Chapter 1

Okay, quick question.

Is laying in your bed at 2 in the morning thinking hard about putting a drill to your forehead because the sound of the bit going through your skull and into your brain would be a tiny fraction of a fraction of a percent less annoying and awful than the hideous sound of your half-brother’s snores as he laid in the bed next to your bed a trans thing, a poor thing, or a half-brother thing?

Cause, on the one hand, I could be thinking about head drilling due to the fact that I lowkey hated everything about my body, from my broad shoulders to my square jaw to my long golden brown hair that always looked Fabio rather than, you know, feminine. Okay, I actually highkey hated everything about it. Except for my voice.

I super highkey hated my voice. Stupid macho manly rumbly voice. Sucks.

Or on the other hand, I could be thinking about head drilling due to the fact that I was crammed into a small room in a small apartment in a small part of the shittiest district of Seattle, and I really should be sleeping now cause I had to get up in the morning to work my nine to drop dead deep fat frying food that would kill me only slightly slower than going without food at all.

Oh, also, I was going to be doing this day in, day out, forever until I died.

Or, on the other other hand (picture I have three arms in this case), it could be because my half-brother swore up down, left, right sideways and dimensions that didn’t even fucking exist yet that he didn’t snore. I had pointed out things like sleep apnea, about how it was fucking up his circadian rhythms as much as mine, that he had a serious danger of choking to death on his own fucking tongue, that he could fix it with a twenty dollar mouth guard you could buy at a fucking Wallgreens and to all of this, my half-brother would snort, then call me a pussy faggot.

My brother was the kind of guy who called the novel Corona virus pandemic a “planned-demic” if you wanted to really get a picture of him, my step-dad Hank, and my biomom Janice, all in one instant snapshot.

So, that’s the scene and my headspace the instant the small sphere of pale white light appeared out of thin air right above my bed. It cast a pale glow across the entire room, revealing the cockroach that scuttled over our shoes and slipped into mine. It revealed my half brother’s wild, barely tended beard. It revealed my own features and the nasty, ratty covers I wore. My half-brother made a snorting, grumbling gurgling sound, then rolled slowly onto his other side, so he faced the wall rather than the middle of the room.

The sphere made no noise, and it didn’t move. It simply ... sat there.

Two thoughts shot through mine. The first was that I was dreaming.

The second was that if I wasn’t dreaming, this might be some kind of weird, alien, inexplicable event. Obviously, only a total moron would stick their head into it. It might be the targeting light for the Head Exploder 9,000, or the guidance beam for a teleporter that would whisk me to a flying saucer where nice men from Alpha Centauri would stick probes in my ears. It might be any number of awful, horrible things.

But you know what it wasn’t?

Fucking here.

Which is why I thought about it for five seconds, then stuck my head into the glowy light.

You know, I could have experimented with my finger.

But fuck it.

There was no pain.

Just...

Brightness.

A feeling of falling.

And then a steady series of clicks.

Click. I became aware of the sense of smell. Something green and fresh and leafy.

Click. I became aware of the sense of sound. Birdsong, twittering. Leaves, rustling. Grass sussurating. I love that word. Sussurating. It is a specific word, covering a specific sound, one you only find while standing out in the vast fields of Kansas, with the grass stretching in every direction and the sky overhead streaked with stars. Or, if you’re a poor schlub like me who can only experience joy when it is sold to me at sixty dollars a pop, if you’re playing Breath of the Wild on the Nintendo Switch and wishing you could play as Zelda instead of Link.

Click. I became aware of skin. And I was wearing something tight and form fitting, with a collar. It instantly began to strangle me. But I could also feel warm sun on my face.

Click.

Sight.

I was standing in a grassy path, my feet pressing down some strands underneath me. There were tall trees – ash trees and hazel trees and birch trees. Trees you’d see in a cliché fantasy video game or Europe or something. No redwoods or anything. There was, about five feet to my right ... an elegant, filigreed, brass and wood paneled hovercycle. It had a pair of handles (carved in wood teak with solemn lion heads on the ends and golden plated brake levers) and those handles swept down towards a kind of inset engine that produced a pale glowing field of energy, which kept the entire thing hovering a good two feet off the ground. The saddle-like seat that perched behind the handles was clearly meant or a human rump.

Okay.

I was holding a small golden flower – which, as I watched, retracted from a being “expanded” outwards into a radial pattern into a small sphere, folding so neatly away that I couldn’t find a single seam on it. My clothing was ... Fancy Old Time British. I had a ruff and everything. I looked at my palms, and saw they were unsullied by anything like callouses. But they were thin. Pale. Feminine. My heart started to pound with excitement and I realized I could hear a babbling brook. I sprinted over, dropping the sphere in my excitement.

The brook was clear. I knelt down and looked into the water and...

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!” I hissed.

I was not girl. No gorl for Lucy.

That was my name.

Not on my birth certificate, but Janice married a guy like Hank, what the fuck did she know?

I took in the features that I had. And this had to be a dream. Which, hey, this dream was a huge improvement over my two running nightmares – nightmare one being showing up to high school with teeth infected by explosive spider eggs (don’t ask) and nightmare two being a new arrival. The Covid nightmare, which, uh ... yeah. No reason to go into that.

Still, my dream body was, annoyingly, not that of, say, a petite girl with long blond hair and blue eyes and a single anime fang who was still superhumanly strong, could fly, and shoot lasers out of her eyes whenever she wanted, also, was a master of the arcane arts to cover for the fact that being half-Kryptonian, half-Green Martian left her weak to magic.

... I had a lot of time to think about overpowered trans OCs, okay?

Instead, my dream body was...

“Well. Aren’t you one Draco Malfoy looking motherfucker,” I said, and was deliciously pleased at how femmy my voice sounded. I bet whoever this guy had been before I had mind swapped into him (since that was how this would work in fiction ... though, is that how this works in dreams? I’d have to make a note if I ever actually got isekai’d to another dimension) was super pissy about how femmy he sounded. I wondered if he pitched his voice down and tried to sound more macho. Well, fuck him, I was happy to sound so girly!

But I had not lied. I was one Draco Malfoy looking motherfucker. Long, almost white blond hair, bright ... red? Eyes? Yes. Those eyes were red. And ... I reached up, pulling my upper lip back, and whistled. Or tried to whistle while pulling my lips back. Those were two fucking fangs right there. I frowned, then looked at my arm, then grinned as I turned my palm up to the sun. “The Ordo Dracul will be deeply interested in my recent breakthroughs,” I muttered, hamming my voice up as much as possible. “It seems I, a lowly neonate, have unlocked sunwalking.”

I stopped, then looked around.

Okay, no one was around to hear me being a total fucking nerd. Good.

Still. Pale as hell, femmy features, long white hair, red eyes, fangs. A ... Victorian? Coat?

I was some kind of fancy vampire boi.

Improvement!

“ ... but the hovercycle?” I asked, turning to face the hovering cycle, frowning as I walked slowly around it, then poked it with my finger. It bobbed ever so slightly in the air, before settling back in place. I grinned, then looked up at the trees overhead, wondering if I’d see, like, two suns or something to really hammer home just how weird my world was.

I saw something way, way, way weirder.

The sky...

Was more ground.

The ground stretched upwards, arcing into the air like a curved hill, except unlike a hill, this hill was like ‘fuck you gravity, I’m gonna keep going up’ and so, it went up, then arced overhead. I could see a glittering lake, and what looked like the roof of a shockingly large mansion on the far side of it, almost directly overhead. The sun was not actually the sun. It was a big ball of glittery light which shone down in every direction. And past the curve? There was just ... stark blackness. And off to the left was a planet. A big, blue-white planet.

“Okay...” I whispered, slowly. “I regret the hardest sci-fi I ever read being the manual to Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon.”

The manor house seemed like the first, immediate destination. But I had to know more about myself before I...

Wait.

This was a dream.

Like ... I was just going to wake up before The Good Part anyway. So, why bother wasting precious mind minutes doing dumb shit that wouldn’t matter? It was all being made up by my sleep brain, right? Except a teeny part of my brain was like: But what if it’s not? What if? What if?

But if I gave that teeny part of my brain even the tiniest little shreddy scrap of a possibility of hope, then when I woke up, I’d open the window of my apartment and tip myself out head first. Right? ... right.

I rummaged around in my pockets. I found that my vampy boi had a pocket watch. When I clicked it open, I saw that it had a portrait or painting or something, of two very unfun looking adults and a very unfun looking child. The adults were as pale as I was, with red eyes, though the father had black hair and the mother had blond hair. And, well, that must be my body, but as a twelve year old, looking all sullen and pouty. The watch, though, was the weirdest damn thing I had ever seen. It had three faces, interlocking and interconnecting. The first was a twelve hour clock. The second, though, had thirteen hours, and the third merely had two hands – one aiming towards AM and the other to PM. Okay, so, it told me that it was both 10:14 AM and 13:20 AM?

I closed the pocket watch and flipped it over and there was a name.

PROPERTY OF

ALBERT FITZLAND-LANCSTER III

EARL OF ARUNDEL (IN ABSENTIA)

DUKE OF CAROUSEL, BURGUNDY II, AND PHECDA-C

I grinned. “Well, uh...” I pocketed the pocket watch. “Cool. I’m rich. In my dream. Which I will wake up from any second now.”

I paused, then kinda ... tried to fake the dream out. “BOO!” I shouted to the forest, throwing my hands up.

I was still in the dream.

“Right?” I asked, then paused, picking up the golden orb and pocketing it hurriedly. Then, I frowned to myself.

I had a choice. I could walk to the manor house. If my guesstimation was right, it was maybe ... like...

Shit, it was a long ass walk.

Or alternatively, I could ride the hovercycle.

I swung my leg up over the side of the cycle. My feet fit into stirrups that made me feel more like I was astride a horse than a motorbike. I grabbed onto the handles and adjusted them, gently, hearing the whirring and sputtering noise. “Okay...” I said. “If I was a make go fast button, I’d be...” I looked over the entire thing. There was an elaborate looking filigreed horn thing. I picked it up and found it had a thick cable leading into the rest of the machine. I held it up and looked into it. It had a speaking grille. “Hello?” I asked.

There was a crackling, hissing, popping voice that came back through.

“Master?” a feminine voice, sounding faintly concerned – in as much as I could tell through the crackling. “Is everything quite all right? Are you injured?”

“No, uh ... no, I’m fine. We’re all ... fine here. How are you?” I grinned, slightly, unable to stop myself.

“Ah. Well. Might I ask why you are speaking over the emergency broadcaster, then?” the voice asked. “If I might be so bold, that is.”

“Uh...” I flushed. “Sorry, wrong ... button.” I shoved the cone back into its spot. Shit. If that was an emergency broadcaster, it had the worst reception I had heard. I was shocked I hadn’t heard some old fogey asking me about if they could revulcanize my tires or something else Mr. Burns would say. I frowned. “Okay, seriously, go faster...” I sat back, sighing, and my ankles pushed inwards – touching the stirrups that my feet rested in to the sides of the hover-cycle.

It shot forward like it had been fired from a cannon.

A tree shot at me. I jerked hard on the handles – and skimmed past the tree with a whirring whub whub wuhhhh sound. Another tree came at me and I weaved the other way. By then, the bike was still going fast, and as I shifted in my stance, my ankles pushed harder, and the entire thing shot forward even faster. A branch almost smacked my face and I ducked low – and began to laugh. Giddy. Insane. Crazy. Hah! Ah! AHHHH! AHHHHHHHH! I screamed. “AHHHHHHHHHHH! FAST!” I ducked even lower, focusing on doing nothing but weaving and dodging past trees. Then I shot out of the trees and came to a huge, flowing field of shimmering grass.

“AHHHHAHAHAH!” I laughed, sitting back up, wind blasting into my face. This jerked my handles up and the entire hovercycle started to sweep UP into the air. I screamed and pushed forward and I swooped down again, gaining even more speed. I pulled back up again before hitting another treeline, then leveled out, skimming along the top of the trees. I flew over two more small copses, before coming to the area around the manor house proper. There was a long, thin lake, then a rise, then the manor house itself. But as I drew close, I saw that there were some oddities.

Which...

Like, how could I even say what was fucking odd anymore.

For one thing, there was a small enclosure near the back that was walled off by a hedge, with only two entrances. And inside, as I could see from my hovercycle, there was a nine by nine set of large glass cylinders. My brain immediately said cloning bank or naked girl depository. But I also noticed that the left wing of the manor had a large, enclosed building out back that had several cables running in and out of it and produced a constant, low level hum that I could hear even from here. I found that I was able to slow down my zoomness by pulling my ankles away from the hovercycle and tugging back on the brakes – allowing me to simply gently come down and almost smash into the hedge.

Once the cycle had stopped, I swung free, laughing to myself. “Hah. Wow. Okay...” I grinned, then stepped over to the hedge, moving with a kind of tottering, almost drunken gait. My head was still spinning from the exhilaration, and my heart was pounding. I stepped around the hedge’s side and came to the entrance of the tube farm, my fingers crossed. Come on naked girls. Gimmi a River Tam and five Melfinas, please. My gay ass could go for some of ... that...

I frowned.

“How annoyingly practical,” I muttered, looking at the tanks that were each filled with a burbling blue-white liquid. Inside of each was growing what looked like ... well, okay, it was going to sound weird, but everything about this dream was weird as hell. They were pieces of meat – but they weren’t just, like, random pieces of meat. They were specific cuts of meat. There was a cluster of ribeye streaks, growing in a nested kelplike sprawl of veins and tendons that hooked it all together. There were maybe fifty free-floating chicken breasts, glistening faintly as their veins threaded them together. There was lamb and ... I swore some turkey and duck and other cuts I didn’t recognize, all of it floating and ... alive. Like, I could see the meat twitching and blood flowing from tiny little organs that I didn’t recognize.

“Grown meat,” I whispered, softly. “What a concept.”

A humming sound drew my attention and I ducked behind some cow thighs and peeked around the tube, my heart hammering.

And that was when the fuckable robot swayed into the meat farm with a butcher’s knife.

The fuckable robot was ... like...

Good goddamn.

Like.

Holy shit.

She had skin like fine porcelain. Not, like, in a racist way, but like the texture and material. Now, if I was more like the Malfoy I was currently inhabiting, I’d say that she was ‘full figured’ or maybe even ‘Rubenesque’ but because I’m me, the first thought that shot through my head was: Holy shit, she got some mad titty for a robot. And she was definitely a robot. For one thing, she had glowing holographically projected eyes and curled coils like from a computer for hair. For another, she was obviously a robot. And for a third thing, I could see the seams on her arms, because she was a freaking robot. But that didn’t stop her from having breasts almost the size of her head, a generously deliciously curved belly – enough for snuggles and then some – and a rump that simply didn’t quit. Her thighs were wide and her legs tapered a bit, giving her just the perfect honeydelicious body type, contained in a leather apron and leather gloves and-

And she turned to the side and...

Nothing else.

Her rump was right there, and her back was bare and she was naked under that apron holy shit. I could see the cleft of her pussy and...

Oh. Also, she’d ... like ... dyed herself pink. It made her look a bit like a walking glass statuette, though less transparent than that sounded. I could hear a soft whiring sound, like a CPU fan warming up as she murmured. “For an eighteenth birthday, if I were a human lad, what would I choose?” She paused. “ ... other than losing your virginity, Polly. For food.”

Another face appeared from around the corner of the other entrance. It was another robot. This one was also a girl, but her skin was ebony black and her hair was bright white, and she was dressed significantly more formally, in a black tunic and white undershirt. She had white gloves, too. So, basically, she looked like a girl, robot, slightly drowish version of Walter from Helsing, but, like, a girl. And maybe not armed with monomonocular finger wire. I mean, I wasn’t about to count anything out.

“Pollyanna, the young master is going to be returning soon!” she hissed. “You have to wear clothes.”

“Like he cares, Marci,” Polly said, scoffing. “He called me a tub of lard last week.”

They both had, like, the cutest British accents too. ‘Marci’ (if that was her real name) sounded extremely fucking posh, while Polly (of which I had no doubt) sounded more like a cheerful country lass who might roll in the hay for a wink and a giggle.

“It is the principle of the matter, Polly,” Marci said, frowning. Except she didn’t. Like. Her lips didn’t move. Polly’s lips didn’t move. They were like Power Ranger masks – just there to look pretty, I guess. And yet, despite that, Marci still managed to look like she was frowning. It was all in the look in her holographic eyes and the set of her shoulders and the way her hands went to her hips. “You’re the last cook we have, we can’t let the Master have more of a disgust of you than he already has.”

Okay, wow. Whoever had this body is a douche, I thought.

“Yeah...” Polly sighed. “Let me just pick some meats. I’m thinking ... venison?”

“Yes, venison should do. And a cake,” Marci said, nodding. “One only turns eighteen once.”

“Has he ... asked about the, ah, other guests?” Polly whispered, her voice soft.

“Of course he hasn’t,” she snapped. “And the other guests haven’t inquired twice after I told them that Master wishes to take his birthday party alone. This is our last chance to get through to him.” She sighed. “I hope it works...”

“Hey, worst comes to worst, we can-”

“For the last time, we cannot send him into the army!” Marci snapped. “Can you imagine the ... ugh.” She shuddered from head to toe. “We’re fortunate our Dora is so stolid, I’m shocked she hasn’t pitched him out a window...” She shook her head, then turned and swept away.

Major douche, I thought.

Polly hummed, then turned and walked towards where I was hiding. I shifted a bit to the side – but it was too late. Her fans whirred a bit louder. Then, hesitantly. “ ... young Master?”

“Uh, hey, hi! Hello!” I said, blushing.

“Master, are you all right?” she asked. “You sound...” She paused. “ ... is that an ... American accent?” She paused. “No, not quite...” She stepped around the tube, looking at me, and cocked her head a bit, her fans whirring a bit louder. I coughed, then adjusted my collar.

“Well, uh...” I said, trying to sound as much like Johnny Depp as I could. He was English, right? ... oh shit, I just realized, I didn’t know if Johnny Depp was British or not. Still, Jack Sparrow was British right? No, shit that was pirate. Fuck. “I ... I just ... am having a nice day out and, uh, you’re looking...” I paused. If I wanted to be in character, I’d have to call her a tub of lard or something. But, like, she was a robot. She had clearly gone to great efforts to give herself the best tits in the universe, what kind of absolute asshole would shit on her for that? “Good!” I said, nodding.

“Good?”

I nodded. “Quite. Good.”

Polly cocked her head, then grinned. “What, did you get your mind transposed with some pauper from one of the American colonies or something, master?” she asked, laughing softly.

“ ... yeah, actually,” I said, taking refuge in audacity. Polly laughed, then put her hands on her hips.

“No, but really...” She narrowed her eyes. “Is this some kind of a prank?” She frowned. “Did you convince some of your friends to come by and they’re going to all laugh at your Polly? I wasn’t build yesterday!” She thrust her finger at my nose. “I threw an applecore at Old Bones Apart, I’ll have you know!”

“Who?” I asked, cocking my head.

She blinked. “ ... Napoleon,” she said, slowly, then stepped closer. Her breasts mashed up against my chest and ... okay. So. I’m a total gay disaster? Like, you’re allowed to be gay as hell for girls if you’re trans, that’s allowed under Article B of the Queer Articles of Alliance. And so, feeling this soft, squishy, exotically gorgeous girl pressing up against me while she was also naked and also interrogating me (which, lowkey, one of my kinks, really!) ... well ... uh ... I reacted. My cock hardened and my cheeks burned as she narrowed her glowing eyes at me. They didn’t have eyelids, her projections just narrowed themselves, leaving some of the glassy material of her eyes dark.

Then she grinned, slightly. “Georgetta is going to have your hide for skimping on your history books, young master,” she said, laughing. “I...” She paused. “Oh, what’s this, did you find some ... thing in...” She trailed off, looking down. “Master!”

“S-Sorry, it’s just, ah, you’re a very fine ... uh ... lady!” you say.

“ ... did you hit your head?” she whispered. “Are you ... was I right?”

I blinked.

“About the mind swap thing?” she asked. “It was in a book I read once!”

“ ... honestly?” I said. “ ... yes?”

She narrowed her eyes again. Her hands went to her hips and she stepped backwards. I could hear her fans revving up a bit. “Prove it,” she said, her voice soft. “I’ve been hurt by you too many times, young Master. All of us have. And if this is just another one of your childish, mean spirited, cruel pr-”