Transgenderism and Ranma-chan/Ranko
Table of Contents
A Short Essay on Transgenderism
Ranma ½ and Transgenderism
Sistters: a fiction story I did about transgenderism
Scream Silently Through the Dark Night: another, much darker trangenderism story.
A list of my other works
A Short Essay on Transgenderism
Transgenderism is also referred to as "gender identity disorder" or "gender identity dysphoria." This is the situation where a person is born one gender but believes they should have been born a member of the other gender.
M2F refers to people born males who want to be female, and F2M refers to people born female who want to be male.
This is not the same as crossdressing. People who crossdress like to wear clothing of the opposite sex (at times), but are content with people the gender they were born. Crossdressing is basically a choice; people like to do that but can do without it if necessary.
Transgenderism is NOT a choice an individual makes. In American society, with its incredibly strong homophobic element, transgendered individuals are subject to the same types of prejudice that gays and lesbians are but , in most cases, are not given the same legal protections (in the places that legal protections actually exist). So a person can easily be fired, for example, if an employer learns that the person is actually transgendered.
Why this hatred? It again ties in with the homophobic thinking of many people. Being gay or lesbian is assumed by them to be immoral, usually because it is prohibited by the Bible. Interestingly enough, two women having sex is quite acceptable to most men (actually, a rather major turn-on for many), but the same men would be violently opposed to watching two males having sex (and, to a degree, the reverse, women disliking watching women have sex but like watching two men have sex).
There is also an assumption made about the sexual orientation of the transgendered person. If the person is a M2F, for example, then the assumption is made that because the person wants to be female then that person is interested in men, sexually. In some cases that is true; in some cases the person is really bi-sexual and in some cases the person is attracted sexually only to women. (In one Ranma-chan fiction piece she refers to herself as a "heterosexual lesbian", meaning in her male form she was attracted to females and in her female form she is still attracted to females.)
In addition to lack of legal protection, people who are transgendered are basically shunned; they become (in many cases) outcasts. Their own parents might disown them. If a person finally realizes that they are really transgendered and they are in a marriage, in many, many cases that marriage ends up being doomed.
Transgendered people often encounter hostility from their own children. Unless a person can "pass" as the opposite gender then that person also takes a major risk dressing in the clothes of the gender they feel they are and then going out in public. These people are subject to stares, name-calling and at times actual physical attack.
Why am I stressing this point? To show that transgenderism is NOT a choice a person makes. Who would be willing to chose something which will cause them intense personal and financial hardship and perhaps even physical attack. People do not wake up one day and decide "well, today I'm going to become gay" or "today I'm going to become lesbian" or "today I'm going to become transgendered." It is NOT a choice of lifestyle.
On top of all of this there are other things which make a transgendered person's life at times a continual living hell. If you are a heterosexual person, say a male, and suddenly you found yourself trapped in a female body and knowing you could never return to your male body how would you feel? No doubt very, very angry. You would want to be changed back somehow, but any means you could find. You would probably want to seek revenge on the person who trapped you in the "wrong" body.
This is how a transgendered person feels all of the time. They are trapped in the "wrong" body. Even with sexual reassignment surgery (an incredibly expensive option that many cannot afford) the person will have the outward appearance of their "real" gender but not the actual inward biology. The person will not have grown up being their "real" gender. What should have been their "real" life has been stolen from them by fate (or whatever) and they will never, ever been a full, genetic version of what they feel themselves to be.
Let's also deal with the word "feel" here. The word "feel" is actually inadequate. The term "know" is better; a M2F, for example, "knows" that he is really a she. But what do I mean by "know?"
Again, for someone reading this piece (if anyone actually ever does), try this approach. First, ask yourself what gender were you born. (A no-brainer to start out with.) Then ask yourself this: how do you know you are that gender?
Your answer will probably be along these lines. You have the physical appearance of a man (for example, I'm not ignoring F2M people). You have the biological structure of a male internally which has certain outward manifestations during sexual arousal. When you speak you voice is deeper pitched than that of a typical female. If you touch your body again you will be able to identify it as being male. There might even be a "male scent" that you can detect. So, of the five senses you've used four to identify yourself: sight, hearing, touching and smelling.
So the information from this senses verifies that you are a person born male.
Now imagine this scenario. You are placed into a sensory deprivation tank. You are strapped into the tank so you cannot move. You are gagged so you cannot make any sound. A non-human smell, such of that of oranges, is piped into the tank. Once it is closed you can no longer see yourself. You can't move and feel certain body parts moving in expected ways. You cannot verify your gender by sound because you are gagged, and you cannot detect any scent from your body because the strong smell of oranges is pervasive in the tank.
Now, what gender are you? In the above situation you have no physical way of verifying your gender. None. You might say, "well, I know I'm male because I remember that I'm a male."So let's go one step further. You are administered a drug while in the tank which gives you temporary amnesia. Thus, you cannot even remember being any specific gender.
Again, now what gender are you? You would still probably say you are male (or female) because you "know" you are. How do you know? Not by the world of the standard senses. You don't know on the physical level; you know on the level of your soul (or your core being in case you don't believe that people have souls). You are absolutely certain that you are male (or female) even though you have no way of physically verifying that.
This is the case for transgendered people. On the level of the soul (or core being), the person absolutely knows that they are really a member of the gender opposite to that which they were born. It's not a matter of choice; it's not a simple matter of physicality; it's a spiritual knowing that you really are the other gender no matter what your actual physical appearance is.
The transgendered person also lives with the knowledge that they have been cheated out of the life they should have had growing up. For example, a M2F will never know slumber parties; will never know the joys of talking with other girls about "girl things." They will never have their parents treating them as the gender they should have been growing up. They are, instead, forced into a role that is totally opposite to everything that they feel.
Even something as basic as clothes can be a source of psychological pain. Try being a "genetic male" ( a person born male) and go to a shopping mall in female clothes, carrying a purse and wearing lipstick and make-up. You will be asking for a world of trouble if you do so yet this person knows that they really should wear women's clothes and use women's cosmetics. Again, not by choice but by that internal "knowing."
So not only do many transgendered people feel they have been cheated out of the life they should have had growing up, but they know that it is not safe to be their "real" gender in public (although women in men's clothes is considered somewhat acceptable while the opposite is definitely not considered "normal.")
Ranma ½ and Transgenderism
In the U.S. we call them cartoons, but in Japan they call them anime. There's an incredibly wide variety of anime shows, but one of them strikes a note with a lot of transgendered people, and that one is the series Ranma ½.
Ranma ½ is about a boy who is around sixteen years old. He's an expert in martial arts. His father, pretty much a loser, basically kidnapped Ranma when he was very young and took him on a training trip to develop his martial arts skills.
While doing this they encountered an area in China that had magical springs, and Ranma fell into one, giving Ranma a 'curse' whereby anytime he is exposed to cold water, his body changes into that of a 100% woman; when doused with hot water he returns to his male form.
The Ranma character is male, physically and mentally, and is absolutely positive about it, including holding some rather narrow views about women in general and their abilities.
The change (in the series) is physical but not necessarily mental. Ranma always insists he is a male, no matter what his physical appearance. At times Ranma uses his female appearance to serve a purpose such as get extra helpings of ice cream free, to fool Ryouga and so on but never really wants to experience fully what being female means.
The one exception, in which Ranma truly believes that his natural gender is as a girl, is Pretty Womanhood. In that story, Ranma hits his head, falls into a pond, and changes into a girl as usual. However, the nature of the head injury causes Ranma (known in girl form as Ranma-chan or Ranko) to sincerely believe that his real gender is female. It is during this time that we get an appreciation of just how much an adjustment to being female Ranma can make.
Many fan-fiction writers seem to like to write about situations where Ranma actually welcomes being female, or at least is trapped forever (or at least it seems it will be forever) as a female and has to deal with that fact. The stories range from where Ranma, even female, is still mentally male (the minority of stories) to ones in which Ranma fully embraces being female, even wants desperately to be a female her entire life.
This is shown in many of the Ranma-chan/Ranko fanfiction pieces, where the male Ranma "knows" that "he" is really a "she." In those pieces, once the male Ranma starts living as a female then her life improves dramatically, especially in her relationships to other people. Now, I'm not saying that everything would be automatically better if a person changed to their "real" gender, but the inter-personal relationships could become much, much better, making life easier to live.
As I noted, in the episode Pretty Womanhood, Ranma is changed into Ranma-chan when she is hit by Akane into the pool and hits her head on a rock. When Ranma-chan wakes up, she is sure that she is a woman. Her language (there are very gender-specific words in Japanese) is female as are her interests and body mannerisms.
She and Akane are eating and she says to Akane:
"How do I explain it? It feels like I've just awakened from a long, refreshing sleep. As if I've experienced an amazingly long dream. I don't know quite how to describe it. It's as if my experiences until now aren't mine. It seems so unreal. As if I have another person's memories. And this morning, the real me awakened. I finally realized that I was a woman."
To me. this is one of the most beautiful ways of describing how a M2F person feels when they realize that they really are supposed to be female.
In my favorite Ranma fanfiction of all, Genma's Daughter, Ranma is born a girl but is cursed to become male. She is finally able to rid herself other. She describes her feelings about realizing that she really is a girl and not a boy in this way:
"Ranko looked deep in thought. For a minute, she looked into the fire, as the others waited. Finally, she spoke. 'I...it hasn't been like I expected. I...I haven't had the feeling that I've been changing into another person.'' She paused a moment, then continued with wonder and realization in her voice. 'I...I feel like I 'was' another person, and...and I'm become 'me'. Like I was a puzzle put together the wrong way, and not I'm slowly being put together the right way.'"
M2F people know, also, that if they had been born female then they would also have some of the negative things that come along with that, things such as periods. Yet, the transgendered person considers that type of thing a price well worth paying if they could be their "real" gender.
So, in general, the transgendered person is often an outcast from society, subject to hatred and physical attack, cheated out of the life they know they should have had growing up and knowing that they will never, ever be a "genetic female" or "genetic male". Although some transgendered people get sexual reassignment surgery and are very happy with that and can live a life as their "real" gender, there will still be the sadness there knowing that they never were and never will be fully, completely the gender they know they actually are.
So, everyone raise their hands who would choose this way of being. No takers? Not surprising. Again, knowing that you are should be the opposite gender is not a conscious, logical choice. It's a soul-level, core-being knowing that. can lead to intense emotional and psychological pain.
There are, in many places, support groups set up for people who are transgendered. There are numerous on-line resources the transgendered person can explore. For some people psychological counseling can be helpful. So the sadness and the emotional pain can be tempered somewhat by turning to these sources but, no matter what, each day the transgendered person wake up knowing that this is another day that they will live in the "wrong" physical form.
A M2F person can easily identify with Ranma-chan/Ranko in the fiction pieces. By some wonderful magical means the male Ranma becomes Ranma-chan/Ranko without having to go through the entire psychological/medical process that they would have to go through in the "real" world to become a female. In some stories, there are also F2M themes, including stories where Akane goes to the cursed springs and willingly becomes male, or where Nabiki does the same thing to become male (although, in those cases, it's not because the girl mentioned really is transgendered; it's done as a matter of love for Ranma or out of self-preservation.)
The life denied the M2F person can be lived vicariously through these Ranma-chan/Ranko pieces. At least for a little while the person reading the story can become, in their mind, Ranma-chan/Ranko and live their life as they know it should have been.
One of the things about the Internet is that people's interests circumstances change, and, from time to time, sources of information and stories basically disappear forever. This is why that on my website I have collected a bunch of these stories, noting the source (if there is one anymore), and giving a short review and a synopsis of the story.
(This material can be found at: http://www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/ranko/ranfict.html.
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In many of the stories Ranma-chan makes a wonderful adjustment to being fully female and, in most cases, the type of life she ends up leading actually is much better than the life she was leading as a male. Gone is the macho-ness and the narrow views of what women are capable of. Replacing that is a warmth and an understanding and, most of all, happiness.
(For explanation purposes: Genma is Ranma-chan's lousy father. Nodoka is her mother. Genma and Ranma-chan are staying with the Tendos. Soun is the father (his wife is dead), and Kasumi is the eldest sister, staying at home and taking care of the house; Nabiki is the middle sister, and Akani is the youngest sister who was promised by the fathers to male Ranma as a wife. Also, Genma had promised Ranma as a husband to Shampoo (a Chinese girl) and Ukyo (who runs her own restaurant).I told you he was a creep.
A few examples of such stories include the following:
A Different Path:
The story starts out with the premise that Ranma was extremely happy when he fell into the Spring of Drowned Girl, rather than upset. It then proceeds basically through the same events that happened in the first episode through the point where Ranma and Kuno had jumped from the window, fallen into the pool, and Kuno had ended up grabbing Ranma-chan's breasts.
The differences then begin. Ranma-chan wanted to talk to Akane about everything that was going on, but outside her door she heard Akane refer to Ranma as a pervert. That was exactly what the young, extremely vulnerable girl did not need to hear at that moment.
Kasumi ends up comforting Ranma-chan as she breaks down into tears, still unable to tell Kasumi everything that has happened and is worrying her. Then comes the strongest scene of the short story where Kasumi confronts Akane. Akane still talks violently against Ranma and Kasumi ends up slapping her sister, then says "Little sister, there's a girl, our GUEST, outside the dojo who is struggling not to hate herself, and all you want to do is hate her some more?"
Kasumi ends up apologizing to her mother at the family shrine and says that "...I never felt such pain from anyone before..."
Akane then talks to Ranma-chan who reveals to Akane that she is really happy at finally being able to be a girl, but is extremely sad over having virtually no friends her entire life and she had been hoping that Akane could have been her friend.
Am I Smart? Ranma-chan's Declaration of Womanhood
The story is based on Pretty Womanhood, and is another fanfic using that episode as a jumping-off point. Ranma-chan is in female mode, but has really become female. She and Nabiki get along very well, and Ranma-chan has become finally happy.
Genma's Daughter
This is one of the best stories. It is revealed that Ranma was actually born a girl, but was changed by Genma into a male (using a magical spring) on purpose. The story concerns her finding out about this and having to learn to adapt to being a real female after years of being told she was really a he.
It's a very moving story, and has two sequels, Equal Halves and Notes from Julliard.
Hello Again
In the Ranma 1/2 episode Pretty Womanhood, Ranma-kun is hit by Akane and cracks his head on a rock in the backyard pool. Upon awakening, Ranma-chan is convinced that she is really female, basically was meant to be female, and wants to remain female. In the series, of course, that doesn't happen, but a number of fiction pieces have been writing using the premise that Ranma-chan did want to remain female, permanently.
The story "Hello Again" is one of those stories that expands on that premise. It's a relatively short story, but one of the most moving that I have read. Ranma-chan wants to remain female; Genma and Soun don't intend that to happen, and so Genma has threatened to kick our Ranma-chan, leaving her with no home at all.
This proves too much for her and she flees into the night. Akane has seen the expression on Ranma-chan's face, though, and is terrified by the look on her face. The line the author uses to describe Ranma-chan's crying is particularly noteworthy: "This was the weeping of a soul beyond hope."
That one sentence invokes so many images and depths of despair that it's almost an entire story unto itself. This is definitely a must read fanfic.
Ranko's Big Decision
This is one of the types of stories in which boy-type Ranma realizes that "he" really wants to be "she" and to stay that way. Caught in a rainstorm, Ranma-chan takes refuge in the store of a dressmaker. Gradually, over time, she reveals her story to the elderly owner of the store and finally finds a good friend. The mental anti-female training that Genma gave him gives Ranma-chan some problems, but she realizes that being a woman is what she really wants.
Ranma-chan tells her family that she has decided she will remain female, with the expected rather harsh reactions from Genma and Nodoka. Akane, though, does not react violently and ends up becoming a really close friend to Ranma-chan. (In the context of the actual series, I doubt Akane would be very understanding, though. She reacted very violently to Ranma-chan being female in Pretty Womanhood. Still, for the sake of the story, it's good to have Akane being willing to listen, for once.)
Things become somewhat complicated, though, when Ryoga ends up asking Ranma-chan out on a date. It gets even more complicated when Ryoga informs Ranma-chan that he has a map to one of the springs that will enable Ranma-chan to stay physically female forever, and Akane reveals that she actually loves Ranma (but not Ranma-chan, at least physically), forcing Ranma-chan into a very difficult position In the end, though, it's Akane that comes up with a solution to their problems.
The story does a good job of showing just how deeply Ranma-chan feels about "really" being a woman, and the problems that would result from a decision on her part to live full-time as a female. This also shows Ranma-chan being more relaxed, carefree and happy than she ever was in the actual series. The complication with Ryoga is a good addition, and the ending of the story is upbeat and good.
Those are just a few of the many fanfiction pieces I have been able to find that involved a transgendered Ranma.
Sisters
Mary had been worried about her friend for some time now. They had met some months ago an anime convention. They both shared their love of series like Ranma 1/2 and Battle Athletes and their initial conversation had turned into what was looking like a lasting friendship.
Lasting, that is, if Robert survived. Mary had learned a lot about Robert but not everything. She knew enough to be worried that he might take his own life. Robert was over fifty a tall, rather unattractive man, a little overweight and suffering from the deepest depression Mary had seen in anyone. He was divorced, his first wife having thrown him out once she found out about his secret.
Robert was one of those men who believed that he had been born the wrong sex. His belief that he really should have been born female was something that Mary knew was very, very deep in him. His sadness that he had not been born a girl had only deepened as the years went on until it had finally reached the point where he was seriously considering ending it all.
Mary understood the feelings well herself, having been born a male also, but she had fully transitioned, having had the surgery to become a female.
She learned that Robert had led a rather lonely life. He had grown up without any brothers or sisters and, for some reason that he never could exactly figure out, never had any friends through his early schooling. Even at college he had few friends. After he had graduated he had married; his marriage had gone badly wrong resulting in an attempt to kill himself by taking every prescription drug there was in the house.
She knew that Robert was very loving person, yet despite of his caring and loving he seemed to be consumed by an intense self-hatred whose intensity frightened her at times. She could never convince him that he was anything but some kind of horrid creature that deserved to be punished by being in the wrong sex.
Mary had her own share of difficulties. As a young boy named Mark she soon realized that she was really a girl. She played with girls and tried to wear girl's clothes whenever she could. Mary was very close to her older sister and shared her feelings with her. Her sister had even given Mary the clothes she had worn when Mary's age.
Her parents, on the other hand, were shocked when they found out about Mark's "secret life" as they called it. Her father had always tried to raise a macho son. He had taken the small stash of girl's clothes she had been given and threw them away; yelling and screaming at his "son" to start acting like a man.
Even after she was living on her own, a successful businesswoman, they had tried to get her to act "normal". The last straw proved to be when she told them that she was going to have the surgery necessary to change her from a male into a female.
Her mother broke down into tears. Her father took one look at her and she backed away from the hatred in his eyes. "I have no child", he said coldly, turning his back on her. Mary (at the time still Mark) turned and walked back to her car, tears flowing freely down her face.
Her friendship with Robert had deepened quickly. Mary had seen the way his eyes seemed to light up whenever he talked about having bought this or that piece of female clothing and wearing it, something which she knew she had also done when she was in her male form.
She had also watched him at times look at something, perhaps a scene from an anime show, or sometimes just look off into the distance and appear to start to cry but then shut down like some kind of massive steel door suddenly descended to block his emotions.
It was a Saturday and Mary had asked Robert to go to the mall with her shopping. She had even offered to help him in buying women's shoes by getting them herself since he was still uncomfortable actually shopping in a woman's store. The city where they lived was full of people who disliked anyone "unusual" and the wrong word by a salesperson could get someone arrested.
So they walked through the mall, doing window shopping at some stores, going into others. Once they entered a pet store and Mary watched as Robert picked up a rabbit from a large open bin where several of them had been placed. Almost as soon as he picked the rabbit up she was able to see the Robert calm noticeably. She watched as he gently stroked its fur then held it so he could give it a quick kiss on its nose and then put it back into the bin.
About a half-hour later they had turned down a side corridor of the mall when Mary spotted a somewhat strange-looking storefront. 'Spells R Us' was the title posted above the store entrance.
"Look's interesting," she said, taking Robert's hand and leading him into the store. Once through the door it seemed like they had entered some kind of wonderland. Almost every inch of the store was crammed with items that looked like crystal balls or wands or other magical materials. Mary and Robert walked through the store, picking up items, looking and them and then returning them to their shelves.
Just then they heard a sound behind the counter. They turned and saw a man wearing what appeared to be some kind of wizard's outfit. He had a long, white beard and a nice, friendly smile. His eyes seemed to look through their very souls as he looked at each one of them in turn.
"I see that you're finally found my store," he said.
"Finally?" Mary replied. Before she could say anything else, though, she saw that Robert had moved to another part of the store. He was looking at a display of knives, some with intricately carved handles. What scared her was the look on his face. She could almost see his mind thinking about buying one of those knives and later using it on himself.
She walked over to him and put his hand on his shoulder. He turned at looked at her, his eyes brimming with unspilled tears. Suddenly he turned sharply away from her and walked several steps away. He stood with his back towards her and she watched as he lowered his arms to his sides and then clenched his fists tightly, so tightly that his nails began to dig into the skin of his hands, blood beginning to flow where the nails had cut through the skin.
"He can't let go, can he," the wizard said to her. She turned and looked at him for a second and then turned back to watch Robert.
"He has all that emotion bottled up inside. All the pain, the goodness, the sadness, all bottled up." The wizard seemed to sigh and then suddenly he face broke into a smile.
"I think I have the exact thing the two of you need," he said, reaching under the counter and bringing out a small box.
"The two of us?" Mary replied.
"Yes, the two of you," he answered.
"Why both of us?" she questioned.
"He wants to be a girl, actually a very young girl so he can grow up and experience everything as a female. You were born male but had yourself surgically altered yet you also would like to be a young girl, just like him."
Before Mary could make any reply Robert walked back to her, no tears showing on his face but his body still noticeably trembling.
The wizard turned towards Robert. "What do you wish most in life?" he asked.
Robert hesitated. Mary knew that he had major problems trusting anyone. Anyone at all, even including himself.
Barely containing his tears he answered. "Anything at all? It'd be complicated," he began. "I want to be a young girl and grow up as a woman. I'd want to do this but at the same time have no financial or other harm come to my wife or my parents."
He shook his head. "It's just dreaming, though. Right; like there's real magic and I'd be allowed to have my wish granted," he said, his voice becoming softer and full of even greater sadness then before.
Robert looked up. "I'm suddenly rather thirsty. Is there some water I could have, please?"
"Just a moment," the wizard answered. "I'll get you something to drink."
He ducked through a door and then, a couple of minutes later, emerged carrying a glass full of something that looked like tea. Robert noticed that the glass contained two straws.
"Here, this should help you," the wizard said.
"But there's one of me and two straws," Robert said, a puzzled look on his face.
"Maybe your friend here is also thirsty," the wizard replied, gently pushing the glass forward until it was directly between the two shoppers.
Mary looked at Robert. "Why not? I am thirsty, now that you mention it."
She picked up the glass and put her lips to one of the straws. Robert hesitated then
He also began to use one of the straws. The two friends soon finished off the drink.
"Thank you for the drink," Mary said. The two continued to look at items in the store and before long both had purchased something that appealed to them. Mary had bought a beautiful, expensive-looking necklace while Robert had bought one of those snow globes with a unicorn inside. The wizard also handed Mary a slip of paper. "Don't open this yet. You will know when the time is right." Mary took the paper and put it into her purse
They paid the wizard and left, continuing to do shopping at other stores for a while.
Mary started to yawn. "All of a sudden I'm starting to feel really tired," she said.
"We have been shopping for hours," Robert noted. "But I've enjoyed every minute of it," he added, a very rare smile appearing on his face for a few fleeting moments.
"Let's go to my house first," Mary said. "I want to drop these off," she added, indicating the various bags full of things she had bought on their trip. So a little later both of them were at Mary's house. Robert followed her as she entered her bedroom and watched as she put her packages near the closet.
Suddenly Mary yawned again. She moved to her bed and sat down, Robert joining her a few moments later, also yawning.
"Normally I don't get so tired shopping," Mary said. "I think I need to rest for a few minutes." Robert started to get up and then fell back on to the bed.
"Oops." he said. "Shouldn't stand up so quickly; one of the medicines I take causes me to get dizzy when I get up suddenly."
By now, though, Mary was now laying on her bed, apparently asleep.
Robert smiled at her and then tried to get up again, this time with even less success. He shook his head to try and clear the cobwebs but a few minutes later he was also laying on her bed, eyes closed, asleep.
*****
"Time to get up you two sleepy-heads," a voice said. Mary and Robert opened their eyes almost at the same time in response to the voice. They looked up and saw a woman, around her mid-thirties, looking at them and smiling.
"You two have a good nap?" she asked.
Mary and Robert looked at each other and then the realization set in.
They had changed. Mary was now a young girl.
And so was Robert.
The woman smiled at them again. "Better hurry up," she said. "Breakfast's ready." With that she turned and walked out of the room.
Mary and Robert looked around the room. All the furniture had changed. Even the walls were different. The bed they were on was much smaller, the right size for young children.
As Mary and Robert looked at each other Mary's hand brushed against the slip of paper the wizard had given her. She opened the paper and read it and then handed it to her friend. The note was short. "Your wishes have been granted," it began. "And no one has been harmed. Robert's wife is now married to another man and is doing quite well. "
Robert, now Roberta, looked up at Mary. "Then this means..." he started.
"That you got your wish," Mary chimed in. "You're a girl!"
Roberta and Mary laughed and hugged and cried together then finally both got up and rushed out of their bedroom to enjoy their first day of being together as sisters, wide smiles on both of their faces.
Scream Silently through the Dark Night
Part I: How not to carry out a successful alien contact
Derek was what is termed a 'genetic male.' That means he was born a male; yet, in the depths of his soul he knew that he really should have been born female. Derek was also fairly certain that he had been abducted by extra-terrestrials when he was six years old. Add to all this, a strong belief in the paranormal, and some slightly unusual abilities of his related to that, and you have a bit of a personality problem.
Throw on top of that being on the wrong side of thirty, no social skills, relationships that always end up going wrong, major depression and negative self-esteem and you have more than a fairly major problem. You have a walking, breathing social disaster.
The thoughts were going through his head as he walked along the street, trying to find some enjoyment in the fresh summer air. Still, whenever he would pass a store and see his reflection in the window the fact that he was 'wrong' was driven ever deeper into his soul. He had long ago given up any hope of finding happiness in his life; instead, he basically got from one day to the next, wondering when the next problem would arise in his life.
He was stuck in an entirely unhappy marriage. His wife, Barbara, had threatened him with a gun numerous times. She spent his money, ran around on him and paid no attention to his needs, physical or otherwise. The only thing that she was concerned about was that he keep working, and keep bringing in money so she could spend it. He knew that if he tried to get a divorce, though, she would find a way to take almost every penny he had.
Possibly as a result of all of this, he had developed a strong sense of self-hatred and no longer cared enough about himself to try and escape the hell his marriage had become.
His parents had disapproved of his marriage and never failed to remind him of that fact. He knew that, if they found out that he really considered himself female, that they would react with, to put in mildly, extreme displeasure. They would probably disown him.
He had given up on living, basically. He walked through each day like a zombie, doing what needed to be done, hearing but no longer listening to the constant nagging of his wife, going to work, coming home, doing housework, going to bed and getting up the next morning to repeat the routine yet once more.
Derek wished he could believe in magic; he knew that if magic really existed then he might somehow be magically transformed into what he really saw himself as in his minds eye; a young teenage girl, beautiful and smiling, with a loving family and lots and lots of friends.
Fat chance of that happening, he thought, looking down and shaking his head while he continued down the street.
Now, one point of truth is that, if you are looking down at the ground you generally can't see something that is right in front of you which is why he didn't notice the slight distortion in the air just a few feet ahead of him. Moments later he entered the distortion and vanished from the surface of the earth. The distortion itself disappeared mere moments after Derek did.
There had been various paranormal reports of people vanishing from the earth even when being watched by other people. None of those who vanished had ever returned, so Derek wasn't the first to vanish.
He was just the first to really, totally screw up that act of vanishing.
Because, of course, Derek had to vanish somewhere. He might have gone to an alternate dimension. He might have gone into the past or the future. He might have returned to the earth, suffering amnesia and having no idea he got to where he was.
Derek's luck being what it was, though, he didn't do any of these things. He materialized about three hundred miles straight up.
Right into an alien spacecraft.
Derek liked science, so he was familiar with the Law of Intertia. It goes something like 'an object in motion tends to remain in motion unless acted upon by an external force.'
Derek tended to walk very quickly, thus building up a lot of momentum. When he passed through the distortion (really a spatial distortion, to be more precise) he was moving at a fairly rapid clip. Thus, Derek managed to plow right into a group of aliens that were waiting there for his arrival.
Now, as far as the aliens go, they aren't part of some vast government conspiracy. When has the government been efficient enough to have a conspiracy
last more than a couple years?
They also weren't planning an invasion. Through their technology all their physical needs were met. No, they were just here observing, learning, some even
students studying earth for their own version of exo-sociology classes.
So, if they weren't hostile, then why hadn't they contacted us?
Because they were disgusted with how people act. The aliens not only had a highly-developed technological civilization, they also had a highly-developed
spiritual/philosophical civilization. The things they saw people on earth do to each other revolted them. Sure, they saw some good things, but they also saw all the wars, the hate crimes, the prejudice, all the ways people have to hate each other and to hurt each other.
No matter how disgusted the aliens were, though, they were not allowed to use force against the Earth. But they could try and manipulate things without force. Thus, their abductions had changed from merely abducting people to find out basic information about humans, to abducting people to try and bring about changes in their behavior.
They had decided that, when they abducted people, they would subject the people to some psychological conditioning and see if that helped the humans to become
less violent and hateful. They had also planned, later on, to carry out experiments seeing if they could physically transform some people, giving them new physical
identities, then returning them to earth and take a more open and active role in getting people to change. (One of them must have watched the series The 4400.)
Now, there's one problem that will affect Derek. People tend to think
that just because aliens can get to earth, the alien's are way, way smarter than humans and have all the answers. Well, they don't. Humans make mistakes and aliens make mistakes. They don't make as many mistakes as humans do, but they still aren't perfect.
Which brings us back to the rapidly forward-moving Derek and the waiting committee. The aliens were set to peacefully subdue Derek, then use their portable
mind-examining machines to check Derek out and see what mental changes they needed to make.
Unfortunately, the alien in charge of getting the mind-examining machine had been watching a female alien that he had an interest in and thus picked up the wrong device.
This one was the experimental model of the body-changing device.
You can pretty well figure out what happened next. Derek plowed into the aliens, everyone fell in a heap, the body-changing device landed on Derek and activated.
Moments later there was a flash of light and, when the
light dimmed, in its place was the absolute cutest
four-year old girl you've ever seen. Derek had been
instantly changed into a female.
Granted, a four-year old female, but still a female. Derek
looked around, terrified for a moment, then looked down
and saw that his fondest wish had been granted.
He, now she, looked down at herself and yelled out a most
enthusiastic 'Yes!'.
Or would have if there had not been one problem. The
body-changing device, as I said earlier, was experimental.
Also, as I said earlier, the aliens were not perfect. So,
the device did manage to change Derek's body almost
perfectly.
Almost.
It left out a part.
Derek's larynx was gone. Totally. It was as if he, now
she, had been born without one. Derek had gotten his wish
to become a female, but he was going to be a little girl
who could not utter even the most minor of sounds.
The aliens were just as surprised as Derek by the course
of events. One of them stepped back in alarm, managing to
bump into a control panel and depressing a button that
said, in the alien language, of course, 'Please do not
press this button.'
Button pressed, space portal opened, and one vanished
short-term abductee.
If they had been given enough time the aliens would have
been able to track where Derek was transported to and
gotten him back into the craft.
Unfortunately there is another law called the Law of
Conservation of Mass and Energy. Basically, it states that
matter and energy cannot really be created or destroyed,
that they can just be transformed into each other.
Einstein's theory is part of this. So, when you take
Derek, who was around six feet one in height and some
one-hundred and eighty pounds, and alter his body to the
size and weight of a four-year old girl you have a lot of
mass that has to be accounted for.
Since the mass cannot actually be destroyed, it changes to
energy. Rather a bit of energy. Enough energy to seriously
hurt the aliens and damage their machinery enough that
locating Derek was no longer possible.
The aliens were too busy just trying to survive; they
didn't have time to try and fix up an error with one of
their experiments.
Part II: Dante was an optimist
Moments later Derek materialized on a side street filled
with beautiful, although slightly older, houses. The
houses seemed to compete with each other to determine
which had the most attractive floral arrangements. Green
grass, flowers of every color and tall trees lined both
sides of the street. There were a few people out walking,
some working in their yards, and a couple just lounging
around, enjoying the sun.
Now, in that type of situation you're used to squirrels
making sudden appearances or neighborhood cats running
after said squirrels, things like that. What you're not
used to is a flash of light and a very young, and very
naked, girl materializing near one of the trees.
(Here's another one of the problems. In Magical Girl Anime
series, the girls change their outfits via magic and
return to their normal clothes via magic. When Derek
changed into a young girl, via actual scientific methods,
his clothes became way too big and dropped off his body.
The clothes, and his wallet, were incinerated in the
aforementioned little problem with mass conversion.)
John Roberts, home for a day of vacation, was the first to
reach the girl. She looked at him briefly, her eyes the
bluest he had ever seen. He bent down to try and talk to
her but her eyes closed and her whole body went limp.
Quickly he picked her up and yelled to his wife to call
911.
A few minutes later a police car pulled up to the curb
followed by the EMS unit.
'Now let me get this straight,' one of the policemen said
after leaving the car and walking over to where John
Roberts stood, watching the EMS unit examine the girl.
'The girl just appeared, poof, out of thin air, right?'
John Roberts shook his head, realizing just how crazy the
thing sounded. 'Yes, officer, she did.' He began. 'Ask any
of the other people around here; I'm sure they all saw the
same thing happen."
"People don't just appear out of thin air," the officer
countered. "She had to come from somewhere. Are you
absolutely positive she wasn't here all the time?"
"Positive," John replied.
The officer's partner came over to join the questioning.
"EMS says that the girl seems to be running a slight
fever. No bruises or contusions, no broken bones, nothing
to indicate physical abuse. They are concerned about their
inability to wake her, though. They're taking her to the
hospital. Once they get done examining her then they'll
call social services."
Another officer appeared. "I've talked to the other people
standing around. They all say that the girl just appeared,
poof, out of thin air."
While they were talking, Jennifer, John's wife, had gone
over to where the girl was being tended by the EMS people.
She looked down at the girl and then gently touched the
child's cheek.
"She's so lovely," Jennifer began. "So young and innocent.
Who could possibly have done this to her?"
"No idea," one of the EMS people replied, "but we've seen
a lot worse. At least she's still in one piece." A few
minutes later the EMS unit pulled away to be followed by
the police car.
****
It was late into the next afternoon before Derek awoke.
Slowly she opened her eyes, rubbed them with the back of
her hands, and then carefully looked around. She realized
that she was in a hospital room. Another bed in the room
contained a child, probably about twice her age. The other
girl's leg had obviously been broken and she lay in her
bed, crying.
Although still groggy, Derek was awake enough to realize
that there had been some changes made in his life. Like, a
total gender switch, to start off with. At first he
thought he was dreaming, since his dreams, usually
nightmares, were extremely realistic, but after pinching
himself rather vigorously he came to the inescapable
conclusion that "he" was now a "she."
It was also quite obvious that she was in a hospital.
Derek knew there would be people asking questions, and she
also knew that they would never believe the actual truth,
not without a lot of explaining. So, her first job was a
new self-identity. Derek in his fantasies had decided that
his "real" name, his feminine name, was Jessica, and for
now, at least, she would use that name to identify herself
with.
Jessica started to get up from her bed and go to the girl
on the other bed and try to comfort her. She started to
call out to the girl but then had her second major
revelation of the afternoon. No matter how hard she tried,
she couldn't make a single sound. Nothing. Not so much as
a whimper.
She tried to recall what had happened, but her mind seemed
to have an empty space, starting when she was walking down
the street and ending when she woke up somewhere else as
someone else. She remembered that she had been male, and somehow ended up female, but the how and when eluded her.
She began to look around wildly, her whole body beginning
to shake as she started to cry. Tears flowed freely down
her face but still no sounds emerged from her at all.
Worse yet, she began to be flooded by internal questions.
Worst of all, she knew that somehow she would have to deal
with the problem of her marriage. Although his wife had
treated Derek with contempt and abuse, he still wanted to
make sure that she would not suffer unduly by his no
longer being a male, or being able to earn money. (His sense of duty was somewhat extreme, basically.)
Jessica did not have long to think about all these things,
though. Moments later she was hit by a migraine. Now, if
migraines could be measured on the Richter scale, then the
migraine that hit Jessica moments later would have topped
out somewhere in the 9.5 range. The pain was instant,
intense and terrifying. She grabbed both sides of her
head, trying to drive the pain out, trying to scream,
trying to do anything to get the pain to stop. The pain
did not stop; if anything, it got even worse. Suddenly
there was a flash of light and Jessica had a vision.
A vision of death and horror; a vision of a shopping mall
exploding, bodies scattered everywhere, blood dripping
from the walls, shards of glass impaling passers-by. A
name flashed through her vision; then her vision suddenly
seemed to focus, speeding her through a smaller and
smaller area until her movement stopped, leaving her
facing an ordinary garbage container. She knew, somehow,
that this was the container that contained the bomb that
destroyed the building.
Or, rather, would destroy the building, for somehow she
knew that the explosion had not yet occurred. Once her
sight cleared and the dizziness passed she ran from the
room, going to a nearby nurses desk. She grabbed a
clipboard from the desk and began to write down the name
of the mall and the location of the garbage can.
The nurse quickly moved from behind the desk, reached down
and took the clipboard back from the little girl. Moments
later she called for an intern to escort Jessica back to
her room.
Although Jessica tried to resist the intern, he was a
grown adult and it was only a matter of minutes before she
found herself back in her room. Another nurse entered and
gave Jessica a shot, causing the girl to fall deeply
asleep.
Out in the hall, meanwhile, the duty station nurse glanced
at the clipboard, saw what was written on it, and realized
that something quite strange was happening. She saw the
name of the mall, the word "bomb", and a simple map
showing the location of the garbage can.
In an instance like this there are generally two paths
that can be followed. One path would have the nurse either
ignoring the message or simply putting the clipboard down,
not even noticing what was on it.
The other instance would have the nurse read what was on
the clipboard, wonder what the writings meant, and call
someone to find out.
Fortunately, for the several hundred persons who would
otherwise have been killed, the nurse followed the second
path. She made a call to her boyfriend, who happened to
work for the F.B.I. He knew that his girlfriend was an
extremely intelligent, wonderful person who would never
even consider trying to pull a prank on anyone.
So, within a half-hour, several agents entered the mall,
just to be on the safe side, checking to see if there was
such a mailbox. They soon found it, just where the map
showed it would be. Within in it lay the bomb, a bomb that
could have killed hundreds but ended up killing not a
single person. The bomb disposal squad arrived, removed
the garbage can with its cargo from the mall and placed it
into a waiting vehicle. The bomb was taken to a relatively
nearby open field where waiting bomb experts swiftly
disarmed it.
A short time later one of the agents made a phone call to
a number that only he and a small, very small handful of
people not in the military knew, a number that would
connect him to an agency so secret that the C.I.A. would
be an open-house by comparison.
Meanwhile, in the hospital, another call was being made.
This one was from one of the relatively impoverished
orderlies who sensed dollar signs dancing through his
head, an attendant who had overhead everything that had
happened and knew the exact place to call: the offices of
the World Examiner, one of the planet's leading, most
sleazy tabloids in existence.
Part III: If we prick ourselves, do we not bleed?
When Jessica awoke the first thing she found she needed to
do was to go to the restroom. She got up and walked the
relatively short distance there, and then she started to
realize the full extent of her physical changes.
She removed her hospital gown, sat down on the toilet and
did what was necessary. She looked down at herself
afterward and smiled at the "physical evidence", so to
speak, of her change. Finally, she was what she should be.
No more trying to live a lie. No more trying to hold down
all the feelings since men "did not cry." No more being
trapped in the "wrong" body.
She smiled, realizing that, not only was she now a girl,
but she would have a full lifetime to experience
everything her gender now offered her, the good along with
the bad.
She stood up, wanting to look into the mirror and see her
whole self. Unfortunately, the mirror was too high for
her, resulting in Jessica stamping her foot once in
disgust then walking back into her room.
The girl in the other bed looked at Jessica as she came
out of the restroom and smiled. "Hi," she said. "I'm Mary.
What's your name?"
Jessica backed away a few steps, her eyes widening. Derek
had been hurt by so many people during his life that he
had finally become terrified of others. He had taken the
X-files saying "Trust no one" to heart. He had lost what
few people he had been able to call friends, and everyone
that he had ever cared for had, at least in his mind,
betrayed him in one way or another.
This fear of others and of being hurt by them was deeply
embedded in Derek's mind and now in Jessica's.
Mary looked at the cute girl backing away, only to be
stopped by the wall. "You can't be afraid of me, can you?"
she asked, giggling. She pointed to her broken leg. "I'm
not going to chase you, you know."
Jessica relaxed, marginally, inching away from the wall.
"So," Mary began, "What's your name?"
Jessica tried to say her name but was quickly reminded of
her condition. She stamped her foot, shook her head and
then hit herself on her leg, hard. "Baka," she said
mentally to herself, hitting herself again. "Baka, baka,
baka."
Which brings up another problem that Derek/Jessica had.
Derek had gotten to the point where he had felt only total
self-hatred. Partially due to this, and partially due to
everything else that was going wrong in his life, he had
begun to practice what is called "self-inflicted violence".
He had abused himself verbally all the time, constantly
referring to himself as stupid, an idiot, and other even
nastier names. At times this hatred and feeling of having
no control over what was going on in his life resulted in
his taking the next step, and that was personal violence.
He would hit himself in the leg or side quite hard when he
became extremely angry with himself.
Things had worsened and gotten to the point where he was
even cutting himself several times a week. The cutting, he
found, was about the only way he could avoid breaking down
emotionally when confronted with a situation that upset
him. So Jessica's hitting herself was pretty much normal
behavior for her.
Jessica calmed down. She saw a pad of paper on a small
counter and wrote down her name and then showed it to Mary.
"Jessica. That's a nice name," Mary said. "Maybe we can
become friends." Mary's smile was wide, warm, and
welcoming, and for a moment Jessica thought she might
actually be able to make a friend.
Which would have been a wonderful start to her life as a
girl if matters had not deteriorated suddenly, for just as
Jessica started to approach Mary's bed bright flashes
filled the room. Jessica turned, just in time to see two
men, one holding out a microphone and another with a
camera pointed directly at her. The reporter, a rather
sleazy-looking character, began barking out questions.
"How did you know about the bomb?" he began. "Do you know
the people who planted the bomb? Were they related to
you?" The reporter and the photographer moved closer to
her, forcing Jessica to back further and further away. He
kept barking out one question after another and soon
Jessica backed into another wall and sat down, drawing her
knees up to her and sobbing, tears running down her face
but yet never making so much as a whimper of sound.
"What the hell is going on here?" a doctor said, entering
the room and finding the pandemonium that was happening.
"Get out of this room right now. This is a children's
hospital, not a TV studio." The doctor grabbed the
reporter and began to pull him out of the room.
"You have no right to interfere with the press," the
reporter yelled. "The public has a right to know about
this girl and how she knew about the bomb. We're just
fulfilling our duty to our readers."
By this time a nurse had entered the room, trying to help
the doctor restore some sense of order.
Jessica held her hands to her ears, trying to block out
the noises in the room. Her body began to shake from the
terror she was feeling. She realized that she had long
fingernails and she began to dig these into her upper
arms, pressing hard and slashing upwards, managing to
break the skin. A steady flow of blood began moving down
her left arm, then moments later her right as she repeated
her cutting on that arm.
Mary watched the adults in the room and then looked down
at Jessica and screamed. "What are you doing? Help her.
Somebody help her."
The nurse looked over and saw the frightened child on the
floor, blood flowing down both arms, tears flowing freely
down her face, her entire body shaking as she again went
back to covering her ears. The nurse ran to a wall cabinet
and quickly removed some supplies. Moments later she was
trying to stop the flow of blood, all the while trying to
talk in a comforting manner to the frightened girl.
Suddenly, there was the sound of several pairs of feet
moving rapidly down the hall towards her room. Three more
men came into the room, one dressed totally in black, his
face rough-hewn, his hair close-cropped and his voice deep
and menacing. With him were two soldiers, fully armed and
looking even meaner than the man in black.
"And who the hell are you?" the exasperated doctor said to
the new intruders.
"Blakeley, FBI," the first man replied, quickly producing
a wallet with his FBI identity card clearly showing his
photograph and identity. "As of now this is a matter for
the FBI and there will be no, and I repeat no reporters or
other unauthorized personnel allowed in this room." With
that, two more soldiers entered from the hallway, grabbed
the reporter and the cameraman, and pushed them out of the
room. The reporter continued to yell about his rights in
the hallway, but one of the men closed the door to the
room and finally some sense of quiet returned.
Blakely turned to the doctor. "As of now your patient is
under FBI care. No one is allowed in this room without my
knowledge and permission. Two men will remain outside the
door to make sure that order is carried out."
"Wait a minute," the doctor said, running his hand
distractedly through his hair. "You can't come into this
hospital and start giving orders. You may be FBI but this
young girl has obviously been through some kind of trauma
and doesn't need to be upset even more."
The nurse, by this time, had stopped the bleeding and was
holding the still-crying girl who clung desperately to
her.
"And we're going to make sure she isn't," Blakely replied.
"My men and I will make sure that this room remains a
nice, quiet refuge for your patient."
"And just why are you here anyhow?" the doctor asked.
"National security," Blakely replied. "This girl knew
something about a terrorist act and we want to find out
how she knew about their plans."
Jessica had watched all of this unfold, her eyes still
filled with tears, showing a growing terror at the events
unfolding in front of her. She stood shakily, her back
solidly against the wall. Mary, meanwhile, kept moving her
head quickly back and forth, trying to watch everything
that was going on in the room, trying to watch Jessica,
trying to watch the man now approaching her and not having
any idea what she could do to help and watching the two
soldiers who had taken up positions by the windows.
"Jessica," Blakely said, his presence now looming over the
frightened girl. "You will come with us as soon as the
doctor says you're well enough to leave. We want to take
you to a facility where you can be protected and we can
have you explain to us just how you knew about these
terrorists."
With that, Blakely crossed the remaining distance between
the two, putting his arm out towards Jessica who stared at
his arm and then suddenly began to silently scream,
seconds later collapsing to the floor, fainting from the
overwhelming flow of emotions coursing through her at the
moment.
Blakely then turned towards the doctor. “And get this other girl out of here and into another room. Now.”
Part IV: "Area 51"
It was several more days before Jessica's doctors said
that she was well enough to leave the hospital. Blakely
had been replaced by a young woman, Agent Johnson. She had
also introduced herself to the hospital staff as a member
of the FBI, her credentials as bogus as those of
Blakely's. Both represented an ultra-top secret
governmental group known by the in-joke name "Area 51."
Very few knew of its existence, yet it had been around in
one form or another since the closing years of WWII. It
was at that time that a few people were found in the
military that displayed unusual psychic abilities. One was
able to get hazy glimpses of the future; another could
describe the appearance of objects including buildings and
people at a great distance, and the third, when she
displayed rare moments of sanity, was able to read minds.
Since there were so few in the group and the ESP
phenomenon was still largely unknown and not understood,
the group did not make any significant contribution to the
war effort. There were those in the military, though, who
felt the idea of such a group was something that should be
pursed, an idea given impetus by the later discovery that
the Soviet Union was trying to train people to use psychic
abilities to spy on the United States.
The Roswell crash in 1947 proved to be their first
excursion into alien technology. The pieces of the crashed
saucer had been recovered and the area thoroughly cleaned
by the military. The pieces, along with several bodies
recovered, had been transferred to Wright Patterson Air
Force Base in Ohio and stored in Hanger 18.
That much, of course, later became a major focus of all
UFO enthusiasts. The military denied there was ever any
crash and explained it away by saying that the object was
a malfunctioning weather balloon. They even eventually
allowed some reporters into Hanger 18 to show them that
there was nothing there except standard Air Force
technology.
The military at the base had actually been telling the
reporters the truth, because there was nothing at Hanger
18 that in any way resembled alien technology. What they
did not tell the press was that such material had, at one
time, been there and mysteriously disappeared. An
investigation had disclosed a wide variety of falsified
documents, leading the investigators to the conclusion
that some group had gone to great lengths to get their
hands on the materials and to remove all traces of them
from the military's control.
The group that did this, of course, was Area 51. They had
spent the intervening years studying the pieces along with
others recovered at various locations, eventually even
being able to tap into the alien computers and download at
least some pieces of information, information about aliens
and mental abilities that became the core of the group's
studies.
The group remained small over the years and was still
known to few. They had, from time to time, found other
humans who possessed abilities like Jessica's and had them
brought into their main facility in the mountains in a
remote area of the northwest. The people were studied,
tested, probed and analyzed to determine the extent of
their abilities and how those abilities could benefit the
U.S.
Agent Johnson did not explain any of this to Jessica, of
course. She visited Jessica daily, trying to win her
friendship by giving her a mother figure to cling to. She
would hold Jessica and rock her back and forth when the
child became upset. She would read to her and play games
with her, all to win Jessica's trust.
The idea, of course, was to get Jessica out of the
hospital and into Area 51's facility with as little
difficulty as possible.
Things seemed to be going well until Jessica finally tried
to explain to Agent Johnson what had actually happened to
her. The agent had listened carefully, then left the room
a short time later.
She dialed the number for Area 51 using a phone they had
developed which scrambled everything so no one else could
eavesdrop on their messages.
"Let me speak to Blakely," Agent Johnson started.
"Blakely here," he replied a few moments later.
"Jessica might be the person that we've been looking for,"
she began. "The one the seer told us about."
"You mean the story about the one 'woman but not born a
woman'? The one that's supposed to have these great
abilities that nobody seems to be able to specify?"
Blakely, although a part of Area 51, was, in effect, the
Scully of the group. He questioned constantly what the
psychics in the group had said. He believed that their
abilities were not really abilities at all, but excellent
guesses and insights.
Area 51 kept Blakely around because of his questioning,
for they felt that his views would help those of the group
who wanted to treat their psychics almost as gods.
"I think I know what the `woman but not born a woman'
thing is. Jessica told me that she was originally a male;
something happened and he was changed into the
four-year-old girl. She has no
memories at all of what actually happened. The
psychiatrist we had examine her told me the child has
suffered some form of crisis that has caused her to
develop selective amnesia."
"So do you believe her story?" Blakely asked.
"I believe that she believes it," Johnson replied, "and
that we should bring her into the group. I think she might
be the one they predicted we'd find."
Blakely sighed. "Ok. As soon as the doctors release her
we'll bring her in for study, but this better not be a
complete waste of our time."
"I don't think it will be," Johnson replied.
In the hospital room Jessica was in her bed, sitting up,
her knees drawn up to her chin. She had gotten her
greatest wish, yet the granting of that wish had not
brought the happiness she expected.
It had also brought loneliness since Mary, the other child
in the room, had been moved out a soon after
the reporters had been removed from the room. No other
child was brought in and Jessica had talked to no one
aside from the single nurse that always seemed to be the
one to check in on her and Agent Johnson, who Jessica had
started to trust, just a little.
Jessica requested one favor of the agent before she went
with them. Despite all the terrible treatment that Derek
had received at the hands of his wife, there was still
some sense of duty within his former self. She got them to agree that their agency would deposit a considerable amount of money in their joint
account, money that should last Barbara for quite a while. They would also tell his wife that Derek had died in some kind of terrible accident, and his body was unrecoverable.
Agent Johnson told Jessica it was time to go. The child
looked around the room and gathered up her few possessions
which included some clothes the agent had given her, a
large stuffed bunny and a small purse with some Hello
Kitty cosmetics in it.
Part V. Another Vision
'If she was a normal child we could just turn her over to social services and they could find a foster home for her,' Blakely began, 'but she's anything but normal. The facility will have some plan for her, and my guess is she won't see the outside of the place for a long, long time.'
Jessica suddenly began to squirm and then started to
thrash wildly. Agent Johnson tried to hold her but the
girl's other arm had gone to her head and her silent
screaming went on and on.
"Another vision?" Johnson asked aloud.
It took some fifteen minutes before Jessica was able to
get calm enough to be able to write down on paper what she
had seen. She drew what appeared to be the space shuttle
with an arrow pointing to a place along the side of the
left-hand booster rocket.
Blakely tried to get more information on what she had
seen, but Jessica was still in considerable pain and she
couldn't calmly write down a detailed description of her
vision. Since she didn't know sign language she couldn't
use that medium, either.
Blakely made an emergency call to the Cape, identifying
himself this time as being from the CIA. He told the
senior controller that the CIA had solid information that
terrorists had somehow sabotaged the shuttle and they
should make no attempt to launch it until they had
inspected it thoroughly. He described the area the drawing
pointed to, receiving assurances that they would
immediately check out the shuttle and then he turned his
cell phone off.
Jessica, meanwhile, had finally fainted from a combination
of the pain from her vision, and from the realization that she had virtually no control at all over what was going to happen to her. She had prayed so much to be a girl, and thought that it would solve all her problems.
It didn't.
For Jessica, she had totally lost her past
and she had no idea where she was going in the future.
Part VI: Into the Darkness
Two hours later the news arrived; Jessica had been correct
again. Workers had detected a structural flaw on the
booster rocket in the exact position she had shown. If the
shuttle had been launched, they determined, the booster
would have exploded, destroying the shuttle and killing
all those aboard.
Blakely had taken Jessica to a 'house' belonging to one of
Area 51's agents. The 'house' was actually a living quarters that on a military base that was out in a wooded area, fairly far from the nearest town.
There were numerous such living quarters, as anyone deemed of 'extreme importance' to the work done there had to remain on base the vast majority of the time, allowed out only under very controlled conditions.
Jessica was to be placed with one of these workers until they were ready to study her to best figure out how to use her talents.
This would have given Jessica a chance for a stable home
environment.
Notice the expression: "would have".
"The agency did not tell me that I would have to babysit
some four-year-old brat," Melanie Rogers said. Melanie had
been working for the agency for over ten years and in that
time had acquired a reputation for being ice-cold,
unsympathetic and without any form of compassion
whatsoever. Her partner, Michael Roberts, was away on a
mission for the agency and would not be returning for
several weeks. He was Melanie Roger's total opposite;
caring, considerate, always willing to help someone out.
Why the two had been paired to pass as an "ordinary"
couple neither one could figure out, yet the pairing,
somehow, had seemed to work rather well.
"Jessica is not a four-year-old brat, as you put it. She's
a sweet, innocent child..."
"Who the agency wants me to babysit," Melanie finished.
"Why don't you place her with someone else?"
"The agency chose the two of you to be her guardians, at least temporarily,"
Blakely replied. "The girl's been hurt physically, and
psychologically she's a mess. She needs someplace to stay,
now; a place where she can at least rest somewhat in
relatively normal conditions."
"Then put her in a damn hotel," Rogers yelled. "Or an
orphanage. She belongs at a place like that."
"We've considered that," Blakely replied, stunning Melanie
temporarily. "But we need to have her somewhere she can be
kept under constant surveillance. You haven't seen what
the visions due to her. She's in obviously terrible pain,
yet she still does her best to communicate what she sees
to us. Further, you are the only two here on the base that are available for a project like this. The other couple is in Washington, being debrief about the child they had been caring for."
"Right. Communicate. The kid can't even said a word. And we're the only two smucks unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
“She can't speak,” Blakely said. “Whatever changed her into a girl, it didn't work perfectly. She lacks a larynx. She'll never speak, no matter how long she lives.'
"She gets her message across well enough using her writing
pad," Blakely continued. "The agency has classified her as
absolute top priority. She could be the one the psychic
council has been looking for."
"Oh, wow, now we're the X-Files," Rogers noted
sarcastically. "That council is as nutty as you are if you
think I'm going to take charge of that girl."
"I am not, as you so nicely put it, 'nutty'. I am,
however, your superior officer and you work for the agency
and will do what you are told. Have I made myself
perfectly clear?"
Rogers started to reply, but then decided that there were
times it was best to just remain silent. The two agents
discussed what Jessica would need, how she would be sent
to the science area to be studied, and a cover story to
explain her sudden appearance in the household.
During the next two days children's furniture was brought
into the house along with an advanced computer system, a
wide variety of books that Jessica had told them she would
like to have and plenty of stuffed animals, especially
bunnies.
"There is a potentially troubling area," Blakely told
Rogers when they had finished setting up Jessica's room.
"The girl is four years old, perhaps five; our lab people
are trying to figure out just what age to place her at. So
physically she's a child, yet mentally she has the mind of
a grown up. We don't know what type of a clash that
might cause in her. She may end up acting very advanced
for her age; but she might end up mentally regressing to
her actual physical age."
"Or she might go stark raving mad," Rogers said.
"Unfortunately, that is a possibility," he replied. The
two agents turned at the sound of a car pulling into the
driveway. "Looks like she's here."
Moments later the front door opened and Jessica entered
the house holding the hand of Agent Johnson. Jessica was
dressed in a cute pink outfit, her blonde hair pulled back
into a ponytail and tied with a Hello Kitty holder. She
glanced warily around the room then at Blakely.
"Okay. You've got the cover story down, right?" he asked
Melanie.
"Yes, chief, " she replied. "This is the daughter of a
dear friend who died in a tragic car accident. Her father
ran off before the child was born and no one has any idea
where he is. We've agreed to adopt the child to give her a
loving, warm, caring home."
Agent Johnson brought Jessica over to Melanie. The young
girl looked up, her deep blue eyes seeming to search into
the very soul of the agent. She grasped Johnson's hand
even tighter. She finally was able to coax Jessica to let
go of her hand and go to Melanie, but when she was there
Melanie just looked at her, then resumed talking to
Blakely.
The next few hours were spent getting Jessica adjusted to
her room, making sure it was stocked with enough pads of
paper and pens so she could write out any messages.
Arrangements had been made to give her sign language
lessons, hoping that she would pick that up quickly and
make communicating with her more efficient.
A week passed by quickly. Jessica had settled into her
new home. Her sign language classes were due to start in
the next couple of days, and she had no further
premonitions. The scientists were beginning to question
whether or not the two that she did have were aberrations
of some sort.
As for Jessica's relationship with Melanie Rogers, things
had not gone well. The agent was cold to Jessica for the
entire week, talking to the young girl only when
necessary; never touching her, never making any real
effort to get to know the girl.
One night, while alone in her room (as usual), Jessica was
thinking about what had happened so far.
"What's happening to me?" she wondered. "The agency just
wants to study me and Melanie hates me." She sighed. "I thought that finally
getting to be a girl would be wonderful, but everyone
either wants to use me or hates me."
She looked out her window, holding her white and brown
rabbit, Mrs. Tilliwink, tightly to her.
"I never know when one of these visions will happen. I'll
never be able to talk to anyone again. I'm a freak and
when I start taking those classes I bet the kids will hate
me just like they did when I was a student before."
She looked down at Mrs. Tillliwink. "All I wanted was to be
what I was supposed to be - a girl. I wanted lots of
friends, maybe a sister or two and what do I have? What
I've always had - just me. Alone. Unwanted." Tears were
beginning to flow from her eyes.
"Can't I even have a little bit of happiness? Can't I
enjoy being a girl?"
Jessica finally cried herself to sleep. A little later she
had a nightmare. Nightmares had become a common event for
Derek. Sometimes he even had several in the space of one
night. So far they had not bothered Jessica, but with the
strain of her relationship with Melanie and worry over
about how the other kids would react to her, it was only a
matter of time till they started up again.
Melanie had gotten into the habit of doing a routine check
on Jessica each night. When she felt she could take a
short break from other things she was doing she would
check in on the girl just to make sure that she was all
right. Not that Melanie really cared about the girl
herself; she just new that if anything went wrong she
would be the one that Blakely blamed.
When she walked into the room she saw Jessica wake
suddenly, sitting up in her bed and trying to scream.
Tears were pouring from her eyes and her whole body was
shaking.
Melanie looked at the child for a few moments, then she
approached her and stared into her eyes. She had never
seen anyone cry like this. This wasn't any "normal"
crying; this was the weeping of a soul beyond hope. Seeing
the child falling apart right in front of her melted the
ice that had been around the agent's heart and she held
Jessica tightly against her, rocking the child back and
forth. Tears began to flow from the agent's eyes now and
she realized just how cruel she had been to this child for
the last week.
Melanie had been told the story of Derek's life and hadn't
been impressed by it at all. In fact, she considered that
Derek should just have faced his problems in a manly
fashion. That he was TG and felt that "he" was really a
"she" did not impress her at all.
But now, holding this young child in her arms, realizing
that she carried the emotional scars over from her life as
Derek seemed to be the event that finally allowed Melanie
to accept Jessica in her own heart.
The next day Melanie escorted Jessica to her sign language
lessons. Since Jessica had shown no signs of any further visions, and since Melanie could pose as her adoptive mother, they felt it would be safe to allow Jessica to attend sign lessons at a place off the base.
The lessons were being given at the local mixed school off the base. Since there were not that many families on the base, and only a limited number of rural, non-military children, the school was actually a K-12 type of school.
One room had been set aside for the sign-language classes, and there were children of a variety of ages in the classroom, Jessica being the youngest one there. The
teachers were known to be patient and understanding and
worked well with all the children. After talking to the
teacher and being assured that Jessica would be fine she
returned to her home and started to work on her latest
report for the agency. The students had a two-hour period for sign-language lessons and then spent the rest of the day in regular classes.
The younger sign-language students were given a recess period during their
lessons so they could have some fun and relax a little.
Jessica followed the others outside, enjoying the
sunlight, the puffy white clouds drifting across the sky
and the sounds of the birds coming from the nearby grove
of trees.
There was a small play area reserved for the children with
several swings and a jungle gym. Several of the students
were climbing all over the gym while the rest were either
on the swings or nearby. Jessica remained by herself,
afraid to join in with the others, afraid of being
rejected by them.
She was watching the other students so intently that she
didn't notice the high-school boy approaching her.
"Now who do we have here, cutie?" he said. "You too good
to play with the others?" he smirked. Jessica turned and
looked at him, growing fear evident on her face.
"Maybe if you don't want to play with them you'll play
with me, instead." He waited for her to say something but
when she didn't he took a quick look around, making sure
that the other students were not looking in his direction.
He saw that the teacher was on the other side of the
playground working with a student and looking the other
way, so he reached down and grabbed Jessica's arm, pulling
her behind him.
"You too stupid to even cry?" he asked. "Or maybe you like
being treated this way." Then he pulled her around the
corner of the building and stepped behind some large
bushes.
He grabbed her and tried to force Jessica to kiss him but the
girl kicked out, accidentally hitting the boy in his most
vulnerable spot. He dropped her and she started to run
away.
Blinded by his pain and his arrogance he chased after
Jessica, grabbing her when she had gotten only a little
distance away. They were still in some tall bushes and
remained hidden from the view of the playground so he
continued his assault on the girl.
"You bitch!" he yelled out. "Now we play by MY rules."
With that he grabbed the girl and spun her around,
gripping her top and tearing it off in one move. She fell
to the ground and tried to crawl away but he continued
tearing at her clothing and within moments she was left
with only her panties, and then not even those.
By this time students were looking out the windows of the
high school, drawn by the boy's loud cursing. Although the
bushes were tall, effectively screening him from being
seen by anyone on the ground, he had forgotten that people
could see into the bushes from above. A couple of the
students had gone to get help, and two of the boys raced
from the room to try and help the young girl. Before they
could arrive to rescue her the students saw him grab
Jessica and pull her towards him, reaching his hand
between her legs and trying to force them apart while he
tried to kiss her.
Moments later the two boys ran from the door and straight
into the bushes. One of them grabbed Jessica away from her
attacker while the other tackled him, holding the student
down until security was able to get there and take the
student into custody.
A short time later, Melanie was in the nurse's office
trying to comfort Jessica. She had become furious with the
teacher for not taking better care of her child. Security
had told her that they had everything under control and
that her attacker would be suspended immediately and
possibly expelled. The matter had also been referred to
the police.
"What do you mean 'possibly' expelled?" Melanie angrily
said. "My god, the child's only four years old! That piece
of garbage should be kicked out of school forever!"
The security man told her that they had to follow
established school procedures to make sure the rights of
the students were protected, and that he had the right to
a full hearing before they could actually expel him from
the school.
Jessica was released from the hospital later that night.
Melanie started a bath for Jessica and put the girl into
the tub, making sure the water was just the right
temperature and not too deep. She was even using some
fragrant bath salts that she felt the girl might enjoy.
Just then the phone rang. It was Blakely, wanting to know
how Jessica was doing. Melanie had called him on their way
to the hospital, giving him a very brief description of
what had happened.
Now she gave him a more detailed explanation, including
how the boy had been stopped by the two brave young men
and then turned over to security. She also told him about
the conversation she had with the school's principal when
she called him from the hospital.
She had talked to the principal, telling him that she
wanted to see the boy permanently removed from school, but
the principal had explained that the boy was the child of
the head of the school board and that made it a very
delicate issue to handle.
"Delicate, my ass," Melanie had said before she slammed
down the phone.
Suddenly she realized that she had left Jessica in the
bathroom alone. She ran to the room and opened the door,
then screamed. Jessica was in the bathtub, streams of red
flowing from both her wrists, turning the bath water a
pinkish color. Melanie grabbed the child and pulled her
out of the water, noting as she did the razor blade that
the child had found in the medicine cabinet.
She quickly grabbed two of the smaller towels and wrapped
them around the child's wrists. then rushed her out of the
bathroom. Placing her on the couch she called base security and a
few minutes later the house was surrounded with flashing
lights as the emergency squad tended to the girl. They put
her on a stretcher and took her out of the living room,
down the front steps and into a waiting ambulance.
Melanie followed them, closing the door quickly behind her
and climbing into the ambulance with Jessica.
Part VII: Defiance and Resolution
It was almost a week before she was released from the
hospital. By this time Blakely had gone to the school and
questioned a number of people. He praised the two boys
that came to her rescue and was told that the boy that
attacked her had been expelled for ninety days, but that
his father was fighting the expulsion.
Jessica was scheduled to return to school a week later but
Melanie was told she would first have to meet with the
principal.
"Please, Ms. Rogers, have a seat," the principal said,
pointing to a rather worn desk chair. "I'm glad you've
come for our little talk. The assistant principal and I
have decided that Jessica should not return to this
school."
"Why?" Melanie asked, her eyes becoming slits.
"We feel that her attempt to kill herself would be a
distraction to the other students. We've reluctantly come
to the conclusion that our school is not really able to
serve your child's needs."
"And just what are you talking about?" Melanie asked.
"Jessica is obviously a very disturbed young girl..."
"And you're worried that her behavior might contaminate
the other students?"
"It's not that at all, Ms. Rogers. Jessica is a very
special child. We feel that she deserves more attention
than we can give her here. We're just a small base school, Ms.
Rogers, and we can't really devote the type of resources
to your child that she needs."
Melanie looked down for a moment, thinking. "In other
words," she began slowly, "the head of the school board
told you to get rid of Jessica."
The principal looked stunned for a moment. Being a
consummate politician, however, he quickly recovered.
"Let me assure you, Ms. Rogers, that there is no truth in
that accusation at all. Our decision was based purely out
of our concern for the needs of your child."
Melanie rose and left the principal's office without
another word. She knew that the most difficult task lay
ahead, and that was telling Jessica that she wouldn't be
returning to the school.
She knew that having Jessica attend a school where she was
not wanted would not help the child at all.
Even if the teacher and the students were receptive to
Jessica's returning, the principal was in a position to
bully them into following his lead. Not only him, of
course, but the head of the school board would be applying
pressure to the teachers to force Jessica out.
This would create a bad situation for everyone involved.
Jessica already carried over myriads of problems in
dealing with others; putting the young child into a
situation where she might be resented could harm her, and
that was something Melanie didn't want to happen.
Later that evening Blakely came over and the two of them
had a long discussion about Jessica. When Melanie
suggested that they find another sign-language class to
enroll Jessica in Blakely revealed that he had already
looked into the matter and received the same answer from
each school he contacted; they could not accept a child
with such "special" needs as Jessica. When he asked how
they knew about her "special" needs, none of the people he
talked to would answer him.
It was obvious that, in effect, Jessica had been
blackballed from the entire school system.
"Then what can we do?" Melanie asked.
"I don't know," Blakely replied. "The agency has already
told me that since Jessica has not shown any more signs of
her premonitions that their interest in her has ended. And
that means your interest in her will end, too. They have
decided to have her placed in an orphanage."
"They can't do that," Melanie said, rising from her chair.
"They can't do that to that child. She deserves something
better than being tossed aside like some used dishrag."
"You know that I agree with you, Melanie," Blakely said,
"But there is nothing I could do since they've reached
their decision. We will just have to hope that she will be
able to find some parents that would love her the way you
do."
Melanie was crying now. "But I don't want to lose her. I
love her; she's such a sweet, innocent child."
"The agency doesn't judge by love; it judges by
usefulness, and in their minds Jessica's usefulness has
come to and end."
Neither agent noticed that the door to Jessica's bedroom
was opened, or that the child had left her room and was
standing on the opposite side of the wall to the living
room.
Jessica turned and walked back quietly to the room. She
had been expecting something like this for a long time. It
was the same pattern as it had always been; get a glimpse
of happiness and then have reality come crashing down
around you. To know her, she thought, was to hate her.
She even had her doubts about Melanie. Maybe the woman was
just putting on a show to impress Blakely.
Jessica had prepared for this day. She knew it was only a
matter of time until everyone wanted to get rid of her.
That was the way it always was and always would be.
She returned to her bedroom and closed the door softly
behind her. She took her purse from the top of the
dresser; she had a small amount of money that Melanie had
given her the last time they had gone shopping. She knew
that if she ran away she stood very little chance of
surviving alone on her own but she didn't really care. Not
any more. The grown-ups just didn't understand her at all.
She had tried to kill her self once; why couldn't they
understand that she no longer cared to be alive at all?
Her dream of becoming a girl and having a happy life had
turned out to be a nightmare in the end. The only reason
anyone had ever put up with her was to see what they could
get out of her, and now that her powers seemed to have
gone away they wanted nothing further to do with her.
She picked up a bag and put Ms. Tilliwink into it. She
would not leave her favorite bunny behind, no matter what.
She moved her chair near the window, then took one last
look around the room and opened the window carefully. She
would cut across her backyard and get onto the next street
down from her own.
There was an interstate bus terminal just a short distance
away. She could make her way to the bus station and try to
follow another family on board a bus, hoping that the
station personnel would think she belonged with them.
After that, well, she'd deal with that later.
She climbed onto a chair and then out the window. She quickly made her way across her yard and before long was on her way to the bus station.
The world looked a lot different at night when you were a
four-year-old girl and not a grown man. Everything was so
much bigger. It took longer to get anywhere, too. By the
time she arrived at the bus station she was already tired
and more than a little scared. Still, what choice did she
have? The agents would ship her off to the orphanage,
anxious to get rid of her. She'd probably stay at the
orphanage for years; who'd want her, anyway? Certainly not
with her little lack-of-a-voice problem.
There seemed to be several women with children getting on
the bus so Jessica made her way nearer to the group and
fell in behind a tall, dark-haired woman who was leading
two young girls after her. The woman and her daughters
boarded the bus and Jessica followed them, climbing the
bus steps with difficulty. She took a seat near the woman
and then looked down, trying to make herself as
unnoticeable as possible.
The bus door closed and the driver began to pull away from
the station. Seconds later, though, the bus jerked to a
sudden stop. Pounding was heard on the door of the bus and
then it opened. Jessica looked up and there were Melanie
and Blakely.
Melanie ran to Jessica and grabbed her, crying as she held
the child close to her. "How could you run away?" Melanie
said. "I love you. I want you to be my daughter for the
rest of your life."
Jessica pulled away and angrily opened her purse,
withdrawing a pad of paper and a pen. "LIAR!" she wrote on
the pad, turning it so Melanie could see the word.
"YOU DON'T WANT ME!" she wrote on a second piece of paper.
"But I DO want you, honey. I love you," Melanie replied.
"NO YOU DON'T," Jessica wrote. She then began to write
down a longer note. She kept crossing out words, getting
more and more upset at herself. Finally she finished and
handing the note to Melanie.
"I heard the two of you talking about sending me to an
orphanage," she had written. Jessica quickly wrote another
note. "You don't love me. You never did. You just want to
use me, that's all." By this time the commotion had grown
considerably. Station personnel had crowded around the
bus; the passengers were asking what was going on, and
flashing lights indicated that the police had arrived.
An hour later they were back at Melanie's home. Blakely
had told Jessica that they were able to track her by using
a tiny homing device they had planted in her body. Both
Jessica and Melanie had become angry when told that, but
Blakely explained that the agency wanted to be able to
keep track of its "property" at all times.
It had been then when Michael, Melanie's husband, returned
from his assignment for the agency early, having completed
it in half the time they had estimated.
Melanie filled him in on everything that had happened and
he greeted Jessica, who was at first frightened
of the large man and kept away from him. Melanie told him that, in time, Jessica might warm to him, at least a little.
"You must understand," Blakely explained. "With the latest
things Jessica has done the agency has determined that she
is too unstable to continue to consult. She has to be
placed in an orphanage and the two of you need to return
to your work."
"So she's no longer useful and you intend to throw her
out, just like some kind of trash, is that it?" Melanie
asked, her temper obviously rising.
"We have to look out for our own interests," Blakely
responded. "With Jessica as unstable as she is we don't
know if she'll ever have any other premonitions or if they
will even be close to accurate even if she does have any.
We also can't keep trying to cover up her actions. The
agency must, and I emphasize the word 'must', remain
totally unknown to the public at large. There's been
enough media attention about Jessica already and we can't
take any chance that some reporter might find out anything
about the agency through their investigation of Jessica."
"And have they even come close to finding out anything
about the agency?" Michael asked.
"No," Blakely replied, "But we simply cannot take that
chance. We must separate Jessica from ourselves and the
agency before it's too late. We can either do that by
placing her into an orphanage, or committing her to a
mental institution."
That did it for Melanie. "You bastard!" she screamed at
Blakely. "You'd put an innocent four-year-old child into a
mental institution simply because she might inconvenience
the agency? What kind of a sick person are you, anyway?"
"Let me repeat myself," Blakely said slowly, his own
temper beginning to become evident. "The needs of the
agency must come first above all our own personal needs.
The agency must be protected at all costs, and if that
means putting Jessica into an orphanage or mental
hospital, then that is what we will do."
"No, you won't," Melanie said very slowly, venom dripping
with each word she uttered. "You will not separate Jessica
from me. You and the agency be damned!"
"I don't think you understand," Blakely said. "Jessica goes and you two will carry on your duties for the agency. 'If you choose to keep Jessica, then the two of you were be permanently removed from the agency.'
"What do you mean 'permanently removed'?" Michael asked.
"It means you will both be fired from the agency. Any and
all contact between you and the agency will end. You will
be monitored for the rest of your lives, and if we ever
feel that you are about to endanger the agency in any way
we will take any and all necessary steps to stop you."
"So we have to choose between Jessica and the agency,
right?" Michael asked.
"You will have to find new jobs; find a new place to live;
basically, start your married lives all over again."
"You know, Michael," Melanie said, turning to her husband,
"I think starting over might be fun. The THREE of us," she
said, with special emphasis on the word 'three', "could
all get a fresh start together. I don't think that's such
a bad deal at all, do you?"
Michael looked at her and smiled. "Nope, not a bad deal at
all. I've always wondered what would have happened if I
had become a college professor of psychology like I
originally wanted to be and trained for, and this would
give me the chance to find out. Professor Johnson, the
psych professor I had in college, told me that if I ever
wanted to teach there I would only need to call him and he
was sure they would hire me. I've always thought Seattle
would be a nice place to live."
"This may sound old-fashioned," Melanie said, looking down
at Jessica who had returned to her, and smiling as she ran
her hand through the child's hair, "but I think it would
be really nice to be a housewife. My loving husband would
go off to work in the morning and I would take care of our
house and our kids."
"Kids? As in plural?" Michael asked.
"You don't expect I'd let Jessica grow up without a sister
or two, do you?" She hugged the child tightly. "I think
the orphanage is a good idea, except that instead of
putting Jessica in the orphanage, I think we should get a
couple of young girls OUT of the orphanage. Jessica could
use a couple of sisters!"
Jessica's eyes brightened and her smile illuminated the
room. She was so excited she was bouncing up and down on
Melanie's leg.
"I know it won't be easy," Melanie said to Blakely. "I
know that Jessica has some special needs, but I feel that
with the type of home life that we could give her, Jessica
would finally have a chance at the happiness she deserves."
"If she ever has any more premonitions you would be
expected to inform the agency immediately; I'm sure you
understand that," Blakely noted.
"There would be no problem doing that," Michael answered.
"We're not mad at you or the agency." He stood up and
moved over to Melanie, getting her to stand up with him as
she held Jessica. "I think it's time we have a real
family, the three of us; or four; or five." He laughed
then kissed Melanie. He leaned down and kissed Jessica
lightly on her forehead.
Blakely stood and then turned without saying a word and
left the house, making his way to a black car waiting by
the sidewalk. A few moments later he was gone from their
sight.
Melanie closed the front door and a new chapter in
Jessica's life began.
My Written Works
My Internment Camp Series
All three of these books deal with the interment camps for Japanese Americans that were run by the U.S. government during World War II. I examined literally thousands of newsletters from the various camps and extracted articles from them that I felt were particularly important, then wrote the following books about what I found. All three are available only in a Kindle edition.
From the Inside: Illustrations and photos used in Internment Camp Newsletters
From the Inside: Articles relating to Violence from the Internment Camp Newsletters
From the Inside: Articles relating to Prejudice from the Internment Camp Newsletters
My Maude Adams series (also available only in Kindle editions)
BOOK 1: MAUDE ADAMS: AS OTHERS SAW HER. A book containing a lot of information about Maude Adams. This includes Chapter 1 (Basic information); Chapter 2 (family news); Chapter 3 (her avoidance of publicity); Chapter 4 (illness); Chapter 5 (fashion); Chapter 6 (money); Chapter 7 (her return to the stage); Chapter 8 (movies); Chapter 9 (teaching); Chapter 10 (as an inventor); Chapter 11 (her personal life); Chapter 12 (her statue); Chapter 13 (death notices); Chapter 14 (plays she was in); Chapter 15: Conclusion; Appendix A (books about her); Appendix B (books with some information about her); Appendix C: (longer magazine and newspaper articles about her); and Appendix D (radio programs she did).
BOOK 2: MAUDE ADAMS: A KISS FOR CINDERELLA (Scan of the original book of the play along with articles about the play.
BOOK 3: MAUDE ADAMS: CHANTECLER (Scan of the original book of the play along with a scan of a booklet of the play plus articles about the play.
BOOK 4: MAUDE ADAMS: L'AIGLON: (Scan of the original book of the play, plus scan of the original souvenir booklet, plus articles about the play.
BOOK 5: MAUDE ADAMS: THE LITTLE MINISTER (Scan of the original book of the story, scan of the original souvenir booklet, plus articles about the play.
BOOK 6: MAUDE ADAMS: THE JESTERS (Scan of the original book of the play plus articles about the play.
BOOK 7: MAUDE ADAMS: JOAN OF ARC (Scan of the book Maid of Orleans along with articles about the play.
BOOK 8: MAUDE ADAMS: OP 'O ME THUMB (Scan of the original book of the play plus articles about the play.
BOOK 9: MAUDE ADAMS: PETER PAN (Scan of the original book plus articles about the play.
BOOK 10: MAUDE ADAMS: THE PRETTY SISTER OF JOSE (Scan of the original book of the story plus articles about the play.
BOOK 11: MAUDE ADAMS: QUALITY STREET (Scan of the original book of the play, scan of the original souvenir booklet, plus articles about the play.
BOOK 12 MAUDE ADAMS: ROMEO AND JULIET (Scan of the original book of the play plus articles about the play.
BOOK 13: MAUDE ADAMS: WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS (Scan of the original book of the play plus articles about the play.
Non-Kindle Books
Gentle Slopes and Lofty Tower (printed version, 1996)
Thunderhead: A New Age Life and Times (co-author with Medicine Hawk)
Golden Harvest and Timeless Treasures (poetry contributed to these two anthologies)
Other Books
Spirituality Without Fuss or Mess
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