On Monday, August 14, I tried to summon Aries and bring myself to the world of the Sea Men again, but as Jody this time. It didn’t quite work, though. I arrived in the world, but I was sleeping alone on the beach and the doll was just a doll, in my house. I decided that this answered one of my questions about the power in one of the ways I thought might be true. I could not summon Aries today because I was trying to summon her into a world where she already exists, even though that was some distance from here.

In the morning I get up.

Not immediately — I lie still for a moment first, the way I've started doing, taking stock of the day before it begins. The chest there, the weight of it against the mattress, familiar now in the manner that things become familiar when you've woken to them for over a week. The mild awareness of last night's underwear, which has done what underwear does now, the slight damp of it, and I get up and deal with this in the bathroom before I do anything else. The mechanics of this have become unremarkable.

I shower. I dress.

On Tuesday, August 8, I summoned Victoria. It was the first time I’d had my Victoria here on a work day since the first time I brought her here accidentally, and the intent was to see how well my ability to just briefly direct her mind to do things allowed her to do useful stuff while I was working.

January means performance reviews. The forms have been in everyone's inboxes since the second week of the month - self-evaluations, peer feedback requests, the annual accounting of what you did and what it was worth. I've been filling mine out in the gaps between client work, in the gaps between other things.

Dave stares too long over the cubicle partition at nine-fifteen.

The call comes from Marcus at seven-thirty on Saturday morning.

I'm already awake — I've been awake since five, the mesh's activity elevated since the failed protocol, a low-level hum in the background of everything that is different from the ambient warmth of before. More insistent. Less ambient. ARIA pressing on the edges of things, or testing them. I've been lying in the dark noticing it and finding my own words when it tries to give me some.

Once back at Sam’s place Sam got out his Ipad and started browsing through it while I put away my things and changed out of my dress and underwear. I came out wearing a pair of shorts and a silk blouse along with fresh undies. I then sat down in the recliner next to Sam and watched him go through a few screens on his Ipad.

Gary had never been hotter in his life.
Hey, that’s Africa for you, he thought to himself. It’s not like anyone ever said it wouldn’t be anything other than sweat-your-fucking-balls-off hot. And boy is it! If anything, they might have been underselling it!

Wychwood Venice

After The Fitting

One

In the morning I did the regular routine, light makeup, jogging outfit, cap and stretching. This time Ted was washing off his car while he watched me. His conscious efforts to keep observing me again boosted my confidence but there was still that nagging doubt in the back of my head that I was going to be outed. As I stretched, I noticed a definite camel toe outline in my spandex shorts. This appeared not to have gone unnoticed by Ted.

For Saturday, August 5, I brought Aries back with a specific idea in mind. After breakfast, and after asking Aries to put on one of her bikinis, I called my parents and set up another video call.

As soon as Aries came into the frame, before I even had a chance to introduce her to my parents, Mom exclaimed, “What the hell is that!”

“I can explain, Mom,” I said.

But Dad interrupted with, “Told you so.”

“Told me what?” I asked.

My phone rings at twenty past one.

"I've got it," she says, before I can speak. Her voice is different — faster, something lit in it. "The reactivation isn't a response to the gradient. It's a response to the timing. The nodes are pattern-matching the suppression interval and compensating. If we randomize the interval — structured pseudo-random within a fixed variance band — the mesh can't predict the next suppression event."

I sit up.

"Show me," I say.

"I'm at home. I've been running it on my machine."

I'm already looking for my shoes.

In the dream, within her dreamworld, I tried to see how far into Victoria’s past I see. And it was what wasn’t there that stood out. There were memories, and more memories of Victoria’s than I could ever remember exploring before. I could actually follow my Victoria back a bit further now in her mind, before I could remember ever having dreamed of being Victoria, though not all the way back to when I first invented Nancy before we had even started school. But this Victoria, the one who I grew up being in dreams, was not, no way, no how, the same as alt-Victoria that I brought into the world the other day. Even if she had some of the same personality traits, it was clear that she followed a different path.

The venue is a large room, three thousand capacity, standing floor with a balcony above. We get in and I find the accessible section along the side wall - a riser with a handful of stools, a sight line to the stage that's partially obscured by a PA column but clear enough. Emily takes the stool without argument, which tells me her back has been at it since this afternoon. I stand beside her and the opener is already playing, the PA system at full output, the low end moving through the floor and up through the body before the first song has finished.

I go to the hospice on Thursday morning without calling ahead. The ward is quiet at that hour — a different nurse at the desk, the corridor smelling of the clean that hospice corridors smell of.

Mom's door is ajar. I knock and go in.

I awoke and started my morning ritual of preparation to go out jogging. I slipped into my padded vaginal pants and then stretched into my short jogging tights. Using a bit of adhesive I attached my breasts, and then put on an exercise bra. Use of the IPL device was definitely showing a difference in my face less beard growth so it only took me a moment to lightly shave with the razor.

My alarm woke me at 5:00 and I prepared to go jogging. I wore a jogging bra with non-attachable breast forms that felt comfortable while I jogged. I then covered that with an aqua tank top. As an under foundation, I wore my vagina padded panty with only Nike women’s running spandex shorts. I then slid on my slightly undersized pair of Nike aura / mint women’s jogging shoes.

The next two weeks dragged…really dragged. I spent most of the time on my own as my desire and ability to interact with my guards was limited. Did I say guards? It felt more and more like a prison, comfortable, but still confining. I wasn’t even interested in trying to engage with the female police members; I must be losing my touch! Actually, it was probably more that I was fed up trying to explain my position to each individual who arrived on site.

There was a knock at my door and I heard Sam asl Barb are you awake? I moved off the bed and grabbing a robe from the closet I cracked the door and saw Sam standing there. He said that he was sorry to wake me but wanted to know if I would like to go out for dinner.

Looking at my watch I saw it was a bit past five and I replied sure but it would take me a bit to get freshened up. He said no problem and to take my time, it was still early and there were no appointments to keep. I smiled and said thanks and closed the door.

I proposed a date a couple of months from then and he said that would be good timing and suggested moving the date back by a week. I agreed since this timing would also allow me to get my preparations in order. I then made plans to prepare myself, a bit of weight loss, full body waxing and some purchases.