BS. Bimbo Syndrome. The real name was something like sex-reconfiggerwhatsit. But it’s been called Bimbo Syndrome since it was first released, back when it only affected guys.
She had it. My best friend was about to become a guy.
BS. Bimbo Syndrome. The real name was something like sex-reconfiggerwhatsit. But it’s been called Bimbo Syndrome since it was first released, back when it only affected guys.
She had it. My best friend was about to become a guy.
As I picked up the miscellaneous pile of brown gunk, I felt like I was going to throw up. I tried to take my mind off the horrible job of lugging the dog’s doings (we didn’t even own a dog. I was beginning to think that my father was TRYING to get dogs to crap there) around the back of the house, to the bins. So I thought of Netherworlds. If my father didn’t get too angry and pull out the modem cable, then my female human priestess, Liara, would be among the 29 other guild mates trying to kill (or "down", as we called it) Prophet Tharik’lor, the serpentine final boss monster of the epic Crumbled Tombs.
I dumped the... sludge... into the bin at the back of the house, then turned on the hose and tried to spray the disgusting goop off him. Turning round, I looked at the dingy two-story house I called... well, not home. Home wasn’t on any map, for me. But it was where I slept - every second week, anyways.
I tried to sneak upstairs, without my father noticing. I succeeded, for once - my dad was usually turning round and glaring at me about now. And then, if I didn’t take the hint, yelling. About something. I usually tuned out. I got up to the top stair, and walked towards my room.
I dumped my bag on the floor, and launched up the gaming computer I usually played Netherworlds on - a relatively cheap second hand gaming computer. It had totally been worth it, Netherworlds ran incredibly smoothly on it, and I lost track of time as I became totally immersed. After launching the client, I groaned as I saw that it couldn’t connect to the internet. Obviously my dad wasn’t in a good mood.
I was glad I had a second hobby. Well, not hobby. Even so, I was going to have to let Sarah know.
I pulled my phone out of the front pocket of my bag, and quickly dialled in Sarah’s number.
She picked up on the third tone.
"Mate, don’t call me while I’m in a dungeon!" squealed Sara.
"’Mate’?" I laughed.
"Look, it’s what all the guys do. I’m just trying to fit in. But seriously, don’t call me! You know how the ringtone comes out in voice chat," she said, reproachfully.
"Look, Sarah, hearing a retarded ringtone is kinda necessary right now. I’m not gonna be able to make it to TAT tonight."
"What? No, you have to come! You’re the best healer we have - the next best is Taveena, and she can’t tank heal for shit," said Sarah, "we _were_ gonna put her on group!"
"Wait, what about Kitten?"
"Funeral. I said she could have it off, it seems fair enough..."
"Sarah," said I, "Taveena’s gonna have to tank heal. I can’t make it, and I’d rather you guys had another tank come along than some newbie healer we randomly picked up."
‘Tank’ was the in-game term for a player who’s job it was to soak up damage and hold the monster’s attention. Healers kept them alive. Damage dealers had a pretty obvious job.
"So we got one healer, and 29 freaking damagers?"
"Wait, no tank?"
"I can’t make it tonight either - you’re a great healer, I thought we could pick up a tank somewhere. You’re good enough to heal a complete noob through Doom Plateau. But a pickup healer and a pickup tank? Not going to work."
Doom Plateau, or DP, was the home of the most difficult bosses in the game - if even one player makes a mistake there, the entire group of thirty or so players died. It wasn't true, but I let the compliment stand.
"I’m sorry, Sarah... guess without either of the guild leaders there, we’ll have to call it off."
Sarah sighed, coming out my end of the phone like a wave of static.
"Look, I’ll be at my mum’s tomorrow - she always lets me on. We can finish Crumbled Tombs off then," I said.
"Alright. The guild won’t be happy, but..."
"Tharik’s days are numbered. She’s going down... soon," I said.
"Alright. See ya soon, Liara," sighed Sarah, calling me by my character’s name.
"Laters, Tauro’thon," I replied, responding in kind.
I knew she winced. She always did, whenever anyone called using her bulky male human warrior’s name.
"Seriously, save that for the guild."
"I will when you do, milord," I teased, and hung up.
The two of us played on a role-playing server, and because of the game’s bizarre fixation on relationships, our characters were married for the convenient bonuses in a tank/healer combination. Because of the gender bonuses to intelligence for females and strength for males, we’d both wound up playing characters of the opposite gender.
I grinned, and lay back on my bed. After getting bored of that, quickly, I had another look at the positions for the Tharik fight. So, my second hobby was basically the same as my first. It's not like I had anything better to do.
Homework doesn't count.
I blearily opened my eyes. It... was another day.
Wow.
There’s a surprise.
I slammed my hand down onto... the alarm clock...
... waaaaiiit...
... where’d the clock go?
I blinked, and my room swam into focus.
“Urgh... what the...”
I slumped out of bed. my alarm clock was lying on the floor.
I set it back up... and noticed the time.
I had about 10 minutes to get to school. my father had already left, as had my sister.
Crap.
I more or less jumped out of bed, grabbed my clothes from yesterday, and pulled them over my head.
...wait.
... I blinked again. I was really feeling messed up today.
Then I realised I had my pants on my head.
I scrabbled around until I got the clothes in the right places, and the right way around.
I burst into my English class, panting heavily. Even though he’d sprinted there, I was still about 2 minutes late for class. The teacher, old Mr. Norton, glared at me, but reneged to comment and I apologized quietly and sat down in my normal seat next to Sarah.
Where Sarah would be, anyway. It didn’t look like she was here.
Damn.
About 10 minutes later, she stumbled into class. Mr. Norton, angry at being interrupted, didn’t hesitate to give her an after-school detention. I winced - this means, once again, they’d be without a tank for Tharik. The dungeon would reset if we didn’t manage it tonight - on the positive side, this meant that we could clear out the lower bosses again for loot. On the downside, it meant we’d have to start the whole dungeon again, and therefore be set back further.
She passed a note underneath the table to me. I discreetly unfolded the crunched up paper.
sorry kept zoning out weirdly
What? I wrote, on the small piece of paper, and handed it back.
just kept getting confused dunno why
I kept getting confused when I was getting ready. You mean like a little moment where you forget where you are?
ye i guess so
Urgh, damn. Maybe we’re coming down with something.
good more time for Tharik.
Seriously, use some grammar.
grammr is for n00bs
So is spelling, apparently.
shh
“...daisies?” finished up the guy at the front of the class. I dunno who I was. Some guy. I mean I knew my name... but...
... hold on.
I looked to my left. I couldn’t focus on anything, but Sarah.
She noticed my stare. I felt kind of embarrassed, but at the same time, sort of not.
I suddenly doubled over in pain. It was... strange, like my bones were trying to grind each other into dust. Like my stomach was trying to turn itself inside out. And then the whimpering started.
I couldn’t make out what the voices were saying. This was probably a good thing.
Then it all snapped back into place.
My hip hurt.
A lot.
The table on top of me wasn’t helping. My pelvis had two desks on it. So did my head.
I groaned.
Mr. Norton stood up from behind my upturned desk. my eye was twitching. Both of them.
I crawled out from underneath the desk. My hip hurt. So did my head.
Sarah had a widening circle of people around her.
“Urgh. What... What just happened?” I groaned. People glanced at me, but they weren’t paying much attention.
The focus of the attention was Sarah. This seemed reasonable, seeing as she’d just gained about 15 centimetres (6 inches, or something) in height, and lost a fair bit in other areas.
I noticed something in the teachers eyes. Something I hadn’t seen before.
Fear.
“Seriously, what happened?” I asked again.
“You should know. You were watching with the rest of us,” said Gary Fletcher, a somewhat nerdy boy a few months older than me.
“Okay, assume I had my eyes closed. Or that I got amnesia. Whatever - because I DIDN’T SEE WHAT HAPPENED.”
Gary glared, but answered anyway. “Sarah here suddenly went apeshit. And she picked up those fucking tables and threw them at the teacher. Then a couple of people tried to hold her back, you included, she thumped them, and then picks up a couple of tables and drops them on you. And then you said “What just happened?”
“Wait, SARAH did this? My friend?”
“Yeah, the little nerd chick. Looks like she had a gorilla in her ancestry,”
I glanced at Sarah, but she was staring at the floor.
This had looked like a normal day until now. Now my best friend turns out to be a mini-hulk. Hurrah.
Sarah coughed, nervously, and began dragging the tables back together
“Ms. Khan,” said Mr. Norton, either sarcastically or patronizingly. Dunno which, I’m not good at words. “I would be obliged if you could go to the principal’s office and explain WHAT THE BLOODY HELL YOU WERE DOING!”
“I… uh… I…” she stared at her feet. She gulped, blinked, and looked up at the teacher again.
“The… the…. Uh. The…” she said, and she sprinted out of the classroom.
I blinked. This was really weird.
School passed relatively uneventfully after that. I heard a couple of people talking about Sarah. Not nicely, of course. I didn’t hear much of it, but I heard the word “dyke” used once or twice. It was odd. I didn’t know any Australians used the word.
Anyway, it happened more and more often later on in the day. In the end, I couldn’t stand it. I had to know what was happening. What seemed so blindingly obvious I was the only one who couldn’t see it.
Eventually, I got one of the guys in my maths class to tell me. He looked at me, genuinely surprised. But then again, this was the kind of guy surprised when 2 followed one.
“Dude! You serious? I thought you were her best friend!”
“Look, I didn’t see any of it. I was K.O’d the whole time.”
“You’re such a nerd.”
“Look, what happened?”
“She grew a dick.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“You heard me. She’s a dude now. She’s got BS.”
BS. Bimbo Syndrome. The real name was something like sex-reconfiggerwhatsit. But it’s been called Bimbo Syndrome since it was first released, back when it only affected guys.
She had it. My best friend was about to become a guy.
BS started around 2003. Pretty isolated incident - an attempt to make a Virtual Reality sense-set. Not just changing what you see, but what you hear, smell, taste… so it felt like you were fully in-game. Or movie, but who gives a shit about that?
It was bloody dangerous stuff they were messing with. They tried to cut off all nonessential signals from the brain - you know, everything except breathing, and stuff - and pump it all into the Vbox, Sony‘s next attempt at a console. The VBox pumped the virtual world back. And you could reconnect and disconnect yourself really easy.
It looked set to rock the world. They started selling it late 2003. Or they would have, if a test demonstration hadn’t gone horribly wrong.
So, this kid was around 13. I was 10 at the time, and puberty seemed a long way off. Me, Kara and Mum had gone to the shopping centre - I think we were getting the first Netherworlds expansion. We saw the crowd, we went and had a look. The kid went up on the stage, put on the headset and complicated suit, and slumped into the chair he’d been given. A lot of people gasped in shock/horror at that, but he was fine. So far.
Anyway, this kid was just going into puberty. The genius with the VR system was that it actually made the senses you were feeling. So if you smelt dog food in the game, it was because tiny little dog-food particles were going up your nose. If you touched something, the suit you had to put on became rigid in that area and took on an appropriate texture. It was genius. They even had a screen showing what he was seeing.
The catch was, none of the testers before this kid were in puberty. The problem wasn’t anything to do with BO, or growth spurts, or anything. It was urges.
So the kid was trying TombRaider. He was playing as freaking Lara Croft, when he notices - hey, I’m a chick ingame, right? So he does what all teenagers do.
He had no idea that an entire crowd was watching him masturbating. It was kind of creepy.
About now, the machine sped up. It was a brilliant piece of work that you plugged the suit into, and - damned if I know how - it made tiny little particles out of the air. Probably with some Large Hadron Collider bullshit, or something. I’m swearing a lot now. This story makes me kinda angry.
So it goes and tries to make him feel like he’s Lara Croft masturbating. It’s creepy and disgusting and absolutely typical of teenagers.
And he started moving in the chair.
This hadn’t happened before, even when he’d been running around the tombs and stuff. But his hand moved, and now not only was Lara Croft playing with herself on screen, he was doing it in public too. Figure, a lot of people turned away. I didn’t know what was going on, so I kept watching. I thought his pants were itchy, or something.
At this point, the tiny AI in the VBox goes into a panic. It hadn’t prepared for this. It didn’t know how to deal with sexual gratification.
So, the VBox has a little train of thought now.
Boy masturbating = Lara Croft masturbating. Tick!
Boy Pleasure = girl pleasure. Cross!
So the VBox goes insane, and fires off this huge cloud. And then the boy woke up, as though hundreds of people hadn’t been watching him masturbate. And it’s declared to be a huge - if slightly disgusting - success. It wasn’t as big as they’d hoped, the VBoxs were expensive, and anyway, it was just pre-order list.
A few days later, the boy was pulled out of school because he appeared to be going through puberty backwards. His voice was going higher, he was shrinking, and his penis was shrinking too. They put him in to hospital.
And there, they found out it WASN’T going through puberty backwards. He was still going through it. Just a different one.
And 3 days later, he’s turned into a girl entirely. His brain hadn’t changed, but all the female hormones were making him angsty, and, as it turned out, suicidal.
It turned out the VBox made all the changes with incredibly fast breeding bacteria, that genetically modified themselves to form the terrain. It was a brilliant piece of microbiotechnology.
But the bacteria got confused. It only understood simple instructions from the VBox - “tall here, thin there”, “blue there, green there”, and when it was asked to tell this kid to pleasure himself female-ly, it overloaded. The VBox blows off all the microbes at him. And they rewrote him entirely, except his brain. Every one of his cells had a little XX in it, even the almost untouched brain.
It was bizarre. Australia’s foremost biologists were at a loss to explain how game designers managed this.
So the poor kid died. But around 30 or 40 had already been sold, and around 20 of the owners had the same problem. It was alright for a while. Some of the infected continued to live normal lives. Some became recluses. One or two, like the first kid, committed suicide.
Unfortunately, one of the people had their strain of the microbe mutate. This one could survive in air.
The four thousand infections that followed had scientists gasping. It was terrible. Eventually they built a complex for them, which was essentially a large quarantine. They were supposed to be treated well there, but no-one uninfected could go in.
The people in the quarantine lived fairly content lives, but were confined and it was a cheerless place.
The scientists found out what had happened later on. The only way the VBox could properly recreate the effect of female masturbation was to turn him into one. So the happy, little, VR bacteria did that. And completely fucked up the boy’s life.
The bacteria, now living in the air, was a threat. It didn’t actually have any adverse affects, but considering the prejudice in society, it could completely screw up the power balance. So they isolated the infectees.
Or so the news said.
I hadn’t been paying much attention. The first major outbreak was in Queensland. Victoria seemed safe enough for now. Queensland’s 4000 or so infectees were kept safe out of town, away from prying eyes.
It looks like it’d spread to Victoria now. And my friend had become the first victim.
Shit.
She grinned, and rather surprisingly, threw her arms around me.
“Um… Sarah? You alright?” I asked. This disease was supposed to make her into a guy, not into a moronic bimbo.
“Awesome! Never been better! Why?” she said, literally bouncing on the bed.
“Er, you do realise your life as a girl is, you know, nearly over?”
“Yup! So I gotta make the most of it! Also, you’re cute. Why haven’t we fucked before? Let’s do it now! Yes, let’s!”
I was really out of my depth here. Being a virgin at 15 presumably has its good sides, but I have yet to see ‘em.
No, no, not that kind of relationship… see, one of the main problems with being a teenager? Everything has a dirty meaning. Even things that don’t, do if you mishear them… there was one time, when Sarah was chatting to Kara. Kara had just joined scouts or something. I misheard an offer to “polish her boots”.
I was relieved to find out that the final word didn’t have two “B”s in it, but also kinda disappointed. But that’s how life is, right?
So, yeah, I had a bit of a crush on Sarah. But I had a bit of a crush on every girl I met. She’s been a great friend… what the hell, I sound like I’m writing a eulogy! She doesn’t die, anyways, so I guess I can talk about her in present tense. Would this change everything? Would she stop hanging around me? If she was a guy would that mean she’d stop liking Netherworlds? Will we ever get to kill Tharik’lor?
Shit. My friend’s about to go through what’s probably the second most traumatic period of her life and I’m thinking about a bunch of bloody ones and zeroes in the shape of a serpent.
It’s been 5 years since BS was released. It was only rampant for a few weeks, and in that time, about 4000 people were infected. We thought it was safe. Seeing this happen was like seeing the 9/11 bombers hit your house - scary, personal, and unstoppable. Urgh.
I kinda shrugged it off. Today I was at my mum’s, which meant guaranteed broadband internet. Score. I guess.
Mum loved me more than dad did, which wasn’t hard. She tended to lavish her attention on Kara, though - I don’t blame her for it. She just doesn’t really get boys - she was really hoping for a daughter. She got me. She got her wish though, in the end. Kara, the little bundle of joy.
Mum lives in a smallish apartment inside Melbourne proper. It was really expensive rent, but she stayed above it easily - she’s a divorce lawyer. It’s depressing how much money she makes. She sued dad out of so much, he’s horribly in debt to her - I can’t believe they were ever married.
I reached the bus stop that would take me in to the city. It was always late, and hardly a bust stop. It was a sign, next to a swimming pool. They got annoyed at me if I sat in the entrance steps. So I usually just stood around. In front of the sign. For about an hour. Waiting for the god…damned… bus!
So, yeah, eventually I get into the city. It’s wet. People say stuff about Melbourne. Sometimes, it’s good. But we don’t really have any major attractions, like the Harbour Bridge or the Opera House. We’ve got the ripoff of the London Eye. Woo. Right now, Melbourne is wet. You know, because of the rain. But it’ll probably be around 40 degrees Celsius (90-100 Fahrenheit, I think. Don’t quote me on that) by dinner. “All four seasons in one day”, they say, or they say they say, but I’ve never heard them say it, whoever they are. The bastards.
Yeah. I’m ranting. Maybe thinking about this whole thing too much is a mistake. Or maybe thinking too little.
Damn it.
I walked into the house, and rather awkwardly hugged my mum. I was now taller than her - a fact she disliked heartily - but she was still taller than Kara, who’d apparently arrived before, and was sitting on the couch - against all reason, texting, typing and watching TV all at the same time. She grinned as I entered, and I smiled half-heartedly back.
“Hey, mum. How’re things going?”
“Oh, good, good.”
After going over other scintillating topics such as, e.g, the weather, I couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Mum. Sarah has BS,” I said, interrupting her rant on… something or another.
“BS? Oh. Gender Displacement Disorder,” she said.
“She hasn’t lost it, it’s just changed!” I protested.
“What the name means is that her old gender is being pushed out of the way for the new one. I’ve been in a few cases with that. Naturally, most marriages can’t survive such a change,” she said as she shook her head disapprovingly. “Now, it’s fairly obvious you’re somewhat distraught about this. It won’t do you any good to worry about it - perhaps you should just go and play your game. She might be on the same level as you.
Poor Mum. Totally clueless about online games.
“Okay. I will…”
In my mum’s house, although the internet is considerably better, the graphics are ramped down a fair bit. It’s a bit annoying, but it has advantages.
I brought up the usual character window. Liara was standing there, smiling at me as always. My slightly sulkier other characters hung around at the back, chatting, and I think one of them was hitting on another. It’s kind of funny, how they put so much effort into such a simple screen. I double clicked Liara, ready, once again, to enter the Netherworlds.
Tharik’lor didn’t go down.
None of the useless trash mobs did, either.
Sarah wasn’t on.
We got a useless pick-up tank. They had no idea how little health they had.
We got flattened.
The next day, I woke up on my front, really uncomfortable for some reason. I was really cold last night.
Then I noticed the time. It was 11:30 AM.
I groaned. Mum had either forgotten about me, which I doubt, or she’d let me sleep in.
She’d never let me sleep in for something NICE.
It turned out I was right. After lounging around in bed for an hour or so, playing around with a graphic calculator (seriously, have you SEEN the graph for sin-1(sin(x))+tan-1(tan(x))? Freaking awesome! Yeah, I’m a bit of a nerd, just not by consensus) Mum came in.
“You’re wondering why I let you sleep in?” she said, as I opened my mouth, “We’re going to the hospital. No,” she said, as I was about to raise an objection, “not for a checkup. Or anything of the sort. I thought you might want to visit Sarah.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. It was surprising - mum had read exactly what I wanted. It was about as unnerving… as… something really unnerving. I don’t know. Unnerving but nice.
So I got ready fairly quickly, you know, normal stuff. Bowl of cornflakes for breakfast. The usual.
Mum seemed to be hiding something, but for the life of me I couldn’t work out what it was. What really confused me was when we stopped by EBGames. And we bought a Wii. For me. Not my sister. My OWN Wii. I asked why, and Mum shushed me, and then talked me into buying a few games for it - she said she didn’t want anything too violent, though. That I suppose I can understand… Mum’s a little squeamish. She was hesitant about getting PacMan in my cereal a few years ago.
So, in short, so far today, my Mum had let me sleep in, pulled my out of school, bought me my own console and 3 or 4 games to go with it, and is now taking me to hospital to see my friend.
Awesome as that is, I got the feeling that whatever was going to come next would more than compensate for it, and I’m not talking about my… wossname, tense switching. Past and present tense. Yeah… I’m not much of a storyteller.
So, we arrived at the Children’s Hospital, where Sarah had been for the last 28 hours or so. After a bit of an argument with the nurse at the counter, she directed us to where Sarah is. She was in a ward on the something floor. She was in the cancer ward.
I took a few deep breaths. Just because she was in the cancer ward, doesn’t mean she has cancer. This is the first time this has happened in Victoria. Of course they’d put her there. I relaxed, almost. I was still stressed as hell - I’d never seen someone partway through a transformation, just the before and after pics some people posted on Wikipedia.
When we got to the room, I was glad Wiki hadn’t had pictures. I was even more glad to find out I wasn’t looking at Sarah. It turned out that the rooms here were pretty big - but we’d got them wrong. Fortunately.
Eventually, we found the right room. It was - duh - roomy. Better than a normal hospital room, I suppose.
Sarah called me over, and I was relieved to see she almost looked normal. Her cheekbones had sunk a tiny bit since I last saw her, and it’s possible her boobs had shrunk a bit, but I tried not to look.
She grinned, and rather surprisingly, threw her arms around me.
“Um… Sarah? You alright?” I asked. This disease was supposed to make her into a guy, not into a moronic bimbo.
“Awesome! Never been better! Why?” she said, literally bouncing on the bed.
“Er, you do realise your life as a girl is, you know, nearly over?”
“Yup! So I gotta make the most of it! Also, you’re cute. Why haven’t we fucked before? Let’s do it now! Yes, let’s!”
I was really out of my depth here. Being a virgin at 15 presumably has its good sides, but I have yet to see ‘em. So, I’m really confused.
“C’mooon, let’s do it! Fuck me!”
“Uh, Kara? What the fuck are you doing?”
A nurse, who’d been tending to one of the cancer sufferers, came over. “Sorry about Kara here. We’ve put her on a certain anti-depressant. When we first brought her in, she was a wreck - she tried to commit suicide. Twice,” she said, adding “So who are you, and why’re you visiting Sarah?”
“This is Aaron and his Mum. They’re awesome. Can I fuck Aaron now?” piped up Sarah.
“Uh… is this normal?”
“Unfortunately so. The only antidepressant we have that has any affect on these sufferers removes potential doubt by ramping up their sex drive. It’s a little odd, but it’s the only successful treatment we’ve found.”
“Wait, what? You mean, you can cure her?”
“No. I just mean keeping her from being suicidal.”
“Oh,” I said glumly. Bubbly as Sarah seemed, the suicide attempts said something different.
It was a bit of a downer, but it’s not like she was gonna die or anything. I still don’t understand the point of the day.
Sarah’s new enthusiasm began to tire me, so I said bye. Me and my mum headed for the exit.
So, we were driving home. It had been an freaking awesome day - even though I knew it was the antidepressants, it was good to see Sarah happy. Maybe some of my good-feeling-ness had worn off by the time we got to the doctor’s.
“Mu-um! You said there wouldn’t be any checkups!”
“Not at the hospital. Look, I’m a bit worried about you, to be honest - your teachers told me bout your dizzy spells, and I think it might be something serious. I had a look at Wikipedia while you were asleep this morning, and… oh, screw it, Aaron. I think you have BS too.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“None of the changes are showing up yet, but you’ve been exposed to Sarah for few days and the disease is contagious even in its incubation. We’re gonna need to pull you out of school for a while, at least until we know what this is.”
Shit.
Reeeeaaally shit.
Okay, positives. I’m not certain about it yet, I’m out of school for a few days, I got a game console out of this, and even if it IS true, I’m gonna be with Sarah through the whole thing.
Negatives. I might turn into a chick.
Shiiiit.
So, messed up past/present/future tense aside, I was terrified. I gotta admit, I still am.
About half an hour later, filled with mental expletives and another bizarre purchase, we got to the doctors. This time my mum - and I’m serious - bought me some condoms. I didn’t really understand why, I wasn’t planning to take Sarah up on her offer any time soon… and not just because it’d be difficult if we were both-
EW ew EW ew EW. No. Can’t think of that. Mustn’t.
So, the doctor’s clinic was fairly crowded. There was one kid, maybe 8 or 9 with a broken arm. A girl who threw up every minute or so. Some guy with horrible burns on his hands.
I felt fine. These people needed a bit more than a doctor. So why was I being brought here? A couple dizzy spells aren’t much, in comparison to what these poor guys were going through.
See, my local doctor is pretty small. There were two doctors there - but most of the people here really should have been in hospital. While we were waiting, I can’t really do my dizzy spells in the past tense, it just doesn’t work. So I had one. My thoughts went cloudy, I started swaying, and most of the world faded out. Then it got painful - my bones started groaning. Rubbing against each other, and the muscle. Fucking agony, I tell you. Like sanding yourself from the inside out. It’s horrible… and then I heard a snap. Not a crack, or a crunch. A snap. Yeah, I screamed. Something in my leg broke. It turned out to be my hamstring, which meant - joy - I couldn’t move my leg without getting in even more agony. I wasn’t paying much attention, even as Mum called 000 (emergency phone number in Australia, for all you non-Australians here). It hurt so much. And my bones were still grating against each other - and I couldn’t cope with it. So I didn’t, and I blacked out, just as the paramedic van showed up a few minutes later
So I was blacked out, apparently. It was like sleep. But the pain stayed, and I had no mouth, throat, nothing. It was horrible. It felt like it lasted hours. It ended, though.
There’s always a few seconds of “Where am I?”ness that happens if you blacked out. I seriously have no idea why, probably why I came to on a hospital bed. I couldn’t feel anything, I guess I was drugged up pretty bad, cuz I couldn’t move either. My leg had a sort of cut down it that wasn’t there before.
I hadn’t noticed it yet, but I couldn’t hear anything either - the only sense I seemed to have was sight. Maybe taste, but I wasn’t able to test it.
My hearing returned, and with it my thoughts. I remembered the snapping I heard. I remembered what happened before I “snapped”. I remember why I was there. I groaned, pretty loudly - my leg was throbbing.
I heard the end of a conversation “ - problem, or whether it will help. Ah, he’s up.”
He. That was a good sign. Looks like I was safe - from BS, anyways. I was seriously worried there.
I was seriously worrying too much. Anyway, I was near Sarah - hopefully she wasn’t as ramped up as yesterday. I tried to pull myself up, and my leg… well, I’d say “twinged”. But it seems like such a huge understatement! It… was horrible. The pain was just unbearable. And - even though I tried to stop it - I started to cry. It hurt so much. My mum came over, and started hugging me. Even though I’d given up on that a few years ago, it felt so relieving to have her there.
So, yeah. I was a bit of a wuss. I’ve never broken a bone before - worst that’s ever happened was something that seemed like appendicitis, but fixed itself after a few hours. So I have no idea how much a bone would hurt - and I’m pretty sensitive most of the time. I tried to avoid sports - not just because I suck at them, and I go out of breath easy, but because I get hurt. So, you know, it’s painful.
So. I was in the hospital. Not far from here, presumably, was Sarah. Hopefully she’d stopped being a sex obsessed nymphomaniac (is there any other kind?) by now. Then again, I doubt suicidal Sarah is much better - she went through a goth phase. I’m relieved it only lasted a month.
The fact of the matter was that despite everything going on right now, I was bored. I tried to reach over to the remote lying somewhere to the left of my bed. My arm hit something plastic - and… I pulled the little PSP to my face. It had Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories in it.
It had a card. I was almost dreading what’d be inside it.
Turned out to just be a little “get well soon” card.
Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
I hope.
And it started again. Nikolosandwhichev looked on in alarm as I spasm’d about. Sarah jumped up, looking alarmed. Alarm, I thought. That’s a word. Like Clock. And Peanut. Peanut clock. Peanut butter jelly time.
My brain had gone kinda insane trying to deal with the pain. While contemplating on whether Hitler’s moustache was actually the barcode for a brand of chinese razor, my bones ground against each other. I was insanely hungry too - it felt like my stomach was boiling. A couple of bits of stomach acid went up my throat. My balls felt like they’d been kicked in. My penis felt like it was being used for a slingshot. And my chest just plain felt weird. The spasm kept going, even as Nikefootwearmanchev went and got another… nurse… or doctor…
GTA was actually pretty fun. It wasn’t the kind of game I usually played, but… it was better than I expected. Geek/nerd/social reject that I was, I didn’t usually have anyone to talk to about this kind of thing, and I relied on reviews on the internet (Me and Sarah were both huge fans of Zero Punctuation).
Zero Punctuation’s unflattering review of Netherworlds was a little hurtful to us players, but his description of us was unfortunately accurate. Up to a point.
Me and Sarah were a bit odd. I was a little less odd than Sarah, I suppose. We’d both chosen to play characters that weren’t very normal for our demographic (smart sounding word for the win). Most teenage boys, like me, played big, sword/axe swinging, hand to hand damage dealers, while teenage girls were generally split between melee damage dealers and spell casters. The fact we’d chosen to play as tank and healer was odd by itself - what was more surprising was that I chose to be a healer, while Sarah was a tank. Then there’s the gender bonuses, so I was playing female, she was playing male. When we were still newbies (or noobs, n00bs, or something like that) we met a few people who were creeped out by the fact that I was spending 4-8 hours a day pretending to be a girl. A few of them downright shunned us, spread nasty rumours, and were generally bastards. So we both got some voice modifier software, so that when we talked through the mike, we actually sounded like the characters we were playing, or at least the same gender as them. I had to do a kind of messed up “gay”-sounding voice, otherwise it came out weirdly, but Sarah could talk how she wanted.
So those morons had to take the stuff they said back. The server we played on gradually accepted us, or at least, because of the immense size of the game, stopped taunting us.
One of my guild mates, Feaura, was quite a talented artist. She drew up a few pictures of Liara, and I had to admit, I was impressed, and she drew up this one picture of Liara that… was somewhat more… erotic, than the others. And what really surprised me was later on, when she drew what she thought I really looked like.
It was perfect. It looked so real - oh, granted, there were some slight differences, like her drawing me with a Mac instead of a PC, and the desk she drew was a little messier than I remembered it, but it was obviously me, in my room.
She had got me down perfectly. Except for one thing.
She’d drawn me as a girl. It’s not surprising, I know. She didn’t know. But it was me.
I don’t know how she’d captured it so well, considering we’d never met. It was kind of unsettling, seeing what was ME, but… it wasn’t. Except it was.
Afterwards, I thanked her for her picture of me, and said she had it down perfectly, except for the computer. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth. The girl in the picture - the ME in the picture - had her back to the viewer, but it was so obviously me. It just exuded me-ness.
I’m ranting again. This was 2 years after BS first happened.
The weird thing was that when she emailed me the pic, it just had two words on it. “For later”.
Yawn for foreshadowing.
I mailed her back, asking what she meant, and she said that it was just in case the guild disbanded, or something.
What was creepy was that she got my hair the right colour. I hope it was a guess.
Most people I knew in real life were assholes to me and Sarah. Our guild was an escape for both of us. Maybe for the other people, too.
I have a nickname, at school. Everyone calls me it, except Sarah, and that’s because she’s not a bastard.
It’s hardly original, but depressing as hell. I’d really rather not write about it. Half the school thinks I’m gay. The other half just think I’m a pervert. This whole thing has already happened, so I guess a flashback won’t hurt.
Year 7. First day of high school. Primary school had been easy - it hadn’t seemed it at the time, but it was. I got my first piece of homework 6 years in. And I get to high school, and it all changed.
Someone splashed something blue and chemical in my eyes in the first science class, and it stung like hell. I cried. I shouldn’t have, but I did. The science teacher told me to go to the sick bay, who told me to go to the science teacher. I eventually just ran out of class and ran to the bathroom, where I washed it as good as I could.
A few months later, I was in a woodwork class, with a power sander. It’s just a very, very rough belt. You hold wood against it to smooth it. If you hold the wood too loose, it goes flying off and smashes you in the head. Too tight, and you sand your knuckles right down to the bone.
I managed to do both, and went through another round of sickbay ping-pong. I got in trouble for doing it wrong, and even more for doing it the next two lessons as well.
About a month after that, I’d gotten a reputation for being incredibly clumsy, antisocial, and a complete geek that thought schoolwork was below him. I ate my lunch huddled in a corner near my locker, so no-one could sneak up on me. I became sleep deprived, so I started falling asleep in class - other students stole my stuff. I lost so much. And I couldn’t tell the teachers, because they thought I’d misplaced whatever it was.
That was when I met Sarah. She had been on extended holiday until then. She saw the not-really-all-that-keen-emo kid sitting by himself in the corner.
And he opened up to her. She was nicer to me than anyone else had been. She was the one who showed me Netherworlds, the huge canvas that is the internet, where I was free to be whoever I wanted to be, without the menaces of copper sulphate and power sanders. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be writing this. If it wasn’t for her, then I’d probably have been expelled months ago.
And then she tries to commit suicide twice?
If it wasn’t for her, I would’ve beaten her to it.
Later on in the day, Sarah came to visit. She had one of those masks - you know, like the ones doctors wear to stop contamination. So I couldn’t see if anything had changed, face wise. Her voice had dropped in pitch a little bit, though.
“Hey, Aaron,” she said.
“Hey. Uh, you aren’t here for-”
“Nah. I was completely out of it that day… I’m not hyped anymore.”
She slumped on to my bed, barely missing my injured thigh.
“You’re not going to commit suicide or something, are you?”
“Why would I?”
“Oh, the nurse said you tried twice.”
“Yeah. Tried. I’ve given up on it for now. I mean, I should be feeling like shit. But I don’t. I don’t feel anything right now,” she explained.
“That’s… weird. Do you know why it’s happening?”
Sarah shrugged. “Hormone imbalance, or something. That’s apparently what happened in class the other day - I got a huge testosterone and adrenalin rush. So I went nuts. So… uh. Do you have it too?”
“What? No! I don’t have it and I never want to!”
Sarah gave me a reproachful look.
“Being a girl isn’t that bad.”
“Sure, if you’re born to it. But let’s face it - I have 15 years of experience being a guy. Let’s say I DID catch BS-”
“GDD,” corrected Sarah.
“Whatever. Off you. What am I meant to do? Just suddenly throw it all away and start a whole new life? Or should I just go on and pretend I don’t have boobs? Or should I just end it all, like the first kid did, and you tried to do.”
“Sheesh. No need to get worked up,” said Sarah.
I sighed. “Sorry for getting annoyed at you like that. I’m just kinda pissed about my hammy. I’m gonna be out of here with a cast in a few days, though… at least I think it’s a cast. They say I’ll be discharged in a few days.”
“Aaron. My mum brought my laptop in, and I had a look around. You wouldn’t be here for so long if you’d just torn a hammy. It would’ve been some painkillers, maybe one short operation.”
“I haven’t had ANY operations. They’re probably just busy.”
“Look, Aaron… I hope you’re right. I hope you don’t have GDD. Then again, I hope I don’t have GDD, and yet I do.”
The two friends were interrupted by a loud knocking at the door.
“Excuse me, are you decent?” asked a gruff man’s voice, with a hint of a Russian accent.
Aaron raised an eyebrow at Sarah, who shrugged.
“Um… I’m pretty good?” said Aaron.
“No, I mean are you dressed. It’s a kind of stereotypical way for landladies to ask that, and it would’ve been better than making a corny “knock knock” joke.”
Once again, I sighed. “Just… come in. Please.”
Turned out the voice belonged to a big, Slovakian man, who introduced himself as Dr. Nikolokolofoloefvetch or something. I lost track around the third syllable.
“Sarah, it’s good to see you’re out and about. We were quite worried about you,” said Dr. Niko-etc.
She shrugged, non-commitally.
“Anyway, Aaron,” said the doctor, turning to me, “You are aware you have a torn hamstring?”
“Yeah,” I groaned. This didn’t look like being a promising conversation.
“Well, what was happening at the time?”
I went over my dizzy spells, and the grinding and the…
… oh, greaaat…
… no… not here…
… please…
And it started again. Nikolosandwhichev looked on in alarm as I spasm’d about. Sarah jumped up, looking alarmed. Alarm, I thought. That’s a word. Like Clock. And Peanut. Peanut clock. Peanut butter jelly time.
My brain had gone kinda insane trying to deal with the pain. While contemplating on whether Hitler’s moustache was actually the barcode for a brand of chinese razor, my bones ground against each other. I was insanely hungry too - it felt like my stomach was boiling. A couple of bits of stomach acid went up my throat. My balls felt like they’d been kicked in. My penis felt like it was being used for a slingshot. And my chest just plain felt weird. The spasm kept going, even as Nikefootwearmanchev went and got another… nurse… or doctor…
This spasm was lasting longer than the others. That, or I was staying conscious for longer. I realised I was clenching my teeth down on my tongue. But I didn’t care, because that hardly hurt in comparison to the other things.
The strange part was my leg - the one with the dead hamstring in it. I was so fucking hungry then… and so my body turned on itself - at least, that’s what the Russian guy said afterwards. My body…. Uh, “actually started consuming preserved body fats”. Got the medical report right here - helps a lot with the bits I can’t remember.
So my body started eating me. My stomach went down. The back of my thighs went down. I wasn’t too keen on checking, but I think my butt went down. And then it… uh… “started eating muscle tissue”. So my biceps shrunk, my other -ceps shrunk, my (for want of a better word) biceps shrunk even more. But what was really weird?
It fixed my leg. I could feel it reattaching muscle to itself. It was… strange. They scanned me later. It turned out it was completely fixed - like I’d never hurt it in the first place with the other spasms. But it ate my muscle. So I got weakened like hell. I collapsed face down onto the bed, and I could hardly breathe.
Nikoleskimotch started laughing. I’d say I glared daggers, but that’s not enough, and you can’t say you glared, say, AK-47s.
“Well, my friend, I must admit a practical demonstration was very helpful,” he chuckled, “after what happened last time, though, we’re going to need to check your entire body for muscle tears and possible bone breakage. We’ll also need some blood samples, and… I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”
I continued to glare. “Look, why do you need all this stuff?”
“We need to make certain this is what we think it is.”
“Y… you think this is GDD?” I stammered.
“Are you from Krypton?”
“Um. What?”
“Krypton. Superman’s home planet.”
“Er… no?”
“Then yes, I think this is GCD. I’m sorry.”
Aaaaaand shit.
“If it’s any consolation, though,” he said, “there’s a chance we just discovered a miracle cure, or possibly a new weight loss method.”
“A… a chance?”
“Yes.”
“What’re my odds?”
Niko-etc gave me a long, sad, look.
“Almost impossible, my boy. I’m sorry. On the off chance that this is a miracle cure and not some crappy plot device for some kind of bizarre story, we‘ll test you for it. ”
I sighed. “Thanks, I suppose. But… um… how does the whole thing work?”
Nikolocomotion gave me a blank look.
“I’m not an idiot. You’re specialized in this microscopic piece of shit that’s about to ruin my life. Tell me how it works. I’m going to stop it.”
Dr. Nick gave me a warning look.
“When it’s confirmed you do have it, I’ll be pleased to show you the ‘microscopic piece of shit,’” he said, obviously annoyed at me, “doing its job. Don’t bother trying to stop it - it’s not the bacteria that’s the problem. It’s the nanobots that attach to them.”
“What nanobots?”
Nikolopolis sighed. “The disease doesn’t work on its own. What actually happens is the disease - whatever it is - hijack any bacteria or viruses nearby, and change how they work. We think it’s a nanobot - we’re not certain, though. The bacteria then goes insane trying to make oestrogen, while speeding up your metabolism, so it takes effect much faster. The body sees the bacteria as normal, so it doesn’t attack them. The one thing we’re not certain about-”
“Other than what the fuck this IS…” I interjected (is that a word?)
“-is how it changes your genetalia. I’m yet to tell your parents, but I assume they’d need to know. Oh, and while you’re in the transition stage, you’re not contagious. We’ll be checking your leg daily. As soon as that’s healed, we’ll be discharging you, provided you haven’t finished the transformation,” he said.
It sank in. I was going to be a girl.
I looked at my chest, and since the last spasm, two tiny breasts had formed. Sarah tried to comfort me, but it didn’t work. It was horrible. Everything I’d learned for the last 15 years, is useless. I already knew about school, but… my life was going to change, completely.
Pros: Sarah was going through the same thing, so she’d know what I was feeling, I’m one Wii and one PSP up in profit, I’m out of school, possibly permanently.
Cons: I was going to turn into a chick.
Fuck.
I crawled slowly back to consciousness.
Body stock check - arms: 2, legs: 2, head: 1, penis: 0.
My eyes slammed open, if that’s possible.
“Hey, he’s up!”
Argh. Am I always going to be beaten to consciousness?
I was in a hospital bed. Not surprising, really…
Ah. The memories. There they are.
I craned my neck, and on my chest, I had a pair of boobs - I have no idea what size, it’s not the kind of thing I needed to know until now. I didn’t really need to look to see that I was lacking downstairs.
So. I’m a girl now.
Urgh.
On that… pleasant… subject, mine had grown during the night. Not much, but… yeah, it happened. Oh, and my penis started bleeding. Not a “time of the month” type bleeding. Just… more like disintegrating. They had a bandage on it trying to stop the blood loss. But no, that’s alright, because the fucking disease cut off my blood supply for me. My penis was going blue, but it didn’t hurt, because my nerves there had been disconnected too. Worst part? This is all freaking normal, apparently.
Not in my bloody book.
They were pretty much supplying unlimited food, though, but it never filled me, my body consuming it straight away. Sarah visited me a few times in the night, but she had to leave because I kept having those fits.
I felt like crap the whole time. My stomach threatened to regurgitate everything I put in it, but my, uh, “increased metabolic rate” made sure it didn’t have enough time to come out. Course, I threw up anyway, there just wasn’t anything to throw up.
I’d spent the whole of the night I wasn’t throwing up or having fits crying. It’s supposed to be the oestrogen rush. Maybe that’s why Sarah was so stoic then.
Sarah Khan. An enigma wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in a nutshell.
Uhh, I dunno what that means. Again - smart sounding words for the win.
She was odd - after I’d poured my heart out to her, she did the same to me. She’d come from Singapore, but her parents had moved to Australia when she was 4, hoping for a better education. It worked. To a point.
When she was 7, she was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. This is about 10 times rarer in girls than boys - but it turns out I had it too, my parents didn’t care enough to check until I was 12.
Aspergers (sometimes called Ass burgers or Asparagus syndrome) is a mild form of Autism. Bonus to intellect, reduction to social skills. Also, stronger senses, lower pain tolerance, and a huge hate of homework. Also dark vision and +2 bonus to resist poison (nerd joke. LOL! Ahem.)
Aspergers is reasonably common. Except in girls… but then again, Sarah was hardly ordinary.
Back in primary school, in ‘quiet reading time’, she’d pull out the dictionary and scan through it. Both of us found Discworld in year 6, and Netherworlds the year after. She was my only friend. That’s odd enough in itself to merit (smart sounding word obsession) a remark.
Maybe it was just me, but since I hit puberty, she’s seemed like the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Up to now, anyway. Her face was looking more and more rugged by the hour, and it’s hard to see someone as the girl of your dreams when she’s growing stubble.
I sighed. They guessed I was only 2 more fits away from complete girl-dom. Sarah - even though she got it first - had another 5. Mum had come in a few times, Kara came in once. It was awkward, to say the least - Kara had to suppress her delight in having an older sister, and her mournfulness that the aforementioned sister - me! - would be sent off to quarantine as soon as the goddamn disease was done with me. Mum had wound up buying me this stack of girl’s clothes - fortunately, no dresses or skirts or anything like that, just girl’s jeans and tank tops and some other pant(ie?)s and things. No bras, though, cause no-one had any idea how big they (you know, THEM) would be. I was hoping there’d be some when I got there. As well as the stuff for… you know, “time of the month.” Heh. Seems like a werewolf.
A knock on the door distracted me from my sniffling. It was Doctor Nikoshyn, as his name turned out to be - he was actually a pretty nice guy. I’m surprised he wasn’t worried about infection, but he’s the doctor, right?
“Aaron? Can I come in?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
Nikoshyn - turned out his first name was Olaf, and seriously, I’m tempted to write “lol” at that name - entered the room. He had a package.
“Aaron, I’m afraid by now you are about 75% female. There’s going to be another two spasms, but if you’d rather get it over with, we can activate the rest of the nanobots now.”
“I thought you weren’t sure it was a ‘bot,’ I said.
“We’re not, but electricity seems to stimulate them, so Nanobots seems the most likely… anyway, would you prefer to finish it now?”
I thought about it briefly, then nodded.
“Capital!” It was such a British word, it seemed funny coming from this swarthy Russian man. “Your young ladyfriend has made the same choice.”
I grinned, slightly, but it was all too much. I burst into tears, because I just couldn’t cope with it.
The large man sat down on my bed and patted me on the back.
“I’m never - *sob* going to go - *sob* home. I’m never - *sob* going to play - *sob* Netherworlds again.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Your mother said you might be worried about that, so she asked me to give you this.”
He handed me the large (ish), cardboard box, and I tentatively opened it. I opened my eyes wide. My heart swam in geekish joy.
I lifted the laptop out of the box, and had a look at the specifications. I was right - the graphics card on this was insane. And according to the docket, it had internet access ANYWHERE - with less than 10 ms latency, even from overseas. It seemed impossible, but it was this worldwide network with some kinda radio wave and satellites.
I smiled, for the first time in days.
“Alright. Let’s get this over with.”
About 30 minutes later, Nikoshyn lead me into a greyish, Spartan room. Sarah was already there, and she ran up to me and hugged me tightly, whispering into my ear “I’m sorry, Aaron… I’m so, so sorry… I’m so sorry I infected you… I’m sorry…” and other variants.
There was a defibrillator, a board like they use when they’re rescuing swimmers with broken bones, the whole defibrillator charging kit, a couple of doctors, a nurse, both my parents (on opposite sides of the room, glaring), Kara, a couple o’ teachers from school, and a few people I didn’t recognise. Also the premier and someone who I assume is his secretary.
I realised I was in an operating theatre, and that everyone (except Nikoshyn and Sarah) was on the other side of a sheet of glass. The defibrillator and the board weren’t.
“Ready?” asked Nikoshyn, picking up those pads you see in movies - and cliché-ly rubbing them together.
I nodded, slowly.
“Which of you wants to go first?”
Me and Sarah glanced at each other.
“I’ll go first. I’ve got further to go than you, Aaron…”
He looked at her. She still looked like a girl, albeit a rather mannish one. Sort of like a semi-convincing transvestite, I guess.
Me? I… didn’t look like me any more. Hell, I was a chick… I just looked like a tomboy. I guess I could still say I was a guy, because between my legs was a furiously bleeding dick, but short of dropping my pants, anyone who looked at me would’ve seen a girl. Not a particularly attractive one, but definitely a girl.
And I was only 75% girl so far. I passed androgynous some time last night.
“No, Sarah. I need to get this over with before you. I’m bleeding like hell… uh, downstairs.”
“What? Is it your time of the month?”
“No… not yet. I’ve got a disintegrating penis down there - and I never thought I’d say this, but I want to lose it as soon as possible,” I said, wincing at my own words.
“Oh, right. Go ahead, then.”
I laid down on the board. It was uncomfortable, to say the least.
Nikoshyn and Sarah both helped buckle me in.
“Are you ready for this?” he asked.
“Hell no, but go anyway,” I said.
“3... 2... 1... CLEAR!”
Everything went black.
I crawled slowly back to consciousness.
Body stock check - arms: 2, legs: 2, head: 1, penis: 0.
My eyes slammed open, if that’s possible.
“Hey, he’s up!”
Argh. Am I always going to be beaten to consciousness?
I was in a hospital bed. Not surprising, really…
Ah. The memories. There they are.
I craned my neck, and on my chest, I had a pair of boobs - I have no idea what size, it’s not the kind of thing I needed to know until now. I didn’t really need to look to see that I was lacking downstairs.
So. I’m a girl now.
“Aaron? You there?”
I sat up in the bed.
“Whosit?” I asked, groggily.
“Me. Sarah.”
I looked over to my left. There was a really fit-looking Asian teenager there, sitting in a nearby bed If I had to guess, I’d say he was 17 or 18.
It looked like we’d been moved out of the cancer ward. For once, there were no nurses, no doctors, no weird clowns asking if I wanted to win a Nintendo DS Lite, no parents. It was just me and that guy.
That… guy?
“Sarah? That’s YOU?” I asked.
“Looks like it. How do I look?” she asked. She?
“Um… fit… athletic… er, muscly…”
“Seriously?”
“Yeeaaaaaah… you don’t look anything like how you used to,” I said. This guy was SARAH.
He grinned. “You can hardly talk,” he said. He was Sarah!
I gulped.
“Uh… how do I look?” I said, nervously.
“In two words - fucking hot,” he said.
“What?”
“Seriously. Have you seen yourself?”
I looked down, and realized he was right. I also realised I was naked, and my boobs were showing. With a squeal, I pulled up the thin sheet and covered my… uh, bountiful chest.
Sarah started to laugh. He was really deep now.
“Dude, I’m not going to try anything. I looked like that about an hour ago,” he said.
I didn’t let the sheet fall.
“Look, if you’re that paranoid, your mum left some clothes on the side of the bed. If you need help with anything, just lemme know.”
I sighed. “Alright, I’ll put it on, but you have to look away first, okay?”
Sarah laughed his new deep, throaty laugh. “Alright.”
I climbed off the bed and pulled a pair of plain white… well, underpants. I don’t really know how to describe them. There was a matching bra, which after a lot of fiddling around, I still couldn’t get on.
“Hook it up in front, then swivel it round.”
I whirled around. “YOU LOOKED!”
Sarah turned out to have his back to me, which was just as well.
“Christ, Aaron… I didn’t. Everyone gets stuck there the first time round.”
I followed his advice and I soon got the bra on. It felt a little tight, but I seriously needed that support. I pulled out a pair of navy tracksuit pants and a white tank top, which I hastily put on, along with a pair of flip-flops.
I turned around, and it looked like Sarah had got dressed too, in basically the same outfit I was in, but, you know, for men.
“Umm… I can’t really think of you as Sarah any more. You’re just… just… not,” I stammered.
“Come to it, you’re not much of an Aaron either. So what’re you gonna call yourself now?”
“Er. I don’t know.”
“Something starting with A? Anna, Angelica, Angeline, Alana, April, Ashley…” he suggested. I think he was wistfully hoping for Ashley.
“Ew, no. I’m a gamer, not a Hollywood weirdo.”
“Well, what then?”
“Uh. I suppose I could go with Lara. That’s the same as my character, except… you know, missing the ‘I’”
“Lara. Hm, alright. And it is gamer-y, Lara Croft is a pretty big name in gaming. I dunno what I’ll be, though.”
“Well, we can’t really alter Tauro’thon to be a name. So… S names? Sam’s the only one I can think of,” I said.
“No, not Sam. Um…I need a really boyish name. I’m a guy now, I don’t want to pretend I’m a girl still.”
“Um. Michael?”
“Hm, I like that. Can we keep it to just Mike, though?”
So, yeah. That’s where Aaron and Sarah died. And where Lara and Michael were born.
And that’s really just the beginning. What happened afterwards…. Well, you’ll see. Or read.
“As they say,” I said as we stood there, looking at the new us’s “when life throws you a curveball, make lemonade.”
“It’s not rocket surgery,” said Mike.
And I started giggling Little girlish giggles. Mike just grinned.
Well, he would.
He’s a boy.
It was then, with bits of miscellaneous orange gunk dripping out of my mouth, that I realised how much my mind had changed. I’d SEEN broken bones before, and not felt like this. I’d actually seen a suicide jump, and while emotionally scarring, I didn’t feel nauseous, even seeing the pile of crumpled gore on the ground. But now? Even THINKING of that set me off again, but I had nothing left to throw up, so I was just retching. And I’d tried to help Leeroy. That is enough to creep me out.
It was about 4 PM when we landed in a small airport a few kilometres out of Brisbane. It was seriously humid, even though this was autumn, fall to yall’s over in the USA. Course, it was spring in the US right now, so… uh, yeah. Anyway, we were in Brisbane airport and they had another freaking helicopter ready to take us to QQ.
And I was way too calm about what seemed to be the end of my freedom. I didn’t CARE that I’d be spending the rest of my life in an unknown quarantine facility.
THAT was when the antidepressants started wearing off.
So it sunk in. Again. Not just that I’d lost Kara, but I’d also lost Aaron and Sarah. I’d lost my parents. I’d lost 15 years of my life. I’d lost the ability to go anywhere. I could never get a job, I could never do anything I had wanted to do when I was older. I had no idea where I was going, for all I knew they were gonna kill us to stop it spreading, or they were going to experiment on us, or whether they were going to dissect us, or whether they were going to do something much worse.
We eventually came into sight of QQ, landing on a helipad outside the huge, white dome that was QQ from the outside. Clambering awkwardly out of the helicopter, I scanned QQ. I’d never seen it before, but as we got out… it looked slightly see-through.
There was a bit of a checkpoint, but after the receptionist - who was in a full biohazard suit - saw Leeroy and her broken arm. She was rushed through, while the rest of us had to hang around for a while before getting a form to fill in about pretty much everything. I caught a few glimpses of other people’s forms, and I saw a few interesting things. First was that Mike wanted his new middle name to begin with “X”. Second, Sam was changing to Sammy. I stifled a laugh at that. Third, Leeroy's middle name was Jenkins. Ah, that classic video...
After we filled the forms in, we handed them to the receptionist, who clumsily typed the details into a computer.
I almost lol’d (no, seriously, I nearly did laugh out loud) with relief when I actually saw what was inside - it looked like a small slice of inner-city Melbourne dunked into the middle of Queensland. Another surprising bit was that from the inside, the dome was see through, so anyone inside could see out but not the other way round. It was just… weirdly normal. It was a small chunk, yeah, but I even saw shops I knew here. As we were led through the city by the receptionist I looked around and then… then I stopped.
It was an EB Games, just like how I knew in Melbourne. What impressed me, though - and Mike too, by the way his jaw had dropped - was the poster with the fucking awesome screenshots next to it.
It didn’t say much. Just enough to attract your interest.
Netherworlds II for VBox
Available for testing now.
“My dad went… kind of insane after Mum died. He wasn’t violent… I guess I’m lucky there. He got angry, though… at me. But he wasn’t actually a bad guy. He wound up getting drunk a lot lately. But he… didn’t take it too well that he was losing his only son. He… kinda let it slip at the pub I’d caught BS. People started making fun of me for getting the “queer virus”… and he reacted badly.”
Netherworlds II?
We’d HEARD of it, sure, but only as a rumour on some of the obscure forums, and even then, the Netherworlds staff had deleted it straight away. The NW team was… fast, to say the least. People joked they had monkeys just typing “netherworlds II” into Google and deleting the sites that came up. Netherworlds… had power. Power that other MMORPGs (say mumorpuguhs… or don’t…) didn’t.
It was run by a Korean company - a seriously big one. No-one actually knew who worked there, except for a couple of the friendlier forum staff, but they’d gone a little profit-crazy lately. So, now we knew why.
Netherworlds II. For VBox.
The bloody machine that got Sarah and me into this mess. The machine that broke my leg. The machine that turned me into Lara. The machine that had caused more than 300 suicides.
And THAT’S how they release Netherworlds II?
“Uhh… Lara?”
“Huh?”
“You’ve been staring at the poster for about 5 minutes,” said Mike.
“Oh. Right. Er, where’d everyone else go?”
“Up to the apartments. It’s only a block from here.”
It was seriously strange, even walking that distance. When I said it was like a slice of Melbourne, I wasn’t kidding. It had shops, and shopping centres, and apartments - and it seemed way too small to need all that. I saw a few shops that I recognized, so I suppose enough people were here that some people who worked there didn’t get fired. It was… weird! And I’d almost feel at home… if it wasn’t for… my boobs.
My longer hair rubbed up against my shoulders. My boobs felt the constricting pressure of the slightly-too-small bra. My larger hips swayed weirdly when I walked. Being Lara… was so different.
From the information I’d found on GDD, I was entirely female now. The only thing that showed anything of my previous life was the inactive nanobots that were apparently hiding in my now swollen ass. My brain had male memories, but it was all female now.
GDD was man-made, and as a result, actually AIMED for a perfect body, which is why I looked like a cheerleader, and probably why Leeroy looked like a whore.
The apartments looked like a hotel when you came in. It had a big lobby with parts of it leading off to what looked like a seriously well supplied food… place. I could see a buffet from here, and it smelled GREAT… at least, parts of it did.
I’m a vegetarian. Not because I don’t like the taste of meat, or because I’m allergic. I just really like animals (no, not like that. Urgh! Teenage brain for the lose.) So I’m vegetarian for moral reasons. Or at least, I was - there’s no telling how much this thing had messed with my head.
Turned out that this thing hadn’t messed with my morals, which was a huge relief.
So we went to the reception desk. I was somewhat surprised to see the pretty girl at reception - maybe 22 or so - wasn’t wearing a biohazard suit.
“Sorry to see you here, guys,” she said, “Names?”
“Er, original or current?” I asked.
“Depends. You two already transformed?”
“Yeah, we’re done,” said Mike.
“Alright, new names then,” she said.
“I’m Lara now…” I said.
“Mike,” said Mike.
“Alright. Seeing as you’re already done, you can head to the normal rooms. All your stuff has already been put there - Mike, you’ll be in room 1057, floor 10, Lara, you’ll be in room 1092, same floor.”
“Er… if you don’t mind me asking, why aren’t you wearing a biohazard suit like the people who checked us in?” I said. I erred a lot now. It was weird.
“Oh, I was born a guy like you. I think I was about the hundredth person to catch it.”
“So they kept you in here?” Mike asked.
“Oh, hell no. I was broke n’ homeless, and after I got BS, they let me stay here.”
“Let… you? You mean, you coulda left?” I asked, confused.
“Yeah, but I haven’t got anything to go back to. There’s a permanent population of about 15 thousand, only about seven thousand people actually chose to leave,” the receptionist said.
“So… we’re allowed to leave?”
“Sorta. You’ll get it explained to you late-”
“Wait. 15 thousand plus 7 thousand? There’s only about 4000 infectees, aren’t there?” said Mike.
“There were 4000. We’ve been getting about 10 new infections a day since then - nanobots aren’t easy to stop. Look, I really think you two should go up to your rooms. You’ll be starting the classes tomorrow, and you don’t wanna sleep through it. Trust me.”
“Crap, we still have to go to school?”
“This isn’t a normal school. You’ll see.”
Just as we turned towards the lifts, she added “Feel free to come and chat any time. My name’s… well, it’s Bridget now, but I still think of myself as Peter.”
“Alright, thanks, Bridget,” said Mike, “See you later.”
Okay, seriously. They had ELEVATOR MUSIC. I thought that was only in the movies. Apparently not. And it was freaking “Spanish flea”. How much more cliché can you get?
… okay, not much. There’s a limited amount of lift related clichés in the world. But this one was trying its best to fulfil them.
It was about then, as the lifts doors opened, that I realised how freaking tired I was. I’d been up for… what, 36 hours straight? I had - and still have - no idea how I managed to ignore it. Maybe some kind of perverse adrenaline rush.
So by the time I’d found my room and fumbled with the entry key card we’d been given enough to open the door, I didn’t even have time to take my clothes off before I fell asleep. Pity I missed the bed.
I woke up with massive pins and needles in my right arm and a bruise on my hip. So I had a bad landing. Then I remembered where I was and why I was here.
The why was a lot more unpleasant.
I was still really tired, so I crawled up onto the bed I’d aimed for before. This time, my aim was better.
About an hour later I woke up for real - I was surprised to see that it was only 5 AM. FIVE FREAKING AM. I wouldn’t normally get up that early even if someone slapped me in the face with my own dead dog. While it was on fire. And had nitro-glycerine in it. And a rabid wolverine. If I had a dog, anyway.
I groaned. The classes were today. You’d think spontaneously changing gender would be enough to drop you out of school. Apparently not.
I actually rolled out of bed and slumped onto the floor before pulling myself up blearily. There was a little post-it note stuck to the drawers next to the bed.
It said - and I’m not joking here - This is not a bad dream. This is real. Clothes are in the drawers.
I’m not sure what worried me more - that the note was true or that the note was necessary. Uh, except the clothes part. That wasn’t scary at all, I suppose.
Probably the latter, because I’d already come to terms with my new identity. Well, sort of.
I glanced around the room. It was normal enough, with an ugly light-beige paint on the walls, a similarly coloured carpet was on the floor, and the bed I’d gotten out of was - you guessed it - beige. With beige sheets. Urgh.
The clothes turned out to be in the drawers, funnily enough. I held it up, incredulously.
You know those dresses they have for kids in primary school? Those ones with the white-and-green checkered pattern? It was one of those. Except, you know, bigger. And uncomfortably comfortable - that is, mentally UNcomfortable, physically fine. But it was a dress, and it fit me, and I couldn’t find any other clothes, other than the underwear they’d provided. This was actually pretty sick, in my mind. I mean, I’d been a girl for - what, 48 hours? And they shove me into this.
Urgh.
I pulled the horrible… uh, can’t think of a derogatory name for a piece of clothing, so… dress over my head, and looked in the mirror.
Lara looked back at me, mimicking my actions.
She… wasn’t me. I was Aaron Campbell. Lara was… close. She looked… not like my twin sister. Not like how I think I’d look as a girl. More like… a hotter version of my twin sister. And looking at her…
…
I sighed. She was probably the hottest girl I’d seen, but… considering most of the girls I meet are made of ones and zeroes, that’s not much of an achievement. But hell, she was hot.
But I felt nothing.
GDD was messing with my mind. Aaron was holding it, sure, but the libido seemed to have been won over by Lara.
… this is where I started to wonder if I was schizophrenic. Not only was I sorting my mind into “Aaron” and “Lara”, but I was thinking about both of them in third person. So… who the hell was I?
The fact of the matter was, at the moment? Lara wasn’t me. She hadn’t really come out into the light yet, but she was slowly blacking out the Aaron-ness of his - MY - mind.
So I didn’t seem to occupy any of my mind. This… was a problem.
And then? It wasn’t.
Somehow, the girl in the mirror wasn’t Lara. She was me. I saw her body and felt smug, not… er, lusty.
I looked down at my body, and even though it wasn’t what I was used to, it was mine.
Then I caught myself thinking like this. The stuff I’d read about GDD said that about one in ten people with it had wound up actually getting used to it. Looks like I was one of them.
Lucky freaking me.
Oh, it was still weird as hell, but I’d accepted it as real. I was a girl now, albeit one with zero experience. Urgh.
I reached the… you know, the point at a hotel where you check in. Lobby, that’s it - I kept thinking it was login. Netherworlds had really rubbed off on me. All the other GDD victims were sitting on a couple of couches arranged in a square - I’ve seen those in hotels a lot, but no-one ever sits on them while I’m looking. Double-you tee eff? My eyes scanned the group, clearly embarrassed by the clothes they were wearing, especially the guys who were yet to change - although the dresses did look funny on them.
Rachel had edged a little bit closer to androgyny over the night - her breasts were definitely smaller, and there was the beginning of a bulge in her pants. Steven didn’t seem to have changed - the slightly androgynous boy was as slightly androgynous as he ever was. Leroy was sitting down on the floor - it seemed like she was done - and was just staring at herself incredulously. It looks like the ‘bots had cut back a bit in the end - yes, her boobs were bloody huge, but they were within reason. Sam looked female now, although still pretty close to androgyny. I swear, I’ve used the word androgynous and stuff like it more times in the last hour than in my entire life. Tom was still a guy, definitely, but his face had softened and he looked less like the jock he had been. Brittany was almost done with hers, I think.
She looked…well, now would be a perfect opportunity to abuse the word “demure”, so I will. She was demure, petite, tiny - even, as the shreds of maleness inside my head tried to put together a coherent thought - kinda cute. She’d put her long hair in two pigtails, and it looked like she’d brushed it. My hair just kept getting in the way, and seeing as I hadn’t had breakfast or anything yet I hadn’t really done much more to get ready than put some fresh clothes on.
Brittany waved me over, and began to talk about some slightly random things that I wasn’t really paying attention to - mostly because this was girl talk.
Yes, I was female. Yes, I had all the plumbing. No, I was not a girl.
I still felt like a boy. I didn’t want to be Lara, and I’d sure as hell change back if I could - but I knew I couldn’t. It would be stupid to expect society to treat me the same as before, so I had to change to fit it.
That is, if I ever went back into society.
So we were all sitting there, chatting about random… stuff… and this woman comes in from the lifts, looking a bit flustered. She looked like she was in her mid-40s, which meant she was born a girl.
Unlike me.
The inactive nanobots in my arse were going to stay there until I died. Their job? Stop me from changing back.
The ones that had been left behind survived mostly on the reduced amount of testosterone my body produced - and by doing that they keep it down further. They used the chemicals to make sure nothing - not surgery, not hormones, not…some other third thing… could change me. Well, it could. It’d just be back to Lara in under an hour and another painful spasm.
I became vaguely aware of the woman calling a roll of names. I wasn’t really paying attention - between GDD and Netherworlds my mind really hasn’t had a lot of free space lately. As it was, in the end me, Mike, Leeroy and Brittany were the only ones left - because we were done with the transformations, I suppose. Brittany brought up the subject of boys. I still found the idea of relationships - this time, I MEAN the more mature… okay, more adult… meaning - with boys freaking repulsive.
The idea of being a girl… well, I guess I should separate it into two bits. There’s the “female” part. I had a vagina. I had breasts. I was female, and I’d accepted that. Then there’s the “girl” part. The part that means I can wear skirts or dresses without being shunned. The fact that I’m expected to be interested in guys.
To sum it up? The anatomy, I could live with. The culture? I’m not so sure.
Leeroy stopped… her… silent self-inspection. She looked up at me, Mike, and Brittany, and… cried.
“How the *sob* fucking hell do *sob* you guys take this so easily? I’m a *sob* fucking cunt now,” she bawled, “and I’m fucking stuck like *sob* this. My *sob* fucking dad hates me now, and my mum’s *sob* dead. I *sob* fucking cry at everything now because I’m so fucking emotional and you’re *sob* sitting there like nothing’s bloody *sob* happened!”
Mike was actually grinning at Leeroy’s discomfort. Somewhere in my head, Aaron’s sadism towards Leeroy was jeering. But…
I wasn’t Aaron. I had changed.
Maybe Leeroy had too.
I struggled with myself internally for a while before coming out on top. Yes, Aaron hated Leeroy. Lara, though… should give him a chance.
I got up off the couch, and sat down next to Leeroy. And hugged her.
She… looked at me. Surprised, not disgusted.
“I… I thought you were… I thought you were born a girl… you’re… so natural….” she stammered.
“Uh… thanks…?” Was that an insult or a compliment?
“Who… were you?” she asked.
“I was Aaron Campbell. Mostly… I still am.”
“… oh.”
There was an awkward silence. Knowing you’d said more to what you thought was a complete stranger but actually turned out to be someone you’ve been annoying, teasing, and bullying for 8 years than you’ve ever told anyone else.
I sighed. “Leeroy… Aaron hates you. Lara’s inherited a lot from him. But… you’re not Leeroy any more. You need to accept that. Hell, I’ve accepted it - I still hate this body and I’d cut off my right arm to be Aaron again. But I can’t. I’m Lara now… and as soon as you know who you are…”
“Lara… I never knew who I was. That’s why I was an asshole, because… I wasn’t anyone… after my mum died… I just… felt so alone…”
“Shouldn’t you have… you know, gotten some counselling?” I said. It was really hard to remind myself that the tearful girl next to me was the boy who’d given me so much grief.
“Heh. I wish,” she said, giving a weak smile, “he was a bit… you know. Tough guy-y. ‘Boys don’t cry,’ and all that crap. My mum kinda lavished her attention on me… and after she died, I suffered from Acute Attention Withdrawal.”
“Uh…” I uh’d.
“I needed attention, basically. I didn’t know how to get it at school, so… I was an asshole. It worked… but… in the end, everyone hated me so much that I lost the attention I craved. I…wanted to start again. My life… was a mess.”
“And that was 6 years ago… I… couldn’t cope. I… hated life…”
“My dad went… kind of insane after Mum died. He wasn’t violent… I guess I’m lucky there. He got angry, though… at me. But he wasn’t actually a bad guy. He wound up getting drunk a lot lately. But he… didn’t take it too well that he was losing his only son. He… kinda let it slip at the pub I’d caught BS. People started making fun of me for getting the “queer virus”… and he reacted badly.”
“About half an hour after I got the final shocks turning me into this,” she gestured at herself, “I got the news he’d been badly injured in a brawl at the pub. He’s in ICU now…”
“He really cared about me.”
I stared at my feet.
“I… I got the fresh start I wanted. I… didn’t think… it would be like this…” Another weak smile.
“I’m… I’m going to do better this time.”
I looked at her face. Teary, honest eyes looked at me. Leeroy… becoming this girl… was surprising…
She looked up, a thoughtful look on her face.
“Hello… I’m Lisa. It’s nice to meet you.” she said.
I smiled at the newly christened Lisa. She already seemed happier.
“Hello, Lisa. I’m Lara,” I said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you too.”
This wasn’t actually the first time nanites had been a terrorist threat - some Islam terrorist group had been trying to release a variation of GDD.
All it did was convert people into corpses. By eating their brains. Nanozombies. Urgh…
They wiped out the threat with massive a massive EMP - electro-magnetic pulse. Huge success. Nanobots all wiped out. No deaths. Pretty much a first for the US. *giggle*
After GDD, they tried the EMP solution.
It… didn’t work.
GDD sufferers (or GDD… infectees. You cant say Brit was suffering much…) were able to be grouped into 6 major categories. The first was… the kind that led to depression and suicide. The people who never adapted to the new them.
This was a huge 88% of sufferers. Which meant… thought pause for calculation… longer pause to bring up calculator application… about 19300 people had been led to GDDDD. Gender Displacement Disorder Depression Disorder. Yes. They used “disorder” twice. *sigh*
GDDMDD is the same as the above… this was the same as the last one, but it had a “manic” in it. About 0.5% of people wound up like this. Gibbering wrecks. Plain denial. Flat-out insanity. So about 110 people.
10% were in my group, GDDAS… Gender disp-blahdyblah acceptance syndrome. The people who got THIS form became essentially transsexuals. People stuck in the wrong body. These people were supported by TG groups because - among OTHER things - they proved how mental gender was, and not accepting these people as who they were before was, you know, discriminatory, and people were finding it hard to define the difference between GDDAS sufferers (yes, sufferers. Acceptance, no more) and born transexuals…
Of the last 1.5%, 1% were like Brittany and Lisa, embracing their new gender and enjoying it much more than being a boy. A lot of these guys and girls were TG in the first place, which is why they like it, but a few of them never considered anything like it and just enjoyed it hugely. This one was called GDDG. I have no idea what the second G stands for.
0.495%… were about halfway between GDDAS and the happy folks. No, not leprechauns. Or Irish people. Whatever. Happier than they were before, but still feeling conflicted and kinda confused about their gender identity, which was called GDDSG - I think the “s” was for semi. Still no idea what the G is.
0.005%… on one person…
… the… nanobots messed up. They called them a GDDAHH.
Nanobots… or nanites, whatever you want to call them, are seriously dangerous things. It’s pretty scary what they can do. Not just rewrite a person, but rewrite anything. If a confused GDD nanite found itself alone, it would build more of itself, using ANYTHING it came across, and it would eat people, houses, earth, stone… anything… making more.
It wouldn’t kill, though. It finds itself in another living being, it does the normal thing.
Turns them into the opposite gender.
And a human.
We were lucky GDD was only confined to Australia. And that it’s soooo slooooooow. But since 2004, the population of Australia increased a lot. We’d been forced to expand into the desert, but all the GDD animals were so discriminated against that more than 80% of them were murdered. They had cults after them. Unfortunately successful cults, because the government couldn’t afford to protect them. Even so, Australia’s population had gone up 10 million in 5 years. Can you say “overcrowding”? I’d say they were a minority… but they weren’t. They were a majority. One in three people in Australia nowadays wasn’t human 5 years ago. If it wasn’t for the cults, Australia’s population would be around… seventy million. These “demi-humans” were treated like a slave race.
It was horrible.
We thought we’d got past that. But Australian society proved us wrong.
I was ashamed to be part of the country… at least, I think I was… the shame of being me might have drowned it out.
A stroke of luck was that the nanobots in GDD animals completely wore themselves out, dying completely. It wouldn’t spread and they’d be immune to it from then on.
In 2007, one person, though… he got a slightly confused version of GDD.
He was hybridised (holy shit, that’s actually a word).
He… got crossed with a wild fox.
GDD did what it was meant to do - or what it was known to do, anyway. He wound up a she.
But… aw, screw it… in short, he got turned into what looked like a Japanese kitsune. A fox spirit.
He… she… had gone a bit weird. Oh, she wasn’t superhuman or anything, she was just a bizarre fox/human hybrid. Lab tests proved it, basically - she was just a human with a tail and fox ears.
She’d… started a religion. Or a cult. And she’d decided she was the leader of the GDD’d people and animals. Convinced she was an avatar of a god, and all the GDD-ificated people were her… uh, harbringers, I think she said… she’d… worked something out.
She said she’d worked out how to control the nanobots.
She threatened to release them on the entire world, unless they converted to the cult.
This wasn’t actually the first time nanites had been a terrorist threat - some Islam terrorist group had been trying to release a variation of GDD.
All it did was convert people into corpses. By eating their brains. Nanozombies. Urgh…
They wiped out the threat with massive a massive EMP - electro-magnetic pulse. Huge success. Nanobots all wiped out. No deaths. Pretty much a first for the US. *giggle*
After GDD, they tried the EMP solution.
It… didn’t work.
Electricity in small amounts accelerates nanobots, which is why they used those little shocks to blast me into the next gender - in larger amounts, though…
There were two things that could happen to the GDD nanites. Both bad news for us.
First case scenario - nanites got on an electricity high. They ran around completely randomly morphing everything - not even into recognizable things. Just grey-y browny gunk. Everything… people, animals objects, landscapes… Lotsa death. Woo!
Second scenario - the nanites exploded. Host dead. Anyone near them dead. Anyone within 50 metres dead. Anything within 100 metres infected with more nanites. Anyone within 400 metres deafened.
This is when the game designers figured GDD had been tampered with - they’d been using nanites, but an EMP stopped their ones in their tracks. And didn’t explode.
It had become a law to avoid making nanites EMP-proof - it was theoretically possible, but…
An EMP on someone already through the transformation won’t explode them. It’s just a guaranteed horrible melt to death. And goop.
If the nanobots were dormant, it was because it hadn’t spread through their body yet. So you could save them the melt by amputating.
Urgh.
Okay, back one step. So the Kitsune nut said she had modified GDD nanites to her own personal changes… but still had the explodyness and meltification of GDD, so…
… the government called her bluff.
Sort of.
She’d… had some problems.
She’d managed one “controlled” transformation.
And as a result, the issue of whether Australia could ever have a female prime minister became a moot point.
And the second kitsune was born.
Oh, they captured the original kitsune, and she was given life in prison for terrorism, or something.
The PM stood down when he first heard of the transformation. He went into hiding - which was definitely a good choice, given what the mobs wanted to do the original kistune. His… deputy prime minister? Whatever you call the backup. She took over.
She proposed new housing for the GDD animals. She proposed increased animal rights, because the GDDificated animals showed how intelligent they actually were. She would have proposed a third thing… but the riot smashed down the doors then.
She was lynched. Oh, sure, the leaders of the mob were arrested, but the conservative opposition party smashed them in the 2008 election, because they’d managed to pass a bill banning GDD animals from voting.
Gender Displacement Disorder victims - animals and humans alike - had almost no rights. If we were killed… unless someone, an unaltered relative… pressed charges, there was no punishment. As a result… animal GDDers were constantly at risk, constantly abused, and murdered daily. They looked like normal people, but their voices were… accented. By their former species.
They were raped and slaughtered en masse.
Anarchy reigned free, so QQ was set up. From the outside, it seemed to be an experimental facility - it was actually set up by a group of left-wingers who decided to form a safe colony for all of these sufferers. The total population of QQ was about 4 million - only 15,000 of which were originally human.
QQ wasn’t a slice of Melbourne. It was an entire city.
The six-million or so “free” GDD animals were constantly at risk, but in QQ it was safe.
It had been about 6 months now since the opposition claimed power. Slavery had happened. The 20% of surviving GDD animals… were nearly all kept as slaves.
Neither my father, mother, or anyone I’d call a friend had any, but… there were people at school who boasted about their slaves.
It was horrible.
The strain (is that accurate for bots?) of GDD capable of mutating animals to humans was wiped out by a huge EMP bomb. About 800 GDD’d humans were killed, and infected another 2000 or so. But the insane population growth had stopped - because the strain was dead. Most of the untransformed animals it was in were killed, but the already-transformed animals lived.
At least that was what I’d understood from the PowerPoint show the 40s-ish woman (Melissa, I think she was called) had shown us.
Like I (think I) said, I was vegetarian, and I was actually really interested in meeting some of the GDD animals. But the genocide caused by the Australian government sickened me.
The other people - i.e. everyone except me, Brit, Mike and Lisa, came back partway through the PowerPoint. It took me a little while to recognize them… Rachel (now Richard) had some serious stubble. He… was really tall. But…he… looked so sad. I could see him holding back tears.
He… hated who he was. I remember when I first became a girl, it wasn’t that big a deal, and Mike seemed to act the same way. Brittany was freaking ecstatic with her change. But…
… I… felt really sorry for Rachel.
It was a “her” behind all the stubble. She… was part of the depressive 88%. I wondered why I hadn’t seen anyone else acting like that before - granted, Leeroy was freaking suicidal at first, but… she’d adapted already. I wasn’t happy with this, but I was comfortable, I suppose.
Tom and Sam were completely female now. Tomi and Sammy (so original!) were more in disbelief than depression. Steven (Stephanie, now… for fu- fudge’s sake) looked… not happy, I suppose, more… a little irritated. At a guess, she was in the depressive 88%, but more angry than depressed.
But… Rachel… she was scared.
Trying to see the girl I’d seen before was even harder than trying to see Aaron in Lara. I… didn’t know what to do. I mean, as a girl now, I could’ve hugged her or something, but… seeing as she’s a guy, she might think I’m coming on to her. Eww. Yeah, I was still into girls.
I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to do. But I could feel her pain.
I actually was getting slightly more comfortable with “girl talk” , even though I had NO EXPERIENCE AT ALL. I’d underline that a few times if I could be bothered… it would’ve been faster to underline it than write this… eh.
Lisa was throwing herself into this whole-heartedly - figures she’d try to leave Leeroy behind ASAP. Tomi was… silent. Sammy - who now looked more like a cheerleader than me - was… acting blonde, I suppose, which made sense because she was. Brittany had to pause every 30 seconds or so to answer a question Lisa had thrown to her. Her questions kinda became more and more sparse as Lisa and I learned about what it was like to be a girl.
There were still traces of Leeroy in Lisa, and as far as I can tell, I was still mostly Aaron, but you never would have guessed Brittany had been born a guy. Then again… she’d been hoping something like this would happen for years.
It would be strange, I suppose, to feel like you’ve been in the wrong body your whole life, only to suddenly be “cursed” better. I was coming from the other way, but I wasn’t scared, or depressed. I could live with this and I’d accepted I couldn’t go back.
Netherworlds.
What was it?
A basketball t-shirt I saw once reminds me of it - “Some people call it a game. I call it a way of life.”
Less than a week ago, all my worries were limited to slightly low frames-per-second and disconnection on the Area of Effect damage phase of Garrock Blackrend. Now I had to adapt to being an entirely new person, probably living in a new city I’d never seen before, people who wanted to LYNCH me for getting nanites shoved up my arse, as well as low FPS and the AoE phase of Garrock Blackrend in Netherworlds II.
It struck me, suddenly, that I hadn’t played Netherworlds for 3 days.
How much of the guild had quit? How much of the guild had transferred?
What the hell WAS Netherworlds II? And why was it only for GDD’d people?
“Lara? You alright?”
“Bwuh?”
I looked around. Lisa looked at me. I looked at her.
“You go like that a lot. Have you got some kinda inner monologue going?”
“Uh. No,” I lied. Maybe they should’ve put that as one of the symptoms of GDDAS… Maybe born TS people monologue this much.
“Alright now, children,” said Melissa, most of us wincing at the emphasis on the word, “Don’t expect that this will get you out of your education - on top of that you have certain … other things, to learn. Personal matters.”
“How personal?”
“Extremely so.”
/shudder
Uh… that’s a slash command. It’s how you do emotes in Netherworlds and a lot of other MMORPGs… I’ve been using them in writing and real life for a while, too… (real life pronunciation: slash shudder)
We were shepherded out of the lobby and we stood around in the humid (you can say “in the cold“, can’t you?), waiting for a while. Sammy was freaking bizarre now. You could see Sam in her, but… the ditzy blonde (he was blonde before, by the way) in front of me who had apparently decided to give up punctuation in favour of the word “like” was really weird - it’s like she had had the old Sam’s memories shoved into her apparently-empty skull. And - bizarrely - an American accent was shoved on. This - Melissa told us - was uncommon, but not unheard of - a total body-rewrite would have some unintentional ramifications. Some American kid had recovered from a stroke and come back with a cockney accent - and here we got an entire brain rewrite.
She hadn’t coped well, at all - and she was sitting there crying. Rachel seemed freaking brain dead - apparently “boys don’t cry” had already embedded itself into her head, but I could see her tearing up. Tomi, too, had given in to the crying epidemic.
Solution? Anti-depressants. I swear Melissa shoved a handful of valium down each of their throats, and they calmed down a little. Alright, a lot.
So no-one was really crying or talking, right up to the point where the bus came.
“What would you rather be? A girl dealing with her first period or a guy dealing with the same thing? This whole thing is a lot easier if you just let yourself BE who you look like. We’re worse off than born transsexuals, because we’re stuck like this. They can get operations and stuff but WE can’t do anything except accept this and hope like hell that we don’t get LYNCHED for having robots cut off our balls,” said Allison. “I liked being Alex. He was a happy kid. These nanobots come and change me into THIS. Allison is a new girl, and she’s learning. She’s not happy about that but at least Alex has the dignity to SHUT THE FUCK UP and try to let Allison live her life! If you’re going to let Sam keep running Sammy’s body, then you may as well jump out of a window now. ”
Ah, the bus. My old nemesis.
The half-hour waits at my bus stop into the city had honed my hatred to a finely-edged menace. It was boring, and cold, and it hadn’t helped my temper after a bad day of school. Being there - for what I worked out as about 17 days in total - had been really stressful, what with the lack of any shelter - I cursed the 546 bus route. The goddamn bus wasted so much of my life - that’s, like, 400 hours I could have spent on Netherworlds! That’s easily enough to get a character from level 1-120 (the record was 42 hours played time), and probably enough time to get a full set of 30 man gear.
No, not gear made of people (or gear FOR 30 people), gear only available from 30 man dungeons. Liara had a full set of that, as well as a full set of DPS (damage per second, just means a damager when you’re talking about gear or people) gear - only 12 man gear, though. Bwahahahahaa! Multi-function class for the WIN! Fear my holy wrath! PEWPEWPEW! BURN IN RIGHTEOUS FIRE!
Where was I? Oh, right, the bus. Yeah.
It was one of those bigger than normal, white ones, with the “extra low floor” that the 401 bus route always seems so stuck-up about - those stupid, 5 times a minute buses.
/glare
I’m guessing that was there because pretty much everyone and anyone could be infected, and - well, if a worm or something got GDDificated, you’d think they’d have trouble walking. So it was a bus for the disabled, I guess, even if it was about 20 years too old. It looked like a hybrid between a school bus and a monster truck. It was freaking HUGE…
So me, Mike, Tom(i), Sam(my), Brittany, Stephanie/Steven, Lisa and Rachel/Richard were shooed onto the bus (can you be shooed somewhere or just FROM somewhere?) and we were surprised.
There were a lot of people there. Like, a lot lot. Around 30 or so people - there were still around 20 seats spare, this bus was pretty big. They all looked normal… well, that is, they had the right anatomy and no disfigurements - a few girls there were chatting about normal stuff… well, relatively normal… I hadn’t met many girls into Magic: The Gathering. I’m kinda ashamed to know what it’s called, I’m seriously not into that stuff.
Then I remembered this was a GDD sanctum, and it made slightly more sense. I guess they stayed interested in the same things, if not the same people. Of course, I could’ve been majorly wrong - they might’ve been jocks before GDD hit and had randomly taken it up. I chose to believe the first - I wanna stick with Netherworlds. Urgh, gotta stop using the word jock. So American-sounding.
What surprised me, though, was when five girls near the back beckoned us over. I glanced at Lisa and Mike before we walked over to them.
“Nuh-uh. Girls only zone here,” said one of them, holding up a hand to block Mike’s passage.
Rachard/Richel nodded sadly, and turned away. Mike shot the girl a slightly annoyed look and followed after R*ch**(d) - they both got a few seats near the front of the bus.
The five girls were having a lively conversation, despite being split between three different rows. One was the girl who waved us over - an Asian girl who looked quite a lot like how Sarah used to look, although this girl was a little taller and… more well-endowed. A goth-looking girl who had waaaay too much eyeshadow and a fringe that pretty much covered it up anyway, a short (like, really short, maybe 130 cm tops?) brunette who gave off an anime feel because of her (relatively) huge brown eyes, and a curly-haired redhead with emerald eyes giggled as a blonde girl with blue eyes came to the punch line of…
“And he said, that wasn’t a walrus. That was my WIFE! ”
I blinked. Thaaaat didn’t seem like a typical girl’s conversation.
“Uh, what?”
Oh, right. GDD. I knew that.
The blonde sighed. “New girls?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said.
“In every sense of the phrase,” Lisa added.
She scanned us over, and…
“Well, you two came out well,” she said, “What’re your names?”
No-one answered.
“Yo, blondie. Asked you a question.”
“Uh… Sammy,” she stammered, staring at her feet.
“And your cheerleader friend?”
More silence. Then it dawned.
“Wait, me?” I said.
“You’re two pompoms short of showing up at an NFL match. Who do you think I’m talking to?”
“I…uh…my name’s Lara.”
“Used to be Larry, I s’pose,” she said.
“Um, no. Aaron.”
She looked at me and raised an eyebrow - a little heckler inside my head went “How long did you train for that?” which was followed by a bizarre train of thought leading up to the Olympic eyebrow raising event.
“So why’d you choose Lara?”
“Oh, um, I play a character in a game called Liara, and I didn’t want to pretend I was still, you know, a guy, so I kinda went with that so I could distance myself as far as possible from who I used to be because I used to be teased and stuff all the time and pretty much the only thing I liked was my game and-”
“Woh, slow down,” said the Asian girl. Even her voice sounded a lot like Sarah had. “There’s no hurry.”
“Well, what ‘bout the rest of yas?” said the redhead. She… well, I think the accent is from Texas. I dunno, it was kinda like how you’d imagine a cowgirl or whatever going “howdy, pardner” type thing. The American accents were really thrown on strong… sounded more like an parody than a real accent, I think…
“I’m Brittany. This is kinda the best thing that’s happened to me,” she said as the bus began.
“Oh, thank god, finally someone agrees with me!” said the little brunette, doing the classic Leyton Hewitt air-fist-pump-thing. Whatever you call it.
The goth girl glared at her. “Yeah, that’s right. Because losing my fucking penis is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, amirite?” Yeah, it was ‘am I right’ but where I come from, it’s amirite.
No, not Melbourne, the INTERNET.
“Still got your regular one, though, right?” said Brittany.
“What?”
“You lost your fucking penis, I’m assuming your other penis is… oh, screw it.”
“What else could ya do with it?” said the redhead.
Girly giggle outbreak. Holy shit, I’m part of it.
Me, Brittany, Lisa and Sammy had been accepted into the group pretty much flawlessly - Tomi and Steph had gone back over to sit with Mike and Rachel/Richard.
The blonde girl - the unofficial leader of the girls we were sitting with - was called Allison, goth-girl was called Yvonne, Asian girl turned out to be Sarah (doubleyou tee eff!), Texas redhead Leanne, and the little brunette was Tina. Formerly Alex, Ivan, Simon, Liam, and Tim - but all of them, they explained, either had GDDAS, GDDG or GDDSG.
“Wait,” Sammy said as Allison explained this, “I thought, like,” she shuddered at the unintentional use of the word, “only, like, 11% of people got happy.”
“Oh, sure, at the START,” Tina said - effing hell, she was cute, “but that’s the whole point of the GCS.”
“GCS?”
“Gender Conformity School. It’s not what the name sounds like, it’s basically a combination of teaching you to blend in and dealing with the changes. It’s pretty cool, actually, there’s no homework or any real work. It’s only for about 4 hours a day and then they let us go back to our rooms or go shopping or whatever. Yvonne’s been here the longest of any of us,” said Tina, giggling slightly as she mentioned Yvonne.
“Look, it’s not my fault, okay? I’m not a girl, I can’t bring myself to CARE about the crap they exam us on!” she whined.
“Exams?” I asked.
“Yeah, basically to see if you’re ready for the real world. You’ve gotta be pretty much perfect, otherwise they fail you and keep you there for another 2 weeks. Pretty much no-one passes their first exam…” Allison explained.
“Why wouldn’t we be ready for ‘the real world’?” I asked.
“Um. Well, they can’t really let anyone know that we’ve been let out. As far as everyone knows, we’re stuck in QQ forever…” said Tina.
“People… don’t react well to letting us out…” said Leanne.
“Rape and murder pretty much sums most of it up. Also vandalism and stuff like that. Because we got nanobots shoved up our ass. We’re freaks now,” Yvonne muttered.
“How are we freaks? We changed, yeah, but we’re just normal…” Leanne struggled to say the word, “g-girls. I mean… we’re girls in every way.”
“But we weren’t born that way!” blurted Sammy.
“And why does that matter?” Tina asked.
“Because this… this is WRONG! I’m not a girl!” she said.
“Your crotch says different,” replied Yvonne, “and so does mine. Look, as soon as you get out of here, you can be whatever kind of girl you want.”
“Yes. Whatever kind of GIRL,” Sammy spat the last word. “Fuck that. My life has been completely fucked up - as if being fucking pulled out of school, and away from my family, and having random spasms where my arms break for no apparent reason, wasn’t enough, I’ve got to learn to be a fucking GIRL? I’m going to have my first fucking period in a few weeks or maybe tomorrow and you…” (Yeeaaah, her “like” habit goes away when she’s angry. Maybe it’s conscious? Duh duh dunnnnn…)
“What would you rather be? A girl dealing with her first period or a guy dealing with the same thing? This whole thing is a lot easier if you just let yourself BE who you look like. We’re worse off than born transsexuals, because we’re stuck like this. They can get operations and stuff but WE can’t do anything except accept this and hope like hell that we don’t get LYNCHED for having robots cut off our balls,” said Allison. “I liked being Alex. He was a happy kid. These nanobots come and change me into THIS. Allison is a new girl, and she’s learning. She’s not happy about that but at least Alex has the dignity to SHUT THE FUCK UP and try to let Allison live her life! If you’re going to let Sam keep running Sammy’s body, then you may as well jump out of a window now. ”
Awkward silence.
Followed by awkward Sammy bursting into tears.
“Hooboy,” I said. I’d wound up sitting next to her, aaaand… well, is this counted as maternal instincts or something? But, I… uh, kinda hugged her, like I’d done with Lisa.
But she just glared at me, and… the isolation I felt lead me to sit down next to Brittany instead. Sammy kept crying, but with awkward sobs instead of the river of tears there had been a moment ago.
Tina sighed. “She’ll probably turn out like Yvonne. You, though…” she gestured at me, “I’m pretty sure GCS should be able to bring you at least up to GDDSG, if not full-on GDDG.
“What?” I said, startled. “Hell no, I’m not like that!”
The… other Sarah… smirked. “How long did you spend crying because you were going to turn into a girl?”
“Well, I didn’t, but-”
“Were you ever particularly… macho?”
“No, but that’s because I’m a-”
“What is it about GDD that’s so bad for you?”
I had to stop and think there.
“Well… because I’m a guy.”
“Your chest says different.”
“Fine, because I’m used to being a guy!”
“Well, then once GCS is finished for ya you should be completely happy then, right?”
“Hell no, I just got yanked out of my life and away from my family!”
“So if you got to go back and live with your family, you’d be fine.”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“BECAUSE I’M A GIRL NOW!”
“Exactly,” said Sarah, “and you should try to remember that.”
What just happened…?
“No, I mean, I’m a guy stuck as a-”
“Lara. You’re a girl,” said Tina. “Welcome to the winning side.”
“There’s no point in holding it off. Your subconscious has accepted your gender change… you really should too,” said Allison.
I blinked.
“Why fight it? If you do, you’ll just get depressed. No-one here is gonna be testing your masculinity. Just…go with it,” Yvonne advised.
“I… I’m not a…”
“You’re a girl, Lara. You’re probably one of the girliest in your group. You’re just not accepting it,” said Allison.
The fact I broke down crying then didn’t really secure my image. I’m REALLY surprised I held on this long.
____________________________________________________________________________
Please leave a comment, I use them to measure my worth as a human being. ^_^
The place was surrounded with security cameras, barbed wire, there were a couple of armed guards, and it looked more like a prison than a school.
Stupid goddamn foreshadowing. I wish I hadn’t been right.
It was pretty clear that the girls weren’t trying to hurt me. Hugging people to cheer them up seemed like a bit of a stereotype, though - I got the impression they were actually… well, kinda girlier than actual girls, but… then again, I’d never really had a chance to see what girls actually did together when there weren’t any boys there. Well, there was ME… and I suppose them… but yeah, the lines between genders had been shattered.
Anyways, the girls were being really nice, once we managed - rather clumsily - to get off the whole gender topic. Allison and Sarah were all seriously into CounterStrike, while Yvonne and Lisa were hardcore Halo-ers, and… well, I don’t like that kind of thing. Tina played Guild Wars pretty avidly, and Leanne was a World of Warcraft addict - neither of them played as much as I was on Netherworlds, but they were pretty intense about it and were actually pretty excited to hear about NWII - if only because we got it into a (free) closed beta test. Mm… beta…
Netherworlds was… expensive. 30 US dollars a month, which at the current market, is about 36 AU. It was - as far a MMORPGs go - big, but…the tiny development and maintenance team and large (4 million) subscriber base meant they made an insane profit. Unfortunately, they’d raised the cost to 45 US a month recently (remember me talking about profit-crazy?) and surprisingly, they only lost about 30000 subscribers, which meant they had… a lot of money. About 120 million in profit a month.
So after the CS discussion had drawn to a jerky close based on a discussion about teabagging (if you don’t know what this is, I envy you,) we switched to what was buzzing on my mind - the GDD animals.
“Yeah, nearly all of them are stuck here,” Yvonne said, “I mean, they get to sit the tests like everyone else, but barely any of them get used to their new brain. A couple of the smarter ones, like the chimps and gorillas and stuff, manage to pass, but because the only ones available to be GDD’d are in zoos, we don’t have many of ‘em.”
“A few’ve the dogs and cats manage to pass, mostly because they already know about people - fair few birds manage to pull it off, especially the parrots. You know, because they already knew how to talk,” Tina said, “but even once they pass, the have to move up to the advanced course - our class.” Okay, I seriously like-liked (sudden abandonment of complicated words in favour of childish terms for the total win) her. Looks like Lara’s a lesbian.
Okay, that realisation was a relief. A big one.
It LOOKED like GDD hadn’t messed with my mind at all, apart from not being turned on by a cute girl in the mirror. My morals were the same, my orientation… well, it was different, but with the same end result, and Netherworlds was still the shining beacon of light it always had been. (Coincidentally, Beacon of Light spam for the win.) On the other hand, I was a lot more emotional now, actually quite a bit more confident, and… well, it was a completely different kind of friendship, I s’pose. Thing is, I don’t know whether those three were more a result of GDD or the fact that I was a girl, or even just the fact that I had changed.
Okay, the emotions I can explain away. My body was getting an excess amount of oestrogen at the moment. The confidence, though… is a little odd.
Aaron was quiet and introverted. Lara… wasn’t…
And question number 2 pops up - have I still got aspergers?
Like I said, Aspergers was a lot less common in girls than boys. It didn’t SEEM like GDD had messed with that, but like I said, I was more outgoing and “social behaviours” felt more natural. While this was all well and good… the intelligence bonus was a big part of me. Going from antisocial nerd to social… cheerleader… looking… girl… was kinda messed up, and I seriously don’t want to lose that unique part of me. Thing is, it was kinda hard to tell at the moment - what with falling behind in classes and stuff, I haven’t felt that smart lately - maybe the dizzy spells during the spasms had been the nanobots messing with my brain.
“So, um, what’s gonna happen when we arrive?” Lisa asked.
“Everyone’s got to go to this assembly thing in the hall, it’s just welcome and stuff, and then they play this video feed from the chief bender factor or something… and then you get your classes assigned,” Tina said, somehow managing to convey how boring it is with an expressionless voice.
“Assigned? D…don’t we get to pick?” I stammered. The main thing going through my head was “crapcrapcrapcrap PE crapcrapcrapcrap…” followed by “do I still suck at it?” and “if they’re making me do sport how does that help with blending in?”
“Hell no. It’s gotta be stuff outside your comfort zone. Pretty much the only thing I can guarantee is that you’ll get home ec and sport,” replied Yvonne.
“Guh…”
/whimper
“What… what sports?”
“Depends on your body type, I s’pose, like the really agile types get gymnastics and stuff, the bulky types wind up wrestling, n’ so on. I got stuck with netball…” Leanne sighed.
“Sport is pretty much the only class we’re we’ll have anything to do with the GDD animals. It’s kinda annoying, they kick our ass at athletics and stuff, but we’re usually better at most team sports. Seeing as there’s about 20,000 times more GDD animals than people, you never get put with any other original humans.”
“But… how can they afford schooling for 4 million animals?” I asked.
“Uh. Schooling is kinda optional for animals,” Sarah said, looking down - sorta embarrassed.
“Yeah, none of the insects actually come, even though they make up about 85% of the GDD animals. It’s only about, oh, 0.375% of the mammals actually get to come, so about… uhh…” Allison mumbled.
“0.075% of all GDD animals come, so there’s only about 1500 at the school. There’s usually about 200 GDD humans who haven’t passed,” Yvonne shot Sarah an annoyed glare, “so it’s pretty cool for us, we always wind up captaining or whatever if we do team sports. I’m leader of the gymnastics team, ” Sarah added, proudly.
“Yeah, netball captain here, Allison does archery. Li’l miss goth here does shooting,” Leanne said, scowling.
Yvonne smirked. “Just about the only class I LIKE,” she said.
“Sweet. Tina, how about you?” I asked. This didn’t sound too bad, actually, archery would be pretty kickass.
“Oh, cheerleader here.”
I blinked. “That… isn’t a sport, though.”
“It’s Phys Ed, not sport. It’s cool, though, I like cheerleading. All the girls I’m leading used to be possums, they look all cute and innocent and stuff but they’re actually real bitches. I think they look at me as a leader, though, but that doesn’t stop ‘em from snatching food and trying to scab money and stuff like that… Lara? You okay?”
I already knew which sport I’d be stuck with. I only had to look in the mirror to find out.
For those who hadn’t worked it out, in case I have to be completely direct, I looked like a cheerleader, and figured I’d wind up as one. Sure, I could be lucky and wind up with another… less… public “sport”, but I had a really unlucky streak, as you’ve probably noticed by now. I really wouldn’t be surprised if the AFL* started recruiting cheerleaders for the grand final (maybe they have already. Eh, not like I care about football,) but if they do, I’m pretty much guaranteed to find myself waving a pair of pompoms in front of about a hundred thousand people. Urgh.
“Lara, snap out’ve it. They don’t offer internal monologue counselling as GCS,”said Allison, snapping her fingers in front of my face.
“Guh?” I mumbled. Allison was… kinda weird.
“So what’d you think of those two cute guys that came up?” Leanne asked.
“Wait, Richard and Mike?” I said, blinking.
“You, uh, think they’re cute?” Lisa asked.
“Well, look at ‘em!” Leanne said.
I looked down the bus to where Rachel/Richard and Mike sat, with Tomi and Stephanie next to them, talking quietly. I didn’t hear what Mike said, but the two girls started giggling while he grinned broadly. I’m pretty sure my face went red at that point, for two reasons. No, wait, three. One, Mike was MY friend. So I was feeling kinda overprotective. Two… I actually did think he was “cute”. Kinda a disturbing realisation. Three - uh. Kinda awkward… but, um, my boobs… they kinda went sorta hard. I guess this is what girls had instead of… you know. Stiffies. (does that word have a plural?)
Also some uncomfortable, uh, dampness. Downstairs. Which kinda reminded me how empty I was there. Which kinda reinforced the redness. It was really embarrassing.
“Awww… is ickle Lara embarrassed?”
I kinda just stared at my feet at that point. Like I said, YES, I WAS EMBARRASSED. THIS IS NOT THE KIND OF THING I’M USED TO. CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME.
I mumbled affirmatively.
“I’m not surprised. Nearly everyone who goes through GDD comes out bi.”
“Nearly?”
“Yeah,” said Tina, nodding, “people who were originally gay or lesbian become straight. Basically how it works is that heterosexuality is added to your current attraction.”
RANDOM LANGUAGE FACT #1337 - Homo Sapiens vs. Homosexual.
Homo Sapiens literally means “wise man”, so it figures that “homosexual” is “attracted to men”, which would mean that all straight women are homosexual. But in homosexual, “homo” means “same”, but THAT means Homo Sapiens means Wise Same. Gaaah… language is confusing!
Anyways…
“So, um, you guys’re all bi now?”
“Er, no. Not me,” said Tina, “I’m just hetero.”
Gah, damnit.
“So, uh, you were gay before?” said Lisa, a little nervously. From what I knew of him, Leeroy had been a bit of a homophobe. Again, looks like Leeroy still had a bit of a grip on Lisa.
“I s’pose so, I hadn’t really thought about it that much, y’know? I wasn’t really that attracted to girls, but I wasn’t attracted to guys either. I’m just a normal girl now, I guess,” said Tina, shrugging.
“Oh.”
/whimper
“Um, we’re almost here,” said Leanne.
“Oh, cool,” I said, sorta half-heartedly.
As we filed off the bus… is that possible? Meh. As we got off the bus IN single file, I realised my brunette curls had fallen in front of my eyes again. I brushed it out of the way, and guess what, it swung back again. Woo! Annoying long hair!
“Lara? You need some help with that?” Tina asked.
“Oh, um. Yeah, kinda.”
“Kay, just face away from me for a moment,” she said, and before I was done turning, she’d pulled my hair into a high ponytail.
“Wh… what are you doing?” I asked.
“Just a moment,” she said, and holding it in place, she pulled something out of… one of the pockets on her dress, I think, I couldn’t really see. She’d wrapped it round my hair before I could blink, and then she let go.
Then she turned me around to face her. And she pinched my cheek. Omg.
“Aww, you look so cute like that,” she said, her face…
Okay, this might take a little bit of explaining. You know how there are all the different kinds of smiley emotes? :), =), :D, =D and so on. Probably the happiest of them is ^_^ in my opinion. I use it a lot, although the winking version ^_~ is pretty popular too. How you have a wiggly eye I don’t know. But, anyway, ^_^ is a very anime thing. Like… eyes closed from happiness. Kinda confusing. But that’s how Tina looked, and I <3’d that look a lot.
I started blushing again as we waited for further instruction from the teachers.
“Heehee, that’d be your bisexuality playing up, right?”
“Um, yeah,” I said, scratching the back of my head embarrassedly. I felt the ponytail, and reached down, where it fluffed out a lot at the bottom.
“We should really try using a hair straightener on that, I think you’d look hot with straight hair,” she said. Gah! She said I’d look hot! I mean, sure, I’d never have a chance with her, seeing as, you know, she’s straight, but if she thought I’d look hot, then sure as hell I’d-
“Alright, boys and girls,” said Melissa, her rather petulant voice acting as an interruption to my first PLEASANT inner monologue, “For those of you for whom this is the first time, please wait here. The rest of you know where your classes are, and I highly suggest you get to it.”
Allison and co. waved goodbye, as they filed through the gates into the school.
I looked at the building.
And surprisingly enough? It looked back.
The place was surrounded with security cameras, barbed wire, there were a couple of armed guards, and it looked more like a prison than a school.
Stupid goddamn foreshadowing. I wish I hadn’t been right.
We walked through an area that wouldn’t have looked out of place at the Berlin Wall during WWII, through another area that had HOLOGRAPHIC LANDMINES (I was so freaked out when I saw that explosion hit Mike) before passing through another place with HOLOGRAPHIC MISSILES. They were really having a field day with the holograms, as the holographic guards with holographic AK-47s shooting holographic bullets at holographic escapees showed. It… just… I mean, when did they even develop this kind of thing? It was so bloody over the top that I wouldn’t be surprised if they released ARMOURED TYRANNOSAURUSES with LASER CANNONS.
It was strange. We appeared to be staring at just an ordinary part of the fence, but you could see the barbed wire and guard posts all around it and inside it. And on it. It… was somewhat menacing.
“Sorry about the bleakness of it. We’ve… had to gain a certain reputation to continue to be approved by the government,” Melissa loudly said, her eyes blaring with a fire in them I hadn’t seen before. I looked around, and realised there must have other buses with infectees on them - it was a Monday, after all. The people who came over the weekend must’ve had to wait until today - a Monday - before they could come. What surprised me the most was the number of familiar faces there - fortunately, no-one from my family, but assorted school…associates. What was surprising was how easily I recognized who they used to be, even when they had changed so much. I don’t really know how. The hair colour and basic body structure helped, but I kinda just knew who they were. Unsurprisingly, Gary Fletcher was among them, although he was now a sullen, thin girl. A few other classmates whose names I don’t remember, including the daisy guy, a couple of bullies I knew, four girls (well, guys now) who I didn’t really have much connection with. Also, there was one brunette girl there who puzzled me. She was scanning the other kids here, much like I was, but when she came to me, she actually did a double take before turning away hurriedly and blushing. It was odd, to say the least.
“Hey… Mike?” I asked, looking at my friend.
“Yeah?”
“See that brown-haired girl over there?” I said, pointing.
“Um, yeah. What about her?”
“I… think she somehow recognized me.”
“How the hell could she recognize you? I don’t even recognize you!”
“I dunno!” I said, “Maybe she saw that picture that Feaura put up on the guild site!”
“… you think so?”
“I don’t know!”
“Please - quiet down, children!” Melissa said, over the hubbub that had risen. “Just follow me through here.”
Melissa fumbled in her pocket for a while before pulling out a big, red, button on an exaggerated remote. It was actually kinda funny, to be honest. She pressed the button, and the fence… er, it KINDA exploded. It more just went up in flame and kinda disappeared.
“This is the student entrance. This part of the fence is actually a hologram - you can walk through it fine, but… it’s somewhat more entertaining to blow it up when you enter. I, er, personally use it as a bit of stress relief. The other students have already passed through here. Now, if you could continue to follow me…”
We walked through an area that wouldn’t have looked out of place at the Berlin Wall during WWII, through another area that had HOLOGRAPHIC LANDMINES (I was so freaked out when I saw that explosion hit Mike) before passing through another place with HOLOGRAPHIC MISSILES. They were really having a field day with the holograms, as the holographic guards with holographic AK-47s shooting holographic bullets at holographic escapees showed. It… just… I mean, when did they even develop this kind of thing? It was so bloody over the top that I wouldn’t be surprised if they released ARMOURED TYRANNOSAURUSES with LASER CANNONS.
Eventually we made it to a huge, metal door. Melissa pulled out the remote again, and this time the door shuddered slowly open. When the Star Wars droidy things rolled out and started shooting lasers, she hit the button again and they disappeared - this was a really diverse remote for only one button. More doors, more droidy things, more hologuards…
“This is the school.”
Okay. This room will take a bit of explaining, but this is what it looked like.
In one of the doctor who episodes, those weird cat-nun-nurse-people are running a hospital where they have cures for everything, which they learn from studying people who have been infected with every disease. There’s a huge room with a whole load of levels with pods that people go in.
Then think of The Matrix - with all the sleeping (dreaming? Matrixing?) people in THEIR pods, lying down, sleeping and with plugs sticking into them. Fortunately, there weren’t any plugs here, just little electrodes attached to their heads. Also, these people had clothes on, the pods had some kinda gel at the bottom which actually looked really comfy, the tops were open, and the people in them were smiling. It - in short - looked like a kinda human incubator.
“In co-operation with Xianking Studious in Korea, we are proud to present the latest in education technology. A coalition between scientists has found a way to direct the learning directly at long-term memory while the user is comatose, while keeping the conscious mind active and controlling an… er,” Melissa paused, rummaged in her pocket for a few moments, before pulling out some cue cards, “intuitive full-body interface allowing internet access and most PC-based games. We are currently working on Macintosh and Linux operating systems, as well as console games.”
Wait. What?
Xianking Studios was the aforementioned profit-crazy Netherworlds developer. This probably meant that while we were sleeping, we could…
“The gel pods are designed for perfect support of the body and the electrodes are self-attaching. As soon as you’re considered ‘comfortable’ by the machine, they will attach and you’ll become comatose. Your pods are on level 17. 1 through 15 are filled with the GDD animals capable of receiving this information, 16 is filled with the other base-human classes, 18-30 are currently vacant. Take any pod you want, the numbers don’t mean that much - you‘ll have to use the same one each time, though.”
Okay, so 16 flights of stairs in any direction is tiring. It’s a pity we had to go up. But once we get there, we finally got a closer look at the pods.
Each of them had a little logo on them - what was kinda weird is that must’ve them had little markings on it. I s’pose it was Xianking’s little marks, but each of them was the icon for one of the classes in Netherworlds. Shield for warriors, dagger for rogue, sword for fighter, one-hand mace for barbarian, burst of light for priest, burst of fire for mage, burst of shadow for summoner, a paw for druids, a leaf for naturalists, 2hand mace for justicar. And five I hadn’t seen before - a sword, dagger, bow and stave, each of which had a skull on the handle. And the last was a skulled crown.
There was only one pod each for the skull ones, while there were 10 of each of the others. I noticed Mike having a look at the justicar pod, but I pulled him, Brit, and Lisa over.
“C’mon, let’s go to those skull pods on the end,” I said.
“Huh? I thought she said it didn’t matter?” Brittany said.
“Exactly, so we may as well go to the unique ones.”
Mike shrugged, and he and Lisa followed. Brittany hesitated before following us up there.
I climbed into the dagger pod (rogues are so overpowered, so… why not?) - the gel moved a little under my feet but moved back when I pulled away. Mike was about to climb into the crown one when Melissa hurried over.
“Sorry, that one’s reserved…”
Again - what? I thought it didn’t matter, but… eh.
Anyways, I got into the rogue-y pod. Brittany took the staff, Lisa took the bow, and Mike took the sword. I lay down, adjusted myself quickly and blacked out.
Netherworlds had a lot of different races, as well as the ability to decide on a dungeons-and-dragons type alignment, which determined what quests were available and who you could group with. Liara, Taur’othen, Gorokka, Brynhilda, and the rest of Dyslexics Untied (our guild) were Neutral Good, which as far as I can tell is basically obeying the law but only if people are watching, and trying to help people as much as possible. Chaotic evil guilds were so common that it tended to make world Player vs. Player combat really imbalanced, because Chaotic Evil is going around slaughtering stuff not paying attention to what people THINK, and because you’re chaotic you’re allowed to kill pretty much anyone that you don’t have loyalties to, and sometimes people that you do.
Chapter 11
By Taveena
Author's Note:I'm actually pretty happy with this one, I think the extra time payed off. Comments would be great, feel free to be harsh.
---
I was lying on my face. Also on my boobs. They were squished.
I groaned and pushed myself up.
I was lying on a mat on the floor - with a blanket on me. No actual pillow, by the looks of it.
I looked around the stone-cold room and realised how cold I was. I was wearing… a…
I goggled.
Desperately looking away from myself, I noticed there were two other girls in the room. One of them was wearing a kind of dress with a long slit all the way up the side of the leg. She looked… maybe 16? 18? There was a long staff, very similar to the priest one in Netherworlds, lying next to her mat.
The other was an elf girl with really long, blonde hair - like, maybe a metre down her back? She had a bow and quiver next to her mat. I investigated the smallish sized quiver.
There were around 30,000 arrows in it.
Yup. This was Netherworlds, definitely. Netherworlds II.
That, at least, explained why I was covered in fur, my ears had slid up my head and morphed into cat ears, I’d gained whiskers and a cat nose, and I had retractable claws. They made no noise as they slid in and out, but… heh, it was cool.
There was a mirror in the room - my eyes had changed colour but not shape. They were basically human eyes that were coloured weirdly - like cat-green with pure black pupils.
The elf - really long ears, by the way, like 50 centimetres (about 1.6 feet?) - began to stir, while the human groaned and pushed herself up.
“Urgh…” she said, messaging her head.
“Hey, Brit,” I said.
“Hm?”
“Lara here. I think we’re in Netherworlds II.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Since when,” the elf said, presumably Lisa, her voice muffled by the mat, “was my hair this long?”
“Lis, your hair’s been this long since you changed.”
“Oh. Yeah. Then what’s with the ears?”
“You’re in Netherworlds.”
“Ah.”
Lisa pushed herself up, and opened her eyes. They were startlingly blue - like human eyes, but it all had a blue tint. They glowed blue.
“Okay. So I’m some kind of elf,” she said.
“A high elf hunter, I think… Brittany’s just a human priest, and I’m a…” I looked down.
There was a pair of twin daggers next to the mat I was on, as well as a pile of light leathers.
“Yup. Felis rogue,” I said.
“Um… right. So what do we do now?” Brittany asked.
“I… think we’re playing hero classes. Otherwise everyone else would be here… the people on the bus didn’t mention anything like this, so I think this is a first.”
“Dang right it is,” said a voice from outside.
“Leanne?” asked Lisa.
“Yeah, Tina n’ Allison’re here too, ‘swell as your boytoy,” she said. I heard Mike’s petulant voice object obscenely to that.
“ You guys dressed?”
“Um…” I looked down.
“I think the answer to that is a definite ‘no’,” said Brittany.
“Just… hold on.” I pulled the leathers on. It felt kinda wrong - like I said, I’m vegetarian. But this was starter gear. It didn’t come from anywhere. Or anyone.
“Yeah, okay. Come in.”
Leanne, Tina and Allison came in. I was… surprised, although I suppose I shouldn’t have been.
Leanne… was… a half-ogre. Which basically meant she looked the same, only bigger. And stronger. And more huge-hammer-holding-y. Allison didn’t look the same, except in the broader facial structure, and the hairstyle. She was an orc, and therefore green. With tusks. She had a pair of axes. Mike had stayed human and looked mostly the same, but he’d gained maybe 30 cm and a couple of kilos of muscle. Also a sword. Tina also looked mostly the same… only about a metre shorter.
“Oh… my… god… Tina! You’re adorable!” said Brittany, picking Tina up almost effortlessly and hugging her like a doll.
“Gerroff!” she said, and Brit put her back down.
The tiny gnome mage Tina had become was, like I said, really short, but her eyes had grown hugely as well and her face had been majorly chibified (look up chibi if you don’t already know what it means). She looked… just… well, cute. There, I said it. Not attractive, unlike the girl on the bus who I’d met earlier, though they were very similar. Cute in the same sense a puppy is.
Okay. She was… about… 50 cm high. Yes, she was shorter than Brit’s ears. Weird, but… yeah, that’s gnomes for you.
By the looks of it, Netherworlds II was basically the same as the first with a frikkin’ huge graphical upgrade.
“So, um… I’ve never played Netherworlds,” Leanne said, “but I heard there were faction type things in it.”
“Sorta… you ever heard of alignments? Like in dee n’ dee?”
“Er, not really…” she replied.
Netherworlds had a lot of different races, as well as the ability to decide on a dungeons-and-dragons type alignment, which determined what quests were available and who you could group with. Liara, Taur’othen, Gorokka, Brynhilda, and the rest of Dyslexics Untied (our guild) were Neutral Good, which as far as I can tell is basically obeying the law but only if people are watching, and trying to help people as much as possible. Chaotic evil guilds were so common that it tended to make world Player vs. Player combat really imbalanced, because Chaotic Evil is going around slaughtering stuff not paying attention to what people THINK, and because you’re chaotic you’re allowed to kill pretty much anyone that you don’t have loyalties to, and sometimes people that you do.
Usually in PvP it just goes good vs. evil, with neutral people randomly being assigned a side. This being an online game, there was the obligatory capture-the-flag type PvP with the tagging people being replaced with KILLING THEM. Taur’othen usually carried the flag, Liara kept her alive with her l33t healz.
This is basically what I said to them, only a little more paraphrased.
“Umm… right… so, uh, what are we?” Tina asked.
“I… don’t know. Um, usually you can tell because of the quests you get…”
“So do we look for giant floating exclamation points? Or should we try to find some kinda quest log?” Leanne asked.
“Hmm… well, I checked Lisa’s quiver, and there’s 30k arrows in there, so I think gameplay is kinda more important than realism… so maybe we should check our bags or something?”
“We have bags?”
I sighed. “Yes, Allison, we have bags. We’re not going to carry around all this stuff in our pockets. Look,” I said, “You guys should probably go back to your rooms and get your bags and stuff.”
“Oh, um… okay…” Leanne said. She headed towards the door again, Tina and Allison following closely behind.
Something… something snapped. In me.
“Uhh… Mike? Don’t you need your bag?”
“Oh, um. It’s in here…”
I was in an inexplicable virtual world, created by the people who stuck me like this.
“Wait, what?”
“Um, yeah, I kinda woke up here… so I left to see if I could find anyone else…”
I was stuck kilometres away from home, lying in some science-fiction reject ‘facility’.
“Oh, do you know which one’s your bag?”
“I think it’s the biggest one…”
And I had lost my… my… downstairs. How the hell had I coped up until now…
“Woh… that’s a big sword. You sure it’s not compensating for anything?”
… my body. My family.
My life. It had been stolen.
I sat down, and started crying. What could I do?
Who the hell was Lara? Why had I adapted? Why was I able to ignore this? And why wasn’t I able to now?
Because Aaron didn’t have anything Lara didn’t have, and Lara has more.
My manhood. Lara doesn’t have that.
So?
What do you mean, so? It’s my fucking PENIS.
… um, okay, so now you have a vagina. How’s that worse?
Because it’s a girl’s part?
So what? How is being a girl worse?
“Hey? Guys?” I asked.
“Yeah?”
“How… how do you cope with this?”
“Cope with what?” Mike asked.
“THIS!” I gestured at myself.
“Being a catgirl?”
“No! Just… being a girl!”
“Lisa’s got a traumatised memory as a boy. Brittany was a suppressed transsexual. I was, too…” Mike said.
“Huh?”
Mike sighed. “I hated being a girl, and I wanted to be a guy. I didn’t know what I was until Brittany told me. I tried my best to… girl up, I s’pose… but meh. This is kinda a dream come true. You never wondered why I said I should be the tank?”
“Well, you were playing a male character, so you had better stats.”
“Mhm. And why was I playing a male character?
“Because they had better stats for t-”
“Going in circles there, Lara,” Lisa said, smiling slightly.
“That’s not my name.”
“I used to think I was a lesbian,” Mike said, “but then I realised… I was just straight. Have you heard of Autogynephilia?”
“Um, no… is that something to do with pregnancy cars or something?”
“Nah, not really. Mostly it’s just a word conservative assholes use to describe transgirls like Brittany. What it’s supposed to mean is that you get turned on by imagining yourself as a girl - and usually that’s because of the sense of taboo that comes with it. Not always, though, sometimes there ARE people who are like that, but… well, the female-to-male version is autoandrophilia. I guess I used to have that, but my parents were cool with it, so I started being Mike at home. I dunno if there’s a word for what I did have, though.”
“Wait. What did you have?” I asked. I don’t even know if I wanted an answer.
“Extragynophilia, I guess would be the right word.”
I blinked. “You get turned on by the thought of other people as girls?”
“No. Just one other person. And now… everything’s right with us.”
“Wh… what?”
“It’s all good. Now, we’re both in the right bodies,” he said. He was kinda getting creepy.
“Mike… no, I’m…”
“You’re bi now. You can’t say you don’t find me att-”
“Wrong.”
“Huh?”
I took a deep breath. “Mike, I dunno why, but I’m still only attracted to girls. You’re a great friend and all, but I’m not interested in you in that way, okay?”
“But…”
“Seriously. ‘you can’t say you don’t find me attractive’? You know how much of an asshole you sound like that?”
“Lara, I-”
“That’s not my name,” I said, and I left the room. Which overall was a dumb choice, seeing as that assassin was right outside.
---
“Rise, Shadowstalker.”
“Don’ wanna.” I mumbled, blearily opening my eyes.
Something pieced through my chest, and I was held up to eye level of the monstrosity, like an unidentifiable piece of meat on a kebab. I looked blurrily around. Looked like I was in some kind of big, circle, stone-walled room with no obvious routes of escape.
“Norae delcuf dunim,” the voice intoned. I suddenly discovered what having a vacuum cleaner sucking your insides out from both ends felt like.
“Weak. She will learn true strength,” it said, and I was wiped off his sword. I heard deep footsteps echo away, slowly.
“… She, my ASS,” I muttered, pushing myself up. The stab wound from where… the guy… had impaled me had started oozing. Not bleeding, but oozing tarry black stuff. Eww.
I pushed myself up, noticing my skin had gone a purplish-grey tint. My ears came to a slight point, as I felt my face I realised it wasn‘t furry, and it seemed that I wasn’t a felis any more. Random race change? Woo?
The ooze clotted up pretty fast and my body seemed to heal really quickly. And then, I noticed I was naked.
I groaned.
“Okay… clothes…”
I looked around the large, circular room. There were a couple of crates nearby that I tried to open and failed at. There was a skeleton near the edge that had some armor that it turned out was way too big for me.
“Mike? Lisa?” I called. No response, can’t say that shocked me. Not that I would’ve been to happy to see him here, especially with me naked. Never thought he… she… would have turned out to be such a chauvinist… you wouldn’t think it was possible considering everything SHE’D been through. I don’t care what Melissa said. Or even what Allison said. I’m a boy. Just because I don’t look like one right now…
Right. More immediate problem. Stuck in netherworlds II. Want to buy logout button?
As the demon charged again, I took a grab at its ear after I dodged. It didn’t do anything to STOP the hippo, of course, but I think I got it angry. Probably not helpful - it’s not like it can stun itself any harder, right?
I took my booty as it charged, (not my ass, you sick pervs. The shard.) and hit the hippo in the eye, which started oozing. Yay!
Chapter 12
By Taveena
Author's Note:So much time, so little output. Sorry. This stuff is kinda spawned from depression in class, and I've been channeling that into Linerider recently. Also, I downed Icehowl AFTER writing this. Hell, I'm pretty sure I wrote that part pre-3.2. If you're not a WoW player, ignore everything after Linerider. Except the story. Which you should totally commend on.
After a few more circuits of the room, it became pretty clear there wasn’t a way out. I found a piece of ribbon, oddly enough… it was kinda bloodstained, though. I inexpertly tied my hair in a low ponytail in the hope it’d let me look a little more boyish. Oh, yeah, there was a little puddle of SOMETHING black and reflective… maybe it was the ooze from before… near the edge. Turns out I’ve sprouted a couple of tiny horns from my forehead, and my hair’s gone back to normal. Simple enough to work out, now I’m a tiefling. Huzzah. A relatively human demon-type thing. Urgh.
Then there was the growl.
I turned around, and it was a very inhuman demon-type thing. How it got here, I don’t know, I’m in a room with no exits or entrances. But it was there now. Which was KINDA a problem.
It lowered its head, and charged, smashing me against a wall before I knew what had happened. I heard a few ribs snap then. And it HURT.
It backed off, and I got a proper look at it as my wounds inexplicably healed themselves.
Okay, felboars are pretty annoying beyotches, with their charge, knock back, chain-stuns, fire breath… there’s a reason most quests to kill them were designated as “group” quests. There first boss in crumbled tombs was a 3 headed felboar who had this annoying tendency to have half the raid stunned with a damage-over-time burn effect at all times. That was why we wiped the other night, the useless pickup tank didn’t have enough health to survive even one round of the stun… urgh. Anyways, back to the felboar in front of me.
I looked at the demonic thing, noted its glowing red eyes, its creepy green crystal spikes, it’s rounded snout, but most importantly of all… its yawning mouth.
Well, not felboar, as such. It looked like… okay, this is kinda dumb, but… it’s a felhippo. Yeah. Seriously.
Okay, they LOOK ridiculous. Imagine a black hippo with glowing green spikes poking out of it’s skin. Yeah, this was what I was fighting.
Fighting’s probably the wrong word, I realised as it charged me again for another round of downtiefling. (Downball… downtiefling… get it? No? Screw you), it was really more like… well, being charged by a super powered spiky hippo repeatedly. I fail at similes. Blame the aspergers. If I still have it.
I managed to dodge its charge this time, and it charged into a wall, becoming stunned for a few seconds before it charged me again. Hm.
This time I went on the offensive, throwing a kick at its snout. 2 ribs broken and something in my leg snapped. A bone this time, I think, but of course, I had apparently unlimited regeneration, so unless I got taken down from 100% to 0 in about 4 seconds, or got hit with an Aimed Strike or Mortal Shot or something else that reduced healing, I’m more-or-less invincible. But, apparently, not very high defence (No armour) and not very high attack (no weapons). Woot.
Another wall slam, damnit. I was ready for the next charge, though, and the hippo got stunned again. Apparently the AI is a little crappy. I once again jumped out of the way as it charged into the wall, before - urgh - shoving my hand up its nose, grabbing what seemed to be a rock up there, and pulling it out. The demon roared in pain (hippo roar?) as I inspected my (fortunately unmucused) booty - a green crystal shard like the kind that had been in its back.
I watched as the demon started oozing from the hole in it’s nose I’d left. And I worked it out - this is a minigame more than an actual boss fight. Remove the shards.
As the demon charged again, I took a grab at its ear after I dodged. It didn’t do anything to STOP the hippo, of course, but I think I got it angry. Probably not helpful - it’s not like it can stun itself any harder, right?
I took my booty as it charged, (not my ass, you sick pervs. The shard.) and hit the hippo in the eye, which started oozing. Yay!
I took advantage of this and wrenched out another couple of shards from its back, which I reapplied in its gums. The hippo had slowed down, buuut… the remaining shards were on its stomach. And thus began phase two. The hippo plodded over to the center of the room, ejected the shards from its stomach so quickly they stuck in the floor
The adrenaline had faded. I fell to my knees, looked at my ooze-stained hands, and realised I’d slowly, deliberately, and painfully killed something. I’d never done that before. I’d accidentally stood on insects in the past (though I tried not to) and I’d clicked on my fair share of monsters in Netherworlds, but I’d never deliberately ended ANY life.
There was a brief swirl of bluish lights and I found myself in a much smaller room. This one was rectangular, maybe eight metres by three, and was pretty clearly a jail cell, although they’d apparently decided to replace the bars with greeny-yellow fire. Looking around the cell, there was a mat that was evidently meant to be used as a bed, a bowl of some vaguely-breadish thing next to a jug of a strangely coloured liquid (Silvery-greeny-orange?) and what looked like the leather armour they’d taken from me earlier. Too exhausted to even think (again, urgh…) I collapsed on to the mat, bruising myself lightly, but managing to fall asleep. Sorta.
RANDOM LANGUAGE FACT #1338
I just looked it up on the internet and it turns out that homo means “same” in latin and “man” in greek. Or maybe the other way round, I’ve already forgotten.
“Lara… wake up… please?”
“No’ my name…” I mumbled.
I could practically hear the eye roll.
“Fine, Aaron. Wake up.”
“Meh.”
Someone poked me in the stomach.
“Maaaah…”
“You’re out of Netherworlds. Just get up.”
I groggily opened my eyes and saw the pod-room again. All the people on the other levels had woken up - the animals and the other classes. The green gel I’d been in had moulded into my shape… which I noticed, rather irritably, was about as hourglass as you could get without removing any internal organs. I mean, I’d imagine it’d be worse for Leeroy. Effing DDs at 15. DDs that were looming above me.
Leeroy… or Lisa. Sarah or Mike… Chris or Brittany. Rachel was still Rachel inside, Sam and Tom stayed the same… and I was still Aaron.
The nanobots must’ve totally fucked up Sarah’s brain, seeing as she thought she WAS a guy now. I dunno about Brittany, maybe she is a girl inside, I dunno. But I’d known Sarah for years and she’d never acted like a guy. I mean, sure, she never wore skirts or whatever, and she never really did anything with her hair other than tie it into a ponytail, but she DID wear her hair long and…
… um. Yeah. She had long hair. But so did a lot of guys, didn’t they?
I stopped thinking about her. How about Leeroy? He… she… um… THEY were a totally different person now. So… wait, was it actually a hidden part of the old Leeroy that I’d never seen? Was he closeted like Chris had been? Or was it because of the… stuff… with his father? It really doesn’t sound that bad, though. So his father was a little neglectful. Big whoop. I wish my father was…
Sam’s in more-or-less the same situation as me, as are Tom and Rachel. Leeroy and Sarah have gone insane, as have all the girls… boys… on the bus. Except Yvonne. Speaking of…
“Hey, Lara?” she said, grabbing my hand and helping me out of the podule.
“Not my name.”
“Aaron. Whatever. Can I chat to you in private?”
I glanced at Mi- Sarah.
“Yeah, sure.”
I followed her down the platform (You can see so far down it’s effing TERRIFYING) until we came to a closet. It was small. It was private.
“Wait, what?” I said.
Yvonne facepalmed.
“Just come inside, okay? It’s not anything NSFW.”
“Enn ess…”
“Not safe for work. Seriously. Just get over here.”
“You’re a bigger nerd than I am…”
“Leave it.”
“But seriously, half expecting you to-”
“I said leave it.”
[Liara] has logged on.
[Guild][Liara] hey guys ^_^
[Guild][Brynhilda] urgh
[Guild][Brynhilda] i hate pugs
[Guild][Liara] how’re yall doin?
[Guild][Liara] also pugs are cute
[Guild][Brynhilda]
[Guild][Taur’othen] heeeey, li!
[Guild][Liara] lol, haley
[Guild][Brynhilda] why lol
[Guild][Liara] no reason. ^_~
[Guild][Legolasz] omg is that ur name irl?
[Guild][Liara] ~maybe~
[Whisper from][Taur’othen] ur never going to tell them r u
[Whisper to][Taur’othen] tell them what?
[Guild][Legolasz] ur name is haley! Lol
[Whisper from][Taur’othen] that ur a guy!
[Guild][Taur’othen] no its not
[Whisper to][Taur’othen] they gives me teh phat lewtz cuz im a girl
[Whisper from][Taur’othen] they dont give gorokka “teh phat lewtz”
[Arcanus] has logged on.
[Whisper from][Taur’othen] also ur ont a girl!
[Whisper from][Taur’othen] not*
[Whisper to][Taur’othen] yeah but they know shes a guy
[Whisper to][Taur’othen] also half orcs arent hot
[Whisper from][Taur’othen] LOL! im telling her u said that
[Guild][Taur’othen] gorokka?
[Guild][Arcanus] hey guyz!
[Whisper to][Taur’othen] dont u dare
[Guild][Legolasz] its teh resident jinja midget
[Guild][Legolasz] ninja, argh
[Guild][Brynhilda] lol, ginger midget attack!
[Guild][Gorokka] bak
[Guild][Arcanus] dude im a mage
[Guild][Arcanus] not a ninja
[Guild][Liara] ginger ninja wizard! pewpewpew i will stealthily spiec ur drinks!
[Guild][Taur‘othen] lia thinks ur ot hot
[Guild][Taur’othen]] not hot*
[Guild][Arcanus] wut?
[Guild][Taur’othen] liara thinks half orcs arnt hot
[Guild][Gorokka] liara u racist
[Guild][Gorokka] anyway im hotter than u
[Guild][Gorokka] *twirls hair*
[Guild][Legolasz] shuold i b worried im kinda turnd on
[Guild][Arcanus] hell yes
[Guild][Liara] yes
[Guild][Brynhilda] yeah
[Guild][Arcanus] dude ur imagining a bunch of green pixels
[Guild][Arcanus] how can u be turned on
[Guild][Legolasz] correction
[Guild][Legolasz] a bunch of NAKED green pixels
[Guild][Gorokka] lol u a pixopheliac?
[Guild][Liara] u mean pixel hugger
[Guild][Gorokka] whatev
[Whisper from][Gogmoff] plz run me through death chasm
[Gogmoff] is now being ignored.
[Guild][Legolasz] well its not like im going to see any other girls naked!
[Speech][Gogmoff] why u mute my whispers
[Guild][Liara] :D LOL
[Speech][Gogmoff] r u even a girl IRL?
[Guild][Taur’othen] i know liara irl
[Guild][Taur’othen] i could get u some nekkid picturez
[Guild][Liara] hell no
[Speech][Gogmoff] A/S/L u cyber
[Guild][Taur’othen] hehehehe…
[Guild][Liara] screw it imma go play one of my alts
[Guild][Liara] cant get motivated to play lia
[Guild][Liara] also some orc noob is bugging me
[Guild][Liara] later guyz
[Liara] has logged off.
[Guild][Legolasz] so when do i get the pix
[Guild][Taur’othen] send me 500 gold and ill see what i can do
[Guild][Legolasz] done XD