It was just a Walmart, not a Belk or something, and I was probably just getting basic underwear, not anything I could show off at school like a skirt or dress. But it was my first time shopping for girl clothes and I was determined to enjoy it. I’d read a million scenes like this in various stories since I first got past the nanny software a couple of years ago, and now I was going to live it.

Pioneers

part 6 of 15

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story is set, with permission, in dkfenger's Trust Machines universe. It's a prequel to his stories, however, and I've written it to stand alone for readers who haven't read them.

Thanks to dkfenger, clancy688, MrSimple, Karantela, Icaria, and JAK for feedback on earlier drafts.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

By eleven-thirty on Saturday, I had the rest of my weekend homework done. I told Mom, and she said we’d go shopping right after she ate lunch. (I’d had a banana sandwich while I was finishing up my Geometry homework.)

“And I guess I need to tell your dad where we’re going,” she added with a put-upon sigh.

I heard raised voices from the garage a little while later, but I didn’t try to get close enough to hear. Some minutes later, Mom came and told me we were going, and we went out to Mom’s van.

“So where are we going to buy stuff?” I asked as we pulled out the driveway and down the street. I was wearing old boy clothes, baggy sweats and a T-shirt, saving my Venn machine outfit for school.

“I was thinking about the Walmart on the west side of Greensboro,” she said. “Nobody we know is likely to be shopping there. And...” She was quiet for a few moments. “I don’t want to have to explain things to the staff. We’re not going to mention that machine at the library, or the fact that you’re really a boy, or anything — we’ll just say you’ve had a growth spurt and need new things.”

“Or we could say I just lost a lot of weight. That’s true, it just leaves out stuff that’s none of their business.”

“Yes, that’s better.”

“So you’re going to tell them I’m your daughter?” I asked, smiling hopefully.

“Yes... it’s simpler with people who don’t know us, not having to explain.”

“Maybe you could practice calling me ‘Meredith’ now, so you don’t slip up?”

That was a step too far, I guess. She glanced at me with a furrowed brow before returning her attention to the road. “I’m worried about you, Tyler. Some of the things I’ve been reading online about transgender... There was a man who was mis-diagnosed as transgender when he really had multiple personalities, and he went through these irreversible surgeries before they figured out what was really going on with him, but it was too late. I’m terrified to think you might have multiple personalities or something, but after all that’s happened lately, I don’t know. Does this ‘Meredith’ feel like another part of you?”

“No, Mom. I’m Meredith. That’s the name I chose for myself, like you chose Tyler for me. But they’re just different names for the same me. A Tyler or a Meredith by any other name would be just as sweet.”

She couldn’t help smiling at that — just for a moment. Then her worried look returned, and she said, “I wish we could have gotten you an appointment with the counselor sooner.”

Given what I expected from the kind of counselor Mom and Dad would probably look for, I was glad of the temporary reprieve. But I knew better than to say so.

It was a forty minute drive to Greensboro — Mom really wanted to make sure we didn’t run into anyone we knew. After talking for a few minutes near the start of the drive, we lapsed into silence, and I pulled Dragonsong out of my bag and read several chapters. When we finally pulled into the Walmart parking lot, I felt like bursting into song. It was just a Walmart, not a Belk or something, and I was probably just getting basic underwear, not anything I could show off at school like a skirt or dress. But it was my first time shopping for girl clothes and I was determined to enjoy it. I’d read a million scenes like this in various stories since I first got past the nanny software a couple of years ago, and now I was going to live it.

So we went in, found the girls' clothing department, and asked one of the staff if she could take my measurements. “My daughter’s lost a lot of weight recently,” Mom said, and that word “daughter” gave me such a thrill I did a little happy dance right there. I’m guessing the woman thought I was just proud of having lost so much weight.

She escorted me into one of the dressing rooms and wrapped the measuring tape around my breasts, just under them, and so on and wrote various numbers down. I’d thought she’d ask me why I was wearing boy clothes, but she didn’t.

“Let me know if you need any more help finding things,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said, beaming.

So Mom and I picked up a couple of packages of panties that should be the right size, which didn’t take too long, and some socks, and then started trying on bras, which was a much longer process; the labels of the bras that wound up fitting me well only loosely related to the sizes the woman had written down for me. I wanted to get at least one that was lacy and decorative, but Mom only wanted to get plain ones.

“I’m spending my own money on it,” I pointed out. “And it’s not that much more expensive than the plain ones, not even $15.”

“No,” Mom said, surprising me. “If you spent most or all of your savings on girl clothes, you’d feel even more invested in this... questionable decision, and less willing to consider changing back because you might feel you don’t want to waste all that money. So I’m paying for them. Besides, who is going to see it?”

“Nobody,” I insisted. “But I’ll know I’m wearing it.” Supposedly, from the stories I’d read — mostly online fiction about trans girls, but also some real accounts from trans women — that would make me feel a lot more confident in social situations. Not that I wasn’t already a lot more confident than I was a week ago, but a little more couldn’t hurt.

“No,” she said again, and that was that. I wound up getting six regular bras, all fairly plain, and two sports bras, and then we started looking for gym clothes. I managed to talk Mom into buying a couple of better-fitting tops as well as a pair of shorts. I was going to get a pair of sweat pants for when it got colder, but she said: “That will give you a reason to put off changing back until after you’ve gotten some use out of them,” and I had to be satisfied with that.

Then I suggested the possibility of getting something nice to wear to church, and Mom shut that down fast; I didn’t push it.

So we checked out and headed home. I picked up Dragonsong where I’d left off and started reading, but after a few pages, something reminded me about Andrew, which reminded me that his date with Emilia would be starting about now. I felt a pang that didn’t go away no matter how much I tried to tell myself that Emilia, whoever she was, was probably better for him in several ways, that I didn’t have any claim on him, and so forth. But eventually I managed to focus my attention on the story again, and that helped more than all the reasonable, reassuring things I tried to tell myself.

When we got home, Sophia wanted to see everything we’d bought, and I showed her. Dad seemed pretty grumpy about our shopping trip, but didn’t say anything; I avoided him for most of the day, except at supper.

Sunday morning after my shower, I looked disgustedly at the boy dress clothes in my closet. Baggy jeans and T-shirts weren’t that bad by comparison; they were sort of androgynous in overall type, if not in cut and style. But I was going to look silly no matter which of those white or blue button-up shirts I wore, or which of those black or grey dress slacks. Not to mention the fact that my boy dress shoes would be too big for me, but I wasn’t sure if Mom and Dad would let me wear my Venn machine sneakers to church. I should have mentioned shoes to Mom while we were at Walmart yesterday. I sighed; no point in putting it off.

A little later I was in the kitchen, holding up my dress pants with one hand and carrying a belt with too few holes in it with another. “I need the ice pick to put another hole in this,” I told Mom. “And before you say anything about my shoes, I tried on my usual dress shoes and they’re way too big.”

She sighed. “Let me get something to mark the place we need to poke the hole. Wrap the belt around your waist...”

Dad stared at us in silence while we figured that out and cut a new hole, morosely sipping his second cup of coffee. He finally said: “It’s not too late. We could run by the library before church.”

“No, thank you, sir.”

He gave a long-suffering sigh and took another sip of his coffee. I got my belt on and tightened it up, then sat down to eat breakfast.

We didn’t leave for church at the usual time; when we’d finished breakfast and loaded the dishwasher, Dad said he had something to do before we left, and disappeared into his bedroom. That gave me more time to stew about what was going to happen before it happened. I was pretty nervous; I knew a lot of the people at church would be even worse about trans people than Mom or Dad. By the time Dad emerged and said he was ready to leave, we were going to be just a couple of minutes early, or barely on time, instead of our usual ten to fifteen minutes early.

The trouble started the moment we walked into the vestibule; Mr. Colton greeted us, and then did a double take at me. He was in his early fifties, but had retired several years earlier because of a workplace injury, and did a lot of volunteer work for the church and a couple of other local charities, including ushering and greeting on Sundays.

“Good morning! Where’s — Tyler, is that you?”

I started to say “I’m going by Meredith now,” but Dad talked over me and spoke a little louder than me:

“Tyler used that machine at the library,” he said. “He’s grounded until he agrees to change back.”

Mr. Colton narrowed his eyes. “You do it your way, I guess,” he said. “I wouldn’t wait on that. Tyler, what possessed you to do a thing like that?”

The cowardly part of me that had put off coming out for so long was frantically trying to come up with some plausible-sounding reason that wouldn’t set Mr. Colton off, but I pushed that aside and said, “I’m transgender. I’ve wanted this since well before that machine showed up.”

Mr. Colton stared at me for a moment longer, then looked back at Mom and Dad. “Do you think —” he started, but Mom said, “Look at the time! We’d better find a seat.” I shot her a grateful look as we hurried into the sanctuary and sat down in our usual area.

Our church usually had the lights dimmed by that point, so the PowerPoint slide show with the words to the songs and scripture readings would be clearly visible. So I hoped in the dim light, nobody would notice me. But it wasn’t so close to the start of the service that I was immune to further socializing at the last minute. A couple of Mom and Dad’s friends, Mr. and Mrs. Dirksen, spotted us and came over to say hi, and no sooner got close enough to see me well than Mrs. Dirksen said: “Tyler, what happened to you?”

“I’m going by Meredith,” I said, a little louder and faster than I had when Mr. Colton greeted us.

Mom said, “Please pray for all of us. We’re still figuring out what to do as a family.”

Mr. Dirksen said, “Did he use that machine at the library?”

“Yes. He’s being disciplined.”

“Seems like you’re overlooking something obvious —”

The band started the opening song then and the lights got dimmer, so Mr. Dirksen interrupted himself, saying “Let’s talk later,” and they went back to their seats, murmuring to each other. I started singing along with the band; I’d been looking forward to trying out my new singing voice, though not as much as I’d dreaded dealing with transphobes, and I found that I could sing better than before, or at least had a prettier voice — it might take me a while to get as good at hitting the right notes as before. But I remembered all the posts on trans forums I’d read where people were talking about how they hated their voices, and how distressed I’d been a few years ago when my voice started changing, though I didn’t understand why until later, and I started crying for joy.

Then a few minutes later the first song was over, and the band switched to a quieter instrumental version of “Here I Am to Worship” while Mr. Clarkson, the worship leader, said it was time to greet people. So everybody turned around and said hi to everyone in the pews in front of and behind them, and I had to confront some more people who hadn’t noticed my change until then.

Then things were pretty okay for a while; after a prayer, we started singing again. Even in the dim light, I could see people glancing aside at me here and there for the next while, but nobody was disrupting the service to whisper gossip about me.

One of the prayers involved thanks for the sudden recovery of several sick people we’d been praying for every Sunday — in some cases for as long as I could remember. And then another song, and then the sermon.

Dr. Debenham started off with reading a good chunk of the story about Jesus healing the man born blind in John’s gospel, and then talked about several people in our church who had just been healed of chronic illness, some of whom were able to get out and attend the service today for the first time in months. Then he talked about the Venn machine at our library (I think he called it a “trust booth”), which they and their friends had apparently used for healing, and the others around the country and around the world.

“We don’t know where they come from or who made them,” he said. “But we can’t reject something out of hand that God has used to do so much good, even if others are using the trust booths in questionable or outright terrible ways. I think it’s possible that God put them here — directly, or through some mortal intermediary who hasn’t openly taken credit for them — to teach us as lesson about trust. Psalms 146:3 says, ‘Do not trust in princes, in mortal man, in whom there is no salvation.’ We’re reminded several times in Scripture that we can’t fully trust any human being; only God will never let us down. But in practice, we have to trust each other most of the time about a lot of things. We trust that the other drivers on the road are not drunk or insane. We trust that the staff at a restaurant or grocery store are not planning to poison us. We trust the skill of our doctors, the honesty of our bankers, and the courage of our firemen. And, to get the benefits of the trust booths' amazing healing powers, we have to trust some friend to operate the machine for us. No one can heal himself with a trust booth; you can only heal someone else, while trusting that person to heal you — if you need it — and not to transform you in some undesirable way. Yes, you’re taking a risk when you do that. But you take similar risks every day. You take a similar risk when you ask a friend to pray about the problems you’re going through, hoping that they will simply pray about it and not gossip.”

So far, so good. But then he talked about the way other people were abusing the machines, with passing jabs at trans people and furries, though he reserved most of his indignation for people who deliberately changed others into inanimate objects, and then about how it was less obviously wrong, but still wrong, to use them to change someone into a completely different person rather than simply a healthier or younger version of themselves. He actually had some good points to make about how some users of the machine were pushing each other toward a Hollywood-manufactured ideal of beauty which would erase the individual differences God made us with.

He knew more about the machines than I would have expected, but there were enough little inaccuracies and gaps in his knowledge that I was sure he hadn’t been in the Venn machine himself. He’d probably just heard second-hand accounts from church members who’d used it to heal or rejuvenate their relatives or each other.

He segued from there into asking us to reflect on times when we’d trusted people we shouldn’t, or distrusted people we should trust, or betrayed other people’s trust, and then into an invitation to trust Jesus as your savior if you hadn’t already — the same way every sermon always ended. Not the smoothest segue ever, but I’d heard plenty worse.

And then the band played the final song, and I braced myself to talk at greater length to a bunch of people. But I was surprised when Dad said, before the closing song was half over, “Let’s go,” and Mom nodded and we all filed out. We didn’t get away without talking to anybody, but we didn’t have the extended conversations I was dreading with people trying to talk me out of being trans, either.

Instead of eating at one of the restaurants near the church with friends, we drove halfway across town to a restaurant where Dad probably figured we wouldn’t run into anyone we knew, and we didn’t. Within minutes after we left, Mom, Dad and Caleb’s cellphones started ringing and pinging with calls and texts from people at church who’d seen me but hadn’t had a chance to talk with us — or not as much as they wanted — and people who’d heard about me from those who had talked with us. Mom answered the first call, and I heard half of the conversation:

“Hi... Yes, sorry we couldn’t stop to chat... Yes, Tyler and Sophia used a trust booth to change Tyler into a girl... Thank you, that will help a lot... We’re working on that. I made an appointment for next Monday — no, not tomorrow, the following Monday... Yes, we’ll see how it goes... I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone else that... Let’s talk later in the week, okay? We’re almost there and I can’t talk any longer. Bye.”

That could have been any of a dozen of Mom’s friends and acquaintances from church. Partway through that conversation, Caleb answered his phone, and I figured from what he said that it was one of his friends who home-schooled or went to the Everett Academy. “Yeah, Tyler’s a girl now. She’s going by Meredith at school, but Mom and Dad won’t call her that... Oh, sure, at least a dozen people at school have used that thing. Mostly just making themselves look better, but some are a lot weirder than Meredith... No, she’s the only one I know of that’s come to school as the opposite sex, but I hear some other people tried it out overnight and it wore off before they came to school. Probably more this weekend... Yeah, it can do some crazy stuff, there’s a guy with what-do-you-call-'em, those extra eyelids like a lizard has —”

“(Nictitating membranes,)” Sophia whispered to him.

“— nictitating membranes, yeah, it’s pretty cool, and a girl with extra arms and a couple of kids with purple or green skin... Nah, Coach says the athletic association hasn’t ruled yet, but until and unless it says the machine’s okay, he’s not going to allow his players to use it...”

“Hang up, Caleb,” Dad said.

“Got to go, bye.” By this point we were out of the van, in the restaurant and already being led to our table by our waitress, who seemed to be listening with interest to Caleb’s conversation.

“Let’s silence our phones until after lunch,” Dad said, and Mom and Caleb silently complied. After the waitress had taken our drink orders and left, Caleb said:

“So why were we in such a hurry we had to leave early?”

“We didn’t leave early,” Dad insisted. “The service was already over.”

“You know what I mean. We always hang out and talk with friends after church. I can barely remember the last time we didn’t. And what was it you had to do before church that made us barely on time?”

“Caleb...” Mom began, but seemed at a loss for words, and when she’d paused for a second or two, Dad took over:

“I’m trying to strike a balance here. I don’t want us to stop going to church, and I don’t want to leave Tyler at home. We all need it — Tyler maybe more than usual. But...”

“I know you wanted to try to minimize the gossip,” Mom said, putting a hand on his arm, “but it’s obviously not working. I think next Sunday we should arrive early and hang out with friends afterward as usual. Deal with all the questions and get them over with.”

“Tyler, you could change back anytime in the next week and make this decision a lot easier.”

“No, thank you, Dad.”

The waitress came back with our drinks, and I sipped gratefully at my tea. I had deliberately not drunk much with breakfast because I didn’t want to have to use the restroom at church, so I was pretty thirsty. I hadn’t had any problems with using the girls' rooms at school, but I was pretty sure somebody at church would complain no matter which restroom I used.

“Are you ready to order?”

“Give us another few minutes,” Dad said, and she left.

So we studied our menus in silence for a bit. Now that I had a body that felt right, I was pretty motivated to eat healthy and keep off the weight the Venn machine had instantly removed along with other unwanted baggage. Before, there hadn’t seemed to be much point — even if I got some weight off and kept it off, I’d still hate my body. After looking over most of the options, I decided on a chef salad.

By the time I made up my mind, everyone else had already decided and put their menus down, but no one was talking. Sophia and Caleb were looking back and forth between me and Mom and Dad. Mom was looking at me with a sad, worried expression. Dad was looking off into a corner of the ceiling.

Finally Dad said, “You’re right, Erin. Next Sunday we’ll arrive and leave at the usual time. And I guess we can talk to people on the phone in the meantime. I didn’t want to tell anybody before today because, well, I was hoping Tyler would change his mind before this morning.”

I was feeling weirdly conflicted, simultaneously annoyed at Dad for his passive-aggressive attempts at manipulation and irrationally guilty about embarrassing him in front of his friends even though I recognized that manipulation for what it was.

“Mom, Dad, I know you don’t understand why I did this, but please try to understand that it wasn’t on a whim. I didn’t know it was possible to do it this fast and this perfectly until a week ago, but I’d been thinking for months about doing it the slow, painful, expensive way once I was old enough.”

“I’ve been reading about that the last few days,” Mom said. “About all the health risks of hormone therapy and sex change surgery. In a way, I’m glad you can do this reversibly with the machine and get it out of your system —” She glanced at Dad, who was looking at her, appalled, and hurried on: “— before you started doing something so dangerous. Crystal was telling me on the phone how Mrs. Taggart was cured of cancer and made thirty years younger by the machine, and that’s great; she would have been dead in a few months without it. But we don’t know anything about the long-term effects of those things. For her it’s okay, there would be no long term otherwise. But for you, with your whole life ahead of you?”

“Why only thirty years younger?” Sophia asked.

Mom couldn’t help smiling even as she reproved her. “Sophia! That’s not the point. Tyler, that thing could have even worse long-term health effects than hormone therapy.”

“We don’t have any proof yet,” I admitted. “But I don’t think it’s very likely. The trust booths are obviously way ahead of our medical technology. Like a hundred years, or a thousand. Whoever built them can do things we have no idea how to even start doing — they would have figured out how to eliminate side effects a long time ago.”

“That raises the question,” Dad pointed out; “why did they put them on the lawn at our library? And have them accept any amount of money, however small? What are they getting out of it?”

Nobody had an answer to that.

Posting early again because tomorrow is going to be super-busy. I think next week's chapter will be on Tuesday 8 October.

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