Genderwave: First Reports free porn video

GENDERWAVE: FIRST REPORTS By BobH (c) 2004 It started on June 21st - the summer solstice - shortly after noon local time. That was when the shimmering wall appeared along a line stretching from the top of the world down through the middle of the Bering Strait all the way to the middle of Antarctica. Running from one pole to the other and stretching from the top of the atmosphere to the ocean bottom and through the deepest caverns known to man, it seemed impossibly huge yet was only a few millimetres thick. To the naked eye it looked like heat haze. No sooner had it appeared than it spawned a second, identical wall. The first remained where it was, but the second broke away from it, anchored to the poles as it traversed the Earth westwards, rewriting the world as it went. That the wall formed at the point on the planet's surface where the advancing edge would be over the least land, was a fact whose significance would be debated for years to come. At first, its path over the waters of the Pacific was interrupted only by a few small islands and it crossed the International Date Line, passing from June 21st to June 22nd, unheralded. The moving wall hit its first significant population centers on Tonga and Western Samoa. By the time it departed those islands, the word was already going out to the rest of the world, warning them of the fate that was headed their way. Fiji and New Zealand were next, followed by Australia, Japan, the Philippines and China as the wave continued on its inexorable, unstoppable way. The now independent republics of the old Soviet empire succumbed to it, as did the rest of the Far East. India, Pakistan, the nations of the Middle East, and Russia itself were left in its wake as it carried on over Europe and Africa, and out across the Atlantic. It hit the Americas at Newfoundland and the Natal region of Brazil. Moving down the eastern seaboard of the US, it swept over Boston, New York, and Washington DC in turn, crossing the continent in three hours. Sweeping out over the Pacific once more, it eventually crossed Hawaii, Honolulu being the last major city to feel its touch. An hour later, the residents of Nome, Alaska, became the final urban dwellers on the planet to be transformed. At last, twenty four hours after it started out, the moving wall of energy met again with the standing wall it had left behind. As the two touched so there was a quick burst of light which flashed around the planet in an instant, and then both were gone. They vanished without trace, showing no sign they had ever existed, but leaving the world utterly changed. My name was Tim Jones, and I still work for the BBC at its White City headquarters in West London. The morning TV breakfast show starts at 6am, but I have to be there two hours earlier to help edit the news footage that's come in during the night. I left for work that day at 3am as I always do, kissing my sleeping wife and infant son before climbing into the car and setting out from our home in Hounslow. I still remember turning on my car radio and hearing that first announcement: "Reports are coming in of what witnesses have variously described as a wall or curtain of haze that appears to be sweeping around the planet. Stretching as far as the eye can see in all directions, it has already swept across New Zealand, Japan, and Papua New Guinea, and is currently passing across Australia and Eastern Russia, heading for Indonesia, China, and the Philippines. Incredibly, it is reportedly changing the sex of everyone it touches. This phenomenon - which has already been dubbed 'the Genderwave' - is expected to reach Britain in nine hours time and to hit the east coast of America three hours later. Scientists have no idea what has caused this phenomenon, or how it can be stopped." At first I thought this must be a joke, that I'd tuned into a radio drama where they were making use of faked news reports, just as Orson Welles had in his famous radio production of 'The War of the Worlds' back in October 1938. There was no way what I had just heard could really be happening, after all. That's what I told myself and what I believed, right up to the moment I arrived in the White City newsroom. "Have you heard?" asked Mark Johnson, rushing over to me. Mark was a sound engineer, and probably my closest friend at the Beeb. "In just over eight hours," he said, "you and I will be women." "And I'll be a bloke," said Jane Rogers, our script editor. She did not look happy at the prospect. "I still can't believe this is happening." There was a strange atmosphere in the newsroom. Everybody was filled with trepidation at what was coming - nervous faces and dark, gallows humour prevailed - yet at the same time there was an odd undercurrent of excitement. I knew why. "This is the biggest story in history," I said, "and we get to live it as well as report on it." "Yeah, but you have to trade in your dick for a pair of tits and a pussy to be a part of it," said Mark. "That's a hell of a price to pay." "Show him the Australian footage," said Jane. Mark slid a videotape into one of the slots in the bank of VCRs in the room, and an image sprang to life on one of our screens. It was a feed from one of the Australian networks and showed an Aussie newsreporter I recognised but whose name I could never remember. Fortunately, this was displayed at the bottom of the screen: Bruce Keene. Keene was standing on the coast, microphone in hand, gesturing out to sea. In the distance, approaching rapidly, was what looked like a wall of heat haze. "Here it comes," he said, managing to maintain his professional composure in spite of everything, "and there's nowhere you can hide from it. It's moving too fast to outrun - about one thousand miles per hour at the equator - and according to reports from New Zealand, it passes through walls as if they aren't there. It's coming ashore just about ...now!" As the wave hit him, so the tall, short-haired man in his business suit and tie was replaced by a shorter, long haired woman in a skirt suit. She was immaculately coiffed and made-up, her jewellery understated and tasteful. The name at the bottom of the screen now read: Kylie Mason. To the naked eye, the change looked instantaneous. "That was..." began the woman, pausing at she first heard her unfamiliar voice, then staring down at herself, and at the long painted nails at the end of her slender hands, in stunned amazement. She shook herself briefly, regaining her composure with admirable swiftness. There would be time to take stock later; for now she had a news report to deliver. "What some are calling the Genderwave has started to move across Australia. As you have just seen, its effect is nothing short of miraculous. Whether this is the work of God or of man is not yet known. What we do know is that if the Genderwave continues around the world at its current rate, then by this time tomorrow it will have transformed everyone on the planet. What this will mean for the world as a whole, and how it will affect individual countries, we can for now only speculate. This is Bruce Keene...what? I'm sorry. They're telling me through my earpiece that the name you're seeing on your screens has changed. So I guess this is Kylie Mason, returning you to the studio." I was stunned by what I'd just seen. "Wow," I said. "Yeah," said Jane. "Makes your stomach lurch just thinking that's going to happen to us too, doesn't it?" "What's with the name change?" I asked, particularly puzzled by this. "How does Bruce Keene become Kylie Mason?" "We had our suspicions about that," said Mark, "and were chasing that up before you got in. We just received confirmation from Australia that our guess was correct." "So spill. What's the explanation?" "Everyone is being changed regardless of age," said Jane, "which, if they're still alive, includes everyone's parents and grandparents. As you saw from the way his clothes changed along with his body when Bruce became Kylie, the Genderwave is doing more than just giving everyone a sex change; it's rewriting reality. Not only are you changed, but the world around you changes so that the new you is the you who has always been there. Women always used to take their husband's names when they married. So if, say, your maternal grandmother is still alive, she's now your paternal grandfather and hers is the family name that will have come down to you. Sure enough, the surname of Keene's maternal grandmother - his great-grandparents are all deceased - was Mason. Kylie is what his parents would have named him had he been born female." "So let me guess," I said. "You two have already worked out what your new names are likely to be, haven't you?" "My mother's parents are dead," said Jane, "but her maiden name was Kerry. If I'd been a boy, she would've named me Carl." "'Carl Kerry' is not too bad," I said. "It is if you're happy being Jane Rogers," she replied. "Oh Jesus, Claire!" I said, suddenly leaping to my feet and crossing to a phone. "Your wife?" said Mark, looking puzzled until comprehension dawned. "If these are the last few hours she gets in her birth-gender," I said, "she's not going to want to waste any of them sleeping." The conversation with Claire was difficult. At first she didn't believe me, but turning on the radio and catching the news - it was all anyone on air was talking about - soon convinced her. Naturally, she wanted me to come home, but I pressed on her that this was the biggest story in history and that we had to stay here to make sure it was properly covered. Now, more than ever, people would be turning to the media, I explained, and I had to see this through. "I don't know when I'll be able to get home," I said, "or what I'll look like when I do, but whatever happens to us, always remember that I love you." As I put the phone down, I remember hoping that would still be true after we had changed. Only time would tell. "We're getting news feed from the US," said Mark. "Seems all hell has broken loose among the L.A gangs." The first radio report I'd listened to had been at 3am local time, by which point what was happening was pushing everything else off TV and radio all around the globe. At 3am in Britain it was 10pm the previous night on America's east coast, and 7pm on the west coast. It was now 4.20am, the news had had time to get around and sink in, and in those countries that had yet to be touched by the Genderwave people were starting to react to the news in major ways. We watched the US newsfeed as a reporter buttonholed a gangmember. Cars were ablaze in the background, the sound of gunfire and sirens no more than a street or two away. "What's happening here?" demanded the reporter. "Ain't no-one turnin' us into no bitches!" snarled the young man angrily, his eyes full of fear. "We goin' down as men, and we settlin' a few scores at the same time." "Macho morons!" said Jane in disgust. "Is being female so awful they'd rather kill themselves?" "Pretty much, yeah," I said. "Their manhood is ludicrously important to them. To some, it must seem like all they have. These are not the sort of guys who treat women well, so they also have to figure they're in line for the same treatment when the tables are turned." (As it turned out, a few days after the change the former girl gangs moved in, and viciously put down the survivors of the gangs of former guys. They made major use of rape, getting some hooked on heroin or crack and forcing them to turn tricks, then took over their lucrative drugs business lock, stock, and barrel.) The Genderwave had finished transforming Japan, was almost done with Australia, and was beginning on its way across China, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Kylie Mason had wondered how the passage of the Genderwave would affect individual nations. Well, I thought I knew what one effect would be in rural China, at least. Due to China's 'one family, one child' policy, instituted in an attempt to bring their exploding population growth under control, a generation of girls was missing in the countryside. The cultural importance of having a son had led to the routine abortion of female foetuses, something which happened in some other parts of Asia, too. It looked like that particular imbalance was about to be reversed. I couldn't help feeling there was a certain poetic justice in this. It was about this time the first reports of the stationary wave started to come in. "This is weird," said Mark, reading a feed from one of the wire services. "It looks like the Genderwave left a standing wall of the same stuff behind it when it set off around the world. It passes from the north pole, down through the Bering Strait, and all the way on to the south pole." "That's pretty much the line you'd draw between the poles if you wanted to miss as much land as possible," I said, looking at the map on the wall. "Yeah but it doesn't miss all land entirely," said Mark. "It crosses a few small islands, including US territory in the Aleutians just outside of Dutch Harbor. The Yanks have rushed troops to the area, cordoned it off, and have bunches of scientists investigating it already." "Is it transforming people like the Genderwave is?" asked Jane. "Yep," said Mark. "It says here they had volunteers march into the standing wave. Instant transformation. When they marched back through it, they remained transformed." "So transformation is a one-time deal?" said Jane, unhappily. "And no one will escape it," I said. "You can try and outrun the Genderwave, flee before it, but you'll eventually reach the stationary wave and be caught between them when they meet. This really is going to affect every last person on the planet, isn't it?" We fell silent then, each of us absorbing this information as best we could, stunned by the sheer enormity of what was happening to our world. When 6am eventually rolled around and the show we worked on, 'Good Morning, Britain', went live, the Genderwave had finished with south- east Asia and was about to start sweeping across India. Our show's presenters, the silver-haired and avuncular Ken Preston, and twentysomething blonde Lisa Holmes, tried to be as cheery as always but there was more of a fixed and unnatural set to their smiles than usual. As they read the news from their autocues, so their faces grew grimmer. "Good morning, Britain," said Ken, "on the day the nation wakes up to a world that is undergoing an amazing, some would say impossible transformation even as we speak. At around 11.30pm last night our time, around noon local time, a mysterious wall of energy seems to have formed, stretching all the way between the poles along a line running down through the Bering Straits. It is now believed that the instant it did so it formed a second wall, this one splitting off from the first and moving off westwards, across the Pacific. Due to the areas it first passed over being sparsely populated, reports of its existence and of the effect it was having on people did not reach the rest of the world until the early hours of this morning. What was that effect? The following remarkable report from Australian TV will explain that." We then ran the report from Bruce Keene/Kylie Mason. What with setting up this item it was the third time I had seen it. It had lost none of its power to shock. They followed this with a piece on the US military cordoning off the area near Dutch Harbor where the stationary wave crossed land, then switched to a live announcement from the Prime Minister. We had only been told about this a few minutes before going in air, but I can't say it was unexpected. I watched on the monitors as Tony Blair stepped through the door of 10 Downing Street and strode over to the microphone-festooned lectern that had been set up for him. I found myself thinking he might actually make quite a good-looking woman, something it would never have occurred to me to speculate about before this. "Good morning," he said, pausing briefly to look around at the assembled press corp standing before him, off-camera. "I don't need to tell those of you who are waking up and tuning into news broadcasts about the astonishing thing that is happening to our planet even as I speak. It is, so far as we know, unprecedented in our history. As yet, we also have no explanation for what is causing it. The phenomenon currently sweeping around the world, the so-called 'genderwave', will reach us shortly after noon, six hours from now. At that time you, me, and everyone else in this country will be transformed into a member of the opposite sex. This is inevitable. It *will* happen, and I'm afraid there's nothing I or anyone else can do to prevent it from happening. Based on reports from other parts of the world that have already experienced its effects, I am able to assure you all that the Genderwave is not dangerous, that beyond the inevitably disorienting effects of the transformation, it will cause you no harm. Unfortunately, those same reports have shown that not everyone has taken the transformation itself calmly, or the news that it was coming. There has been widespread unrest, more in some countries than in others. In light of this, we are asking all non-essential workers, those who don't work for the police, hospitals, the emergency services, or electricity generating plants to stay at home today. We are also asking that at noon you stop whatever it is you are doing and wait for the genderwave to arrive so that there is no possibility of sustaining injury through being distracted from what you are doing by the shock of the transformation. Stay by your radios and your TVs and listen to the news broadcasts for further announcements. It's highly unlikely there will be any other story today. I say to you that we can get through this, that we *will* get through this, if we pull together as a people and remain calm. Thank you." With that he turned and headed back through the door of 10 Downing Street, ignoring shouted questions from the press pack. And, really, who could blame him? He didn't know any more about what was going on than the next person. He was just like the rest of us; all nervous about what was to come and filled with an almost religious awe - and I say that as an atheist - at the sheer power and scale of what was happening to the world. "Mrs Smith," said Jane, chuckling. "What?" I said, non-plussed. "Tony Blair," she said. "Afterwards he'll be Mrs Smith. I just did a websearch on Mrs Blair, Cherie Booth - did you know she's distantly related to the guy who shot Lincoln, by the way? No kidding. Anyway, her mother is Gale Booth, maiden name Smith, so our Tony is going to end up as Mrs Smith. No idea what her first name will be, but we'll be finding out in a few hours." We followed Blair's speech with various reports and interviews from around the world. In another hour or two the Genderwave would be sweeping across the Middle East and there were already reports of chaos in the streets in some countries there, as well as some in Asia and in Africa, countries where women had always been second-class citizens. It looked like significant numbers of men in those countries were not too happy that the shoe would soon be on the other foot. This was not a universal reaction in such countries, however. Where this was seen as an act of God, the mosques and temples were filled with people praying and awaiting what they saw as His judgment. As was always the case, America provided some of the more interesting reports and interviews, and a wide variety of reactions to what was coming. It was now midnight on the east coast, 9pm on the west coast, so unlike in Britain, where most of the population was just waking up to the news, people there had already had time to digest the news coming in from around the world, to decide how to face the fate that would descend on them at noon tomorrow their time. "We'll all be in church, praying to the Lord when it comes for us," said Hiram Bates, an elderly WWII veteran interviewed in Houston, clutching his wife's hand and looking fearful, "trying to understand why He is visiting this fate upon us and what it all means. Our Pastor has said our congregation should all be in the house of the Lord to receive this judgment upon us, and we agree with him. Our entire congregation will be there, heads bowed in prayer, when this manifestation of His power reaches us." "On the beach, linking hands in one long chain, watching it ride in over the water towards us," said Oscar Phelps of Tampa Bay, Florida, smiling dreamily into the camera at the thought of it. "It's Gaea, dude, flipping the polarity of gender duality like she flips the orientation of the magnetic poles every million years or so. This is a natural process, one that last happened before there was written language to record it. We are blessed to be alive at such a propitious moment, and we will celebrate and embrace this once-in-a-thousand millennia moment." "Screwing," grinned Kevin Bates of San Francisco, an androgynous looking teenager, his arm around the waist of his pretty girlfriend. "It's coming, we can't escape it, so why not surf the Genderwave? Gonna be one hell of a ride, a one-time only sexual opportunity." That one gave me pause. What would it be like to be having sex when the Genderwave struck, I wondered, to switch genders in the middle of the act of making love? "I'm heading out west on my hog," said Chester Gaines of Birmingham, Alabama, grimly, as he fired up his Harley-Davidson. "Going like a bat out of hell with the devil on his tail. If I can outrun the sucker, I'll ride right off the coast of California and into the Pacific." This last was a surprisingly common reaction. All across the east and middle of the US, families and individuals were already setting out for the west coast, and all westbound flights were booked solid. This made no sense to me. There was no way of avoiding the Genderwave, no way of outrunning it, so what did they think it would accomplish? I can only suppose that their instinct to flee was overcoming their common sense. There was one group who were delighted by what was coming: transsexuals. "We'll be having a big party out on the lawn," said Mandy Collins, excitedly. "I've been online, talking to TS friends in Australia, and it looks like the Genderwave identifies your gender by your genes. Mentally, emotionally, sexually, we are women, but out genes say we're male. Well, not for much longer. When the Genderwave hits we'll become fully genetically female. Fine-boned and natural, able to bear children, to become biological mothers for the first time ever!" There were tears in her eyes as she spoke. It was clear this was the happiest day of her life. By 7am the Genderwave had traversed most of India and was starting out across Pakistan. We continued to get reports of unrest from across the globe, but more worrying were those countries that had gone 'dark'. Total news blackouts were in effect in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Burma. The first two had yet to be affected, while the transformation of the third had taken place about ninety minutes ago. What was happening in those countries we could only guess at. As the morning wore on we did some man-in-the-street reports to gauge the mood in Britain. Things were tense, but mostly calm. It seemed almost as if everyone was holding their breath. The churches were fuller than was usual in secular Britain, but there had been no huge surge just a gradual increase in people praying as the hours passed. I was pleased by this, but I wondered if things would still be so calm after the Genderwave had passed. We ran a satellite interview from the US networks with Captain Marcia Peters, who commanded a destroyer in the US 6th Fleet. Currently based at Pearl Harbor, she and her ship had been one side of the Genderwave when it appeared, while Hawaii had been on the other. Indeed, the islands would be one of the last places on Earth to feel the touch of the Genderwave. When she radioed in what had happened, the military brass had air-lifted her from her ship and flown her back Pearl. She did not look at all happy at her transformation. "Can you describe for us what happened?" asked news anchor Todd Leiber via the satellite link. "Well, you can see what it did to me," said the fortysomething Captain Peters, glancing down at her body in disgust. On the screen, next to the feed from Hawaii, was a still photo of the captain as she had been. Where Marcia Philips was a fairly attractive, rather sweet-looking woman, her auburn hair pulled back in a neat bun, Captain Henry Mathers (the male name printed below the photo of her former self) had been a stern, square-jawed man with a steel-grey crewcut. Clearly, Marcia dyed her hair, a fact that would not have escaped her. "We had no forewarning of the Genderwave," she said. "We were only a few miles west of where it appeared and were probably some of the first people on the planet to be affected. There was pandemonium among the crew as everyone assumed it must be some sort of enemy attack. Despite the shock at what had happened to us, we were still all professional members of the military, and discipline was soon restored. I radioed in what had happened. At first my superiors didn't believe me, and who can blame them? I can still hardly believe it myself. Heck of a thing what happened. It transformed our uniforms along with our bodies. When I got to my cabin I checked out my new face. Can't say I'm too happy with it." "Why not?" asked Todd. "Too...pretty," said the captain, flushing slightly as she used that word about herself. "A commander needs to look commanding." "So what do you think happens next?" "Next?" said Captain Philips. "Well one thing that's going to happen is that Uncle Sam has to decide how he feels about having a mostly female military, because a few hours from now that's just what he'll have. The only good thing is that every other military in the world is in the same boat." "Thank you, Captain Marcia Philips," said Todd Leiber, turning to face the viewer, "and now a word from our sponsors...". It was 10am when the Genderwave reached Europe, Rumania and Bulgaria being the first two countries there to feel its touch. That meant Britain only had two hours left. Reports continued to pour in from Australia and from those other countries that had been the first to be affected, reports that showed the effect of the genderwave to be even odder than we had thought. One of these concerned the dead; the other the unborn. We had thought the genderwave only affected the living. We were wrong. That it could affect the dead was first spotted in a morgue in Auckland, New Zealand. After the genderwave passed, some of the corpses had switched gender, but only some. When the authorities investigated they figured out why. Each of the dead was a parent and survived by a spouse. If only the living parent had switched, then their children would now have two biological parents of the same gender. Since the new reality being created appeared to be self-consistent, then in order to have the same biological parents, which everyone still did, the dead parent had to switch, too. If both parents were deceased this wasn't a problem and they remained unchanged. Nor did it matter how long ago the deceased parent had died, as the rewritten tombstones on graves across the world attested. A corollary to this was that if there were no offspring then there was no reason for the deceased spouse of a living partner to switch. Which meant that after the genderwave had passed, all records and photos showed them as having been a gay couple. (To my great amusement, a childless widow in Nevada who had achieved a measure of national notoriety in the US thanks to her anti-homosexual campaigning found herself the surviving half of a gay male couple after the genderwave struck that state.) Pretty early on it was realized that when pregnant women were transformed the babies they were carrying had to go somewhere. In most cases, the father ended up carrying it when he became a woman. This came as a particular shock to those men who believed in spreading their seed around without ever staying to see the consequences. Where a guy had impregnated several different women, those other babies ended up being carried either by another male the former mother had slept with or by someone who had slept around but never gotten anyone pregnant. This last group was particularly troubling, and just how the Genderwave allocated those children no one ever could figure out. It was impossible to do a full census, but based on what figures they could gather, medical authorities concluded that though they were relocated, the total number of unborns was the same after the wave as before. Not that this was the weirdest thing involving the unborn. No, we found out what that was when we learned about the Groths. Jim and Caitlin Groth were a young couple from Bethesda, Maryland, and Caitlin was eight months pregnant with their first child. Jim was a computer security expert working for an international bank. Two days before the arrival of the Genderwave, he flew out to Australia to work on the computers at the bank's offices in Melbourne. When the genderwave struck, Jim became Mary and eight months pregnant. However, Caitlin was still in the US, as yet unchanged and still eight months pregnant. When Mary phoned Caitlin, and they compared notes on their babies' kicks, it immediately became apparent they were kicking at exactly the same times. Hurried genetic tests in Australia and the US soon confirmed the babies had the same parentage, one being female and the other male. The inescapable conclusion was that they were the same child, pre- and post- Genderwave! Impossible as it seemed, their baby was in two different places at once. And it stayed that way until the Genderwave reached Maryland. Then Caitlin's pregnancy vanished along with her birth-gender. In cases of separated parents where the mother was first to encounter the genderwave, her pregnancy vanished with the baby not reappearing until the father was transformed into a pregnant woman. Where did the baby go in the meantime? Nobody knew. By 11.30am our time, the Genderwave had finished with Eastern Europe and with Italy and was busy chewing its way through Germany. I watched the news from Italy with amusement when the Pope stood on the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square and announced the suspension of the Catholic Church's strictures against women priests. With all her subordinates from priests up to cardinals now women, she had not really had a choice, but I couldn't help wondering how long the suspension might last. The cynic in me would not be at all surprised if all those archbishops and cardinals found it convenient to let stand until they had all passed on. And then it was our turn. The Genderwave would be making landfall in Britain on the coast of East Angla. An hour later, it would be leaving Ireland and Portugal, the last two places in Europe to feel its touch, before setting off across the Atlantic for the Americas. Our reporter in the East Anglian seaside resort of Great Yarmouth was Bill Turner. Where the beach had seen pitched battles between Mods and Rockers during the 1960s, it was now filled with New Age types. "Can I ask you why you've chosen to come here?" Bill Turner asked one young woman gazing beatifically out to sea. "A change in the balance," she smiled, never taking her gaze off the horizon, "yin becomes yang and we will be here to witness the wave of Gaea as it transforms us in flesh and in spirit, purging us of all our gender-centric pathologies by showing us that underneath the skin we are all as one. Truly, we are blessed this is occurring in our lifetimes." "It doesn't concern you that you'll soon be a man?" "Which gender you are born into is an accident, a flick of a switch in the womb. Why should I be frightened of the switch being flicked again?" Watching Bill's live report, I found the girl's complacency disturbing. And yet, perhaps she had the right idea. Raging against the fate rapidly bearing down on us was pointless and could accomplish nothing. But, still... "Here it comes," said Mark Johnson, as he and Jane unconsciously leant forward into their monitors. I sat transfixed as Bill Turner, a man I knew personally, was transformed in the blink of an eye into a woman, his short brown hair becoming shoulder-length and immaculately coiffed, features softer and expertly made-up, his dark blue men's suit replaced by a yellow silk skirt-suit, his shirt and tie vanishing to reveal an open neckline showing the top of what appeared to be an impressive cleavage. A large brooch, gold hoop earrings, and a tasteful bracelet completed the ensemble. According to the by-line on the TV, her name was now Lynn Daley. "That was..." began Lynn, pausing as she heard her new voice for the first time and caught sight of the now-slender hand holding her microphone,"...that was...amazing! I think I'm in shock! Words can't describe..." Behind her, the assemblage on the beach started cheering, some of the new men picking up their now smaller and now female partners and swinging them around. They all looked happy and excited, but I knew that not everyone would share that reaction. Some, perhaps even most, would react very differently. A few minutes later, it was our turn. The video-editing suite we worked in when not in the newsroom was a windowless, subterranean room, but we still saw the Genderwave when it hit us. The clock on the wall was counting down the final seconds as we all stared at the room's east-facing wall. You could have cut the tension with a knife. Suddenly, the wall seemed to grow hazy, the haze hit us, and then it was gone. Lynn Daley was right. Words really can't describe the feeling. One moment I was Tim Jones, a husband and father, and the next I was Suzanne Taylor, a wife and mother. (Yes, I'd already figured out what my new name would probably be.) The sensation of the wave was no sensation at all. Transformation was instantaneous, but it took my brain a moment or two to register that change. Then the sensations came flooding in. The weight of my breasts, the extra hair on my head, the earrings hanging from my ears. The taste of lipstick on my lips, the smell of my perfume, the realisation I was both several inches shorter and wearing heels that gave me back two of those inches. "Holy shit!" said the woman who had been Mark Johnson. Mark had been a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy, and now she was a jeans and T-shirt kind of girl, albeit with make-up, earrings, and bracelets. Her hair was short, and I thought she was very pretty. "Well fuck!" came a gruff male voice, and I turned to see the former Jane Rogers, also wearing jeans and a T-shirt, although this was stretched over a very buff-looking torso. "Guess I must work out," he said, flexing an impressive bicep. Mark watched him open-mouthed, her eyes popping. "So I guess it's Helen Lester and Carl Kerry now," I said, reading the security passes they wore on chains around their necks. "I guess so," said Carl, grinning at Helen who was still staring at him. She looked away, blushing furiously. On our monitors, the Prime Minister was coming out of 10 Downing Street to address the media. I was right. She was a real looker. "Ladies and gentlemen, the Prime Minister, Moira Smith," said a flunky as she stood in front of the lectern. 'Moira'. Yes, Blair was born in Edinburgh and that was a nice Scottish name. I wish I could tell you I remembered her words, but I don't. Shock was setting in as she started speaking. I sat down heavily in a chair, staring at my face in a mirror I'd found in my handbag. It wasn't just my old face made female but an entirely new one. There was an obvious family resemblance however, as if I had somehow become the sister I never had. I guess the lever on the genetic fruit machine had been pulled again and a different set of genes came up from my parents' gene pools than those I had originally inherited. Odd, but it paled into insignificance next to the changes the Genderwave had wrought in our world. Trembling, I considered the future. This was my face and my body now, and who I would be until my dying day. Oddly, I found I didn't feel too bad about the situation. We were all in this together, everyone on the planet, and somehow I knew it would all work out. It had to. We had no choice but to make sure that it did. I could have stayed to watch the reports from America as the Genderwave reached the States, as Carl and Helen chose to do, but unlike them I was married, so instead I went home to my family. My husband came to the door to meet me when my car pulled up in front of the garage door, our daughter in his arms. "Matt," I said as I climbed out of the car, knowing his new name from the entry on my PDA. He put his arm around me, kissed me lightly on the forehead, and we stood there in front of the house, my family and I, hugging and comforting each other. I won't say it wasn't strange and difficult at first but, as many of you have discovered, it got easier with time as we grew used to who we now were. It was a week after the Genderwave that we first made love, a week in which we both got a lot more comfortable in our new flesh. We were awkward together at first, but the switch hadn't changed the love we felt for each other so we persevered. And when it happened it was wonderful! It was a hurdle we had to get past, but as soon as we did our sex life resumed with a vengeance. For some, there had been no hurdle. When I went back to work the day after the Genderwave, it was impossible not to notice how Carl and Helen were with each other, the flirting and the coy looks. It didn't take long for the penny to drop. "You had sex, didn't you!" I said, stunned. "We only did it once in the editing suite," said Helen blushing. "And another three times after I took her back to my place," grinned Carl. "B...but, you were both heterosexual, weren't you?" I said. "Still am," said Carl, "never had any gender identity issues either." "Nor me," said Helen, smiling sweetly. "Then how...why...?" "It just felt...right," said Helen. "I don't think I can explain it better than that." "Yeah," said Carl, thoughtfully. "We'd never been interested in each other like that before the Genderwave, yet afterwards..." It was clear they were as puzzled by this as I was, though not at all unhappy about it. Indeed, in the weeks that followed, Helen gradually grew more and more feminine in her clothing and her manner, eventually abandoning trousers entirely and thereafter never being seen in anything other than fashionable skirts and dresses, full make-up, and a pair of stylish high heels from her fast growing collection of shoes. Within a month, she and Carl had announced their engagement and moved in together. When the time comes, I'm sure she'll make a beautiful bride. Nor is theirs an unusual story. At first, I was puzzled by how soon most people seemed to adapt to and accept their changed circumstances. Then we had an eminent scientist, Dr Feingold, appear on our show who gave his theory as to why this was happening. What he said made a lot of sense: "If you image a standard distribution curve," he said, "also known as a 'bell curve', then at one end of the curve you have those who very strongly identify with their birth gender, the super-macho and super- femme, if you like. At the opposite end of the bell curve are those who very strongly identify with the gender opposite to that of their birth, the transsexuals and gender dysphoric. In the middle are the rest of us, the vast majority who were brought up in the gender of their birth, who were happy to go along with it, and who are culturally adapted to the accompanying societal gender role. Had they been born the other gender, these people would also happily have gone along with that, too. Some years ago, Dutch scientists examined the brains of a number of deceased male-to-female transsexuals and discovered a structure in their brains that was closer to the size of that structure when found in women than when found in men, from which they concluded there is a physical site in the brain that helps determine gender identity. Now, when the genderwave passed it transformed our brains as well as the rest of our body. In most people, the physical structure that helps determine gender identity became that of the gender they switched to. So in the vast majority of non-strongly gender-identified individuals, it was then not that big a leap for them to cross the line, particularly when everyone else was in the same boat. It took a few brave individuals to take the first steps, but most people eventually followed them. Of course, in the case of those who had identified very strongly with their birth genders - the super-macho and super-femme - the genderwave was a tragedy, and they have become the new gender dysphoric." A whole planet had been transformed, from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the deepest ocean trench. Of the six billion people who inhabit our world only seven, the astronauts who were in space aboard the Space Shuttle when the genderwave struck, high above the atmosphere, remain unchanged. And that pretty much covers everything - except for the Genderwave's final trick. Twenty four hours after it started out, the moving wall of energy met again with the standing wall it had left behind. As the two touched so there was a quick burst of light which flashed around the planet in an instant, and then they were gone. They vanished without trace, showing no sign they had ever existed, leaving the world utterly changed. What that final burst of light did, we now know, was recast all the images we had taken during the twenty four hours of its existence, erasing the evidence. When we replayed the tape of Bruce Keene becoming Kylie Mason, it now looked very different. It started off showing Kylie Mason standing on the coast, microphone in hand, gesturing out to sea at a calm, clear day. She was immaculately coiffed and made-up, her jewellery understated and tasteful. The name at the bottom of the screen read: Kylie Mason. "Here it comes," she said, gesturing at those clear skies, "and there's nowhere you can hide from it. It's moving too fast to outrun - about one thousand miles per hour at the equator - and according to reports from New Zealand, it passes through walls as if they aren't there. It's coming ashore just about ...now!" She stood rigidly, as if something was happening to her, but nothing was. "That was..." began the woman, pausing as if hearing her voice for the first time, then staring down at herself, in stunned amazement. What she was amazed at was unclear. She looked the same as she had for the entire report. "What some are calling the Genderwave has started to move across Australia. As you have just seen, its effect is nothing short of miraculous. Whether this is the work of God or of man is not yet known. What we do know is that if the Genderwave continues around the world at its current rate, then by this time tomorrow it will have transformed everyone on the planet. What this will mean for the world as a whole, and how it will affect individual countries, we can for now only speculate. This is Bruce Keene...what? I'm sorry. They're telling me through my earpiece that the name you're seeing on your screens has changed. So I guess this is Kylie Mason, returning you to the studio." It was the same across the world on every other recording that had been made. Film of people acting as if something had happened but with no actual evidence that anything had. In years to come, those not yet born will look at this material and assume that the entire planet suffered a mass delusion, that we imagined a change that never actually occurred. But it did happen. We were there, and we remember. So that was my story, what I was doing on the day everything changed, but mine is only one story among six billion. Where were *YOU* when the Genderwave struck? The End. *** New notes: This story has been revised following discussions on the Hyperboard and in the comments sections of the three Genderwave stories I've written to date. The other two, both available here on FM are: Genderwave: Ramifications Genderwave: The Analyst These three stories form the 'bible' for this universe. If you have any questions concerning this universe, the chances are it's answered in one of these three tales. What follows are the original notes/universe rules. Additional info on the timeline on the day of the Genderwave can be found at the end of Genderwave: Ramifications. As a bonus for those of you who read the original version of this story and have persevered this far with this one, I'm including a taster (ie. the first few paragraphs) of the Genderwave story I'm currently working on. This can be found after the original notes/rules that follow. *** Notes: This one has been sitting half-finished on my hard drive for more than a year. There's nothing unusual in this. At any point I have at least a half-dozen stories sitting around in such a state since I tend to work on whichever one I feel enthusiastic about at the time, moving on to another when I get fired up about that one. This was originally going to be the first of three new 'open universes' I was going to launch on FM, and certainly the first I started writing, but then I really got into writing stories set in the Carnival of Mirrors, which was originally going to be the third. Anyway, I recently got interested in this one again and so picked up where I'd left off. This story is the 'global overview' that had to be written before any other story could be set in this universe. I think and hope I've covered all the bases when it comes to the main logical implications of the Genderwave. This one is the 'bible' for this universe, and written as such rather than as a character piece. For those who wish to write in this universe, a few rules: 1) No one knows what caused the genderwave. By all means have your characters speculate on what caused it - God, aliens, magic, mad scientists, whatever - but there's no direct evidence for any of these. The cause remains a mystery. This is why the categories for this story include both 'sci-fi' and 'magical transformations'. 2) If you want to see where the Genderwave was at a given time use a globe. The line of the supporting bracket doubles for the wave just fine. Also, of course, if the wave took 24 hours to circle the world then the slice of the planet between each pair of lines of longitude on your globe shows the chunk of the Earth it passed over in any given hour. The wave would have hit wherever you're starting from just after noon. Count the lines heading east to see where it's been, west to see where it's going. Yeah, I know this is only a 'rule of thumb', that time zones don't accord exactly with lines of longitude. Any fine tuning you want to do you'll need a time-zone map for. And since the genderwave sweeps across areas at noon local time, that means it's stationary relative to the sun, of course, for what that's worth. From my point of view, the main attraction of this particular scenario is that thanks to global communication, much of the world knows what's coming and so has time to react before they're overwhelmed by it, and those reactions would probably vary vastly. What would it *feel* like, knowing the entire world was changing, that no one could do anything to stop it, and time was counting down to the moment you and everyone you know is changed forever? 3) Transformation was instantaneous, but it always happened to people where they stood. No one suddenly found themselves somewhere else. Nor did they suddenly find themselves married to someone else. The genderwave kept them in the same place there, too. 4) The naming thing, with family names descending along what had been the matrilineal line, is probably going to be the most difficult thing to keep straight, but the logic of the set-up kinda falls apart without it. This means it's easier to use fictional characters rather than real people unless you want to put in the research. For instance, Bill Clinton would not become Mrs Rodham unless Hillary's mother and her mother's mother are dead (I haven't researched them - this is just an example off the top of my head). Assuming Hillary's maternal Grandmother is her oldest matrilineal relative, and assuming her maiden name was Jones, then Bill and Hillary would now be Mr and Mrs Jones. Like I say, fictional characters are easier. 5) The astonauts are mine, so please don't use them beyond maybe mentioning them in passing. They were the *only* ones unaffected by the genderwave. There were *no* other exceptions. This particular universe arose out of me wanting to write a story where it's not the protagonist who undergoes transformation but everyone else in the world. I still intend to write that story one day. Anything else introduced in this story is up for grabs, however. If, for instance, you want to tell the story of those LA street gangs I mentioned in passing, or the new agers, or whoever, please feel free. *** Preview - GENDERWAVE: THE ASTRONAUTS By BobH (c) 2005 The scariest part of any spaceflight occurs just before take-off. The tension, the anticipation, starts when you get out of the bus at Pad 39B and stare up at those huge rocket engines, filled with highly explosive fuel. Then you take the elevator up a hundred and fifty feet and walk across the short walkway that takes you into the Shuttle itself. A couple of technicians help strap you in, but when the door seals, you and your crewmates are on your own. There's an hour or so where you're lying on your back, while all over the launch site, technicians are running like hell to get last minute checks done before the final countdown. Six seconds before lift-off, the liquid rocket engines ignite and you feel a slight shudder. At zero, you lift off. The noise and vibration are almost indescribable. But it doesn't matter, because you're on your way into the heavens. On your way into outer space. My name is Nathan Walters. I'm the Mission Commander of the Space Shuttle Olympia this time out. This was my third shuttle mission, and my first as Mission Commander. My pilot was Mei Ling - Colonel, USAF, retired. Just like me. We'd known each other twenty years, though this was our first time in space together. This flight, our five Mission Specialists were husband and wife team Joe and Carole Branson, Jill Reilly, Mark Stone, and Ray Washington. Jill Reilly, the Bransons, and I were all married with children, the others all unmarried and childless. In Mei Ling's case, I knew this was because she had put career ahead of family, and Mark Stone was gay, though discreet enough this had never caused any real problems with NASA. Ray Washington was something of a mystery. Black, quiet, intense, the youngest member of the crew - I'd never really managed to get a satisfactory 'read' on him. It was Saturday June 19th, 2004, and these were the people I'd be sharing my life with for the next week. We had a lot of tasks to get through, but it was going to be a pretty routine mission. *** The full story will be posted when finished. Lots of research to do first. - BobH.