We were on the bench for another few minutes before Kat’s phone went off, mom had been getting worried that we had been gone a long time. She relaxed hearing both of our voices but reminded us that it was getting on in the day, after some assurances that we were fine and would be back soon we were released.

We started to jog back in companionable quiet, but it wasn’t long before I started to think back to the question chain I had earlier.

Was I fine with my clothes just because I asked myself some questions?

I mean, yeah introspection was normal, and I was happy with my conclusions, but I don’t think most people would have had it so… cut and dry?

“Is something wrong?” Asked Kat, I guess my thoughts were influencing my expression.

“You know how I was thinking for a long time earlier when you asked about how I felt with the clothing?” She nodded without interrupting and I paused, unsure how much I wanted to talk about feeling like my mind was different.

“I was asking myself questions in that long period, and then answering them seemed… useful.” I said struggling to even think of how to describe it. “Like I wasn’t really against wearing the feminine clothing before, but that was in private in the house. But after I had my little internal Q and A session, I am fine with the idea of wearing them in public too. I don’t think it’s normal for me to be able to adapt like that so quickly.”

“Hmmm.” She let the thought hang for a while. “Does it feel wrong or like your mind is being manipulated?”

“No, not at all,” I responded while shaking my head. “It felt natural, same with using the answers. It’s more like being able to skip to the end of a repeated internal debate the moment it starts again.”

“Does having those answers feel better?” She asked while focusing on my expression.

I hesitated a bit.

“Yeah.” Then I protested while throwing my arms out in confusion. “But like, this is wearing stuff that I wouldn’t ever even consider on Wednesday!”

“If you are happy with them, does it matter?” She said with conviction.

I groaned.

“Probably not.” I wasn’t quite happy with that answer alone. “But yesterday I had a panic attack at Mike saying I had a cool voice, I shouldn’t just be over something like that!”

Then I realized I wasn’t jogging anymore, having stopped at some point. “That doesn’t seem human at all…”

“Does being human matter?” Kat asked while walking back to me.

“I lived my whole life as a human and now you are asking if that even matters?!” I asked incredulously.

“Does it change who you are?” She asked, more gently this time.

“I don’t know!” I almost shouted.

“From my perspective, it doesn’t. You are trying out things you wouldn’t before, but you still behave like the sibling I grew up with and love.” She countered while putting her hands on my shoulders. “You as a person are far more important to me than questions of what you are, you might want to answer them for yourself, but you shouldn’t let them get in the way of being happy.”

I blinked a few times, unsure of what response I should have to that.

“…Is it ok for me to be happy like this?” I said eventually. “Even with how it affects people I care about?”

“Of course it is.” She smiled sadly. “If we care about you, then we shouldn’t be stopping you from being happy regardless of how big a change it is.”

A bike zipped by behind Kat and then I realized we were still on a path full of people, what had I been shouting about here of all places? Kat’s grip on my shoulders grew firm as I stared wildly looking around, startling me into looking back at her

“They don’t matter.” Kat said firmly. “Do you think you are or can be happy with your form after the change?”

I struggled to not break myself free of her grip and just run away from all the confusion and not think about any of this.

Why is she giving me such a hard question?

Why do I have an answer already?

“Yes,” I said while my eyes watered up again. “I think I can be…”

“That’s what matters.” She said gently, pulling me into a hug.

Having to lean up to Kat because she is taller than me again is another reminder of all that’s changed, but somehow it helps make me feel that she has all the answers again like when we were kids.

She eventually released me and then messed up my hair with a grin.

“Come on, Sam. We don’t want mom worried about us again.”

----------------------------------------

Too late for that.

We had barely gotten our shoes off before mom gave us a bit of an ear bender as our ‘quick run’ ended up being the better part of two hours, but she was mollified a bit by learning how much of it we had spent talking and she didn’t press on what the topics were.

Dad joined us cheerfully talking about how he had been emailing Summers and a bunch of suppliers. He had apparently learned a ton about how many different fossil fuels there are and the myriad ways they can be processed. Summers had said that he had connections that he could lean on to get orders far below what would ordinarily be processed by companies that would typically be interested in contracts measured in tanker trucks or trainloads. As a result, there would be some kind of delivery to my place in the next few days. The lack of details kind of worried me but given none of my roommates had a car either, I knew worst case we could put whatever turned up in the garage.

At this point, dad seemed to realize what I was wearing, and he started to say something, but I think Kat gave him a death stare because he closed his mouth again. Mom said we should clean up and then come back to help with dinner, which on one hand was a relief to avoid a conversation I don’t think I was ready for, on the other it meant I had to figure out what I was going to wear.

“Let me get showered and then I will come and help you pick something Sam.” Kat said over her shoulder as we went upstairs, having guessed one of my concerns.

Speaking of showering, I started looking at my joints wondering if I need to clean them, I don’t see any obvious oil seeping despite all the activity, but I will probably take a quick pass anyway. Although there is some mud on my legs below where the leggings ended, I found that I didn’t like the feel of it drying on my skin.

“Do you need to shower?” Kat asked, then had another thought. “…can you? You were a bit worried last night with water on your hands.”

I paused with a hand on the banister.

“I think I can, I feel the need to have something get the mud off but just kind of wiping at it with a cloth has negative feelings associated with it.” I thought on it a bit more. “I feel indifferent about it being a shower though, wait Dad installed the showerhead with a hose last year, right?”

Kat nodded.

“I might just use that to spray off the mud, maybe use some residue-less soap if needed.” I said with a shrug.

“That makes sense, you are just getting something specific off rather than sweat.” She said starting to go up the stairs again. “I might call dibs on the shower first as I am dripping though!”

“Go for it, I need to clean my joints and warn my roommates about the mysterious delivery anyway.”

Grabbing some more bits of an old shirt while Kat went to get her stuff, I paused not sure where to go for privacy. My new clothes were all still in the guest room and Kat’s backpack was in my room, so I guess I will just treat the guest room as being mine for the moment.

I didn’t find as much oil when cleaning as I had expected, but I felt better after doing it.

After throwing the dirty rag in the trash bin, I pulled out my phone to warn my roommates. Jake and Mike seemed to be arguing about something that happened in a tournament when I brought up discord.

TheOneMoose (Jake): No way, they fucked up their timing

TheOneMoose (Jake): It just happened to work out

supJim (Mike): i am telling you man

supJim (Mike): its the big brain plays

supJim (Mike): they are 100% going to the finals

TheOneMoose (Jake): Sure

TheOneMoose (Jake): If they don’t eat shit in the next match after overextending

TheOneMoose (Jake): Again

IndustrialCat (Sam): Hate to interrupt but

IndustrialCat (Sam): @TheOneMoose @BellingMouse @supJim There’s either a or multiple deliveries of unknown food for me arriving in the next few days

IndustrialCat (Sam): I have no idea what as my dad and Summers set it up

IndustrialCat (Sam): I guess fuel not food

TheOneMoose (Jake): Cool, we will let you know when it’s here

BellingMouse (River): I would call it food @IndustrialCat

BellingMouse (River): Calling it fuel is a bit demeaning

supJim (Mike): i was reading about weird additives for changing the properties of petroleum products earlier

supJim (Mike): mbe we could see if you could eat jellied gas

supJim (Mike): might make for some interesting meals

Looks like Mike preempted me on the idea of cooking.

Heh.

I blinked away the hint of a few tears.

IndustrialCat (Sam): That sounds worth trying

IndustrialCat (Sam): Gotta be careful not to turn the house into a hazardous waste zone tho

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

supJim (Mike): lmao

TheOneMoose (Jake): You’ve seen the green bin right?

TheOneMoose (Jake): We are too late on that one

IndustrialCat (Sam): Oof

The conversation floated around a bit aimlessly until Kat knocked on my door, she then popped her head in to let me know she was out of the shower. I just hosed off my legs not even bothering to undress fully, it felt odd to have water flowing inside my leg, but it didn’t feel like an issue and it meant the mud was gone. After drying off I went back to the guest room to find Kat already there, it looks like she had been organizing and folding my new clothes and stacking them on the desk.

“Ok, this is gonna sound weird but are your clothes actually dirty after the run?” She asked after I pushed the door closed again.

“I have no idea honestly.” I said before pulling the top off, I tried to smell if it had any odor to it.

Nothing, maybe a hint of the store it was from?

“Well, I can’t smell anything, but my nose is weird now.” I said before offering to her.

“Same.” She declared after a few seconds and shrugged. “I guess if it doesn’t look rumpled or get dirty from something it’s clean enough, saves a bit of effort on laundry. Any preferences on what you want to wear now Sam?”

There was some mud on the leggings, so they needed washing at least. Before I undressed any further though I needed to figure out what I was putting on after. I drew a blank looking at the selection of stuff I had now, the number of times in the last year where I didn’t just grab a t-shirt and jeans or shorts from my closet for any given day could probably be counted on one hand.

“I don’t really feel like a skirt, maybe just some skinny pants and a blouse?”

“Bah, boring.” She laughed and headed for the door. “You can probably figure that out, just don’t wear a black bra under either of the ones we got you.”

Oh right, sheer fabric.

“I started with organizing them roughly by what works together, so don’t start throwing them all over the place and you will be fine.” She said with a chuckle at the steam still spiraling out of my face, before pulling the door behind her.

As I arrived downstairs some pasta dish was already in progress, I didn’t pay that much attention to it and mostly just did whatever seemed to be helpful. They ended up with something nice looking anyway, can’t say I could complain about my meal either, even if just having coal again wasn’t particularly complex.

Over the meal, mom said the clothes worked on me, which was a bit embarrassing. It did lead to having to bring my dad up to date on what is comfortable to wear, and I am not sure he was quite ready for it.

To keep the conversation moving mom asked me what my plans were for the next few days, which I admitted I had barely even been considering yet. I was planning on going to the meeting Summers suggested on Tuesday, but I still wasn’t quite sure how well I handled other people yet.

Kat pointed out I still needed some more clothes and that we needed to return the stuff that didn’t work. Presenting me with an opportunity to see how I got on, I was a bit leery of going to a mall or the bus, but Kat offered to drive me and pointed out that there were stores either at the entrances or had entrances of their own so I could avoid a lot of the people.

I ultimately agreed as I couldn’t think of a great reason not to at least give it a try.

----------------------------------------

Ok yeah sleeping like this rules.

Sure, it takes forever to get to temperature and able to get up but feeling perfectly rested is delightful.

I seemed to have the start to a morning habit as well, meticulously cleaning my many exposed joints, throwing on some clothes, then checking my reflection in the mirror. This time I noticed that my hair is looking a bit messy, so I went looking to see if there was a comb on the desk.

No dice.

I can ask Kat if she has one that I can borrow for the moment and add another to the shopping list of things I needed on my phone. I tried to pat it back into place for the moment, but I wasn’t too successful. I am starting to realize that my hair is so even that having out-of-place hairs looks weird, but that might just be me.

I knew I had one in my room, but it was kind of crap, and I might as well get one worthwhile. I paused for a second as something nagged at the back of my mind, and then realized I had added another item. Oh yeah, lubrication oil. I do have to think about changing it at some point, it’s still fresh but I should get some ahead of time just in case.

Wandering downstairs, I found Kat at the dining room table with her laptop and a mound of textbooks.

“Morning! Mom and dad just left for the farmer’s market, so it will be just us for a bit, and I gotta say this is the earliest I have seen you up on a weekend in a while!” She said cheerfully, to which I shrugged.

“I seem to wake up on a timer now, and I feel rested anyway.” I responded while looking for my mug, having found it I leaned on the counter and pointed at her mound of books. “What’s up with those this early?”

“Well, I missed probably my two busiest days of the week and even if I am getting some leeway I don’t want to fall that far behind.” She said while returning to looking at her laptop.

“Sorry about that.” I said a bit sheepishly.

“Nah, I had more important things than education to worry about.” She said flashing me a quick grin. “Now go and find your breakfast already!”

I made my way over to the box that had yet to find a proper home and crouched down looking for the kerosene since it was nice for breakfast yesterday. I was picking up reading bottles and packages partially out of curiosity when I felt a sharp pain lifting my hand.

“Ow.” I said pulling back, looking to see what caused it, I saw one of the kerosene metal cans had a big ugly burr sticking out.

“Oh no, Sam your hand…” Said Kat with a pained voice, I looked back at my hand to see what she meant.

Oh, that’s a bit ugly. The burr had cut a long slice into the skin on the back of my hand and then pulled it away a bit, so you could see bare metal with a flap of skin hanging off. It didn’t seem to hurt after the initial damage though.

“Oh no, no, no.” Kat was starting to look a bit freaked out as she rushed over to look at my hand.

Huh? It doesn’t seem like that big a deal it’s just a cut.

“Are you ok Kat?” I asked a bit concerned.

“Am I? I can see bare metal!” Kat was aghast. “Why aren’t you concerned?!”

Tick tak tick tak tick tak…

As she spoke, a small six-legged robot with a canister attached behind its little barrel of a body emerged from my wrist joint. It quickly scuttled up to the flap of skin and then used its two little arms on the front of its body to grab the flap and pull it down. Once it was in place, it lifted itself so the nozzle on the underside of the canister could point into the fine gap left between the flap and the rest of my skin.

It then proceeded to shuffle sideways down the length of the cut filling it in with what appeared to be a liquid version of my skin, once it reached the end it then retraced its way along with the cut while a little laser from its ‘face’ that cured the liquid.

It stopped, looked back and forth at its work, and then bobbed its face once in satisfaction. It then turned to look up at my sister staring at it slack-jawed, raised one little hand, and gave a wave before scuttling off back towards my wrist.

“Thanks, buddy.” I said when it paused for a second there, to which it bobbed a couple of times and then disappeared into my forearm.

“What. The. Fuck.” Kat was looking at me incredulously and pointing at my wrist. “Did you know about those?”

I blinked a couple of times and thought for a moment.

“Not really?” I said. “I knew I had some degree of doing self-repairs, and I knew I had material stores, but I guess my skin is a petroleum product so it’s easy for me to make more from fuel.”

“And you aren’t alarmed by giant spiders living inside your body?” She said in disbelief.

“They are cute and fix me, so why would I?” I said a bit confused.

“Cute?” She let out a bark of laughter. “The fact those fellas of all things your change brought don’t freak you out is pretty hilarious actually.”

It took me a second of thinking back, then I started laughing as she wasn’t exactly wrong.

“In all seriousness that gave me a hell of a scare.” She said grimly as I stood up, bringing the offending kerosene can so I could use it up. “If you had an injury like that without those spiders, I don’t know if anyone in this dimension could fix it.”

She had a good point there. My body was scooped from a world with this technology but it’s not like it brought all the supporting industry or expertise. If I were some mass-produced thing maybe, but Summers had said that he was unaware of anyone else like me at the moment which implies there were few enough beings like me to miss the random sampling of the dimension clash. There are probably some buildings that got replaced but the chances of any of them both specifically having parts relevant to me and the documentation explaining how to apply repairs was essentially zero.

That’s a sobering idea.

I seem to have a vague awareness of my internal components, does that extend to being able to reproduce them?

No way, that’s like saying you know how to make a heart because you can feel it beating in your chest. I seem to have awareness of the names and rough functionality of my components when they become relevant, but I didn’t even remember that I had my little repair buddies let alone whatever other ‘organs’ I have.

Maybe there is something they could use to image my internals without opening me up? They did scan the Antikythera mechanism with something, and that wasn’t a willing subject for whom it might mean life and death. This is like something to talk to Summers about, so it got thrown on a list on my phone too.

In the end, I managed to spend my whole breakfast considering my mortality.

----------------------------------------

“Have I told you that your hair is really neat?” Kat asked as I was using a borrowed comb.

“Yeah, when we were walking up to my place Thursday.” I responded, not missing her wince being reflected in the mirror I was using.

“Sorry if I was pushing a bit hard then.” She said.

“Don’t worry about it.” I said, before steering us back to less awkward subjects. “You aren’t wrong, I have no idea what it is made of but the way the color shifts with the light is… pretty.”

“Is it egotistical to say that about your own hair?” I wondered aloud.

“Nah, you gotta have some self-confidence!” She declared bouncing back. “Do you know if it’s static or if it grows?”

I tried to think about it to see if my instincts said anything about that when nothing conclusive came up, I shrugged.

“No clue, do you have something to measure it with? We could keep a record and see if it changes over time” I suggested, once prompted she went digging in her backpack before emerging with one of those little rulers. After hunting for a suitable patch of hair that was both shorter than the ruler and that we might be able to find again, I added another note to my phone.

“You ready to go subject yourself to one of humanity’s worst creations?” Kat asked with a grin after I had checked for anything else being out of place in the mirror.

“They aren’t that bad.” I said with a snort of steam. “But I do have one issue I kind of avoided yesterday.”

“What is it?” She asked a bit more seriously after having noticed my conflicted look.

“My wallet is full of cards with my old face on them, and while I can probably still use the credit card but what if someone asks? It’s not like they are false or something, but they don’t quite…” I vaguely swept my hand towards myself while looking for the right word. “Match.”

“Fuckem, that’s not something for them to concern themselves over.” Kat said forcefully.

I blinked in surprise.

“We can get new ids when you are ready, in the meantime, those are still legal.” She paused. “Are you saying that you have decided they don’t represent you?”

“I guess so?” I said a bit taken aback by the new topic.

“Then we can wait on this trip until Summers gets you new IDs if you want, I don’t want you feeling uncomfortable because of that.” She said as if it was the obvious thing to do, I was a bit flabbergasted, to be honest.

“I don’t think it’s that bad…” I said still shocked.

“Are you sure? You could feel dysmorphia from having to present as your previous self.” She probed while staring at me

“Huh. I guess that could make sense, but I think I was more worried about if someone thought I stole them.”

“Oh, if that’s all I can just vouch for you.” She shrugged. “We do have similar faces and the same last name.”

“Ah yeah.” I was still a touch off-kilter by how hard she was able to go from joking to ultra-serious about my IDs. “I feel a little weird saying this, but it almost seems like you are taking this more seriously than I am.”

“I would say it’s more that it’s still not real for you in some ways,” Kat said thoughtfully while holding up a hand at my shocked expression. “Yes, you have changed, but it was so sudden you haven’t had time for you to be aware of all the things it affects.”

“You are still in the middle of figuring out yourself, and I would say the administrative stuff just isn’t important in your mind yet.” She paused with a grimace. “The friends who came out as trans in the time I have known them have had a… differently painful experience.”

“To be frank, our medical and social system still doesn’t have that much interest in supporting them between apathy for a minority and bigotry for those differences.” She continued before starting to count out points on her fingers. “Everything takes forever for them, just changing IDs can take months to propagate without someone like Summers greasing the wheels.”

“Then HRT and other confirmation treatments take months to years to apply even after you get them. The internet helps with letting you buy stuff without suffering from the dysmorphia induced by having to interact with people to buy stuff in the meantime but then you are a hermit.” She shook her head while continuing. “That’s stuff off the top of my head that I am willing to pass on, and that’s just society.”

“You are lucky in another aspect in that I will say that mom and dad are being extremely accepting of this, so many people’s families just refuse to believe their child could be anything but ‘normal’.” She said while making air quotes. “The number of ways that my friends have been fucked over makes me want to exploit every ‘privilege’ you have from this being caused by a dimension clash. It’s bitterly amusing how crises can result in support systems appearing out of thin air, but persistent problems are just ignored.”

I was vaguely aware of some of this stuff, but so much of it was abstract, I knew River had some… rough experiences historically. I never knew them ‘before’, so it wasn’t as immediately relatable, I guess.

I was uncomfortable to hear my situation described as privileged, but…

She wasn’t wrong.

Pretty much from a few minutes after waking on Thursday there had been people helping me, even if I was unconscious of it. There was a dedicated doctor who had set aside a whole day to help me and was still working in the background. Plus, it’s not like I am in flux, I was me and then a different me just like that, with no chance to think about getting from one to the other.

“Is it… wrong that I don’t have that… suffering?” I asked guiltily looking at the floor.

“Of course not!” She snapped back starting to pace the room. “Falling into stuff like that is just a crabs in a bucket mentality, it’s not your fault that you changed in a way society has decided to support. It’s society’s fault for not deciding to support everyone.”

“The clash support reveals it is possible to get the needed money out of those that can afford it too, they just decided that Amazon would have to pay for the overwhelming majority of it as the responsible party, and guess what they did!” She continued angrily. “The money and people exist to make things better, it’s just allowed to be used in the pursuit of greed instead of researching or supporting ways to help.”

I felt her hands on my shoulders.

“Sam, just because your suffering is different that doesn’t mean it’s any less valid.” She said gently, the earlier anger gone. “Just because you didn’t have to live through a physical transition period doesn’t make the future any easier, you will be a highly visible minority for the rest of your life and one with different needs than the world is used to.”

“If society is willing to offer you help, take it.”