Hesitation and Action

Farra had described her situation to George before she’d arrived, but it was clear that he hadn’t really prepared himself for the sight of her. Not that she could blame him, really. What had stepped through her door was nothing less than a vision of the past, and a double vision at that.

“Farra, you look incredible,” he said, moving around the desk toward her.

Then he stopped, unsure of which body to embrace. She couldn’t help but smile; it was the same reaction their son had had. She had her loose haired body move to hug him.

Even at nearly 60, George Jones-Ali was a handsome man. He was tall and broad shouldered, his body rippling with lean muscle that he tended to daily in spite of his age and busy empire. The years had stolen the blonde from his hair, leaving it a uniform snow white that hadn’t thinned in the slightest. He’d taken to wearing glasses, and they made him look as brilliant as he genuinely was.

To her shame, she felt an immediate instinct to pull away from him, as if her young new body had no business being this intimate with one so much older. But as those strong, familiar arms wrapped around her, she relaxed into his grip.

“It’s all the same me, omr-am,” She said. “I’m not two separate people, it’s more like I have a right and a left hand that just happen to be entirely separate bodies.”

She kissed him and her braided haired body moved to the small wet bar he kept. It contained, as always, a few spirits he’d offer to guests along with an electric bucket filled with balls of ice. As the two separated on the other side of the room, she poured a finger of whiskey for each of them.

“How in God’s name did they do this to you?” He asked, taking a seat.

“I couldn’t say,” Farra said, handing him the drink, before retreating back into the corner. “They’re damned powerful, whoever they are.”

George’s eyes flicked between her two forms, but Farra drew his attention to the one sitting in front of him.

“Just focus on me for now,” She said, raising her hand. “I don’t have much time, and we have a lot to talk about.”

Her husband of nearly four decades straightened up, adopting the serious, all business posture of his that she’d always admired. She explained the contest, how it worked and where they were at, and he listened carefully, only interrupting near the end.

“Where’s my son? What’s happened to him?”

Farra’s heart fluttered. It was the question she’d been dreading.

“Ryan’s our daughter now, not our son,” She said, and mourned the stricken look that came over his face.

George let out a sigh, rubbing his temples.

“I was afraid that might happen when I read the letter they sent me,” He said. “I guess all of us emergency contacts got one explaining what was going on. Pretty unbelievable stuff, but I believed it anyway as soon as I’d read it.”

“I’m not surprised,” Farra said. “Probably enchanted that in some way to make it believable for you.”

“Is he okay? She okay?” George asked.

Farra briefly debated telling him that Ryan was being brave, or that she was helping transition her. But he needed a clear eyed picture of what was going on.

“Not really. She’s struggling a lot,” Farra said. “I don’t think she has much chance of winning as things stand.”

“I don’t know how on earth they could expect him to. He’s got to be in way over his head.”

Farra nodded.

“That’s why I’ve made a decision. And it’s the first thing we need to talk about,” She said, taking a breath. “I’m going to do everything in my power to win the show. And do whatever that entails.”

To George’s credit, he didn’t so much as flinch.

“That means seducing Jake, right? I always had a lot of respect for that man,” He said. “But he’s so much younger than you. Have you thought of ethics?”

“Of course I have. But holding the ethical high ground isn’t going to protect my boy,” She said. “If I win I can either wish him back to normal, or use the power they give me to set her up in as advantageous a position as possible, failing that.”

George nodded.

“Then you do what you have to do,” He said. “I won’t hold it against you. I know we’ve not talked about fidelity much over the years. I’ve certainly had my flings on the side.”

“So have I,” Farra said. “But there is a difference between quietly pleasure seeking and seducing one of our son’s best friends on live television. I wanted you to know.”

“That’s not exactly the same as asking permission,” He bristled, “But I also understand. Hell, given the circumstances, I even support it.”

“That brings us to this,” She said, withdrawing the pistol from her purse.

She placed it on the desk between the two of them.

“What’s this?” George asked, hefting it like a museum curator.

“It lets us change anyone we shoot. We get three shots to use it on anyone we want,” She said. “I used it earlier to turn Ratsinger into the type of student floozy he likes to pressure into sleeping with him.”

“And you can still use it?” George asked.

“Two shots. Any way I want,” She said. “It basically allows anyone firing it to rewrite the reality of the person they shoot as they see fit.”

He placed it back down.

“And what do you plan to do with it?”

“Well, I did Ratsinger as a way to hedge my bets for the contest. Well, that and because the bastard deserved it,” She said. “But I thought we’d use the remaining shots to set things up for the future. As to how…”

She made open palmed gesture toward him.

“You’re my partner. Let’s talk.”

George adjusted his glasses and looked the machine over. When his hand closed around it his eyes went wide, and Farra was sure he was going through the same time slowing effect she had when she’d transformed her former boss.

He placed it back down on the desk.

“That is really incredible,” He said. “I’m surprised you haven’t used it on your own bodies. Recombine yourselves or at least do something to make having them both a little easier.”

“The thought had crossed my mind,” She admitted. “But I’m getting the hang of it pretty quickly already, and I don’t want to do anything that might create conflicts with future changes.”

“And I don’t suppose we could use this on Ryan.”

Farra shook her head.

“Out of the question. I can’t use it on another contestant. If he would actually join us like I’d asked him to, we might be able to use is to undo the change, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“The audience want this for him and they’d punish him badly if he went against them. Is that about the gist of it?” George guessed.

Farra nodded.

“He risks them doing something even worse by overturning the change. There might be some of us who could get away with that, but…” She shook her head. “Ryan’s results were a blowout. He’d anger pretty much everyone.”

“That all makes sense, but if you don’t want to make this an easier transition for you and we can’t use it to help Ryan…what good is bringing this to me?”

Farra fought back a sigh. Her husband was a brilliant, and incredibly shrewd man. But he’d always lacked imagination.

“There’s you, to start,” She said. “If I come out of this mostly myself, I’m not giving my youth back. It might be nice to be married to a man who didn’t look nearly twice my age. Perhaps we could come to some arrangement like I have, even.”

George shook his head.

“No, Darling, I don’t think that’s a good idea. One of me is more than enough,” He said. “There is some potential with this youthening business, though. But I’d only be interested if I knew I’d be doing it to be with you.”

She was surprised. She was sure he’d jump at the chance to turn back the clock, and that he might at least be intrigued by the possibility of actually being able to do two things at once.

“So what happens to us at the end of this?”

“Well, according to you, you’re stuck in this harem, win or lose,” George said. “There’s a lot of round between now and the end, and God only knows what changes you’ll go through in between. Maybe what comes next is a question we can’t answer right now.”

Farra couldn’t help but chuckle.

“I was just sitting here thinking you lacked imagination,” She said. “And then you bring up something I’d never even considered.”

He smiled thinly.

“You’re not wrong. What you’re experiencing right now is my strong belief in risk management,” He said. “Tell me exactly what you did to Ratsinger. No details left out. You’ve used the damn thing. Tell me how it works and I’ll be much better informed of our options.”

So she did, down to the option she had to change him back and forth later on.

“So it’s conditional? You can set changes to be reversed or…modified later?”

“It certainly seemed to work on him. Do you have anything in particular in mind?”

“No,” He admitted. “But I also don’t think I have to. It sounds to me like we can keep things open ended and deal with the fallout when the game is over.”

Farra thought that over.

“I think I have a plan. If you trust me, of course.”

“Trust has never really been an issue between us. I don’t see why I should make it one now.”

She reached out and took the gun, leveling it at him. She fired, then turned the gun on herself. A moment later…nothing had apparently changed. George waited in anticipation of something happening, then spoke up when it didn’t.

“Okay. You know I’m not fond of guessing games.”

“I didn’t do anything,” She said. “At least not yet.”

“And what happens when we get to Yet?” He asked.

“When this is over, I’m going to meet you back here,” She said. “I’ll let you know what’s happened to me, what I’m stuck with and whether or not I’ve won anything. After that, we’ll have an hour to make any changes to one another that will help us into new lives.”

He nodded, understanding at once.

“Iron out the rough edges. Make it work however we can. I understand.” He said, looking thoughtful. “But what happens if we can’t?”

“Then…we can’t,” She said. “I care a great deal for you, but let’s be honest. What we have is as much a business relationship as it is a marriage.”

“You know, dear,” He said with a dry smile. “Your sense of romance is one of my favorite things about you.”

“George…” She began to protest, but he put a hand up to stop her.

“I don’t need to tell you that our relationship has been built more on mutual respect and admiration than love these last twenty years or so,” He said. “But that doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been love along with it. I do care about you and I do want to make this work.”

Farra melted a little about that. If his great flaw was a lack of imagination, hers was romance. She slipped a hand over his.

“If I have any say about it at all, at least half of me will always be yours,” She said.

She looked around.

“I just wish we could have done something similar for Ryan. Where the hell is he, anyway?”

*****

Lindsey sat cross legged on the park bench next to Ryan, eating a giant stuffed pita. Her breasts were only modestly sized, and she was clearly moving carefully not to agitate them. Ryan tried not to stare at her piercings, without much success. If Lindsey noticed, she at least didn’t say anything.

“Mmm…I take it all back,” She said through an unseemly mouthful. “This is the best falafel I’ve ever had.”

Ryan eyed her with a smile.

“If I didn’t know any better, I think you only argued with me so I’d pay for it.”

She smiled guiltily.

“Me? Never!”

She wiped the corner of her mouth before turning her attention on him.

“So what’s up? You done your challenge or whatever yet?”

Ryan shook her head.

“I haven’t. In fact that’s sorta what I called you here about.”

She affected a stern look.

“Are you trying to steal my homework?”

Ryan shook his head.

“Not a bit. I know who my target’s going to be. It’s what I’m going to do to her that I need to figure out.”

This time, the discomfort was real.

“Oh? You’re not like, going after an ex or something are you?”

“I’m targeting myself, Lindsey. I’m too in my own way and I can’t compete in this thing with a bunch of women if Jake’s all hung about how I started or I’m hung up on how different everything is,” She said. “I need to shake things up and the best way to do that is starting with myself.”

Lindsey nodded, considering.

“And you wanted to brainstorm what to do with me. I gotcha,” She said. “Why me, though? Shouldn’t your Mom be part of this conversation?”

Ryan shook her head.

“She’s too close to it. She’d only think about protecting her baby, not what needs to be done here.”

“I see…But why me then?

“I dunno. You helped me before. Maybe you can help me now.”

Lindsey nodded, seeming to accept that.

“Well, what do you have in mind?”

Ryan picked up a stick, tracing it along the sidewalk.

“The way I figure, I could either go small or go big,” She said. “Small would be making myself comfortable with my changes, giving myself feminine mannerisms and necessary skills and all that shit. Putting the ‘getting used to yourself’ phase behind me.”

“And Jake?” Lindsey asked before tearing off another bite. “What about him?”

“Jake is…trickier,” Ryan admitted. “I’m not attracted to him, but that could be changed along with the other stuff. But the bigger issue is that he’s not attracted to me. I mean, he might be, but that’ll do me fuck all good if he’s not willing to mess with his best friend.”

“What if you put some kinda aura on yourself? Made it so he would be attracted to you?”

Ryan frowned.

“It could work, I guess. But it feels too much like…I dunno, drugging him or something,” he said. “Like, if I made it so anyone I wanted to would be attracted to me and used it to sleep with a bunch of girls, what would that say about me?”

Lindsey examined him for a moment. Did her breasts just grow a bit?

“I guess that’d be pretty creepy, yeah,” She conceded. “Okay, point taken. So you’d really only be solving half your problem. I take it that’s where going big comes in?”

Ryan nodded.

“I…don’t know if I could actually do it,” She said. “But what if I retconned away Ryan altogether? Made it so only I knew I was ever anything but a girl.”

Lindsey’s reaction took her aback. She put her hands on her hips and indignantly added.

“You better include me in that!” She said. “I’m like your…shaman on this journey or whatever.”

“I think you mean my sherpa. They’re like guides,” Ryan corrected.

“Whatever. I’m a shaman Sherpa,” Lindsey insisted. “And you’ve roped me into this much of the ride that I definitely wanna keep being a part of it.”

“Okay, okay…” Ryan relented. “So you and me. But everyone else would think I’ve always been a girl. I think I’d go hot tomboy but I’m not sure I’m decided yet.”

“Even Farra?” Lindsey asked. “That seems kinda cold, icing your own Mom out like that.”

“I need to make a break from all this stuff holding me back,” Ryan insisted. “If Mom keeps treating me with kid gloves, I can’t do that.”

“Hmm…still, it seems pretty ****. You sure you just wanna erase the old you like that?”

Ryan gave a snort of derision.

“Yeah, because the old me was such a fucking prince,” She said. “I was a lazy fuckup who mooched off his parents, lived to get drunk with his friends and spent his free time stalking game girls. The world’s really gonna miss that guy.”

She balled her hands into fists as she said it. Lindsey put a hand on one of them.

“Look, I don’t ask to be a bitch or whatever,” She said gently. “But are you thinking about doing this because it’ll help you win, or to get away from yourself. There’s no wrong answer, but this is a genie you may not be able to put back in the bottle. You should just make sure you wanna do this, y’know?”

Ryan met her eyes, and the genuine concern she saw in them was touching.

“I don’t know,” She answered honestly. “A little bit of both probably? Whatever the case, I am losing, though. I think we can agree on that.”

Lindsey frowned.

“Yeah…I’m sorry, but you’re not wrong.”

“Well that sort of answers the question, doesn’t it?” Ryan said. “This decision is going to be made for me if I get kicked off the show, and the person they turn me into will be a lot less pleasant than the one I’d pick for myself. I mean you saw what happened to Amelia.”

Lindsey considered, then nodded.

“Okay. So it sounds like you don’t really want advice, just to talk it out.”

Ryan shook her head.

“Absolutely not! I want advice too. Like…” She paused. “What kind of woman should I make myself? My own distaff counterpart? Should I give myself something to do with my life? How crazy with the remake should I go here?”

“Uh uh. No way,” Lindsey protested. “I am not gonna tell you any of that. If you’re going to make a new you, you need to figure out who you want to be for yourself.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Ryan sighed.

Ryan brought the gun out from the sleeve of her hoody and held it to her thigh. She imagined a woman with her current build with short hair and a geeky, sexy style; a woman who was comfortable being one of the guys, but also perfectly at ease with her femininity and her sexuality. She was bi, and every bit as fun loving as Ryan was.

Her name would be Rae, she decided; a junior associate at her father’s company. Not just a store manager, but a shrewd business leader like her father. Someone the entire company was comfortable taking over, and that her father was actually proud of. For fun, she was a streamer herself as a side hustle, but one who did it purely for fun rather than out of necessity. She was still Jake’s childhood best friend, still close with AJ, and her charms would be as effective on men as they were on women.

She was truly, honestly terrified. She might as well be putting a real gun to her head and pulling the trigger. It would be taking Ryan Jones-Ali out of the world just the same. But she bit the fear back, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Instead of the pink flash the manual had promised, the gun only emitted an angry beep. Three dots on the side of the pistol flashed red.

Beside her, Lindsey gasped. They sat together like that for a moment, Lindsey mortified, and Ryan merely surprised. Then, a strange, manic giddiness bubbled up inside of her. Ryan wondered, distantly, if this was how people felt after a near **** experience.

“What the fuck?” She asked, pulling the trigger again. Again, nothing happened but for the beep and the flashing lights.

“Oh shit! I think you’re out of ammo!” Lindsey said, pulling up her own gun.

As she held it, the same trio of lights blinked on her own pistol. Two green, one red.

“I used one shot on a bitchy rider, but all the others since then have been really boring,” She said. “One shot gone, two left.”

“I didn’t shoot it, though. What the hell?” Ryan asked.

Lindsey bit her lip.

“Son of a bitch…I was this close to doing all that to myself.”

She stood up, running a hand through her hair. Then she gave a heavy sigh, twisted around, and threw the gun with all her might. It landed in the nearby pond with a loud plop. Lindsey winced as she did it.

“Dude, what the fuck? You can’t just give up!” She said.

Ryan laughed at that; a laugh with some bitterness.

“The hell else am I supposed to do?” She said, “They’ll either give me a break, or they won’t.”

She flopped back on the bench.

“Well…fuck it,” She said. “Thanks for trying.”

“Ryan…” Lindsey said, standing over him. She seemed unsure of herself.

Ryan waved her off.

“Go do your thing. I’m going back to the hotel,” She said. “Maybe I’ll find Leah or something. Or maybe not. Maybe this is best anyway.”

Lindsey’s eyes blazed.

“Oh, fuck that action! There is no way I’m going to let you-”

But whatever she said next disappeared. Ryan had beamed herself back to the hotel.