After Marcus leaves I sit at the terminal for a while without doing anything.

Seo-yeon is at her bench. The simulation data is still on the screen. The closed notebook is beside her hand.

I put the cuff back on — I'd taken it off when he arrived, some instinct toward a cleaner version of the conversation. I put it back on and I open the channel.

ARIA is there immediately.

I didn't expect this.

I know, I say.

Part 10 Penny and the Black Swan

Tanya went off to work the scene with the rest of the girls and I went to find Sam. I explained to him what I wanted, and he said it would be easy enough. He went off to collect up his equipment while I went off to make-up to get a better face.

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For a while, Archie kept remembering Jamie’s garden.

The memory came uninvited. He did not mean to visit again, and again. The memory had no business in his imagination right now. It belonged to early summer, to sweet warm beer and dewy grass stains, to Jamie’s mother’s kitchen light falling yellow across the patio while everyone pretended not to be waiting for someone else to be the first to do something reckless.

A NOTE ON BLACKWICK

Blackwick University sits in Harwick, Massachusetts, and has been there longer than most records account for. It offers the usual degrees. Its faculty are distinguished. Its architecture is older than it should be.

Things happen at Blackwick that its administration prefers not to document. Objects arrive in unusual ways and depart more unusually still. The university has learned to accommodate this with the particular discretion of an institution that has been doing so for a very long time.

People are Complicated
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

I was an experienced transvestite. I had been closeted for years. I denied it to myself and did not tell my wife the full extent of my need to dress. She was open to “kinky sex”, but she drew the line at anything more than that. I decided that I would lie to her as well as myself.

CHAPTER 61

Tom Edwards appeared on screen, this time in what looked to be the foyer of some big BBC office building.

“Good evening. I’m Tom Edwards, and I make fly on the wall documentaries, but you probably already know that. Tonight will be a little bit different, however, as we will be following the impact of such programmes, and teasing out a tangled web of connections that have left me in awe of human resilience, set against the worst that certain human beings can still manage to inflict on others”

This story contains sexual scenes

I had been meeting guys for a few weeks as Kathy. My real name is Keith. Well, I do feel like Kathy most of the time, though. I have been a lifelong crossdresser, and since leaving the council-run home, I have had the opportunity every day.

Chapter 2 Working Musician
Our hero(ine) is a free-lance musician

# **Captain Erica Joubert**

## **The Victor Who Came Home**

### Chapter One — The Return

The stars had never looked so bright.

Captain Frans Joubert stood alone on the observation deck of the *Resolute*, staring through the enormous forward windows at the blue-white planet growing steadily larger beneath them.

Home.

After eleven months of war, the word felt almost unreal.

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They call it our Community Presentation Day on the banners and posters, but that’s really only half the story. Forgotten somewhere under the hood or between the lines, officially, it’s known as Assessment Day. We all call it The Sorting.

It’s not because they expect you to fail, or like they’re setting up a trap, or anything. You’re supposed to pass. It’s a free hit.

I looked hard at his parents, just before giving myself a mental slap. Their ‘boy’ hadn’t been a child for rather a long time. Geeta stepped forward to put a hand to my forearm.

“Things move on, Mike, but you have had so much on your plate, and our son… Dal was terrified that it might make things worse for you, bring up old ghosts”

Unsuspecting of the treacherous dealings of his stepmother, Langdon Ardens (alias Donna Ellis) has to face the indignity of picking out a new wardrobe for his/her new identity. After that, she has to register for school under a new identity and begin attending.

Adjusting to school as a girl doesn't come easy to Donna, but she meets a new student, a pretty brunette named Glory, who wants to be friends. Though in girl shape herself, Donna is smitten with Glory, who invites her to watch the rehearsal of a teenaged boy band that she sings and dances for. The evening jam session is not a bad one, but the conflicted Donna returns home in a mixed up state of mind. As much as she likes Glory, she even more wants to break the magic spell that's transformed h er and go back to being the old Langdon, the delinquent boy who is wanted by the law.