Roommate Meetings

In the first pod, there was a moment of silence as the lights outside went out. Delia and Sarah each lay on their backs, looking up at the ceiling, which left them just enough room to sit up or stand on their knees in the space.

“Would it make it better or worse if I told you that that color scheme on you is pretty stunning?” Delia asked quietly.

“Better, but not by much. I can see it’s objectively beautiful, and it doesn’t hurt that apparently it took every little blemish off my skin, but it still feels like I’m stuck in a Halloween costume that won’t come off. I keep expecting it to wash off like body paint, but I guess that’s not going to happen.”

“You could always see if Jacqueline would trade with you. I’m sure you’d look great in green.”

Sarah let out a little snort of laughter.

“Sorry, that wasn’t meant to diminish what you’re going through.” Delia apologized.

“I get it. I’m trying to remind myself it could be worse, but it’s hard when our whole lives have been completely overturned in just a few short hours. And, like, I don’t even know if it’s safe for me to go into the sun anymore. Am I just going to get instantly sunburnt? Or am I just going to melt?”

“I’d definitely suggest sunscreen, but I don’t think our sadistic host would want you turning into a puddle. At least not literally. That doesn’t seem like the kind of show he wants. But with your first transformation… Maybe a little more figuratively.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. Speaking of which, I think I saw a storage compartment at the far end of the pod. I think it’s got spare blankets and pillows. We should probably build a bit of a wall between us. I’m holding it back at the moment, but I can feel the heat from your body from over here, and I’d rather you not wake up frozen cause I instinctively spooned you in my sleep.” She got up on her knees and started scouring through the compartment when she stopped. “This will be the first time in a long while that I’ve slept without Serena next to me,” she said, wistfully as she began pulling out the pillows.

“I saw you two talking. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s just weird. We were hugging, and it felt… different. I’m used to her being this big, solid man who just envelops me in his arms, but instead, she’s this little thing. Consciously, I know she’s my girlfriend, but part of me feels like I’m cheating. Meanwhile, part of me just wants to snuggle her like she’s a body pillow and suck all the heat out of her.”

“I’m sorry. I wish I could say something to help, but none of the couples therapy books I read before my divorce covered what to do if your significant other is suddenly transformed into a new body.”

“She’s not taking it well, and I don’t get why. I mean, I do get why, but the way she’s reacting doesn’t feel right for her. One second she’s telling me all about the cool things that her new implants are showing her and getting excited, but then, suddenly, she’s crying. Even she doesn’t seem to understand why.”

“It’s been an impossibly stressful night, and she’s dealing with a whole new body.”

“It’s just so different from what I’m used to. It’s not like she never cried before. She was always a sensitive guy, the sort who's never been afraid to show his emotions, but this felt different. It was like a switch suddenly flipped, and she went from excited to despondent in a second. I’ve never seen her emotions control her like that before. She was always the stable one.”

Delia considered for a moment, remembering how Serena had been acting when she found her during the challenge, overwhelmed by the intensity of the vibrator until she was sobbing.

“Do you think it has something to do with her transformation into a woman? I never really bought the whole idea that women are more emotional than men, but maybe the sudden change is having some effect on her. It’s a whole new set of hormones after all.”

“I hope that’s it. Jacqueline seems to be taking it fairly well, and Serena has always looked up to her. Hopefully, it’ll help that the two of them are dealing with this together. But I think I know that it's the other part of her transformation, and I worry that I did this to her somehow.”

Delia reached out and put her hand on the other woman’s shoulder over the wall she’d built. Sarah looked grateful, but pulled away.

“Thanks, but I don’t want to get myself overheated while I’m sleeping.”

“What does it feel like?” Delia asked

“Which part? Most of the time, it just feels like someone left the AC on too high, and I feel like all I want to do is snuggle up to a warm fire, a warm body, or anything warm at all. But when I start to heat up. That’s not like anything I’ve ever experienced before. The closest I can say is it feels like I was in the middle of the hottest, sweatiest drunken hookup ever, and the other person just disappeared. It’s like there’s suddenly all this energy in me that has one specific purpose and no way to satisfy it. It leaves me feeling hot, and needy, and sensitive, and so horny that I can barely think straight. All I want to do is crawl out of my skin or pounce on the first willing body I see.”

“I wonder if Daisy’s heats are sort of the same. I guess I’m in the same boat if I don’t change forms enough.”

“How about you? What does it feel like to be half the age you woke up?”

“Honestly, kind of amazing, and it’s got me feeling a little bit guilty with what everyone else is going through.”

“Maybe you should hold off on feeling that way till you figure out what the mental components are like.”

“That’s definitely worrying. I guess we’ll see. I don’t know how quickly they’re supposed to build up.”

“But, seriously, how does it feel to get your youth back like that? I can’t imagine what it would feel like to suddenly just drop a ton of years like that.”

“It’s not like I’m a fossil!”

“Oh, hush. We’re both in our thirties, even if we were on different ends of them. Though, I guess now you’re physically down with Jenna and Jacqueline. But anyways. Even I’m feeling some significant differences in my body from when I was younger. It’s got to feel amazing to be back to that. And you were quite a looker when you were that age.”

The smile on Delia’s face dimmed a bit.

“I think they’re taking some liberties with that. Don’t forget, my younger body still has this whole corset thing, which leaves me a lot less pear-shaped than I was back then, and whatever magic they used to make me younger luckily skipped over giving me back the braces and horrible fashion choices I was making at the time. Besides, by the time I was 21, I was already married, so I wasn’t really looking to turn any heads.”

“All the more reason to enjoy it this time around. Now, Aaron’s not who I would have picked, but you could do worse. If I were you, I would have preferred Jacqueline’s male body or maybe that cashier of yours. But, yeah, you could do worse.”

“Oh, Ken. What’s he going to think about suddenly being in this mess? What are any of them going to think?”

“Not sure about Ken; he’s always been too much of an enigma. Perrin’s going to be ecstatic as soon as he hears that he’s got an audience to perform for, but hard to say how he’ll take the gender change. Courtney’s going to spend every second complaining, so a normal day for her. Tara’s going to be Tara. Grace is probably going to try to murder Aaron, so probably best to keep her and Daisy separated. Evelyn… I don’t know. I still don’t really understand what happened between those two. He's got sort of a bad habit of leaving relationships as a smoking crater he just doesn't comment on, doesn't he?” Sarah said, listing off her former coworkers.

“Grace would never hurt Aaron, at least not as long as Jenna’s in the way. As for Evelyn, I don’t think even Aaron’s sure what happened there. From the sound of things, they had one bad night, and the next day I woke up to a letter of resignation with a forwarding address for a final paycheck and no more commentary than that.”

The two continued to speculate and gossip about their future crewmates, with Delia passing along some of the interesting stories from the store since Sarah had left. Sarah had heard a few of the stories from Serena over the time since she’d left, but she suspected that the sharing helped soothe the other woman. Eventually, they realized that the hour had gotten later than they expected, turned off the pod’s lights, and fell asleep with a wall of pillows between them.

Jacqueline was deep in thought when Serena slid into the pod, her eyes swollen from tears, but the rest of her face locked into a scowl. For a moment, Jacqueline’s instincts as a single father of a young woman overruled her masculine stoicism, and she reached out and put a hand on the purple-haired woman’s shoulder.

“Hey kid, what’s wrong?”

Serena wanted nothing more than to deny that anything was wrong, but as she did, she found the tears returning, and she found her mouth already confessing.

“I don’t know, and it’s pissing me off, which is confusing me even more because I’m not used to being quite this pissed off.” The other woman groaned in frustration.

“When did this start?”

Serena thought back. She’d had every reason to be angry before she’d been abducted, but it hadn’t felt like this. During C2’s initial introduction and the first round of transformations, she’d been terrified and furious, but that had felt more justified and controlled than what she was feeling now. It was only during the challenge that she’d started to feel strange. At first, she’d had this anxious and frustrated need to move. That had transitioned to anger when the drone had caught her, then fluctuated into a strange, overwhelmed sorrow when the vibrator’s highest intensity had hit her.

“During the challenge, I guess.”

“Do you think that this could be related to the Dream Girl transformation?”

Serena looked at the other woman in confusion.

“It said that you might start to show some of the personality traits of Sarah’s dream woman, right?” Jacqueline clarified.

Serena considered the possibility, and felt a sickening lurch as it started to fully register what Jacqueline was implying. Sarah had always complained about her wilder exes, constantly complimenting Serena on how much of a relief it was to date someone who was so emotionally stable and secure. Several times over the course of their relationship, Sarah had gone on long rants telling him how volatile and maddeningly emotional one of her exes was, only for Serena to find that the stories didn’t hold up when she actually met them. Serena had figured that either her exes had become less wild since Sarah had dated them or that she was exaggerating their negative traits to justify the breakup. But had that been an act? Or maybe just denial on Sarah’s part? Had those tales been complaints or veiled nostalgia? Serena’s body was living evidence that she didn’t fully understand whatever corner of her girlfriend’s mind her dream girl had been drawn from. Were these powerful and rapidly fluctuating emotions really something that Sarah, deep down, dreamed of in a female partner?

And then the darker thoughts started to flood in. Sarah’s dream girl was so different from the man Serena had been in every way. In fact, the emotionally volatile person she seemed to be turning into was exactly the sort of person she’d always tried to avoid and sworn against becoming herself. If this was what Sarah had always wanted in a partner, had his male self ever really been someone she’d been interested in? Had her affection for the man named Sebastian just been an act or a calculated move?

She tried her hardest to push back those thoughts, to remind herself that, perhaps, what Sarah looked for in a female partner was different than what she looked for in a male one, or that, perhaps, this vision of her dream partner was drawn from some part of her girlfriend’s mind that she actively rejected. But, in both those cases, she wondered what it meant for her relationship going forward. Would she have to completely abandon the person she’d been before their abduction for Sarah to maintain interest? Would Sarah actively reject a version of her dream woman that she didn’t want to admit she desired? Was there some middle ground where she could be both her old self and this new person that Sarah supposedly dreamed of? How much of her old self would she have to surrender to become that person? Could one of the transformation upgrades fix this? Would Sarah want it to be fixed?

She was so wrapped up in the assault by the dark thoughts that she didn’t realize she’d started crying again. Jacqueline was rubbing her shoulder in support, surprised by how different the woman lying next to her was compared to the solid and even-tempered young man her protege had always been.

“It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.” Jacqueline repeated like a mantra.

“Maybe… maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s just part of being a woman.”

“If it is, it’s not something I’m feeling. I’ve known women to get the sort of mood swings you’re getting if they were pregnant or having their period, but C2 was pretty clear that neither of those is a possibility for us.”

“Fuuuuck!” Serena sobs in rage

Jacqueline continued to stroke the woman’s shoulder as she sobbed. She didn’t say anything until, finally, her sobs began to soften and slow. Jacqueline, hoping the other woman’s sobs would carry her off to sleep, reached for the switches on the ceiling of the pod and flipped them, extinguishing the light.

Serena’s sobs eventually resolved into a few last sniffles before she turned and faced Jacqueline in the dark.

“Did you really figure out that they were bringing the rest of the staff just because they didn’t bring Evelyn?”

“It was more that they brought you, especially when there were so many more dramatic options. Evelyn’s definitely top of the list, but if you really want conflict or tension between Aaron and the contestants, or between the contestants, then having the coworker he knows least and has the least drama with among his coworkers made very little sense. I mean, can you imagine if Grace was here, or Perrin?”

Serena imagined the fireworks that she now knew were destined to occur when C2 added the aggressively anti-Aaron kitchen assistant and universally flirtatious waiter to their ranks.

“Yeah. You’ve got a point there. I guess I’d rather it was them than Sarah or me, though I am glad that they didn’t take Sarah and leave me. I hate the idea that I might have woken up tomorrow and completely forgotten she ever existed. I guess I wouldn’t have known, but it’s a scary thought.”

“I feel the same. I wish none of us were here, but I’m glad if Jenna has to be going through this, that I’m here with her and that neither of us has to live with the idea that we’ve been removed or replaced in the other’s life.”

Serena desperately wanted to ask the other former man what she intended to do about Aaron. Still, her male pride held hard to the question, refusing even to allow the concept to pass her lips, which made it extra surprising when the question slipped out anyway.

“What are you going to do about Aaron? Do you think you could ever… you know… be with a man? Especially your best friend?”

Jacqueline turned and looked at the other woman for a few moments, clearly chewing over her answer.

“I… “ she paused. “I have a plan. I hope it’s a good one. I promise I’ll let you know if I find something that will help. But in the meantime, work with Aaron and work with Sarah. See if there’s some workaround. Just… Don’t get yourself eliminated, kid. This is going to be a big crew, and I’d rather not have to cook for all of them alone for the rest of my life.”

“Wait, are you planning to cook for everyone all the time?”

“We’re cooks, aren’t we? That’s what we do.”

“There’s a machine up there that will make any food we can imagine, and you’re planning to cook for every meal? I planned to keep it up as a hobby, but we’re on a spaceship in a new galaxy! If I’m stuck out here, I don’t plan to spend all my time in the kitchen.”

“Oh? You have your eye on anything you particularly want to do instead?”

“Tough to say. I’ve always been a big sci-fi nerd in my free time, but there are so many cool jobs on the ship. My implant showed me all the lessons those virtual pods have, and some of them sounded pretty cool. I don’t think I’d want to be an engineer or a science guy. Obviously, the captain role is spoken for. I could maybe see myself being a pilot or working in security. I guess it depends on how often we actually have to go down to planets and stuff. Cause, flying sounds amazing, but I don’t want to be stuck on the bridge all the time either.”

The two continued to discuss which lessons they were each interested in from the course menu. They speculated on how the rest of the Roost’s staff were likely to react to joining the crew when they finally began to feel the full weight of the evening and fell asleep, Serena’s emotions feeling much calmer and less volatile as she finally drifted off.

The third pod was filled with a stony silence as Daisy slid in to find that Jenna had already constructed a small wall of pillows and blankets which mostly separated the new space. Daisy glared through the wall at the younger woman, but she was distracted, looking at something floating just above her braceleted wrist that only she could see, her face flipping through a variety of emotions as her eyes tracked invisible text.

Daisy turned off the light on her own side of the pod, giving the other woman another glare to hopefully encourage her to turn her own light off, but the younger woman was intently focused on whatever she was looking at.

“Do you mind? I’m trying to sleep.” Daisy said to the other woman.

Jenna rolled her eyes but flipped off the light on her side of the pod, but continued to stare at the invisible screen. Her hand occasionally flicked as though she was moving to a different screen.

“Can you stop? It can’t possibly be that interesting that you need to stay up looking at every single one.”

“There’s literally no way this is disturbing you. I’m barely even moving and I know you can't see my screen. And, for the record, this is easily one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s a whole list of magical items and transformations. It’s literally an upgrade menu for our own minds and bodies. I can’t imagine anything more interesting I could be doing right now.”

Daisy wanted to retort, but she suddenly felt the familiar sensation of her heat setting in. The slickness began to grow between her legs as the warmth spread through her core and up into her face. Without meaning to, she felt her hips starting to move as she started to smell the scent of her own arousal.

Next to her, Jenna began to sniff before she looked over to see the subtle movements of the other woman.

“Oh, seriously? I know you can’t control it, but is there any way you could take that outside?”

“Fuck off, brat. You go outside if you’re going to make a stink about it.” It was all the response that Daisy could summon up. She pulled a pillow from the wall and pressed it between her legs, desperate for something to apply pressure against her molten mound and not trusting her own hands. As Daisy unconsciously humped the pillow, Jenna fumbled with the various switches on the pod's ceiling, finally finding one that turned on a fan that she hoped would bring in outside air. She turned her back on the other woman and tried to ignore the needy sounds that began to leak out of her as she continued to browse through the BP store.

She found several items that were particularly interesting. She found that, in general, missed transformations cost 1500 BP to buy for yourself and 3000 BP to buy them for someone else, except for the boon transformations, which were 4000 regardless of who you bought them for. There were some generic transformations would modify the size of their breasts or asses or enhance their libido, and some consumable items that would allow various types of sabotage or temporary advantages. There were also some special options that appeared to be specially curated. The ones that jumped out at her were the sexuality changes that C2 had described, as well as some that appeared to have been set aside for specific individuals.

Sexuality: Bisexual – Affected contestant will find themselves attracted to members of both the opposite sex and the same sex (Kinsey Scale 2 – 4) at an intensity in the 65th percentile of bisexual persons of the same gender. 5 VP Bonus. (600 BP – Self)

Sexuality: Heterosexual – Affected contestant will find themselves attracted exclusively to members of the opposite sex (Kinsey Scale 0) at an intensity in the 65th percentile of heterosexual persons of the same gender. 5 VP Bonus. (600 BP – Self)

Sexuality: Mastersexual – Affected contestant will find themselves attracted solely to the Master at an intensity in the 65th percentile of heterosexual persons of the same gender. 7 VP Bonus. (600 BP – Self)

The heterosexual option was grayed out, but she briefly considered the other two. Below that set of options was one she suspected would be available to all the current contestants except Serena and Sarah.

Sexuality: Wincest (Mild/Medium/Hot) – Reduces aversion to incest in purchaser and removes stigma from other crew members. The degree of aversion reduction depends on the level purchased. Self-purchase only. (2000 BP for initial; 1000 BP to adjust level)
• Mild: Contestant is comfortable being in the same room as a family member engaged in sex. Awards 4 VP bonus for purchase.
• Medium: Contestant is comfortable engaging in nonsexual touch with a family member engaged in sex. Awards 5 VP bonus for purchase.
• Hot: Contestant is comfortable with all levels of sexual and nonsexual touch with a family member. Awards 6 VP bonus for purchase.

She recoiled at the concept but wondered if there might come a day when it was necessary. She decided that there was a world where she could eventually see herself getting the Mild version. Still, she struggled to imagine a future in which she would ever be interested in the Medium or Hot versions.

There were also various upgrades to her transformations, including ones that expanded the range of her gravity reduction, allowing her to reach 100% gravity reduction or reduce her minimum gravity immunity to 50%. There was a special transformation that was tempting.

Mag-Feet – Contestant gains the ability to magnetically attach their feet to any solid surface and walk along it normally. The contestant is no longer able to wear shoes, but feet become indestructible and insensitive to most harmful surface conditions. Feet become erogenous and cause pleasure when touched by others. (1,000 BP)

The available upgrades to her boon ability were more expensive. Still, they would allow her to sway the resulting adaptation transformations towards boons, have more adaptations at once, or choose which one to replace when she hit her cap. She decided she would need to take a closer look at her challenge options the next morning.

She also spotted the upgrade to her clothing change and wondered if Sarah’s looked similar.

Relaxed Clothing Restriction – Contestant’s restriction is loosened so that they may wear any clothing that satisfies the core criteria of their clothing change. Core criteria: Tight, Commando, Displays two of Midriff/Nipples/Cameltoe. (1,000 BP)

When the sound of Daisy’s rustling finally receded, her scent beginning to fade, Jenna looked at the time and finally decided it was time to turn in for the night. She didn’t make any purchases, but she started to consider how she would use her large stock of BP that she’d earned from the polls.