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Wish Shift: Chapter Nineteen Crossing the Rubicon Year 1 A.S. Day 103 Bob's was a little bit busy this morning for a Thursday. Derek had picked Jenny up at her house at the regular time for her appointment, but they still had more than an hour or so to kill when they walked into the restaurant. Bob waved to Jenny and Derek as they came in the door, but he didn't come over. There were too many people cycling through the place at the moment. Jenny was pretty sure that if he got a little bit of time that he would turn up on her elbow soon enough to check on her. Because there were so many people crowding in, they didn't have many options to choose from. They were trying to fit into a set of small benches against the wall across from each other over a small table, when the couple who were eating nearby came over and offered to move there so Jenny didn't have to squeeze into that narrow space. They quickly gathered up their dishes and moved them to the little booth. Jenny thanked them and sat down in the wooden chair. Cindy came up to them with her uniform stretched over her broad frame and took their order. Jenny asked why Bob's was so busy this morning and Cindy said it probably had something to do with the music festival that was starting later today. Jenny had read about it earlier, in one of the local papers and forgotten that it was happening today. It was a pity too, because she had been thinking that, if she had the time, she would like to go. The festival had actually been delayed. It was supposed to have been scheduled to take place about three weeks after the Shift. With all of the confusion and the uncertainty when the scheduled acts suddenly didn't exist anymore, if anyone thought about it at all they figured that it was already a dead letter. Some of the acts had managed to pull themselves back together. Some had to get new singers, since their original ones found themselves in bodies that were unable to do that; either from physical maladies or just no longer having the ability to perform on that level any longer. Others had reconstituted themselves around the sole remaining original member and advertising themselves as featuring so and so, like they used to do when all of the others had left the group or were dead like before. There were some new ones as well, that had musicians who never worked together, in acts that they had put together post-Shift. Jenny asked Derek if he remembered how long the festival was supposed to last and when he said he thought that it would be there until Sunday she decided, that if Derek couldn't take her, she would see if Kira could come down with Dianne. She knew that they both would probably love this and it would appeal to Kira's impulsive nature. Cindy came back with their order on the big oblong tray and started putting it down on the table for them. They thanked her and she smiled at Jenny before heading over to put the tray back and see to someone else's table. Derek remarked that Cindy was looking better. She had lost some more weight since the last time he had seen her. Jenny agreed. Cindy had been a thin woman in her late twenties and had shifted into a woman in her late thirties who weighed nearly three hundred pounds. She hadn't been able to work right away, but Bob had kept her on until she felt she could get back to work. She looked like she had lost at least thirty or forty pounds already and seemed pretty pleased with it. "So who is this J.L. Amelia was talking about?" asked Derek dipping his fork into his eggs. "Why did she mention him?" Jenny asked reaching across the table for some pepper. "We were talking during the cookout when you introduced me to her and she mentioned him. So who is he?" Derek said taking the pepper shaker she offered him when she was done. "I suppose that you could say that J.L. is my son," she said after considering it for a moment. Now that Derek had mentioned him she wondered if, when she was finished with Dr. Warren later on, she would be spending that long with him today. Dr. Nakamura had said something a couple of days ago about some new approach that she wanted to try with him to see if his learning rate could be accelerated even more. "Wait a minute," he said, "is he the one you were talking about before? The thirty-seven year old?" "Yeah I mentioned him before," she said. "Well I'm not surprised that I didn't recognize him then, you didn't say that much when you told me about him," he said spreading some strawberry jam on a piece of toast. He took a bite and looked back at her. "No I didn't," she said. Jenny went back to eating her breakfast. "So who is he then?" he asked again turning back to his eggs. "I suppose you could say that he was me," she said finally thinking over what would be the right words. Trying to figure out what J.L. really was to her had been something that was also taking up a good deal of her time when she was by herself. It was particularly troubling to her that last week when she was visiting and getting ready to work with him, he had gotten a noticeable hard on while she was doing that and she had been unable to stop herself from thinking about what had happened with him in her apartment; even more disturbing was the faint arousal that she had felt. "And how did that work?" Derek asked her. "You remember how I told you I switched right?" she said. She really didn't want to do a recap of this right now in the middle of all of these people, especially since she had not told him specific details. "Yeah," he said. "You switched with your girlfriend." "Well, J.L. was one of the babies she wa...I am pregnant with," Jenny said looking down at her belly. "Oh, so he's a..." Derek said "A baby, right. Except he's in my old body now," she finished. "So where is he now then?" he asked looking away from her belly. "Right now he's at the institute. He's been there since we both came back and he's part of the reason that I have to be down here all the time. Well except for when I'm working with Dr. Min that is," she said mopping up some egg yolk with her toast. "And is he...all right?" Derek asked. "He's fine," Jenny answered. "The problem with him is that he is a baby in the body of an adult man," she finished her yolk and reached for a single serve package of blackberry jam for her other piece of toast. "Yikes," Derek said. "I've seen some raw deals since the Shift happened, but that one just seems wrong," The idea of it was making Derek raise his eyebrows and shake his face slowly at the thought of it. "Actually Dr. Nakamura is pretty pleased with how he's doing," she said. Last week she had watched while Mika with some of her assistants were trying to see if they could encourage J.L. to walk using some parallel bars to support himself. "How can she be pleased?" Derek asked not seeing how it was possible. Jenny started to tell Derek a little more about the experiment and what it was the doctors she was working with were looking to accomplish. He listened quietly, occasionally taking a bite of his breakfast while she went over the details that they had figured out over the last few weeks of observation and testing. After she brought him somewhat up to speed he put down his fork and looked across the table at her. "So right now he has the mind of a nine or ten month old child and he is actually only a couple of months old? How does something like that even work?" he said looking a little confused and overwhelmed at the idea. Jenny told him a little bit of what Dr. Nakamura had told her, but since she was still not that familiar with the specifics of what the little doctor had told her, she just relied on general methods to describe it. Derek just listened until she finished. "That's kind of amazing," he said."And they actually think that he'll be somewhat independent in just under ten years?" "If they are right about the way they think that this will work then I'd say so," she answered and then told him how they had started having her try to see if J.L. could learn to speak now, even though that would be much earlier than normal for his estimated development. Dr. Min was particularly involved in that aspect of it and they had been working closely together on it, in addition to the memory work Jenny was doing with her. "So what happens after they are done here?" he asked. "I really don't think that they are going to keep him here until he grows up again," Jenny wondered that herself. Dr. Nakamura wanted him there longer, but even with that there was no reason for J.L. to only leave when he had been restored more or less. "Well Dr. Nakamura already asked me to keep him here for much longer than they initially asked for. She gave me some good reasons and I agreed with her, so for right now he's here. But at some point I'm going to have to take him home. That's why Kira meeting Belinda was such a lucky break for me. Her having to deal with taking care of Kyle has given her so much practice already with a child like that when they visit. And she has just been so much of a help to me already just talking with her. With what she has to deal with, every day with him has been a real eye opener." "Yeah, I saw Kyle at the cookout," Derek said. "Even though he's in that teenager's body he's just a little dynamo most of the time. I could hardly keep up with him while he was there." "Well I don't think that J.L. will be as energetic as Kyle, but I expect that he'll be as much of a handful when I have to take him back full time," Jenny said and inside she hoped that she would be able to do as well with him as Belinda had done with Kyle. "You don't sound too excited to do that," he said noting that she had gotten a bit subdued when she answered. "In some ways I'm not," she said. "In a couple of months I'm going to have a pair of newborns, one of which will probably have Sonya's mind, in some form, inside them. You've seen my trailer, so I'm probably going to be going back to my parents house for the time being. Because there is literally no space for them now, let alone J.L. and then there's the other things that come with this," she said quietly, sadly. "Like what?" he asked, there was something here he realized. "Like I can hardly look at him," she said, "I know he's my baby inside, but I mostly just see my face, my old face. The one I saw in a mirror all of my life staring back at me the way he does most of the time when I see him. And since he started crawling a couple of weeks ago, he is weirding me out even more. It's not like watching a baby crawl. You see a baby moving around and I don't care if you're a man or a woman the first thought you usually have is how great it is they're doing that now," she said. "But you don't with him," Derek said. "No, it just makes me sad. It's like watching a wrecked car try to move. It just looks like it should just stop and be wrecked already. It doesn't feel natural," she said. I know he's done nothing to merit that feeling from me, but it does make me feel that way. And I still don't know what I should feel for him now. Maybe when he starts talking and I can see someone else in there it will be better." "So do you think you may not take him?" he asked. "Of course, I'm going to take him," she said. "I just have no idea how that is going to work when I do and I'm actually afraid that when I do take him that I'm going to make some horrible mistake that can't be fixed and do some real damage to him." "It sounds like you are thinking of him as a baby, even with everything that you are telling me right now," he said. "I suppose I am in that way and I suppose that I'll figure it out, but right now I just don't know and the only thing that I can do is keep being involved with him while this study is being conducted and hope that I figure it out before then," she said. Derek reached across the table and put his hand on hers to reassure her. "I'm sure you will, it wouldn't bother you this much if you weren't trying to figure out how to do it the right way." Jenny wasn't sure how to take the gesture, at first she thought that he might be making a pass at her. She didn't know for sure because she had never been on the receiving end of one from a straight man before, but after giving it a quick thought she decided that he was just expressing his sympathy to her the way he would to any woman in her situation that he would have been talking to. "You know I really still am not sure how to take it when people do things like that to me," she said. Derek withdrew his hand. "Did I do something wrong?" he asked. "No," she said, "But even with all of the way that I've come since the Shift happened, in some ways I'm still a man inside. And doing what I would have done before is still my first reaction." "I hope your reaction right then wasn't to hit me," he said. "I've seen what you can do and I really don't want to be on the wrong end of it." He mimed holding his hands up in terror. "That's not it," she assured him, "it's just that if I had switched into another man you wouldn't have done that just now. You probably would have done something, but you wouldn't have done that," she explained. "You're probably right," he said. "Sorry about that. I just did what I thought I should do." "I know," she said. "You see a woman you know, who is upset about a problem and you do something like that to reassure her because that is what we are supposed to do, but it feels strange to someone like me. Because when it happens it's a reminder that you just don't match who you were anymore. "I had the same discussion with Amelia," he said. "Believe me it's driving me crazy just as much as it is you." "Speaking of crazy," she said, "We should get going in a few minutes, I have to meet with Dr. Warren soon." "Ok, hang on a sec and I'll get the check and we can get going," he said starting to get up. "Sit down," she said. "It's past my turn to get the check and you know it," she had been letting it pass, but after the last time she decided that when it happened again she was going to say something about it to him. "Jenny it's not problem, I can get it," he said insisting. "And so can I. I'm not a pauper you know." She looked over at him in the other chair. She could tell he really didn't want to argue with her over something like this. Derek sat back down. "Jenny I want to get it ok? I'm fine with it. I really am." "Derek you've gotten the last five checks for one reason or another. I really think I should be getting this one. You wouldn't be doing this, I think, if I had not shifted or if I had gone into another man's body," Now that this talk had started she figured it was better to get it over with. "But you didn't do that," he said. "You're not a man, you're a lady." She looked at him across the table. Her eyes narrowed a bit. She looked at him really closely. That had better not have meant what she thought it could mean she thought to herself. "I think you better explain what you mean by that," she said to him watching him closely. Derek looked back at her and slowly exhaled. "Jenny," he started to say and paused before continuing. "I just don't feel right letting you pay. I know we're just friends, but it still feels wrong to me not to pick up the check when we do something like this, especially since half the time it's me taking you somewhere and you have to go; you have no choice, because I'm the one driving you," he said. "So this is some kind of a date then?" she said. "Is that how you think of this? Like we're dating?" If he said yes, Jenny wasn't sure what she would say. Yes, he was someone she considered a good friend, even someone who was becoming a close friend. But she had not considered him to be anything that would be more than that and if he had started to think that it was, then there would be complications that she was not sure about from now on. "No," he said. "It's not dating. A date would at least involve flowers." "So what is it then?" she asked him. "Let me ask you a question," he said. "If you were still a man or had shifted into another man and you became friends with a woman and have been doing what we have been doing. How would you feel?" Jenny leaned back into the faux leather of the chair. "I'd probably insist on paying most of the time too," she admitted looking down and a bit away. "That's just it," Derek said. "If I didn't do this or at least try to, it would just feel wrong to me. Like I'm taking advantage of you." "Look Jenny I like you," he continued. "You're my friend and I would really just feel better doing this. So can I just go and pay the check and we just drop this?" "Derek," she said thinking about how she wanted to say this. "Pay the check this time, but ask me first next time. Don't just assume you are going to just do that next time and at least give me the opportunity to say no." "Deal," he said getting up to pay the cashier. "I can do that." They walked across the parking lot to Derek's jeep. Jenny had been a bit quiet since the end of their talk. She hadn't said anything else about it since they had somewhat settled the matter, but Derek was pretty sure that it was still on her mind and that they would probably have it come up again real soon. She was reaching for the jeep's door when she started laughing. "What's so funny?" he asked her. She waved him off and opened the door and started climbing into the passenger seat. "Really," he said. "What is it?" She looked at him and laughed a little more. If he hadn't been thinking about what it could mean he might have enjoyed hearing her laugh like she was doing. Her laugh was sweet and high like bells tinkling in a breeze. "This is like being in China," she said still laughing. "I really don't get it," he said. "How is this like being in China?" He closed his door and put his key into the ignition. "Because friends there fight there over paying the bill all the time. It's one way to show good manners to your host," she said. "They do? Arguing over the bill is good manners?" he said. "Seriously, they look at it like that," she said. "You go out in a restaurant there and you see a group of people at the table most of the time when they're done, you're going to see them start arguing and snatching the bill back and forth. Someone will start to go pay it and the first one will stop them and bring them back. It's all a show." "How is that a show?" he asked. "He just couldn't see it. "It's one way that they have to show how they express gratitude over being invited out," she said "They already know who is going to pay for it, but they still do it. It can be confusing to watch when you don't know why they are doing it. They can get pretty passionate about it. I've seen it countless times before." "That's not quite what we were doing," he said "I know, but it still reminded me of it," she said. Derek laughed a little at the sudden mental vision of him and Jenny going back and forth snatching the bill out of each other's hands and trying beat the other one up to the register in front of everybody. He put the jeep into gear and pulled out of the parking lot. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Year 1 A.S. Day 103 Derek drove into Dr. Warren's parking lot and found a place near the door. They got out and starting walking toward his office. "So, how long do you think it will be this time?" he asked her. "We usually talk for about an hour," she said. "It'll probably be about the same today. Why?" "I was going to head back to Java Jolts and just come back if it was going to be longer," he said. "You don't have to wait for me," she said. "Go ahead and go back, do what you need to do. I can wait for you to get back here when I'm done." "Alright then," he said opening the office door for her. "You get done early, you call me, I'm just down the road." "I'll do that," she said and walked inside. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Year 1 A.S. Day 103 "At our first session you said you felt terrified. You didn't want to lose yourself and become someone else," Dr. Warren said poising his pencil over his notepad. "Do you feel like talking about it again today?" Dr. Warren asked her. "I'm thinking we should. The thing I realized about suddenly finding yourself as a woman is that it isn't the physical part," she said. "And how would you see it, then?" he asked her. "Well yes it's different, you have it thrust into your face with every action right away. Everything is different. You're short, or you're fat or you're really thin and you can't do the things you used to do so easily. You have weights moving on you that you never felt before and things you have felt there before are missing. You don't walk the same or sound the same or even see things the same way. Everything is off and nothing feels like you know it should," she said. "But that's just the beginning and before long you start not to notice these things. You get used to the way your body moves now. Going to the toilet is an experience the first time, there's no other way to say it, but after that, it's just peeing and you do what you have to do because this is how it is now. You accept that you have to sit down and you have to change how you finish, because if you don't then you make a mess that has to be cleaned up." "After a while these things stop becoming strange and just become you. And you start to tell yourself that you have adjusted to what you are now. And that while you may be this on the outside, you're still the same inside," she said looking at him from on the couch. "But that isn't true either. Every day, the moment you walk out the door you have it put into your face what you are now. That things have changed for you in ways that you still don't feel used to. I've had men both shifted and unshifted open doors for me so much I stopped counting. I stopped myself from saying anything when it happens too many times to count already. All they're doing is being kind. I understand that they don't know just what to do anymore than I do right now, so they're falling back on what everyone did before and they're just being polite to me. Someone who doesn't know me just calls me Miss. They don't know anything about how I am or how I feel about that and they're just being polite." "They're killing me with being polite. Every time they're polite it's just a reminder to me that, even if I consider myself the same inside, I'm going to always be treated how I am on the outside from now on. I still feel myself dying a little more each time I give in and act the way I think I should to their gesture of politeness. I was getting angry inside at first, even though I didn't say anything, now I just don't feel anything about it one way or the other. She looked back at Dr. Warren. "And does this have something to do with the young man that brought you here today? The one that has been driving you around since you found yourself unable to drive?" "Yeah, he's part of it," she said. "When he is with me I just can't help noticing it more." "We were getting some breakfast before we came here and he got up automatically to pay for the check and I realized that he has been doing that more and more and it irritated me," she said. "And what happened?" Dr. Warren asked as he continued to write. "We had a small argument. Nothing big or anything. I asked him if he was looking at this as some kind of date and he denied it, but he did say something to me that was exactly what we are talking about now." "And that is?" he asked. "He said I was a lady and that he wouldn't feel right if he didn't do what he was doing," she said. "And do you blame him for feeling like that?" Dr. Warren asked leaning toward her in his chair. "I really can't now can I?" she said. "He pointed out to me that I'd have done the same thing. I may still have all of the instincts that I had before as James, but I guess even with how I've been feeling about it, I've been growing more comfortable being Jenny as well." "The last few weeks has been just me becoming comfortable with me and that maybe I finally accepted for the most part that includes accepting when someone opens a door for me or when Derek does something like automatically reach for the bill. That is just part of who I am now. But every once in a while that feeling that I should object to being treated like that comes back. That I shouldn't let them do that and I feel uncomfortable." And do you think that how you have your accepted yourself more has become easier for you since you cried for Sonya? "Maybe. I know that I haven't felt as much confusion since then. At least not until the other night when I had that dream," she said. "Maybe we should look at that again then," he said. "What's to say? It was disturbing and I wanted more of it at the same time," she said blushing. "And have you had similar dreams since then?" he asked. "I've had a few," she admitted. "But not as intense as the first one was, especially since I started trying to meet those needs the way that I do." She blushed again and Dr. Warren tried to ignore it. "Jenny, that you are still having some form of that sort of dream suggests that what you have been doing may not entirely be enough," he said. "Well it's all that's going to happen, so it'll have to be," she said. "Jenny, having erotic dreams is nothing unusual, both men and women have them all the time. It's just your mind telling you something that you need the only way it knows how. Don't feel that you should have to respond each time that you experience one of these messages from yourself," he said. "But you should recognize that a part of your life that has been dormant until just recently is no longer so. And while you will have taken measures now, you will have to come to fully to terms with it eventually." He started writing again. "I don't think I have as much of a problem with that Dr. Warren, I think that part of my life is under some control for now, but I'm more concerned about something else though," she said. "And what's that?" he asked. "It's this whole idea of becoming someone else," she said. "I know we talked about it, but like I said once you get past the physical differences you have all the other things that come at you. And I'm not talking about accepting courtesies," she said. "Then what is it that concerns you?" he asked. "What is it that you see when you consider this question?" "It's just that after the Shift, after I got used to some of the differences. I felt for a long time that I was being what a man thinks that a woman should be inside. I did what I did, because after I got over some of the things dogging me, I thought that was what I was supposed to do to be a woman, but that was still superficial. I was kind of a stereotype in some ways." "And what do you think now Jenny?" he asked her. "I think not so much now, I look at what I'm doing every day and I know that it's changing me, but I also think that the only thing that's going to help me understand what it really means to be a woman is time spent being a woman. To keep experiencing it every day and figure out what that means for me. To understand that what I do every day is not because I'm expected to do this, to play some role, but that I am doing this because of what I am inside and outside," she finished. "That sounds a lot like the advice that your mother gave you," he said. "It does, doesn't it," she replied. "Are you familiar with the term, 'Crossing the Rubicon?'" he asked her. "It sounds familiar, I know I've heard it before. Something along the lines of making a decision," she shifted in the leather of the couch. "Yes," he said. "It comes from when Caesar crossed the Rubicon river and marched on Rome. When he did that it was illegal for Roman soldiers to bring their arms past the river. To do that was an act of rebellion. When Caesar brought his army past it, he became a rebel and he couldn't go back without becoming a conqueror. Ever since then, an irrevocable decision you make that changes everything afterwards is referred to as crossing the Rubicon." "I mention it because at several points in our lives we always cross the Rubicon," He said to her. "I don't think you have done so yet, but I think that you may be close to crossing one of your own personal Rubicon's soon and that when you do, you will, perhaps, find a measure of peace with it then." "I'll try not to get my feet wet," she said.