The Love Bug: Part One free porn video

The Love Bug By Kyrie Hobson xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters in this story and any actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. This story is copyright 2004-2010 by Kyrie Hobson. Permission is hereby given to share this story on the World Wide Web, provided that (a) no charge of any kind, including, but not limited to, subscription fees, is made in connection with access to the story, (b) the story is reprinted in its entirety, including this notice, and (c) proper credit is given to the author at the time of posting. All other rights, including, but not limited to, those of adaptation to other media and formats, reserved to the author. Contact: [email protected] Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Part 1: Second Childhood Chapter 1: The Love Bug It was May, and the love bugs were out. If you've never lived on the Gulf Coast, you probably don't know what love bugs are. Ten months out of the year, they're harmless beetles that no one really notices, but in late May and early June, they rise up in swarms and start mating. Millions of them spend the end of spring and the beginning of summer flying around joined at the euphemism. This year was worse than most, and, as I drove home from my job interview, the clouds were so thick I finally had to pull over to wipe their remains off of my windshield. For some reason, it's nearly impossible to remove splattered love bugs from your windshield using your car's windshield washers. The wipers smear the insects' remains and just make it worse, so most people who travel distances near the Gulf just keep a towel in their car to hand-wipe the mess. As I got out of my car and started brushing the stupid things off of my windshield, another cloud of them descended and flew about me, landing on my nose, in my ears, and of course, on my car. I continued batting them away, when suddenly I felt a pinch on the back of my hand. I looked down at my hand expecting a bee or a wasp, but all that was there was a beetle. I brushed it off and, cursing my luck to find the one and only biting love bug in the universe, I took a couple more angry swipes at the windshield and got back into my car. By the time I was well on the highway, the bite itched terribly and was starting to raise an ugly welt. It was distracting, but, since I've never been particularly allergic to insect bites, it didn't really alarm me much. As I continued, however, I started to feel oddly fatigued, and a little dizzy and nauseous, and, by the time I finally pulled into the driveway, I was shaking my head in an effort to stay awake. I considered going to the hospital, but decided against it. It was a hot day and my car had no air conditioning, I was probably suffering a minor heat stroke, a glass of cold water and a nap and I'd be fine. Sharon heard me come in and asked how the interview went. I mumbled something like, "Fine," and stumbled to the kitchen. She must've caught something odd in my voice, because, as I was filling my glass with water from the fridge, I suddenly heard her voice behind me. "Kyle, are you all right?" "Yeah," I answered. "I'm fine. Just a little over-heated." "What'd you do to your hand?" I glanced at my hand. The welt was slightly larger, and there was a patch of angry red surrounding it, but it was no worse than a nasty bee sting. I said so to Sharon. Her brow wrinkled concernedly. Sharon had been my friend since kindergarten, and had been a rock when my parents had died suddenly one week after college graduation. She had helped me reinvest my moderate inheritance so I would receive a fair annuity that often came in handy, given my lifestyle. When I had come back to Houston, she and her husband had opened their door to me, telling me I could stay with them for as long as it took to find a new job and a place of my own. She stood watching me as I drained the glass. "Why don't you lie down," she said. "You don't look well at all." I cracked a half-smile at her. "That's what I was planning." I shambled into my room and collapsed on my bed without even removing my clothes. In my dreams, the bite on my hand became a glowing ember, then a white- hot bolt of pain that spread up through my arm and across my body. After what seemed like hours of torture, the pain subsided and only the heat remained, dancing fires burning my mind and body. Then, suddenly, I was floating, flying as high and as fast as I could to escape the fire that I knew was trying to destroy me, but wherever I went, the flames followed, and I came crashing down into wakefulness. The first thing I recognized was the starchy crispness of a hospital bed. I tried to rub the sleep out of my face and realized that my hands were bound at the wrist. A little experimental wriggling confirmed that I was also bound at the head, shoulders and feet, and that the strap that held my arms had another loop across my hips. I slowly opened my eyes to gain a full perspective, but was greeted with only darkness. "Shit!" I cried, my dry throat releasing little more than a croak. Was I blind? And why was my throat so dry? How long had I been here? Was I going to live? I heard voices in the distance like a low rumbling, and then suddenly I could understand them. I realized they must have been talking as they came through a door. "?ositive that I heard her make a noise, sir. I think she's awake." A female voice, almost defensive. A male voice, older and filled with authority responded. "We'll find out soon enough. Mr. Hobson?" I heard my name, but something was odd. Something the female voice had said. I tried to ask her to repeat it. "Of course," the male voice said in response to my feeble attempt at speech, "your throat must be dry. Nurse?" In a moment, I felt something jab at my lips. I recognized it as a straw and pursed my lips around it. Soon my mouth was filled with a cool, sweet liquid. I swallowed and drank some more. After a third swallow, the straw was pulled away. "Not too much," the male voice said. "It's been a while, so it's best to start slowly. How does your throat feel? Can you talk?" "I think so," I managed. But something in my voice still seemed off, although I couldn't pinpoint the wrongness. I told the voices. "It's nothing that should concern you at the moment. Everything will become clear in a short while. Let me introduce myself: I am Dr Parsons. I've been treating you for the last three months." "Three months?!" I exclaimed. "I was out for three months?" "More or less," the doctor said. I heard him refer to his charts. "One hundred seven days, to be exact." "I don't understand. How could a bug bite knock me out for three months? Why am I strapped down? And why can't I see?" "You are strapped down to prevent you from harming yourself. You've had a very high fever and you've been quite delirious. You can't see because there's a compress over your eyes. We've been keeping them cool to prevent the fever from damaging your optic nerves. I believe we can remove it now, but I'd rather leave the gauze on a little while longer so your eyes can re-acclimatize themselves to the light." He tapped his clipboard. "Your other question will have to wait until Mr. Cheesman arrives." I heard him stand. "And, until he does, I believe it's in your best interest that we leave and let you get some rest." As I felt the weight of the compress lifting off of my face, I heard the door open and the doctor leave. Then the nurse kissed me on the forehead. "You'll be fine, honey," she whispered before gathering her things and exiting. I awoke ravenous. Three months of intravenous feeding had left my stomach empty, and now I wanted nothing less than a five-pound porterhouse steak. I opened my eyes, but my vision was still occluded by the gauze shroud. "Nurse?" I called out. The Nurse came, and fed me jell-o and salad, with a tangy fruit juice to wash it down. She explained that the doctor wanted to restart my diet with something light and easy to digest. I was still hungry when she finished, but felt I could manage. Something must've been in the juice, because I lay back down and slept almost immediately. I was awakened later when the door opened and several people walked in. "Good morning, Kyle," a voice I recognized as the doctor from before said. "Do you remember me?" "Dr. Parsons," I said. "I'm still hungry." Something was still wrong with my voice. It felt natural, but it didn't seem to match with my memories. "Yes, yes," he said. "All in good time. Right now, someone wants to meet you." He pulled back a little. "Kyle Hobson, may I introduce Dale Cheesman." I knew the name. Dale Cheesman was the founder and CEO of Cheesman Technologies, a leading company in the genetics and microelectronics fields. I wondered what he would want with me. His first statement, however, addressed the doctor. "How much does...he know?" he asked. "Only that he's been in a near-comatose state for three months. He knew enough to connect the insertion point with his illness, however." A pause. "I felt it best not to divulge any other information until you arrived." Cheesman hummed an affirmative. "Mr. Hobson, do you know where you are?" "I assume I'm in some kind of hospital." "Not quite. You're in the care facility of a Cheesman Tech genetics lab." He waited for that to sink in. "It's actually better than a hospital. Our doctors are the best in their field, and the equipment is cutting edge. Also, you won't receive a bill for your treatment, here. "Mr. Hobson?may I call you Kyle?Kyle, you are the victim of a very unfortunate accident. You encountered a piece of our technology that should never have been where it was." "What do you mean? I was bitten by a bug!" "You were bitten by a B.U.G.?a Biological-imitating Universal Gene- vector. It's a device we've been developing for certain government agencies. It's designed to seek out a target and inject him with a microsample. The primary use is to be targeted infection with cultures of designer virii." "Are you saying that this thing infected me with some killer disease?" "Not a disease, per se. Something different. It's rather technical." "Well, what can you tell me?" He was quiet for a moment, as if he was trying to formulate the right words. "Tell me, Kyle, what do you know about retroviruses?" "Only what I read in science fiction. Viruses that cause a retroactive change in a person's DNA. It doesn't sound very plausible." "It is possible, but only for specific applications, such as cancer treatment. You can't change an entire human being with a retro-virus." I was non-plussed. "So?" I asked. "Suppose you wanted to change a person's identity completely, right down to their fingerprints and retinal scans, how would you do it?" I wracked my brain for some kind of answer. "I don't know, brain transplant?" I finally said. He laughed. "We're not sure how much of the personality is carried in the brain, and in any case, the probability of rejection is prohibitively high." He paused again. "Fortunately, we have a better way. We have nanocytes that can change a person's DNA much like a retrovirus, but much more efficiently. We can do that fairly easily. The difficulty is that many of a person's cells don't reproduce, so the altered DNA can't be distributed through all systems. Lucky for us, there's a thing called a stem cell. That's an undifferentiated cell that can become any other cell, depending on where it's placed. Are you following me so far?" I nodded, as much as I could within the restraint. "We have developed an experimental process where nanocytes are used in concert with specially processed stem cells to copy the DNA of one mouse onto another, thereby creating a whole new mouse with the original's DNA." I started to panic. "Are you saying I was infected with mouse DNA? Am I turning into a mouse? Is that why my voice is so funny?" He laughed. "You're not turning into a mouse," Cheesman said. "Genetically, you're not changing much at all." "Then what's happening?" "That's hard to explain," he said, "partially because it's so technical, and partially because we're still working it out ourselves." "Can you at least give me the TV Guide version?" "The nanocytes that infected you had a two-part program. The first part, which we believe is finished, used your body mass to culture stem cells and reconfigure your body to match an altered DNA pattern." "What kind of DNA pattern?" "Yours." "That doesn't make any sense." "It will. First, you have to understand that what makes a male a male is a lack of genetic material. The so-called Y-chromosome is actually a normal chromosome with a minor mutation that compresses the helical shape of the DNA making the appearance of the overall string shorter and thicker than its mated X chromosome, even though they're more or less identical in most ways." I blinked at the technical explanation, trying and failing to understand. "The program, if we understand it correctly, and preliminary blood work bears it out, essentially copied the variant genetic material from your X-Chromosome to its counterpart position on the Y-chromosome, allowing the male identifier to reconfigure into its longer, less-compact state. So, essentially, you're you, except that you're the you you would have been had you been born a girl." I was stunned. "What?" I exclaimed. "You turned me into a woman?" "We didn't turn you into anything," Cheesman protested. "Somebody, illegally using our technology, has altered your body to that of a girl." I was stunned. "We would like it if you stayed here for a while. The first part has finished, but the second part of the program hasn't begun yet; we still haven't decoded enough of it to be sure what's going to happen next. So at the very least, we'd like you to stay under observation until the nanos leave maintenance mode and begin the second program." "The damn thing's already turned me into a woman, what else can it do, make me a cheese sandwich?" "You have to understand some things, Kyle." Cheesman's voice was carefully patient. "First off, you're not a woman, you're a girl. Part of the initiation routine essentially regressed you to a prepubescent state. We believe," he put an extra stress on the word. "We believe that the second part of the program will merely accelerate your growth and aging to a certain point." "Then what?" "We're not sure. Decompiled source code rarely has comments. But we think that you'll stay that age pretty much forever." "That's not possible." "It is, but we'll talk about that when we've deciphered the entire program. Right now, we need to discuss your immediate future." "I'm strapped to a hospital bed and blindfolded. My future's pretty much out of my hands at this point, don't you think?" "Oh that." I heard him stand up. "Doctor, I don't think Mr. Hobson is likely to be any danger to himself at this point. Why don't you release the restraints?" "Of course," the doctor said. Suddenly, two sets of hands were unbuckling the straps that held me to the bed. When they were done, the doctor said, "Nurse, get the lights." As the lights dimmed, I realized that the gauze covering my eyes wasn't so thick that it blocked out all light, and then I felt it being lifted off of my face. I tried to blink in the glaring light of the shaded room, and a cold washcloth slid across my eyelids. Soon, I could see clearly. The nurse, a heavy-set, elderly woman, stood next to me, holding the moist cloth. Beside her, the doctor peered in at me. He was middle- aged with tinges of grey just beginning at his temples. A handsome man, who I took to be Cheesman, leaned against the wall by the door. He was young looking and well built, and his eyes betrayed a quick intelligence. The doctor held his hand up in front of me. "How do you feel?" he asked, "Any pain or itching?" I said, "No." "How many fingers am I holding up?" he continued, raising three fingers from his hand. "Three," I responded. The doctor shrugged to Cheesman. Cheesman nodded. "Well, Kyle, is there anything you would like to know?" I thought for a moment. "It seems to me," I started slowly, choosing my words carefully, "that you've spent a lot of time talking about what has happened to me, and what will probably happen later, but you haven't said a word about how I'll get back to being me." Cheesman and the Doctor exchanged an uncomfortable look. "Well, yes," said Cheesman. "That's a bit of a problem." He redirected his attention. "Nurse, could you ask Dr. Williams to come in, please?" As the nurse left, Cheesman turned back to me. "Dr. Williams is the lead designer of our nanocytes. She'll be better able to answer your question than I am." The nurse re-entered, with a fifty-ish woman. "Nadine," Cheesman said, addressing the new arrival, "Mr. Hobson wants to know how we're going to get him back to being him again." Dr. Williams gave Cheesman a sidelong, almost angry look. Then she stared dispassionately down at me. "The short answer, Mr. Hobson, is we won't." She waited for my surprise and anger to subside and continued. "For one thing, Dr. Parsons has assured us that you would never survive such a radical transformation again. You barely survived this one." She waited for that to sink in and continued. "But that's not the main reason." She paused, and seemed to collect her thoughts. "The problem is the nanocytes. Ordinarily, they are preprogrammed to perform a task, then shut down, and your body would just eject them like any other waste product in your system. In that case, we could simply inject you with nanocytes bearing a new program, and, assuming you survived, you'd be back to your old self again with very little harm done. "These nanocytes, however, have a maintenance subroutine, so that when they are not following either of the reconstruction programs, they are maintaining your body in that state." "Well, why can't you just make a bunch of nanocytes to destroy the ones already there, and then turn me back to normal?" I asked. "It's not that easy," she responded. "We only make a few nanos at the start. Part of their original program is always to make reproductions of themselves until a certain density is reached. With the maintenance program intact, the existing nanos would see any new ones as invaders and try to destroy them, with the help of your immune system. The best-case scenario if that were to occur would be that we would have wasted thousands of dollars and man-hours on nanos that were almost immediately destroyed. The worst case scenario is that the new nanos would be able to reproduce long enough for the ensuing internal battles to kill you." "Well, can't you shut down the maintenance program?" "You weren't listening. You can't reprogram a nano. It's built with its program already in it's hardware. The best you can do is give it a terminating program or at least have some sort of terminating signal. There doesn't seem to be one in this case. These nanos will just keep on maintaining your health and their population until the program finally becomes corrupted in something like five hundred years." It was all too much. I couldn't process what they were telling me. My mind blanked, and I sat there in the bed staring at these people whose work had shattered my life. Anger and rage and an unbearable sadness welled up within me, but could find no release. Nothing in my experience could prepare me for what I was feeling, what I had been told. I began to shake, lightly, at first, then more and more violently until I felt I would rattle apart. Suddenly I was encompassed in warmth and softness as the nurse wrapped her arms around me and held me close. Within her embrace, I felt small and protected. I turned my face into her shoulder and released my distress in hopeless, wracking sobs. Chapter 2: Dreams and Realities The next few weeks, as the maintenance program held me just below the puberty line, became something of a routine. Each morning, before breakfast, a nurse would come in and take some blood; then she would watch and carefully mark how long it took the nanos to close the hole. It was morbidly fascinating, in its own way, watching a minor wound heal itself fully in minutes. As soon as the nurse left, Dale would come in and have breakfast with me. We would talk about my condition and he'd tell me what advances they'd made in finding out what to do about it. He'd show me the paper and we'd discuss the news in the outside world. He had a way of speaking, of looking at you just so, that made you feel like you and he were the only two people in the world. He never talked down to me. He had kind eyes, and he smelled soft and masculine at the same time like a warm living room on a cold night. He felt safe. I reveled in the safe feeling while he was there in the mornings. As the initial shock slowly wore off, I began to realize the horrible completeness of what had happened to me?what had been done to me. I felt small and vulnerable in a world that had grown six sizes overnight. I began to have nightmares. Every night, huge, masculine shadows pursued me through the decadent streets of an unfamiliar city. They always walked at a slow and steady pace, but no matter how fast I ran, they were always just behind me. Deeper and deeper into the darkness, they herded me, down narrow lanes and alleys, until finally, I was trapped in a dead end. The shadows crowded around me, and I could feel their anticipation as they closed in. I was powerless, and soon, they would just take what they wanted. I woke, each night screaming denial. Then, each morning, the nurse would come, and Dale would have breakfast with me, and everything would be okay. Once, he tried to explain exactly what had happened to me. It was all very technical. He tried to explain the details of the genetics, how the "Y" chromosome had been overwritten and restructured, about genome activation and isomers. He told me how the nanos had used copies of my own myelin tissue to protect the stem cells from unwanted hormones and enzymes while they bred them and moved them around my body. He showed me schematics and algorithms about the nanos and how they had keyed themselves to my altered genome, so I would be the only habitat in which they could thrive. It was all really lost on me. I had never been much more than a solder jockey, and, anyway, I still clung to the illusion that somehow they would come up with a way to make me better. My eyes glazed over early on, and I let my attention wander. Something in the newspaper on the table caught my eye, a headline. "Mystery Illness Death Count Now 5." The article under it described a strange new disease that had recently popped up in the Gulf Coast area. It seemed to originate from an insect bite, but quickly developed into allergic shock. Eleven cases had been confirmed, and none had recovered yet. Doctors were hoping to find a cure, but so far tests had showed nothing. All that the victims had in common was that they were five feet, ten inches tall, medium build. Just like me. I felt Dale looking at me. He glanced down at the article and stared me in the eye. "Yes," he said. "How many?" I asked. "We don't know." He bit his thumbnail. "The BUGs are built and programmed in batches of a thousand?multiple redundancy is important?but the batch counter was somehow disabled for a short time." "Didn't you say these things were designed to be used for assassinations? A thousand at a time? That's genocide!" "No," he shook his head. "They're designed to seek out a specific target. Most of their systems do nothing but identify and verify that they're landing on the right person. This...this kind of thing was never supposed to happen." An awkward silence filled the room. I looked down at my hands. "Are you...are you at least trying to help them like you helped me?" "The ones we can. Quietly." He ran his hand through his hair. "You have to understand that you were extremely lucky: lucky that your friend took you to the hospital shortly after you passed out, lucky that one of our CDC contacts happened to be in the emergency room and recognized the symptoms, lucky our doctors had done total realignment experiments on some of our lab animals, and had some idea how to care for you. Even then, with early recognition and the best possible treatment in the world, you almost died." He held me with his sad, almost frightened eyes. "Even when your body was not actively fighting the nanos?and you had a fever in the 104 range?the nanos were doing disastrous damage in the first phase of their program. They shut down systems, rerouted blood, made wholesale structural alterations. One of the first things they did was to set up a farm, protected by myelin and other naturally occurring polymers, where they bred the stem cells and infiltrated them with the altered genome. It's possible that they replaced almost every cell in your body with an altered stem cell." He fell silent a moment, studying his hands. "We found another, about a week after you came in, he..." A knock on the door interrupted him. A face followed the knock, and an annoyingly perky voice followed the face, attached, as they were to a small, short-waisted, annoyingly perky woman with mousy brown hair. "Hi, honey! My name is Dr. Reed, but you can call me Sara. Or you can call me Dr., or Ms. Reed, or the head-shrinker, or anything you like as long as you don't call me late for dinner." She chuckled at her own joke. I glanced at Dale. He shrugged. She bustled around the room, setting things out on the various flat spaces. I was so busy watching her that I didn't at first notice that the things she was setting out were the accoutrements of a traditional girl's bedroom. Nothing extreme. She didn't post boy band posters on the wall or erect a canopy over my bed. Everything she laid out was more or less normal, stuff you see every day, but definitely girly. She put a Hello Kitty doll on the chest of drawers where they kept supplies and my hospital gowns. Using a thumbtack, she hung a print of a bunny in ballerina clothes on my wall. A floppy-eared stuffed dog took up residence on top of the monitoring equipment. Other things found homes in other places, until, only moments after her flurry of activity began, she sat down on the bed beside me and set a small plastic tiara on my head. "There," she said, sitting back and admiring her work, "now we can begin." Dale rose, as if to leave, but she stopped him. "You can stay, Mr. Cheesman. It'll probably be good this first time." She reached forward and brushed a wayward strand of hair out of my face. "You have such pretty hair." She studied my hair a moment. "But it doesn't look like it's seen a brush in a dog's age." She reached into the bag from which she had produced the knick-knacks now crowding my room and pulled out a large hairbrush with an oval head. "Sit up sweetie, and let me get behind you." I glanced at Dale for some idea of what I should do, but he just shrugged again, so I sat up and scooted forward as well as I could. In a twinkling, Dr. Reed was behind me. The brush stroked smoothly across my scalp, the scratching massage exotic and relaxing. "Don't get to comfortable," she warned me. "I'm only here for a little while, just so we can get to know one another. Next time, we'll do some tests; then the real work can begin." She continued brushing; her free hand followed the brush and stroked my hair as it went. "So tell me, what's your name?" I craned my neck around to look at her, then glanced again at Dale. He opened his eyes wide and shook his head. "Kyle Hobson," I responded contemptuously. "It's on my file, I assume." "Don't be silly," she laughed. "Your name can't be Kyle. That is very definitely a boy's name. And you"?she punctuated with a brisk pat on my head as she rose?"are not a boy." "No," I agreed. "I'm a thirty-five-year-old man." "Really?" she looked at me as if I'd just stated that I was Zargon, High Emperor of Mars. "Yes." She looked around. "This room has no mirrors. How sad." She reached into the bag, again, this time bringing out a round hand mirror, mate to the brush. She pointed the reflective side at me. "Does that look like a thirty-five-year-old man to you?" There, in the glass, looking back at me with my own eyes, was a stranger. Not a stranger; a daughter I had never fathered, or a sister who had never shared my childhood home. Her hair, a light brown with red highlights, hung in measured waves around her face, accentuating the gold flecks in her deep, brown eyes. I raised my hand to touch my face, and so did she, our fingers passing over the straight, slightly turned-up nose, high cheekbones, and full lips. My features, but different: more delicate and set in a different frame. "Does it?" I wanted to turn away. I didn't want to face this. If I did, it would mean that it was all really real, and I could never go back to my old, comfortable life again. But I just kept staring at that child's face, that little girl with her hand on her narrow chin, her mouth agape in surprise. "Come on, sweetie. It's a simple question." I tore my eyes away and looked directly into Dr. Reed's eyes. "My name," I finally whispered, "is Kyle Hobson." "Are you sure? I think you look more like a Suzy." "My name is Kyle Hobson." Louder. I could feel a dark well rising up inside of me, threatening to swallow me in depression. She tilted her head. "Maybe Mary Ann? From what I hear, that's the face you'll be seeing for a very long time and it shouldn't be tied to "Kyle"." "My name," I shouted, " is Kyle Hobson!" Tears were flowing down my cheeks. I batted the mirror away, but Dr. Reed just let her arm go wide and drew me into a hug. "It's okay sweetie. It's okay. Maybe later." I sobbed and tried to fight the hug, battering her ineffectually on the back while she whispered encouragement and endearments in my ear. Dale coughed, and I realized this was the second time he'd seen me drop into a crying jag like a child, and wondered why I cared. The shadows pursued me in my dreams again that night. Their silent menace herding me down forgotten lanes. Suddenly, I realized I was me again, in my old body. An adult man with nothing to fear from these shadows no matter how dark they seemed. I turned to face them and they stopped their measured pursuit. I started to laugh, but the sound died on my lips. Something was oozing out from underneath their robes. Something dark, some things dark, thousands of them like a river or a rioting mob. With horror, I realized they were bugs. I tried to run, but my legs wouldn't cooperate. The mass of black beetles poured over my feet and up my legs. Then they were biting me; they hadn't risen past my hips but already they were tearing me apart. They climbed across my chest and I could feel each individual bite as a new hell. They were on my face and I opened my mouth to scream, but they silenced it as they poured inside and up my nose and in my eyes. I could feel them in my heart and lungs, in my gut, tearing, cutting, destroying. I spent an eternity in hell and when it was done, they all just streamed away, in search of another victim. And I was left alone, the girl in the mirror, small and vulnerable. And the shadows were waiting. Chapter 3: Home School Over the next few weeks, I grew to despise Dr. Reed. I asked, begged, Dale to find someone else; if I had to have therapy, anyone else would be better. He told me that there were no other therapists who were even close to qualified for my problem and also had the necessary security clearance. She was a spook, he told me. She had done her groundwork as a post-traumatic stress counselor for the army, but had quickly moved to the CIA to do behavior modification work, creating counter-insurgents from captured terrorists. When Dale had asked for permission to find a therapist for my transition, she had gotten wind of it, and had jumped on the project. She had theories to prove. Her previous work with the terrorists had been based on a deeply-held belief that if you can make a person act a certain way, their thought-patterns would alter to accommodate the new pattern of action. Unfortunately, her employers were results-oriented, and she had been forced to use certain chemical therapies to augment the modification process. I was a perfect subject for her. The nanos denatured any drugs that were introduced into my system before they could make any real changes, so any brain-chemistry and thought pattern changes that happened would be the direct result of the therapy. She had talked her employers into giving her a blank check on the experiment. Cheesman Tech depended on government contracts for half its income, so Dale's hands were tied. Since I depended on Dale to ensure my survival when the nanos entered phase 2, my hands were tied. I was now a covert project. On the third day after her arrival, she had me moved out of the antiseptic environment of the medical labs and into an apartment. Cheesman Tech's main facility, which everyone called "The Campus" occupied ten acres southwest of Houston. Because they handled so many secret projects, security was tight; entering and exiting the Campus could be like crossing a national border. To make life easier for the employees, apartment buildings were scattered among the assortment of administrative, research, and manufacturing buildings. Very few people commuted daily; most stayed in the dorms during the week and returned home on the weekends. Some stayed on-campus full time, and for that, they were given luxurious apartments to make their stay as happy as it could be. I had made progress in my physical therapy and was able to walk short distances by then, but, just to be safe, they wheeled me to my new home, a spacious five-room affair between the medical lab and the main admin building. Even if I could have afforded it, I doubt that I would have lived in such a place by choice. The walls were treated with pastel sponge-work throughout, and pinks and pale greens abounded. My bedroom was a solid dusty rose with white dressers and a white vanity, dominated by a white-with-pink-accents princess canopy bed. On the other side, a bedroom had been converted to a playroom and was covered in wallpaper featuring cartoon ponies with long manes and tails. Two dollhouses, fully accessorized, occupied low tables, and a lavender and white desk sat in front of the window. The floors were ceramic tile made to look like marble, but throw rugs covered almost every inch of them, except in the kitchen. There were mirrors everywhere. I couldn't turn around without being confronted by the tiny invader that had usurped my body and imprisoned my mind. She followed me everywhere. I saw her in the bedroom arguing with my "assistant" over proper dress. In the living room she mocked me, slouched down on the sofa trying to find news or sports on a closed circuit TV or rifling through the cd collection desperately searching for anything not by a boy-band or depressed poetess. I saw her in the bathroom, her hair stringy with the moisture of my shower, the wave just pulling it up, her slim hips and flat chest hiding a promise of puberty held in abeyance, her brown eyes shocked and horrified that she couldn't remember how she used to look. I still had the dreams; some nights they got so bad I took to holding the stuffed dog at night, hugging it close to me like a lover. Each morning I'd awaken in a sweat, and push the thing away from me. Then I would hear my assistant quietly rap on the door, and wonder if I had screamed. I did have Dr Reed to thank for one thing, although I still doubt that she did it out of any innate kindness. She brought Sharon to see me. It was a Wednesday. Wednesday mornings were my physical therapy time. I would spend two hours with Emmy Ludag doing different exercises meant to return my leg and arm muscles to some functional tone. Toward the end of the session that day, Emmy was chiding me for obviously not having done any workouts during the week, when I looked up and saw a familiar face. Sharon looked down at me as if she was trying to remember the name of a long-lost maiden aunt. "Kyle?" she finally asked, her voice hesitant. "Yeah," I replied, trying to sound happy. I wanted to do anything to erase that look from her face; it indicted me with its loss and confusion. Here was my best friend staring at me like I was a stranger come to sell her buttons. "Kyle what happened?" "It's...um...it's complicated." "We were afraid you were?I mean you had the bug bite, and the guy in the hospital said?and then there were the news reports..." "I'm okay, I guess. Sorry for making you worry." An uncomfortable silence set in and she watched me with pity and sadness. My assistant came in with drinks and finger sandwiches, and Emmy excused herself. Finally, one of us?I don't remember who?started speaking, and it was like old times, a little. We talked about the things we'd done together as friends and before that as nascent lovers. We talked about where I had been and the things I'd done. We talked about that horrible day when I learned that my parents were dead and I was alone in the world. "Remember Kyrie?" she asked. "Who?" "Remember? It was junior year and we thought we'd get married when we graduated? We were going to name our first daughter Kyrie. I don't know why I thought of that." My assistant came in and reminded Sharon that the gate were getting ready to close, and that she'd need to go if she wanted to get home tonight. I hadn't realized she'd been there so long; it seemed only moments since she'd come in. She excused herself and we hugged; she promised to come back as soon as she could. She stopped a moment at the door and looked back at me again with that look that asked where her friend had gone. I hobbled inside and sat on the couch. I was glad to have seen her, but the whole interview seemed sad to me. It occurred to me that the things we talked about, the me that was, the us that had never been, these were the sort of things you discuss at a funeral or a wake: past glories, failed possibilities. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that look. It was a look of loss and sorrow, a look of sympathy. It was the look the vet gave my dad when our dog was hit by a truck. It was the look I had carried the day she and her husband lost their first child to a miscarriage. It was the look she had given me the day my parents died. For the first time since the incident, I looked for a mirror. I looked deep into the brown eyes of the tiny invader. She had won; Kyle Hobson was dead. I sat staring at the face in the hand mirror for a long time. At some point, I must have fallen asleep, and my assistant had taken me to bed. I woke up to the sound of Dr. Reed making her entrance. She bounded through the apartment and into my room. "And how are you, my little sweetheart?" she asked, picking the stuffed dog up off the floor. "Kyrie" I said. "Excuse me?" I dipped my head for a moment, almost lost in despair. I took a deep breath and looked her in the eyes. "Call me Kyrie." Chapter 4: Thirty Days in Black "Call me Kyrie." I had done it. In three words I had stripped away the shrouds of denial that I had been weaving for the weeks since my awakening. I had forced my eyes open to the facts, and had admitted, to myself and to Dr. Reed, what everyone else already seemed to know. Kyle Hobson had died of a fatal accident, and some strange new life had risen in his place. I could no longer pretend to be what I thought I was. I was someone completely different: my own daughter born from the death throes of her father. But I hoped, even as I admitted defeat on one front, that I had opened a front of resistance. I hadn't asked Dr. Reed for her permission or opinion regarding my name. I had chosen the name that Sharon and I had once thought to name a child we would never conceive. I wasn't sure that she caught the subtlety of the challenge, but I knew it was there, just the same. I would not simply accept her version of my new reality. If Kyle Hobson was dead, he had at least created a legacy, and there was no way she would transform it into her bubblegum version of femininity. "Why Kiri, dear," she mispronounced. "Not Kiri, Kyrie." I pronounced it again, slowly. "Keer-ee-ay. And my reasons are my own." She seemed taken aback at my firm stance. I was no longer denying her reality, but had usurped it to my own purpose and this seemed to disconcert her. "All right, then, dear. How do you propose we proceed, Keer-ee-ay? Will you be accepting Ms. Donsen's assistance in your clothing and activities? Would you like to learn a few things about yourself?" I had to struggle not to cheer with glee. For the first time since she'd come bursting in on my private hell, she had truly asked my opinion. She no longer assumed that she knew best and held all the power. I couldn't resist a tiny smirk as I answered her. "I suppose that all depends on you, and me. If by assistance you mean am I going to dress in frills and sailor skirts like some anime little sister, no. If you mean am I going to allow her to suggest clothes that will ease me into my new being...we'll have to see." With some effort, I put on my business face. It was a trick my father had once taught me, to swallow everything you were feeling and make your case as bluntly and logically as you could. "As for learning a few things, that's a definite yes, with caveats. I've never quite understood the workings of feminine plumbing, and I suppose that's something I'll find out soon enough on my own. It would be nice to be forearmed, though. I don't want to learn how to play a character role in the Patti Duke Show, however. "Which leads us to how do we proceed. I assume you have some idea of the proper scheduling and operation of these things, and I will try to cooperate when it doesn't directly conflict with my own needs, but I want you to try to remember that I am a human being as well. I have my own way and my own mind." I watched her carefully for a few moments. If she saw how nervous I was under the fa?ade, the whole deal was blown. Her eyes were wide as if she didn't fully understand what was happening. She opened and shut her mouth a few times. She was buying it. "I'm okay with the whiney poet girl music, I?Kyle always did like alternative rock. But he also liked classical, and a little jazz. The boy-bands, however, have to go. Even were I born a girl, I doubt that I would have been very interested in that pap. As it is, I know for a fact that I'm not. I'd also like something other than Powerpuff Girls and teen dramas on the television. I like news. I like knowing what's going on all around me. Maybe not as a constant diet, but at least sometimes. Even a second-rate sitcom would be an improvement over what you're force-feeding me now." I paused and took a breath before announcing my final demand. "I want a funeral," I said. She blinked twice. "What?" "I want a funeral. If I?if Kyle is dead, then he at lasts deserves the minimum respect given to dead human beings. He deserves to be interred, and remembered, and mourned." I could see the wheels turning in her mind as she considered this new development. "All right," she said, "If you promise to cooperate, I'll see what I can do." It was a suitably cold and rainy morning when four black vans and a deluxe hearse rolled out of the funeral home parking lot and trundled to the South Bern Memorial Cemetery. We stood around an open pit under black umbrellas and buried an expensive coffin full of stones. Ms. Donsen had coaxed and wheedled me into a black knee-length dress with white ruffles at the collar and cuffs. My hair was pulled back away from the sides of my face and bangs hung almost to my freshly- tweezed eyebrows. The dress had no pockets, so I carried a small clutch. All this was the result of a grueling bargaining process. The dress (and a promise to wear at least one dress a week in the future) had bought me the funeral. The make-up and bangs netted Sharon's presence. Sharon stood at my side, her hand resting on my shoulder. The same paperwork shuffle that had made me my own daughter had made Sharon my guardian. The ease with which my life had been recreated was almost frightening; certain clauses of the law that created the Witness Protection program, when read the right way, allowed for the creation of reams of paperwork that had no basis in fact. Officially, I (Kyle) had married a non-existent woman named Grace, who had subsequently given birth to me (Kyrie) before succumbing to a fatal, virulent, but non-existent disease. I had lost a custody battle with my non-existent in-laws, but, when they met with a horrible accident, I was forced to return to Houston to resume my duties as father to myself. I then died heroically in a matter of National Security, the details of which would never be revealed (owing mostly to the fact that they never happened). I had, of course, left all of my property to my daughter Kyrie, and named Sharon as her legal guardian until such time as she was legally competent to handle her own affairs. The dates on all these various pieces of history were left blank. Dale pointed out that, since we had no way of knowing when Phase 2 was going to begin, or at what apparent age it would leave me, there was no point in dating the paperwork only to have to change it (which he assured me was much more difficult) later. Dr. Reed had made clucking noises about assigning Sharon as my guardian, but Dale had quietly explained to her that a civilian guardian was necessary to maintain plausible deniability. All this had taken only two weeks, and now I stood next to my own grave, my titular guardian resting a hand gently on my shoulder as a military chaplain droned on and on about my heroic sacrifice to a country that I had only served by being accidentally bitten by a robot bug. I could feel water running down my cheeks, but wasn't sure if I was crying or if it was the rain. Sharon squeezed my shoulder and whispered so only I could hear, "I'm sorry. I know it's hard." I placed my small hand over hers and returned the squeeze, acknowledging her support. Soon, it was over, and the box of stones representing my old life was buried six feet below the ground. As we were turning to leave, I heard something. A click, maybe; I wasn't sure. I turned to the sound and saw a glint as if someone were striking a lighter far away. Without thinking, I threw myself between Dale and the glint just in time to feel the bullet bite into my chest. Moments later, Dale was supporting me in his arms on the ground; Sharon was kneeling worriedly above me. "Kyrie?" she asked, the single word loaded with a world of concern and question. I looked her in the eye. "North twenty-eight, thirty-two point nine six four. West ninety-five, thirty-two point zero nine seven," I said. "What?" "The gun," I croaked out. The bullet had pierced my lung, making it hard to breathe, and even though I felt the nanos starting their work repairing me, still, it hurt, and I was having trouble staying conscious. I heard one of the security men?I think it was Phil?say, "GPS coords on the shooter. We're on it." Then, darkness. I awoke a few hours later with sore ribs, but not much else to show for my adventure. The bullet had passed cleanly through my chest and thudded harmlessly against the Kevlar vest that Dale had been wearing. The security detail had caught the shooter, and he was?no doubt?on his way to Club Gitmo for some very vigorous activities. At the time, it didn't even occur to me to question why I had jumped in front of Dale. The next month was extremely difficult for everyone involved. Life, I have found, is a series of epiphanies followed by periods of backsliding. Sometimes the life-changing epiphany is lost against the awful weight of psychological inertia. Despite the funeral and my recognition of my own death, parts of me still fought the complete dissolution of all things Kyle. Dale was still having breakfast with me, although less often. As a general rule we shared breakfast on Thursday then had brunch together on Sunday. Ms. Donsen helped me dress for them in attractive dresses that were appropriate for my apparent age. As before, we shared opinions on the news of the week, and sports, and the events on Campus. The day after the funeral, Dale had a special breakfast with me. As a thank you gift for trying to save his life, he gave me a necklace with a deactivated BUG encased in artificial amber, and the bullet mounted to a plaque. He explained that he'd been informed of the possibility of an assassination attempt in his limo and hadn't the opportunity to warn Sharon and I, for which he was sorry. I asked who would want to kill him, and he shrugged. "Well, there are the usual crazies, of course?psychopaths and other individuals who target anyone even remotely famous." He made a slight moue. "And then there are my business rivals?military technology is not exactly a pursuit for pacifists. And, of course there are a few countries and organizations that have every reason to dislike me, since my inventions have made their operations a little more difficult. I like to believe that they've only been put to use toppling or undermining dictatorships and criminal syndicates, but I'd have to be incredibly na?ve to think our government didn't have their fingers in some unhealthy pies, as well." He sighed, sadly, so I changed the subject by asking him if I should cut my hair. He said he liked it long, which pleased me for some reason. Dresses were a bother to me. I looked forward to Wednesday with dread each week. After a lifetime of wearing pants, the airiness of a cotton dress made me feel somehow naked and exposed. I kept tugging at it to make it cover more. Not that any of my dresses were unreasonably short?they all fell to a demure below-the-knee length; they just... To be honest, there's no real way to describe how "other" it feels to not have your legs wrapped in fabric. I wore a training bra, now. I had nothing to put into it, but Dr. Reed and Ms. Donsen decided I needed to learn to wear a bra. I hated it. It was symbolic, I guess. Just some unnecessary thing I had to wear that I hadn't worn as Kyle. It didn't help that everything they had me try made me feel stupid, or clumsy, or both. When I tried applying makeup, I looked like Bobo the Clown. Sharon brought me a pair of shoes?essentially flats with a slight lift in the back?that I just couldn't get the hang of; I always felt like I was falling forward and had to lean back to accommodate them. Everything?hose, hair care, that stupid bra?seemed designed to thwart me: watches with multiple catches designed by engineers from hell, hair-control devices that relied on complex physics and magic to hold their place. I started falling behind on my physical therapy schedule. Emmy kept trying to push me to catch up, but I just kept fighting her. I knew I should be walking and supporting myself for longer periods by now, but I still couldn't stand to have my full weight on my legs for more than a few minutes. Just recently, they had begun to ache; my arms did, also, a little. I didn't mention it because I was afraid of getting another lecture on the importance of doing my exercises every day. Instead, I just let my pain and frustration vent themselves in tantrums and harsh moments of fierce crying. The dreams kept coming, of course. Dr. Reed knew I wasn't sleeping through the night, and, during my therapy, she kept asking me why. I finally told her, one day, after a particularly bad one wherein the cowled figures had dressed me as Alice and reshaped Wonderland into a hellish nightscape designed by H.R. Geiger. I described the helplessness I felt, how alone and vulnerable I was in the dreams. She taught me some very simple exercises for helping me adjust my dreams, meditations and focusing exercises I could do just before laying down. She also suggested that I try, during these exercises to focus on a place or a person that made me feel safe. It wasn't a magic pill, for a while, it was just another new thing that I couldn't do, but one night, as the shadows closed in, suddenly I wasn't alone. Dale appeared and scooped me up into his strong arms, and the shadows shrank back. I slept through the night dreaming of his warming support. Chapter 5: Childhood's End Gerry was a bartender at Josie's in Wichita. We were never really together; we shared an intense physical relationship, but we were nothing more than friends. She had been an oboe player for her high school band and that had given her skills with her tongue that had to be experienced to be believed. Man, she could kiss. We were kissing now, passionately, our tongues fencing in a lovers' duel. We broke for air, and she began to shower me with tiny kisses, tiny nips along my face and neck, her tongue occasionally working its way out of her mouth to gently stroke my skin. She slowly worked her way down my naked body, pausing momentarily at my nipples exciting them, exciting me. She slid excruciatingly down over my stomach, then skipped down to my inner thighs. I could feel my need for her grow, desire melting into painful demand. Finally, she finished her teasing and her mouth slid over me. It was every bit as good as I'd remembered. I shuddered gently as she worked me closer and closer to climax. I was almost there, maddeningly close to an explosive pleasure, but...something was missing. I just couldn't take that final step. Over and over the feeling would grow to a fever pitch and then subside just as I neared the end. I wanted to scream; I wanted to cry. Up, up she drove me, and then...nothing. I awoke, bathed in sweat. I realized with a start that my right hand was couched deep in my panties, my left, pinching a nipple. I hastily removed them. I climbed out of bed and padded in my bare feet over to the French doors. They opened to a small terrace. The whole building sat on a man-made hill overlooking the rest of the campus, and from my room, looking out the windows, I could see for miles. The moon was setting over the lowlands to the west. I felt empty. It was a strangely unique sensation. I'd felt dissatisfied before, but this emptiness was entirely new. Was that why I had dreamed of Gerry? Our relationship had been shallow and devoid of meaning. Was it empty? Did Gerry feel like an upended bottle when we finished having sex? Why this aching need to grasp and hold?something? Why this odd desire to be filled? The ache was returning to my legs, so I made my way back to the bed. I grasped the puppy and held him close to my chest, tears of frustration burning my eyes. What was happening to me? It was Wednesday, and Ms Donsen was clucking as she helped me into my dress, a pastel thing that was really only suitable for parties and zipped up the back. "What's the matter?" I asked, twisting my neck to see her behind me. "You're getting fat." She tugged on the panels to illustrate. "I told you that you shouldn't eat so much. I told you it would make you fat." "Nonsense. The nanos won't let me get fat." Sharon had smuggled two bags of Fritos and a box of Twinkies in to me a few weeks before. In an act of defiance of my carefully planed diet, I ate them all at a sitting. Then I spent the next hour with my head over a toilet. "Your dress is tight." She clucked again. "And your bra is stretching. Can't you even feel that? I'm amazed you can breathe." I felt the pressure release as she unhooked the strap. She stepped back away from me. "The hem is high. It shouldn't be above your knee." She stepped briskly to the call button mounted near my bed. When the nurse on-call answered she said, "Please page Dr. Parsons and Dr. Williams. There's a problem." She noticed me standing with my clothes hanging loosely. "Change into something else, dear. It'll be all right. How about those elastic shorts and the blue top?" She stepped out of my bedroom. I changed quickly, but before I left my bedroom (I admit I wasted a little time hanging the dress and ensuring it wouldn't wrinkle) a corpsman and a nurse were waiting for me with a wheelchair. The corpsman sat me down and made sure I was comfortable and secure while the nurse took my temperature and placed a blood pressure meter on my arm. The nurse counted my heart rate on one arm while the corpsman swabbed my inner elbow with alcohol on the other. When she was done checking my vitals, he inserted a needle and took three vials of blood, each one headed for a different lab station (they had different stopper colors). They wheeled me out and down the path to the medical station, the nurse giving reports and taking orders on her headset the whole time. We stopped at one of the examination rooms in the clinic. "Can you stand, sweety?" the nurse asked me solicitously. I nodded, and she led me to the height and weight station and carefully measured me. She recorded the numbers and reported them to her headset, "Weight: 38.56 kilos...Height: 129.54 centimeters." She gestured toward a hospital gown on the examination table, and I started disrobing to put it on. "Yes, sir, I'm sure...Yes, sir." She turned to me. "Dr. Parsons and Dr. Williams will be here to examine you soon, dear. Would you like some juice?" "Is something wrong?" I asked. "No, dear, everything's fine," she assured me. "The doctors just want to check on some...anomalies. Why don't you climb up on the bed while you wait?" She gathered my clothes off the floor and left the room. She returned, bearing a sippy cup full of juice just as the doctors arrived. Dr. Parsons greeted me with a long stare. "Well, you seem to have gotten a little big for your britches, haven't you young lady?" I shrugged in confusion. "I'm joking. The fact is you've been growing at an alarming rate. We just didn't catch it. You've grown an inch and a half in the last two weeks." He consulted his clipboard. "Miss Ludag reports that you have been slacking off on your therapy?" I nodded my head, ashamed. "Have you been feeling pain? Deep aches and sharp twinges?" "How did you know?" "Those are called growing pains. In a normal childhood, they occur occasionally during periods of rapid growth and are considered a warning sign that new bone is being stressed. In your case, there is no doubt about the stress. One and a half inches in two weeks is a phenomenal growth rate. You're lucky you didn't do yourself a permanent injury." He gave me a stern look. "You should have reported the pains as soon as they began occurring." I said, "Sorry," to my shoes. "We're not your enemy, Ky?Kyrie."Dr. Williams said. "We only want to help you, but we can't do that, unless we have full information." "I know. I just didn't think it was that big a deal." "Everything is a big deal, as far as you're concerned," Dr. Parsons pointed out. The examination then began in earnest. They poked and prodded me, asked me thousands of questions, many deeply personal ones ("Have you noticed any unusual stains on your panties?"). At one point, Dr. Parsons offered to leave the room. "Why?" I asked. "Dr. Williams needs to manipulate your chest to check for signs of breast development. Most girls your age feel self-conscious having a male present when this is done." I shrugged. "I guess I might, if I grew up a girl. Should I take the gown off?" Dr. Williams snorted. "No, dear, just hold the gown at the bottom of your ribs when I slip it off your shoulders." She untied the top knot of the ties in back, and poked at the area around my nipples for a while. It felt...odd, but not unpleasant. Before she pulled the shoulder back up, she measured both aureoles with a micrometer. She exchanged a look with Dr. Parsons and shook her head "no" very slightly. "'No,' what?" I asked. "You noticed that?" she responded. "Yes, what did it mean?" "Nothing, really. Literally in fact. I was indicating to my colleague that your aureoles had not grown any." "Puberty is a mysterious stage in a person's life cycle," Dr. Parsons added. "But it still takes place in a predictable fashion. In general, girls will undergo a short phase of accelerated growth, then their breasts will develop, including an enlargement of the aureoles and nipples, then their sexual organs will mature triggering the development of minor characteristics like pubic hair. A woman may grow as much as an inch or even two in the ten years following sexual maturity, but generally, the appearance of pubic hair marks the end of the puberty cycle. "Dr. Williams was indicating to me that your nipples have not grown in any measurable way." "Which is a good thing," Dr. Williams said. "We know both from your sudden growth and from the results of the blood samples that your nanos have entered phase two. Puberty is, as Dr. Parsons just said, a somewhat mysterious time. We had always planned to move you back here to the medical facility when you began, because there's so much we don't know about puberty." "Frankly," Dr. Parsons said, "what we do know often frightens us. At no other time in a woman's life, with the possible exception of pregnancy, will she be assailed by as many hormones and rapid changes to her body structure. With you, we were extremely concerned how it would progress and whether you would be allowed to recover from the traumatic changes, or if the nanos would endanger your life in pursuit of their program. Luckily, Ms. Donsen caught the growth spurt?which was, by the way, about five to ten times the rate of pubescent growth?and we'll be able to monitor you and see to your medical needs." "Congratulations," Dr. Williams finished. "You're no longer a girl. You're becoming a woman."