My old cell was smaller than I thought - or I was just bigger now. It seemed claustrophobic. It still smelled of perfume.
When I first met Sam, I thought of him as a sort of thief - he had stolen my life. Now I felt like the pretender.
Chapter 31
Anne-Marie wore a pink spaghetti-strap sundress with a matching barrette to hold her hair back. She saw me sitting at the far end of the restaurant, and crossed to meet me. I gestured to the chair opposite. She sat down gracefully, folding her hands in her lap, with her knees parted.
"You look nice," I said.
She grimaced. "The fuckers didn't just change me back. They restored the nano-conditioning I'd self-administered a few years back, before John changed me. I can't help but wear this crap. Did you order? I need a drink. May I?" she said, holding her handbag up. I nodded. She set it on the table.
We ordered.
"I wasn't expecting you to call me," she said finally, after a long silence. "I kind of figured you'd steer clear of your former tormentor. Not that I'm capable of doing anything to you now." She looked down at her wineglass.
"You know," she continued, "I'd forgotten what being...well, me, I guess, is like. It must have been hard for you, feeling the way I do now. I'm sorry I put you through it." She grimaced. "Did you invite me here to gloat? Because it's not nice, though I guess I deserve it."
I shook my head.
She looked thoughtful. "Are you going to claim me?" she asked. "You know what I'm like. Probably better than anybody. I suppose you could do to me as I did to you. I'd make a good slave, God help me. I'd even be grateful, in a way, though I'd hate you for it."
"I know I could. But you aren't the same anymore. This Anne-Marie, the girl you've become again, it isn't really you - not now. Not after everything that's happened. Being Sam Smith, I think, made you happy. This is just a torment for you. Am I right?"
"Yes," she confessed, "it is. I have to tell you, I liked being powerful. I liked having the world at my fingertips. I liked feeling I had the right to do anything I wanted. It was so freeing, you know? After a lifetime of feeling my proper place was on my knees. Now, I look at you, and wonder how I could ever have felt that way. I want it back, but know I don't have the right."
"Anne-Marie, what if, this time tomorrow, you were Sam Smith again - forever - and no one could take it away from you again?"
Her eyes locked on mine. "What?"
"It's why I invited you here. I want to make - let's call it an arrangement. I give you what you want, and you give me what I want."
"What do you get out of it?" she asked incredulously.
"Look, I'm as uncomfortable in this body as you are in yours. I spent a year believing I was you. It's a hard thing to shake off - a whole identity. I want to be stuffed back into that pretty little body of yours. But I'll do it only on two conditions."
"What are they?"
"One. I won't be your slave. Two. Johnny Dentz is still out of town. He doesn't know what's happened. I don't want him to."
She shook her head, laughing. "I can't believe you'd want to throw your life away, to be - this," she said, gesturing to her own body. "You're nearly as fucked up as I am. Okay, Mr. Smith - I agree to the first of your terms. Knowing what I know now, I don't think I'd want you around as a slave. It'd be too weird.
"As to the second - for one thing, we're going to do this legal. I don't want anybody saying I forced you to do anything - to have any excuse for changing us back. So we're going to register the nano-mods. That, for one thing, will mean Mr. Dentz could find out if he wanted to.
"Besides, I don't like the idea that you get everything you want out of this. So, this is my condition, non-negotiable - that, once you're Anne-Marie again, you surrender yourself to Mr. Dentz. Fully and unconditionally. And with full admission of who you once were. I want him to know what you've become. Further, I want him to know that you're my gift to him - from one good friend to another. If, knowing who you were and what you are now, he rejects you, then you're free to do as you wish. Not before. And, as you know, I'm very good at making Anne-Marie obey my wishes."
I thought about this. "You know, I can do this without you. I can just become a different woman, and you'll still be trapped as Anne-Marie."
"Don't kid yourself. See, I know exactly how you think - or used to think, anyway. It's not good enough to simply become a woman anymore. You need someone to take your masculinity from you. I'm going to do that. But only on my terms."
I could tell the authoritative tone she used was forced. It was as if she were trying to assume a power and authority she knew she was not capable of wielding, so her tone seemed brittle.
Yet, in her position, I wouldn't have even been able to negotiate.
"Agreed. On your terms."
The drinks arrived. She lifted her glass. "A toast - to us." We drank.
Chapter 32
The train rattled through the heavy woods. I watched the pines streak by, lightly peppered with country houses and railroad crossings. I felt a little frightened.
I wore the pink sundress Anne-Marie had worn to our luncheon, and the little barrette held my long hair back. Mr. Smith had added a few stipulations to our deal; wearing this was one of them. He let me stay in Anne-Marie's apartment - her real apartment - last night, and a thorough investigation of her wardrobe revealed that all of her clothing was as feminine and exposing as the dress I wore now. And in any case the nano she'd self-administered now flowed in my veins; wearing anything else would cause me physical pain. Another stipulation of Mr. Smith's I agreed to. I held the ticket stub in my hand, and a ten dollar bill. I had no hand bag to put them in, and no pockets.
I got off at my stop - a crossroads, really. I had the way station call a taxi.
The woods grew denser, the road turned to packed dirt. Finally the taxi stopped at the base of a logging road.
"I can't bring you up, miss," the cabbie said. "You'll have to walk from here, I'm afraid."
"That's okay. Keep the change." It wasn't enough for a return train ticket anyway, and I knew I'd pay dearly if I didn't keep my part of my deal. Backing out now was out of the question.
I got out. The sun was shining, still high in the sky. The taxi drove off.
I felt the sun on my face, warming my skin, my bare arms and legs where the dress left them exposed. The woods were full of the rustling of small animals and birds. I walked up the dirt path in my pink heels.
The path wound back and forth up the mountain. In my all my time as a man, I'd never guessed Mr. Dentz kept his house here because a woman's screams would be far from any ears that might hear. I knew it now, and it made continuing up the hill an exercise in self-composure.
Finally I was at the house.
I stripped naked, carried the small pile of clothing over to the cliff behind the house. I looked over the precipice. Only a few hundred feet down, but it would take a day to walk around to get to the foot of the cliff. I hesitated a moment, then threw the bundle over. Another of Mr. Smith's stipulations.
Every act was a divestiture of power. My body. My clothing.
I walked barefoot back to the house. The key was under the welcome mat.
I remembered the smell of this place. I remembered things done to me here.
As Sam it would have been perfectly natural for me to make myself at home now. I wasn't Sam, though, and never would be again. The DNA encryption could only be decoded by Mr. Smith, and I knew very well he had no intention of helping me. Now I felt vulnerable; I knew Mr. Dentz wouldn't have permitted me to walk about freely in his absence.
I turned to the DNA lock controls and activated it. I heard the front door lock. I pressed a couple of keys on the keypad; no effect.
Now every door, every window in the house would only unlock for someone with a Y chromosome. Which I no longer had. I had been used to this method of imprisonment in Mr. Smith's house; but it had been nearly a month since I'd lived as a slave there, and the sound of the locks engaging
was frightening.
Another act, rendering me progressively more helpless. And each dictated by Mr. Smith.
The key in my hand was now useless. I set it on a sideboard.
It was a simple matter - a ballgag, four leather cuffs and a single padlock from Mr. Dentz's cabinet in the basement. I knelt, trembling, brought my wrists behind me. I hesitated - only for a second - before I snapped the padlock shut, joining all four cuffs by means of the D-rings set in their faces. It was the last thing Mr. Smith had commanded me to do. Further instructions were unnecessary; I was completely helpless.
Now that I'd completed his instructions to the letter, I was left without a script to follow, and felt nervous and flustered. I had no idea what would happen next. Would Mr. Dentz even come today? Had he been told I would be here? Or would I wait and starve?
A folded note, in a sealed envelope, hung from a string around my neck. Mr. Smith hadn't let me read the contents.
I knelt, in Mr. Dentz's living room, and waited.
Chapter 33
Mr. Dentz read the note. He sat in a wicker chair, smoking a cigarette, glancing over at me from time to time, as he read.
Finally he stood, walked over to the fireplace, stacked a few logs on top of some kindling, and lit it. He waited until the fire was roaring. I felt the heat on my bare breasts, cheeks and thighs. He held the note over the flame. It caught, and he dropped it into the fire. It blackened, shriveled. Then it was gone. He returned to his seat. He lit another cigarette and looked at me without speaking for a long time.
I shifted my weight uncomfortably. I'd been kneeling for six straight hours.
"I came up for a little quiet fishing trip," he finally said. His tone was matter-of-fact, emotionless. "Now I find you." He exhaled smoke. "I bet you took a taxi from the train, and dumped your clothes somewhere inaccessible. Am I right?"
I nodded mutely. The ballgag left no room for my tongue to form even muffled words.
"Curious. It's hard to believe it's really you, Sam - that it was always you. And curiouser still that you would submit yourself to the indignity twice. One would think, after all you've been through, you'd have learned your lesson. You know, I'd always thought that girls like Anne-Marie were born, not made." He smiled. "You learn something new every day. Today I learn that a man I counted a friend has been living the life of a slave girl for the past year, right under my nose, and under my whip - and apparently will continue to do so, of her own free will. Hmmn. Was coming here your idea?"
I shook my head.
"So, you're a gift from Sam, I guess, as he says. Yet you obeyed and came. That's very like you - very Anne-Marie of you."
He sat in thought, then seemed to come to a decision. "Well now - Anne-Marie, I think is what I should continue to call you, since you really are the Anne-Marie I always knew - it looks like this is going to be an interesting weekend. I came to fish, and not ten minutes into the weekend I've already caught something. I have a choice to make, apparently - to reject or keep Sam's gift. In either case, you're still a woman - Sam made it clear he wasn't going to unlock your DNA. So the question is what to do with you. You make a very attractive package, a nice little present, all tied and prepared.
"Hmmn. There are decided benefits to keeping you. I know from experience that you're well trained. You were always my favorite before, and I don't see why that should change. I had use of you off and on for a year, and I imagine you're as pleasant a fuck as ever."
He stubbed the cigarette out. He leaned forward, his face inches from mine.
"You're at my mercy. You can't leave here without my help. You're a helplessly bound little fuckpet in a house with locks that won't open for you, ten miles from the nearest neighbor, with no clothes and no money. Whether you wished to come here or not, your agreement with Sam apparently stipulated that you come here, no? Therefore you've delivered yourself to me, I suppose, as part of the price of becoming the slave girl you are. Your slavery is a fait accompli. You're here, you're under my thumb, and I don't intend to release you."
He leaned forward, lifting my chin to look into my eyes. "I want you to understand something, Anne-Marie. I will be no kinder knowing who you once were than I was when, to me, you were just a pretty little slut. For it's clear now that that's all you really are - a sexy little cunt - and maybe always were. Do you understand me, bitch?"
I nodded, lowering my head.
"Good."
He sat back, then stood. He towered over me.
"You've had a month's reprieve from slavery, Anne-Marie. A month to unlearn behaviors which should be innate. A month to convince yourself you have a right to be free. I think some extensive retraining is in order. I think now I need to remind you what a whip feels like." He got up, pushed me over onto my side, and rearranged my restraints, so that my wrists were still cuffed behind me, but my legs were free.
"Get up, slut." I obeyed, shaking like a leaf, my cunt sopping wet. He grabbed my arm and led me to the basement stairs.
"This, I think, will be the best fishing trip on record," he said, chuckling as he led me down into the dark.
Epilogue
I never did become a man again, in case you're wondering.
By the time the DNA encryption technology used on me was made obsolescent by organic nano (replacing the microbots of old with programmable, self-aware bacteria), and I once more had the option of returning to my old gender without Mr. Smith's decryption key, I'd been Anne-Marie for six years. Long enough that being anybody else was pretty much out of the question.
Mr. Dentz gave me my freedom when he decided to settle down and marry. I don't begrudge him that - I'm not really cut out for the wife thing. I make a much better fuckpet.
So, I have freedom to choose again. And Mr. Dentz has given me an emancipation fund large enough to afford nano, so I could become male again if I wanted.
I don't. What I am interested in now, is the fact that I never really was a girl - I mean, a girl-child. My life as a woman started at eighteen.
Anne-Marie has become a good deal younger - like about eleven years younger.
Tomorrow, I'll be on a bus, on my way to Phillips Academy in Massachusetts. I'm part of the incoming freshman class. Phillips is one of the schools enlightened enough to permit age-regressed nano-mods to apply, if their higher educational memories are wiped. They're more concerned about throwing the grade curve off than propriety.
Thirteen years old.
Nothing in my wardrobe fits me anymore. My breasts have developed, but the curves and all are still shifting, not where they'll be a few years from now, and I'm only 4'9". I'm a kid, really. Innocent again. Sort of. Probably more of a Lolita than anything else. Not that it's illegal for teachers to have sex with nano-regressed minors - it's not - and I'm looking forward to looking up to my teachers in more ways than one.
But you know, it isn't like the old days, when nano was expensive and a guy like Sam Smith could make a fortune from working the trade. Those were cowboy times.
Now you can buy it off the shelf - products like "Eternal Youth" deliver on the promise, and pills to "increase your sex drive" are so effective they come with intimidating advisory warnings on the packages. They even come with software interfaces so you can customize your appearance, age and sex to your heart's content. The little things log onto the Gov servers and register any changes.
A lot more people are changing gender than I would have thought. Largely it's for temporary, recreational purposes. There are even those who cross the species divide - to become horses, or eagles, or whatever.
And looking like a movie star has gone out of style. The natural look is in.
It's a brave new world, all right, though I sometimes wonder if it's lost some of the magic in the process. When I was first transformed, nano gender-reassigns were so rare that the fact that I was one, well, it made me feel special, chosen, in some way, for the life I now have. That anybody can be anybody, literally, within the reasonable bounds of the law, makes i
t seem...commercial.
But then I'm old fashioned. Inside this thirteen year old's head is a very old mind. I only have an 8th grade education now - and in a few days much of what I've written here will read like somebody else's lurid imaginings, since I'll be wiping all memories of my sexual history - I'll literally be a virgin again, physically, emotionally, and intellectually. But I'd have to do a total brainwipe in order to forget that I was born many decades before the date on my birth certificate. That I'm old, though my body is young.
They say youth is wasted on the young. Now it's hard to tell just what the hell that means, when anybody can be any physical age, and any gender. Every generation has trouble adjusting to the strange ways in which the world moves on, leaving them behind. But I think these are the first days of an era in which the generation gap will erode, blur, and eventually become meaningless.
Religions that espouse reincarnation are undergoing explosive growth. People always need to wrap meaning around what becomes possible through science, and now that one can literally become reborn, become a new incarnation of self, they feel a need to frame it in religious terms.
Me, I'm not ready for that yet. I want to remember who I once was, though I no longer much identify with the man I was born as. But I am willing to make concessions.
I'll remember who I was, but not my name. The name Sam Smith will mean nothing to me. Maybe the next time around, I'll be ready to be reborn fully - a new person with no memory.
But not yet.
The end
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