Chasing Zero

"I used to be 5'11"," I complained.

"What kind of disease can cause someone to shrink?" I asked Doctor Nguyen. "I've lost five inches since last year."

Doctor "Gwen," as I mentally called her, admitted. "No one has any explanations for this syndrome. It's not really a disease since there is no pathology. It's just a syndrome, a collection of symptoms, and one of them is height loss."

We were in one of the small examination rooms and she had already had the nurse take my vitals, then she’d pulled out her notepad and consulted it frequently while we talked about my condition.

I watched her make notes in the reflection of one of the chromed pieces of medical equipment.

"I used to be 5'11"," I complained.

"That's what you're most upset about?" she said, raising one eyebrow. "You know we can no longer find any trace of your testicles. They're just gone. And we’ve ruled out surgery to go looking for them.”

"Yeah, well," I muttered. "I don't think I'd been getting any use of them for years. And all the head hair I lost grew back. No more bald spot or receding hairline." I hadn’t had a haircut in months now and my shaggy locks curled over my shirt collar.

"No beard or body hair either," she commented drily.

"There's that," I admitted. "Saves on razors."

She looked at me over her reading glasses in a way that suggested she did not find me as funny as I found myself. "You've also lost approximately thirty pounds of muscle and—impossibly—bone.”.

She glared at her clipboard and flipped a few pages back. "Then there's the migration of your urinary meatus from the distal end of..."

"I know where it used to be," I interrupted.

"Well, currently, it's somewhere under near what used to be your scrotum," she finished.

"Getting easier to aim, actually," I said. “I just sit down.”

Gwen put down her clipboard. Just set it on the desk and looked at me with an expression that was equal parts medical concern and genuine bafflement at my continued existence as a functional human being.

"Are you not worried about any of this?" she asked.

I thought about it honestly. "I'm worried about the five inches," I said. "I can’t reach the top shelf in the kitchen without a stool anymore.” I smiled. People used to say I had a disarming smile. Now they’re more likely to call it cute. “If I get any shorter, I’m going to have to start looking up to you.”

She sniffed, turning her face away for a moment. “You’ve also lost more than two inches…elsewhere.” She turned back to frown at me again. “And you don’t seem particularly upset about that either.”

“I don’t really seem to get upset or even excited anymore at all.” I sighed. “It’s peaceful?”

She glared at something else on the clipboard. “Your tissues continue to not respond to androgen replacement therapy. Shots of testosterone seem to not have any effect at all. You’ve asked that we discontinue them.”

“Well, they do have one effect. They hurt.” I shifted uncomfortably. “Didn’t you say you had found something about this in the literature?”

“Umm,” she grunted. “There is literature about this. Turns out there have been about twenty cases of it in the last decade in North America, similar enough that they’ve given it a name, Zero Syndrome.”

I nodded. I’d found a few references on the internet myself. So far, no one was panicking and calling it an epidemic. It seemed that only medical professionals cared that a few middle-aged men seemed to be getting younger, and—less masculine. “No diagnosis, just a name,” I put in.

She tried to look serious, so I gave her a big goofy grin, and all she could do was frown at me. “No diagnosis,” she repeated, sounding severe. “But there is a prognosis. All known cases have progressed over a period of about three years to a complete erasure of all male primary and secondary sexual characteristics with a cumulative loss of seven to ten inches in height and ten to twenty years of apparent age.”

She put everything on the clipboard back in its place and stared, first at it, then at me. “This calm indifference to your condition and its progress that you express is listed as one of the symptoms.”

I flexed my eyebrows at her, something that almost always made my students grin. She didn’t even smile, a tougher crowd than your average middle school history class. “Any suggested treatments that we haven’t tried?”

Her frown was back. “Nothing seems to work. Except…and this isn’t a cure, exactly—just something that has been done with measurable results.”

I waited her out, and she continued after a time. “Once patients reach what the literature calls a ‘zero’ state with no sexual characteristics…some have responded to a cocktail of hormones.”

I’d found this information too and had been waiting for her to bring it up.

Outside, the sun had fallen far enough in the west that its glare streamed through our second-floor window at the clinic. The light could have been harsh, but instead it became golden, painting the room in optimistic colors.

She eventually began to describe the treatment. “The suite of hormones used were similar to the ones given to young women experiencing delayed puberty. The results—well, I haven’t seen them myself, but the description is extraordinary.”

I didn’t twitch or say a word, letting her proceed at her own pace.

“Patients began to show signs of a female puberty progressing rapidly as their bodies changed again.” She stopped, staring at the wall behind me. “They grew new organs, internal female organs, wombs, ovaries, vaginal canals, and all the external parts too.” She changed her focus to my face. “Breasts, too.”

She shook her head. “Unbelievable, but the study has been submitted for peer review.”

I waited, but her spring had unwound, and she stayed stopped. I cleared my throat. “How long did that take?”

“About another three years. And the pateients who completed the—treatment—appeared indistinguishable from young women of normal medical background. Genetically, their X-chromosomes had....” She searched for a word. “Cannibalized their Y-chromosomes, duplicating themselves. Barely detectable that this must have happened.”

She shook her head as if to clear it of thought.

I counted three ticks of the big industrial clock on the wall. “Doctor, how long do you think before I reach Zero State and can start the recovery treatment?”