Chapter 2

John

John knew that his depression was deeper than he had intended, this early in the process. On the other hand, he knew that such a plunge is only to be expected from time to time. He would have to make sure most of the time was not so deep.

He took his handheld and made some notes about his thoughts concerning the video. He was reasonably sure that the Machine would not like the parts about appealing the decision. But he was also confident that he could set things up in such a way that the Machine would not be able to entirely suppress it.

One or two generations, at least, would be able to see it. And every time it was played, it would remind the Machine of the part of human nature that fights involuntary change of that sort.

John got his compromise sleepwear, an extra large t shirt cut long, worn as a nightgown, and got ready for bed.

He found he was going down a long, shallow staircase. At uneven intervals along the way, a stair was missing, and a relatively shallow hole was there in its place. At the other end of the staircase, a large figure stood. It looked like his adult, male self from his visualizations. Although his feet were at the bottom of the stairs, his head was level with John's.

John found that when he went down a step, he grew a little to keep his head even with that of the figure. But when he stepped into a hole, his head was below that level. Sometimes even below the belt of the figure.

When he was facing that, he had to work to get back up on the stairs. Once he was on the stairs, his head grew level with that of the figure and the pattern continued. He knew it would take a long time to get down to the end of the stairs.

Knowing that, he settled into a rhythm and lost track of time. He didn't even notice the whole scene fading away.

He was in a primitive prison cell. Faceless, rough men were forcing him to put on a simple dress, then binding his hands. He was lead outside, and he didn't even pause to wonder why he was on a planet. He was taken to some kind of upright pole, and secured to it. The men were saying things he didn't understand, but he somehow knew that if he remained there he would be killed.

His struggles to get free only tangled him in the long dress. He thrashed around with all his might, finally sitting up. He was still tangled, but he was not tied to the post any more. It took him a moment to realize he was in his room, safe in the belly of the ship.

The Machine was telling him it was time to get up. He couldn't remember much of the dreams, but he suddenly knew who he wanted to dress as for the Remember Dance. She was not a cheerful choice, but seemed oddly appropriate.

He went to the interface, and started a search for reference materials for the required paper. Then he went to change and get ready for the day.

Janey

John was back to his pretended normal. Janey could see through the almost-right smile and greetings. He wasn't as bad as the night before, but he was still less than his normal self.

That didn't stop him from talking about the videos and the dance. When he announced his choice for a person, it fit his mood. Martyred in part for dressing like a man and in part for claiming to speak with God in a way that others didn't, and literally forced into a dress before she was executed.

On the other hand, the choice inspired Sean. He begged John to be his date, and said he had the perfect person for the part. An actor and comedian, he was known in part for his comic portrayals of Inquisition era church officials.

John looked at him blankly for a heartbreaking moment, then absently agreed.

As Janey watched him through their shared morning classes, she noticed that his moods rose and fell in an almost normal way. He could laugh at something funny, but would not get lost in the laughter. He could genuinely smile at something or someone, but there was no real spirit in that seeming happiness. Nothing happened to make him angry or even seriously sad, so she couldn't judge the depth of those reactions.

At lunch time he seemed a somewhat hollow parody of his usual self. He noticed, and commented on, the ongoing dance between Alex and Cassie over at the court table. But it was matter of fact commentary.

He even actively participated in the discussions about the videos. His head was in the discussion, but his heart wasn't. After the enthusiasm he had shown at first, that reaction shook Janey to the core.

Something was seriously wrong.

John

John was not spending the day sad or anything. He just had trouble working up any enthusiasm. He was happy when a couple of people asked him for help with an assignment ... but not very happy. He even laughed at a couple of Sean's bad jokes. But it wasn't a deep laugh, and it didn't have any lasting effect.

On the other hand, he only got mildly annoyed when he had a problem of his own with some classwork. Or when he overheard a derogatory comment about his situation.

Even finding out that he had confused Orleans with New Orleans when working on his report left him feeling indifferent. He adjusted his search terms and started the process of digging out new references. He had plenty of time to finish the assignment, and the mistake was understandable.

Even Sex and Babies seemed dull. John didn't really believe that he would ever be pregnant or deliver a baby. It was possible, he thought, but not likely. He would have sex exactly once, at a time in his cycle when ovulation was extremely unlikely. He couldn't take precautions - the Machine would not accept that as satisfying the conditions of the agreement, and he would just have to do it again anyway.

It was intellectually interesting, in a distant sort of way, to understand what his wife would be going through. And like first aid, it was wise to be prepared for the unlikely - even the vanishingly unlikely. But his overall feeling was that the class had nothing to do with him.

Physics class, on the other hand, drew him in. He was able to lose himself in the flow of information and observation. And that carried through to his special class, with the three screens. He easily got into his zone, completely focused on what he was doing.

If he had stopped to reflect, he would have noticed that one of the reasons he did so well that session was that he did not stop to reflect on the information he was getting as part of the process. He just lost himself in the process and absorbed what there was to absorb.

After class, Janey and Sean asked him to get together for some more talk about the video. He declined, saying that he wanted to develop the character images a little bit more first. They did get him to promise a meeting after dinner.

John had an idea about how to develop the major characters. He had the Machine pull up appropriate images of the current generation, average them, then reduce the image to a cartoon. So for the little girl with the candy, he averaged all the girls from when they were five years old, dressed the resulting girl in what was statistically the most popular dress among those five year olds, and made her into a cartoon. For the fourteen year old girl, he averaged the current girls, and for the boy, the boys. For simplicity, he dressed the teens in fatigue uniforms.

He was about to start working on the boy with gills, when the Machine reminded him that it was almost time for dinner. He didn't really have time to change, so he just washed up and redid his minimal makeup. He downloaded the images to a chip, so he could show them to the others, and went to pick up Janey.

Marie

Marie was starting to have trouble with her temper. The things her father had taught her helped, but not nearly as much as they had before Classification Day.

It took all of that discipline to keep from rounding on a couple of girls who were making snide comments about her status, and flattening them. Especially after hearing much the same things from others for the whole day.

By dinner time, her nerves were worn raw. And she had become aware of another problem. She was not just angry. She was horny. And the two seemed to be feeding off of each other.

Before they got into talking about the videos, Marie pulled Janey and John aside to talk about her problem. They reassured her somewhat, telling her that their research had turned up descriptions of similar effects when female bodies were flooded with male hormones over extended periods. Male bodies, for that matter. But the males had the advantage of a slower build up, giving them a chance to get used to it.

"How the hell do you put up with it?" she demanded.

"How do you put up with bloating, gut wrenching cramps, and bleeding every month? Not to mention the mood swings? You learn to cope. You learned to cope with those, but the Machine took them away and gave you a whole new set of things to deal with." John replied. Then he went on.

"I don't know if I'm luckier or less lucky. I've got the emotional roller coaster, but not the whole period thing. Yet. You get to deal with the whole thing at once, like most of us did. I have to do it in two parts."

It was a relief to know that she wasn't just going crazy, but she was still on edge. Which went a long way toward explaining what happened moments later.

As they passed the court table, talking about the videos, Alex stuck his foot out to trip Marie. Within seconds, he was on the floor, the offending leg broken at the knee and ankle, and one hip and one shoulder dislocated. John and Janey had intervened to block a stiff fingered blow to his neck, which may well have been the only thing that saved his life. The counter attack had frightened and hurt Alex so much that he had wet his pants.

John called for Sean to get to an interface and call for help. In the mean time, he and Janey were holding Marie and quietly saying calming and reassuring things to her. Cassie had taken up a protective pose over Alex, holding his hand on the undamaged side and telling him that she wouldn't let them hurt him any more, and that help was on the way. She was also looking daggers at Marie, as well as John and Janey.

The autostretcher arrived and, while it collected its passenger, the Machine summoned Marie and her companions to a nearby conference room.

On the way there, Marie was seething. She knew that it was not rational, that it was largely an effect of the hormones and the circumstances, but that knowledge didn't really help. It was how she felt.

But she hadn't lost herself completely. She was marshalling her facts and organizing them. She drew heavily on the training and discipline her parents had instilled in her. And the strategic skills she had grown up learning.

Once they were there, the Machine dismissed her escorts, asking them to wait outside the room. Then it interviewed Marie about the incident. While Marie was not John, she knew enough by then to phrase things in a particular way. So she described the attempt to trip her as an unprovoked assault, and her subsequent actions as defending herself. She formally requested that the Machine review the video of the incident and verify her statements.

The Machine did so, and then questioned her about her mental state. She was prepared for that.

"I was angry and upset. unhappy."

"About what?"

"I am told that it is an expected effect of the hormonal shift you imposed on me. There were aggravating factors, such as the campaign to create social pressure on John and me by causing people to think and say certain phrases repeatedly. But there is no rational basis for most of the feelings, so I must conclude that it is the hormone effect in operation."

That wasn't what she wanted to say and do. She wanted to scream and swear at the Machine. She wanted to hit things and throw things. She wanted to get hold of that inhuman avatar of the Machine and beat the living hell out of it.

She knew she couldn't hurt the Machine that way. But a very loud part of her insisted that it would make her feel better anyhow. But another, colder, part of her responded to that, commenting that she could come closer to hurting the Machine by convincing it that it, alone, was the primary cause of the incident.

The Machine changed the subject. "Our review of the incident shows that you were prepared to deliver a killing blow, and that your companions prevented you from doing so."

"You're wrong"

"Explain"

"I was poised to deliver that blow, and they did intervene. But if I had really wanted to, I could have easily shaken them off and delivered the blow. I was prepared to deliver that blow if, and only if, he or his companions continued the attack on me. I saw that the threat had ended, so I did not deliver the blow."

The Machine reminded her that she had been warned about inflicting damage disproportionate to the seriousness of any attacks on her. She replied that in her hormone induced mental state, the attack on her seemed potentially life threatening.

"Explain"

"The nature of the unprovoked attack was such as to render me open and vulnerable to additional, potentially deadly attack. A kick to the neck or head, for instance, could have disabled or killed me while I was recovering from the fall."

The Machine directed her to go to her quarters. She would be able to request and eat her dinner there, and the solitude would be more conducive to her recovery from the hormonal effects she had described. She was also advised that there might be more consequences, after the Machine collected more information.

As she left, she heard the Machine tell John and Janey to step inside. She assured them that she was ok, then went to her room.

John

After seeing Marie off, John and Janey went into the conference room. The Machine asked for their description of the events, but John countered by asking to see the videos of the event. He argued that they could give their incomplete and untrustworthy recollections without the videos, but the quality of the information would be greatly enhanced by the review.

When they commented on the conversation before the incident, John made a point of having Janey describe certain aspects. When asked why, he said that his answers could be construed as violating his earlier agreement, concerning his status.

Janey, under no such constraints, was blunt. In a calculated way. She described Marie's predictable reactions to the hormones, pointing out that the dangers were clearly described in the clinical literature. She added that subjecting someone with those deadly skills to such uncontrolled emotional states was a danger to the entire generation, and should be reversed immediately.

She grew a little more circumspect when she went on to describe the other irritant. Rather than making it obvious that she was aware of the Machine's experiments with "sleep learning", She pointed out that the universal use of certain statements, word for word, pointed to a single source. Then she recommended that, for the safety of her entire generation, that source be located and cut off. She said that it was clearly aimed at pressuring Marie and John into accepting their new sexes and getting on with their lives, but it was having the opposite effect. It was increasing intolerance among their peers, and deepening their own resentment of their involuntary changes.

She pointed out that such responses increased the volatility of the situation, making the entire generation less happy and increasing the danger of such confrontations. If the pressure campaign is allowed to continue, she predicted, there would be deaths before too long.

John took more of a low key approach, pointing to the expressions on some of the relevant faces. Marie's earlier anger and stress were obvious, and her somewhat less strained expression as she walked toward their table after their discussion. He also pointed out the clear malice on Alex's face as he turned and suddenly extended his leg in front of Marie.

He also pointed out that there was a clear pause in Marie's motions after she formed her hand into the potentially lethal wedge and before the two of them intervened. While that clearly showed her self discipline, it also showed how close to the edge she was. He could not guarantee that she would continue to exhibit such discipline if the pressures kept up.

The Machine commented that their description of the events did not match those of the people who accompanied Alex to the clinic. John replied that the Machine would just have to compare both sets of descriptions to the videos, and decide for itself which descriptions best matched its own observations.

Of course, he was confident when suggesting that. He and Janey gave their description while watching that same video. There would be other videos, showing Marie's earlier reactions, but that would only help their case.

It wouldn't directly help his own case, but that was going to be a long term project in any case. He allowed himself to slump a little with that thought. When he and Janey left the room, he put up his false face, and went on to eat dinner and show the others his composite characters.

Marie

When Marie got to her room, she looked around for something to destroy. In the process, she calmed down a little, and became aware of her other problem again.

She tried playing with her breasts, what was left of them, but her nipples were nowhere near as sensitive as they used to be, and she didn't get much out of it. In frustration, she pulled her clothes off and threw herself down on her bed.

After what seemed like an eternity of frenzied searching, she finally found some parts of her pussy that were better than others. Her labia were still sensitive when they got swollen, but, like her nipples, were not as sensitive as before. Her hole stayed dry, and had lost most of its oomph as well. Her much larger clitoris was still good, though. She found that she could get good feelings from rubbing the hood back and forth along the length of it. As her stimulation built, her hand started moving faster. Her breathing got heavier, as the sensation built in her groin. A part of her mind noticed that the feeling was much more localized than she used to get, but most of her just didn't care. She needed release.

She felt the tightness in her abdomen build and build, and finally ... release. It was not the full bodied release she was used to, but it was surprisingly strong in its limited area.

As she relaxed, she noticed a wet feeling. It was warm and sticky, thicker than her normal lubrication. But it seemed to be coming from the right place. Curious, she used a finger to collect some for a look. It was sort of a milky color, but thick as syrup.

She went through two brief bursts of panic. First, she remembered health class warnings about whitish vaginal discharge. It wasn't life threatening, but it was a good indication that it was time to go to the clinic right away. She calmed down as she realized it was the wrong color and consistency for that.

Then she recognized it. Semen. The primal equation came forcefully to mind: semen + vagina = pregnancy. Was she pregnant? Was she about to be pregnant? Most disturbing of all, who the hell managed to shoot that stuff into her without her noticing. She thought she would be more than a little aware of the first time she had that kind of sex.

Then it hit her. That really was impossible. There was only one person it could have come from. Her. And if sperm was shooting out of her pussy when she came, it was a damned good bet that she was not going to get pregnant from it.

In fact, she might even be able to get someone pregnant. She remembered some exploration she had done with Penny, when they tried rubbing their pussies together. Was that how it would work? Could she knock a girl up that way? Some part of her liked that thought.

But the mechanics were wrong. If she was really going to plant her little sperms right, she needed to get deep inside of her partner.

For that, she needed a cock.

Now that she had calmed down a little, she discovered she was hungry. She pulled on her underwear, to keep from dripping all over the place, and used the interface to order some dinner. While she was waiting for that, she went into the bathroom to take care of another pressing necessity, and to clean up.

When she got out, she decided to get ready for bed. It was early, but she doubted the Machine would let her out until morning, anyway. While she was gathering her clothes from on and around her bed, she noticed that the sheets needed changing as well.

She decided to put all of that off until after she ate. She pulled up an old "television" show she liked, and watched it while she ate. She was done when the show ended, so she dumped the dishes and used the interface to request pajamas and new sheets. She stuffed her dirty clothes and sheets into the chute when it told her to, then she started another show to watch while she waited.

The rest of the evening, she alternated between homework and shows. She kept herself distracted enough that bed time caught her by surprise.

John

The incident with Marie gave John some ideas for the videos. In particular, they should warn the viewers about likely effects of the change. It was not just a simple rearrangement of body parts, but a change in hormones and the associated changes in emotional responses. Girls becoming boys will be quicker to anger, even rage, than they were. They will often become more aggressive, as well. Those going the other way may undergo severe emotional fluctuations, and heightened sensitivity to touch, smell, etc.

The people who are changed will have to learn to deal with their new responses, and so will everyone else. He talked it over with Janey and Sean as they ate, and they largely agreed. Janey pointed out that it was probably not necessary, or even useful, in the ones aimed at the younger kids. But the ones for shortly before and maybe after classification day were another matter.

They debated bringing the point home with video footage of Marie ripping her two opponents up, but decided it would be a little too much for the vids. So they sketched out a similar scene, with the animated characters.