Alma Mater
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Oliver Furness came to me in 1898 – I remember that it was the year that the Spanish American War ended. He had a scholarship to the University, or thought he had. He saw that my boarding house and health clinic offered lower rates for “students with refined manners” and considered that described him well enough. He was a slightly built young man, seemingly ready to study, as I had been at the same age.

I have to keep myself from smiling as I touch up my lipstick, before liberally coating my long brown hair with shiny hairspray. Once my look is complete, I stand up from my dresser and examine myself in my bedroom’s full-length mirror.

Sara’s Quarters:
Kelly woke up early and felt like crap. She was still getting used to being a girl, but last night had been wild. She went to a friend’s birthday party. One of the girls she first met when she came to Vineyard, invited her.

She walks into the bathroom and does her morning business, before taking a nice hot shower. Ever since she was turned into a girl by her father. She had found that she enjoyed taking hot showers. She didn’t know why, but it felt nice against her sensitive skin.

Blake Medical Recovery Center, Napa Valley, Northern California:
Sara and Cindy look down at all the women and some men who have been brought to the center for help and recovery. Both of them couldn’t understand why anyone would forcibly turn innocent males and some women into the opposite sex.

“Mom and sis weren’t joking when they said that there would be days when this job would get to you.” Cindy looks at her twin sister standing next to her.

That didn’t cause me any panic. I was expecting a few deliveries and I was hoping this was the one I was really waiting for. When I opened the front door a delivery-man was standing there, brown uniform, a cardboard box in his arms and one of those sign-in document thingies for me to register that I had received the delivery.

The office building apparently was from around the beginning of the century. All chrome and insulating glass, well-maintained. A metal plate at the entrance listed the companies inside. According to it, Montafun Statistics occupied the twelfth floor.

The floor turned out to have a single wide corridor with half a dozen of doors at each side. At its end, a big Venetian window offered a nice view of the east of Milan. Its beginning was arranged as a little lobby, presided over by a massive wooden desk with a stocky, gray-haired woman behind it.

“Hello, my name is Damiano Rossi. I’m coming for the job interview, at 10 o’clock.”

Still reeling from their disastrous loss at the hands of Xenos, Chris and the others race to find a clue that will help to track him down so they can thwart his plans. And for Chris and Lydia, to get him to swap their bodies back!

While Chris and Lydia search for answers, Caleb looks to Enchantrix and Bhramari for assistance, with unexpected results. But as they all prepare for their next encounter with the cunning villain Xenos, he readies his trap for them. And he seems to know them even better than they know themselves!

Chris and his little cousin Lydia, now stuck in each other’s bodies, struggle to deal with the change. And Chris soon learns that the super-powered dangers of Faraday City look a lot more menacing from the perspective of a defenseless young girl!

Chris always dreamed of being the kind of superhero who could inspire people. But between fighting crime as Prodigious Girl and then having to dress as a girl in his off hours, he wasn’t exactly living the dream. Even less so when his latest thrilling escapade was to babysit his little cousin for a weekend. But when a cunning body-swapping villain sets his eyes on our young hero(ine), Chris finds himself in far more danger than he expects! (A tale of Faraday City.)

He was 5’11” and 245 pounds, with a full head of brown hair. He had three charges of Domestic Abuse against him and had drunkenly slept with several women, two of whom had pending charges of rape against him. In short, he was not a model citizen. One night in the local bar, the brother of one of the women he’d raped, slipped a tiny pill into his drink while he wasn’t looking. Frank’s life was about to change dramatically.

Chapter 1

I didn’t mean to end up this way. It just wasn’t in my thinking at all. Somehow, every step along the way seemed the right thing to do. There was a point where I could have called a stop to things, but I was, to the core of my being, a ‘Union Man’, and the Union needed me.

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He was a quiet, yet very proficient financial investigator and his only problem is that he got too close to people who rationalized themselves to be serving humanity but were absolutely ruthless. They did research in Medicine, Artificial Intelligence, and Robotics. One of their goals was to make Cyborgs.

Bonus scene! Bonus artwork! Bonus--well, it’s just those two things, actually. But that’s still pretty cool! After Fraylim got inspired to do some additional artwork for “Family Therapy,” I wanted a way to share it with you. So, to avoid undercutting the original story, I’m offering this as an “alternate ending.” Here, we see a young trans woman on the verge of an important decision as she muses on the unusual road that her life has taken, and the role that her father-turned-mother played in it...and may yet play in the future.

Driven from Normal .

Simon McKenzie started his week normal enough, but after a series of events he found himself standing in a bar wearing a cocktail dress and the weeks that followed didn't return to normal.

A father and son in crisis reach out to an online therapist who, unbeknownst to them, is actually an artificial intelligence. But after the machine mistakenly deduces that one of them must be transgender—and bound by its programming to maintain its patients' privacy—it ends up feminizing both father and son. When the truth finally comes to light, will this bring the two of them closer together, or tear them hopelessly apart?

Driven from Normal .

Simon McKenzie started his week normal enough, but after a series of events he found himself standing in a bar wearing a cocktail dress. Chapter 29.