The Boston Bubble: Lora's Story. Part One free porn video

Hi folks. For a long time, I've been reading and commenting on the stories on this site. Every time I read something that I really liked, I found myself wishing that I could do that; write something good that people would enjoy reading. So a while ago, I decided it was time to stop wishing and do something. This story is the result. One of the stories that really impressed me was The Long Strange Journey of Seth Gates by AJ James. In that story, he created a universe where an unexplained "bubble" caused a massive group transformation in downtown Boston. My story is set in that universe. There was never any explanation for the source of the bubble. The prologue below is my humble attempt at an explanation. Oh, and here's the standard legal blahblahblah about copyright. If you want to post this somewhere else, ask first. And give me credit. And if you're not old enough to be reading this, then I'll tell you the same thing my grandfather always said to me... fuck off kid. And now, on with the story... =========================== Prologue: The War He usually didn't notice the hum. The constant sound coming from the overhead lighting was always there, as normal as the sound of his own breathing. So when the timbre of the white noise changed, it was all the warning he needed. Without any conscious decision being made, he flicked down and tapped the save button, just as the power died. Just in time. Again. Life during wartime. Life on the losing side during wartime. A quiet, nervous laugh escaped his throat. A thought like that, spoken aloud, could have him executed for crimes against the state. He rolled his eyes at his own folly. The new reality was that the state was rapidly losing its ability to enforce anything. And if he didn't finish his work soon, a bullet in the brain might seem like a blessing. The alienplague. Planet by planet, star by star, they had swarmed through the heavens. Nothing stopped them. Shit, nothing they tried had even slowed them down. These outer colonies were their final stand. The weapon system he was working on was really their last chance. Two years ago, when he first proposed it, no one took him seriously. But as the alienplague spread, their options dwindled. They took him serious now. Any port in a storm as they say, and the alienplague was a hurricane. "Doctor Embel, are you okay in there? The power went out again." The corporal had a penchant for stating the obvious. It was his way of dealing with the stress. "Yes Corporal, I can see that. Is there anything you can do to get it back on?" Being next-to-useless in a crisis situation was what had had the corporal assigned to this backwater outpost in the first place. But he did have his strong points. Making broken things work. And scavenging. Very valuable skills under the present circumstances. Embel leaned back in his chair, massaging his forehead. What he wouldn't give for one good night's sleep. In his own bed... sleep. The dim glow of the emergency lighting, the silence and his exhaustion all worked together to push him into a fitful slumber. ----- "Doctor Embel, I've read through the outline you provided to the members of this committee. I have to say it seems somewhat far-fetched. Transporting a weapon anywhere using this technology just doesn't seem possible." Embel found it difficult to keep the exasperation out of his voice. "Doctor Melia, that's correct. This technology could not be used to transport solid matter." Melia nodded. "And you write here that the limited energy that could be directed through this device couldn't possibly be strong enough to do any significant damage to anything. Could you explain to us then, if we did provide the necessary resources to build this system, how could it possibly be of any use against the alienplague?" Embel took a deep breath. "Doctor Melia, I agree that the energy directed through this system would only be capable of causing minor changes on a molecular level. At first glance, that might appear to render this system useless as a weapon. But its weakness is actually its strength. The low power involved allows for extremely accurate control. Control in not just three dimensions, but four." None of the four panel members seemed to understand the significance of Embel's words. He knew he was losing them, so he dumbed it down. "Gentlemen, we would be able to manipulate matter on a microscopic level, anywhere, any time." The bureaucrat on Melia's right spoke for the first time. "Doctor Embel, how could that affect the course of the war? This technology might be able to make some of the enemy ill. It might even kill some of them. But we couldn't possibly mass produce enough of these things to equip even one percent of our forces."" Embel was finding it difficult to remain calm. Government types... they think along such narrow lines. It's amazing anything ever gets done. "Gentlemen, we would only need one device." Melia looked up from his scribbling. "Doctor Embel?" Now he had their attention. "Research conducted on enemy corpses has revealed that they propagate in a rather unusual way. The alienplague actually consists of two distinct species, and successful reproduction must begin with a coupling between two individuals; one from each species." He paused, expecting an interruption, but it never came. "The two species, although distinct, are actually very similar. In fact, without careful examination, they are almost indistinguishable from each other. Post mortem tests have shown..." Melia was losing patience. "Could you skim past the anatomical details, doctor, and explain how constructing one device could help us?" "Certainly. We could use that one device to rearrange a few molecules in the alienplague chromosomes, and almost instantly, they would all be the same species. They would no longer be capable of reproduction. They would age without bearing young, and eventually they would go extinct." The room grew silent as Embel's last words echoed off the stark walls. Melia gathered himself and asked the obvious. "Doctor Embel, do we know the lifespan of the alienplague?" "It has been estimated at somewhere between eighty and one hundred years." Melia spoke slowly, as if talking to a simpleton. "So if we approved construction of the device, and somehow managed to succeed in altering the species of billions of the enemy at the same time, we would still have to struggle against them for another one hundred years, until they all died off?" Although he appeared stoic, Embel was giddy. He had been waiting for Melia to ask that very question. "Gentlemen, the beam generated by the weapon is not chronometrically restricted. We can aim it anywhere, any time. We can target their home world, two thousand years in the past. Long before they learned to leave their tiny planet. They would become extinct many centuries before they could become the menace they are today." ----- Embel was aware that he was being nudged. He was in that place between dreams and reality, where the two blend together. He was at home, having dinner with his son. But it was odd... he didn't understand why his son was calling him Doctor Embel. And his voice had changed. He sounded just like the corporal. "Doctor Embel, wake up. Doctor Embel." He slowly opened his eyes to see the corporal. He looked worried. "Doctor Embel, you fell asleep. I have the power back on." "Yes, I can see that corporal." "And Doctor Melia is here." The corporal lowered his voice. "He doesn't look happy, sir." The cobwebs were suddenly gone from his mind. "Melia? He's here? Now?" "Yes sir. He's in your office." This couldn't be good news. Melia had never set foot on this colony before, much less in this lab. Things must be moving faster than he thought. Without a word to the corporal, Embel got up and hurried toward his office. ----- Melia was sitting behind Embel's desk, stone faced. "Ah, Doctor Embel. Come in, close the door please." The room was small; Embel couldn't help but notice that Melia hadn't bathed in days. "Doctor Embel, how long before your weapon is ready?" Blunt. No political doublespeak. Things must be very bad indeed. "The weapon system itself is ready for testing. It has been ready for a few weeks now. The only hold up is the constant power interruptions. The corporal is doing his best to stabilize the situation, but..." "Doctor Embel, we need to use the weapon as soon as possible. Today. Now." "That's not possible! Without the proper calibration tests, it could..." "Doctor. Stop. Listen to me. I just came here from Angor Prime. It's gone. The entire planet, destroyed." Embel didn't notice himself sitting down. "That means they'll be here..." Melia finished for him. "Yes... in hours." He paused just long enough to let Embel hitch in a breath. "Now, Doctor Embel. We need to go down stairs and do whatever needs to be done to fire the weapon now." Embel slowly lifted his gaze to look Melia in the face. The clarity of thought that comes with routine suddenly washed over him. "Yes, Doctor Melia. You're right, the weapon." Without another word, they both rose and made their way down to the lab. ----- Embel surprised himself. His voice was steady and clear. "Doctor Melia, there is a good chance that this will work... if the power remains stable." Glancing past Melia, Embel made eye contact with the corporal. His assistant was shaking his head. He went on anyway. "The beam depends entirely on the power supply. If it fails before the weapon is charged to full capacity, we'll still be able to get off a shot. But it won't be wide enough to affect their entire home world." "I understand, Doctor. I've read the reports. Even a partial hit might change their history enough to stop them before they get started." Melia looked directly in Embel's eyes. "Now let's fire this weapon and force the alienplague... what do they call themselves?" The corporal spoke up. "Hu-mans. They call themselves hu-mans." "Thank you, corporal. Let's push these hu-mans into extinction." ========================= Lora's Story Chapter One: The Change It never got old. The completely mundane things in life became absolutely thrilling, simply by tossing in a little cross dressing. If I had been wearing my "normal" clothing, nothing about the interaction would have seemed memorable. The scruffy looking man with the long greasy hair had no idea that he was part of a moment that I would remember for the rest of my life. He only did what panhandlers do; he asked for money. "Excuse me Miss, I'm stuck downtown and I need bus fare to get home. Could you help me out?" Dozens of thoughts raced through my mind, competing for dominance. Do I turn and walk away? Do I run? No, that would only make things worse. Women just do not run along the streets of downtown Boston in a skirt and three inch heels. Stay calm, stay calm... Wait a minute, he said "Miss". Is it possible he hasn't read me yet. Maybe. Just act like you would any other day. You should be able to get off one word in a woman's voice. Okay, here goes. Shrug shoulders. Make eye contact. Raise eyebrows. "Sorry." Keep moving girl... that's it, one foot in front of the other. "Thanks anyways, Miss." Calmly walking away, I was screaming inside my head. I can't believe I'm pulling this off. He didn't read me. In broad daylight, no less. ----- I knew that I was a cross dresser before I was old enough to know the word. Some of my earliest memories involved wanting to be like my sisters. I didn't want to be a girl, I just wanted to be pretty like a girl. In my teens, whenever I was alone in the house, I would be going through wardrobes, trying things on. It was amazing that I never got caught. Occasionally my sisters would notice something had been worn, but they would always accuse each other of stealing their clothes. I would just keep my head down, grin to myself and watch the fireworks. When I got my own apartment, that's when I started getting serious. It wasn't just stolen moments in borrowed clothes. Wigs, make-up and full body shaves became a big part of my life. Leaving the safety of my own four walls began with drunken two a.m. stumbles through the hallways of the apartment building. I would wake up the next morning hung over, still dressed and furious with myself for going out looking so awful, always muttering "never again." After dozens of such episodes, I realized that there would be no stopping myself. If I couldn't stop "Lora" from going out, I might as well accept it and stop "Lora" from going out looking like a drunk guy in a wig. That meant lots of practice with make-up, losing some weight and buying a few outfits which were a little more situation- appropriate. And no liquid courage. Living on the sixteenth story of a busy downtown complex meant that getting Lora in and out of the building unseen was probably not going to happen. So that left one option: Halloween. Months of preparation went into that one magical evening each year. Not once did anyone bat an eye as Lora rode the elevators, walked calmly through the crowded lobby and into the night. Each little success built my confidence. Stops at lonely ATM's, mail boxes and public telephones led to window shopping and the ocassional stroll through the local malls. After several years of this, I started feeling that one night of being Lora each year was not enough. Seeing as my living arrangements were the problem, I moved. A house on a quiet street in the suburbs suddenly gave me the ability to come and go as I pleased. Sometimes I would spend an entire week of vacation in drag, going out at night and filming myself doing run-of-the-mill things. And everything filmed went straight to youtube. The feedback there gave me almost as much of a rush as getting dressed and going out. Almost. I got dressed and went out so often, it started to become routine. And routine led to boredom. The thrill was fading. I decided to bump it up a notch. Daylight. That was the next frontier to be crossed. Downtown Boston in daylight. The light of day was just the thing to spice up what was becoming ho-hum, and doing it downtown meant that Lora wouldn't look out of place in a skirt and heels. Looking forward to that sent a chill up my spine. ----- I was no more than ten steps away from the panhandler when it happened. The world around me went white. It wasn't like a flash of bright light that would make you squint. No, it was more as if everything in the world suddenly changed color, everything became the same shade of white. The sidewalk, the people, the buildings, the sky; every single thing became indistinguishable from everything else. It's funny how your mind can take in information it doesn't understand, and then instantly make up a story to explain it. My mind told me "Oh, I've gone blind. So this is what it looks like when you're blind. Strange how it's all white, not dark." And as quickly as that thought was finished forming in my mind, it was over. The white was gone, like nothing had happened. No spots in my vision, no moment for my eyes to adjust back to normal. To tell you the truth, I was actually wondering if it had just been a trick of my eyes. I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed it, or if it was just in my head. I looked back toward the panhandler, but he was gone. Standing in the spot where I expected to see him was a confused, scared looking young girl. She was dressed like he had been, but the clothes were far too big for her. Where the hell did she come from? She was trembling, looking at me with a question on her face. The cross dresser in me began to worry... what if she starts yelling? A young girl standing on the sidewalk screaming was just the thing to attract a lot of attention. I began to feel a panic coming on. All I could think about was moving away from her before she started causing a scene. Two steps was as far as I got; my feet walked right out of my shoes. Wasn't that the damdest thing? I had bought those shoes on-line, and the first time I tried them on I was disappointed to find that they were tight. Not crippling tight, just uncomfortable tight. But they were the perfect match for the business-type skirt suit I had on, so I wore them anyway. And now there they were, standing there on the sidewalk . Squatting down to pick them up, I saw these little glossy pink flakes scattered around. Seeing my hand as I reached to pick up one of the flakes, I managed to put two and two together. The polish was gone from my finger nails. It had just fallen right off, and there it was in little finger nail shaped pieces, lying on the cement. Sitting on my haunches, looking at my shoes and nail polish, I didn't really notice that people were starting to wander out of the buildings. The hush that had frozen the world was starting to melt. Someone across the street started screaming. That broke me out of my daze. Panicking cross dresser's mission number one took over: get back to my car. I just left my shoes standing there on the sidewalk and made tracks. Get to the car, get to the car... that thought crowded everything else out of my mind. The two minutes it took me to walk-jog- trot back to the car were surreal. The urgency I felt was difficult to keep under control. I didn't even notice that I was barefoot. Everyone everywhere had been affected. A courrier was on the curb next to a bicycle, blood trickling from a gash on her forehead. She was just sitting there, staring at the blood on her hands. A young woman with a shaved head was on her knees beside a hot dog cart, staring at her reflection in the chrome. An oriental girl in a very large T-shirt was standing on the corner with her jeans in a pile around her ankles, unashamedly examining herself. Dozens of cars had rolled into things or each other, the drivers mostly oblivious to the damage. Once I was safely inside the cocoon of my car, my approaching panic began to subside. I took a deep breath and that's when I noticed that my bra was unusually tight. In fact, it was down-right painful. A quick glance down at my chest answered the question of why. Through my blouse and jacket, I could see that my silicone breast forms looked massive. My bra was bursting. I undid the top two buttons on my blouse, reached in and pulled out the forms. Even though I instantly felt much more comfortable, it dawned on me that I didn't feel normal. One more undone button and my blood ran cold. There were breasts in my bra. Real, honest-to-goodness breasts. I reached into the blouse and poked the left one. Poked it hard. It hurt. When I pulled away, there was a white mark on the skin where my finger had been. As I watched the white mark fade to pink, I was snapped back into the real world by the sound of an approaching siren. Several approaching sirens. My mind kicked into high gear. Something big is happening here, and the police are on their way. They're going to be stopping people, looking for witnesses, asking questions. Like any cross dresser who has ever ventured out in public, I had a knee-jerk reaction. I did not want to be stopped by the police while wearing women's clothing. The knowledge that I had just discovered a pair of flesh and blood breasts in my bra was forgotten. Instinct took over. I pushed up my sleeves, started the car and put it in gear. With my stocking foot trembling on the gas pedal, I started to move. ----- The drive home was a blur. To this day, I can't remember a single detail about it. I might as well have been riding in the trunk of my own car. One moment I was in the parking lot downtown, and the next thing I knew I was sitting in the car with my garage door closing behind me. A lot of what we do is based on superstition. Hockey players won't shave during the playoffs; baseball players have a routine about stepping into the batter's box. Me, I always uttered the same phrase while that garage door was closing... Well Lora, you made it home safe again. So in spite of the lunacy of the past hour, habit kicked in and I began "Well Lora." That's as far as I got. Three little syllables were all that came out before I stopped. That wasn't my voice. Over the years, I had worked hard at being able to sound like a woman, with some success. But on my best day, I didn't sound anything like the voice that had just come out of my throat. That shocked me into taking inventory. I pulled down the sun visor, opened up the mirror, and looked into the eyes of a very surprised girl. As if it had a mind of its own, my hand reached up and rubbed her cheek. It felt greasy. I looked down at my hand and saw the tips of my tiny fingers were smeared with pressed powder and blush, mixed in with a healthy dose of nervous sweat. Since that day, a lot of people have asked me about that moment. I like to think that I have a well rounded vocabulary, but I've never really been able to do it justice. The best I've ever come up with is this; it was like looking at myself wearing an extremely life-like mask, except I didn't have a clue I was wearing that mask until I saw it in the mirror. I'm proud of the fact that I can keep my cool in a crisis. I once gave CPR to a co-worker while the other ten people in the room just stood there looking lost. But that was training kicking in. This was different. My mind had no frame of reference for this situation. I just sat there looking at that young girl's face staring back at me from the mirror. After what must have been five or ten minutes, a coherent thought suddenly burst through the confusion and rushed to the front of my mind... maybe the face and breasts weren't all that had changed. And along with that thought came the realization that the ever-present discomfort of tucked genitals was no longer ever-present. Denial took over. If you don't confirm a truth, then it's not yet a truth. I reached over for my purse, got out of the car and padded into the house. Once in my living room, the sight of the television spurred a train of thought. There'd been a lot of commotion going on downtown. Maybe this didn't just happen to me. The white flash, the screaming, the sirens... there had to be something on the news about all this. Plopping down on the floor in front of the couch, I pulled my knees up under my chin and turned on the TV. I shouldn't have been surprised to find them reporting it on the first channel that came on. I was right; this was a big deal. They didn't have much in the way of details, but what they already knew was enough to make them interrupt whatever they had on. They were showing footage taken from a camera perched at the top of their broadcast tower. My god, the flash looked like a small nuclear bomb exploding. Slow motion showed it starting in one place and then expanding until you couldn't see a large chunk of downtown. And then it was gone; it just popped like a soap bubble. There was no damage, no debris in the air, not even any smoke. Nothing. After running a loop of that a few times, they showed a shot of the national guard setting up a road block on Congress Street. The announcer was saying that an "unknown event" had occurred involving a ten block area of downtown Boston. Until the nature of the event was discovered, all people inside the affected area were being quarantined and were being asked to make their way to city hall. The phone rang, scaring the begeebers out of me. Muscles that I wasn't accustomed to having went loose, letting a few drops of pee leak out of me. I ignored the phone, deciding that now was as good a time as any. I had to bite the bullet... I had to get out of these clothes and find out... find out... I didn't know what I was going to find out. Forcing myself to get up and walk down the hallway to my bedroom was hard; real hard. But I don't really recall doing it. What I do remember clearly is the sound of the little spark that zapped me when my hand touched the doorknob. I remember thinking "well, Lenny, I guess that proves you're not dreaming." Directly across the bedroom from the door was my full length mirror. (I know, I know... single guy, full length mirror? I was a cross dresser, remember?) My first impression of the reflection in that mirror was "she looks like a girl trying on her mother's work clothes." I walked up to the mirror, reached up and pulled off my wig. I knew it would be easy to freeze up, to start losing it, if I kept staring at her, so I turned my back to the mirror and got busy undressing. Jacket, skirt, blouse... that was as far as I got before I let myself peek over my shoulder at the mirror. "Oh shit oh shit; just don't look." Without looking down, I peeled off my pantyhose, padded panties and bra. At that point, I didn't really need to confirm anything, but I did need to look. I sucked in a deep breath and turned to face the mirror's brutal honesty. A terrified young girl, wearing nothing but too much make-up, was staring back at me. "Oh shit oh shit ohSHIToh shit... how the hell is this even possible?" After a quick scan from head to toe, I tumbled onto the bed and curled up in a ball. ================================ Chapter Two: Baby Steps I didn't want to move; I didn't want to think. I just wanted to lay there and ignore reality. But the world keeps turning, and it always finds a way to drag us along with it. As it does every day, the sun crept across the sky. Shining through the bedroom window, the light inched its way across the bed until it started warming my toes. It felt good as it moved to the the soles of my feet, but once it reached my naked butt, it started to become uncomfortable. Being curled up in a ball on my side, there was no way to just pull away without moving my entire body. I gave in, rolling over and stretching out flat on my back. The trill of the phone beside my head scared another little trickle of pee out of me. "Dammit, that's gotta stop!" With my mind occupied by the frustration of my mild incontinence, I picked up the phone and barked "Hello." "Uh, hi... is ah... is Len there?" I couldn't tell whether Jessie was baffled or worried that a young woman had answered her brother's phone. I held my breath for a moment. Jessie could be a bit of a loose cannon, so she wouldn't have been the first person I would call to talk this over with. But what the hell. She was on the phone, and I had to start somewhere. "Jessie, it's me." "Me who?" "It's me, Lenny." I knew we were both holding our breath now. I blinked first. "I was downtown this morning..." "Honey, I don't have time for this right now. Could you just put Lenny on the phone, OK?" Maybe it was my sister's doubt. Maybe it was the stress. Or maybe it was my reaction to a whole new system of chemistry going on in my head. But just then, something made the dam burst. My jaw started trembling as I tried to get words out between spasms of breath. "Jess I don't know what happened I was downtown and a light flashed and everything went white and a bum looked like she was gonna start screaming so I ran back to my car and... something happened to me Jess." "Len?" "Yeah. It's me." "My god, Lenny, you were there? Oh Len..." Her voice cracked. She stopped, took a deep breath, and then announced "Stay right there, I'm coming over." "No! You can't do that!" "Why not? Ben's still away but the girls'll be fine. They can order a pizza..." "Oh, Jess. Please." It was a struggle to get words out, but she had enough of a feel for the situation to wait until I could make my point. "You can't come here. Something... I don't know what happened and it might... I'm fine, I just need to think about what to do." "Lenny, it's been on TV all day." I could hear she was scared. "They're not saying much, just that they've quarantined everyone who was there when that bomb went off. Are you sure you're Ok? I mean, your voice? It's, like..." My god, she didn't know. How could she know? "I'm Ok. Uh, I think I am, anyway. I'm not hurt and I don't feel sick or anything like that. I just... it's complicated Jess, but I'm OK." Another deep breath, and I came to a decision. "If they're keeping people downtown, I think maybe I should just go back down there." "I don't know if that's such a good idea. On TV they keep showing shots of the crowds around the roadblocks. People trying to find out what's happening. I don't know if you could get in there." She had a point. "Ok, well then I'll start making some calls. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was there and left before they blocked the roads." "Alright. Call me back before you do anything. Are you sure you're Ok?" "I'm fine. I'll call. OK?" After a few more assurances, she let me hang up. I didn't want to worry her any more than she already was, so I didn't tell her that my first call would be to 9-1-1. But first things first. The make-up I put on that morning was still on my face. And I wasn't about to call anyone until I at least found some underwear to put on. ----- "You have reached the 9-1-1 emergency response center. All of our operators are busy. If you are calling regarding someone who you believe is inside the Boston Quarantine Area, please tune to your local radio or television news for information. If you were affected by the event and you are not inside the Boston Quarantine area, please report to the nearest police station for transportation to the temporary care center located at Boston City Hall. If you are reporting any other police, fire or medical emergency, please stay on the line. An operator will be available to answer your call in ---twenty--- ---two--- minutes." I hung up. Well, at least there was a clear path laid out in front of me now. Official instructions on where to go, what to do. Confirmation from the bureaucracy that they know something has happened to me and that I need help. Back in my bedroom, I stood in a pair of jockey shorts, looking through the open drawers of my dresser. Seeing as my options were rather limited, it wasn't too difficult to choose what to wear. I hadn't been a very large man, but not many of the clothes that fit me before were of much use to me now. The best I could do was a pair of track pants, a T-shirt and a hoodie. A pair of tennis shoes with a few paper towels stuffed in the toes completed the look. Picking up my wallet, keys and phone, I hopped in the car and... sat staring through the windshield. "Lenny boy, if you can find the nerve to walk around in public with your family jewels tucked away under a skirt, then this should be no big deal. They know what happened to you, right?" I wasn't really buying my own spiel, but what choice did I have? It took a good five minutes of meditation and psyching myself up before I pressed the button to open the garage door. A couple of deep breaths and I was off. ----- "Hey Jess, it's me." "Oh my god, Lenny, it's about time. I was just about to call you back. I called Kelly and told her what happened. She's bouncing off the walls. She said she tried to call you but there was no answer." I should have known she'd call Kelly. The symbiosis of sisterhood. One of them simply cannot survive knowing something without instantly telling the other. "I'm not at home. I'm at the police station on Concord. They said I should show up here and they'd give me a ride downtown." "Len, she's really worried and I am too. Please tell me what's going on." "Jess, please... I'm Ok. Really. I'm perfectly healthy, at least I feel like I am. Please just let me deal with this and I'll call you when I can. OK?" "Alright. You're an adult. You don't really sound like one but..." "You're a regular riot, Jess. Listen, call Kelly, calm her down, tell her I'll call both of you when I can. I gotta go, OK?" I know it was a bit cruel to leave them in the dark like that, but how do you tell your family something like this? I guess at that point, I was still hoping that this "change" was going to somehow wear off. There were a pair of cops standing outside the front doors of the Belmont Police station, wearing surgical gloves and respirators. They took one look at me approaching and the one on the right just pointed his neoprene index finger at a large tent set up in the parking lot. "Go right on inside over there, Miss." Raising my eyebrows, all I got out was "I was downtown..." before the other one interrupted me. "We know." Pointing at the tent again, he added "They'll take care of you in there." Over the years, I had spent a lot of time watching how women and men do things differently. There are literally dozens and dozens of little contrasts; some obvious, most of them subtle. I had become a somewhat passable cross dresser by working really hard at imitating those feminine traits. Something else I had put a lot of effort into was making damn sure that I didn't display my "girly tics" unless I was in drag (a guy just does not wiggle his butt walking around the grocery store!) Walking up to those cops, I wasn't in drag and wouldn't have felt right acting like I was. So I suppose it was no great surprise that they knew why I was there simply by looking at my gait. That plus my hair, my complete lack of make-up and jewelery and my four-sizes- too-big sweat pants. But as sure as they were about me, that cop still couldn't bring himself to call me sir. Well, at least they were calm and courteous. There was a hand written sign hanging beside the entrance to the tent. BUBBLE AFFECTEES ONLY. So that's what they were calling it, the bubble. How cute. And I was an "affectee". It seemed to me that the powers that be had decided to use warm and fuzzy language to avoid creating a panic in the general population. I pulled the flap aside and stepped into the first three days of my new life. ----- Being a pair of rookies, the two young policemen had drawn the day's lousiest duty. Standing on your feet in one spot all day would be bad enough, but doing it while wearing respirators made it torture. "That short one in the track suit... she makes it a hundred, right?" "One oh four by my count." He leaned in closer to his partner. "Cutest one yet. Did you get a load of the body on her?" "Miller, you've got a one track mind." He took a quick look around, then added, "But you're right. God damn, I just can't believe that was a guy this morning." ----- She looked up. "Hi, come on in and have a seat right here. I'll be with you in two shakes of a dog's leg." Her bright, chipper attitude was in total contrast to the way she was dressed. Her face was the only part of her that was visible through the plastic window of her haz-mat suit. She had dialed down the serious nature of the situation by putting a smiley face sticker on the side of her hood. Below that was a label which read, "Hi, my name is CAROL." I sat down in a chair beside her desk. After a few more clicks on her lap-top, she turned her attention to me. "Are you feeling OK?" "Other than the obvious, I feel pretty good. A bit of dizziness once in a while, but..." "That's pretty common. Can you push up your sleeve for me and we'll get a few basics out of the way?" She wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my little bicep and pushed a button on a monitor. A hum started and the cuff inflated. "Can I get your full name?" "Leonard Michael Williams." A few taps on her keyboard, then "Date of birth?" "February twenty-ninth, nineteen seventy-two." Smiling through her plastic shield, she offered "Well, Mister Williams, isn't this one heck of an early birthday present?" Through a crooked grin, I came back with, "You could have just got me a tie. And call me Lenny." "OK Lenny, height and weight?" "Well I used to be five-eight and a hundred-fifty pounds. I don't have a clue what I am now." "That's Ok, they'll check that out downtown. So, where exactly were you when it happened?" She didn't need to explain what she meant by "it". I had never admitted to a soul in the world that I liked to slap on a skirt once in a while, and I wasn't about to start now. I didn't want to have to explain why I had run away so fast that morning... so I lied to her. "I was waiting on a red light. I'm pretty sure I was at Tremont and Bromfield." Her machine stopped humming and the cuff on my arm started deflating. There was a steady beep that I assumed was my pulse. "Well Lenny, from what I've been told, you were right on the edge of it. If that red light had been green, you probably wouldn't have any reason to be here right now." I tilted my head, raised my eyebrows and quipped "Well, Carol, some people get all the luck." She smiled again. Her cheerfulness, her light banter and the way she was treating all this as perfectly normal was going a long way towards keeping me calm. They must teach this stuff at natural disaster school, I thought to myself. "OK Lenny, we're all done here. Just go on through that door right there and have a seat. A bus will be around in a few minutes." ----- I took a seat in the next room. There were about forty girls scattered in the fifty-odd available chairs. They ranged in age from around fourteen to eighteen years old. One glance around the room and it wasn't hard to guess at how each of them had woken up that morning. A group of five were sitting together, chatting away while their thumbs flashed over the buttons on their phones. Their hair, make-up and well put together outfits identified them as being teen girls who just happened to be downtown this morning. Almost half of the rest of the girls in the room were wearing women's clothing of one style or another, sitting with legs and arms crossed. No doubt that they were women who had been caught in the bubble. The rest of us fell into the third category; guys like me. We all looked like we were dressed for sloppy day at the girl's school. Our ill-fitting clothes, bad posture and men's hair cuts said it all. We were the "affectees" who had the most to deal with. Other than the chatty-Cathys in the corner, everyone was lost in their own thoughts. Some quietly crying, most of us just silently existing in our heads. ----- Two things ruined it for me. I could have fooled myself into thinking that it was just another perfectly normal day; that I was getting on that bus to go to a Pats game or something. But word must have gotten out. A television news crew had set up with their camera about fifty feet away, filming us as we walked the twenty steps from the tent to the bus. That in itself was unusual, I'd never been on TV before. But then there was the bus driver. He was wearing a haz-mat suit just like Carol. I was definitely not on my way to Foxboro. Taking a window seat, it wasn't long before a girl sat down beside me. She stuck out her hand and said, "Hi, George Garneau." I shook her hand. "Len Williams. Call me Lenny." "Pleased to meet you Lenny. Any theories on what the hell happened to us?" "Yeah, I heard something, but you gotta keep it to yourself." I glanced around to make sure no one else could hear me, then whispered, "I have it on good authority that the Salem witches have come back to life. They're pretty pissed, and they're taking it out on us." I glanced around again, then whispered "Mums the word." We both burst into quiet giggles. Once it started, there was no stopping it. It felt so good to laugh. I leaned back into my seat and looked up at the ceiling. With a smile on my face and a tear rolling down my cheek, I turned and asked, "Shit George, what the hell are we gonna do?" George just smiled back at me and said "Make lemonade." When I didn't respond, she went on. "Lenny, I'm sixty-eight years old. My heart was so bad, I was out of breath just taking a piss. Now look at me. I'm a kid again. I feel like a million bucks. So my dick is gone. I really don't care... I'll trade a useless dick for a good ticker any day. I've got my fingers crossed, Lenny. If this is a dream, then I don't want to wake up. Because I'm gonna watch my great-grand kids grow up." She wasn't just smiling. She was glowing. I was never so glad to meet anyone in my life as I was to meet George on that bus. Make lemonade. That sounded like a fantastic idea. To be continued... ================================== Hi folks... author here. Please remember that I can't hear you say "Hey, I enjoyed that." So, if you did, or even if you didn't, I'd really appreciate it if you could let me know. I know, I know, everyone who's ever written a story and posted it here says the same thing. The truth is, for every story here, there's an author sitting looking at their story, wondering if anyone gives a hoot about it. Thanks for your time... Lora Guy