Author's note

Hey there. I got a bit tired of some main stream fiction, so I had the luminous idea to start writing my own with my meager skills. The story below is what my twisted mind came up with. I was aiming for some solarpunk, also described a the love child of blade runner and flower power. I also sort of borrowed a few concepts from Whateley Academy. That's why I have to give this little warning, things can get weird. Mostly family friendly, but still a little bit weird.

~o~O~o~

"Excuse me, sir. Do you have Faith?"

"Of course we have Faith ma’am. Do you want Baptist, Methodist?"

"Catholic, please."

"Alright. Let me ring your purchases up for you. That'll be 5 Holy Fathers and 2 Hail Mary please. Just tap your phone on the pay plate."

“So much?”

“Catholic Faith is not doing well in the market ma’am.”

“You have to suffer for your Faith, right?”

I watched the older lady put her phone on the plate and confirm the payment on her phone using one vertical followed by one horizontal swipe. The resemblance of the confirm movement that also scans your fingerprint was no coincidence. All the Christian Crypto Coins used it. After a few seconds a heavenly chime sounded and the payment was completed.

Our little second hand robotic greeter turned toward the lady and said "Thank you for your p-p-purchase, madam. Please come back soon."

And there goes my last costumer for the day. I flipped the sign to closed before somebody else came in. I didn't get overtime when the shop was empty and it wasn't a good neighborhood. Miami really went down when the sea went up, if you catch my meaning.

After a bit of tidying up and letting the floor cleaning robots work I could go home. I only had to reset the bots two time today. I waited five more minutes just fiddling with some stuff on the shelving so the security system would register it as more working and the boss didn't have an excuse to dock my pay.

With that little bit of acting done, I closed the shop and got my bike. All the locks were the good ol' mechanical kind. You'd think that in the year 2047 we'd have good working locks but the last electronic locks installed got hacked and the store was robbed three times on the first night they were installed. The last pack of thieves took the shelving because all the rest was already gone.

Half an hour of biking later, puffing and wheezing, and I was home. I'd rather use a robocab. This humidity and my health was not a great combination and meds were more important than robocabs. That ‘patented formula’ on the box of the meds actually means ‘extortion rates’. I really needed a chance to earn some cold hard cash to pay for a treatment that actually heals me instead of dealing with the symptoms.

"Hey Mom, I'm home," I called out. Yes, I'm 25 years and graduated a long time ago. I still live with my parents in an apartment. It was a slightly above average apartment and we worked hard to keep pay the rent.

"Hi Andy. Home already? No overtime today?"

My mom was a woman from the millennial generation. She didn't have a lot of luck in her life and it was showing unfortunately. You could still see the beauty hidden behind the layers of fast food quickly eaten between jobs. Her brown eyes had acquired a permanent sad look and her hair was grey now. I wished I could do more for her.

”Not today Mom. I squeezed every minute that I could but no customers means no overtime paid."

"Andy, I'm sorry to bring it up, but we need some more money."

"But our basic income is scheduled to increase in three weeks."

"That’s not enough. Our landlord is increasing rent in one week."

“Seriously?”

“I’m sorry.”

"It’s okay mom, I understand. I'll look around for more work."

At that moment Daenerys, my sister, walked in. Yes, that's her real name. You can guess what show my mom was binge watching when she was born. We just call her Dani. She just graduated and was now looking for a job. And a boyfriend. She wasn't having much luck with both at the moment.

"I received spam mail! It's the Nigerian Prince scam again. Somebody is pranking me! If I can find the person responsible for this!"

With that, she threw the letter away where it floated to the floor and left the room, her brown hair flowing behind her. If I had to be objective she was cute with her hazel eyes, but not on the heartbreaker level. She hated that she wasn’t pretty enough and had no chance of marrying into the higher classes of the US society.

I certainly didn't stand a chance of wooing a rich little socialite or corporate daughter. Not with me looking like a small thin white boy with black hair and a scruffy beard. Certainly not in Miami, the city where the captains left and the rats remained to man the sinking ship. Stupid global warming that officially still doesn’t exist.

Perhaps that letter could get me some money if I could scam the scammer. It was desperate attempts, but I quickly took the letter to my room for studying. If there was a chance I could earn some money from it in some way I was going to take it.

The envelope was made out of weird paper. It felt just different from the regular stuff. It was also without stamp. Somebody delivered this personally. That's a bit strange as most stuff is digital anyway.

As I opened the letter I saw it was made of the same paper as the envelope. The text on it was seemingly handwritten.

"Dear Daenerys,

My beloved Sister, I hope this message gets to you in peace. I found you and your dream at perfect-body.com.

My name is Jayamma Ọyáwálé, born in Borno state in Nigeria. I am crying while writing this message in a church hostel. I lost my beloved wife to a terrible disease that is terrorising Borno state. My daughters was kidnap along with 270 girls been kidnapped in school chibok village in Nigeria by terrorist.

While the entire world is searching for them I have seen upon my body the first sign of terrible disease and I am staying in church hostel, we are staying 30 in a single room and i am afraid my living condition will make my remaining days shorter.

I am asking in help from you in order from me to carry my legacy to fulfilment. Included in letter you find seed and small nugget of gold. Carry this seed to the place it is told so my legacy is alive after I am no more. For this, accept the nugget as sign of my appreciation.

When you do this for me, I shall in turn work magic and pray for you, so you shall receive body you are dreaming about.

Hope to here from you,

Jayamma Ọyáwálé

Please contact me at ja.oy@very-anonymous.com"

That's a strange twist on the normal scam. Apparently my sister was lured in with some promise of the perfect body. She does have some insecurities of course but still.

There should be something included. I shook the envelope while holding it upside down and out fell a little scrap of paper with a seed from some plant taped on. It also had GPS coordinates written in it. The other side had a few little balls from a ball bearing taped on. The bearings were yellow in color. Holy heavy metal Batman!

It this is real, it might help our finances so we wouldn't lose the apartment. I checked the GPS coordinates on my smartphone. It was not far from here, only five miles. I quickly hid the letter and scraps of paper in my jacket and went back out.

"Mom, I'm going to go to the shop for a beer. I'll be back in an hour," I announced from the apartment door.

"Okay, bring some chocolate for me. I need it."

Dang, now I had to buy her chocolate. I hoped this thing earns me some money.

Author's note: Things gets more weird. It's going to take a few more chapters before the big reveal.

~o~O~o~

After a short bike ride I arrived at an empty lot in between two houses. The GPS said that this is the right spot mentioned in the letter. I entered the empty lot overgrown with weeds and got to the exact indicated spot. There were no barriers or fences here. There was nothing much to protect anyway.

Then came the challenging part: how to plant a seed. I think I once did that back in elementary school. It should be simple: dig a hole, put the seed in and pour water on top. Right, I could do that. With a bit of plastic debris that's always laying around in the city I dug a small hole, put the seed in, shoveled the sand back on top and poured the contents from the water bottle from my bike on top. There, done. Hmmm. Nothing happened. Not knowing what else to do, I assumed this was good enough and pedaled to the nearest pawn shop.

I entered the pawn shop. That action apparently triggered the torture of something electronic that responded with producing a sound that with some interpretation might be considered a jingling of bells. When my nerves recovered from the nails on blackboard sensation, I noticed greed personified eyeing me, and especially eyeing my lime green cycling outfit and judging me unworthy. Somewhere in the blond and grey beard something started moving, and Greed started speaking.

"Whaddya want boi. It's near closing time."

"Can you take a look at this? I'd like to sell it to you," I said while slowly putting a paper with one of the little balls taped on it on the counter. When his eyes stopped bulging out and swiveling between me and the tiny balls, he ran to the back of the shop yelling "Don't move, I'll be right back." After some repeats of "where is it" he came back with his smartphone, something with spectroscope 2000 written on it on fading letters and a variety of adaptors. After some cursing at the various corporations for changing connectors every year, he got the right combination of adaptors lined up and started scanning the ball.

When the results came on screen he definitely got a hungry look before straightening his face and declaring "Sorry son, looks like these are fake. I can give you a few bucks."

"That's okay. I'll give them to my little sister for making bracelets or something. Thank you for your time." I pushed a dollar over the counter to him while retrieving the little ball.

"Wait! I mean... I can test again, I think it was plugged in incorrectly."

Heh, I thought so.

"Oh, okay," I responded.

He made a show of rearranging his adaptors until they were again in the original position and tested again.

"You see, now it says it contains some gold."

Trying to sound innocent, I asked "Perhaps you can check a third time? Then you can also check the others."

"Others? Okay, just for you I'll test again. Oh, look, now it says high quality gold. It just had to warm up."

"Here, I have a few more," I said while pulling out the other paper with the rest of the balls.

The guy eagerly checked the rest and announced them good quality gold too.

"I'll give you $50 for all."

"They said on the news gold is at all time high. $500."

After some gritting of teeth and some back and forth, I walked out of there with $250 cash. Not bad for an evening working.

I immediately took my phone and typed a message to Jama Jama or what's his name. I just couldn’t remember foreign names. Right, Jayamma was the name.

"Dear Jayamma,

I hope this finds you in good health.

You have my deepest sympathies for your situation. I have done what you asked and planted the seed on the marked location, it was the least I could do.

With all my heart,

Daenerys Danvers."

Now to buy some chocolate and go home.

~o~O~o~

Nothing happened for a few days except we now managed to pay rent on time. That made my parents happy.

The week after the first letter, the second letter arrived. Again, thus one was addressed to Dani without a stamp. I quickly snatched the letter before anyone else saw it. I took it upon myself to get the mail from the apartment mailbox after work just in case another letter arrived and nobody complained.

This letter read:

"Dear Daenerys,

My beloved Sister, I hope this message gets to you in peace. I can not express my gratitude that you took upon yourself to carry my legacies planted into the soil.

Included in this is more seeds to bring to soil. There is also payment for your efforts.

Very special I have worked my magics. Included in this letter are small beans. Eat one per day. You will grow healthy and strong.

Hoping to hear from you soon,

Jayamma Ọyáwálé"

"It gets weirder," I muttered. Now there were three seeds and again some little gold balls. And seven small raw beans gleaming with an impossible healthy green. "Oh, those look so good."

It was impossible to resist, I had to try a bean. It tastes pretty good, but with an aftertaste that made me not want a second one for now. I hope they worked. Riding my bike didn't get easier with my health.

The locations for the seeds were a bit further out but still doable on bike so this evening I went out again. I went to my favorite greedy pawn shop and brought a little scale with me that I bought for more haggling power when I caught him cheating. It gave me more than enough extra cash to buy beer and chocolate for my parent.

It was still a mystery why my Nigerian benefactor wanted to plant seeds and trusted me to do so enough to send gold. Not that I was complaining, it made life a lot easier. But it was still weird.

This continued for a month. Jama Jama's disease was not bad enough to prevent him from sending more seeds, gold and beans. I dutifully ate the beans and got healthier, stronger and had more stamina. I also lost weight and strangely also some body hair. The loss of the hair was totally compensated by the new muscles I was getting now, especially the first signs of my new sixpack were awesome.

The latest letter I received however had planting spots that were almost beyond biking range. These spots are not in busy locations and public transportation was non existent there. It was also out of the mapped area of driverless cars and we didn't own a car. Time to call the reinforcements. I let my friend Jama know I needed to bring my friend Tom in the game if locations kept getting further out. The next letter had more gold and double the amount of beans. Time for a phone call.

~o~O~o~

"Hey Andy, get in," Tom said as rolled down his car window.

"Tom, my man. How're you doing?"

"I'm awesome. You looking sharp man. You've been biking a lot?"

"Oh yes, I got a side job delivering stuff and had to do a lot of biking. It did wonders for my cardio. But I've got a couple of new deliveries farther away. I'll need you and your car, but you get a part of the money. Lemme fill up the tank of this old heap of junk of yours."

"I can use free fuel, you know that. I sure can't afford a new electric car, just these old second hand gas guzzlers. This side job of you, it's not illegal, right dude?"

"No worries, all legal. It's just planting some mysterious Nigerian legacy seeds. I'll do that part, I have lots of experience with planting now."

"Hah. I'd pay to see you doing that. You killed all those plants in elementary."

"I did not! After we get some fuel, just drive to the waypoint on my phone. I'll put it on the dash. Then we go to ol' greedy at the pawn shop."

"Why do you have to go there? I thought you were doing seeds?"

"Yes, I just plant seeds. But the crazy part, they pay in gold. Only some grams but that's already worth a few hundred bucks. Yes, really weird. Even stranger is they send me this beans. They even got some for you. They must be full of vitamins and electrolytes because they make you feel great. You should try them. The blue ones are yours."

"That's some story man. I don't know that you've been smoking but I want some."

"Here, see. Gold."

"It looks yellow. Are you sure it's gold?"

"The pawn shop pays in cold hard cash for this. It's solid man."

"Alright. Let's do this. What are you doing with that phone? Have you clogged it again with spyware? You should really stop installing every app you see. Remember when that ransom thing killed your thesis?”

“I almost got it. There, navigation set.”

“Alright, let’s go.”

"This is the life. Look at us hanging out in style," Tom said smiling.

"You mean with above average beer in the mall and money to spend on entertainment instead of browsing social media?" I remarked.

"Yep. Thanks to our new source of humble wealth. And look at my arm."

He times it right, flexing his biceps just when a few girls were walking past, giving him and annoyed and then an interested look when she thought I wasn't looking. Hah.

"Those beans work differently for you than for me it seems. I got stronger but without the big muscles, just leaner. And my stamina is crazy. I can bike for miles without getting out of breath. I overtook a scooter yesterday. You had to see the look on the guy's face!"

What I didn't tell him was that I lost more weight from around my waist. And my chest started itching recently. I mean, you don't discuss your nipples with your pals, right?

"Have you noticed that counting and remembering stuff is easier?"

"I have. I often figure out the sum of the merchandise I ring up at the register before I scanned everything. Well, almost. I think my boss has this hack on the register that adds a random amount to the total of the purchases. Just a percentage or two if my calculations are correct."

"You work for a skimmer, man."

"Yep. Such is life"

"Can't you quit and live on the seed m-"

"Hush, look. Nigeria on TV."

"... the military report a drone has been lost above the jungle of Nigeria during the investigating of the jungle as part of the quarantine program. As you know, the multiple diseases that wrecked the country in the last 15 years necessitated international cooperation for the creation of a quarantine zone around the entire country and coastal areas.

As you can see in this footage, large numbers of trees have more leaves that are in shaded of dark blue or dark green instead of the normal vibrant green. The scientific community expressed their concern about the growing number of spots in the jungle where this so far unexplained phenomenon is taking place. However, the advanced drone was taken down by what appears to be a primitive man with a wooden spear in want military experts say was a very lucky shot.

More news will follow after the international meeting in Frankfurt to discuss the situation has concluded.

In other news, the dust bowl in the Midwest is expected to arrive at..."

"Your mister Jama has damned good aim," Tom muttered while throwing his empty beer cup in the trash bin.

"Good throw man."

"It's about the only thing you learn at the office."

"Can you come to my work tomorrow? We can get supplies in the shop with employee credit. I have the feeling it's going to be a long trip tomorrow. We can depart at middag. Then I get off shift."

"Right, tomorrow is letter day. Sure, no problem."

~o~O~o~

"Hey Andy. How’s business?" Tom asked as he walked into the shop.

"The morning rush from the hyperloop commuters is over. I only expect just a few shoppers today but there is nobody here now. Our stuff is behind the counter. Let me open up for your."

"Sheesh Andy, are you expecting a tornado? Look at that pile."

"I'm just so hungry lately."

"Yeah, me too actually. Maybe all that food is a very good idea. I've parked the car in front."

At that moment somebody wearing a balaclava kicked the door in. At least, they tried, but the door opened automatically causing the leg swinger to stumble. The robotic greeter turned and was slowly rolling towards the visitor. The man entering the shop, with a painfully bruised pride and looking for a way to re-establish some dominance, fired a shotgun shell through the bot and into the lemonade rack. That allowed him to enthusiastically pump his shotgun and grin threateningly at Tom and Andy, while small streams of cola and other fizzy beverages were spraying behind him.

"Boyos, we have some business to discuss."

Tom lifted his hands in the air and I was quick to do likewise while cursing my boss. Why had that stupid guy bought the simple open register model instead of the bullet proof glass.

"Andy!" the guy yelled at me. How did that knew my name? I'm not wearing a name tag or something like that. The guy was now slowly pointing the gun to me.

"You have been selling gold," he said. A few more goons came in now. Of course, my greedy friend from the pawn must have gotten even more greedy. I should have expected that. "You thought we wouldn't notice hey? But we found out. You got it delivered. You're getting a letter today. Am I right?"

Andy nodded. "What do you want?! I don't have a stash of gold or money! Do you want that letter?!"

"No, I want your supplier."

"I don't know the supplier! I just get the letter!"

"I thought so. But you'll tell us find the source of the gold," the main robber said smugly while standing in the carbonated carnage.

"But how? I can search for the old letters and give them to you. I swear. But I have to search my room, it's a mess."

"So you don't know that the letters are actually delivered by a seagull. I can see by your gaping faces you don't. You'll see soon enough. The bird arrives at nine thirty. We'll have to see up before then. Jamal, Juan, put our guests in the van and keep them there. Jeff, take that pile of food. No sense in letting it go to waste. Let's go.

The bandits sat behind us in the van casually holding their guns. They drove off and in a few minutes we arrived at my apartment building.

"Get out," the guy behind Tom said.

We scrambled out of the car. I tried to appeal on their humanity.

"Please don't hurt my family. They haven't done anything wrong! They don't know anything!"

"We're not here for your family. We're here for the seagull."

"Seagull?" I asked confused.

"My g**, you're so naive. The seagull brings those letters from overseas. To find out where the gold comes from, we follow the seagull."

"But if the seagull gets the letter here, then how does that bird get the letter in the mailbox?" Tom asked.

"There are a few rats that help," the other bandit said.

"Rats? Don't they know where the gold is? And why rats? I don't get it!" was my intelligent response.

"Our source doesn't know where the rats come from. Just that they help the seagull getting the letter to you. But you need the seagull to get the gold," bandit number three explained.

"So who is your source? The internet?" Tom asked sarcastically.

The bandits were suddenly suspiciously quit and looking at each other. Then two of them started pushing us to the side of the building where there were some trees.

"Move it you two. We have to set up the trap," the guy behind us said roughly.

Three men started to build a trap under the trees while one men kept a gun pointed at the ground before us. It turned out that the trap was a metal mesh they put on some wooden poles just in front of the entrance of the building, where the post boxes where located. They added a little "Cell phone reception measurement, do not touch" card on it. Then they hid back under the trees. After that, the waiting began.

After a bit more than an hour, the seagull landed on the grass. It slowly waddled up to the door. I could also make out a few beady eyes behind the glass of the door, from the rats. Unbelievable! The bird stopped in the middle of the metal mesh where it started eating some dog food one of the men left there. It was of course stolen from the store but was near expiration date so nobody would miss it. The bird seemed to appreciate it anyway.

While the bird was eating peacefully, somebody pushed a button on the remote and the net dropped on the bird. Strangely enough the bird wasn't really startled, like it was expecting this.

When we got closer we could see that the bird was wearing a little white backpack. The robbers didn't waste any time and took the contents out of the little backpack. The robber-in-chief quickly took the little gold nuggets for himself and threw the letter towards Tom and me. Once the backpack was empty, they inserted a cobbled together piece of electronics and lifted the net from the bird. Of course the seagull quickly scrambled away, probably cursing us with it's loud cries and flew away to the ocean.

The men kindly asked Tom and Andy to take a seat in their van. Again. What was going to be the next disaster that awaits us? They weren’t out to kill us. These guys seemed to be so incompetent that an accident was our main concern.

They drove towards the beach, passing the harbor. The smell frying food was strong today. Chinese food always had this distinctive smell and usually the area was saturated by it. The government wasn’t happy with all the Chinese imports and made some rules that delayed the shipments in the harbor. China responded by buying most of the harbors using a number of American subsidiaries. Guess what shipments get priority now.

The smell of the cooking faded away as we drove on and arrived at a house surrounded by sandbags. Another house scheduled to be eaten by the rising sea soon. The van parked in front of the house. Of course our poor kidnappers picked this dilapidated spot.

“Alright, everybody out!” Bob commanded. “Jeff, Juan, start carrying our stuff to the boat. Jamal, keep an eye on the kiddies here.”

“Hey, why does he get the easy job?” Jeff wanted to know.

“Last time somebody gave you a gun, it took you all of five seconds to shoot the tire of my van,” Juan complained.

“Hey, nobody told me about that safety thingy.”

“I rest my case.”

“Quit yapping and start carrying, you bums,” Bob said as he started to hand them boxes from the trunk. “Move it. That transmitter has a limited range.”

“Right. Gold!” was Jeff’s response as he found his motivation and started carrying the boxed to somewhere behind the house.

When all stuff was moved, Bob came to us. “Come on, we don’t have all day. Let’s go.”

We got out of the van and walked the path the rest had taken on the side of the house. When we got in front we saw there was a wooden pier leading up to an old rusty boat.

“Are we going on that thing? It looks like it’s held together by duct tape,” Tom asked. He really wasn’t happy with the idea.

“It’s a good boat! Don’t you start insulting the boat my grandpa left me,” Bob said stubbornly.

“And what’s that smell,” I asked pinching my nose.

“What smell?” Bob asked blinking his eyes.

“The diesel fuel you mean. Or the lubricant. Juan always spills some.” Jamal suggested.

“Diesel? I thought most ships used hydrogen or methane? You have a diesel synthesizer here?” Tom asked, intrigued by all things technical.

“Synthesize? I'll have you know I use the best fossil fuels I can find. None of those artificial crap. It was what my grandpa was using and it's what I use,” Bob stated irritated.

We said nothing. Most of the gas Tom's car used was synthetic and barely smelled. This guy was paying premium prices for real authentic diesel. No wonder they are desperate for gold.

Hesitantly we walked the wooden pier to the welded together pieces of rust resembling a boat. That pier itself also was fixed up with shipping pallets and didn't invite confident walking. In some ways these guys were courageous. Or ignorant. Sometimes it seems to be a synonym.

Bob helped us on board. “Welcome to the Fishy Tart. Juan here will take you to your cabin where you can freshen up. Preparation for launch will be completed soon and we'll be on our way shortly. I do hope you can join your captain for dinner this evening. We thank you for booking with Bob's Excursions.” Bob rattled of jovially. He had been waiting a long time to use those lines.

With that, we were brought to a small cabin with tiny toilet, shower and two bunk beds.

“I guess this is home for now,” Tom remarked as Juan closed the door behind us. “And our prison room.”

I laid down on the top bunk. Some time later the engine started with lots of coughing, and wheezing while the crew was shouting things that shouldn’t be repeated, but in the end the house and pier we departed from got slowly smaller in the grubby window in our cabin.

~o~O~o~

“Andy, why are you always wearing your shirt? It's much cooler without. There is nothing else to do here so you can get a tan. The aft deck is great to catch some sun.”

I didn't wanted to admit that I was developing some serious man boobs. It was weird as I wasn't getting fat. More the opposite. “The ozone layer is thin man. I don't want to get cancer here.”

“The ozone layer is recovering. You're making stuff up.”

“I don't trust the news.”

“Fair enough.”

“There goes Juan again. That's the first time barfing for him today, right?”

“Yep. 7 in total since we departed. So lucky we don't even have a hint of sea sickness. I have an extra dessert riding on him barfing 9 times before sunset. That guy should not be on a ship.”

“Making bets with the kidnappers now are we? Getting cozy?”

“We can’t escape here. It’s the middle of the ocean. And I have the feeling everything is going to be okay.”

“There is our captain now with the medication. Stingy guy should have given the meds the day before yesterday. There goes your bet.”

“Oh, look. Jeff is trying to get the phones to work again. This is going to be good. I learned so many new cuss words when he's trying to get it working.”

“Who would have thought those always online phones don't work so great in the middle of the Atlantic. Are you going to help him today? Tom, how did you hack those phones anyway?”

“I just found a few simple workarounds.”

“Simple? They were working on it for hours and you cobbled something in minutes.”

“I don't know. It’s all just straightforward and easy. Can you believe they used online tools to follow that seagull. I just pulled the files out of cache and enabled an emulation in a sandbox.”

“Right. Easy… You used to be a klutz with electronics.”

“I think it changed when I started to eat those beans. And I saw you going through those Sudoku puzzles you found like it was nothing this morning.”

“It was nothing. It were children level puzzles. The difficulty level on those puzzles must have been a misprint. So, you're going to help them?”

“Yep. This trip is not going to be shorter with them running the boat in circles. And they seem to desperate to turn back.”

“That's right. The coast guard was announcing a search for them as their debts have been called in. It’s probably why they’re out for gold.”

“Andy, how do you know that?”

“It was on the radio earlier. Captain Bob had the speaker on I think. I heard it clearly. You must have been on the toilet and didn’t hear it.”

“That must be it. Let's help them. Only laying here is getting boring otherwise.”

~o~O~o~

“Six days of canned food. I'm getting tired of this,” Jamal complained.

“Bob says we're almost there,” Jeff said trying to calm down Jamal. “It's just one more day.

“That doesn't mean I have to like it. Barfing Juan was supposed to be our cook. The meds work but he still can't cook. What a mess.

I heard them complain through the wall. Again. It was the fixed ritual. And Tom was helping Bob navigating. That left me quietly alone in the cabin so I could take a quick inventory of the things changing on my body: my hips were getting wider, waist narrower, a starter set for breasts appeared, less morning wood. Tom was sporting a beard you could use for sanding down the deck after these days without razor while I had no hair anywhere except for my head. What I had on my chin were hairs like some lonely blades of grass pushing their way through otherwise smooth pavement, and even those hairs were disappearing.

I can pretty much guess where this will end and that is somewhere in girl land. I can already guess what happened. There was the site about perfect body, my sister’s name that I used for those letters and the beans that made me healthy. Although it sounds really weird, my bet was on those beans giving me the perfect body, for my sister. That will teach me to use her name and stuff. It sounds impossible, but I’ve seen rats ready to help a seagulls with backpacks carrying gold. What is one more crazy thing, right? Sister dear might be a bit upset I stole her perfect figure.

The important thing right then was not to panic. We were still surrounded by people with guns in the middle of an ocean. I’ll just try to hide this like I was doing already. This boat was on its way to the source of the letters so perhaps there was an answer there on how to reverse this. I quickly pulled my clothes back in place and left the cabin.

I was lying in my bunk when I suddenly I heard a voice. It had this strange stereo effect. I heard it once like in my head and at the same time through the speaker of the ship’s radio. Am I hearing radio now? I’m not growing any antenna as far as I can see. One more thing to add to the pile of mysteries.

"This is captain Smith of the USS Weston. You are approaching a quarantined area. Cut all engines and prepare for inspection. Please acknowledge!" I peeked outside the cabin and saw Bob coming from the direction of the toilet racing to the bridge, still trying to fasten his pants. Yep, those phone calls always come at the worst time.

Oh, there was really a ship on the horizon. From what I could see it was one of those newer all stealthy weird things.

"This is Robert Parks of the research ship Neptune. We are preparing for your arrival."

So we were a research ship now. I haven’t seen much research so far except for those guys ‘researching’ men's magazines.

After a few minutes the war ship came along side. We all stood on deck for the welcome. Bob said that hiding out of sight didn’t work with the sensors on these ships, but they weren’t looking for missing persons anyway as that’s another part of government anyway. The weird stealth ship unfolded two robotic arms that clamped on the posts where you normally would have used ropes, but I guess that was not fancy enough for the military. With some groaning sounds, the ship pulled itself closer.

Then, the captain of the ship stepped on some platform that swung down for him on another robotic arm. He stepped on the platform and the arm moved toward out boat. Really fancy stuff, the platform was kept perfectly level independent of the movement of either boat. When the arm moved to our boat and matched its movement so the captain could easily step on deck. Our own captain was extending his hand, just as the military man stumbled when stepping of the platform, so Bob quickly grabbed his hand to help him with his balance. Many mouth corners were trying really hard not to curve upwards.

"Captain Smith, welcome to the Neptune. What can I do for you?"

"I'd like to know your destination and see your permits. This is a dangerous area. We have reports that the whole area is filled with contaminated savages."

"No problem, captain. Our destination is not fixed. We are studying the adaptation of migratory birds to the changes to the African coast. However, might I introduce you to our team leader, Jack Daniels. He will make things clear. Right this way, sir."

A smile appeared on the face of captain Smith. The two captains disappeared into a cabin. After a few hours they emerged, well inebriated, with Captain Smith was carrying a small wooden box.

"Captain Parks, *hiccup* I will keep this paperwork with me for further investigation, but it all seems good. Very good. You go on and have fun over there."

He patted his box that had glass tingling inside affectionately, tapped on a screen on his sleeve to summon the platform again, stumbled onto the platform and disappeared into his ship. The robot arms pushed us away and then retracted. In the whole time the ship was there, I haven’t seen a single person move on it. It looks like the poor guy was all alone in a high tech ship.

"All right people, we've got work to do. Start the engines and check the transmitter on that bird. Go go go! I'll be in my cabin for... checking the maps. Don't disturb me for nothing! I’ll see you later." Bob closed the door behind him and closed the curtains.

~o~O~o~

It was in the afternoon of the eight day at sea. Finally there was land in sight. In the distance there was a beach with some jungle behind it. It didn't look quite right. The trees where there but it looked like some of them had blue tint instead of green leaves, or a dark green with a blue shine. That was so weird.

"Men, we're at the coast of Nigeria. The tracker says our gold is 3 miles inland. We'll drop anchor here. Jeff, go prep the dinghy. We’re going to scout out the location. Make sure the engine is fueled and running in one hour. Juan, go prep four environmental suits. If that air conditioning of my suit isn't working, I'll kill you. Jamal, get the guns in case the people there did turn to cannibals. Go people, you're wasting daylight."

"Boss, who's gonna watch the kids when we're in the jungle?" Juan asked.

"We're taking the kids with us and let them do the work, unless you're volunteering to do all the chopping trees and digging. No? Thought so. You stay here and prepare dinner. Got it?"

"Okay boss."

"You kids, wait here on deck. You'll get your suit soon enough."

Me and Tom sat down on the deck, watching the men puttering about. It didn't take long for Juan to give us some white suits, or at least something that used to be white once. I think it was something you saw firemen use, like a hazmat suit.

Juan started his instructions. "These is the suit. Look, open here. Put your feet in the boots and pull it up. Close the zipper."

I dutifully did what he said, but these things were hot while it was already hot and humid outside.

"Come on, put this backpack on and I'll hook it up. Good. I'll turn on the systems. It's now connected to the ship's grid so it doesn’t drain the batteries." Juan told me.

The temperature in the suit went down to bearable.

"My goodness. This thing is warm! Are you serious we have to chop down trees?"

"Yes. But we have chainsaws and we stole a small excavator from a construction yard. You didn't think we're going to do that by hand? Oh you did. Heh."

"You, other kid, put on your suit too while l put on the breathing mask here. We don't want our working force sick with all the viruses out there in the jungle. First check the connections to the backpack. Put this over your face. Breath in to check everything works. All okay?"

I nodded.

"Ok, now pull the straps over your head. And the hood over the straps. With the controls on your arm here you can adjust settings. Radio is set to channel 1."

He walked now to Tom and watched him put everything on.

"Breathing okay? Ok. Looks good. You're all done. Look, the boss is here. Adventure awaits!"

Indeed, Jamal and Bob showed up. Of course, their suit was better and cleaner than ours. And they were wearing a gun on their hip, a shotgun on their back and a machete on the other leg.

"Everybody in the dinghy. We're going."

After a lot of maneuvering in the cumbersome suits, we all got in the little boat. Bob used the crane controls to lower the boat into the water. After he made a number of vague but impatient gestures toward the corners of the boat we finally understood we had to unhook the chains from the boat so quickly got to it.

After a few minutes, we arrived at the beach. After some fiddling with the controls on his arm, Bob's voice came over the radio.

"Okay, we all get out of the boat pull it ashore, near the tree line. Go! Get out!"

At least the suits kept us dry as we got out of the boat and into the waves. We slowly dragged and carried the boat op the sandy beach near the tree line and quickly found out that sweating while wearing a breathing mask was not so fun. Bob tied the rope to the tree and we took a little breather while the cooling of the suit went to work.

"Alright, enough rest. Jamal, let's go inland. You go first. Then the kiddies. I go last. No running, you hear?" Bob said while patting his gun. Right, that message was clear. This is the real deal. Jamal went ahead and into the trees while we quietly followed. He found some wild trail that was easy enough to follow. Bob was checking his phone for directions. He had his phone in some bag for underwater usage to keep it air tight.

"It's still 2.3 miles. Go a bit to the left. There seems to be a trail."

"Boss, I see some things moving here. Maybe the bush people are here!"

"Nonsense. Now walk. I'd like to find the location of the gold today."

"Okay boss."

But I heard something else. I was a voice in my head again.

I tried to look around, but didn't see anything, but somehow could feel that the voice was transmitted by radio from nearby, about a hundred feet to the north. And it sounded like a friendly voice, not in the sense of the voice itself but something in the transmission signal itself. So, following my gut feeling there, I tapped my leg twice.

I tapped my right leg twice. This was getting weird, but it better than following these gold hunters.

I tapped Tom on his back where the bandits didn't see it. When he looked in my direction, I gave him our hand signal for 'teacher/parent coming, look busy' from our time in school. He looked very confused, so I give the signal again and carefully looked around. Tom nodded. He understood.

Suddenly a primal roar sounded through the jungle.

Oh God, seconds after that first roar, it was everywhere. From all sides, there were screeches and growls. Some of them sounded like barking and modulated growls. The sounds somehow hit the exact frequencies to get all hair on your body to stand on end. If I hadn't been warned I think I had to clean out the bottom part of this suit.

Tom was looking around wide eyed. I pointed to a tree and dragged him by the arm towards the tree. The bandits didn't see us hide. They were trying to see in too many directions at the same time, waving their guns around.

From behind a tree on the left of the bandits, a loud animal scream sounded. As they all swung their guns towards the sound From the other side an honest to God velociraptor right out the movies ran by and clawed at them. It managed to damage Jamal’s guns. Bob’s gun went of hitting a tree, but the beast was long gone.

Bob was now hit by another pair of velociraptors and he dropped his gun while in front of Jamal three animals let out another chilling howl. To make things complete, now the area was hit by small arrows embedding themselves in the protective suits.

Human figures became visible between the trees. They were dressed like tribal people. They didn't look good. What these men and women used for clothes was torn. Their skin was this mottled gray color and unhealthy hair. Some had sores, red angry wounds, scars, pus and some even has scales.

They all shuffled forward, clutching spears, blowpipes, and bows while moaning and shouting strange words like they were trying to cast spells. Then colored puffs of smoke appeared around the bandits while darts and arrows were still were coming down around them.

That was the last straw. The shouting over the radio became screaming now. Our kidnappers turned around and ran away. They tore of their masks to throw at the zombies while they shuffled after them moaning.

A half dozen zombies was left behind and we were eying them carefully still hidden behind the tree. They stopped shuffling and stood up straight. Their color now started to change to normal. The scars and sores started to look like tattoos and then those were disappearing too. Then these people started to laugh.

"God, did you see them! So scared!!"

"That screaming they did!! They were too afraid to aim their weapons."

"With those suits! That color!! We could see them from miles away!"

"Lemme catch my breath for a moment! I gotta find those kids."

Carefully I poked out my head from behind the tree. One of the guys started to wave me over. My internal sense was telling him it was his voice I heard. I stood up straight and slowly started to walk over.

"Hey Andy, you can take off the suit now. There is no plague or virus here. And they are ripped anyway. I don’t think they were made for jungle walks."

Then one of those velociraptors came out of the trees. It seemed to be sniggering in an animal fashion with little barks. I was preparing to turn when one of the other 'zombies' high fived the animal.

"George, good show! Awesome teamwork! Hey, watch those claws. Did you time it?"

_grunt_ _bark_

"From first howl until they started screaming, those are the rules."

_chitter_ _bark_

"Under 180 seconds? Those were weak. Are there any military scheduled anytime soon for an invasion? I need a challenge man."

_snigger_

"Too bad. Alright lads, the score was 173 seconds! Anybody got the pool?! Mandy here had 175. Anybody got closer? Mandy wins the pool!"

While I was trying to take that all in while Tom was coming up behind me. I took of the mask and started to peel of the suit, Tom following suit

The 'zombie' guy came over.

"Here Andy, let me help you. You can call me James. Let me answer a few questions already. No, James is not my real name but it's a good use name and you probably can't pronounce my birth name. Yes, we speak English now. We figured that was easier for you and because we think it's fun to play with the idioms and culture. Yes, that was our seagull. There, without the suits it’s much better. You can give the suits here. We'll recycle them later. The rest of the crew will pick up any other garbage left."

Tom and I handed the suits over to James. It looked like he was our only hope now.

"Come you two. We prepared a room for you. It's not that far from here."

"Elsie, can you take this stuff? I'll take care of the kids here."

James handed the damaged suits to the velociraptor who stuffed it in a basket that was now strapped to his side. The ‘raptor gave us a thumb up and a bright little chirp.

It was too much. Totally shell shocked, we meekly followed James who was walking deeper in the green and blue tinted jungle.

There was sunlight shining in my eyes. It was time to wake up anyway. I had such a weird dream about dinosaurs. Huh. Since when do we have a polished hardwood ceiling? Or these nice bamboo walls? That was not a dream! No panic! First, remember what happened yesterday.

That dude, this James fellow, walked with us to some round earthen hut with straw roof. For some reason, there were wooden doors that slid open when we came close. Inside it was a large elevator. James stood in the elevator and waved us over. As soon as we were in the elevator, the doors closed and the elevator started to descend smoothly.

On reaching the bottom, the doors opened and we were in something that looked pretty much like any subway station. Okay, most didn't use wooden paneling and hardwood floors, but it was a large hall and pillars. To the side were a number of platforms and at some platforms small rail cars were waiting. The door at one of the rail cars opened and we took a seat. By this time I was so far gone I just fell asleep.

I guess that they tucked me in. OK, that explains how I got here. No need for panic. There was a nightstand next to the bed. On top of the nightstand was something that looked like a small wooden board with something written on it: "Good morning Andy. The door on the left side is a bathroom where you can shower first and find fresh clothes. The other door leads to a corridor. Follow that corridor to the living room where we will be waiting for you to explain everything. PS: you need this tablet to shower."

That means it was time to get out of bed. A pity, these were such a nice sheets. I still threw them off and I saw I was sleeping in my clothes from yesterday. Apparently they didn't want to undress me. Good. It would be so embarrassing with my slowly changing body.

I took the tablet-board into the bathroom. As soon as I entered the bathroom, the text disappeared and was replaced with a few controls: shower on/off, warm/cold, faucet on/off, warm/cold. Fancy. And I needed them, there were no controls in the shower or faucet.

They also didn't believe in single use bottles. There were only this translucent pearls with 'shampoo' and 'soap' written on it. On a stool nearby where new clothes and towels.

Time to get started. I put the tablet on the dresser. The tablet thing really felt like a piece of wood. It didn't really have a screen, it was like the wood just changed color. I tap shower on and play a bit with temperature control until it was perfect. Oh yes, this shower is nice.

Of course, the towels are really fluffy. And the clothes on the stool are all natural fabric. I once felt something like that in an expensive store. Why would they just give something like that to basically a refugee? It was just white T-shirt, black pants and underwear but better than the stuff I usually wear.

As I was now clean and dressed, it was time to go outside and get some answers. I went out the corridor and arrived at living room. Of course it's a nice room. These people know their luxury items. It's filled with sculpted wooden furniture, shiny silk pillows and ... flowers growing out of the wall. Okay. James was sitting there with Tom. Each was nursing a drink from a intricately carved wooden cup. James looked a lot better than his zombie appearance from yesterday. He was now looking more like a lingerie model! The man was build! And speaking about build, there was a young women sitting next to him. She was Caucasian, nicely bronzed and at least as beautiful as a fully photoshopped Hollywood star. I don’t know what she did to her genes but it really brought out here best features.

James made an inviting gesture and said: "Andy, join us. We have much to discuss this morning. I’m James, in case you didn’t remember. This is Elise, my beautiful wife.”

We exchanged greetings. James and Elise disappeared in the kitchen to get snacks and drinks.

“Hey Tom. How are you?” I asked. ”I see you have the same outfit as me.”

“I’m okay. I had some bad dreams, but I slept well in the end. The shower also helped. And yeah, they had new clothes for me. Nice stuff.”

“Do you have any idea where we are? The last thing I remember is the subway.”

“We’re in some resort in the woods somewhere. Just look outside.”

I looked through the windows. We were indeed in the jungle with large trees around us. Between the trees a small distance from the ground there were more wooden houses seamlessly integrated with nature around them and with some walkways in between. It all looked like somewhere between an Ewok village and a luxury resort.

Then James and Elise came back with wooden cups they gave to us and a few small bowls of strange fruits they put on the table.

"You're now at the southern part of what was used to be the Omo Forestry Reserve, in what used to be Nigeria,” James said. You could say this is our new capital."

"Well, it doesn't really look like a city,” said Tom. “And eh, I saw on the news there were so many epidemics in Nigeria that were kind of deadly?"

"It is true. A lot of us died. It was a terrible time. And we were desperate. There were simply too any diseases wrecking the country." James explained. "There was simply not enough money to buy medicine, not enough people to quarantine the epidemics. We were denied loans for medicine and vaccine to treat our sick and quickly ran out. The only thing we had were desperate people that were used to improvise. So we took a big gamble."

James continued. "We bought a number of black market gene editing machines and smuggled it out of China. We also stole as much data about genetics as we could, and later we also stole data about AI and nano-tech. The plan was to hack our own genes to create some sort of resistance against the diseases. Keep in mind that his was done with trial and error instead of solid science."

"So you were experimenting on sick people?" Tom asked.

"Yes. That's what it boils down to. Some stuff even worked, and we could slow down the diseases somewhat, but it wasn't the success we needed. Then somebody found some designs and experiments on DNA computing. That's when things started to turn for us. We now had a way to hack our immune cells, to make them smarter so they could detect and destroy diseases by reprogramming them with new patterns. After that, we got some designs for small processors from carbon in the form of graphene and nanotubes that we could grown and assemble inside normal cells using the new DNA editing abilities. With these little computers, we had superior defenses against diseases."

"So, you cured everybody?" I asked.

"Yes, finally we had a way to cure everybody. It still took a long time. People needed to reprogram and customize the cells continuously and errors were made. So somebody figured out how to link these tiny computers into brain cells. It gave us the rudimentary control over our own cells and slowly we learned how to reprogram our defenses. Then we learned to make tweaks to our own DNA. Then we also learned to hack DNA from other creatures."

"Wait wait. You can actually change your own cells?"

"Exactly. Look."

With that, the skin on his James' arm started to slowly change into a plaid pattern.

Tom snapped his fingers. "Oh, so that's how you did the zombie thing."

"Indeed. I added some DNA from chameleons and added my own tweaks for full color spectrum."

I was curious. "And you also changes other creatures? You made the trees all blueish?"

"Yes. The plants now absorb more sunlight and we modified the photosynthesis to be more efficient. Some plants now use electricity to boost photosynthesis or even make electricity."

"How did you do that? It's been only a decade ago and you changed an entire forest?" Tom asked.

"Well, when you have little computers throughout your body, and you're stuffing your brain with additional computer power, you connect them all and run artificial intelligent software, you can get a lot done."

"You're telling us you are a walking computer?" I asked incredulously.

"Each human here is now a network of a few trillion computers actually. It helps with some things." James answered a little smug. "Come, I'll show you what we did."

He guided us into the kitchen. At least, I thought it was a kitchen but there wasn’t any appliance. Instead of that, there were a lot of branches growing out of the wall with berries and fruits growing on them. And I mean visible growing. As I watched them, I saw some berries slowly getting bigger and change color.

"This is your evening meal growing right here. These here are berries containing a meatball. You can just peel them when they're fully grown. These are some berries tasting exactly like vegetables. And that fruit there has concentrated broth inside. I programmed these using some patterns I learned. It's easy once you know how. They get the energy and raw material to grow from the trees around us, and the trees reprocess our waste directly using specialized bacteria. The entire house is grown like that directly from the tree using mostly water and light from the sun."

"But first I have a confession to make." James said. "Andy, Tom, you have been eating the senzu beans we gave you. You notices that you were getting healthier and also smarter?"

Realization hit me. "We have these gene things inside us?"

"Yes, you have. We were experimenting a bit, trying to see if this works on default humans to see if we could upgrade them. We sent out some letters not really expecting anybody to be so gullible or desparate to actually do this, although it would be valuable data.”

"That was not ... nice!" I stammered.

"No, it wasn't. We're sorry about that. The decision to do this experiment was taken some time ago when the land was falling apart. Actually the land is still falling apart. The rebuild is far from over. But that's no excuse." James said morosely. "We'd still would like you to examine you to see if everything is in order and to see how the upgrade has affected you. Elise is a doctor, so she will do the checks. Please do, it's for your own benefit."

"OK, I'll undergo the examination. I also have some questions." I said, still a bit angry.

"Thank you. Let’s finish breakfast and Elise can start the checkup, okay?"

Author's note: DNA computing and data storage exist and are already done in a lab environment. The same goes for graphene and nanotubes. I'm assuming technology progresses a bit more. That means things get more performant and more miniaturized, with as assumption that in the end we can build processors into our own cells. It's not so weird as there are already complete computers smaller than a grain of salt. In the end, that makes the application as used in this story reasonably plausible. Weird, but possible. I'm also playing on the recent and current epidemics (now in Congo) what makes the setting not impossible unfortunately, and the possibility for technology leapfrogging

“Andy, lets do your medical checkup. Come, we'll start with a few simple checks. Let’s do that in the privacy of your bedroom."

“Okay,” I said and went to the my bedroom and Elise followed me.

Once in my room, she asked "So you're changing in a girl, aren't you?"

"I...erm...I....You see...ah...I ate the wrong stuff." I was stammering. I felt so busted. She outed me with barely a single glance.

"Don't worry about it kiddo. Weirder things happen. It still wasn’t a smart thing to do."

"What?! Weirder things happen?"

"Not all the time, but often enough."

"How?"

"You know that you got those little computers in your head and body?"

"Yes?"

"Well, it blurs the boundaries between body and mind. Your mind will eventually use the added processing that is distributed throughout your body. It makes you a lot more conscious of your body and environment. You're might already noticing this."

"You mean like puzzles that are suddenly easy? Or hearing radio?"

"For example. It goes a lot farther than that. In some people, this makes the body adapts to the mind, by changing into female, although in some rare cases more weird things can happen. In your case, you touched stuff that wasn't yours."

"Just how did you notice that I was changing?"

"That you're changing? Your clothes don't stop infrared light much, so I could see your chest quite clearly.”

"You see infrared?"

"And UV. It comes in handy from time to time. I always wanted to see the world through different eyes. I certainly got that wish granted to me. But you see things you sometimes wish you didn't see."

"Now that you mention it, pentagram shaped irises are not the norm in nature. I didn't notice it before."

“Yeah, I really like the look of those modifications.”

"You can just change?"

“Sure. With the right blueprint and genetic program you can pretty much change anything.”

“So I can change back?” I asked hopefully.

"Yes. But first the current change has to be completed. Those beans gave you a very basic program that keeps on running until it completes. Perhaps you can turn up the speed. We can try that later on. I still have to do the basic investigation.”

“Alright.”

She started slowly waving her hand over my body and staring intently at the spot on my body she was waving her hand over. It looked like on of those astral healing stuff or something.

"Are you using voodoo on my aura? Aligning my chakras?"

"Of course not silly. It's just an ultrasonic scan."

"With your hands?"

"Sure. I grew a phased array of ultrasonic transducers in my palms and fingers, with some targeting and imaging software I found, linked up with a few medical database. It's all pretty basic actually. I'm terrible at making my own designs."

"Grew...in your hands?"

"Sure. Think of it like downloading a new app on your phone. It’s easy."

"You've got to be kidding."

"Oh no. There are entire catalogues from the useful to the weird. You'll see. OK, you're definitely developing all the right stuff for a girl," she said while standing up. "It’s all healthy and all parts are complete. The ovaries, womb, vagina, it’s all there. The bones are in the correct configuration. It all needs a last switch to be complete. Andy, you’re looking a bit green again.”

“Sorry. It’s just getting concrete so suddenly.”

“Let's go see how Tom and James are doing, okay?"

~o~O~o~

We found the boys back outside on the porch sipping a drink.

“But shrooms,” Tom was asking.

“Yes, we can have our body synthesize narcotics and hallucinogens,”James was explaining. “But just because you can, means it’s a good idea. We had a few people that are, well, bricked, to borrow that term. You ha… Hey, Elise. Is Andy healthy?”

Elise nodded..

Tom looked up and said: "Hey Andy. James says I'm changing."

"Yeah, me too. I'm probably changing a bit different from you, says Elise. She even checked me with ultrasound from her palms. That was weird. I'm not going to be surprised when somebody here is going to shoot laser beams from their eyes."

Elise giggled and said: "There are some laser rangefinder designs, but it has little practical use in everyday life except for playing with cats. And eyes are a terrible location for a laser emitter."

Tom and I just looked at each other.

"Andy, Tom, following the normal development pattern,, you should now see a black circle on the underside of your wrist,” James said. We checked, and indeed there was a quarter inch black circle.

“These are your interfaces. It allows you to exchange large amount of data, using DNA or classic electric signals. We wanted to load you up with the good stuff and start training.”

~o~O~o~

“Training?” Tom asked. ”Like going for a run?”

“No, just some simple games for now, the most fun way to learn” James replied. “But first we’re going to load your new operating system. Tom, can you come here.”

”Andy, can you come to me?” Elise asked. ”Please sit down and lift your arm so we can begin.”

I did so. Elise sat down next to me and grabbed my arm in such a way that the circle on her and my arm touched. I saw Tom and James to the same. Then I felt a pressure that feels somewhat like wants to enter my body but not quite.

“Andy, let it in. Just relax. This is just a basic operating system. You need this to function properly.”

I got myself to relax and tried to let that pressure in. A few seconds later, I could actually feel information flow inside of me. Then I saw flashes of light, crackling noises and a shiver went over my spine causing goosebumps. After that everything settled down and I somehow felt more complete.

“Alright. Diagnostics say everything is go. Now we’re going to start with something simple.”

She held up her unoccupied hand and a pea sized light just appeared in it. The light floated slowly upwards to hover in between us while it grew to the size of a tennis ball and appeared to solidify.

"Andy, your job is to move the ball."

Of course I tried to push the thing with my finger. The thing gave my an electric shock for my trouble.

"That's cheating,“ Elise said smiling. ”You have to move it with your mind."

"How? With telekinesis?"

"Of course not. The ball is a virtual object in an augmented reality environment running on your systems. As it’s on your system, you can control it. You just need practice. Go on. Don’ t look at me like that."

Allright, time to do some magic, or techno-wizardry. Move the ball. Easy. Concentrate. Oh, that thing wobbled. Let's try that again. It wobbled again. Concentrate, maybe push in one one direction. Hey, it worked. The ball wobbled slowly to the left.

"Good work. Now try to get more control. Guide it through the hoops."

Elise manifested some rings after which she let them float in a rough circle and grew them into hoops.

More games. Those I can do. Slowly the ball wobbled through hoop number one. I managed to make it slowly change direction to hoop number two. Number tree was a little more smooth and completed the circle.

"Keep going."

The next circle was again more smooth. This is getting fun. It feels like I’m doing magic. The next lap had only a bit of wobble. The one after that was smooth.

"Try to do it faster."

Okay, faster. I focused some more on the ball and managed to slowly increase the speed with each lap. After some time I really got the ball zooming through the hoops. I was grinning happily.

"Well done. Of course, we go to the next level. We go multi-ball. Get them all running the circuit."

She let more rings appear and balls in different colors. Now there were three balls in total with each their own rings.

"You have to get them all looping at the same time. Yes, you can do that. You just need to get your brain and system trained. We are doing this to expand your mind so start expanding."

It sure took a lot of mind expanding. I got one ball orbiting, then I tried move the second one. After that I retrieved the first ball when it ricochets of the rings and tried again. When I finally got it working with two balls, I tried this with the extra ball. I certainly did feel my mind expanding. As soon as I got it working with three balls, Elise added even more balls and hoops. As crazy as this seems, at the end of the exercise I was successfully concentrating on ten things at the same time.

"Look at that! I'm doing it! I am really doing this! How am I doing this?"

"Science. It works. Want to do more?"

"Sure."

All the balls disappeared in motes of light. Elise now made three cubes appear, that grew into scrambled Rubik's cubes.

"Here you go. Solve the cubes."

Alright, let's figure this out. It was pretty easy to manipulate the cube itself. Making the first side all one color for the first was really easy. The other most of the other side was more work. The last side took a long time but I got it done. The solved cube flashed and was scrambled again. After several times solving the first cube, I got to work with multiple cubes. With a lot of concentration, I was able to solve the cubes simultaneously.

"That's good enough, Andy. Now, just one more thing. Close your eyes. You should be able to feel the location of the objects, their color and manipulate them. Go on, close your eyes."

I closed my eyes and tried to feel around. It worked. It was a really weird in the beginning to perceive color and texture without seeing or touching. But I got one cube solved, then the next and the one after that even faster than just by seeing. It's easier if you can feel all sides at the same time.

"Well, Andy, those the games. Now you are able to feel the virtual objects without looking, manipulate them and handle multiple items simultaneously. But you now need to control your own system. My arm is getting really sore. If you feel in the middle of your forehead, there should be a virtual button, only visible to you. If you find it, lightly tap it."

It was easy enough to find, so I tapped it. And suddenly, my vision was full of screens floating in my vision. Elise started pointing them out.

"There you go. Environmental monitoring, personal system diagnostics, medical diagnostics, subsystem management, development suite, genetics control, manuals. All the usual. Most people either close most of them, move them out of your point of view or adjust transparency. That way you can still perceive and control the data without impeding vision. You can also develop a set of 'virtual eyes' to see screens without needing to use your real eyes, but that's a bit advanced now. Really advanced is to integrate these systems directly into your mind but most would say it takes away from your humanity."

"Whoa. I feel like I'm NASA. So much to play with!"

"You should get more training first. You can overwrite all your genetics when playing too much."

"Oh. How long is that going to take?"

"That depends on your aptitudes. We’ll see that in the coming days. First, we have a break. Tom and James finished this part too."

"But I want to play with the new toys."

"After a few snacks. You need calories. Those systems don’t work for free."

I checked the environmental screen and it indeed a few hours have passed. Yep, time to eat. We got up and went to the kitchen to pluck some fruit and get a drink. There were some fresh juice berries. With that I could relax a bit and enjoy the weather before continuing the lessons.

After our break, we went back outside.

"Tom, Andy, ready for more?" James asked.

"Hit me!" I exclaimed.

“In that case, let’s get started,” Elise said. ”We have more stuff to do.”

Tom and James went to their corner to continue the training.

"First, we have to set up communications. You need communication software for that. We have to load it up. It’s interface time.”

We put our wrists against each other. Now Elise materialized a stack of playing cards.

"This is communication software. Take it. When you try to feel them, you can perceive the names, labels and all secondary info. Or you go through them one by one to read the description on the back."

“Playing cards?”

“Everybody used their own theme. I like this one. It can look like anything.”

A small translucent screen appeared with text and pictures flashing on it too fast to follow and suddenly the cards were replaced by a small rotating galaxy, where each star represented data. Then it were playing cards again and the screen was gone.

“You see?”

I pulled the cards towards me and start going through the stuff. It was a whole bunch of program code, documents and instruction videos. This one was simple radio control. It links to the ... graphene radio transmitters growing on my ribs. Nice to know that little addition. It also supports IR transmitters ... growing on a number of spots on my skin. Sneaky body modders.

So this piece is for the antennas, that for sending and receiving. This here is for voice communication, there is video and holographic data. There is a firewall, virus scanners and maintenance. This one is weird. Communication, storage, integration and compiling of neuromorphic data formats. I give up. Let’s just install this.

I brought up the software screen. I go to installation and drag the cards to the installation drop zone. There it goes. The objects are all sucked into the screen, where a simple progress bar shows how far the process is with compiling and installing. It is surprisingly fast. A few seconds later it's all done and a few new screens pop up to control radio, phone, message system. Yay, more stuff to monitor.

Elise let go of my arm.

"Good. Now you can check if it all works. Switch on receivers, set them to scanning and have a look around."

And when I flipped those virtual switches, I entered the Matrix. Or cyberspace. I saw radio and infrared signals everywhere as neon glow. Inside the house signals were transmitting weakly. Trees were glowing with communication signals like they was made of light. People were like lighthouses of data signals. There were even some animals with data streams. Amazing. Then the automatic compensators kicked in to dull most of the data streams to a soft glow.

It was beautiful, like I was suddenly in a fairy forest. The jungle was apparently a lot more active and multilayered than I thought it was. It was just a different world. A few new screens started to pop up now. First there were basics like a standard internet browser, a weather prediction app, local group chat and social media, knowledge base, a network analysis tool and more. The network tool was really interesting. It was saying the trees were working as servers and network nodes.

Now I see it. These people don't need computers, laptop or phones. They don't need data centers. They have it all, growing in their own bodies, growing in the trees, in the animals or in the grass.

“From your look, I guess it all works,” Elise remarked. “Now you’re not a barbarian anymore.”

~o~O~o~

I looked at Tom, to see how he was doing. He was just installing software. It was pretty neat. I was receiving the data from what he was doing. It seems James was a trekkie. All his programs looked like neat piles of chips from that old Star Trek show. Tom was pulling them into the installation screen.

By now Tom had installed and activated all his stuff. He was now gaping around like a fish out of water going all "whoa dude". I wish I could record a video of this. My media screen blinked with a "visual stream saved" remark. Alright, quality blackmail material right there! I pickup the file and show it to Tom as a repeating clip in a picture frame. Now his eyes bugged out even more.

"Dude, no fair. You had the same face just minutes ago."

"But I have a recording. Though luck."

"I didn't know you can record things without a camera."

“Me neither. It still works.”

~o~O~o~

Elise and James were looking at us smirking. “Good, you are using the system already,” James said. “You still can use more practice. We’re going to give you a bunch more stuff, including a lot of games. Now your wireless is active, this can be done easy enough. Oh yes, a word of advice. Never give out your private encryption keys. Never! You’ve ready fantasy novels? You have seen what happens when a creature gives out its True Name? That’s what will happen to you when you give out your private keys. With that out of the way, dig in.”

James waved his hand and manifesting a small mountain of isolinear chips on the table. Elise made a flourish with her hands and had a spread of playing card in her hand, gathered them into a stack with another movement floated them towards the table. Then they sat back to watch the show.

I quickly started copying the stuff on the stuff on the table and installing it. Tom was hesitant but after some prodding from me he acquiesced. Then came what you can expect when you give some youngsters new toys. We had to test them all!

Turns out that finger guns can now shoot laser beams. It were not real lasers of course, just virtual beams. They did left nice scorch marks everywhere that after some time slowly disappeared without a trace. It did hurt when you got hit. Apparently there was also someone who programmed all energy attacks from the cartoons in there for lots of fun.

WIthout doubt, we did have to try the light sabers. The simulated pain from getting hit was excruciating so that didn’t last long.

Then there were the games, from board games like 3D chess and going up from there. Holograms were also fun. I freaked out when suddenly there were three perfect copies of Toms all moving in sync.

Finally I found out that my clothes also had an interface I could link with. That opened whole new options of changing the colors of of clothes, adding band logos, skulls. Too bad their libraries were so out of date.

We lasted a few hours playing with that stuff right up to dinner.

~o~O~o~

Even going inside was more interesting now. Small screens appeared on the walls for switching on light, opening taps, controlling locks and others as soon as we walked inside. In the kitchen, we washed our hands first. Switching on the water and soap dispenser was done with the little screens that appeared next to the tap.

The branches in the kitchen were now not only filled with fruits, but also was full of screens with nutritional information and genetic composition for each berry and fruit. It was almost blocking my vision but you could turn it off easily.

At the end of the meal, I was checking the last fruit I had on my plate. I was curious and switched on the full information again. I was trying to make sense of it all, and miraculously I could actually figure it out. It were actually not different fruits but just customized growths from the tree, very large cells just pumped full of nutrients and stuff for giving taste and texture. Interesting.

~o~O~o~

After dinner, I sat with Tom. I needed to come clean over what was happening to me. I didn’t think he already noticed what was happening with my body.

"Tom, can I talk to you?"

"Sure."

"There's something I have to tell you."

"That sounds ominous."

"Maybe it is. We are changing, right? We have been for some time. You're getting more muscles besides all the stuff in your head."

"Yeah. It's been great."

"You probably noticed that it worked a bit differently for me."

"Yeah. You don't seem to bulk up a lot. More flabby here and there."

Did he just call me fat?!

"What!? I am not flabby you jerk! I'm just changing into a girl, idiot!!"

I slapped my hands quickly over my mouth, but much too late. The words were already out. Oops. Nice and smooth Andy. Really nice and smooth. Darn it.

"Whu- bu- but you- really- how- why- You're joking, right?"

"Aaaaah, nope. It's really happening. Sorry," I squeaked out.

"Who did this to you?I'm gonna kick th-"

"Nobody did that. It just happened."

"That doesn't just happen."

"Okay, it didn't _just_ happen. Those beans that gave you those muscles? I actually took the ones meant for my sister. It’s my own fault."

"Oh. But- But you're okay with all that?"

"I don’t have much choice at the moment. But I made peace with it. I can’t stop the process a this point, but once it’s all completed I can start changing back to normal."

"If you're okay with it, I can accept it. It's still a bit weird."

"I understand. It is weird for me too."

"Does this kind of stuff happens here more?"

James spoke up. I totally forgot about him and he startled me. I certainly did not let out a little squeak.

"Let’s just say that children growing up here can have a really weird puberty. I don’t envy them.”

"And those dinosaurs?" I asked. I didn't think I would look good in scales.

"Those changes are mostly voluntary. The velociraptors are our soldiers. The first one to change was because he was doing a bit too much experiments with his genome. They guy was really fascinated with dinosaurs. He turned out to be a great fighter and single handedly fought of a raider group. Since then soldiers used the velocirapor form. They are brutally effective in combat."

"Yeah, we noticed," Tom remarked.

"You see," I said to Tom, "me changing is nothing."

"I guess you're right. In fact you're already starting to act a bit girly."

"I do not!!"

To emphasise my point I pouted, crossed my arms over my chest and turned my back to him. I was kind of surprised of my own reaction. I dug to the screens until I found the one controlling the my body. Yes, there were clear increases of hormones recently. Gah! The other screen that controlled the change showed it was still ongoing. I couldn’t cancel it, but I did found a speed controller. I turned it to max. The faster this ends, the faster I can turn back to normal. A countdown appeared saying the full change would be done in twelve hours. That should do it. And now I suddenly felt sleepy.

“Hey guys, I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

After saying goodbye to everyone I went to my room. I undressed to get ready for bed. The plan was to throw my clothes on the dresser and sort it out in the morning. That didn't work like I planned. The clothes actually started to complain that they wanted to be stored correctly. I tried to ignore this but I had interfaced with the clothes and they had my address, reminding me I was now responsible for hygiene and maintenance.

There was no other choice. I hung up the clothes on the hangers that gave the clothes nutrients so they could clean, adjust and repair themselves. That makes sense. The clothes gave of a sense of gratitude in return. They clothes were not actually alive but you couldn’t call it dead matter either.

In the bathroom I noticed my little Andy was already shrinking. It was just big enough for one last salute, my last moments of peeing while standing up until I got this all reversed. A proper farewell was in order, so I peed while humming 'The Last Post' while doing that.

That done, I finally got in bed hoping that the sheets would not complain or something.

I awoke with a growling stomach. I have never been so ravenously hungry, so I jumped out of bed and just ran to the kitchen, where I started devouring everything I could lay my hands on. After several minutes my stomach's complaints subsided and it started to digesting my bounty.

At that point I became aware of several pairs of eyes watching me. Two pairs were watching my face. One pair was looking at something below my face, so I looked down to see what that was but I couldn't see anything. There were these things in front of me blocking my view, so I took a step sideways to look around those things hanging there to see what was so interesting. Hmmm. These things move sideways with me, like they're stuck on me. I felt that movement in ways not so familiar. And they’re made out of pink skin where it was not covered with my shirt. Wait a minute here! That were breasts. My breasts. They were sticking to my sleeping shirt. And Tom's eyes were glued to them.

"Tom, if you like looking at breasts, I'm sure these people can grow some on you!"

His eyes snapped so hard upwards I thought they would keep spinning in the socket

"That's better," I said but still covered the eye candy with my arm.

"Andy, I see you have blossomed overnight," observed Elise with a very good poker face. "All that blossoming can make a person go hungry, right?"

"You can say that again. I was starving."

"Maybe you should go back to your room and freshen up now your hunger is sated."

"Right, good idea. I'll get right on it," I responded while walking quickly to my room. That was one weird way of waking up. The second I was in my room and closed the door, I of course start patting down my body. Man, things can change quickly. Next stop, bathroom mirror! I ran towards the mirror to see my sister standing there. A really pretty version of my sister. A body with all the right curves, shoulder length raven hair and my sister’s face where somebody pressed the enhance button several time. That perfect body site really does deliver. Except one thing. I could see all my ribs and seemed to be really underweight. That quick change really took it out of me. Well, except for the breasts. It’s like most of the fat on my body was moved to these two assets. I decided it was my sister’s fault for wanting large breasts as her ideal body. I checked the design for that.

“I thought I’d find you there”

“Gaaah!!”

“Easy there. Any more staring in the mirror and your eyes are going to fall out.”

“Elise, you startled me.”

“Sorry about that. I thought you could use some company. Actually, I was expecting more panic accompanied by you holding your new breasts screaming whyyyy.”

“I knew this moment was coming, Elise. I did my panicking quietly on the boat.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m fine, thank you.

“You had your transformation set to max, right? You did, otherwise you wouldn’t be such a lightweight right now. It takes several thousands of calories to complete and It makes you really tired. ”

“Say Elise, am I shorter now?”

“Yes, you lost above an inch. You can check in your vital statistics.”

I opened the screen. She was right. Minus 1.4 inch and minus twenty pound.

“Dang. And I lost a lot of weight. Where did it all go?”

“Usually it goes to evaporation, exhaling and sweating it out.”

“Eeeeuuuw. That's why the bed and shirt still felt so sticky. I thought this stuff was self cleaning.’

“Not when you sweat something like a pounds of waste products. It takes time. This isn't magic you know.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“You'll feel better after a shower. I'll find some other clothes.

“Sounds good. I'll see you later.”

With that, I closed the bathroom door and started the task of washing this continuously changing body. It was like a rushed version of puberty, again. It was time for a bit more investigation.

Those wider hips made clear why my behind felt so sore this morning. The continued itching on my chest was also easily explained. There were still two things growing there. I was smaller now. I had to reach just a bit further now to pick up the towel, to wash my hands. My little Andy was now gone. My systems says the last details of the conversion is done in two hours.

I washed to get rid of all the stickiness, tried to deal with longer hair that grew overnight and ignored most of how I looked now. After cleaning up, I noticed that on the dresser there were some new clothes with a virtual label floating above it. It read: "Andy, some new garments that will fit better after this night. Elise." That sneaky woman. It was a T-shirt, skirt, panties and bra, all in the usual material they use. I didn't know if I should be glad or angry.

Time to get dressed. With the loss of my little guy, it was less of an issue of an issue to wear panties. I always said boys need to dress like boys and girls like girls and I stand by my word. That bra on was also becoming a necessity. But it didn't really look like the normal bra I'm used to from my extensive research in pornography. It did look like a bit like sport bras from the commercials. I thought these things were supposed to be tight but this was more like a short T-shirt.

In the end, I pulled it over my head and got it somewhat settled over my growing bumbs. That's when the bra-shirt begun shrinking! It shrunk until it way the perfect tightness comfortably cradling my new growths. A screen popped up to control my new bra. It had settings for tightness, cup size adjustments and activate support, besides just changing back to a T-shirt mode so I could take it off. One size fits all. I set the bra to full comfort. I can still change it later if needed.

Over that, I just pulled on the T-shirt, shorts and sandals. More screens popped up. After setting the shorts to jeans print, and a simple band logo for the T-shirt, I closed the screens.

Now squeaky clean, I exited the room and joined James, Elise and Tom in the kitchen, fashionably late.

"Morning Andy," Tom said while giving me a strange look.

I joined them at the table where another plate of fruits was waiting for me. I really need to reprogram that food system. I had a craving for pancakes.

[*ding*]

[Mental note added to list: “reprogram food system”.]

When I finished my plate, James said: "We're all going to the gym today for some light practice. It will help you guys with developing your coordination. I'm sorry to say but your coordination is about at the same level as a young child from around here. Don't give me that look, I'm being polite about it. We're not it going to do heavy exercise so Andy can keep up. Quick cellular regeneration is quite draining."

Tom tried to look crestfallen and said: "But I wanted to try out these babies," while flexing his biceps.

Hmm, that looked good on him.

James just chuckled and responded: "You'll learn soon enough, young grasshopper." He did that with a perfect Japanese accent. That was eerie.

We quickly cleaned up the dishes and went out. We took the stairs from the porch to ground level. This was the first time we went to ground level. It was beautiful. Walkways meandered between the trees, with thousands of flowers bordering the paths. Some of those trees were softly glowing in the shade of the trees. The paths themselves were made of wood in different patterns.

Tom and I slowly followed James and Elise while gawking like tourist. Other people were gawking at us too. I guess they don't get a lot of the tourists here. We were on the outskirts of what passes for a town here, but there was still a lot of foot traffic.

A lot of people did looked like supermodels. Most women were really beautiful, but the men look like they were sculpted by master artists. There were also some alternative people. A few women had leaves and flowers growing from their skin. Some guys had something like bone plates and spikes. Still others has parts with scales and some had fur. It’s like having animal traits was the current fashion trend. Although that one couple did have skin that was remarkably similar to shiny rubber.

Animals were walking and flying around us, totally ignoring the humans walking around, but when I saw the lion coming from behind the tree I was ready to run and Tom looked like he would be right behind me.

"Don't be afraid," Elise said and giggled. Your IFF has already told the lion you're a registered friendly.

"IFF? Oh, friend or for identification! We have that? The lion has that too?" Tom exclaimed panicky. "And, by the way, are lions not extinct?"

"Oh, they were extinct. Just not for very long," James said grinning.

"We see it as our duty to repair all the damage humanity caused," Elise said. "It kind of is our religion now."

"And that’s what we do here." James was really serious about this. “We're using our knowledge of genetics to bring back a lot of plants and animals, even invent new ones. It's a very rewarding occupation.”

"Will you bring back American animals too?" I asked quietly.

"Of course. It's part of our long-term plan and you’re part of it. We'll have to discuss that later. We have arrived.”

I hadn't noticed we continued walking and were now at a sort of building. It were multiple trees that joined their canopies to form a large covered open area, with various field and equipment underneath, surrounded with netting made from living vines.

"Welcome to the gym," James said with obvious proud while Elise rolled her eyes.

"Let me guess. Your design grew that place here," Tom asked.

James gave him a brotherly sideways hug and said happily "Glad to see you're learning. We'll make you a botanic warrior yet."

Tom's ego was visibly swelling at the mention of warrior and was already heading towards the entrance.

I arched an eyebrow towards Elise and she just shrugged, mouthed "boys" to me and followed them in.

~o~O~o~

It became clear very fast that they were not expecting a lot from us. We walked past the rack with weights where some people were casually tossing around dumbbells like they were toys. There were men and women so big and muscled that they would make the average gorilla cower.

We ended up in the game room for a round of darts, far away from the men with their big glistening muscles.

"Tom, Andy, we're going to practice some eye hand coordination. Hey guys, stop ogling the women."

I snapped my head around to look back at a slightly annoyed James.

"As I was saying, we’re going to do a few friendly matches to gauge how fast you improve."

"But I always lose with this stuff," I complained.

"We'll see," James said with a half-grin while he handed me three darts. "I'll let you go first. Just do some practice shots."

I just shrugged and threw the first dart. Of course the first dart completely mist the board and hit the wood behind it.

"Tom, stop laughing."

The second dart at least hit the board, followed by some sarcastic applause from my supporters.

Dart number three was at least somewhat in the direction of the center.

"I told you, I'm not good at this."

"No problem," James remarked, gathered the darts and handed them to Tom. "Your turn."

Tom's first dart hit the wall. He glared at me while I tried very hard to keep from smiling. I noticed a virtual screen hovering in front of James with data appearing. I quick look during Tom's second throw and saw the speed, distance from center and a bunch of other data appear.

"More test data? Should I feel like a guinea pig?" I asked him.

"We do like to see how you're doing and how the process works on blanks. Around here, everybody basically grew up with the augmented coordination. By the way, your turn to throw."

“Blanks?” I asked?

“People without established software ecosystems or neural extensions,” James explained. “Like you.”

“It feels demeaning,” I mumbled.

“You’ll get there,” Elise comforted me.

Tom and me ended up doing a dozen sets in friendly competition. We did get a lot better with a little practice, hitting closer to the bullseye.

"James, why don't you play? It doesn't seem fair to let us do all the work," Tom teased.

James just smirked and took the darts. After a quick glance to Elise, he threw the first dart to her. She just plucked it out of the air and threw the dart where it stuck at the top of the bullseye. Then James quickly threw the two other darts to Elise at the same time. She plucked them out of the air, one in each hand and threw them at the board simultaneously, where they stuck on the bottom left and bottom right of the bullseye, forming a perfect triangle.

We were starting slack jawed at the scene. "Are you ninja's?" I managed to squeak out.

"Of course not," Elise said smiling. "We just have a bit more practice. But from the data it’s clear your extended visual and motor cortex are developing nicely."

"You mean we can do that too?" Tom asked eagerly. "Or only after years of training?"

James checked his data. "Your aim should be as good in 54 more games. For ambidexterity you need to do all this once with the other hand and then with both hands. Let’s try to reach that by the end of the day."

"Let's get started!" Tom yelled before grabbing the darts. He sure was eager to learn that little trick.

"Guys, have fun. I'm going to the bathroom. See you later."

I had to go, but also really needed to adjust my clothes a bit. I wasn’t used to this sort of outfit and I didn't wanted to start tugging at it in front of the rest. In the bathroom I quickly got into a stall. It was nice of them to also have a western style toilet build here. Or grown here. This blending the line of biology and technology still is confusing. It was wood on the outside and what looks to be the inner lining of something like seashell on the inside of a bowl.

I was still getting used to being changed and wanted to change back. I’m afraid I’m getting already somewhat used to this new body, so I have to be quick. I already checked, but the system was still in “cooldown”. It was the polite expression for my cells melting if I tried to change now according to the help file.

So for the moment, it was sitting down. Luckily the rest of the bodily functions still worked like they're supposed to. While that was happening, I quickly checked the library Elise has given me and searched for aiming. Aiming - Archery, aiming - badminton, basketball, baseball. Ah, aiming - darts. Install, done. Now I'm ready.

When I got back, Tom was still throwing darts, so I called out “Hey Tom, can I try again?”

“Sure. Here you go. Show me what you've got. I got my aim improved to within an inch of target,” he answered smugly.

I picked up the first dart. Immediately a small screen with “calibrating” appeared with instructions to hold the darts in a few different positions. I saw James arching an eyebrow and sighing softly. He knew what's up. When the progress bar was full, an aiming target appeared and I nudged that one directly over the bullseye. An extra circle appeared over the aiming target to indicate target lock. Then I threw the dart and got a really weird feeling in my arm as the software helped guiding the muscle movements. The dart embedded itself in the board dead center. Tom's eyes bugged out for a moment before realisation came.

“You cheated!”

“Yup”

“How?”

“Aiming software from my library.”

Tom was opening his library screen, when James put his hand on Tom’s shoulders. “A man can do this without cheating,” he said.

Tom looked a bit embarrassed but nodded.

“Tom, can we continue the tests?” James asked. “Without cheating? Ignore them. Elise always cheats and uses software for everything.”

“Not everything,” she says as she approached James and kissed him. Then she sashayed away while she let her hand lingered for a moment on his lips. “Andy, let's give the boys here some room to play.”

I was a bit miffed by the remark about men and just followed Elise towards the other end of the bar where we sat down at a table.

~o~O~o~

“So, you like messing with software?” I asked Elise.

“Sure. You can spend months learning things, or a few hours tweaking a few routines and massaging neural data and you’re done. That’s when you just can’t download a package from somebody else or public repository. I prefer the easy way. James likes to take the hard way, like a man.” She made air quotes here. ” That makes him a great source of data though. He’s not alone, you have more people disliking the easy way. You also have people disliking body modifications, mind enhancement and you have people reveling in it. As long as you respect other people’s choices and you don’t hurt or annoy other people there is no issue. And we have a lot more choices than the average human.”

“But you have such a large list of programs and modifications.”

“Yeah, I’m a bit of a hoarder. Although these are my favorites. They were gifts.”

She manifested a few programs as pure crystalline figures.

“This one I got from James when we married. This one was from my best friend when -”

I wasn’t listening. These things were so beautiful and shiny. I quickly copied them and installed them.

“ - from my mother in law as a peace offeri - Hey! What did you do?”

“I just installed them.”

“You just can’t copy everything. These were gifts. Are you appdicted? I think you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

In the distance, Tom had heard the commotion and shouted “Yes you are. Your phone dies by app abuse every six months.” He then continues throwing darts.

“You know what you installed?” Elise whispered. ”One of those was for adding extra nerve clusters and even taste buds in your nether regions for more sensations during sex.”

“Oops.” Now my face was bright red. I hadn’t considered that. “Can I still cancel this?”

“Not these ones. They are a bit special. Sorry.”

“My own fault. I was a bit greedy.”

“A bit? But no harm done. We can reverse that all later. I actually wanted to ask you about those pancakes you mentioned actually. It has been ages since I had any and now that you mentioned it I’m looking forward to some. You want to help me make some?”

“Sure! But how?”

“Lets see. How do you make a pancake?”

“You take milk, and eggs. Flour and sugar. A bit of salt. Butter.”

“So you use these molecular structures.”

Molecule diagrams appeared in 3D on the table between us. Starch molecules for flour, molecules for glucose, egg proteins. There was a group with lactose and triglyceride for milk.

“First you need to figure out what happens during mixing and baking. Take the simulation software and try combinations.”

I found what she was referring to and figured out how to use it. After some time, I did get a large structure that started to resemble a small piece of pancake.

“Good work. Now the fun part begins. You should have examples of DNA and what it produces. Can you find a combination that produces the structure you just found in the simulator?”

Hesitantly I started to check the libraries and quickly got engrossed. Amazing what those little tweaks to DNA can do. I was making some serious progress and I got a decent version running in the simulator when I saw Elise studying me.

“You’re not helping. Oh. This is another test, right,” I asked.

“Yes. And you’re doing great. You were really getting into these genetics. I wasn’t expecting you to pick it up so soon.”

“This was fun. I like tinkering with this.”

“It’s funny how we all originally installed the same neural net and software but everybody seems to develop a speciality or talent. We’ve never found out why. It’s interesting to see it also happens with everybody, even when introduced at later age like you. You seem to be a bio gadgeteer.”

“Bio what?”

“Gadgeteer. It’s a term we picked up from a series of old but very good science fiction stories. They are able to create biological entities easily that for others will take a very long time. I tried the pancake recipe before but failed. You do it in two hours.”

“Two hours? I really got lost of time.”

“And that’s another defining feature.”

“Are there other types of people. I mean gadgeteer people. I mean... You know what I mean.”

“Of course. I’m a healer. When I first looked at medial diagrams and diagnostics, it just clicked. So I became a doctor. You also have devisors. Those are really good with biology, software or technology but it only works for them. They always have to keep tweaking parameters, DNA or something like that or it stops working quickly.”

“I haven’t seen any real technology.”

“Oh, there is a technology for sure. That what is now built into the your very cells is technology, and there is classic tech. All classic tech is hidden of course. With our biotech we don’t have need it in our daily life. Oh, you also have exemplars. They have a certain ideal image in their heads and their body changes to match. Very often they specialize in speed or strength. The men and women training here in the gym are often exemplars. You also have paragons, able to learn one thing really fast and excel in it, such as martial arts, music, media masters. They can do things that nobody with upgrades and modifications can match.”

“Music? Media? I haven’t seen anything like that?”

“You wouldn’t. They would play it on their own system. No boomboxes here.”

“But what kind of media you have? Memes? Youtube clips? No disrespect intended but it isn't Hollywood here.”

“Ha. Shows you what you know. Let me share something. Ready?”

“Sure. Hit me.”

And suddenly I was standing between lots of people in a fancy dress, with the sun warming me in the breeze smelling like the sea, looking down at a harbor filled with hundreds of people in old fashion clothes between very old fashioned equipment and old cars. They were all waving goodbye while the ship I was standing on was blowing it’s horn.

Then I was standing in an engine room. I could feel the heat from the furnaces and the deck vibrating beneath my feet while the huge engines were working.

Suddenly I was standing on the deck of a ship. It was freezing cold and there was an iceberg getting really close for comfort. Just before it would hit I was back in my chair in the gym, staring wide-eyed at Elise.

“What was that?!”

“A teaser trailer.”

“You serious?”

“Like I said, some people have real talent here. Immersion software writers, great artists, holographic designers and no need to work to earn food and a place to stay.”

“It makes the best Hollywood VR look like amateur hour.”

“Not bad for a few guys living in a tree house, right”

“In what kind of world did I end up in?”

“Try to finish your design, so we can test this at home.”

Elise woke me up in the morning by poking his head in and calling: “Hey Andy. Get out of bed. We’re going to the gym”

“Ugghh” was my reply. “I’m tired. Can’t we skip today?”

“Prioritize your healing, dampen pain response, load some caffeine generating program then get moving. Daylight is wasting!”

“Oh alright. I’ll be right there once I figure out how to do what you just said.”

“I’ll help you.”

She threw a little something my way. It was another piece of software, shaped like a coffee bean. I ran the program and it presented a few options:
- Morning boost
- Day kickstart
- Adrenaline rush
- Full panic

“I suggest you go with the lightest option.” she said while leaving the room.

Running the boost program, I felt like I just gulped down a double espresso. It gave me the energy to get out of bed and into the bathroom to get ready. There I found myself wondering if I should grow my hair a bit more? I always thought Dani's hair was too short, I don’t know why.”

[Introspection: long good looking hair is an indicator for health and fertility and makes a female more attractive.]

Oh, was that the reason. I hate it when the inner voice is right. I still want longer hair. Wait a moment. What was that voice?

[Introspection: This software investigates thoughts and desires to show the source and your underlying motivations to expose hidden biases in decision making. It is installed yesterday afternoon.]

Oops. That was one of those things I got from Elise yesterday. Who knows what else I picked up.

After washing, I tried to bring some semblance of order to my hair. I understood now why my sister preferred shorter hair. I didn’t know how to handle longer hair … but I was now suddenly wrapping towels around my hair like I have been doing this my whole life. What was happening here?

[Mother: Don’t you worry, Mother is here.]

U-oh. Another piece of software reared its ugly head. I was regretting that wholesale import more and more. What does this one do?

[Mother: I’m watching over you dear, to make sure your posture, mannerisms and appearance are impeccable.]

Ah, that’s why it’s called mother. Can I turn it off?

[Mother: I’m sorry dear, I cannot go home for another three weeks, 6 days, 5 hours and 8 minutes.]

And now I’m stuck with a nosy mother in my head. Grmbl. But my stomach is saying food is needed right now. I better check the gauges. Whoa, 58,000 calories below optimal weight. I need to get out of here and eat. I quickly fixed my hair with knowledge I never had and ended up with a pretty nice braided haircut looking very presentable. My clothes had cleaned themselves tonight so I donned them.

[Mother: one moment dear.]

As I was watching in the mirror as make-up was appearing on my face. There was the classic eye shadow, mascara, bright red lips and a healthy blush. The whole complete package just faded in.

[Mother: I took the liberty to grow a chromatic skin modification on your face, dear, to make your appearance impeccable.]

Whoa, I now look like a model. It looked pretty good, but was so over the top. Mother needs to make this go away.

[Mother: I’ll make it look more natural, but I cannot approve of you going out without.]

The make-up changed to subdued colors and simple glossy lips. It would have to to. Or maybe I’m not fighting this hard enough.

[Introspection: you like the way you look now.]

I hate that inner narrator.
I was ready, so I opened the door and tried to peek out but my muscles felt weirdly sore when I tried to do that. My movement only seemed to work right when… when I tried to move in a very feminine manner.

Mother!!

[Mother: A lady going out in public should always walk with grace and dignity.]

I hate you!

[Mother: In time you will understand, my dear.]

Aaaaaah!

~o~O~o~

I gracefully strode out the door of my room, as if I had any other choice at the moment, and walked into the kitchen where the smell of freshly baked pancakes hung in the air.

Elise was sitting at the dinner table, trying to explain genetics to Tom. From her expression, I think it wasn’t getting through. And now Tom was now paying rapt attention to me, not to the genetic code floating over the table.

“Hey Tom. Are my clothes dirty?”

“Andy?”

I got a little sick when he called my Andy. I can guess the source of that little hint.

Mother? A problem with my name?

[Mother: A lady should not have a boy’s name.]

“Andy, you okay? Why are you made up like that? I mean...Er...It looks good on you. I just wasn’t expecting this.”

“Tom, can you call me...Just call me Amy. That’s a good enough name.”

“And you even change your name?”

“I have to adjust a bit to how I look now. Apparently it comes with the territory.”

I turned to Elise, and whispered “Mother”.

Elise looked a little amused and grabbed my hand to give it a little squeeze.

“Sorry. But you did this to yourself, Andy.”

“What’s happening?” Tom asked not understanding.

“Amy here has a behavior control program running in the background. It would be best to not comment if she acts or dresses a bit girly, you understand? She looks like a girl now and will act like a girl.”

“Can’t you just turn it off?”

“No. Believe me, I got stuck with that program once and you can’t get rid of it easily,” Elise explained ”It will block you trying to change also, I’m afraid. Mother can be rather insistent.”

“Excuse me, I have to consume some sugars. And by the way, you have to connect this sequence here and connect it up between these blocks.” I pointed to the point on the sequence on the table.

Then I saw the remains of a pancake breakfast below the DNA sequences on the table.

“My pancakes!! Did they grew okay?!”

“We … we might have eaten from them. There were so great.”

“WHAT!? My pancakes!!”

“Sorry about that. They are awesome. Especially the blueberry one is just heavenly.”

“But I wanted to taste them first. On that note, what exactly happened yesterday.”

“You came home, still in designer haze. You finished your pancake design and you really got lost in your design. Typically gadgeteer. Then you set them to grow in the kitchen, ate enough to feed a small army and fell asleep. That’s about it. We’re sorry we ate them, but we started a new batch on high speed. They’ll be ready soon, okay?”

“Okay then,” I said a bit said.

As Tom ran his simulation on the new DNA sequences, I went and plucked some freshly grown hot pancakes from the tree. I can’t believe it all worked as planned! With my own hands I made pancake fruit! I could touch them, smell them, taste them. This was sooo satisfying.

With my stack of pancakes I sat down next to Tom and started to much on my food. So good. All that calories really hit the spot. But Mother was keeping me from wolfing it down like I wanted to, so I was daintily eating them.

“Hey ...Amy. How did you make those pancakes? You make good stuff. Those things are great. And how did you get them heated on the tree itself?”

“I added a feature that if you put the grow speed to high it doesn’t grow the final structure overall, but makes macro cells stuffed with balanced nutrients and organic fuel packages formed from sugar. Then the fuel packages are combined. They basically bake the nutrients from the inside out into pancake while the produced gasses make the pancake fluffy. Easy.”

“Easy. Right. Elise is trying to explain how it all works, but I’m not getting it. I can see how the protein is encoded, but putting the proteins to work is beyond me. And you just bake stuff from the inside out.”

“I don’t know. It just all seems so simple. Elise, you must know.”

“You better ask one of the better head shrinks around here, but I’ll try. You know that your cells now have computers that extend your brain. They mostly do literally extend your brain from the top level onward. This is done in way so everything that makes you, well, you, your consciousness and personality, is exactly like it was before. By definition, that moves all the extra stuff into your unconsciousness. Unless you start messing with your brain yourself, the development of that outer brain is also done unconsciously. This usually manifests itself into giving you certain aptitudes. We didn’t chose those, but somehow it always happens. Tom, you have skills yet to discover. No need to worry. Amy, you ready? We’re going to visit another training ground today.”

“Ah, I need to freshen up for a second. Mother insists. Excuse me.”

“Meet us out front. I’ll look for James.”

~o~O~o~

We were walking through the jungle again. Now the shock of our first walk was over, I could make out a lot more details. There were so many different animals and plants could be found on the trees and ground.

“Elise, what are those berries at the bottom of the trees? Some of them are weird?” I asked.

“Those are meatballs. They are for the carnivores. They don’t have to eat other animals here. We don’t allow that in this region.”

“Like these animals understand that,” Tom scoffed.

“Remember, most animals also have the friend-or-foe system,” James pointed out. “They know that attacking a friend makes them a foe. It’s a bit harsh but getting eaten is not an option.”

“And these insects and birds. And those other creatures flying here. They have so many colors and unusual shapes. These can’t be natural,” I asked.

“No, most are not natural. They’re part of our restoration project,” Eline said with proud. “Many animals were extinct because of industrial waste and destruction of habitat. Of course, when you can change genes and essentially build any animal you want, some people tend to get creative.”

I was getting jealous. I wanted to make animals too.

“But where do you breed animals?”

“Well,” Elise said and paused dramatically. “You have a womb now. You can just breed them yourself if needed.”

“What?!”

“Oh, your face. You can actually do that, but using a large egg and breading room is much eas-”

We passed five teenagers that were giving us some really dirty looks. I even felt some pings on my nerves from their direction. Are they trying to breach my mind? It felt dirty. Then their eyes started to bug out and one of the girls looked like she was about to throw up.

James and Elise looked at Tom who seemed a bit too happy with himself.

“What happened?” I asked.

“We were attacked. It were just some petty cyber attacks. The teenagers here are a bit mad at Westerners and those associating with them. They feel like you took away their change to own a big house, big car and other goods. You can feel that in your systems.”

“They were not so good as they thought they were,” Tom answered.

“What did you do?” I asked Tom.

“They were throwing a bunch of simple attacks and sending packages intended to steal information. First I blocked them. Then I … Well, ahem, I used to visit some very dark dark web. Porn and much worse. It weren’t my proudest moment. I attached some of the darkest stuff I could remember to their return packages.”

“Hold on. You send the most nasty and darkest stuff the Western world can come up with and send it right in those fresh virgin minds?” I asked incredulously. Tom nodded. “Those poor kids. And how did you do that anyway. You just happen to do that in a few seconds?”

“I don’t know. When they started their attack, it just clicked. It was so easy to counter what they were doing.”

“Yar a hacker, Tommy” Elise said.

Tom pumped his fist in the air shouting “Yes!!”

“We’ll test how good you are when we get to the gym.”

“What was that yar a hacker thing?” I asked Elise.

“Oh, something from my youth.”

“Errr, how old are you?” I whispered.

“I was a senior doctor with Doctors without Borders assigned to this region at the start of the crisis,” she said.

"Didn't that happen more than 10 years ago?"

"Yep."

“Looking good,” I responded.

"Thank you."

~o~O~o~

We got to the gym without any further incidents, except Tom continuously saying things like “did you see that” and “hack the planet“”. Luckily he cooled down a bit from his little hacker high by the time we arrived, fortunately.

“I’m going to see if Obiefune is around here, to take care of our little hacker boy. I’ll be right back,” Elise announced. “See you in a sec.”

James signaled with his hand for us to follow. “We’ll go to the dojo for some training now. That was the original schedule anyway. That’s my favorite spot. In case you didn’t guess already, martial arts is my talent.”

“But I’m not dressed for any martial arts,” I complained.

“You have to be able to fight in any circumstances.”

“But this is a new outfit!”

“No worries. You can get a training outfit here.”

“But you just said -”

“It’s true. You have to be able to fight in any circumstances. Just not today. The women's dressing room is over there. The dojo is through that door. We’ll meet in the dojo.”

Right. I have to use the other room now. I slowly went to the indicated door. I looked down before opening the room. I’m wearing a skirt and I have difficulties seeing my feet because two somethings were in the way that wasn’t there several months ago. Yep, I have the right to enter here. It was still weird, but I pushed open the door and saw nothing remarkable. Then a voice behind me called out: “Can you move your white ass to inside the dressing room? You can admire the furniture there without blocking the door.”

A woman that looked like she was definitely an Amazon, except this was the wrong continent, was standing behind me, hands on her hips.

“Oh sorry,” I quickly blurted out while stumbling in the room.

“No problem. But I thought dressing rooms were pretty normal where you're from. This one was modeled after Western movies after all. Hi, I’m Kashish.”

“Hi, I‘m Amy. Nice to meet you. Ours are usually cheap plastic and chipped paint, not wood.”

“You build with what you have, and some materials are just more beautiful.”

“I have to agree with you. Great craftsmanship. Although you could grow these almost completely automatically when you add a few artificial sequences from to the third chromosome and … Sorry. Got carried away.”

“Ah, a baby DNA doodler. So cute,” she said with a smile. “My specialty is body sculpting.” She pointed at herself and asked: “What do you think?”

I let my eye roam her body that probably was inhabited by a goddess and declared “I'm so jealous right now.” The strange thing was I meant it. How does that happen?

[Introspection: comfort level with female form has increased to 67.96%. Expected final level of 91.8%]

What? But I’m a man?

[Introspection: The biological parts of the brain have been very responsive to female hormones. Current configuration is not male anymore.]

Oh. And now I realize that this goddess is undressing in the same room with me and I basically didn’t care. Some man I am. I might as well accept it.

“Are you alright? You’re not that jealous?”

“No. No, I just … I didn’t always look like this, and … It’s kinda...”

“No problem. Hey, I’ll give you a few design, okay?”

She made a flourish with her hand and three credit cards appeared floating above her open hand.

“Here’s a sample of my work.”

“I just have this one design. Hold on.”

After a little struggling with the system, I also had a card with a copy of the pancake design floating in front of me.

“It’s just a design for growing a pancake. It’s the first thing I made.”

“You don’t need to give my anything, but thank you.”

Her cards started to float towards me, and I pushed my cards towards her. I did made sure to check if auto install was turned off before receiving the cards.

[Received: auto lifting breasts - no more sagging for centuries]
[Received: maximized cardiovascular endurance - never let fatigue stop you]
[Received: intimate protection - vaginal shaped charges and labial electric charges]

“Shaped charges? Electric charges?”

“Guaranteed to fry anyone trying to touch you and blow away anything trying to force its way where it doesn’t belong. A girl likes to be safe.”

Yes, these mods are going on the queue.

“Oh yes. That’s safe. Thank you. But I was told there would be sportswear here I can use.”

“Those are in that cabinet on the right just in the last locker. Yes, that one, the one without any sign on it. Yes, a sign would’ve been handy.”

I opened the cabinet and found the clothes. There was a basic gi in there. I quickly put my normal outfit in the locker, set my bra to sport mode and put on the gi. Now I’m ready to fight! I said my goodbyes to Kashish and went to the ring. Mats. Tatami. Whatever.

~o~O~o~

“Hey James. I’m ready.”

“About time. Please run your warming up routine. Wait, what are you doing?”

“You said to warm up. We call it jumping jacks.”

“Ugh, not like that. Use your systems. We have much better routines then your bouncing around.”

“Oh, I found it. Here goes.”

And suddenly my muscles felt a bit like they were cramping up. My legs first and going up from there. Then the feeling was gone.

“I think it’s ready with warming up. Does this even work?”

“Of course. I designed it. Do you have any fighting experience?”

“Besides video games? No.”

“Video games? Which ones with fighting?”

“Errr. Street Punch. Russia Bash. Invasion. Strategic Defense.”

“Action themed and strategy. Hmmm. I can use that. Take this.”

A stack of isolinear chips appeared in front of James and floated over to my opened hand.

[Received: martial arts interface]
[Received: hand-to-hand basic training]
[Received: weapons basic training]
[Received: initiation kung fu]
[Received: advanced kung fu]
[Received: …]

I just received a life long of dedicated training. Nice.

“Hey James, why do you use those floating chips trick. Can’t you just e-mail them or something.”

“Of course I can. It’s just not considered polite to do so. We prefer a more personal touch.”

“Oh. You wouldn't like my boss then.”

“Your boss is rather irrelevant right now. Are you installing the packages I gave you?”

“Right. Just a sec.”

I quickly started the installation and felt dizzy. When it passed, I couldn't help to quote that new Disney movie Matrix Beyond.

“I know Kung Fu.”

James saw the same movie apparently.

“Show me.”

This challenge could not be ignored. As I tried to assume a martial arts position that I remembered from the movies, the fighting interface came up. I now saw a whole lot of options for kicking, punching, defensive positions and a lot more, but it was all grayed out. Only the calibration was usable, so I quickly used that. Suddenly my arms and legs started to move all by themselves doing a bunch of kicks, punches and jumps that are typical used for showing off. As the progress bar for calibration completed, all other options came online so I hit generic defensive position #3. Now I was ready!

“You will have noticed that using these functions means giving up partial control of your body to the semi-automatic systems. If you believe capable of handling this, try to hit me.”

Like the casual gamer that I am, I just start mashing virtual buttons. Punch! Kick! Punch! Punch! Block! Evade! I’m the avatar in my own arcade right now. It feels really weird to not be in total control of your movements but in exchange for some serious kung fu this is acceptable. But James was better. He was untouchable.

“Good enthousiasme but little control. Try to hit me.”

Time to double down. Let’s see how to so this a bit more tactical. I need a battle plan. Hmmm. Tactical analysis screen says preference for punches and right side attacks. I’ll try to work with that. Use the battle planner to come up with some good combos, queue them up and go. This time it was on! Well, until I got my legs kicked out from under me about a minute later.

“Good, you are using the tools available to you. Try again.”

Again I ran the analysis and planner. But this time I tried to keep my focus on the surroundings and analytics. I saw there was a battle awareness option to shift processing power around for greater efficiency. Now everything was happening in slow motion, like my brain was overclocking. Maybe it was. Now I could keep analyzing the fight and continuously adjust. Now I lasted five minutes before I got knocked down again. James suddenly changes fighting style and he got me.

“Again.”

“Just a minute.”

So I needed to add the other fighting styles into the battle computer, crunch the odds and try again. This was getting more complicated. There was also a cool array with moves for getting up in style. One backflip later and the fight was on again.

“Again.”

“Now do try to hit me.”

“Not good enough.”

“You almost got me there. Keep trying.”

After several of this, I just laid on the mat panting, barely able to move.

“You did great!” Tom said enthusiastically on the side of the room in his own gi. “It was streight up movie material.”

“Ugh. Thanks. How did your training go?”

Tom winced. “About the same as your fight here. It’s awesome to learn and do so much in so short a time. And then to get crushed by somebody so much better than you. Here, let me help you up.”

“Thanks. For a short time, it was great.”

“You did great. Amy. With more training you can become a good fighter. Hit the showers. Tom, when you’re ready.”

I got my legs under me and made my way to the showers for some heavenly hot water.

~o~O~o~

Ah, a good shower helped me feel a lot better and I was now dry and dressed in my ‘street clothes’. I did use up a lot of hot water. If that came from the rain and heated with solar power, I might have wasted it all. That made me feel guilty, so I did a quick check on the shower systems and found I could all access it.

Water reservoir was at 99%. Heat transfer was running, nuclear reactor within tolerances. Hold on. Nuclear reactor? And I just took a shower in that. I quickly went to the dojo as far as my still tired legs would carry me, just in time to see a blur of arms and legs until Tom landed on the mat. Poor guy.

“James, why do you have a nuclear reactor here?”

“Tom, time for a break. Amy, we use it for heating and electricity of course. Solar power is great for a lot of the things we do, but we must move more quickly so need more energy.”

“But it’s not safe!”

“Sure it is. You’re thinking of those clunky designs you have. And we keep everything deep underground in small devices, not that bomb in a building you guys used.”

“But the water could be radiated?”

“Did your senses indicate anything? Just check.”

Hmmm. I did find radiation sensors in my body. And the graphs said there was only background radiation. I hope these things are accurate. It was still creepy. And I was standing there with my hands on my hips scowling just like my sister does.

“What else is there underground,” Tom interjected. “I can’t image you just bury a reactor there.”

“You are right. Our labs and research facilities are also there. We have a visit scheduled for you in t-”

At that moment I saw a message being transmitted from almost every surface. I could make out it was an emergency code, but the contents was encrypted.

“What’s happening?” I demanded to know.

James was still standing there, silent and unmoving but encrypted communication was blasting to and from him. Then suddenly he moved.

“You have to get out of here. Tom, Amy, grab your stuff from lockers and meet back here. Quickly. Go. Now!!”

“You have to get out of here. Tom, Amy, grab your stuff from lockers and meet back here. Quickly. Go. Now!!”

Tom and I raced back to the locker. I kinda panicked, just grabbed the gi and towel I had taken, but that in a bag I found in the locker where I got the gi and raced back to James. Tom was arriving there too, still in his gi and all his other clothes in a bag. James was already at the exit waving at us and Elise came running.

“Go, go. Follow me,” James shouted.

Tom and me looked at each other with questioning looks and somehow decided to follow James. We ran towards a rather large tree, or rather the wooden cabin at its roots. The cabin door opened as we approached. When Elise was in, she closed the door, James worked a virtual panel and suddenly the whole cabin was falling down. Or at least the interior was. It was in fact an elevator.

The elevator descended for something like half a minute before the door opened and we entered the lobby. I quickly checked my navigation sensors and they said I’m now at 150 feet below ground. The door opened into a lobby. Yes, a lobby. Beautiful wood paneling, leather benches, carved tables and an actual desk. Nice soft lighting gave it a homey feeling. Behind the desk was the Nigerian flag and a corporate logo of some tree and Latin slogan. I didn’t bother running it through the translator.

Behind the desk, a man faded in. “James, Elise, dear guests, good day to you. Your vehicle is waiting in bay 17A. The man gestured with an arm towards a corridor on the left side and faded out.

“Was that a hologram?” Tom asks.

“It’s more an augmented reality projection, not a real hologram, but the result is the same. We don’t have time for this. Come on.”

With that, we sprinted through the corridor. I glimpsed laboratories, people in lab coats around strange tech, plants and animals and even a cafeteria and rec room until we reached a part of the corridors with labeled doors. 17A was already opened and gave out to a small waiting room with one wall in glass. Behind that glass wall was a small subway car. The door closed behind us, and a part of the glass wall opened, allowing us to go in the subway car. As soon as we were in the car, it closed its door and started to race away. James and Elise relaxed somewhat and turned to us. “It looks like you guys are going home sooner than planned,” Elise said.

~o~O~o~

“We’re going home?” I asked hopefully.

“Yes. We have to do this now otherwise the risk of being detected will become too big,” James told us.

“Why?” Tom asked. “What happened? You got this message. It was some red alert announcement, something to do with launching boats, right?”

“How do you know that?” James demanded to know.

“I have been training hacking today, you know. That message had strong encryption but I’m figuring it out. I can read some parts.”

“I’ll let the alert management know. They think they encryption is safe,” James commented. “But yes, the United States is about to deploy two submarines with advanced detection equipment. It’s on the edge of being sensitive enough to detect our transports, so it’s important to transport you before they launch.”

“You spy on the military?” I asked.

“Of course. We have our sources. It’s one of our prime interests.”

“With those rats?”

“Err. Yes. And other ways of course.”

“You have to forgive him,” Elise said smiling. “He doesn’t like other people figuring out his little spying business.”

“This is a serious intelligence operation and important to our people,” James said.

“I know honey,” Elise said while patting is arm. “But now we have to get our guests home. Tom, Amy, we’re now driving back to the coast where a submarine is waiting for you. It will take you back to your country. We’re going as fast as we can, burning some serious kilowatthours. In the meantime, we have to tell you something. You probably guessed there is a bit more to everything that happened.”

“Yeah. Why had you guys having us running around planting seeds?” Tom demanded to know.

“Let me start at the beginning,” Elise explained. “Our original plan has always been to eventually give to you what we have here. With our technology, we can dramatically decrease and reverse carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants while increasing the standard of living for millions of people. We don’t need factories and trucks for our houses, clothes and food. Neither do we need electronics, like a TV, computer or phone. It would destroy most industrial, commercial and financial industries in the process without most people to give up anything.”

“Destroy? Are you so mad at us?” Tom asked.

“A bit. People are not exactly loving you at the moment. But by removing most of the industrial complex, the military loses a lot of power and money while politics goes in disarray. The end result means no attack on us and attempts to raid our resources or tech. The projections are really solid.”

“So killing us with kindness,” I remarked.

“That is the general idea,” James stated. “A complex solution to a complex problem. Our first plan was to have people plant seeds and we can use those to start growing advanced plants that give people some upgrades who eat the fruit. That’s what you were doing with those letters. But your little kidnappers have given us a new opportunity.”

“They were saying they read everything on the internet. Your work I assume?” Tom reasoned.

“Of course. The few local operatives can easily do that.”

“But,” Elise began. “If you are willing to work with us and do a more controlled spread, like setting up companies and selling the tech as a new product on the market, even on the black market, things will go a lot more smoothly for everybody. If Amy designs new bio products and treatments while Tom designs a machine to support the biotech and sell to the black market, you will have enough market and money to go legit. Your products will sell very good and make you rich. Being rich, you gain political influence, bend some regulations and spread from there.”

“And in the meantime get every oil tycoon after us,” Tom remarked.

“If you continue combat training on you own I know you will be better than all assassins out there,” James sad. “I didn’t design all that training programs just for fun.”

“Yes, you did. You were giddy with excitement when you finished a training chapter.”

“Did not. So what do you think? Want to go home and become a billionaire?”

“I’ll do it,” I said. “Save the world, become rich, make the boys real hunks and the girls very pretty.”

“Me to. Somebody has to watch Amy here,” Tom said giving me a wonderful smile.

“Thank you,” Elise said smiling. “We’re going to help what we can but that’s limited from here. We’re working on that but it’s going to take some time.”

“Okay Tom, what do you think. Amy Enterprises!”

From there on we were speculating wildly on what we would sell, name of the companies while Elise tried to prevent us from being too silly. She didn’t really succeed. But it did make the travel go by quickly.

The subway car parked in its dock automatically and opened the door. We followed James as he briskly walked through the corridors. Here too, there were labs, cafeterias, meeting rooms and roaming people in lab coats.

“James, why does it look like the Google headquarters here below ground?” Tom asked.

“Hanging around in trees gets boring after some time and isn’t a good defensive strategy. We needed a hobby and an edge.”

“But digging all this must take so much time,” I asked.

“Not really. Some smart boys and girls build a robot that builds other robots out of scrap metal. Other people remotely control the robots to make the underground installations and power plants. It’s pretty easy when you have some people with a talent for controlling a few hundred robots. I helped out some too. It feels like you inhabit the robot body.”

“You mentioned an edge,” Tom asked.

“Some people got carried away and now we have some nukes and intercontinental missiles ready in case we need to announce ourselves sooner than anticipated. We need some mutual assured destruction to be taken seriously of course, that’s just how the world works. Just in case, you understand. Politics can be weird. Ah, we’re at the harbor.”

A man was waiting for us at the end of the corridor. He shook out hands and then gave us a package.

“Hello. I’m honored to meet you. These are suits for your travel. Please put these on over your street clothes. The toilets are right over there. Put your personal belongings in the provided bag. Please don’t take too long.”

We quickly got into the provided suits. It was made out of some strange material. Then James led us through some really large corridors and through a large door. There were a number of people zipping at high speed through the corridors on what appeared to be electrical skates weaving between some velociraptors walking. Neat. I guess that improved equilibrium and reflexes prevented them from assaulting the floor with their face or other people.

We entered a huge cave with a few small and larger submarines moored at the quays. They have been busy. There were even a drydock where robots were crawling over a half build submarine. But James took us to the side and stopped at a small quay.

“Oh look, a whale!” I exclaimed. “How did that get in here? Can I pet it?”

“That’s your transport,” James stated in his usual drone.

“That’s a whale,” I repeated.

“It’s a not a whale,” Elise explained. “It’s not even an animal. It’s a submarine made out of mostly biological parts. It helps when you try to stay low key.”

“I have to get in there?”

“Yes, you do,” James told us. “It has enough fuel to cross the ocean and self destruct after dropping you of. The suits you’re wearing will keep you dry and keep you out of contact with the biological parts. But first we have to give you a few things. These are the instructions on how to handle your whale.” With that he handled us an info card.

“And this, ” Else said while manifesting two shiny golden coin, one for each of us, “is all the software, designs, genetics, training and information you can ever need for the near future and your mission. You’ll have to interface to transfer this.”

“Thank you. We’ll do whatever needs to be done.”

I grabbed Elise’s wrist to interface and took the coin. Then I felt like somebody tried to ram the entire internet through my frontal cortex. I whimpered a bit.

“You really got it all, didn't you,” I complained, rubbing my temples.

“Yup,” said a smugly smiling Elise. Then she repeated the process with Tom.

James gave us helmets from the bag the guy I the corridor had given him. It looked like jet fighter helmets

“Time to go, I guess,” said Tom. “I’ll miss you guys.” He shook hands with Tom and Elise.

“Me too. I’ll miss you too. Thank you for everything you’ve done for us.” I hugged Tom and Elise and start strapping on the helmet.

We managed to give the command for the ‘whale’ to open its mouth and we used the instructions James had given us to climb in, got us settled and connect the umbilical. It was a messy process and we ended up wedged in between the artificial meat of the whale. We closed the mouth of the ‘whale’ and turned on the autopilot.

“There we go,” I said. “I hope everything works out.”

“It will. Now we just activate the stasis routines and wake up when we’re home.”

“Okay.” I sought out Tom's hand and gave it a squeeze. “Sleep tight.”

~o~O~o~

This annoying beeping was making me up. I tried to stretch but the blanket was really heavy. And the blanket was covering my face. When I eventually reached with my hands to my head, I felt the helmet. Then I remembered I was traveling inside a whale submarine slab of fake meat.

“Tom, you awake?”

“Ugggh.”

“I think we’re almost home.”

“Home?”

“Yes. Lemme checked. We’re something like a quarter mile front of the coast, at the surface. We have to swim the last part.”

“Then let’s go. How do we get out of here?”

“I found the eject function. You can’t miss that handle, it’s the bright flashing yellow thing. Are you ready? Oxygen and pressure okay? You have your luggage?”

“I’m ready. Blow this thing and let’s go home.”

I hit the button and the whale came apart around us in a cloud of bubbles and foam. Then we were floating on the waves and could see some lights in the distance, while dissolving parts of whale floated around us. That’s one way to do an ecological friendly self destruct. We started swimming towards the beach and after some time crawled into the sand.

“The instructions say to ditch the helmet and suit,” Tom said. ”Just throw it in the ocean and they’ll self destruct soon.”

“Could you turn around?”

“Oh. Okay.”

I quickly got out of the suit and helmet so I could straighten out my skirt, shirt and hair. It was still a disaster after being stuck for several days asleep on the ocean. I need a shower at least to fix this somewhat. It can’t be helped now.

“Tom, your turn.”

Tom didn’t bother to turn around and just stripped out of the suit. He even went as far to flex his muscles and grin. I could appreciate that.

“I’m ready. Do you have any idea where we are now?”

“South of Miami. 26 miles that way to my home, 38 miles that way to your place.”

“Let's drop you off at home first.”

With that we started walking to get off the beach and made our way carefully through the flooded streets until we reached the city proper. Then a driverless taxi zoomed by us and suddenly did an emergency stop. I gave Tom a questioning look.

“Your work, I assume?”

“Yeah… I tried to go some quick attack on the thing as it went by, just for practice. I never knew it was so easy. The damn thing might as well not have security.”

“And now it's calling home with our pictures.”

“I shut down the cameras before it saw us. All other communication is disabled. All logs are deleted and a scrubbing is almost done.”

The door from the car opened.

“Ladies first.”

After the obligated annoyed look, I got into the car followed by Tom. My seatbelt was barely clicked shut and the car took of with squealing tires. These things were not supposed to drive like that. Tom was sitting there with a very broad grin, so I can make an educated guess.

“Having fun?”

“Oh yeah. This is awesome. I can access all sensors and controls. It's like the car is an extension of me and with a bit of physics software...”

The car drifted through a tight corner at rally speed.

“...it allows me to go a bit harder than the normal pace.”

“Aaah, slow down!”

He did slow down eventually. Perhaps he figured out it was better to stay low key or it was the death grip on his arm and my nails digging into his flesh slowly drawing blood that was the reason, but the last miles were very smooth, better than any normal driver, robot of human. Tom jumped out very happy with himself, walked to the other side of the car while the door opened automatically and helped me out of the car. As we walked into the entrance of the apartment I felt a network connection like there was in the jungle. It came from the two rats peeked out from under the mailboxes.

“Andy, you’re back!” one rat said. ” Good. Your mother is getting worried. We’ve been sending her updates for a cover story that you’ve been in surgery after an accident.”

“Sorry?” I squeeked.

“Oh I’m sorry. Mario is the name. And this is Alex. We’ve been assigned to your case.”

“Hi,” said the other rat while waving at us.

“Errr hi,” said Tom. “You made up a fake story?”

“Yep. Just the usual things: intercept a few phone calls, updates by mail in the mailbox here.”

“Oookay, errrr, keep up the good work lads,” Tom said as we continue

“Thank you. Can we talk later? I really want to see my family.”

“Certainly”, the rats said. ”We didn’t mean to hold you.”

We went upstairs after that and I was now standing in front of the door to my home, too afraid to ring the bell.

“But what if mom doesn’t recognize me?”

“She’ll recognize you. You still look like family. And she’ll recognize me. I haven’t changed that much.”

“Then you do it.”

“Okay.”

And at that moment, Tom pressed the doorbell.

“What did you do?!”

“I pressed the bell. You told me to do it.”

“I did not! I meant to...”

“”Dani?” my mother asked from the now open door. “Daenerys? What are you doing out here so late?”

“What are you talking about?” Dani said from the kitchen. ”I’m in the kitchen, not outside.”

Mom turned around. And back again. And once again her head flopped back and for. Then Dani saw me.

“You!” Dani exclaimed. “That’s my body. I designed that.”

“I remember you throwing away the letter that could have given you that body. Now it’s mine. You really should stop throwing stuff on the ground, sister dear. Still letting towels and panties laying on the floor in the bathroom?”

“No, of course not! Maybe. But that didn’t allow you to steal m-”

“Andy! Dani! Stop fighting,” my dad yelled as he came in the hallway.

“But she starte-”
“But she starte-”

“Both of you! Stop fighting.”

“Andy?” my mother asked.

“Yes. Although I do prefer Amy.”

“Why do you look like your sister? They said you had surgery, but this?”

“That is a long story,” I said as I carefully moved forward to hug my mom. “But it’s all Dani’s fault.”

“Andy!” my father warned.

“You shouldn’t blame your sister for everything,” said mom. “You always do that.”

“Sorry mom,” I said while slowly hugging my mom. “I missed you so!” That’s when the tears came.

“It’s alright, dear. Let’s get inside. Come. You too Tom.”

I walked into the apartment that I haven’t seen for so long. Then I saw my sister eyeing Tom appreciatively. That wasn’t allowed to happen. I caught Dani’s eye, discretely pointed at Tom, narrowed my eyes at her and quietly hissed “He’s mine.” I had to nip that in the bud.

Finally we all settled in the living room for a really weird family gathering.

~o~O~o~

Epilogue

I was looking out of window of my office. It afforded me a nice view of the city. That city has changed so much.

When we got back, we started a little family company. The first factory made small model carbon convertors. It sucked the carbon out of the air and converted it into sugar. It actually produced something very similar to honey using electricity and water. The FDA required a stabilizing agent and conservation agent. It gave the honey a blue color. Of course everybody now called it manna what only added to the popularity.

We also made machines that used the “manna” to grow plants. We only sold seeds for decorative plants at first of course for legal reasons. That didn’t stop the black market from selling modifications that were surprisingly easy to use and plants that produced food. We deny any involvement and there is not a shred of evidence for this. Anyway, all trails are passed now to even sell medicinal plants.

It did make it a lot easier for a lot of people to have very cheap healthy food and medicine. It costs energy to run the food machines but we also sell semi-organic self growing solar panels of course. The recently introduced eggplants were also a big hit. It grows a large egg, and in that egg grows a garment.

And there were the mods that could eat plastics as fuel source or recycle septic waste. It could make each house or apartment into a small self sustaining biosphere. There was serious interest from the independent folks and from NASA.

Our company was now in the top 500, although many copied us. We upgraded the whole family pretty soon. Dad turned out to be a gifted micro mechanic, speeding up the design process quickly. Mom was really good with numbers and administration. It all helped our little business grew tremendously. The end result was a green city, a concrete jungle reclaiming some aspects of a real jungle, bustling with plants and animals.

Pretty soon we’ll start slowly to distribute the first “sensu beans” for public testing. That was a long fight to get it approved, but there is progress.

Dani, now my twin sister, turned out to be a fauna-devisor. True to her namesake, she had several small dragons flying around the office. They didn’t breed and tended to spontaneously combust when Dani didn’t take care of them and keep tweaking their metabolism. She insisted on them breathing fire, but that turned out to be really tricky. Luckily she had rapid regrowing of hair and burned skin down pat and was making serious progress on making herself fireproof. She needed it a lot.

I need to go now. Tom is standing at the door in the classic pose every husband has when his wife is late. We’re invited to the arrival of the Nigerian delegation today, now that diplomatic relations have started. I can’t wait to see James and Elise again.

Author’s note: Well folks, this is where it ends. It was the intention of giving you a glimpse of a possible future and some of the weird and/or useful things we might see happening soonish. I hope I succeeded in this in combination with providing a bit of entertainment.