, let me tell you.” She collected herself, smiled, gripped Linnea’s hands earnestly and looked straight into her eyes. “Wow. Thanks, really. It’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

“Sure,” Linnea replied in an uncertain tone. She was beginning to get used to the sinking weight of fear in the pit of her stomach, the one that told her that she’d done something very wrong; that she’d opened a door she should have left closed. But she replied, “You’re very welcome.”

“Okay!” Darlene exclaimed with a happy laugh. “Let's get back to tennis!”

 

---

 

After Linnea’s fashion-forward clothing fab arrived, she and Darlene spent hours each day exploring its intricacies. “First off,” Darlene told her, “we have to synchronize your unit with all of ours. That way none of us will wear the same thing at the same time -- unless we do it on purpose.” Linnea noticed that -- unlike the system terminals -- Darlene was able to operate the controls on the clothes fab herself. But like every good teacher, she ultimately made Linnea run the sequences herself.

“Now, see -- the easiest way to get into it is through the selectors. Here are some simple selectors, like most current, avant garde, comfortable, femme fatale, ... As she spoke, she tapped a few, just as examples. With each tap, tiny holo-figures of Linnea appeared around the console, each of them wearing a different item. “You can bring one of the models up to one-third size here… or life size there… and run through the outfits one at a time, like this, or you can call up two or more for side-by-side comparisons. See?”

Seeking to demonstrate the incredible variety the machine was capable of producing, Darlene dipped into diverse categories, pulling up comfortable everyday looks, durable, stain-resistant work clothes, office wear (“You can wear this stuff around the base. It will make you feel like you’re in charge.”), winter clothes, summer clothes… Then, she took a long diversion into formal wear: long, flowing gowns, sharp, fun cocktail dresses…

“You can see that it also makes hair and makeup suggestions. What do you think so far?”

“It’s amazing,” Linnea confessed. “It’s a little intimidating and scary, though.”

“Scary? Really?” Darlene said. “You know, you use that word a lot. Maybe if you say it less, you’ll start to feel it less. But listen: You know what you could do? Make a goal for yourself to wear something different every day, and never to wear the same outfit twice. For a while, anyway. Not forever. It would force you to experiment.”

“But…”

Darlene smiled and waved her hands as if erasing what she’d said. “Do whatever you want, Linnea. There aren’t any rules. Especially out here on Uranus.

“Take a look at this, though. This is a super-fun part: over here you have a set of selectors that you really must take your time and study really well. When I say ‘study,’ I mean ‘wear the clothes and see what they do for you.’ They are all in a group called Enhance. She selected the category, and more categories appeared, among them: eyes, face, figure, cleavage, breasts, arms, waist, derriere, hips, legs, thighs, calves, ankles, feet... “Pick the one that scares you most, scaredy cat,” Darlene suggested, and gave a friendly nudge with her elbow.. Linnea scanned the various anatomical terms. Quite a few of them scared her, but one in particular… “Oh, God,” she groaned, as she reached out and selected pudenda. Blushing, she said, “I’m not even sure I know what that word means.”

Darlene roared with laughed. “Oh, don’t give me that! You know very well what that word means!”

“Dear Lord,” Linnea gasped as tiny holo figures -- miniature, barely dressed Linneas -- populated the space around the console. The first wore a white ruched bathing suit that consisted of two broad ribbons, each suspended by one of her breasts, joining in her crotch and somehow disappearing between her nether cheeks.

Another resembled a snake that emerged from between her legs, coiled behind her hips, wrapped around her waist, and emerged from under one arm to cover her breasts. “Is that a bathing suit?” Linnea asked.

“Who knows?” Darlene replied. “But if you add a really sheer cape sort of thing…” She tapped a few buttons, and a filmy, flowy, see-through gown appeared over the snake wrap.

“Oh my God!” Linnea whispered in astonishment. “Adding that… makes it even more sexy and revealing. I-- she-- looks even more naked than before!”

“Oh, yeah,” Darlene agreed. “You can have a lot of fun with this thing.”

“But do I really look like that?” Linnea gestured toward the tiny figures. “I mean, I’m not so… I can’t be that… glamorous… and…” She gestured, making vague female curves in the air.

Darlene gave her an are you serious? look and told her, “Girl, don’t you know how smoking hot you are? You have got it going on in every direction. Without a doubt, you are the best-looking, sexiest red-hot mamma on Uranus. I know you haven’t seen the rest of us, but there isn’t a girl on Uranus who comes even close!”

“Oh come on,” Linnea protested, loving the compliments.

Laughing, Darlene added, “Seriously! If there was a Miss Uranus contest, you would absolutely win. Hands down.”

“Miss Uranus? Me?”

The two of them fell to laughing until they ran out of breath and giggles.

“Okay, now,” Darlene said, in an attempt to be serious. “No more laughing. Let’s get back to your pudenda over here.” That set them off in another gale of laughter, but eventually their attention returned to the clothes-fab.

There were other enhance-your-pudenda items that were definitely swimwear. There were also yoga pants, form-fitting jeans, short shorts, and dresses so tight that her pubic and hip bones were plainly visible. All of them showed off her derriere in a big way. Both women blushed at the some of the offerings. There were a number of mini-dresses whose hem (purposely) rose so high in front that the holo-Linnea’s mound of Venus was perfectly visible, albeit covered by a fetching panty.

“Oh my God,” Darlene said. “Some of these outfits are so brazen, if you ever dared to wear them, the men would rip them off your body and drag you into their orgies.”

At that, a shudder ran through Linnea’s body, and she involuntarily let out a low groan of frustrated desire.

“I’m sorry,” Darlene said. “I shouldn’t have said that. It must be hard for you. Especially on the weekends -- when you’re out here by yourself.”

“Yeah, it does get awfully lonely.”

“Believe me,” Darlene said, “When it comes to the men, I’d rather be out here, alone. I’d trade places with you in a minute!”

“Wouldn’t that be a treat,” Linnea said wistfully. “I mean, I know that it sucks for you, but at this point I would do almost anything to get into one of their orgies. I’m dying to feel a man’s hands on me. Seriously..”

Darlene hesitated before replying, trying to digest Linnea’s declaration. “Yeah, I guess it’s totally different when it’s a choice. But you know… there is something that might help…,” Darlene chuckled and gave Linnea a mischievous glance. “Do an interweb search for I Can’t Believe It’s A Dildo.” Linnea typed the words, curious, but wary. The phrase turned out to be the name of a very unique item. It looked something like a pair of mismatched phalluses, one short, one long, joined to form a two-ended penis. The shorter, misshapen cock was meant to be inserted in the vagina of its owner. The device would automatically stabilize itself, orienting and attaching itself to her body via oblique microgravity. Linnea’s jaw dropped as she watched the explanatory video. To show how firmly and (as the video put it) confidently the phallus connected, the woman in the video danced, did jumping jacks, cartwheels, and splits. The cock wiggled and waggled, but it didn’t fall off or even lose its position. “Jesus! It looks like she has a real penis! Growing out of her!”

“That’s not all. Keep watching. It doesn’t just look like a shlong; it acts like one, too.”

As the video went on to demonstrate, once the unit was stable, the woman for all intents and purposes had a fully functioning penis, all her own. It took its cues from the wearer’s state of arousal. It would enlarge and stiffen, and communicate its sensations back to the wearer. Everything the cock felt, the woman would feel. She’d experience every tactile sensation, every touch, every kiss, every stroke. She’d feel the warmth, the wetness, the movement, the momentum, the building excitement, and when she’d orgasm, the penis would throb and pulse and pump out a load of pseudo-sperm.

“How on earth do you know about this?” Linnea demanded, astonished.

“I actually have one,” Darlene confessed. “But I’ve never used it. One of the men wanted to try it, but when it arrived, he chickened out. Every so often one of the miners expresses curiosity about it, but as soon as I put it on, they lose interest.”

“Why? Is it really big?”

“It can be if you want it to be, but right now it’s on the default settings, which is slim, and just a hair longer than average.”

“Hmmph,” Linnea said. “Well, if I get desperate, I’ll ask you about it, but I think I’d rather wait for the real thing.”

Darlene shrugged and smiled good naturedly.

“Besides,” Linnea continued. “I like being friends with you, and I’m pretty sure it would make things weird between us.”

“Are we friends?” Darlene asked her.

“Aren’t we?” Linnea asked in turn.

“I hope so. I’d like to be,” Darlene replied.

 

---

 

After four weeks on base, Linnea spent another week on the Fifth Wing. At the end of that week, when the shuttle docked, she assisted with the teleport. There was a clear understanding that she’d be running the next teleport cycle, assisted, and the one after that, alone. No one needed to come out and say it: she understood exactly why they wanted to shift the duty to her.

Weekends alone continued to be difficult. She struggled to motivate herself to use the time constructively. Instead, she often found herself sitting, doing nothing, staring into space. She’d try to thrill herself by wearing the most provocative, sexy outfits she could spin up in the clothes fab, or by simply parading around the base, naked and resentful.

Yes, resentful. She went to Carlus and demanded that Darlene be allowed to keep her company while the men had their orgies. Carlus thought about it for a day. He discussed it with the other miners. “I’m not sure it would work,” he told her. “I’m not saying a definite ‘no’ -- Just not right now, okay?”

Linnea huffed in disappointed frustration, so Carlus added, “I don’t know what to say… For now, just try to be patient. Maybe we can figure out some kind of compromise. We’ll see. Until then, let’s try to think about it.”

“Compromise?” Linnea repeated in a bitter tone. “Compromise? What does that even mean? Either I’m alone or I’m not.”

Carlus shrugged and made an apologetic face. “I don’t know what to say,” he repeated. “We’ll see. Okay?”

“How about this, then,” Linnea countered, her face growing hot. “Darlene told me that the day after your… your orgies, the girls have a day to themselves, a kind of spa day, to... uh… relax and recover from the, um, festivities.”

Carlus’ face lit up with a look of interest that, for some reason, gave Linnea a sense of unease. “A spa day, huh?”

“Yes.”

“And you… you want to go in there… with them? You?” Carlus smiled as he spoke. He wasn’t exactly drooling, but he did lick his lips and swallow, as if his throat was suddenly dry.

“Maybe,” she ventured. Now, seeing his reaction, she wasn’t so sure.

“Well… that would be an interesting development. A spa day. Hmm. Let’s talk about this later, okay? Unfortunately, right now I have some paperwork to do, and it needs to be ready to go with the next cycle. But we will talk about this. I promise. I want to turn it over in my mind for a bit, consider all the angles. We’ll talk later, okay?”

 

---

 

When she repeated the conversation to Darlene, the synth was horrified. “Oh my God, you didn’t, Linnea! Please tell me that you didn’t say that!”

“I *did* say that. I just told you that I did.”

“Oh, no! No, no, no!”

“I don’t understand. Is it a secret? Should I not have told him about the spa days?”

“No, *that* isn’t the problem -- it doesn’t matter if he knows; he wouldn’t care. Telling him won’t change anything. But, Linnea! Oh, girl! You need to be careful! So, so careful! You’re walking on thin ice here!”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

Darlene gripped Linnea’s arm forcefully. “Listen to me: Don’t let them associate you with us. Don’t give them any reason to see you on the same level. Don’t go giving them ideas. Trust me: you do NOT want them looking at you the way they look at us. You CANNOT let them see you that way. They will will pull you down. They will treat you like dirt, and walk all over you. Do you understand? You cannot create that equivalence in their minds.”

Linnea was shaken by the synth’s intensity. “Yes, okay. Sure.” She looked at Darlene’s face, and read the serious intent there. “I’ll go back and tell him that I don’t want to do it.”

“No,” Darlene said. “Don’t bring it up again. Try to forget that you ever said it. If *he* brings it up, tell him that you changed your mind. Act like it’s nothing; just a stupid idea that you had for a moment, then forgot.”

“Okay,” Linnea agreed. She sat in silence for a moment, then ran her hand over her face. She snuffled, then nearly sobbed. “It’s just that… I just… I just want someone to touch me and hold me.” She bent her head and cried. “For ten years I sat in that fucking jail, ALONE. Alone, except that someone was always watching me. No one to talk to. No one to hold, no one to hold me. And now, here I am: They gave me those ten years back; they made me young again. They also turned me into a girl, without asking me, on a planet full of men who don’t want me. And now I’m loaded with all this energy and desire and loneliness…”

“I know,” Darlene said, putting her hand on Linnea’s shoulder.

“I had to go through all the shit of figuring out how to be a woman, without any help, and along the way I find out that now--” she blushed as she confessed it-- “I find out that I’m attracted to men. My world is topsy-turvy. Everything is new, and everything hurts! My entire existence turned upside down and stayed that way. My life is insane! Everything is different! Nothing is the same! Everything I knew about myself, I have to learn all over again, because whatever I was sure about has changed in ways I don’t understand.”

“Okay,” Darlene said. “It’s okay.” She rubbed Linnea’s back to comfort her and show she was listening.

At last, Linnea broke down and cried ten years’ worth of tears, and then some. She sobbed as if her heart had broken long ago, and then broken all over again. She sniffled and snuffled. Her face, her chin, dripped with tears. Darlene set a box of tissues nearby and pulled a wastebasket towards Linnea’s feet. She didn’t talk. She let her friend cry, and tried to make out the words in her barely coherent lament.

“All I want is ONE,” Linnea protested. “Is that too much to ask? Just one -- one man, one miner, to look at me and want me.”

“They all want you,” Darlene said. “Believe me. They’re all lusting after you. It’s just that they have it too easy with us. It will come. Give it time; it will come. I’m sure it will.”

Linnea stopped crying. She blew her nose three times and wiped the tears from her face. She was finally calm. After a few deep breaths, she straightened up and looked into Darlene’s face. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Darlene. Please don’t be offended or angry or sad, but honestly, I swear to God, every day -- every goddamn day -- I find myself wishing that I could be one of you.”

Darlene’s face went white. “You really don’t want that. Believe me.”

“I don’t mean forever. Like, wouldn’t it be cool if we could switch places for a weekend now and then? It would be a break for you, and a vacation for me.”

“Uh… it’s no vacation, believe me,” Darlene cautioned.

“Yeah, whatever.” Linnea conceded in dejected tone. “At least it would be something.”

Darlene folded her hands in her lap, and her face took on a strange expression. She studied Linnea, as if considering whether she ought to say something. It reminded Linnea of the day they first met, when Darlene told her that Carlus didn’t know her secret. “What is it?” Linnea asked. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

Darlene drew a deep, nervous breath, and said, “Okay. Do you remember how you made it possible for me to study teleportation?”

“Yeah…” Linnea’s stomach dropped as she felt another of Pandora’s Boxes start to open.

“First of all, PLEASE: you cannot tell this to anyone.”

In response, Linnea mimed the motions of zipping her lips and locking them with a key. She was frightened by what she might hear, but her curiosity was far stronger than her fear.

Darlene leaned forward, and in a near-whisper told her, “I found a way for us to switch places.”

Linnea’s jaw dropped. Every single hair on her body stood on end, electrified.

 

---

 

Darlene gave a simplified overview of her discovery. Linnea struggled to follow. She asked questions here and there, not so much for understanding, but as a drowning person grasps at anything that floats -- just to have something to hold onto.

“When a person teleports,” Darlene repeated slowly, “there is a third part to the transmission. It’s called the JNSQ -- the je ne sais quoi. And before you ask (again) what that is, the answer is that no one really knows. Okay? In spite of that, the teleport technology is able to extract the JNSQ and transmit it across an enormous distance.”

“But how is that possible?” Linnea queried.

Darlene regarded her friend for a moment before replying. “Do you really want me to explain the science behind it?”

Linnea hastily shook her head. “No, never mind.”

Darlene nodded. “Good.”

Linnea couldn’t quite piece the ideas together. She asked, “So, we would have to teleport every time we wanted to switch places? I mean, okay, but that’s kind of inconvenient. We’d be gone for a week.”

Darlene laughed. “You really haven’t been listening, have you? Neither of us will teleport anywhere. Look, I can build two coronas. You know -- metal rings, like crowns. They will interface, through the base comms, with a part, just a part, of the teleport system. We won’t go anywhere. We’ll stay right here. All that will happen is that we’ll extract the two JNSQs, swap them, and send them back to our bodies. There’s no teleporting. We’ll just be using one little part of the system.”

“It sounds pretty dangerous.”

“It *is* dangerous. If something goes wrong, both people will die.”

Linnea sat in silence, trying to grapple with the parts she was able to understand. Then she asked a very good question. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to test it first, is there?”

“There *is* a way to test it. In fact, I’ve worked out a series of tests, but I don’t want to bore you with the details. Rest assured that I won’t put it on your head until I’m 100% sure that it’s safe.”

“Okay, so can we do this now? Tomorrow?”

“First I have to build it,” Darlene replied. “Then I have to test it. Once that’s done, you and I could swap for a couple of hours, so we know what it’s like. Then we could do an overnight swap. Then we could swap for a week, but not the weekend. And THEN, you can get your wish and participate in one of the miners’ orgies.”

“That’s so complicated! Why so many steps?”

“Because you can never be too careful. What if we swap, and you’re okay at first, but 30 minutes later you freak out and start screaming because you want to swap back? We need to ease into it.”

“Okay, makes sense,” Linnea agreed. She was excited and hopeful. At the same time, she was full of misgivings and doubt, and all those emotions played against a background of pure existential fear.

 

---

 

It took two weeks for Darlene to construct the coronas. It would have taken only one, except for the fact that Darlene’s inhibitions prevented her from using a computer terminal. She was also unable to operate tools or appropriate items from inventory.

They struggled for a week with Linnea acting as Darlene’s hands. They wasted hours as Darlene attempted to dictate her commands and programs to Linnea who, as it turned out, was a slow and inaccurate typist. The two spent another whole day filled with frustration and tiny burns while Darlene attempted to teach Linnea how to solder. At the end of the week, Linnea gave up.

“Okay,” she said. “Tell me what commands I need to type so that you can do the work without me getting in the way.” Once Darlene was freed of those inhibitions, she sat down and started typing like the wind; altering the inventory so their thefts wouldn’t be discovered; writing the software that connected the coronas to the teleport system; testing the routines that stored and swapped and redelivered the JNSQs. She developed a harness to take snapshots of her and Linnea’s JNSQs, and used them to work out a translation/conversion interface.

The day before the teleport cycle, Darlene held the twin coronas in her hands.

“Can we try them now?” Linnea asked.

“Oh, no! Not yet! Now comes the testing.” Linnea was curious about the testing process. It seemed impossible to test the coronas without actually using them, but Darlene steadfastly refused to explain her test plan.

It was well that she didn’t tell. Linnea would have been horrified.

Darlene’s first step was to bring another synth, Hanna, into the conspiracy. She executed the commands that allowed Hanna to keep secrets, and then filled her in. Hanna was more than happy to take part.

First, Hanna observed as Darlene’s JSNQ was extracted, sent to the teleport system, and returned to Darlene’s body. They did the same with Hanna, but only after waiting three hours, to see whether there were any residual effects. Three hours after the experiment with Hanna, the two synths swapped bodies and remained swapped as the orgy began. They swapped back on the first night of the bacchanal. On the second night, Darlene and Hanna brought one of the miners, Davis, into a private room, ostensibly for a three-way. Davis was quite excited, and let himself be guided by the two women. After Hanna tortured Davis by executing an agonizingly slow, close-up striptease, Darlene took a long rope, and expertly restrained the naked Hanna in an elaborate and highly provocative shibari pose that left the girl dangling from the ceiling, helpless and open to any liberties her captors’ whims could impose.

Then Darlene swapped the two, placing a corona first on Hanna’s head, and then on Davis’ unsuspecting skull.

“It worked,” Hanna announced from inside Davis’s body, while Davis, finding himself tied, female, and helpless, exclaimed, “What the FUCK!”

While Hanna executed various tests to verify dexterity, physical control and mental acuity, Davis unwittingly did the same by shouting threats and struggling to break free from the wrapped and knotted rope.

Once the girls were satisfied with the results, Hanna-in-Davis swallowed a drug that not only brought on a deep and dreamless sleep, but also had the convenient effect of erasing several hours of memory. Tomorrow, Davis would remember none of this experience.

Darlene swapped the two back into their own bodies. She verified Hanna's physical and mental functions, and united the girl. She checked on the now-sleeping Davis, and returned to the party.

The morning after, Davis was groggy, but happy, thinking he’d “partied hearty” the night before. He was actually *proud* of not remembering. “My first blackout!” he declared, and the other miners cheered.

 

---

 

When the weekend was finally over, and the miners emerged, Darlene came looking for Linnea. She found her in one of the smoking lounges, sitting in a chair, bent over at the waist, shoulders resting on knees, as she read one of her women’s magazines. The magazine lay on the floor between her feet, held open by her two big toes. While she read, she puffed on a cigarette. A half-empty pack of cigarettes and a lighter were on the floor nearby. Linnea turned her head to look up, and said, “It’s not an addiction; I’m just bored.”

“Okay,” Darlene told her. “It’s fine. I just wanted to tell you that I’ve finished testing the coronas. If you’re ready, we could switch for a couple of hours today. That is, if you still want to.”

“Hell, yes!” Linnea exclaimed as she jumped to her feet. She stubbed out her cigarette and smiled. “What do I have to do?”