A Wish the Heart Makes : Fornever in Blue Genes

by: Tigger

 

Chapter 3: Views from the Other Side.

Forty-five rather embarrassing minutes later, a very uncomfortable Matthew found himself hosting, or rather, hostessing a breakfast meeting with Robert West and Adam Jacobs in attendance. Adam had arrived within a half hour of the sedative wearing off. The breakfast had been Robert’s idea - he figured that Matt’s new stomach needed to start dealing with food instead of nutrient sprays. The ‘party’ had been the nurse’s idea. "Well, if you’re going to be a girl, dear," she’d told him, confirming she was aware of his gender change, "then you don’t want to let visitors, especially male visitors, see you with your hair a mess and your teeth green."

Nurse Therese (call me Teri) Richards was short, with an impressive figure and an arresting face highlighted by beautiful blue eyes. Even doped up with a strong emotion blocking agent, Matt had noticed that and would have had an appreciative, male physiological response to her blatant femininity if there had still been anything between his legs to respond with.

"I wonder what she would look like in a bathing suit - or out of one for that matter," he mused to himself when she was out of earshot.

Teri must have been a military nurse before joining up with BioCybernetics. Before Matt could get out a word of complaint, he found him . . . dammit, . . . *her*self decked out in a pretty nightgown and peignoir, and had gotten her (long!!!) hair ruthlessly brushed and her teeth thoroughly whitened. Teri’d even managed to sneak some make up on to her stunned patient’s face and to spritz her with some lightly floral perfume.

Matt did manage to recover sufficiently in time to draw the line at wearing the open toed, high heeled bedroom slippers she tried to slip onto Matt’s feet. Not much of a victory over that force of nature in a very nicely fitting nurse’s uniform, but it was something with which to salve his injured pride.

The mirror then provided yet another shock. "God, but I’m lovely." And then the still male-thinking brain responded like a male brain is usually configured to respond in the presence of a sexually attractive female - desire and sexual awareness flared inside Matt. He, that is the "he" that his mind still told him he was, wanted himself, or rather *herself*, that is. He just did not want this her to be him.

God, but that was confusing to think about, and Matt was going to have to live it. "Confusing" was a rank understatement. In the untold days since he had lost consciousness at the moon port until she had awoken in this sterile room, she had lost his identity, his most basic concept of self. Whoever that was in her mirror, it was not the "he" whom Matt had spent 56 years thinking of as "ME". Nor was it the "he" Matt had expected to see in the mirror if the experiment had actually been successful. It was like he’d died and been suddenly reincarnated, fully grown and aware of his past life, but with no memory of *her* new life.

Adam had been stunned when Teri had helped Matt back into the main room. Even Robert had been surprised. For her part, Matt had still been much too bemused by the highly unusual pampering to have done much more than make idle pleasantries when they sat down to eat. That soon passed, however, and she had begun to focus on what had been done.

"Okay, guys," she finally said. "Explain to me why I’m a female and not the somewhat smaller version of myself -- my MALE self -- that I personally programmed into that file."

Robert coughed. "Well, Matthew, therein lies part of the problem. You see, with the exception of modifications made by the optimization program per the directions you left behind in your wish-file, you ARE what was in the Wish File that Adam, Cat and I opened the day you left the Moon."

"Robert, I beg to differ! For the most part, all my wish file contained was a somewhat shorter version of me. I wanted a much faster metabolism and to be spared male pattern baldness, but I still wanted to be me . . . I mean, a male. What the hell happened?"

"Well, maybe I should tell you what happened on our end. It all began with that first high priority call from Castleton . . ."

 

Interlude: Reminiscences of a Disaster - A Flashback

"Jacobs," a sleep-drunk Adam answered the call before he realized it was coming in on the circuit reserved for use only by the company’s leadership. Since Matt was off-planet, that meant it had to be either Bob or Cat, and Bob rarely used the damn thing.

Adam had been wrong. "Adam? Bob here. Something’s gone drastically wrong at the Moon Base. Matt has been hurt very badly, and is only being kept alive because of extraordinary intervention. I need you here at his office right now. I need Cat, too."

"Call her," Adam ordered as he reached for his clothes. "I’ll pick her up on my way in. Do we need to activate the security force?"

"No, not yet. At least, not until Matt gets earthside. He’s launching from the moon as we speak. Should be here in about 80 hours. Don’t plan on going home anytime soon, Adam. This is going to be hairy."

"Right. 20 minutes, Bob. See you then."

~--------------~

"Okay," Cat Donovan said in the quiet tone of voice that was all the more frightening for its rarity. "So you’re certain that a THE Project treatment is the only way he can live a full life again?"

Catherine Brenda Donovan, formerly Captain Donovan, United States Marine Corps, and now Chief of Security, BioCybernetics Corp. was definitely *not* happy. More accurately and bluntly stated, she was thoroughly pissed off. Matthew Sorenson was one of her few male friends, and at that precise moment, she was helpless to do anything substantive to help him. Cat Donovan *hated* feeling helpless, and she damned well was going to find whoever had done this to her friend. She was tall, powerfully built and competent in far too many ways of bringing pain and death to her fellow humans to be taken lightly. More importantly, at that particular moment in time she was dangerously angry with the cold, rational fury of the professional warrior. *Someone did this to Matt, her mind whispered, and that someone is going to pay - big time!*

Bob nodded gravely. "Castleton did his work well. I have full brain scans and neural path continuity check results. Unless we can re-engineer his whole body, he will be a living mind in a dead body for as long as we can artificially sustain him. Knowing Matt, I am confident that he would soon opt for self-termination rather than continue such a bleak existance."

"So," Cat said, a suspicious hitch in her voice, "what do we do now?"

Pointing to the touch plate on Matt’s desk, Bob smiled wearily, "We prepare the treatment. Step one is finding out what are Matt’s wishes. For that, I need both of you."

"All right," Cat growled. "Let’s do it. Then, I’m going to start setting up security for his arrival at the spaceport and for his subsequent transfer here. This smells funny, guys, and I don’t want anything more happening to that man." She placed her thumb upon the sensor plate on Matt’s desk.

*She wants there to be a conspiracy so that she will have someone to fight*, Adam mused. *It is much harder for her to accept this as a random, malicious act because she can’t fight that. Well, so be it, there isn’t much for her to do here once we’ve opened Matt’s file.* "And I’ll go make sure the documentation trail is clean so that there are no questions about Matt’s identity after . . . whatever happens."

A short, dapper little man, Adam still remembered the day that Matt Sorenson had chosen the relatively inexperienced young Adam Jacobs, Esquire, over several older, better known and socially-placed attorneys to head up the legal division of his new corporation. Over time, real friendship had grown between the short statured lawyer and the physically large computer scientist. If Cat was right, and there was something more behind this, Adam Jacobs would damn well make sure whoever did this to his friend would not gain by their crime. *There won’t be any questions about who you really are that I can’t answer, my friend. I swear it,* he thought fiercely as he put his print next to Cat’s.

"Right," Bob said as he placed his thumb on the plate next to Cat’s and Adam’s. "Computer. Open Filename: Sorenson Wish- File. Password: Rebirth."

~--------------~

"You’re kidding me, right? Matt Sorenson? Cripes, Bobby, I went to pleasure resorts with him in the early days. The man is as male-heterosexual as I am. Hell, he caught more girls at that place than I did. Why would he want to be a woman??!?"

"You’ve read the file," Robert said quietly. "All the justification and background documentation is there, Adam."

"Look, I know he’s always, well, you know . . . " Adam ran a frustrated hand through his hair and took a deep breath. "Look, I know he’s always complained about his size and lack of looks, but to do something like this? Look, it’s a wish thing, Bob. He was just playing with some silly fantasies some dark and lonely night and forgot to erase them from that file there."

"Does that sound like Matt Sorenson to you?" Bob challenged. When Adam couldn’t answer, he continued. "He told us where the file was, Adam."

"But what about the survival stuff? Didn’t you tell me that this course of action is unsafe?"

"Yes, in general, but I am checking into those probabilities as they relate to Matt’s specific genetic makeup. I have those tissue samples I took from each of us a few months ago. I’m doing clinical testing on some of Matt’s."

"And if it doesn’t work?"

"I will also generate a non-gender changing treatment that will be ready in case of an unacceptably low survival probability with the gender changing treatment. In the meantime, I will conduct optimization studies to comply with his stated wishes."

"But you will insist on a very high survival probability, right? As in 100 percent?"

"He’s my friend, too, Adam," Robert said with austere dignity.

"Sorry, Bob, I know that. Well, guess I better make like a lawyer and make sure we do this perfectly," Adam said with a sigh before a thought hit him. "What about Cat?"

"We comply with Matthew’s stated wishes whenever it does not affect his chance of survival. He doesn’t want her interfering and you know as well as I do that she would try. Let her worry about setting up her security plan and let it go at that."

~---------------~

The sleek, hypersonic space-transport shut down its engines and rolled to a stop near the smaller airship that was waiting with its own engines hot. Four med-techs raced across the tarmac pushing what looked like a cross between a bed and a combat tank towards the bigger ship.

Six other men rushed down the spaceship’s loading ramp carrying a life support litter. With skilled efficiency, the man in the litter was transferred to the bed and then wheeled to the load hoist of the smaller airship. They were airborne less than ten seconds after the hoist had melded into the smooth lines of the fuselage.

Bob and the other doctor worked feverishly to hook up the bio- network. "Damn, he’s further gone that we thought," Bob swore.

"We need his go ahead, Bob. That was the agreement. Because of the inherent risk of the gender transition, he personally has to approve the use of any treatment with that type of re- engineering," Adam said. *Hopefully, he won’t say anything and we can forget the whole idea.*

Matt awoke momentarily, surprised to see a very worried Bob looking down at him. "Matt . . . I need to know. Are you sure you want to attempt something so drastic?"

The effort seemed to drain yet more life out of their friend, and for just a moment, Adam thought he was not going to be able to answer. Only he did. "Dras-tic? Good. Short-er . . . Plenty . . . hair. Thin waist? New face. Not ugly freak. Dras- tic? Com-pared . . . to what, Bob? Do it! Gotta . . . look bet-ter . . . prove to . . . "

Adam could only stare at his now comatose friend, willing him to say something more. When he didn’t, he rounded on Bob. "Cripes, West, what the hell did he mean to say? What do we do now?"

The strain of more than three days concentrated effort on far too little sleep and far too much stimulant burned in Robert’s eyes. "I think we both know what he meant to say, Adam. As for what we are going to *do*? We’re going to save his life *and* give him the life he’s asked us for at least twice. Any other questions?" When Adam could only shake his head, Bob nodded wearily. "I know. I feel it, too. Sorry for jumping down your throat. Come on, we’re starting to descend. We’ve both got work to do, my friend. Let’s get to it."

 

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© 1996 by Tigger. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.