During 2035 there were 12 incidents in which a spacecraft was impacted by free-floating man-made materials in space, generally classified as “space junk.” This was a record number of such impacts, and everybody agreed a solution was needed, but what? 2036 managed to avoid breaking the record again only due to companies shying away from launches.
In 2037, Karl Greene proposed a solution. He formed a company called SpaceFab that would be responsible for the removal of space junk around the Earth. It would be funded by all space-faring nations and by private companies launching or maintaining objects in orbit, effectively a UN-administered tax. In the absence of any competing proposals, after some dickering over the price, the plan was approved.
In the first part of the solution, nations and companies were required to register the items they have orbiting the Earth. UN Space Command, which collects data from all spacefaring nations and companies, would keep SpaceFab informed of all launch and landing activity and non-orbiting objects traveling within the low Earth orbit (LEO) zone. Astronomical organizations would inform them about the rare, naturally occurring objects within this zone, such as meteorites, to the extent possible. Separately, SpaceFab launched a set of satellites to detect and catalog all the items found in LEO and their orbits. The goal would then be to remove any unregistered items. Where possible, the unregistered items were identified from catalogs of items known to have been launched into space but which had been abandoned, failed, or otherwise ceased to be used but were not able to be deorbited. There were found to be approximately 170,000 such items ranging from disused satellites to collision debris, about half of which were able to be at least partially identified.
Now it’s 2042. SpaceFab has a permanent station in orbit, officially called SpaceFab-1 but often derogatorily referred to as the space junkyard. Rather than deorbit the objects, SpaceFab collects most of them and offers them for sale to anyone looking to build or repair objects in orbit. It costs thousands of dollars per kilogram to launch objects into LEO, so all of this material that SpaceFab is being paid to remove is potentially valuable. That said, so far few customers other than SpaceFab employees themselves have actually used the collected space junk for anything.
SpaceFab-1 has two ships for collecting space junk. They dock at the station when not in use, but since SpaceFab commenced operations, there has almost always been one in use. They go out on 10-day missions, numbered from STM-1 (the abbreviation is for Space Trash Mission). These are demanding missions, so a separate crew comes up from Earth to the station to run each mission.
Each crew consists of 11 people. Within the 11, there are three sub-crews of three people each designated for removing the space junk. During STM-1 and STM-2 they experimented with different shift lengths, but since then they have usually used 5-hour shifts. This means each sub-crew is active for 5 hours and inactive for 10 hours at a time. Usually, each sub-crew mostly just eats and sleeps during every second inactive period. During the other inactive periods, they take only a short nap, allowing them to participate in other activities such as cleaning and recreation.
Each sub-crew consists of three roles. One is a pilot, whose job is to move the ship near each piece of space debris to be collected and to match speed with it. Automatic systems help alert the pilot to any objects that may be on crossing orbits and need to be avoided. The second role is the arm operator. His primary job is to extend the collection arm to within 3 meter proximity of the space debris, and he works with the pilot in case the ship is too far away to achieve this. He also acts as a monitoring officer during flight movements, double-checking the pilot’s actions to help avoid collisions.
The third role is the retriever. He sits in a cockpit located at the end of the collection arm. He has at his disposal a large maneuverable secondary arm for collecting whole satellites. There is a small secondary arm, just as long but more slender, for collecting objects on smaller scales, things roughly the size baseballs; an electromagnet on this arm helps pull in smaller items too difficult to grab. Finally, there is an energy gun for vaporizing debris too small and not metallic enough for the small arm to collect. It’s technically not a laser gun, because for safety it’s designed to defocus the energy within 10 meters of the target to avoid damage from missed shots hitting Earth or other spacecraft, but it closely resembles one. Aim, fire, and a beam comes out and blasts stuff. The energy is focused in specific frequencies designed to break the bonds of organic molecules, so these objects are converted into their constituent atoms or small molecules that will not re-condense and continue to cause trouble.
Two other men round out the crew. The medic is in charge of handling any injuries or ailments the crew suffers during their 10-day mission. The backup is trained in all three crew roles and is there to fill in for anybody who can no longer perform their duty, avoiding the need to abort the mission if one crewman is incapacitated. Each of the 11 crewmen are paid one million dollars on the completion of a mission, even the backup and even if he did nothing. While the crew roles are more demanding, the medic and backup roles require greater training.
At the end of the 10 days, the ship returns to SpaceFab-1 and unloads the material they collected. Workers on the station sort it various ways, separating chemical and radiation hazards from items that can be sorted and stored or disassembled by hand. Hundreds of bins on the station contain such sorted material.
At first, STM crews were all male because there were only male volunteers. Maria Idzhikova was the first female volunteer, and she asked for the condition that she have at least one other woman on the crew with her, not looking forward to being in space for a week and a half with ten men. Mr. Greene not only accepted her request but went a step further. “You’re not going to go on a mission until we get a full crew of 11 women. I’m not paying people to join the hundred-mile-high club!”
That comment was wrong in so many ways. Most significantly was that because of the danger level while going out to intentionally encounter space junk, we wore space suits continuously during the 10-day missions, with a catheter-based system to deal with bodily waste. Even during off-duty hours, we were monitored. Stripping out of the suits to the extent needed to perform any sort of sex would have set off alarms. The only part we were allowed to remove during flight was the helmet.
The comment was also wrong because gay men and lesbians could join their own version of that club. And it also ignored activity on SpaceFab-1 itself, where men and women were stationed for longer periods of time, together, and weren’t expected to wear space suits all the time. I knew for a fact that sex had occurred on the space station, and quite likely before Maria’s first flight. It was true, though, they they didn’t get our high hazard pay. But he used the statement as a recruiting push for women, and for STM-15 and STM-27 he indeed used all-female crews.
STM-35 was my third mission. I planned for it to be my last; 3 mill would make enough for me to retire on. And it was going well. On my last turn in the retriever’s chair, we picked up an old, nonfunctional Soviet satellite and a piece of junk from a private satellite from the 2010s that had suffered a collision. Our third target was one of the “unknown” objects we sometimes came across; we would have photos and size data but usually no other data about these. This one appeared to be a small intact satellite of some sort, but nobody had claimed it, so it was scheduled for removal along with all rest of the junk.
Everything went fine until I grabbed it with the small arm. Then it shot out some sort of pink beam and I blacked out.
I awoke some time later, lying on a medical-style bed. I could see other people beside me on other beds in close proximity. I was restrained only in the casual way used in space medical facilities, intended to ensure I didn’t fall out of the bed during maneuvers or float out in zero gravity, with grips holding my upper arms and mid-thighs to the bed, but allowing some movement. I could tell we weren’t then in zero gravity; I could feel the pull of gravity, separately from the restraints, holding me down to the bed like I hadn’t felt in 10 days.
“Rise and shine, ladies!” said a man who I looked up to see.
Ladies, I wondered? But as I looked down the length of my bed toward the man, I also saw that my body had two lumps I didn’t expect to see. The other people beside me seemed similarly confused.
“I’m Zachary Quill, M.D., medic on SpaceFab-1. An incident happened during your mission. When you seemed incapacitated and could not be reached over comms, we sent someone out to bring your ship back in. We were surprised to see a female crew aboard since we recorded your crew as male when you left.”
There was a lot of shouting from my crewmates, high-pitched shouting in some cases, since none of them expected to wake up female, either. A fair bit of it was cursing.
“Relax, please. Your insurance clause about returning with all organs intact has been activated, and you’ll get triple pay. Also, we apologize for the close quarters, and the decor. Our sick bay wasn’t designed to hold a whole crew at once; we had to improvise facilities in the morgue. The beds are replicas of the standard medical one, though; you can press a button under each side of the bed near where your hands fall to release the restraints.”
There was another pause as everyone did so.
“We don’t know how it happened, but we are certain it was related to the last object you picked up. The first tug we sent out to get you also failed, the pilot feeling sick as he neared, but he veered away and reported radiation coming from the object your ship held in the retrieval arm. We were able to remotely release that object, and once your ship was sufficiently far from it, a second tug was sent out to pick you up.”
He paused for a moment because we were all occupied checking out the extent of the changes in our bodies. I did too, and confirmed they were complete, at least externally. We were only dressed in those stupid paper medical gowns, so it wasn’t difficult for us to check between our legs. We were plugged in, but I could tell how the urinary catheter went into a flat part of my body and not a penis, and I likewise felt the extra hole I had before reaching the other catheter.
“We found you all unconscious, and not fitting in your suits well. When we got you here we removed the suits to perform medical tests, but the problem we have now is that you don’t fit into them properly for returning to Earth. Your undersuits were all ruined by bodily discharges as well, but we have new ones you can wear.”
He held up a full-body undersuit much like the ones we put on under the space suits before we went out on our mission.
“This is the female version of the suit. It will be tight zipping up, but when you do so, the top will act like a sports bra. Some of you definitely need that.”
Next he held up what were unmistakably panties. Plain, opaque white panties, but panties all the same.
“These open in the same direction as the suits, so you can open both garments to use the toilet without wriggling all the way out of your suits.”
He didn’t really need to say that. We’d all worn the men’s versions of both garments with the same bathroom features before.
His so-far silent assistant picked up a big stack of clothes and the two walked along our row of beds. For each of us, the doc removed an IV from one arm and two catheters between our legs, wiping each of us briefly where they were pulled out and depositing the paper in a bag hanging from his waist.
We were familiar with the catheters since the space suits we had worn during the entire space flight were equipped with them. Because getting in and out of them was such a chore, and nobody wanted “one of the crewmen is in the bathroom” to ever be a reason for a launch to be delayed, using the catheters was standard protocol if you were using the space suits, and time was built into launch prep to hook everyone up. They fed our wastes into containers within the suits that could be dumped, or more like vacuumed once a day into into a container on the ship that kept the sewage sealed up tight. It was part of our training to learn how to insert and remove the catheters on our own, when needed, but if they were around, we let medical staff do that. The removal felt a bit weird to me, though. Maybe that was just the lack of a penis.
We were usually filthy when we came out of the suits, with 10 days’ worth of skin flakes stuck to our skin and/or the undersuits. But they’d washed what the doc called bodily discharges off of us, so they cleaned that up, too.
When the doc finished unplugging each of us, the assistant checked our names on the paper tag around our left wrist, ripped the tag off, and handed us clothes like what we’d been shown.
When they finished with the last of us, the doctor said, “We will leave for a moment so you can get dressed.”
Both men left, leaving the 11 of my crew from the garbage ship alone. Some of my crewmates were a bit hesitant, but after realizing the rest of us had similar body shapes to their own, everybody got up off their beds, stripped off the paper gowns, put on the panties, and started squeezing into the undersuits. This process was somewhat familiar, since we’d gotten into the same garments before putting on the space suits. The female versions, though, are smaller at the waist and larger at the hips and bust, and so present slightly different challenges. The back of the neck opens up down beyond the waist to allow entry into the undersuits. Pulling them up our bodies took some effort. When we had them all the way on, the zipper from butt to neck kept them in place, and I have to admit, despite the tightness, it was comfortable when I got it on.
We couldn’t help looking around a bit. This didn’t even look like my crew, apart from us all being female. We had completely new bodies. There wasn’t one that looked over 25; we looked like a sorority rather than a space junk crew. If my sense of proportion was right, though, most of us were large women, though proportionately built. We must have still had the mass and approximate body sizes we had before. So maybe more of a women’s athletic team of some sort.
I recognized some of the mannerisms and verbal responses of the others. In particular, a “what the flying fuck” identified my arm operator Gardner. He’d said that three times this mission when we came up to a particularly odd-looking piece of space junk. That reassured me that I was really among my crew and not 10 strangers.
About 10 minutes after the doctor and his assistant had left, we had all managed to cover ourselves, and one of us, due to our changed bodies I am not even sure who, opened the door and let the two men back in.
“I hope you find these suits bearable. At least they cover you.”
One of my crewmates who now had a voice that sounded like that of a little girl asked, “How female are we?”
“As female as if you’d been born that way, right down to the chromosomes. We expect you’ll menstruate, and we have the supplies for that, too.”
This was met with several groans.
“Can you turn us back?” someone else asked.
“We don’t even know how it was done in the first place. The only possibility is if we can recover that thing and there’s a way to make it turn you back. Since we can’t even get close to it, we don’t even have a plan for that. So you should prepare to stay like you are now.”
A different one asked, “So we’re just supposed to go down and start new lives as women?”
“Your governments will all help with that. They know, and they’re scared shitless that there’s something out here that can do what this thing just did to you all. They will not hesitate to give you new names and fix your gender on all records, or create entirely new identities for you. Counseling will be available, several different kinds of counseling.”
There were murmurs among the group, a general sense of agreement despite the strangeness of it all.
“We are out of IVs after keeping you fed for 3 days, so you’re going to have to eat the station food. We have a supply ship on the way that is bringing more food and suits that will fit you. For now, follow me.”
The first place he took us had our comm units with our names on them lined up in alphabetical order on a table, sitting on chargers, and each of us picked ours up in turn and affixed it with the usual Velcro to the spot on our suit above the left breast. Thoughtfully, in these female suits, the Velcro was actually above the breast, on what was a flat part for most of us. If it had been where it was on the male suits, it would have been on the top slope of my breast.
Quill introduced the man who had helped him hand out suits. “This here’s Jagermeister, or at least, he lets us call him that because his actual name’s too difficult and doesn’t even fit on the name patch.”
The indicated man had JAGERMSTR written on the strip attached to his comm badge since even Jagermeister was too long. I wondered what his actual name was.
“He’s the station’s quartermaster, who we didn’t expect you to need, but you’re going to be here at least a couple days until we get those suits, so he’s going to assign you some bunks to sleep on, and he’s also going to update all your voice prints in the system. Please confirm for me by raising hands to indicate that everyone has found the comms with their own name printed on it.”
All 11 of us raised our hands.
“Hands down. After Jagermeister finishes with you, he’ll lead you to the mess hall.”
We all waited patiently while he had each of us dictate into a microphone the standard text, which included all the common sounds in English, followed by our surname as we expected to be addressed. When that was done, we moved to another area, where he handed us keys with room assignments, double rooms except one leftover single, and we each got a tote bag into which he put another 2 of the undersuits, 2 panties, and a bundle of what I discovered, when it was my turn, included a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, and feminine supplies. He led us to the indicated rooms, which were all in a row. They were already supplied with bedding, and our other limited personal items had already been removed from our ship and placed in our rooms. Everybody confirmed their keys locked and unlocked their doors, and then as promised he led us to the mess hall.
As a crew for STMs, we never got a chance to eat here; we arrived on a transport, went straight into mission prep, and were put on board the garbage ship. So when we arrived at the mess hall, Quill was there and explained the food briefly.
“We’re not quite vegetarian here, but largely so, because we grow as much of our food as is possible in a hydroponics bay on the station.”
It was different from what we were used to in flight, but because there is real food, it was better than the rations we took with us on the garbage ship. Another nice touch was that, since this part of the ship rotated to provide artificial gravity, we could eat mostly in the way we did on the ground.
There was nobody but our group using the cafeteria, and after we were done eating, a woman named Dunn arrived and spoke with us briefly. She explained she wasn’t medical staff in any way, but she was here just to give us some hygiene lessons we may not have gotten as men. This included demonstrations of how the tampons were supposed to work, using a Fleshlight, not her own female parts; I wondered who had given up their toy for the lesson.
After this, Quill led us to a room where we were debriefed by a group of the station’s officers. This didn’t actually last very long because nobody knew much. My testimony was perhaps most relevant, that seizing the object with the arm seemed to activate it, and knocked me out before I could release it or call for help. The others perhaps were affected less quickly, and one of them was able to send out a distress signal that alerted the station more quickly than they might otherwise have realized that we were in trouble. However, we were all knocked out before we could say anything over comms. I don’t think the debrief gave them anything they didn’t already have from recordings, but it corroborated what we knew.
At the end of this debrief we were told we had no further duties until the resupply ship arrived, but that we’d get more lessons tomorrow, and that they were looking for volunteers to help in retrieving this object. One theory was that it only affects men, and with our changes complete, we’d be able to approach it in a way that the men could not, and hopefully turn it off. And of course, that counted as a new mission and we’d be paid for it, though they hadn’t quite worked out the details yet. Neither I nor anyone else volunteered at this time.
We went back to our rooms. They had simply put us in alphabetical order, leaving Zimmerman alone in the last room. I, Curt Robinson, was next door to Zim and sharing with Sputterman, one of the pilots.
“How are we going to do this, Robs? Er, maybe Robin is more appropriate now, given your hair.”
My roommate was the slenderest of the crew, and her female version was still skinny, but one part of her did not come out small. The result was someone I was having to resist trying to make out with.
“Sputty, have you taken a look at yourself? You are going to have to beat off the men!”
She saw that there was a mirror on the wall, though like all space mirrors it was a piece of heavily polished metal, rather than glass. She stared at it a moment, perhaps trying to confirm that she was really looking at herself.
“Oh my God! I’ve turned into my own wet dream! They’re going to be calling me Slutty instead of Sputty.”
I chuckled, but suppressed it, not wanting it to seem like I was laughing at her body. Instead, I said, “You’re only as slutty as you let yourself be, though I agree that your shape lets you do that much more than I could.”
I looked at myself. I understood his comment about Robin now, as I had a big frizzy mess of red hair, exactly the color of a robin’s red breast. If you only looked at my face, you might think I was cute. The body, though... I had been the opposite extreme on the crew to Sputty, just barely under the height and weight limits for astronauts. And I hadn’t gotten any smaller, only differently shaped. I outweighed Sputty by perhaps 80 pounds, none of it fat. I was five inches taller than her, though she wasn’t short, and I was more muscular. I think my breasts were actually smaller than Sputty’s if measured by volume. Despite being big, they looked pretty normal on my body. You might actually think my whole body was cute, if you were 6’ 9” and 300 pounds.
After a moment of looking at us both in the mirror, Sputty turned to me and grabbed onto one of my arms.
“Protect me if any men come after me, Robin, please!”
I told her, “OK, but you might need protecting from me.”
“You’re OK. You don’t have a dick anymore. That’s what I’m afraid of. What you do to me is OK if you keep the men off.”
Her look of fear moments ago had changed to something else. Was she making a pass at me? I was having trouble reading her expression. But she’d given me permission for something, so I bent down and gave her a big kiss, the kind of kiss a man gives his date. I’d never treated Sputty in any way other than as a colleague before, but Sputty was never a super-hot woman before, nor had Sputty ever come on to me. And Sputty did not shy away from it. She was, after all, getting to kiss a woman, too, though a woman built more like a linebacker than a supermodel.
Out of respect for what I perceived as the intent rather than the literal words of Sputty’s request, I didn’t go further with her, and we slept in our separate beds.
In the morning, we stripped and showered. There was a private bathroom in our room. I went first. Sputty was standing there stark naked and not hiding her body from me in the least when I came out and she went in for her turn.
It was a treat to get to use a real, private shower, even if we knew the water was recycled after enough filtering to let it actually get us clean and ensure it didn’t carry any diseases. Usually, we got exactly one shower during the trip. When we got back to the station after the mission, we removed our space suits, tossed the undersuits and underwear into a quick-wash-and-dry laundry service they had here, and cleaned off the dead skin cells and sweat in a big communal shower. Half an hour later, after much scrubbing and drying off, we would be presented with the same clothes ready to put back on.
I also had a pee for the first time as a girl that morning. Well, for the first time as a conscious girl without a catheter. It wasn’t anything to write home about, nor anything beyond what I expected. Just something I’m going to have to get used to.
We each put on a new outfit of panties and undersuit from those we’d been given and went out to join the others for breakfast. Dunn was there and gave us some more lessons in being women after we finished eating.
Then they brought up the subject of capturing the device that had done this to us. Mr. Greene called us from Earth to beg us to help.
“We’re tracking the object. Its orbit changed after your encounter with it, but it’s in a stable orbit and not likely to collide with anything soon. But that’s not why we want you to get the device. Right now, STM-36 is out there but we aren’t risking another problem like yours. We are keeping them on the opposite side of the Earth from the device, since there is still plenty of space junk to clean up, but we can only do that for so long.”
He paused for a moment. I think he was trying to let a little guilt sink into us.
“Here’s what I’m offering. I need a crew to go out and fetch that thing. That’s one pilot, one arm operator, and one retriever. We don’t need a medic or backup because it’s just the one target; it shouldn’t take more than three hours at the most to travel to and from the thing and catch it. If we get a near pass to the station, it could be as little as half an hour. If you can capture it like you can with the usual space junk, you’ll take it directly to one of the hazardous waste satellites that’s currently empty and will be designated for this one purpose, and people can travel there if they want to study it.”
The hazardous waste satellites were part of the required learning for all crew members, but we usually didn’t have to travel there ourselves. When crew aboard SpaceFab-1 separated the collected objects into radioactive, hazardous, and normal, the radioactive bits were stored in a lead-lined room on the station (but still potentially available for suitably protected customers to buy). Chemicals deemed too hazardous to keep on the station were taken to one of several satellites that carried out automated operations to convert them into safe chemicals by breaking down complex molecules, then essentially burning them to make light gases like carbon dioxide and water vapor. Water vapor was captured through filters that allowed only water to pass through and collected for reuse. Carbon dioxide went through other filters and eventually froze into dry ice. Trace amounts of metals, usually metal oxides at this point, were left behind and would be periodically removed when they amassed to a certain amount.
These hazardous waste satellites were in high orbits, well above the altitude most space junk was at, but they were also isolated from where other ships were likely to travel. Each satellite took a few months to completely process its contents, but they had enough so that usually after one of these missions the next one in line was done. Depositing this object in one that they would presumably turn off just meant they’d skip that one and not use it for anything else.
“If it’s evasive, you have permission to destroy it. I’m offering 5 million dollars to each of the crew who go to either capture or destroy the device, with an extra 5 million apiece if you succeed in capturing and storing the device on one of these stations, so it can potentially be used for good. What do you say?”
Zimmerman spoke up first. “This transformation is beyond my wildest dreams. I don’t want risk encountering the thing again and getting changed back.”
It surprised me that Zim was trans, but thinking about that let me understand Greene’s plan. If we capture the thing for him, he can let trans people pay for flights to the thing and get fully working gender changes. Some trans-women already pay tens of thousands for hormones, surgery, and more for something that only makes them look female. Becoming a fully functioning female in days? Priceless. But he would set a price, of course, say a hundred grand for a short flight to the device, a couple recovery days at SpaceFab-1, and then back down to Earth. He’d add tens of millions a year to what he already makes on this operation, and paying an extra 15 mil to us was just the cost of getting it started. I’m sure he considered the first 15 mil a business expense to keep SpaceFab going, something he had to do because he was contracted to continue cleaning space junk.
Two of the other guys, Ted Baker, a retriever, and Kevin Posey, an arm operator, said they had wives, and Posey had a daughter also. Both said they were sure being a woman was going to make their relationships strange, but also that they believed their wives would support them. So they weren’t willing to undertake the extra danger of this mission, and the extra two million they each were already getting from insurance was enough. Posey specifically said he wouldn’t “risk getting turned into a potato or something.”
Then Sputty looked at me. Apparently afraid I was going to volunteer, she grabbed hold of my arm. “Don’t do it, Robin. I want you to stay safe and protect me.”
And she planted a quick but messy kiss right on my mouth. I guess she wasn’t worried in the least of letting the others know about the relationship we had started. That she had started, anyway. I was just happily going along with it.
So I said, “You heard Sputty. I guess that means we are both out.”
Sputty said, “That’s right, I’m out, too,” and then gave me a longer kiss.
Gardner then said, “I have a wife, too, but she is rabidly anti-gay and anti-trans. There is no chance we can stay together if I stay female. I’ll join your mission as arm operator.”
Reynolds, the smallest one of us, who had also come out with the smallest breasts and looked like a 14-year-old girl now, said, “I’ll go as retriever.”
The two remaining pilots, Michaels and Lemon, both bowed out. And Cardenas, the medic, wasn’t even asked. There wasn’t a role for her in this quick recovery mission.
The last person was Chisholm, the backup, who said, “I can fly your ship.”
The three volunteers were taken away to get briefed on mission plans and everything they knew about the device. The rest of us were released back to our quarters with just a little info on our schedule. The supply ship with our space suits was going to arrive at 10 o’clock GMT tomorrow morning, and the crew would test them and prep for the mission immediately, with intention to head out after the thing at noon. The rest of us civilians would also confirm the fit of our suits, but then be able to watch the mission, as we were going to have a continuous video call going, and we would potentially be there for advice, as crew trained with the same skills they were using.
But there was nothing else to do for now, so this gave me a chance to think about my life with Sputty. I hadn’t ever wanted to be female, but if it let me have a girlfriend who looked like Sputty does now, I was not going to complain.
I asked Sputty, “You wanted me to protect you, so I guess we need to find a home together after we get back. Someplace new?”
“Yeah, I can’t face up to my friends like this. They offered to give us new identities and I’m going to take them up on that. I can live with you, if you have the space, or just somewhere new.”
“I’ve only got a small apartment. I didn’t have much left after breaking up with my ex. She took the kids, the house, and enough of my money that I went on three of these missions to build a proper retirement fund. But with the insurance pay we’ll have more than enough to buy a house anywhere.”
“Somewhere boring. I don’t want to be in the spotlight.”
“We’ll have to see if we can find a way for you to dress so you don’t bring a spotlight anywhere you go.”
“Yeah, I expect we’re both going to be spending some time figuring out clothes,” she replied.
We spent the time until lunch talking about clothes and places we might live. After we all got together for lunch, we socialized with the others who declined to go out on the recovery mission, eight of us in all. Somebody had found two decks of cards, and Posey taught us all cancellation hearts. It’s like regular hearts, but with more players and two decks, and if two of the same card are played on the same trick, neither can win the trick. It was a fun way to pass time, and rather than keep a running score tally, the loser of each hand had to tell us something about themselves. We were strangers before our 10-day mission, and had gotten to know each other a little during the mission, but now we were bonding in a new way due to our shared fate.
A couple of them were pulled away separately for something, so we played some hands with 7 people, for which we added one joker to the deck to make the numbers come out even, with the rule that whoever gets the joker leads it to start the first trick and the second player’s card determines the suit to follow on that trick. A few hands after the last of these returned, the game was halted so all of us not going on the mission tomorrow could discuss our return plans. The doctor introduced us to Jenna Carter, a clerk aboard SpaceFab-1.
Carter explained, “All of you who are married have had a chance to speak with your spouses, and you’re just getting new first names and going back to live with your families. The rest of you can do that if you wish, but you can take whole new identities and move to new places, if you like. Also, it seems like you have all come out of this process looking younger than you did before, though the effect seems to have varied in intensity, so we can reduce your age as well.”
The married ones revealed their already-made decisions first. Ted Baker chose to be called Dora. We decided she looked about 25, but Ted got married at 18 and if we reduced Dora to 25, she would have gotten married when she was 6, so she chose to stay 37.
Kevin Posey chose to be called Keisha. The de-aging effect wasn’t strong with her, so she kept her real age of 39.
The crew’s doctor, Michael Cardenas, chose to be called Michelle. We only learned during the hearts game that she was married, and she hoped to stay with her wife. She was being reduced in age from 47 to 30, though I thought she could have passed for younger. You can only be so young and have a medical degree, I suppose.
Zimmerman chose to be called Chloe Kelly, reduced from 38 to 26 years old, and was going somewhere new within her native Australia.
Sputty shot down some suggestions for where we might live as too much in the spotlight. Some of Sputty’s ideas were discouraged by Jenna as too difficult for us to get along in as a lesbian couple. We finally agreed it would be OK for us to move to Philadelphia.
Sputty, wanting to be as boring as possible, chose to be called Ann Smith. Since Sputty had already named me Robin for my red hair, I decided to go with Robin Smith since Sputty seemed smitten with me, and it would eliminate the question about one of us changing our surname later if we married. Yeah, I was already looking that far ahead, not that I planned on asking her, but because I expected she might ask me.
I was the oldest here at 55 and went with the age of 26 that was the consensus of our group for how I looked now. Sputty was really 34, the second-youngest here, and while the rest of us thought she looked 18, she chose to be 21 so she could drink.
The two pilots who bowed out at the end, Pete Michaels and Bobby Lemon, were going to move in together in New York City, where one of them already had a place to live. They also chose to have the same surname, as Rhonda and Joanna Jacobs, but they didn’t appear to be romantic. They were going to pose as sisters, and apparently wanted to support each other during their unexpected transition to womanhood. They were both in their 40s and divorced, but were each taking 10 years off their ages.
Then, with us together, they discussed clothes.
Carter explained, “While you were unconscious, Doctor Quill took a full set of measurements to order you proper space suits, and we’ve used those to develop a full set of clothing sizes for each of you. Since some of you may not have experience buying women’s clothes at all, and none of you have experience buying them for yourselves, we will also give you some helpful guides along with these size lists once you’re back on Earth. Wherever you land, we’ll have someone find you a normal set of clothes to travel to your new homes in, rather than these undersuits, and we’ll have more clothes waiting for you in your new homes.”
Wherever we land usually meant somewhere in the Pacific. It was the biggest patch of water on Earth for splashdown, but it meant we could end up in any of several countries within it or along its shorelines, but SpaceFab was a global company who could hire people anywhere to pick us up and buy clothes for us. It was thoughtful to give us something to start with, since none of us own any clothing that is likely to fit.
“Those of you who are moving will arrive at apartments we will arrange for you on a month-to-month rental so that you can move into permanent homes when you find something you like, and we’ll provide assistance with home-buying. All of you can also have two years of service from lifestyle coaches to help you choose clothing and deal with other aspects of your transition to womanhood. Any form of mental health treatment you end up needing will also be covered.”
This session ended and we went back to the hearts game until dinner.
At dinner, we saw the volunteers for the recovery mission for the first time since they volunteered, but after dinner, they were taken away again for whatever preparation they were doing. The two pilots who chose to live together also bowed out of the group, and Sputty and I decided to do likewise. I went back to the room I shared with Sputty, or Ann as she now wanted to be known. I tried to use her new name so we’d both get used to it.
“Ann, I can see that you’re smitten with me.”
She gave me a “who, me?” kind of look.
“And you look like a dream girl to me, the kind of woman who I could only have in my dreams. You might think with my body that I could get any woman I wanted, but my male face was kind of ugly. It kept me from getting that sort of woman.”
Ann just looked at me as if not entirely understanding what I was saying.
“But I want to know how far you want this relationship to go.”
“Oh, Robin, I need to tell you something. I never told any of the crew this, but you should know.”
I decided it was probably best for me to be sitting for this, and did so on the edge of my bunk.
Ann said flatly, “As a boy, I was raped.”
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry!”
Ann then couldn’t hold back any longer, and broke out crying, hugging me on one shoulder.
After a good ten minutes, she sat down beside me and continued her story.
“It was a teacher at my school. I was in fifth grade. It happened in a restroom. I reported it, they got the evidence, he went to jail for a long time, and I got counseling. I was able to live a life, but I never dated. With you talking about relationships and dating, it brought back all those memories. It was just something I could never do, and I think it’s our shared experience that makes me feel like I can trust you.”
“I understand why you are acting the way you are, and I’m happy to stay with you and help you through it. I hope, someday, we can have a healthy, full lesbian relationship, but we’re going to have to take it slow. I want to set up some ground rules so that I don’t go too fast. You told me last night that whatever I do to you is OK, but I don’t think you were thinking through all the things two women can do together.”
Ann went wide-eyed, then got a disgusted look, and went through a few more expressions as she clearly thought out the consequences of what she had said.
“Thank you, Robin, for not taking that too far. I am not sure I know all the things, as you said, but I do want to do some of those things, slowly.”
“OK, then, I will let you initiate any new form of contact between us. We have so far only kissed, some pretty deep kisses, and I will continue to kiss you at appropriate times, but go no further until you ask for it or just go ahead and start doing things yourself.”
“That sounds good, Robin. But I think I may not know even what to ask for.”
“Did you ever date women? Have sex? Watch porn? Masturbate?”
“No women, no sex, no porn. It all reminded me of the rape. Being the one using a penis, potentially, didn’t make it better. I did masturbate, just with my hand. When I got erections as a teen, I learned to masturbate to get rid of them. After college it was a lot less, but I still did it sometimes up until recent times.”
“OK, then, you can just tell me when you’re ready to try something new, when you run out of what you know. I have had several female sexual partners in my life, and while actually being a woman for it is just as new to me as it is to you, I know things to try. I’ll suggest something, maybe help you find some porn so we can watch some other women doing what I suggest, and then you can say yes or no.”
“That sounds good, Robin.”
It wasn’t five minutes later when Ann asked me, “How do women masturbate?”
Of course, given her previous answer, she had never seen it happen in video nor with a live partner. I tried to speak in a neutral tone so I didn’t sound like I was belittling her for not knowing any of this.
“Women are more complicated than men in sexual response. Men have all their sensation in their penis, while women can get sexual excitement from several parts of their body, so they have many ways to masturbate. Dunn talked to us about it a bit.”
“Yeah, but some of it went over my head.”
“Well, she just named the parts. She wasn’t going to actually masturbate in front of us. But I’ll gladly demonstrate for you while I try some of these things for the first time myself.”
“That sounds good,” Ann replied, and she immediately started stripping out of the undersuit, so I did likewise.
As she did so, I mentioned, “One of the sexy things you can do is to strip more slowly and make a show out of it. But it’s hard with these suits. We can try it when we have normal clothes back on Earth.”
Ann didn’t reply, but finished removing the undersuit and her panties and stood there naked in front of me while I also finished stripping.
“One area is the nipples, and to a lesser degree the whole breasts.”
I demonstrated by making a loop around each nipple with one of my index fingers, first one and then the other and then both at the same time. Ann started exploring those with her hands, and was clearly surprised at just how sensitive her nipples were. After a more general exploration of her breasts, she went back to spinning both index fingers around her nipples and looked in bliss from the feelings she got from it. I let her go at it for more than five minutes before continuing.
“And you know about kissing, but Dunn mentioned it can be a component in female sexual excitement. It can get very deep with tongues exploring each others’ mouths, and you didn’t shy away from anything I did that way last night.”
“It was interesting and new to me, though also a bit weird. I could that tell you had some experience and I just let you do it. I did enjoy it.”
“You can’t really masturbate that way, though, at least I don’t think you can. Let me know if you find out differently!”
Ann grinned.
“The other significant areas are all between your legs. You might want to sit up here on the bed to help explore them.”
Ann got herself comfy, sliding back far enough on my bunk so that her calves were at the edge of the mattress. I sat down at the other end of the bed and I turned to face her, legs spread wide, and she turned to mimic that position.
“Dunn specifically talked about these parts, but I understand if you were blocking out that part of her talk.”
“Blocking it out? Yeah, maybe I was. But go ahead. I’m paying attention now.”
Running my finger around the outside of mine, I explained, “This is the vulva, and everything within here is sensitive, to differing degrees.”
I let Ann duplicate what I was going, while experiencing a slight bit of arousal myself. Then I spread the top of it apart with two fingers above and outside.
“This tiny little nub, which gets hidden inside the folds at the top, is the clitoris. This is for most women the most sensitive bit, and it corresponds to the head of the penis. It can get erect when you get aroused, but it’s small and you may still not see it without opening yourself up like I am doing.”
I started rubbing mine, and I actually shuddered with the sensations. It was good, better than anything I had ever felt as a man. Ann touched hers, and seemed afraid to continue touching it, like touching a hot stove. I wanted to keep going, but I also wanted to move along with Ann’s lesson.
“At the other end, this is your vagina. You can get sexual sensations both on the outside and also by penetrating it with an object.”
Ann stammered, “L-l-like a p-p-p-penis?”
“Yes, but you could also use your fingers, or a dildo.”
“Right, I remember that part,” Ann commented.
Dunn had shown us her personal dildo. She had apologized that she only had the one to show, but what we can take into space with us is limited. She invited us to go explore them when we were back on Earth, saying that they varied in length, thickness, texture, and other attributes.
I started poking a finger, then two fingers together into my vagina. The feeling was interesting. It was nowhere near as strong as the feeling at the clitoris, but I felt some arousal. It was a much slower, and, I realized, a building sensation that would grow in intensity as I kept doing it.
Ann watched me with curiosity, and by the time I was experiencing intense pleasure, she started poking a finger into her vagina. I added my thumb on the clit to what I was already doing, and soon felt what was unmistakably an orgasm. My first female orgasm.
Ann stopped before going that far, and said, “Thank you.”
“Oh, but there’s more.”
“More?”
“These folds along the sides are called the labia, or sometimes lips. There are two layers of them, two separate folds on each side of the vulva. They also engorge a bit when you are sexually excited, as we are now, which tends to open up the vulva. When you’re not aroused at all, they fold mostly flat against the body, hiding all the other parts. Both layers are sexually active.”
Ann explored them, and the separation between the inner and outer labia, but she seemed to be done masturbating for this session.
“Finally, I want to point out your urethra. You probably realize this already, since you woke up with a catheter in it, but since there’s no penis, your urine just comes out here, right in the middle of the vulva. It’s hard to even see, but when you are sexually excited it’s easier to spot.”
Ann examined herself and eventually seemed to locate her urethra.
“It’s not sexually active, at least no more than any other part of the vulva, but you may leak a little urine from it when you are sexually excited. That combines with other secretions your body makes at that time to better lubricate the vagina for receiving ... an object,” I told her, avoiding the word I knew she found a bit distasteful.
“You can say it,” Ann replied. “A penis.”
“Yes,” I acknowledged. “A penis, or a dildo.”
When I didn’t say any more, Ann asked, “Are there any more parts?”
“Those are the main ones. Dunn mentioned that some women can get sexual stimulation in other parts of the body, varying by person, so you’ll just need to experiment.”
I intentionally didn’t mention the anus, though I knew that was the most important spot I hadn’t mentioned. Ann didn’t need to hear about that now, and maybe ever.
“OK, thanks for the lesson.”
She got off my bed and put her panties back on, leaving the suit off and thus her breasts hanging out, and she sat in her chair, rolling her fingers around her nipples. I’m not sure if she was afraid to continue exploring her vulva, or just liked the nipple stimulation better, but I started exploring mine as well. All of my girlfriends and my ex-wife had enjoyed that to some degree, and also having them sucked on, though that wasn’t something most women could do to themselves. It might be possible for Ann, due to her size, but I’d let her explore that on her own.
Ann went to bed like that, but I had gotten wet enough that I wanted to wash myself off first. Not a whole shower, just a wipe-down of everything between my legs. With that done I put on my panties and also went to bed without the suit on, playing with my nipples for a bit before I fell asleep.
The next morning, our space suits arrived. All eleven of us were all together when we were trying on the suits. Our group of eight simply tried on the suits, without catheters, and made sure they fit. They were set aside for our return to Earth. The other group got fully ready for flight, with a near pass of their target to the station just an hour from when the suits arrived. Our return was going to wait until the other group went out and caught this thing that changed us, or destroyed it.
While they were getting into the ship, the rest of us were put into a room where we could watch the feed from the ship. There was nothing to do at first, while they were boarding and getting ready to go, and my recent crewmates cracked lots of jokes about turning female. Clearly, they had gotten over any resentment for having been changed, though Chloe, the former Zimmerman, was the only one who really was delighted by it.
But soon they launched the ship, and it didn’t take long to reach the artifact. They needed only 20 minutes from launch to match its speed and location.
We were holding our breath as they approached it. Was it going to change them back to male, make them even more exaggeratedly female, just knock them out, do nothing, or do something else entirely? The answer turned out to be “something else entirely.”
At this point we had a split screen in the video feed, one side showing the device outside the ship from the retriever’s perspective, the other showing the interior of the ship where the other two sat. As soon as Reynolds grabbed hold of the device, rather than bathing them in a pink beam, it spoke. I’m not sure how, but we heard it clearly in the audio feed from the ship.
Welcome back, my daughters. Only three of you returned, but that is two more than I require. One of you must serve as my interface to the world. Who shall it be?
At first, the people seemed frozen, and we were all shouting “No, don’t do it!” but after about 30 seconds, Gardner said, “I’ll do it.”
So be it.
A blue beam shot out from the device in the exterior view, and an aura of the same blue encompassed Gardner’s body from his position as arm operator.
Our Mission Control on SpaceFab-1 were frantic. They had not wanted anybody to volunteer for whatever the device wanted, but Gardner did, and now they were powerless to stop what was happening.
As the blue glow faded. we saw that the artifact had disappeared, but there was no evident change in Gardner.
“What happened?” Mission Control asked, desperately seeking clarity on Gardner’s status.
Gardner responded in a monotone, “I shall serve as the conduit for those who need the artifact’s services.”
“Are you Gardner, or are you the artifact?”
“We are both here. Gardner speaks for herself, except when information about the artifact is needed, or its services.
“You spoke of services and those who need them. Are those services gender changes?”
“Male-to-female only. My counterpart does the others.”
“There is another device?”
“Yes. It looks identical, but I do not know its whereabouts.”
“OK. We will look for it. How do you intend to perform the services, or determine who to perform them for?”
“Now that the device is in a host, it is easy to determine who wants the service. Only those who insert their penis inside the host shall receive the service. When the device was first activated, without a host or a potential host near it, the only available option was to service those near it to try to obtain a host.”
They returned to the station, and there was another call with Greene which we were all allowed to participate in. Those from the mission explained the situation to Greene.
Greene responded, “This is helpful. You have removed the threat of further involuntary gender changes just from flying into the wrong part of space. In doing so, you have completely fulfilled the requirements for the first 5 million apiece.”
We cheered, even those of us who didn’t volunteer and weren’t getting money.
“I am afraid I have to say the second part of the deal was not satisfied. The intent of that deal was to deliver the artifact to a location controlled by me and to give me full control over its usage. With it trapped inside Ms. Gardner, to satisfy that deal would essentially mean turning her into my slave, to service any and all customers as I wish. This is distasteful to me, and probably also distasteful to Ms. Gardner and most of the rest of the human race. So the additional 5 million apiece will not be paid.”
There were a couple of “awwww”s, I think from those who would have been getting the money besides Gardner herself, who looked relieved. Mostly I saw nods from people in agreement with Greene’s conclusion. When Greene asked the three potential recipients of that money to indicate their agreement with this conclusion as a way of resolving the deal, they all agreed with his conclusion.
“With that done, Ms. Gardner, you and I may negotiate a separate deal for the use of the artifact. That does not have to happen now; you may wait until you are back on Earth and you can speak in comfort.”
“That seems reasonable,” Gardner said. I was glad to note her voice was back to normal.
Those of us besides Chloe who didn’t want to become female could hold out hope the other device could be found. But we weren’t counting on it, and still prepared for the likelihood of living our lives as females. Before they even put us in our suits for the trip back to Earth, they told us they’d looked through the satellite photos of every object of unknown origin similar in size to the female-making device, and they didn’t find a match.
This was going to be a shorter trip, but we still had to maneuver from high orbit, through some remaining space junk, to a splashdown on Earth, and get picked up. The space suits would protect us through the pickup, though as long as we landed properly upright we could open a hatch on the capsule, remove our helmets, and breathe normally while waiting for pickup. So we got back in the suits, and they hooked up the catheters for the trip.
There was one more step to prepare as women. We learned that the women’s suits allowed for a third catheter for the vagina, mainly for menstrual fluid. They used that on the 10-day junk pickup flights when it wouldn’t be possible to change tampons or pads. They could not risk the suits getting stained by menstrual fluid, though I really wondered when they were next going to have a female astronaut in my size. For this short trip, that was overkill, but just in case any of us started our periods, since none of us knew when they might start, we had to put in tampons for this trip. And that wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, I couldn’t feel it at all once it was in unless I specifically searched for the feeling that it was there.
We waited half an hour in the capsule before launch to get the best path to Earth needing the least maneuvering to avoid junk. And this worked, because we only needed to use thrusters twice after leaving the station and landed without incident.
They knew where we were landing, so there was a ship a short distance away that picked us 45 minutes after we splashed down. It was a Philippine navy ship, but some of the crew spoke English. It was a two-hour ride back to shore, during which we helped each other remove the catheters and get out of the space suits.
On land, we got some real clothes, though they had problems with some of our sizes. They didn’t have a bra in my size, for instance, but they provided me with a densely woven undershirt that helped keep my nipples from showing, and a big loose dress to wear over it. Then we got on a commercial flight from Manila to LA, except for Chloe, who was from Australia and went to Sydney instead, and Gardner, who went... somewhere else. They were keeping her location secret even from us. I largely slept through the flight.
They took us to a SpaceFab office somewhere in southern California. There, we signed some paperwork which was mostly filled out for us already to make things official, including applications for our insurance payments that were already being processed, and some identity documents not previously filed. They also had clothes there that SpaceFab had bought for us. Since this was clothing they bought in advance for a place they thought I would end up, and not just whatever city we’d splashed down closest to, this time they had a bra for me. They warned me I would be shopping in specialty stores to find my size. That wasn’t a new thing for me, since I had shopped in “big and tall” men’s stores before. It would just be the women’s version of those.
We spent the night in a hotel, and in the morning they put us all on flights to our respective destinations. Ann and I got to Philly, took a cab to our apartment, and found more clothes there in our sizes waiting for us.
We spent the next two weeks in a flurry of activity. There was more paperwork to fill out. Our belongings from our old homes arrived. We opened those boxes to pull out specific things, but mostly left them boxed. Ann and I went house-hunting and found one we liked. We were only going to have to live in the apartment for the one month they’d already paid for us.
Ann readily adapted to sleeping in a bed together with me, though most of the time it was just sleeping and maybe cuddling. Ann and I only got intimate twice during the first few weeks, both times doing oral sex.
We both started our periods on the 12th day after getting to Philly, which wasn’t as bad as we’d worried. We didn’t suffer any PMS, which was good, in a way, but it also meant it happened as a surprise.
We also explored different types of clothing. The week’s worth of clothes that were waiting for each of us at the apartment were in a variety of styles and types of garment. When they sent over our old stuff, they included all our male clothes, but they weren’t of much use. I looked through mine, and while I could wear some of the shirts, they were very tight over my breasts, and button shirts left peekaboo gaps between the buttons. I needed one size larger. My smaller waist and wider hips made my old pants not work. Ann found it even more hopeless wearing her old male clothes. So we put all of them back in the boxes and stored them in the attic in case we ever got turned back.
The limited amount of clothing we had when we started forced us to try out the different types of garments they provided. I hadn’t ever really planned on wearing dresses or skirts, but one dress they provided me seemed to bypass my younger appearance. It made me look like a very formal English matron, the leader of an aristocratic family who lived in a mansion. Ann simply couldn’t pull off that look no matter what she did, but she had clothes that let her look more like a normal person and less like a big-breasted bimbo. So we had ideas what to look for when we went out shopping for more clothes, which we did pretty quickly. Sadly, I found the advice I was given was right: there is only one manufacturer who makes bras in my size, not available in any of the stores near me, but I was able to order them online.
But most of what we bought were simply casual clothes, pullover tops and shorts, because we weren’t going to be going out and needing to impress people all the time. Lots of the time we were simply going to be at home. We bought enough things we’d be comfortable in every day to last two weeks, and all of it machine washable, because who really wants to go out to a cleaners? That kind of stuff was for special events and we’d buy it when we needed to. We quickly learned which stores had good selections we liked, though my large size meant that those were never the same stores for both of us.
When all of our initial expenses were taken care of, we invested the rest of my 5 million and Ann’s 3 million, figuring we’d make more than enough to live on and grow the capital to keep up with inflation. I had intended for 3 million to do that for me alone, over a shorter time span for which it might not be critical to grow the capital.
We were surprised to see Gardner on TV. The stories featuring her explained that we were changed female during our mission but that Gardner was the only one whose identity was being revealed. They were not, at this time anyway, talking about how it happened, but Gardner explained that she never wanted to be changed female but she’s accepting it and dealing with it. They were painting her as the unfortunate victim of an accident. And they still weren’t saying where she was, though clearly at least one TV crew knew.
At our request they had put us all in contact via e-mail, but Chloe set up a weekly video chat for the whole group. The 11 of us were invited, along with spouses, though the spouses usually didn’t attend. They were held Saturday evenings in Britain, afternoons in the US, and Sunday morning in Australia. This kept regular communication going among all of us.
The first was a session for the three who went on the recovery mission to get to know the rest of us. We’d had some time together but we’d largely been segregated after making that decision to go or not go on the recovery mission.
Melvin Gardner was now known as Freedom Gardner. She had naturally been most in touch with SpaceFab during the recent weeks. She confirmed for us that SpaceFab had kept our identities secret. Usually, the names of the crews get posted on their web site, but only after the conclusion of the mission, in case something happens. And something indeed happened.
Freedom was going to allow her name to be posted there, and gave the rest of us the option, and only the crew’s doctor chose to allow her name to be posted. In time, Freedom was going to work out how to offer male-to-female gender change service using the artifact, but there was a lot to figure out, in part because she wasn’t just giving the change away.
I wondered what Greene’s bargaining chip was. Gardner volunteered for this, she had the thing, and if she wanted to offer services through it, why did Greene need to be involved? But she explained.
“First off, this will be public eventually, but I am in the Netherlands and for now this is a secret. Even before Greene sent us out on the recovery mission, he’d already been contacted by the governments of the U.S. and U.K., and since then all the other major powers as well. They want the thing. Apparently, the ability to remake someone with a totally new appearance and gender, even if that appearance isn’t under our control, is the kind of thing those governments would normally put under the deepest secrecy levels, and they are really upset that it’s in the hands of a private individual. Well, hands is not the right body part, but you know.”
Chloe asked, “The artifact said it’s going to trigger when men put their penis into you, so does that mean it’s in your...”
Freedom nodded so that Chloe didn’t need to finish the statement.
“Basically, Greene’s my liaison to the major governments of the world. He’s running security for me, really high-level security, to keep someone from one of these governments from coming in here and kidnapping and enslaving me. I’m going to give him a significant cut of each conversion and he keeps me alive and free. And the Netherlands was simply a country with no such ambitions and one neutral with respect to letting them send their agents in here to be converted, should they wish to do so. Of course, all these governments are going to be spying and probably getting pictures of everybody converted.”
Freedom stopped at this point and let the others speak.
I’d wondered how Reynolds was going to get along looking like a 14-year-old girl. She’d moved in with Chisholm in London, as they were the only two British among the crew. In public, they often posed as mother and daughter, and like us, they’d chosen to use the same surname, Victoria and Elizabeth Riley. But legally Reynolds was 18 and they were simply two adults living together. In private, they were a lesbian couple. That made sense to me; Reynolds latched onto someone she trusted just as Ann had with me. After Reynolds, now Elizabeth Riley, mentioned this, Ann described the limited ways in which she and I had become intimate. And we went around the rest of the group.
In subsequent meetings, Freedom gave updates. Greene was getting 30% of the 50,000 euros she was charging for each conversion after certain expenses were deducted. She’d also negotiated for Reynolds and Chisholm to each get 10% until it reached the 5 million they would have gotten if they’d been able to turn over the artifact Greene’s way.
She did test conversions. Things worked pretty much as they did on the ship. Patients were going to need medical care with IVs and such for about two days, and the cost of this was the major deduction. And people were still getting made younger along with the conversion. Typical seemed to be a reversion of 50% of the aging since puberty, but this varied across a wide range of about 20% to 80%. They wouldn’t be able to model it until they had more data that would come when they started doing the changes in bulk.
Gardner completed divorce proceedings with her wife. As expected, her wife didn’t tolerate at all being married to a woman, and so Gardner got a good deal. Her wife got their house and half of their money from before Gardner went into space. Gardner kept all the money paid by SpaceFab and had full rights to whatever comes out of the service, apart from whatever she pays to satisfy Greene.
In other news, Chloe reported that she was actively dating men, aiming to find a husband, but was still looking.
Rhonda and Joanna had started using a life coach at their home in New York, and gave positive reviews. It wasn’t just the kind of stuff Dunn had told us in two sessions on the station. The life coach was a woman we could ask about any aspect of womanhood. There was no stupid question except the unasked one. Ann and I decided to get one.
Rhonda and Joanna also reported they were both trying to date men, though they hadn’t found any they liked yet. They had gone on 2 dates as double dates to help reassure each other as they started this life. They and Chloe were the only ones doing this, but not the only ones lusting after a dick...
Doctor Cardenas reported, a few months after returning to her practice, that about a third of her patients had left, but she had picked up enough transgender ones to replace them and more. She had told us she was married, but only now revealed her wife was a pre-op transsexual. They had previously had sex in both roles, but Cardenas was now enjoying receiving her wife’s dick in her pussy and her wife was going to keep that dick. And the doctor was now pregnant, confirming that it was indeed possible for the rest of us.
Because this discussion involved anal sex, Ann had to step away, and I called her back when it was over. This led to Ann telling the whole crew how, when she was a boy, she was anally raped, and how it made her avoid sex entirely until she changed. Cardenas apologized, but Ann said it wasn’t his fault, that he didn’t know, and furthermore that she wanted to talk about it now. So this turned into a discussion that anal sex is a thing that some men and women enjoy, and is not simply a way boys get raped. Ann still didn’t want anything to penetrate her back there, but she could talk about it.
Ann and I had eight one-hour-long weekly sessions with the life coach before we stopped. I don’t think she told us anything we couldn’t have figured out on our own, but it was nice getting confirmation of some things. Some of it might have taken us a while, but she was able to tell us directly without us spending months wondering. She liked the way we had decided to dress, and made a couple other suggestions but thought we had chosen good styles for our shapes.
Five months after our transformations, it was December. We all exchanged clothing sizes because some of the group wanted to send gifts, and that obligated all of us to do so, though we did not all send clothes. Gardner had started offering the service, and her secure setup meant she lived and worked in that compound all the time, so we could send her gifts there.
I sent everybody a scented bath oil I enjoyed. Ann had already been planning to buy me a vibrator-like toy that was designed to massage a nipple after discovering that she could suck her own nipples but I could not. When the gift discussion came up, she realized from the video that none of the others were as endowed as she was, and got them all that gift, even sending two to each of our crew who was married to a non-crew woman. We weren’t sure if it would work for the trans-woman the doctor was married to, but at least she would have the opportunity to find out.
In January, SpaceFab contacted us to let us know they had visually inspected with their satellites every piece of tracked space debris potentially of the right size to be the other device and did not find any candidates for the female-to-male device. But they were still looking.
That led to us directly discussing on our next call whether any of us would change back if they did find it.
Baker and Posey said they’d consider it, though they were both enjoying the rather different interactions they had with their wives now, and they would still be happy if they never got turned back. None of the others indicated any desire to change back, including myself and Ann.
After the call, I asked Ann, “Are you sure of what you said on the call, that you wouldn’t change back?”
“Robin, I like what we have now. Ken was afraid of sex.”
“Ken?”
“Yeah, you know, the old me, Sputterman.”
“Would you believe me if I told you that you’ve never actually given me that name before? You were always Sputterman or Sputty and I never heard your old first name until just now.”
“Wow! Maybe I’m beyond that more than I thought. But as I was saying, even though Ken was grown up, he was still a little boy afraid of any kind of sex. As Ann, I’ve been able to break through that and enjoy sex with you in lots of different ways, ways I didn’t even know about because I had been so afraid to explore sex. Thank you, Robin.”
“You’re welcome. Is it time to dispose of our old clothes? I’m happy as Robin, too, and if we don’t have any intention of changing back, even if we are able, then we should get rid of them.”
“I’ll think about it,” Ann told me.
But the next time there was a clothing donation drive here, Ann agreed to do it, and we went through all of our male clothes, donating the ones suitable for someone to wear and throwing out the ones that weren’t.
We kept our weekly chats going for years. Not everybody showed up every time, but nobody quit entirely and there were enough each week to keep going.
By mid-2043, Gardner was servicing 10 patients a day, 5 days a week, and the Rileys each got their full 5 million each by the end of that year.
Doctor Cardenas had a healthy son, and then two daughters, the last in 2047.
Victoria Riley proposed to Elizabeth in 2044 and they married that November. Ann was so excited when the talk of marriage came up that I knew the time was right, and I asked her to marry while we were still on the call, apologizing for not having the ring yet but going out to get us matching engagement rings the next day. We married in January 2045.
Rhonda and Joanna finally found and married their Mr. Rights in 2045 and 2046, respectively, and in that same order also became the second and third of us to bear children. None of the rest of us ever got pregnant.
Despite Chloe dating extensively from just weeks after her return to Earth, she didn’t actually find a guy she liked until 2048 and married him in 2049, the last of us to be married, apart from Gardner, who had no intention of again marrying either a man or a woman, and devoted her life to the service.
In 2050, SpaceFab finally identified what they believe was the female-to-male device, but it was only about a third of the device. They found other smaller pieces among their inventory, some of them even picked up but unidentified even before our fateful trip, and there was no hope of putting together a working device. Fortunately, we were all happy with our new lives.