The Department Of Keeping It Real - Chapters 1-3 free porn video

THE DEPARTMENT OF KEEPING IT REAL VOLUME I: KEEPING IT REAL by OVID LEMMA CHAPTER ONE: DREAM ON For as long as he could remember, Trevor Bailey had a vivid imagination. His fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Parker, had once noted: 'Trevor is a gifted boy, but his head is always in the clouds.' It was true. He'd imagine different worlds - fantastic worlds and worlds not so different from his own - in stunning detail, their every little facet as real as the world he lived in. As a child, he'd had imaginary friends, imaginary neighbors, and even imaginary teachers whom he could have sworn were real. Mrs. Parker had been real... but Mrs. Olivieri? Apparently all made-up. Only gradually (and after years of therapy) had he come to realize that the world was a lot more boring than he imagined - those vivid images were only in his head. The world was, for the most part, a pretty humdrum place. His dreams were still vivid, though, and he had them nearly every night. He'd wake up in the morning and scribble them in his dream diary, trying to commit to paper or computer those insubstantial, fading fragments of a world that never was. The more vivid dreams, he'd go on to sketch or paint at the drafting table in his room. At least that's what he did for most of the more vivid dreams. Less so for the erotic ones, and he had plenty of those. Trevor had erotic dreams maybe once a week... but when Madison stayed over, as she had that night, it was a virtual guarantee. His parents didn't know she'd even been there. She'd said her goodbyes to them after dinner, giving Trevor a chaste kiss before zipping home on her moped. Except she only zipped around the corner and then Trevor let her right in the back. Trevor and Madison tried to keep it quiet and, because they were serious about being quiet, they didn't go beyond heavy petting. Trevor got pretty worked up without any release and, when he finally calmed down and settled into sleep, it was with Madison curled up next to him, her cute butt pressed into his side. His dreams were appropriately themed. In his dream, they were at the Electrolux Castle. He'd only been there once, with its spacey 1960s sensibilities, fuzzy psychedelic music, and its panoply of colors, lights, and strange exhibits. But he remembered every detail, right down to the Cheshire Cat's face that led into the hall of mirrors. Only, instead of a hall of mirrors, that strange smile led right into a sunny bedroom where two women were rolling around the bed in an advanced state of foreplay and Madison was nowhere to be seen. What was a boy to do? "I can't believe we're doing this, mom," the younger woman said, a lithe redhead a few years older than Trevor, perhaps twenty. The tartan skirt of her school uniform had been pulled down, revealing pink cotton panties with a little red bow. "Just don't let your father find out... or your brother," the older woman said. She was bustier - a lot bustier - and looked to be in her late thirties, blonde and very fit. She kissed her daughter full on her delicate cupid's bow lips. She slid the girl's blouse off. She wriggled on top of her, in charge and in her black lingerie and garters, the frilly lace taut against her bombshell body. "Mmmm... I love that mom," the daughter said. "I feel so naughty... I kind of wish sis would walk in on us..." It was unbelievably hot to watch and Trevor was incredibly hard. But he couldn't do much about it - he half-realized he was in a dream. He couldn't touch himself. His erection was insistent, and it felt good to just stand there and watch, his hips slowly thrusting. Oh, how he wished he could get involved. To feel the slim redhead kissing him, to have the big-busted blonde MILF mount and ride him like a woman possessed. [Please choose desired parameters] A little reticule popped up in Trevor's vision. That was odd. His dreams were usually pretty detailed, but that had never happened before. He swiped it away and the steamy action unpaused. The MILF was reaching for a strap- on. [Please choose desired parameters] There it was again. An image of Trevor's body popped up next to the reticule... only, it was more like his body in an aspirational fantasy. He wasn't exactly a slouch, but nor was he a hardbody like this guy seemed to be. In his imagination, though, he could do better. More muscles, more rugged... definitely a bigger unit. A seriously above-average porn star for a seriously above-average scene... except it was a lesbian scene, wasn't it? He didn't think big bro Trevor would be welcome at mom and sis's midday tryst. Trevor imagined a better fit for that scene. The lithe girl's younger sister. A delicate girl, petite and adorable beyond words, unaware of her... [Gender conflict - resolve change? Y/N] Yes, of course! Trevor continued. Petite, adorable, strawberry blonde hair and an angelic face. Barely aware of her own budding sexuality, but with a freshly-developed body, curves that she was just beginning to understand the power of, a body with sensations just yearning for release. She suspected it, too - as innocent as it was, you could see the spark in her clever eyes. She wanted it. At the fresh age of fifteen... [Age conflict - unresolvable... cannot overwrite parameter... adjust maturation parameters? Y/N] Trevor had no idea what that meant. He just wanted the girl to get in on the scene. A bit more petite, though... and more curves than her sister... no, more than that. Toned but stacked, just like mom. Nice full lips... bigger breasts... a dancer's ass... hmm. Was it too much? Nobody looked that good - a caricature of young sensuality. Maybe he'd gone a bit too far... +++++ "Trevor! Stop humping my leg!" Madison hissed. He awoke mid-hump and, realizing what he'd been doing, blushed. What a strange dream! Perhaps most strange was the part where he'd made the perfect woman. Well, girl. But once he'd realized what he could do, his imagination and libido had both run with it and absconded into the hills. "Are you going to let go?" "What? Oh, sorry," Trevor said. His hands were planted on Madison's hips and he'd been caressing along her side. His erection was still painfully engorged. "Mmmh," she moaned and rolled over to her phone. "What time is it?" It was a Sunday. They still had a week before school started, so the time didn't much matter. True, Madison still had her part-time job at Kennedy's until next Saturday, but no work today. Trevor's stint as a counselor at the Summer Art Camp had ended last week. So she had the day off, he had a free week, and he hoped they'd get up to more mischief than furtive make- out sessions and dry humping in his little bedroom. With a little ingenuity, he was sure he could make it happen. His mother banged on his door. "Trevor! Are you awake?" "Gimme a minute," he mumbled. "Shit!" Madison hissed. They'd both be in serious trouble if Trevor's parents found her there. Maybe. Actually, he'd never brought the matter up with his parents. He and Madison rummaged about to find her clothes and, one sock short, Madison snuck out the window and onto roof of the little screened-in porch out back. From there, she could jump behind the hedges and sneak off to her moped with Trevor's parents none the wiser. He watched out his window as Madison ducked out onto the boulevard and jogged to her scooter. He sniffed his shirt and sighed - it still smelled like her shampoo. Life was good. He stepped into some jeans and headed downstairs, trying to flatten the dark, jumbled mess of his hair. It was a lost cause, as it usually was. He headed to the kitchen for some cereal but stopped dead in his tracks. His parents were in their work clothes on a Sunday... had he gotten the days confused? He checked his phone. No, it was a Sunday. "Trevor, we need to talk," his father said. Shit. They knew about Madison. That had to be it. This was the talk - he was going to be grounded... curfew... no car privileges. Something bad. He pushed his fingernails into his palm and calmed himself. "Okay," he said. He sat on the love seat across from the couch. "What about?" "We'd better wait for your sister," his mother said. This was definitely out of the ordinary. Sick relative? They weren't close with any relatives. Were his parents getting divorced? That didn't make any sense - he'd had zero inclination that something like that might be happening. Far from it - they were made for one another. Smart, diligent, and more attractive than he liked to admit, Trevor's parents, Michael and Meghan Bailey, fit right into the manicured lawns of their North Virginia suburb. And they had an active love life, too - Trevor knew this because they weren't half as discreet as Madison and himself. They weren't getting divorced. What could it possibly be? Olivia padded into the room in her sleep clothes. She was Trevor's 16 year- old sister, fourteen months younger than Trevor, though nobody would mistake them for twins. She was a bit below average height, a bit above average weight, and otherwise took after their father - chestnut hair, hazel eyes, and an expressive face. Trevor's look was more after their mother's side, with his thick almost-black hair and intense, dark eyes. Neither of the older Bailey siblings shared their parents' effortless athletic physiques (Trevor considered himself slightly above average, and probably wasn't far off in his judgment) - but neither did the Bailey siblings bike sixty miles every Saturday the way the Bailey parents did. So perhaps it was a matter of Trevor and Olivia failing to coax the good family genes enough. Trevor was lost in thought until Olivia settled in next to him on the couch. She shot him a look: do you know what this is about?, and he shrugged: nope!. "What's this about?" Olivia asked. "Are we in trouble?" Olivia knew better than that - Trevor knew she knew better than that. You never asked whether you were in trouble because it implied that there definitely was something you should be in trouble about. "What would you be in trouble about?" Meghan asked, eyebrows raised. "Sorry about playing the music last night," Trevor said. Rule 1: always fess up to a marginal transgression. Rule 2: make sure to implicate a potential snitch in your own alibi. "I found this YouTube music video and I just had to show Olivia..." "Yeah, sorry," Olivia said. She giggled. "It was really funny, though." "It's not about that," Meghan said. She suppressed a smirk. Then she was suddenly very serious. "This is serious," she confirmed. She placed two devices on the coffee table - they looked like smartphones, but were more angular and shinier all around - more like blocks of polished onyx. She waved her hand over one of them and the sapphire-blue letters 'ARM' faded into view against the pitch black screen. "These are for the two of you," she said. "You're... giving us phones?" Olivia asked. She snatched the nearest one before Meghan could change her mind. "They aren't phones," Michael Bailey said. With his deep and resonant voice, everything he said sounded commanding. It was frankly a bit embarrassing, Trevor having a perfectly average voice and a slightly taller and thinner than average frame. Being introduced by your Silver Fox of a father with his Captain America body at social functions, everybody probably thought: poor Mike Bailey, stuck with a just-average kid! "Those are your ARMs. Kids... you aren't kids anymore. Trevor and Olivia, it's high time your mother and I came clean about this. It's about our job." "You're... government agents?" Trevor asked. That made sense... well, a little bit of sense. "No, not quite. More than government," Meghan said. Her voice also carried a stern command. Her features were elegant and patrician like those of a well-curated starlet a decade past her prime - familial features that on Trevor's 'young man's face' looked pleasantly attractive in a slightly androgynous way. But most of Trevor's friends would consider his mom to be a 'scary AF MILF' as Anton had once put it. Thus, she pulled off the serious tone pretty well. "Trevor, Olivia... your father and I work for the Ministry of Reality Enforcement - the MORE." "Is this, like... a joke?" Olivia asked. She looked to Trevor. "Are you in on this, Trev? What is this?" "We realize that this is hard to believe, but your mother and I work for the MORE, and we're telling you today because we've just been reassigned to a neighboring reality. We've only just found out about the transfer yesterday and we called in the protocol last night. If you don't believe us now, you certainly will soon... but this isn't the first time a situation like this has come up, so the Ministry's put together a little info blurb on your ARMs. Go ahead and hold your thumb against the screen for five or six seconds." Trevor picked up the unclaimed device and held his thumb against the screen - maybe the screen. The two sides were identical. A moment later, he felt a sharp pinch and started to pull his thumb away, only to have a little spark tense the muscles of his hand. [Neural linking... 20%] The device blinked in red. Tiny singes of pain coursed through his skin, enough to make him wince, but not enough to be really worrisome. Next to him, Olivia was undergoing the same unsettling process. The percentage counted up quickly, completing in perhaps a minute and a half. Suddenly, the prickling sensation stopped and a little blue dot appeared on the screen. [Link Successful... Press for pre-programmed content] Trevor pressed it and was suddenly awash in shapes and colors - the ARM device was somehow projecting into his vision or, more likely, directly into the visual centers of his brain. It had the graphics of a very well- produced infomercial, right down to the smooth CGI screen wipes. "The Ministry of Reality Enforcement, working to protect reality since AE03," a woman's voice rang in his ears. Against a synthpop soundtrack, she went on to explain the basics of the ministry, whose mission was to 'shore up' reality in the multiverse - a reality weakened by an event of unknown origin some two hundred years ago. Agents, such as the Bailey parents, were assigned to timelines in the multiverse... "Realities," the narrator explained, "since they exist along branching expanses of time." The agents worked to shore up weaknesses. What, exactly, constituted a weakness was left unclear. "With the technology of the ARM, synced individuals can observe, document, and detect changes outside of a single limited reality." As soon as the video (hologram? simulation?) ended, Trevor stated. "Welp. I'm convinced." He had a healthy imagination and, now that it was pointed out to him, it actually made a lot of sense. Olivia was still processing it. "You're just telling us this now... why, exactly?" Meghan reached across the coffee table and patted her hand. "I'm sorry, honey. It's because we're all moving to a new reality - one adjacent to our current one, but with a lot of little differences. You'll notice them, and it'll be impossible to miss. Most of your friends, acquaintances, most personal possessions will change a little or a lot. But you'll keep your same memories." "We've changed realities before, haven't we?" Trevor asked. "Well... yes, but you were too young to remember it." "I remember it," Trevor said. "That's not... well, that's very rare," Michael said. He glanced to Meghan, who just shrugged. "Without a neurally-linked ARM, that's an Assistant for Reality Management, you shouldn't remember. Some people are more resistant than others - all of our minds are 'blurred' across time, some much more and some much less. But you were much too young to get an ARM..." "Don't you remember all my imaginary friends? All my therapy?" Trevor said. "I was in therapy for years. Remember?" Meghan and Michael shared another uneasy look. She shrugged again. "It's possible," his mother said. "I'm sorry, Trevor, honey. We've done it twice since you and Olivia were born, the last time when you were six years old." "When he had the nightmares..." Michael added uneasily. "We got you kids implanted with the neural linkers then, so that when we shifted reality you'd be able to link to an ARM. We made a tiny shift this morning - an ordinance shift it's called, too small for almost anybody to notice, even with an ARM. But the next few days will be a lot bigger. We'll be shifting in the night because it can be very disconcerting to do it while awake." Olivia looked toward the stairs. "What about Sydney? Why isn't she here?" Sydney was their twelve year-old younger sister. Trevor knew the answer - they'd mentioned it in the video. "Agents can apply for loved ones over fifteen years of age to receive a limited-access ARM," he repeated. "So Sydney won't remember any of this? She might even change... like, a lot?" "Probably less than most," Meghan said. "Since we'll all be staying the same, mentally, at least, the things that are closest to us have a little 'drag' to them as we shift across timelines. So the things that are really important to you, you have to keep tabs on them across the days of the shift. Otherwise, you might lose those people and things and they'll shift out of your orbit forever." "So... you two just basically ruined my life," Olivia said. She stood to leave, shoving the ARM in her pajama pocket. "Super. Thanks." "Oh, it's not all bad, Liv," Michael said. "We've arranged for you both to get the basic enhancement package. They let agents custom-tailor themselves... kind of like super high-tech cosmetic surgery... but that's complicated. In any case we figured you two wouldn't mind generically better everything. But if you don't like it, we could always..." "That... that sounds pretty awesome," Olivia said. Her reaction was clearly mixed: "I wish I could tell all my friends, but they're just going to disappear, apparently." She turned and headed to her room. "Not all of them! Just..." Meghan sighed. "Well, at least Trevor took it well." Trevor clutched his ARM, his heart thudding in excitement. "I've got to tell my friends about... hmm..." he looked to his parents. Neither one said a thing - Trevor was usually pretty good at connecting the dots on his own. "I can't tell anybody, can I? Not even my friends? I just have to hope they don't all disappear." His father patted his knee and nodded sympathetically. "We're glad you understand, Trev," he said. "Everything will be fine. You'll see." CHAPTER TWO: THE SCREW'S FIRST TWIST Trevor left his little meeting with his parents equal parts nervous and giddy. He was nervous because his life was now veering into the unknown with massive changes on the not-so-distant horizon. But he'd just discovered that the world itself (well... the multiverse) was almost as strange as he'd imagined, and his imagination could be pretty wild. He tossed his ARM next to his phone in his backpack, zpped it up, and biked over to Anton's. [Mind if I head over?], he messaged. [Sure just playing kingdom diamonds rn], Anton replied. [Order pizza?] [Sure], Trevor messaged. [omw] It was late August, humid and hot, but Trevor didn't mind. The cicadas were buzzing and a gentle breeze rustled the elms and provided him a little relief, especially with the wind whipping in his face as he pedaled. As he waited for the light at Gordon Avenue, Trevor worried about his younger sister, Sydney... what did it mean for her that she didn't have an ARM? Would the Sydney he knew wake up tomorrow, her parents and older siblings vanished? Or would some doppelganger likeness of them remain in this reality? Or would the old Sydney just vanish, overwritten by a reality- appropriate variant? Any possibility had all kinds of philosophical and moral implications. Implications that he was ill-equipped to answer. He shrugged and biked on. Anton's house was twelve minutes away, ten if he hit the light on Gordon Avenue right, which Trevor hardly ever did. He added a few minutes to that when he saw an old golden retriever sleeping in a spot of shade by the trunk of an old oak tree, whipping out his drawing pad to sketch the dog and then giving it a quick belly rub. He pulled into Anton's driveway just as the pizza girl was pulling in, so he paid for the pizza and gave her a $20 tip. It was almost all the cash he had, but he figured he'd probably have a new wallet tomorrow. There was no point in not splurging. Trevor saw himself in and headed up to Anton's room. "Good to see you, Trevor," Anton's mom said. "You too, Mrs. Park." "You tell that boy not to play video games all day, all right?" "I'll do that. Do you want a slice?" He cracked open the box and she inspected it: ground beef, salsa, black olives, Mexican cheese and spices - a 'taco pizza'. She helped herself to a piece and nodded sagely. Emilia Park was Puerto Rican by way of the Bronx and her husband was Korean, which probably made Anton and his brother Lukas the only half-Hispanic half-Asian kids in Fort Ruth. Anton embraced his heritage... though he perhaps overgeneralized: tacos, anime, futbol, and K- pop ad nauseam. Trevor knocked on the bedroom door and let himself in, knowing that Anton would likely be headphones-on and dialed-in to his game. Nothing would rouse him from that short of a thermonuclear explosion or the wafting aroma of taco pizza. Twelve year-old Lukas was there, too, playing P2 co-op for Anton's Kingdom Diamonds game. Anton's nose prickled to the smell of the food and he paused their quest. "Trevor, my dude. What do I owe you for pizza?" "Nada, mi amigo," Trevor said, setting himself in the bean bag chair. "Muchas gracias, mi hombre." "Hey, Trev," Lukas said. Trevor nodded back. Trevor picked up a controller and joined the brothers Park as P3 - Kingdom Diamonds would let you play with up to four players, each of the secondary players controlling two characters from the main player's 'party'. It made the fights more complex and more difficult but increased experience, loot, and rare items, so was generally well worth it if you could get a few people who knew how to play cooperatively. Anton's KD party, like most of the posters in his room, featured scantily-clad, busty anime waifus. They played for a bit and easily devoured the whole extra large pizza. Trevor regretted having offered Emilia a slice, but good form had demanded it. Then one of Lukas's friends started live streaming on Flinch and he wandered from the room to watch the game. The whole time they'd been playing, Trevor had been thinking. "Have you ever wondered what you'd do if you could, like, change reality?" he asked Anton. Anton nodded. "Yeah, of course. Hasn't everybody?" He scratched at his shaggy black hair. "Haha... maybe not everyone. But I have. I mean, everything from what if I could magically have straight-A's and what if I could teleport to straight-up perverted shit. Like... what if I could make one of my little waifus real." "Or you could just get a girlfriend," Trevor observed. "Too much work," Anton said. "As opposed to altering reality?" "True, true. Fair point." Anton's healer in Kingdom Diamonds got stunned by explosives. He cursed and gestured vaguely at the screen. "Hey, you got Valentina - she can morph into a paladin with the Alta Stone ability." Trevor used the ability and, sure enough, suddenly had a host of healing options. "Speaking of altering reality," he said. "I've just been thinking about it a lot. My parents said we might move." Anton paused the game, his mouth agape in possibly-melodramatic outrage. "The fuck, my dude? When?" Trevor shrugged. Tonight, if he wasn't mistaken - but Anton might be, if Treor understood things properly, coming for the ride. "They just mentioned it today... something about their jobs." Anton nodded and offered Trevor some pocky. "Well, you know... parent stuff. It takes a while. They haven't put your house up for sale, right? That takes weeks at least, right?" "Yeah. I guess," Trevor said, while thinking: 'holy shit, I'm moving tonight (kind of)!' He cleared his throat. "Yeah, I was thinking about what it would be like to be another person, you know? About how every little decision you make could branch off into a thousand different directions, but once you make a decision - or don't - you're stuck with that one forever. And if you could flip those decisions back and forth, even going back to when you were a little kid or before you were born... a few little changes and you're a completely different person today. Are we, like, products of a butterfly effect? Or maybe we're the opposite - maybe we have built-in flex and it takes a lot to really change things? What do you think?" Anton crunched on his pocky. He glanced to the door. "That's a good question. When I was a little kid, I wondered what it would be like to be big and athletic, you know, one of the popular kids. But then lately I've been wondering about different stuff. Like what would it be like to be a girl?" Trevor paused his pocky-eating mid-bite. "Really?" Anton's nervous expression said: yes, really. "Are you, like, trans?" Anton glanced to the door again and whispered. "No! I mean... I don't think so. Maybe a little bit. You can't tell my mom I said that. She. Cannot. Know." Trevor crossed his heart. "Hey, I'm not judging. I just didn't know..." It was clear that Anton hadn't quite known, either, or at least had never admitted it to himself. He shrugged and laughed nervously. "I'd never do anything about it, though. Not just because my mom. I couldn't stand being a half-assed boy-looking girl. I'd want to be really hot. Or at least, you know, super passing. I can't have my waifus looking that much better than me." Trevor closed an eye and framed Anton's face with his finger. The boy could stand to hit the gym, or to go outside at all, but he was thin and had good, decidedly androgynous bone structure. "I bet you could pull it off. Maybe not Valentina hot, but who is?" Anton ran his hand down his AniCon t-shirt in a decidedly unfeminine way. "Thank you, daaaahling." He was clearly relieved. Trevor's phone buzzed. [My parents are out until late], Madison messaged. [;)] [omw], Trevor replied. "Speaking of girls." He shook his phone. "The lady awaits. You around tomorrow?" Hopefully, Anton would still be around tomorrow. It was possible that he wouldn't be, in a quite literal sense. Anton nodded. "After two, yeah. I'll pencil you in, hombre." +++++ It was a good thing that Madison was home, because she was the second of his 'must-hit' spots for the day, or his first, depending on what you meant by must-hit. They weren't breaking up, he reminded himself. This wasn't goodbye. But it was, quite possibly, the closest thing to it. Zapping into a completely inaccessible reality. He chained his bike to their wrought- iron porch railing and rang the doorbell - unlike with the Parks, one did not simply see oneself into the Gables residence. Madison answered the door wearing only an orange bikini, and she looked great in it - field hockey and kayaking kept her in shape. She was dirty blonde and slim but had enough of a figure to pull off straight-up sexy. When she smiled, her tongue peeked through her teeth in a manner she was self-conscious of but that drove him wild. Trevor called her beautiful and considered himself extremely lucky, but an objective eye might have called her pretty cute in a girl-next-door way. Regardless, Trevor was extremely lucky, and he knew it. Madison took his hand and led him into the house. "I was sunbathing, but now that the sun's just about set and my parents are gone, I need something else to do," she said with a sly wink. "Do you have any ideas?" "I might have some ideas," he said. He pulled her close and touched his forehead to hers before kissing her briefly on the lips. Her skin still had a tiny residual stick of sunscreen. "For instance, don't you have a big bathtub?" She wagged her finger at him. "In my parents' bathroom, bucko. Off limits." Trevor pulled out his phone and cleared his throat. "You messaged, and I quote, 'my parents are out until late.' Now... perhaps I'm misunderstanding here, but that implies to me that the lady is up for mischief." "We can't make a mess," Madison cautioned, but she was already headed back to the master bath and its oversized corner tub. They made a mess. Not a disgusting mess - just lots of soapy water. When Madison stripped out of her bikini, Trevor was right behind, taking in the sight of her nude, shimmying body and shucking his own clothes off in about five seconds flat. He was painfully erect, his member clearly offput by its previous night's Madison deprivation. When he slid in behind her in the warm water, she didn't deprive him for a second night. He eased into her, and they soon established a very pleasant rhythm that had them both moaning and had gallons of hot, sudsy water slopping out of the bathtub and onto the marble tile. "Trevor!" Madison squeaked. "Keep going," he said, and she did. They had a rhythm going, after all. When they both padded out to dry themselves off perhaps ten minutes later, they found that the overflow water had spread out into a half-inch layer across the entirety of the bathroom and was starting to seep out into the bedroom. They had to rummage through the closet and deploy the wet vac to get everything back into the tub and drained, Madison in her bathrobe and Trevor in his half-soaked jeans wiping every bit of pooled wetness away. Then they wiped the tub down of any remaining residue and finished the cleaning job just in time for them to hear Madison's parents pulling into the driveway. Trevor rushed out into the living room and pulled up Netflix on the television and Madison dashed in moments later in sweat pants and a t- shirt, settling in next to him. Immediately thereafter, the Gables parents unlocked the door and strolled in, Mrs. Gables looking pleased and perhaps a bit drunk. "Trevor?" she said. "Um... hello." "Hi, Mrs. Gables," he said as innocently as he could. Madison yawned and raised her head from his shoulder. "I thought you were going to be late." "It is late, Maddie," Karl Gables said. "Past eleven. Do you need a ride home, Trevor?" "Um... no, I rode my bike. It's not far." "Right, then." Trevor got the hint and sidled to the door, keeping the still-wet backside of his jeans out of view. Hopefully, neither Gables parent would check the couch because it was guaranteed to be damp. He'd have to see if there was any fallout tomorrow - it might tell him a lot about the 'rules' to reality shifting, such that they were. He returned home just before eleven thirty, returning his bike to the little storage shed at the side of the house and proceeding inside. His mother, Meghan, was awake and reading on the couch, apparently having waited for him. "You're late," she stated. He shrugged. "I had some maybe-goodbyes to make. You don't usually care." She checked her ARM. "We aren't usually about to reality shift in three-ish hours. Olivia was late, too... she just got in. Do you need a shower?" "Um... no. I went swimming," he said lamely. His jeans were still damp despite the bike ride. "We'll reconvene at 7 am and debrief," Meghan said. Debrief? His mother was laying the secret agent stuff on pretty thick. And 7 am? That was early for a non-school day, but he'd deal with it. The circumstances were plenty extenuating. His mother kissed him on the cheek as he passed, and he continued up and into his bedroom for the night. +++++ Getting to sleep was a chore. Trevor was both excited and terrified about the upcoming shift - there was a lot to look forward to, but he also stood to lose a lot. He tossed and turned and made a tangle of his sheets, up until close to 1 am, at which point he downed some melatonin and found himself drifting off an hour or so later. He had a dream where he was back in the Electrolux Castle, where he'd been once last year for his Junior class trip. They were in the sculpture garden where some hippie sculptor circa 1973 had made fiberglass sculptures of the characters from Yellow Submarine, some of them widely out of proportion to the characters they portrayed (Chief Blue Meanie's eyes, for instance, were huge portholes to the interior of the submarine). He followed his classmates but soon realized that while his attention had lapsed and they'd left him behind... they'd all gone elsewhere. Realizing he was alone, Trevor ran to a concession stand, breathing a sigh of relief when he remembered that Madison was manning the cash register for her summer job. Only, when he finally approached, he noticed she was a much taller person, a gangly man wearing a replica mask of Madison's face. "You aren't Madison," he said, though his voice came out like he'd swallowed helium. "Neither are you," the man said in a strangely deep voice. He reached out, pinched Trevor's earlobe, and pulled. The flesh of his earlobe pulled out like a long string of taffy and, as the man kept pulling, Trevor could feel himself diminishing, deflating before the man's greedy eyes. Trevor awoke to a knocking on his door. "Six fifty-five, Trev. We meet downstairs in five," his father said. "Yeah," Trevor said. His voice sounded strange - maybe he'd been sleeping with his mouth open. He rolled to the edge of the bed, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and blinked. It took him a moment to remember why he found himself in a mostly- unfamiliar room: reality had shifted during the night. His room was almost twice as large as before, the tiny art desk in the corner replaced with an entire artist's nook with an easel, a drafting table, and a light box. He didn't much care for the overall decor - an orange cream rather than the neutral beige of the day before - but he'd live with tangerine pastel if it gave him an extra hundred square feet of room. There were more expansions, too: his little schoolwork computer was now a gaming laptop and there was an extra door leading to a small ensuite bathroom. The room was definitely a step up. A glance out the window revealed a whole neighborhood of carefully-curated lawns, tidy gardens, and houses modestly larger and nicer than those of the neighborhood he'd tossed and turned to sleep in the night before. Rows of nice houses, their terracotta roofs basking in the morning sun. Trevor patted his hair down, but found that it was mostly under control already. He padded into the bathroom, took one look in the mirror, and yelped. He'd changed! He'd been pretty much expecting that. What he hadn't been expecting was how he'd changed. Where he'd been expecting to shift incrementally toward something resembling his father's brawny masculinity, he'd instead done the opposite. He was more attractive, to be sure, his dark eyes shifted toward a curious hazel, his features softened and refined to a vaguely aristocratic, definitely more-androgynous look. His father banged on the door again. "Trev, it's seven o'clock. Time to come down." Shit. What was he going to tell his... he almost laughed out loud. This wasn't on him. Whatever the hell this was, it was their fault, not his. He'd get them to fix it. Whatever the Ministry of Reality Enforcement's technology had goofed to change him thus, they could damn well un-goof. He stuffed himself into a pair of skinny jeans - tight even on his slightly- smaller, slightly-leaner frame - and a tailored button-up short sleeve and headed to the living room, noting that the pictures of Young Trevor in the family portraits had changed to match his current form. His mother looked up, clearly irate. "Trevor, we agreed seven o'c-... oh!" "So..." Trevor said. "I woke up like this..." "What the hell," Michael said. Trevor's father rose from the couch and got a good look at him. Normally he was an inch or so taller than Trevor's six feet, but now it seemed closer to four inches. "This... this doesn't look like the basic enhancement package," he said. Meghan Bailey pulled up her ARM and fiddled with it. "The shift records say Liv and Trev both got the package." She looked at Olivia, sitting surprised in her sleep clothes on the sectional. "Olivia got the right program..." That much was pretty clear. Olivia still looked like herself, but with every slider moved a notch or two in the right direction. Her slightly- dumpy, bottom-heavy frame had evened out to almost perfectly average. Not wonderful, but it nudged her from cute-homely to just-cute, especially when a host of other, almost-imperceptible aesthetic adjustments were considered - clearer complexion, sparkling eyes, and her chestnut hair noticeably fuller and richer than it had been the day before. And his parents looked slightly younger and slightly fitter, as well - nothing too major, but they hadn't had as many imperfections to pave over. Meghan whispered something to Michael. He nodded seriously and she shuffled off, furiously plugging away at her ARM. "What are we going to do?" Trevor asked. Stepping into the living room a moment ago, he'd imagined strolling into the living room, giving his parents shit, and having everything cleared up with the push of a button. Clearly, that wasn't going to happen. "Yes, we're having a technical issue with our shift. 42-Aleph-3- Tangerine... yes, 3-Tangerine," Meghan said in the background. Michael shrugged. "We can't do anything on our end. Your mother's contacting the technical people. Maybe they can fix things on their end autonomously, and maybe we'll have to stop by the MORE office in person. How do you feel?" Trevor scratched his head and sat on the couch. His mother looked back to them and whispered angrily into her ARM. "I feel fine," he said. "But I look like a metrosexual version of myself. It's pretty weird. Is this, like, a glitch? Maybe I'll be back along the 'basic enhancement' program tomorrow?" Michael scratched at his stubble. "Maybe," he said uncertainly. "Usually, the changes happen along a continuum... like with your sister here. You can extrapolate her changes continuing in one direction for three more days." Olivia didn't seem unhappy to hear this. She poked a finger into her firmer belly and nodded her approval, only turning a concerned eye to Trevor when she considered his conundrum. She attempted a sympathetic smile. "That's bullshit!" he said. "So I'll keep changing in... whatever direction this is? I'm going to be an effeminate little wimp?" Meghan put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "You aren't," she said. "I've called technical and they're looking into things on their end. They're busy doing trajectory corrections after yesterday and can't see us until tomorrow, if not later. But now that they're aware of the problem, we're going to get it fixed. We'll take this all the way to the top if we have to." "Oh well." Trevor sighed. "At least I have my own bathroom..." "What?" Olivia snapped. "That's not fair!" So there was at least one measure in which Trevor came out ahead on the morning of their first big shift. His own bathroom wasn't much, but Trevor would take whatever he could get. CHAPTER THREE: TRAJECTORY ADJUSTMENTS There wasn't much point in Trevor getting used to his new situation - it was all going to change tomorrow, anyhow. Either they'd get things sorted out or they wouldn't, but in either case the next shift was going to happen. Still, he couldn't help but snoop into new-Trevor's life. First and foremost, obviously, was checking social media and his messaging history. He and Madison were still going out, thank god. He and Anton were still friends - great. He had more friends, likes, and connections than ever before, but two thirds of them were people who Trevor didn't recognize. He figured out how to calibrate his ARM to recognize and integrate his life across reality shifts. When he recognized someone or something that seemed different, the ARM detected his reaction through skin conductance and made a little buzz. If he double-tapped the screen, he'd feel a buzzing in the middle of his scalp that spread, tingling, throughout his head, and he'd touch upon a ghost of a memory from the new reality. It didn't feel like a real memory - it didn't feel quite real, but it might be helpful for dealing with awkward discrepancies. He did this for a dozen or so of his new contacts who were listed as schoolmates and quickly found his head spinning - too many 'ghost memories' would confuse him. He'd have to 'integrate' with his new reality a little bit at a time. He showered in his little private bathroom, hardly making use of the twenty different personal hygiene items in there. There were six different things for his hair - Trevor, who had only ever used two-in-one shampoo- conditioner, had no idea what to do with most of them. And his wardrobe... "Holy shit." He had more and better clothes. Of course, they weren't at all his style. Too many skinny jeans, button-up shirts, and other chic and trendy things a fashion-conscious young man might wear. He wondered whether new-Trevor might be gay, but he and Madison were definitely going out and attempting to integrate any new memories with her produced no buzzing whatsoever... it seemed that their relationship was completely unchanged. That, at least, was good news. He messaged her. [Can I stop by your place after u get out of work?] [I didn't go to work], she messaged back a minute later. [I called in sick] [Feel pretty yuck today :(] [I'll call u later probably just gonna relax rn] [Ok sorry], he messaged back. [I'll text u this aft] So he'd just shifted into a reality where Madison was sick. That wasn't good - he wasn't sure how much texting 'counted' for in terms of stabilizing their relationship. So he'd want to go over in person - that's what a good boyfriend would do, anyway: take care of his boo when she was sick. But he'd leave her be for the moment - he had plenty else to deal with. Anton wasn't answering messages - it was 'only' 10:00. Knowing him, assuming he was largely the same, he'd probably been up until close to dawn playing video games and wouldn't stumble out of bed until half-past noon. To pass the time, Trevor explored his new art nook and was very pleasantly surprised. He was frankly jealous of new-Trevor's artistic ability. Maybe he wasn't better, but he'd certainly had access to a lot of supplies, and probably had more lessons and studio time from the looks of it. There were fewer childish robots, space battles, and anime characters - the sorts of things that had occupied much of his artistic mien through early high school. They'd been replaced much earlier by the landscapes and character studies he'd been doing of late. Even yesterday's quick sketch of the golden retriever resting in the shade had somehow taken on a more essential quality, reflecting more soul of the dog. Trevor looked at one of the newer canvasses - a bleak alien landscape done in acrylics. The mountainsides were jagged brown and muted purple, the sky a hazy gold with dozens of strange stars peeping through the curtain of dusk. Not recognizing the work of his own hand, his ARM buzzed. On a lark, Trevor double-tapped and was suddenly in possession of ghost memories of the work spent planning and executing the landscape, of practice sketches and studies in chiaroscuro. He cracked open the acrylics and got to work on a small canvass, imagining what that bleak landscape would look like populated by the gold and russet leaves of autumn instead. Within an hour, he had a little five-by-seven piece that he could live with. Not his best work ever, but as excellent a balance of time and quality as he'd ever made. Only in looking at it retrospectively did he notice something he'd absently brushed in, hardly even thinking about it. It was also visible on 'his' original larger work of the landscape: a slash in the veil of sky where no stars lived. It was empty, the gold glow of the sky almost swallowing the absence, but it was there. Strange, that. [Yo Trev], Anton messaged - it was only 11:45, early for him! [I just finished some new inks] [Lukas is useless want a second set of eyes] [Head on over?] Inks? Anton? What in the world did that mean? Trevor shrugged - he'd soon find out. He put his paints away and messaged his friend back. [Yeah] [Be over in a half hour] +++++ Unlike Trevor's own house, the Park residence hadn't changed much on the outside: a beige cape cod house with a small yard flanked by blooming azaleas. Inside, though, was a different matter. For one thing, Emilia Park had taken a turn for the religious. She had a little cross on her necklace and about twenty different crucifixes mounted to the living room wall near the staircase. The woman herself was dressed in a conservative but form- fitting purple dress and had lost about twenty pounds since yesterday. So had Trevor, but those were pounds he hadn't wanted to lose, whereas Anton's mom was very much the better for it. "Good morning, Trevor," Emilia said. "Hi, Mrs. Park." "You haven't been encouraging Anton in his little game, have you?" What game was she talking about? Kingdom Diamonds? "Um... no? I don't think so." "Good. Kindly don't," she said. Trevor nodded and quickly made his way to Anton's room, hoping his friend hadn't similarly made a turn for the devout. He needn't have worried. K-pop was still blasting out of the speakers and the most religious thing in his friend's room was the shrine to anime heroine Kira Shurime in the corner of his room. The most notable thing, though, was that about half of the posters pinned around the walls were original work, and they weren't half- bad. When he opened the door, Lukas looked back over his shoulder. "Hey, Trevor. What's happening?" "Hey, Lukas," he said. Lukas was tapping away at Kingdom Diamonds on a monitor screen - only half the size of the 44-inch television Anton had the day before. It wasn't hard to see why, though: a corner of the room had been converted into a little drawing studio and Anton was hard at work coloring a drawing of Valentina in her regal red glory. In Trevor's memory, Anton had gone through a stage in middle school about five years ago - around the same time Trevor got serious about his own art - where he'd gone crazy for anime drawing. That phase had only lasted a few months... but had apparently persisted in this post-shift reality. His drawings weren't professional quality, but they weren't amateurish, either. Presently, Anton wiped the ink from his fingers and rose to greet Trevor. "Trevor, amigo. I have such sights to show you," he said. Anton, too, had changed. Trevor had expected that he and Anton would be about the same size, assuming his friend hadn't changed - but he certainly had changed. He was shrimpier than before... and, looking back to the Kingdom Diamonds game, Lukas was larger. They were practically the same size. That was pretty wild. Anton wore a tight purple shirt and white jeans - far more stylish and effete than the lazy gaming gear he'd have worn before. "What are you working on here? Valentina?" Anton nodded. "Lukas's girlfriend, on special commission." "Shut up!" Lukas shouted. Anton blew on the paper to finish drying the ink. "I can always give her to somebody else. Somebody who, unlike certain philistine brothers of mine, might appreciate her inner beauty." He winked. "No! Sorry," Lukas said. He snatched the drawing and looked over it with his eyes, licking his lips in a slightly-creepy way. "I can really keep it?" "You grinded my KD party past that godawful Kandor Pass?" "Yeah, and got all the loot boxes." "Then she is yours for services rendered. Go with God, brother Lukas." Lukas nodded solemnly and crossed himself with a little smirk - clearly, an inside joke they now shared. When he left the room, Anton led Trevor over to some of his more recent drawings - some of them, he said, on commission - and discussed inking and papers with Trevor. Anton hadn't known anything about either of those yesterday, but they had a nice, productive conversation and Trevor actually learned some things about watercolor inks he hadn't known before. "So... the maroon is too dark, but the carnelian is too glossy..." Anton said. He showed Trevor some color samples from his latest Kira Shurime fan drawing. Trevor ran his finger along the shiny paint. "Right, if you can't find a replacement, you can just use a little sandpaper - carefully - to gloss it down. P800 or higher, I'd recommend.... I've got some P1200 at home if you want a few sheets to test it out." "Can I? That'd be great!" Anton sat himself in front of the screen and handed Trevor a controller - at least he hadn't forgotten about video games. He just had, in Trevor's humble opinion, a more productive hobby on top of it. "Your mom wanted to make sure I wasn't encouraging you in your 'little game'," Trevor said. Anton lowered his controller and rolled his eyes. "Fucking Christ. Lukas and his pendejo mouth... at least she just thinks I'm a cross-dresser or bi-curious or something. I don't even think she knows what trans is." "Sorry, amigo." Anton snorted. "Amiga... but we're cool, Trev." He... no, she chuckled. Then her character failed a summoning spell. Anton frowned and shook her controller. "Maybe I'll stop shaking you if you start picking up your end in this fucking fight, puta!" When Trevor finally left Anton's, it was mid-afternoon. He was conflicted on whether to message Madison - if he did, she was more likely than not to just rebuff him again. Instead, he just biked over, puzzling over the fact that his bike was exactly the same when almost everything around him had changed in at least some subtle way. Everything had changed but his trusty 21-speeder. Maybe it would stay with him through this whole thing, wherever it was headed. +++++ It took Trevor almost an hour to get to Madison's - he drove to her old house, only to find that the whole development no longer existed. Since his ARM didn't detect any funny business in his memories of her, Trevor looked up Madison's parents, eventually finding one of her mother's social media profiles. Upon looking at Pam Gables's profile, his ARM buzzed and Trevor updated his memory, quickly gaining a wisp of a memory as to where she lived. So he biked across town to the condo development where Madison now, apparently, lived - a big step down for the Gables and their big ensuite corner tub. When he knocked on the door, Pam Gables answered. Madison's mother, once a bleary blonde, was now a haggard and world-weary brunette, though it might well have been a dye-job. She looked Trevor up and down and gestured him inside without saying anything. That was just as well, because he probably would have addressed her as 'Mrs. Gables', but Karl no longer seemed to be in the picture. Literally - he wasn't in any of the pictures that Trevor saw. The Gables(?) residence was much reduced, but Madison still had her own room in the back of the three-bedroom condo, upon which she'd very prominently displayed a 'Do Not Disturb' sign. Trevor knocked anyway. "Go away," Madison said from inside. "It's me. Trevor." He heard shuffling inside and then nothing - for a minute, he thought she wasn't going to open the door at all. Eventually, she did and Trevor stepped into the darkened room. She shuffled back to her bed and sat. "I told you I was sick," she said. Her voice sure sounded hoarse... but, if Trevor had to guess, it was from crying. "You know you can tell me if there's something wrong, right?" he said. He sat next to her on the bed, but when he put his hand on top of hers, she recoiled away. "Yeah. I've just been sick," she said unconvincingly. It was hard to tell what was wrong or whether she'd changed in the shift - Madison wore a loose gray hoodie, the hood pulled over her head, her dirty-blonde hair draping out of it, and loose sweat pants. "I'm sorry for whatever you're going through," Trevor said, adding, "It's not anything I did, is it?" "What? Oh! God, no," she laughed, still hoarsely. "No, Trev. I'm just going through some personal shit. It's got nothing to do with you. With us. I just... I just don't feel well, ok? Can we leave it at that?" "Sure," he said. He leaned over to kiss her, and she let him - but only just that. Trevor brushed her hair back, leaned in, and kissed her on the lips. He could see her eyes reflected in the dim LED lights she had lining the doorway, and kissing her felt the same as always, or close to it. But when he leaned farther in to advance things a bit, she pushed him away. "I'm serious, Trev. I'm not feeling well. I might get you sick or something." Could he even get sick between reality shifts? "I don't mind," he said. "But I do. But thanks for stopping by." +++++ When Trevor returned home for dinner with his family (Greek food delivery from a restaurant he'd never heard of, nor ever would again), his parents kept making furtive guilty glances his way, as if they'd wronged him. Which, in a way, they had. Olivia was engrossed in her phone. And Sydney was annoyed. "Why is everybody so quiet?" she said. "You'd think somebody died." "It's been a strange day," Trevor said. Sydney had no idea. Afterward, he returned to his room, intending on taking advantage of his new art supplies. Whatever he made might not be there tomorrow, but at least he could get some practice in. Maybe on one of the big 24" x 36" canvasses. On his way to his room, he spotted Olivia in her room looking concerned and knocked on the doorframe. "What's up, Liv?" he asked. "With me? Oh, nothing. The usual. I'm going to go to sleep and wake up with a completely different life," she said. Then, noting his annoyed look, added, "Sorry, Trev. I forgot. I mean..." "It's fine," he said. "Are you playing around on your ARM device?" "Yeah, pretty neat. I found out earlier today that you can sort-of meld your memories with the new you. It's kind of scary, though." "What do you mean?" Trevor asked. Olivia stretched out on her bed and started fiddling with her ARM. "It's like... I've got two sets of memories overlapping, and I know they can't both be true, but they both feel like they happened, you know?" That hadn't been Trevor's experience at all - the memories he'd 'integrated' still existed as fuzzy, half-real things. Though, he supposed, if he'd obsessed over them (which was not out of the question for Olivia), things might well be different. In so doing, you might lose yourself every bit as much as if you'd never been in your original world... Trevor was determined to keep at least that much of himself intact. "I've tried not to do it too much," Trevor said. "I feel like it's probably not meant to be done a whole lot." "Yeah..." Olivia didn't sound convinced. Her phone buzzed, and for a minute she was tapping away with both thumbs, one on her ARM and one on her phone - truly, a product of her generation. "I have more friends and feed followers now. I guess that's good?" Trevor leaned over to look, noting how much closer in size they now were. The difference in size and weight between them was already halved. More to come, he supposed. Like Olivia, new-Trevor also had more friends and followers - for instance, on YOLO he had 227 friends and 14 followers (mostly friends from school), exactly the same number that new-Olivia had. "I have exactly the same number, too," he said. "Maybe it's kismet." "What?" She didn't know the word. "You know, fate? "I guess we'll find out tomorrow, right? I hope things get ironed out, Trev." "Yeah, thanks." He retreated to his room, playing with his new art supplies for a while before he became sleepy enough that he decided it wasn't doing any good. He dabbled around with watercolors, painting a summer evening sky, dark trees silhouetted near the ground and stars and swirling nebulae swirling above. Then, just before he called it a night, Trevor took a big brush of inky violet and smeared it across the sky, forming a great wine-dark void. He didn't even know why he did it; the impulse had just come to him. Probably, he was just tired. Strangely enough, and very unlike the night before, sleep came to Trevor easily. Perhaps it was because he was no longer looking forward to that night's shift. Maybe he was just emotionally drained from a very strange day. He lay down on his bed and worried about not being able to sleep for about three minutes before drifting off. Before he did, he thought about Madison and how sick/unhappy/whatever she'd been. He tapped out a message, his eyes already drooping. [Sorry you were in a bad place today] [I hope you're ok] +++++ Trevor awoke at 6:45 am to his buzzing phone. Somebody named Bryce had sent him four messages in rapid succession. [I'm not ok] [Sorry I don't even know if you remember sending the message] [It's not in my message history] [Freaking out rn] Shit... well, that wasn't good. Then Trevor noticed his hand as he held the phone: smaller, smoother, definitely not the hands he'd had yesterday, let alone the day before. Double-shit. He rolled out of bed and immediately noted the difference... he'd text 'Bryce' back before getting around to triple-shit. [Ok], he texted. I'm omw] [Don't freak] [I'll be there by 8] [No, wait], Bryce texted back. [Pls don't] Trevor scratched his head, thinking about what to do. His hair was longer, soft and tawny brown and in his face. If Olivia had become 'Bryce', and it seemed A) pretty likely that she had and that B) something was definitely freaking her/him out, then Trevor was definitely heading over after the 7 am family debriefing. [I'm heading over], he messaged again. Time to assess the day's damage... Good things first: the room hadn't changed much, but was overall nicer, with a higher ceiling and big windows overlooking the front lawn. Gone was his art corner, but there were still plenty of completed works and pieces- in-progress around the place, so new-new-Trevor was still into art. Where he did his work was a good question - a question for later. The ensuite was slightly larger and nicer with a built-in laundry chute. Convenient. Bad things: the girl in the mirror definitely wasn't him. "Fuck!" Trevor said reflexively. That wasn't his voice, either. The girl looking back in the big bathroom mirror was neither especially feminine nor obviously a former boy. She was a very cute girl, but in an androgynous way, with a slightly-square jaw, high, defined cheekbones, and expressive lips. Her loose pajama top also revealed small breasts, and a quick pants check revealed a reversal of the plumbing down there. Trevor might have thought a transitional progression from yesterday would have deposited him into some half-male-half-female intersex state, but he was definitely female through-and-through down there - sparse, light brown pubic hairs, fuzzy labia, and a vagina. It felt pretty different when he concentrated on it - his brain was getting all sorts of signals from parts that weren't quite where he was used to them being (or used to there being), but he'd hardly noticed it at all when he wasn't focused on the changes. His mother knocked on the door. "Trev, debriefing in five." "Okay," he said, not bothering to disguise his alto register. They'd find out soon enough, anyway. Meghan paused at the door. "You okay in there?" "I'll see you in five." Strangely enough, his clothes were less feminine than yesterday's, if you discounted the switch from boxer-briefs to boy shorts and the addition of a handful of A-cup bras for his small but definitely-there breasts. A quick glance on YOLO confirmed that: A) he had more friends and followers than yesterday (340 and 30, respectively - most but not all of them school friends he didn't recognize) and B) he and Bryce were now an item. The boy was recognizably Madison, but also recognizably an androgynous male. 'Bryce' and 'Alyssa' could have swapped wardrobes and nobody would have noticed... save that Alyssa's clothes wouldn't fit Bryce on account of his being about half a head taller. Trevor couldn't be more than five and a half feet tall now. There was nothing to be done about that. He didn't bother to get out of his sleep clothes - plaid flannel pants that hugged his new bum a bit too snugly and a loose 'Fort Ruth Overnight Art Camp' sleep shirt that didn't reveal much beyond a thinnish and decidedly unmasculine frame. In bare feet, he plodded down a big open staircase, acutely aware of his whole family watching him from the dropped-floor grotto of their new living room. "Jesus, Trev," Olivia said.