Impacted

I sink down into the tub, replaying the conversation in my head.

It’s an impacted bowel, from the constipation, the doc says.

With a thin hand and a deep sigh, I put my palm gently to my own face and let the air out. “Jeezuz, Dad …”

Dad just smiles.

“So we’ll have to remove it. The fecal clump. After that, we’ll need to implant a healthy transplant stool to restore his microbiome.” The doctor tilts their head and looks at me over their glasses. “Do you know about that?”

I nod. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know about that.”

“Okay, then …”

“Wait,” Dad said. “They’re going to put poop into me?”

“Yes,” the doctor says. “That’s right, Wil. We’re going to take out your poop, which is lodged inside you and cannot come out on its own. That’s why you are having such pain right now.”

Dad nodded.

“Then once that poop is out, we are going to put good poop inside you to help you heal.”

Dad’s eyebrows jumped up and he made that astonished and kind of incredulous expression. “Oh-kay,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it, Dad,” I said. “It’s fine. It’s just what they need to do to help you is all.”

Dad nodded. “Okay. Okey doke.”

I come up out of the water, let it run down my face and chest, look at myself in the mirror.

I have his face. People tell me that all the time, especially if they know him. That certainly doesn’t help my gender dysphoria, even though I know plenty of people look like either or both of their parents. I’m named after him, too, you know. In case you didn’t know that already.

Next I shave, then I go back to soaking in the tub.

I could just lie here, underwater, forever.

[Ed., To continue reading along the Dad path, click here.]

Then, there is a sucking sound, like how I imagine it would feel to be juice getting sucked from fruit—that feeling as a sound, sound as feeling—and there is a familiar set of voices again. [Ed., To read the first Scenes from the Tank path chapter, click here.]

Is she back in the 21st Century? Or is she still in the 32nd? one asks.

It doesn’t matter. Roll the dream from the other night, the other says.

You got it, the first says.

I feel a surge like a lion’s roar in my body, and then I am back in my dream, the one from last night—what I think of as last night.

I’m at some sort of party, and I feel an itch around my waistline, so I pull up my blouse and see three moles above my left hip, each similar to the one near my navel that I’ve had my whole life.

I think, Uh-oh, then try to find Lila to check it for me.

She takes a a look, and says not to worry that they’re probably just new moles. I say I don’t think they are cos it feels like something is happening. But she finds this thing on Bubblevission™ where this scientist is talking abut how knew moles develop. My rational mind wants to think that’s all it is, then, but I know it isn’t by intuition.

And it isn’t.

Barely after we’ve finished watching the vid and now there is a small penis growing out of one of them.

I show it to Lila, and she takes a look at it, and says, Yeah, I guess you were right.

Then, a moment later, and I see and feel that I am growing a giant purple dick—a second dick, above my first—maybe more.

I think it’s the hormones, I say, and Lila concurs.

Lila isn’t that worried about it, but she is expressing sympathy for my concern.

I begin to ruminate on it and wonder if I should have just left my body alone.

Skip forward, the second voice says.

Right-oh, the first replies.

Again, I hear a sucking sound and feel the juice being squeezed, hear it, followed by a roar throughout my nerves and skin, and I am on a transport to gun range. Pembroke is with me, though I’m not sure if she’s actually there or just joining via Bubble™. The transport is style like the corner section of a living room and part of a kitchen, so when it connects to the driver’s house, it locks in and becomes that. She has her kids with her, the driver, who are both playing video games.

Eariel is with me, and he is excited about being out and going to the gun range, but I don’t think he’s happy about how late it is already.

I’m not feeling great about it either, tbh, and would rather be home and in bed.

But we go there, and the transport delivers us to this building that’s fifteen stories tall, all occupied by the same family.

The woman who runs the shooting range is blonde and kind of butch. Her dad is a graybeard and has an obviously chauvinistic and sexist attitude. I tell him that it seems like he doesn’t really like women, and he admits that he doesn’t. I tell him that I admire his honesty. He looks at me with suspicion, and I explain it’s not some kind of trick; I really do respect that he was honest about it. Not many people can be honest at all, especially about things they know will be unpopular. He seems to soften to me some after that—not that it matters because I don’t like him and we don’t see him anymore anyway.

On the range, we are getting ready to shoot and they’re going over safety and all that.

When she asks if I’ve ever shot a gun before, I kind of smile, and say, Yes.

She asks how long it’s been, and I say a good long while—which is mostly true, depending on how you’re counting and which timeline we’re in.

I though this was a dream, the first one says.

It is, the second replies flatly. She’s a lucid dreamer.

What does that mean? the first asks.

It means that she lives her dreams like they’re real life, so to her, they are other timelines. To us, they’re just dreams.

Huh, the first says. Sounds confusing.

Let’s just finish it, the second says.

Right-oh.

Before we can get to the actual shooting, Eariel says it’s 11:45 and we need to peace out.

I say okay, good lookin’ out, E, and feel some weird sense of relief, like there was something emotionally tied up in holding a gun again or something.

Pause there, the second says.

I guess they do because it’s like I’m suspended in mid-action.

Let’s pull her out of the tank, the second says.

There is suction and pressure, hissing and popping, and rushing of water. The room isn’t as cold as I thought it would be. Somehow I’m thinking. Somehow I’m anticipating how it would be.

I feel my body being laid down and then the aridifier begins drying me. Me being me, I am totally exhausted but still have just enough energy to get a little horny from the vibration of the machine.

Is she getting hard? the first one asks.

It happens to a lot of people, the second one says. It’s a side effect of the process.

After a moment, I nearly come, and start to moan.

They lift me up and help me walk to a stretcher, which hovers me along down a hallway. Then another hallway. And another, each lit with that kind of sickeningly bright light, the kind that threatens to pierce your eyes and scald your optic nerves.

“It’s too bright,” I moan.

“Put the sunglasses on her,” someone says. I thought it was the second one at first, but it’s not. It’s a third one, a different one, one whose voice I don’t rightly know yet.

They do put them on me, and my eyes feel immediately better.

Without much filter and little will of my own, I reflexively ask, “Do I look cool?”

“Yes,” the third one says. “You look bitchinly cool. Now try to relax.”

I suddenly remember the extra dicks and feel for my crotch but find only the one and my vagina.

“Oh thank sweet fuck,” I say.

“What is it?” the third one asks.

“I thought I was growing more dicks,” I say.

“Would that be bad?”

“Well, no,” I say, “but it’s not really the look I’m going for.”

“You’ve just the one,” the third one says. “You’re fine. Please, relax now. We’ll be to your recovery room soon.”

“Okay,” I say, and I am weirdly able to relax, relax completely.

I feel so relaxed, it’s like I’m falling asleep.

At the liminal threshold, I think I hear Fox telling me that it’s 11:45 in the morning, which means I’ll need to get up soon, for work.

Play procedures

• You may now modify your character’s genitals anyway you wish. It is a literary procedure, so there is no pain and no surgery required—unless you wish for there to be.
• If you’re one of about three people who has read the draft that features these nameless folks who have me in a tank, you get a gold star! And, all jokes aside, my sincere and heartfelt thanks. If they are new characters to you—new as of this book, I mean cos we’ve seen them before in da Backbone—you may design elements of their personality, their motives, and so forth, but keep in mind that they are government types first and foremost. They can be in bed, so to speak, with other people, but that’s their archetypal context, like an MKUltra kina deal. I mean, not that, but like that. Kind of.
• If you’re working toward unlocking secrets such as lucid dreaming, a psi-screen, telepathy, or time travel, you may count this chapter toward one (but only one) of those.