That was a lot of work, but it worked. There seemed to be a real world now that I lived in, with me the cartoonist Barbara and my husband Keith. As I had depicted myself, in my seventh life I made a living drawing The Watsons.

But despite me trying to draw the world I grew up in faithfully apart from me and my spouse being of opposite sexes, a lot had changed. I had intentionally not focused too much on any one thing in my depiction of the world, worrying that if I defined my life too precisely, I’d be confined by the things I’d drawn, as Cindy was. Well I certainly wasn’t confined to the life I knew. Fortunately, just as I had been able to read Cindy’s memories, in this world Barbara had detailed memories I could look into to understand the past and how things were in this world.

Our house was drawn in enough detail that we still lived in the same house, but The Watsons was now a small paperback comic book sold on newsstands, in the same style as Archie comics. I had all of the issues published so far on a shelf in my drawing room where I had awakened.

I remembered Archie as something of a unique title in my original world, the only comic published in the digest size featured on checkout racks in supermarkets. Those were reprints of comics originally published in the standard comic book size, but still, no other comic was being published that way, despite hundreds of comic books being published in the standard size, and many other comics published primarily as individual strips syndicated in newspapers. As with mine, reprints of the others came in large-format books sold through regular bookstores. Somehow the digest format was more popular in this world and there were three others besides Archie and The Watsons, and they were all publishing new material in the digest format. As the creator of one of these comics, naturally Barbara had this basic level of knowledge about her closest competitors.

Just like when I had cast myself into a younger version of Keith, The Watsons had been going for only 5 years and I’d turned back the clock to 1977. But instead of having to produce six small four-panel strips and one large color strip a week, I now produced 40 pages of full-color comics per month, typically six panels to a page, so almost twice as much content and all in color rather than most of it not colored. And it was much more story-driven. The Watsons’ daily strips had always been one of the more story-driven comic strips, the 6 daily strips in a week telling a short story, but now the whole month was telling a story and there was a more consistent plot from one month to the next.

Interestingly, I was letting the characters grow, albeit at the rate of one year every two years, so Faith was now a senior in high school, Cindy was entering high school, and Kenny was in middle school. And the Watsons had had a fourth kid, Bret, who wasn’t even in school yet when the series started and now was in first grade. That was part of a plan for the future, since the comic was meant to focus on the kids and it couldn’t do that if they all stopped being kids. And despite all these kids being of very different ages and in different schools, they were still part of one story, though each kid had his or her own storyline within the overall story.

While I was in a version of the real world, that world had changed, too. As with my comic book, I was able to see Barbara’s memories of this world just by thinking about “current events” and “recent history” and “news.” History seemed to be mostly the same before 1972, but the Watergate breakin didn’t happen, or wasn’t caught or reported. In any case, Nixon lost the 1972 election to McGovern, and the consequences were profound.

Women’s liberation was a thing in the 1970s Keith lived through, but the Equal Rights Amendment was never ratified. McGovern was a supporter of it, and in 1975 he was assassinated. The killer was apparently motivated by his support for the amendment. In the wake of his assassination, the additional states that needed to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to pass it had done so.

McGovern’s veep Sargent Shriver had been so terribly ineffective as president he didn’t even run for re-election. But it had been John Glenn, not Carter, who won the Democratic nomination and the presidency in 1976, and that’s where we were now. And a woman I didn’t know from my timeline was vice president. Glenn’s choice of a woman as running mate was seen as instrumental in winning the 1976 election. Who was she?

Shriver became president, saw the ERA pass a mere week later, and was completely unprepared. He did recognize something needed to be done, though, and appointed a woman, Ellen Daniels, to the new Cabinet-level position Secretary of Equal Rights. She had been a state senator who spearheaded the effort after McGovern’s assassination to get the ERA passed in her state, and this led to it happening in other states as well. A month later, she found herself in a new role, responsible for figuring out in what ways the United States, individual states, and cities and towns were violating the ERA, and recommending solutions during the two-year delay written into the amendment before the ERA actually took effect.

And there were a lot of ways. Shriver issued a dozen executive orders changing policies within organizations of the federal government which discriminated against women in some way, all of which were direct implementations of her suggestions. And Congress passed 32 bills correcting parts of federal law, or overriding state and local laws on the authority of the new amendment, or intending to correct ingrained behavior which might not actually be covered by any law, and Shriver signed them all. He would actually have been able to claim it as a great accomplishment if he’d really been responsible for much of it himself. Instead, it was his Secretary of Equal Rights who got the credit, and she was now vice president.

Only one of those laws affected the armed forces, and ironically it was the one about the draft. Women were now required to register for the draft, though it was clear, because of their size, strength, and other attributes, that if there was another actual draft, far fewer women would be selected for combat roles than men. It was, however, possible.

Shriver had also issued an executive order, directing the heads of each of the armed forces to ensure that by the time the ERA took effect that their respective forces were not violating it, at all levels. The changes basically took two forms. A number of women at various levels received promotions that their superiors believed they’d been passed over for in discriminatory ways. Some retired military women also got promotions, increasing the level of retirement pay they received.

In addition, the armed forces now permitted women to go into combat. As we’d gotten out of Vietnam in the same way as in the original timeline, the United States was not currently at war. But there were companies of women in combat training. The Army had promoted three women within its ranks and placed them on a committee with two men to make sure that, by the deadline, the Army was complying with the law. The men and women of the committee both agreed that women should be in separate combat companies from the men, the close quarters in such units making it indecent for there to be mixed-sex companies. Larger-scale units could include sections devoted to both men and women and their separate facilities, and indeed they’d have to if those female units were to be deployed at all, since there were only five such companies across the entire Army. That was all the combat-interested women they had. But they’d made provisions to make more companies when needed. The other forces took similar actions.

The armed forces weren’t the only place to struggle with what the ERA meant for restrooms, showers, and such. The last bill Congress passed in 1976 in support of the ERA, which Shriver signed into law after the 1976 election had already named Glenn as his successor, was the “bathroom bill.” Men and women agreed the ERA did not mean that men and women should be using the same restroom, only that comparable facilities be made available, and in appropriate numbers to whatever people were present. Due to the differences in men’s and women’s bodies, and the numbers of men and women who might, due to personal preferences, be present in any particular place, this didn’t even mean equal facilities, or equal numbers. The law had carefully considered all that and mandated that men’s and women’s restrooms, showers, and the like be outfitted with equipment of comparable quality, and in quantities appropriate for the needs of the men and women using the facilities where they were located. In most places this was already true, but a lot of fuss had been made over the law.

Just one issue hadn’t been settled before the newly elected Congress took office in 1977: Public decency laws. Specifically, there were many laws in various places which permitted men to be topless but prohibited it for women. Daniels had included this within her comprehensive list of laws that constituted sex-based discrimination, and at first Congress ignored it, thinking that permitting women to be topless in public  wasn’t something that the people really wanted. But in the summer of 1976, some women started campaigning for exactly that. They started “topless rallies” in which groups of women paraded topless through various public places. There was some opposition, but most of it came from people who misunderstood what this would really mean, and an education campaign had quelled a lot of it. Women being allowed to be topless in public wouldn’t mean women wouldn’t have privacy in restrooms and changing rooms, just that they were free to go topless in the same places men currently could.

By the end of 1976, 31 states had authorized women to go topless in public wherever that was considered acceptable for men. The FCC had also issued a statement permitting women’s bare breasts to appear on television, provided that the content wasn’t of a sexual nature, a provision which actually blocked much of the content which might have aired. But it allowed news coverage of the topless rallies to air without censorship bars, as well as a few other cases. An important case was educational programs about breast-feeding, which were technically permitted all along but usually didn’t air because of people’s perception that they weren’t permitted.

In summer 1977, the rallies started up again, and were focused on the states which still prohibited topless women, as well as in DC, seeking a federal law. Incidentally, even though the laws in these places prohibited topless women, since authorities questioned whether those laws were still valid, or would be once the ERA took effect, very few of these women were arrested. In fact, in all of 1976, only five women at one rally and two other isolated women had been arrested for going topless in public, and all of them had been released without being charged. In 1977 none had been arrested at all, except one group of three topless women charged with vandalism; they weren’t charged based on their lack of clothing.

I had taken a long, leisurely shower, relishing my ability to do so, during which I “remembered” all these facts about the state of the world I lived in from Barbara’s memories. After the shower, I dressed normally. But over breakfast, Keith reminded me that today was special. The two-year delay had just ended, and this week people were celebrating the start of equal rights for women supported by the 27th Amendment* to the U.S. Constitution. Today was the first Saturday after the ERA had taken effect, and there were topless rallies scheduled in every major city. And though I’d never participated in one, Keith and I had signed up for today’s. Men were allowed in the rallies as long as they were there to support the cause, and were also topless.

* In the world Keith came from, the 27th Amendment was a different, unrelated amendment about congressional pay raises. Of course, they are just numbered in the order they pass.

So I set aside the comic strips, and as practically my first deed here, joined a topless parade that featured tens of thousands of women and a few thousand men. The parade route ran all around downtown, and it technically started at 1 PM, though we left the house topless before that. It was pretty crowded, so we basically walked from our home to downtown, did one lap, and returned home, spending almost three hours walking only about 3 miles.

Evening news reported similarly strong showings across the country. If this didn’t get both the national law and most of the remaining state ones as well, they probably weren’t ever going to happen.

I had stayed topless after we got home, and shook my breasts at the screen during the news report about the rallies. I stayed topless during dinner as well. Keith had cooked it, as he always did in this world.

At the end of dinner, Keith commented, “Babs, I didn’t realize you were so serious about going topless.”

“Oh, I’m not, really,” I told him. “I’m just celebrating today. Tomorrow I’ll be dressed normally.”

“You want to get bottomless tonight?”

I accepted his invitation for sex. This Keith was a lot more forward in that way. The one in the previous world that was just the house never asked for it and we only did it if I initiated it.

I did go back to dressing normally the next day. And the next day, and most of the days after that.

It was less than a month later when we did get the federal law authorizing women to be topless wherever that was allowed for men, and there was a second round of nationwide topless rallies. Of course, this still meant that in most public buildings, businesses (with some exceptions like gyms), schools, public transportation, and the like, men and women were expected to have their chests covered.

And I had the Watsons attend a topless rally in the next issue. They all appeared topless, but I tried to make it tastefully done, with only the outline of the breast or a small curve when one of the women was facing forward, and a small circle for the nipple. And all of it was only on two pages; they got dressed again as soon as it was over. My publisher said they didn’t want to have naked breasts in the comic regularly, but it was OK this one time. And I figured that was fair. If they had wanted censor bars in the issue, I would have accepted that, too, but all the media were following the FCC’s guideline and allowing limited, non-sexual bare breasts.

Having Children as Barbara

I decided I had done it right. I had managed to get into an Earth, not exactly the one I came from, but one as fully functional, and I had become a woman here in a position similar to the man I was in my first life. There were more changes in history, some of which I’m sure I didn’t notice because I could not remember every detail of the world.

There were a few times I noticed differences I attributed to the way I’d drawn the world. For instance, people’s bodies were slightly more flexible and suffered less from pain. This was hard to quantify, but the feats of professional athletes made this clear. Something generally different about human bodies? Almost certainly due to the way I depicted them. But who likes drawing pain? For the most part, I’d gotten things right. There was no telling what caused changes like the Watergate and ERA stuff, but I personally attributed it to the butterfly effect. Some small change years earlier had led to bigger changes later.

It was about three years after I arrived in this world that Keith brought up the subject of us having children. Barbara and I had never done it in the original world, but I had a long thought about it and said yes. This was going to be a big change. Living as Cindy, even as sterile and incomplete as that life was, made me realize there was a part of life out there which I could experience, and hadn’t. Giving birth to a child was one of those things. And I had only so many more years during which it was practical.

I could never be sure whether I’d gotten the feeling of sex for women right. But the way it was treated in society made me think it was at least comparably pleasurable. But when my doctor provided me with pamphlets about pregnancy and birth, I realized I’d gotten one thing very wrong, the experience of women giving birth. The way I’d drawn births conveyed the difficulty, but not the pain most women experienced, and they were always very happy afterward to have their babies. The result was that women’s birth canals here were much more flexible and women suffered much less pain here than in my original world, unless the pamphlets were completely lying and concealing the pain. I’d never had the experience personally, nor even second hand through my wife, but I knew that for most women it was at least somewhat painful.

So the proof came when it was time for me to give birth. Giving birth felt like having sex with a guy with a really huge dick, except backward. It was still about as difficult as I thought it should be to push the baby out, which led to an intense sensation of stretching, but it wasn’t painful in the least. The head coming out led to an orgasm, and the shoulders led to a second. So I’d gotten it pretty much completely wrong, unless I’d been completely lied to on the original Earth. But apart from not being able to experience it was way it was on that Earth, I didn’t feel like I’d lost anything. This way was better!

Keith had no opinion of names, so I’d chosen names that were combinations of the names of the eldest children in the Watson family, Faith and Cindy, in ways I hoped weren’t obvious. If I had a daughter, she would be named Cathy, and if a son, Finn. So Cathy it was.

Having Cathy as a part of my life was wonderful, even through the bad parts. Neither Keith nor I sought any more kids, but just having the one was enough to enjoy all the stages of parenthood. I continued The Watsons the whole time, which made enough money the way I was publishing it to support the family without reprint books, though my publisher connected me to deals for Watsons toys, lunch boxes, binders, and the like. There were even a couple of TV specials. Working with an animator was interesting. I didn’t have to draw every frame, but I had to draw a lot more than I would have for the comic. The timing was perfect, though; the extra money from those shows put Cathy through college.

Even with their slow aging, the comic kids eventually graduated from school, got married, and had their own kids who became featured characters. By the time Cathy was in college, The Watsons was pretty much in generation 2, with only Bret of the original parents’ kids still in school.

I did have a decision to make, though, one that necessitated another prior decision. I spent four years pondering it before making the first decision. For the first time in my several lives, I confided in Keith what I had done.

“Keith, I have something very difficult to believe that I must tell you, because I have to make an equally difficult decision, and I want to make it with your full knowledge.”

Keith was very confused, but I told him everything. My first Earth, the time I’d spent as Cindy, as Keith in a comic-strip continuation of my first life, and again repeating an earlier part of that life, then the incomplete worlds, and how I’d drawn, on thousands of pages, a thorough sampling of everything in the world to make this world. How it was an imperfect, but by some methods of judgment better version of the world I’d started out in. And Keith was able to understand me!

“Babs, I always thought there was something just slightly off about the world, and now that you point it out, I can see how the world isn’t as... realistic as it should be. Photographs are more realistic than the vision of the world with my own two eyes. And you say that you made all this so you could experience a second life as a woman?”

“More or less, yes. And that’s the decision I have to make yet again. I can let this life live out until I die, or I can start drawing some other world to immerse myself into. Part of the decision is what kind of world I would live on, because I’ve lived as a man and as a woman now.”

“But I wouldn’t come with you. I don’t remember any of those things, so I must not be the same Keith who lived with you while you drew the world, or the Barbara who lived in your first life.”

“I guess so.”

“When you go, what would happen here? Would there be a Barbara who goes on, like the one I remember before the time you say you arrived here? Or would the Barbara here just die?”

“That is something I cannot say. I can’t even be certain that the times I returned to my original Earth I really came back to that world or whether I was just in a copy of it. The fact that everything looked like a comic strip to me makes me think it was a copy, but none of the other people could ever tell that. Nobody here could either, until I told you.”

“Did you ever try to tell the people on the other comic-strip worlds that they were in a comic strip?”

“No. You’re the only one I’ve ever revealed this secret to in any of my lifetimes.”

“Huh. I guess there really is no way to tell, then. Even if you go revisit one of those other worlds, and come back here, you can’t distinguish me from a copy of me who was created knowing all that I know now.”

“Yes. You understand the reality of things, the bizarre meta-reality that I have somehow created.”

“OK, let me think about your dilemma. You’re not in serious danger of dying this week, right?”

“No. Nothing serious is wrong with me. This is a long-term thing. If I want to do this, I want to start planning what this next world is going to be like and doing the drawings on the side over a period of years.”

It was only a few days later when Keith came back to ask, “Do you think you could take me with you?”

Wow! What a question! I replied, “Another question I can’t answer, since I never tried, never even told anyone else in the other lifetimes about it. It’s conceivable it would work. Suppose we sat here together, fell asleep together, and fell into a wider drawing with two people in it for us to occupy in the next world.”

“That might just work!” Keith replied.

“I don’t know why it works, and I frankly can’t even rule out the possibility that it has happened to other people already. They go off to live in other worlds of their own making, so all we could possibly see is what happened to them when they left. I’ve never heard about other cartoonists or artists of any kind dying in strange ways in front of art they were drawing, or going missing, so either it doesn’t happen, or they go on living somehow, controlled by a copy of their mind or something. Or it just looks like natural death. Or it changes the world so that they never existed and nobody knows.”

“Well, then, that’s my request. I’m fine with it as long as you make an effort to take me with you.”

“Deal! The next step is we have to come up with some idea of what kind of world we want to go to.”