Changing Realities

- Dimensional Tech - 

By Barker Tree

I looked in the mirror at the changing station. For such an elaborate lobby, the bathrooms were decidedly sterile and impersonal, like the proportions were slightly wrong. If this were a restaurant, I'd probably decide to leave.

But it wasn't a restaurant. I was here to abandon my old life and be transformed. Limited dimensional shift, the brochure called it. I should laugh, but I didn't. 

I didn't even smile. I was feeling more nervous than I thought I would be. For weeks I had felt resolved, testing myself by postponing the urge to walk through the doors. Even just yesterday, I had felt so committed, so certain. But now... I tugged on my fingers nervously and looked down at the aspirin container of DNA that I had illicitly (and guiltily) extracted from my niece's bedside trash. Some of her nails and hair I had found bedded among the tissue paper and discarded school papers. Maybe I'll be like her soon, I thought, shivering strangely. Maybe.

I carefully pulled off my suit and tie, and laid it out on a small bench in the corner. There was no reason to come dress up, but as I would be giving up everything I had, I had decided I might as well give my best suit one more spin. Not much need for suits in the future, if things went according to plan.

The plan. It made my heart beat strangely. "Experience being someone else!" the brochure had said. "Forever." All you had to bring with you was a sample of DNA from a relative. It would be used to project a model for a dimensional warp. "You'll be someone new," the brochure said, "half-modeled on a baseline template chosen by you. Who would YOU pick?" 

I had twisted over the decisions for months. Who would I like to be like? I had gone over my relatives carefully: I had a cousin, a high-paid lawyer in New York, and a nephew working in tech in San Francisco. Both were confident, handsome. There were a few babies in my family: I could do everything over again. But I couldn't escape the option my mind continually returned too, could I? It was my niece, Emma. I don't think she was particularly ambitious, or particularly anything, but she had something I had never had as an option: she was young and adorable. I thought of the way she opened her mouth in a surprised half-smile before she laughed, as if her mind took a second to process the joke, her eyes creasing. 

"Daad," she'd said to my brother when I made a surprise visit, hitting him on the shoulder, "you can't not tell me Uncle Alex is coming!" and he laughed too and batted her away. "I didn't know he was coming either!" and I watched her jostle down to her room in a blithe, unconsciously carefree saunter.

I shook my head, and looked at the forlorn suit, lying on the bench. So staid and uptight. I started to put on the jumpsuit they gave me for the dimensional procedure, which was something white and sterile, but paused to look into the mirror. Jesus, I thought, I look even more nonexistent naked than I do clothed.

I had gotten used to the way I looked -- a little like how you get used to a stain in the corner of the carpet. But even so, I never escaped the feeling of being vaguely cheated by life. Of being plain. Since high school, feeling so sexually squalid and mired. And I had tried hard, I really did -- to be interesting and educated. For years, I earnestly cultivating myself in hopes of finding someone wonderful. This year was the year, was my birthday mantra.

But somehow there was never time, somehow you never clicked with people. Or worse, women would look right past you at the handsome, articulate men, their eyes happy and shining, and you felt like a bookcase. And all around me at the university where I taught, there were these beautiful women who were the object of so much attention and love, and then there was me, who had aged out so quickly, watching them in the hallways. They looked so free, young and clothed in beautiful, flattering stylish clothes, and I felt this grinding envy and desire to be like them. 

I wanted to be loved. Maybe that was the crux of it.

I pulled on the jumpsuit and zipped it all the way to my neck. In a perfect world, I had decided, your interior self would match your exterior. Instead: thinning hair, and even in the jumper I could see my shape, like a disappointing triangle the wrong way, with hips a little too wide. Like a girl, I had once thought and then could never unthink. Overweight, with a moderate middle-aged paunch painfully visible (in my mind) over my belt.

And all my life, a story of asking people out for coffee and having it be awkward, they could sense your trepidation, it was never free and easy like it was when I watched other people do it. There was no easy yes or no when I did it. They would frown, like I had asked them something odd and demanding, like I asked if they wanted to take a cross-country bus trip with me or something.

I looked down at the brochure again. "Become someone new. Forever." And beneath the tagline was an entire quarter page of small text on the possible side effects of dimensional manipulation. Inter-dimensional death, was one that jumped out: Quantum pain, was another. But yet, I thought, on the positive, possible side: being loose and free and simple. Starting over.

Oof. I stepped out into the lobby, feeling slightly stupid. The jumper didn't really fit right on me, and so I walked awkwardly to the receptionist desk, and admired a cheerful looking plant while I waited for the receptionist to acknowledge me. She was young and looked bored to be there, and was watching something on the screen.

"Hello!" I tried to say, friendly-like.

"One minute please," she said, waiting. Finally, she looked up at me. Through me, more like it. "Okay. Before you continue you'll need to finish your waiver. This final section is a verbal addendum to the paperwork you already filed. Please indicate by a clear yes or no." She pulled out a pen and looked at the sheet she was holding.

"You are Mr. Alexander Donaldson?" she asked.

"Dr. Donaldson," I said instinctively. I winced. How pretentious in face of what I was doing. Me, Dr. nineteenth century British literature, with an emphasis on female authors...

"Uh-huh," she said. "Do you understand that your Majority Identity will be irreversibly changed?" 

"... Yes," I said

"That the process cannot be reversed or repeated?" 

"Yes." I felt a little tremor run through me.

"That this facility is not responsible for any dead zones, mishaps-H, spiral rippling, or other hazards inherent to dimensional shifting?"

Mishaps-H?

"Uh, yes."

"That some outcomes are outside the control of or otherwise mandated by your physician and or technician?"

"... yes?" I said.

"And that from this period forward, your autonomy is relegated to the facility and its managers until the reality shift is complete?"

I thought about it. Why not. "Yes," I said. 

"Perfect," she said, bored. "Please take a seat, and Dr. Moore will be right out."

---

I took a seat in the waiting room. My heart was fluttering, despite my desire to remain calm. I was here. And that was kind of the mother of all waivers. Was I really going to go through with this? I looked down at myself. My stomach bulged a little from sitting, and I imagined myself smaller, flatter. I imagined seeing the bulge of my chest, the flare of my hips. And I imagined my mind changed too, not minding, thinking it normal, to look like... well, a little like Emma. 

I glanced at the reading material on the coffee table. Maxim. Mens Health. Cosmopolitan. Bridal magazines. Fitness pamphlets. Quarterly visual journals of contemporary dance companies. Were those here like fashion pictures at a hair salon?

I shifted nervously. I felt like I was slouching, and tried to sit straighter. And when my phone buzzed, I jumped. I had forgotten I had kept it with me, and I pulled it out clunkily and my heart gave a little tumble-twirl as I saw a text from an Emma Donaldson. I had a terrible moment that she somehow knew what I was doing, and I flared with a white hot sense of guilt. Maybe a web camera had caught me, snooping on my hands and knees, going through her wastebasket... 

But it was just a hello. 
"great seeing u last week! :)" and then another
"dad says to come for longer next time. I agree!!! kiss your ass at pictionary again... :P"
"*kick haha"

I tried to imagine that style of writing. Writing like that. Coming out of me. Naturally. Coming out of my hands normally, that that was the best, normal outcome of my ability... my hands were shaking a little as I texted her.

"No fair, playing against such a good artist!" I wrote back. "Be as that may, I'd be happy to have my ass kicked as often as I can manage."

My mind guilty went back to asses. What would it be like, to have one? I opened up my brother's Facebook profile and scrolled through his photos. Emma was young enough that she didn't really upkeep Facebook, but I enjoyed the family photos my brother gamely posted. Stewart had married young to a devastatingly handsome woman, of whom I kept screenshots guiltily in a secret folder on my desktop. Emma was their youngest, still not moved out despite graduating from high school. There was one of her on the floor, smiling widely in an overly large t-shirt. 

She had taken on the best of both her parent's qualities. She had this open, centered, compliant demeanor, a sort of sassy demurity that came out in her carefree eye-rolls. "Okaay Dad." She had a way of smiling and feeling open that made everyone love her. She was cute, almost abnormally so, with a face and hair that made you feel refreshed, but otherwise not that special. A normal girl, made special by the touch of god with physical gifts. An extroverted, semi-popular ray of sunshine. Not exactly an airhead, but certainly not intellectually-inclined by any stretch of the word.

Just a girl. Young. Cute. ... Like I wanted to be, was the unspoken finish. Like the girls I saw in my class. All the academic achievements I had gained more and more felt worthless the older I got, the longer I went alone. Like I had gone off the path somewhere. Like if I could exchange all of civilization for a mud-hut and a wife and kids, I would. A do-over. 

---

"Alex? May I call you that?" I heard someone say, and I looked up and an easy-going, friendly woman smiling at me from over a clipboard. Her face was relaxed and her smile made me feel calm.

"That's me," I said, heart thudding.

"Excellent," she said, "it's wonderful to make your acquaintance. Danielle went through the waiver with you? Yes? Great, then we're all set! Follow me."

I followed her ponytail into a hallway that took bewildering turns, like a hospital, and I was soon discombobulated. She moved with a practiced pace.

"You're... Dr. Moore?" I managed to croak out. I had suddenly become nervous, I had difficulty phrasing out sentences. We were deep inside now.

"The one and the same!" she said, turning back and smiling. She had intelligent eyes, and a casual white sweater on. She indicated a small lobby. "We'll run some compatibility tests here to make sure the transfer has a high likelihood of success before commencing. If things are a go, we'll move on to the Dimensional Chamber and complete the procedure. You brought a sample? ... Otherwise we have generic material in our catalog..."

"No... no I have some," I said. Heart beating, I handed my little jar of Emma to Dr. Moore. She emptied the contents into a little intake port and sat down on a rolling chair and clicked through a system of menus. 

"Hm... It looks like we have a female, young," she said, tapping on the keyboard, looking intently, leaning into the monitor, popping her head onto her fist. "Socially-oriented, low-ambition, still fertile. High physical and social sexual dimorphism." I felt myself get a little hard, and I felt a little embarrassed. She was acting like I was getting cosmetic surgery or something.

"Is it...?"

"Suitable? Absolutely. The closer the familial relation, the more effective the localized shift will be. Outcomes have tremendously varying results otherwise. Movie stars are tempting but tend to achieve sub-optimal outcomes. Unless the tissue obtained is, say, an egg."

"An...egg?"

"Yes. We're going to run through some baseline tests to prep calibrations for the localized dimensional manipulation. We're going to affect a talent transfer. Ready?" She leaned over to attach an electric node on my forehead, and I couldn't help but notice that she smelled good. I looked down at her sweater out of the corner of my eye, and felt a little embarrassed again. A talent transfer?

She checked that the node was correctly wired into the monitor, and clicked a button. I felt a brief haziness in my mind, followed by a sort of throbbing. It felt like there was something unfamiliar in my brain, although it sort of slowly faded, like something had spilled in my head and was slowly running into the cracks and dispersing. Normalizing. "What...?" I said.

"It looks like drawing skills?" Moore said. "Here..." She dug around the desk and handed me a pen and some scratch paper. I looked at it blankly for a second, and then I realized that I had drawn many times before. Hadn't I? Since forever. With relief I made a quick sketch of Dr. Moore, with her hair down, three quarters profile. It was pretty good. I shook my head. I was proud of this little talent of mine, wasn't I? Have been proud? This was really weird. 

"Hey, not bad!" she said. "Looks like a strong base." She got up and lead me through another series of hallways. We took a turn and I checked my phone on a suspicion. There was a new message from my brother. "Hey, come again soon! Open door." I closed out of it and checked Emma's text.

"great seeing u last week! :)" it said.

"dad says to come for longer next time. I agree!!! You can kiss our asses at pictionary again... :P"

"*kick haha. no fair playing aganst someone so talented..!"

I frowned and tried to think. It looked wrong somehow. Didn't she used to be... good at drawing?

"So... Have you done this a lot, Dr. Moore?" I asked, trying to make conversation. Damn, I sound nervous. 

"You can call me Rachel, if you prefer," she said easily. "And we perform the dimensional procedure less than you might expect. Ah! Here we are. Monochamber Number 22-B." She ushered me into the room, where I saw a tall control station, and a few yards away a bed like a dentists chair, tilted at sixty degrees below a giant concave metal dome. The bed had straps and monitors nearby, and a scary strainer-looking helmet with a frightening latch below to clamp onto your head. My heart beat faster.

"This is the localized dimensional manipulator!" someone said, and I jumped. I hadn't noticed him in the room. "My name's Adam Stevenson, and I'll be the assisting technician today." He was fairly young, and looked professional and competent in his scrubs. He gave me a comforting, confident bed-side mannered smile. "We're all set doctor," he said, leading me over to the bed and sitting me down on it. "How tall are we reckoning today?"

"About five seven," Moore said absently, typing on the monitor, "With standard variances within three inches." 

Adam adjusted the restraints, making them tighter. It made me feel claustrophobic and nervous. What had I done with my agency? "When you start shrinking," he said, "this will prevent you from slipping out." He double checked everything with a couple tugs. I didn't like this at all. He called over to Moore. "Any keystone fetishes to be aware of?"

Keystone fetishes?

"Hmm..." Moore said, scrolling down the monitor. "Let's see... exhibitionism, mild-spectrum submission, perchance for strangers..."

"Hey, uh... Something I should know about?" I asked. Exhibitionism? Strangers?

"Sexual fetishes and kinks tend to have an outsized impact on the new reality we localize," Adam said, almost apologetically. "Whatever baseline identity-template you've brought has the listed kinks present to an above average degree. They're frequently transferred over to levels moderately to significantly higher than baseline. We're not entirely certain why." 

"Although," Moore said distantly, staring at the screen, "I do have some very convincing hypotheses." Adam rolled his eyes at me good-naturedly. He lowered the headpiece down on me, and clamped it on like a helmet. I felt the rough straps under my chin, and it was only then that it fully dawned on me how firmly I was bounded in. I felt increasingly uncertain. Emma and exhibitionism? Strangers? Outsized impact?

The technician stepped outside of the dome and flipped a switch, and I could feel the electronics come to life, hmm all around me, and I could feel something odd in my head, feel something odd in my body. I felt an odd combination of arousal and fear. Change. 

"He's fully integrated Doctor," Adam said brusquely, watching some meters in the wall.

"Good." Moore said, concentrating. "It looks like your subject -- Emma? -- is fully linked as well. The new reality should attach to yours strongly as she's converted."

"As she's, ah, ...converted?" I said, not sure I heard correctly.

"Mmhm," she said, looking through menus. "Our system will transfer segments of her reality to you, and the attributes will mingle. In some outcomes, she may even be removed from reality altogether."

Alarm bells went off in my head. "Wait -- removed... from reality?" I stopped stupefied. "Like... killed?"

"What?" she said, confused. "No. No, she'll just -- have never existed, that's all. It's quite humane. Well, of course there'll be some pain during the Transference, but no one will remember it. Even us in this room will have trouble recalling who she was. In effect, it will have never happened."

"Doctor Moore," Adam said politically. 

"Oh, right," she said, bopping her head and smiling. "I mean, that's not how it happens at all."

I was struggling with that thought as I could feel my mind start to warm. It was almost like I was tipsy or something, like it was becoming malleable. Like it's a hamper of recently dried clothing. "I'm having second thoughts," I said, tingles beginning to run through my body. "I want to stop." The machine got louder.

"It's too late for that," Adam said. "Just hang in there, and you'll be remixed and mobile soon." He looked at some meters. "Doctor, we have successful connection with host subject. Can you feel it, Alex?"

I... I... I could feel it. I could feel her, it was like there was a mind on the other side of a wall. It was like the wall separating us had become perforated, and the strange smell of her was drifting through. I could feel a desire to push through the wall. She felt some of this too, I think, felt it vaguely, maybe not as strongly as I did...

I touched the wall curiously and had a funny flash of her closet. Only... it wasn't her closet, was it? I mean, none of the clothes were hers... Even though everything looked familiar, it was imitative, new...

"I've changed my mind!" I said louder. "Please, take me out." I tried stupidly to reach for the latches of the restraints. Of course I couldn't reach them.

"We have a new name," Moore said, pulling out a printed piece of paper, and frowning. "Mia."

"Pretty," Adam said, amused.

Mia?

My name was Alex... Alexand... wasn't it?

"What's your name?" Adam asked kindly.

"My name?" I said confused. Was there anything about that that wasn't ludicrous?

"Mia, how are you feeling?" Adam asked.

"I'm feeling... God, I'm... fine..." I said. "A little odd..."

"Mia really is a pretty name," Rachel said encouragingly. They were trying to get me to go along. But I wouldn't. I hadn't changed yet. This was going to do bad things to my niece. Maybe even remove her.

Or was I changing? I looked down at myself. I felt funny. My mind felt even hotter than before.

"Subject is beginning to regress in age," I could dimly hear Adam say. Everything was getting a little strange. "IQ is beginning to re-normalize, dropping to target level." 

"... IQ?" I said vaguely. Maybe that was why my head was starting to hurt.

"Your niece has average intelligence," Moore said, adjusting her ponytail while she watched the screen. "Her intelligence is being templated for you." 

And I could kind of feel it. There was something coming into me. Adjusting me. I could feel the realities in my head, like galaxies colliding, and something inside me resisting. I shouldn't become stupider.

"This isn't... hurting Emma, is it?" I asked, slurring my words a little. Was my voice a little higher pitched? I couldn't tell. Rachel looked at Adam.

"Let's stay focused, Mia. Just breathe normally. The more open you are, the faster you'll progress."

"Yeah," Adam said. "And as you settle into your new reality, as you're willing to become Mia, things will get easier. You'll wake up tomorrow, and neither you nor Emma will ever have existed. You'll be free to be who you've always wanted. Half-Emma, half-something new."

"Half... new?" I said. I tried to think. I frowned. It was like the ruts of my head were changing. Rearranging. New paths. Flowers. Then I shook my head. "I'm not Mia," I said. I frowned as the outline of my nose seem to shrink slightly. "I'm... I have to teach a class tomorrow. Please. Let me down." I felt some of that foreign brain want to come into me, but I could feel that new mind that wanted to be my mind wasn't as strong, sort of mushy and vapid, and I pushed against it.

"We can't do that. The process..." 

"Let me down!" I yelled, shaking violently. The restraints were too strong and I started panting. I was feeling really weak. Something fell over my eyes, and I tried to toss my hair away with a practiced throw, but my head was too constrained. Instead, it just fell thickly out from under the headpiece and for a moment all I could see were slivers of Dr. Moore watching the monitors. I started shaking as I felt a constricting all around me, like I was underwater, pressure from all sides, and I could feel the reality of the hair whoosh in, like through a vaccum, memories of brushing it, shampoos -- razors for places other than a jaw. What the hell?

I have such lovely hair, I thought suddenly. These half-real memories poured into my brain unsubstantially, unconvincingly. Thick and luxurious. In fact... I tried to look at it as it cascaded down past my neck and kept lengthening. It looks a lot like Emma's. No. What was happening on her end? Was her hair short?

"He's resisting," Moore said to Adam warningly.

"Mia," Adam said. "What sort of schooling do you have?"

"Umm..." I said. I felt the soles of my feet pull off the foot rests slightly. I was shrinking, I thought worriedly (satisfiedly) and I had a funny image of a airline seat, spacious and wide. A memory? Mine or... I kept shrinking at the seat got larger and larger. I could feel myself growing slimmer.

"I'm not Mia!" I said indignantly, a high-pitched complaint. "I'm..." I tried to think. "I'm Alexandra." Like I wouldn't remember my own name. I felt something break past the wall into my reality, a certain point of view, and I felt something funny in my chest. 

"I have a doctorate! I study gender and writing in British history. I mean literature. Emphasis on... proto-feminism." I had to grasp back deeply to remember it. But then I felt another chunk of reality disengage and enter my mind, and I felt reality shifting, and I had the sudden realization that school was kind of blech. I could rarely finish the readings, couldn't I? Gah, a part of me thought. I'm being reduced..." 

"Is it interesting, British Literature?"

"Yeah!!" I said. But then I thought about it. I had a sinking sensation (or relief?) that it actually really wasn't that interesting. I could feel my hair reach down to my nipples, which, I realized, had a sensation of thriving. Growing like a weed, expanding, laying roots. And I had this aching sense of deliciousness, of wanting all this. Why was I resisting again? My half-hearted protests wasn't stopping anything, was it? I tried to push the thought away. It was important to not give in for some reason. I knew it was.

I wanted this to stop. "I'll be better!" I tried to say to them. "I'll appreciate what I have!"  But I couldn't say that. Besides, anyway, part of me was so aroused. I could feel it down below, in a sort of altered manner that felt unfamiliar and familiar at the same time. And I realized I wanted to consume the pool of Emma's reality. All of it, voraciously, like with a straw, sucked up right into me. I wanted... I wanted... get it together, Alexandra, I thought terrified. What are you doing to your cousin? This is all your fault.

"How old are you, Alexandra?" Rachel asked.

"I'm Mia," I said indignantly. "And I'm twenty-six. No, I mean twenty-five. Four." I scrunched my forehead trying to piece it together. I was in the middle of my doctorate program, which I had started with a lot of thought, hadn't I? I had announced it to some girlfriends over brunch, smiling. They were aghast. "You're doing what?!" "You're not really the literary... type... Are you?" someone had instinctively said, and immediately looked sheepish for having said it aloud. "But I love it," I whispered it to the room. But then I frowned. I mean, I had barely finished college, just twenty-three years old.

I felt a little panicked. Were things going faster, because I had acknowledged that I wanted this? No. No no, that wasn't good, that... My chest was hurting, and so was my groin. Actually, my entire body felt like partially dried clay, being pressed around.

"And are you really a feminist?" Adam asked curiously. 

"I... I..." Yes. Yes I am! I wanted to shout. "...Yes..." I said slowly.

"Why do you think that?"

"I'm not sure," I said, pouting a little. It was an expression I had unconsciously adopted from so many captioned selfies. "I guess it's just how you're supposed to be, nowadays? But that doesn't mean I want to be ugly or anything." I had felt compelled to say that for some reason. I shook my head. My head was so foggy... changing...

My breasts were growing. I tilted my head to look down and through my hair I could see the jumper lifting slightly, actively. It was slow, but definitely moving. Like a slowly expanding balloon. A rising cake. My rear was changing as well, I realized. Rounding itself. Softening. Cushioning. I felt slimmer. 

"Subject is nearing completion velocity," Adam said to Moore. My head lolled over to look at him. I realized he had been sweating for some reason. "We might still make it on track." Had he been worried something might have gone wrong? I realized He looked different somehow. Taller, with a more visible jaw-line than before, with barely-perceptible stubble. I frowned. Not more visible. Just more noticeable. Way older than me.

"Do you like hanging out with friends, Mia?" Moore asked me.

"Uh, yeah?" I said, incredulous. My voice had gotten softer, higher. It felt good to have a little pitch of sardonicness to it. I was tired of resisting. I wasn't even sure why I was any more. As I thought that, I felt the changes accelerate slightly, like when you stop holding in your gut, but only for your breasts. They plooped outward. I watched in fascination and happiness. I could feel it all happening, I could feel my rear getting more shapely, could feel myself shrinking. I felt my muscles grow. I liked yoga, didn't I? Had a medicine ball in my room? And there was an airy feeling between my legs. Very normal, I thought. 

"Giving in makes it go faster," Adam said to me encouragingly. "If you don't give in, you won't far enough."

I wanted to. I wanted to. I could merge with that other reality. I could feel it, snatches of it, of being completely and irreversibly someone else, I was changing into a girl for fuck's sake, and I had these odd memories of me standing in the changing room at the thrift shop -- or of me putting on cute boots during winter -- stepping out of the shower and wiping away the fog of the class... And I no longer cared that Emma would go away. Rachel was right. The was no moral quandary. The same way you don't feel bad for someone you haven't killed.

"Give in," Moore said encouragingly.

"Yes..." I said, and it was like a weight had lifted completely, and I could feel my face change quick. My nose shrank more, and my lips felt different, my cheekbones were shifting. Give in? Somewhere, I could feel Emma's puberty, her experience of it, the result. The triumph of turning out different, successful, ahead of the other girls, all the glances and attention and easy living it allowed. It could be mine. Her entire life could be mine. I felt aroused, deep inside me, and I felt satisfied. Incredibly satisfied. Free.

"God," I said to Adam. "I want this. Really, I do. Really, really, really do." He looked so handsome and in control of the situation. I felt comforted and aroused just looking at him. 

"Are you sure?" he asked me, glancing at some metric. "Do you want to be young?"

"... Yes!" I said, and I shivered. I was merging with a new reality. As my shiver spread down from my shoulders all the way down to my widening hips, I felt my body tauten, smooth itself. I was twenty-one. And to think I had been twenty-four when I had come here. I squirmed and felt healthy. Alive. Change me, Adam, Rachel...

"And you want to be adorable?"

"Yes!" I chirped, and immediately I felt my face burning. The machine was thrumming. My eyes were adorable, I knew. They expressed the right sort of emotions all the time, were shiny and large. My eyes, pert and sexy. I arched my back a little and bit my lips. They felt fuller.

"And you want to be social and popular?"

"Yes!" I said. I was twenty. I had lots of friends at college, some roommates, romantic friends. Drama I discussed with my friends. People I stared at in class and who stared back at me. I shivered again, and I felt again the tweak of the absence between my legs, a particularly good-feeling absence. I twitched and my hands nearly came out of the straps.

"Adam! The straps!"

"Christ," he muttered. "She's getting smaller than we thought. By a fucking lot," he said grimacing, winching me tighter to the bed, and as he did I had such a powerful wave of arousal -- of being controlled -- that I felt this pleasure sweep over me. I was pretty helpless, wasn't I. I glanced at my hands, which had become more delicate, with small, slender wrists. I liked being small. I bit my lip and squirmed as I looked at Adam.

My boobs were still growing. They weren't large, but they were ample and beautiful. Looked great in my clothes, out of my clothes. My waist had finished, I felt, and I knew I was a beautiful assortment of curves, suggestive of sex, no matter what I did, with coyly hidden feminine muscles that peeked out at the right moments. I mean, I did love yoga and zumba. I'm becoming someone different! part of my whispered with joy. I'm different.

"Are you a feminist?" Adam asked me.

I thought about it. "Not really," I said honestly. I just had never really given it that much thought. Sometimes I watched YouTube videos on stuff, and they were interesting. I had a friend who loved Ted Talks. 

"And your schooling?"

"Umm, high school? I graduated there last May, I think." I liked answering his questions. I was going backpacking with my girlfriends in Europe soon -- dad had surprised me with a travel grant, saying awkwardly how he had always wished he had had that sort of opportunity when he was young, and I had leapt up and hugged him close, pressing against him happily.

"Her IQ has bottomed out," Rachel said. "It looks like she's a little below average, a little less than Em--" she stopped, trying to remember, but it was hard, even I couldn't really remember. "--Emily. But well within median bell-curve. Slightly above average emotional intelligence."

I tried to think if that bothered me, losing IQ. It really didn't. I mean, I had friends. Things I liked to do. I like going out. And I still read books, I mean, Pride and Prejudice was one of my all-time favorite books, wasn't it? So I liked classics as well as romances. I smiled happily and I felt my face shift and crease adorably as I did. I couldn't wait to look at myself. I was someone new. This was me. This was me was me was me.

"Transference is almost complete," I heard Rachel announce. I wondered what I would look like when I was as old as her. I thought of my brother Emmet (whoa, did that used to be Emma?) who had gone off to college and seemed to come back twice as old each time. It was the hair. I stared at it when I thought he wasn't looking. Man, I was vain.

But I liked being vain. I could be vain, and that was what was delightful. I felt like a satisfied sponge. I had taken it, whatever was offered in the dimensional shift. It had mixed into me. Become me. The old me felt very far away, but I could still sense it, distantly. I felt delighted at myself. I was a girl. A cute one. I wriggled in the seat just to feel my butt scrape against the bed. It felt shapely. A little new, even though I had vague memories of a bad habit of sending certain snaps to friends. A small lingerie collection. I smiled and felt warm and cheerful at the thought. I couldn't wait to send one to Eric. Tug and pull little. I knew my adorable face could drive people wild. It had an innocence about it, day to day, someone once told me, that made certain pictures even more alluring.

"Her fetishes should be activating. Give her a check?"

Adam walked over and lifted the dome off my head. My hair was freed, and it fell down to my chest. A beautiful chestnut color, slightly lighter than Em-what's-her-face had had -- a mix with what my old self had had. 

"Are you an exhibit?" Adam asked, pulling down my zipper. My boobs sprang free, and all across my torso was a light sheen of sweat from the tough work of changing, and as I breathed out my abs came into focus. It didn't feel weird to be exposed. Instead, it felt wonderful. He took it all in briefly, and as he looked at me I had such a sudden, overwhelming wetness and arousal that I squirmed helplessly, feeling my tits slide as he watched. They were cute. I curled my tongue over my lips and watched his face, looking at me, my beautiful boobs, and I jiggled them while I stared at his eyes, watching him watch me. "Ooh," I breathed out, squirming again. I wished he would take photos. 

And I didn't know anything about him, really -- that turned me on even more. A stranger. I watched fascinated as he brought his hand down to touch the skin right below by breasts, and gently ran a finger along the contours of my (mine!) breasts. They were so lovely and young. I was dripping with happiness and satisfaction.

He drew his hand up and pushed the hair out of my eyes and I made an involuntary funny exhale and then shuddered terribly, before laughing and giving him a bright smile. He returned if briefly before leaving to speak with Rachel. 

I let my head lilt exhaustively to one side. There was a mirror there, where I could see my reflection. I smiled, because I had a round face, a face like a moon, with a cute smile and eyes that arched with friendliness. My face was young and unlined. My butt lifted me slightly. That was me now. Mia.

And it did kind of look like me, I realized. I mean, from before. Before whatever. Just, younger. Slenderer. Cuter. Like someone had generously filtered me into a girl.  No more books, I thought dimly. No more sexual frustration. It was like a voice in a dream.

Rachel checked a screen. Man, she was old. "Everything's complete," she said. "Your previous Majority Identity has never existed. You're Mia, and that's that. Target match was well-picked, it looks like you've joined her in her old family. That should make for an easy transition.

Adam injected me with something, and shook a small bag he had. A skirt toppled out, one of mine, and a red top. No bra. "Probably used to be something else," he said, amused. "Found it in the bathroom." I smiled at him (he was so large now!) as I faded into unconsciousness. And when I woke, I woke up in my bed.

I looked around and saw my pictures on the wall, all my clothes and shoes in the closet. My phone was nearby, full of messages from my friends. I thought about my mother and father, my brother, some of the boys I had gone on car rides with. I was going to go traveling soon, it was exciting, and I thought of nude beaches in France and nightclubs in Prague, strangers on trains. I thought of a friendly man I met online, we got together sometimes and he filmed me while other men played with me. Strangers. It was a friendly, amazing little side-gig. A secret little life.

Yeah, life was pretty good. It was recently, wasn't it, that someone -- I never knew his name -- had his finger inside me, I was all oiled up, he was pressed against me, squeezing my ass, my tits, and I was keeping my hair up out of the oil, out of the scene.

And I fell back to sleep, thinking of a stranger's finger, playing with me, me smiling with joy, and how everything was nice and simple and uncomplicated.

Incomplete source (PornHub)
---


---
(Thanks for reading! If you liked this story, you're welcome to support new stories and access story-variants on my totally optional, only-if-you-feel-like-it Patreon)
---