I still remember my thoughts when I awoke. My first thought, as it had been everyday for the last year and a half, was thankfulness that I was still alive. My second thought–one that had been happening less and less frequently over the last couple of months–was that this was a good day because the pain was not totally debilitating. From then on, things began to get confusing.

Maybe I should explain a bit. For that matter, maybe I should apologize in advance if this narrative seems to jump about. My name is...no, my name was George LaPierre. I was a research scientist with a specialty in genetics and oncology. You see, all four of my grandparents had died of cancer at an early age and so had my parents–heck, I barely got to know my mother; she died when I was just six. I figured that my body was a ticking time bomb, just waiting to go off–and I was damned if I as going to “go quiet into that dark night” or however the quote goes. Selfish? Certainly. In my shoes, I expect you would be too.

It was at my mother’s funeral that I first announced that I was going to cure cancer. As you can guess, my father and my relatives humored me. After all, who takes a six-year-old boy seriously when he says he is going to change the world? Especially when he announces that he is going to cure something as ubiquitous as cancer rather than become a superhero like most kids.

After her funeral I was quieter, less apt to play with my friends and more likely to spend hours on end in my bedroom. It became very common, whenever my father would check in on me, to find me on my stomach with my feet up in the air and my elbows propping up my head as I stared at one of a collection of books about the human body. One of my presents for my seventh birthday was a new children’s book of anatomy. It was to replace the book I had worn out with my constant perusal.

At first, my father was concerned by the abrupt change in me, but one of the psychologists he was required to talk to where he worked–he was a nuclear physicist, and the government wanted to be sure that everyone working around “the project,” as they called it, was as stable as possible–advised him that I was just going through a particularly intense grieving process and that if I didn’t get over it in a while, my father should bring me in to talk to him. Lucky for me, Dad became caught up in his work as his own way of grieving and soon considered my behavior normal.

Do not get me wrong. I still did all–well most–of the things kids do. I played ball, climbed trees, debated the merits of various comic superheroes and went to school. I was a Boy Scout and still am–at least at heart, if you believe my best friend Paul. I developed an interest in girls at an early age–like I had a choice living on an army base–and I went to college, joined a fraternity and graduated summa cum laude. It might have been magnum cum laude were it not for that unfortunate incident at the lab where Professor Carlson was splashed with semi-permanent skin coloring. It had been meant for my lab partner, in response to his attempt to substitute alcohol for water during one of my experiments. Had I not recognized the distinctive aroma of ethanol, I might have blown up a good portion of the college’s Chem. Lab. Paul, yes Paul my lab partner, thought it was hilarious to see Carlson with a bright green face. The unfortunate part was that Carlson–Professor Carlson Waldorf Maldonado, yes that Carlson–did not, and tried to fail me. Luckily, I was good enough that he couldn’t make an “F” stick, but he did only give me a “C”–thus, the summa instead of magna. Oh well, I still ended up getting a better job than the girl who was magna cum laude.

Back to when I woke up. Once the initial joy of surviving to live another day passed, I examined my surroundings; pale green walls, fluorescent lighting and medical equipment everywhere. This was not my bedroom. It was not even Kansas –and if I had a little dog named Toto, the dog would not be around either. If the preceding didn’t make sense, perhaps I should explain that the morphine I’ve been taking makes thinking very difficult. It is like you are wading through a swamp and making the simplest connections is a major effort. That is probably why it took me so long to realize that I was in the same hospital room that I had been in for the last month and a half.

It is also probably why it took me so long to notice that the pain was gone, but then it is always harder to recognize the absence of something. My best friend Paul Goldblum–the same Paul from the Chem. Lab incident–is a trial lawyer and he would always complain that it was harder to defend the innocent ones than the guilty ones. For the guilty ones, Paul invariably found that they were playing pinochle or poker with their best buddies at the time of the crime. For the innocent ones he had to prove that they were at home, in bed, alone, with no witnesses. It must be my Boy Scout training, but I always silently cheered when Paul told me he really had an innocent one.

I think the same thing applies to pain. First, you have to realize it has gone–that absence thing. Then, and only then, you can begin to recognize the extent of its absence. Is it just the morphine dulling your senses so you cannot feel it? Are you still dreaming; imagining what it would be like to be pain-free again? Are you dead and feeling no pain at all? Believe me; given the excruciating pain I had been in, I had been wondering about death a lot lately.

It was not until I actually moved that I truly began to appreciate the absence of pain. I had cancer of the bones, one of the rarer forms of cancer, even for my family. Notice I did not say leukemia, which is effectively cancer of the bone marrow. They are both phenomenally painful, but there are treatments for leukemia, treatments to extend your life–sometimes a significant length of time. No such luck for cancer of the bones, especially once it had metastasized and spread throughout my body making surgical removal impossible.

As I said, the movement brought home the absence of pain. My joints did not ache. The muscles did not rub agonizingly against bones warped by the cancer, nor did I feel the sharp pain of snapping bone, weakened as the cancer leeched away the calcium so vital to healthy bones in milk commercials.

If I am depressing you, I apologize. That is not my intent. Did you hear the joke about the lawyer’s opening remarks in behalf of a client accused of breaking a valuable vase from the Ming Dynasty? Remind me at the end of this story and I will tell it–and in case you are wondering, I collect lawyer jokes. It is a defense mechanism, my way of getting back at Paul. As I’ve mentioned, Paul’s a lawyer and he’s always got another mad scientist joke to tease me with so, in self-defense, I “zing” him back with lawyer jokes.

Actually, I think I have it easier. Have you noticed how many lawyer jokes there are out there? If, as many suggest, there is a grain of truth in most humor, it does not speak well of the legal profession; although Paul has never, ever, given me reason to believe he was anything other than a hundred and ten percent honest. Why I remember once he found a satchel filled with money and he...well, that is a different story.

Thinking of Paul reminded me of why I was not in my own bed–or actually, our last talk together as he witnessed me signing the papers that got me here....

“George, are you absolutely certain you want to do this?” Paul asked as he stood looking worriedly down at me from beside this very same bed. “You know that there are always new procedures being developed, procedures that are not as radical as this one. You also know how much can go wrong between animal trials and human trials. I strongly encourage you to think carefully before signing these papers.”

I took the papers from his hand–or at least I tried. It only took me four attempts and I was too weak afterwards to reach for the pen. “Look at me Paul. I am dying–I have days, maybe weeks to live. There’s no time for a new cure.” I stopped to catch my breath. Even breathing was getting to be a strain and I had learned to speak through gritted teeth more than a year ago. “And even if I had the time, I’m not sure how much longer I’m willing to live with this pain.”

Paul nodded sadly. I knew he understood. We had had variations of this conversation for over a year. He was just being a good friend and trying to make certain I was making a considered decision. Rather than make me suffer the agony of further speech, he carefully placed the pen in my hand and guided it to the proper place on the paper. Once I was done signing and initialing, he took it all from me and notarized the document–I was hopeful, but neither one of us knew whether this was really my salvation or just a quicker, and more legal than suicide, way to attain the inevitable. He walked out of the room without another word, but I heard his ragged sobbing before the pneumatic door closer finished its task.

One of the interesting things about cancer cells, and I will try not to lecture here, is that they are really your own cells. Cancer is your own body, your own DNA, turning against you. Sure, there are pre-viral strands of DNA that enter the cell and live on the helix, but they seem to be segments of DNA, in effect part of the human genetic matrix. It is just recently that we discovered that the cell changes result from the waste products of those pre-viral strands interacting with selected segments of our own gene strands on a number of different chromosomes. In effect, the little bastards shit all over us, causing mutation.

The problem has always been that we can’t seem to kill the pre-viral strands without killing, or at least mortally wounding our own cells; and efforts to eliminate just the specific cells using lasers and surgery haven’t always worked because it doesn’t always get all the pre-viral strands. They are still in the body searching for a likely cell to make into home sweet home.

The goal of my research was to develop a pre-pre-viral strand. In effect, we wanted to build a critter that would attack the pre-viral strand. It is like the limerick–sorry, you would think I would have remembered the exact quote, but things have been a bit difficult lately. The part I can remember goes something like this:

 

 

Well, I accomplished that. I built an even smaller strand of DNA–really just a clump of the four proteins from which DNA is comprised–and designed it to only attack partial strands of DNA. AND IT WORKED! It actually worked. Our protein clumps would only attack partial strands of DNA and destroy them. In the process, it also eliminated the mutagens in the cell nucleus and gradually allowed the body to replace the damaged cells with healthy new ones.

However, that was only half the battle. The other half was to speed the healing and cell replacement process so that the body regenerated itself before it died from the double insult of cancer and the war of viruses as the protein clump, or prion as it’s called, killed the pre-viral strand. For that, we turned to the research of Dr. Chen-Liu and his colleagues. You have probably heard of him, or at least the line of topical skin rejuvenation formulas the cosmetics companies have created based upon his discoveries. Not as well known but, in my opinion, much more important are the injectable “scrubber viruses,” as he calls them, that clean up the waste material in the cell and dispose of it in the kidneys and intestines. For some still unknown reason, it also served to increase the rate of cell regeneration–sometimes logarithmically depending upon the strength and purity of the viruses injected.

We were able use this as part of a one-two punch to cure cancer. The first step was injection of our protein clumps to kill the pre-viral strands and the second step was to flush the clumps, the strands and the damaged cells from the body. We used the completely undiluted version given the tremendous amount of cell repair needed.

That brings me back to waking up pain-free for the first time in recent memory. Paul was there, looking haggard. He had not shaved in several days and given his tendency to forget to eat when he’s concentrating on something, I was betting he hadn’t done much of that either. I stretched and groaned as I used muscles that had been dormant for a while and he was instantly awake and by my bedside.

“How,” I croaked and tried again, “How long?”

“A week and a half. How are you feeling?”

“Probably better than you, if looks can tell anything,” I gave him a wan smile to show that the croak was not a problem. “How long have you been here?”

“Since you were injected. Last night, the doctors said it was too early to tell for sure, but that you seem to be fully recovered. Everything went exactly as predicted. They removed the IVs with the morphine drip late last night.”

“Everything?” It was great news to hear that the cancer was gone, that I would be able to live, and that I would live without excruciating pain, but the procedure had a down side too, one I had been unwilling to consider seriously until now.

“Everything,” Paul answered quietly, searching my face for any indication of how I was going to take the news. He looked strange, almost wistful, which didn’t seem quite the right emotion for a best friend, but I brushed it off as the last traces of the morphine still playing havoc with my thought processes. Besides, I had “more important things to consider.”

With a tentative movement, my right hand–did I tell you I was right handed–moved slowly up my body. I felt it move across my stomach, past my ribs, and finally to rest on my chest. They were small, but they were there. Two of them. Fleshy masses. Breasts.

I did not realize I had been holding my breath until I released it with a hiss. Paul nodded, “That’s correct. Breasts. The doctors tell me that they will grow larger as you regain some of the mass you lost to the cancer. They tell me the rest is anatomically correct too.”

Turning for a moment, he reached to the nightstand and picked something up. The same man who had shouted down prosecutors, who had won our college fraternity’s Dollars for Decibels contest by shouting louder than anyone else, spoke so softly that I could barely hear him. “Would you like to see yourself?”

The answer was a no-brainer, but still I hesitated as all sorts of thoughts ran through my mind. The one side effect of this treatment, the treatment I had helped create, was that it destroyed all partial DNA strands. While this meant that some cells in the process of mitosis were erroneously destroyed, that was a small consideration in my decision to volunteer. After all, the scrubbers used in the second half of the process would just clean them out along with the rest of the waste. The bigger problem was the “Y” chromosome.

Have you ever looked at images of the human gene structure? Sure, most people know about the forty-six chromosomes, but fewer people consider how the “Y” chromosome looks like a withered up “X” chromosome with one leg missing. That is right the protein clusters considered the “Y” chromosome a strip of partial DNA and eliminated it. The “scrubbers” got the body to repair each helix, but had no “Y” chromosome to build on, so it duplicated the “X.” In effect, I was now genetically and physically female.

Now the thought of being female did not bother me. That is not why I hesitated. If someone were to ask me which sex was the better one, I would probably just look at them like they were crazy and offer a quasi-witty response like, “The one not paying the restaurant bill.” What bothered me was that I would have two identical “X” chromosomes. Do you have any idea how many “X”-related genetic disorders there are? I will make this easy. We already know of more than two hundred and more are being found every day. I was deathly afraid that I had done little more than exchange my cancer for some genetic death sentence. That is why I hesitated. I was scared, so scared that I just nodded my head rather than speak.

Paul took the hand mirror he had picked up from the nightstand and held it before me. My face was very much like my mother’s, and as my father had reminded me often before his death, it was a beautiful face with gray-blue eyes, a pert nose and eminently kissable lips but that is not what I was looking for. I looked for the telltale signs of genetic disorder. “What about the blood work?”

“Not all back yet, but so far the doctors say there are no signs of any identifiable genetic disorder.”

Not bad for a lawyer, I thought. He had really been listening when I described the risks and benefits of the procedure. Of course, he would have had to since he was the one who would have had to defend my decision in a court of law had anyone challenged it. Thank god that had not happened, or I would have been long dead before it was agreed that I could do what I wanted with my body. Actually, I was lucky. The fact that the research was done on a military base meant that there was sufficient security to prevent too many people from finding out and sticking their fingers into my life–or death.

“So can I get out of bed?”

“I don’t know. Let me ring for the doctor and we’ll see.”

It was seconds after Paul rang that the doctor entered. It was as if they were monitoring the room, just waiting to be called; it made me feel important until I reminded myself that this was not a general hospital. There are reasons for adages like “Don’t volunteer.” At a military base, too much attention is rarely good.

He did the basics, blood pressure, listening to my heart, thumping my back, checking my ears, nose and throat, and incidentally driving me crazy as he refused to answer any of my questions. Finally, he looked at the medical chart, “uh-hummed” a couple of times and looked at me–my eyes not my still growing breasts–at least until he spoke. “Well George. It looks like you may want to start thinking about a new name. Of course, with experimental treatments such as this, we can’t be certain, and you understand that we will not pronounce you cancer-free until you’ve gone at least five years with no new symptoms, but all indications are that the treatment was a complete success.”

“What about the genetic studies? Do I have a clean bill of health there too?”

“The nurse handed me a bunch of results that should include the last of them just before I came in here,” he took several lab slips from the pocket of his hospital greens and sorted through them. “Yes, here it is. Uh-hum. Yes. You test clean for all known, diagnosable genetic conditions.”

“So when can I get out of here? I’d like to walk around a bit.”

“As soon as you’re able. We have nothing to compare your experience to, so we will work at your speed. If you think you can do it, we will try it. Shall I call a nurse to assist you?”

“Yes please.” With that he left, leaving me smiling like an idiot and Paul shuffling his feet uncomfortably.
“What?”

“I um, I guess I should go now,” he stuttered and actually blushed.

It took me a moment to figure out what the problem was–remember I said I was still a bit slowed down by the last vestiges of morphine. When I finally realized, all I could say was, “Oh.” The nurse’s arrival interrupted our mutual discomfort session and Paul slipped out the door without another word.

Do you remember that book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? My training in biology tells me that this is not really true, but in terms of clothes, rituals and general body maintenance, it may well be accurate. Some parts are familiar but other parts are quite different.

For example, pants go on the same way, one leg at a time, regardless of gender, so do tee shirts and robes. The thing about reversed buttons takes all of one trial to figure out. Admittedly, the bra is a bit strange, but mostly because of its novelty–and the fact that it can be a pain to put on. The only other issue is the irregularity of women’s clothes. Much more selection than in clothing for men, women’s clothes seem designed to push the eye in one direction or the other with design features such as sweeping necklines, off the shoulder fashions and slit skirts.

The biggest difference in terms of rituals is the fine art of applying war paint, as I like to call it. There are just so many different options in terms of color, style and purpose, so many ways to apply it. I have often wondered if it was not some sort of defense mechanism. You know, smaller creature uses larger creature to protect it, much like those birds that perch, safe from predators, atop hippopotami and peck the bugs out of the skins of the hippos before they can cause the huge beasts irritation or even infection. If it is, I can tell you that it is a damn shame that any woman would feel so weak or in need of protection that she would feel the need to seek a protector.

Even bodily maintenance is similar, albeit more intense. Hair washing remains the same, there is just more to wash. Soaping down a body is soaping down a body, regardless of gender. It is just a bit different the way the nooks–I did NOT say nookie–and crannies are laid out. Then there is hair care, where things begin to get really different again.

Luckily, the nurse understood those differences even better than I after my weeks of intensive study as I prepared for this necessary transition. Patrice–that was her name, Patrice DeJesus–did not try to make me over into a woman right then and there. Instead, once she had done a bed bath, she gave me clothes I could handle, panties, jeans, a tee shirt, socks and sneakers. No bra, but then again, I did not really need one yet. She brushed my hair with a part down the middle to make it look a bit more feminine. Luckily, it was still a bit too short for any special treatment, not even a scrunchie to make a ponytail. We did not even talk about makeup that first day.

Finally, I was ready to stand up, but before she would let me, she called in an aide to help me in case I fell–and I almost did. It wasn’t that anything was wrong, I just hadn’t walked on my own for several weeks and physical therapy can only do so much, especially on an unconscious patient. No resistance, no muscle growth.

There I was. I was alive. I was walking. I was dressed. Life was great.

Wasn't it?

 

 

I had the freedom of the base. Actually, I had the freedom to go wherever I wanted, but I felt comfortable on the base, which is why I used one of the perks of my research position and rented quarters there where the brass could feel more secure about me as well as my research. With the PX for groceries and household supplies, the NCO club for the occasional libation, the base hospital to make sure I stayed healthy and work to fill any other voids left in my waking hours, my life was complete. Of course, now that I had survived, albeit with a change of gender, I threw myself into my research in hopes of solving the gender problem. I had actually convinced myself that gender was not an issue and that life would continue as before with minimal modifications such as a change of name from George to Kirsten, the name my mother had once told me I would have gotten had I been born female. Did I ever tell you about this bridge I keep in my back pocket? It is for sale–cheap.

There was no single event that brought reality crashing to the fore prior to that Thursday. Even that day had started off as a remarkably average day, two days shy of three months after I had awakened free of cancer–and a few other pieces of anatomy.

It started at the lab at around eleven o’clock in the morning. Felix Agutter and José Guttman were sitting by the electron microscope, taking turns examining a slide and arguing –again. That they were arguing was nothing new, they argued over everything from breakfast to bedding, girls to gametes. My role was to keep them on target. I remember once accusing them of arguing over so many things; all they had left to debate was how many angels could dance on the top of a pin, only to have them begin to debate exactly that. This time it was over the meaning of the latest test results showing that the protein clusters were remaining in my body long after we expected them to be gone. “The clusters cannot survive this long. In all our animal subjects they were expelled from the body within a couple of weeks,” Felix insisted. “They are regenerating somehow.”

“They can’t regenerate,” was José’s heated response. There is nothing to regenerate them. Somehow they are being reintroduced into her body.”

“Not possible,” Felix grabbed some papers off a nearby countertop and waved them at José. “This is a clean environment or we too would have them and our tests come back clean. Could it be that they are being reintroduced from some outside source?”

“No way José,” Felix responded, getting the desired scowl from his fellow researcher in response to the stereotypical statement. “No one else on this planet has these protein clusters. They do not appear naturally. Either her body is regenerating them or one of us is reintroducing them into her body.”

“Well, it’s not me and she has no reason to reinfect herself. You must be injecting her while she sleeps, José.”

“You could at least laugh when you say that. I guess we assume she’s regenerating them herself, Felix old boy.” He paused for effect. “Unless she’s reinfecting herself.”

“But she has nothing to gain from such an action and could actually be injured should it be determined that she is contagious.”

“Well, we’ve already ruled out contagion,” José tapped the papers again. “Could she be reinfecting just herself?”

At this point, I could see they needed some redirection. “Gentlemen?”

“Then maybe we’ve missed something and they really are regenerating themselves,” Felix grudgingly allowed. “Did her last MRI show anything unusual?”

“Gentlemen!” I tried again, louder.

“I don’t know,” he started flipping through files. “Give me a moment.”

“GENTLEMEN!”

“No coffee now. We’re trying to work here,” Felix grumpily waved me away without even looking up from his papers.

I gaped at him a moment, shocked at his boorish behavior before I laid into him. “How dare you? Where the hell do you get off making a comment like that, especially to the man who pays your salary? I ought to fire you on the spot and I guarantee you that it is not your personality that is the reason I am holding back. Now get out of here. Take an early lunch or something–and when you get back here I expect you to behave in a totally, you hear me, totally, professional manner.”

“Bye Felix,” José called out cheerfully as Felix stormed out of the lab. Apparently, he thought that meant he had won their debate. It was time to clear up that misconception also.

“And you,” I railed on him. “You’re not much better or have you forgotten the sound of my voice too? Until now, I’ve never stopped your incessant arguments, but I have expected to be able to be included in them and to be able to steer them in functional directions, at least while you’re in the lab.”

He hung his head, but didn’t quite wipe the smile off his face as he responded, “Yes, Ma’am.”

I think it was the “ma’am” that stopped me in my tracks. It was not wrong, but it just caught in my brain and seemed to jam the gears. Instead of standing there with my lips moving but no words coming out, I too stormed out the door.

When I returned from an extended lunch, Felix and José were back at work–silent. I got a polite nod when I entered and that was it. Every time I attempted to initiate a conversation, to loosen the tension, they responded with “Yes Ma’am.” or “No Ma’am.” and nothing else. Even my best lawyer jokes fell flat. I mean who does not laugh at jokes like “Why won’t a shark bit a lawyer? Professional courtesy.” or “What are 3000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A good start.” Even my very best, the vase joke I mentioned earlier, fell totally flat.

I did not have to be hit on the head with an anvil to realize what was happening; they were punishing me for being their boss. By the end of the day I was in a foul mood and happy to be leaving the lab for the first time in years. In hindsight, this probably set me up for the next blow. Paul came by to visit.

We usually managed to get together at least once a week, but I hadn’t seen or heard much from Paul in the last few months, just the occasional brief telephone call. Apparently, he had been tied up with an extremely complex case in another part of the state that had just been settled and he wanted to celebrate. We were to meet at the NCO Club and move on from there, so when I got back to my quarters I cleaned up and put on one of the two suit dresses I had bought in case I needed to present to some bigwigs. It was a simple navy blue and gray pinstripe that the saleslady had said looked “divine” on me. I also added the matching smoke gray pantyhose, navy patent leather shoes with the one-inch heels–she had pushed me to get three-inchers, but there was no way I was going to give up comfort for the sake of some saleslady’s image of the perfect female–and a simple white silk blouse.

Oh yeah, and a brassiere as I was now a 36C, whatever that meant. I cannot say that it was more comfortable to wear one, but it seemed less annoying than not wearing it, between leering enlisted men and unwanted movement as I bent over an electron microscope or reached into a specimen freezer. Finally, out came the scrunchie that had become a permanent feature of my attire and I ran my comb through my now shoulder length hair, then I grabbed my small, black, over the shoulder, utility purse. Sadly, I’d given up the wallet I usually kept in my back pants pocket prior to the change as I found it hard to put anything into the back pockets of women’s clothes, even baggy pants, assuming they even had pockets, which my skirt did not.

I was expecting him to be late and had planned accordingly, heading out a full fifteen minutes after the time he was supposed to meet me. If he was actually there on time, I was betting he would insist that I was early rather than admit to timeliness. His mother once told me he was even late coming out of the womb, which he claimed had set the tone for the rest of his life.

I once tried to pull his leg by telling him I expected him to be late for his own funeral but he just smiled knowingly and said, “I have every intention of doing exactly that.” It took the wind out of my sails and I had had to scrounge around for another way to tease him that night. If memory serves I ended up picking on his tie, one of those gag ties from the Warner Brothers Store with Taz ® dressed in a judge’s robe and one of those white powdered wigs, leaning over the bench to pound Elmer Fudd ® with his gavel while Bugs Bunny ® looks on laughing. As I recall, I kept asking him which one he was supposed to be and looking askance at him whenever he said he was Bugs. That tie saved the night and I hoped Phil would be as obliging again soon.

When I got to the NCO Club, I checked the bar and dining room to see if he had showed up on time for the first time ever. Once I had confirmed his ability to maintain tradition, I grabbed a stool at the bar and ordered a 7&7, laying out a twenty to cover the cost of drinks and tips for myself –and for Paul when he finally arrived. After taking a long, cool, refreshing swig, I set the plastic glass down and sighed. That is when I noticed the twenty was laying on the bar untouched.

“Hey Joe.” All bartenders are called Joe, are they not? Someone once told me it was part of the labor-management agreement. “You forgot your money.”

He looked up from the drink he was preparing and raised a finger to tell me he’d be with me in a moment, but before he could get back to me, an innocent-faced kid in fatigues tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a nearby table with three buddy-clones grinning hard enough to be just short of drooling. “My buddies and I paid for your drink. Would you care to show your appreciation by joining us?”

Now I remembered why I did not go to the NCO Club as often as I used to. It was nearly impossible to avoid the frequent pickup attempts by flocks of sex-starved teenagers. In memory of my own clumsy attempts at his age, I decided to be gentle, “Thanks for the offer, but I’m waiting for someone.”

“We don’t mind. Come sit with us until he arrives. That way there won’t be any more pickup attempts.” He waited expectantly, but I had heard that one before.

“Good try, but no thank you. Next you’ll be telling me that you have a bet with one of your buddies that you can get me to kiss you or something before the end of the night.” I still felt a responsibility to be gentle with him in memory of my own experiences so I waved to Joe and told him to buy a round for “Innocent-Face” and his buddies.

Turning back to my drink, I was surprised to find a hand on my arm gently trying to pull me from my stool. “Aw please Miss. We’re awfully lonely. Why don’t you try to be a bit more friendly?”

My mellow mood was gone and all the grief I had received from José and Felix came crashing back. How dare he try to tell me what to do! Smoldering, I slowly removed my arm from his grasp and whispered through clenched teeth. “Soldier, I strongly suggest you slink back to your friends right now and find some other way to occupy yourselves. You do not want to get into a brawl here. All the MPs will do to me is ask me to leave, but you could find yourselves doing KP, or worse, for the next month.”

He finally returned to his table and I turned back to my now unwanted drink. Pushing it aside, I turned my seat towards the Club entrance waiting impatiently for Paul to get his butt over here. My ears burned as I heard muttering from my erstwhile suitor and his friends, especially when I heard one phrase clearly, “Pukin’ Lesbian.”

I actually started to get up and stalk towards them, intent on the idea of cortical stimulation via sensitization of the pain receptors when I saw Paul standing by the entrance and squinting into the dimly light bar. Still angry, I considered inviting Paul to share the fun, but my self-control won the coin toss and I just stormed off to join him. When I reached him, I just kept walking, grabbing his arm and twirling him around so that I could pull him back outside while muttering angrily.

“Miss?” he sputtered from behind me. “Miss, do I know you?”

Once outside I stopped and turned back to him. Releasing his arm, I put y hands on my hips and growled, “What’s the problem Paul? Has it been that long since you saw me last?”

“George? I mean Kirsten?” His eyes widened almost enough to be mistaken for an anime character. “Is that you Kirsten?”

“Of course it’s me, and you’re late again, as usual. Now let’s get out of here before I drag you back in there and start a brawl with some snot-nosed kids.”

“Well okay, but wait just a minute while I get a good look at you.” He moved me under the entrance light, positioning me with his hands on my upper arms. Then he stepped back and just stared at me for a long while, long enough to make me uncomfortable.

“Enough already!” I brushed his hand off my arms and stepped back to let some other folks get by us and enter the Club. “So what do you want to do tonight?”

Paul claims that being a trial lawyer has honed his wit razor sharp, although I usually claim he is only half right, but he actually paused before answering. “I…I’m not sure. I was happy to get this latest case resolved and I just wanted to see my old friend and celebrate. I guess I didn’t plan beyond that.”

The corner of his mouth turned up just a bit and I knew he was about to offer a zinger. I was sure of it when he sounded "oh so pitiful" as he continued, “But here you are, and you’re not even dressed for dancing.”

Phil could instantly see he had made a mistake, as my face turned stormy and my fists clenched. He tried to backpedal. “Joking. I was joking. I sure got you this time, didn’t I?”

“Please tell me you didn’t just try to ask your best friend for a date,” I asked through teeth that were getting tired of being clenched so often.

“You know, until today I didn’t thing there were any major differences between men and women. I figured I was alive and that was all that mattered. Boy was I wrong.

“So far today, I’ve had intelligent researchers, people I’ve worked with for almost five years, exclude me from a discussion in my own lab and then have the audacity to ask me to get them some coffee. I’ve had the joy of being reminded that I need to wear different clothes than I’ve worn for thirty plus years, just to fit in enough to avoid a scene. I have had a group of fresh from the tailors non-comms try to pick me up and then publicly claim I was a lesbian because I said no. Now, my best friend, the guy I grew up with, who got mumps with me, who helped me with the knot tying merit badge in Boy Scouts, wants to date me. Since when am I your type, I thought you like the long legged, svelte bimbos with long wavy blonde hair and big tits….”

That was when I doubled over in pain and slowly collapsed into his arms. The damn fool was so surprised by my outburst he almost did not move in time to catch me. My last thought before everything went black was, “I bet he wishes he was holding one of those blonde bimbos instead of me.”

I woke up because sunlight was flashing over my eyes as a gentle breeze made the curtains in Paul’s bedroom flutter–and I was ravenous. If Paul walked in just then, I was going to start gnawing on his leg. Tossing the covers aside, I stood up and stalked toward the kitchenette, absently noting that I was wearing nothing but my briefs and an oversized tee shirt that must have belonged to Paul and that Paul was racked out on the couch in his living room.

Once upon a time, there was a television commercial. It was for an indigestion medication and the catch phrase was, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” As I sat there looking at the remains of Paul’s kitchenette, I couldn’t believe I’d eaten everything in it, probably a week’s worth of food for an adult male like Paul, and I’d eaten it all.

About half way through, Paul staggered in, saw what I was doing and gaped for a while before heading off to his bedroom to shower and dress. I think he left for a fast food breakfast because I could see the edge of a nearly empty cup of coffee with the logo for Dunkin Donuts on it on the end table by his hand as he sat in the living room watching television and waiting for me to finish.

Rubbing my pleasantly full belly and wondering where everything I had eaten had gone, I joined him, dropping down on the other side of the couch and comfortably crossing my legs on top of his coffee table. Paul just sat there watching me as I licked some icing off my fingers and watched CNN, something about a sudden, nationwide flare-up of criminal activity. Finally, I asked, “So what the hell happened and how did I end up here? The last thing I remember is doubling over in pain just outside the NCO Club.”

 

---

 

End -- Part One of Three

For the Love of Life

PART TWO OF THREE

by

Jaye Michael

 

Chapter Three:
Babe Tails

Did I mention that Paul is a lawyer? Have you noticed that lawyers never, ever seem to be able to give a simple, straightforward answer? If there was a fire in a movie theater, you could expect anyone but a lawyer to yell, "Fire!" A lawyer would want to interrogate the fire first to make sure that it was really responsible for the roasting flesh and burning chairs. Paul is occasionally better than that, but this was not one of those times. He stared up at the ceiling as he composed his thoughts, cleared his throat, and then answered me, "In my experience, the most difficult questions to answer are who, what, when, where, why, and how. I cannot even begin to tell you what happened leading up to your collapse, but I can tell you what I saw.

"If you remember, you were extremely angry, probably the angriest I've ever seen you. Again, I'm not certain why you were angry, certainly it couldn't have been anything I said or did," he smiled wanly, "but angry you were as evidenced by shouting, glaring, hunched shoulders and clenched fists."

"Paul."

"Yes?"

"Stop being a lawyer." Paul always hated it when I made the word sound like an expletive. "What happened already?"

He cleared his throat and tried again. "In a nutshell, you fainted and collapsed. I didn't think you'd want to go to the base hospital where all those male orderlies would be giving you bed baths et. al., especially after you blew up about some rubes at the bar, so I brought you to my car to go to St. Joe's. By the time you were in the car, you were mumbling about how you were okay, just very tired and how you didn't want to go to a hospital. Thus, I brought you to my apartment and put you to bed."

I blushed crimson as he told me he'd undressed me and put me to bed, but I wasn't sure if that was because he'd violated some gender-related taboo that I was now supposed to conform to or because I was embarrassed by how my body had changed. For that matter, I'd known Paul long enough that I was fairly sure that he was hiding something. I'd been able to tell ever since he admitted breaking the yo-yo he was supposed to give me as a present on my eighth birthday. A terrible weakness for a lawyer, he was just lucky I hadn't gone into the same profession.

"Thanks, I guess. But what is it you're not telling me Paul?"

"What makes you think I'm hiding something?" he asked indignantly. "I just did you a favor and you sit there in my tee shirt, on my couch, in my apartment, and call me a liar?"

"Paul?" He has this small artery just below his left ear that starts pumping like crazy when he's
lying. "Don't make me bring up the yo-yo incident again."

He actually considered denying it, even after the "yo-yo gambit," but finally he caved in, although I was not too sure listening to his elaboration. In America, we have an art form that started in the hills of Appalachia, was honed during lonely nights on the Great Plains and was finally perfected in the land of the Lone Star. It's called the tall tale and some of the classics involve Picos Bill or Paul Bunyon and his giant blue ox, Babe. Someone else might have guessed what he was going to tell me from the little signals I was getting from Paul and from my own body, but I was a genetic researcher and I knew the difference between a tale and a tail or at least I thought I did.

"Okay, you got me, again," he told me with that boyish grin that helps him win over the jurors, especially the female ones. "It happened pretty much like I told you, up to and including leaving the base to go to St. Joe's, but something happened before we got there.

"You know how Spaulding Boulevard is all lit up thanks to the Common Council's approval of billboards?"

"Yeah." I knew he had been opposed to that and had even spoken before the Council trying to get them to change their minds, but could not see where this was going at all.

"Well, it was a full moon, and we were passing through that stretch of Spaulding, and when we stopped at the light by Fulton Street I turned on the overhead light to see what I was doing as I reached over to check your pulse."

I was tempted to ask him when he'd picked up a degree in nursing but figured I'd just annoy him and he'd take that much longer getting to the punch line, so I just nodded noncommittally to let him know I was still listening.

"At first I thought it was a trick of the light, but then I looked again, more carefully. Your hair was longer. I couldn't tell how long because it was trapped behind you, but it was at least several inches longer, below your shoulder blades–and it was lighter, a platinum blonde instead of your usual dirty blonde."

What are you talking about?" I reached for my head to show him my hair, even after three months letting it grow; it still just missed reaching my shoulders. My hand came back with a handful of platinum blonde hair extending past my shoulder blades and halfway down my back. Knowing that hair is dead material and that it does not grow a foot and more overnight, I quickly scrambled about for a rationale explanation–and almost missed the obvious.

"Nice gag Paul. Which one of your girl friends did you put up to this? By the way, is it a wig or are they hair extensions?" I had tugged gently and it was not coming loose. I was betting on hair extensions because it felt like I was tugging on discrete bundles of hair.

"Neither. I think it's real."

"Paul, you know that this much hair can't grow overnight. It only grows at a rate of about a 32nd of an inch a day. Now come clean already." I was so sure he was still pulling my leg; I didn't even check that telltale artery.

"Then maybe you'd better check out another change. Look down."

"What?"

"Look down,” he repeated and pointed at my chest. “Don't ask. Just do it."

I figured I might as well humor him and looked down. "Two arms, two legs, two breasts; what's the problem?"
But I couldn't resist, I just couldn't let it end there. "Wait a minute. Two breasts? That's not right. How did that happen?"

Paul groaned so I went in for the kill. "I'm supposed to have three breasts. Where did you hide my middle breast, you thief?"

"Alright, wiseass. If you don't want to know, go get dressed and I'll bring you home." He turned to watch yet another report of the country's rapidly spiraling crime rate on the television and refused to speak anymore. I made a few half-hearted attempts to get him talking again, but then gave up; it wasn't that good a prank anyway. Standing up, I headed back towards the bedroom to look for my clothes.

"Check the mirror on my inside closet door while you're there," he called out as I was almost to the bedroom and then returned to his studious examination of CNN.

“Why? Is it missing?” I retorted–an absolutely abominable line if I do say so myself, but I humored him by walking over to the closet and opening the door–and saw someone else standing there. She was my height, but she was much more buxom. She oozed sensuality. Even the act of standing still with one hand resting on the doorknob seemed an invitation to unimaginably sensual delights. My mind raced, trying to rationalize it as another trick from my personal Loki, I mean lawyer, but came up blank. It was me; or rather, it was the woman I had angrily described to Paul back at the NCO Club less than twelve hours ago. Dressing forgotten, I stepped slowly backward until my legs made contact with a piece of furniture and I slid slowly to the floor, my back propped against the bed as I stared at the stranger in the mirror.

A couple of minutes later, Paul came in and stood by the door. He watched me sitting there, unmoving, staring at the image in the door. Then, with a sigh, he closed the closet door, knelt beside me and held me. I never realized how much I needed a hug until that moment and I hugged him back with sufficient force to draw a surprised grunt from him.

This seems like a good time to drop back ten and punt … er, punt-ificate. Having accepted with reasonable good grace the presumably more traumatic change from male to female, it might seem strange to have me break down over something as insignificant as a glamour makeover, even if it is one that might have cost a pretty penny given the breast enlargement and facial reconstruction, not to mention the lesser but still relatively astronomical price of hair extensions, dye job and perm. A lot of you men are going think it was just "wunna them thar woman things." ERNNNNT! Wrong. In fact, there were two entirely separate problems.

First, as a geneticist I was absolutely certain that this was impossible. Changes like this don't happen without some external source and there had been none. If it couldn't have happened, it must not have happened, yet it did happen so it must be possible, but it wasn't possible. See? It was cyclic logic, much like calculating pi to the last decimal place. It was the kind of logic that the heroes of cheap sci-fi adventures use to thwart the evil robot in the last reel. In effect, I just couldn't reconcile my years of study and research with the facts of what appeared to have happened.

Second, I had had years to live with and learn to accept my mortality and, more importantly, months to accept the absolute need to accept a change of gender if I wanted to continue to do the research to which I'd dedicated my life. I knew what would happen; I had even developed computer models that had predicted how I would look with surprising accuracy. In effect, I made a carefully planned transition from one me to another me. Yet here I now was, with no warning and no chance to acclimate, someone entirely different.

To be completely truthful, there might have been a third reason. I had accepted my change of gender as a necessity, much like brushing one's teeth to prevent tooth decay or wearing a seatbelt in case of an accident. Once it was over, I really did very little to acknowledge that my gender change had even occurred. I'd worn the same jeans and tee shirts as before, just a different size. I'd worked at the same lab with the same people on the same project as before. I'd lived in the same quarters on the base as before. I'd kept the same few friends as before. You get the idea; I had done the absolute minimum necessary to accommodate the changes that had been forced upon me. Yet, here I was looking like something out of my personal fantasies, read wet dreams if it will help. The way I looked now, I couldn't possibly minimize my new gender. Life with a brassiere wasn't going to be a choice but a necessity; situations like the rather clumsy pick-up attempt at the NCO Club would be frequent and inevitable. Heck, I was jealous that I could not date myself.

Now I'm sure you understand that all this wonderful introspection and analysis came later. What actually happened next was I finally regained sufficient composure to ask Paul to release me and he did, although a bit reluctantly.

Then, I had to convince him that I would be all right for long enough to get dressed. Alone, I put my words to action and dressed. He had left me with my panties on the night before and I had nothing to change into anyway so I left them on and added a borrowed pair of sweat pants to complete my lower half.

Did you ever notice that the more important something is the shorter the word used to describe it? The bra–it was a brassiere when there was a choice–was a total loss, painfully insufficient for my new and improved bust. Realizing that, I dropped the half-baked idea that I had been formulating involving accidentally forgetting to put a top on to tease Paul for sneaking a peek last night.

Knowing that some sort of support was absolutely necessary, I searched around in Paul's drawers–that's chest of drawers for those of you with other things on your mind. You'd think a guy with as many girl friends as Paul would have some female clothing left at his apartment, but there was nothing. All I found was an old tee shirt about three sizes too small. I think elves place them there during the night just so half awake people can struggle with them each morning, trying to get them on and wondering why they do not fit until they wake up enough to check the size on the labels.

The next trick was to tie it. They always look so nice on the magazine models, but it is not that easy, try it some time. I fumbled around with the tee shirt until realized that I needed to cut it open first, which I did with Paul's permission, and got it pulled tight and knotted in front. It wasn't a lot of support, but it was definitely better than nothing.

I checked myself in the mirror to see how I looked and almost decided to leave it that way, nipples poking through the thin cotton material, but reconsidered. I was looking to get home, not inflame lust. As you may have gathered, until now I had tolerated being female and had tried to make it something other than the primary focus of my life. I really didn't want to start now, so I went digging through Paul's clothes again, looking for something to wear over my handy-dandy new bra.

My cover up ended up being one of Paul's old flannel shirts, also tied off, but this time at my waist. Luckily it was early fall and it was getting a bit cooler so I wouldn't roast. Unluckily, I still looked like a walking advertisement for sensuality. Regardless, it would have to do since I was out of options. With a shrug of my shoulders, I headed back into the living room, returning to my same spot on the opposite side of the couch from Paul.

"Paul?"

"Yeah?" He acknowledged my question, but kept his attention on the news.

"Do you have any idea how this happened?" I surprised myself that I was so calm.

"I was hoping you'd tell me."

"And I was hoping you'd tell me. I realize this is no gag. The hair is real and so are the breasts. I want to say it's impossible, but the proof is right in front of my face." I watched his lip turn up into a leer momentarily, then his eyes studiously locked back onto the television, and realized he was thinking that I was right about the proof being in front of me, but that he felt it was a bit lower down on my anatomy than my face.

"I can't help you there, Georgie-Girl. You're the researcher, not me. I'm just a simple country lawyer." He still wouldn't look at me.

"Is there some reason why you aren't looking at me when I talk to you? And stop calling me Georgie-Girl. You know I hate it. When this happened I agreed to go by the name Kristen, in honor of the name my mother would have called me had I been born a girl."

"I prefer not to at the moment."

"What? You prefer not to look at me or not to call me something besides 'Georgie-Girl?'"

"Both."

I was flabbergasted. "Paul! What the hell is going on here?"

He finally took his eyes off the television, but still wouldn't look at me, instead staring intently at the coffee table. "I…you…it's..."

Now I was doubly flabbergasted; a lawyer, especially Paul, at a loss for words. The world was truly coming to an end. "I didn't quite catch that Paul. Did you say, 'You worship me for my brilliance and wish to humble yourself before me?'"

Now he added a crimson face to his stutters. This was going to be one for the annals. I'd never, ever gotten him so thoroughly flummoxed before. The only problem was I still didn't know how I was doing it. As I pondered how to press my advantage, I was shocked when he got up and stalked into the kitchen and then out the door, leaving me alone in his apartment.

Damn. What the heck just happened? This wasn't how the script was supposed to go. We were supposed to banter back and forth, sometimes one teasing the other and then the reverse. It was always gentle jabs, not knockout punches. We were best friends, blood brothers. We "grokked" each other. It had to be a gambit, a feint on his part. He was going to walk back in momentarily, laughing about how he'd "gotten" me. That theory was quickly shattered by the sound of a car driving away.

Running to the window, I saw that it was his car.

What had changed? How had things gone so wrong? It had to be...it had to be…my body. That's what was different. Not me. Not him. Not the apartment. Not our banter. My body.

I look back now and realize I was in a near panic state. I had somehow alienated my absolute best friend, my secret brother, the only person in the world I could tell anything. And it was all because my body had somehow done the impossible.

I wanted my best friend back and I wanted my old body back, more than wanted it, I needed it. I couldn't go through life as this overstuffed bimbo. I just couldn't.

By now, I was crying so hard, I couldn't see. I just kept repeating my new mantra. My body. My old body. I want my old body back. It doesn't matter which. Even my old female body.

About that time, I felt the pain start.

 

I did not faint again, although I wished I had and death even seemed desirable for a short while. The pain was excruciating. It was not the dull pain of a headache but the mind-numbing agony of the worst migraine imaginable–and it did not just settle in one part of the body, it was everywhere at the same time. I survived by rolling onto the floor and into a fetal ball. Then I clenched every muscle I could, as tightly as I could for as long as I could. When I could finally open my eyes and drag myself up onto the couch, it was all over but the hunger.

I did not know when he returned, but Paul was back. He sat unmoving, paralyzed, with a horrible rictus of a smile stamped on his face. I could guess what he was thinking, although I hoped I was wrong. “Damn that hurt.” My voice did not sound any different, but I had not noticed a difference the last time either. I guess it is true, you really cannot recognize your own voice.

Reaching for my hair, I discovered it was short again, just above my shoulders and dirty blonde instead of platinum blonde like before. The lumps on my chest were smaller too. Further investigation was going to have to be postponed pending some serious binge eating.

I staggered to the kitchen only to find I had eaten all of Paul’s food after my last transformation. Either I was going to go out to get something to eat or I was calling out for a delivery. I was so hungry I was ready to just grab my money and head out. I might have, except my new clothes no longer fit and I knew it would do me no good to be arrested for vagrancy. With a tee-shirt for a bra that was so loose and oversized my breasts were flopping about, frequently on display, and pants that were so loose I would have to constantly hold them up somehow or provide a public exhibition of another portion of my anatomy, that was a highly conceivable possibility.

Showing remarkable restraint, I called out to Paul to see if he wanted anything before ordering, but got no response. The delivery boy was going to get a good tip considering I had ordered enough pizza, wings and soda for a small platoon. There was little I could do now but wait, and I had always hated wasting my time hanging around, doing nothing. Another quick shower and my old clothes were next on the agenda for the day so I headed back through the living room and on through to Paul’s bedroom. Besides, doing something, anything, might help take my mind of the intense hunger I was feeling. At one point, I remember wondering if this is what a vampire in need of blood would feel.

On the way to the bedroom, I checked on Paul, who still had not moved and still did not respond to my words or gentle shakes. I was starting to worry about him, wondering about shock, yet I would have thought his legal training would have prepared him for the unexpected and this certainly fit the bill in that area.

The comb had just touched my hair when the doorbell chimed and I called out to Paul asking him to get the door. My only answer was another chime as the delivery boy started leaning on the button. With my belly growling loudly enough to drown out some of the melody, I dropped the comb, grabbed my purse and ran for the door. Shoving a wad of money into his hands, I grabbed the food and dove in before the door had completely closed on his surprised face. I suspect I would have been just as willing to injure him severely if he had failed to hand the food over.

About half way through the third large pizza, I was sated enough to wonder why Paul had not joined me. It was an afterthought, but I was also wondering how I was able to eat as much as I had without bursting at the seams. I called out a couple of times, but Paul never answered so after I polished off the third pizza, I grabbed some wings and wandered into the living room to find him–or at least that was my intent.

He was not in the living room, or the bedroom, or the bathroom, or even the balcony. There was no note, but when I remembered to look, his keys were missing from the bowl on the kitchen counter by the refrigerator where he usually tossed them, along with his change and his wallet. Actually, considering the condition of the kitchen after my two eating binges, it was almost surprising I had not eaten the bowl and its contents.

There had been times in the past when Paul had needed to think things through, like when he found out he was adopted or when my mother had died. In the first case, I had found him hiding in our favorite tree in a near catatonic state–at the time, I’d just thought he was fooling around–and had managed to break through to him by offering him my mother. That had worked and we had grown even closer, often joking about being secret brothers. In the second case, when my mother died, I was having my own problems and could not be much help. He had missed school for a week and his father had been on the verge of having him committed to a children’s psychiatric center when he finally came round. I was so upset that I had vowed never to let someone I knew of be placed in a position of such hurt and, so far, I had kept that promise to the best of my ability.

I was betting that Paul had gone somewhere to do some serious thinking, but was unsure where as our tree had been torn down several years ago as part of a land development project. Therefore, if he was not here in his apartment, the only other place I could think of that he might have gone was to his office. A quick call there got the answering service and, like most answering services, it was not helpful. I am not sure, but I think the people that answer the phones at answering services are trained by the three monkeys.

Even if I could not find Paul to see if he needed help, I still needed to figure out what to do about my own situation. Paul’s assessment of my situation was sadly on target and some fast research was essential. That left me only one viable choice. I called a cab and headed back to the base and my quarters.

The ride was not an enjoyable one. The cabbie kept staring back at me in the rear view mirror instead of at the road. There were at least three near misses as a result of his inattention and I kept checking myself to see if something was wrong with how I as dressed and feeling uncomfortable from his intense examination. It had been a while since I had taken a cab, before I got sick, but I never remembered running into any cabbies like that before and wondered if he was on drugs or something.

I probably should have explained earlier, but I am not in the military and I do not work for the military. I worked for BioLogInc, with a very small “n” as they preferred it written, which was a profit-making division of the state university. They paid me and they paid my research bills, including renting the space at the base. They chose the base because it was in closure mode and the space went for a pittance, not because my research was a security issue.

Back home, I left a message on Paul’s answering machine at the apartment and another message with the service for his office. Then, feeling exhausted, I went to bed, even though it was only about three in the afternoon. Unsurprisingly, I slept around the clock, not waking again until a bit after nine that Sunday morning.

I ate a thankfully normal breakfast, if you consider a grown man, ah woman, eating Frosted Flakes ® normal. Then, I left yet another set of messages for Paul–I was beginning to wonder if he was intentionally avoiding me–and did some long overdue housekeeping.

It was not that I was wasting time, or putting off the inevitable. I had at least until Monday after next to decide how to stop the human testing, so that was not priority one. I find that when I do routine tasks, like vacuuming or cleaning the bathtub, I can let my mind work at it’s own pace on problems, wandering about unimpeded by my usual attempts to organize and channel it. In effect, I was actually developing a plan of attack for the research I would need to do to discover how I was able to change shapes and evaluate the extent to which I could do it and the housekeeping just happened to be getting done also. By the time the bathroom was clean, I had decided how to proceed with my personal testing program.

There had been multiple variables to be considered for my personal testing regimen. I needed some place secluded enough to avoid being seen, especially if I was going to be different people. It had to be near a hospital in case something went wrong. I would have much preferred to have someone I trusted, like Paul, with me, but he still had not called back. Felix and José were out of the question. Aside from the fact that I’d try to kill one of them if they kept arguing twenty-four seven and I couldn’t get away, even for a few days, it was going to be a major challenge to convince them I was sane when I told them it was necessary to stop the human research studies. If I then had to tell them some story about how I had become a different person a lá¡ Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde they would be completely helpful, as they drove me to the nearest padded room. It also had to be near enough to the base that I could get there within an hour or most, assuming I still wanted time to study my new ability instead of just take a brief vacation.

When I put it all together, the obvious answer was the old family camp on the Sacaguea River. Our families, Paul’s and mine, had spent summers there in happier times. It was only a half hour away from the military base on the other side of town, so it was less than fifteen minutes drive from the university hospital, located I the center of town. Yet, the camp’s nearest neighbors were about a half-mile down the road and hidden from sight by a stand of trees that surrounded the camp property. I almost changed my mind and began looking for another place when the memories of life in easier times, when my mother was still alive, crashed down on me, but I did not have time. This would have to be my Menlo Park.

I left a message with the lab answering machine saying I needed to get away for a few days and think about a paper I was considering. Felix and José would understand; they were part of the “publish or perish” system that exists in most colleges and research facilities. That done; I grabbed some clothes and a toothbrush. Then I was off. My only stop was the supermarket near the strip where I picked up a carload of food. I was at the cabin before I knew it.

The cabin was as I remembered it, a small three-season home at best. It had framed out walls with exposed construction members rather than anything like sheetrock or plaster on the inside. All the heat was provided by a potbelly stove in the great room and, on cold nights, you opened your bedroom door and used a lot of blankets–or froze.

It was night when I got there and I quickly fumbled in the moonlight for the key in the fake rock by the front door. Once in, I went to turn on the main circuit breaker only to be surprised to find it on. I could have sworn I had gone through the whole place shutting everything down about two years ago when my father had died and the estate had been settled. Since then, I had not been back, instead leaving the cabin as a personal shrine to my memories; pictures, clothes, toys, sporting equipment, even a small but valuable collection of comic books, all as it had been when the estate had been settled. Making a cursory glance around the great room, nothing was obviously out of place so I shrugged it of, assuming my memory was at fault.

Next on the agenda was to bring in the groceries and do some light cleaning, just enough to make the place minimally habitable; after all, it was to be a temporary research site, not a long-term living arrangement. I had not brought a lot of food that would need to be refrigerated because it would take so long for the old refrigerator to cool down any perishables might be spoiled first, so I was even more surprised to find it plugged in, cool, and nearly full of food. The place was also a lot cleaner than I had expected it to be. The obvious explanation was that someone had been here–recently.

At this point, I had a really unpleasant thought; someone could be using the place right now. “Has someone been sleeping in your bed, little bear?” Even if I changed “bear” to “bare” the thought was NOT funny, especially when I remembered what happened to Goldilocks in the original Grimm tale. Suddenly, coming here did not seem like such a good idea.

I think it is safe to say that so far I had consistently minimized the impact of my change of gender on my life. Some clothes, the monthly purchase of sanitary care products, and slightly longer hair had been the extent of the accommodation. Even then, the choice had been to allow it to grow rather than enter that bastion of femininity, the beauty parlor. If it was not absolutely necessary to survive, I had ignored it. Thus, I used no makeup, did not date guys (or gals for that matter), and I had no sex, at least not with a partner. But now, a concept totally foreign to me for my entire life had forced itself to the fore; a concept that women live with daily, rape. I could be raped.

Before you ask, yes I did live elbow to elbow with several thousand horny eighteen year olds, at the peek of their sexual arousal, on that military base. But believe it or not, a military base is actually one of the safest places imaginable for a female, especially a female who appears to have rank by virtue of being in charge of a major research operation. The manual says you don’t mess with your own and there were ten youngsters who believed the credo and would be glad to help correct a straying mate should it be necessary for every one who might consider straying.

The thought of rape was a wonderful motivator. Food forgotten, I crept back into the great room, flicking off the kitchen lights on the way. Hugging the wall, I slid towards the front door and the baseball bat that was a permanent fixture behind it. It was surprising how much safer I felt with my fingers curled tightly around its stock.

Bat poised in the air before me, I turned off the rest of the lights and waited for my vision to adjust to the low level of light provided by the moon’s wan glow. While I waited, I considered my choices and again the decision was simple, if surprising, once I had clarified the problem. I was leaving. The risk of rape overrode my need for answers.

I suppose this was an inevitable choice at the time, but in hindsight–you know where you check back to confirm you have made an ass of yourself–it seems strange. I think the problem was my denial of my new gender. Women who grow up as females are forced to adjust. They learn to recognize that rape is always a possibility, but they also learn, of necessity, to accept the risks, adjust their behavior to realistically minimize the risks, and move on with their lives. Additionally, and also of necessity, they are intimately aware of the risks of pregnancy associated with rape. They learn to cope. I had not. Until that moment, I had still been operating from my years of male experience. Rape was bad, but it was something that happened to others.

Back to the wall, and still tightly gripping the bat with my right hand, I slid my other hand to the doorknob. Once I had a firm grip, I prepared to bolt out to the car. A deep breath, then another, and I was off.
The door slammed open and then shut behind me from the force with which I yanked it open as I rushed through it. In an instant, I was down the steps and at the car. The bat went flying toward the passenger seat, finally coming to rest on the floor. I threw myself in after it, scrabbling to the far side of the car to lock those doors and then back to lock the driver’s side doors. Forgetting my seatbelt, I dug into my pockets for the car keys–and stopped short. They were still in my purse on the kitchen counter.

Once again, the reflexes of a lifetime had betrayed me. I made a promise to myself then and there to explore and acclimate myself to every aspect of femininity as soon as possible–assuming there was an “as soon as possible” and assuming I was, for some reason, unable to reclaim my original gender.

Did you notice how, even then, I was still denying some of the realities of my gender? One of the possible outcomes of rape is murder. As a man, I trusted my physical strength and size to permit me to handle dangerous situations with the impunity of the immortal we all think we are. As a woman, I was not as strong as I had been as a man, or for that matter, as most men. Of course, I had acknowledged it in terms of cursing a difficult to open jar, but not in terms of being generally weaker than a man. Certainly, I had not acknowledged it in terms of a man being a serious threat to my life.

Now, however, I was in a very exposed position with little more than some safety glass and a baseball bat between me and a potential rapist. The situation was untenable. I had to do something. I was going to run into the cabin, grab my keys and run back to the car. Then I could get the heck out of here like I had originally planned. Another couple of deep breaths, my hand poised on the door handle, adrenaline surging thorough my body, and I was ready to go.

“TAP! TAP!” The sound was like twin rifle shots in the confined silence of the car and I jumped, my head bolting towards the front, passenger-side window and the source of the sound. I saw a face, a male face–and screamed in terror.

 

Half way through the second scream, I changed from terror to joy. It was Paul. I did not even think about it. The baseball bat was again on the floor, the car door was open and I was hugging him like a long lost son. I was out of the car so fast, he barely missed being hit by the door and I guess he was still off balance when I threw myself at him to hug him. We ended up rolling on the ground, still hugging each other.

I am not certain how it happened, but he ended up on top, looking down at me with a silly grin on his face while I smiled back up at him. Just when it was beginning to get uncomfortable and I was going to ask him to
let me up, he bent forward and kissed me.

Now, everyone knows that men, real men, do not kiss each other. The thing about quiche is wrong. I know that some of them occasionally do eat quiche. Heck, I even eat it once in a blue moon or two. The kissing thing, however, was still a problem and I froze in shock.

Paul felt me go stiff and immediately stopped. He was close enough that he could see the panic in my eyes. With a muttered, “Oh, shit.” He quickly got up and then helped me up. Without a word, he stalked into the cabin, leaving me standing alone and confused, by the car. Given that the keys were still in the cabin, I really did not have a choice so, admittedly hesitantly; I brushed myself off and followed him back into the cabin.

I found him in the kitchen unpacking one of my bags of groceries. Still without saying a word, he opened two beers, handed me one and marched into the great room. My purse, with the car keys in it, was staring at me from the kitchen counter. It was a tough choice, but I followed him into the other room.

We sat silently drinking our beers and wondering what to say, where to start, or if we even should start. I can only guess what Paul was thinking, but I know I was trying to figure out if there was any chance to recover the friendship we had had, at least that is what I was telling myself at the time.

I knew we were in trouble when he went for a second round of beers. At this rate, I would pass out drunk before he got ready to talk. It looked like it was time for me to shake him out of another major introspective spell. The only problem was that I was not sure I wanted to this time. This conversation was bound to be the weirdest we had ever had.

“Paul?”

He jerked like he had been struck. Still he said nothing, but at least he was looking at me now.

“Paul, listen to me. We need to talk. I will not try to tell you this is anything less than the weirdest situation I have ever been in. It is. However, we have been best friends way to long to loose that. So, how about it, are we going to talk or are you going to try to drink me under the table?”

A soap opera moves the plot along faster than it took him to decide whether he was going to answer or not and I was getting ready to explode from the tension when he finally made up his mind.

“You’re right. First, I need you to understand that I am sorry. I never meant for this to happen.”

There he went again, being a lawyer and confusing rather than clarifying things. Was he talking about the kiss, surprising me, disappearing from his own condo, coming here, or something else? This was NOT the time for pranks or verbal sparing. I vowed, probably for the first time in our long relationship, to keep quiet and just listen.

“We’ve been best friends for more than thirty years” Paul hesitantly explained. “I have cherished and valued our friend-ship. There are times when I do not know what I would have done, how I would have survived, without it. I don’t know how I will continue now if I have lost it.”

“Thank the heavens for that,” I thought. “He wants to keep our friendship. Now, can we keep it? That kiss was definitely weird–better than I would have expected–but still weird.”

“When I found out I was adopted, the world nearly collapsed around me. That may not be what happens to most people, I do not know, but it did to me. Not that my adopted parents were bad people, you know that they were not, but I was no longer who I thought I was. I was now someone I did not know any more. My whole world turned upside down–at least for a while.

“You and your family saved me. You gave me an anchor to grasp onto until I could regain my equilibrium and realize that my adoptive parents were still there for me, still loved me, until I could ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ as they say.

“In other words, I owe you more than you can probably imagine. The bottom line is that I will be there for you how ever you will allow me to be there, period. No questions asked. Guaranteed.”

Why did the phrase “one thousand percent” suddenly come to mind? No reason, just an errant thought. This was Paul, not some politician.

“And I will be there for you,” Paul continued as I began to feel a warm glow of companionship. “It’s just that something has changed, something basic, and it’s making it extremely difficult to keep the promise you just heard me make.”

Great. My stomach knotted, glow gone, even though, deep down, given my absolute belief in the universality of Murphy’s Law, I had known the other shoe was going to fall. I felt the need to become small and unobtrusive, but the best I could do was bring my legs up onto the beat up old stuffed chair I was sitting on and hug them tightly to me.

“I’ve been lying to you and I don’t want to any more.”

“Bu…”

“Please,” he did not move, but his eyes pleaded with me. He had beautiful, deep, innocent, trusting eyes. “Let me finish before you say or do anything.

“I’ve been lying to you. I was not recently on a difficult case. I have been here, in this cabin, with all the wonderful memories. I needed to think, really think about us.”

Yup. It was going to be that thousand percent, just like McGovern and Eagleton. I am about to lose my best friend and I don’t even have a clue as to why. My eyes became moist and I surreptitiously wiped them against my knees.

“When you changed…”

I groaned and then hoped it had been silent, but I was not certain. It might have slipped out as Paul was examining me strangely. First, that damn cancer was going to kill me, now it was going to kill the best friendship I had ever had or could ever hope to have.

“…it changed our relationship. I didn’t want it to and I tried to ignore it, but I couldn’t.”

Yup. It is over. I do not know why, but it is. My knees were beginning to feel damp from the frequent efforts to dry my eyes with fabric of my jeans.

“You see. I loved you like a brother until the change and then I fell in love with you as a woman.”

My head jerked up and my face went carefully neutral. No tears, no curl of the lip to show happiness, sorrow, or even anger and no glow of attentiveness in my eyes. I was barely breathing. A mannequin would have seemed more alive. It was a trick I had learned from Paul, who had learned it as a way of surviving as a trial lawyer. Most people interpret this kind of facial expression and body language as a severe rebuke and start talking, sometimes unwisely, in order to repair the damage. It is the closest thing to a “Perry Mason”-style trial ending that I ever saw happen in real life as the person on the receiving end blabbered until they realized they might be saying too much. Nevertheless, that is not why I did it, I was so shocked that I shut down in order to backpedal frantically and figure out what Paul’s words really meant.

Most people would smugly sit there as they read this and say something like “Jeez, what a maroon.” The whole story had been leading up to this point and, in hindsight; it is obvious to me also. At the time; however, I was still making that same fatal conceptual mistake. I kept thinking of my self as a male. Sure, it was faulty logic and sure, I had been given multiple reasons to review and revise my thinking in just the last several days, but intellectualizing something and letting it sink into you at a gut level are not the same thing. I liken it to the folks in Ireland, the Middle East or any of a dozen other sites around the world, who know that they would be better off without the death and destruction, but who cannot change the way they think so that they can move on and find a path to peace. On the other hand, maybe they can, but the old emotions, the hatreds, the scars, are just too deep and they do not want to change. It was still wrong, but I can similarly justify–or at least explain–my behavior. Regardless, I was still blinding myself to reality. I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts; I missed some of what he said next.

“…to hurt you so I’ll leave and get out of your life. I hope you can forgive me one day. Once I am settled, I will send you a forwarding address. I hope you’ll keep it…and maybe…one day …use it.”

He stood to leave, shoulders hunched, a broken man. My best friend was walking out of my life, when I needed him most, all because of some stupid gender change. I briefly marveled at how such a seemingly insignificant thing could possibly make such a tremendous difference. Nevertheless, my primary emotion was anger. He was making decisions about me, about us, without even giving me the chance to express an opinion–whatever my opinion was.

I snorted derisively. “That’s all you can come up with–to leave? I thought lawyers were supposed to think ‘outside the box,’ to be creative, to find the solutions that elude everyone else. For that matter, what kind of fair weather friend are you that you would walk away from thirty years over anything?” I was trying to hurt him; he deserved it for running out and, from the flush that rapidly spread over his face, I had succeeded admirably.

“Damn it! There is no other solution. I can stay here and agonize over how I need you desperately but cannot have you while second guessing every interaction, hoping–no praying–for something that is not there. Or I can leave. If I stay, I will not be able to function and I will destroy something I cherish, will cherish, forever.

“Did you ever wonder why I never settled down?” Paul asked, seemingly out of the blue. “It certainly was not for lack of opportunity. It was because I never found the right woman. I was looking for someone who could be a friend first and a lover second. The problem was, I always compared those friendships to ours and none ever came close.

“When you became female–not some ersatz female via hormones and surgery, but a real, genetic female–I was ecstatic that you were alive and I helped you through the legal processes because I could. However, the more time I spent with you, the more I realized that something very basic had changed. I was talking to a female and she was a friend, my best friend–and she was you.

“Now, we’ve both been straight all our lives and I knew from talking to you that you still viewed yourself as a male. As such, any relationship beyond friendship was impossible. Yet that’s exactly what I began to want, to dream of, to need, more and more.

“As I told you earlier, I lied when I told you I was busy with a case for the last three months. I was here–thinking.

“When I arranged that date…”

For some reason that word made it through the haze in my mind. It was a “date.” I was surprised to find that I liked the idea more than I expected and I smiled in response, buy Paul was still staring off into space as he spoke.

“…I had planned to explain this all to you, but then you changed.

“Now, maybe I should apologize for my hormones, but the change–when you suddenly turned onto a blonde sex goddess in the living room of my condo–made you into my image of the perfect woman, or at least the sexual partner of my dreams. It threw me for a loop. You had just changed the equation yet again and a relationship that was already difficult became impossible. I had to have you. Even glancing at you made me want you; want to rape you, my best friend, on the spot.”

“You mean you didn’t think I had become some horrible monster?” I was shocked. This entire time I’d been waiting for him to say I was no longer human and he was afraid to be anywhere near me. In the blacker recesses of my mind, I wondered if our friendship would be worth a fifteen minute head start before he called the authorities to send out the dogs and hunt me down.

“What would make you think that? Didn’t you see my hands clenching and unclenching in my lap? Can’t you guess what I was doing?”

“I thought you were just... No. I guess I didn’t.” First, I was actually relieved. Next, I realized I was also insulted, hurt that he did not love me as I was, but as some image of perfection. Then, I realized how foolish that was. This whole issue arose only because he did love me, regardless of whether I was male or female, average or zaftig. He loved me, the inner me. The exterior was just window dressing. This was information that most people would never know and would live their lives all the sadder for that lack of knowledge.

“Well I was. I was dying to kiss you, to hug you, to hold you. Instead, I got out of there before I did something we would both regret. Something that our friendship could never, ever, in a million years, survive. I came here again, to think, to evaluate my life, to try to figure out how I could be such a sick and perverted person.”

We just glared at each other; well, he glared, I was…bemused? It was a strange emotion for what we both knew was a major turning point in our lives, yet I knew what I had to do. No matter how this ended, I could not let him walk out of my life without talking it through. I cleared my throat to get his attention and then softly, tenderly, I beckoned to him, “Come back and sit down. Please.”

When he finally sat, on the couch, it was near the door and looking like a deer ready to bolt if it was spooked. Realizing that I would not be getting anything better, I began. “Paul. You have had your say and I listened to you. Now I hope you will do the same for me, as there are several points I need to make.

“First, I love you dearly and have for many years. You are more important to me than anyone else in my life. You are like–no, you are–family, secret bothers together.

“Just two days ago something impossible happened. I do not know how it happened or if it can or will happen again. I do not know if it means I may be able to regain my original body. Until then I would have said it was impossible, but lately it seems that word is highly over-rated. I do not know what the long- or short-term risks are. What’s worse, I need to develop a really good justification for stopping or at least delaying further human testing, currently scheduled to start to two weeks, or risk having the same kinds of changes happen to other people.

“I mention this, only to explain that while some might think them important, they are secondary to other changes in my life. Just an hour or so ago, I came to the belated conclusion that I was denying how pervasive and significant gender is in our lives. Regardless of how this turns out, I have promised myself I would embrace life again instead of denying it.

“I can’t tell you that I will marry you and have your children. I know I am not ready to consider sex with another person until I know what I am looking for in another person. Heck, right now I don’t even know what gender I’m going to end up, let alone the gender of my sexual or life partners. If you can bear with me long enough to permit me to discover what’s happened to me and what it means for me…for us, we’ll both be able to move on knowing that whatever happens was meant to be. It’s not a lot, but it’s the best I have at the moment, and I’d hate to lose what we’ve had for all these years without even trying to save it.”

I was done and maybe we were too. I had not offered much, but I hoped and prayed it was enough. I needed his help and his support desperately. As he sat there considering my words, I bit my lip and wondered if I should offer more, if I should, or maybe it was if I could, offer myself, to make certain he stayed.

“So you’re offering me the chance to continue the pain I’ve been feeling for the last three months, possibly indefinitely, to torture myself looking at and being near someone who doesn’t share, or even understand the meaning of, the love I feel for her. The only carrot you dangle is the possibility that your feelings will change over time, now that you know how I feel.” He wasn’t angry as I might have expected, he was resigned, tired, as if he had run a marathon and had nothing else to give.

“What I’m offering you is the chance to keep a lifelong friendship and maybe more.” I thought furiously, trying to determine what I could say that would keep our friendship intact. It was not the “guys thing” that was tearing it asunder; it was the “guy-gal thing.” I had to change my perspective if I was to succeed, but he wasn’t giving me any wiggle room. It was frustrating and I guess my next words showed it. “What do I need to say, that I’d appreciate it and I’ll show my appreciation however you’d like?”

His face turned red and he was glaring again, but he did not leave. “I’ve never forced myself on anyone and I don’t plan on starting now.”

“Then, like I just said, your choice is to stick around and be patient while I try to work things out and maybe retain a friendship you hopefully value, maybe more, or walk out and possibly doom us both to unhappiness at the least. What I am telling you is that I need your help to find myself, for I truly am a ‘stranger in a stranger land.’”

End -- Part Two of Three

~o~O~o~

 

“What the hell does she mean, she’s concerned about some of the study results?” Felix asked, slamming his coffee mug onto the lab countertop.

“I don’t know,” Felix growled. You heard the same answering machine message that I did.”

“She’s losing it. That is the only explanation. She’s got to be losing it.” Felix stood and paced the length of the lab as he seethed.

“Possible, but that a side effect that would strongly support her claim that the results need to be reviewed again,” José noted with a smile.

“But José, we’ve been over and over it. Hell, she is more cautious than my maiden aunt from Dubuque. The only irregularity we found in any of the animal or human testing was the pre-viral clusters still in her body and they’re not a problem.”

“Maybe they are,” José mused. “We don’t know what the effects of long-term contact with the viral strands might be.”

“Oh no you don’t, I’m not going to let you sucker me in this time. I know I am right and I can prove it. Here, look at the chem. Profiles.”

~o~O~o~

“No sir, Dr. LaPierre is not in today.”

“No I don’t know when she’ll be back.”

I’m sure she knew about the meeting sir. I put it into her daily calendar myself.”

“Yes sir, it was sudden, but she did leave a message telling us she had a family emergency and needed to take some time off.”

“No sir, we haven’t notified the authorities.”

“Yes sir, if you insist.”

~o~O~o~

“Have a good…” and suddenly, Patrice DeJesus was speaking to a dead telephone. As usual, the most distasteful part of her job was speaking to Dr. LaPierre’s boss. She had once heard Calvin Coolidge described as a going through life with a pickle in his mouth. She did not know much about presidential pickles, but she often wondered if Carlton Maldonado went through life with one stuffed into a very different, hopefully more uncomfortable bodily crevice. With a resigned sigh, she dialed the police.

It had been a grueling couple of hours, but Paul had finally said, “Yes.” Kirsten had wanted to run over to him and hug him, but that would have sent the wrong message so she merely nodded and said, “Thank you, Paul.”

The next morning we began researching the changes. There were now two occurrences to start with and we discussed what had happened each time in minute detail. Maybe it was his lawyer’s skill at reading people’s emotions, but it was Paul who observed how angry I had been when I had changed.

“I have no clue how an emotional state could trigger a change of physical form, let alone control its shape, but we’ve nothing else to go on so let’s try it.”

“Okay. What form do you want to try for Georgie-Girl?”

“I guess my old male one–and don’t call me Georgie-girl.”

“Fine,” he agreed, but with less enthusiasm than I had expected. “Just don’t change into bimbo-Georgie. I do not think I could handle that. Oh, and would you prefer I called you Shirley?”

“Shirley? You know you helped my legally change my name to Kirsten. Now what the heck are you talking about?”

“How quickly they forget. It was a running gag in the movie ‘Airplane.’ Someone would ask Leslie Nielson if he really meant what he said, something like ‘Surely, you don’t mean that.’ and he’d response, ending his dialogue with ‘…and don’t call me Shirley.’”

I groaned. What else could I do?

“So now, if I need to ‘Paula’ joke out to calm you if you get too mad, I ‘Tina’ good way would be to call you ‘Shirley.’”

I did not even bother to groan that time.

“What’s the matter Georgie-Girl? No sense of humor?”

“That’s not humor. That’s a pun.”

“And you’re heavy and not my brother. Of course a pun is humor, possibly the highest form of humor.”

“Are you crazy? How can a pun be the highest form of humor?”

“What? Where were you educated, a pig sty?” Paul feigned shock.

“The same college as you, or have you forgotten?” I was getting annoyed now. He seemed to have gone off on a meaningless tangent rather than helping me study the change.

“I know that Georgie-Girl, but you must have slept through your classes. Don’t you remember Professor Kensington’s class in English Literature?”

“It was Professor Grisham and you took that class, not me. I took the class on Shakespeare.”

“It was Kensington, Georgie-Girl, and I suppose now you’re going to tell me that Shakespeare never used a pun in a single one of his stolen plays.”

“What the hell is going on here?” I demanded indignantly. “Have you lost your senses? Who the hell cares about puns? We need to get back to the business at hand.”

“No, you need to admit you’re wrong. Shakespeare actually wrote the first pun, something about a jester and a noose.”

“Paul! Stop this instant!” I stood and all but shouted in his face, but then buckled over in pain.

Instantly Paul was by my side, helping me back to my seat on the couch. “Now focus Georgie-Girl, focus on who you want to be. Focus on George LaPierre. Do it, damn it.”

I focused, but nothing happened. The pain was there, the tingling that seemed to foreshadow a change, but I was not changing.

“Damn it. Change you stupid slut.” Paul slapped me.

I was shocked. Through the haze of pain, I tried to slap him back, but he just blocked the blow and laughed at me. He laughed at me like I was the stupid slut he had called me. I wanted to kill him, but then I felt the changes overwhelming me and realized what he had been doing.

It was better than the previous time in that the pain was more bearable and I did not lose consciousness or even need to close my eyes against the pain. This time I could see the changes. I was becoming the slut I had just envisioned. At least it wasn’t the blonde Paul had asked me to avoid.

Frantically, I tried to refocus on my male body, but it did not work. My hair again grew out, this time into a curly black mop that extended to just below my shoulder blades. My breasts grew again, causing pain from my now too tight bra. Most surprising, was my skin. It turned a light coffee color. I guess there are small pockets of prejudice in the best of us, but the thought that I had become a mulatto actually worried me for a moment. Then I had a vision making myself appear to be black and finding out what it was like to live as a member of that population group like John Griffin did in Black Like Me. I too could be a temporary Negro. It seemed strangely humorous until I realized I was already doing the same thing in the female community, hopefully temporarily.

As the pain began to recede, I checked my watch. The entire transformation from noted transgendered Caucasian researcher to mulatto whore had taken about half an hour. As I stood and took off my tee shirt and now too small bra, I noted that the pain seemed to be less each time I changed. That is when Paul came back into the great room with a huge stack of pancakes oozing in maple syrup and butter. All other thoughts were going to have to wait until I had finished eating.

~o~O~o~

“Paul?” I popped the last bite of a pizza with the works into my mouth and sighed. The pancakes were long gone, but I was finally sated, well at least for food I was sated.

“Yeah, Georgie-Girl?” Paul came out of the kitchen still carrying a dishtowel.

“I realize what you were doing before, trying to get me angry. It worked. Thank you.” I gave up on correcting him about my name.

“Good, now how about putting a bathrobe on or something?” he said as he turned back to the kitchen. I had never bothered to cover my top after removing the brassiere.

“Paul?’ I stood and slid out of my jeans and panties. Now I was completely naked.

“What?” He turned back and his eyes turned into huge saucers. “What the hell are you doing?” he sputtered. “Get dressed.”

I walked towards him, making sure that my hips swayed noticeably as my left hand cupped and stroked my breast. “I’d like to thank you.”

“You did,’ he growled. “Now get dressed damn it.”

However, I was having none of that and I pulled him close to me. I had promised myself that I was going to discover my feminine side and I was damned if I was not going to do it right then and there.

Remember that hindsight we have discussed before? Here we go again. To say that my attitude at this point was dramatically different from what it had been an hour or so ago would be an understatement. My best guess is that I had inadvertently visualized myself as a whore and my vision of a whore was someone who had a phenomenally high libido. I will skip the biochemical discussion of estrogen, progesterone and the roughly twenty other hormones and proteins that were now flooding through my body, the result was that I was horny as hell, with minimal self-control and no shame. I knew what I wanted and I was going to get it.

When I grabbed him, Paul stepped back, bumping into the wall and I closed the space between us before he could dodge to the side and through the door. Again, grabbing him, I threw my arms around his shoulders and planted the biggest, wettest, sexiest kiss I could imagine on his mouth–and yes, we played tonsil hockey.

By the time I let him up for a breath, I could feel him rising to the occasion and I let one hand drop to his crotch. That is when the front door shook from someone pounding on it.

“Ignore it and they’ll go away,” I breathed huskily into his ear.

“Police. Open the door please.”

Oh, shit.

Paul pulled away from me and quickly strode to the door. “Get dressed,” he hissed back at me.

Ignoring him, I sauntered up behind him as he opened the door and began playing with his ear and kissing his neck. He opened the door just a crack. I guess the little dear wanted to preserve my honor. I giggled at the thought.

“Are you George LaPierre or Paul Goldblum?” There was a very large–I think its part of the job description–state trooper outside the cabin.

“I’m Paul Goldblum. Can I help you officer?”

He saw me standing behind Paul and I smiled sexily at him. Two would be even better than one.

“And what’s your name ma’am?”

“Why I’m whomever you want me to be officer,” I cooed through half closed eyelids as I tried to look sultry and adjusted my position to let a bit more of my breast peek out from around Paul.

“She’s my girlfriend, Wanda,” Paul interjected as he poked me with the elbow still hidden behind the door. “Wanda Langowski.”

I tried not to laugh at his choice of names. His reference was to a character from one of our favorite comic books. The cop’s expression made it clear that he didn’t think I looked like any Langowski he’d ever seen, but all he said was, “Would you please step outside sir?”

“I guess so officer. What’s the problem?”

“Oh never mind. You boys don’t gotta worry ‘bout my modesty.” I was frustrated, but I wanted very badly to hear what he had to say. “Come in side, officer. I’ll get dressed.” I made sure to give them both a nice show as I vamped my way to the bedroom to get dressed. Throwing on a bathrobe to cover my top, I was quickly back in the great room and sitting next to Paul playing innocently with his hair.

“What can I do for you, officer?” Paul asked as he irritatedly pushed my hand away and tried to concentrate on the police officer.

“We’re looking into the whereabouts of a Ms. Kirsten LaPierre.”

I’m not one of those people who get upset when people don’t use proper honorifics like “doctor,” but I was beginning to dislike this minion of the law, if for no other reason than he was interfering with my constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness.

“I’ve been out of touch with Dr. LaPierre for quite a while officer. Is something wrong?”

“We’d like to talk to her,” he said with that solemn unaffected face made so popular by Joe Friday. “I understand you had a date with her about three days ago.”

“Yes, we were to meet at the base NCO Club, but she never showed up. I figured she was involved in a research project that she couldn’t leave unattended.”

“Didn’t she call you to explain that she’d be busy?”

“No. Dr. LaPierre is a wonderful woman, but when she gets an idea in her head she can be quite focused.” Paul glared up at me, frowning as he gently pushed my hand away from the front of his shirt where it was slowly approaching his nipple. I of course pouted as sexily as I could and then started inching my way back there all over again.

“The gate records from the local military base show you left with a woman. Can you tell me who she was?”

“I’m sorry, officer; I met her that night and haven’t seen her since. She never gave me her name.” I swatted him playfully as if I were jealous, which when I thought about it, I was, even if it was me he was talking about.

The officer sat thoughtfully watching me as I clung to Paul so I bent over a bit more to give him a better view of the merchandise. He promptly cleared his throat and stood up.

“Here’s my card. If you hear from Dr. LaPierre have her call me as soon as possible.” With that, he gave us both a noncommittal nod and left.

I almost laughed aloud when I noticed him walking a bit stiffly. While I resisted laughing, I could not resist a parting shot so I called out after him as innocently as I could, “Oh officer, does that leg wound hurt?”

He just glared at me as he left, which gave me the opportunity to return to my previous research topic.

Unfortunately, Paul had other ideas. I knew he was interested, I could see the bulge, but instead of letting me complete my research project, he grabbed me by the shoulders and quick marched me into the bedroom.

“Go to bed. Take a cold shower if you need to. We’ll continue this in the morning.” He shoved me through the door and started closing it. “And don’t even think of sneaking out here during the night.”

Of course, I did sneak out of my bedroom, about fifteen minutes later, but he had locked the door to his bedroom. Spoil sport. I knew he was awake because I could hear him talking on his cell phone. It was hard to tell for sure–the door muffled his voice more than I would have expected–but it sounded like he was trying to find out why the police were interested in me. It hurt to admit it, since I really did want to dally a bit–actually a lot–but I realized that under the circumstances I had best leave him be. I wanted to know why the police were looking for me too.

~o~O~o~

The week was nearly up and I was back in my standard issue female body. Paul and I were reviewing the findings to date as we savored the last of our morning coffee.

“Okay, we’ve established that the process is painful, but becoming less so with practice. It seems that I can change into just about any female shape within about thirty minutes or less. The transformation is triggered by anger or, more accurately, the increase in epinephrine in the blood stream to some as yet undetermined level and the outcome is the result of focused visualization on my part. Each different body bathes the brain in a unique set of hormones and protein complexes that can significantly affect the thought process and emotions.”

Paul nodded and sipped patiently at his coffee while he waited for me to finish. He knew I would never be able to move on until I had clarified the issue for myself. “When I had finally wound down, he asked, “So is it my turn now?”

“I think so. As far as I can tell, I’ve completely summarized the status of the research to date–at least the research you’ve let me do.” I batted my eyes lazily at him and pouted for a moment to make my point, and to see if I could still, after all these days in close proximity, get a rise out of him.

“Good.” Paul pulled a legal size canary notepad from the kitchen counter and began leafing through it. “Then it’s time to discuss some basic issues like how to explain your disappearance, how to stop the human testing project, how, if at all, you are going to use your new ability and last but not least, how do we proceed with our personal relationship. I still think you should have called that police officer. It would have simplified things tremendously.”

“You’re almost certainly correct,” I sighed, “but this research would never have gotten done if I had.”

“Well, it’s water under the bridge, but we need to explain where you were in a way that either can be verified or at least sets aside any possible questions of impropriety or espionage.”

“Why not just tell the truth?” I asked innocently.

“We could, but then I need to have a justification for lying to an officer of the law, that is unless you’re planning to support me in the manner to which I’ve grown accustomed,” he grinned slyly.

“Why sure honey-chile, come sit on Momma’s lap.” I patted my knee hopefully and waited, trying to look as innocent and unthreatening as I could.

“Right,” he laughed. “But seriously, we could say we were having an intense interpersonal experience together and didn’t want anyone to know it. People would interpret that to mean ‘torrid affair’ but I can live with that if you can.”

“I suspect I would find it even more acceptable if it were true,” I answered wistfully. It had not taken long for me to make up my mind about our personal relationship, now I was eagerly waiting for Paul to decide I was serious and follow suit.

“To do that we need to be able to explain my night of wild abandon with the fiery Wanda. We could say it was you in heavy makeup. People would consider us a bit kinky and, of course, it would help if the cop is blind.”

“I doubt he’s blind, but anything else would start getting complicated. I seem to recall you telling me to keep things simple when dealing with the legal system, Paul.”

“A disciple,” his charming boyish grin was back. “I have a disciple. An excellent point and it is even true. If we stick together on that, it will be his word against ours and he probably will not care too much as long as you turn up and no one finds any other irregularities.

“Next we need to decide how to stop the human testing project. That one is probably more in your ballpark. Any ideas?”

“Well, there are a variety of options, but none of them are optimal. Simplest would be for me to reveal what the treatment has done to me to the rest of the team and ask for their support.”

“And become a lab rat? It is your choice, but I would certainly recommend against it. Of course, one variation of that would be to go public. No, filth like the National Enquirer would be the only ones likely to cover something so patently outrageous. Can you imagine a newspaper like the New York Times headline? ‘Researcher discovers Regenderification Process’. Even if they published the article, no one would understand it enough to read it.”

“I could just resign,” I mused aloud. “No, that would just delay things a bit and I wouldn’t be there to prevent the human testing after the short period of time it would take for the research team to come up to speed on the few pieces I’ve held back.”

“How about an anonymous letter to the FDA with copies to a few well placed muckraking news people?” I could always count on Paul to get creative.

“Tempting, and a good idea on the surface, but there are less than fifty people in the entire world who know anything about the project and maybe five who could provide sufficient technical information to make a credible presentation to the FDA et. al. Even if I were to pretend to be outraged by the disclosures, I would be top of the list as informer and would never work in the field again.

“Let’s set this aside for now. It doesn’t seem to be going well,” I sighed in frustration. “What was the last issue again?”

“You mean, ‘What to do with your new ability?’ or ‘How to proceed with our changed relationship?’"

I could not resist. He’d made it clear that he would not act until he was certain it was right for both of us, and had reaffirmed that position after we realized that different forms affected my personality differently. Even if he was not going to take advantage of me–the little dear–I knew that, if I had to go down, I was going to go down swinging. I gave him a saucy smile and went for it.

 

I'm skipping portions of the next two weeks, mostly because major portions of it were unbearably boring. Paul and I spoke often by telephone, but didn't see each other, which is just as well as I was spending about twenty hours a day at the lab with just two goals in mind. The first was to find out more about my newfound ability and the second was to stop the human testing project.

With respect to the first, I accomplished little as I could only work on my personal research project when Felix and José were not around. On a positive note, I kept "practicing" new forms and my body somehow accommodated to the process so that the pain was barely evident and the time to change was now a mere five minutes.

Additionally, I was now at the point where I only needed a couple of “energy bars” to recover from the drain on my body’s resources. Who says old researchers can’t learn new trick? Aside from becoming male–which just was not happening–I really do have a broad range of options, so broad I am still testing the limits. Don’t even think of going for the obvious pun there. I suppose I could come close to becoming myself again, at least in terms of everything but genitals. I'd always have some small growth of breast and a void where I'd be scratching if I were a ball player. Having never wanted to be a Pushmepullyou, I had early on resolved that if I had to be female, I would be female.

With respect to my efforts regarding human testing, they were little more than exercises in bureaucratic frustration as I tried to stop, or at least postpone, further testing. Felix and José almost quit as I kept pushing them to review and re-review the animal results looking for something, anything, I could use to justify my goals without letting them realize that my intentions were other than to be extremely cautious.

Interestingly, once I had finally decided to try to be female and put my mind to it, it was relatively easy to control them. Instead of trying to shout them down and having a temper tantrum when they ignored me, I expanded a bit on my makeup use, broadened my attire to include some above the knee skirts and asked them to do little things for me, the “helpless” woman. The first time Felix got me a cup of coffee and stood attentively in front of me waiting to see if it was satisfactory, I knew I had it down. I also nearly bit my tongue off trying not to laugh and spoil all that work. It is interesting to note that the reason why most women feel they can change a man–is because they can.

Patrice did quit once–yes the same Patrice who had been my nurse during my initial recovery. I had convinced her to transfer to the lab so she could keep track of my medical condition and help teach me what I needed to know about my new gender. She really wasn’t needed full time, so she had agreed to function as the lab’s secretary and make certain the reams of bureaucratic paperwork was completed in a timely fashion. After her first month in that job, our requisition forms and time sheets were submitted on time for the first time in months.

Anyway, she was tired of dealing with Dr. Maldonado's rudeness, but I talked her into coming back before her paperwork could be processed. Carlton was just being difficult–more difficult than usual, if that was possible. I swear he still had it in for me because of that ancient mishap with Paul in the college chemistry lab. It was his position that testing needed to proceed apace and everyone from project director to cleaner was responsible for insuring that it did. Furthermore, he felt it was his responsibility to remind each and every one of us of our responsibilities, as he saw them, and insure that we complied. It’s not a good idea to insist that a secretary explain why a project is behind schedule and harangue her to get it back onto its appropriate place on his projected timeline.

One of the reasons Patrice came back was that I told her that I'd convinced Carlton that his constant telephone calls were taking us all away from necessary final preparations and that he should cut back on them. Of course, I also told Patrice to get the phone company to install the Caller ID feature and use it. From then on, Carlton always seemed to catch us when we were all away from the phone working busily to finalize the next phase of the project. I suspect Carlton was so frustrated he would have fired us, if he had just been able to reach us. He actually did at one point, but he did not realize it as Patrice recognized his voice and quickly repeated the answering machine message and then beeped at him–smart girl, that Patrice.

It was late Friday evening, just four days after the start of operation Caller ID, and I had already changed. Now I was a rather plain looking middle aged woman with short graying hair, average height, and a tendency to enjoy chocolates just a bit too much–read stocky. Everyone else had gone home for a well-deserved weekend and I was back to the old drawing board. My latest theory regarding how I could control the changes had just gone down the drain when the MRI and C-scan showed absolutely no abnormalities in the brain. I'd gotten the idea from an episode of the "X-Files" where a brain tumor had caused new mental powers to manifest, which also demonstrated how far afield I had been searching for research hypotheses. Anyway, Carlton had actually left his ivory tower at the administrative offices of BioLogInc and come a-visiting, thousand dollar designer suits and all.

“You! What's your name?”

“Ulp!” He had shocked me. I had thought I was alone and I had not realized that I had left the door unlocked–careless, definitely careless. Patrice was going to ball me out for lack of feminine caution–if I told her.

"I asked you your name,” Maldonado snorted. “You do have a name, don't you, girl?" You would think he could be a bit ruder and more abrupt, but I guess he reserved that for people he really disliked.

"Umm, yes sir," I almost gave him my real name, which would have blown my secret out of the water, especially given Carlton's innate ability to sniff out a profit. "Virginia, sir. May I ask what you're doing here?"

"I run this lab. Where is everybody?"

"It's after eight on a Friday night and everyone’s gone home. Now I'm going to have to ask you to leave too sir, I know Dr. LaPierre and you're not him–or her–so you can’t be who you say you are." I began moving toward him, as much to keep him from coming to me where he might peer over my shoulder and see my research on the computer monitor as to get him out of the lab. It was interesting to note that he was my height, and I was only 5'2 at the time. I wondered if all small men acted as pompous as he did.

"I am Dr. Carlton Maldonado, Ph.D., Executive Director of BioLogInc and Dr. LaPierre's boss." He puffed up so nicely, just like a bantam cock. I knew then and there, I was going to have some fun with him.

"And I am the cleaner. I’m responsible for insuring the security of this lab until I can finish getting it cleaned and locked up for the weekend,” I huffed. “Like I said, I know Dr. Pierre and I don't know you. Do you have some identification?”

Did you ever meet one of those people, usually new doctors–Ph.D.s or M.D.s, it does not matter which–who are so full of themselves they introduce themselves with their degree and insist on being called by the title as if it were their first name? Most seem to be able to move beyond it within a year or two, but Carlton had been doing this for the past quarter century, which is why I took every opportunity to call him Carlton instead of Dr. Maldonado. As a result, I was only surprised with the intensity of his response–until I remembered that I was not his peer and the lead researcher in a project he was extremely interested in at the moment. I was just some faceless underling to be lorded over, not someone close enough to his “greatness’ to be permitted the right to challenge him. He immediately went from his usual pallid color to a ruddy hue, but he didn’t stop there. Even before he could start talking–read shouting at the top of his lungs–he moved on to a mottled, reddish purple. I was actually wondering if he was going to burst some of the small blood vessels in his scalp and was reviewing the medical procedures for dealing with apoplexy when the dam finally broke.

“You ignorant little pissant,” he stormed. “How dare you. What is your full name? I will have your hide for a wall hanging by the morning. You’ll never work for BioLogInc or any related company again.”

“I told you my name sir. It’s Virginia, Virginia Hyde.” I know, it was not very original, but I was betting he would fail to get the hint. “Now if you’re going to be rude, we can forget about any ID check and you can leave right now.” I took him by the shoulder and squeezed, hard.

Did I mention that I had been working on unusual features? I had long ago run the gamut of various forms of extrasensory perception and had found that abilities like telepathy and telekinesis did not really exist, at least not in any of the genes I possessed. The closest I would come there was the occasional hunch, like woman’s intuition–or “spider sense” if you prefer. I had liked that ability so much, I had kept it and I will bet you can guess what it had been telling me about Carlton.

Tonight I was also working on enhanced musculature. Just prior to Carlton’s arrival, I had been experimenting by lifting the slate-top lab tables with one hand. So, while I looked like a slightly dowdy forty plus year old, I was strong–almost as strong as the Great Muldoon, but that’s another story. Carlton’s yelp reminded me how strong I now was and I felt a twinge of guilt for hurting him–physically that is. As you’ve probably noticed, I had no problems with playing with his mind. Despite that, it felt great to have the upper hand and I quickly turned the surprised man, grabbed his belt with my other hand and quick-marched him out the door to the lab. Coming back inside, I locked the door, leaned back against it and, sad to say, laughed hysterically. I do not know what it was about the situation, maybe the look of shock on Carlton’s face, but in hindsight, pushing his buttons like that was not really that funny and it certainly proved to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.

When he spent the next few minutes pounding on the door, it became even less funny. With Carlton making all that racket, the MPs would be around shortly. Then, I would have “some ‘splainin’ to do,” and my name was not even Lucy. Worse, it was not even Virginia as I had told Carlton. I could just imagine what the MPs, and Carlton, would think when they were introduced to someone in a research lab who did not have a legal existence.

That is what I got for letting my hair down and having fun. I felt the quiver that presaged another change and quickly reasserted my current image before I was in a position to do the Lady Godiva routine–although a good chocolate or two did sound nice.

Those were two of the problems that I was discovering with respect to these changes. First, it was getting too easy to initiate a change and second, if I was not careful it could get really annoying dealing with the various drives and urges of whatever body I was wearing. Besides liking chocolates, this body was not the smartest M&M in the bunch, which was not making things easier at the moment. I almost changed back into my Dr. LaPierre form and let Carlton in, but then I would have to listen to him rant and I really did not want that if I could help it.

A few judiciously expended brain cells later, I decided it was time to leave. The front door was out as Carlton was there and he would make a terrible doorman. Besides, my name was not Rhoda Morgenstern. The back door was also out as it was for emergencies only and would set off an alarm that would guarantee the MPs came running. That left a window. Unfortunately, the windows were of the style that cranked out, far too narrow for my current robust form. I reached into my memory for one of the super-thin actresses currently on television, but quickly reconsidered as that would make me too recognizable and cause other problems. Instead, I reached back into my formative years and a lady from the “Laugh-In” television series called Twiggy. Then, just to be certain, I made her even thinner. I think I ended up so thin, my internal organs were stacked one on top of the other, but I was thin enough to fit through the window and tall enough to reach the ground easily. Good thing this was a one story building.

Grabbing a copy of the Bernoulli drive with my research on it, I tossed the lab coat in a corner, grabbed my purse and slid feet first out the window furthest from the front door. Once out, I quickly changed back into my Dr. LaPierre persona and began slinking around the building toward the parking lot and my car. If I could get back to my quarters, I could come back to the lab for some late evening research and find Carlton there. I would still have to listen to his tirade, but it was becoming evident that I was going to have to face him sooner or later.

The parking lot demonstrated another flaw in my plans. It was well lit and only had two cars in it, Carlton’s and mine. Additionally, the front door was offset so that unless Carlton was blind, he would definitely see me if I tried making a run for it. The choices, face Carlton or make a break for it, were not great ones and they rapidly became even less appealing as a jeep pulled into the parking lot and two huge MPs got out.

I am not sure if it is natural selection or a planned breeding program, but I have never seen an MP less than six foot two and two hundred pounds with more muscle than any of the actors in Pro Wrestling. One went up to Carlton and suggested in a deep rumble that he stop pounding on the door and explain himself while the other one checked out the license plates on the two cars.

The two-car dash was now out of the question, so it looked like it was time to face the music, or rather the Maldonado. Maybe I could pretend I’d been out for an evening constitutional and then let Carlton dress me down–figuratively, please–the thought of him laying a hand on me in any literal sense caused me to shudder. With that in mind, I began changing back into Dr. Kirsten LaPierre.

That is when the unthinkable happened. Like a little lap dog that barely stood tall enough to stare at the MP’s chest, Carlton had been yammering away at the MP nearest him. The soldier had been stoically ignoring Dr. Maldonado’s dance of death, repeatedly advising him to calm down and explain the problem when, without warning and in mid-rant, the damn fool pushed the MP.

There I was, watching the end of my career. There was no way that Maldonado would ever settle for less than my head on a platinum–forget silver–platter. I told you he was not the best manager I had ever met and vindictive was just one of the few words acceptable in polite conversation his subordinates used to describe his administrative skills. I should have been panicking, and yet, I was nearly buckled over double struggling not to laugh aloud. He had not even budged the soldier.

Carlton just kept right on screaming and gesticulating. In his fury, I doubt he even realized what he had done, but the MP did. The soldier’s voice got loud and curt, with an undertone that suggested he should be listened to but hoped he would not be, and told Carlton to shut up and step back against the wall immediately.

It is sad to see an intelligent man with the cortex, or at least the frontal lobes, completely disconnected from the body. That was Carlton. Instead of meekly complying like any sane person, he pushed the soldier again.

I was watching when it happened, yet I have no idea how it happened. One moment Carlton was pushing the MP, the next he was face down on the ground being handcuffed. In the words of a wise and learned professor of mine during grad school, “the fit had shit the fan.” There was little more I could do but watch as they pulled Dr. Maldonado to his feet as if her were a toy and cart him off to their jeep. Next stop would be the stockade.

I had no clue what to do now. As I said, I had just watched my boss do what might have been the stupidest thing imaginable, which did not bode well for my career or my research. I could take my car and go around to the stockade to try to bail Carlton out, but the damage was done, and the last thing I wanted to do was be the target for his anger just then. Besides, I knew he could get himself bailed out in short order without my intervention. It would be a small delay, but even waiting the few days until Monday to see him would help him cool off a bit. I became Dr. Kirsten LaPierre. Stopping off at my quarters, I packed lightly and headed up to the cabin, making a call to Paul from a gas station along the way. I asked him Paul to join me there, telling him I needed to talk to him and get some advice.

It is so easy to see things after the fact. The lab accident in college was the first and biggest mistake of my life. It brought me to the attention of Carlton Maldonado in the worse way possible. It set the tone for our relationship through out the years to the point that I was surprised when he hired me for the cancer research project. In hindsight, this was probably the second biggest mistake of my life.

 

“Like the sands of an hourglass, these are the days of our lives.” That thought kept running through my mind as I waited at the cottage for Paul. The quote, from the opening to a soap opera, seemed to sum up my life recently, although maybe not; no soap opera I’d ever seen was quite as bizarre as my life had been in the last year.

The gravel crunched from the sound of tires as a car pulled up to the cottage and I ran to greet Paul I as so happy to see him. I had been waiting almost two full days for him to get my message and come to me and the cabin had been lonely without his company. Throwing the door open, I reached out to hug him and stopped in my tracks. Instead of Paul, there was some huge, muscle-bound, pug-ugly.

“Where’s Paul? What are you doing with his car?” I tried to look around him to see if anyone else was in the car, but couldn’t really see around him. Without speaking, pug-ugly handed me a note.

~o~O~o~

Dear Kirsten:
I have reviewed your research notes and I concur with your attempts to stifle further human testing. Instead, I have decided to take this project under my personal attention and make it a special project, with only a few personally selected candidates. We need to talk of many things, including Virginia and Paul.

Dr. Carlton Waldorf Maldonado requests your presence to discuss your future and the future of your research. The gentleman bearing this invitation will escort you to our rendezvous.

C.

I looked up at the man-mountain standing in front of me. He had heavy calluses on his knuckles. The only way I knew to get calluses like that was from punching something–hard–over and over again. Did I want to go anywhere, for any reason, with this guy? I didn’t think so. “I’m waiting for a friend. Please advise Dr. Maldonado that I’ll be happy to meet with him at a more convenient time.”
He stood there with a mildly bemused expression on his face and then handed me a second note. I was beginning to wonder if he was mute, possibly from repeated blows to the head.

Dear Kirsten:
Sammy is here to assure your attendance. He will do whatever is necessary. I encourage you to allow him to make your time with him as pleasant as possible. Oh, and as an incentive, Paul is here, so waiting there for him will do little good.

C.

~o~O~o~

This was rapidly beginning to have all the makings of a bad gangster movie. I knew Carlton was not to be trusted, but this smacked of criminal intimidation, as I was willing to bet Paul would not be with Carlton, at least not willingly. I opened my mouth to tell tall, wide and silent to get lost, but he already had something else in his hand.

A ring.

Paul’s ring.

It was his law school graduation ring. Paul was very proud of that ring. In one of the few instances of self-indulgence I had ever seen from Paul; he had designed it himself to include an emblem noting that he had graduated summa cum laude. He also never removed it, even in the shower, which meant that this no longer just “smacked” of anything; it was forcible kidnap. My shoulders fell as I grasped for ways to stall until I could think of something, so I asked for a few moments to get changed into something “more appropriate.” Some fast thinking was called for. I had clearly been underestimating Maldonado.

Fifteen minutes later, as I slid into the back seat of the car, I wondered just how far my ex-mentor and ex-boss–there was no chance that there could now be any other than an “ex-“ relationship–was willing to go to attain his goals, whatever they might be. The absence of a human finger inside the ring was a positive, but the thorough frisk, the metal and plastic protective shield between the driver’s seat and the passenger compartment and the absence of door handles or locking knobs answered that question.

~o~O~o~

The windows of Paul’s car had been painted black and they had installed a solid metal partition between the front and back seats so I would not be able to see where we were going. They had also removed the doorknobs and window cranks so I wasn’t going anywhere without a struggle. I wasn’t quite sure why they bothered as I knew who we were going to see and I didn’t really care where we were going as long as I could make certain that Paul was okay. As a result, I spent the ride to where ever we ended up planning and preparing–which is what I wanted anyway. To ensure the best chance in the event of a fight, I enhanced my hearing, vision, speed and strength to the maximum while retaining the familiar Dr. Kirsten LaPierre exterior to insure that I appeared friendly, harmless.

I also enhanced my appearance subtly to make myself appear helpless and non-threatening–and yes, desirable too. I was hedging as many bets as I could. I modified my voice to make it as friendly and sensuous as possible, enlarged my bust to the maximum comfortable within my dress and thinned my waist a bit. I also increased pheromone production, and finally, I stretched my legs a couple of inches but shortened my spine by an equal amount in order to assure that I was not looking down at Carlton. I wanted him to feel as assured and in control as possible in hopes that he would overestimate me. By now, there was no pain at all as I made the changes, and I covered the energy loss with a single energy bar from my purse. You know w hat they say about practice making perfect. I had been practicing.

Even when the car finally stopped, I still wasn’t certain where we were as it had pulled into a parking garage and the garage door closed before the car door opened, dashing any hopes I had of getting a clue to where I was by seeing the exterior of the building or the surrounding street.

Like most garages, this one was dimly light and I quickly increased the number of rods in my eyes to facilitate low-light vision to that approaching a cat’s. This helped as I could see a sign reserving a parking space for Dr. Carlton W. Maldonado, Director of Research and knew I was at the main offices of BioLogInc. Somehow, I had been expecting to find I was being taken to an office with fifty-year old furniture in some rat-infested warehouse. Certainly television had led me to believe that was where most gangsters did their business. The fact that we were in the corporate headquarters seemed to suggest that maybe Maldonado was not that much the villain and mobster I had been anticipating.

Once I had been thoroughly frisked a second time, we took the elevator directly up to the top floor and Maldonado’s office. I remember commenting to Paul that it was designed to intimidate. It was twenty by forty feet wide with a step up to the area around Maldonado’s desk and another step up to his desk, which spoke volumes about his vanity and a few other personality characteristics. Behind his desk, with the chair back, his feet up and his hands comfortably entwined behind his head, sat Maldonado.

I idly noted that his desk was completely barren of any indications of office equipment, files or even a telephone and the rather large wall hanging behind his desk that seemed at odds with the otherwise sterile environment. It was a copy–at least I assumed it was a copy ¬–of Rembrandt’s he Ascension” with Jesus standing on a cloud in a state of rapture as cherubs surround him and a crowd of humanity stares up at him in awe and reverence. As I thought of it, maybe the painting wasn’t so much out of place in that otherwise sterile environment as it was a portent, telling anyone who was astute enough what Maldonado’s real goal was in life–to be revered as a god-like figure. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the face in the painting had been modified. It didn’t have the beard I remembered the original having. It was clean-shaven and looked surprisingly like Maldonado’s face. Was he really egotistical enough to have modified the painting if it was an original? That was a scary thought.

In the pit area nearest the entrance was a conference table covered with material that looked suspiciously like the samples and research notes from my lab. Also, in the pit area, by the window wall, was a conversational grouping with some soft lounge chairs, the kind that you start sinking into and just keep sinking. In one of those chairs was Paul, flanked by Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee. They were obviously close relatives of Sammy, the man-mountain, who nodded amiably at them and then took a position directly in front of the door we had just come through. Once he had settled in, there was only a small segment of the door visible around his calves.

“Good evening Dr. LaPierre. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us. And may I note that you’re looking especially radiant tonight.” I knew he was a sarcastic bastard, but until that moment, I had not realized exactly how smarmy he could be. I had to fight the urge to shudder.

“As we both have many demands on our time, I’ll be brief.” He was again the crisp businessman as he stood up and gestured for me to sit in one of the other chairs in the conversational grouping. I followed his lead, but mostly because I wanted to look at Paul. He had not really moved or said a word since I had arrived and I was worried.

“Your friend will probably be fine.” In cheap detective movies, this is where they would note that the villain seemed to be reading my mind, but it was quite evident what I was thinking as I approached Paul and knelt daintily beside him so my face was inches from his.

“For now,” Maldonado continued, allowing the implied threat hang heavily in the air between us.

My response was, of course, “What the hell have you done to him you slime.”

Maldonado’s response, equally well scripted, was, “Oh, nothing much. I’ve provided him with a moderately large dose of one of the stronger sedatives. In a few minutes, we should begin to see the first symptoms of respiratory and cardiac collapse. He will shortly die, unless we can come to a deal.”

“Deal?” I couldn’t believe this piece of slime was talking business as he watched someone die. “I gather you tend towards the reform view of the Ten Commandments, ‘It’s not murder if you don’t get caught.’ How the hell can you expect me to make any deal I’ll keep under this kind of duress?”

“Sadly,” he gave me a wry grin, “along with being an annoying wiseass, you also have a rather intuitive mind. There is no guarantee I can actually expect from you. Have a seat and watch.”

“I don’t think so,” I growled and prepared to leap.

“Oh, I do.” He slid into a soft chair beside Paul and pointed to the Tweedle brother by the door. Sammy was pointing a gun at me. “He’s quite a good shot, especially from less than fifteen feet like now.

“I too am armed,” Maldonado noted while patting a lump in his chest, “but I’m quite sure you won’t make it necessary for me to use my weapon, will you Kirsten?

“Can you stop us all before one of us kills you and/or Paul? Please feel free to try. I’m actually rather interested and would like to see a demonstration.”

Damn, I cursed silently. For all his myriad faults, the man was smart. Could he really have figured out what happened from his brief time skimming the lab notes?

“What kind of demonstration would you like?” I asked, trying to assess how much he had learned as I stood and slid beside Paul. I made a show of putting one hand on his shoulder and rubbing it nervously. The move also put me next to, and barely touching, the Tweedle furthest from everyone. He glanced down and leered at me while I braced myself so I would not flinch or shudder, tempted as I was, as his hand furtively moved to rub against my buttocks. I had cranked up my pheromone production as high as I dared without making the room reek for weeks to come, so I would have been even more annoyed if he hadn’t made any move at all.

“I mean, are you expecting me to turn into a gorilla or something? What the hell are you expecting?”

Psychologists call it reaction formation, the use of sarcasm and saying the opposite of what is meant to confuse and misdirect. I made certain that my voice dripped with sarcasm as I continued my original plan, slid behind Paul’s chair and leaned down a bit to rub Paul’s shoulders with both hands. This served several purposes. It allowed me to shake my hair and let it flow appealingly over my shoulders and frame my breasts, highlighting then. It also allowed Sammy a better view of them and the lacy bra I was wearing. Finally, it allowed the second Tweedle guarding Paul to move his hand over to my rump. With luck, it was only going to be a matter of time before one Tweedle’s roving hand found the other Tweedle’s and they hopefully got mad at each other.

“No, I think something simple like a change of hair color, a breast enlargement or a height change would be sufficient.”

The height change would have been the most obvious way to get on Carlton’s good side, assuming there was one. He’d probably love the idea of beautiful woman who was shorter than him. It would make him feel all the more a man–a big man. Unfortunately, that would have made it much more difficult to maintain all the hidden musculature I had created for myself on the ride over. Instead, I chose hair. I made it shorter and darker, almost a crew cut like the lady who was hawking her diet book a while back, but still styled in a feminine manner. When the fighting started, there would be less chance of getting it pulled.

The rubbing stopped. Shit. I hadn’t thought they would be that observant. I cranked the pheromone levels up again, deciding it was more important that worrying about the room reeking. Actually, I was chastising myself for caring about the condition of Maldonado’s office considering what I was planning. I also, added a bit more wiggle to my butt as I rubbed Paul, just enough to insure that it would make contact with their hands again. Thank god for short memories and overactive glands; they were soon rubbing again.

The increased pheromone production had another benefit. Sammy had wiped some drool of his chin and taken a silent, sliding step closer to us. I gave a silent cheer, as I needed him to be as close as possible for this to come off. Next, I pumped up my breasts just a bit more and moved the nipple a bit higher so that it was visible above the edge of my bra. By increasing the sped with which I rubbed Paul’s back, I was able to increase the jiggle factor and he moved another two steps closer.

I had been ignoring Carlton the last few moments. Luckily, he was apparently caught up in his own thoughts, probably deciding how to make the most of my discovery. I wondered if he realized what I was trying to accomplish, but regardless, it was time for a distraction, “So what do I need to do to save Paul?”

“Why, merely walk over to the telephone by my desk and call 911, then provide CPR until they arrive.”

“Since I assume you will not be allowing me to do that until you have something, why don’t we stop playing these games? What do you want from me?”

“Actually, nothing any more. I have your research. I have your samples. Now I have the proof that it works thanks to you little demonstration.” He stood up and strode decisively to the table with my life’s work on it. He spoke with out turning back to me as he did something I could not quite make out, but the scent of lighter fluid suddenly became more overpowering then the combined body odor of three Tweedles. “I’ve already made copies of the relevant material and this job is no longer necessary to my plans. I will miss you LaPierre. You are a damned boy scout and you would surely interfere with my plans for a new world order, but as I have noted, you do have an intuitive mind. Oh well, “Qué sera, sera…”

When he did turn around, he had a syringe in his hand. “I’m certain you can guess what this is, your wonderful formula.” With that, he injected himself.

I knew I would not be getting a better chance. Carlton’s hands were full and the Tweedle family was in deep lust. Feigning moral indignation for his too free hands, I screeched and spun on the middle Tweedle and yelled “Fresh!” as I slapped him hard enough to break his jaw. Continuing my spin, I grabbed the far Tweedle and kicked him in the family jewels hard enough to fracture his coccyx before hoisting him backwards over my shoulder and sending him flying over Paul’s chair into Sammy with me flying right behind him.

The broken jawed Tweedle was on the floor moaning behind Paul’s chair, out of the action, at least for the moment. Mr. Crushed Cojá³nes Tweedle was a dead weight on top of Sammy, who had not dropped his gun as I had hoped, but who was struggling to move Cojá³nes so he could get off a clean shot. I was on top of them both before he could get off any shot, clean or dirty. With a loud crunch of broken bone, the gun was in my hand and someone below me was screaming.

A fast roll and I had the gun aimed at Carlton, or at least where Carlton had been. Instead, I was nearly blinded by the brightness of the yellow flames engulfing my life’s work. I was shocked into paralysis and that is when I heard it, the soft popping sound of a bullet. Maldonado was shooting at me.

It took precious microseconds to locate him, by his desk of all places, and he was able to get off a second shot before I emptied my pistol in his direction.

It would have been nice to be able to say that I was a crack shot, but I was not. Paul and I had been hunting with our fathers several times as youngsters and I knew enough to point the damn thing and pull the trigger, hoping the safety was off. Nevertheless, I had not shot a gun in twenty years and I had not been that good even then. Besides, even veteran cops will tell you that in the heat of a firefight, aim is the last thing you are thinking about. When I opened my eyes, I could see a cluster of bullet holes in and around the desk, but no Carlton.

A quick glance back at the conference table with my research burning like some damn Boy Scout bonfire was enough to tell me that it was a lost cause. I knocked Sammy and his clone on the head just hard enough to make sure they would be sleeping for a while and turned to Paul and the last Tweedle, Mr. Broken Jaw. That is when I saw the blood.

Knowing that there is about the same amount of blood in the human body as there is oil in the oil pan of a car does not prepare you for the shock of bright red flowing down the side of a white shirt. I followed the red upward as I traced it back to the source. There was a steady flow of blood gushing from a small hole in Paul’s left eye.

With a smothered whimper, I leaped back to Paul, only to find what I suspected but prayed would not be. There was a large, gaping hole in the back of my best friend’s head. No more would we trade barbs and think up jokes to tease each other. No more would we eat, or play, or study, or be sick together. No more would we be there to help each other. No more, no more, no more.

I knelt beside Paul’s chair and cradled him in my arms as the last of his blood dribbled out, mixing with my tears. Mr. Broken Jaw groaned and tried to move so I kicked him, possibly too hard as he stopped moving all together. The building’s smoke detectors finally realized that something was burning and the sprinkler system released a deluge that covered us all, turning Paul’s blood a pathetic pink. I do not know how long we stayed there. That is how security found us.

 

“Paul was dead, but I wasn’t even allowed to attend his funeral. It seems that Dr. Maldonado had prepared a bunch of phony records framing me, describing me as unstable since the experimental cancer treatment. There were counseling memos, pleading notes to the company’s Employee Assistance Program to get me into therapy, even a couple of calls to company security asking that they be present whenever I was in the building as he feared for his life.

“They never found Maldonado’s body, but that didn’t matter to the DA’s office as they had Mr. Broken Jaw Tweedle’s body and my confession to having kicked him. That was enough to guarantee Manslaughter and when the other two goons concocted a story about how I’d attacked them like a wild creature, breaking bones and shooting at poor Doc Maldonado in a fit of rage, as I accused him of sabotaging my work, they felt confident they had enough for Murder Two. You’d think the big strong Tweedles–by the way, just to show how quirky life can be, it turns out that they really were brothers and Tweedle really was their surname–would be too embarrassed to admit to have been beaten up by the little slip of a thing I was for the trial.

“The last straw was when the police went through my quarters at the base and found blue prints for BioLogInc’s corporate office building as well as directions to a local swamp known for its quicksand deposits, a map with directions to Canada using local and back roads, and a box full of money. The fact that I had never seen any of that stuff before was absolutely irrelevant–and besides, who the hell ever escaped to Canada except a few draft dodgers? That crap was the proof of premeditation that gave the DA his Murder One charge.

“At the time of the trial, it amazed me that no one asked how I could have beaten up those huge, muscle-bound men so badly. No one asked who had shot and killed Paul since the bullet didn’t match any of the guns in the room, or even why he was there.

“Do you know what my court-appointed attorney’s advice was? ‘Look innocent.’ I cannot even imagine what she meant by that, but she certainly didn’t do anything else to functionally present a defense for me. I suppose that’s why she sent me the Laura Ashley outfits to wear. I hear it helped their sales, although the only thing it did for me was get me voted best-dressed woman on death row. I am wearing one now under this orange prison issue jumpsuit. You can just see the top of the turtleneck.

“Actually, as far as I could tell, the only person in that court room who believed I was innocent, excepting the Tweedles, was Patrice. We had been friends since my initial treatment and she came every day. I understand that she has tried to visit me, but she was not my immediate family, my attorney, or someone the State wanted to see me, so we haven’t been able to speak in months.

~o~O~o~

“About now, she’s the only one I’ve got left. Would you please give her a message? Tell her ‘I love her and I’ll never forget her.’”

“So here I am, Father; with no family, no friends, no job, and no future.” I stopped him before he started the usual platitudes about how my faith will help me accept what was to come. “I know. God loves me. Well, if you were about to tell me to confess and free my soul, I’ve got a problem. That was my confession, I’ve confessed to being stupid, and naíve and innocent, but not to being guilty of the charges against me.”

“My dreams of helping mankind are dead; even if I could find someone to fund me, it would be years before I could recreate my work to this still incomplete point. To put it bluntly Father–and I apologize in advance for the language–but I’ve been raped and screwed in the most basic, albeit figurative, terms. Just as Dr. George LaPierre’s life ended when he contracted cancer, Dr. Kristen LaPierre’s life ends in a couple of minutes.”

“What about the other deaths, dear?” His hand trembled a bit as he poured a small quantity of holy water into a steel basin and then dipped his fingers to sprinkle it on me. I think he was afraid that he would join those that had died from being near me. That had been the kicker. With the near absolute control of the inmate population, anyone who had tried to talk to me had died under mysterious circumstances. They couldn’t prove I had done most of them, in fact most are still unsolved, but Maldonado made certain that a few were linked to me via circumstantial evidence, enough that the second trial resulted in the death penalty.

“I have never killed anyone, Father. Those people who died may have died because of me, but not by my desire. I’ve grown tired of trying to explain Dr. Maldonado’s real nature and his role in all of this. Do you want to hear that story again?”

“That won’t be necessary, my child. I shall pray for your soul.” The priest kissed his rosary and crossed himself before rising. He seemed happy to be finished blessing me, yet another successful convert to my side–not.

“Thank you, Father; but pray for this country and the world. Dr. Maldonado is still out there and if he’s even half as ruthless as I believe he is, we’re all in deep trouble.”

The sound of a key rattling against the bars made us both start. A contingent of four burly guards and the Warden was waiting just outside the cell. For some reason the joke about the King and the Jester came back to me and I realized that I heartily agreed with the punch line, “No noose is good news.” Oh, and that reminds me of the other joke I have yet to finish, the one about the vase. It is about an attorney making his opening address to the jury in behalf of a client who is accused of breaking a neighbor’s extremely valuable vase. It goes something like this. “Your honor, distinguished colleagues, and ladies and gentlemen of the jury, by the end of these proceedings, I intend to prove three things beyond a shadow of a doubt. First, I shall prove that my client never received the vase in question. Second, I shall prove that when she did receive it, it was already broken. Third and finally, I shall prove that when my client returned the vase, it was intact.” I almost wish my attorney had been able to match the quality of the attorney in the joke. Actually, I wish Paul had been alive to serve as my lawyer.

The Priest silently stood and backed out of my way. I had actually been waiting for this moment–or maybe it was that stupid noose joke–but I gave him a jaunty wave and said, “See you later, Father.”

They added handcuffs and leg chains before letting me leave the cell. Then, we all did a slow march, the Warden in front, the Priest in back and me, surrounded by the guards, in the middle. My escort was silent and grim, but the cheers from the surrounding cells was deafening and could be heard even after the heavy steel door at the end of the corridor closed behind us.

I had had many discussions with attorneys, news people, psychologists and guards over the past year and a half while the required appeals were processed–against my wishes, I might add–by do-gooders trying to help.

Meanwhile, Maldonado has had free rein to remake the world in his image. As a result, I was not surprised by the huge crowd seated in the bleachers in front of the gallows. But then again, I had been planning this moment for quite a while now.

We continued our slow march to the top of the scaffold. Then, I got to listen as the Warden read my list of crimes and verified that I was Dr. Kirsten LaPierre in accordance with state law. Were my situation different, I might have found it funny that after being in jail for almost two years, this was when they verified my identity. Finally, in a deep stentorian voice, he completed the ritual by citing the statute under which this execution was occurring.

Then it was my turn. I was asked if I had anything more to say. Still shuffling due to the chains, I stepped up to the microphone and glared out at the audience. “I have said it from the beginning and I say it again. I did not kill Dr. Carlton W. Maldonado. He is alive and he is amongst you plotting evil of such magnitude that it will stun you at the least, and could prove the undoing of this country, even the world.

“I know that you do not believe me. I know that you consider me the evil one. It saddens me that I have not been able to convince you to join me to fight the evil that is Dr. Maldonado, but fight him I shall, to my dying breath. One last time, I implore you to release me and join me.”

The silence was deafening. A guard shuffled his feet and the Warden checked his watch against the large clock mounted on the scaffold. It was almost time.

The guards escorted me back to a marked position on the trap door and offered me a hood, which I declined. Then the noose slid over my head and down my neck. Someone, one of the guards, was thoughtful enough to pull my hair through so it was not trapped between the noose and my neck. The chains stayed on; I guess they figured it would be added weight to insure that my neck snapped, then they added sandbag, which were attached to each foot by the leg chain. When I had been prepared, the Warden nodded to someone behind me. He declined to look into my face although I looked into his. Then, the ground fell out from beneath me.

For more than six months I had been preparing for this moment. I had read of this moment and I had dreamed of this moment. I had interviewed anyone who could tell me anything about it. I had even spent time on the Internet researching gallows construction and the medical details of hanging. I was at peace, knowing what would happen.

The first feeling was that of falling. My shoulder length hair floated up creating a golden halo in the morning sunlight.

Then, the thick hemp rope snapped taut and it was over, but for the perfunctory medical exam. I can honestly say that there was no pain.

They let me hang for several minutes. I guess no one ever told the Warden that asphyxiation as the actual cause of death in hanging is an old wives’ tale–or maybe he was just being cautious.

You did you know that hanging does not kill you by asphyxiating you, right? The actual cause of death is the landing, so to speak. More accurately, it’s the combined multiple insults to the body including the trauma to the brain as it is bounced about, the spine as it is severed, and the essential organs as they stop receiving messages to function. Trust me I speak from personal, first-hand experience.

Finally, they took me down and lay me on a gurney. The jail physician took out his stethoscope any listened for my heart, checked for a pulse and flipped my eyes open to see if there was any pupillary dilation. There wasn’t.
From then on, it was just a matter of time. I had asked for immediate cremation at the funeral home that had cared for my parents’ remains, but like most bureaucracies, it took almost five hours, lying on a freezing metal slab, before my body was released for pick up.

Right about now, you’re probably thinking of the ending of any of the dozens of “B” horror flicks Paul and I used to watch on Sunday mornings as we grew up. Someone always seemed to end up intoning in a somber voice, “There are some things man was never meant to know.” At least it makes sense in the context of wondering how I could possibly know about things like my death and the events that occurred after it. If it will help, I could tell you that it is beautiful up here and “a far, far better place to which” I have gone. However, I can assure you that I am not a ghost, nor am I some other type of supernatural being. My personal experiences are the result of living through my own death.

I told you I had been researching executions for months. After all, I am a research scientist and that’s what we do when we want to know something–research it. I also told you how a properly administered hanging actually works. Remember I had quite a bit of time for independent study during those many months in solitary confinement on Death Row. Thus, I practiced and honed my ability to change shape until it was effectively instantaneous. In the process, I discovered that the only limitation is my ability to properly visualize the biology, to imagine the change in sufficient detail that it is able to function. This means I can even assume various animal shapes, even in between shapes like a half man half animal. For some reason, I am partial to large white furred, ape-like creatures. Sorry, just kidding about that last comment. I don’t really have a preference of any sort, except for being male, which I still can’t do.

As the noose went around my neck, I created a shell-like exoskeleton under my turtleneck sweater extending down my spine and under my crotch. The upper part prevented asphyxiation and a snapped neck. The lower frame served as a support so I would not snap some other portion of my vertebrae. Once the trap door opened, I just played dead, removing the lower exoskeleton first so it would not be noticed when they lowered me off the noose. Then, I just moved my heart and major arteries well away from their normal position in my chest so that my internal organs dampened the beating sounds until they could not be heard by the good doctor. Finally, it was just a waiting game until the funeral home picked up my body and placed it in a casket to be cremated. When no one was looking, I just swapped another body for mine and disappeared amongst the next group of mourners.

From there, it was a quick bus ride to Patrice’s apartment to borrow some money, collect some clothes and say our tearful goodbyes. I cannot afford to lose my last true friend and I know Maldonado would kill her without a second thought if he thought she was helping me, but I am not worried. I can still call her if I finish the conversation within sixty seconds, or drop her an e-mail, even a letter to return the money she lent me. Besides, she gave me the hope that this will one day be over and I can again be with her. It will not be the same as it would have been with Paul, but no one should ever give up a friend without a fight.

Now I am free to seek out Maldonado. It will not be easy. I do not know her new name. I do not know what she looks like. I do not know where she is. I do not even know what her goals are. I just know she’s out there plotting, organizing and controlling more nefarious criminal activity and she must be stopped before she does to others what she’s done to me. She will also have the same ability to change her appearance as me and, when I catch her, I will have to tell her she is a lousy lawyer. I am certain she is still planning for our next encounter. She will believe I am dead as much as I believe she is dead.

I never wanted to be some kind of a hero. I never once thought to save the world. I just wanted to help my fellow man. Now, I have a mission–and I will succeed. I have to. I cannot let down Paul, or my parents, or those of you who have no way to protect yourself from Maldonado’s machinations. Like in the comics still at the cabin, I need a superhero name, but most of the good ones are already taken. I have combined the two things that are most prominently me. I am a biomorph and, as Carlton sneeringly pointed out, I am a Boy Scout.
Prepare yourself Maldonado. I am coming for you. Bio Scout is coming for you.

 

The End