“Last time Brenda and I played backgammon,” Grandpa said, “we talked about venning into little bitty bodies, maybe two or three inches tall, and seeing how the board would look from that angle. Big enough to roll the dice and move the pieces, but small enough that it would be as good a workout as an hour at the gym.”

“Have you tried to talk to him about rejuvenating?” Grandpa asked.

 

“He won’t listen,” Mom said, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “I’ve almost given up trying. I bring it up every few months, still, but...”

 

We heard a door open somewhere, and changed the subject.

“Zoe, bring up some pictures of me from about ten to fourteen years ago,” Daddy says to the household AI. Zoe complies, projecting an array of four pictures on the opposite wall. Three of the four show Daddy holding a baby, either Sebastian or his big sister Stella, who lives with Mommy now. In one of them, he’s nursing the baby. “Sebastian, do you see what’s different about me back then?”

One day in mid-December, a few days after Meredith came home from UNC Chapel Hill for Christmas, I was taking a break at work and hanging out with Genevieve and Terri for a few minutes. Genevieve was a kind of beetle-bee hybrid, with a bee’s striped fuzzy underbelly and a beetle’s elytra over her wings, and a slightly human-ish face. Terri was a big mushroom with a face and arms and four small feet, apparently based on a fantasy creature from a story she liked, “though the ones in the book are a lot smaller,” she said. I was in one of my more outre dragon-like bodies, slender with silver scales and four smaller wings more like a butterfly or moth than a bat.

“Have fun at college.”

 

“Wooo! Girls and partying!” I exclaimed as I waved back. Jada and my big self both giggled.

A father and son in crisis reach out to an online therapist who, unbeknownst to them, is actually an artificial intelligence. But after the machine mistakenly deduces that one of them must be transgender—and bound by its programming to maintain its patients' privacy—it ends up feminizing both father and son. When the truth finally comes to light, will this bring the two of them closer together, or tear them hopelessly apart?

“Muahahaha!” she laughed. Despite Sophia being more of a mad scientist, Meredith had a better supervillain laugh.

Jada was a little demon, only about eighteen inches tall, with short horns, bat-like wings similar to mine, short reddish-brown fur, and cute little hooves. I picked her up and gave her a piggyback ride with her legs around my left neck.

 

Britt was an angel of the same height, with feathery wings and mostly-human legs with bird-like feet, wearing a white robe. I picked her up, too, and she straddled my right neck.

Mr. Ramsey was still female, but Mrs. Ramsey had switched back to female already, though her new girl body had blue skin like the guy body she’d worn for a couple of weeks and the body Mr. Ramsey was still wearing.

“You’re heavy. Did it make your bones out of osmium or something?”

On Furry Friday, I had Jill venn me into a two-headed creature with a sheep-like head and a wolf-like head. After some practice, I tried talking with my usual voice with the sheep head and with a fake Scottish accent with the wolf head; I would recommend the meat dishes with the wolf head and the vegetable dishes and salads with the sheep head.

“Let’s try it,” Ms. Paget said. “Joy and I are going to be chibis on Thursday, and I’d like to get some other volunteers to do the same. You don’t have to wear schoolgirl uniforms or anything; you can be chibi mice or chibi dragons or whatever, even chibi robots,” (nodding toward Todd, who was in one of his less humanoid robot forms today). “If it works out, we might make it a regular thing. Chibi Thursdays. Come in anime cosplay, or better yet venned into a chibi form, and get 10% off...”

I finally had my first therapy appointment the Wednesday after graduation. I debated over whether to venn into my human girl body for the appointment — I’d been wearing my dragon-girl body ever since graduation — but decided it would be more honest to meet my therapist in my most preferred body. If she couldn’t handle my being a scaly, it would be good to know that up front so I could start looking for another therapist.

Jada was the only one of our group of lunch friends who was going to college in the fall. I was working for a year to save money and establish residency, Britt was going to take online trade school classes while learning more from her dad about working on cars, and Poppy and Lisette were just going to start working full-time.

The envelope was hand-addressed in my dad’s handwriting, which got my hopes up even though he deadnamed me, but inside there was no handwritten or even printed letter.

Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Hammerstein is at the cusp of finishing high school in his hometown of Los Alamos, NM. He has a seemingly ideal life and is blessed with loving parents, a cute baby sister, and great friends. Nicholas is a gifted student and martial artist who has dreams of leaving for college at the end of his senior year. But, living in a world of Emergent humans, he will soon find his life turned upside down as his life and the fate of a kingdom hang in the balance. His future and theirs will be determined by how he navigates the drastic changes in his body and the magical and superpowered Mergent population he joins.

“Yes!” I said, and babbled on before I could lose the momentary burst of confidence, “I’m interested in —”

“With the way Dad is being, I can’t move back in any time soon. Would it be okay if I came over sometime after you get off work and before Dad comes home, and get a few things out of my room? Or could I ask you to pack up a few things and bring them to the Ramseys’ house, or bring them to work and let me come by to get them when Meredith or Sophia are giving me a ride home from school?”

“So what’s your story?” Poppy asked. “Trans, lesbian, or both?”

 

I gaped at her. “How did you know?”