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GENDERWAVE: RAMIFICATIONS by BobH (c) 2004 Smoothing my skirt down, I gave my hair and make-up one final check in the mirror, then nodded. It had taken a lot of practice, but applying cosmetics was something I was getting pretty good at. A crash-course in the basics was a huge help initially and, fortunately, there had been no shortage of entepeneurs who had seen their chance to make a fast buck when that particular gap in the market opened up. Glancing around the apartment, taking in the tastefully feminine decor, I sighed ruefully as my eyes alighted on the glass display case. It contained a cheerleader's outfit from my old high school, various pennants and cheerleading trophies, and a large framed photograph showing the pretty teenage version of the woman I now was, clad in that outfit and beaming at the photographer. In a way, what that display represented lay at the heart of the case I was currently working on. Picking up my high heels, I headed down to the condo's basement car park. I wore sneakers for driving, donning the heels every morning when I arrived at work. A professional appearance took more time and attention now than it used to, but then it's always involved more effort for women than for men. I don't miss shaving, but applying make-up is much more time-consuming, as is deciding what outfit to wear every day. Rotating the same three identical grey suits just wouldn't work anymore. I've had to start getting up an hour earlier, which definitely goes in the minus column of being a woman. Climbing into my BMW, dropping the heels into the passenger -side foot well, I slid a CD into the player. With the sounds of the Queens of Leon booming though the car, I drove up the exit ramp and pulled out into the traffic heading into downtown Los Angeles. As I drove I found myself glancing around at the people on the street and those driving the cars around me, marvelling again at how we had all mostly accepted what had happened and were now going about our business as usual and getting on with our lives. But then, it wasn't really that surprising. We all still had jobs that needed doing, all still had to put food on the table. Nothing had happened to change that simple fact of life. It was now four weeks since it happened, four weeks since the world changed completely, yet to an outside observer it would seem as if nothing much had altered at all. But it had. There might be no remaining physical evidence, but every last person on the planet knew what had happened. Save for the seven shuttle astronauts, no one had escaped. Stopped at a set of traffic lights, tapping the wheel in time with the track pounding from the speakers, I glanced down at the photo on the case I'd plucked the Queens of Leon CD from and smiled. It showed the girls of the band in typical rock-chick pose, guitars in hand, scowling and displaying lots of attitude. They were a lot easier on the eye than they had been as the men of the Kings of Leon, something which couldn't be said of the Rolling Stones, alas. Despite professional make up and the best lighting, they still looked a bunch of haggard old women in their latest album photo and publicity shots. Next to this CD on the passenger seat lay an early Beatles album featuring the Fab Four - June, Jill, Jane and Ringo. The 1960s cover shot now showed four young girls at the start of their musical careers, all with the beehive hairstyle that was so popular back then. To my surprise, I've actually come to prefer my Queens of Leon album with female voices to how it sounded with male vocals. Of course I'd really like to have both versions, but the original isn't available anymore. The original versions of a hell of a lot of things aren't available anymore, unfortunately. The law firm I work for is called 'Bendis, Wainright, & Cohen'. Until four weeks ago it was called 'Carter, Finch, & Rabin' but, outside of our memories, there was no way of proving this anymore. "Good Morning, Ms Ashton," said the receptionist, greeting me as I crossed the foyer of the downtown building that housed Bendis, Wainright, & Cohen, my heels clicking on the marble floor as I walked. " 'Morning, John," I said to the sandy-haired youth behind the desk, "are they all here yet?" "All but Ms Wainwright, yes," he replied. "She's caught up in traffic and isn't expected for another half-hour yet. So you have time to grab a coffee." "Good," I said, flashing him a smile and heading for the elevator. Four weeks ago, John had been Annette. Like the rest of us, he's had to adjust to the big change in his life. A man got into the elevator with me, a tall, good-looking Latino wearing a black leather jacket over jeans and a check shirt. "Are you Kelly Ashton?" he asked as the doors closed, "Used to be Robert Martin?" "You have the better of me," I said, staring at him frostily. It may have not even been a full month yet, but an etiquette had already arisen that it was impolite to ask people who they used to be. With the exception of certain legal and professional situations, this was theirs to reveal or not as they saw fit. "Oh, sorry," he said. "I keep forgetting. Name's Mike Sanchez. You used to know me as Teresa Marquez." "Detective Marquez!" I said, shaking his hand and genuinely pleased to see him. "It's been months." "Yeah," he said, "only it's Detective Sanchez now." "Of course," I said. "I'd say how much you've changed, but then who hasn't?" "Got that right," he chuckled, as we arrived at my floor and the doors opened. "D'you have time for a coffee?" I asked. "Hey, I'm a cop! I've *always* got time for coffee," he grinned, "particularly if it comes with donuts." "I'm sure we can manage something," I said. We ducked into one of the small client interview rooms and I rustled up coffee and donuts. "So," I said, as we sipped our coffee, "where were you when the Genderwave struck?" It might be impolite to ask someone *who* they had been before the Genderwave rewrote our world, but this was pretty much the standard question that opened any conversation with someone you hadn't seen since then. "Working with the LAPD's anti-gang task force," he replied. "You heard how news the G-wave was on its way and they'd all be turned into women in less than a day from then sparked an all out war among the gangs, right?" I nodded. It had been pretty ugly there for a while. A lot of people had died. "Well, we were more or less mopping things up after the main event had gone down and we'd cornered Carl Jones, one of the last surviving members of the Blood Hawks and a perp with a depessingly long rap sheet, behind some buildings. He had no interest in surrendering to us, was determined to go out in a hail of bullets like the rest of the his idiot friends. We knew the G-wave was coming, and even when - who didn't? - but when you're in the middle of a gunfight you tend to zone out everything else, so it came as a bit of a shock when it swept over us. From being the only woman on the squad, I was suddenly the only guy, and I was surrounded by all these stunned-looking women. Then I hear this frightened female voice shouting from the shadows not to shoot and that she's coming out. So, out steps the former Carl Jones, dressed like a hooker. The transformation had also taken her gun away and, in her shocked state, she chose the better part of valor over 'suicide by cop'. A quick check of her new identity - Shona Perkins - on the police computer showed that she did in fact have several convictions for soliciting. Ol' Shona was pretty pissed at this, said she'd never been no ho and would carve any guy who tried to make her one." "You have to have some sympathy with her over that," I said. "I mean all of us have acquired histories to go with our new identities that include stuff we have no memory of doing because we didn't in fact do it." "Yeah, but that's not necessarily the legal position," said Mike. "From what I hear, that's why your big meeting here today, after all. So what's the most embarrassing thing in your new past." "I used to be the captain of my high school football team," I said, "something I'm kinda proud of. I've got a display case in my apartment that I kept my old shirt and all my trophies in. The case is still there, but now it's a shrine to my time as a cheerleader. There's even a photo of my teenage self in there, grinning excitedly. Except I never was a teenage girl." "A cheerleader," said Mike, trying and failing to suppress a grin, "I bet that hurt." "What hurt more is there's now no record of my achievements on the field," I said. "It's as if they never happened." "Yeah, well, there's a lot of that going around," he shrugged. "So how about you?" I said. "How did you and your cop buddies handle the switch?" "Lots of nervous laughter and joking around," said Mike, "busting each others balls and the like - though under the circumstances, that's probably not the best way to describe it. I joined in, of course, but as soon you get some time to yourself, get to strip off and examine yourself in front of a mirror, that's when what happened first really sinks in." "Uh-huh," I said nodding my agreement. I remembered doing the same thing. I was as surprised by the quality of my underwear as I was by my female body. This version of me obviously had exquisite if expensive tastes in that area, and a quick check of my wardrobe and bedside drawers revealed a whole lot more in the way of pricey lingerie and stylish female clothing. Since I'd had the time it took to drive home to begin to get used to what it felt like to have a female body, it was almost a bigger shock finding my apartment now obviously the home of a woman rather than a man. This should not have come as a surprise to me, but for some reason it did. "What's kinda surprising is how quickly most of us seem to be adjusting to our new roles," said Mike. "Oh, there are the exceptions who insist on sticking to their previous gender roles, like those Hell's Angel chapters that seem intent on proving they've still got what it takes and have been causing all sorts of trouble since the G-wave, but most people are just getting on with it and adapting. It really didn't take me long to get used to dressing in male clothes and shaving every day. And look at you. You look great! Every inch the professional female lawyer." "Yeah, well, being professionally turned out goes with the job," I said, secretly pleased by his compliment and noticing again just how handsome he was. Looking at men that way had worried me at first, but it didn't anymore. "Lots of guys insisted on still wearing pants when they first became women," he said, "but they seem to be gradually loosening up. Even some of the cops I work with now turn up in skirts, and they don't get any flak over it from their buddies. It's kinda harder for those of us who used to be women. We all wear male clothes in public, but I bet there's a hell of a lot of cross- dressing goes on behind closed doors. The only thing I miss is the softer underwear - men's is rougher on the skin - but I see someone's already on the case there." "That company that's offering men's undershirts, boxers and briefs in silk? I saw that. Yeah, I've really taken to silk underwear. I can see why you wouldn't be in any hurry to give it up." "So where were you when the G-wave struck?" asked Mike. "Here," I said. "The senior partners, we associates, and those staff not at home with their families, gathered together to watch it all unfold on TV. Even now, it still seems totally unreal. I mean, look what happened. In the middle of the day on June 21st, 2004, a mysterious wall of energy springs up stretching from pole to pole by way of the Bering Strait. (This is just the other side of the International Date line, which means it actually reaches most of us on the 22nd.) Extending from the bottom of the ocean to the top of Earth's atmosphere, it almost immediately sets off westwards around the globe, leaving an identical, stationary wall in its wake. Wherever it passes, it changes men into women and women into men. Nor is there any escape because fleeing westward you'd eventually run into the stationary wall. And transformation is a one-way deal. When you've been exposed and transformed a second exposure has no effect on you. At the speed it's travelling it takes the Genderwave - as it gets named by some Aussie newsman - twenty four hours to circle the globe, which means we get plenty of warning that it's coming and what it will do to us. There's no escaping it. Except for the seven shuttle astronauts orbiting there in space, way above the atmosphere, not a single human being escapes transformation. When the moving wave meets the standing wave there's one last flash of energy that races around the globe in an instant, then both are gone. It turns out that final flash of energy rewrites all records and photos taken during the twenty-four hours of the Genderwave to match the altered world we find ourselves in, totally removing any evidence the event ever actually occurred." "Put like that it sounds like the plot of a bad sci-fi movie, doesn't it?" said Mike. "Yeah," I said, "and harder to deal with than the physical transformation is the way your life and your past changed to match the new you. We got new clothes, new names, and in some cases we even got heavily pregnant. The names came down to us from the oldest surviving women along the maternal line - Ashton was my mother's mother's maiden name - and our first names are what our parents would've named us had we been born in the genders we now occupy." "You know what's weirdest of all," said Mike, "far weirder than your own switch?" "Seeing your parents for the first time," I answered, and he nodded. "So what brings you here today?" I asked. "I've got a meeting with one of your junior associates," he said. "I arrested one of your clients, he's defending, and now we've got to do the whole sharing-of-evidence and Q & A dance." "Doesn't sound like you're looking forward to it," I grinned. "I'm not," he admitted. "From a law and order point of view, the G-wave was a disaster. If a crime was committed before but is being tried after - and that's one hell of a lot of cases - all eyewitness identification has been rendered totally useless. All a defense lawyer has to do is ask a witness to point out in court the person they saw commit the crime and we're cooked. It's particularly bad in rape cases. An awful lot of rapists will get away with it because, now that they're women, there's no way their victims can identify them. In fact, in the nineteen hours or so warning we had before the G-wave hit L.A., the number of rapes went through the roof. I guess the scumbags figured it was time for one last hurrah, and realized the G-wave gave them the perfect chance to escape detection." "Jeez, that's horrible," I said. "Yeah...yeah, it is," said Mike. "And you have to wonder how many of the now male victims are gonna want payback, are gonna take it out on innocent former males. It's a mess." The door opened, and a pretty girl stuck her head into the room. "Jill Wainwright's finally arrived," she said, "so you need to get over to the main conference room. "OK, Penny," I said, "I'll be over shortly." Penny was one of our secretaries. Before the Genderwave, this had also been her name. Penny was transsexual. Since, as we now know, the Genderwave keyed into a person's genes, this meant she went from being someone made externally female through hormones and surgery to someone born female. And since that surgery was now not necessary, it had never taken place. For Penny, the Genderwave had been a dream come true. And unlike the rest of us, who mourned the loss of all the records and photos showing us as we used to be, she had no problem with the eradication of her former past and was delighted with the photos and diaries from a girlhood she had never actually experienced. She decided to keep the name she had chosen for herself rather than her now given name, however. "Guess we'd better go," said Mike, holding the door open for me and running an appeciative eye over my body as I stood up. It was obvious he was attracted to me, and I'd be lying to myself if I said I wasn't at least a little attracted to him, but the thought of acting on that attraction scared me. Unlike some, who had wasted no time in exploring all the sexual possibilities of their altered bodies, I was in no hurry to see what sex with a man was like. Even before the Genderwave struck, it had been eight months since my last relationship. Ah, Melissa Barnes. Blonde, beautiful, and brilliant. We met at a legal conference and were together only two months. Not a long time, but long enough to break my heart when she left me. With her working for a rival firm we'd had to keep our relationship a secret, so I hadn't even been able to seek comfort in the commiserations of my colleagues. I wonder where Melissa is now? And who she is? No, in the past four weeks I've learned the truth in that old adage: a girl's best friend is her vibrator. "It was really good seeing you, Kelly," said Mike, placing a hand on my shoulder and looking into my eyes. "I hope I get to see a lot more of you." With that he kissed me on the cheek then headed down the corridor towards the associates' offices. I gently touched my cheek. That kiss had been...nice. Mike was a sweet guy, and I couldn't deny I felt some attraction towards him, but was he my type? Did I have a type? And if I did, what was it? I had no answers for these questions. Entering the main conference room, I glanced briefly at the new painting on the end wall. It showed the senior partners as they used to be, as Messrs Carter, Finch, & Rabin, and had been commissioned post-Genderwave, the artist working from their descriptions until he achieved likenesses they approved of. With all photos and portraits of everyone from before changed to show the living (and some dead people) as they were now, and with no existing record of how they used to look, this was the only way those faces could be recaptured. Artists able to recreate likenesses from descriptions were going to make a fortune in the next year or two, before people's memory of their former faces dulled enough to render such portraits increasingly difficult. I'd gone online myself and subscribed to one of the many photo-fit sites that had sprung up to enable people to construct images of their old likenesses, but I had yet to produce one I thought was good enough. Seated around the conference table were Jill Wainwright and Lynne Bendis, women in their late fifties like Rachel Cohen, and the other senior partners; a guy around Mike's age I'd never seen before today, though he was obviously another lawyer; Michelle Sawyer, young, black, very snooty, stunningly beautiful, a fellow senior associate at Bendis, Wainwright, and Cohen, and someone with whom I had a, ah, complicated history; and various clerks and secretaries, ready to start furiously scribbling notes at a momen's notice. Michelle winked at me and gave a knowing little smile. Yes complicated, and made even more complicated by what had happened two weeks earlier, when we had both been working late.... It was GW+13, thirteen days after the Genderwave had struck, and I'd taken a break from the brief I was poring over and headed out to the coffee station in an alcove off the main office. Like everyone of associate level and above, I had my own office, the main office being a large, open plan area where everyone else toiled away in their individual little cubicles. As I poured myself a cup of thick, black coffee, Michelle entered the alcove. "Oh, hello Kelly," she said, clearly surprised to see me, "I thought I was the only one working late tonight?" "Obviously not," I said, standing aside to let her get to the coffee machine. "With the crazy workload we have now you probably won't get the offices all to yourself again for a long time." Michelle was my rival at the firm, the only other senior associate and the person I would most obviously be compared with. She was a graduate of Harvard Law School, an all-round high flyer, and ruthlessly ambitious. I found her intimidating, had found her intimidating even when she was plain Justin Jones who, while not particularly impressive looking, had more than made up for this with a phenomenal legal mind. I guess his family's gene pool had more physical potential than had surfaced in Justin though, because Michelle was gorgeous. She looked a lot like the young Robin Givens, which was a problem for me. I ran my appreciative, and somewhat envious gaze over her body as she leaned over the coffee machine, only to have her snap her head around and catch me in the act. "Like what you see, Kelly?" she said, straightening up and smiling like the cat who'd got the cream. "You turned out very beautiful," I said, unable to stop my cheeks from flushing. "I know," she grinned. "If there's such a thing as a genetic lottery, I hit the jackpot. Do you know who I remind me of?" She knew full well that I did. "No," I lied, not sure what I thought this would accomplish. "Oh, come now," she laughed, "you mean you don't think I look like the young Robin Givens did during her time on 'Head of the Class'?" "Now that you come to mention it," I said, uncomfortably, "I suppose I can see the resemblance." "You 'suppose'?" she said, mockingly. "Aren't you the person who confessed to having a huge crush on her in that show when you were a kid?" "Dammit, Michelle!" I said, "you know damn well I did! What do you expect me to say?" I had confessed this early crush to Justin when he first joined the firm and I was trying to be friendly with him. At the time, I hadn't realized he filed every such tidbit away for possible future use. "Hey, take it easy," said Michelle, laying a slender hand on my shoulder. "I was just flirting with you." "'Flirting'?" I said, my mouth suddenly dry. "Yeah, y'know, *flirting*," said Michelle, "bantering with someone you're attracted to." "You're attracted to me?" I said, non-plussed by this unexpected development. "Not to the old you, obviously," she smiled, "I wasn't gay. But like a lot of people, I'm not sure what I am now. We don't just have female bodies, we have female brains too, with whatever that means in terms of determining our sexuality and gender identity. The physical change was instantaneous, but I think it'll be a little while yet before all that other stuff settles into place. Before it does, there's still enough of Justin left in me to be turned on by girl-on-girl, and intrigued at the idea of being one of the participants. And I've always had a thing for blondes." She took her hand from my shoulder and gently stroked my cheek. "My place is closest. You can follow me in your car. What do you say?" I nodded mutely, still stunned by this unexpected turn of events. "Good!" she laughed, grabbing my hand and heading for the elevators. "We've both done enough work for one day. Let's go have fun." It's surprising how soon you get used to your new body, just how little time it takes for waking up female to no longer be a surprise, for the weight of breasts on your chest and the swaying of your more generous hips as you walk to come to feel natural. Two weeks in, and this new body no longer felt strange. It was mine and I was now comfortable with it. What did feel strange was having hands other than my own running over that body for the first time, caressing my breasts, stroking my clitoris, bringing me to a wonderful orgasm. "That was amazing!" I gasped, in my post-orgasmic glow, still coming down from the experience. "Yeah, I know," grinned Michelle, who had experienced her own orgasm at my hands a little while earlier. Propping myself up on one elbow, I idly caressed one of Michelle's breasts, contrasting my own pale flesh with her black skin, still dark but a shade or two lighter than it had been. Her body was almost flawless. Almost, but not quite. "So Sawyer was your grandmother's maiden name?" I asked. "Mother's," she said. "My grandmother died years ago. You?" "Yeah, Ashton was my maternal grandmother's maiden name, " I said, "and since she's still alive, only now an old guy name Albert, the iron logic of the G-wave means that hers is the family name that came down to me." "Takes some getting used to, a whole new name," mused Michelle. "Yeah, it does," I said, looking around. "Say, this is a really nice apartment. Modern, yet elegant and classy. Have you always had such expensive tastes?" "Hardly," she snorted. "Expensive taste wasn't something I could afford growing up in Cabrini Green, back in Chicago." "'Cabrini Green'?" I said, surprised by this revelation. "I always assumed you were born into money. The way you carry yourself, that superior attitude of yours...." "No, I was raised in poverty by my mother," she said. "She had to work two jobs just to keep our heads above water. She was determined I would make something of myself, and drummed the value of education into me. Anything less than straight 'A's wasn't acceptable. That made me a target for those around me, and there were a lot of them, who hated the idea of anyone bettering themselves. They tried to drag me down to their level, but I wouldn't let them. The day I won my first college scholarship was the proudest day of my mother's life. I always vowed that as soon as I had the money, I'd get her out of there, set her up in her own house, let her put her feet up for the first time in her life." "From your expression, I'm guessing things didn't work out that way," I said, gently. "No," said Michelle, grim faced, "they didn't. One of the jobs she worked was in a sweat shop. The guy who ran it locked his employees in, one night there was a fire, and...." "I'm so sorry," I said, as her voice trailed off. "That's awful!" "Just a few more months and I'd have had her out of there," she said, "just a few lousy months. Twenty two women died in the fire, but the owner knew people, and he got off with a slap on the wrist. So I launched my own civil suit against him. I tracked down all his operations and found enough to get him closed down. He was frightened and offered to settle. The cost of that settlement was that everyone working for him got at least minimum wage - he wasn't even paying them that - and that his operations were brought up to code, a private company of my choosing to inspect any of his operations for compliance at any time I chose. He knew I could close him down so he agreed, of course. As much as this was going to cost him, it was still a lot less than the money I could have taken him for." "Why didn't you?" I asked. "Because as shitty as those jobs were, they were still preferable to no jobs at all. I wasn't going to be responsible for all those folks being thrown out of work. These were people just like my mother, poor men and women doing whatever honest work they could find to put food on the table and dreaming of a better future for their children. No, I couldn't have that on my conscience. Something else I could never have had on my conscience was being a deadbeat dad. I'd seen how hard it was for my mother on her own, how it ground her down, and I vowed that any child of mine would have a father who was fully involved in their life and who supported them and their mother. I guess I'll never have to worry about being a father now, though." "Have you ever had a relationship with a women who had kids?" I asked. "No," she said, giving me a curious look. "What made you ask that?" "Oh, nothing, "I said, "just being nosey." "Well, I need a smoke," said Michelle, rolling into a sitting position on the edge of the bed then standing up. She threw on a negligee and headed out into the living room, returning a minute or so later smoking a cigarette. "They say those things are a nipple substitute," I said, "a sign you were weaned too early." "Can't be a nipple sustitute in my case," she replied. "My family always favored bottle over breast." She took a long drag on her cigarette, staring at me thoughtfully. "I won't ask you to stay the night," she said, "because as nice as this was, I think we both know it was a one-time deal. Now that that's behind us, I think we'll both be turning our attentions in another direction. Oh, and while we're being so open with each other, I have a confession to make. I was sleeping with Melissa Barnes at the same time she was seeing you, though I didn't find out about your relationship until afterwards. She was quite careful to keep each of us from knowing about the other." "Melissa? You mean she left me for you?" "No, she left us both at the same time. I guess there must've been a third guy." Sitting here now, regarding Michelle across the conference table, I wondered if either of us would ever find out what had happened to Melissa, not that Michelle seemed terribly interested in finding out. Soon after that night, Michelle started dating guys and had not looked back since. And if she could use her stunning looks to advance her career in some way I had no doubt at all that she would. Senior partner Rachel Cohen, the former Seth Rabin, opened the meeting in her familiar brisk fashion, rising to her feet and launching straight into it: "Before we begin, I'd like to introduce the newest member of our team, Craig Byrne." The new guy nodded, flashing his perfect teeth as he gave a megawatt grin. Tall, dark-haired, and with movie-star good looks, he radiated confidence. "Craig will be joining us as a senior associate," said Rachel, "and I'm sure you'll all join with me in welcoming him to the firm. Right, now, it's been four weeks, the four busiest weeks any of us has ever known, and we've been running all out just to stand still. It's time to pause and take stock, to pool our experiences, apply the lessons learned, and plot a new way forward, particularly in light of the Identities & Contracts Confirmation Act." The ICCA was the single most significant response the government had made to our post-Genderwave circumstances and something that affected all Americans. It had been rushed through Congress at breakneck speed, passed unanimously, and gone onto the statute books, all in a little over three weeks. And save for one senator who had managed to attach an appropriations package for military retraining bases to be built in her state, it had emerged remarkably free of pork. President Barbara Hawkins - the former George W. Bush - announced its passage herself in a televised address to the nation. "The importance of the ICCA can hardly be overstated," said Rachel, eyes scanning the room and resting briefly on each of our faces, "and it affects many of the assumptions we've so far made about the post-Genderwave legal situation. It confirms that as far as the State is concerned, everyone is in fact the person the records show them to be and not the person they were before the Genderwave. Any contracts shown to be signed in that name are legally binding, whether you remember signing them or not. They didn't really have any other choice in this. A modern State can't function without its records and legal documents, and every single one of those documents relates to the post-Genderwave reality we find ourselves in. In most cases, this isn't a huge problem due to the strange way the Genderwave rewrote reality. We were transformed where we stood but remained in the same place physically and socially. By which I mean we all still lived in the same homes and were married to the same people. Had the Genderwave altered reality from the past forward it's inconceivable that, in our changed lives, we all would have ended up with the same partners and living in the same places. No, the Genderwave rewrote reality from the present backwards, changing just enough for the rewritten present we found ourselves in to be internally consistent. Which meant, of course, that regardless of whether or not your new or your original name was on a contract, it was still you who signed it and who were legally liable. Fortunately for this firm's future business, things aren't always that clear cut. Ms Ashton?" "Uh, ah, yes..." I said, rising from my chair abruptly. I hadn't expected to be called upon to speak so early and was caught on the hop. Surprisingly, given how awkward things had been between us since that evening we'd spent together, Michelle gave me a quick smile of encouragement. "As you know," I began, "our new histories, while consistent with our new identities, are not consistent with our memories. What we do in the here and now, our professions, have with a few significant exceptions remained unchanged post-Genderwave. Among other things, this has left us with a predominantly female military. However, what we did in the past has usually altered to accord more closely with our new genders. For example, I was captain of my high school football team, yet all the records show me to have actually been a cheerleader. Which brings us to the case of Corporal Dan Rivers. Corporal Rivers lost an arm in 1991 in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. As such, he enjoyed the benefits that accrue to those injured in combat and the services of the Veterans Administration. Corporal Rivers is now Ms Julie Smith, a woman who lost her arm in a car crash. As such, she is no longer receiving those benefits she once did since, as per the ICCA, the government claims she's no longer entitled to them." "So the government's saving money," said Michelle. "Or is someone else getting it?" "Someone else is getting it," I said. "Someone still has to have been there in Ms Smith's place, in all their places, and someone was. There are women now men who have Desert Storm and other wars as part of their pasts. We know they weren't there, they know they weren't there, but as far as the records are concerned they were and that's the story the government is going with per the ICCA. Of course, the downside is they're now also registered as reservists and can be called up at any time." I had experience of this in my family. My father had served in Vietnam and was highly affronted when, post-Genderwave, all his photos from that time now showed a younger version of the man Mom now was there in his place, alongside buddies he didn't recognize at all. "Good," said Rachel Cohen, "this is all good stuff we can use." "'Use'?," I said, puzzled. "Yes, Ms Ashton, 'use'. I propose we put the full resources of this firm behind Ms Smith's case. It seems our best chance of driving a wedge into the ICCA. In erasing any evidence of how things used to be, the Genderwave created the possibility that the world in which we now find ourselves is the way it has always been, that the memory everyone has of a life before it arrived as a member of the opposite sex is in fact a global mass-delusion. The physical evidence certainly supports that interpretation and now, for reasons of legal convenience, so does the State. The ICCA renders our memories of our earlier lives unsupported hearsay. Does anyone in this room really believe we all suffered a mass delusion, that the Genderwave did not in fact give everyone a sex-change?" No one raised a hand. "Exactly so, and neither will any jury. They will sympathise with Ms Smith, will see the injustice in her situation, and will find for her regardless of what the ICCA says. With any luck we can take this all the way to the Supreme Court. I want Ms Ashton, Ms Sawyer, and Mr Byrne to give this case their full attention. Make sure we cover all the angles." Afterwards, the three of us having ended up in my office, I asked Craig Byrne the inevitable question: "So where were you when the Genderwave hit?" "Watching TV with my parents," he said, sizing me up, "and my daughter as was." "You're a parent?" said Michelle. "Does that mean you're married?" There was disappointment in her voice. She clearly found him attractive too. "No, a single parent," said Craig. "I was a single mother; now I'm a single father, and there are suddenly an awful lot of us out there." "How old is your child, and what's her, I mean his, name?" "He's two months old," said Craig, "and his name's Aaron. It used to be Susan." "Two months!" said Michelle, shocked. "Shouldn't you still be on maternity or paternity leave?" "Maybe," he said , "but I really needed to get back in the saddle and, fortunately, Bendis, Wainright, & Cohen were looking for someone with my particular experience. Aaron's with his grandparents right now, who totally dote on him. They'll be looking after him when I'm out." "Do you have pictures?" asked Michelle, eagerly. "What new parent doesn't?" said Craig, pulling out his PDA and calling up the photos stored on it. "Oh, he's so cute!" cooed Michelle. And he was. The pictures showed a beautiful baby boy, his eyes bright and alert, staring curiously into the camera. As Craig and Michelle bonded over the pictures of his son, I studied Craig thoughtfully. "OK," I said at length, "time we were getting down to the task at hand. "I agree," said Craig, pocketing the PDA. "Perhaps we ought to start by reviewing how the military in general handled the G-wave, see if there's anything there we can use." "The first members of the US military to be affected were Captain Henry Mathers and his crew," I said, reading from my notes. "They were part of the US 6th Fleet and based at Pearl Harbor. They were out on manoeuvers when the Genderwave sprang up leaving them on one side of it and Hawaii on the other. After their transformation, the Navy airlifted Henry Mathers, now Marcia Peters, off the ship and flew her back to Pearl to be debriefed. They also let her be interviewed by the networks. I think they were hoping that seeing a serving officer calmly handling the switch would somehow reassure the public and let them know there was nothing to worry about. I'm not sure how well that worked out, though." "Yeah, I remember seeing her interviewed on TV," said Michelle, "and she was none too happy about the change. I can't say that I felt very reassured after seeing her." "How are they handling now having a mostly female force?" asked Craig. "Depends on the service," I said. "It doesn't make a lot of difference to the air force whether its pilots are male or female. The army and navy, however, both have positions where male strength is pretty much a requirement. A woman can operate a missile battery and other tech positions as well as a man, but hefting the heavy pack and other gear required of an infantryman is beyond the capacity of a lot of women." "What are they doing about this?" "Well, the army is trying to move some if it's formerly female support staff from back-up to front-line infantry positions," I said. "Understandably, there's been some resistance to this, and then there's the whole problem of being trained in the necessary skills. It'll be a while before it gets sorted out. In the meantime, I think we can expect to see a few lawsuits." "A mostly female military, suddenly all-female baseball leagues," mused Michelle. "The G-wave certainly did a number on us, didn't it?" "Got that right," I said. "I don't see that there's anything here of immediate relevance to our case, though. Perhaps we ought to look at it specifically from the viewpoint of the ICCA itself? It pretty much sets in stone US government recognition of one particular interpretation of the Genderwave. That's the angle we have to attack this from." "The *effect* of the ICCA might be the same as if the government had decided the G-wave caused a mass delusion rather than actually transforming everyone on the planet," said Michelle, "and we can all see why they had to do this from a legal standpoint - but I don't think it was their intent to validate any one particular explanation of the phenonmenon. I mean, if that was the case, why would they have cordoned off that area near Dutch Harbor where the wave crossed land when it first appeared?" When the Genderwave sprang into being, it did so along a line that stretched from pole-to-pole via the Bering Strait. That's an interpolar line that crosses about as little land as it's possible for such a line to cross. But it still passed over some land. Where it crossed US territory was in the Aleutians, near Dutch Harbor. When the moving wave set out westwards around the globe, the stationary wave remained sitting along that line for a full twenty-four hours. Needless to say, as soon as the authorities appreciated what was happening, the army were rushed in to secure the area. Since then the area has remained cordoned off and, if news reports are to be believed, teams of scientists have been poring over the land ever since to see if the Genderwave left any physical evidence behind there at all. The conspiracy theorists have another explanation for all this activity. According to them, there was already a pre-existing secret facility there and, far from needing to examine the area, the government already knows exactly what happenned. Their theory is that it was an exotic experiment at this facility, one that got out of hand, that caused the Genderwave in the first place. I don't know if I put any credence in this particular explanation of the Genderwave. It's only one of many, after all, the most widespread being that God was responsible (Michelle subscribes to this view). But a lot of people do. That place has become the conspiracy theorists' new Area 51, and there are now dozens of them camped outside the fence, though what they hope to accomplish by this I don't know. We continued arguing back and forth for several hours, trying to apply precedents to a case that had no precedents. The Genderwave had rendered much of the territory on which we hoped to base our legal arguments unfamiliar ground and there was an extent to which we were making this up as we went along. Scary stuff, but also very exciting. Craig kept up a flirtatious banter with both of us during all this, and he was very good at it. So much so, that when Michelle left to use the bathroom, I was more than receptive to his proposal. "So," he said, smiling and looking deep into my eyes, "what are you doing after work? Can I take you to dinner?" I nodded, my heart in my mouth, more than a little scared of the effect he was having on me. "Good," he grinned. "I'll pick you up at eight." Which is why, at eight o'clock that evening, I found myself dashing around my condo, putting the finishing touches to my make-up, obsessively checking and rechecking my dress in the mirror, and generally acting like a teenager on their first ever date. But then, this was my first date as a woman, and I was more nervous about it than I could recall ever being about any past date as a man. There were things I was hoping would happen tonight, and things I hoped would not. I had a lot riding on the outcome of this date. The doorbell rang, and I jumped, showing just how wound up I was. It was Craig. Instead of buzzing him up, I told him I'd join him downstairs in the lobby. "You look wonderful!" he said when I appeared, lightly grasping my shoulders and giving me an air kiss on the left cheek, taking care not to muss my make-up. "I've booked us a table at La Cruz, " he said, as he opened his car's passenger door for me. "I hear the food's pretty good." That was an understatement. La Cruz was one of Los Angeles' best Mexican restaurants, and the food was to die for. We made a little inconsequential small talk before the food arrived, but it was afterwards, when we had eaten and were both feeling reflective over our wine that I broached the question that had been nagging at me. "So," I said, taking a sip of my Merlot, "have you dated much since becoming a man?" "Hardly," he said. "Even with my parents' help, taking care of Aaron has been pretty demanding. This is the first time I've been out in months." "How come you left your previous firm? You were on maternity leave, so they must have held your position open for you." "I wanted a change," he said, "though I guess I got a much bigger one than I bargained on." "Yeah, we all did," I chuckled, "but there's nothing like a shock that big to make you reassess your life." "Exactly," he said. "It wasn't generally known, but my old firm were about to become the main west coast legal team for the Saudi oil princesses. It's a huge deal, but it meant divesting ourselvesof all our old clients and working exclusively for the Saudis. The money to be made more than compensates for the lost business, but I didn't want to work for a single client. I need variety in my work, so I quit." "Funny how a society where woman have traditionally been very much second-class citizens, where they weren't even allowed to drive cars, should suddenly have decided it's OK for women to run the place post-Genderwave," I said, voice dripping with irony. "Yeah. The religious authorities, who also suddenly all found themselves female, decided that anyone who had already achieved the age of majority at the time of the G-wave should be accorded male status. What are the chances?" I had to laugh at this. One thing the Genderwave had been good at was bringing into bold relief the depths of self-serving hypocrisy we humans are capable of. This was only one example. There were many, many more. Later, Craig drove me back to his apartment. "Do you want to come in?" he asked, as he pulled up outside. "Of course," I said. "So you arranged for your son to stay with his grandparents overnight?" He nodded. "My, you were confident," I said, smiling. "Well, I guess you'd better lead on." As I followed him across the lobby of his building to the elevators, I regarded him through narrowed eyes. What he said and did in the next fifteen minutes or so would be crucial. "Excuse the mess, but I haven't long moved in," said Craig, gesturing towards a stack of boxes when we entered his apartment. "That's OK," I said. "I've seen worse. Heck, I've been responsible for worse." Craig took my jacket, then he spun me around and kissed me. It was long and deep and I felt myself going weak at the knees. Dear God, it was amazing! His hands slid up under my blouse, moving towards my bra-strap and it felt good, very good. If I was going to stop this it had to be now. "No," I said, pushing him away, "no, I don't want this." "What's wrong?" he said, looking puzzled and annoyed. "Is this your first time as a woman? Is that why you're getting skittish?" "Yes," I said, tucking my blouse back into my skirt and trying to regain my composure, "this would've been my first time, but that's not the problem. The problem is you." "Me? What have I done?" "It's what you haven't done," I said. "I gave you every opportunity waited to the last moment, right up until it was obvious you never had any intention of telling me." "Telling you *what*?" he said, beginning to sound exasperated. "Telling me that you used to be Melissa Barnes," I said. The color drained from his face. "How could you possibly know that?" "So I was right," I said, shoulders slumping. "There was always a chance, a very small chance, I was wrong. You've no idea how much I hoped I was." "How did you rumble me?" "It's been a month since the Genderwave," I said, "which means that every post-pubescent, pre-menopausal, non-pregnant woman on the planet has now experienced her first period. And since none of us knew what the warning signs of its onset are, there were one hell of a lot of 'accidents'. We'll all know better next time, and we now appreciate the importance of always carrying a tampon." "I don't understand," said Craig. "What does this have to do with figuring out who I used to be?" "It's a demonstration of just how little most men know about women's bodies," I said, "about these bodies that are now ours. I've seen Michelle naked. Her body is almost flawless. Almost, but not quite. The flaw is something she didn't recognize but I did because, unlike her, I've made love to a woman who's had a child. The flaw is stretch marks. She believes she never fathered a child when she was male, but the fact she has stretch marks as a woman says otherwise. It was when she told me she'd been having sex with Melissa at the same time as I believed we were in an exclusive relationship that it all fell into place. Michelle thought Melissa had left us both because she'd found another lover, but that wasn't it, was it? With a black lover and a white lover there's really no hiding who the father is when the kid is born, and you had no way of knowing which of us it was. Having the kid - and I know you don't believe in abortion - would mean choosing one of us, and there was a fifty-fifty chance you'd choose the wrong one. Doing the math, you skipped out at the end of your first trimester, before you started to show. When you showed us that picture of your son, of that beautiful coffee-colored boy, it instantly aroused my suspicions. I watched your mannerisms, listened for Melissa's particular verbal habits, all the sorts of things I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been looking for them. That's how I figured out it was probably you." "Very good," said Craig, dryly. "That was worthy of Columbo." "I loved you," I said, accusingly, "and it tore me apart when you left. Yet here you are, in your handsome new body, flirting with the both of us and trying to get into my panties with no intention of telling me who you used to be. If I knew it was you I could have chosen whether or not I wanted to renew our relationship, but what I might or might not want didn't matter to you at all, did it? All that mattered to you was your own sexual needs, and I imagine fucking me without me knowing who you used to be would just add to the excitement for you. Was Michelle next?" His silence told me everything I needed to know.. "So you were planning on stringing us both along again, just like you did before. Well not me, not again. I was attracted to you as Melissa and I'm attracted to you now, I can't deny it, but I guess that just means I need to change who I'm attracted to. I want more than this. And I deserve better than you." Somewhat to my surprise, this outburst actually left him looking shame-faced. "So what happens now?" he said. "Now? Now you tell Michelle who you used to be, and that she's a parent, and you let her get to know her son. If you don't tell her, I will. Treat her right, and there's a chance you two could have a future together. I'm pretty sure she'd make a great mother. Treat her wrong, and I'll come down on you like a ton of bricks. And don't kid yourself that I couldn't." "OK," he said, in a small voice. "I'll tell her in the office tomorrow." "Good," I said. "I'm leaving now. Even though I don't think we can win our current case, I hope we develop a good professional working relationship, but that's all it can ever be." With that, I gathered up my things and left his apartment, head held high. Once outside, I leaned against a wall, shaking. That had been harder and had hurt more than I expected. It would have been so easy to fall into his arms and to ignore his deception, but I was glad that I'd been strong. I knew now that I was prepared to take the next step in being a woman, that I was finally ready to be with a man, but what I had said in there was true. I *did* deserve better than him, and I really did want to change the kind of person I was attracted to. I knew the obvious place to start. Taking my cellphone from my purse, I scrolled to a familiar number in the address book and activated the dialler. My call was quickly answered. "Hello," I said, "I'd like to speak with Detecive Sanchez...." The beginning. ******************************************* Notes: This isn't the story I was expecting to write next, but after the first in this series, GENDERWAVE: FIRST REPORTS, was posted it quickly became apparent that I hadn't defined this particular universe as fully in that story as I'd intended. So I launched into this one with the intention of remedying that and, hopefully, fitting an actual plot somewhere in there too. This tale and GW:FIRST REPORTS are essentially the 'bible' for the Genderwave shared universe. You should read both carefully before setting a story in this universe, and pay particular attention to the rules at the end of the first story. I've spent quite a while figuring out the major ramifications of the Genderwave, and there are lots of them. If you write a story focussing on a small group of fictional characters then there's not too much to keep straight; if you want to work on a larger canvas, then things get a bit more complicated. Something I need to clarify is the Genderwave timeline. The G-wave took twenty four hours to circle the globe, which meant it struck pretty much everywhere around the middle of the day their local time. It first appeared on June 21st, 2004, at around noon local time, running between the poles along a line through the Bering Strait. In the first story, I forgot about the International Date Line. Since the G-wave spang into being just east of the line, this means it actually hit everywhere on the *22nd*. There's a stray reference to druids and the summer solstice in FIRST REPORTS you should now ignore (obviously this was just the press getting it wrong again *ahem*), but other than for this the story is unaffected. Just what the time in a given place when the news it was coming got out is a little more complicated. As per FIRST REPORTS, the news went global around 1am in the morning London time. This means Europeans woke up to the news on the morning of the 22nd. However, at 1am London time, it was still the previous day in the US, which means east coasters heard the news around 8pm on the 21st, and west coasters at 5pm. Which means they got 16 hours and 19 hours warning respectively. Conversely, New Zealand would have been getting the first reports at the same time the G-wave reached them, and Australia would have had about two hours warning before it reached the cities on their east coast. A good resource for finding out when news would have reached a given city anywhere in the world, based on 1am London time, is: www.timeanddate.com Remember also, that if you're using real people in your stories you have to research what their new names would be in the post-Genderwave world. I did this with George Bush and Tony Blair respectively, who become Barbara Hawkins and Moira Smith respectively. This is because as women they'd have taken their wives' names, and those family names now came down from their wives' mothers or maternal grandmothers, whichever is the older still alive. So, to show the logic in George W's case: his mother's maiden name was Pierce and, given the way names get reused down the generations in that family, it's reasonable to assume that as a female he would have been Barbara Pierce. As to a maried name... Well, Laura Bush's maiden name was Welch, but her mother is still alive and she was born Jenna Louise Hawkins. Therefore, in the altered world of the genderwave I give you President Barbara Hawkins. Names are also reused in Laura's family (hence a daughter named Jenna). In our timeline her father's name was Harold Bruce Welch. So, picking one of these, I give you First Gentleman (I assume that would be the title of the President's husband) Bruce Hawkins. The genderwave stuck in June. I'm assuming it had no effect on the outcome of the election, though I'm sure both candidates would somehow have managed to make political capital out of it. I chose arbitrary first names for the Beatles (and assumed, since it was a nickname, Ringo would still be called Ringo), but didn't give surnames as I didn't want to do the research necessary to figure out what these would've been. And the reason they were all female of course, despite John and George being already dead when the G-wave struck, is that they had surviving offspring and spouses and so needed to have been female to still have been the other genetic parent to their kids. In the case of the Stones, so far as I'm aware Brian Jones died without having fathered any kids. This means he wasn't retroactively made female, which gives us the odd situation that the Stones started out as a largely female band with a single male member. However, his surname may not still have been Jones. That would depend on whether his mother and/or maternal grandmother are still alive.