This story started out based on a lucid dream, but quickly grew away from that, into wherever it's at now.
Some say the muse is a spirit all of her own, others say she is just your imagination.
One way or another...
I have a very strange imagination.

Chapter 1.1

N21 was a space station that had been orbiting Earth for many years, but it’s original purpose had been made obsolete by a modern, more efficient version. It was a weapons platform, housing missiles that had aimed at every military base on the planet below, as well as the largest cities. Had they been launched, the once beautiful planet would have been turned into a mostly barren wasteland.

Now, there was a newer, more efficient and deadlier version circling the world, just a few kilometers away.

What a wonderful thing accomplished by our governments.

There were several of us that wanted nothing more to do with Earth’s warlike culture. Most from our group were scientists, wanting to explore “the wonders of the universe.” Many were artists of one form or another. I was one of the latter. A musician by trade, with a minor in gastronomy.

Those who were scientists had lived in constant fear of being “appropriated” by their respective governments, and made to lend their talents to the betterment of society. In other words, to help maintain the delicate balance that prohibited the MAD (mutually assured destruction) that kept our governments from destroying the world -- or rather the people populating it.

Then there were people like me, who were completely useless as far as the general populace was concerned. It wasn’t that our fields were not wanted, or needed. Rather, we were backwards, as far as they were concerned. We didn’t stand with the general opinion that “Big Brother” was benevolent, and much of our art reflected our beliefs. It wasn’t my gastronomic creations that were looked down on, but rather my music.

Once, I had owned a very successful restaurant, but as society went downhill, I converted the establishment into a street kitchen. I would spend the day coming up with a new, wonderful edible creation, and feed it to those who had no place in society, and therefore, no place to call home. It was my way of thumbing my nose at the people who controlled the world.

At one time, I had watched many of the ancient television shows. One was called Star Trek, and I had read about one episode in particular, that had been about time travel. In it, a social worker from the 1920s had a kitchen similar to mine, and the “payment” was to have the people listen to her preaching about a new and better place. Rather than preach, I played my music. Listening to my lyrics was the payment.

Then, one night, I was rousted from my bed. The group that I had secretly been a part of, was taken to some place in Europe. We were placed in a theater, and made to listen to “Caesar”. It wasn’t his real name, but that’s what we called him.

He preached for quite some time, then he gave us an ultimatum.

“Because we are benevolent, we are giving you a choice. You may serve the greater good of the people of our world,

or you may choose to be exiled to the N21 station.”

There were several thousand of us in the assembly. We knew that the station had been stripped of its armaments, otherwise we would not be sent there. Even with guards, there would be too much chance of us using them.

Some of us were frightened by exile, and agreed to be assimilated into society. Personally, I doubted that they would ever be trusted. I was enough of a conspiracy theorist that I was certain they would not live another day. The rest of us were forced into shuttles. As we stepped aboard, we were each given some type of shot in our shoulder.

Each one was designed to hold twelve people, not including the pilots. That was with comfortable seats. We didn’t have that luxury. One hundred of us were standing, packed together like sardines, when we took off. There were no windows that we could see the station as we approached. The only way we knew we were there was when we felt the ship slow, then what seemed to be half an hour later, we heard sounds through the hull. A moment later, there was a slight depressurisation, and the hatch opened. We were forced out of the shuttle, into a long, dark corridor.

We were herded into what had once been part of the primary purpose of the station. I spotted someone I knew, standing near the back wall of the “room”. I wondered if I would be allowed to approach him, or if the guards would stop me. To my surprise, there was no attempt.

“Hello, John,” I said to him, very quietly, when I stopped and leaned against the wall beside him.

Rather than speak, he glanced at me and nodded. In our group, he was the leader of the scientific part, where I was his counterpart for those who were artists.

“Any idea what’s going on?” I asked.

He shook his head and looked around. “This was a missile bay. All the launch machinery has been removed. Maybe taken to N22. It would be a waste to scrap it all.” Several years ago, John Carlson had been one of the scientists who worked on the superstructure of the station. That was, before he realized what it was actually for. He had not had any reason to dislike the establishment before he started the project. When he politely stepped aside, he loathed it. Suddenly, he stopped his survey. He was gazing towards the single doorway into the bay.

There was his brother, Roger, a medical researcher, standing with several members of the medical field. They were being grouped by a few of the senior guards, while some of their minions were standing around the perimeter of the group, weapons facing outwards.

“That’s all,” said a Lieutenant. I could read lips, and I translated for John.

“Are you sure? We don’t want to leave any,” replied his Colonel.

“Positive, Sir.”

“Very well. Carry on.”

About half of the armed guards made the medicos follow the Lieutenant out of the bay. A few minutes later, we felt a vibration in the floor. John looked at me, tears forming in his eyes.

I had a sneaking suspicion of what had just happened, but I looked at my friend for verification.

“They ejected them,” he said quietly.

I nodded solemnly, and said, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but that was a reverse ejection. The air burst will give us a bit of speed, but it will slow them down. Any nanites in their bodies will not be able to protect them from burning up in the atmosphere.”

He shook his head. “Nanites might have kept their cells from bursting while they froze, but there won’t be a chance.” He looked at me gravely. “You’re right.”

A moment later, the Colonel sneered and turned on his heel. His guards followed out the hatch backwards, keeping their weapons trained on us the entire time. Not that we could do anything. I was still wearing my pajamas. I had nothing, not even my watch or slippers.

The door was sealed shut behind the last guard.

A moment later, we felt the final shuttle undock. We were alone.

---

For the first time, I took in who was present. I saw several people that I knew, and even more that I didn’t. There were several people who were personal friends of mine, and then others that I had simply seen in our meetings.

We had never been secret about our leanings. There was absolutely no reason to, as we had held them long before they became “wrong”.

I walked over to where some of my friends and acquaintances were talking, while John and several of his part of the group looked at the hatch.

A moment later, we heard and felt a shuddering of the station. It continued to gain in intensity, and several people fell. The station had artificial gravity, but as on Earth, rapid movement can change the apparent direction. The station was obviously accelerating, I hurried over to where John was unlocking the door. T he wheel that opened it could now be turned, but he glanced over at the people crowded into the bay.

“Can I have your attention please!” he shouted.

The general confusion that had begun as we started to move did not abate in the slightest. I put two fingers in my mouth, pursed my lips and blew. The whistle was shrill, and those nearest us glanced in our direction. They saw John trying to get people’s attention, and word quickly spread.

“We’ve got this hatch ready to open, but we have no idea what’s on the other side. Was the dock sealed before the military left or not?”

I could see his point, however, we were in a bay with no food, water, clothes, or even toilet facilities. What did we have to lose? I said as much in a voice loud enough to carry. A couple of my friends had followed me to the hatch, and one, by the name of Carter shouted, “He’s right! If we open the hatch, we could die. Being afraid of opening the hatch is certain death.”

My other friend, Reese, spoke up. “Why would they go to the trouble of bringing us up here? I don’t think they plan on killing us.”

“We’ve always expected that they would kill us,” I said. “We just expected it to be sudden. Not this.”

“Exactly,” Reese said. “There’s no reason for them to do this if we are just expected to die.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed with Reese. Carter, on the other hand. Again, my conspiracy theory side came through, at least in my unsaid thoughts. If they killed us outright, there would be fallout for them. However, if they tell people it was our own idea to leave because we were all nutcases… Well, they could direct the station into the sun, or something else. Of course that begs the question, why kill our doctors?

The general consensus was to open the door. John nodded and turned. Slowly, he turned the wheel. A small hiss was heard, and he stopped turning it, even backing up a bit. He stopped, and I slowly exhaled. I willed my heart to slow down, but it was quite content to continue racing.

“Using the airlock vents a bit of air,” John said. I could see sweat forming on his brow.

“That makes sense,” I agreed, hoping that I sounded sure. My trembling voice betrayed my feelings though.

John looked around at those closest to him. “Well?”

What a question. Do we open it or not? We had thought we were prepared, but were we? We didn’t want to die. We truly had nothing to lose, but life itself. To hold on for more, or not?

Very quietly, and with more calm that I found somewhere, I said “Open it.”

Chapter 1.2

John glanced around, as if wanting another, possibly different, opinion.  Sadly, there was none.  Had anyone put forth a differing viewpoint, I would have lost my resolve as well.

The wheel was turned, and I heard a the air pressure adjust a bit more, then silence. John let out a loud sigh of relief, then spun the wheel quickly. He stopped it just before the dogs released, then made the final turn slowly. I couldn't blame him.  Apparently there was air on the other side, but what else?

The group around us drew close, as if to guard anyone, or anything from getting through to the rest of our people, but after the last few days, I didn't see that much could be done in that regard.  We had never been fighters.

The door finally swung open to reveal only darkness beyond. I'm not sure how he found the fortitude, but John stepped into the corridor and a little way to the right. We could hear him fumbling for a control in the dark, then dim lighting came on.

"Looks like they turned off our main power as well," he told me as I stepped out of the bay as well.  "Can you see if Marc Dodson is with us?  He helped design the electrical system in this station."

I stepped back over the lip of the hatch and held up my hands to signal the need for quiet.  "Is Marc Dodson here?" I called out.

A man who appeared to be anywhere between twenty-five and…  Well…  Who knows?  Each of us carried a complement of nanites in our bodies which were constantly making repairs from the inside out. We rarely thought of them, but we didn't age.  I suppose the term immortal would be used by some, but in reality we weren't.  There were injuries that could, and eventually would kill us.  Take the doctors who had been ejected out of the station, for example.

The man stepped up to me and introduced himself.  I gestured to the hatch, and he stepped through, looking for all the world like a man who expected some wild creature to grab him as food for its young.  I followed a bit more sure of myself.  

What they were doing made little sense to me, so I went back into the bay to see if I could help the men and women who were there.

Strangely, I realized there were no children present, but I realized Caesar probably figured he could remove the “faulty ideas” we had instilled in our children.

I began to circulate to see if anyone was injured.  Not that my help would be required, but it gave me something to do.  Not surprisingly there were no physical injuries.  Mental was another matter.  I gave what help I could, but I felt useless.  Anyone who had anything to do with the field of medicine had been jettisoned.

I’m not sure how long I worked my way through the people, but I began realizing the size of the bay, and the number of people here.  I had, at first, thought there were about four thousand. I now revised my estimate to twice that.  Perhaps three times.  We would have to make a count.

Partway through my circulation, John and Marc returned and gained everyone’s attention. I returned to the hatch, which was a considerable walk.  

“We have some news,” John said, “but I would like to establish a few things first.” Everyone waited expectantly.  He cleared his throat.  This wasn’t easy for him.  He indicated himself and me.  “We have been the leaders of our people for several years.  I see no reason to change that,” he stated.

I looked out at the sea of people.  Several nodded.  No one argued.

“I think we should make it a triumvirate now.”  He indicated Marc Dodson.  “Dr. Dodson understand’s this, I guess ship is the best term now, better than anyone else.  That will give us the care and maintenance of our home in him.”  He indicated himself, “Research,” then he pointed at me, “and the arts.”

Again, there was no argument.

“Our news, is strange.  The other bays are not empty.  They have been turned into what appears to be quarters for all of us and other necessities.  Twenty-nine bays.”  He shook his head, then continued. “I’m not sure why, but it appears that we weren’t meant to die out here.  This station is huge, and we have several farming facilities in hydroponic setups.  Another couple of bays appear to be stacked to the ceiling with crates of some of our belongings.”

“Caesar must have been planning this for awhile,” I commented.

“Yes, he was.”

Our populace spread out through the ship, each finding an apartment.  There were some married couples who took some of the larger ones, but most of us were single.  After we moved in, which was simply to claim an apartment, we started distributing our belongings.  I had several crates that contained instruments, and my cooking utensils, and another containing my clothing.  That was the extent.

Almost everything had been damaged, apparently quite deliberately.  I had a drum set that I unpacked, with every head destroyed.  My piano had several broken keys.  I had no strings on my guitars, and my brass instruments were dented to where they were unplayable.  I had learned bagpipes in my younger days, but I couldn’t find them initially.  At the bottom of one of my clothing box, under a kilt, I found them.  The bags blended perfectly with the tartan of the kilt, but they were destroyed.  The chanter was actually broken into three pieces and there was no reed in sight.  

Everyone found their clothing in shreds, and my cooking utensils, while usable, were all damaged.

Those were put to use first.  It would take awhile to get food from the hydroponic bays.  Thankfully some of our people were specialists in the field, so they were happy to get the massive project going.

My job was to take several of the ground level apartments and refurbish them into a cafe.  My normal gourmet restaurant was not to be.  At least not immediately.  At the bottom of each storage bay was crate after crate of cans of food.  Nothing special, but at least they were there.

And then one day, a week after we had set out on our voyage, I received a call to the control room.

I entered and looked around.  It wasn’t what I expected.  I suppose that from what I had seen of ancient television, I expected a circular room with stations all around the perimeter and a center seat where the commander sat.  There wasn’t even a navigation station that I could see, but then, this wasn’t a ship, but a station.  It was supposed to sit in orbit of our planet and not navigate anywhere.

“Ah, good.  You’re here,” John commented as I looked around, taking in what I could understand.

He grinned as I said, “Well, this isn’t what I expected.”

There was the sound of a throat being cleared, and John gestured to Marc Dodson.  “He has something to show us.”

We stepped up behind Mr. Dodson and he turned to the console in front of him.  He flipped a switch and one of the screens in front of him lit up.  It showed little except a red dot in the center.

“What am I looking at?” I asked.

“That’s the sun,” Dodson said.  Both John and I looked at him, incredulously.

“I’m not one for the sciences, but every painting or picture I’ve ever seen has the sun as yellow, or white.”

Dodson nodded, but before he could say anything, John asked, “Why is it so small?”

“Thankfully, both your questions can be answered at once.  Our speed.”

“To go this far in a week, we’d have to be travelling faster than light.” John shook his head.  “That’s impossible.”

Something was tickling at the back of my mind.  Something from my boyhood.  Suddenly I had it.  “Red shift!  We ARE going faster than light!” I exclaimed.

Marc  shook his head.  “John’s right.  That’s impossible.  What is actually happening, however, is even more confusing.”  He stood and stretched.  He’d been sitting there for quite some time, apparently.  “We are going incredibly fast, but not in excess of ‘C’.  What is happening is, in fact, red shift, but in theory, it can’t happen if you’re going faster than light.”

“Why?” I asked.  These guys were scientists.  I knew very little about astronomy.  My specialty was gastronomy.

“Well, if we were moving faster than light, how would lt be able to catch up to us?  Relativity says that since it started from our sun, it’s travelling at ‘C’ relative to there.  That’s why it’s shifted red to us.  The waves are coming slower.  By the same token, any light produced in N21 is travelling at ‘C’ relative to the station.  That’s why colors are normal here.”

I tried to wrap my head around it.  “Okay, but you haven’t answered John’s question.  How are we this far away from the sun in a week?”

Dodson looked first me, then John in the eye, and very deliberately said, “We’re not.”

“Huh?” I said, feeling like an idiot.

Marc sat down again and turned to another screen.  “Let me show you something else.” He punched a few buttons and the screen suddenly showed what appeared to be stars, moving stars.

“Those can’t be stars,” John seemed confused. “Asteroids? But so many visible doesn’t seem right.”

“As I said, John, we haven’t arrived here in a week.”

I had glanced back to the first screen, and the red dot seemed to be somewhat dimmer than it had been just a few moments before. “Uh, sorry to interrupt, gentlemen, but, uhm, where’s the sun going?”

Marc sighed.  “To get where we are, even at the speed of light, would take several hundred years.  In fact, it has taken several hundred years.”  He paused a moment and I saw John swallow hard.  Then he slowly nodded.  Dodson continued.  “Time slows down for you as you approach the speed of light.”

Again I remembered something I hadn’t thought of for a few hundred years, and I understood what was happening..  “Okay.  Correct me if I’m wrong.  We are moving so fast, and at such a slow apparent time, that in just a few minutes, we’ve seen our ship move several years.”

“Relative to Earth,” John stated.

Marc nodded, and I looked at the other screen.  “This screen showing what is on our side, is showing stars, not asteroids, but again, we are in a few minutes, seeing what would in actuality be several years… If we were still observing time normally.”

“Uhhhh….” Marc started.

“Yes,” John interrupted. “Let’s keep this simple,” he told Marc.  “No offense,” he added to me, almost as an afterthought.

“None taken,” I said as I stared back at the screen showing our home.  “Well, that pretty well decides turning around and going back,” i said quietly, “Even if we had the fuel to do it.”

Even as I spoke, one of those coincidences that will freak out even the most logical mind happened.  The constant low level vibration of our new home ceased.  We felt some machinery work from both sides of the station, and then everything was still.  A moment later, we saw a long tube accelerating away from the side of the station.  There appeared to be a thruster on the front and back of it, pushing it out into the void between stars.  It was moving at the same velocity that we were, but it was picking up speed.  Without even looking, we knew the same thing was happening on the other side.

“This sets our predicament in stone,” John’s voice was a monotone. “We now have no engines.”

“We will drift at this speed,” Marc said.  He pushed a button and the screen showing our sun changed again.  Now it showed lots of stars coming towards us.  As we watched I expected to see new ones appearing.  They didn’t.  They were thinning out.

“We’re going to leave the galaxy,” John observed.  “He turned to me.  I’m curious what you meant when you said we couldn’t turn back.”

“Simple,” I replied.  “The planet no longer exists as we knew it.  We have only aged a week, and our technology hasn’t grown.  Theirs has.  By over a thousand years.”

“More,” Marc said.  “We were accelerating until we lost the engines.”

None of us felt like speaking.  We just looked at the screen that held our future.

Chapter 1.3

Our life on the station… well… ship, settled into a routine. Marc adjusted the lighting to dim at night, so our circadian rhythms would be normal.  We opened the bay cargo doors, so more than one person could enter a bay at once.  These were motorized doors that slid open and closed like a pocket door.  They were airtight so the exterior bay doors could be opened.

So it was day after day of trying to survive, but things were getting better.  As things grew, we were able to replace our tattered clothing from plants. As well, as natural, some of our scientists, of which we had an abundance, were able to produce synthetic fibers.

Strangely, some junk had been placed in one of the storage bays. We had enough raw materials to make to make most of what we needed.  We had to determine that we would recycle everything. Not that we had any choice.  We had some reserve air, but we would not waste it by ejecting anything. Nor would we waste anything else.  We needed everything.

When we found the junk, it was as if the fittings of the station had been thrown in there after they had been removed from their original location.  The foremost thing on everyone’s mind was, why?  Why had Caesar not killed us outright?  Why did he give us what was needed to survive?  We had enough water to live indefinitely, as long as we recycled everything.  The same with food supplies.  Well, not indefinitely, but as long as we had power.

Why did he take our medical researchers?  Granted, the nanites did most of the work, but someone had to be able to service them.  

It was about a year into our voyage to nowhere that it happened.  We had started to feel that we were beyond Caesar’s reach.  We shouldn’t have been so stupid.

HELLO CHILDREN.  I’M BORED.  LET’S PLAY!

The voice that echoed through every inch of the station was recognizable. It was Caesar’s and it came from every speaker at decibel levels that deafened us... literally.  It took several hours for our nanites to make repairs, so for the next day, we did very little.  Several of our computer engineers started a review of the station’s systems, although the only way they could communicate was through paper, pen, and computer screens. The last was used sparingly, however; who knew what bots the systems contained that were intelligent and could read their messages?

When our hearing had fully returned, we were all on edge.  What would happen next?  Was the voice just some programming left by Caesar, or had one of our people put it there?  Had one of our people got bored and decided to have some… fun?

SO COMPLACENT!

The voice wasn’t as loud this time, which was just as well.  We needed as little damage as possible for what happened next.  Not that it was terrible in itself, but nerve-racking for us.

The lighting started to strobe, so fast that we appeared to be moving in stop motion.  It was eerie.

Dodson and his team tried to help the computer engineers from the mechanical side.  One of his men pulled a wall panel off and reached into the space to trace the wiring.  He was the first and last man to do that.

Somewhere, a bolt of energy found his body, and left him a smoking pile of charred flesh on the corridor floor.  Next, the flashing stopped. There was silence for a moment, but then the voice:

THAT IS NOT ALLOWED.

The cargo doors all slammed shut, leaving everyone inside the bays sealed away.  I wasn’t far from where the scientist had been killed, and I heard a scream, followed by another, then another.

The station was built like a two level pinwheel.  Tipped on its side.  It’s artificial gravity was set up so to get from one level to the other, you walked through a one hundred and eighty degree downhill slope.  There were twelve of these spaced around the center hub.

I was across the main corridor from one of these passageways and heard a scream filter from ‘downstairs’.  Several people were running to see what had happened on our level, and I headed to the other.  When I got there, I saw why the screams.  

A woman had been passing through the door when it slammed shut.  Normally, there were sensors that would not allow the doors to close when someone was in the way.  For some reason, this hadn’t happened this time.  Her body had been bisected, and the part that was on this side of the door was lying in a bloody mess on the corridor floor.  I knelt down and brushed a bit of blood off her face.  I had known her.  She was an artist and had helped several people make their apartments more homey.

I was fighting back the urge to vomit when we heard the external doors of one of the bays opening.  I was shaken, but I still had the presence of mind to jump up and run to where the sound seemed to be coming from.  It was hard to locate, because with the circular corridors around the hub, the sound came from both directions, and with nothing to muffle the sound, it echoed.

I found the correct bay, not so much by determining the direction, but by the crowd of people outside the door.  There, someone had been going through the door, or perhaps trying to hold the door open for someone.  The bisecting here was almost perfectly in the middle of the person’s body.  It was a man this time, and while I didn’t know him, a woman was weeping, being held by a friend.  I figured she had probably known the man, intimately.

While I had passed several doors, I had heard muffled hits from the other side.  This one was completely silent. I glanced over at the monitor that showed the pressurization of the bay.  It had been depressurized before it had been opened.  Now, it was pressurizing.  I wondered why the bay had been opened at all.  The complete depressurization of the bay would be enough to kill people.

A red light on the panel turned green, and all the locked doors opened. What we saw was horrifying.  Most people had hurried down to the locked door, and many had hammered on it with their fists.  There was a chill in the air, and not just from the cold of space.  I saw several people I recognized, and I looked at the bay number, in complete shock.  My own home was in this bay!  Had I been there, I would now be dead!

I stumbled into the bay, seeing friends whom I had worked with to make a halfway comfortable home over the last year.  At first, I didn’t know what to feel.  I was completely devastated, and furious all at once.  I realized there was nothing I could do, but I still felt guilty that I wasn’t home to face death with my friends. Slowly, I made my way to my restaurant.  I pushed open the doors, and quietly walked inside.  No one was there, that I could see, but there were meals on tables.  I went to the kitchen, and there were people there.  Or rather.  You understand, I’m sure.  There was no life anywhere. I was reminded of an ancient song from a stage production.

There's a grief that can't be spoken,
There's a pain goes on and on.
Empty chairs at empty tables,
Now my friends are dead and gone.

My apartment was the same.  I didn’t share the space with anyone, but all was still.  I pressed a few keys on my piano, and heard that the extreme cold and then moisture of returning warm air had flexed the soundboard.  My refurbished brass instruments were all cloudy with frost, and as I touched my bagpipes, they were hard with the cold.  I sat down in a chair and let out the grief.  I didn’t know what to do.

I’m really not sure how long I remained sitting there. I’m sure they could have used my help around the ship, but I was being selfish. Or was I?  I needed to get myself under some sort of mental control if I was going to lead others.  I wasn’t a military man.  I was a musician.  A cook, for crying out loud!  What could I do to help these people.  How could I have ended up a supposed leader when I didn’t know what to do now?  I knew how to conduct an orchestra.  Get the strings going on their part, then while keeping the beat going, start the flutes and clarinets.  Bring in the trumpets, then the lower brass, the tell the soloist it is her time to shine.  But how did that translate….

I suddenly realized that I could use the same form of delegation in this situation. Slowly I stood and went to find someone to help me orchestrate our recovery from this fiasco.

---

We had been working on cleanup for three days, when I entered the control room.  John and I had been delegating authority to the general population and we were exhausted.  He was already there, and was slumped in a chair, with his eyes closed.  Marc was scanning through computer code, trying to figure out what was going on.  I slumped into another chair.  Strangely, the control room was the only real place we had to sit down, where we could keep in contact with the rest of the people.  My eyes were getting very heavy when something got through to my fuzzy brain.  Beside me was a flashing light.

“Hey, Marc,” I said, still somewhat drowsy, “What’s this light mean?”

“What light?” he asked, seemingly preoccupied.

“There’s a flashing light over here.”

He stood up, and saw where I was sitting.  It was kinda around the corner from his bank of computer screens, in an alcove.

“What the…” He glanced around me and saw what light I was referring to.  I stood and let him into the console.  “This means we have an incoming message.”

“Incoming message?”  By now, John had come fully awake, as had I.  We were both shocked.  What did this mean?

Marc reached for a switch but hesitated.  “What do you guys think?” he asked.

“Could receiving a message start something else happening?” I asked.

“In theory, sure,” Marc said.  “But then again, anything that’s going to happen could have been programmed into the computers, so why wait for us to flip a switch?”

“So what do we do?  Do we wait for the next… whatever that Caesar has planned, or possibly set it off ourselves?” John asked us.

“We might as well hear it.  Maybe it’s aliens,” I said in a futile attempt at humor.

Marc glanced at John, who nodded. He reached over and touched a control.  A screen came alive and we saw a man.  A human, but not someone we knew.”

“Hello, people of N21,” he said.” I am President Freeman of Earth.  I know when you were sent away, Willem Wallace, or ‘Caesar’ as you referred to him, was the ‘Chancellor’.

“Approximately three hundred years after you left, Wallace had shown enough of his character to make those of us still on Earth recognize what you had long ago seen.  There was an uprising, and we were able to remove him from power.  He was in prison until we received a signal from you.

“Every computer around the world came on at the same time, and showed Wallace seated at his desk. He told us that we were all going to join him in a celebration of your exile.  We saw what your camera’s recorded, Wallace telling you he wanted to ‘play’; the death of your maintenance worker.  Then we saw a bay of the station open, and the people dying on the floor.”  

For a moment, Freeman stopped.  He looked somber, then rubbed his face with his hands.

“Wallace was questioned at length.  That was an experience I never want to have again.  He was, quite simply, insane.  He wanted to toy with you as a cat toys with it’s prey.  Revelling in your suffering was what he wanted most of all.

“He tried to bargain with us with his knowledge.  He wanted freedom, but we refused.  It took several months to obtain what we wanted.  He spent that entire time in and out of consciousness.  It wasn’t pretty.  What we got from him, we want to pass on to you.

“There are several… surprises, in the computers of the station.  They have been left there.  There seems to be no way to remove them from the memory.  Even a complete shutdown will reload the same information when you start them again.

“Much of what is programmed will be worse that what has already happened.  Some not as bad.  We will append a file to this message that will tell you what we have found.  I hope you can find something on board that we didn’t think of here.”

---

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc
        Songwriters: Alain Albert Boublil / Claude Michel Schonberg / Herbert Kretzmer

Chapter 1.4

The message ended, and Marc turned to get busy with going through the file that was sent.  Almost immediately, however, we received another call from Earth.  Again, it was President Freeman.

Hello again, N21.  This is Freeman.  We have found something very disturbing.  For the last fifty years, our people have been sifting through the damaged palace of Wallace.  250 years after the the broadcast from your ship, the decaying structure collapsed.  Our people had to pull the remaining shell down.

Apparently, there is a ‘special surprise’ for you.  According to records, it is supposed to make any and all other pale in comparison.  The others, we were able to dig to find out what was supposed to happen, but this one is only referred to as the ‘Total Fun’. Fun for Wallace. I doubt anyone else will see it that way. What it is, we cannot tell, nor do we know how it is started.

I’m sorry we don’t know.  We are going to continue to search.

The message ended, and Marc began his reading.  Halfway through, he put his fist through the monitor in front of him.  Rather than give voice to his feelings, he simply stood and walked out of the command center.

John watched him go, then moved the destroyed monitor away and put another in it’s place.  I stood beside him as he read the report.  Some of the plans included deactivation of nanites in everyone with a certain trait.  There were several that were designed to happen at the same time.  Eye color, hair color, blood type.  It would keep us guessing what the cause was.  It’s no wonder our doctors weren’t with us.

Another was to make every electrify every wall, so that if you touched the walls and floor simultaneously, you’d die. All we could say was, thank God they had sent us the information.  We had some knowledge, but how to get into the programming.  It was buried in the memory and protected by several algorithms to protect them.  We had NO idea where to look.

“Horrible, isn’t it?” Marc said from behind us.  I turned and just nodded.  He walked to the comm station we had watched the message from President Freeman on.  He keyed the mic and said.  “This is Marc Dodson on board N21.  What are the chances you could send us the original computer OS from the station.  Before it was turned into Caesar’s playground?”  

While the mic was keyed, John asked, “Will that be able to control the entire station?”

“I’ve no idea, but it’s got to be better than unleashing all of these things.”  He pushed the send button and we prepared to wait.

Less than a minute later, however, a transmission came in.  President Freeman was once more on the screen. He looked very different now.  He was wearing a completely different style of dress, and had a different, longer hairstyle.  “That was a good idea, Marc.  It took us several years to find them.  They were archived in a scientific museum, and we had to negotiate to be able to copy them.  It took awhile, but we believe we got them intact. They’re appended to this message, obviously.

“Oh, I’m no longer the president.  I retired from that job about a hundred years ago.  I’ll be your liason for as long as we can maintain communication, however.

“I’ve arranged for news and library files to be sent to you as well.  Also, if anyone wants to take courses in medicine, we’ve sent an entire course, complete with access to whoever the best doctor is on Earth at the time anyone has questions.

“Later, I’ll arrange for collaboration with your scientists and artists with ours.  We are aware that time is moving much slower for you, but we would love to collaborate.  As Marc demonstrated, your insights are valuable.  We never thought of finding the original operating system for your computers.

I’m going to sign off now.  I’m looking forward to your next communication.

As soon as the message was done, I ran to the intercom.  “Gerry Carter, Winston Reese, and Perl Grey, to the command center, Now!”

“What are you doing?” John asked.

Rather than explain to John, I flipped the comm on.  “This is N21 to Earth.  I am going to have three people rotate in 8 hour increments.  Their only job for now will be to converse with you.  We don’t desire any lag in the communication on our end.  Eventually we will lose contact with you, but until then, we will have someone in constant contact.  Is this acceptable?”

“Very much so, N21.  That’s an excellent idea.”

“Can we piggyback two messages together?” I asked Marc.

“Sure.  We should be able to do more than that.  Something I would like to do as well.  Ask them for information on how to build better memory storage systems.  We’re going to need it if every moment we’re getting centuries worth of information.

“At least I’ll have things to read from here to eternity.”

“No doubt,” I said with a chuckle.  It felt good to laugh even if only a small amount.  I hadn’t laughed in several days.

I relayed the request to Freeman, and he called back that it would work fine.  He also sent the information to us regarding computer storage.  Marc glanced through it, and a huge grin appeared on his face.  “This is ingenious,” he said as he left the room, presumably to talk to some of his people.

At that moment, Gerry Carter entered the command center at a dead run.  He skidded to a stop and breathless asked, “Yeah?” before I could answer the other two entered.  Perl ran headlong into Gerry, who was barely able to reach out in time to hold her upright.  Winston was moving a bit slower, so was able to stop before adding to the bruises collected by the first two.

Laughing, I told them about the contact with Earth and asked if they were interested in 8 hour shifts talking to Earth.

“Hell yeah!” Perl said.  Before either of the others could react, she sat down at the comm station.  “How do I key this thing?” she asked, then apparently saw the control. “N21 calling Earth,” she stated into the microphone.

“Okay,” I said to the guys.  “I guess this is Perl’s shift.  Who wants to do the next one?”

It was determined that Carter would do the next, and Reese would take the last one.  Technically, Freeman was immortal, but a long time would pass for him for the guys.  I wondered if the job would be handed off to someone else by the end of Perl’s shift.

---

It didn’t take long for the operating system to be loaded onto the permanent memory for the computers.  Dodson had them loaded and ready to go in a couple of hours.  Caesar had apparently not protected it, so there was no problem.  I suppose he figured if we decided to clear the memory, so be it.  

When alarms went off, however, we were concerned.  

OH, KIDS. YOU’VE BEEN BAD. I SUPPOSE I’M GOING TO HAVE TO PUNISH YOU NOW.  IT WILL BE FUN FOR ME.  TOTALLY FUN.

It was Caesar’s voice.  He was long dead, but we had awakened his ghost.  Apparently, we had triggered ‘total fun’.

“Computers are out of control!” Marc’s voice came over the intercom.  We can trigger the intercom, but that’s about it.  Everything else has us locked out.  I didn’t even get a chance to shut them down.  The moment I finished loading them, the computer added a few subroutines.  I’m not sure what they do, but…”

His voice went dead at the exact moment the lights went out.  Ventilation stopped as well.  For several minutes, the only sound was of other people.  Then, all at once the machinery started running again.

Cautiously, we touched the controls.  Nothing seemed to be broken or unresponsive.  Perl contacted Freeman, and he responded immediately.  She explained what happened, and that we had apparently triggered ‘total fun’.  “Have you got any idea what it is?” she asked.

“I’m sorry.  Any reference seems to have been lost when Caesar died.  Something we did turn up, however, was how he came to power.  If only we had known then.  He was a genius programmer and  had his hands in both computers and genetics.  It seemed as though he wrote a computer virus that was incredibly complex.  It gave him political power throughout the world.  He also had a hand in the production of the nanites used to repair our bodies.  That was long before he showed any interest in computers however.

“I’m very sorry I can’t tell you any more, Perl,” Freeman said.  

“You’ve given us an idea where the problems may lie, Sir,” she responded. “Give me a few minutes.  I’ll be right back.”

“How do you figure?” Marc asked.  He had entered while she was talking to Earth.

“Remember that injection each of us received when were exiled?”

I watched as Marc’s face went white.  “Dear God!” he exclaimed.

I turned to John.  “We’d better tell everyone.”

“It could start a panic,” he replied.

“Yes, it could, but they have a right to be warned.”

Apparently, John agreed, because he went to the intercom and flipped it to station wide. He explained what we knew very quickly.  We didn’t know how long we had before Caesar’s ghost started playing with our minds -- or bodies -- or both.

---

I wasn’t able to sleep well that night.  I tossed and turned for several hours, and finally I got out of bed, and angrily changed back into clothes. The elevator was something that was added long after the original OS had been made, so it didn’t work right now, and I now lived on the top, or fifth floor in a different bay.  I stomped down the stairs to ground level and found hundreds of people milling around in the street.

“What do you think will happen?” It was the main question I was asked, and of course, I had no idea.  

“You know as much as I do,” I told them.

To their credit, there was no panicking.  I guess we had been through so much that we couldn’t conceive of anything worse.

We had morals.  Caesar had none.

I arrived at the command center and saw that I wasn’t the only one who had been unable to sleep.  I checked the time and saw that Reese was halfway through his shift with Freeman.  It was still Freeman he was talking to.

Perl was still present, as was Carter.  I don’t think Marc had ever left his position at the computers.  There were three more IT people working on other computers, and John was sitting in a chair in the corner.  It didn’t look like he’d left either.  I felt guilty, as I was apparently the only one who had tried to sleep.

No, I wasn’t.  John was gently snoring.

“He hasn’t left, but he’s been like that for a couple hours now,” Perl told me when she saw me looking at him. “I think he’s waiting for some news.”

“I think I’ve got something!” It was from an IT guy.

Instantly, John was awake.  “What?” He was on his feet, but he stopped for a moment.  He swayed for a moment.  “Stood up too fast,” he said.  I had reached out to stabilize him.

We finished moving to the IT’s location.  Everyone else was there.

The man pointed to his screen.  There was a jumble of code that I couldn’t make heads or tails of but Marc exclaimed, “Oh, shit!“

I looked at him expectantly, as did John.  “What are you seeing?” I asked.  

“This code is designed specifically to modify the basic programming of our nanites.  What’s strange is that it’s just one bit.  It’s like a switch that it will turn on.”

I felt like melting into the floor.  Suddenly everything made sense.  The injection we’d all received.  The disappearance of our doctors.  Everything made a warped, perfect sense.

“But you have no way of knowing what that switch will do,” said Marc.

“Not any way.”

For a moment, my vision blurred then it seemed as though I pushed my fists into my eyes, as all I could see was multiple colors swirling around.  There was a disconnect between before the blurring and after.  It took a moment for me to realize I could see fine again, but then I noticed Perl standing right beside me.  I jumped away from her, terrified, and she looked at me wide eyed.  

“STAY AWAY FROM ME!” she screamed.  There was no need to scream at us, because every one of us seemed scared spitless of her.  We were all as far away as we could get.  

She kept her gaze jumping from one of us to another.  Anytime any of us moved, she flinched. She kept bringing her gaze back to me.  No, not me.  The open door behind me.  I started to inch to the right, where Carter stood.  Interestingly none of the others bothered me in the least.  Just her.

As soon as I was far enough away, she bolted.  Each of us seemed to lose our tension.  Whatever it was, it seemed to make us scared of certain others.  ‘Total Fun’ was upon us.  

Like it or not, Caesar’s Ghost had raised his ugly head again.

Chapter 1.5

As soon as my heart slowed down, I jumped to the comm panel and contacted Earth.

“This is N21.  We have ‘Total Fun’ happening here.”

“Freeman here!” He was staring at the screen, seemingly terrified.   “We have it too!  Sending you the OS seems to have triggered it!”  We heard a door open in the room he was calling us from. He bolted out of his seat, and without his face centered on the screen, the camera widened to show the whole room. It was the first time we saw anything other than him, and the room seemed to be a personal office.  A woman entered.  She seemed scared of him, but she resolutely stepped toward him. He screamed at the woman! “DON’T TOUCH ME!” She was moving slow, as if she was terrified, but she kept advancing on him.  She was close enough now, and Freeman was cowering on the floor.  She bent down and tentatively reached out her hand.   “NO!!!” She touched his face.

It was as if his body was made out of wax.  It seemed to melt and then reform.  The next thing we knew, Freeman was a woman, or seemed  to be from all appearances.  The tension in the room evaporated and he, or rather she hugged the woman..   “It’s okay,” the woman told her as she returned the hug.   “You’re my daughter now.”

Freeman let go of the woman and smiled at her, then she stood up and walked back to her desk.  Her clothes had not changed in the slightest, but they no longer fit his… rather her form.  She reached out and severed the connection.

Before we could react, the connection came back on.  The female Freeman was sitting there.  Her face was immaculately made up.  She stood up, and twirled.  Her dress swirled around her.  She sat back down, and told us, “This is me now.  I’m still Freeman, and have the same memories, but I am quite content with being a woman.  The fear has transferred from being caused by women to men.”  Obviously, she wasn’t seeing us, but there seemed to be a bit of revulsion as she spoke.  I felt the same thing looking at her, so I suppose she was affected by who she knew would be watching her. “These are the effects of ‘Total Fun’,” she said. Her voice much higher than it had been. “Whenever you see someone of a different gender, you are terrified.  Now that I am Female, I no longer have a fear of my mother.” She paused as she considered what to say next. “When you are touched by a different gender, you are changed to that gender.  The person’s sex makes a difference as well.  If they are biologically male, that is what you will be.  If they are biologically female, you will be as well.  If they are intersex, so will you be.  We have been working on this for more than a thousand year naw  Wallace’s code is incredible.  We haven’t been able to break it.  I’m not sure if we ever will.” Again she paused. “It’s hard to speak to you.  I can’t see you, but I know who is watching, or rather I suspect who is.  Not much time has passed for you, so it is probably the same men who were in the room at my last communique when my mother changed me.” She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts.   “We were inoculated for a supposed virus shortly after you left.  We had no reason to suspect it to be anything other than what we were told.  We believe this was when our nanites received their new programming.

“Because of the nanites, Wallace convinced us to do away with the medical profession.  Those same people are back, working on the problem, as are our computer specialists.  Every one of them.  They are collaborating, but nothing has been found yet.  We have no idea how nanites can make these changes so quickly, but we suspect that the ‘innoculations’ had a new strain of nanites with stronger abilities.  Or perhaps they have always had this ability locked away.  We don’t know, but are trying to learn.  There seems to be nothing inhibiting us from working towards that goal, except Wallace’s safeguards.  Again, If we find anything, we will let you know.  Freeman out.”  She reached to the computer, and seemed relieved to switch off the communication.

“This is insane,” one of the IT people exclaimed.

“Remember who started it,” John said.  He sounded disgusted.

“For some, this would be heaven,” I remarked.  “Except for the built in fear of other genders.  And for the prospect of turning back.”

Marc gave me a strange look, then seemed to realize that what I was saying made sense.  Slowly, he nodded in agreement.  “Aye. I wouldna ‘gree, but...” He swallowed hard, and seemed to make an effort to speak Standard again.  Different languages or dialects were rarely used anymore except in the home.  Tradition had held on as pride in one’s heritage.  Marc tended to revert to a Scottish dialect, which was from his mother, when he was upset.  He had never shied away from it before but perhaps thinking about his mother affected him.

I tried thinking of my mother for a moment, and I felt a rush of revulsion, something I had never felt. I loved my mother very much.  It appeared that my supposition was correct, although if that is what happened to Marc, I had no idea.  

A moment later, I heard a noise at the door, and I turned.  Perl and three more women were there.  
“Have you contacted Earth?” she asked.  It seemed to take every ounce of courage she had to stand there.  I nodded because my mouth was completely dry.  I felt the blood rush from my face, standing even this close to a woman.  I felt trapped in a room with only one exit, and a woman standing in it.  I felt faint and started to sway, putting my right leg forward to stope me from falling.  “DON’T COME ANY CLOSER!” Perl screamed.

I backed up to where a chair was, and sat down.  I didn’t like vulnerability of being seated rather than on my feet, ready for flight at a moment’s notice, but  supposed  if I fell, I would be even more at risk.   “Yes,” John told her, his voice trembling.  It took effort, but he told her what we had seen happen to Freeman.

“You’re shittin’ me,” Perl responded.

“No,” I said.  I wasn’t dizzy anymore, but I wasn’t going to stand.  I didn’t need to be again.  “We can all confirm what John just told you.”

“So if I could walk up to you and touch your face, you’d become a woman?” she asked me.

“Apparently yes,” I replied.  “Please don’t.”

“Not likely I’d do that right now.  I know this is all in the nanites and what they did to us, but touching you terrifies me.” She thought for a moment.  “How come his mother didn’t change?”

I thought for a bit, then said, “He… She told us that if we were touched by another gender… That implies that they were the one initiating contact.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Perl scoffed.

“Maybe,” Marc said, “ but do you have a better idea?  I don’t .”

“Neither do I,” she admitted.  “So what do we do?”

“I doubt we have to do much to keep all genders separated,” John took the lead.  “Maybe it would be best to separate them by bays.”

She nodded slowly.  Suddenly one of the three women with her announced, “I’ve got to get out of here.” She turned and ran.  

Another took it as an invitation to follow suit, and Perl grabbed the arm of the other before she could.“  Please, don’t go Kari.  We need to complete this conversation and I need your support.”

Kari looked absolutely terrified but nodded.  She looked like she was going to fall, so I reached for another chair.  Any other time, I would have walked over and helped her sit.  I couldn’t stomach that right now, however, so I kicked the chair towards the women.  It made it to within Perl’s reach, and she gingerly reached out to grab it with her thumb and index finger.  She moved it to beside her.

Kari looked at the thing like it had just been excreted by me.  “He just touched it.  How do I know there aren’t his nanites on it?”

With my love of ancient TV, I had come across the idea of ‘cooties’, and I let out a peal of laughter.  Perl looked at me like I had gone completely insane, and I explained.  “Just something I ran across years ago.  An idea among children that boys and girls both had their own special germs that could be transmitted to each other.  What they did, was never stated.  I doubt it was anything like this, however.”

One of the IT guys piped up.  “Our nanites are mostly biological, except for their memory that controls them.  They can’t survive without a person’s body heat for more than a couple of seconds.”

Kari nodded and sat down heavily.  It looked like she wanted to do it more gracefully, but being dizzy…

With her sitting down, Perl started to pull her hand away from Kari’s arm.  This was unacceptable, and the seated woman shouted, “No!” and reached up, grabbing Perl’s arm with both hands.

I felt the same way.  If the two hadn’t been standing in the doorway, I would have bolted.  I think all of us would have, judging from the looks on the others faces.

“I think the idea of bay segregation is a good one,” Perl said, her voice trembling.

Something inside me, from before the fear, made me speak up. “Marc, can your people be trusted to disable the motor controls on the exterior doors?”

“Hell, man!  Now you mention it, I don’t know if I can!”

“We’ve replaced the OS.  Didn’t you say it wrote exactly what we uploaded but added one bit?” John was thinking about the possibilities.

“Aye.”

“Okay, then there shouldn’t be anything to hurt anyone if they try.  Disable the motors permanently.”

Marc sighed.  “Okay.  The nice thing is I won’t trigger them while I’m working on them.  I don’t want ejected myself.”  He thought about it, then turned to Perl.  “Don’t move the women until I tell you to.  We don’t want you transferred before those motors are ruined.  That should keep any of the men from trying anything.  They won’t want to eject themselves.”

She nodded.  “Is that it?”

“Use the bays on the lower side,” I said.

“What about other genders?” She asked.  

We discussed them for a few more moments, then she made a quick exit.

---

The door to the command center opened into a short hallway which led to a smaller circular corridor in the center of the station.  There were several rooms on the inside of the corridor.  And on the outside were several ‘j’ shaped halls.  You walked about 10 meters, and then the floor curved up to ninety degrees from the floor of the walkway. From there, you turned right and you were in the middle of the hall which led from one level of pinwheel to the other.  The whole station was a maze of strange gravitational fields.  

I was heading home a short time after Marc left to work on the exterior bay door motors.  I was contemplating our situation.  It was frightening, the terror I felt when face to face with a woman.  Just the thought of one scared me.  I hadn’t met up with any other genders yet, so I didn’t know how much they would bother me.  The thought of caused fear in  an inverse funnel between me and a woman.  A bisexual man bothered me a little bit.  Then a gay man, followed by a genetically male gender fluid, to intersex, with all the layers in between.  The pattern reversed through the genetically female genders as the funnel got wider and wider, until it reached a completely heterosexual female

When I reached the ‘u’ shaped corridor running between levels, I turned to go to my apartment.  Now that we knew what was going on, I was a little more at ease.  I came face to face with fright again, however as I turned left into the corridor.  I was standing almost nose to nose with two women.  All three of us screamed and the women spun on their heels and started running downhill to the upper level.  

I stared at my hand, unbelieving.  When they turned, one of the women’s hands brushed mine.  A moment later, my vision began to blur and it felt as if my body was being taken apart and put back together.

Chapter 1.6

When my vision cleared, I looked down at myself.  My clothes were hanging loosely of my new frame, although a certain area of my shirt was rather tight.  My pants had split at the seam running up my backside, I found when I reached around to get an idea what my general shape was.  Yet, as I slowly started walking, I found that my boots were loose.

I knew I needed to call John and tell him what had happened, but the thought terrified me.  I didn't want to face him.  I started to think that maybe I’d run into a guy the same way I had the women, and be changed back, but I found I didn’t want to do that.  I was not scared of women now, but of men.  The funnel went the other way.

I pulled my shirt out of my pants, and let it hang down. It made an almost respectable minidress.   The waistband of my pants was holding tight on my hips, so as long as I didn’t perform any serious exercise I figured I could make it to my room.  But what then?  I didn’t have anything that would fit me there.  Then I remembered.  Across the hall from my apartment was a woman who was probably about my size now.  I might be able to borrow something from her.  

I was deliberately avoiding the thought of talking to either John or Marc.  I knew they would be as terrified of me as I was of them now.  I began to wonder if I touched a man, if they would become a woman.  Was my transformation so complete?  I had no way of knowing unless I touched a man.  I certainly didn’t want to do that.  Coming so close to one scared the living daylights out of me.

I got to the corridor above or below, however you looked at it, and looked to the right.  The bay door was there that would take me to my home.  Unfortunately, there were about a dozen men standing between me and the door.  They were in groups of two or three talking, presumably about the screwed up mess we were now in.  

I shrank back into the hallway to downstairs, my heart pounding in my chest.  What was I going to do?  The thought of passing all those men was horrifying!  I felt like I had to pass within striking distance of a viper.  My problem was solved, however, when a man suddenly turned into the corridor I was in to head downstairs.  He jumped back as if bitten by a similar snake.  “Woman!” he shouted.  He spun on his heel and ran away.  I heard what sounded like a stampede, and cautiously peeked out of my hiding place.  I was tensed to turn and flee as fast as I possibly could, but I needn’t have worried.  Apparently the thought of a woman… of me… being near them made them run.  I stepped into the corridor and started toward the bay doors and home.

Before I turned into my bay, however, I stopped.  How many of those men had walked into here? I wondered.  Again, I apprehensively peeked around the corner.  The ‘street’ in between the buildings on either side was empty.  My home was about three quarters of the way down the street, on the right, and on the top floor.  I was scared to walk down that street.  I would be in the open, where anything could happen.  Slowly, I began to walk.  I felt like everyone’s eyes were upon me.  Indeed, I saw several curtains flutter in the apartments that started on the second floor.  One or two of the ‘stores’ (we didn’t have any money)  on the bottom level closed their blinds and turned the signs to closed.  

Oh yeah!  There was a boutique just up the street a bit.  Just passed the stairwell leading to my apartment.  I started to hurry a bit faster.  I wanted out of the street.  I passed the stairs, and a couple of stores down the street I stared in horror.  The boutique’s windows had been broken out.  There were some heavy chairs thrown through.  Much of the inventory had been destroyed, and there was no sign of life inside.

I decided I didn’t want to be on the street anymore if this was what we were coming to, turned and ran to the stairs.  Just before I reached them, I saw a man open the door of a liquor store that was adjacent to the stairs.  He lifted up a bottle and threw it at me.  I ducked and I felt it brush my hair.  A moment later, I was sprinting as fast as my ill fitting boots could carry me.

---

I reached the top, and turned left.  My apartment was approximately 30 meters down the hall.  I started running again, but instead of turning into my rooms, I knocked on the door across from mine.  The door opened and I jumped backwards hitting my own door.  I forgot that it was a married couple that lived across from me.

“Go away!” the man shouted as he slammed his door.

Now, I had no idea what to do.  I needed some clothes, or the men would be staring at me.  They would be anyway, but it would only get worse.

I was scared spitless, but I crossed the hall and knocked again.  I’m not sure if I knocked hard enough to get his attention, but he must have been near the door.

“Go away, I said!” came the muffled yell from inside.

He said???  I was almost deaf from his yell!  “Please Mr. Finch.  Is your wife here?”

His voice was a bit softer now.  “No.  With this new affliction, we were terrified of each other.  We couldn’t stand to be in the same room.  Her sister lives in another bay, so she left to stay with her.”

“Did she leave any clothes?” I asked.  “I’m your neighbor from across the hall.  We get along fine in reality, without this newest situation. I was touched when I came upon some women in one of the downstairs passages.”

There was a long pause then finally,  “Go into your apartment and shut the door.  I will set something outside your door and then knock.  Don’t open your door until you hear mine shut.”

“Thank you, Mr. Finch,” I said as I opened my door.  I shut it hard enough for him to hear, then waited.  It was about ten minutes when I heard a soft tap on my door, then his door slammed. I opened my door and found a small pile of folded clothes.  I took them into my bedroom and unfolded them onto my bed.  There were a couple of pairs of panties, two bras,  a couple of dresses and two pairs of shoes.  At least he figured in that I was going to need more than one of everything.  Well, I figured, These will work.

I changed into one change of clothes, and went to my personal comm system.  It was strange that I had changed without a thought about it.  I sat down and my hand froze as I considered what I must now do. I couldn’t make it go to the switch to call John.  Slowly, I put my head down on the table onto the desk in front of me and started to cry.

I’m not sure how long it took, but I went into the bathroom before I made the fateful call.  There was a wallsize screen on one side.  Normally it showed a peaceful scene.  I had always liked scenes of whitecapped peaks.  I grew up in Alaska and I could always see Denali on a clear day. So that’s what it showed.  I told the screen to become a mirror, and froze.  The image I was now seeing took me by surprise.  My face was a mess.  Apparently, the nanites had put makeup on my face, as well as lengthened my hair and changed the color.  I turned on the water and washed off my face, then I looked again.  My eyes were red from crying, but I could see that my genes were the same.  My face looked very much like my mother’s.  Her hair color was the same as mine had been, but she had lightened it a couple of times to the honey blonde I now had.    

Actually, as I looked, I now saw how much my mom and I looked alike, because my face also looked like it had before I changed.  The features were softer and quite nice, but I still liked like me.

Thinking about how much I still looked the same, I could feel revulsion rising in my head.  I stopped thinking about it.  I resolved that when I looked in the mirror, I would not see my male self.  I would see me now, with a resemblance to my mother.  Nothing more.

 All this looking in the mirror was getting me nowhere.  I still needed to call John.  I started out of the bathroom and realized I needed to use it for another purpose.  Grateful that I didn’t have to use the comm yet, I went back.

When I came out, I still wanted to put things off.  I decided I hadn’t eaten yet, so I went into the kitchen alcove and made a burger and fries.  We had not meat on board, but I knew how to make a veggie burger that tasted just like the real thing.  

I got it ready and sat down at my table.  Then I realized I wasn’t hungry.  At all.  I stood up and put the plate into my refrigeration unit.  

This is just putting off the inevitable, I told myself.  I walked over to the computer and before I sat down, I made the call.

It was answered almost immediately, and John shrank back from the camera as soon as he saw it was a woman calling him.

“What do you want?” he asked, keeping his voice under control, but I could see his eyes were filled with fear.

“I need to talk to you,” I answered.

“I’ve never seen you before,” he said.  “I thought I knew everyone….” His voice trailed off and I could see that he had recognized me.

“I ran into a couple of women when I was walking home,” I explained.  “One of them accidently touched me as she turned to run away.”

“Do you want me to come over there and touch you?” he asked.

I was still terrified, but something in my heart stirred as he offered that.  I could see that he didn’t want to, but I knew if I said yes, he would do it.  “No, John.  I don’t.  I doubt either of us could handle that.  I can’t see myself voluntarily letting a man touch me now.”

He slowly nodded.  “What do we do about this?” he asked.

I thought for a moment, then realized something. “In a way, this is a good thing.”  He looked at me like I was crazy, or maybe it was just fear.  “We don’t need three male leaders right now and none female.  Be honest.  The women would get the short end of the stick, wouldn’t they?”

He sat still for a bit, the only thing moving was his face as it displayed a wide variety of emotions, with terror underneath it all.  Finally, he answered.  “I would try my best to not allow that to happen, but yes, I’m afraid you’re right.”

“I can’t see myself coming to the command center anymore.  Again, I doubt any of us could handle that.  I will remain in contact with you on the screen.  I will also contact Perl and let her use my comlink to be patched through to Freeman, so she doesn’t shirk her responsibilities, but doesn’t have to associate with you or the others.

“Also, I think it would be a good idea to have another woman appointed as my equal.  I think we need to maintain an equilibrium so the women do not feel overlooked.”

“They probably will anyway,” he said with a sigh.  It took a moment, then he looked back up at me, obviously afraid he just made me mad.  I have to admit, I felt a bit of anger, but in my heart, I knew he hadn’t meant anything derogatory by it.

“John,” I said, my voice trembling.  “We need to bury the hatchet between us right now.  We are doing exactly what Caesar wanted.”

“I know it,” he said. “I don’t know what I can do about the fear, but I will try to not let it rule me.  Deal?”

I almost laughed.  “Deal, but it’s a good thing we’re not in the same room,” I commented.  “This is where we’d be tempted to shake hands.”

He stared at me for a moment, then burst out laughing.  “Yes, We would.”  A moment later, the smile left his face and he turned to where I knew Marc would be seated.  “How many reports of changes?”  

“Fifty-seven so far, and they keep coming in.”

John’s face went white.  “I need to get off here now.” He looked back at me.  “No offense.”

“None taken.”

Chapter 1.7

The next week was filled with fear for everyone on the station.  It was taking a considerable amount of time for Marc to disable all of the exterior doors.

In the interim we got several things accomplished.   A woman with chocolate brown skin was appointed the joint leader for the ladies.  When I saw her, I smiled.  “Hello again,” I said to her.  She looked at me disbelieving.  “You’re really him?” she asked.

“No, I’m really her.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I was him.” I laughed.  “I really slid the chair over to you, Kari.”

Perl had come in with her, and sat down at my comm station.  She turned to stare at me for a few moments.  “I find it hard to believe, but I can’t deny it.  You look the same, only different.”

“That’s quite a paradox,” I said.  “Now that we’ve got the disbelief out of the way, can we please not bring up who I used to be?  I get scared thinking about once being male.”

They both agreed, as thinking about it for them was frightening as well.  Perl turned to the computer and in a few moments Freeman’s visage filled the screen.  “Thank goodness it’s you Perl,” she said, obviously relieved.  “I wasn’t sure how many more times I’d have to speak to either Carter or Reese.”

She smiled at him.  “Well it’s me for awhile now.”  She introduced Freeman to Kari and explained her function.  

It looked like they were settling into a good conversation, so Kari and I made our exit.  It was not easy to walk out to the circular corridor, but we made it.  All the way, we could see curtains and blinds fluttering as men looked out to see who was walking down the street.  When we got to the circle, Marc and John were standing quite some distance away.  

“We’ve already inspected your bay’s motors,” John yelled to us. “They look fine to us.  We are going to the next one.  As you can see, we have removed the door to the stairs.  When you come back down, Marc will weld it in place.”

“Why?” Kari asked.

“The only reason for going up there is the motors,” Marc explained. “They no longer work.  I’ve also welded beams in place on both sides and in the middle of the doors.  The scaffolding is still there so you can inspect my welds.  John wants to see them as well.”

We watched as Marc removed the door from the next set of stairs.  Satisfied with what we were seeing, we went up the stairs to the overhead doors in the bay we had just been in.  We came to the motor and could hardly believe our eyes.  It was about the size of a refrigeration unit, and the outer casing had been melted into the armature  There was no way this motor would ever function again.  It was a heap of scrap.  “I definitely approve,” I told Kari.

“I’d hate to be on the receiving end of Marc’s torch,” Kari said, her voice trembling.

I just looked at her, but at the thought, I could feel my heart beating wildly.  I hoped it would slow down before I tried to go down the stairs.  We stared at the remains of the motor for a minute or two, then I said, “Let’s see the welds.”

We started moving to the center of the doors.  About six meters from the center, we came to an I beam that had been welded to the bottom of the door.  It was about half a meter tall, and there was a continuous weld along the part of the I that was touching the door.  It went all the way along to the same position on the other side.  We went back to the center and moved through a hole that had been cut, big enough for us to crouch and step through to the catwalk.  Both Kari and I had prepared for this.  We were both wearing peach colored jumpsuits, rather than anything that would expose us to the underside.  We hadn’t known about the beams welded in place, but John had told us that Mark welded the two sides of the doors together.  It was why the work had taken a week to do.  By the time we had finished inspecting this one bay’s doors, I was determined to find out who had helped Marc.  I had understood that he was going to do the work himself, but it was apparent he couldn't have done this himself in the amount of time allotted.  Not on forty bays.

Eventually, we went down the stairs.  We found John and Marc waiting for us, again a considerable distance away.  Marc took the door that had been set against the bulkhead and began welding it in place.  It took some time, as he was a meticulous welder.  When he finished, we moved to the next one.  I turned to speak to them men before we entered the stairwell.  “Can we get someone else to follow with the welder?  No offense intended, Marc.  You’re a very careful welder, but it’s going to take awhile to inspect every bay, and waiting for you to weld the doors in place will take even more time.  If they’re welded in place after we come down, we can make another circuit of the corridor when we’re done and then go downstairs.”

“Who do we trust to not weld the door on while we’re up there?” Kari asked.

“How about Colleen Grimes,” I suggested.  She was an artist, and her medium was metals that she welded into sculptures.

John and Marc conferred for a moment, then Marc yelled to us, “That sounds good.  Can you call her?”

I did just that, and a few minutes later, Colleen and her daughter came from downstairs.  “I figured if there were going to be two men here, I’d want to have someone else I can trust with me.”

“I can’t blame you at all,” I told her, then Kari and I went up the stairs.  

As we ascended them, I could hear Marc yelling to her, “Don’t worry about making them pretty.  Just make them secure.”

It took us all day, and most of the next to do all forty bays.  By the time we were done, All four of us were shaken up by such a frequent contact with men.  Not that there was ever the opportunity to touch each other.  They wanted to keep their distance from us, just as badly as we wanted to from them.

Both Kari and I were exhausted from the constant stair climbing.  Five flights up, five flights down.  I had never made an up and down circuit of five flights, twenty five times in one day, then fifteen the next.  Once we were done, I crashed in my bed and slept for a day.  It wasn’t just the stairs, but keeping vigilant while looking at welds without going cross eyed was mental stress.  When I woke up, it was time to move all my stuff to an apartment ‘downstairs’.  We had an electric tractor with a six meter trailer that could be used to carry stuff downstairs, but it meant my piano would have to go down five flights now.  

When I got down to street level, I was surprised to find John, Marc, and three other men there. There wasn’t supposed to be any men out on the street while the women were moving to downstairs.

“What’s going on?” I asked.  I was mad.  I didn’t need to be scared today.  I had a lot of fragile things to move.

“We would like to help,” John yelled across the ten meters between us.

“I have a lot to do,” I yelled back.  “Why would you want to help me?”

“You told me we needed to bury the hatchet.  Well, you have a piano up there.  It’s got to come down five flights without being dropped.  Do you want to do that?”

“How do I know you won’t drop it just for spite?”

“If I do, you can deck me,” he returned.

“And turn you into a woman?” I laughed in spite of my fear. “Not likely!”

He looked down at the ground for a moment, then back up at me.  “In spite of my fear, I care about you.  I know those instruments are special to you.  I saw how broken you were when you saw the damage as you unpacked them.”  He paused again, then with a trembling voice he called to me, “Please let me help you.”

“Let you personally, or all of you?” I asked.  I was curious about what he said.  Was it a Freudian slip?  We had always been best friends, but did it now extend farther than that?  It seemed unlikely with all the fear involved.  A Freudian slip, however, is regarded as revealing the subconscious.

He didn’t say anything for a moment.  He looked scared.  Scared of me, and perhaps scared of what he had said.  He looked at the men around him.  Marc raised an eyebrow at him, and looked like he may laugh.  He might have, had he not been so scared by my presence.

“Please let us help you,” he finally said.

I looked up at the window of my soon to be former rooms, then back at the men.  “I have your word.  Not a scratch on anything?”

“You have my word,” John said.  “Not a scratch.”

“Yours personally, or the entire groups?”

His voice was firm and decisive.  “Mine.”

I gazed at him for a minute, then said simply, “Fair enough,” and I walked down to the former boutique.  I went inside and pulled out one of the chairs.  The upholstery on it had certainly seen better days, but I wanted to watch them.

I carried it out, my arm muscles straining at the size of the thing, and set it down in the middle of the street.  I sat down, crossed my legs, and folded my arms.

John watched with an almost amused expression.  When he saw me in my supervisor position, he told the others, “Come on guys.  She can’t help us, and we don’t want her to.”

His words filled me with relief, but also something else.  Disappointment?  Why would I be disappointed about that?  Was I so concerned about my things?  

I watched as they took several cases upstairs and then started bringing them back down a little while later.  John didn’t come down, however.  He must have taken up the position of supervisor in my apartment.  

I was wondering if the cases held my instruments.  I supposed that they probably did.  Maybe my cooking utensils also, or rather those that weren’t in the restaurant.  What surprised me was when two of the men went into the restaurant and brought out four cases.  My restaurant equipment had been moved from the old bay and placed into what I was going to make my new location.  With everything that had happened, I hadn’t had a chance to do what I wanted.  While they were doing that, Marc pulled the trailer over to the other side of the street and put a net over everything, pulling it tight.  Nothing would fall off now. I was surprised.  I had seen several tractors and trailers heading both ways before I climbed into bed.  None of them had things tied down on them.

While all of this was being done, John started carrying my instruments down in their small cases.  So what were in the huge cases?  The four cases of equipment from the restaurant were loaded onto the trailer, then the five men went upstairs.  They were gone quite awhile, but eventually I could hear one of them urging the others to be careful, move right or left.  Telling John where the next step was.  Eventually, I saw, first the man who was giving directions, then John and another come out of the stairwell holding one end of my old upright Yamaha.  I wasn’t sure how old it was, but I knew it was many centuries.  I had paid an incredible amount for it, but it was worth it.  

Very carefully, the four men set it down on the street and I saw them massaging their muscles.  I remembered taking that thing up the stairs when I moved in.  It was heavy.  John and Marc helped then too.  I was ashamed of my fear, but there was no way to turn it off.  When they picked it up and lifted it onto the trailer, I held my breath, waiting for them to drop it.  They didn’t.  Instead, they took some heavy blankets and used them to protect the finish from scratches from the hemp rope they used to tie the piano in place.  The rest was tied down with nets, although a heavy blanket was placed over my instrument cases to protect them.

John took a few determined steps toward me, then stopped.  He looked ashamed that he was stopped by fear, but he told me that everything was out.

“Everything?” I asked.  Surely, they hadn’t got my clothes.  I doubt they could have stomached that.

“Everything,” John said again, firmly.  He paused for a moment, then as if he’d read my mind, told me, “You sure got a lot of clothes in a short amount of time.”

I stared at him, then ran toward the stairs, shouting, “Move!”  They all did, and I went up the stairs two at a time.  I entered my apartment and just stared.  Everything was gone!  I went into my bedroom and bathroom.  That must have been what John was doing while the others brought stuff down.  He was packing everything.  Why would he do that for me?  I had thought they’d just get the heavy stuff, but no.

I went downstairs, and saw Marc and the three guys pulling the first trailer away.  John sat on the tractor ready to pull my piano downstairs.  “I’m sure you don’t want to ride on the tractor with me here, but there’s room at the back of the trailer.”  He was right.  There was a mesh tailgate that lowered into a ramp, allowing people to load stuff with a hand truck.  The piano had been loaded to one side, leaving a space I could ride, approximately a meter square.  That would put me about eight meters from John.  I could probably handle that, but I shook my head.

“No thanks, I’ll walk.”  He looked both disappointed and relieved as he shrugged.  “No problem,” he said.

“I also want to tell you of a development from yesterday.  Marc and I didn’t want to mention it in front of the other men without your approval.”

“And what is that?” I asked.  “Was this whole helping me move just to give me some news?”

“That’s ridiculous, and you know it,” He answered.  He stared at me until I nodded, signifying he was right.  He started the tractor moving, and said, “I’ll tell you when we get into the passageway.”  A moment later, I thought to myself, to hell with it and I ran up to the trailer, grabbed the tailgate and jumped on.  He stopped the tractor and looked back at me, smiling.  I stared defiantly at him.  A few minutes later, we entered the corridor to take us downstairs.

It’s always strange when your muse takes off in a different direction than what you had intended. This chapter is NOT what I envisioned, but hey. It works, so who am I to complain? I only hope I did it justice. Otherwise, the muse may give me the silent treatment for awhile. She’s finicky like that.

Chapter 1.8

I walked into my apartment, and couldn’t believe my eyes. While I had almost expected it, seeing what they had done packing, I was surprised. I had placed holders for all of my small instruments on the wall in the old place. While this was a mirror image of the old rooms, everything had been put away the same way.

My piano was sitting across the room from the display of instruments, in exactly the same position it had been in. Only everything was reversed.

I checked out my kitchen alcove, and things were where I had them in the old place as well. My bathroom and bedroom were the same. I wondered how much fear John had faced while touching my clothes. Just the thought of him touching them horrified me, but on a lower level, I appreciated what he had done. It was kind and thoughtful, something I had doubted a man could be.

I debated washing all of my clothes because I knew he had touched them. Instead, I went to my computer and typed a message, just two words long, and then sent it to John. “Thank You.” I didn’t want to face him and cause as much fear as that would bring to both of us. Sending a text would be much less of a trigger.

I sat down in my recliner and pressed the button that raised my feet. I had planned on this once I got done unpacking, and now found it really wasn’t necessary. I reached for my books that were usually on a table on my right, then realized they were on my left. These were reprints that a friend had made for me, I had rewritten them from memory, thanks to my nanites, and they had been printed as soon as we had paper to use. I hadn’t asked for them. They had been a gift. I picked up one that was a music text, then thought better of it. I wasn’t tired. In fact I had sat watching the men working, so my backside really didn’t want to be used for sitting for awhile.

I went outside, and it was much easier. There was not a man in sight, but quite a few women were working on storefronts. I looked to the right, and there was a large space being unused. I was disappointed as I would love something this size for another restaurant. For a moment I wondered if any shop I set up should be temporary. What if I was touched by a man?

During our trip downstairs, John had told me that we had finally lost contact with Earth. The signal started degrading during our reception, and it disappeared a moment later. Our people were checking everything on our end, but in reality we just felt we were too far away to receive anymore. Thus, we didn’t have Earth’s vastly more experience with this situation.

I got to thinking about it, and realized I wouldn’t be leaving this bay, very much anyway. I had told John and Marc that Kari and I would communicate through communications. If I set up my restaurant, I would be able to do my commander stuff from home, and my music and cooking in the restaurant. I shouldn’t have to leave at all.

We built a room behind my kitchen to contact the command center from. It was a perfect location where I could keep an eye on things during the day although I had a wonderful assistant chef who could cook rings around most people.

I had split my cooking to six hours before my command time and four after. While that only left six hours to sleep, I had always done fine with that before. I also allowed my assistant to cook the ‘weekend’ meals, so I got some time off for relaxing.

Once again, our lives became a routine, day in and day out, until one morning, Kari and I both got a call early from John and Marc.

“We need you to meet us in the small circle,” John said.

I tried to speak, but couldn’t. He wanted us to go out of our bay. Out where the men were! I didn’t know if I could handle it. I hadn’t seen a man in five months.

“There’s been an… incident there,” Marc said.

“You’re gonna have to give me more than that,” Kari told him. “I’m not coming there for an ‘incident’.”

“Uh… You might want to for this one,” John told us.

“What’s going on, John?” I asked.

“Someone was attacked outside the control room.” John hesitated, then his face went whiter than it had been before. “She was killed.”

I was on my feet in a second, and out the door, hurrying down the street. It took me a moment to realize Kari was right beside me.

“Stupid men!” She was very hot. I grabbed her arms and turned her toward me. “We can be angry, yes. But we have to maintain clear heads. We have no idea who killed her. For that matter, we have no idea yet who was killed. She may not even be a heterosexual woman.” I paused for a second, then added, “Not that it matters. Whoever it is, we have to deal with it as professionals.”

“I know, but I need to get rid of the anger before we get there.” I thought for a moment and realized she was right.

“Stupid men!” I said, then we both smiled. We couldn’t laugh, under the circumstances. Possibly one of our own had been killed, and we were going into the arena where it had probably been done.

---

When we arrived, we approached slowly. We saw John and Marc standing off to the side, and a medic was crouched looking at something beside a body. We stopped before we could identify the woman. We really didn’t want to get any closer. It looked to me like she had been beaten terribly.

John was positively green, and he stepped around the carnage and walked to within just a couple of meters of us. We were both so infuriated by the death, we stood our ground. Not that I didn’t feel like turning and running back to our sanctuary.

John looked positively green. His eyes seemed to be flashing in anger. For a moment I thought we were going to have to defend ourselves, but when he stopped, we could see he had been crying too.

I couldn’t figure out why he would be crying over the death of a woman… unless…

“Who was it, John?” I asked.

“It was Perl,” he said, his voice flat.

We had both known her for a long time, even before we were forced into the station. Both of us had gone out with her many times. Not a romantic thing; just as friends.

“Who did this?” I looked to my side. Kari and I had been holding hands for support, and she was squeezing mine hard. She was more pissed than I had ever seen her.

“We don’t know,” Marc had joined us, and he looked about as sick as John did.

At that moment, Kari gave a stifled cry, and her knees buckled. Marc looked torn. He wanted to help her, but the fear kept him back. I ended up supporting her weight and lowering her to the ground.

I looked beyond the two men facing us, and I saw why Kari had fainted. I heavily fell to the ground, managing to land on my butt. The Medic had moved to the body and the item he had been examining was left in gruesome display. It was Perl’s head, her platinum blonde hair covered with red.

I put my head down and started bawling. I heard a shuffling and looked up. John was kneeling in front of me; out of arm's reach but close enough that I could make out every detail of his face. Strangely, I wasn’t feeling any fear for a change. I almost wanted to bury my face in his chest and cry, and I would have, but a different fear stopped me. I didn’t want to change John to a woman, accidently.

The medic walked toward us, and stopped about five meters away. “Can I talk to you, gentlemen?”

John turned and looked at the man. I couldn’t see his face from my anger, but I heard his voice. “Anything you have to say needs to be told to these ladies as well. We are EQUAL in our rank. Is that clear?”

I couldn’t see John’s face, but I could see the medic’s. He looked at John with more fear than he did me or Kari. He gulped, and I imagined I could hear it even where I was. “Yes, Sir,” he said very slowly.

Then, something very strange happened. John reached out toward me. I started to shy away, but held his hand up. He was wearing gloves. “Are you afraid of me right now?”

I thought about it, and realized I wasn’t. I shook my head. I knew my eyes had widened in surprise. He took both my wrists and told me, “Whatever you do, make sure our faces don’t touch.” Then he pulled me to my feet. For a moment, he steadied me, then we walked towards Perl’s body. It was so strange. There was no fear of him at all; just gratitude… and something else. I didn’t have time to examine that, however as we were not standing by the remains of our friend.

Marc and Kari were suddenly standing to my right, Marc in between me and Kari. Again the fear was not there. I knew the lack was from what had happened to Perl, and hoped that her death might give us some insight into what was going on.

“We need to have a female medic here too.” My voice was wracked with sobs as I tried to speak.

“I’m not good enough?” the medic sneered from somewhere behind me.

John whirled around, almost pulling my arm out of its socket. His voice was full of fury now, and as I was right beside him, I could see his face. It was as if all of the terror he had felt over the past six months was coming out in the form of anger. “If you speak to her that way one more time, I will make sure you are working in the recycling plants for the next millenia.”

“John, it’s okay. We’re all upset here,” I said, patting his hand in… I don’t know. The only emotion I could think of I shouldn’t be feeling for him.

He turned to face me. The anger seemed to melt off his face and was replaced by tenderness. “No,” he said. “No it’s not okay. I’ve missed you, and for the first time since this mess began, I’m not afraid of you.” He looked at Marc and Kari who both wore astonished expressions. He seemed to dare them to stop him from saying what he wanted, no matter the circumstances. “I’m standing here, holding you. I’m feeling terrible about Perl, but at the same time, I’m able to acknowledge my feelings for you. I’m having a hard time understanding this.”

I backed away from him and he lowered his eyes to the space between us. He looked back at me and I could see the hurt in his eyes. It must have been hard for him to say those things. I know I was feeling hurt as well, and I know he saw it in me.

“I guess the feelings aren’t reciprocated.” he said sadly.

He was turning back when he stopped. He heard me say, “They are.” He turned back, confusion on his face. “I backed away, because I didn’t want to turn you into a woman, John.”

He stared at me, then seemed to realize what I meant. I stepped back to his side, and stared at our friend. The Medic walked around us and gave us his report. He was still clearly disturbed by us. I wasn’t sure if he was afraid or angry.

I was having feelings for the man standing to my left, I had no fear of the man on my right, and I was pissed beyond measure at whoever had done this to my friend.

May God help the person when I found out who it was,.

One of the strange things about dealing with a character like ‘Caesar’ in this story, and what he might consider to be total fun, is it allows my imagination to go to some very strange places, indeed.

So far, my muse isn’t giving me the silent treatment. I’m hoping that continues.

Chapter 1.9

Kari and I went with John and Marc to the command center. Carter was there, replacing some burnt out equipment. He stared at me and Kari like we were vampires, or something.

“Carter,” I asked, “Would you excuse us for a few minutes?”

We cleared the way to the door, and Carter bolted. I sat down in the chair I had once used all the time. It was strange. I could think about having once been male, but it didn’t scare me anymore. Not at all.

It was so strange. My emotions were swinging up and down. For a moment, I would be furious and despondent about Perl’s death… I suppose murder was the undeniable conclusion. The next, I was giddy and frustrated about John’s feelings for me. Giddy because of someone to spend my time with on this voyage of forever to nowhere, and frustrated, because anything physical was a virtual impossibility.

Was it my rollercoaster of emotions that was masking the fear, or was something else happening that we had no idea about?

Another idea came to my head, and as I looked at John, I became a hundred times more fearful than I had before. It had nothing to do with Caesar or his tricks. But what if this was a different swing to his play? What if the fear was disappearing, and in its place was coming attraction? If my attraction for John grew, would I be able to resist? Would we end up in bed together and hang the consequences? What if this happened to everyone? I could see a station where everyone changed sex every day, even multiple times. Was that what Caesar had in mind? Complete chaos because we wanted physical fulfilment so bad, we didn’t care what happened afterwards?

My mind was running away from me, but I had no idea what was going on, or what was likely to.

I looked at him, and he had the sweetest smile. I could feel his arms around me, our lips touching….

Suddenly, I couldn’t take it anymore. I jumped up and ran from the room. John followed, and I could hear him shouting my name as I ran to the ‘U’ corridors. I lost my footing in the shifting gravity, and tripped, falling onto the carpet. I felt the blood start to flow from one knee. “Damn,” I thought. “That’s gonna ruin these jeans.” I rolled over and looked at the hole that had been made. Already, the blood had stopped, and a layer of nanites was weaving itself across the injury.

I heard John’s footsteps as he came running into the ‘J’ walkway I was in. From my perspective, I had to look up to meet his eyes. He came partway up the curved floor and stopped.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m not him anymore,” I said. For some reason, it had never dawned on me to change my name. I had just left it. Everyone on the station knew me, and it just seemed too much trouble to get them used to a new name. There was already enough that they needed to get used to.

He knelt down, presumably so I wouldn’t get a crick in my neck looking up at him. “I’m very much aware that you aren’t ‘him’ anymore.”

"Why did you run?" he asked.

"We're in there to figure out what happened to Perl, and I can't keep my mind on that. It keeps wandering to other things… to you." I was crying again. "You really want to know, my emotions are in turmoil!"

"Is it…" he paused, clearly trying to be diplomatic.

I glanced up and realized what he was trying to say. "Not that time of month!"

"Can you come back so we can discuss the investigation?"

I shook my head. "No. I can't focus."

"Because of me?"

I gave a half smile. "Yes. Because of you."

“So what do you want to do?”

I sat up and pushed myself against the wall behind me. It wasn’t fear now. I was trying to protect myself from my own feelings. I drew my knees up and hugged them instead of him.

I shook my head. He knew how I felt, so there really wasn’t any need for me to not meet his eyes. When I did, however, I had to look away. “I’m not sure if I’m feeling the way I do because of Caesar or something else. When I became a woman, were my hormones pushed through the roof? John, I think I’m in love with you. I have been for quite some time, but I’ll be honest. If this is something from Caesar, I don’t want to be a part of it.”

I watched as he seemed to crumble. I wanted to reach out and touch him. If I’d had gloves, I would have. Again, I felt myself becoming more under some spell. I hugged my legs so tight I thought I might shatter them. I wanted to heal the hurt I saw in his face, but I wasn’t sure if I dared. Would I fall to the spell completely if I tried? I squeezed my eyes shut, and I felt tears leak out.

“John,” I finally said, “I promise you. When we get this figured out, if I still feel this way, you had better watch out. There won’t be anything that will keep me away from you.”

He managed a smile, and told me, “I will definitely hold you to that.”

---

We went back to the site of the murder. It seemed so strange to me that I would have no fear of, and such compelling feelings for, John. As I slipped some gloves onto my hands, I knelt down to look at my friend one last time. I would have preferred not to remember her like this, but we really didn’t have anyone who knew anything about solving crimes. It was up to the four of us to figure out what had happened.

“Do we know when it happened?” I asked.

“I wish I could give you an exact time, Ma’am,” the medic said, “but I’m not advanced enough in my courses. I’m really sorry.”

I looked at him, surprised. He was kneeling on the other side of the body with absolutely no appearance of fear or revulsion. I held my gloved hand out over Perl, and said to him, “Touch my hand. I’m wearing a glove, you’re in no danger.”

He did. No problem.

I held my hand up to Marc. “Marc?”

“Touch your hand?”

“Please.”

He did as well.

“Kari?”

“There’s no reason I wouldn’t touch your hand,” she said.

“No, but will you touch Marc’s?”

There was no problem there either.

“What is going on here?” the medic asked. “I shouldn’t be willing to be anywhere near you, and I’m less than a meter from you.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I should be running from here, screaming. Instead, I…. Well…” I blushed.

The medic glanced between me and John, then gave a small smile. “Got it.”

Then he did something strange. He took a small knife out of a wrapper, made a tiny puncture in a finger, then put some of the blood on a microscope slide. Next, he took out another slide and did the same with some of Perl’s. He took out a portable microscope and looked his blood.

“My nanites are still active. They shouldn’t be, though. They should have died by now.”

He switched out the slides and looked at the other. “Perl’s nanites are definitely active, but it seems as though they are slowing down.”

“Give me one of your knives,” I told him.

He handed one to me. “This is a scalpel,” he corrected me.

“Whatever,” I said as I got a bit of blood on it. “Check this against yours.”

He raised an eyebrow, then nodded as he put some of my blood on the slide with his. “They’re not interacting.”

He thought about it for a moment, then removed a glove. He held out his hand to me. “Take out your glove and touch my hand.”

“What?!!?”

He sighed. “Ma’am, this is not something I really want, but we have to know if there’s a reaction or not. This is the only way we can be sure. Besides, if there is one, I’ll just have John or Marc touch me.”

“Uh huh,” I said doubtfully. I thought about it for a few minutes. It was logical, but I still didn’t like it. I had never even accidentally changed a man to a woman, and here he was, asking me to do it deliberately. I thought about it, and realized we were right. We needed to find out, because something seemed to have removed all of our fear. He was voluntarily asking to be touched by a woman. That would NEVER have happened yesterday. I looked at him to make sure he was serious, then peeled of my glove. I grabbed a new one to use after this experiment. I was not happy.

“What’s your name?” I asked the medic.

“Randolph.”

“So Randy?” I asked.

“My family usually calls me that,” He answered.

“You realize in just a few moments it might be Brandy, right?”

He laughed, but there was a touch of nervousness in it.

John moved to behind Randy and said, “I’m going to hold your arm so you don’t put the activity into this. I’m sorry, but I don’t want you to change her into a man.”

The medic nodded. “I guessed that, Sir.”

John grabbed his upper arm, and in his eyes, I could see apprehension. As far as we knew, this had never been done before. He was going to be touching the arm of someone who may be changing.

“You don’t have to do this, John. I’ll take my chances,” I gently told him.

He shook his head.

Could I do this, not having any idea of the risks for either Randy or John? What if there was some change we hadn’t seen yet? God only knew what Caesar had arranged. I gave voice to these fears, and it didn’t change Randy’s resolve at all.

“I’m aware of the risks,” he said, "but we have to know what will happen now.”

John nodded as well. I knew there was no way I was going to dissuade him. I had seen this determination too much over the years but what if he changed too? I took a deep breath and touched Randy’s hand.

I watched, fascinated as Randy seemed to melt and reform. I knew it must have been similar with me, all those months ago. When it was done, I looked at John. I had been so interested in what was happening with Randy, that I hadn’t even glanced at this man for whom I was obviously developing feelings.

Chapter 10

John was still sitting with his hand holding back Randy’s… or should I say Brandy’s? I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized that it was still his hand. He seemed rather pleased as well. I turned back to Randy, or rather Brandy. “Well?”

“Apparently, there is still the same effects as there has always been,” she said.

Kari knelt down. “What about fear? Everyone I’ve talked to who has been transformed has reported that their fear has completely reversed. Instead of being scared of women, they were now scared of men.”

Randy nodded. “I’ve talked to men who had been women as well. They reported a mirror effect. As far as me, I had no fear anymore.” She turned her attention to me. “I am so sorry. My attitude this morning was not based on fear, but rather the memory of it. I expected to be afraid, so I built a wall to protect myself.”

“I understand,” I said as I rose to my feet. I turned to John, who had also stood.

“There is one more thing I’ve noticed with those who have been transformed. They always exhibit no desire to return to their former sex or gender.”

Randy seemed to think about it for awhile. “I see no reason to return to being a male. I suppose, I should get used to being called Brandy now.”

“What did you feel like before the transformation, as far as gender identity is concerned?” Kari asked.

“I wanted to be a male. I really didn’t want to transform, but I was willing to because we needed to know.”

“Don’t you think you should transform back? You said before that you would if there was a transformation,” I told her gently. “This is not who you are. Being forced to be something you are not is not right.”

I could feel John’s eyes on me as I said this. I wondered how he was going to take what I was saying. I’m sure he was not liking what he was hearing. I wasn’t liking saying it either, but I didn’t like Randy being brainwashed into being Brandy.

“I understand,” the medic said. “I know what you are saying, but it is as if I have always been a woman now. I can’t even imagine going back. I know what I used to be, but I am comfortable in this skin. The desire to return is simply not there.”

“We can’t force a return on you,” John told her. “If you want to stay as you are, I will respect that.” I knew he was saying that for other reasons as well. The fact was, I didn’t want to return either. I was very happy as I now was, so I wasn’t about to argue the point. I could see Marc wanting to say something, but Kari got his attention and shook her head. I think he almost said something anyway, but he seemed to think better of it. He nodded to her. Instead, he told us, “This is all very interesting, but I would like to know who killed Perl.”

Brandy arranged for Perl’s body to be transferred to the hospital, such as it was. Since the nanites handled most things, it was actually more of a research clinic. Brandy had started out as an agricultural researcher. I guess that was not considered to be detrimental to Caesar’s plans because she, or rather he at the time, was allowed to remain alive.

I was a little apprehensive as to how the men that worked with Randy would respond to this new female version. She warned them that she was now female and would be making her appearance. From what she told me later, it had not gone well. The fear was still there.

“So what freed us from the fear?” I asked when she and I met a few days later.

“Is the fear still gone?” she countered?

“Were you afraid of the men in your clinic?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not the way you’re thinking. I was afraid because they were afraid of me, however. I wasn’t sure how they would react when I walked in.

“What about Perl’s nanites?”

“They would have to be airborne,” she explained. "That doesn’t seem to be the case. They don’t….” She hesitated, then shook her head. “Of course! I have no idea how he programmed this, but remember, to transform someone, there had to be the conscience, or unconscious act of ‘touching. When I put her blood and mine on the same slide, there was no reaction, but who touched who?”

“I would say whoever’s blood went on the second time,” I responded.

“But there was no physical contact between bodies. Perhaps the ‘strong feelings’ between you and John are part of the ‘Total Fun’ as well.”

“Where’d that thought come from?” I asked.

She laughed. "Just thinking out loud.”

“Okay. In that case, why would Kari and Marc not be subject to that?”

“You’ve told me that you and John have been very good friends for a long time. Didn’t your mother once joke that you were such close friends, if one of you were female, you’d get married?”

“Yes, she did, but that negates your argument.”

“Kari and Marc, are an item. You’ve been so enamored with John you haven’t noticed. Besides, it took a bit longer, I’m guessing because they didn’t have an established relationship like you two do.”

I know my face went red with her use of the term ‘enamored.’ “You’re quite an observer.”

“Just part of a researcher’s job.”

I decided to change the subject. “Perl’s blood?”

“If the nanites were ‘aware’ of her death, they might have a trigger to change their function.”

I thought about that one. “That’s a possibility, but if they were dying, how will we test that?”

“The only way I can see is with another dead body.”

Yes, that made sense. “Problem with that,” I said.

“Yeah. I know.”

“You’re the only one who has volunteered their body for science, probably because you are no longer subject to the fear.”

The other three walked into the lounge while we were mulling things over.

We apprised them of what we had been discussing. I mentioned the problem with the fact that we needed another dead body to make more observations. “You’re not thinking of…” John asked, going white.

I smiled and shook my head. “While I have lived a relatively long time,” I said, “I have no real desire to end it now.”

He seemed relieved.

“I think we all agree that we aren’t going to make another body.” Kari seemed very adamant about it, and I couldn’t say I blamed her.

“So what do we do?” Marc asked no one in particular.

---

Later that day, we each asked for 2 volunteers from each gender to meet together. We explained that we thought the fear might be abating, but we were unsure. It took awhile to find people with enough courage, but we finally did. Except for intersex. We only had one one board. She was very lonely, afraid of everyone else on board.

It didn’t take long to find out that these people did NOT share our lack of fear now, which left us wondering if Perl’s nanites had changed with her death? It seemed that was a logical conclusion, but how could we be sure? Again, it seemed that making a new body was the only way to know for certain, but how could we do that? And what about the need to have a relationship? Also, what was keeping Brandy from having one?

It was hard to figure. Obviously, this was something that Caesar had decided on for a new twist, but why? What would happen if we had sex in this. We were soon to find out.

---

The next morning, in the command center, Marc and Kari showed up, hand in gloved hand, but obviously, it HADN’T been that way the entire night. Somewhere, they had switched places.

In retrospect, that made no sense, unless…

The short, partially Scottish lass told us they had been unable to resist the pull of their ‘urges’ and had engaged in intercourse three times last night, changing sex each time.

“Well, that answers two questions,” I commented. “We know what happens when you copulate, and we also know that you can switch back and forth.”

“It answers another question as well,” Kari told us. “Somehow, things are based on intent, at least some of the time. Nothing happened until we were…” He paused as if searching for the right words. “In the midst of things.”

“So you’re telling me that… uh…” John didn’t seem to be able to finish his sentence.

“It was a unique experience,” Marc told us.

“So are you going to….” I really didn’t want to pry, and I felt the blood rushing to my face, but for the sake of observation, I needed to know. Perhaps under the circumstances, observation wasn’t the right word.

“Do it again?” Kari asked. “I think that’s a fair bet.”

A few minutes later, Brandi entered the command center. She was somewhat excited. There had been another murder. This time, it was our intersexed woman. The man who had found her seemed to have no fear any more.

We rushed to the ‘J’ walkway where Carla’s body was. She was killed in exactly the same way Perl was. A big man was there. I recognized him as one of my movers. His name was Ralf, and as he was explaining how he had found the body, I saw that his eyes kept straying to Brandy -- even when he was answering a question from one of the rest of us. I also noticed that Brandy could not seem to take her eyes off of him.

John put what I was thinking into words. “I believe another twist has been verified.”

“What’s that?” Brandy asked in a rather dreamy voice.

“You haven’t been able to take your eyes off of Ralf since we got here. Not to mention he is looking at you in the same way.”

Both of them looked away, blushing, but it wasn’t long before they were back to gazing.

“One thing you should know,” said Marc. “We both hate the way we are right now. Another part of the twist is that once you give into the urges, it seems you have to continue as much as possible, however, when you are in the opposite body, you cannot wait until you are switched back.”

Kari continued. “The length of time between the switches seems to lengthen each time. Right now, we could go back to our room and have sex, but we wouldn’t change.”

“What if I were to touch you?” Brandy asked her.

“That’s an idea,” Kari told her. “We could try it.”

Brandy and Kari both removed their gloves, and Brandy reached out to touch Kari. While it was plain to see, Kari did not move her hand toward the other woman, it was not her that changed. Instead, Brandy changed back into her old self.

As soon as the change had completed, both Brandy and Ralf started to convulse, as if they were in pain. Quickly, I reached out to touch Brandy’s hand. Once more, she started to reform. She became a woman very quickly. Once it was done, however, she seemed extremely weak. I suppose I would be as well, had I changed twice like that. I watched as she took one last breath, and that was it. She died.

We had no time for grief, however, because there was obviously a bond between Brandy and Ralf. His convulsions started in earnest. He let out a scream, whether of grief or pain, I wasn’t sure, then he collapsed. He too was dead.

Chapter 1.11

I was devastated. It was terrible investigating a headless corpse, but to watch someone who had become a friend die right in front of you was somehow even worse.

I had to pull myself back to the murders, however. I had a theory about them, but I had no way of testing it. It seemed too convenient that the murders were happening and leading to another twist. Was this programmed into the nanites? Were they making someone do it? We had never had a murder before now. Arguments, certainly, but murder? Hardly. The four of us met in the medical clinic the next morning. People were not happy to see me or Kari, now a woman again, come into the clinic.

“We need to test everyone for lying,” I stated.

“Why lying?” Marc wondered.

“You don’t think they’re going to tell the truth about murdering someone, do you?” John agreed with me, but that wasn't a surprise.

“I suppose not.”

Something had been bothering me, but I hadn’t been able to place it. Now, I did. “Look at this cut,” I said, pointing to the obvious one on Carla’s body. “Can anyone tell me which way whatever made it went through?”

Nobody said anything. Finally, I said, “Exactly. It doesn’t look like any tool was used. Perl’s was the same way.”

“What are you saying?” Kari asked.

“We’ve been travelling in groups, or at least pairs for protection. I seriously doubt that would help. If nanites can reform the entire body, what’s to stop them from amputating any part of the body at any time?”

“That’s crazy!” exclaimed Marc.

“So was Caesar,” I returned calmly.

“Well isn’t that just lovely,” John muttered.

---

We returned to the room off the command center and John pointed something else out.

“Marc and Kari; you have found that touching each other does not change your sex. The act of sex is what does it. What if one of us touched our opposite in you?”

“We have no idea,” Kari pointed out. “I would hesitate on touching each other, though. Our physical relationship didn’t start until we accidently touched. That seemed to intensify our feelings until we couldn’t fight it anymore.”

Inside, I felt deflated. I wanted so badly to feel his arms around me, especially with all that had been happening. I also knew that I could never go back to being a man. If I did, even accidently, we would convulse until I became a woman again, or possibly, until John did. I wondered if we would hate being the opposite sex. I suspected that since we had a bond, we would. I really wasn’t looking forward to finding out.

We had no recourse but to wait.

---

It was about two weeks later that another person was killed. This time, a man. We were constantly afraid that one of us would be killed, causing our mate to be killed as well. We had seen it happen, and the convulsions appeared to be a horrible way to die.

I missed Brandy very much. She had seemed to have a head for the investigation. We had recruited another man to help us investigate, several days before, as we knew we would have another death. His name was Roman.

The problem was, Roman had been there when the man died. It turned out he had been in a homosexual relationship with Louis, the dead man. They had continued with their physical relationship, as they were not afraid of each other, and no sex change was going to happen for them. They had been living together throughout 'Total Fun'.

Roman was training as a medic, and had been second only to Brandy. Louis had worked in hydroponics.

Louis had died in the main circle on the upper side, and about twenty men had been nearby. All of them had lost their fear afterwards, and were standing not far away as we knelt by the body. The cause of death was the same. We had been starting to wonder if the deaths would happen only in seclusion. Now we knew; they would not.

I hated to ask Roman what happened, so I turned to the group. “Are any of you medics? This will be very hard on Roman, so I think we need to question somebody else.”

No one volunteered and I wasn’t surprised. I had smelled vomit when I entered the circle.

I turned to Roman, and realized some of it was on his shoes, and even more, not far from the body of his lover. I couldn’t ask him. I stood and walked over to the men. “I need to know what happened,” I said. “Who saw it happen?”

One man slowly raised his hand. “Come with me, please.”

We stepped about ten meters away, and I asked.

His color suddenly went white as he told me. “I was heading in the same direction as them, but slightly behind. They were holding hands, and stopped. They turned to each other and kissed, then his face froze. He was still smiling at Roman, but his body just gave a tremble, and his head fell onto the floor. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, and I could see him move his eyes to look at his body as it fell. His body twitched a few times, then stopped moving. It seemed like his head lived for about thirty seconds, then it stopped moving. I lost my lunch over there.” He pointed off to the side of where the body lay. “So did the Roman.” I could see tears forming in his eyes. They were forming in mine as well, and I knew I had gone white.

John had walked over before the man had started. I was glad Kari hadn’t. I was thinking about Perl dying in the ‘J’ walkway like that, all alone. Kari and Perl had been friends, so I knew she would have hated to hear it. I had thought Ralf’s death had been terrible. That last thirty seconds for Louis was worse than anything I can imagine, seeing what had happened to you and knowing what was coming. I realized that somewhere in the conversation, John had gripped my hand. I was squeezing his very hard. Suddenly, I remembered. I wasn’t wearing gloves yet! I looked down, and breathed a sigh of relief. John was.

“Do you always have guys walking around out here in the circle?” John asked.

“A lot of us are homosexual. There’s a couple of bis as well, but I don’t associate with them. They scare me. Is Roman going to be okay?”

“It will probably take awhile for him to recover from Louis’ death, but he should be,” I told him.

“I’m glad to hear it. He called for help, and I ran over. Obviously there wasn’t much I could do for Louis, but I held Roman for a little while.”

I stared at him for a moment. I had a feeling what would come. There would probably be a bond between them, but what would happen if they had sex? I guessed we’d see eventually.

---

Ten days after Louis died, a straight woman died. This was the start of a run of people dying. I can definitely say that it left us reeling. The next day, we received three different reports of people dying.

With so much happening, I began to wonder if John and I should just give in and begin a physical relationship. We arranged for a place to speak with privacy, and talked about it. I was rather surprised when he made the decision that we wouldn’t.

“I want it to be something special that we decide on our own. Not something decided for us by Caesar.”

“Do you think we will ever defeat this?” I asked him.

“I certainly hope so.”

I thought for a moment, and asked a question I really didn’t want to. “I know you felt that Brandy should go back to being Randy. What about me?”

“I’ve thought about that. You can’t go back. Not without us both dying. I would gladly trade my life for you to go back, if I could. However if I were to, you would die also. That is unacceptable to me.”

“Yes, but that isn’t logical,” I argued. “You said you want our relationship to not be forced on us by Caesar. If we ever get to that point, I will be able to go back.” He opened his mouth to speak, but I held up my hand to stop him. “I have been a woman for several months. I seriously doubt that I would ever be comfortable going back.”

“Now who’s being illogical?” He asked. “If you were to be touched by a man…” he stopped, remembering the outcome of that. “Okay, point taken,” he conceded.

We were both seated on a couch that was L shaped. We were on either side of the ninety degrees. I got up and sat down on the other side of him. We had gotten into the habit of wearing gloves around each other. I got as close to him as I could and put my head on his shoulder. I would have much rather sit on his lap and cuddle, but I was afraid that might lead to something much more. What I was doing was dangerous enough. I was very careful that my face did not touch any of his skin, but I knew an accident could happen.

“I love you,” I finally said, my voice breaking as I started to sob.

He sat there, unmoving for a long time, then finally; “I love you too.”

---

The next day, two people died. Again, we were feeling the punch from Caesar’s tricks. The only good thing was that we were getting an ever larger number of people who had no fear of any other gender. We decided to call a meeting of those people.

Marc and Kari led the meeting, while John and I sat in the front row. They spoke for quite some time, telling of their experiences. We weren’t sure what any audience participation would bring, but it was revealing. One man stood up and told us that he and his partner had a physical relationship, and during a conversation with a husband and wife, there was an accidental skin to skin touch between his partner, another man, and the wife. Nothing had happened.

With a bit of questioning, it turned out that the man and wife had a physical relationship as well.

So the benefits of a bond with physical relationship was you could no longer be transformed by any other touch except while in sex with your mate. As well, there was no fear.

The cons were that you died when your mate did, period. Or so we gathered. It was very hard to tell, because there were changes with the sex act.

Another thing that was discovered, was that the sex always came in groups of three. However each time between a group got longer. I looked at our two friends, and Kari seemed to be thinking. Finally, she said, “I had never really noticed before, but you’re right. It’s not by much, but if the trend continues eventually it will be a long time that you have to spend as your opposite sex. That will be completely miserable.”

“So,” John said, “The tradeoff for a physical relationship with your mate is that you have to spend a longer and longer time miserable afterward.”

“It seems so,” Marc agreed.

“Is there any way to avoid sex?” I asked bluntly?

“Only the way you and John are doing it,” Kari answered. “Don’t touch each other.”

“But if I accidently am touched by someone else, I will probably kill us both,” I responded.

---

A few weeks later, John and I met again where I first told him that I loved him. We were not sure what to do now. Do we give in, risking an eventual long term being miserable, or do we remain as we were, risking life and limb?

I know what I wanted to do, and I’m sure John did as well. The bond was getting deeper and deeper. So much so, that I sometimes thought I could feel his emotions when we were in our own rooms.

I was having a hard time sleeping too. He had told me of the same problems. It was such that when I fell asleep, I was jerked back awake almost immediately. I was now getting very little sleep at all, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep going like this. I don’t know how, but I knew if we had sex, I would no longer have this problem.

I told John of it, and waited. I had no idea what he would do, but I didn’t expect his response. He leaned over and kissed me.

---

I know the nanites beheading their host is strange, but then again, my muse appears to have an much odder imagination than I have.

Chapter 12

That night, we made love. As we expected, we switched sex, and during the day, we both had to endure being something we were not. Granted, I had been a male for many years -- over two hundred, but I was completely acclimated to being female now. John and I had grown up together, and he was just as comfortable being a male as I was female. I have to say, he made an attractive woman, but he was positively grim all day. We were both thrilled the next day to become ourselves again.

Three times a night was what seemed mandatory. I suppose that it was the most our bodies could endure. There was a two hour break in between each time, then after the third time we fell deep asleep. I had vivid nightmares each time, and John confided in me that he did as well.

We seemed to be in a hiatus in the murders. There had been none for quite some time, and we were hoping there would not be any more.

Marc and Kari told us one day that their time as the opposite sex had levelled off at forty-eight hours. While I found the thought of remaining male for two days horrible to contemplate, I seriously doubted that Caesar had left things there. I was certain that we were in for another twist.

“I am sorry to say it, but I’m sure that we have something new in store,” I told them.

They both nodded, solemnly. “We figured,” Marc told us. “ I’m just hoping that it’s not something we can’t handle.”

It was horrible when it arrived. They had been at forty-eight hours for about thirty days, when things changed for them. Kari told me that she had been terrified of Marc that night. She was afraid that Marc was going to force himself on her, and she couldn’t bear the thought. She complied simply to protect herself. They didn’t change until the end of the third time. For awhile that day, she had been afraid of him still, but it slowly faded, and she was happy with him again. Of course, they were the opposite sex now, and she noticed as she lost her fear of Marc, he seemed to be growing fearful of her. They were still on speaking terms, but Marc constantly seemed to be on edge.

"Wouldn't it be terrible if Caesar made everyone go through a period when they were scared?" John half joked. He stopped and thought about what he had said.

"Oh dear God, no," I said. Kari and I were the only ones who had dealt with a period before. Marc and John, even though they had spent a considerable amount of time as women now, had never experienced that particular pleasure.

---

Later that day we were in the command center when a light started blinking. It was the incoming communication light. What is going on? I wondered. I walked over and accepted the communication. It was from Earth!

It was Freeman, once again as a man!

To the people on N21. This is Freeman.

I’m not sure how long we have for this communication, so I hope you’re recording. I fully expect this to burn out our comm system.

The picture was grainy, and there was a lot of static in it, but we were receiving, and it was intelligible.

I want to tell you what we have tried to defeat the ‘Total Fun’ problems. We have still not been able to do it, but I want you to know. Maybe you’ll get some ideas from our failures.

The first thing we tried was looking for more documentation on the nanites. We could find none. Well, we found some, but it did not include any programming. The nanites are designed to be impermeable, as I’m sure you know. They are designed to withstand almost anything. We were not sure how much, but we found that the only way they die, is if the host dies. Obviously, that is not a desirable outcome.

We tried to set up an EMP, but when our scientists did, they were promptly killed by the nanites.

We tried an acid only known to affect metal, but the things are encased in an organic shell, so there was no effect. The acid could not get through.

Another attempt was to set up a local EMP, only affecting one person at a time. Again, there was no effect.

We heard a knocking on Freeman’s door, and he glanced that way, but then ignored it.

I have to hurry. We tried… He broke off when the knocking turned to pounding. We heard wood splintering. Shit! I’m sending you a file which contains everything our scientists attempted. BANG! BANG! This will be the last message from me. He reached out and touched a button. Goodbye N21! Freeman out!

He stood and turned to face the door but he left the comm going. There was an explosion of the door and whatever they used turned it into shrapnel. Several pieces directly hit Freeman. He was flung backwards by the explosion, his arms and legs stretched out in front of him. He hit the wall with incredible force, and I was afraid his back would be broken.

He slid down the wall, and then slumped over where we couldn’t see his face, but while he was sliding, we saw that he was hardly recognizable. His face had been demolished, and his chest was covered with blood. Apparently, a piece of the door had cut through an artery in his neck, and it had left a considerable spray across the room as he flew. Now, it was sprayed out and then slowed to a trickle.

There was another explosion, this one seeming to burst from inside the room, and the screen pixelated, then went dark.

None of us could believe what had just happened. Marc grabbed a hard data repository for the information to go onto, then started it saving.

It took a considerable amount of time to save, but considering how long Earth had been able to work on things, It was no wonder.

I wondered what they had tried. It was a frightening prospect that over thousands of years, they hadn’t found anything that worked.

John and I left the command center and hand in hand, we walked around the upper, then lower circles. It was heartening to see that many couples were out for a stroll as well. It was also disheartening. How many people had to deal with the disgust of being the opposite sex for however long?

We finally went to my apartment, and I rummaged around in my recipes. I finally made a facsimile of chicken with peanut sauce and asparagus tips.

When John had finished his dinner, he sat back, gratified. “I have the best meals on this station,” he said. “The senior chef of the best restaurant, cooking a meal for just us.”

“That’s not all you get,” I told him as I grabbed his hand. He let me pull him up, then we made our way to my bedroom.

Four hours later, we fell asleep, and stayed that way for several hours.

---

It had been three weeks since we received the data from Earth. I was constantly wondering what had happened on our planet. We had lost our friend and source of information, but we wondered who had killed him. We had no doubt that he was dead. We showed the recorded video to Roman, and he told us there was no way a person could survive the carotid artery being severed. Even the nanites couldn’t help there.

Marc and Kari had extended their cycle time to a week now. John and I were at the forty-eight hour point, and I found that I was fearful of him now. True to form, the ghost of Caesar had given us another twist. Every time Marc and Kari swapped, the woman had a period. Thankfully, she was not afraid of him, but the periods were exceptionally terrible. Kari told me that she had never had one even half as bad. The cramps were extraordinary, and her emotions were such that nobody wanted to cross her. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell John what we had to look forward to. It sounded bad enough to me. What would it do to him?

I saw the effect on Marc, and he told Kari and me that if this was what we had to deal with every month, he took back every joke he ever said about a woman during her time. Kari answered that this was way worse than any she had ever experienced, but she accepted the apology.

John heard and I saw him go white. He was not looking forward to this for himself.

Not much research in the Earth files got accomplished that week. Marc could not concentrate through the pain. All he wanted to do was sleep, but that was effectively stopped as well. I sat up with him for several hours each night I was a woman, and John did when he was.

We were grateful when the time came for him to change back.

---

When we reached the time that they were at, I was shocked. Nothing that Kari had said prepared me for how miserable it actually was.

What we had to look forward to was much worse, however.

Marc and Kari’s sex life had gone to one time every month, with a period for the woman lasting the entire time. For the men, it had become bad too. Marc explained it as a constant throbbing in his testicles as if he had been kicked there, and the pain simply would not diminish for the entire month. There seemed to be no way to simply block it out either. There was no getting used to it. It was constantly demanding that you felt it at its original intensity.

I had almost forgotten what being kicked there felt like. The times as a man hadn’t included that feeling. I remembered that it hurt like hell, but the feelings of being a woman had eclipsed that for me.

When John and I arrived at that point and I felt a month long, super intense period, I found myself looking forward to switching. That wasn’t such a good thing, however. When it was my turn to be male, I couldn’t do anything. I had needed support from John during my period, but now I found I couldn’t stand upright. I didn’t remember anything hurting so much from my time as a man. John told me he didn’t either. I wished that I could put my hands around Caesar’s throat and squeeze the life out of him, but I doubted I would be able to squeeze hard enough. The pain was simply too intense.

Somewhere, Marc had been able to find the time to finish going through the work that had been done on Earth. We met in the room by the command center again. It wasn’t good.

“They tried some very good ideas, and some that made almost no sense at all. I suppose when their good ideas ran out, they figured anything was worth a try.”

“Is anything worth revisiting?” John wanted to know.

“I’m not sure,” Marc answered, his feminine voice sounding thoughtful. “I've got a few ideas. There are a few of their ideas that make me think they might work, if we could find a way of pulling it off.”

“Why?” I asked. John was in severe pain, and I’m not sure he or Kari were following the conversation very well.

“The scientists who were working on an EMP were killed. They were beheaded in the same way our murdered people were.”

“How do you propose we get around that little obstacle?” I asked. My emotions were high, and I was finding it hard to control my temper.

Marc was pretty pissed about everything in general too. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “The fact that they were killed, however, leads me to believe that they may have been onto something.” He sounded very mad as he told me his opinion.

“I’m sorry, Marc. I didn’t mean to sound like that.”

“You really didn’t,” he told me. “I think we’re both on edge. Let me do some more research and I’ll let you all know what I’ve found.”

“Okay,” I told him. I turned to John. “Let’s go back to your apartment. I’ll make some dinner for us.”

“I sincerely hope I can keep it down my dear,” he said as we stood. Well, him sort of.

Chapter 1.13

---

A few weeks later, we had some strange news. Marc and Kari had become their normal sex, and everything seemed to stop for them. They had a completely normal relationship; they weren’t switching every time they were physical, and could do it anytime they wanted. The big question was, why?

John and I arrived at that point six weeks later. It was incredible to no longer have such a strange situation everytime we had sex. Marc and Kari were still in the same stage. We knew that whatever happened to them, we had six more weeks before it happened to us.

They had become John and my best friends, but I was grateful every day that their situation remained stable, knowing we had at least six weeks of as well.

We were in the command center for another discussion. I’m not sure what we expected out of them. Knowing that Earth had ended up having thousands of times our experience, and still had not succeeded in defeating ‘Total Fun’, what could we hope to accomplish?

“Why were people killed for the EMP and not other things?” John began when we sat down.

“Well, first off, there were other things that ended up getting them killed,” Marc corrected.

“What?” I asked.

“It seemed like whenever someone seemed to be elated about something, they would lose their head.”

“Uh, that leaves a very wide range of things that can cause your death,” I said. “Feeling elated? What if John and I have a very special evening?”

“We never heard anything about that in their reports,” Kari explained. She smiled at her man. “Also, I can say from personal experience that being elated doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be killed.”

I smiled at John. “Well, that’s a relief.”

“Okay, do we know the stages that are coming up for us?” John asked. He wasn’t ignoring me. He had one hand stroking my leg in response to what I had said.

Kari took over now. “We know about the first several stages, but I’ll go through the whole things now. They sent us an outline. It’s not pleasant to read. Especially what we have coming up next.” She passed out a paper to each of us, which had what we had been through and what we had coming literally for years to come.

1. The first person of a compatible gender that you come in contact with after you lose your fear obtains an emotional bond with you.

   1. You are under a compulsion to make love to this person constantly.

   2. Once you touch the person, the compulsion becomes irresistible.

   3. If one of you changed without the other one, convulsions occur in both.

   4. If one of you dies, the other does as well.

2. Changes occuring daily after three times of sex.

   1. Remaining the opposite sex gets increasingly longer.

   2. Being the opposite sex is abhorrent to the victim.

   3. Takes about three weeks, getting to forty eight hours.

      1. Forty eight hours lasts for thirty days

      2. Goes to a week.

3. The week adds a terrible period for the woman.

   1. Sex life descends to once a month.

   2. Adds in pain for the man that cannot diminish.

4. Go back to normal for twelve months.

5. Both bondmates spend one month of being opposite sex

   1. Wake up and eat.

   2. After sex, they arrange seating where they can see each other.

   3. Sit unmoving at all all day, until they get up sixteen hours later, use the facilities, and sleep for eight hours.

   4. Any deviation from this routine results in death.

   5. Victims are aware of everything happening around them.

   6. Any intellectual stimulation results in death.

   7. Lasts for twenty four months.

6. The periods and pain come back, both lasting for two months.

   1. One time sex every two months.

   2. This takes eighteen months.

7. Periods and pain last three months.

   1. Everyone must watch who they touch again.

      1. Bondmate will convulse if one switches.

      2. Bondmate will die if one dies.

   2. Bondmates have intense hatred for each other.

   3. Do not want to have sex but at three months, they must or will die.

   4. Lasts thirty six months

8. Same as five, but lasts sixty months with period and pain.

9. Woman gets pregnant.

   1. Is unable to move from her bed for entire time, except as in five and eight.

   2. Man as in five and eight.

   3. Cycles three times for each.

10. Same as five and eight.

    1. Bondmates have extreme hatred for each other.

    2. Lasts seventy two months.

11. Same as nine.

    1. Bondmates have extreme hatred for each other.

    2. Cycles five times for each.

“Wait a minute,” I exclaimed. “This is crazy!”

“So was Caesar,” John said gently, as he put his arm around my shoulders.

“I can’t even comprehend having extreme hatred for you,” I was sobbing now.

“I can’t either. Hopefully it won’t reach that point,” John’s voice was loving as he held me.

I was near panicking. “What causes death with the EMP?”

“Honey, we’re going to find out,” John said. He moved his chair to right beside mine, and gently pulled my head onto his shoulder. I was normally pretty strong, but what was coming terrified me. Marc and Kari only had about nine months until they entered the fifth stage. John and I had only ten and a half months.

The meeting broke up, and John and I returned to my rooms. We had taken residence there so that I could run my restaurant. I had no wish to cook at that moment. What I wanted to do, more than anything was to make music.

---

I sat down at my piano and started playing. I was so scared that what I played was mournful. When I stopped for a moment, John commented, “I’ve never heard that before.”

“I haven’t either,” I responded. “I was just playing.”

“It was beautiful,” he told me.

“Thank you.”

I started playing again, trying to make it more upbeat, but I couldn’t. I started thinking about John, and how he had supported me throughout this terrible time we had been through, and how he was now. I realized that the music I was playing mirrored my feelings. It was very romantic.

When I was done with it, John came over and slid me over on the piano bench and sat down beside me. He started reached for my shoulders and started rubbing them. It felt wonderful. There was so much tension in them, I was shocked that I had been able to play anything.

I leaned my head against him again, and when he started to work lower and lower down my back, I felt like purring.

Eventually, he whispered in my ear, “I can’t do anymore here.”

I nodded to him, and he stood up, took my hand, and pulled me up. We went into the bedroom and, well; I’ll let you imagine from there.

---

The next morning, we went to the command center. I was glad I was feeling the way I was because of John’s and my relationship.

When we sat down, Marc surprised us. “I think I have an idea.”

“Okay?”

“When the scientists on Earth tried an EMP, the people that tried to do it were in a normal point. Stage twelve is normality, exactly like what we’re in now. I think we need to have people who are afraid of each other working in tandem. Anything that keeps them from feeling that elation.”

“That’s a great idea, but who do we have feeling that?”

“We have several people who are in stage three.”

Kari and I shook our heads. “We weren’t afraid of each other then. You can continue to feel elation, knowing that pain will end, and that your period will end. I don’t think that will work.”

I nodded my head in agreement. “If anyone volunteers, we can try it, but I’m afraid stage seven may be our only hope.” I sighed deeply. “I hate to think we will have to go through stage five. That scares me the most. Two years of nothing. Staring at John is okay, but not being able to talk or really think sounds like a living death.”

“Stage eight would be worse,” Kari said, “and ten and eleven are even worse. Getting pregnant and hating Marc, while he’s staring at me, hating me.”

I could feel tears as I thought of that. “What would we do with all those babies?”

“I don’t know,” John answered.

---

Marc took a big chance. He designed the system to set off the EMP, but I think he was so scared of what might happen, and he had no idea if it would work.

We then had some people build the system before they entered stage four. The were able to do the work, surprisingly. We all crowded into the original bay we had been locked into. A cage had been set up to keep the EMP from affecting the stations computers. The system fired.

We went back into the rest of the station, and Roman checked the blood of several of us. He was concerned.

“It sort of worked, but didn’t.

“What do you mean?” Marc asked him.

“Remember that the nanites are partially organic. Well, I wasn’t sure what the mechanical part did. I’ve observed them now, and I think what it does is simply give them power. It’s like a little battery. It seems to store power. They can still operate, but there is nothing to store the power now. I doubt they could be even slightly airborne now. However, they still function.

“So where do they get their power?” I asked.

“Brownian motion.”

“Huh?”

“Brownian motion was discovered by Robert Brown in the ancient date of 1827.”

I held up a hand to John. “John. I love you. Please spare me the history lesson and just tell me what Brownian motion does.”

“It is the motion of microscopic matter in a fluid as it is hit by different particles of the fluid. If the fluid is viscous…”

“Oh yeah!” I said. “They mentioned it in an ancient science fiction book. Uh, what was the name of that… Oh yeah. Fantastic Voyage! They made a submarine microscopic as well as the crew, and injected ...”

This time, it was John’s turn. “I love you,” he said as he raised his hand. “I’ve read the book too.”

“Touche,” I said, smiling at him, in spite of the failure of the EMP.

“Wait a minute,” Kari said. “I thought they got their power from body heat.”

“That, I’m afraid, was a misconception.”

“How?” Marc asked.

“Think about it. Brownian motion needs fluid to work. When you take blood out of a person, that blood cools, so the brownian motion slows. This is just enough to where there is not enough power to recharge the batteries in a nanite. In a body, the nanites don’t stop as fast, as it takes time for a body to cool, but we’ve always looked at the nanites in the absence of body heat. We thought they needed the heat to work. In a way, they do, but that’s only because of the viscosity of the blood.”

I was starting to get it. “What if we cooled a body?”

“Even freezing a body would probably not work. As soon as we revived the person, the motion would start again. Just as we started working again, so would they.”

“Well, it was a thought,” I said.

Chapter 1.14

“Do they have a hive mind?”

I had never considered such a thing, but John had a good question.

“They don’t as far as I can tell, but I’m not really sure what I’m looking for,” Roman told us. “There are certainly some that are sacrificed when they are working.”

“Maybe they consider that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” I quipped, quoting from another of my favorite ancient movies.

“Perhaps the individuals just feel that resistance is futile.” I should have known that John would get the joke and build on it. With very little else to do recently, we had been watching as many of the old films as we could get our hands on. He raised his eyebrow at me, and I started to laugh, the others looking at me like I was mad. It occured to me that I may very well be. Living in this crazy world created by Caesar was enough to drive anyone mad.

“I would think they have to have something like a hive mind,” Kari said. She glanced at Marc. “Look at the complexity of your body. Every time we make love, the nanites rebuild you into the opposite sex. How?”

“Genetically…” Marc began.

“Not enough. Let’s say they receive a signal that it’s time, what do they do? Change what needs to be changed wherever they are? How do they know where they are?”

“They hold a piece of your DNA inside them. It’s like a blueprint, I guess,” Roman offered.

“Is there a little arrow that says ‘you are here’ on that DNA blueprint? How does a nanite know where the hell it is inside you? DNA isn’t enough. Every cell has DNA in it.”

“You’ve made your point, Kari,” John told her. “There’s got to be something controlling them. The question is, what?”

“If these things are organic,” I asked, “why don’t antibodies or white blood cells take them out?”

“As far as I can tell, they seem to be tuned to your body,” Roman explained. “When a child is injected with the first set of nanites, there is a period of NNS, or ‘neo-nanite symptoms.’ This is the stage where the body tries to get rid of the ‘invading’ nanites.” We had all heard of, and seen a baby with NNS. It was something that all babies got, but we had no idea it had anything to do with nanites. “I said that the nanites were tuned to your body. Actually, your body is tuned to them. Something -- I don’t know what -- is done that makes your body refuse to reject them. They become part of your body’s local inhabitants. As far as your body is concerned, the nanites are native.”

“So they can do anything they want, and nothing will argue with them,” Marc sounded disgusted.

“Pretty much,” Roman said, nodding.

“So how do they communicate?” I asked. “Obviously, they have a way. They’ve got to know where they are, what needs done there. Probably the wanted outcome.”

“They don’t necessarily need to know the desired outcome,” Kari argued. “If they know what needs to be done at their location….”

I cut her off. “No. That doesn’t work.” Everyone was looking at me, obviously, wondering what I meant. “If I hear a piece of music, and want to write it out, I can know everything about music, what each instrument sound like, their range. Hell, I can know what a V64 is, or a Perfect 5th -- Even an N6. That’s not going to help me write the music if I don’t know what it is supposed to sound like.”

“There have been robots that simply make the same moves with pieces of metal for millennia,” John began.

“John,” I patiently explained, “Music is fluid. So is the human body. It is the imperfections in how a human played instrument sounds that makes it beautiful. So it is with the human body. It’s the imperfections that make us unique.”

I could see that he was thinking of protesting, so I persisted. “You’ve known me for almost two hundred years. Even after the changes that have happened in me, am I a different person?”

“Aside from the obvious?”

I gave him a dirty look. “Yes, Dear. Aside from the obvious.”

Marc nudged John. “Couch tonight,” he stage whispered.

I turned a glare on Marc, and he wisely shut up.

Perhaps to keep the creature comforts in the upcoming sleep period, John said, “Well aside from your vastly improved appearance… among other things… your personality is essentially unchanged.”

“Essentially?”

“From what I can tell, it’s not exceptionally different. There are some changes, yes, but I think those can be explained by a different cocktail of hormones in your body.”

I put away the evil glare I had been giving him, and grudgingly responded, “Okay. That makes sense.”

“I think I know what you’re saying, however. A human body can change over time. It grows, things wear out. For the nanites to do the job that they do, they have to know what the finished product is going to be.”

“But how can it know?” Kari seemed frustrated now.

“Read the DNA.” Marc said.

We all thought about that for some time. Finally, “So do we change?” I asked no one in particular.

“What do you mean?” Roman wondered.

“Obviously not the way I have, but I am wondering about that too. Marc suggested that the nanites may know what the finished product is by reading our DNA. Personally, I think that’s a fair assessment. Perhaps they don’t know what we look like in the physical sense, but they know how the inside is supposed to be built.”

“Go on,” John said, intrigued.

“If they read the blueprints and build from that…”

“You said they couldn’t build a human that way,” Kari was confused.

“I don’t think you could, normally. But what if we are an exactly what our DNA says we should be?”

“It could be,” John said thoughtfully. “Remember that movie we watched where the guy cut off his son’s hand with that weird glowing sword thing? His son had a mechanical hand after that. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“I’ve read medical texts,” Roman said, “Where people would have to get an artificial limb made. Legs and arms didn’t grow back. Nothing did except hair and nails.”

Marc looked skeptical. “Do you think that is because they didn’t have nanites?”

Roman was beginning to realize some things. “Think about it, Sir. In our example here,” he indicated me, “they have a set of blueprints. They change one thing. They change that Y chromosome to a second X. That changes everything. Now, they look at things and realize it all has to be remade. It’s not like the blueprints say it should be. She’s the same person, but structurally, she’s not. she has to be remade as a woman.”

“Granted, that makes sense, but what about anger and aggression?”

“Well thankfully, no one’s been aggressive, but we know where the brain needs stimulated to make anger. We also know what genes to change to make a person more susceptible to anger and rage.” Roman glanced at the rest of us. “I know there’s more we’re not explaining with all of this, but I think we’re beginning to see how some of these things work.”

“Please, Roman,” I implored. “We need to know the rest, and you’re the only one who can figure it out.”

---

A few weeks later, Roman called everyone together and told them what he’d learned.

“Apparently Caesar was very sure of himself. I have not appeared to have a problem with looking at anything. The nanites are leaving me alone. I think the only real problem is if you start to feel elated, it assumes that you’re getting close, or you think you are.”

“So it reads our minds?” Kari asked.

“I doubt it,” Roman said. I think it just knows when you’re feeling happy about something. Perhaps it can generally read emotions, but not exactly what you’re thinking.”

“If you’re not having any problems, why were our doctors spaced?” aked Marc.

“Honestly, I think he was playing with us even then. There doesn’t seem to be any other reason for it. I’ve passed my medical exams with flying colors now, and I’m still fine.”

John nodded. “That could well be, Roman, but we need to be certain that anything you do is safe.”

“Yes. We don’t want to lose you,” I agreed.

---

Marc and Kari still had six months before they entered stage five. It was late at night, and the four of us were off shift for awhile.

I went to see Kari, hoping that I could cheer her up. She had been really depressed for awhile, and I wasn’t sure what was causing it.

We had taken the time to beautify some of the bays of the station, and had even turned one into what seemed to be an outside park. Some of our artists had done a wonderful job working in holograms, making the ceiling look like a beautiful sky. Much of the flaura here was growing in a hydroponic culture, but it had been carefully arranged to not appear to be. The walls were hidden by both flora and holograms. Obviously, the holograms were just tricks of the light, but as long as you didn’t try to touch them, you didn’t notice.

Kari and I met and sat down on a bench. It was overlooking a fountain in the center of the park. We didn’t have the water to spare on a fountain, but the was real. There were speakers in the middle which provided the sound of water, so it was quite pleasant.

“So what’s going on, Kari?” I asked her.

“What do you mean?” she countered.

“Oh come on. You’ve seemed really down lately. Can’t you tell me?”

She sat, unmoving for awhile. “I wish that was real,” she finally said.

I looked at her closely. “I don’t think that’s what’s bothering you,” I told her.

She sighed, then without moving her eyes from the fountain, told me, “We only have six months.”

Very quietly, I said, “I know.”

“I’m scared,” she told me. “I love Marc, but to just sit, day after day, month after month, watching him, unable to do anything else. It just seems to be too much.”

I didn’t say anything this time. I nodded, but she didn’t move her eyes.

“We’re supposed to be aware of everything around us, but too much mental stimulation results in death. How much is too much?”

“Marc didn’t say there seemed to be a limit to ambient stimulation.”

“I know!”

I stared at her for a bit. “What are you not telling me, Kari?”

“I spoke to Glenda earlier.” Glenda was a man who had been turned into a woman from the outset. “She tried to kill herself. She couldn’t. She and Bil have become bondmates. They decided it wasn’t worth the pain. They decided to commit suicide at the same time. She says when she tried, she couldn’t move her hand to do anything. Neither could Bil!”

She started to cry now. I pulled her into an embrace. “Marc and I had decided if the six months were gone, before we ended up in stage five, we’d rather die, but we’re stuck. We can’t even end everything.”

“Are you sure they just couldn’t bring themselves to do it?” I asked.

“They really wanted to! She could move her other hand, but when she tried to bring a knife to her neck, it stopped.”

I felt like I had been deflated, and I knew I’d have to tell John tonight. We had thought the same thing.

---

Author’s note: It’s interesting. I received a comment on this, and I had already decided to address the possibility of suicide.

Chapter 1.15

John and I talked to Marc regarding the idea of suicide. Of course, Marc knew before we did, but it was another piece of grim news to discuss with the rest of the station.

We had discovered another fact about Caesar’s ‘Total Fun’, probably related to our limited population. If someone didn’t get a bondmate within a certain time period, they died. This left us with everyone who was still alive in stage two or higher.

I began to wonder what would happen with a homosexual couple in nine and eleven. I spoke to Kari about it, and she explained what they had found while going through the data from Earth. Apparently, the one doing the penetrating was considered the man, and the one being penetrated was considered the woman. As soon as that was determined by the nanites, the necessary transformation would proceed, then the pregnancy would continue as in any heterosexual couple.

Later that night, I took a blanket with me, and went to the park. I got off the main path, and spread my blanket out on some grass, hidden from view of passersby. I sat down and idly began pulling pieces of grass and tossing them away. This was strictly against the rules, nor was it as fulfilling as it had been when I was a child. The patch of grass was actually an old idea for allowing cars to drive across grass without destroying things from ancient times. There were steel grates, supported from below, with grass growing from hydroponic pots below, hence my blanket. It looked real because of holographic projections, even down to bugs in the dirt, but when you touched it, you felt the steel grating.

I considered all that we had learned about Caesar. His psychopathic play certainly dug new pits for hell. He made one of the most beautiful things for us and made it horrendous. While we would normally enjoy it, that was blackened by what we knew was going to happen. I knew I entered into bliss whenever John and I had sex, but what would happen if we ever defeated the nanites? Would I ever be able to have a physical relationship with him again? I remember reading about PTSD in ancient books, then thought about what had happened when I saw the woman bifurcated by a bay door. Later that night, visions of that dead body would not leave me alone. I tried to sleep, and couldn’t. Visions of my friends bodies that were frozen on the ground came back too.

I started crying as I thought of all of them, and what was going to happen when and if we stopped the ‘Total Fun’. Right now, sex was wonderful and beautiful between us, but I didn’t know if I would be able to have a relationship with any man afterwards. Or woman, for that matter.

I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and found that I needed to blow my nose. I didn’t have anything, so I stood to head to a restroom. Standing by a tree, watching me was John.

I wasn’t sure what would happen later, but right now, our relationship was beautiful. I fell into his arms, and wept. He didn’t ask me why I was crying. He just held me.

---

I awoke the next morning, wondering once more what would happen. The last night had been wonderful, as it always was, but I began to wonder if John was really as skillful as he seemed to be. Was my view skewed because I had never had sex with any other man? Was it because my hormones were sky high because of the nanites? How did he think I was? It seemed that he loved what I did, but was that a result of the nanites? I began to worry, not that we would have PTSD if we ever removed the nanites, but that I might not be able to please him, because alone, I wasn’t enough.

My thoughts drifted a bit. Did others feel this way? Was John as unsure of what might happen as I was? Did he feel he’d be enough for me? I was certain he couldn’t fail there, but was that just my nanites thinking for me?

Was this a horrible aspect of stage four that Earth didn’t recognize? Was this worry part of Caesar’s plan? I couldn’t see how, as there were no visible aspects that Caesar could view. Well, there was, but who wants to see a woman crying constantly? Okay, Caesar did. The first question there was why, but as in all things with Willem Wallace, nothing was explainable.

I rolled over and found that John wasn’t beside me. Immediately, I began wondering if he had given up on me; this poor, pathetic woman who would never be able to satisfy him without the help of Caesar.

I was preparing to descend into more despair, when I heard a sound from outside the bedroom. I got up, grabbed a robe, and looked out.

John was busy in the kitchen alcove. I smelled something wonderful coming from the pans he was busy with. “What is that?” I asked.

He turned and smiled at me. “Something I rarely do anymore, my dear. Breakfast. I know I’ve been shirking my responsibilities lately, and letting you do all the cooking. While it’s understandable why, considering the delicious foods you make, I don’t want you thinking I take advantage of you.”

For some reason, tears started again. This time, there was a lot of relief. He really did love me. He loved me! He hugged me again, apparently recognizing that I was in a turmoil of emotions. After a bit, he gently asked, “What’s the date?”

It took me a minute to realize what he was asking, and I hurried into the bedroom. Picking up what we had jokingly dubbed, my tricorder, I checked my calendar. Oh thank God! This wasn’t Caesar’s doing!

---

It was getting close to the time we were all dreading. Soon, Marc and Kari would enter stage five, and a month and a half later, John and I would.

I tried not to think about it. Everytime I did, I could feel my heart racing. It wasn’t pleasant to think about.

We were trying to set up things where when we arrived at stage twelve, which mirrored stage four, we would be able to work once again on an escape.

We had several researchers working with us while we searched for ways out of Caesar’s control, but in seven weeks, John and I would be ‘away’ for a long time. Marc and Kari had only one six days.

Before they entered stage five, John and I had them over for a meal that we both worked on. We wanted them to know how much they meant to us. We knew that even though we had six more weeks after they… well you know... they would be uncommunicative. Yes, we could see them, but we didn’t want to overstimulate them. We weren’t willing to risk their deaths.

It was a lighthearted meal, or we tried to keep it that way. There was an underlying tension that we couldn’t seem to break. Finally, after a very quiet dessert, I couldn’t take it anymore.

“I’m so sorry,” I told them. “I shouldn’t have planned this.”

“We both did,” John stated. “We wanted you to know that you are our best friends, and we are going to miss you.”

“We know,” Marc assured us.

“Just come in each day until you enter five yourselves,” said Kari. “Let us know how much we are loved and missed. We’ll need that.”

“No!” I exclaimed. I told her how we were afraid to overstimulate them.

“You know what?” Marc said. “I’d rather die than be left alone for two years. If we died from you seeing us, at least we’d know that we were cared about.”

I wasn’t sure whether I could agree with this or not. I looked at John and he seemed to be as indecisive as I was. “Are you sure?” I asked.

Kari grabbed my hands with hers. “We talked about this, and were going to ask you just before, but now seems as good a time as any.”

“Besides,” Marc said with a dry chuckle,” Caesar won’t let us commit suicide, so why would he allow us to ask you if we’d die from that overstimulation?”

John joined Marc in the laugh, but I couldn’t. I looked back at Kari, who still had my hands in hers -- her grip seemed as if she never intended to let go -- and she was smiling at me. All I could get out was a broken okay, then I tried to smile. I wasn’t very successful.

---

For the time between now and at least stage six, the research was now laid out. We worked tirelessly with Marc and Kari until the end of the last day. We knew that in the morning they would not appear at the lab. Kari had become my best friend, and I almost felt like she was dying the next day. I had told her that I would appear twice each day. I was planning on stopping by in the morning, as was John, and also in the afternoon, after we were done at the lab. John and I would fill them in on what happened at the lab.

This was part of how we were planning on keeping them abreast of what was happening as far as the ‘escape research’ as we now called it.

This twice daily visitation was risky. It might very well be overstimulation, and I hated to think of what I would feel if they died in my presence. I doubted I could take that. However, the command staff, meaning the four of us and Roman and his partner, Jerold, had decided that we needed to have this kind of updating. Unless, of course, we lost Marc and Kari because of it. It might allow them to think about possible solutions while they sat and did nothing else.

We walked aimlessly through the station, none of us wanting to call an end to our time together.

So much had happened over the time since ‘Total Fun’ started. We looked at the welded shut doors behind which was the stairs that would take someone to the absolutely destroyed motors to open the overhead doors. We even had a laugh over the distance that we had kept between us as we inspected everything. Now, I was gripping John’s upper arm with both hands, like my life depended on it. Kari and Marc were holding each others hands tightly. We had come a long way since that fear to be anywhere near each other.

Our meandering finally took us to Marc’s apartement, where he and Kari would spend the next two years. I wanted to make another circle, but I saw that Kari’s eyes seemed to be getting heavy. So did Marc’s. I suppose that was part of the next stage coming on. I doubted I could ever get tired knowing what was coming.

They walked into the apartment, and as the door shut, I saw them embrace like two lovesick teenagers after a particularly hot date.

Apparently I wasn’t planning on moving, but John took my arm and steered me away, back to our own apartment. We sat in the main room for some time, with the lights off, gazing down at the nighttime sleep below. Most people knew what was happening tomorrow, so very little was going on in the street.

I imagined that our friends were having desperate…. I tried to force that from my mind. I didn’t want to cry. It dawned on me how emotional I was being about this. I know John could tell what I was thinking, just by looking at my face, while it was like he was carved out of granite. Nothing showed on his face. Well, that’s not quite true. I knew him well enough to realize that he was showing a great deal of emotion in that apparent absence of it. I could also see in the flickering lights, a bit more moisture than his eyes usually had.

Morning seemed so far away, and I wasn’t sure what it would hold. Okay, I knew, but how would we all deal with Marc and Kari not being there for two years? I just couldn’t seem to make heads or tails of it.

As I continued looking out at the night, I whispered to my best friend, Kari, "Just remember that Rose loves you." Then I started to cry again.

---

End of Part 1

Chapter 2.1

I had sat in the same chair for an untold number of days. I sat facing John, and it was as if my muscles were disconnected throughout the day. I could breath and blink, but that was it. Every joint was locked. When it was time to use the facilities, I seemed to have no control of anything. I would stand up, go into the bathroom and do whatever needed to be done, then go to bed. I would fall asleep immediately, and get up seven hours later, have a meal, have sex with John, then we would sit.

Over and over, day after day. The only break we would get was switching sex, every few weeks. I had no idea how much time I spent as each sex. I couldn’t count. My brain was apparently locked from anything but staring at John. I could see everything around me, but I really couldn’t process anything, except John sitting, facing me.

I longed to put my arms around him, but even when we had sex, there was nothing in it. Just the action, then sitting. I felt empty, emotionally.

Then, one day, after an interminable amount of time, I was able to do something else. I could now remember all that had happened to me, and it was as if I had just come off a time of unbroken sensory deprivation.

---

Now, we were we were going through times of pain and period. We were able to move around and to think, but the pain was much worse. It was almost completely debilitating. The first two month time I was female and John was a male, and I don’t think I really had any idea of what he was going through as the cramps hit with such ferocity that I felt like I was going to pass out each time. I think if I hadn’t had the nanites keeping me awake and feeling things, I would have. I can’t imagine someone being able to stand that.

When we made love, I felt I was being stretched far enough to have a baby, the moment he penetrated. It was agony! I loved the man beyond reason, but I desperately wanted him to pull out. We both climaxed at the same time, and that was the moment we switched.

I felt like my penis was on fire. I wanted to pull out, but could not. I had climaxed as a woman, and now I had to as a man, before we completed. Again, I loved John as a woman beyond reason, and knew she was in agony, but couldn’t stop. The drive of my libido was controlling me, making me continue until I was emptied.

We got very little done during this time. We visited Marc and Kari twice, but couldn’t get out of our apartment except to get some food, although much of that was lost due to the pain. Neither of us could hold anything down.

At the end of eighteen months, the pain intensified again. As I had thought there was no way to stay awake before, I now thought there was no way I could possibly survive. But we did.

Thankfully, we hardly left the apartment, so we didn’t have to worry about switching if we touched anyone else.

The problem was, I hated John. I couldn’t even stand the sight of him. I couldn’t stand the thought of making his meals, and I certainly didn’t want to sleep with him. Although touching him wouldn’t hurt me, I wanted to throw up at the mere thought of it, and I knew he felt the same. Sharing the same bathroom grossed me out too. I mean, there were times his butt had touched the same toilet mine had to! How disgusting was that! And then, at three months, I could barely stand it, but there was an urge to have sex.

That’s all it was, however. Having sex. There were no sweet nothings whispered, no enjoyment of the act.

It was pure sex. I felt degraded and used, because he had to have me, the same as I had to have him, or we would die. We knew that beyond the shadow of a doubt, so I gritted my teeth and did the act.

Most of the time, I thought of Marc, Carter; even Roman! I fantasized about having them all. I thought maybe I would be good enough in bed without John anywhere around, that I could turn Roman straight.

I knew, however, that Marc was my best friend’s man, and I couldn’t hurt her. I sure wanted him rather than John, though!

Day after day, week after week, month after month.

---

And then something completely unexpected happened. I woke up one morning, and I knew it was the day for us to have sex and I wasn’t having a period. I couldn’t bear the thought of sex, however. I started to go through my thoughts. I was afraid of John. I didn’t hate him. In fact, I knew that I loved him beyond reason, but I was afraid of him. I thought about Marc, and I was afraid of him. I wasn’t as afraid of Roman, but I couldn’t begin to fantasize about him. Not with John around.

I got up and walked into the main part of the apartment, where John was sitting on the sofa. “Don’t come any closer, Rose” he told me.

“I don’t think I can.”

He nodded. “We got a call from one of the researchers. I don’t know how, but he was working.”

“What?!!?”

“Yeah. He made had made some kind of airborne virus and found out that it… God knows how… reset the nanites. He sent it into the air circulation system, and everyone on board the station is now starting stage one. The only problem is, I can’t get ahold of him now.”

He tossed me a pair of latex gloves like we had always used, called Marc and we headed toward the lab, keeping a respectable distance between ourselves.

When we arrived at the lab, a gruesome sight awaited. For years, the station had avoided a beheading, but now, the researcher had been killed just as Perl was.

Tentatively, I pulled off a glove and very gently, touched John’s face. Sure enough, nothing happened. I grabbed him, and hugged him as tight as I could. “I’m so sorry!” I cried.

“Why?”

“All the hate. The things I said!”

“It’s not your fault, Rose,” he told me.

“I said them with the intent to hurt you even more than you already were. I knew that the emotional hurt would make you ten times more miserable than you were with the physical.”

“I did the same thing to you, but it wasn’t either of our faults. We were being controlled by the nanites. All I can figure is that the areas of our brain that linked us was somehow inverted. No one is sure how the nanites did it, but that was what happened.”

Marc and Kari entered the lab about that time. One look at John and I, and they removed their gloves. The looked at each other, and John took Kari’s hand.

I looked at them and all of the sudden I thought of something. “Oh no. John!” I exclaimed as I backed out of his embrace.

He cocked his head at me, as if asking for an explanation. “I just realized what I did! By touching you, I restarted the bonding.”

“Your point?”

“We had no time to explore how we felt about each other without the bond.”

He took my hands and asked, “How did you feel about me when you came out of the bedroom this morning?”

“I loved you more than I can ever explain.”

“Rose, I felt exactly the same about you.”

I thought about it, then told him, “We’ve been friends for so long. I never wanted our friendship to die, and then when I became a woman, you went out of your way to help me, even when you were afraid of every woman on the station.”

“Do you know why?” I shook my head as I observed Marc and Kari backing out of the lab. I guess they wanted to give us some time to ourselves.”

“As you said, we have been friends since we were kids. Remember how your mom said if one of us was a woman, we would get married?” I nodded, blushing. “I didn’t want our friendship to die either. I tried to keep it a friendship. I helped you because I didn’t want it to end by us being afraid of each other.”

“John, that doesn’t sound like a ‘bromance’ thing,” I said laughing.

“No, it doesn’t. Now that one of us was a woman, I found that what your mom said was true. We had so much in common that I couldn’t let you go. I was scared shitless of you, but I was determined that if we could beat this stuff, and you were still a woman, I was going to make sure we were together always. I wanted to marry you.”

“Wanted?” I asked.

“Okay, I want to marry you.”

“And that was all before we were bondmates?”

He pulled me close. “You damn well better believe it.”

Suddenly, Marc entered the lab. “I’ve got an idea. Hopefully, we’re not too late.”

“What,” I asked, suddenly excited.

Marc didn’t answer at first, but went to the researcher’s body. “I’m really sorry,” he said to the head, and then took a scalpel and cut a rather large section out of the man’s leg. It dripped blood as he put it on a tray. “The airborne virus gave me the idea.

He hurried to the same input the researcher had used to the air ducts, and we followed. “I found during my last pain cycle in stage five, that the nanites have an organic ‘battery’ as well. It uses the same type of energy as a sperm. The difference is, rather than spin a tail, it keeps them ‘alive’ for an extended amount of time, but it only seems to happen if the person has died in this way.”

He opened the grate and slipped the gory nanite supply inside the duct.

“So you’re going to try to cause stage two.”

“I know that is hurrying along stage three, but we’ve got to get rid of the fear.”

“We’ll have a year of normal time after stage three,” Kari pointed out.

“We need to try to stagger entering stage three so we always have someone awake to research,” I said.

“Agreed,” John said. He looked at me. “Think we can hold out a year?”

I gazed at him for a few moments. “No,” I said honestly. “I doubt I can wait a day.”

“I don’t think we should anyway,” Marc told us. “If one of us changes, we’re going to die. You know that.”

“It’s a chance we have to take,” John argued.

“It’s a chance we can’t take,” Kari said. “We’re the commanders of the station. We’re all needed.”

“I seem to remember you wishing you could commit suicide,” I told her.

“Yes, but I had time to think in the last few years. I realized that we couldn’t do that. It would be against the best interest of the population. Even if I’m not needed, Marc is.”

“John and I aren’t,” I argued, then I looked at John. “I’m sorry, Dear.”

“You’re right,” he said, smiling.

“No she isn’t. You three are needed as well. People look up to you and derive strength from your determination. I’m a glorified mechanic, but you three and Roman are all leaders. Don’t sell yourselves short.”

We were standing in the upstairs circle, and as we talked, I noticed that several people were making their way out of their homes, many holding hands.

“Looks like it’s working,” I told Marc.

John slapped Marc on the back. “Good job, my friend,” he told him.

“I’m glad. We really didn’t need the fear again.”

Authors note:
This chapter is quite short, but it had to be.

Chapter 2.2

We had one glaring problem, that those of us in a leadership position hated. When the researcher died, his bond mate had no one to bond with anymore, and he was the second death this time around.

It was wonderful to make love that was not marred by hate or pain again. Granted, we hated changing during the third act, but the first two were incredible. Even when I was a male, it was wonderful. Not quite as good as when I was myself, but still…

---

It was three weeks later that it was discovered what the researcher had done to reset the nanites. There was a compound that was, in fact, airborne. It wasn’t understood what was being done to them but it worked. We had staggered our entering stage two as long as possible. John and I had entered stage four when we were ready to start again.

Since we were dealing with people’s possible deaths, we put it to an anonymous vote whether or not we were going to reset every time we reached stage five.

Not surprisingly, no one wanted to go through the pain and periods of stage five and six ever again, so we determined that we would each be with their bond mate when we reset. Unfortunately, we knew that for someone to turn off the fear, we would have to lose someone. We hoped that we could overcome the fear of being with our bond mate before we dealt with the death nanites.

We had many thousand people on board the station, so losing one couple was tolerable, but we were each fearful that the next couple would be ours. I took solace every time we reset when it was neither John or I who died, nor Marc and Kari. After the twenty-seventh reset, Roman’s partner was the one who died. We didn’t know how to respond. He had become a good friend, and we knew he would die before stage three was done for all of us. He would never see stage four and normality again.

I wept when I got to my apartment that night. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing a friend, but the worst was to come.

Roman died approximately three weeks later. It was horrible. I was working with him as he was researching. He asked me to get him some more microscope slides. I went to a cupboard across the room. “Is this the right drawer,” I asked. There was no response. I turned to ask him again, and was horrified to see his body slump forward, and his head roll across the bench he was working at.

I screamed.

---

It was so hard to deal with. I had seen Perl’s body years ago, but I had never seen it happen.

I never thought again that losing one couple each year was acceptable. I couldn’t. Not when I had lost a friend to the situation.

No matter what I thought of it personally, however, we had to go on. I don’t know how long I mourned Roman, but when we reset again, I held onto my John almost constantly until we heard that the first death had happened. It was so hard. We couldn’t kiss, nor make love. We had to wear gloves until the death nanites were distributed. I was scared to death, but I still loved him. It was the most draining thing I have ever done, like letting spiders crawl over me. I had arachnophobia even when I was a man, but I had lived with it. What helped me with the fear was the fact that I knew someone was going to die soon, and if it was my John, I would never forgive myself for not being there when he died.

Another twenty five years went by, always safe for us and Marc and Kari. Until one day, we were working together in the command center. All of us were wearing gloves and I turned to ask Kari a question. She began to answer me, then the strangest look appeared on her face. She had stood up and was walking toward me when it happened. Her body was apparently following the last command that her brain gave it, or maybe it was her spinal cord making her walk from reflex. What happened will stay with me for the rest of my life. She tripped and started to fall toward me. He head slipped off of her shoulders and landed in my lap while her body sprawled on the floor in front of me.

“KARI!!!” I screamed. I’m not sure if I got her whole name out because somewhere in that yell, my voice broke. I sat there for several minutes, unable to move. John and Marc couldn’t either. They had both turned to face me, or rather, us.

I stared at the head of my best friend. I don’t know how long it was, but I heard a man crying. I looked toward the body, and there was Marc. He had somehow collapsed on the floor, and his head was on her back. I had not started crying yet, but that scene broke me. Those two had loved each other so much. I felt a weight move from my lap, and saw that my husband had moved Kari’s head, and respectfully placed it on the floor. He took me in his arms and kissed me ever so gently, then he moved to Kari’s body and cut the familiar piece of her leg out and left the room carrying it. A few minutes later, he was back and took me in his arms and let me weep. I wanted so much to hold Marc, but he was unbonded. To do so would kill both John and me. John did something I’d never seen him do. He gently picked up Marc and hugged him. Marc was still weeping over the loss of his wife. We started to ease him to his apartment, when the strangest thing happened. We received an incoming communication!

---

I hate my muse right now. As the words to this chapter came to me, I had to have a box of tissues beside me. Damned Muse! Don’t do this again!!!

Chapter 2.3

John and I tried to move Marc from the control room, but it was no dice. He would not leave the incoming communication. I knew that our subjective time was incredibly slow for Earth, so how many thousands of years, or perhaps millions had passed on our world since we had left? John surreptitiously removed Kari’s body from the control room, as Marc answered the call.

“N21, this is N22 requesting permission to dock.”

Dock? What the hell? Marc must have been too far into despair from Kari’s death, and I couldn’t say that I blamed him, but we were just best friends. Marc was bonded with her. I reached around him and keyed the mic. “N22, say again. You’re requesting permission to dock?”

“N21, that is correct. I am currently off your port side.”

I looked at the screens that showed what was around us. They had showed nothing for years, except the reverse one, which still showed a galaxy that stretched beyond our view. The Port side screen showed something amazing, however. There was a station that mirrored ours beside us! I knew I was getting too excited, so I thought of Kari, and the fact that she had missed this. That put me into a serious state of depression.

“You… You’re here? Wha… How...” I started bawling.

“I am the AI controlling N22. I cannot help with the ‘Total Fun’, but I am here to take you home. At least I can offer you that.”

My cries became even more serious as I thought of all the people we had lost. Roman, Kari, Perl… Those were just some, but they were the closest to me.

I wasn’t sure if the person in N22 mistook my crying for relief or not. “I understand, Ma’am. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?” he asked.

“This is Rose Carlson,” I told him.

“Ah… Congratulations on your marriage to John Carlson, Ma’am.”

“Thank you,” I told him, then I thought about things. “Wait a minute. How do you know about that?”

“Mrs. Carlson, if you will give me permission to dock, I will explain things to you.”

“Permission granted, of course,” I told him, completely confused now.

John walked in at about that moment. One look at the screen and his jaw dropped.

“It’s docking, John! It’s here to take us home!”

“Please, Mrs Carlson! Please don’t get elated. Earth is still under the control of Caesar. Remember that!”

It was then that I realized we had a serious problem. This AI was stressing the point that Earth still had our nanite problem. We absolutely could not feel joy about this rescue. In fact, it really wasn’t a rescue. What type of rescue was this? We would go back to a planet that perhaps had no people left on it. How many people had they lost? If they had learned to reset the nanites as we had, which would make sense, how many people had they lost?

We had no way of knowing.

I felt a slight vibration in the floor, that told me the other station was connected to ours.

Marc was still sitting, not moving in the chair he had been in. He had been staring straight ahead. It seemed that he was trying not to blink. Finally, he put his head down on the console, and really started to cry.

---

We discussed the situation with N22, as we were now calling him. We needed to get our people together and tell them the situation. It must be stressed that this was not a rescue. We were simply being taken to where there was more room. The population of Earth had been destroyed by ‘Total Fun’.

There was a huge debate as to why we would wish to go back to Earth. Everything we had was here. We put it to a vote, and we had a small majority in favor of leaving.

We were ready to leave N21 for what we now realized was a much more spacious, and full of more supplies than we ever had aboard our station. The airlock between the two stations was small. Only large enough for two people to traverse at the same time. It was decided that each bond mate couple would go through at the same time. John, Marc, and I would be the last to leave what had been our home.

When we were ready, Marc told us his decision. “I’m staying.”

“What?” John asked him.

“I have no reason to leave. I’m going to die anyway, John.”

“You can’t commit suicide!” I told him, almost shouting.

“I’m not. There’s no population over there. There’s no one for me to bond with. Besides, I don’t want to leave Kari.”

“What would Kari want?” I asked him, tears flowing once again. “We know you’re going to die, but let us be with you until that moment.”

“Come on, Marc, my loving husband told his best friend. Kari wouldn’t want you to make this sacrifice. Remember what you said about stage five? Let us show you that we love you until the last moment.”

Just to be sure, we waited until Marc had gone through the airlock. We didn’t want him to blow the seals from N21’s side after we left, stranding him on N21.

Finally, we stepped into the airlock, not looking behind. I had left all of my instruments behind. I took only the clothes on my back, as did everyone. As soon as the inner seals were closed, the seals were blown and we were away from N21.

---

Something felt very different as soon as we were no longer connected to N21. It was something almost indefinable, as if something had been shut off, then something very surprising happened. All of the people from N21 had been moved to one bay, but now, several doors opened and we were suddenly in the company of hundreds more people!

One man stepped forward from this new group and welcomed us aboard. His voice sounded…. It was the AI… or rather a man…

Now I was really confused. “What’s going on here, John?” I asked. Suddenly I was very worried. Was this some of Caesar’s subterfuge?

The man picked up a mic and his voice came through loudspeakers. “I am Rashda Smythe, the commander of N22. I am sorry for lying to you. Keeping our people a secret was necessary for a very important reason. We couldn’t risk you feeling… Well, elated.

“We are not controlled by nanites on this station.”

John stepped forward. “We have nanites. You do not appear to be segregated from us. In fact, several of your people have mingled with ours.”

“Oh yes,” Smythe agreed. “However, you don’t understand. We have nanites, the same as yours. Only on this station, they don’t control us.”

“What are you saying?” I asked, my confusion going deeper.

“Ah, Mrs. Carlson, I’m glad to make your acquaintance.”

“Just call me Rose, please, and would you answer my question?”

“Alright, Rose, just as we are not controlled by our nanites, you won’t be either. In fact, the control has stopped right now. The nanites only do what they were originally programmed to do now.”

The entire population of N21 erupted into talk. Marc was standing beside us and he looked stricken. “Oh God, Kari” he murmured just above a whisper. Hesitantly, I reached out and hugged him. I understood perfectly. Just a few hours before, and she would be standing here with us. I now felt such hatred of Caesar that I could almost taste it. I felt like I wanted to torture that bastard in exactly the same way he had tortured us. Only rather than the pain that the men got, I would gladly slice his penis off his body, one millimeter at a time. Using a dull blade, damn him!

---

The three of us joined Commander Smythe in the briefing room, later. It was late at night, our time, but dinner time on N22. I hadn’t eaten since that morning and I was famished. Food was brought in and we ate. It was good, I’ll say that, but….

Smythe must have noticed something in the three of us, as he said, “I’m sorry that the food isn’t up to the standards Rose could make.”

“It’s fine,” my husband said, valiantly. Or was that, in vain?

Smythe, however, wasn’t buying it. “Oh, come now, Commander Carlson. I can recognize someone trying not to insult. And from what I have heard over the link to Earth, your wife is legendary in her skill.”

“Legendary?” I asked. Say what? I knew I was good, but legendary?

Smythe laughed. “Sometimes in the midst of their chatter with Freeman, God rest his soul, Reese, Carter, and Perl would mention some food they had in your restaurant. It sounded divine!”

“You’ve been listening in on our conversations with Earth?” Marc blew up, “And you didn’t let us know?”

The anger on his face would have dropped a tyrannosaurus in it’s tracks.

Smythe looked shamefaced. “I’m so sorry, Commander Dodson, but we couldn’t. We couldn’t risk the joy of us coming to your rescue. Just as I couldn’t risk letting you know we didn’t have the control of the nanites here when we docked. We figured it best if you thought N22 was an automated situation. Even the thought of an expanded population could have caused elation in your population. We simply had no wish to cause your deaths.” He paused for a moment. “I’m truly sorry that you lost Kari, Marc. Please accept my sincerest condolences.”

Marc’s fury had abated as he had to accept the logic of Smythe’s reasons. “Thank you, Rashda,” he said, using Smythe’s given name for the first time.

The mood was very somber, and Smythe tried to make it lighter. “One thing we do well, is desserts,” and some chocolate volcano cake was brought in. John tried to appreciate it, but again Smythe caught the look. He turned to me, “Rose, I would love to taste your culinary treats.”

I laughed at the way he said it, and the mood lightened considerably. I wondered if he had meant for that to happen as the volcano cake tasted suspiciously mass produced; not fresh.

---

Rashda Smythe did get to taste my ‘culinary treats’. I was able to set up a restaurant in one of the bays, as I had done on N21. I had a special buffet in a back room for the officers of N22. I had made a simple pot roast, with carrots, potatoes, and onions in the broth. At his first taste, his eyes got wide and he went back for thirds, and then fourths! I blushed furiously at his compliments.

Most nights after that, the officers ‘rented’ the back room and had my special of the day. “I haven’t had food this delicious since we left Earth, dear Rose,” he told me on one occasion. “No… I haven’t ever had food like this.”

That night, when we went upstairs to our apartment, John turned to me and took my hands in his. “I haven’t made love with anyone that compares with you, dear Rose,” he said in a very bad British accent. “No… I haven’t ever made love with anyone who compares with you.”

I couldn’t help giggling at his bad imitation of the gallant commander. “I thank you very much, kind Sir,” I told him.

Needless to say, we went into the bedroom and verified his claim that night.

In the afterglow I asked John, “Do you think this is something left over from the nanites?”

“How do you mean?” he asked.

“The love I feel for you is so intense,” I responded. “I have observed some of the people that work in the restaurant, and those who play in my orchestra. Those that are married, love their spouse, but they are able to separate from them all day. I can’t even imagine being away from you that long.”

John thought about it for awhile. “You know, if this is an effect of the nanites, it’s the one good thing Caesar did to us. The love that we share is beyond anything we ever felt on Earth, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Well,” I answered, turning to where I could gaze at is handsome face. “There’s another thing he did for me.” At John’s questioning look, I told him, “He made me a woman.”

The second time that night was even better than the first.

---

We traveled for several years. Even more than we had on the way out. It was three centuries since we had left N21 behind. I still got teary as I thought of the people we had left there. It seemed that our emotions had been intensified by the nanites. Perhaps they made our neurotransmitters more efficient. Who knows? The fact was, every time I thought of those people, my heart ached for them. I remembered all of them as if it was yesterday.

We had entered the galaxy a few years before, and we were about ready to enter our solar system.

We were called to the command center to find a very grim faced Smythe there. “I’m very sorry for this,” he told us. “I’m able to see Earth now, even to zoom in and see cities.”

We watched as the scopes were brought online. All of the cities were seen through an orange haze, that billowed like smoke. There were no people to be seen although we could see what we thought might be the remains of many. There were craft that appeared to have once been smoking ruins. Some buildings were present, in a very decayed condition, but the vast majority were piles of rubble.

It appeared that Caesar was not happy being the only one gone.

Chapter 2.4

“What happened here?” Marc asked.

“I’m not really sure. Obviously, it wasn’t like this when we left.”

“I’m sure of that,” John said. “Where can we find records?”

“The capitol was in Honolulu. Diamond Head. We’ll probably find what we need there.”

“We’ve stopped our roll. Engines are ready to fire, Sir.”

“Fire them and turn on main engines to slow.”

“Roll?” I asked.

“The station rolls. That way, if anything happened to the gravity, we’d have some form.”

“Yeah, but we’d be standing on the ceilings,” I argued, “and we’d hit those hard. It’s eighty feet up.”

“Yes, Rose. That’s true, but the station normally spins at a rate that makes gravity about twenty-five percent.”

“I see.” I didn’t, as physics was not my strong suit.

John smiled indulgently. He knew me too well.

Suddenly, we felt the station shudder, and I had a momentary flutter in my stomach. For several minutes, I felt like gravity was at an angle to the floor. I had to lean to one side. I guessed that our direction of travel was the opposite of my lean.

And then, I was scared. I looked at my husband, whose hand I was holding, and I was terrified of him. I hadn’t felt this way for over three hundred years. I let go and cowered against a wall as far away from the men as I could. The men got as far away from me and the navigator as they could as well.

Smythe had never felt anything like this, but John had. “Roll us over and get us out of here. As fast as you can, but don’t hit the sun, okay?” The navigator was paralyzed, so I jumped to her side. “Please, I know you’re scared, but I don’t know how to fly this thing. Set a course away from Earth, and get us out of here, as quick as you can. Please!”

She looked up at me and then she did what I asked.

In a few moments, the fear disappeared. “That was stage one, wasn’t it,” Smythe said. Slowly, he approached the navigation station, and looked at the screens to see where we were headed. “How much fuel do we have.”

“Not much, Sir.” she said, pointing to a gauge on the screen in front of her.

Smythe turned to John. “What do you think?”

“There’s something on the planet that’s starting the nanites. We can’t go down there.”

“Well, we could, but we couldn’t stay long.”

“How long did they have?” I asked, rhetorically.

“Quite right, Mrs. Carlson.”

“Miss Smith,” he asked the navigator, “Is it possible to pick up speed if we swing around the sun, then use the rest of out fuel to break away the direction we’ve come?”

“Yes, Sir.” I think we can do that. I’ve aimed us into orbit of Sol. I’ll have to burn our fuel anyway, because even if we were to stay in orbit, it would decay soon.”

“Okay, do it.”

“Rashda,” I said as we were preparing. Is there any way we can get close enough to the Earth to see what is causing the nanites to activate?”

“Why? We’ll be going at a speed where we can’t stay in orbit.”

Miss Smith did some figures. “I can bring us close enough to use Earth’s gravity to swing around and head out the way we came into the galaxy. The only problem is we’ll touch the outer atmosphere to do it.”

I looked at Smythe. “It’s your ship.”

“Mrs. Carlson, arrange two observation posts. One for men, and one for women. John, you and Marc, separate the men and women in the rest of the ship. Tell them what we’re going to do.”

“Thank you, Commander,” I said. “And it’s Rose!” Before he could reply, I had left the command center.

---

I hurried down to the observation posts. I told them what we were planning, and they segregated themselves. I stayed with the women. I had no idea what they were going to do, but I wanted to hear as soon as possible. I got a call from John and Marc after a few minutes. They were wondering what observation posts the different sexes were in. A couple of women came up to me. “We should leave, Rose.”

“Why?”

“I’m bisexual, and Cindy is intersex.”

Alright, Carla. Go ahead. I understand.”

They hurried out. Suddenly, I felt the room getting hotter and hotter. One of the women shouted, “We’re going around the sun!”

“Our environmental systems are having trouble keeping up,” another woman said.

We were on the side of the ship away from the sun. I hated to think what the men were feeling, as they were on the other side. I called John.

“We’re really feeling it, but the systems are favoring our side of the ship.”

I acknowledged what he told me, then said, “John, when we get close to Earth...” I stopped for a moment.

“Yes?” he said.

“Remember that I love you.”

“Keep that in mind yourself. I love you to, Rose.”

I’m not sure how long it took us to swing around the sun, but when it started cooling off, I was very happy. Not long afterwards, the revulsion returned. I had been here so many times, I was able to keep in mind John and my love, but the thought of him still made me sick to my stomach. Soon, we felt a buffeting of the ship, then it was gone. Not long after, stage one abruptly turned off. Several of the women in the room sighed in relief. They did not have the experience with stage one that I had.

A few minutes later, some of the men hesitantly walked into the post, including Marc and John. “We need to get the data to the lab,” Marc told the women. The men’s data is heading there as we speak.”

Carla pushed some buttons in front of her. “It’s on it’s way.” She turned to me. “Mrs. Carlson; Request permission to head to the lab?”

I was shocked that she asked, but then realized I was a commander. “Granted,” I told her. I think I was the only one who noticed Marc head out with her.

Three hundred years,” I murmured.

John snapped his head in my direction, then noticed that Marc was no longer beside him. He smiled at me. “I can’t even imagine what he has gone through losing his bond mate, but I don’t know if I could ever take another woman if something happened to you.”

I had to look away, because my eyes started to water.

Passing Mars,” one of the women said. “We have a fair amount of speed.”

Do you know how much fuel we have left?” John asked.

None,” the woman said after she switched her screen to mirror Miss Smith’s.

She cut it to the wire,” I commented.

So we will leave the galaxy never to come back,” John said quietly.

Unless we made some fuel,” I said to him.

We need every ounce of matter on board, Ma’am,” the same woman told me. “Food, air; it’s all necessary.”

There was a thump, then, “There go the engines.”

I guess Commander Smythe feels the same,” John said.

---

Later that night, we were in the back room of my restaurant. Carla was there with Marc, and surprisingly, Miss Smith was there with Commander Smythe.

Personally, I thought both relationships were cute.

“That was some impressive navigating, Colleen,” the commander told her.

“Thank you, Rashda.”

“We all agreed, and she blushed.”

“Well, we think we know what was causing stage one,” Carla told us.

“What?” I was very curious, even though I probably wouldn’t understand.

“There was a magnetic shift in the Earth’s core.”

“How would that affect us?” John wanted to know. “I thought the core was changing anyway.”

“I’m not sure how Caesar shifted it, but any shift from the way it was was enough to cause stage one.”

“So you’re saying it would have happened eventually anyway.”

“It appears that way,” she said.

“So did our magnetic field change on N21?”

“Perhaps,” Marc said, “But I think it’s more likely that there was a computer hidden somewhere on board that was controlling the nanites. That single bit turned it on.”

“So are you saying the computers on Earth used the same idea?” I asked. “Why would he make a trigger so hard to set off? Certainly changing the magnetic field of a planet was not easy.”

“My guess,” explained Carla, “is at some point, he wanted to know if he could do it. When he found that he could… Well, a magnetic sensor wouldn’t he hard to make. You could actually do it with a compass. In fact, by turning the compass, he could ‘Total Fun’ from happening.”

“So the compass switch would turn on the computer?”

“Well, it might have been more sophisticated than that, but essentially, yes,” Marc said.

“What destroyed the cities?” Smythe asked.

“We’re not sure of that,” Carla told him. “We’re still investigating that.”

---

Later that night, John and I were laying in bed. “I was so freaked out when I was scared of you,” I told him. “I haven’t felt that way for three hundred years.”

“I was too.”

I moved closer to him and put my head on his chest. “I never want to feel that way again.”

“I don’t think you’ll have to,” he told me.

“By the way,” I told him, “I’ve noticed that my period is two weeks late, and shows no sign of starting.”

“Does that mean what I think it means?” he asked cautiously.

“It might,” I told him, smiling.

“I thought all the women on the station were taking birth control.”

“John,” I said, “there will be mistakes. I’m not sure how it happened, but it did. I think I’ll like being a mother, and I’m sure you’ll like being a father.”

“But we’re still not sure?”

“No, my darling husband, we’re not. I’ll see if any of the labs can test me tomorrow, okay?”

He kissed me on the forehead, as I looked up at his face. “I know we’re not supposed to have a baby, but I like the possibility.”

I smiled and kissed him on the lips. Then I told him, “Me too.”

I put my head back on his chest. Soon, I felt myself drifting off.

That night, I dreamed of having not one baby, but twins. A boy and a girl. I was ecstatic, as was John. We made Marc and Carla their grandparents.

A girl can dream, right?

Chapter 2.5

The next day, I went to the lab. I met Carla there and quietly explained what I suspected. “You know, we can’t have more children, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. That’s why I came to you.” Carla had become a very good friend on the way home – no, not to home, but to Earth – from N21.

We slipped out of her lab, undetected, and made our way to her apartment. Strangely, I had never been inside before, but I saw why. She had kept her sexual preferences quiet, but inside her apartment, they became quite plain. I had never seen some of the items she had, It was rather interesting

Where I had a kitchen, she had a personal laboratory. It was in stark contrast to what was displayed in her living room, but when you closed the lab door, It was just that -- a lab.

“Do you cook in here?” I asked.

“Actually, no. I usually eat at one of the restaurants downstairs.”

I nodded. I had eaten at some of them as well. I had wanted to know if any were better than the food we had that first night in the briefing room. None was. I had not wanted to ‘step on any toes,’ but I knew I would have to make my restaurant rather large. Interestingly, some of the station’s chefs had come to me for instruction. I was flattered, but I wasn’t sure I could teach what I knew instinctively.

I had tried to teach music, but I found writing was the best way for me to do that. I couldn’t get in front of a crowd and speak very well.

“I’m insulted, Carla,” I said “You’re not always in mine.”

She blushed in embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Rose. Your food is so extravagant. Sometimes I need something easy and quick.”

I smiled. “I’ll tell you a secret, Carla.” I looked around her lab, acting like I was checking for someone spying on us. “So do I,” I told her in a stage whisper.

We both giggled, then she had me hold out my arm to get a blood sample.

She examined it under a microscope. “This is interesting,” she said as she looked at it.

She moved out of the way so I could look. I saw blood. “What am I looking for?” I asked.

“Do you see the nanites?”

“Uh…. No?”

“Sorry, Rose. I forget sometimes that you’re not a scientist.”

“I am!” I exclaimed. “I do gastronomy!”

She rolled her eyes, then told me, “I’m really sorry, Rose. To make sure, I’ve got to take this to the biology lab. It’s gonna get to Commander Smythe.”

“It was going to eventually anyway, Carla,” I said to her, resignedly. “May as well get it over with.”

Together, we walked toward the biology lab. On the way, I asked, “Should John be here?”

“It’s up to you, Rose. It might be a good idea, as this might be something that involves all the people on N21.”

I called John and asked that he meet us there. When we arrived, Winston Reese was present as he was in charge of this particular lab. John walked in a moment later.

“What’s up?” he asked.

I motioned for both men to come out into the corridor. They followed, and Carla told them what she had found.

“I think your nanites are still doing something a bit different than what they would do in me. At least they are in Rose. We will need to check a wider range of people to make sure.”

“Any idea what they could be doing?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” Carla told me.

“Do you notice anything different than before you started in ‘Total Fun’?”

“I couldn’t tell you.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I was a man before ‘Total Fun’. I was changed in stage one. I guess I have no idea what a woman without having gone through any of the the stages would feel like.” The idea that I was not a normal woman hit me hard. I glanced at John, and I think he understood what I was feeling. He put his arm around me and pulled me to him. I was grateful for that, as I didn’t feel so alone.

Carla nodded. “We need to test people who were female before ‘Total Fun’ as well. I guess I could check myself, but I won’t see anything like this.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because I haven’t gone through…” She paused. “I guess I have, huh?”

I nodded.

“We’ve got to contact Commander Smythe about this,” Winston said, starting to head back into the lab.

“Wait! Please,” I exclaimed.

“What’s wrong?” He asked.

“I think I might be pregnant,” I said in a small voice.

Winston stopped and looked at me for a long minute. “I see,” he said. “Did you stop...” His voice trailed off.

“No,” I told him. “I’ve been very careful to take my birth control shot. One each year.”

“Is it not working for women from N21?”

“We haven’t heard anything from anyone else,” John replied. “But if they’re pregnant, they might be afraid to say anything.”

Reese nodded. “I understand. We can’t afford to have a bunch of kids here. If we do have, we’re going to have to come up with a solution. And fast.”

“The resources we have here are it,” Carla said, very little inflection in her voice. “Recycling everything is something that we have to do. I think we could get away with a thousand kids, but that would be stretching things.”

“Can you test that sample for pregnancy?” I asked. "I’d really like to know before we have to tell Rashda.”

“Come on into the lab,” Winston told me. We walked in and he motioned us to follow him into a private room. This was set up very similar to Carla’s kitchen, but it had a few more devices that I had absolutely no idea of their function. Winston had me make a fist, and took some blood from my arm. He put the blood into some device, and in a few minutes, he had a reading.

“Well?” I asked. I was tense, and John was rubbing my back. I suppose he could feel my tension.

“I guess we’ll have to wait to see what Rashda says before I congratulate you,” Winston told me.

I leaned into John. I was so happy, but at the same time, I wasn’t. How could I explain to Commander Smythe that I had not skipped birth control?

I really wanted to give it some time before I told the commander, but Winston took that option away from me when he called him. “What did you do that for?” I demanded.

“If this is something common to all N21 women, then we need to let Rashda know. Also, if that’s the case, it’s not your fault, Rose.”

Carla held out her arm. “Test me, Winston. This may not be a problem with just N21 women.”

“Could you be pregnant?”

“Not that I know of, but I could be if all women have changed because of that little excursion we had into ‘Total Fun’, we need to know.”

Winston nodded and took a blood sample from Carla. “We need to test everyone, he said after a bit.”

A moment later we saw that he really did mean everyone as he pulled a blood sample from his own body. “It’s a bit different from you two’s blood, but its still not normal.”

“What’s not normal,” I turned my head and saw Rashda standing in the doorway.

Rather than answer, Winston held out a syringe to Smythe. “Commander, may I have a sample of your blood?”

The commander didn’t say anything, he just held out his arm. His expression was not pleased.

“Same as mine,” Reese said. “John?”

Winston checked a sample from John with the same results. “Commander, could we please meet in the briefing room, along with Marc Dodson. I’ll explain what I’ve found there.”

---

In the briefing room, we had a couple of extra people that Winston had asked to come with us. I was not happy to be there, as I had a feeling what Smythe would say.

“I’ve done some blood samples, on John and Rose, Carla and Myself, and also Commander Smythe,” Winston told the others.

“Alright Winston,” said Smythe. “What did you find?”

“Mrs. Carlson had a bit of a problem, so she asked Carla to see what was wrong,” Reese told him.

“What did you find, Reese?”

“I’m getting there, Commander.”

Rashda looked like he was about ready to lose his patience. I understood. This affected him as well. Not that he could get pregnant. At least, I didn’t think he could. Winston hadn’t told any of us what he found.

“Okay, Reese, what did Rose find?”

“She suspected that she might be pregnant.”

The commander didn’t say a word. He just looked at me. I felt like I was shrinking into the floor.

Smythe finally asked me, “And are you?”

I couldn’t speak. I just nodded my head.

“Have you been taking...”

“She hasn’t missed one at all, Rashda,” John defended me.

Rashda nodded, then looked back at Reese. “I’m assuming that Rose being pregnant has something to do with what you found?”

“Yes, I believe it does. Carla found something...”

At this point, Smythe sighed heavily. “Winston, I assume that at some point you will tell me what you found. Is that a valid assumption?”

“Yes Sir.”

“Carry on.”

“Okay,” Winston said with a smile. He hated to miss details when he was giving a report, so he always did it his way. It always worked better for him, but he drove others crazy. “Carla found something in Rose’s blood that she couldn’t explain, so she brought it to me. I took another sample, and saw it as well. I then checked Carla and found the same thing. You, John and I have the something similar.”

I could see that Rashda wanted to hurry Winston along, and it was taking all his effort to refrain from exploding.

“It appears that we still have a different job that the nanites are doing in our bodies. As a matter of fact, now that I know the effects, I can testify to this myself.”

He took a deep breath and finally gave the facts to Smythe. “Men have testosterone in their bodies, women have estrogen. There’s some crossover there, but in general, that’s how it is. In men, I found that the nanites have receptors for carrying testosterone. I can only guess that this is heading to the brain. There, it would increase the male libido. In essence, men will want more sex. I can testify that I wanted it way more when in one of the stages. Any of them, actually. In stage one, the only thing keeping me from jumping every woman I saw….”

“Must you put it like that?” asked his wife, Ruby. She was one of the two people who came up with him to the briefing room.

“I understand what you mean, Hon, but honestly, that’s how it felt at the time.”

Marc and John both nodded their agreement.

“Yes,” John said, “but I wonder if a good or special friendship with one person focuses your attention toward her.”

Hearing him say that, I squeezed his hand.

“It could be,” Reese said. “I know the married couples generally bonded with their spouses when we reached stage two. In fact, in certain cases, they didn’t have to be anywhere near each other for the bond to take place.”

“So what happens in women?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to know.

“Women’s nanites seem to have specialized for them as well. They have been designed to carry estrogen in the same way men’s nanites carry testosterone.”

“Wait a minute Reese,” Vern Smith had come up from the lab as well as Ruby. He was the brother of Colleen Smith. “I thought hormones are simply secreted into the blood stream.”

“Generally they are. However, the brain has chemical receptors to bond with it. What the nanites do, is pick it up with their own receptors, but it doesn’t bond with the nanites. They don’t allow that. Instead, they carry the majority of the chemicals to the brain.”

“Where it bonds and makes the sex drive.” Vern finished.

“Right, only it creates the sex drive in spades.” Reese explained. “Now, this is just supposition from what I saw in a very limited group, so we need to scan several people and verify this. Also, I want to see inside people’s brains and make sure what’s happening there.”

“I’ll volunteer for that,” John offered.

“So will I,” I told him.

“So why the pregnancy?” Rashda wanted to know.

“That, I’m not sure of,” Winston told him. “For that, I’d rather someone who isn’t pregnant. Actually, I know that some of the medical equipment from when they needed it could effect a developing baby, so I appreciate the offer Rose, but I’d rather not take that risk.”

“Alright,” I said nodding. I agreed wholeheartedly. I was rather protective of the child that was developing inside me.

Suddenly,we received a message from Colleen. “Rashda, we have something up here that you need to see.”

Smythe looked around at us all. “John and Rose, will you come with me? Winston, figure this out please.” Then he touched a button that put his voice through every intercom on the ship. “Mr Dodson, would you please come to the command center?”

Then we were off.

---

Author's note.
This story is not over yet, but I need to focus on "After Caesar" for a bit.
My sincerest apologies, however to go on here will give away too much of the story. I am planning on eventually making a file that will put "N21" and "After Caesar" in chronological order for reading. Hopefully it will make things a bit less confusing. Then again, it may make things more confusing. Who knows?

Author's Note:
I recommend reading After Caesar through chapter twelve before reading this chapter of N21. You can read this beforehand, but it will ruin After Caesar when you do decide to read it.

N21 Chapter 2.6

I'm not sure what we expected as we entered the command center. What we found however, was shocking, to say the least.

Colleen had some scopes showing the exteriors of the bays.

There was something wrong, however. I stepped closer and peered at them. Half of them looked as though they had been rubbed by a rough grit sandpaper over their entire surface.

"What happened?" Rashda asked.

Marc hurried into the command center, and answered.

"We were doing an inspection of the exterior. As you know, we touched the atmosphere briefly. The starboard side of the ship touched the orange haze. The port didn't. At first I didn't know what the haze was. I do now.

"Apparently, missiles like the ones N21 and N22 held were fired off on Earth."

"What?!!?"

I had never seen fury like I saw on Rashda's face that day.

“I thought they were sent into the sun,” John said.

“They were,” Smythe replied.

“Weren’t they the only missiles left in orbit?” I asked.

“Yes, they were. They must have missed the sun when we fired them.”

Marc just looked at him. I could tell he wanted to ask how, but didn’t.

I figured I could ask with a bit more tolerance than Marc could, so I asked.

The fury left Rashda’s face, as even though I was born a man, he would never yell at a woman. “I’m not sure, Dear Lady. I do know that the programming for them should have taken them directly into the sun. Colleen and I collaborated on it.”

“Rashda,” Colleen addressed him. “I’m looking at the course we set. There is no way those missiles should have missed.”

He walked over and looked at the course. “I don’t see any way they could have missed, however the question now is what is happening on the ship.”

Marc walked into the center of the room. “The outer hull appears to be deteriorating.”

“What?” John was shocked. “Was it from coming in contact with our atmosphere?”

“We just skimmed the atmosphere. The other side of the ship had much less contact.”

“Is there any deterioration on it?”

“Some, but not as much. I believe whatever is causing it was considerably more concentrated on the starboard side.”

“When you say deteriorating,” I asked, scared of the answer, “do you mean that it is still occurring?”

“Yes,” Marc answered.

"Will it come through to the interior?" John wondered.

"There certainly seems to be that possibility."

I was completely sick of this entire situation. "When will this end? We have gone through hell and back for Willem, we've changed genders, I've been terrified of my husband… what more does this bastard want of us?" By the end of my tirade, I was starting to cry.

"Come on, Honey. Let's get you back to our room." John put his arm around me and began to guide me out of the command center. I was not having it! "No!" I ducked under his arm and spun to face him. On his face was a look of complete surprise. I don't think anyone else expected it either.

"I am not going to be shooed away… the poor Rose… mommy to be. Her hormones have her in a tizzy! I won't be treated that way, John. Not by you or anyone else." I know I was giving him a look that would probably have made Willem Wallace rethink his plans, but I was fed up. I just wanted to be able to live my life in peace with my husband and children. Was that too much to ask?

It suddenly dawned on me that everyone was staring. I looked around, and had my face not been flushed from my anger already, it would be now from embarrassment. I stepped over to a chair and sat down hard. I was embarrassed, but I was also pissed off. I glared at John, who seemed to think that the better part of valor was to concede.

Smythe looked from me to John, and I gave up on glaring at John. How dare he look to John for the decision. I was fully able to make my own mind up! "Don't you dare ask John if it's okay for me to stay, Rashda," I exclaimed! I wanted to cry again, but my pride wanted to scream. What the hell was wrong with me?

I think John figured that I needed calmed, but I wasn't about to leave. He did the only thing he could. He pulled a chair up next to me, sat down, and offered his hand.

I grabbed it in a vice like grip, then I put my head on his shoulder. My crying was now full force. Everyone seemed to be trying to look anywhere but at me. Carla had accompanied us from the briefing room, and now she stepped to Rashda's side. She whispered something to him, then stepped away. The commander simply went to his personal chair and sat down. Rather than brush me off, he simply went over the course figures again with Colleen. I wasn't being ignored, but I was given some space to vent. I wasn't sure if any pregnant woman had ever been treated with such respect, but I appreciated the respect that everyone gave me.

After a few minutes, I kissed John's cheek and gave him a tight hug. "Thank you," I whispered in his ear. He returned the embrace and we stood up. Rashda didn't hurry or show any frustration. Instead he finished his conversation with Colleen, then stood up.

"Have you any idea what these are, Marc?" It seemed that he was going to act like nothing had happened.

"I'm guessing," Marc said while giving me a nervous glance, that they are nanites." I smiled reassuringly, hoping that I could keep my emotions at bay. I wanted to scream again in frustration, but I was afraid if I did, I wouldn't have a choice. I would be expelled from the command center.

"I think Rose is right, Commander. This would most likely be another one of Caesar's playtimes."

"I guessed that, Marc." He sighed. "I'm tired. Do you have any idea what we can do?"

"No, Sir."

Rashda nodded. "Find out, please. I'm gonna take a nap."

I watched him leave and he looked as though he was going to cry. I realized that he probably blamed himself somehow. Those missiles were programmed by him and Colleen. The whole idea was his to launch them. I felt horrible for losing it the way I did.

Suddenly, I wanted to head to our rooms. I had just made a good friend feel responsible for the death of our planet. I couldn't speak, so I simply motioned to John that I needed some sleep. He nodded and I made my exit.

I was walking down down the street in our bay when John caught me. I realized I had been engrossed in my thoughts and had missed the doors that would take me home. I shook my head and we walked back. We didn't say anything until we got into our living area. Once again, I sat down and started crying, only this time, I poured out my thoughts to John.

I'm certain there were times he wanted to yell, "Snap out of it, woman!" Wisely, he didn't.

"You didn't need to make him feel bad, Rose. He already felt horrible."

"Right," I said to him. "I made it worse."

"No. I don't think that would be possible."

I knew he was right. For some reason, I was looking for something to fuel my depression. I wasn't sure why, but I suspected my hormones were running wild from the pregnancy. I took a shakey breath and nodded. I decided that I really did need a nap, so I went into the bedroom. John accompanied me but I turned away from him as he lay down.

I really didn't want to feel good, and I suspect that John knew that. He spooned up to me put his mouth beside my ear. I really didn't want to hear him tell me how beautiful he thought I was, or how much he loved me. He kept punctuating his statements with kisses. I didn't want this! I wanted to feel bad! I tried to get up.

I tried to scream at him. Instead, he somehow got through to my addled brain and I finally started listening. I turned my head back to look at him. He was propped up on an elbow, apparently waiting for my brain to start working sensibly. He smiled at me and kissed away some tears. I rolled over and snuggled up to him, and marvelled that I had such a man. Eventually, I fell asleep.

---

About halfway through the night I awoke with a start. Something was very wrong, but I couldn't place it. I was still curled up next to John, and his breathing was even. I carefully disentangled my body and tried to sit up without waking him. I went into the restroom, did what I needed, then threw on a robe. I stepped into our living area and looked around. I couldn't see anything wrong. I heard a sound from the bathroom and realized that, as usual, I wasn't able to get up without waking John.

I could detect absolutely nothing strange, but I knew there was something, somewhere, if I could just place a finger on it. John came out of the bathroom. He was wearing just his pajama bottoms, and I really wanted to grab him and convince him to go back to bed with me… but what the hell was wrong?

John had an odd look as well. "Do you feel it?" he asked me.

"It woke me up, but…" my voice trailed off. "What is it?" I asked him.

He shook his head, turned and went back into the room. The light came on, and I hurried to see what he was doing. He was getting dressed. I gathered that our night had ended, so I grabbed some clothes and threw them on.

I really wanted to put on makeup at this time of morning, but he pulled me out of the room. We headed to the control room and were met there by Marc and Carla, as well as Rashda and Colleen. It appeared that we all were awakened by something.

I glanced at the status screen, and everything was green all the way across. But then, one of the bay status lights went yellow.

"Rashda!"

He turned from where the men had been discussing something and hurried to Colleen's side. By the time he got there, three more had gone yellow. Then the first yellow turned red, and it was if everything moved to slow motion. The computer had already shut the doors to that bay… Our bay! Then, when the red light came on, it signified some sort of catastrophic failure.

What it would mean on a passenger ship was one thing, but on a weapons platform, it meant that you get rid of a failing missile bay as soon as possible.

I watched numbly as my home was once again lost. I wanted to lash out, but the horror escalating all around stopped me. I saw another light go red. Already, john had grabbed a mic and was ordering people to evacuate all bays to the upstairs and downstairs rings.

Through the corridors, I could hear screams and panicked voices. A light went red. Thunk! Another light went yellow, while two more went red. Thunk! Thunk! I glanced at, then couldn't look away from the screens showing the bays. The first one, our home, seemed to be crumbling away as it slowly pirouetted, the distance between us growing.

I stared, and everything seemed to be happening at the end of a dark tunnel. The next thing I knew, I was waking up on the floor with Carla beside me, making sure I was alright.

---

Author’s note:

This is the end of N21, however the story will continue, merged in with After Caesar Part 2 Chapter 1.