Man Forward

This story is a sequel to "The Choice," another work of mine that appears on the ASSGM archive. You don't need to read that story before reading this, but it would probably help if you read it afterward for some additional background information. This is broadly defined as science fiction, although I keep the jargon under control (for the most part).

The usual warnings apply. If you are less than 18, read the sanitized version of "The Choice" that's out there. If you do not want to read sexually explicit material, stop here. You have been warned.

There are certain real names and places used within the text. Any resemblance between these fictionalized persons/locations and real persons/locations is purely coincidental. No, I have never been to Uniontown, Pennsylvania.

This story is the sole property of the author and copyright is hereby claimed. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to the ASSGM and Nifty archives to maintain this story as part of their free archive service. Any other use is strictly prohibited without the signed, written consent of Major League Baseb...er, me.

Man Forward, 12 of 21 (M/M NS) by JT Michcock

Chapter 12: Homecoming

Thursday, December 24, 2122

I had to swallow hard as we departed the public trans outside the farmhouse. I remembered this place so well. The exterior colors were different, and a small fleet of flying cars was in the driveway and there appeared to be some unusual machinery in the fields. But it was the same.

This was the house where I grew up. Snow covered the ground and winter had clearly arrived in Iowa, the temperature hovering below freezing despite the noonday sun. I grabbed the overnight bag I brought close to me.

The house was decorated for the holidays. Lights twinkled on and off on the outside, a wreath hung from the doorway. The walkway in front of the house had been freshly plowed in anticipation of guests. All in all, it was very nice, although nothing spectacular, a typical Christmas Eve in the Midwest.

"How're you feeling, Chris?" asked Eric.

"All right," I said, barely audible. The walk up to the front door filled me with a mix of anticipation and dread. I wanted to come back, but I was scared by what I might find. For all my life, I had called this old farmhouse home. I was about to figure out whether the old adage about not being able to go home again was true.

As we approached, the front door opened and a middle-aged black man opened the door.

I paused slightly as I saw the door open. That someone other than my mother or father would be the one to open the door was something I had expected. That a black man would open the door was disconcerting. I put the thought out of my head.

"Eric," said the man, a big smile lighting up his face, "how are you son?"

"Hey Dad," said Eric, reaching out his hand to the man. After a long handshake and pat on the shoulder, the older man turned his attention to me.

"You must be my Uncle Chris," he said, grasping my hand. "I'm your great-great-nephew, Simon Hoover. Your brother Tom was my great-grandfather."

I smiled nervously and shrugged. "Chris would be fine, sir" I said.

"I thought about that before you came," said Simon, "Since you're about Eric's age, I think you'd feel more comfortable calling me 'Uncle Simon'." A younger man, in his late teens I guessed, walked up behind Uncle Simon.

"This is my little brother Dwayne," said Eric, introducing him. Dwayne smiled and shook my hand. "Dwayne's the star of the high school hockey team."

Dwayne's face lit up with a smirk. "You could have been a player Eric if you ever figured out how to skate." Eric landed a playful swat across his brother's forehead. Dwayne ducked back into the house laughing with Eric following on his heels.

"Would you like to come in?" asked Uncle Simon.

"Yes, sir" I said, putting on a nervous smile. From what I knew about the era, for me to refer to Simon by his first name would have been considered inappropriate. This much Eric reminded me of while we traveled here. The ironic part was that I would be the oldest person in the house. At least I was technically the oldest.

"Dwayne," said Uncle Simon, stopping the teen from running around the dining room table from his brother, "you take Chris and Eric's bags and put them in the bedroom."

"Yes, sir," said Dwayne, quickly moving to grab the stuff we had lugged from Chicago and disappearing up the stairs.

Entering the house was another shock. It was the same, but different. People were gathered in the living room. It was decorated for the holidays, with a large tree in the center of the foyer with many unopened presents underneath. The crowd was racially mixed. I noticed a young woman of Asian ancestry coming from the kitchen.

I didn't consider myself a racist. But I could not explain this lack of comfort in the setting. Some of it was due to my own feeling that my home was no longer somewhere I would belong. But I knew it was more. In the back of my mind I was wondering how these black people had gotten into my house.

"Chris," said an older man, coming up to greet me, "I want to shake your hand."

I extended my hand somewhat nervously. Behind the older man, who was also black but lighter-skinned than Eric or his father, the others in the room began to step forward.

"I'm Eric's grandpa, Matt," he said. "Your brother Tom was my grandpa and I can't tell you how much he would have wanted to be here.

"I knew Tom quite well and your brothers Phil and Mike too."

My mouth opened a bit and closed almost as quickly. Here was someone who knew my brothers personally. This was inviting, but also unnerving. I don't know what my brothers had said about me. It made me uncomfortable as hell.

The others came up to greet me and I felt overwhelmed, not remembering half the names. Eric eventually guided me over to a couch, where I could get a little quiet time to absorb everything that was happening.

Eric's sister Bernice came over and plopped his nephew in Eric's lap. Nearly nine months old, the boy, Nathan, was going to be having his affiliation ceremony in a few months. Eric proudly informed me that he was going to be the kid's Head Coach. The baby was a light brown. Eric introduced me to his father, a tall redheaded white guy named Bill.

Uncle Simon came over to sit with Eric and me, bringing both of us Cokes. He quickly updated Eric on all the local events, including the local Christmas pageant, the boy's high school fund raising for a new library and the latest corn prices. I sat and listened politely but it did give me a chance to acclimate myself. In hindsight, I had to believe that was the intent.

I spied Grandpa Matt in the back of the crowd talking to two teenaged girls that Eric had introduced as his cousins. My distraction must have been apparent to my hosts.

"Would you like to speak to my Dad?" asked Uncle Simon.

I looked up. "Can I?"

"Absolutely," Uncle Simon said. "He's here to talk to you."

I took a sip of my Coke and set it down. "Excuse me," I said as I headed over to where Grandpa Matt was seated.

"You ready for me?" asked Grandpa Matt.

I smiled nervously, "I guess so, sir."

"Well, let's go sit on the sun porch."

With that, Grandpa Matt sprang up and led me back through to the back of the house. Along the way, we walked through the kitchen, looking remarkably similar to when I had last been there.

The sun porch in the back of the house had been an idea that my mother was pushing for at the time I left. I was glad to see that someone had finally built one. We got out there and proceeded to sit in a pair of rocking chairs near the door. Grandpa Matt activated what looked to be a futuristic space heater to keep us warm.

"Your brother Tom, my grandfather, was in his early sixties when I was born," started Grandpa Matt. "He was in his mid nineties when he passed and we all lived together in this town.

"I got to know him quite well," he smiled, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. "Want one?" he asked, producing a pack.

"Don't smoke, but thank you," I said.

"These don't cause cancer anymore," Grandpa Matt said. "Genetic engineering, you know."

"So I've heard," I said.

"I'm still not allowed to do this inside the house though, my missus thinks these smell awful," he said with a grin.

"I have so many questions, sir," I continued. "What did you think of my brother Tom?"

"He was a good man," said Grandpa Matt, leaning back and inhaling. "He took care of his family and taught me well."

"What sort of work did he do?" I asked.

"Farmer," said Grandpa Matt. "In fact, this was his farm after your parents passed away."

I smiled. "That surprises me," I laughed. "Tommy always had the hardest time getting up in the morning. I would have thought he would have been the last of us to go into farming."

"Well," continued Grandpa Matt, with a chuckle, "he always used to beat me to the breakfast table. I can tell you that much."

I had to smile. The old guy knew so much about my family. It was hard for me to frame any questions. There was so much to go through.

"Did anyone ever talk about me?" I asked.

Grandpa Matt put his hand to his chin and thought for a second. "From time to time," he said, "my Grandpa used to talk about how I had a great-uncle in addition to Uncle Phil and Uncle Mike. You were frozen somewhere. I do remember as I became older he talked about visiting you in Chicago. I asked my Grandpa if I'd ever see you myself and he said that it was possible, but he didn't know.

"And here you are," continued Grandpa Matt, opening his hands with a chuckle.

"Did you know my parents at all?" I asked, smiling at his response.

"Well," said Grandpa Matt, stroking his chin and moving forward. "I was about ten when your mother passed, and I do have some memories there. Unfortunately, your father passed some years before I was born."

My heart suddenly stopped. They were gone. They had both been gone for a very long time. I swallowed hard.

Grandpa Matt must have noticed my distress. He reached out and put his hand over mine and grasped it.

"You'll be okay," he said, a supportive smile on his face.

"The one thing I do remember," said Grandpa Matt, "is that your mother made the best potato salad I ever tasted."

"With the egg slices covering the top!" I exclaimed, reveling in the memory. Grandpa Matt nodded and laughed in shared enthusiasm. Grandpa Matt was right about the potato salad, nothing was better than my Mom's.

"That will be a memory I will carry with me," said Grandpa Matt, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "It gives me comfort knowing that."

I looked up, a little winded. "How do I handle this?" I asked, my eyes beginning to moisten up.

"Don't get teary eyed on me," said Grandpa Matt, smiling. "I don't want to have to hit you.

"Of course, since you're a hell of a lot younger than me, I suppose you can out run me." He was smiling still.

I smiled back, more in pain than anything. "I'm sorry, Grandpa Matt," I said. "I've just been through a hell of a lot."

"Do tell?" he responded. "I think everyone here knows that. But you're here with family and that matters a lot."

"I don't feel as though I'm a part," I continued. "It's hard for me to explain, but I know I'll never fit in here."

"You're a part, whether you think so or not," he responded.

"Look," said Grandpa Matt, grabbing and patting my hand instructively.

"You and I may be slightly different shades, but we also share a lot," he said. "Parts of your body are also in mine. These are parts that come from your parents and my great-grandparents.

"People move forward in many different ways. One of the most important ways they move on is by passing on parts of themselves. Sometimes these are memories and sometimes these are pieces of themselves.

You and I have memories and pieces of you parents and their parents and their parents before them."

I bowed my head and shuddered a sob. This was getting too close emotionally. As much as I tried to block it, I knew I wouldn't succeed.

"You know the rule," said Grandpa Matt standing up and bringing me to my feet and looking at me squarely in the eyes. "But I'm going to unofficially adopt you as my grandson and you can feel free to let go."

I embraced him and shed a few tears.

After composing myself, I went back into where dinner was waiting. If anyone knew I had been crying back on the sun porch, no one ever let on.

There was quite a spread laid out in the dining room. Excepting Eric's nephew Nathan, who sat in a high chair next to his mother, the several younger kids were seated in the kitchen, talking and laughing amongst themselves. A few of the moms took turns supervising and making sure the kids stayed out of trouble.

Amongst the grownups, of which I was included, husbands pulled out chairs for their wives after they had dutifully brought in the food. Eric sat next to me and commented how he had only been allowed to sit at the adult table since his return from the military. His nearly eighteen-year-old brother Dwayne would be spending his last year in the kitchen. After he went off for his military hitch in June, he would be returning to eat in the dining room with the rest of the adults.

"Where were you when you were in the military?" I asked.

"A few places," responded Eric. "Fort Campbell down in Kentucky to begin with, and then about eighteen months on the Ceres station."

"Ceres?" I asked, never having heard of the place.

"It's an asteroid," explained Eric. It's between Mars and Jupiter.

Part of the asteroid belt that circles the Sun."

I threw my head back in surprise. "What was it like living on an asteroid?"

"It was fun mostly," said Eric, "but it could get really tense at times because of some skirmishes."

"Skirmishes?" I asked. "I thought the U.S. was at peace?"

"The NAP," he responded, correcting me. "We're almost never completely at peace. There was some very intense fighting up there with the Brazilians over mining rights. We're still technically at war with them.

"Whenever there was a trespass on NAP territories, we had to scramble into these little fighter craft," continued Eric. "I took out a few of their fighters myself, once helped bring down an illegal barge operation. The one ship I was on got hit and we were out there over a week without any radio contact with the main base. We were all sure we were going to die out there."

"You must have been terrified," I said.

"Nah," said Eric, developing a little swagger. "Well, maybe," he continued, shrugging. "But I made it through, me and the guys. That's what matters."

I paused, not certain how to follow up. War in an asteroid belt? The concept terrified and intrigued me at the same time. I looked over at Eric who had started eating his dinner and I felt an emotion stab through me.

Envy. This was ridiculous, I thought to myself. Why would I envy him for that kind of experience?

"Is your brother going into space too?" I asked.

"No, he's joining the Navy, actually," Eric replied. "He wants to be on the ocean."

"So were you in the Space Corps, right?" I asked. "How exactly does that work?"

"Yep," he responded. "There's the Army, Space Corps, Navy, Air Force and Marines, with a lot of overlap between them in their functions. I was in the Space Corps infantry, for example. We usually worked with the Army and Marines on maneuvers."

"Are the Marines still the toughest?" I asked.

Eric grinned and nodded. "Only the best go there." I smiled back.

As the conversation wore down, I returned to my plate and started devouring the feast in front of me.

Man Forward, 13 of 21 (M/M Oral) by JT Michcock

Chapter 13: The Offer

Eric and I would be bunking together that night. I was back in my old room again. It was strange. He directed me over to his brother Dwayne's bed. We sat down across from one another.

Eric explained that Dwayne would be making do in a sleeping bag on the sun porch. When I asked whether it would be a little cold out there, Eric laughed and explained that his brother had been used to far tougher environments. For that matter, so had he.

"I really missed my brother," said Eric, punching a pillow to emphasize the point. "We used to have a lot of good times in here."

"Hmmmf," I said aloud. "I think my favorite times were when I had this room to myself. But that wasn't for long."

"Did you sleep with Tom?" he asked.

"Nope," I responded. "He slept in the room across the hall with my brother Mike. I was in here with Phil until he left for college. For two wonderful years, I had this room all to myself."

Eric screwed up his face a little. "That's weird. I hated being alone. Whenever Dwayne had to be out of town in a hockey tournament, I felt lonely being in here all by myself."

I laughed. "That's hard for me to figure out," I said. "This house ain't very big. With three brothers besides me and parents, the thing I wanted most was to be alone."

Eric gave me an odd look.

"Chris," he said, "I don't think I could never get used to being alone."

"That's different," I responded with a smirk. "Is that something that's genetically programmed into you?"

Eric paused for a second and scratched his chin. "Actually, yeah, it is," he stated matter-of-factly. "There are certain genes that I have that make me a 'joiner.' Pretty much everyone has them and this makes us all more sociable."

I opened my mouth slightly. I knew I shouldn't have been amazed, but I was.

"How the hell can you be genetically programmed to be more sociable?" I stammered, the whole concept of having your social skills wired into chromosomes being something alien to me.

"I'm not a geneticist or anything," Eric said, "but I know that certain responses you have to social situations are biological. With certain genes, you're less likely to socialize. Not that it's impossible.

It's just less likely.

"Besides," he continued, "you have to realize how everyone is made to feel a part of society from almost the day they're born. No one is ever made to feel left out, no matter what. Things like coaches and cadres help you out."

"I've heard of cadres," I responded, recognizing the term had come up frequently in my reading. "Those are groups of boys and everyone is supposed to belong to one."

"Yep," he responded, "you get your cadre when you're eight. You're assigned a unit by Man Forward based on shared interests and what you can bring to the group."

"Why eight?" I asked.

"That's Joshua," responded Eric. "He formed an unofficial cadre with seven other boys on his eighth birthday. These were other guys in his class who he hung out with. Three of them died at Uniontown." Eric looked somber for a moment before continuing.

"One of the first things Men Forward did was to establish cadres for youth," he said. "Joshua said that in order for a boy to learn how to become a man, he would have to learn early on how to work with other men. Cadres teach you important things about watching out for each other, helping out. From the day you join, you're made to feel a part of something greater than yourself." Eric's words seemed practiced, almost as though he were reciting some ritual.

I shook my head. "But what happens if some kid moves away, doesn't that wreck everything?"

"Well," he continued, "not very many people move away. If your dad gets a transfer to some other city, he just commutes there. No place on Earth or even in the solar system is that far away."

"I remember one kid in my cadre, Joey. His father was with the Marine Corps and he got transferred to Europa. He spent a lot of time in ERBs but was never gone for more than a few days at a time."

That made sense. I knew from my trip to San Francisco that it only took minutes to travel there. The ERB network made everything near.

"You must have made a lot of trips back home when you were in the army," I said, imagining how even in an asteroid belt any place must have been more than a few hours away.

"Nah," said Eric, "you only get two annual leaves each year. You're supposed to be away from your family while you're in the service. It's all part of learning how to stand on your own feet."

"Are your cadre members with you in the army?" I asked.

"Nope," he said. "As a matter of fact, cadre members aren't allowed to serve together. Your job is to create new friendships and relations with men other than your cadre. You use the skills you learned in the cadre to create cooperation in your unit."

"You sound like you're reading from a script," I opined.

Eric smiled and nodded slightly. "Even so, it's all true, you know," he laughed. "Even if I didn't remember the words, I would still believe it because I know it's true."

I wrinkled my brow. "How did the Marine Corps dad get away if you couldn't?"

"Different rules when you have kids," explained Eric. "The new guys don't have any kids."

"Not even illegitimate?" I asked, smirking.

Eric rolled his eyes. "Damn few illegitimate kids these days," he responded

"I suppose that's illegal," I responded. "Or do you have abortions happening all the time?"

Eric smiled. "It can be very difficult for the guy," said Eric. "It's also really bad for the girl.

"You see, if I were to get a girl pregnant and I wasn't in a position to marry her . . . " Eric lifted up his hand and made a gesture of scissors cutting.

"Huh?" I asked.

"You have no rights to see the kid and you have no duty to support the kid -- that's the girl's father's job," he explained. "And if you're the man, you get sterilized. So you can't have any kids ever again. That's the law."

My jaw dropped. "Sterilized?" I asked.

"I can't imagine anything worse," continued Eric.

I shook my head in disbelief. "What about the girl, does she . . . "

"Oh no," he said, "the girl isn't sterilized. The person that gets the worst is the guy. You are pretty much thrown away, society won't have anything to do with you.

"It's only slightly less horrible for the girls too," continued Eric. "She won't likely to get married soon after that."

"So," I shrugged, "you have to get married and you avoid this?"

Eric returned the shrug. "Pretty much," he continued.

"But why not get married and then get divorced?" I asked.

"That's not going to fly," said Eric. "Once you have a kid, it's almost impossible to get a divorce."

"But if they sterilize the guy, why don't they sterilize the woman too?"

Eric looked thoughtful. "How you look at the situation depends on whether you are a man or woman. For a man, it doesn't matter as much to have a kid. That's biology. A guy can spend all day getting women pregnant.

"A woman, on the other hand, has a lot more invested. They can only have a limited number of kids over their life. They have to make every opportunity count. A woman who has an illegitimate baby will be less likely to repeat that mistake, a guy just wouldn't care, so . . . they snip him."

I shook my head. "I don't know if I'll ever fit in," I said after a while.

"You seem to be doing okay," said Eric.

"Oh?" I said, a bit sarcastically. "Haven't you noticed I'm the only gay guy in the universe below a hundred? "

Eric shrugged. "You seem to have changed a lot since you got here," he responded. "I've noticed that you've become different."

A puzzled expression appeared on my face. "Different?" I stammered. "I haven't changed any. I don't think I've changed." Something Eric said hit a nerve, but I couldn't put a finger on it.

Eric shrugged again. "I think you have," he said. "You seem more adjusted. You aren't acting so . . . weird."

"Weird?" I asked defensively. "I'm not weird. Take that back!"

"Like that," explained Eric. "You would never say something like that when you first got here.

"You've become more assertive," he continued. "And the way you speak has even changed."

For a few seconds I just sat there, doing my own self audit. Something inside my head was clicking. Without thinking about it, I raised my hand to my neck. When I realized what I was doing, I stopped myself short and pulled out my hand to look at it.

From as far back as I could recall, whenever I was nervous or anxious, I would place my right hand up to my neck. I hadn't done that lately. I would also wave and gesture expressively with my hand without thinking about it. That was also something I seemed to not be doing less of lately.

"I don't know how to answer you," I said. Listening to my words come out, I noticed the tone seemed different, deeper in pitch and tone.

This was something I didn't realize was happening. Was I getting used to my new environment? The world I was in now was more masculine certainly. Was I picking up certain social cues? That must have been it.

The day after day onslaught of macho culture must be affecting me.

This discussion wasn't making me feel comfortable. I decide to change the subject.

"Anyway," I said, shaking off the prior discussions, "you have to tell me about what you and your cadre did.

"First off, who was in your cadre?" I asked.

"I had seven other guys," said Eric. "There was Marcus, Eddie, John . . . All are still around here."

"Do you talk to them?" I asked.

"Fairly often," explained Eric. "We're all getting together on New Year's Day to watch bowl games. Except for Ted, another cadre member who's visiting his wife's relatives."

"Married already?" I asked. "Isn't he a bit young?"

"If you don't go to college, you often get married right away," he said. "Eddie's married too, girls they met through high school."

"How do you meet in high school if you have separate schools?"

"There are ways," said Eric, smiling. "I dated pretty regularly in high school, unchaperoned for the last year."

"You have a girlfriend?" I asked.

"Not now," said Eric. "There is someone I'm interested in at Loyola."

"Who is that?" I asked.

Eric shrugged shyly. "Just a girl in my economics class," he said.

"Are you still a virgin?" I asked.

Eric looked at me, somewhat shocked. "Guy's aren't virgins. Only women are virgins."

I smiled and he smiled back. "I think you know what I mean."

"Nope, I haven't," said Eric. "Not yet, anyway. Except in the cyber rooms."

"Ever have sex with a guy?" I asked.

Eric opened his mouth slightly and closed it quickly. "That's a strange question to ask."

I was intrigued. There was something Eric definitely didn't want to tell me. I paused for a moment and it hit me from out of the blue.

"You've had sex with guys?" I exclaimed. "Tell me more."

Eric shifted about uncomfortably. I had clearly brought up a topic he was not particularly interested in discussing.

"Why the hell are you asking the question?" he asked, almost pleading for me to stop the line of inquiry.

"Enquiring minds want to know," I responded. Beat. "That's an old expression from my days."

Eric looked at me for the longest time, his brow creased with uncertainty. My own brow was moving up and down, urging him to explain. "Look," said Eric, finally continuing, "since I'm your coach, I have to be honest with you.

"The fact is that almost every guy has some sort of sexual experience with others guys. It's always involuntary though, on one guy's part."

"Rape?" I asked, curious as all hell to hear more.

Eric paused. "We call it hazing," he explained. "It's extremely common between guys and it's just something that happens . . . "

"Well," I said, "go on."

Eric looked flustered. "When I was in seventh grade, the upper class men would go after the younger guys. The goal was to force you to perform oral sex on them."

"Did you?" I asked.

Eric paused again. He was clearly uncomfortable discussing the matter. "Like every other guy," he said. "When I got into ninth grade, I did the same to another seventh grader."

I sat there partly amused, partly appalled. "Doesn't anyone try to stop this?"

Eric gave me a disbelieving look. "No, of course not," he said. "It's part of the hazing. It's part of the passage into manhood. It only gets stopped if it gets out of hand."

I looked at him for a long minute. "When does it get out of hand?"

"If a guy demands too much, it's stopped," said Eric. "The cadres usually intervene. It's a self-correcting problem.

"The same type of thing was going on in your time too. You just didn't hear about it," continued Eric. "The difference nowadays is that we know what's going to happen and we anticipate it. It's something we all expect and there are rules for how it's supposed to work. Back in your time, there were no rules. That's why it got out of hand at times and sometimes someone got seriously hurt."

"That never happened to me," I responded.

"You were never hazed?"

"Not like that," I said. "Quite frankly, I wish some guys had made me blow them. I probably would have enjoyed it."

"I think they probably knew that," said Eric. "I think that's why it never would have happened to you."

I felt suddenly self-conscious and took Eric's point for what it was worth. The whole idea of hazing was that you had to go through something unpleasant. Fellating an upperclassman would have been my idea of an enjoyable experience, even in seventh grade. If I had been forced, I would not have been allowed to enjoy it due to my own orientation. That was a negative experience that would have eluded me.

"Why not stop it?" I asked. "There's nothing positive about putting someone through that."

Eric looked away for a second, deep in thought. "It's not about positive," he said slowly. "Lots of different things shape you and not all of them can be good. Going through the experience helped to shape me, both being forced to perform as well as forcing another kid.

"It's character that's being shaped."

I stared at him. He was just sitting there with a smile on his face, sublimely confident that he knew what he was talking about.

"Why does everything have to be so hard?" I asked. "With all this technology I've seen, people shouldn't even have to work, there should be robot taking care of things and you can sit at home all day long."

"What kind of life would that be?" Eric responded. "Look, one of the things that we learn at school, from our parents and our coaches is that there are three components that come together to make life worth living . . . "

"The three-part test of Man Forward?" I asked.

"Exactly," responded Eric. "It's what the triangle, circle and square represent."

"So popular, it was included in the North American Patriarchy's flag," I said, a trace of sarcasm lifting to the surface.

Eric looked at me silently for a moment. "And those symbols mean a lot to everyone in this country."

I smiled back. I wanted to hear what he had to say.

"The circle symbolizes the mind and the power of intellect," continued Eric. "The triangle represents the spirit and the power of character.

"The square represents the physical, the human form and its workings, the pinnacle of evolution."

"I've heard all this," I said. "I guess my problem is that I smell bullshit. The principles are fine on the surface, but the execution is all bullshit."

"How so?" asked Eric, sitting back to hear me out.

"The little I know about Men Forward tells me it's an organization out to advance men while keeping women in their place," I explained. "The whole premise of the organization is that there are certain things women should not do, even if they are capable of doing so. You serve the stereotypes at the cost of the exceptions.

"It's stuff like this that drives me crazy."

For a second, Eric screwed his lips in thought. He jumped up and walked over to a desk and pulled up a display pad. He touched the screen a few times before returning to sit next to me on the bed.

"This is from my last year of high school," he started, "this text is from the book we were using in government class."

He handed me the display and the screen showed the caption "Affirmative Action." I looked at the screen and looked up at Eric, giving him a puzzled expression. I didn't get it.

"Read the first couple of paragraphs," said Eric, tapping on the screen.

I read the passages. The section contained a description of affirmative action and how it worked during my time. The second paragraph noted how the system was inherently flawed. These were programs designed to give help to those who had previously suffered discrimination and they assumed because a person was black, Hispanic, female or otherwise a member of an "out" group, they would have been subject to past discrimination that required remedying.

While this was mostly true, it was not universally so. In fact, many of the supposed beneficiaries had never been exposed to rampant discrimination. The text recounted an example of a black man who had been raised in an upper-middle class environment, gone to private school and otherwise had all the benefits of an enriched environment. The contrasting case was a white man who had grown up in poverty, attended a lousy school and had otherwise been denied a nurturing environment.

The text noted that both men had applied for positions at a major university. Test scores and grades showed them to be roughly equal in academic ability. But the black man had obtained a position as a result of affirmative action, his race alone serving as an advantage.

I looked up at Eric after reading. "So," I said, "what's your point?"

"How did you feel about affirmative action?" he asked.

I shrugged. "It was something necessary in our time to correct problems of past discrimination," I responded.

"So, you approve of the practice," said Eric, his mouth purse in anticipation of my response.

"Well," I said, waving my hands in the air, "it was something that was necessary."

"Even though situations like this arose where it wasn't needed?" he asked.

"The intent of the law was to promote a worthwhile goal, and not every law can be perfect," I responded. As the words left my mouth, I knew I had been caught.

"Exactly," said Eric, "the laws we have aren't perfect either, but they serve the greatest needs."

"But affirmative action sought to make all things equal," I nearly shouted. "What you're doing is the exact opposite, you make things unequal as all hell."

"So," said Eric, a scowl on his face. "That's how things started out in nature and that's how they will forever be. You think by trying to force things to be equal between men and women you're going to make any changes? Look what happened at Uniontown. . . ."

"Well, you should have to try," I broke in, my voice getting darker.

"Try to do what?" asked Eric, somewhat incredulous. "I could try to put clothes on all the cows in the barn, but what's that supposed to prove?" With this he began laughing hysterically.

I picked up a pillow and tossed it at him, good-naturedly. Eric in turn picked up his pillow and began swatting me with it. I buried my head in the covers laughing my ass off.

"Damn," said Eric, "I haven't beat the crap out of anyone with this pillow since Dwayne." His attention distracted, I bolted up and tackled him, bringing him down on his bed. He moved too fast for me and, without a whole lot of struggle on my part, was soon seated atop me.

"I've got an idea," I said, my muffled voice emerging under the covers.

"Whazzat?" asked Eric, his pummeling of me slowing only slightly.

"Stop whacking me first!" I exclaimed. With this, the hitting stopped and I arose and plopped back on the bed. Eric jumped back on his own bed and sat back to listen

"How long has it been since you had a blow job?" I asked.

Eric sat back startled. "What the hell kind of question is that?" he asked. His mouth was on his chest.

"I'm serious, I said," I said, my lips curled up in a smile. "Since I got here, I haven't given anyone real a blow job and I want to do it."

The look on Eric's face was a combination of being appalled and amazed at the same time. He finally shut his mouth and shook his head.

"Guys don't do that anymore," he said.

"You just said you had to blow some guy," I responded. "And you made some other kid blow you."

Eric shook his head slowly. "But that was the hazing," he said. "You don't do that sort of thing because you want to do that. It's a way to gain submission."

I arose slowly from the bed and planted myself between Eric's legs.

"Pretend I'm the guy you made do you," I said, looking directly in his eyes. Eric returned the look with a disbelieving glare. By his reckoning, a guy who actually wanted to give a blow job was something he had no idea existed.

"I . . .can't," said Eric, stammering and shaking his head, "That would be wrong."

"Look," I said, "you're my coach and you're supposed to help me out. This is one thing I need."

"Coaches are supposed to keep you on the straight and narrow," he responded. "They can't haze you."

"They're also supposed to help you score," I replied. "I read that in the coaches' manual. At least the first coach. He supposed to help you find sex."

Eric looked scared. He shook his head, "what you're talking about is setting someone up with the cyber machines. First coaches do that for the charge when you hit puberty, after the coach gets off his military duty." I moved my hands along his legs and rubbed softly along his thighs.

"Well, you're back from the military, and I already know about the cyber stuff, so the only thing you have left to teach me is some of the real stuff.

"Besides," I continued, "you have to admit that I'm a special case and I need special attention." I opened my mouth and pointed my finger inside.

I lifted my hand up to his pants and began undoing his belt buckle.

Eric's mouth returned to his chest, but he sat there, almost fascinated by what was happening.

I looked up seeking approval, the glance that was returned was hardly dissuading. He was waiting for me to make my move. I slowly unzipped his fly until I saw the white of his underwear, keeping one eye one his face.

Getting more aggressive, I reached under the fabric and produced the flaccid tool underneath. Moving as fast as I could, I swallowed him inside me.

At the outset, I felt a great sense of relief as I realized that I was finally getting something "real" as opposed to the cyber kind. I licked and lapped greedily at Eric's tool, bringing finally to a seven-inch erection.

Eric sat back, his eyes moving to the ceiling. A slight moan passed through his lips.

I continued to grind my face onto him. No doubt with my experience this was the best blow job Eric would ever experience. I lunged my face down to take all of him into me. For a long minute, I maintained my position, my ragged breathing moving across Eric's crotch and back into my nose. I smelled his aroma as it wafted into my nostrils.

Suddenly, I slowed to a stop. There was something wrong. I felt myself getting nauseous as the aroma sank into my skin.

My next recollections were hazy. My head was spinning and I felt myself lose consciousness. All I can remember is grunting angrily and removing my mouth from Eric's cock. Eric had looked down on me and my fist landed in his face. I remembered the blood.

Man Forward, 14 of 21 (M/M NS) by JT Michcock

Chapter 14: The Next Time

Friday, December 25, 2122

Sitting in the hospital waiting room, I glanced up to see Dan arriving. He was dressed in ski clothes. I knew from talking to him before the holidays that he and his family were planning a ski trip somewhere in Michigan. He didn't look pleased.

"What the hell happened?" Dan asked, his face displaying both concern and anger. Fortunately, there were very few people hanging around the emergency room to hear this exchange.

I sat up, my shirt still sporting blood stains. I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

"Chris?" said Dan, more concern starting to creep in. "What is it?"

"I don't know what happened," I blurted out. I shook my head in disbelief. I really couldn't explain it. My first clear memory was being loaded in Grandpa Matt's transport being taken silently to the hospital.

Dan sort of glared at me. I looked up at him, my face red in embarrassment and filled with fear.

"Are they going to arrest me?" I asked, my voice nearly squeaking.

Dan shrugged. "You just broke his nose," said Dan, his voice indicating a lack of concern. "They don't arrest you for that."

"I'm just surprised Eric didn't paste you."

I looked up at Dan. He was dead serious. My mouth flew open as I shook my head in disbelief.

"You folks sure are violent," I muttered into my hands.

Dan began roaring with laughter. I looked up and glared at him.

"What the hell's so funny?" I asked, failing to see the humor.

"You're the one who belted Eric," said Dan. "And you're complaining about how we tolerate violence. I find that to be really funny."

I looked down again, this time mostly in embarrassment.

"What exactly provoked this?" asked Dan after he regained his composure.

"I don't remember," I responded. "It was a very strange experience. My memory is cloudy and I can't remember certain parts."

"What do you remember?" asked Dan.

I looked up at Dan for a second. "I'd rather not talk about it." Dan stood there silently, getting ready to frame his next question.

"Chris," he said, "I'm a bit concerned that you wouldn't remember what happened. I think you should see a doctor about this."

I nodded in agreement. It was something that concerned me after the fact. I felt so different. I could sense that there was something going on with me, but I didn't know what it was. Maybe I was rebelling against the world around me. This was my means of coping.

"Dr. Greiner," I heard. It was Merilee. I was surprised to see her here. Apparently so was Dan.

"Merilee," said Dan, bowing his head, a look of surprise on his face. "I didn't expect to see you here.

"We were just trying to figure out what happened."

Merilee removed her coat and placed it on one of the chairs. "Well, since it involved Chris and Eric, I though I would show up and see if I could help." Dan took off his coat and laid it next to Merilee's.

"How did you get here?" asked Dan.

"My dad brought me," explained Merilee, "he's waiting for me in the car."

"How did you find out about this?" asked Dan.

"Chris called me," said Merilee, nodding toward me.

Dan looked at me. I shrugged.

"I thought she could stop you from beating me up," I said.

Dan looked at me strangely and shook his head in disappointment. He turned toward Merilee.

"Well," said Dan, "if you can help us get any additional information, I would certainly appreciate your help."

Merilee looked at us and sat down quietly next to me.

"How's Eric doing?" she asked.

"He's fine," said Dan. "Just a broken nose."

Merilee shivered, "poor Eric." Dan smiled at her.

"He'll be fine," said Dan, his tone evidencing a lack of concern.

"So," continued Dan, turning to me, "you were going to tell me about what you do remember?"

I opened my mouth and looked at Dan and Merilee. "I can't do that."

"Why not?" asked Dan.

"Um, Merilee's here," I said, focusing my eyes on my hands. Dan looked over to Merilee and smiled.

"Could you excuse us for a minute?" said Dan. Merilee nodded.

"I'll check on Eric," said Merilee as she got up and walked over to the nurses station.

"Okay," said Dan, "what happened?"

"I was giving Eric a blow job and I hit him," I blurted.

Dan paused for a minute. "Was he hazing you?" he asked. "Coaches aren't supposed to do that. I'm going to have to talk to him."

"No," I shook my head, "I wanted to do this. Or at least I thought I did." I was surprised to hear that Dan had picked up on the hazing thing. Was it something that happened often? Did it happen to him?

"Then why did you hit him?" asked Dan, utterly confused by my motives.

"I wish I could tell you," I responded. "I still don't remember why I did it."

Dan let out a sigh and sat back silently. Across the waiting room, Merilee was speaking to the duty nurse. A male nurse, I noted. Since it was past 10:00 p.m. there were only a few female nurses there to handle personal matters with the female patients.

My eyes focused on Merilee. She was talking to the nurse, nodding her head and talking more. For some reason I couldn't keep my eyes off her. I looked down her body and noticed the curves. My head was feeling like it was swimming again. I swallowed hard as I screwed my eyes tight. There was something wrong here.

Merilee returned and I was composed enough to open my eyes and look up.

"They're releasing Eric shortly," said Merilee. "He got hit at an odd angle and it broke open some major blood vessel. They've got the bleeding under control but they want to give him a pint of blood before he left."

"Do they need a donor?" I piped up. I was suddenly hit by a wave of guilt.

"Donor?" asked Merilee, somewhat puzzled.

"No blood donors needed," responded Dan. "We have substitutes that we use."

"We can go in to see Eric, if we want," said Merilee. "Eric said he wanted to see Chris."

I looked at Dan. Dan looked back at me. "What should I do?" I asked.

"Go see him," said Dan. "I'm sure he'd like to know what happened."

I braced myself and got up on my feet. After receiving a few directions from the nurse, I wound my way back to the holding room.

Eric was lying on a temporary bed, the front of his shirt covered with dried blood. Around his nose there was some sort of covering.

"Hi," I said nervously. I wasn't sure how to start the conversation.

"Hey," said Eric, a slight smile cracking his face.

"How are you?" I asked.

"Fine," said Eric, "nothing major broken."

"Eric, I'm so sorry," I said, feeling my knees turn to jelly.

Eric shrugged, a look of distaste in his face. "Don't apologize," said Eric. "It's not really dignified."

I looked back at him confused.

"If I had been hazing you, you would have been perfectly entitled to try to punch me," said Eric, "it's something that I should have been prepared for."

"But you weren't hazing me," I added. "I wanted to do that."

"Well," said Eric, a look of confusion on his face, "if you wanted to do it, then why the hell did you hit me?"

"I dunno," I said. "I can't figure that out."

Eric looked at me with an odd expression.

"Come here," he said, gesturing to have me come closer to the bed.

I walked over and Eric reached out and grabbed me by the scruff of the shirt, pulling my face within inches of my own.

"Next time, asshole," he said loudly, "I hit back!

"You got your one free shot."

I shook my head vigorously. "Eric," I said, "I didn't mean to do it."

"Next time," said Eric, pointing his finger in my face, "remember that." With that, he released my shirt and shoved me back.

I walked back to the waiting room. I thought I'd might start to cry, but I was too much in shock. I sat down quietly next to Dan and Merilee. Both of them looked at me.

"It's private," I said. I turned my attention back to my hands. I made a fist out of my right hand. This was the weapon I had used. For some reason, I felt a strange emotion. Pride. I shook my head and the thought flew out of me. There was no reason to be proud.

Dan flew Eric and I back home after the discharge. Except for a couple of pain pills he was provided on his exit, Eric was done with his treatment. We were silent during the ride. When we arrived at Eric's house, it was already 5:00 a.m. Eric's mom Lucille was waiting for him, his father and all the other family members were in bed.

A cup of hot chocolate greeted us in the kitchen. Aunt Lucille spoke as she served us, not mentioning anything about the incident. With our cups emptied, she sent both of us to bed.

Eric and I stripped down silently and headed into our respective beds. There would likely be more to be said, but not now. I simply covered myself up with the sheets. I looked at the clock, almost 3:30 a.m. I rolled over and soon fell asleep.

I woke up the next morning with a pounding headache. It must have been the stress of the prior night, I thought. I looked over and Eric was in the process of rousing himself. The clock said 8:05. It was time to get up.

Christmas morning had arrived. The thought echoed through my head. I had missed quite a few over the past few years.

I sat up and smelled coffee almost immediately. Maybe that'd get rid of this headache, I thought. Getting out of bed, I began putting on a new set of clothes.

"Hey," murmured Eric from behind me.

"Hey," I said sheepishly. The events of the night before rushed past my eyes.

Getting out of bed, Eric had a blue adhesive strip attached along the length of his nose. The nose was definitely broken -- and looked way out of line -- but the patch was supposed to control the bleeding.

"How are you?" I asked.

Eric sat up and brushed the sleep from his eyes. "Okay," he said, tapping the top of the strip and wincing. "It's still hurting."

"Can I get you an aspirin or something?" I asked as he pulled himself out of bed.

"Nah," said Eric smiling now, "it isn't that bad."

"Are you pissed off at me?" I asked.

Eric shrugged. "Not really," said Eric. "I'll heal." The lack of animosity struck me. I knew that if someone had slugged me I would have been upset indefinitely.

We both dressed silently and headed out of the bedroom and down to the living room. Eric's parents, Grandpa Matt and Dwayne were there already gathered around the tree. From a completely objective viewpoint, I saw a pleasant family engaged in celebrating Christmas. Very Norman Rockwell, when you got right down to it.

"Morning Chris," said Uncle Simon, smiling at me. "I think I have a couple things under here just for you." With this, he went under the tree to grab at a couple of the wrapped boxes.

"Good morning," I said, still somewhat shyly. I was still concerned about how Eric's parents would treat me after what had happened.

"Good morning, Chris," said Grandpa Matt, Aunt Lucille and Dwayne in turn. "And Merry Christmas," added Grandpa Matt, handing me a small wrapped box.

"Thank you," I said to all assembled. "Thank you Grandpa Matt," I said as I turned to the present he handed me.

I opened up the wrapping and the box inside. It was an ID bracelet. I looked on the top and it said "Hoover." No first or middle name.

"That belonged to your brother Tommy," said Grandpa Matt solemnly. "He got that from his wife Patricia while they were dating."

I looked at Grandpa Matt, my mouth opened. After a while, I spoke, "sir, this belongs to you," I said attempting to hand it back. Grandpa Matt would have none of that.

"It's yours, Chris," he responded, tapping a finger to his forehead. "I have a lot of memories of my Grandpa Tommy," he continued. "And I know he would want you to have this."

I looked at the bracelet and attached it around my wrist. I was stunned at the generosity. Here was something my brother had worn and had passed down two generations.

"Thank you," I said quietly. When my composure returned, I turned my attention to look under the tree.

"That big red-wrapped box is from me," I said, gesturing to a far corner. Dwayne reached under and passed it over to me. I gave it over to Grandpa Matt. "This is for the family, I wasn't sure what to get, so I made something."

A murmur of approval arose from the other Hoovers. Grandpa Matt tore open the wrapping, with Lucille making sure it got disposed of. Underneath was what I had made. Grandpa Matt looked at the two items somewhat mystified.

"They're Afghans," I said. "I knitted them."

Grandpa Matt looked pleased, but a bit surprised.

"Knitted?" I heard Dwayne mumble.

"They're very nice," said Aunt Lucille. "We can always use Afghans for the furniture."

"They're in neutral colors," I explained. "I didn't want them to clash with your decor."

"They're very nice," repeated Aunt Lucille.

"Thank you, Chris," said Uncle Simon.

"Merry Christmas," I said, as heartfelt as I could muster. In the back of my mind I knew that they had probably never met a man who knitted before. Well, they met one now.

I grabbed under the tree and pulled out a small package. This one I handed to Eric. "I got you something too. Merry Christmas."

"Thanks," said Eric, accepting the present. He unwrapped the gift and the lock popped out.

"Hey, an ID lock," said Eric. "It's one of the ones with a fingerprint code. I'm always needing another lock."

"I know," I said. "You keep complaining how you kept losing yours."

"Eric never could keep his locks," said Aunt Lucille. "The boy was always losing his locks in school."

Eric blushed. "C'mon Mom," he said, somewhat embarrassed.

"This lock is special," I explained, pointing to one of the apertures on the side. "Push this."

Eric pushed it and the computer voice emerged. "This lock is the property of Eric Hoover, seventh floor, Mertz Hall, care of Loyola University."

"Hey," said Eric, laughing. "That's what I need. A lock who can tell you who owns it."

I opened the other two boxes that had been given to me. One contained underwear and socks. I blanched. My mother had given me the same thing often enough. The other was a very nice pullover jacket, perfect for spring."

"Thank you very much," I said.

"Now I'm going to get the coffee," said Aunt Lucille as she headed to the kitchen.

After the coffee was brought in -- Dwayne was being allowed his first cup -- everyone sat around the living room. I had almost forgotten the incident of the night before, until Dwayne brought it up.

"Hey Chris," said Dwayne, as he sipped his coffee, "why did you slug Eric?" My mouth dropped.

"Dwayne Thomas Hoover that is not an appropriate question," said Aunt Lucille. "This is Christmas and we're going to be spending it in a relaxed manner."

"Why don't you get ready for church?" said Uncle Simon to Dwayne.

Dwayne grumbled and headed upstairs. Aunt Lucille excused herself and returned to the kitchen. I sat there feeling embarrassed as all hell.

"Don't worry about it Chris," said Uncle Simon, "I spoke to Eric and know what happened."

I glanced up. The thought of Eric telling his Dad what happened was something foreign to me.

"Ordinarily, I would have given Eric a trip to the tool shed," said Uncle Simon, "but given what happened, I think he got what he deserved." It was Eric's turn to look embarrassed. Tool shed? I thought to myself. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

"As for you," continued Uncle Simon, "I have no idea how to handle this. You did something I have never heard of a man actually doing. At least not voluntarily.

"I am sure your head coach and you will want to discuss this."

"I know," I said, aloud. "Dan and Merilee didn't say anything last night, but I knew Dan wasn't happy."

"Merilee?" asked Eric, suddenly confused. "Merilee was there last night?"

"Yeah," I said. "She stopped by. I think she may have left before they released you."

"When did she leave?" asked Eric.

I sat there dumbfounded. I couldn't remember when she left. All I know was that she was there for a while. "I don't remember exactly."

Eric looked confused. "I can't see Merilee coming there. That would have been strange."

I shrugged. "Well, I am strange," I responded with a weak smile.

Eric's face continued to display disbelief. He shook his head briefly and the conversation changed.

For the life of me, I couldn't remember Merilee saying goodbye. The hospital trip must have taken more out of me than I thought. I was blanking.

We went back to sipping coffee. Eventually, we all finished up and headed off to church. The local Methodist church, I noted. My family had been strict Episcopalians although I had not been inside a church for a number of years.

Sitting there and hearing the minister talk about the miracle of Christmas I realized how little had changed in this institution. The story remained the same, about a baby who was born with the ideal of redeeming the world. The efforts toward redemption were to take place over many years and continue forward into this tiny twenty-second century church in the Iowa plains.

Man Forward, 15 of 21 (M/F Mast) by JT Michcock

Chapter 15: Adrift

Monday, February 1, 2123

The boat. We were all back in the boat.

There I was sitting along the one side. Dad was talking while pointing out to Tommy how to project the arm out to cast the line. Phil was steering and had the boat going at a fairly good clip. Mike was . . . napping. His baseball cap pulled over his eyes.

I smelled the lake air. There was a nice breeze rushing through my hair as the boat sped forward.

I pulled up a fishing pole from off the floor and took a look through it. The hook was baited. My eyes followed the line from the top of the pole along the shaft into the spindle. It was an impressive piece of equipment.

"Chris, be careful with that," said Dad. His eyes had concern. He had just bought the fishing rod. It was one of the pricier ones.

I looked at my Dad and he looked back at me. Pain. I could see it in his eyes. He was hurting.

The boat swerved and we suddenly went through a wetland area, the cattails making way for us to reemerge in our wake.

There was another boat out there. I could see it at a distance and it was coming toward us.

For a long while I just sat there, holding the fishing rod in my hand and watching the approaching boat approach from behind the cattails. I knew who was in it without the boat even coming into view.

As the boat approached, the person sitting in front came into view.

It was Joshua. He was about 11, the same age I was sitting in that boat.

He was looking at me.

There were three passengers in the boat. I recognized all three from their photos. It was the three who were with Joshua at Uniontown. It was the three who died.

As the boat passed, Joshua continued to glare at me. It was a look of expectation and regret. He was hoping for more from me, he was hoping I would have been more of a man.

As he went past, I croaked out the only words I had spoken.

"I'm sorry," I said, feeling my eyes well up with tears.

I woke up with a start. Lifting my head up quickly from the pillow, I nearly passed out as the blood rushed from my brain.

"I'm sorry," I repeated, the words echoing through my head. I didn't know why. I was so sorry for everything.

My head was throbbing. I got out of bed. The sun was just starting to come up. Going to the window, I parted the drapes to look outside.

Snow everywhere. The street lights and bare sunlight illuminated the late January blizzard that had hit the night before. They predicted twelve inches and that's what we got. The sky was clear now. In the mists, I could see the shoveling crews at work removing the drifts from the walkways and roads.

As I looked out, my nose pressed against the glass, my breath formed a haze on the window. I blew a humid patch on the surface. With my index finger I made the symbols. The triangle, the circle and the square. When it was finished, I casually wiped them away. Those symbols were everywhere now.

I went back toward the net terminal, slogging my way though some discarded dishes, articles of clothing and pop bottles. The place was a mess. I was usually particular about my surroundings but over the past few weeks, it seemed as though I was getting sloppier.

Pulling up the terminal screen, I checked the school bulletin board. All classes were cancelled except for basketball practice. That would mean the presentation I was supposed to give in journalism class would be delayed for another day. At Dan's suggestion, I signed up for a full class load this semester. Fortunately, Loyola was under a legal obligation to let me into any of their classes so I could finish my degree.

I checked the weather indexes on the morning edition of the Chicago Tribune. The whole Midwest got blanketed. Photos from various locations showed the aftermath of the storm. It looked very devastating but peaceful at the same time.

I gave myself a snide look. As advanced as these folks were, they still couldn't control the weather.

Turning back to the Tribune's headlines, I scanned through the lead article on political wrangling in Washington. The ruling Whigs had announced that they were expanding public lands on the Moon by acquiring a variety of parcels. The opposition Tories were demanding that Prime Minister Neeson how he was supposed to be funding these acquisitions without raising taxes. The NAP colonies on Mars were already complaining about the outrageous fuel and water levies. The Whigs were looking at elections in six months and the Conservatives were using the party's Mars policies to enhance their own political capital.

After finishing with the newspaper, I checked my email. My Sports Illustrated had arrived. I smiled. For some reason I was caught up in Loyola basketball. They were looking at a potentially undefeated season with one of the best teams they had fielded in decades. Already, there was talk of their being crowned PCAA champions and March Madness was still a month off.

I pulled up the Newsweek cover and sat back abruptly. Then I laughed. It was the Swimsuit Issue! This scheme for grabbing horny men's attention survived for longer than I would have expected.

I began clicking the pages. It was amusing looking at these rather modest tank suits and bikinis on the attractive ladies picked for the issue. A rather nice looking young lady with long blond hair was posing outside a domed pool located on Utopia Planatia. The pinkish bathing suit matched the background of the Martian surface behind her.

I kept looking. I was starting to wake up now. I felt strange. I felt . . .

Horny.

I shook my head, but I kept going through the pages. When I reached under my nightshirt and checked, sure enough, I was rock hard.

This didn't make any sense, I thought. That didn't stop me from looking. It had been over a month since I'd been to the cyber rooms. It just got boring. My brain started making excuses. The long dry spell I was having would have been stimulated by anything, I thought, including the beautiful young women that were posing . . .

Damn! I thought to myself as a gorgeous redhead came into view. Her eyes were bright blue. I zoomed in the focus on her face. Without even thinking, I suddenly realized that I had been stroking myself.

I felt my breath grow shorter as I moved the camera down the redhead's body. Her suit was one of the more revealing. I paused at her breasts and bent into the screen to look closer. I swallowed. My mouth was completely dry.

Was that a bit of nipple I saw? I looked closer and my nose pressed against the screen. Yes, I think it was. It was obscured. But there it was. I zoomed out.

The redhead's entire body came into view and I saw the tight outline around her crotch. She was beautiful. "Sandy," the caption said, that was her name.

I began stroking myself more quickly, closing my eyes and thinking about touching her. Touching Sandy. I looked back at the screen and I felt myself erupt.

"Shit!" I yelled aloud as the cum was all over now. I quickly went into the bathroom to get a wet towel. Discarding the night shirt, I returned nude to the scene.

It was only while attempting to clean up the mess that I realized that something was wrong. Something was seriously wrong.

I pushed through the last few yards as quickly as I could. The trip to Evanston had been an endurance contest given that public transit was running a minimal schedule and the ERBs could only take you to the bus stations. But I was almost there.

I moved my feet as quickly as I could through the drifts. Below the knee, my pants were soaking. The boots I wore gave only minimal relief from the cold and wet conditions. My breath labored as it appeared as a mist in front of me. Upon finally reaching the door to Dan's house, I felt like I had been through a war.

The entire neighborhood was covered with snow. Shoveling was being done by men in heavy winter coats in front of many of the houses. I ran across a few groups of boys with shovels who saw an opportunity to make a little money.

But I finally arrived. I looked at the front door and knocked. Within a few seconds, Dan opened the door to let me inside.

I cleaned myself off in the foyer as well as I could, Dan's wife Angie helping me remove some of my wet things and placing them next to the radiator that heated the home. When I was finally halfway presentable, Dan took me into the kitchen, scooting the kids upstairs to their rooms.

"What is this about your 'turning straight'?" Dan asked as we sat at the kitchen table.

"Turning straight," I repeated loudly, "as in heterosexual, as in liking women, as in . . . " My arms were flailing to emphasize the point.

"What happened?" asked Dan.

I decided that this would be a good time to be blunt. "I got the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated and started wacking off," I explained. "As in masturbated, as in choked the . . . "

"I get the point," said Dan, placing his hand on my shoulder to settle me down. "Maybe it's not uncommon for some gay men to have engaged in heterosexual fantasies on occasion."

"It's not like that," I responded, "it's everything else. I have absolutely no desire to see a man naked anymore. None. The thought of having sex with another guy makes me . . . nauseous. I'm looking at women and my eyes are focusing on their boobs.

"I don't know how you define straight," I continued, "but I think I know it when I see it."

Dan looked straight ahead, his face displaying no emotion. He was thinking.

"Your conduct lately has been noticeably different," said Dan, turning to me. "Quite a few people have mentioned this. I have attributed it mostly to your adapting to the current culture, but I realize that it's been more than that.

"I think you may be right."

I took a deep breath. "How is this happening?" I demanded.

"In all likelihood, you have been receiving some sort of therapy," Dan responded, "administered without your knowledge or consent."

I looked at Dan dumbfounded. Finally, I just shook my head in disbelief.

"How?" I asked quietly.

"I don't know," said Dan. "I believe it's necessary to take you to a doctor and check it out."

We both sat silently for the longest time. I looked over to Dan and tried to gauge his expression. There was nothing there, it was a blank look that I couldn't interpret one way or another. In the back of my mind I was sure he was masking his satisfaction that this was happening to me.

"Dammit," I said loudly, pounding my fist on the table. "Are you doing this?"

Dan looked at me. It was a look of disbelief and hurt.

"No," said Dan. "I would never do that."

I wasn't persuaded. "What are we going to do to fix it?" I asked.

"Chris," he said calmly, "I may not be a scientist, but I know it is possible to change someone's orientation through pharmaceutical and hormonal interventions. I suspect it works both ways.

"Now," said Dan, getting up, "first, we're going to feed you lunch and then we're going to trudge through the snow to see the doctors about this."

I looked at the wall clock. It was noon already. I was hungry. Maybe getting something to eat was what I needed.

Lunch had been pleasant enough. After I had cooled off a little, Dan brought in his wife Angie and four kids to meet me. I was kind of surprised that I had never met the kids before. Actually, I wasn't surprised at all when I thought about it. How would Dan explain me to these kids, his oldest was ten. They probably didn't even know what a gay person looked like.

I realized sitting there and listening to the conversations about the snowfall that there wasn't any gay person in the room.

Dan's oldest son was named Peter, Petey for short. He was the one to ask me questions while his younger siblings seemed to measure my responses. Mostly, Petey wanted to know the basics about me and I responded, explaining to him that I lived in the dorms at Loyola and my parents and brothers had died a long time ago. He seemed genuinely sad that I had lost my parents.

Nice kid, I thought. As I spoke to him, I discovered that he was in fifth grade now. I thought how soon it would be until he hit the seventh grade and his life would change irreparably. He belonged to this world.

Paul's little brother Bryan spoke up, telling me that, just turning eight he had gotten his cadre assignment, making sure I knew the names of each of the cadre members.

Afterwards, I put on my still partially wet clothing and Dan and I got in the flying car and headed over to Loyola Hospital. The place looked familiar enough and Dr. Moffatt, whom I had seen for a routine check up a month and a half before, was there to meet with me. The hospital was busy with a number of accidents related to the blizzard, but I got taken care of right away, getting a private room assigned to me and a battery of tests scheduled.

The tests that they gave were new to me but familiar. There was a blood sample taken via a painless suction device of some sort. I was inserted into something that resembled an MRI after that, the machinery buzzing as the peculiar rays went into my brain.

Like the hospitals of my day, there seemed to be a lot of waiting involved. Dan stayed with me during the course of the proceedings. It was going to be a while before the test results were compiled and we would have an opportunity to speak to the doctors. As the clock struck seven, Dan called home to inform his wife that we'd be there a while and we decided to head off to dinner.

"I told the doctors about your hallucination," said Dan, as we sat down with our trays.

I looked at him, a little surprised. "How the hell did that come up?" I asked.

"They asked me if you related any unusual things to me," he explained. "I felt that seeing Merilee at the hospital the night Eric was there with the broken nose was unusual."

I looked down at the food and started to pick at it. That had been distressing. When I later thanked Merilee for coming by the hospital that night she looked at me as though I were nuts. Dan gave me the same expression, stating that Merilee had not been there that night. I was so sure she was there that it was only after Merilee showed me her room reservation at the Florida hotel her and her family was vacationing at did I finally concede that I must have imagined the whole episode.

"Did the doctors say anything?" I asked.

"Not really," said Dan, "but they both looked as though it were something important."

We ate quietly for a while. After finishing, I figured it was time to ask more questions.

"What would you think if I were straight?" I asked Dan.

He shrugged. "It wouldn't mean anything to me," he responded. "My charge in being your coach doesn't change a bit."

"But what do you think, personally?"

Dan paused for a bit before answering. "To be perfectly frank, I would have been very pleased to hear that you would have decided to become straight," he said. "I've been raised in an environment where that sort of a decision is simply a given. I also feel that it would have been something that might have helped with your adjustment.

"That having been said, it pisses me off to no end that someone would have altered you without your knowledge and permission," he continued. That is a decision left to the person or to his parents."

I looked somber.

"Who did this to me?" I asked, suddenly feeling my anger well up in me.

"I don't know," said Dan, sensing my emotions. "But if there is anyway that we can find out, we will."

"What's going to happen to the person who did this?" I asked.

"Tampering with a person's brain is a felony," said Dan flatly. "If they catch this person, they will certainly put him in prison for a very long time."

I looked at Dan. His response was serious.

"I was afraid you might give this guy a medal or something," I responded sarcastically.

Dan responded with a nasty look and then just shook his head. "I'm coming to realize that you may never understand this," he said quietly.

"Or are you afraid I might understand too much?" I asked.

Dan looked at me. He knew I was baiting him. Licking his lips, he responded.

"I wonder sometimes whether you are capable of understanding anything," he said, his tone menacing.

I recognized the delivery method. He was trying to get me to back off. I sat back and smiled.

"I think you're the one who'll never understand," I responded quietly (are rather confidently). This was getting enjoyable, this verbal sparring.

Dan returned the smile. "I understand more than you know," he said. "But I think it's time to go back upstairs and see what the doctors have."

With this, we both got up from the table, our eyes in contact with each other all the time we did so. Silently, we exited the cafeteria on our way back to the laboratory.

"So," I said as we headed back, "do you think Workman's injury is going to slow down the team."

"No," replied Dan, "the coach has too much talent on the bench to let that happen."

Looking a little worn from the day's events, Dr. Moffatt introduced us to Dr. Jamal, the geneticist. My only surprise was that the geneticist doctor wasn't more imposing. A small brown skinned man in his mid-forties or so, Dr. Jamal spoke with a distinctly middle eastern accent when he explained what had happened.

"Look here," said Dr. Jamal, as he pointed to a flickering display screen on the wall.

"This is your hypothalamus, the anterior portion, Mr. Hoover," he continued, a greyish blob displayed. Dr. Jamal pointed to a darkened area near the center of the view. "As we look here, you can see this shaded area. This is the part of your brain that controls sexuality and directs sexual orientation. It is called the interstitial nucleus complex.

"Now contrast that with this image," he said, punching a couple of time on his pad, "with this image."

A new image appeared. The area looked to be the same, but the darker patch was distinctly smaller now.

"You notice the difference?" asked Dr. Jamal.

I nodded. "It's changed in size."

"These are quantum resonance images taken of your hypothalamus," he continued. "The first view you saw was how your brain appears now. The second image was taken at the time you emerged from suspension last October. This tells us that your brain has been altered."

"Altered?" I asked, concerned about what this meant.

"Let me explain," said Dr. Jamal, sitting down next to me.

"When you are a fetus in your mother's womb, around the sixth week of gestation certain chemicals become active. These are the hormones that create your gender. Everyone starts out in life with the potential to be either male or female. Depending on the type and quantity of certain hormones during this period, the sexual organs that develop are either male or female.

"One of those hormones is called Mullerian Inhibiting substance or MIS," he continued. "It is produced in order to prevent female organs such as ovaries, uterus and fallopian tubes from forming."

Dr. Jamal looked at me and I nodded my understanding. I had an idea of what he was talking about and recalled some of the information from my high school sex education class.

"In the case of a gay man, there is a variation in either the MIS or the receptors that are constructed in the brain. When a heterosexual male is being formed, part of the MIS breaks down and travels to the brain where it interacts with the hypothalamus. The MIS component defeminizes the brain to match the genitals being formed.

"In the case of a gay man, this defeminization is only partially effective," he continued. "In that instance, you develop a brain that is only partially male and partially female. The focus of your sexual desires will be toward persons of the same sex."

"So, I have a female brain?" I asked. "Sir, I don't feel like a female."

Dr. Jamal smiled. "Only partially female," he explained. "The MIS and receptors create partial redesign of the brain. This will vary depending on the number of Breen factors involved.

"If all of the Breen factors are present, which is a rare occurrence, then the person will become transgendered. Essentially, this is a person with a female brain trapped in a male body."

"Someone who gets a sex change operation," I offered.

"Yes," said Dr. Jamal nodding. "Except in these days, if a child were found to have all the Breen factors missing, the brain would simply be adjusted to make it match the body. It is much easier than surgically changing someone's sex."

I nodded. This wasn't as complicated as I thought it would be.

Dr. Jamal took a deep breath. "Looking at your brain, we can tell that it has been defeminized since your awakening."

"How, sir?" I asked.

"Blood tests that we have administered have displayed the residue of modified hormones that operate directly on the brain. For at least two months, your brain has been affected by these hormones, altering your sexual desires toward members of the opposite sex."

"But, sir," I asked, stammering a bit at what I thought was a lost point, "how did this get this into me?"

"That's the part that confused us too," said Dr. Jamal. "We suspected one particular method and, when we looked, we confirmed our suspicions."

Dr. Jamal arose and clicked another couple of buttons on his display. The image of the hypothalamus disappeared and was replaced by a small metallic-looking ball.

"Several hundred of these are in your body right now," he said.

I looked closely to see the structure of the substance. "What is it?" I whispered.

"This is a nanofactory," explained Dr. Jamal. "It is in essences it's a very small hormone generating factory creating various components. It's delivering these altered substances into your bloodstream and into your brain. These are the types of factories that can enter the bloodstream through the digestive tract. Essentially, you swallow them.

"At present," continued Dr. Jamal, "the factories are inert and are in the process of breaking down. However, we retrieved some from your system and have subjected them to microscopic analysis." Dr. Jamal paused.

"And?" I asked, trying to prompt what he didn't find.

"These are fairly standard factories that may have been accessed from any one of a number of doctors' offices or labs," he continued. "To that extent, it would be almost impossible to trace back the factories themselves to any particular source."

My heart sank. It would be impossible to find out who did this.

"We did, however, perform a molecular analysis of the factories and found something interesting," Dr. Jamal continued.

After punching up some more items on his pad, a chart appeared, this time with what appeared to be molecular names and substances.

"Here are some odd things that showed up on the scan," he continued. "In particular, look at these three molecular components here." The parts of the screen containing the three items were highlighted.

"After chemical analysis was performed, we determined that only one substance could have left these traces and was likely in place at the same time these factories were implanted inside you." Dr. Jamal pushed another key and a word and its definition appeared on the screen.

My jaw gradually dropped to the floor as the significance of this finding sunk into my mind.

"We have no idea how you came into contact with this substance or how it was administered," continued Dr. Jamal. "If we find out how you came into contact with this substance, we will find out when you were given these factories. For this, we need to ask you questions about where you've been and what chemical exposures you've had over the last few months."

I sat there silently. It all made sense, but it didn't.

I knew what had happened now. Mentally, I recalled how it had occurred. There was one question remaining that I could not answer.

Why did he do this to me?

Man Forward, 16 of 21 (M/M NS) by JT Michcock

Chapter 16: The Short Straw

Wednesday, February 3, 2123

I walked up to the door and knocked. The weather outside was almost identical to how it had been last October, overcast and cool. San Francisco was like that. I braced myself for the encounter. I was certain this wasn't going to be pleasant.

After a while, the door opened. I was greeted by a grim looking Marty Fields. He had been expecting me.

"Come in," he said quietly, swinging the door open slowly. I walked in, my face displaying the combination of anger and bewilderment. Within short order I found myself standing inside the living room.

"Why?" I asked as he turned to face me. "Why did you do this to me?" My voice was almost a shout, demanding to find out what had happened and why he did this.

Mr. Fields let out a sigh. "Let's sit down and I'll explain," he said, gesturing for me to sit.

"I should ask how you discovered it was me," he said, slowly sitting down.

"Dried absinthe residues in the nanofactories," I said. "Since this was the only place I've had absinthe in the last hundred years, I kind of figured it was you."

Marty shook his head. He knew he'd be discovered.

"The short answer to your question is that I did it because I promised to," he said, his eyes displaying a weariness I couldn't comprehend.

"Promised who?" I asked.

"Dr. Ted Leahey, actually," said Mr. Fields. "Your old boyfriend."

I sat back shocked. "You never said you knew Ted," I said. "How do you know Ted?"

Mr. Fields smiled. "Actually I sought treatment from him due to my own situation," he explained. "Dr. Leahey was one of the top geneticists at Harvard.

"Ted had a lot of things he wanted to do," he continued. "One of the most important things he wanted to do was to make amends to you. And also to make amends for some other bad things he did in his life."

I sat silently for a minute. That had been so long ago. I didn't know what to say.

"Chris," continued Mr. Fields, "you may not realize but Ted cared about you and held himself responsible for what he did.

"One of the things I promised him was that I would try to persuade you to change."

I looked incredulous at the old man. "Persuade?" I asked, my jaw hanging. "What persuasion did you use? You fucking drugged me."

"I know," he said somberly. "After meeting with you I decided that you might not be the easiest person to convince. I felt that the only way to get to you was to demonstrate."

My hands were balled up in fists. "I don't appreciate being used as a guinea pig," I spat out. I shook my head. This was unbelievable.

"What about everything you told me?" I said. "What about how you thought it was wrong to change someone's orientation?"

Mr. Fields looked at me somberly for a minute. "I lied," he said, turning his head away.

We both sat there somberly for a few minutes. The fireplace was crackling. The whole house was filled with loneliness and sadness.

"I need to explain something to you," Mr. Fields finally said. "I think it may help you understand."

I sat there, glaring slightly, and nodded my approval for him to continue.

"You see, unlike you, I wasn't born gay," he continued. "I was made this way."

I shook my head, not understanding. You were born that way, that much I knew. This didn't make any sense.

"When I was a year old," Mr. Fields continued, "my mother and her lover took me down to a clinic in Mexico. It was there that I received genetic therapy to give me an artificial chromosome.

"That chromosome was specially constructed to make someone gay."

Make someone gay? The thought struck me as peculiar. Why would someone want to be gay?

I caught myself. Wait, I thought, I am gay. Or I was. And I was happy being gay.

I shrugged. "What's wrong with that?" I said, almost a whisper. "I was gay and okay before I met you."

Mr. Fields stared at me and turned away with a slight smile. "You realize what you're saying, but even you don't believe it."

"I could see that much in your face," he continued, a little more forcefully, "you know as well as anyone that no one ever wants to be this way. Not now, not ever. The best you can hope for is a compromise of sorts, to make the best of what you have."

I paused. "I said what I meant," I responded, "and I do mean it."

Mr. Fields looked back up at me and sighed slightly. "I wish I could believe you," he said, "I really do.

"For all my life I have struggled with being gay, with being different. At the start, it wasn't that much of a problem because there were still so many gay people around. Then, when they announced how to make adults straight, I never felt so very alone.

"You see, there was nothing that they could do to fix me," he continued. "The chromosomal implant the Mexican doctor gave me wasn't very high quality. The doctors up here couldn't remove it without irreparably damaging my cells.

"I don't blame my mother, really. She was caught up with this radical lesbian feminist who persuaded her to give me the treatment. Quite honestly, I'm glad that this other woman died when I was five, because I would probably have killed her myself a few years after that." Mr. Fields' eyes lit up. He had meant what he said.

Mr. Fields say back in the chair and sighed deeply. I felt a shiver go through me.

"The story I told you about the straws was true," he said. "There really was a straw drawing ceremony and I really did get the short one."

"Did you try to change?" I interjected.

Mr. Fields nodded. "Several times," he continued. "Your friend Ted became one of my closest friends while I worked with him to try to change this. He was one of the discoverers of the orientation treatment for adults, although he would never allow himself to take any credit. I think his past mistakes kept him from claiming his due.

"The straws to me were a symbol that maybe I was being asked to be gay to serve a higher purpose. Maybe life had some limited role for me to play out. When I was talking to Dr. Leahey, I learned about you. I decided that you were a project waiting for me. You were a mission, so to speak. I can honestly say that I've been waiting to meet you for a very long time."

Mr. Fields got up and opened a vid screen on the wall. Punching in a few entries on the key pad, I watched him pull up some sort of library program. The screen flickered as a datatrans was being loaded.

"This is Ted's message to you," said Mr. Fields, gesturing toward the screen. "He recorded this about a year before he died."

I looked up at the screen and sat transfixed as the wizened face of my former boyfriend appeared. It was Ted, but he was so old.

"Hello Chris," he said, nodding to the camera, "I asked Marty to give you this recording if you ever awakened from your sleep. I'm not sure if you'll ever see this, but I wanted to let you know what happened after you got stuck in that drum and why I asked Marty to help you."

I sat back in my chair. I had to take this in slowly. Ted's appearance on the screen was something I wasn't prepared to see.

"After you got stuck in the deep freeze, I spent a good half-hour looking all over for you. I was half-panicked and turned the gross anatomy lab upside-down looking for you. I'm not sure why, but I knew there was something wrong. I knew you wouldn't up and disappear like that . . . and you were pretty drunk at the time."

I smiled to myself. I remembered the events of the night rather vividly.

"I finally looked inside the cryotube and there you were, in a fetal position, your skin was blue and your heart had stopped. I tried to revive you, but it looked like it was too late. I really did try. It was only then that I called an ambulance. I spent most of the night at the hospital with you and I was there when your folks got there the next morning.

"It was probably one of the worst days of my life," Ted continued, swallowing hard.

"When the doctors wanted to put you back in the freezer, I felt a glimmer of hope. They showed me the lab results and I knew that for some reason that your body was being protected. I was certain that someday we would be able to pull you out of there.

"Unfortunately," he continued, "it looks as though it won't be during my lifetime." A wave of sadness was on Ted's face.

The thought struck at the core of my being. He had been waiting for me to come back. I looked down and swallowed hard before turning my face to Ted's.

"I've asked Marty Fields to hold onto this recording if they could revive you," Ted continued. "I was certain that you'd find each other just due to the circumstances that you both shared. I knew also that you'd be one of the few gay people left in the world if you did come out.

"Marty may have told you that I was one of the people that developed the treatment to make gay men straight," Ted said. "I figured that you might take that the wrong way if I at least didn't try to explain it to you.

"I always knew you were one of those activist types," he said, finally cracking a smile, the gap in his teeth still present.

"Since you've been gone, the world's changed a lot. There is so much there now that's different. Different, but also better in some respects. One of those things is that you don't have to be gay anymore. Whether or not you want to believe that's better is a decision you have to make," he said shrugging.

"The thought of changing my sexual orientation was probably would have offended me if someone told me that in 1999. But since that time, I've seen a lot. I've had the opportunity to work with a lot of people in my line of work, including Joshua Hernandez. It's made me see the world from a much clearer perspective. I know now what it means to be a man. That much, we've all learned.

"I don't want you to rush into making any decisions. You should have a clear understanding of the world that's around you first. You should give the world a chance. It's not really that bad."

"I'm not sure if I'll see you before you see this tape," Ted said, swallowing hard. "I guess you may come out sooner than we think. But I hope all is well with you and you'll make the right decision."

Ted smiled and said goodbye. In an instant he was gone. I looked at the date, August 16, 2075. He must have been around one hundred-years-old then. I watched the screen go back into the wall. I felt empty inside.

Mr. Fields looked over at me. "Have the doctors concocted something to change you back to being gay?"

I nodded. "They're testing something now," I said, "they haven't actually changed anyone from straight to gay before so it's going to take a couple of months for them to build the nanofactories. But they are pretty certain that they can do it."

"Do they know about me?" Mr. Fields asked. From his tone, I could tell that he really didn't care one way or another. He was an old man now. There was little they could do to hurt him.

I shook my head. "I haven't told them anything," I said, "I didn't know for sure until you admitted it."

I sat quietly for a minute. Then I asked "why didn't you give me a chance to see this and then ask me if I wanted to be straight?" Mr. Fields looked at me, his brow creased from thinking.

"Like I told you," he said, "I was sure it wouldn't work. You came in here too feisty to be persuaded easily. I could see Ted's message to you making you even more convinced to stay that way.

"Then, when you got into your late thirties or so, you'd finally cool off enough to get the treatment. By that time, you would have lost a lot of your youth. And I probably would be dead by then.

"So I decided that the only way I could persuade you to get the treatment now was to give you a sample of what it was that you were missing missing. I knew as well that if you really didn't want to be this way the geneticists could concoct something to change you back."

I looked at him. "You didn't have any right to do this to me," I said, swallowing hard. "You invaded my body."

Mr. Fields looked solemnly at me. "I did what I believed to be right," he said. "I would do it all over again knowing what was best for you. Of all the people on this planet, I'm actually one of the few people that can speak authoritatively about the subject."

I got up and silently headed out the door. I didn't even bother to say goodbye. My mind was focused on holding my emotions in check. I had to go see the specialists the following week to be tested before the nanofactories were to be installed. I had a lot of things to do.

At that point, I absolutely hated Marty Field for what he had done to me.