I spent most of Saturday morning studying, I felt I needed every edge I could get with how slow my brain was with this stuff. I didn’t have an exact measure of what it was like before, but I am certain I didn’t have to do these weird pauses where I just waited for the next step to be ready. I hope people don’t get annoyed by all the dinging and clacking.
As it closed on lunchtime, I realized I needed to get ready for my parent’s arrival as I didn’t really want to go out in the stuff I had been laying around in. It felt weird to try and chose what to wear, I wasn’t really feeling like going girly despite basically doing nothing but that these days. It’s not like the skinny jeans, tank top, and handbag for my wallet and phone weren’t though, I hope it’s not too weird with them.
Standing here in front of the mirror is the reminder that there’s no way it wouldn’t be. I’ve spent what four days and a few phone calls as this me with them, compared to the over two decades of the previous me. I can’t imagine they are used to it regardless of how well mom seemed to take it or the attempts dad had been making to accommodate me.
Hell, I’ve been ghosting them since I got back here really. I have been busy but surely I could have found time for a few video calls, maybe gone back for an evening or two. I’m pretty sure I’ve been intentionally making myself busy and focusing on the bits I can handle, being me is something I can do. It’s just one learning experience after another and I have a bunch of friends that never had any prior context because I met them post change or were always going to be supportive.
What about everyone from before?
Family, friends, acquaintances, and I still haven’t touched any of my social media outside of discord even if I wasn’t using them much before either. As far as the wider world is concerned, I am still Samuel Woodward - boring nerd dude number ten million.
I was then surprised by the door opening to a worried River.
“Are you ok Sam?” They asked. “I could hear you thinking next door.”
I didn’t say anything for a long moment. “My parents are due any moment and I’ve just realized how many people I am hiding from really, including them.” I said once I could formulate a response. They waited for me to continue, but their expression was giving me an unspoken question.
“I’ve not actively tried to reach out to anyone I knew before, it’s always been a ‘surprise’ chance encounter or something I’ve ended up at.” I eventually continued. “I know I said I didn’t want to be loudly announcing who I am now, but surely it’s ridiculous that I haven’t done anything at this point It’s not like I can change back or that I would want to-“
Wait, is that true?
I don’t want to go back to the old me?
Starting Chain Four
Do I want my old body back?
No.
Why not?
Because then I wouldn’t allow myself to have a life again.
What do I mean by that?
I’ve been so out of place already that I’ve been doing things I never would have before, I’ve not felt the need to limit myself to what I found comfortable in the past.
Like what?
Being proactive with Anna, enjoying the clothing I wear now, making actual friends I do stuff with other than just my roommates, Getting into danger to help other people…
Is that worth the cost of my humanity?
Yes.
Even with the emotional confusion and the experiences I can’t have anymore?
Yes.
Then I prefer being this me?
Yes
“Oh.” I mumbled to myself, the revelation was really a culmination of stuff I had been gradually coming to terms with already but it was stark when laid out like that. As I looked around blinking while trying to reorientate myself I realized that River had left my room, in their place, Mom was sitting on my bed not entirely calm but not actively worried-looking. Dad leaned in the door with an unreadable expression.
“Sorry I’ve been avoiding you two.” I said quietly as I could feel tears forming.
“Have you been?” Mom asked softly.
“Yeah, because I don’t… “ I trailed off looking away from either of them, before steeling myself and continuing While the tears flowed. “I didn’t want you to realize I like being this way.”
There was silence so I continued.
“it’s not all great, but there are so many things I let myself do and enjoy now. “ I tried to look at mom but couldn’t quite force it, I could hear her standing up from the bed. “And I don’t want to go back…”
I felt mom wrapping me in a hug. “We just want you to be happy Sam, you don’t have to force yourself to be something you don’t want to be to please us.” She leaned back while still hugging me to be able to look me in the face. “I don’t think you have been avoiding us dear, I know your life is busy now and I am glad to hear you enjoying yourself in the calls you do give us.”
I wouldn’t say that the rest of my parent’s visit was free from awkward moments, we were talking about how far from being human I was these days after all. They mostly listened as I talked about being able to detach my limbs or feel water get trapped inside me, or any of a number of so far as I was aware unique to me experiences not being even organic brought. I told stories of things I had been up, shopping with friends, urban exploration, and being with Anna.
My awkward updates got interrupted by the need for food, in the end, I packed some stuff quickly and they ordered take-out. Then we ate in a nearby park and then walked following the river that ran through it as I answered their questions about what life was like for me now. They never quite pushed on any topic and mostly seemed content with my sometimes uncertain answers.
Sexuality came up at some point, it felt a bit weird to talk about it particularly as I still don’t have a great explanation for what I even experience. Clearly I am attracted to Anna, but I was increasingly uncertain what that represented. While I deigned not to exactly talk about how I teased Anna, I have to be honest to myself and say I do things that are pretty sexually charged to her. Maybe it’s because my memories say that humans would enjoy it, but it seems like I get too much out of it myself to say that entirely. They were happy to hear I was enjoying being with her, even if they obviously guessed I wasn’t giving them the full story.
I didn’t let us linger on the topic for long, and eventually turned the questions back on them as they ran out of stuff for me. I got the usual stories of work, dad’s eternally crisis-wrought supply chain, and Mom’s team having to account for some new bylaw that was throwing builders off. I also learned they were planning on going on a trip to the Rockies this summer as just the two of them, in some kind of a first not a family vacation thing since before Kat was born. They were actually guilty about that one, which was pretty amusing to me, but I dismissed their worries.
I also made an interesting discovery if not particularly consequential on our walk, I can still smell flowers and they even smell pretty similar from my recollection. Although the various spring flowers in their wild patches along the path aren’t something I really went out of my way for before, so I am kind of extrapolating that. I guess it makes sense given I can smell other non-fuel things so it’s not that surprising, but I am still learning stuff about myself all the time.
We spent a while walking after the conversation petered off, before I commented that we were getting well into the day and that I should probably get a bit more school work done. Once we got back to my place there were some farewells and promises to keep in touch then they piled into the car and took off.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
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Mary had Molly and I start on small team tactics the next morning; she decided the best way to do this was with a practical training course. It turns out that the fact the facility isn’t completely occupied and is incredibly convoluted makes for good urban setups, she had gotten a load of easily moved dummy barriers to let her change the routes available between rounds without help to keep it secret too.
She had us run through with airsoft pistols having to differentiate ‘civilian’ and ‘hostile’ targets spread throughout the course, my brain doesn’t seem to be able to tell which was which by default so I had to actually focus. My ballistics unit really doesn’t like airsoft guns either, it tries to aim but they are such unstable projectiles that it wastes time recalibrating with almost every shot. Mary pointed out that this was helpful as it put Molly and me on the same level accuracy-wise, making it easier to have us practice teamwork. She had us alternate taking point along with operating under certain restrictions, for example being encumbered or ‘injured’, etc.
“I have a shit ton more experience with a gun than you, come on you can’t complain about ‘only’ being as good as me.” Molly groused as the three of us made our way towards the caf.
“I mean, it feels weird to not be able to hit what I am shooting.” I responded with a sheepish smile. “I’ve gotten used to it just being natural.”
Mary snorted out a laugh. “I’m afraid Sam operates under a different standard to you Molly as you are well aware, that was a poor showing for her.” She said before changing the topic with a smile still on her face. “I am pleased with the progress you two made this morning, I think we might focus on this for the next few weeks at least if that works for you two.”
“Sure.” I agreed
“Works for me, but I am still going to say she cheats.” Molly said giving me a mock glare with a half-smile to diffuse it. “Oh, actually Sam, how do you feel about doing something different instead of urban ex after lunch?”
“I’m down for anything, what were you thinking?”
“You haven’t popped in to see either how we are housing either group of extra-dimensional people right? I know Ivy is working with the translation team today, so we could swing by for a bit to see how they are doing.”
“Sounds good to me.”
I had already known that the other worlders were offsite at a hotel and heard from the others the occasional bit of news on how they were settling in or the infrastructure being built. That’s about it though, so I was curious to see what had been done.
A short drive brought us to a nearby tower whose signage had been removed, with a small cluster of quickly constructed metal sheds next to what I assumed was the conference part of the hotel with pipes almost as wide as my torso running from them into recently cut holes in the walls. A set of transformers on trailers were parked nearby, the spider web of thick cables emerging from them going to the sheds or into the building itself.
The car park was moderately filled, but Molly quickly found a spot anyway. I noticed despite all the extra structures and high energy equipment evidently installed it wasn’t actually that loud, just a steady hum that wouldn’t have been out of place coming from me.
There were a couple of soldiers at the front door who checked our IDs, I noted with amusement they spent longer checking Molly’s ID than mine. I guess they weren’t as thoroughly professional as Kevin at the facility and mostly were going off my distinct appearance.
The lobby wasn’t much different from any other hotel I had been in other than the reception desk having substantially more computers at it that were staffed by a mix of soldiers and people in varying levels of professional wear. They didn’t seem too fussed with talking to us, and Molly continued past them leading us away from the hallway that presumably led into the part of the building with individual rooms.
“Ivy said to meet her in room three.” She said as we walked past a paper sign stuck to a wall with an arrow on it labeled ‘Conference Wing’, it also had presumably the same thing written in a language I didn’t recognize just above the English. There was a second sheet taped onto the wall next to it with a third language crudely scratched on it with a thick black marker.
The hallway we entered had a few rooms off each side before ending in two pairs of double doors, I assumed that was the main hall but we stopped off just before it on the right. This room wasn’t that large but was big enough for a trio of tables and maybe a dozen chairs half of which were occupied by people I didn’t recognize working at laptops or pouring over reams of handwritten notes, I did see Ed and Ivy at the rightmost table apparently sharing a laptop. They appeared to be in an argument from the half I could hear, I think it was something about syntax maybe?
“… More like Japanese.” Ed said then paused for a second before rebutting something. “But that doesn’t make sense, how would you differentiate the subject then?” He groaned after another brief pause. “Oh right, yeah that makes sense.”
He started typing dejectedly but didn’t get far before Molly called out. “How are my favorite linguists doing?”
“Awful, my brain hurts.” Ed answered, then gestured at Ivy. “Can you relay? She has been shouting in my head for like six hours today already.”
“Sure!” Molly said cheerfully, then looked at me. “Ivy says hi! Also that she’s not a linguist despite how much time she is spending with them.”
“If it helps, I have this.” I said holding up my phone, my bag slung over one shoulder so I could fish in it.
“Eh, don’t worry about it.” Molly said dismissively. “If nothing else then I would have to have mine out too. Oh, Ivy is asking if you are ready to get an intro to what they are doing here and a mini-tour? I’ve been here before but it looks like a ton has happened since then so I would be down for it too.”
“Sure.” I answered while returning my phone to its place.
Turns out that the CRD had nabbed a bunch of linguists like they had Kat for physics, and they were in the middle of assembling some level of understanding of the otherworld languages we had encountered so far. Ivy had been putting in an inordinate number of hours helping to build up manuals on them, which was easier said than done as it had to be done in a time-consuming roundabout way. She could ‘listen’ for the meaning of words and sentences or talk to our guests but she didn’t actually understand their language per say. She interprets or stimulates her conversational partners brain to let her understand them and vis versa, she wasn’t entirely sure how exactly she derived meaning, it was like muscle memory or something which meant it was extra difficult for her to give any explanation of how their language worked. This meant that they were having to ask other worlder volunteers to go through endless pages of words and sentences to give the linguists material to work with to have a genuine understanding and then be able to respond or interpret their language.
It was made more difficult by there not necessarily being an overlap of sounds human vocal cords could reasonably produce to all speech with them in their native tongue. The tentacled people, whose actual name was closer to a series of warbles and hoots, could just about make the right sounds for English as Roger demonstrated but their speech was hard on human throats and required a lot of air breaking up any attempts to speak with breaths. The finned folk weren’t as difficult, their name for themselves had clicking and gentle whistles which was something like ‘Tch-tch-fwe-click-tch-fue’, but they had barely even started on that language.
“Honestly, we are months off of anyone being even vaguely fluent, a few of us could maybe order some food and find the washroom in warble but that’s about it.” Ed commented in between Molly relaying explanations. “Like take this.” He scrolled through his document, before pointing at a symbol. “This is something like home or house or something along those lines, it’s pronounced ah I am gonna mangle this, fwee-fuu-tch-feah.” He paused. “I think, oh Ivy agrees, cool.”
“fwee-fuu-tch-feah?” I repeated, it was pretty easy to do since my speech is assembled out of a bunch of small whistling noises already. The click was a little more awkward, so I just kinda went for a close enough sound. I didn’t seem to bother moving my mouth for it, I guess since it’s not a language I am familiar with I don’t really try to make it look right. I knew I could speak English in a similar way, but it felt weird and kinda freaked Mike out when I did it once.
“Woah, yeah that’s about right.” He confirmed while blinking. “That took me like an hour to get.”
“Speaking is weird for me.” I responded with a shrug. “When I think about what I am doing it’s mostly just imitating noises with my setup rather than forming it with my lips or whatever, so I guess as long as I know what it sounds like I can parrot it.”
“Hmm, neat. You interested in joining us in learning their languages?”
“Uh, sometime maybe. I kinda have a lot on my plate already.” I answered backing away from his interested lean forward. “I am pretty bad at the whole learning part of languages if it’s anything like French or the other stuff I’ve tried.”
“Oh, right university, in the summer then?” He asked eagerly ignoring my protests.
“Maybe?” I was grateful when molly put a hand on my shoulder at that point to interrupt.
“No stealing my only agent yet Ed.” I think she looked to Ivy then. “Now, if we were going to see anything else here we probably need to get on. We don’t have all day this time, after all both of us have a midterm tomorrow and I would like to get a bit of hand to hand in after this.”
Our first destination was honestly the main thing of interest in the place, most of the rest of the hotel just having gotten minor changes to support the people hosted at the moment. The main conference room on the other hand had been stripped bare before a massive saltwater tank was installed in the middle of it. Ivy explained the tentacled people were semi-aquatic, while they preferred to spend much of their time on dry land, they did need to spend at least part of their day in the water for some part of their metabolism to work. I recalled that Roger had mentioned that Summers had gotten something similar installed at his place.
A quick peek through a window at the side of the tank revealed that there were pseudo rooms in it along with a few chairs that a couple of people were lounging in. Their skirt-like clothing I remembered before being replaced with some mesh-like thing draped over their bodies, one of them waved at me which I returned unsure if they were recognizing me or not.
There were a few technicians working on some supporting system at the side of the room, Ivy mentioned that the whole setup was very much a work in progress with it having gone through stages of just making sure they had something. We still had no idea when we would get them home, so getting this thing reliable would be a priority.
Molly pointed out that the humidity and salt probably would be nasty on the building, she laughed at Ivy’s response before relaying it.
“We don’t have to worry about what happens to it after us!”