Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Hammerstein is at the cusp of finishing high school in his hometown of Los Alamos, NM. He has a seemingly ideal life and is blessed with loving parents, a cute baby sister, and great friends. Nicholas is a gifted student and martial artist who has dreams of leaving for college at the end of his senior year. But, living in a world of Emergent humans, he will soon find his life turned upside down as his life and the fate of a kingdom hang in the balance. His future and theirs will be determined by how he navigates the drastic changes in his body and the magical and superpowered Mergent population he joins.

“I know almost everything they say about lawyers,” he responded. “We make up most of the jokes ourselves. But what do they say about linguists?”

Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Hammerstein is at the cusp of finishing high school in his hometown of Los Alamos, NM. He has a seemingly ideal life and is blessed with loving parents, a cute baby sister, and great friends. Nicholas is a gifted student and martial artist who has dreams of leaving for college at the end of his senior year. But, living in a world of Emergent humans, he will soon find his life turned upside down as his life and the fate of a kingdom hang in the balance. His future and theirs will be determined by how he navigates the drastic changes in his body and the magical and superpowered Mergent population he joins.

Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Hammerstein is at the cusp of finishing high school in his hometown of Los Alamos, NM. He has a seemingly ideal life and is blessed with loving parents, a cute baby sister, and great friends. Nicholas is a gifted student and martial artist who has dreams of leaving for college at the end of his senior year. But, living in a world of Emergent humans, he will soon find his life turned upside down as his life and the fate of a kingdom hang in the balance. His future and theirs will be determined by how he navigates the drastic changes in his body and the magical and superpowered Mergent population he joins.

Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Hammerstein is at the cusp of finishing high school in his hometown of Los Alamos, NM. He has a seemingly ideal life and is blessed with loving parents, a cute baby sister, and great friends. Nicholas is a gifted student and martial artist who has dreams of leaving for college at the end of his senior year. But, living in a world of Emergent humans, he will soon find his life turned upside down as his life and the fate of a kingdom hang in the balance. His future and theirs will be determined by how he navigates the drastic changes in his body and the magical and superpowered Mergent population he joins.

The Other Side of Me – Part 29
by Lily Rasputin

“Charlie? Are you okay?”

Sight and sound popped back into existence around me, revealing that I was in the living room of my apartment, sitting on the sofa with Samantha’s head resting in my lap. I glanced down to find her looking up at me with a concerned expression.

“Huh?” I asked, still trying to reacclimate to the dimensional jump. Unlike the previous swaps, this one was jarring. The difference between stepping across a threshold and stumbling across one.

Kurtz tried, but she couldn’t keep from laughing. Which proved to be almost as contagious as vomiting on a plane.

The Other Side of Me – Part 28
by Lily Rasputin

As much as I might have preferred to sit on a bench and tongue wrestle with Mike all morning, both of us had classes and responsibilities that we couldn’t completely ignore. So, after another ten minutes of really wonderful public displays of affection, I peeled my face away from his and sighed.

“Guess we should take a break for now, huh?” He asked, sounding about as disappointed as I felt.

I nodded. “Probably. I have to meet with Shelly and talk about some stuff. But I could meet you for lunch if you wanted.”

The Other Side of Me – Part 27
by Lily Rasputin

I made it to school in record time, despite having to pause to accommodate the whims of a flock of stupid geese who decided that the side of the street they had been on was not to their satisfaction.

When I finally pulled into my parking spot on campus, I glanced at the time and calculated that a brisk walk should get me to class just before the lecture started. Which was great, since I doubted my quaking abdominals would allow me to move at any faster pace.

“I know Dad doesn’t want you at home unless you’re willing to change back, but when I have a place of my own, you’ll be welcome to join me there. I don’t know when I’ll have anything to offer that’s better than the sofa bed you’re sleeping on now, though.”

I sneezed explosively; by happy coincidence, the sound bore an uncanny resemblance to the word, “bullshit.”

The Other Side of Me – Part 25
by Lily Rasputin

“No,” I said, trying to inject nonchalance into my voice. “I didn’t forget. Uh, the time just sort of got away from me.”

There was a pause from Sam’s end, just long enough for me to wonder if she was mad that “I” had apparently forgotten we were supposed to get together today. If she was, I’d just have to find some way to put out that fire as well. After all, it wasn’t as if I could tell her that it wasn’t really me she’d made plans with.

I opened the year with an end-of-the world story, and this continues the subject of earth-shattering occurrences . Like the previous story, this one was started early last year, and had to wait until the end of the year, when my muse came back from where-ever it had disappeared to.
Marianne.

Part 1

“Say cheese!” Those two words summed up a lot of my young days. My father, Allan, was an avid photographer, while my mother, Wanda, had been a model. They told me that when they met, it was a marriage made in heaven.

The Other Side of Me – Part 24
by Lily Rasputin

“Well?” The furious woman across the table from me said. “I’m waiting.”

I stared at my mother, pain aching in my chest as I was torn between the elated feeling of seeing her again, and the sheer terror that her sternest glare always provoked from deep inside me. Unlike my father, Mom was slow to anger, but when she got mad, she really got mad.

I held up my hands, shaking my head back and forth. “I …”

Her finger came back up again, pointing right at my face.

Then she asked me what high school I’d gone to before I dropped out, and apologetically asked me for my deadname so she could ask them for my records, and made an appointment for me to come back the next day for placement tests. I was in!

Our hero surrenders herself up to the rebels but mainly to start a dialogue.

It was too short notice to make a birthday cake, Mrs. Ramsey said, but they had a couple of boxes of Girl Scout cookies that they’d bought from the scouts at church the previous Sunday, and we nibbled on those and they sang “Happy Birthday” for me, and I cried, and everybody hugged me.

“Wake up! It’s Christmas morning! You just missed Santa Claus!” Mrs. Ramsey called out from the hallway.

“I still miss them, though, even though I’m worried about how they’ll react. Does that make sense?”