Author’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of the figures portrayed to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental and unintended.

Many thanks to Lesley for her gracious assistance and invaluable input.

 

Scrambled Souls                 by: Julia Manchester

 

CHAPTER ONE

"There are just too many redundant systems for anything to go wrong," Jeff Ellis asserted confidently as he leaned forward in his chair to grab his drink from the low coffee table. He took a sip of his gin and tonic and eased his arm around his wife’s shoulders.

"I’ve studied the computers, the PC storage units, the software—everything. Hell, even the transmission cables are triple redundant, and they even follow different routes between the processors, the memory units, and the cryo-modules. The system is absolutely foolproof."

"I hope you’re right, Jeff," Dan McNeil replied as he sipped his own drink.

"I don’t understand why all that is necessary. The whole idea of separating our brains from our bodies scares me," Patricia McNeil piped up, clutching her husband’s arm as she shivered.

"The brain isn’t separated, Patty," Jeff replied tolerantly. "Nothing is actually separated really, but your personality complex—your thoughts, memories, emotions, likes, dislikes—everything that makes you a unique human being, is stored and then re-inserted. The body isn’t harmed physically."

"Whatever. I still don’t understand why it’s necessary."

Jeff smiled at Patty. At 43 she was two years younger than her husband but she looked at least ten years younger. Despite having three children Patty McNeil still had a trim figure and a pretty face that held few lines or wrinkles. Her coppery hair shone in the Florida sunshine and her face was flawlessly made up. Jeff liked Dan and Patty, and Patty and Karen were fast becoming best friends while they all trained for their upcoming journey, so he was patient with her.

"The reason it’s necessary," Jeff explained, "is due to the cryogenic process itself. The extreme low temperatures preserve the body perfectly, but those temperatures cause the brain to shut down completely. All the electrical impulses are lost, and in effect the brain is wiped clean. That was the real stumbling block to suspended animation for nearly 200 years. It’s only recently that computer technology has advanced to the point where we can actually record a human mind and store all the details. So, when you enter the cryo-module the headset is affixed and your personality complex is recorded and stored. Then, after we reach our destination and your body is revived sufficiently to have brain activity, your PC is fed back to you."

"It’s perfectly safe, Patty. Jeff was on the design team that developed it, and we’ve both been through it several times," Karen reassured her friend.

Jeff nodded, thankful that his wife’s training as a registered nurse gave her a good bedside manner that people instinctively trusted. Karen was very competent, good with people, and very caring. That was why he had hired her as his nurse, years ago. After she began working for him her attractive figure and pretty face distracted him to the point where he couldn’t get her out of his mind, and he proposed to her.

Jeff smiled to himself. ‘I’m not the first doctor to marry his nurse,’ he reminded himself. But he thought he was one of the luckiest. Karen looked more like 28 than her actual 36 years, and she still had the ability to excite him just by walking into a room. He just wished they had more time to themselves, but between the upcoming flight and their 14 year old twins, Keith and Kellie, there was little time for pleasure. Perhaps when they reached New America things would be different he mused, knowing they wouldn’t. If anything Jeff expected to be busier than ever.

Patricia McNeil wasn’t completely convinced. "But, you weren’t frozen for 15 years," she pointed out.

"True," Jeff agreed, "but the duration is completely irrelevant. Theoretically we could remain in ‘cryo’ for a thousand years without any ill effects."

How’s the training coming along, Dan?" Karen asked, changing the subject.

"Better than I would have dared hope two weeks ago," he answered. "Of course it’s only simulation, but the explorer teams will have all of the major landmarks memorized, and the engineering and construction crews have a good handle on the pre-fab units and the pre-packaged utility components. They’ll be pushed pretty hard after we land though, especially the first few days."

"My medical teams will have to be a high priority," Jeff pointed out, but Dan shook his head.

"You’re pretty far down the list, Jeff. If someone gets badly injured in the first week we’ll just have to re-freeze him until we can get around to you. Food, water, and basic housing comes first, and setting that up for over two thousand people will take time."

Jeff nodded. He didn’t like having to wait, but he realized people had to have the basic necessities.

"I can’t believe we’re leaving in only six days," Karen exclaimed.

"It’s been a long haul to get everything ready," Tome noted.

"Well, I’d just as soon stay right here," Patty remarked. "I feel like a reject!"

"Come on, honey, you know it isn’t like that. Our number just came up, that’s all," Dan reminded her.

"I know, I know," Patty said a little crossly. "Random chance. Too many people. The US is over its quota—But we’re leaving everything behind! Our friends, your job, the kids’ friends, our whole lives!"

"We’ll start new lives, on New America," Dan said soothingly. "And we’re already making new friends," he gestured towards Jeff and Karen. "And we’ve got a whole new planet to colonize."

"No civilization, and what happens if we can’t grow our own food?"

"Patty, that won’t be a problem," Jeff assured her. "We’re carrying everything we need—seed, tools, machines of every sort. Over two thousand colonists, and almost every adult has 2 or 3 specialties. We’ll have enough dehydrated food to last nearly two years, and the automated probes have shown that the soils on New America are perfectly compatible with our crops. We’ll probably even find some new plants that we can eat."

Patty’s eyes teared up and she rose from the sofa. "Excuse me," she sniffed as she ran into the housing unit.

Dan looked at Jeff and Karen. "It’s been hard for her, leaving her parents. Patty comes from a big family and they’ve always been very close."

"I feel the same way," Karen admitted. "Maybe I should go—"

"No, let me," Dan stopped her, then rose and followed his wife.

Dan McNeil, Jr. was following in his father’s footsteps, in more ways than one. He was an engineer, like his father, and he had proposed to his girlfriend the day he graduated from college. Vicky Randall had eagerly accepted, but one week later the McNeil family was notified they had been selected for mandatory emigration, i.e.: the colonization of New America. Dan had explained that he would understand if Vicky wanted to call the wedding off, but she surprised him by remarking, "Whither thou goest . . . "

Perhaps that was somewhat dramatic but Vicky loved Dan and colonization appealed to her sense of adventure. As a third year business major she wasn’t sure she would be accepted, and she was a little surprised when she was approved as a substitute for another single woman. She discovered that the bureaucrats who handled such things were concerned about the colony producing children, and her engagement to Dan was a perfect situation. They saw her more as "breeding stock" than for any contribution she might make with her education. In fact, the 2,041 colonists included several hundred single men and women in their early twenties for just that purpose.

Aside from those the colonists consisted mostly of family groups, with the parents in their 20s, 30s, or 40s, and the children ranging from infants to 21. There were quite a few pregnant women too. Apparently the cryogenic process did not harm unborn babies because no special protection was needed for the expectant mothers.

"There’s still time to back out," Dan reminded Vicky as they sat under a tree and stared out at the spaceport. A huge shuttle was poised to lift off with the first group of colonists. It would take six flights to fill the massive starship orbiting somewhere above them. The equipment and supplies had been loading for days and now it was down to the people who would populate the new planet.

"Not on your life, my husband," Vicky snorted and grabbed Dan’s arm playfully, moving closer to her new spouse. "You’re not going to get rid of me that easily."

Dan smiled and freed his arm from her grip and wrapped it around his bride. He still felt vaguely guilty about putting her in the position of having to choose between him and her life on Earth. He knew she had made the choice freely, but he was uneasy about the whole thing. New America might not be what they expected. There might be unknown hazards, despite the reports of the probes. A thousand things could go wrong and if anything happened to the wonderful girl cuddling against him he would never forgive himself for allowing her to come along.

It was a crazy system, Dan thought. The US and Canada weren’t really that crowded, compared with Europe and Asia, but the UN had decreed that all nations would have population quotas and enforcement was strict and even brutal. So, every year the population was culled and those unlucky enough to be selected were shot off into space to one of the hundreds of habitable planets that had been discovered in the past century. The larger nations like China, India, The Russian Federation, and the US—had their own worlds. Smaller nations like Italy, Australia, etc. shared planets.

The problem was all the nearby planets had been populated in the past two decades and the only ones left were damned far away. New America was a virgin planet over fifteen light years away, which meant that it would take nearly 17 years to reach at .9 lightspeed, which was the best any starship could do. That meant the cryogenic process was an absolute necessity. No ship could possibly hold enough consumables for two thousand people for 17 years, and even if they could grow their own using hydroponics they would be much older by the time they arrived and most of the colonists would have spent the bulk of their productive years in space, not on the planet.

But it also meant that they would be completely on their own once they arrived at New America. If anything went seriously wrong they would have to deal with it the best they could. Help would be seventeen years away, and Dan Jr. reminded himself that the seventeen years wouldn’t even start until the SOS reached earth, which took a full fifteen years. Thirty-two years was a long time to wait for the ambulance.

But Vicky wasn’t concerned about such things. She was content to cuddle with her new husband and occasionally glance at her wedding ring. She envisioned a life with Dan on a new, pristine planet, and she did not resent having to sign an agreement to bear a minimum of three children to help populate the new world. Some of the women had complained that the emigration regulations turned them into baby machines, but she pointed out to one particularly vocal chick that the guys had agree to father and support those children, and if they turned out to be sterile they had to allow their wives to be fertilized with another man’s sperm, yet they would still be required to support the children.

"At least the baby will be ours," she remarked. "The guys are stuck with 18 years of support regardless of whose children their wives have."

"Yeah, but they aren’t the ones who will be pregnant," the other woman retorted.

"So what else is new?" Vicky asked reasonably. "The system works the same way here on Earth, too."

Vicky chuckled when she thought about that woman. She couldn’t understand why some people had to look at the negative side of everything.

Keith Ellis looked at his twin sister, Kellie, and shook his head. He just didn’t understand girls. Not one bit. Here they were setting off to colonize an untamed world and she was acting like they were going to a dance or major social event. He estimated that roughly half of the 25 kilos of personal effects Kellie was allowed to take was taken up with clothes, makeup, jewelry, and hair products. And Kellie wasn’t taking just any clothes, either. Most of her clothing was "girly stuff," like dresses and skirts and fancy shoes. Oh, she had a few practical items, but even those had been altered to show off her figure. She wasn’t bad looking either, for a sister, but Keith thought she wouldn’t have much use for her frilly things when they got to New America.

In fact, he didn’t think Kellie herself would be of much use. She was only about 5’ 4" and he doubted she weighed a hundred pounds. Of course they were only 14, but Keith had been working out in the gym and he was proud of the muscles he had developed. He was 6 inches taller than his sister and weighed 165 pounds. He knew he would be of use when they got to their new home.

For her part, Kellie saw her brother as immature. She had learned that girls matured faster than boys and considered her brother living proof of that. While she was interested in personal relationships Keith was really just an overgrown child, spending all his time lifting weights or playing with his virtual sims. His friends were no better either.

It wasn’t that Kellie didn’t love her brother, she truly did, but he was such a meltdown. He really embarrassed her, and it didn’t help that they looked so much alike. Aside from the obvious differences, they both had the same oval face, fair complexion, and light blonde hair. Oh, Keith was taller and heavier, but they had the same grin and their eyes flashed the same way when they were angry. And each had a temper.

That was why she blew up when he teased her about that cute boy she met at the teen dance in the assembly building the other night. She was just getting to know him when Keith came up with some of his juvenile friends and began making snide comments. The guy she was with was so embarrassed he just took off and left her standing alone, surrounded by jerks. If she was a little bigger she would have slugged Keith, instead she exploded and screamed at him and made such a scene that her brother and his companions had retreated under her verbal barrage.

Keith apologized to Kellie after they got back to their quarters, and she could tell by the guilty look on his face that he was sincere, but she was still upset that he’d chased that guy away. Then Keith said something that reminded Kellie that he wasn’t such a bad brother after all, and told her that any guy that would leave her alone like that wasn’t good enough for her. She had to smile at that remark, and she knew there was a grain of truth in there somewhere, despite the fact that it was also an "out" for Keith. The problem was, where they were going there wouldn’t be all that many guys to choose from.

Linda McNeil didn’t have any problems with her brother. Dennis was two years older than she, and if anything they were real buddies. With their dad spending most of his time on the preparations and her oldest brother a newlywed, Dennis was fast becoming her surrogate father figure. She turned to him with the little, and not so little problems she couldn’t discuss with her mother, and she found his advice to be generally good. He was 18, and wasn’t exactly a man of the world, but he had a good head on him and a good heart, too. He was a patient listener and he never once laughed at her or criticized her, except in fun.

She needed that now, especially his sense of humor and compassion, because she was being twisted around inside. She had been going with a boy in her class when her parents got the word that they were no longer welcome on the planet, and the news had cut into her like a sharp knife. Paul, her boyfriend, was also 16 and she was hopelessly infatuated with him. But even if he had wanted to come with her he was too young to volunteer without his parents’ consent. Then, as it turned out, he didn’t feel strongly enough about her to approach his mom and dad about it. Linda knew there was virtually no chance that Paul’s folks would have agreed to let him go, but she would have felt better if he had asked, or at least told her he had asked. As it was from the moment she told Paul about her family’s selection she became a non-person as far as he was concerned. He virtually ignored her, and within a day she saw him hitting on other girls at school, letting them know that his ties to Linda were a thing of the past.

Linda had been devastated, and felt betrayed by the one she loved. She had cried on Denny’s shoulder for nearly two hours the day Paul snubbed her, and he had held her, comforted her and did all he could to ease the pain. She didn’t know how she would have made it through the next week without her brother, but Linda did know that she would never forget what he did for her.

For his part Dennis had no strong personal attachments to members of the opposite sex. He did have some close friends he would miss, but what could he do? It wasn’t like they could call each other. Even if his friends sent a vid-gram the moment he left he wouldn’t get it for 15 years, and by the time he read it they would be in their mid-thirties while he would still be a teenager. And if he immediately sent a reply his buddies wouldn’t read it until they were nearly fifty years old. There was just no getting around the physics, and Dennis realized that for all practical purposes his friends would simply cease to exist for him as soon as he entered the cryo-chamber.

 

CHAPTER TWO

The pain of separation was most intense with members of the colonists’ extended families. Parents and children, brothers and sisters, all felt a terrible sense of loss and every family chosen was allowed to visit their relatives at government expense, one last time. For the McNeils the worst part was visiting Patricia’s parents. Both her parents and their own little family realized that they were seeing each other for the last time, and Patty couldn’t help but think that her mom and dad would both be dead before she reached her new home. Certainly they would never know if she and Dan and the kids got to New America safely. The meeting was more like a funeral than a reunion and even Pat’s usually stoic father broke down. Dan couldn’t bear to see his wife and children in such pain and he was actually relieved when it was time to go.

After the period allowed for visiting and tying up personal matters, the unlucky colonists were shipped to the relocation compound that had been established within the spaceport. After they were checked in no one was allowed to leave for any reason and the perimeter was heavily guarded by armed UN troops. The compound itself held over 12,000 colonists, and the first several weeks were spent testing and matching various job skills with a predetermined checklist of what would be needed on the various expeditions. After that the flight rosters were made up and the colonists were segregated into sub-camps based on their destination. Until that time the colonists had been reluctant to form new relationships or attachments, and the atmosphere was one of cold impersonality. But once the final assignments were made and the colonists separated by planet they gradually began to form new friendships.

The government made every effort to insure that the colonists were comfortable, and various recreational activities were planned during the two month training period that was set aside to familiarize everyone with their new home and plan the best way to build their new society. Engineers such as Dan McNeil were put to work deciding what to construct first and the best way to accomplish what they needed to do. Farmers planned the layout and operation of the various agricultural stations they would establish, while the small contingent of doctors and surgeons tried to anticipate everything they would need to see to the health of the colony. A massive library bank of virtually every known fact was being transported with the colonists, and tools and machinery of every type was crammed into the massive ship’s hold. Several hundred shuttle flights had been required to transport everything needed.

While the government controlled almost every aspect of the expedition the colonists were free to choose the form of their new government and decide all details of their new society. The colonists in the McNeils’ expedition, being all Americans, decided on a representative form of government. They elected an assembly, which chose a Colonial President, and a magistrate to decide disputes and try criminal cases. Dan McNeil and Jeff Ellis were both elected to the council, and Dan was also appointed as the Chief of Security, which made him responsible for the safety of the colony as well as law enforcement. This dual responsibility kept him extremely busy and the time before their departure seemed to melt away. Much of what he had hoped to do before they left would have to be postponed until after their arrival on the new world.

The night before their departure the McNeils spent the evening together in their quarters, reminiscing about old times and just taking comfort in each other. Dan and the children made an effort to keep Patty’s mind off their imminent deportation, and it worked to a certain extent, but underlying all the conversation and jokes their journey was never far from their thoughts. Dan Jr. and Vicky left for their room early, and after that the gathering sort of fell apart. Linda wanted to talk to Dennis, and when she convinced him to take a walk with her Dan and Patty went to their own room. Dan had wanted to make love to his wife, but he ended up just holding her while she cried herself to sleep.

The Ellis family had far fewer ties and their last gathering on Earth was more upbeat, though Jeff was in a pensive mood. Karen and the kids drew him out into their speculation about the new world and eventually he warmed to the subject, and Keith and even Kellie began to look forward to the journey. Keith, for one, was amazed when his father explained that the 17 year trip would seem to pass in the blink of an eye for the colonists. He recounted how, during the initial tests, he had been frozen for two weeks and when he awoke he thought something had gone wrong because it seemed like mere minutes.

The next morning the colonists reported to the administration building according to the pre-set schedule, and they were run through the paperwork and taken by buses to the Cryo-center. At the center they each had a special bracelet containing a chip with all their personal data attached to their right wrist, then they were led into the processing room and along rows of odd cylindrical chambers that looked vaguely like caskets until the staffer located their particular module. Each of the cylinders had several hoses and wires attached at various points, and was mounted on a base that allowed it to be rotated to the horizontal position once the occupant was safely inside. The interiors were comfortably padded, with soothing music piped through a sound system. Unfortunately the occupants had to be strapped into the modules at their chest, waist and feet. Their arms were left free to allow them to remove the restraints themselves once they reached their new home.

Each module had a small window in the cover that allowed the occupant to see outside, but they would only be conscious for a few short minutes before the cryogenic process took effect. Some of the colonists were quite agitated when they saw the small, coffin-shaped modules, and the staffers had to administer tranquilizers to about a quarter of them, especially after they saw the bizarre looking helmet that was designed to record their Personality Complex. The shiny metal helmet was attached by an umbilical cord to a "portable" computer that was about one meter square and was pushed along on wheels by a team of two techs. Several such units were operating and they recorded the PC of every colonist after they were secured inside their module.

The recordings only took a few minutes, but with over 2,000 colonists the entire operation required nearly eight hours. In the meantime the colonists were loaded into the shuttle and ferried up to the massive starship in groups of 200. There the techs stored the modules carefully in racks, attached the triple redundant leads into the computer systems, and transferred the PCs into the three, separate memory banks of the master computers. Everything else—the tools, the machinery, the colonists’ personal effects, every last scrap of supplies—had been loaded beforehand and awaited the final load of human beings.

Finally, everything was ready. The project supervisor and his crew took one last walk through the huge automated ship and visually inspected as much as was humanly possible. When all was reported in good order the supervisor ordered the hatch closed and the last shuttle disengaged from the starship. Even before the shuttle had landed the ship’s engines had come to life and it moved slowly out of Earth orbit, gradually picking up speed. No human eye witnessed the passing of the planets as the enormous vessel sped outwards in a parabolic path to intercept its distant objective, but if there had been one conscious human he or she would have marveled at the tremendous speed it attained, and perhaps gazed backwards for one last look at all that was familiar as the ship cruised into the darkness of interstellar space.

The starship was an amazing example of the technology of mankind, and in its own way was representative of man’s wonderful achievements and also his wastefulness. It was designed to be completely self-sustaining on its journey, and virtually every possible calamity had been foreseen and planned for. It would unerringly find its way across the limitless distances to reach its destination, and it was programmed to protect its precious cargo of souls by a number of means. But it was also a disposable asset. It had only enough fuel for a one-way trip, and it was designed to survive in orbit just long enough for the colonists to strip everything that useful from its hull. Then, unless the colonists destroyed it in space, it would plummet into the atmosphere of the new world and impact the planet in a fiery explosion. One way or the other the powers on Earth wanted no return trips.

Sixteen years into the voyage, and with New America already visible, the ship’s sensors detected an incredibly strong electromagnetic wave approaching at light speed. A nearby star had gone supernova and the pulse was spreading out from the cataclysmic explosion in every direction. The ship’s shields came on automatically and it altered course to minimize the effects of the pulse, but unfortunately the sensors could not detect the electro-magnetic wave in time to avoid it completely. Even worse, the wave’s strength was far stronger than the ship’s designers had anticipated. The shields were designed for the usual interferences but were not nearly strong enough to deal with a disaster of this magnitude.

One month out from its destination the ship was struck by the wave of energy, and the pulse destroyed the shields in seconds. The ship had its own interior shielding, as did each of the cryo modules, and it was this extra, double layer of protection that saved the colonists from harm. The ship’s inner shields stopped just enough of the energy that the modules were able to prevent any real harm to their occupants, and the amazingly sturdy construction of the starship allowed it to maintain hull integrity. But for all that the colonists did not escape unscathed.

The energy wave permeated the great ship and caused massive damage to nearly every electrical system. The computers and the two cryo units that had been provided for emergencies were the hardest hit, and though the PC memory banks survived intact all of triple redundant routing programs that told the computers which PC went to which module were completely and utterly destroyed. Faced with the loss of its road map the computer fell back on its logic base, and when that did not produce a satisfactory solution it began to route the PCs back to the modules on a random basis.

 

CHAPTER THREE

Badly crippled, the huge starship plodded on to its destination while operating on backup systems. Every major function was affected, and in some cases only the self-repair capabilities built into the systems allowed the ship to continue on. But continue it did, limping onward like a faithful dog returning to its master. Only the close proximity of New America made it possible for the ship to complete its mission, and when it finally achieved orbit several major systems were out and alarms were ringing all through the huge frame.

In blind obedience to its programming the damaged master computer began the terminal sequence and various hatches opened slowly and huge cylindrical shapes began to emerge from the cavernous interior. The cylinders were actually hollow containers containing all the supplies, materials, machinery and equipment need to sustain the new colony, with crude but effective guidance and propulsion systems attached. In effect they were one-way transports designed to move the enormous amount of goods from the starship to the surface of the planet. As these large drones moved off and began their descent the precious human cargo was off-loaded in a similar fashion, except the cryo-modules containing the men and women of New America were packaged in shuttles that were far more sophisticated and designed to be reusable.

The humans remained in their modules for the descent in a partially revived state. Their basic bodily functions had been re-started several hours before and the computer had inserted the PCs when it deemed the humans sufficiently revived to receive them, but the colonists were still not conscious. To save time they would slowly return to full consciousness during their trip to the surface, awakening just before they landed. Then, after touchdown, the modules were programmed to open and allow the humans to exit the shuttle via a spiral stairway in the center of the vessel.

Dan McNeil, Sr. opened his eyes and tried to look out the view port in his module but it seemed to be just a bit too high to see much, and he had to crane his neck. Even then he found himself looking upwards at the bulkhead. A red light was rotating, bathing the inside of the ship, including the cryo-unit, in an eerie pulsing glow. Dan was completely familiar with the operations of the ship, and he knew instantly he was on the shuttle and that there was some sort of system failure. Unfortunately he was unable to do anything about it, and all he could do was hope that the automatic systems landed them safely on the surface. He lowered his eyes and took a deep breath, and noticed immediately that something felt . . . wrong. The strap that the tech had fastened around his chest seemed to be cutting into his torso, but his chest seemed to be draped over the strap somehow, and that didn’t seem possible.

At first Dan thought his body had slid down towards the bottom of the cryo-unit. That would account for the fact that he had to look up to see out the view port—It had been at eye level when they strapped him in. But then he took a deep breath and tried to push himself upright, and he immediately knew something was amiss. When he breathed heavily he felt a weight on his chest and he could have sworn it had moved. Then, when he used his hands to push against the sides of the unit he felt long nails at the ends of his fingers. Fingernails were not supposed to grow during suspended animation—Nothing was supposed to change—and a silent alarm went off inside Dan’s head.

Dan raised his hands to examine his fingernails, and as he did they brushed across his chest, touching something soft. At the same instant Dan felt the contact from the nerves in his chest, but the sensations were coming from an area his chest could not possibly be, a point several inches out from his torso. He couldn’t see himself in the cramped confines of the module, but when he held his hands up in front of his face they looked nothing like the callused hands of a middle aged engineer. The only light was the pulsing red glow from the rotating warning signal, but there was enough light to see that the hands in front of his face were small and delicate, with long graceful fingers.

Dan felt his skin prickling and he gasped as he realized that his hands appeared very feminine. "Oh shit!" He exclaimed, then froze, stunned by the sound of his own voice. It was soft and melodious to his ears; definitely not his own baritone speech. He felt an ominous cold chill run through him, and he quickly explored his form with his strangely altered hands. Seconds later a high pitched scream escaped from Dan’s mouth and he nearly fainted from shock. His hands had found curves and contours that his mind could not accept, then they probed the region between his legs and found . . . Nothing! His familiar masculine organs had simply disappeared, leaving a terrible void in their place. And his chest was now augmented with two, seemingly huge female breasts!

The 45 year old engineer and father of three suddenly felt lightheaded, and his vision was obscured by a milkiness that threatened to overwhelm him and absorb his consciousness, but Dan fought the sterile colorlessness and struggled to remain alert. Something had gone wrong, terribly wrong with the routing program, and he had wound up in some woman’s body. But there had to be a way to correct the error. As an engineer Dan knew that almost anything could be fixed with the right tools and a good plan. All that was necessary was to find his old body and use the portable cryo-units to reverse the error. Even if it turned out to be more complicated than that Dan knew a good programmer could sort through the routing program and fix the problem. Though he was not a programmer he knew that Jeff Ellis was one of the foremost experts in the cryogenics field, and he had faith in Jeff. If anyone could sort this mess out Jeff could. All he had to do was remain calm and everything would be okay.

Unknown to Dan nearly every colonist was experiencing a similar dislocation. As the shuttle began its final descent to the planet hundreds of colonists were discovering that they had been displaced, inserted into different bodies. Only a lucky handful had managed to find themselves in the proper forms, and it would later be determined that over 98% of the colonists PCs had been misdirected. From the colonists point of view the error amounted to a sudden and complete transformation, and only the soundproofing of the modules prevented their screams and moans from filling the shuttle.

Meanwhile the fleet of shuttles proceeded in its programmed ballet, completely oblivious to the chaos brewing in their holds. The cargo shuttles landed first, in a circular formation one kilometer in diameter, followed by the four larger passenger shuttles. The latter came to rest in a box formation in the center of the circle of cargo shuttles. When they landed automated sensors snapped on and scanned the landing area for anything that might constitute a threat to their human cargo, and when they discovered nothing their programming recognized as hostile or dangerous a signal was sent to the passenger holds that unlocked and opened the cryo-modules.

The passenger compartment filled with a cacophony of cries, screams, yelling and sobs as the covers of the cryo-modules opened. Nearly all the colonists were unnerved by the experience and they tore at the straps that held them in place. In seconds the walkways were filled with people examining themselves with horrified expressions. Everyone was shouting and yelling at the same time, except for those who were crying and sobbing, and those who had fainted before they even left their modules. Even the children were crying and moaning and Dan realized that there had been a complete breakdown in the routing programs. With a growing sense of dread he knew that they had to do something quickly or the colony would be faced with a critical situation.

He had to find Jeff, but he didn’t have the faintest idea what Jeff might look like now, then he thought of his family and wondered what had happened to Patty and the kids. As the maelstrom of confusion swirled around him Dan realized that he would never find anyone inside the shuttle. Everything was simply too chaotic. He decided he had to get out of the ship and wait until the others calmed down and came to their senses. Eventually they would all have to leave the ship, and Dan decided to station himself at the access hatch and question them as they emerged.

He made his way to the central stairway that spiraled down the middle of the ship to the lower levels, and as he proceeded he was amazed at the strange way his new body moved. His hips seemed impossibly wide, and they undulated from side to side as he walked in a naturally feminine motion. His recently acquired breasts (which really were quite ample) tended to bounce with each step, despite the fact that he was wearing a bra, and his long ponytailed hair bounced against his back. Dan sincerely hoped they could fix the program quickly; He had no desire to remain this body for a moment longer than he had to.

Dan walked through the open portal and out to a wonderful new world. He paused at the base of the short stairway that led from the hatch to the ground and gazed about him at New America in absolute wonder. The air was warm due to the sub-tropical site of the landing area, with the temperature in the mid 80s. The formation of ships had come to rest about a half kilometer from the coast of one of New America’s three great oceans, and the blue water spread out to the horizon, with waves of perhaps two or three feet breaking on the beach. Dan walked around the lander and saw green hills rising majestically, parted by a wide river valley. The colonists had chosen a wide, level expanse of the valley, near both the river and the ocean, from which to begin their settlement, and the location seemed perfect. The river was about 400 or 500 meters wide, with rapids visible upstream.

Dan was stunned by the beauty of the scene. The sky seemed to be a slightly darker blue than earth’s, with high fleecy clouds marching across the vista. Lush green plants grew all around and some had strange, beautiful flowers. The air had a delightful fragrance that combined the freshness of the sea breeze with subtle perfumes from the many varieties of flowers. The soil around the ships was covered with a short, very dark green grass, but closer to the water a tall sawgrass seemed to dominate until it thinned and disappeared at the white sand beach which extended about a hundred meters in from the shore.

Dan spotted the first native creatures in the air over the beach. Birds with small bodies and very long, graceful wings were circling lazily over the shallows. They appeared to be sea birds, and their long wings were perfectly adapted to riding the warm air currents near the shore while they searched for food. As he watched one of the birds suddenly plunged towards the waves below, its body configured remarkably like an arrow, and it disappeared beneath the water in a small splash. Dan watched in amazement as the bird remained below the surface for a full 15 seconds before emerging with something in its beak. After it consumed the morsel it launched itself into the air to rejoin its brothers as another of its companions plunged towards the water.

Dan watched the process repeat itself several times before he heard loud noises behind him. He turned and was surprised to see that he had wandered several hundred meters from the ship. Back at the open hatch a dozen or so colonists milled about, some obviously in shock while others spoke with animated gestures. Suddenly his strange predicament crowded all else from his mind and Dan started walking back to the shuttle. On his way back he saw similar groups congregating near the other shuttles and he just knew from the body language and raised voices that the entire colony had been affected by the glitch in the routing program.

By the time Dan returned to his own ship forty or fifty colonists had emerged and a steady stream continued to exit the shuttle. On the whole they seemed more subdued than before but there was still a considerable amount of shouting and crying, and even the quiet ones wore expressions of fear and desperation. Several were calling out the names of loved ones, hoping to discover what had happened to their families, but Dan didn’t notice any of them having success.

There was no order at all and Dan knew the colonists had to get organized if they were to survive. The op-plan called for his engineering crew to immediately begin erecting the temporary shelters, but Dan had no idea where they were or even who they were now. Getting the shelters up required a lot of brute strength, and Dan knew HE wouldn’t be able to do the job—not in this body. He could only hope that the rest of his crew fared better. Otherwise the colonists would be at the mercy of the elements. Other crews were responsible for distributing food and water, and preparing the necessary sanitary facilities, but nothing was happening.

Dan Jr. was crying because he couldn’t get out of his unit and nobody seemed to be paying any attention to him. He could see people milling about just outside his cryo-unit and ever since the door opened he could hear them shouting and screaming, but he was trapped and unable to move. He didn’t understand what had happened—at first. Then, when he called out for help and heard his tiny soft voice he realized what had happened. He was in a kid’s body. Only the kids had their arms strapped down, to prevent injury in case of muscle spasms.

Something terrible had happened, and as a newly minted engineer Dan Jr. wanted to get out of his padded prison and come to grips with the problem. But as the time dragged on and nobody paid the slightest attention to him, he became frustrated to the point of tears—something his new body was extremely good at producing. Finally a woman who looked very large to Dan glanced in his unit and saw him still strapped in.

"Oh, you poor thing!" The woman exclaimed as she knelt down to his level and began loosening his bonds. "Did your parents forget all about you? Well, don’t worry. I’ll help you find them."

"I’m not a child, I’m a man," Dan Jr. insisted in a frustratingly juvenile voice.

The woman’s eye grew wide when he spoke. "Oh lord! Has everyone but me wound up in the wrong body? What am I going to do with you?"

"I can take care of myself," Dan said defiantly, but his new voice made him sound like a petulant child, and when the woman stood up and stared down at him he realized just how small he’d become. Dan estimated he was no more than three feet tall, half his former height, and even the kindly woman looked very formidable from his new perspective.

"I don’t think that is a good idea honey, er—What is your name anyway?"

"Dan, Dan McNeil, Jr."

"Well, Dan, everything is a little crazy around here. I think you should come with me and we’ll see if we can find somebody who knows what’s going on and how we can get this mess straightened out," she suggested.

Dan watched as two men ran by yelling and gesturing, then peeked out of his cocoon and saw the absolute bedlam that had broken out. He had never seen such a total uproar. On top of that he seemed to have awakened in a land of giants. Everyone looked huge to him, even the women, and he suddenly felt very vulnerable.

"Okay," he agreed reluctantly, and when his liberator offered her hand he took it and let her lead him towards the central staircase. Her hand completely swallowed his own and her grip seemed very strong, for a woman’s. Of course Dan understood that his manly strength had disappeared with his body, but it was still embarrassing to be led around like a child. As he clung to her hand he looked down at himself and saw he was dressed in pale pink bib overalls, and his white canvas shoes had little red hearts. He nearly stopped in his tracks, and when he reached up he felt strands of long hair falling past his shoulders.

"Oh God, I’m a little girl!" He blurted out.

"I’m afraid that’s true," his protector agreed. "About 5 or 6 years old by the looks of it. By the way, my name is Kate Ryan."

"Uh, hi, and . . . thanks for giving me a hand," Dan responded. "I would have never gotten out of that damned coffin without your help."

Kate laughed at his remark and Dan demanded to know what was so funny.

"Sorry," she replied. "It just sounded so strange to hear you refer to ‘that damned coffin’ in that cute little voice of yours."

"I told you—I’m really a MAN," Dan reminded Kate sullenly, resenting the fact that she found his situation so funny.

"I know, and I believe you—especially after that remark—But you have to understand it did sound rather strange coming from a little girl."

Dan sighed and looked down at his cute heart covered shoes. "Let’s just get out of here," he pleaded.

As they made their way down the spiral stairs Dan had to take it slowly. The steps seemed far too high and the railing was near his chin, making the going difficult. Kate hung on to his other hand and resisted the impulse to simply pick him up and carry him down. It would have been so much easier and quicker, but she knew the guy inside the little girl’s body would have thrown a fit if she even suggested it. When they finally made it down to the lower lever and exited the shuttle they saw a sea of people milling about with no apparent purpose. There was no construction, no food or water, and no one appeared to be in charge of anything. After strolling around for a few minutes and questioning various people they encountered Kate finally took Dan over to a tree and they sat down to wait.

It was only then that Dan allowed himself to wonder what had become of his family. What had happened to Vicky, and his mother and father and Dennis and Linda? Judging by what had happened to himself they could be any of the crowd milling about, but how would he know? They certainly would never recognize him. Somebody had to get control of this mess and start working on a plan to put everyone’s PC back in the proper body.

Karen Ellis sighed as she looked out on the crowd of people. Like over 98% of the colonists she found herself in a new body, but she really didn’t mind too much. Oh, she would have preferred her own of course, but this one would do. The woman she had "inherited" this body from was about ten years younger than herself, and prettier too, she had to admit. But her real concern was for her family.

Karen could understand how the twins could have become disoriented by all of this, and that they were probably wandering around with the rest of the population. But she and Jeff had made specific plans to meet in the center of the landing area to deal with any medical problems that might arise. Before leaving the shuttle Karen had retrieved her medical kit and she had been standing exactly where they agreed to meet for over an hour, but Jeff was nowhere to be found. And even if he didn’t recognize her in her new body he couldn’t possibly miss her medical bag. She was becoming concerned that Jeff had been injured, but there had been no reports of any injuries to any of the colonists, and that was a good thing because Karen didn’t pretend to be a doctor. She could handle first aid and take care of minor problems, but she needed Jeff or one of the other doctors for the serious injuries. She was just about to leave and try to find Jeff when a teenage boy carrying a medical kit approached.

"Jeff, is that you?" She asked anxiously as the other approached.

"No, I’m Jack Van Werkom. Who are you?"

Karen sighed. Jack was one of the other physicians assigned to the colony. "I’m Karen Ellis," she informed him. "I was supposed to meet Jeff here after we landed but he hasn’t shown up. Have you run across him?"

The teenage boy shook his head. "Sorry Karen, I haven’t seen him, or at least his body. The way things are I could walk right past him and not know who he is."

Karen nodded in agreement. "I know. Everything is a colossal mess. Do you have any idea what went wrong?"

"Not a clue. The cryo-units are Jeff’s specialty. I’m just a humble surgeon."

Ordinarily Karen would have laughed. Jack Van Werkom was one of the foremost surgeons on earth when his number came up, though he had a self-deprecating sense of humor that endeared him to the entire medical team. He was completely unlike some surgeons who believed they could walk on water. But Karen was really becoming concerned about Jeff. It just wasn’t like him to simply disappear.

"Is anybody doing anything about this mess?" She asked.

"Yeah, as a matter of fact. I just ran into Larry Taylor, Norm Packard and Sarah Wallace. Larry turned into a geeky looking guy in his early 20s, and Norm and Sarah are teenage kids, only Norm’s a girl and Sarah’s a guy. Weird!" Jack shook his head.

Larry Taylor was the Colonial President, and Norm and Sarah were two of the council members. It made sense to Karen that they would be the ones to get things organized.

"So, what are they doing about all this?" She asked.

"Right now they’re just trying to figure out who is who," Jack responded. "They’re setting up a few tables with computers, cameras, band readers and nametags. Until they can sort us out they can’t do much, but I got the impression that Larry wanted to organize an expedition back to the big ship to check out the programs and the hardware. In fact, he was asking about Jeff too," Jack told her.

"We’ve got find him," Karen decided. "He’s the one who will sort this out if anyone can. He knows the routing program inside and out, and he personally helped develop some of the hardware."

Jack nodded. "I agree. Let’s go over to one of the tables and see if we can learn anything," he suggested.

Keith Ellis stood quietly in the long line of people waiting to be identified and photographed. He was cursing his rotten luck and trying to calculate the odds of what had happened to him actually occurring and he gave up. It was simply beyond the odds of probability that he would wind up in his sister’s body.

But he had. He came to after what seemed like a short nap to discover he had Kellie’s small, feminine body—tits and all—and he nearly went mad. He had screamed and moaned for half an hour before someone had finally grabbed his arm and propelled him towards the exit with the admonishment to "get a grip." Now he was waiting in line so the powers that be could identify the body and who was inside it. Hell, he already knew whose body it was. Nobody but his dumb sister would wear a tight white top, short pink skirt, and wedge soled sandals to colonize an uninhabited planet!

She had decked herself out like she going on a date, and now Keith had to endure the stares of everyone who saw him. Half couldn’t believe anyone would wear an outfit like that and the other half—all guys—looked like they wanted to hit on him right then and there. It was damned embarrassing, and Keith couldn’t even get into Kellie’s personal locker to get something a little less revealing until he was checked in with the authorities. That was the only reason he was in line.

Keith was looking off towards the ocean when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, and found himself staring up at his own face! The shock of seeing his own body made him jump, and Keith let out a very feminine sounding ‘Eeeck!’"

His own face was drained of color and bore an expression of shock that mirrored his own condition.

"Who are you?" His body asked, but Keith just continued to stare at his own form for several moments, unable to speak. It was the most outrageous, unlikely encounter possible, and Keith was practically catatonic.

"Wh, who . . . are y-you?" Was all he could manage.

"I’m, that’s my body you’ve got!" His own form told him. But it couldn’t be . . .

"K-Kellie?" Keith blurted. "It’s me—Keith!"

"Oh my God!" Keith heard himself declare, distantly noticing that his own voice sounded slightly different to him from his current perspective than it did when he heard himself speaking.

"We switched places!" His sister announced unnecessarily, and Keith nodded silently.

"Have you seen mom or dad?" Kellie asked after a long pause in which she continued to stare at him.

Keith shook his head. "At least I don’t think so. I don’t know what they look like now, but I’m sure they would have recognized me, or you rather, if they walked by."

Kellie nodded. "I was thinking the same thing," she told her brother, then asked, "Has anyone figured out how to put us back?"

"I don’t think they’ve even looked into it yet," Keith told her. "Everything is too disorganized to do much of anything. That’s why they set up these tables—to try to figure out what exactly happened."

"Hell, we KNOW what happened," Kellie said loudly. "The question now is how do we fix this mess."

"I know," Keith replied, "but from the looks of things nothing is gonna happen before tomorrow, at least about this mess. I think they’re too busy with getting us food and someplace to sleep."

"Just great!" Kellie complained. "I want my body back, and right now!"

"You think I don’t?" Keith retorted. "Look, we all want this straightened out, but I’m sure they’re doing everything that can be done."

Kellie sighed. "You’re probably right," she admitted. "Dad’s probably working on it right now," she added.

Keith nodded in agreement. "That’s my guess too. He’s the expert, and I imagine he’s really busy right now, trying to put things back to normal."

"Which means that we’ll just have deal with this until he can get us back to normal," Kellie observed, and for the first time she began to see the humor of the situation.

"So, how does it feel to be a girl, macho man?" She teased, flexing her brother’s muscles and rubbing the situation in his face.

"Don’t ask," Keith responded morosely.

"What’s the matter? I think you’re really cute!" Kellie announced loudly, twisting the knife.

"Oh shut up!" Keith replied testily. "It’s bad enough you decided to get decked out like some bimbo, but now I’ve got to put up with these," he gestured at the breasts pushing out from his chest.

Kellie laughed with glee. "Oh, this is really great," she replied. "Now that I think about it I wouldn’t mind staying like this for a few days, or even a couple of weeks. I kinda like being taller and a lot stronger. Maybe I’ll check out some of the chicks."

"Kellie! This is serious," Keith scolded his sister with her own voice. "Don’t play around."

"Hey, I was just joking," she replied defensively. "Besides, I wouldn’t do anything like that without setting you up with a cute guy."

"Name and age," the woman sitting behind the table asked the small boy.

"Victoria Randall, age twenty," the boy answered in his pre-adolescent voice.

"Damn, another one. Okay honey, let’s see your bracelet," the woman sighed, then took the boy’s right wrist and scanned it with her band reader. She turned to the laptop computer sitting on the table and made a few notations.

"You’re with the McNeil family, right?"

Victoria nodded. "I’m married to Dan Jr." she replied.

"Yeah, I see that. Hang on a moment. The woman’s fingers flew across the keyboard again and a printer on another table came to life and spit out a plastic blue and pink rectangle with Victoria’s name and age on the top half and another name and age on the bottom. The top half of the plastic card was pink, reflecting the true gender of the person inside, while the bottom half was blue, the body’s gender. The name beneath Vicky’s was Billy Chambers, age 6.

"Okay honey, here’s how this works. You gotta wear this so we can identify everyone. That’s real important because getting everyone back in the right body is gonna get complicated. So, don’t take this off, okay?"

Vicky nodded as the woman leaned across the table and fixed the ID card to her chest using a special fastener.

"Okay, now the other thing is we have to be able to find you when we need you. Now, we’ve set up several areas around the perimeter to keep the crowds manageable and make it easier to feed everyone. I’m putting you in area 5 because your husband is there."

"Dan is here?" Vicky asked excitedly.

"Yeah, he came through about an hour ago," the woman replied, adding: "He’s got the same problem you do. Look for a five year old girl—Here’s a picture of what he looks like now."

Vicky looked at the picture the woman handed her and tried to imagine her strong, handsome man as the little girl in the photo, but it was simply too far of a stretch. Despite her own condition she couldn’t imagine Dan as anything but her tall, virile husband.

"Take him to area five," she heard the woman tell one of her assistants, Vicky turned to see a teenage girl with a solid pink ID card offer her hand

"C’mon honey, let’s go. We’ll send the rest of your family along as soon as they come through."

Area 5 was close to the ocean, maybe three hundred meters outside the ring cargo shuttles, on a small, grassy hill. There were a few dozen people sitting on the ground or wandering about aimlessly. The girl, whose name was Cheryl, told Vicky not to leave the area for any reason. Food and water would be available soon, she promised. Vicky nodded and scanned the vicinity for Dan but she didn’t see him so she wandered over to a tree and sat down, leaning against it as she gazed out on the ocean.

She stared idly up at the deep blue sky and noticed it seemed to be a slightly different hue than Earth’s, then she turned and squinted at their new sun and noticed that it seemed about the same as good old sol. She turned again to look at the ocean when she noticed a little girl sitting by herself behind a bush, staring out to sea. Vicky instantly recognized the girl from the picture the woman at the table had given her. It was Dan. She stared at the girl sitting by herself with her knees tucked up against her chest and the long strawberry blonde hair falling to her shoulderblades and couldn’t believe it was really Dan, but she decided the woman would not have lied to her so she got up and walked over to the small figure.

"Dan, is that you?" Vicky asked shyly when she was a few feet behind the girl.

The small child turned and looked up at her with a puzzled expression. "Yes. Who are you?"

"Oh Dan! It’s me—Vicky," she replied, choking back a sob. "What has happened to us?"

Her diminutive, feminine husband turned and stood up, and Vicky saw that she was a good three inches taller than her spouse. "I don’t know," Dan replied in a small girlish voice. He paused for a moment and stared up at his wife, noticing that she was a boy now, and taller than he. "Well, this is certainly ironic," he remarked, and the words seemed incongruous coming from someone that young and with such a tiny voice. "It looks like we both got a sex change out of this mess."

Vicky actually blushed. "Yeah, I guess so, at least until we get straightened around. I’m not sure it means much at our ages anyway," she replied.

"Probably not," Dan admitted. "Have you seen my mom and dad or Dennis or Linda?"

Vicky shook her head. "Nobody but you," she told him. She noticed that his ID card was like hers only the blue was on the top and the pink on the bottom. She read the name on the bottom. Her husband was in the body of Amy Winkler, a five year old girl.

"So, what do we do now?" Vicky asked, feeling suddenly awkward looking down at her husband.

Dan shrugged. "We wait, I guess, until the experts get a chance to return to the ship and examine the programs. Hopefully they’ll be able to figure out what happened quickly and fix the problem.

"Yeah. The sooner the better," she agreed. "I don’t particularly care for being a child again. Once was enough."

"That’s for sure," Dan agreed. "I can’t believe how short I am. Everyone seems so huge! Hell, even you are taller than me now. But that’s not the only thing. Ever since I woke up like this people have been treating me like a kid, even the ones who know I’m an adult. It’s humiliating."

Vicky nodded. "Same here," she agreed. "I think it’s just the way we’re conditioned to think. People react to each other according to the image we present. It’s only natural."

"Maybe so, but I’m getting tired of it. I can’t wait to get back to normal."

"Me too," Vicky told him. "I had a vision of us spending the first night on New America making love."

Now it was Dan’s turn to blush. "Yeah, well it looks like that isn’t going to happen," he replied morosely.

 

CHAPTER FOUR

Nothing was going right and everything was taking too long, Larry thought sourly. Only half of the colonists had been ID’d and moved to one of the holding areas, and the food and water was just now starting to be delivered. It had been a devil of a time finding enough people able to function after the chaotic mess that greeted their arrival on New America. He was starting to get a few reports from the people handling the IDs and it looked like over 98% of the colonists had been inserted in the wrong bodies. Of those, almost two-thirds had wound up in bodies of the opposite sex, and many had gone through a major age regression or progression. He had dozens of adults in children’s bodies, and a similar number of kids walking around in adult forms. None of those were good for much work, and the ones that had undergone a sex change weren’t much better. A few of the latter could function, but most were still in shock.

It seemed that the greater the change, either in age or sex, the less useful someone was. So Larry was forced to rely mostly on the colonists who had come through the switch relatively intact—the same sex and close in age to their previous selves. But there were damned few of them, he mused. Perhaps 10 or 15 percent fell into that category, and he had every one of them working. It was a good question whether they would be able to erect the temporary shelters and sanitary facilities before nightfall.

Now he had another pressing problem to deal with. They had to organize an expedition back to the mother ship and figure out what the hell went wrong with the damned programs. There were three copies of the routing program, and with the self-diagnostic capabilities of the computer system the PCs should not have been scrambled. They needed to get up there ASAP, but they couldn’t find Jeff Ellis, and Larry was afraid he was one of the ones wandering around in shock, unable to respond to his name. He’d had people go to each of the ten holding areas and comb them for the missing doctor, but so far they had no luck at all.

He sighed and turned to the group of people standing around him. In addition to Norm, Sarah and Dan he now had 3 other assemblymen: Matt Jarvis, Glenn Peters, and Tony Lewis. He was still looking for the others, but for now this group would have to function as the Colonial Government.

"Okay, are we agreed?" He asked, and received a few nods in response.

"I don’t know what good any of us can do, but we have to at least try to figure this out," Glenn remarked.

"At least we can take a look at the ship’s data and try to figure out what happened," Sarah pointed out.

"We might be able to do something if it’s a hardware problem," Matt added, "though that isn’t very likely."

"Well just do what you can Matt. We’ll try to keep things moving down here, and if I find Jeff I’ll get on the horn. Maybe he’ll be able to tell you what to look for from down here."

Matt nodded, then he and Glenn turned and headed towards the designated shuttle to lift off.

The line broke up as soon as the colonists saw the small truck carrying hundreds of water rations. The people checking the IDs looked up in confusion as a collective shout went up and saw everyone in their vicinity rush towards the truck. It took them about three seconds to join the exodus. By that time the guys manning the truck were already tossing out plastic bottles of water as fast as they could pull them from the cases.

Dennis McNeil hovered at the edge of the crowd, hoping there was enough for everyone. He wasn’t strong enough to push into the mass of humanity that thronged around the back of the truck, and he wasn’t tall enough to catch one of the bottles that were tossed out by the crew. He was about to give up hope when a large beefy guy next to him snared a bottle in mid air and turned and offered it to him.

"Here ya go, little lady. Now you get out of this mob before you get yourself hurt," he said gallantly.

Dennis blushed and nodded his thanks. He had been upset all day at having wound up in a girl’s body, but now wasn’t the time to assert his masculinity. He decided to take advantage of the man’s chivalrous gesture and he bit his tongue and turned away from the surging mass of people, carrying his treasure to a grassy area. As hungry as he was, he was even thirstier, and he didn’t wait until he reached the grassy spot to open his drink.

It was only water, but it tasted like ambrosia to Dennis as he forced himself to drink slowly. He watched the others in his area as he sipped the water, wondering if any of his family was in the group. They were slowly dispersing, scattering in all directions with their rations, and Dennis searched in vain for a familiar face. Not that a face meant anything anymore, he knew his family would want to know if he’s seen their old forms when they were reunited. He’d already run into the girl that owned his present form. She was still a girl, though somewhat older and not nearly as pretty as she once was. From their chance encounter Dennis had learned her name, Julie Martin, and that she was 15. He promised to take good care of her body until they were restored to their rightful forms. Julie was classified shortly after that and had gone to one of the holding areas.

Dennis noticed that the line at the table had not yet started to re-form, and decided that it might be a good idea to take advantage and get near the head of the line. He was tired of waiting around and anything had to be better than this. Maybe they would have some information on the rest of his family too. So he capped his water bottle, resolving to save the rest for later (there was no telling when they might make the rounds again) and began making his way towards the table. He tried to put the bottle in one of the pockets of his royal blue jumpsuit, but Julie had tailored her jumpsuit to her feminine form and the pockets were far too small to hold the bottle. It wasn’t the first time that day that he wished the jumpsuit was a little roomier. Julie’s figure was really nice, and Dennis hated the stares he had gotten all day.

Patricia McNeil had never known fear like this. She had been scared before but a close call with the family car or being caught out after dark in a bad section of town, even the fear of rape, had nothing on the terror she now felt. As she stood in line at the ID table she considered that anything short of death would be preferable to the ordeal she now faced. Ever since she awoke in the body of a young man she knew her world had come to an end.

Patty was basically a homebody, a housewife who had grown up in a large, loving family of older brothers and younger sisters. After three boys her father, and especially her mother had been delighted to have a baby girl, and her folks went all out for their beautiful girl child. Patty was dressed in the frilliest and most feminine outfits by her mother, who herself had come from a traditional family. She taught Patty how to cook and sew, and the apple of her father’s eye learned how to bake at an early age and helped her mother with all the domestic chores around the house, while her three brothers helped their father with "men’s work." Her brothers were all several years older than she and from the start they were very protective of her. When she was old enough to start school one of them always walked her to and from her elementary school before going on to their own junior high or high school, and Patty came to rely on her brothers like the sun rising.

She loved them all and returned the favors they did for her by baking treats for them or helping sew a button on their shirt. She rejoiced in their accomplishments and sympathized with them if something went badly. When she was old enough to start dating her brothers scrutinized the young men who took her out like a team of investigators from the FBI. More than one young man was invited not to return when he failed to pass muster, and one was actually threatened with physical harm when Patty was injured in an auto accident due to his careless driving. And no guy in town was crazy enough to risk the wrath of the O’Shea brothers by pulling anything with their sister. There were a lot easier ways to commit suicide.

During her high school years Pat was a cheerleader and well liked by the other students. She had a friendly smile that seemed to leap to her face when she met someone, and she had a way of listening that made people realize she was actually interested in what they had to say. She made people feel important and that was what made her so popular.

But Patty was not a leader. She preferred cheering to playing sports herself, and she was never the president of any of the clubs she joined, though she was occasionally appointed secretary. She was the exact opposite of Dan, who she met in her senior year. Dan was an ambitious young man who knew exactly what he wanted out of life, and a major part of that was Patty.

Dan courted her in an old-fashioned way, which seemed to please her parents and her brothers, and of course he was Irish so they were more favorably disposed towards him from the start. When her brothers realized that Dan was just as protective of their sister as they were they practically made the decision for her. They invited him to games, went fishing together, and generally hung out with each other, even though Dan was younger by several years. Patty was pleased that her family had taken to Dan as they had because she already decided to marry him.

After the birth of Dan Jr., Dan started his own engineering firm and he was a very good businessman. He managed to support Patty and Dan Jr.—and later the whole family—in relative comfort. They weren’t rich by any means but they never wanted for any necessities, and Patty was free to stay at home and raise her family like her mother had before her.

But now that was all gone, shattered by some terrible malfunction in the damned machines that were supposed to take care of them. Patty had never trusted the process of being frozen and stored like a piece of meat. It was unnatural, and she voiced her objections several times, but everyone around her—especially Jeff Ellis—had told her there was nothing to worry about. Well, they were wrong, and it was the end of her world. Her family was probably destroyed as a cohesive unit, and at the very least her marriage, the cornerstone of her life, was ruined. How could she and Dan possibly remain together now?

Aside from that Patty had no idea how to be a man. She had never wanted to be a guy and had never tried to compete with them. Men were strong and aggressive, and the thought of trying to function as a male was terrifying to her. She knew nothing about guy’s stuff, and her only training, aside from high school, was as a beautician. Her only practical experience was as a wife and mother. She was in complete despair as she stepped up to the table and gave her name and age.

Ten minutes later Patty stumbled away from the table and headed slowly towards area 5. She was in shock from what she had learned, and she had to sit down for a moment before she fell down. She sat on a fallen log and stared at her ID badge for a moment. It was pink over blue with her name on top and the name of Paul Easton, age 27 below. She was 16 years younger than when she entered the cursed capsule, but that was nothing compared to what had happened to her family. Her oldest son, her firstborn, was locked in the body of a five year old girl, and his wife was a small boy. Her second oldest, Dennis, was a teenage girl. Only Linda was the same sex she had been before the monstrous equipment failure, and she had lost 4 years.

But the worst of it was what had happened to her Dan. Her wonderful husband had been turned into a girl! Patty was completely forlorn. The guy at the table told her that the Colonial government, of which Dan was a part, was about to send an expedition back to the ship to study the problem and try to fix it, but Patty had no hope that they would be able to straighten this mess out. She had a sense of foreboding that they were all stuck, and her premonitions tended to become true.

She had been told Dan was not at area 5 because he was one of the ones working on the problem, so Patty wouldn’t have to face him for a while, and she glad of that. She had no idea what she would say or do when they met, and she was extremely embarrassed for both of them. She was sure Dan was desperate to get out of the girl’s body in which he was trapped, so if he did show up she wouldn’t mention her premonition to him. Maybe, just maybe, she’d be wrong this time.

Larry watched the shuttle’s engines ignite and propel it upwards towards a rendezvous with the big ship. He had scraped together the best people he could find, but they still had not located Jeff or their best programmer, and they really needed them now. He was worried that Jeff might be among the two dozen or so missing. These were people who had become disoriented or simply driven mad when they discovered them selves in the wrong bodies. They had either wandered off or run away screaming, and Larry had a couple of guys out looking for them, without much luck so far.

In the meantime he had a dozen other problems to deal with. They had managed to get water, then food to the colonists, but they still hadn’t finished with sanitary facilities—several holding areas weren’t equipped with one yet. The temporary shelters weren’t ready either, and wouldn’t be before sundown. The colonists, with the exception of the children would spend their first night on New America under the stars. Fortunately that did not appear to be major problem, unless it rained. They had plenty of sleeping bags, and the temperature was holding in the low 80s. But they hadn’t been able to do half the tasks that were supposed to have been completed. The water in the river still hadn’t been tested, no scouting parties had been sent out, and only a handful of the security force was in any shape to guard the colony during the night.

Much of the problem lay with Dan’s crew, but Larry couldn’t blame Dan. Like their crew chief, over half of Dan’s men had wound up in female bodies, ranging in age from small girls to middle-aged women, and another portion of them were now young boys. They simply weren’t able to handle their jobs physically, and there weren’t enough able-bodied colonists to replace all the guys who were "indisposed."

He couldn’t fault Dan for trying either, Larry realized. The guy had worked as hard as his new body would allow. He’d set up the ID tables and recruited most of the people from his old crew. Dan had also helped with the food and with organizing the search for the missing colonists, even though he was in no shape to pursue them himself. In fact Dan had been like his right hand, but he had tired quickly. When Larry caught him throwing up behind a tree Dan had tried to make a joke about eating 17 year old rations, but Larry had been concerned and ordered him to lie down and rest for a while. A few minutes later he returned to find him asleep, and Larry intended to send him back to his family to rest some more when he awoke.

In the meantime they had managed to identify about 85% of the colonists, and would have them all done by nightfall—except for those who had wandered off. If the shuttle crew could manage to load six or eight cryo-modules and one of the computers they might even start to un-screw this mess tomorrow, assuming they could figure out what happened to the program—and fix it of course. That was a big question without Jeff, but even without him Larry figured they would eventually get everyone straightened around. He was sure the design for the routing program had been included in the massive library that had been packaged with the colony’s essential equipment. The library was said to contain just about the entire accumulated knowledge of the human race, so even without Jeff, one of the bright young programmers they had would be able to figure it out and eventually reconstruct it. Of course that would take time—days or maybe even weeks—but that was better than being stuck like this forever.

Karen made her way to area 5. She was exhausted and terribly worried about Jeff. Nobody had any idea what had happened to him and now they were speculating that he might be one of the ones who had run off after finding himself in the wrong body. At first Karen thought there was no way Jeff would have done that. He was too levelheaded and too cool in a crisis to go nuts and just take off. But as the hours passed and he didn’t turn up at any of the processing stations she began to wonder if they were right. The strain of waking up in a foreign body could affect anyone, she told herself. But now she was worried that if, indeed, Jeff was one of the "runners" he might be injured or even killed out there by himself.

For most of the day she been too busy to let her personal problems interfere with her work. She had helped Jack and the other doctors with an incredible number of sprains, broken bones, cuts and contusions. Fortunately they hadn’t had to deal with any life-threatening situations, but the horrendous problem with the PCs had contributed to a greater than expected number of casualties. A lot of the guys were trying to handle jobs for which they had never been trained, and on top of that they were trying to do those jobs in unfamiliar bodies. Their coordination was slightly different from their former bodies, or they were weaker or stronger, or they were just plain tired from being over-worked—It all contributed to the rash of medical problems.

Now that things were quieting down for the evening Karen was told to go find her family and report back the next morning. She was glad to be getting away from the splints and bandages, but now that she had time to think about her family her personal problems leaped to the fore. Aside from Jeff she had heard about Keith and Kellie, and she was worried how they were taking their body swap, especially Keith. He was a lot like his father—macho, confident, aggressive, and he loved to tease Kellie. How would he take being a girl, and especially his sister?

 

CHAPTER FIVE

As Karen approached area 5 she spotted a young woman leaning against one of the tall, thick trees in the valley. The woman looked to be in her late teens or early twenties and she was obviously having some difficulty. Karen sighed and detoured over to the girl.

"Hi. Are you having a problem?" She asked

The young woman looked up at and shook her head. "Just tired, and my stomach is a little queasy. I think it was those old rations we had earlier."

Karen was close enough now to see the woman’s ID tag, and noticed it was blue over pink, the unmistakable sign of a male stuck in a female body. She wasn’t quite close enough to make out the name in the failing light, but she could read the expression on his/her face. The new woman was clearly exhausted.

"Where are you heading?" Karen asked, wondering whom the attractive woman had been before she woke up in her present form.

"To see my family, over there," she gestured in the general direction Karen was headed.

"Area 5?" Karen asked, and the woman nodded.

"I’m going that way myself. Why don’t we walk together, as soon as you feel up to it?" She suggested.

The woman, barely more than a girl Karen thought, looked up at her and smiled wanly. "Thanks. I could use the help. Today has been a real nightmare."

Karen nodded and sat down a few feet away. "I know," she replied, "but don’t worry. They already sent a shuttle back to the mother ship to get the program and hardware fixed so they can clear up this mess."

The woman snorted. "I know," she disclosed, "but don’t get your hopes up too much. Our cryogenics expert, Jeff Ellis, is missing. He’s the only one who really understands how the program works."

Karen’s head snapped around and she regarded the young woman carefully. "Do you know Jeff?"

Her companion nodded. "I guess you could say he’s my best friend now. We met back at the center, and—"

"Oh my God! Dan—Is that you?"

The woman looked confused for a moment, but nodded and regarded Karen with a renewed interest. "Yeah, who—"

"Oh lord! Dan, I’m Karen."

In his worst nightmares Jeff Ellis had never imagined anything like the ordeal he had experienced this day. He had awakened in the body of a two year old boy, barely older than a toddler, helpless in his cryo-unit. He was released from the unit by a passerby who was too distraught to help him beyond loosening his bonds, and he wandered out of his unit, as disoriented as the others until he was scooped up and carried down the stairs and out of the shuttle by a woman. She deposited him in an area of other people who were wandering around and promptly left him.

Jeff wandered around aimlessly, a midget in a world of giants, unnoticed by any of the others and just as stunned as the rest. After an hour or so he began to come to his senses and he realized that something had gone terribly wrong with the routing program, but when he tried to get someone’s attention the people he approached saw him as just another little kid, and Jeff found it very difficult to express himself coherently. His tiny body wasn’t even able to speak his own name properly, not to mention some of the other things he was trying to express. When he finally did get one guy’s attention he heard himself tell the guy his name was "Jeff Ehwiss," and that he was the "compooter pwogwammer" who fix the pwobwem."

The guy looked at him strangely then walked away.

After that Jeff decided to walk around by himself and try to find someone who appeared to be in charge, but it was rough going with his tiny little legs. He wandered around for more than hour without seeing anyone who appeared to have much control of themselves, much less anything else, and he was trying to decide what to do next when he heard a man’s voice calling from a few feet away.

"Bobby! Thank God I found you! I’ve been looking everywhere!"

Jeff turned to see a large, burly man with a wild look in his eyes. The man approached him and scooped him up before he could run away, or at least try to escape. As he felt himself being lifted by a pair of strong arms Jeff realized he wouldn’t have gotten more than a few feet anyway.

"Don’t be afraid, Bobby, mommy will take care of you now. I won’t let anything happen to you!"

Jeff realized that the man was actually the mother of the child whose body he now occupied, and he tried to explain to the displaced woman that he was not her child.

"I’m not your widdle boy, I’m Jeff Ehwiss," he told her, but the transformed mother had a wild look in her eyes and refused to listen to him.

"Now Bobby, you’re being naughty. Be a good boy while we go find daddy," the man scolded him as he carried Jeff off.

Jeff squirmed and kicked, trying to get away from the demented, transformed woman but she/he had twenty times his strength and all he succeeded in doing was getting her angry. The large male figure turned Jeff around, threw him over his shoulder, and spanked him several times on his little rump. Jeff screamed, and despite himself he began to cry.

"I’m sorry, Bobby. I didn’t want to do that, but you have to behave while we go find your daddy. Now, are you going to be a good boy?"

Jeff sensed it was useless to argue with his captor so he nodded, wiping tears from eyes and wondering why his backside seemed so sensitive. That seemed to satisfy the transformed woman, and she let him down and gripped his hand tightly as she led him off.

He felt completely frustrated she dragged him around the camp looking for her husband. It was a senseless waste of time when he knew he should have been working on the routing program. More than that, it was extremely tiring trying to keep up with the crazy person who was leading him around, and Jeff’s small body was soon exhausted. He yawned several times and suddenly couldn’t seem to keep his eyes open.

When his "mother" noticed him yawning she remarked that it was past his naptime and told him she couldn’t stop looking until they found his father, but she picked him up and carried him while she meandered through the chaos. Jeff found himself with his head on her shoulder and after a while he simply nodded off, lulled to sleep by his exhaustion and the rhythmic movements of the woman’s steps. When he awoke he wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep, without his watch it was impossible to tell, but they were all alone in a wooded area and Jeff couldn’t see the landing area or hear any sounds of other colonists. Evidently his "mother" had wandered off from the others and for the first time Jeff was really scared.

They continued to move through the trees, and Jeff noticed they were conifers, not unlike those found on earth except their needles were thicker and a much darker green. He had no idea whether they were headed towards the other colonists or away from them, and he doubted whether his captor knew either. Finally the transformed woman seemed to tire and she stopped and set him down in a small clearing. Jeff’s first inclination was to run as soon as she turned her back, but then he realized he had no idea where to run. There was also an added consideration. Despite the automated probes showing a benign planet, Jeff couldn’t be absolutely certain there weren’t predators in the woods. They would be very easy to miss, especially if they stuck to wooded areas or lived underground, and in his current form he would be no match for a determined raccoon, much less anything larger.

"Mommy has to rest for a while," the deluded woman remarked after she set him down. "Are you going to be a good boy?"

Jeff already knew what would happen if he incurred his "mommy’s" wrath, and having nowhere to go anyway he simply nodded.

"Good. Now you sit right here while mommy takes a little nap," she told him as she sat down on the mat of pine (?) needles that covered the ground. As she did Jeff noticed a pen and a small notebook protruding from one of her pockets, and he had a sudden thought.

"Dwaw, mommy," he managed, pointing at the pen and notebook.

The huge masculine figure appeared confused for a moment, then seemed to get the message. "Would you like to draw while mommy takes a nap?" She asked, and Jeff nodded, feeling a sense of excitement.

"Okay, but you must promise to sit here quietly and be a good boy."

Jeff nodded and smiled, and took the pen and notebook eagerly from her hand. He waited until she settled down and then opened the notebook and uncapped the pen and began to write. Unfortunately his fine motor skills were about at the level you would expect from a two year old boy, and his handwriting looked pathetic. After several attempts at cursive Jeff had to content himself with a crude, block lettered script. He wrote two brief notes explaining who he was and asking whoever he gave them to get him to the Colonial authorities or his wife, Karen Ellis. He stuffed one of the notes in each front pocket in his jeans and was about to re-cap the pen when he decided that his "mommy" might find the notes and take them away from him. So, as a backup plan he pulled up the leg of his jeans and wrote an identical note on his left leg. The note was completely concealed when he pulled up his socks and pulled down the leg of his jeans so Jeff figured he had an chance to communicate even if his notes were taken away.

"Do you know what has happened to Patty and the kids?" Karen asked Dan after he had told her what he knew about Jeff (nothing) and what he had been doing since they landed.

"Yeah," he replied softly. I haven’t seen them yet, but I‘ve been told Pat’s been inserted into the body of a 27 year old guy, Dan and Vicky are little kids, Dennis is now a 16 year old girl, and Linda got the body of a twelve year old girl. My whole family has been screwed up," he added bitterly. "I wish I knew what the hell went wrong!"

"We all do," Karen reminded him. "I’m worried sick about Jeff."

"Yeah, me too," Dan admitted. "Jeff may be our only chance . . . What about the twins?" He asked, rousing himself from the precipice of despair.

"Would you believe they switched with each other?" Karen asked with a scowl.

"You’re joking!" Dan exclaimed. "The odds of that happening are infinitesimal."

"Yeah, but it happened," Karen replied. "Of course I haven’t seen them either, but I have a feeling it’s gonna be awful rough on Keith. He is, or was, very concerned with his masculinity. I know that is normal for teenage boys, but with Keith it’s become an obsession. He’s always lifting weights, trying to develop a real he-man physique. This is going to really hurt him if we can’t get this mess straightened out."

"Yeah, well I’m not real thrilled about being stuck like this either," Dan pointed out.

"How DO you feel?" Karen asked.

"Physically or psychologically?" Dan asked in reply.

"Well, both, I guess."

Dan sighed. Well, physically, I feel weak as hell. This body isn’t made for my line of work. I wasn’t any use in erecting the temporary shelters, and I can’t see myself going out with my exploration team either—and can you imagine me trying to function as Security Chief looking like this? I’d be a complete joke in that job now. Hell, I can’t even seem to hold my food down. I’ve felt sick to my stomach ever since I ate that freeze-dried shit they call food."

"Maybe we should get you back to the med station and see if something is wrong with that body," Karen suggested, but Dan shook his head, and had to brush his long blonde hair out of his face.

"Naw, I think it’s just nerves and exhaustion," he replied.

"Maybe," Karen said with a doubtful expression, "but if you don’t feel any better tomorrow you’d better stop over and see one of the docs," she advised.

"Okay," Dan agreed.

"What about the psychological part?" Karen asked, and Dan frowned.

"It’s sort of hard to explain," he replied. "I feel . . . vulnerable, I guess. It’s difficult to describe, but I’ve always been able to take care of myself. I know I’m not the strongest guy around, or the biggest, and I’m not as young as I used to be . . . but I can handle myself okay. That was one of the reasons they asked my to run the security detail.

"But now . . . I’ll be honest with you, I’m terrified to be out here by myself. A lot of our people have come unglued, and I’m not even a match for most of the women, much less the guys. It’s scary, and I’m reminded how defenseless I am every time I take a step. These," he cupped his large breasts, "are constantly bouncing and jiggling, and my hips move like they have a mind of their own. But the worst part is knowing I could be a rape victim.

"I never really considered it from a woman’s point of view before, but now I realize that the possibility of sexual assault is always there, even during the day. The feeling has gotten stronger since the sun went down too. When you came up to me I was so scared I nearly peed my pants, and I was tempted to run away at first."

"Well that’s understandable, considering your situation," Karen said soothingly. "We girls do have to be alert for certain people, but it’s not as bad as you imagine it. I’ve lived with the possibility my whole life and you get used it. You develop a sense of what is safe and what isn’t. Just don’t let your fears get the best of you. Be careful, but don’t get paranoid."

"I don’t want to get used to this," Dan told her. "I want out as soon as the guys can figure out how to fix the routing program. If they can," he added under his breath.

"Let’s walk back together, if you’re feeling up to it," Karen suggested, and Dan nodded and got to his feet.

Karen hadn’t realized how small Dan’s new body was until he stood up. She saw he was three or four inches shorter than herself, maybe 5’4" or 5’5" and certainly no more than 110 or 115 pounds. His new figure was silhouetted by the setting sun and it looked very nice, even though he was wearing a jumpsuit. She began to understand why he felt so vulnerable.

They walked several hundred meters until they came to a small rise. There were two portable shelters erected and a pile of sleeping bags near them. Off to one side a portable generator was humming quietly and Dan saw that there were lights in both shelters and inside both of the portable sanitary units. Several more lights were strung from crudely cut wooden poles, and quite a few people were milling about in the lighted area. Aside from that there was a table piled high with ration packets and bottles of water. Apparently the work crews had been able to provide the minimum necessities of life for the colonists in the holding areas, which made Dan feel a little better about the situation. At least they wouldn’t starve or die of thirst.

Karen took Dan’s arm to steer him towards the lighted area, but he hung back a little.

"What’s the matter?" She asked.

"I’m just . . . nervous, that’s all," he replied.

"Well, take it easy. They’re still your family," she reminded him gently.

"I know that, but I’m kind of embarrassed to been seen like this." Dan told her. "I wish I knew how they’re going to react."

"Hey, none of this is your fault. You didn’t plan this—Nobody did. We don’t know why this happened, but it’s only a temporary situation. Just treat it like any other technical problem and tell them everything is going to be okay," Karen advised, gripping Dan’s shoulder.

He turned and looked up at her. "Yeah, you’re right. It’s only temporary. We’ll get everything straightened around, probably tomorrow," he parroted with more confidence than he felt. But he knew Karen was right. He had to be upbeat and optimistic, for his family’s sake if nothing else. Patty would definitely need reassurance, he knew. He had to act like this was no big deal and wouldn’t affect anything in the long run. But a small nagging feeling in the back of his mind seemed to sense trouble on the horizon.

Dan and Karen walked into the lighted area and stayed together until Karen recognized her twins. She hugged Dan and muttered, "Good luck," as she turned to introduce her new self to her children, and Dan turned away to look for his family. He spotted his wife a minute later, standing with a teenage girl near the edge of the lighted area. He recognized them both from the photos he had gotten when he went through the ID process.

"Hi Patty," he said softly as he stood next to her and stared up into her changed features.

His wife turned to look at the girl who had approached unseen and looked at Dan questioningly.

"Hi," she responded cautiously in an unfamiliar masculine voice. Her tone, and the expression on her face made it clear she didn’t have the faintest idea who he was.

"Patty, it’s me Dan," her feminized husband informed her, nervously searching her face to gauge her reaction.

Patty had known what happened to Dan before she headed over to the holding area, but having him show up as a sexy, 20 year old blonde was still quite a shock.

"Oh my God!" She gasped. "T-Dan? Is that REALLY you?"

Dan looked away, completely mortified and unable to meet her gaze. "Yeah, it’s me," he admitted, shamed by his appearance and Patty’s blatant examination of his new form.

"Oh Dan! This is terrible! What are we going to do?"

"It’s just a temporary problem. They’ll have everything straightened out soon," he told his wife, repeating what Karen had told him to say.

"I hope so! They’ve GOT to get us back in the right bodies, and soon!" She said in a fervent tone.

"I’m sure they will. Everything will all right, you’ll see," Dan told her.

"Yes. I know it will," Patty agreed after a moment, but the conviction she tried to put into her new masculine voice seemed strained. "Uh, this is Dennis," she said, changing the subject and introducing Dan to his son. "Dan Jr. and Vicky are in the temporary shelters, with the rest of the small children. They—"

"I know what happened to them, Pat," Dan told her. "They told me about the whole family before I started over here."

"Hi dad," Dennis said softly as his feminized father turned to look at him. Dennis thought he had gotten a bad deal until he saw his father. His dad was stuck in the body of a short, cute chick that was about Dennis’ own age, at least the age he used to be, and Dennis couldn’t get over the boobs his father had now. He’d have gotten hard just looking at him—if he had anything to get hard. As it was they were in the same boat.

"Hello son," Dan replied, ignoring the ironic look on Patty’s face. "How are you holding up?"

Dennis looked uncomfortable as he shrugged. "Okay, I guess. I’ve had better days, but it’s been an ‘interesting’ experience."

"Yeah, tell me about it," his father replied.

"Are they going to be able to put us back in the right bodies?" Dennis asked anxiously, and Dan nodded and did his best to look confident.

"I’m sure they will," he said soothingly. "Larry has already sent a couple of guys up to do some preliminary work and they’re going to bring about a dozen cryo-units back so they can get them ready to re-transfer our PCs into the right bodies," Dan added.

"What happened? Why did we wind up like this?" Dennis asked.

Dan shook his head and shrugged. "I really don’t know," he admitted. "Obviously it was something major to cause all this, but we won’t know until the guys get back from the big ship. The important thing is to get the program discs and bring them down here so they can be analyzed and—"

"What if they can’t fix those programs, Dan?" Patty interrupted.

Dan looked his wife. It was so hard for him to get used to the idea that the tall guy towering over him was really Patty. "Well, in that case it might take a little longer," he admitted. "Jeff Ellis and his people will have to reconstruct the programs using data from the library banks."

Patty McNeil stared at her husband for a while. "Dan, you know Jeff hasn’t been heard from since we landed," she pointed out.

Dan sighed. "Yeah, but I have every hope that he’ll show up. Besides, I’m sure a couple of the other cryogenics specialists can handle the job with the information from the library computer."

Patty had been married to Dan for a long time, over twenty-two years, and she knew him like a book. Even in his girlish body she could tell he wasn’t telling them the full truth, and she sensed something else she had never seen in her husband—Fear. Dan was afraid, and it was more than just a feeling of apprehension. He was truly frightened, and for the first time since their marriage Patty saw him as less than adequate. He looked like someone who was in way over their head and not up to the job, and though she wasn’t really aware of it she didn’t feel the same respect for him that she once had.

 

CHAPTER SIX

A shaft of sunlight filtered through the trees and splashed over Jeff’s face. His childish features shifted slightly and he frowned in his sleep. A moment later he opened his eyes and looked up in wonder at the green canopy overhead. He felt a little dizzy and disoriented but he sat up and scanned the immediate area, and spotted the large man that had taken him away from the others. He was sound asleep and snoring lightly, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. Even lying down the man appeared huge to Jeff, and the rejuvenated physician got to his feet quietly and moved away from the sleeping giant to avoid waking him.

Jeff was hungry and terribly thirsty, and his small tummy was actually hurting for food. Between his hunger and his situation he felt like crying, but he was afraid of making the slightest noise that might wake up the crazy man who had carried him off. Once again he briefly considered running away, but as much as he wanted to get back to the others he was scared of being alone in the forest. But he had to get back. The people were in trouble and they needed him to . . . do what?

It took Jeff a moment to remember it was something about the computers. Oh yeah, the programs, he reminded himself. They needed him to fix the programs. He tried to remember what he knew about the programs but it all seemed so complicated. He wasn’t sure he could do it, but he would do his best. But all he wanted to do right now was get back to his family. He really missed Keith and Kellie, and his mom.

A puzzled expression crossed his face. His mom? Where had that thought come from? He’d been thinking about Karen and the term "mom" had just popped into his mind. But she was his WIFE, not his mother! They’d been married for . . . a long time, though for some reason he couldn’t seem to remember how long.

Jeff was confused. He seemed to be having memory problems and that bothered him a lot. Suddenly he was distracted by a rustling sound in the bushes and he dropped to his hands and knees and peered around a tree to find the source of the noise. A small, curious animal that looked like a squirrel with huge back feet and big round ears was standing in a small clearing nibbling on what looked like a pine cone. The animal was the most curious creature Jeff had ever seen, and it looked very comical. Its big round ears were constantly moving as it snacked on the pine cone, and the way it held the cone in its small front paws was perfectly ridiculous. Jeff couldn’t help giggling, and when the animal heard him it was off like a shot, bounding into the forest and out of sight.

Jeff turned back and leaned against the tree again. What had he been thinking about? Oh yeah, something about his memory, but he couldn’t recall why he’d been worried about that. He shoved his hands in his pockets and felt the pieces of paper he’d stuffed in them the previous day. Pulling one of the papers out he unfolded it and examined his writing, only he found he couldn’t read it. The letters on the paper looked familiar but he couldn’t seem to remember what each one meant or the sounds they made. It looked really complicated, like something a grownup would write. Jeff decided he’d show it to one of the grownups when they found the other people.

Dan stretched and rolled over in his sleeping bag and found himself facing Patty. She was still asleep and Dan noticed that she needed a shave. That would be a new experience for her, he realized as he sat up and yawned. When he raised his arms over his head he felt his new breasts rise up and press together. Patty wasn’t the only one who had to deal with new experiences, he realized. He threw off the top of the bag and lifted his knees together and easily slipped out and rose to his feet. It took a moment for Dan to recognize that his new body was incredibly flexible and lacking all the minor aches and pains that had crept up on him over the years.

At least there was something positive about the situation, he considered. It finally dawned on him that this body was 25 years younger than his old one. If it was male it would be perfect, he thought, but then dismissed the idea as absurd and headed over to the sanitary facilities. The sanitary facilities, or SFs, were constructed of a high tech material stretched over a carbon pole frame, but they were quite sophisticated nonetheless. They were divided into a men’s and women’s sections and they contained toilets, sinks, showers, clothes processors, and single serving packages of soap, shampoo, conditioner, and other health and beauty aids.

Dan managed to remember to use the women’s side of the SF and found several other women already inside. One of the women was undressing and Dan tried not to gape at her as she stripped off her clothes and picked them up and fed them into the clothes processor. The processor took the clothes in through a slot and it whirred and made the usual noises as it cleaned and folded the items and returned them to the woman less than 90 seconds later, neatly stacked and folded on a small tray located on the side.

Dan found an unoccupied stall and took care of business first. When he unzipped his tight royal blue jumpsuit he was confronted by his new, bountiful breasts encased in a lace trimmed bra and the sight was truly amazing. Viewed from above they bulged outwards from his chest like two small melons, and they were definitely much larger than a normal woman’s and certainly larger than Patty’s. Dan couldn’t resist the temptation to touch them, and he cupped them and pushed against his bra, testing their heft. His smaller hands disappeared beneath their bulk, but Dan knew that his boobs were more than a handful for even his old larger hands.

He forced himself to return to the business at hand, and he pulled the zipper lower until he could shrug his arms out of the jumpsuit and lower it past his midsection. When he pushed it down he saw how his new waist tapered inward to a remarkable degree before swelling outwards to his new girlish hips. They weren’t the hips of a mature woman, more like those of a teenager, but the gentle contours left no doubt that they were feminine. He stared at the white, lace trimmed panties that barely covered his groin and noticed they seemed to match the bra he wore, but his attention wasn’t focused on the panties but what lay underneath. Dan peered downwards and took in the sight of his new, gently curved pubis and the small mound beneath the white material until he was distracted by the sounds coming from outside the stall. The transformed man again forced himself to finish what he had come to do. He sat down and looked straight ahead while his body performed its natural function. It felt strange but the sense of relief was the same.

When he exited the stall he saw another woman feeding her clothes into the processor. After she finished she walked over to the sinks, completely at ease despite being totally naked. As she began to wash up and apply her makeup Dan decided that he might as well run his clothes through the processor too. They were getting grungy after spending all of yesterday in them, not to mention the past 17 years, Dan thought ruefully.

Dan decided he needed the whole works and waited a few minutes to see if the room would clear out for a little while but there was a steady trickle of women in and out as the colony awoke to its first full day on New America. After about ten minutes Dan gave up. Nobody was paying the slightest attention to the naked and semi-naked females as they moved around, and he decided that despite his shyness he wouldn’t be treated any differently. He walked over to the clothes processor, unzipped his jumpsuit and untied the laces of his cross trainers. Setting the shoes in a corner, he stepped out of the jumpsuit, removed his bra, panties and socks, and fed everything into the machine. He resisted the temptation to throw one arm across his breasts and use the other to cover his small blonde bush, and simply waited until his clothes emerged onto the shelf at the side of the machine. He took the neatly folded clothes and stacked them on a shelf before turning towards the communal showers.

There were two other women in the showers when Dan entered and hung his towel on a hook. They were chatting about the events of the previous day, and it was obvious from their conversation that they had both been female before the change, and Dan suspected that most of the women he’d seen in the SF were originally female. Most of the ones like him were probably holding off coming here, too shy to enter the women’s section. But he had work to do and did not have the luxury of waiting half the day. He got right to work and showered without engaging in any small talk, trying not to examine himself too closely or otherwise look like a tourist in his new body. He managed to finish without attracting any attention but it took all the willpower he had not to stare at himself and explore his new form.

Dan walked back to where he and Patty and Dennis had laid out their sleeping bags, and saw that there was a line forming at the rations table. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail of sorts since he didn’t have the faintest idea about caring for it or styling it, and he wore no makeup or perfume. He really didn’t want to get into all of that, and hoped that he’d be able to use the men’s side of the SF tomorrow.

Neither Patty nor Dennis was around when he reached their little encampment and he decided that they must have walked over to the SF or gotten in line for rations. Dan considered his next move and decided he needed to get something in his stomach. He’d tossed up most of what he’d eaten the previous day and he needed nourishment if he was going to put in a full day’s work. But he really didn’t feel like eating. His stomach was bothering him again and he was afraid he might lose it again if he ate, so he wandered over to the children’s’ shelter instead, hoping to get a chance to see Dan Jr. and Vicky before he left for work.

The children’s’ shelters were complete bedlam, with a group of volunteers helping the younger ones to dress and eat. Dan got directions from one of the volunteers and found Dan Jr. and his wife sitting at a table. He looked them over before approaching and shook his head sadly. He couldn’t believe that the cute little girl in the bib overalls was really his oldest son, a recent college graduate and married man. Neither did the little boy sitting next to the girl bear any resemblance to the beautiful girl his son had married. She was wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and sneakers, and was swinging her short legs back and forth as she sat next to his transformed son on the long bench. Someone had done something with Dan’s hair, he realized as he noticed it was tied in pigtails. Dan approached the couple and they looked up at him as he sat down across from them.

"Hi Dan, Vicky," he said as he slid onto the bench seat. "Dan, I’m your father," he added before either of them could ask.

His son looked at him for a moment and a wide grin came to his face, then he glanced at Vicky who turned towards him at the same time with a similar smile on her face. Then, without warning, the pair burst out in laughter and juvenile giggles.

"You’re really pretty, dad. Do you like being a girl?" His son asked in a way that was very disturbing.

"Well, I’m hoping we can get everyone back where they belong soon. Your mother is naturally upset by this mix-up, and so am I," he replied.

"Mom’s a boy," his son said unnecessarily, and added: "So’s Vicky."

Dan glanced over at Vicky, who grinned at him. "I can stand up to pee now, but she can’t anymore," his son’s wife announced in a very childish way, pointing at her husband. "And I’m bigger too," she added in a boastful tone.

"Vickeee! The lady said you’re not s’posed to tease me!" Dan Jr. scolded his wife, sounding exactly like the five year old girl he appeared to be.

Dan noticed the pouting expression that came to his son’s face. He was shocked by the pair’s juvenile attitudes, speech patterns and they way they were acting. He hadn’t been prepared for any mental changes at all, but both his son and his wife had regressed to the approximate biological age of their new bodies, and Dan was badly shaken by the discovery.

He sat and talked with them for a few more minutes, then told them he had to go to work, but that he would come back to see them later that day.

"But you’re our mommy now. Mommies don’t go to work, daddies go to work," his son insisted.

"I’m still your daddy," Dan replied. "I’m sure your mom will be by to see you soon. Be good for the ladies," he told them as he stood up and walked away.

Larry Taylor held his head in his hands with his elbows resting on the table that was serving as his temporary headquarters. He hadn’t slept since awaking in his cryo-unit the previous day, and it showed. His face was covered with stubble, his eyes were red with dark rings and his hair was uncombed. A laptop computer sat on the table—he was on his third set of batteries—and contained a list of major problems, the steps he had taken to deal with them, progress reports and estimated times of completion. As each problem was solved he checked it off, but so far the problems were multiplying faster than he could deal with them.

He sighed and straightened up to address the next crisis on the list. As usual it involved a lack of manpower—almost everything did—and he was about to throw the computer as far as he could hurl it when the communicator announced that the shuttle would be returning from the mother ship in about a half hour—Finally.

Larry leaned back and watched as one of the makeshift construction crews he had pieced together started erecting another temporary shelter a hundred meters away. They were getting better at it, he noted, and his people were now telling him that they would have shelters for everybody by nightfall. One less thing to worry about.

The supply system had begun to run more efficiently too, which was a relief. Food and water deliveries were being made to all the holding areas on a regular schedule, and even the SFs were being replenished more or less on time. Food, water, shelter—so far so good—but clothing was becoming a problem and they had to get beyond mere subsistence to the construction of the permanent facilities and commencement of the long-term tasks. None of this would amount to anything if they didn’t get crops in the ground or if the vehicles broke down and there were no mechanics to repair them. Then there was the medical situation. He had to get on with the building of the clinic and surgery.

But underneath the fragile organization Larry had cobbled together was complete chaos. Twenty four hours after waking up in strange bodies most of the colonists were still in shock or completely incapable of performing their assigned tasks. Nothing would go right until they managed to get everybody back where they belonged, and Jeff Ellis was still missing. Not only that but they had discovered that the huge comprehensive library that had been brought from earth contained very little on the cryogenic process. It was if the powers on earth wanted to insure that the colonists would have no way to get back to the mother planet, and when Jeff thought about it he realized that was exactly what had happened. That made finding Jeff imperative. Larry had already spoken with Hal Lomas, his chief programmer, and learned that the cryogenics program was a really different animal—complicated as hell—and Hal had no idea how to go about constructing one. Oh, he could do it with a blueprint and lots of tech support, but they had none of that. All they had was Jeff Ellis, and nobody knew where he was.

Karen dressed the wound carefully, using a generous amount of antibiotic cream before spraying on the flexible bandage. It was only a minor wound, a two inch diagonal cut on the guy’s left arm, and it wasn’t very deep, but this was a new world and the doctors had no idea what type of nasty bacteria might be lurking about. It would be weeks before they could do a complete analysis of the germs and bugs on New America, and until then they were treating all injuries aggressively.

At least they finally had two (count them—two!) temporary shelters to work from. One of the shelters was serving as a dispensary and supply room, and the other had been divided into six treatment rooms and a changing area. They also had a SF that had been converted to a scrub room. It wasn’t the Mayo Clinic, but it was a heck of a lot better than an open-air field hospital.

Karen finished up and sent the guy on his way. She had other patients waiting and one of them had a nasty head contusion. She cleaned up the treatment area and went out to their open-air waiting room (they needed at least two more temporary shelters to function properly) and saw two armed men approaching with a small boy who was barely more than a toddler between them. The child appeared to be two or three years old, and she wondered what the problem was—none of them appeared to be injured—and waved her next patient in.

Fortunately the wound looked worse than it was. The man was part of a construction crew and had slipped while carrying part of a shelter, and had fallen against a sharp rock. Karen dressed the wound and gave the man a small packet of painkillers for his throbbing headache. As her patient was leaving the two men entered the shelter with the child and stood near the door. When Karen looked over at them the boy was staring at her. Before she could say anything the child spoke in a tiny voice.

"Mommy?" He asked.

Karen was confused. She had never seen the kid before, then the thought occurred to her that the boy was probably the child of the woman whose body she now occupied. But before she could respond one of the armed men addressed her.

"Mrs. Ellis?" He asked.

"Yes."

"Hank and I," he gestured to his partner, "are one the search teams that are trying to find the people that ran off yesterday. We found this boy with an F/M transie out in the hills, and we thought we should bring him here."

"Is there anything wrong with him?" Karen asked, approaching the child and kneeling to bring herself down to his level.

"Well, no, but we found this in his pocket and when we took him to Larry he told us to bring him here."

Karen stood up and took the scrap of paper. It was a piece of a notebook page with a child’s crude block printing scrawled on it. When she read the message she almost fainted. It read: "Help! I am Jeff Ellis. This man has kidnapped me. Take me to Larry Taylor or Mrs. Karen Ellis.

"Oh my God!" Karen breathed, steadying herself against an examination table as she reeled in shock. She stared at the note again, then at the small boy.

"What’s your name?" She asked, stooping down again.

"Jeffey," he replied. "Are you my mommy?"

Karen was too stunned to reply, and she simply stared at the toddler. After a few moments she looked up the two men.

"Is this really Jeff?" She asked.

"We think so. Look on his left leg, just above his socks," the same one told her.

Karen turned towards the child. "Jeffey, can I look at your leg?" She asked in a soft, unthreatening tone. The child smiled shyly and nodded so Karen carefully rolled up his left pant leg and saw the same message, scrawled in the same juvenile hand, written on his leg. She looked at the two guys but they just stood there impassively.

"Jeff, is that really you?" Karen asked softly.

Jeff nodded and grinned at her bashfully.

"Oh lord! Jeff, honey, do your remember Keith and Kellie?"

Jeff nodded, still smiling, then he pointed at Karen and said, "Mommy."

Karen shook her head and stooped down in front of her childlike husband. "No honey, I’m not you mother. I’m your wife"

Jeff looked confused at that, and shook his head. "Mommy," he repeated, pointing at Karen.

Karen looked over at the two men who had brought him in as if pleading with them. "Was he like that when you found him?" She asked.

"Yes ma’am," they replied in unison. Then one of them stepped forward. "We’ve seen several cases like this since yesterday. The ones that wound up in kids’ bodies seem to have undergone some sort of mind regression," he explained.

Jeff’s mind had indeed regressed, and it had happened very quickly. It had begun during the night, but seemed to accelerate after he awoke. A few minutes after his encounter with the strange little animal in the forest he could not recall the birth of his children. Ten minutes later he was unaware he had ever been married and had lost all the hard-won knowledge from his years in medical school. At that point his reasoning powers were at a high school level—but his mind continued to recede.

Soon Jeff’s knowledge and memories had reverted to pre-teen levels and his attention span diminished to that of a ten year old. He was easily distracted and abstract thought was beyond him. He rapidly reached the point where reading, writing, and even simple arithmetic were impossible. His thought and speech patterns became more basic as his brain re-wired itself, and he lost the ability to speak in complete sentences.

By the time the search team found Jeff and his captor his vocabulary was reduced to a few simple words and phrases, and those memories that had not drifted away had been modified to fit the personality of a two year old boy. He now saw Karen as his "mommy," and Keith and Kellie as his older siblings. He was a bright, precocious child but he needed his mother—just like any other two year old.

Karen took Jeff’s little hand and led him over to a chair and sat him down, telling him to be a good boy and wait for "mommy." Jeff smiled happily at her and swung his legs back and forth as he looked around the room in wide-eyed curiosity.

"Mrs. Ellis, Larry told me to tell you to get him in to see Dr. Goethe as soon as possible. Dr. Goethe is to make Jeff his top priority and report back to Larry as soon as he knows whether anything can be done," the security officer told Karen.

Karen nodded. "I’ll take him over in a few minutes. Allen went to get something to eat but he should be back soon," she replied.

As the men turned to leave they stood aside courteously to allow a young woman to enter the treatment area, and she hesitated a moment before giving them a wan smile and stepping through the entrance. The mens’ eyes followed the pretty blonde as she passed them, then they exchanged appreciative glances and left. Karen looked up from Jeff as the blonde came through door and a look of concern crossed her face.

"Dan, is something wrong? You don’t look so good," she added, noticing the pallor of his skin.

"It’s the same thing as yesterday," Dan told her, glancing down at the small child in the chair. "I tried to eat something for lunch, and I’ve spent the last ten minutes in a SF, giving my lunch to the recycler."

"I’d better check you over," Karen told him, guiding him to a chair next to the toddler. "And I think you should know . . . This is Jeff," she added.

"What!" Dan exclaimed, his head turning quickly to take in the boy in the next chair. Tell me you’re joking," he practically pleaded, but one look at Karen told him she was telling the truth.

"I wish I was," she said, her voice quavering. "They just brought him in."

Dan looked at the small child in horror. Al Goethe had just examined his son and Vicky, and told him that he knew of no way to restore their former personalities. Maybe in a few months he might learn enough to do something—there was always the possibility that some memories were still deep in their subconscious minds—but he hadn’t really held out any hope. "Their brains are too immature to retain very much," he had explained—and Jeff had wound up in a body that was even younger than Vicky and Dan Jr.!

The transformed man moaned and gripped the edge of an examining table to keep from keeling over. "Oh NO!" He groaned. His last hope—Everyone’s last hope—of getting their own bodies back was gone, dashed to pieces. The enormity of the disaster came to him in a rush, and Dan was completely overwhelmed. He broke down and sobbed, barely aware that the small boy next to him appeared quite disturbed by his outburst and asked, "Mommy, why lady cry?"

Karen comforted Dan as best as she could and got him a glass of water and a tranquilizer. He took it without protest and a few minutes later he was able to catch his breath as he felt the potent pill begin to dull his emotions.

"Let me check you over," Karen suggested, and it was more of an order than a request. She placed a blood pressure cuff around Dan’s arm and adjusted her stethoscope as she timed his pulse.

"You know this is the end of our families." Dan remarked as Karen as he unzipped his jumpsuit to allow her to check his reflexes. "And that goes for the entire colony. Nearly every family has been affected. There’s only a handful of couples where both spouses are the same sex they were, in bodies whose ages roughly match."

Karen nodded silently, then cocked her head thoughtfully. "But there are quite a few like you and Patty," she pointed out.

"Yeah, so?"

Karen looked like she about to say something, but instead she shook her head. "Nothing," she said with a dismissive gesture. "Here, take this cup and fill it and bring it back to me. The SF is through that door.

Dan did as he was told and returned a few minutes later. When he did Jeff was gone.

"Al came by and took Jeff," Karen explained when Dan looked questioningly at the empty chair. "He’s going to see if there’s anything he can do, but—"

"I know. I talked to him already about Vicky and Dan Jr." Dan informed her as he handed her the sample she requested.

Karen took the sample and set the cup in a small opening in a machine that was about the size of a serving cart. She pushed a few buttons and came back to where Dan was standing. "Well, your vital signs all look very good, and there are no signs of trauma. Your reflexes are normal and there are no obvious abnormalities I can find. We’ll see what the analyzer tells us. If your sample doesn’t show anything I’ll have to send you to Jack or Sharon Willis, but they’re both pretty swamped."

Dan nodded, then sat down on the edge of the examining table. "You know, the whole colony could be endangered by this," he noted, unable to fight off his depression. "The blend of skills and talents of the colony were finely balanced, and now—everything is shot to hell! We’ve lost a lot of talent and there are a lot of others, like me, who are unable to physically handle our jobs anymore."

Karen nodded, but pointed out the obvious. "Well, we’ll just have to do the best we can. What choice do we have?"

Dan looked at her and shrugged. "None," he said quietly.

The muted sounds of paper scrolling out of the analyzer interrupted their conversation, and Karen got up and went over to the machine and tore off a letter-sized piece of paper and began examining it as she returned to Dan. When she had taken three or four steps she suddenly stopped and looked up from the page with a shocked expression on her face.

"What’s wrong?" Dan asked, reading her expression.

"I . . . Oh shit!" Karen muttered, shifting her attention between Dan and the report.

"My God, Karen, tell me! Is anything wrong?" Dan demanded, growing more worried by the second.

Karen looked up and fixed her gaze on Dan, her face a blank mask. "Dan, I think we need to run a few tests on you," she announced in a neutral, businesslike tone.

"Why? Dammit, tell me what that thing says!" Dan demanded.

Karen took a deep breath and looked directly at him. "Dan, the analysis of your sample indicates that you are pregnant."

To be continued . . .

 

 

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