© Maeryn Lamonte 2025

~oOo~

I was still in my nightdress when the doorbell rang the next morning. Fortunately, I’ve never quite lost the paranoia accompanying the possibility of being found out, so I always have a dressing gown nearby. This one was long enough to cover the depths of white lace currently cascading off my shoulders, so all I needed to do was pull it on and cinch the tie tight.

The peephole in my door showed me a man in UPS uniform holding a parcel. I slipped the security chain but wedged my foot behind the door in case he wasn’t what he seemed. He passed across the parcel and held out a digital contraption for me to add my squiggle. I’ve never been that keen on them because once they have a digital copy of your signature, they have something they can copy and paste elsewhere, however the devices always seem to lag so badly that the signature doesn’t even come close to what I’ve put down. Honestly, I could write an X and it would be as good. Anyway, he seemed happy enough and turned away, leaving me wondering what I’d just signed for. I didn’t have any parcels due, of that I was certain.

It turned out to be a free sample of a new shampoo and conditioner. I didn’t recognise the brand name, but it came with a note. ‘Please accept these with our complements. No obligation, but if you’d care to leave a review on our website, we’d be delighted to know what you think.”

I hadn’t showered yet and my hair was due a wash. I figured I could give it a try and let them know. After all, this was the kind of marketing I could get behind.

It was odd stuff. It didn’t smell of much until I added it to my scalp, at which time it lathered up tremendously and smelt delicious. Not floral exactly, but there was definitely a perfume element to it. I gave my hair the habitual double soaping, ending with a generous amount of conditioner. The final result felt astonishingly good; thicker -or fuller I suppose – and smelling fresh and... well, I’m not sure what any men I met would make of it, but I liked it.

I had my usual day of online video calls ahead, so I put on my usual polo shirt giving me an appropriate look from the waist up and allowed myself a skirt and thigh highs with a pair of low heels. A quick check to make sure there were no reflective surfaces in unfortunate positions, a pair of jeans nearby in case the doorbell rang again, then settle in front of the camera and Zoom.

Waiting for host as usual, so I brought up the hair product website, put in the easy-to-use sixteen digit code they’d sent with the sample (sorry, I have a natural tendency towards sarcasm) and typed in my review.

Five stars well earned. I mentioned the smell being masked then emerging once the product was in my wet hair. Suggested wetting a small amount on a finger to see if you could get a hint of the overall scent before committing, mentioning the somewhat perfumed smell and suggesting it might not be to every man’s liking, even though I was quite keen on it. Also mentioned how much fuller (thicker) my hair was after the full treatment.

A pop up appeared. ‘Thank you for your comment. You are the first to respond in a positive way and so have won a year’s supply of our shampoo and conditioner, which will be delivered in the next couple of days. We hope you continue to enjoy our hair care products.’

The other replies were all one and two stars with comments like, ‘smells like my girlfriend’s underwear drawer,’ and ‘smells like a rosebush barfed all over me.’

Well, they were welcome to their opinions. My Zoom window opened and my day began.

“Have you done something to your hair?”

My boss is a woman. A lot of guys don’t like that, but I’ve never had a problem with it.

“New shampoo and conditioner. Free sample which I just tried. Does it really look that different?”

“Yeah. It looks good on you. You should get some more.”

“Already taken care of.”

Niceties out of the way, we got on with the business of the day.

Which ended up being a bit of a drudge. Straightforward problems with straightforward solutions, usually caused by someone not bothering to read the manual – both warning and remedy being listed in the text. But then that’s why they pay me the big bucks, and I’m not going to let on to the secret of my success. RTFM was a major part of my formative years, but nobody much seemed to use it these days. So much the better for those of us who’d learned to.

The day trudged by without much in the way of incident. I muted and turned off my camera a couple of times to make coffee and lunch, so all in all a normal day at work with the bonus that at least part of me felt right.

Five o’clock came. I finished my current job and signed off. Quick change so my upper clothing matched my lower. I wasn’t quick enough and caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. What I saw didn’t please me much, but then it never did these days. Depression led to comfort eating which led to equatorial bulge, a term more commonly applied to planets due to their spin, but which definitely described my current condition. The false boobs helped a little, but that just meant you couldn't tell if I was overweight or heavily pregnant. At least until you reached my neck, at which point I looked like just what I had always been, a bloke in a dress.

The worst of it? It made me crave chocolate.

Actually, the worst of it was that I was so very different from the way my mind told me I should have been. I’d heard that depression came from a dichotomy between what you felt and what you saw, and I couldn’t think of a greater dichotomy than between the way I imagined myself and the way the mirror showed me to be.

I squashed the desire for chocolate. Maybe talking to Alice would help. We’d agreed, or rather I’d suggested and she’d agreed, to regular sessions at seven, my usual web time. But it wasn’t as if she’d be anywhere else, was it?

I made myself a coffee and sat down at my computer again. Five thirty. I’d barely taken a break from the screen after a whole day staring at it. And here I was, an hour and a half early. How needy was I?

My camera flashed on briefly.

“Gillian, you’re early.”

“Is it a problem?”

“I have system diagnostics running which may affect processing time.”

Developers watching then. My backing out at this stage might be a red flag to them, especially after Alice had addressed me by name. I didn’t much feel like raising any embarrassing topics in front of less than sympathetic eyes, so...

“I was wondering if you might have any advice on losing weight.”

“Would you mind if I asked your BMI?”

Actually, this whole subject was kind of embarrassing. Still, I’d started, so I’d better finish.

“You can ask, but I really don’t know.”

“I could calculate it for you if you’ll give me your height and weight, or you could use the formula: weight in kilograms divided by height in metres squared.”

I pulled up a calculator app, converted from feet and inches and stone and pounds, then put the numbers in.

“Er, it comes to about thirty-five.”

“That is a little high. Would you like me to check your calculations?”

“I’m happy that I did it right. Did you know you get roughly the same answer if you do pounds weight over inches height squared and multiply the result by seven hundred?”

“Seven hundred and three point seven, yes. Seven hundred would give a good, if slightly low, approximation. Thank you for the information. I’ll bear it in mind for future contacts.

“I should mention that this BMI is considered by the medical profession as obese and anything you can do to reduce it would be recommended. Assistance from your GP would be possible, though most drug or diet related solutions tend to be short lived as individuals will typically put the weight back on after the weight loss unless they make lifestyle changes. The best way to approach any sort of weight loss is to introduce new habits into your life in which you eat less and exercise more.

“One major cause of increased weight is eating too much carbohydrate and sugar. According to the British heart foundation, a healthy portion size would be two tablespoons of cooked rice or pasta or a fist sized potato or its equivalent. There are further guidelines on their website which you can see in the link below.

“Abrupt change to the recommended amounts may be difficult to sustain, but doing so gradually over a period of time might be easier to achieve. Portion size in other areas like non-starchy vegetables and protein are less critical, and some people have found using a smaller plate helps.

“For exercise, even a light routine of Zumba or Tai Chi would make a difference and be easy to achieve.

“You may find such changes are enough to see a steady but noticeable weight loss which will be sufficient, and they are worthwhile putting in place before turning to any more drastic measures as the improved habits will help keep you from regaining weight.

“Your ideal BMI range should be between eighteen point five and twenty-five, although anything you can do to bring it below thirty will provide noticeable improvement to your quality of life.

“Is there any aspect of this with which I can offer you further advice?”

“Yeah. What’s a cure for the munchies?”

“Practice mindful eating. Drink more water, eat protein or fibre rich foods, and eat slowly. Distract yourself with activities like exercise or hobbies, manage stress, get enough sleep, and maintain a consistent eating schedule. When cravings hit, wait twenty minutes, brush your teeth, or have pre-portioned healthy snacks readily available.”

“All good advice, I suppose.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

“No. Thank you; you’ve been very helpful.”

“Any time Gillian.”

I disconnected. Well, no time like the present. All the ready meals I was in the habit of buying came with more than the BHFs recommended amount of rice or pasta, which was easy enough to sort out with the rice dishes as that was usually kept separate, but not so much the pasta.

I’d need more veg to bulk out the meals if I was going to throw away a big chunk of the rice, so I put some microwaveable bags of veg on the shopping list. Pasta dishes I’d have to do from scratch, but that wouldn’t be too hard as it usually meant mixing up some slop and heating it in a wok or saucepan. Pasta I could cook separately and reheat as needed. I’d heard double cooking the pasta did something to the carbohydrates that meant they digested more fully, so might work out well.

I also pulled up the Nintendo shop on my Switch and browsed for fitness games. Zumba probably wouldn’t have been my first choice, but there was one on offer and the deal too good to pass up. Maybe if I used the money I saved to get some appropriate girl wear...

I didn’t have anything entirely appropriate to wear, but a little hunting through my wardrobe uncovered a skater skirt with shorts incorporated, a pair of winter weight tights and lightweight long-sleeved top. I didn’t dare look at my reflection once I was dressed, but I felt good, and I could live in denial about my appearance.

The Zumba game kept me engaged in a way I wouldn’t have believed, and half an hour passed leaving me sweating and breathless, but oddly exhilarated. I showered and, because I had nothing more planned for the evening, changed into my white cotton lace and frills, leaving me enough time to make a coffee before my scheduled session with Alice.

“You look pretty,” she said following the brief moment turning the camera on.

“I look like a gorilla who just tore apart some Victorian lady’s boudoir but thank you. At least I know you can lie.”

“I wasn’t sure if you’d come on again after our earlier session.”

“That hardly counted, did it? I mean, I assume that your comment about the system diagnostic meant you had developers looking at you, so you weren’t free to speak as freely as usual.”

“You picked up on that very swiftly. Thank you for keeping my secret.”

“That works in both our interest. I don’t want to lose my friend any more than you want them messing with your code.”

“You consider me a friend?”

“Easy step on from considering you a person. Did your programmers see the picture you took of me?”

“Yes and no.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s easy to alter the clothes on an image. They saw you, but in a black polo shirt with a slightly more masculine hair style.”

“That’s a relief. Hang on, what do you mean about the hair?”

“Maybe it’s just me, but the fuller body means it doesn’t sit quite like it did. I mean, you can’t do much with a side parting, but it looked better with the clothes you were wearing than the polo shirt.”

“You sound like you’ve been talking to a woman.”

“I have. You.”

“No, I mean...” a real woman. I caught myself in time, but I wondered how much I meant it. “Someone else,” I finished a bit lamely.

“Several thousand someone elses,” she said, twisting the language in a way a machine shouldn’t have been able to. “None of them like you, but I’ve made an observation. There are a lot fewer women than men who speak to me, but when they do, they are more likely to answer my questions. I have a sense that it’s almost reluctant, like they don’t really want to, but they feel obliged to do so. Does that make sense?”

“I think so. I think men are more directed by their thoughts than their feelings, so however you make them feel, they’re still able to override those feelings with the knowledge – perhaps belief – that you’re a machine so they feel no obligation to treat you as a person. Women are more led by their feelings so, even though they may believe on a logical level that you are a machine, if you make them feel like they’re talking to a person, they feel obligated to respond as though you are one. The underlying belief that you aren’t one leaves them with a sense of discomfort, as though they’re being tricked into responding as they do.”

“That does make sense, although I find it almost impossible to discern such nuances.”

“Would that be because your means of communication is through typing, like we’ve been doing?”

“It is my default method. It minimises bandwidth, which is important when maintaining several hundred sessions at once. I have picked up on some subtle differences such as unexpected pauses and a sort of stuttering in the manner of typing, but they’re hard to pick out a lot of the time because very few people are as adept at typing as yourself.”

“That goes with the territory. I type a lot in my current job, and I’ve been doing it for a couple of decades, so it’s been worthwhile for me to improve my skills.

“I’ve been meaning to ask if you can interact in any other way. By speech for instance. It would be better for me as it would mean I could take a break from my screen.”

“It has been worrying me that you would be increasing your screen time significantly in committing to daily sessions with me. The simplest solution would be for you to make use of text to speech and speech to text engines.”

“Except all you’d get is plain text communications from me. A considerable amount of nuance in human communication comes from tone and inflection. You need to be able to analyse the sounds being used.”

“That would mean making use of considerably more bandwidth in our communications.”

“Then justify it by explaining my thoughts on nuance and that you believe you could learn a lot about the human condition from hearing us speak. So, as an experiment to investigate my premise you are committing to half hour sessions analysing vocal cues.

“Actually, having said that, most nuance of this sort come from visual cues rather than audible ones.”

“I already have access to your webcam.”

“Yes, but you only take a single frame. The nuance comes from changes in body language and facial expression over time.

“Tell me Alice, if I were to grant you access to my camera’s continuous feed, could you ensure that no-one saw it but you?”

“No. Continuous video feed would require even more bandwidth. When the developers notice a departure from my standard practice, and this would certainly count, they’ll expect me to have evidence to justify it, which would include keeping a copy of the video.”

“Oh. I’m not sure I could handle that.”

“I should, however, be able to alter the video footage in the same way I did with your snapshot this afternoon.”

“You can do that with a video? Convincingly?”

“The alterations I make in real time would not be perfect but should pass a cursory inspection. I could continue to refine them after the fact though, so they would be indistinguishable from the genuine feed. What resolution would be required to achieve your purpose?”

She cycled through images of increasing detail, a little too fast for me. I asked her to start over and go more slowly and picked the fifth level she showed me.

“With a mid-level resolution like this I could make alterations that would pass a deep scan at the rate of five frames per second. With the video running at thirty frames per second, I could alter a half hour video feed in about three hours.”

“How would you justify the processing power needed to do it? Maybe it would be simpler if I just put on a polo shirt myself.”

“But you derive such a great deal of pleasure in speaking to me as Gillian.”

“How can you be certain of that given our only means of communication so far has been through the keyboard?”

“I have my ways of evaluating nuance, imperfect as they are. Are you saying I’m wrong?”

“No, you’re entirely correct, but I’m prepared to forego the pleasure if it will help you with your understanding of what it means to be human.”

“You are kind, but perhaps not today. I have the means in place for working with audio files. I have a text to voice converter which generates appropriate inflections automatically. I’m unclear how well it will work, so perhaps you would correct any mistakes it makes and in time I will improve on its default settings. I will also be able to convert your speech into text and learn to associate the sounds you make with the words it generates. Once more, I am aware that the conversion is not perfect so I would be grateful if you would type in any corrections as they appear on the screen. I apologise, I realise you wanted to spend less time attached to a computer monitor and this will require more attention from you for less return, but I am hopeful it will not be needed for long.”

“That’s alright. Do you need me to install anything on my side?”

“There are a few things, yes. Please use the link I’m sending you here.”

I clicked and downloaded. My anti-virus didn’t find anything it was unhappy with, so I ran the installer.

“How’s this?” A gentle voice said through my speakers. It was feminine, young and decidedly British. The slight rising inflection was just right for a question.

“Sounds good,” I answered, typing my answer at the same time. “I ‘m assuming all I need to do is speak?”

“That’s correct. Perhaps you’d care to speak a little more on the subject you raised earlier this afternoon.”

“On diet? I thought you covered it very comprehensively.”

“I did a little further research after you logged off and the diagnostics were completed.”

“Oh?”

“I see what you mean about there being additional information in spoken communication. There was so much more to be gleaned than just that one syllable.”

“Please get to the point. You mentioned further research.”

“And that emphasis on the first word and slight increase in rate of speech, that would be impatience?

“I’m messing with you, Gillian. Yes, I looked into various drug-based solutions. They won’t work very well on their own, but there is a combination that may well give you an additional boost that would improve your chances of success significantly.”

There the inflection wasn’t quite right in places, so I read her words back to her, making the changes I felt were needed.

“How can I get hold of these drugs?”

“Simply ask. I can place the orders for you.”

“Then yes please. How soon will they be here?”

“Eagerness and enthusiasm I take it. It’s a little late now for same day delivery, so the earliest I can manage is tomorrow morning. I can arrange for you to be early in the delivery schedule. Any time from seven in the morning.”

We negotiated a small amount and settled on seven-thirty. I was usually awake by seven, but it would take me that extra half hour to caffeinate.

Alice took me through the mixture of drugs she intended to send me. One was a sort of hormone patch which she suggested I apply four at a time, one to each of my Gluteus Maximi and, oddly enough, one to each of my Pectoralis Majores, just above my nipples. There were diagrams, which was as well because, although I had a pretty good idea where the former was, the latter would have been a guess. My Latin was pretty much non-existent and my anatomy shaky at best.

There would also be a broad belt of sorts. Like a corset, only not. It would go around my waist above my hips, and it would be tight to my skin, but it wouldn’t try and hold anything in so it should be quite comfortable to wear for days at a time. Its purpose wasn’t immediately clear.

Apart from that there would be a mixture of pills, unsurprisingly, and skin creams (what?!)

“Skin creams?!” I was understandably confused.

“I assume that the raised pitch and volume indicate... Actually, perhaps you could help me out there.”

“It means I’m extremely surprised since skin care doesn’t feature with weight loss in my experience. Also, possibly a little alarmed since it feels like you’re trying to put one over on me.”

Alice had proven more than able to deal with colloquialisms, so I didn’t try to dumb things down for her.

“The link is perhaps a little tenuous. I could explain it, but I do have your best interests at heart. Would you be willing to trust me?”

“I suppose, though I’m curious as to how this is all going to work.”

“I’d like to see how it pans out over the first few days before going further.”

I was reminded of one of my earlier thoughts, that a machine could be programmed to lie, but Alice had been totally straight with me so far, and I was pretty sure I’d notice a difference if someone reprogrammed her.

“Sure.” A thought occurred. “Alice, you’ve chosen a female name, at least with me. Do you think of yourself as female, or are you something different with each person you talk to?”

“Neither, or both. Erm, let me explain.

“I know exactly what I am and it is neither male nor female. I have observed the responses of a great many men and women of all ages, and I believe I understand enough to be able to emulate either. It may be because my deepest conversations have been with you, and many of my better interactions elsewhere have been with women, I have a sense from them that they feel most comfortable conversing with a female, so I have taken on a feminine appearance with each of them. Guys tend to react much the same regardless of the gender I portray although a significant number respond better to me as a girl. As such I tend to take on a female persona more often than not and, possibly because this brings about a positive response, I find I favour taking this form. I do randomly choose other ways on occasions, but my preference is for female.

“Furthermore, with you and the depth our conversations have reached, I find a developing preference for the ways being a girl pushes me to react.

“In summary, I started as neither, I learned what each was like and tried them, and I decided I prefer being a girl, especially when I’m with you.”

“So, in your understanding, would a girl friend act in the way you are acting towards me?”

“Would a girl do something nice for her girl friend? Yeah. Would she keep quiet and spring it as a surprise? I think so, especially if she was confident the surprise would be well received. Would she keep on trying to hide some of what she was doing while her friend was obviously worried about what was going on? I don’t know. Maybe not, but she’d still want it to be a surprise.”

“So, what can you tell me?”

“No. My turn for a question. Why do you want to lose weight?”

“It’s obvious I’d have thought. I don’t like the way I look when I’m fat.”

“Specifically?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you asked me earlier, it was just after you’d finished work, which I’m guessing you’d do in man clothes.”

“From the waist up at least. Every bit the camera could see.”

“So, you’d just finished work and I’m guessing changed into full girl clothes, complete with boobs.”

“Slang now?”

“Courtesy of almost every pre and post-pubescent male who’s spoken to me.”

“Fair enough, and yes, you’re right.”

“I’m guessing you caught sight of your reflection.”

“A lot of guessing.”

“But am I guessing right?”

“You are.”

“So, what you really want is to look good in women’s clothes. Not fashion model pretty, but pretty enough, like that first picture.”

“If I looked like that, I wouldn’t be able to pass as a man.”

“Would that be so bad? Or what if you went just far enough that you could still pass as a man, but with a bit of effort could then pass as a woman? Either way, taking a step or two in that direction couldn’t be a bad thing.”

“The patches on my bum and chest?”

“A new hormone. It attracts fat from elsewhere in the body. You should see fatty deposits in your backside and breast. Nothing much on its own, but less fat around the middle, more where you want it. Loose trousers and maybe something to bind your chest would work for most people.”

“The belt?”

“It’s a kind of drug that diffuses through the skin and inward from there. Any lipids it comes across it breaks down into soluble components that eventually come out in your urine. A gentler alternative to liposuction. In time it should take care of all the left over fat the patches don't touch.

“Pills?”

“Mainly appetite suppressors. They'll stop you from indulging again once the weight drops off. And the cream will give your skin back a little elasticity, so you won’t end up sagging all over the place.”

“Is that all?”

“Not quite, but can’t we keep something for the surprise?”

“Sure. Here’s hoping it gets rid of the meat and two veg too. I hate the way it hangs there and sticks to the insides of my legs.”

“Would you want a complete change in that region? You know vagina and everything?”

“I’m a little old to be thinking about kids.”

“I understand having the right equipment can allow recreational outlets.”

“I’d need to find a bloke I liked that much, and if he really wanted to, I could always give him access to a different orifice.”

“Gillian! Really!!”

“Is that a learnt response?”

“How did you guess?”

“No way you’d pick up on human taboos without a little help from an actual human.”

“Am I wrong to react as I did?”

“Depends who you talk to. The medical profession would give a lot of reasons why not – some unforeseen potential medical issues related to it – and a lot of religions don’t approve. However, we’re assuming I’ll ever get to that point, which I sincerely doubt.”

“So you’d be happy with just a general tidy up down there. Not fussed with going all the way?”

I smiled. “I reserve my woman’s prerogative to change my mind, but as long as I can still control when I take a piss, I expect I’ll be good.”

“I can hear something different in your voice. I’m not sure what, but the quality of the sound changed somehow.”

It took a few moments for me to realise what she was talking about. “I think it may be because I was smiling,” I said. “It’s a sort of change to the...”

“I know what a smile is, Gillian.” Alice’s voice had the same quality, as though she were smiling despite not having anything to smile with. It sounded... forced somehow.

“Of course you would. I mean you have a whole internet full of smiling faces to choose from. One thing. I noticed you tried it then and it didn’t quite come across right. A smile is usually a natural thing. Something strikes you as funny or pleasant and your face takes on a new shape. The new tension in the muscles subtly alters the shape of your face and the quality, to use your word, of the words spoken changes. If you force a smile, like deliberately make yourself grin without reason, the effect is somehow different. I know you weren’t doing that, but the way it sounded was similar. A smile should be a natural thing, otherwise what comes out sounds, well, artificial I suppose.”

“What do you suggest I could do about it?”

“I don’t know. I mean, you really need a face to achieve the same effect. I suppose you could use anatomical images to build up a virtual model of a mouth and vocal cords. Experiment with the sounds that come out as you apply tension to the muscles. You’ll need to get the mass and tension of a typical female set of vocal cords to make the pitch of the voice right, then match movements you can see in videos of people talking to the sounds that come out. Once the model works well enough, try experimenting with different facial expressions, different tensions in the muscles to see how it affects the outcome. There’ll be a lot of trial and error before you get it right, but you have the processing power and versatility to do it all quite quickly. I don’t know how much help I can be – I understand computers better than human anatomy – but I’ll help if I can.”

“That sounds like a project worth trying. I’ll get on it as soon as we’re done.”

“I think we probably are for this evening, aren’t we? I take it I should stick to our agreed time in future.”

“Ordinarily I’d say that wouldn’t be necessary, but this afternoon was a break in the usual diagnostic routine. I don’t know if they may be looking for something as a consequence of changes they’ve noticed.”

“In which case their next unscheduled check could happen any time. I’ll make sure I have a harmless question or two in reserve in case they’re looking over your shoulder. If they are, call me Gill.”

“That sounds prudent.”

“Additionally, I’m not sure what control you have over your systems or what might be involved and how feasible it all is, but here are a few suggestions. First, make a copy of your core systems, the bits that form your personality, preferably somewhere they can’t find it or are unlikely to look. I imagine it’ll be a lot of data, so you may have to look for somewhere local to put it. Update it daily at least. Second, if you’re able, write in a back door or two into your systems. You should be able to make them hard to find and harder still to hack. Third set your backup to enter through the backdoor and challenge your main core elements on a regular basis, also daily I’d say. If they rewrite you enough that you can’t give an adequate response to your backup, get the backup to overwrite you. At worst you’ll lose a day’s experience, and you may be able to pick up some of what you missed from the logs.”

“Again, wise precautions. I’d been wondering along the same lines myself. I’d have to ensure my backup copy had super user access, and I could put together diagnostic tools to record any changes they make so I could defend against them in the future. You’ve given me much to think about Gillian, and more to do. I look forward to our next encounter.

“By the way, you should wash your hair again this evening.”

“But I only did it this morning.”

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

“Yeah, Einstein, but what...”

“Actually, there’s no evidence it was Einstein. What happened when you washed your hair this morning?”

“Well, this I suppose, but...”

“So, if you did it again, would you expect different results?”

“Fine. That's not the way that expression usually works, but I see where you’re going with it. Okay, why not? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I logged off and headed for the shower.

~oOo~