Prologue

I have been asked to write my story and I have done my best to do so. Others have added their points of view as they wanted to explain their actions when I either didn't care for the reasons or was kept in blissful ignorance.

From an Earth point of view my life has become very strange and not what most people would want or enjoy. Despite all that has happened to me, I can now say that I am content and I know that there will be a small portion of the Earth population that would like to be where I am. This book is for them.

One of the reasons I have been asked to write this book is to find those who would like to come to Arrat. If you follow my story you will know what awaits you and you need to be very certain of your decision. It is not for the faint hearted or those who are insecure in their idea of self. My own beliefs about gender and sexuality have been under extreme pressure causing me severe emotional distress. I have eventually overcome my demons and allowed myself to feel happy, but it was a struggle, far more than I can put into words.

Considering all that, if you still wish to take the irreversible step of following my footsteps you need to visit the website xxx.xxxxxxxxx.xxx or email [email protected]

(The website and email have been removed due to concerns for public safety. There are ongoing investigations into various missing person cases relating to this information.)

Chapter 1

My story really begins when I was 53 years old, but I had better give you a glimpse of my life up until that point. It might explain some of my actions and reactions.

If someone comes up to you and asks you to describe yourself, most of us will begin with our job title. Doctor, Dentist, Carpenter, Plumber. You certainly wouldn't state your gender or sexuality. My first response would be Musician. Not that I ever earned that much money from it, but I loved the guitar. I never had a good singing voice so I specialised in backing up others or playing classical music. I wrote songs but couldn't manage to sell them for someone else to perform. I did teach guitar mainly for the love of it since it certainly didn't pay well.

I met my American wife when I was travelling through the USA after I finished high school. There is another element of your identity, your nationality. I was originally English, but I have spent most of my adult life in California. I don't think I would classify myself as American though.

My wife and I spent several years visiting each other until we couldn't stand to be apart any more and I moved in with her. She had a great job as a real estate agent and since my music career never took off I ended up as the house husband. I learnt photography once Karl our only son was a bit older so that I could help her with clients. I did a fair amount of maintenance work on houses. Karl joined the military and we lost him in Afghanistan. Mary never really recovered from that and was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer at the age of 48. She was gone within 12months.

So my description of myself would be something like this. Musician, Father, Husband, Widower, Englishman, Heterosexual man, Househusband, Odd job man, Photographer. At the age of 53, I was sad and alone. Not suicidal, but definitely thinking that my life was pretty much over.

I decided to travel and I ended up travelling a lot further than I intended. I took a flight to Cancun. I was half asleep when disaster struck. I felt a brief but intense pain going through my legs, my head hit the seat in front of me and I blacked out. The next thing I knew, I found myself sitting in a classroom feeling very small staring at a stern looking woman. She was at least six foot tall, looking very buff, short hair, wearing trousers and a shirt, neither of which hid her clearly female features. She was pointing to a large screen that had letters on it, but when she spoke it was a language I had never heard.

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Thea's explanation

It was actually a very unfortunate and unlikely accident. I have spoken to the scientists involved and they told me what happened. They were experimenting with dimensional travel and had deliberately opened a portal high in the air to make it extremely unlikely that we would hurt any of the inhabitants. Almost none of the worlds we have come across are technologically advanced enough to have air travel.

As soon as the portal was opened material from your world entered ours at extreme speed and even though we immediately shut down the device the majority of the people who passed through the portal, died instantly. There was only one survivor and he was close to death. He was not the first displaced person we had dealt with though. In other worlds we have taken residents who were dying or close to death and integrated them into our society, so, although his circumstances of arrival were unusual, his presence in our world was not. We followed our normal policy for displaced persons.

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As she went through the letters of the alphabet I realised that they were slightly different from what I was used to. There was no y or z, but there was a separate letter for ch sound and th sound. The words sounded Spanish, but I knew enough Spanish to know it didn't fit.

How long she tried to teach me her language I do not know. I couldn't feel my body, I couldn't make any sounds or any movement. There was no obvious way to measure time, all I could do was concentrate on what this lady was trying to teach me. It went from letters of the alphabet to pictures with words and finally to sentences and children's books. There were a few words that they emphasised and tried to make sure I understood.

It all ended very abruptly. The classroom and lady teacher blinked out leaving me with pure blackness, with a white dot blinking in the centre. A word appeared above the blinking dot. Press it said in their language. It took a while to work out how to mentally press the dot and, as soon as I did, the dot disappeared and reappeared up and to my left. I then had to spend time playing the press the dot game.

Once I had become proficient with that I was back to my language lessons again but now I could be tested to see how my comprehension was progressing. It was eventually explained to me that I now had a computer integrated with my brain. Even before they told me I knew that my brain power had significantly improved. My memory for sounds has always been excellent, but now it was an order of magnitude better. I was powering through learning the language, remembering the sounds and meaning so much easier than I ever had before.

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Thea's explanation

I cannot talk about our technology for obvious reasons, but I will say that installing the interface is mainly a way of allowing people to connect to the computers and technology around them. Sort of like having a screen, keyboard and mouse with a WiFi connection to the internet. Except the interface encompasses all the senses, has an ability to store information and a limited processing power that works with the brain.

Normally there is no increase in intellect, but in rare cases, the brain, processing component and the storage facility interact in unexpected ways.

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Once I passed a level of comprehension, I was given a tutorial on the interface, which was the name they called my internal computer. The first thing I accessed was a dictionary. Reading the dictionary was boring but with my increased understanding, by the time I had finished, I knew the language. Although I knew the language, it wasn't my first language and I still thought in English and then translated and likewise, translated into English to properly understand. This meant I was a little slow, but my comprehension was pretty complete.

I was hoping that now that I could speak their language I would be able to ask all the questions that were pounding through me. Where was I? What had happened to me? Why couldn't I feel my body? Unfortunately, my access to the technology around me only gave me limited access that was to education material only. No science allowed, but history, culture and entertainment.

My first inquiry was into the music industry. Good news; they had guitars and singers. It was a bit hard to translate the lyrics quickly enough and a lot of content required payment that I didn't have. The one oddity was that I only found female groups, no male in sight. Nor could I find any classical music. They had meditation type music that was purely instrumental, but nothing involving a full orchestra.

I decided to go to the free entertainment section. Again no men. Clearly, I was missing something so I decided I needed to start studying history to see if I could work out this mystery.

Chapter 2

Studying history was very different to how I thought it was going to be. The same lady who had taught me my letters sat in an armchair facing me. I would ask her a question and then she would pause, then answer. Her answer was a combination of verbal explanation and visual aids. The visual aids were spectacular. If she was talking about war, I would find myself on a battlefield simulation, if she wanted me to hear a speech I would be a member of the crowd in clear view of the orator. It was fascinating and I could stop her at any time if I needed further clarification.

She was clearly a computer simulation and if I asked her something that was outside her programming she would tell me that she would ask for clarification and then continue as if I hadn't interrupted her. Then later the answer would come through.

I would later find out that I spent 8 weeks recovering and I think I spent most of that time going over this world's history and modern-day culture. It was presented so well that I found it fascinating. If I wanted to tell everything that I learned there would be multiple books on nothing but history and the evolving culture. I needed to study the evolving culture to understand why it was the way it was and how I was going to find my place in it.

There were a few specific developments that I think were key to this world, Arrat, turning out the way it did. To start with I should mention that Arrat is one huge continent. There is a large ocean and a few minor islands, but all the major land masses are connected which is possibly why the wars tended to escalate and become world wars.

About five thousand years ago their technology was similar to what Earth is today and they were dabbling in genetic engineering without really understanding what they were doing. They were trying to create super soldiers. The world at that time was mainly male dominated and it was the men who went to war and the scientists didn't want to create babies that would grow up as super soldiers, they wanted to transform the soldiers they already had.

They eventually succeeded and found a process they could use on men that would make them significantly stronger, with faster reflexes. This was a long time ago so some of the details are missing but the general idea was that this development caused another war. Spies managed to steal the process and soon there was a big war with these super soldiers fighting other super soldiers. The nations that won or lost are meaningless now; what was interesting was the result of this genetic meddling.

All the men who had been altered by this process, survived the war and had children, produced super soldier children, but only the females carried this trait. The girls became taller, stronger and faster. This resulted in the start of The Gender War.

History is written by the victors so how much of the atrocities that they claim was committed by the men is true is debatable, but nothing that they mentioned was outside of what I had heard of happening on Earth. What they said occurred was that the men, finding themselves at a disadvantage physically, forced their dominance on the women more and more, to keep them in their place.

The women's rebellion resulted in a horrific war with brother against sister, mother against father. To cut a long and awful story short, the women eventually won and wanted to make sure they were never raped or dominated again.

For a few hundred years after that, I don't think men were treated very well at all, but if you fast forward a thousand years you find a much happier picture. Technological advances also had a big effect. Within a hundred years of the Gender War, the Interface was developed and could be used to completely control the human body. In the case of men, it meant that there would never be a successful male rebellion and sexual function including release was now completely in the hands of the women.

Another hundred years or so after the interface came the regeneration technique, that became known as Regen. Regen was a process that used the interface and some other technology that allows you to reverse ageing, I'm guessing nanotech but as a male, I am not allowed to know or study any science or technology. It rapidly encompassed cosmetic changes as well.

There are now two types of Regen. Basic Regen which is mandatory every ten years that reverses ageing with any desired soft tissue changes. This takes about a week and means there are no old people! Almost all sicknesses are resolved and damage that has been done to the body is repaired. They don't necessarily live forever but they are not allowed to die until after they reach 100. You can set a two-week timer for the interface to shut down the body, but it will not activate unless you have reached 100.

Advanced Regen, also known as Poshgen was originally only available to the really rich, but over the centuries has come down in price and the middle classes can easily afford it now. Poshgen allows you to make skeletal changes as well as soft tissue changes. That process takes 8 weeks.

There are lots of consequences to all of this. Some of which is the complete opposite to the world I was used to. Women passed over child rearing to the men long ago. Possibly as a result of that or part of what I call the short haircut syndrome, men now look like women. Let me explain, in order to get a decent job on Earth, you are encouraged to get a decent neat haircut, dress smart and polish your shoes. If you turn up like a slob or even with a preference for long hair, which I think is totally unfair, by the way, your chances of getting hired greatly diminish.

On Arrat, with the women dominant and in all the authority positions, if you wanted to be hired, men probably found that if they looked a bit feminine they had a greater chance of success. Then fast forward a few thousand years and you have a culture where men have breasts and breastfeed babies. If men cut their hair short they are ostracised and they are looked down on if they wear anything but skirts and dresses. From my look at the entertainment available, all those who look particularly feminine are actually men and the tall strong, short-haired women in trousers are the women. I think of them as Amazons and wonder if Earth has interacted with them before.

Another technological innovation which has had a major impact is the artificial womb. Women and men no longer produce children naturally. Or, at least, that is how I thought of it, they would consider a woman giving birth as horrific. This also made it easier to choose certain characteristics in their offspring, in particular, the child's sex. It was a woman's world, so who would choose to have a male child? The government intervened and offers monetary rewards if you don't choose the gender and leave it to chance. They tried offering money to have male children but it didn't work. This means nothing to those who have money so the rich and famous only have female offspring. A consequence of this is that there are far more women than men and the normal family group is between 2 and 3 women for every man. To have children you need both the government's permission and a laboratories help. Since people can live to whatever age they want, the number of children allowed is carefully managed.

The system of government is somewhere between a democracy and a meritocracy. If you want to have a say in how the government manages its finances, for example, you needed to take tests to show that you are an expert in financial matters and understand the question being posed. You also have to be female, of course.

The one exception is a constitutional monarchy. Similar to Britain, one country had a queen ruling during the Gender Wars and although the main family was killed during the war, a distant relative was crowned. That family exists to this day. They are incredibly rich, pay no tax and are generally loved by the people. They decided after Regen arrived that each queen would abdicate after 100 years of ruling, so there would always be fresh ideas available. No kings allowed.

I was seeing a pattern suggesting men are essentially second class citizens in this world and worrying about my place in it. I managed to confirm my guess that I was in Regen and was told that it was Advanced Regen as they needed to make some skeletal changes as well as soft tissue changes. I thought that meant I would have some input in how I would end up looking but no. Apparently, the matriarchal head of the household has the final say in how any male is treated. Normally, this means your mother, wife or female guardian. Usually, the male's wants are considered. In my case, the female technician in charge of the Advanced Regen made all my decisions for me.

In order to fit into society, my body was going to be scaled back to a sixteen-year-old just going into female puberty. Since I have never had breasts before they thought it would be best if they arrived slowly and naturally. However my face was far too masculine so it was being altered to more feminine norms, my pelvis is being converted to the female version and my hands and feet will be reduced in size. There are some other changes relating to my shoulders and waist, but I didn't really understand the medical terminology.

Because I come from a different culture the technician decided that the lesser genital reconstruction was appropriate. That meant my balls would be internalised and something would be done to my penis, re-routing the urethra so I will be peeing out of my arse. Erections were not permitted unless a female with the relationship 'lover' allows it. I released a mental sigh of relief when I realised that I wasn't going to be completely neutered. I was informed that men are generally happy and one of the reasons for this is an enforced orgasm that they call release which occurs everyday at 10 pm and 7 am. The interface is connected to our nervous system and can have a ridiculous amount of control over us.

It was a lot to take in. It helped to understand the reason why, but I wasn't looking forward to waking up. My job prospects also looked pretty bleak. Men had menial jobs on the whole and usually stopped working after having a baby. They were paid significantly less than women, but since any money they earned went into the female matriarch's bank account anyway, it didn't really matter. Men could own personal items like jewellery and clothes but were not allowed to purchase property and they had the gall to tell me that men and women are equal.

Chapter 3

I woke up on a bed, naked with no sheet covering me and what I saw sent me into an immediate deep depression. I wouldn't say my body looked particularly feminine. I didn't have any breasts to block my view which I had been told previously but was still a nagging concern. I didn't see any exaggerated curves and all my excess fat was gone, which was good, but it gave me a clear view of my privates.

My balls were gone. I knew they were somewhere inside me and intellectually I knew they wouldn't be visible but the reality still hit me hard. Not as hard as seeing very little evidence of my pride and joy. I had never been that big to begin with. Maybe a little under average in length, but a bit wider than usual to compensate. All that was left was a little nubbin, barely bigger than a clitoris. It was just as well there was no hair visible or I wouldn't have even seen that.

I looked like a Barbie or Ken doll. Sexless. I could feel my interface try and fight my depression, but it didn't succeed and an alert icon became visible.

A woman came in and tried to offer me this black disk. She spoke to me at the same time. I have no idea what she said as I couldn't be bothered to translate. Up until that point I had never considered suicide and the idea that suicide was beyond me until I reached 100 made my depression worse. I wanted and even prayed for the world to swallow me up. Oblivion was achieved when I fell asleep and I hoped I wouldn't wake up.

Food came and went without me touching it and then one of the Amazon women came in. It made me realise the previous one probably wasn't a woman, but a man. If I wasn't about as low as I could be, that would have affected me. Instead, it was just a disinterested observation. This Amazon doctor came in and spoke to me. I didn't even bother translating again. This one, however, had a rather nasty trick up her sleeve. I knew that the interface had the ability to stimulate me sexually. That was how they caused the prescribed two releases a day. It was also how they could control men, but I hadn't completely thought that through. Only the carrot was mentioned, now I came face to face with the stick.

A timer appeared in my interface that started counting down from five minutes. With the first tick, I felt two deep achy pains begin inside around my pelvic region. As each second went past that pain built and built until I instinctively curled into a ball. It felt like someone had kicked me in the nuts and decided to just keep doing it. I was in agony. That five minutes seemed to last for hours.

When the five minutes was over the pain didn't immediately vanish, just slowly diminish, still throbbing painfully. When the Amazon woman spoke again I really understood about mental conditioning because I feared this woman and I paid very close attention to what she said.

“Are you listening to me now?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered, noticing my voice was significantly altered. I could tell that they had feminised it, but, probably because it was deepish to start with, my voice had a pleasant fuzz to it. In the female range, yes, but not the clear tones of everyone around me.

“You are not the first displaced male to join our world although they are extremely rare so your reaction to the Advanced Regeneration is not a complete surprise. There are three things that tend to upset the men who have to adapt to our society. All our rules are there for a good reason and we have found that our men are happier and more satisfied than in any other world we have visited.

“There have been three attempted male rebellions since the Gender War. About 3200 years ago men were allowed to own land and build their wealth. A group of the richest men decided to attempt to separate from our society and all the restrictions that we had placed upon them. They had no knowledge of our technology but were able to hire women to work for them. They paid huge sums of money to support political appointments to get women in power who were sympathetic to their cause. They succeeded and created an independent nation, removed all interface controls and paid the brightest women to help create men who were as strong and fast as the women. Men were in control of their own destiny again. They pushed the limits of our science, forcing the women to take dangerous risks which ultimately led to men of god-like power. Our political leaders were still under their financial thumb and urged us to do nothing while the population under their control suffered terribly. Rape, which we thought we had managed to eradicate came back to our world along with violence and rage.

“When our ambassador streamed her terrifying treatment at the hands of one of these creatures, we could take no more and declared war on them. Realising they had no hope of victory they created a dimensional portal and disappeared from history. One portion of our army chased them onto another world, but we didn't understand the portal technology and when the door closed we were unable to open it again.

“We do learn from our mistakes so no man has been allowed to own land or businesses since then and we altered our political system so that money could no longer influence decision makers. We have had no war from that point onwards and we know from our study of other worlds that that is rare indeed.

“The first attempted rebellion was when the interface was first introduced and the knowledge of losing control of sexual function was the driving reason. We introduced the two releases a day. We didn't realise until then that men require release on a regular basis or their satisfaction with life drops dramatically and they are more likely to behave badly. The second rebellion was over 4000 years ago and was an attempt to reprogram the interface. Since then men have not been allowed to study science. We consider men and women equal intellectually, but there is no doubt that women can maintain a better society. Any civilization that has men in charge is littered with war on an almost constant basis.

“I understand that you may feel repressed, however, if you take the time and speak to the men around you, you will find that they are happy. These rules that you find so onerous, actually relieve you of responsibility and when you come to accept them, I guarantee you will find happiness.

“Have you understood everything I have told you?” she asked finally.

“Yes,” I replied.

“You will listen to those who talk to you, wear the clothes that you have been provided and eat your meals or there will be consequences.”

The word consequences gave me a phantom pain in my balls.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.” I didn't know what clothes she was talking about, but I was afraid to ask. Her history lesson was great and all, but it didn't have any bearing on what I perceived to be my neuter state that was the real downer that I couldn't see improving. However, she proved me wrong.

“Before you put your clothes on let me examine you.”

The examination was mostly done by waving this device over me and I imagine looking at the results on her interface.

“Now I just need to check that everything functions correctly. Lie on your back and stay still. I promise that I will not touch you in any way.”

I lay on my back obediently. I saw my interface read Doctor override followed by erection initiated. Over the next few minutes, my little nubbin grew and grew. Way past my original size. It must have been nine inches and even wider than I was before. I couldn't believe my eyes. The only weird thing was there was no foreskin covering it and there was no opening at the end. It also glistened faintly, like it was covered in a thin layer of oil.

Again she waved her device over it. “Excellent, a clean bill of health. Tomorrow morning we will check you one more time and if there are no signs of complications we will release you to a boarding house.” She then passed me the black disk. “I expect you to wear clothes from now on.”

I nodded my head meekly and took the black disk from her. My erection had vanished much quicker than it had arrived, so I was back to looking sexless. But the important thing was I now knew that appearances can be deceiving, I was anything but. 9 inches.

When the black disk was in my hand a new icon arose in my interface. I clicked on it and had this huge choice of clothes to choose from. All feminine styles. There were no trousers or shorts, but I managed to select boots with a low heel, a conservative skirt and top. The black disk slid across me, turning into the clothes I had chosen, including shoes, panties and bra.

The woman nodded and left.

Chapter 4

Although I was left to my own devices, I could never be bored. Once you have the Interface installed there are always things to do. I had been given a basic tutorial which meant I knew how to unlock doors, go to the bathroom, switch on lights and, more importantly, look up how to do other things. There was an endless amount of education that was available for free and a bewildering amount of stuff that you had to pay for.

Right then, though, I was more concerned with working out my feeling about gender. Not something that had concerned me too much before. I had found a secret stash of girl clothes that Karl, my son, had been hiding. Fortunately, he was at school at the time, so I had time to do a bit of research and get my head around it. In the end, I washed and ironed them and left them on his bed with a note just saying that I loved him unconditionally with unconditionally underlined. I visited a psychologist just to ask his advice, but he told me to just wait for Karl to approach me and he never did.

I don't think my son was transgender although I did read about it. My reaction to thinking that I had lost my manhood made me realise that I associated my male gender very much with having one. I understood from my research that gender was not dependent on any body parts. If a man has an accident and loses those parts that doesn't make him less of a man and a woman who has had a hysterectomy is no less of a woman. Gender is all in the brain. You are who you think you are. That was my conclusion anyway.

I remember hearing that pink, that is so associated with femininity now, used to be the colour that young boys would wear as a watered down version of a soldiers red tunic. Likewise, Roman legionaries wore the equivalent of a leather skirt and Scotsmen still wear kilts that have all the appearance of a skirt even if there are some subtle differences. What you wear does not define you or your gender.

The only way I was going to survive this experience with my sanity intact was to keep these ideas in mind and ignore as much of my cultural conditioning as I could. I was going to be conditioned with an entirely new culture, after all.

With all that in mind, I started delving into my interface. Clearly, others could program certain effects into my mind so I looked up what was allowed. While I was in the care of the hospital any qualified doctor could take control of my interface. Outside of the hospital, only my matriarch could cause the pain that was called Crush and only someone I had accepted as my lover could access the intimate functions of my interface. Having said that my matriarch could influence my two prescribed releases. She could cancel them altogether, reduce the pleasure or increase it.

Crush is only supposed to be used in extreme cases and the most it can be set for is an hour. It has a knock on effect that any releases after it would be painful rather than pleasurable for a few days. My matriarch was going to be the woman who ran the boarding house I would be assigned to. Matriarch is the best translation I can come up with. A normal household contains two or three women and one man, often with only one child permitted. In order for that to work, someone needs to be in charge and that person is called the matriarch. Once two women decide to be together and form the start of a family group, they have to decide on who is going to be the matriarch and at that point, their previous matriarch, usually their mothers, lose any authority over them.

When males reach majority, which is 25 on Arrat, they have the option of leaving their family to go and live in a boarding house. Men have very little control in their lives but they always have the option of leaving which is supposed to prevent abuse. Of course, if they have a child, which they do most of the looking after, the idea of leaving that child behind, makes leaving very unlikely.

Leaving a relationship or your original family to go to a boarding house was a big step, but there was no fall back position from there. You got out of the boarding house by moving in with a woman. In theory, because there was a scarcity of men, finding someone to move in with was not supposed to be difficult.

If my matriarch was able to influence my interface, I wanted to know what she was able to do and how much privacy I would have. The answer was more privacy than I expected. My matriarch could access my interface at any point, but I would know when she was doing so. She couldn't look at what I had been doing before she turned her attention to me, only what was present when she looked. It was considered rude to do so if the subject was an adult.

The interface can record any and all the senses but it only does so when you make it. Most men my age would have a library of recordings and I was supposed to have nothing. However, occasionally, the interface reacts differently to different people and in my case, I now had an auditory memory of everything that I had heard throughout my life from the age of about seven. So every song I had heard, every piece of music heard or played was available to me. None of it was organised though, so over the next few weeks, when I had spare time, I would go through my memories and separate out each song or music and arrange it in folders for easy access.

My greatest discovery was illusionary musical instruments. The interface could project non-existing objects as if they were real and have my body respond to them as if they were too. I couldn't sit on an illusionary chair, but I could create a piano or guitar and play it as if it was real. I could feel the strings, the wood and hear the notes. No one else could either see the guitar or hear the notes unless I used a particular setting on the interface. I had to play around with it to get the right sound to come out of it, but the idea that I would forever have a guitar available to me was such a joy.

I was brought dinner by a nurse and remembering the threat that had been issued, I ate as much as I could.

In the evening I had to work out the clothing situation and lack of sheets or blankets. Your clothing and bedding interacts with your interface. Pretty much everything is designed to interact with you. You remove your clothes by asking it to go to default. I needed to do that to have a shower. The shower is also controlled by the interface. In the bathroom, there is this vase looking gismo with a wide neck that takes the black disk that your clothes turn into and cleans it in about thirty seconds. I had to put it back on and choose from various night garments.

The bed has various options and produced a sheet when I asked for one. I kept an eye on the time, knowing at 10 pm I was going to get my prescribed release and because I had experienced Crush that day, it was not going to be pleasant. The doctor, as heartless as I found her, was nice enough to cancel my prescribed releases so I worried over nothing. The time came and went with no effect. It did make me search my interface to see how I could know in the future if my matriarch had fiddled with my options. Once you got the hang of it the interface was fairly self-explanatory and easy to navigate.

I slept well, had another shower in the morning, changed my clothes back to the skirt and top, and then kept myself occupied working on my music. My long hair was interesting. I had never had long hair before and was expecting it to be difficult to deal with, but I think they did something with the Regen to make it easy to manage. I brushed it out and it seemed to look good to my inexpert eye.

The doctor came round, passed her instrument over me again and pronounced me fit and healthy. Ten minutes later a nurse led me to the front door. Their technology is so far in advance to ours that I was expecting hover cars, at the very least. Instead, a car-like vehicle approached. It had three rows of two seats, no driver and no obvious engine, but it was on tyres. I had to use my interface to get the door open, but the destination was already programmed in, so when the door closed, we started moving.

It did feel weird, travelling on my own in a car without a driver or any obvious way of steering. Around me were mainly high rise towers. There were intersections but no light system and all cars seemed to go at the same time, missing each other by what seemed like inches.

My destination appeared to be another high rise. The vehicle went down a ramp and stopped outside a set of doors. I opened the car door, stepped out and closed the door. Immediately, the vehicle pulled away. With no other obvious options, I entered the door to the building in front of me.