Ret-Con, Take One
May. 20th, 2008 03:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wellownedbkupTake One:
There are so many ways to begin her story that she doesn't know when to start. She thinks that maybe she should tell you that it's at night where she feels it the most. The tug of awareness in her body like a solid feeling. It keeps her awake until she can't fight it anymore and she tumbles under, falling down down down into sleep that never seems to end, never feels like it's enough.
During the day, that off-kilter feeling is nowhere to be found. She's as normal as can be expected of someone in her early 20s. She goes to class in jeans and a tee shirt, makes average grades. She hangs out with her friends on the weekends and goes bowling and plays football when it snows and basically keeps as busy as she can. During the day, she doesn't have such disorientation when it comes to self.
It's only at night, when she's lying in her bed alone, that she feels that shaky sense of reality, that feeling that she's
No. Strike that. That's not the way this story begins. Not with telling you how she was normal and ordinary. This story can't start out with letting you know how she was just like everyone you meet, bland and square and normal. This story begins with knowing that you never really knew who she was at all. Because this story isn't about her, not per se.
This story is about him. What becomes of him when he's no longer tied to her.
This story begins where she ends.
The first thing she feels is a terrible coldness that seeps in from every pore, like lying in a doctor's office with a paper thin gown on, parted at the most vulnerable of personal spaces. She feels it hard and metal and sharp against her skin, sanitized and impersonal. She sits up and grasps the sheet to her, unaccountably naked, trying to gather herself. There’s little to tell her where she is, how she got here. All there is in view are white walls, bare except for a tranquil watercolor directly opposite her. She’s lying on a shelf large enough to be called a bed, covered with a sheet and nothing else. It’s cold, and the air tastes like antiseptic and fluorescent lights.
A door clicks open as she sits staring about her, admitting two bustling girls in scrubs and lab coats. When they catch sight of her, the noise they emit is nearly subsonic, so high pitched with glee.
“It’s you! It’s really you!”
“We did it!” Their words tumble out and over each other, expressing their excitement in a waterfall of phrases and laughter. She can barely understand anything they’re saying, let alone answer the myriad questions they ask her. It goes on and on until finally they see her shiver.
“You’re cold!”
“Come with us.” They work in tandem, wrapping the sheet around her and leading her out of the room and down a long hall until they reach a warmer, though no more friendly office. When they arrive, they go through the myriad of questions again, starting with: “How long were you feeling that something was off? That there was something not quite right about how you are?”
She blinks, trying to answer their questions clearly while not even understanding what they’re asking about. After a long interrogation involving questions of sexuality that she had no answer for, the two women look at each other for a pregnant moment before turning back to look at her.
“We’ve perfected it.”
“It’s the perfect machine, of your design. We have your memoirs that you haven’t written yet. We know that we had a deadline, knew that we had to finish this now, get you here now.”
“You were very detailed. And we can’t tell you much more than that because it will make our timeline even more skewed.”
“Time paradoxes will do that to you,” she says, nearly following this verbal ping-pong match.
They nod simultaneously, like they’ve just managed to teach a puppy a trick. “But what we can tell you is that it’s right. You can change your gender completely, from the DNA up.”
“No more painful and tedious sex reassignment surgery. No more hiding.”
“Our way is almost entirely painless, complete with post-op therapy and gender reconditioning.”
“Not that we don’t screen our candidates thoroughly beforehand, you know. It wouldn’t be fair or ethical to play God with someone’s DNA just on a whim.”
“But we perfected it for you.” They pause a long time, evidently waiting for some sort of reply.
“For… me?” she asks, trying to comprehend it.
“You’ve felt it. That sense that something is missing in you? Something doesn’t fit right or wear right about your body? We know you thought it was a weight issue, but it’s more than that. It’s that you never recognized the person you saw in pictures or the mirror as yourself. Isn’t that right?” She’s floored and her expression shows it.
“I’ve felt it,” one of the women says in front of her. “We weren’t identical before this, you know.”
“Not that the records would show that, really. Another benefit—memories, records, everything… reset for you. We keep an alternate database here, in case of emergency or apocalypse or something, but generally speaking…”
“It all pretty much works out.”
She takes a deep breath. Could it really be?
“We’ve seen pictures, but we want to hear it from you. Are you ready? What would you look like as a man?”
There are so many ways to begin her story that she doesn't know when to start. She thinks that maybe she should tell you that it's at night where she feels it the most. The tug of awareness in her body like a solid feeling. It keeps her awake until she can't fight it anymore and she tumbles under, falling down down down into sleep that never seems to end, never feels like it's enough.
During the day, that off-kilter feeling is nowhere to be found. She's as normal as can be expected of someone in her early 20s. She goes to class in jeans and a tee shirt, makes average grades. She hangs out with her friends on the weekends and goes bowling and plays football when it snows and basically keeps as busy as she can. During the day, she doesn't have such disorientation when it comes to self.
It's only at night, when she's lying in her bed alone, that she feels that shaky sense of reality, that feeling that she's
No. Strike that. That's not the way this story begins. Not with telling you how she was normal and ordinary. This story can't start out with letting you know how she was just like everyone you meet, bland and square and normal. This story begins with knowing that you never really knew who she was at all. Because this story isn't about her, not per se.
This story is about him. What becomes of him when he's no longer tied to her.
This story begins where she ends.
The first thing she feels is a terrible coldness that seeps in from every pore, like lying in a doctor's office with a paper thin gown on, parted at the most vulnerable of personal spaces. She feels it hard and metal and sharp against her skin, sanitized and impersonal. She sits up and grasps the sheet to her, unaccountably naked, trying to gather herself. There’s little to tell her where she is, how she got here. All there is in view are white walls, bare except for a tranquil watercolor directly opposite her. She’s lying on a shelf large enough to be called a bed, covered with a sheet and nothing else. It’s cold, and the air tastes like antiseptic and fluorescent lights.
A door clicks open as she sits staring about her, admitting two bustling girls in scrubs and lab coats. When they catch sight of her, the noise they emit is nearly subsonic, so high pitched with glee.
“It’s you! It’s really you!”
“We did it!” Their words tumble out and over each other, expressing their excitement in a waterfall of phrases and laughter. She can barely understand anything they’re saying, let alone answer the myriad questions they ask her. It goes on and on until finally they see her shiver.
“You’re cold!”
“Come with us.” They work in tandem, wrapping the sheet around her and leading her out of the room and down a long hall until they reach a warmer, though no more friendly office. When they arrive, they go through the myriad of questions again, starting with: “How long were you feeling that something was off? That there was something not quite right about how you are?”
She blinks, trying to answer their questions clearly while not even understanding what they’re asking about. After a long interrogation involving questions of sexuality that she had no answer for, the two women look at each other for a pregnant moment before turning back to look at her.
“We’ve perfected it.”
“It’s the perfect machine, of your design. We have your memoirs that you haven’t written yet. We know that we had a deadline, knew that we had to finish this now, get you here now.”
“You were very detailed. And we can’t tell you much more than that because it will make our timeline even more skewed.”
“Time paradoxes will do that to you,” she says, nearly following this verbal ping-pong match.
They nod simultaneously, like they’ve just managed to teach a puppy a trick. “But what we can tell you is that it’s right. You can change your gender completely, from the DNA up.”
“No more painful and tedious sex reassignment surgery. No more hiding.”
“Our way is almost entirely painless, complete with post-op therapy and gender reconditioning.”
“Not that we don’t screen our candidates thoroughly beforehand, you know. It wouldn’t be fair or ethical to play God with someone’s DNA just on a whim.”
“But we perfected it for you.” They pause a long time, evidently waiting for some sort of reply.
“For… me?” she asks, trying to comprehend it.
“You’ve felt it. That sense that something is missing in you? Something doesn’t fit right or wear right about your body? We know you thought it was a weight issue, but it’s more than that. It’s that you never recognized the person you saw in pictures or the mirror as yourself. Isn’t that right?” She’s floored and her expression shows it.
“I’ve felt it,” one of the women says in front of her. “We weren’t identical before this, you know.”
“Not that the records would show that, really. Another benefit—memories, records, everything… reset for you. We keep an alternate database here, in case of emergency or apocalypse or something, but generally speaking…”
“It all pretty much works out.”
She takes a deep breath. Could it really be?
“We’ve seen pictures, but we want to hear it from you. Are you ready? What would you look like as a man?”
