Copyright© 2004 by Kien Reti

He pressed the blinking red button on the cube.

A luminous three-dimensional display popped up in mid-air. There were blocks of text in easy-to-read glowing green letters, and what looked like a side panel of multi-colored push-buttons. This had to be some kind of fancy hologram.

    Mark XXIV GenderChanger®

    Choose an Option:
    [1] PARTIAL CHANGE (genitalia only, secondary sex characteristics
        unaffected)
    [2] COMPLETE CHANGE (down to the cellular level, and inclusive of
        chromosomes and germ plasm) *
    [3] ADVANCED MODALITIES
    [4] HELP SCREEN (option currently selected)

  * WARNING: Gender change /male-to-female/ renders user
    subject to menstruation, pregnancy, and associated
    inconveniences and medical risks.
    Refer to publication 2Y8246-03.


    Usage instructions (simplified):
    [1] Select change mode (PARTIAL or COMPLETE).
    [2] Select RANGE/FOCUS . *
    [3] TIMER SCREEN will appear.
        Set timer for duration of change (30 minutes - 100 years).
    [4] Press (red flashing) EXECUTE button.

  * NOTE: The default {0/0} (0 meters range / 0 degrees deflection)
    setting operates on an effective radius of 0.4 meter.


    Features:
    [1] Baseline gender of target(s) autodetected.
    [2] Autorevert to baseline gender at expiration of timer setting.
    [3] Changes may be manually reversed by repeat operation of
        GenderChanger [tm].

  * ADVISORY: Use of this device is restricted to authorized personnel.


    Patents pending.

It had to be a hoax. An exceptionally clever hoax, but still a hoax.

Orville Morrison was pulling the midnight-to-eight shift, assigned to monitoring the main instrument console in the control room. His job was to log any unusual happenings, and if necessary, contact the watch officer on the intercom. Just before dawn he'd heard a shrieking whistle, then a loud pop just on the other side of the vault-like door to the linear accelerator chamber. He pulled open the access hatch to check, and there was this small shiny object sitting on the floor. It was a 1" silver-metal cube with a blinking red button protruding from its top surface.

Rumor had it that artifacts occasionally winked into existence in nuclear bombardment chambers at energies exceeding 100 billion electron volts. Apparently, random combinations of powerful magnetic fields and gamma ray bursts from high-energy particle collisions could tear a hole in the space-time fabric -- and this sometimes sucked various "objects" out of alternate universes or sidewise dimensions. The net effect was that Things From Elsewhere mysteriously materialized. Some wit had dubbed it the Reverse Bermuda Triangle Effect.

Morrison was an involuntary test subject. He had been demobilized and shipped back from Saigon after spouting off to his commanding officer in a drunken outburst that there was no way in hell the "police action" in Viet Nam could be won. It was LBJ's fucking war, Morrison had said, and he could damn well figure out a way to clean up the mess he'd created. Hastily bounced from the combat theater and threatened with brig time and a dishonorable discharge if he didn't cooperate, Morrison had been assigned to the U.S. Army reservation surrounding the Jarvis Rivermore labs as a technician-observer. This meant that, for all his Army Corps of Engineering training and experience, he was nothing but an expendable guinea pig. For all practical purposes, a prisoner.

Damn it! He'd done the full ROTC bit and come out of school with a second looey's commission. Had helped bulldoze roads through the jungle to keep supplies flowing to Ranger outposts and their alleged allies, the ARVN support troops. Had done a tour of duty and put his ass on the line for his country. But the friggin' Cong were still winning the war, and they'd keep right on winning the way things were going. Only a fool or a rear-echelon officer or a politician would think otherwise. Yeah, sure, and only a fool would speak his mind to a superior officer in this enlightened year of Our Lord, 1966. And Lord help us all.

The mystery cube was a GenderChanger, huh? Morrison had heard the stories about Christine Jorgenson, the weirdo who had gone gallivanting off to Sweden for a sex-change operation. Had his dong sliced off and an artificial pussy excavated between his legs. If the guy was a freak before the surgery, he was a double-damned freak afterwards. As if you could really change your sex.

Well, even if this was a hoax, he was curious. And he had little to lose. He'd already been cashiered out of the army under threat of court martial and blackmailed into being a closely-guarded lab rat. And he'd just now smuggled this gender-gadget out of the Institute lab and into his room. That was probably enough to earn him a twenty-year sentence at a very unpleasant place surrounded by guard towers and barbed wire. Fuck it. What did he owe the army assholes running this place, anyway? Nothing.

Morrison pressed [2] COMPLETE CHANGE, then set ONE HOUR on the timer screen. He took a deep breath, then punched the EXECUTE button. There was a momentary beep and the display vanished. So, that was it? It really was a hoax. Ha, ha, very funny.

All at once his skin began itching fiercely all over and he felt a powerful urge to urinate. Damn, he wasn't sure he could hold it in long enough to get to the bathroom down the hall. He sighed with relief as he unzipped his fly. There was something missing down there. Something very important.

HIS DICK WAS GONE! What the fuck was going on???

He had gender-changed himself, that was what was goin on. Default RANGE/FOCUS setting of {0/0} had affected his own body! He was well and truly fucked.

Damn. He was starting to wet himself. But how? Hot urine was trickling down the insides of his thighs. He tore open his pants and ripped down his underwear. THERE WAS A FUCKING HOLE BETWEEN HIS LEGS!

Emptying his bladder was an enormous relief. Or maybe her bladder. Orville Morrison was a woman, or seemed to have the body of a woman anyhow. Sitting down to piss (or pee, as the girls would say), was something he (she!) wasn't used to. And there was a whole lot else (s)he wasn't used to, either.

Breasts! They weren't all that big, as female breasts go, but they protruded and they were soft. The nipples were pretty sensitive, too. And below the waist the hips flared out. And that ass! It had become rounded, maybe even pear-shaped. Morrison had always been partial to women with padded, pear-shaped asses, and now (s)he was sitting on one.

Someone was banging on the bathroom door. "You gonna be done pretty soon, Orv?"

Damn. It was his roommate, Carlos. They shared this one bathroom, along with the two other guys down the hall.

"Wait -- " Damn. His (her) voice was breaking. It seemed to have slipped into a higher register. Shit! Every part of him (her) must have gone female.

"Wait!" Morrison croaked it out of the back of the throat to make it sound more masculine. "I've got the shits. Got 'em bad. It could be a while. Probably a good long while. Use the upstairs bathroom, would you?"

"Fuck you, man. If I piss my pants, you get to buy me a new pair. Asshole." There was the sound of retreating footsteps.

Forty minutes had gone by since Morrison had pressed the damn blinking button. Wait out the rest of the hour locked in the bathroom and hope everything went back to normal. No sweat. But meanwhile...

Hey, might as well do a little, well, exploring. Morrison reached a hand down below, down there... There was a little nubbin right there, right about where it ought to be, right at the top of the slit. Ah, yes, that was the clit. And it felt good. Rubbing it felt real nice. And the hole was starting to, well, get wet. Might just stick a finger in there and see how that goes. Interesting sensation.

Itching. His skin itched all over. What was that? The hole was closing up and his dick was starting to grow back. What a relief! And yep, by his watch the hour was just about up. He was turning back into a man.

So, what now? He had this fantastic magic cube that could change a man into a woman, and presumably vice versa, but of what use was it to him? Just having it in his possession would probably get him in a mess of trouble. Even doing the "right thing" and giving it up to his supervisor likely wouldn't help. Just his knowledge of its existence put him in jeopardy. People who knew things they weren't supposed to know had a habit of disappearing. Permanently.

Escape! He had to get out of this place. In four days he was due for his next "furlough" off the military reservation, accompanied by a guard, of course. Fuck that. He wasn't about to let them strip-search him and maybe find the cube secreted in a body cavity. And he wasn't going to try and hide it in his quarters, which were methodically searched at unpredictable intervals. So what did that leave? Walking out of the base right under the noses of the guards... as a woman.

The female soldiers had a barracks of their own. Later that night Morrison got into the storage room of that barracks by removing a screen from a back window using just a screwdriver. Piss-poor security.

The faint beam from his penlight showed a row of locker doors. Now, it was a matter of finding a uniform that would more or less fit him and maybe getting some cash and ID.

Early the following morning, Sgt. Naomi DuPlessis showed her identification to the sentry at the gate. He waved her through, staring appreciatively at her well-proportioned ass as she walked away. Nicely pear-shaped it was.

The leather purse had $24 and change in it. Enough to buy Morrison/DuPlessis a bus ticket to San Durango and a sandwich, but that was about it.

"Can you help me? I've been having severe abdominal cramps, and... "

"I'm sorry, Miss, but if you don't have an appointment -- "

At that, the woman burst into tears, and if there was one thing that could melt the heart of old Doc Keldysh, family practitioner, it was a crying woman. A very attractive crying woman.

"Let me show you where it hurts." She was unbuttoning her blouse. The good doctor barely had time to notice that it was an army uniform blouse with sergeant's chevrons on the sleeves before his attention was riveted by the bare breast peeking out. Such a nicely formed mammary it was, too.

"Now, look here, ma'am," the doctor said. "I couldn't possibly -- "

Then she was on him, smothering his trembling lips with burning kisses and groping between his legs. He collapsed onto the floor with her on top of him. He was lost.

Getting fucked wasn't all that big a deal, Morrison decided, glancing at the gray-haired old man snoring on the vinyl sofa in the waiting room. Well, playtime's over. Time to acquire some resources.

The doc's wallet held $473, some business cards, and a small address book. That should be more than enough to get to the east coast.

Time to change back into a man; it was safer to travel that way. Morrison had by now gotten quite adept at using the cube.