Chapter One
Saskatchewan

On Saturday morning, Clement did not come down for breakfast. Going up and knocking on his bedroom door, a voice that was not her brother’s invited Caroline to enter.

Standing naked before her, Caroline saw a woman. She had no penis and her breasts were firm and supple. The face and body were decidedly female. “I will not be Clementine. I prefer Donna,” she said in a pleasant, girly voice. “What do you think?”

“We’re going to have quite a time explaining all of this to Mother, but you are lovely, Donna.”

“I’m having my period. Isn’t that odd? I haven’t even been a woman for 28 days, yet here it is.”

After repeated explanations and their mother accepting that her son was now her daughter, the 74-year-old marveled at how this was even possible: “You mean all that gobbledygook you’d sprouted about jellyfish, and now this?” Mother asked.

“Yes, Clement, now Donna insisted, and the process worked,” Caroline explained with a certain pride coming through in her voice. Mother was not certain if she should be pleased or critical over such a thing although eventually hugged and told Donna that she was indeed a very attractive woman.

Outside Kuala Lumpur, a pioneering process to separate alumina from bauxite required less heat, an enhanced caustic soda mixture considerable pressure and a rotating series of powerful, resonant frequency waves. This new method was more cost-effective than the Hall-Heroult process as well as environmentally friendlier.

Caroline had already seen that a lab in Pusan, Korea was using less invasive sound waves, again in a harmonic rotation, to coax stem cells from the brain and spinal fluid of mice. As the subjects were already vivisected the need was simply to expedite the collection of needful cells without damaging them.

Sitting in her lab reading through professional journals was one of the joys in the life of Caroline Wilhelm. Fortyish, unmarried and an accomplished researcher of blights and parasites impacting grain crops, Dr. Wilhelm was tenured at one of Saskatchewan’s leading universities. If frequencies could separate metals from ore and coax stem cells for collection then why couldn’t they alter an X chromosome to a Y and vice versa?

Biology student experiments always had leftover samples so Caroline gathered some starfish tissue and thought about the best way to relax the needful genetic material to cooperate.

Setting up two dozen Petri dish samples with ten in a saline solution that mimicked seawater, another in freshwater and a third in no water, she set a series of modulators to rotate ultrasonic and infrasonic waves. The next day there was no evidence of anything happening to the X or Y chromosomes. Pondering the problem all day until happening upon the notion of pressure, as in the intracranial pressure of a human brain, she prepared a trough to hold the Petri dishes and adjusted to 11 millimeters of mercury (mmHg), before trying again.

This time there were fluctuations in a few of the Y chromosomes but none among the X. Additionally, only tissue in infrasonic saltwater dishes, but neither the fresh or non-watered samples showed any evidence of activity and nothing with those that had experienced ultrasonic frequencies. Repeating the entire experiment with new starfish tissue exclusively in saltwater, Caroline stayed with the same pressure and adjusted her infrasonic frequencies to change at a slower rate, intuiting that coaxing was a slower process than she’d first programmed for.

Two days later she observed that Y chromosomes in five of twelve starfish tissue samples appeared to have folded. When examining X chromosomes she continued to find no activity.

Spending a long holiday weekend trying to understand what the folding meant as well as how to coax this further into becoming X chromosomes, Caroline hit on the idea of adjusting the strength of her frequencies as each cycle came to an end to essentially push a little harder. This next batch of samples all transitioned from Y to X, and Caroline came home that evening wondering what she had discovered? Living with her younger brother and their aged Mother in the house where they’d both been raised, over supper she shared her experiment, the literature behind the idea and her results.

“Using slight pressure, saltwater and waves of infrasonic sound, I was able to transition Y chromosomes of starfish into X chromosomes,” she’d heard herself say to her brother and Mother. “Can you believe that such a thing is possible and so relatively simple and easy?” Mother offered praise as she had when Caroline was little and performed well in school. Clement also offered a few kind words but mostly kept his thoughts to himself. Then, after clearing the table, cleaning the dishes and putting things away he approached his sister after Mother had gone upstairs to bathe.

“I would like to try your contraption.”

Laughing at first as though this was a joke, Caroline could not understand. Clement had girlfriends and she’d seen that he’d snuck girlie magazines up to his room during adolescence. Still, she had long wondered about undergarments going missing and now theorized that her brother had been having thoughts and possibly cross-dressed, perhaps for quite some time.

Expressing compassion as she had always adored her younger brother, Caroline told him, “It is one thing to transition chromosomes in the tissue of dead starfish but quite another to try such a thing with a living man. Perhaps it will do nothing. What if being bombarded by sound waves harms you?”

“I don’t care,” Clement insisted. “I’ve always wanted to be a woman and I’m more than willing to take the chance.”

A week of coldness passed between them as Caroline would not countenance such a reckless course of action. Still, Clement remained adamant.

Then late one afternoon Caroline asked her brother to walk outside with her. As winters in Saskatchewan were always blustery and unrelentingly cold, they bundled up and walked slowly.

“There is a large tank in the basement of my building and it has the necessary adjustments to pressurize. We can rig a hose and face mask to allow you to breathe. I will have to put broadcast speakers right beside you actually all around you, so you will need to be careful about fidgeting but we can try.”

Clement listened before expressing love and respect for his sister and then asked, “How long will this take?”

“I have no idea. I don’t even know if it will work, but we can at least give it a go,” Caroline said before reconsidering and adding, “You can lie in there for four hours at a time and we can repeat the process over three days. If anything is going to happen it should become apparent by then.” Epsom salts replaced the seawater mixture and Caroline could think of no good reason to make the water cold, so she warmed it to almost bathtub temperature. Helping Clement into the tank and then securing the apparatus of speakers with a few floats for above and directions on how he was to be mindful of the speakers on either side of him and underneath, Caroline helped her brother affix his breathing mask and then closed the lid before slowly adjusting the pressure.

“Are you well? Please knock,” she asked, and he did. Repeating the question and knocking from inside only three times during the first four-hour soak, Clement came out seeming no different than when he’d entered. On the second day he affected a more feminine manner. Caroline was uncertain but Clement was so emotionally invested that perhaps he’d begun acting the part?

It was his insistence to put in more time in the tank after their third session that convinced Caroline that her brother was actually starting to change. Something in his voice was clearly different and his receding hair had somehow started to sprout new follicles.

Now Clement was Donna, and Caroline wondered what would happen when news of the breakthrough became known?

Chapter Two
Canada and Outward Ripples

Plaudits and appearances on Canadian, US and endless international news and interview programs quickly followed the authentication of the first chromosomally altered male to female transgender woman. Dr. Wilhelm’s paper explaining the procedure became the most in-demand scientific release in generations. The Canadian Prime Minister submitted her name for Nobel Prize consideration. Canada formulated rules for when the gender reassignment procedure was permissible and a few thousand men and several dozen underage boys came to facilities to receive treatment. Although treating underage patients was not allowed, these young men were scheduled for as soon as they reached lawful age.

After the amazement of seeing before and after pictures of gender dysphoria patients undergoing corrective procedures there was a certain sense of Canadian pride in resolving a divisive social issue. These new women were not surgically augmented to look like, but chromosomally adjusted to allow women who had always believed that they were born into the wrong body to now be at peace with their gender. They could even bear children.

Soon the argument was whether or not to lower the age threshold for patients and the provinces of Ontario, Manitoba and Northwest Territories allowed patients as young as 15 to undergo the procedure. Sometime later legislators in Quebec permitted 13-year-old patients with properly documented gender dysphoria cases to undergo the new chromosomal gender reassignment process.

In the United States, an ongoing political argument over the morality of changing the gender of your birth continued to rage and sidelined consideration of regulations. All of the Arab states as well as most African and Asian nations from Lebanon to China and Japan simply banned the procedure.

As for identity documents, Canadians readily accepted the notion of allowing people to change driver’s licenses, passport photos and fingerprints – at nominal fees – to their new gender. However, transitioned women returning to the United States ran into a patchwork of state-specific regulations.

Some states had onerous and purposefully frustrating regulations before the gender on an identity document could be altered. Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi along with seven other states simply forbid chromosomally transitioned women from changing their identity documents to reflect their new gender. Others, such as New Jersey, had a form and fee before a new document would be issued. The US federal government, still unable to find consensus about transgenderism, offered more complex forms and fees and longer wait times for new documents to be generated and mailed out. Britain and European Union countries simply formulated regulations as they would for foodstuffs or any other commodity.

A chromosomally transitioned collegiate trans-woman was not allowed to participate in women’s volleyball because of a clause about ‘biological sex at time of birth.’ The resulting court case found, “…absolutely no anatomical or biological advantage demonstrated as resulting from transition at the chromosomal level.”

Soon a few high school trans-women were allowed to participate in women’s athletics, and then a trans-woman who stood less than six feet tall became a star professional basketball player.

Without much fanfare the legal phrase, ‘sex at birth’ was no longer enforced in most state and all federal statutes in the United States and then formally dropped through a Supreme Court decision a few years later. A popular movie came to its conclusion with depictions of a light-ray gun that turned glamorous trans-women and handsome trans-men back into the supposedly ugly people they’d been originally and this entered the common canon of stereotypes and urban legends as many people believed that such a device actually existed or soon would. Continuing accusations of unfairness spawned movements to promulgate laws and other prohibitions against transgendered athletes and others. While capturing the popular imagination for a time nothing came of these movements and in time they receded into irrelevance and a few firebrand speakers.

On the scientific front, the inability to entice an X to become a Y chromosome continued to stump researchers. Individuals and labs studied gender changing mollusks, frogs and fish looking for clues, but nothing solved the riddle.

Then, a full six years later a researcher hit upon the idea of using a non-steroidal compound similar to blood pressure medication to compel the body to retain additional water, in essence making the X chromosome more receptive, and it worked.

The first genetically altered female to male transgender man actually manifested after only two treatments. Then the same medication was tried for male to female patients and found to also expedite the change in chromosomes.

While writers, comedians and moviemakers began to explore the new frontiers of gender, transition and what it all meant for society a few philosophers postulated that the very essence of identity, the self, was now a different set of questions. As with every advancing technology, defense and security agencies across the globe secretly began experimenting with weaponizing gender.

Reports of spies and other agents being drugged and having their genders altered became the stuff of urban legend until an attractive woman from China published a book before appearing on an interview program to share his-her experience telling the presenter, “I would pursue changing back to male but have come to enjoy being a woman.” While she showed a picture ID from when she was a man who worked in an embassy the author strenuously avoided stating which embassy as well as whether or not he had been involved in espionage. Then her Western husband came out and the couple proudly announced that they had a baby on the way.

Still, a transgender woman did decide to transition back to male and was shocked to not be the same man as before.

“The doctors tell me that different genes express during the process and now I am growing a little taller and not balding anymore,” he happily explained with a smile during a press conference. However, another re-fellow who had originally been gay and then thought to try life as a woman returned to maleness and complained that sex with men was no longer pleasurable going on to say that he would now live as a heterosexual man. Using techniques peripheral to those first pioneered by Dr. Wilhelm, scientists were able to stimulate the regeneration of teeth in humans, a major advance for patients suffering from tooth loss. Not causing the same social discord as chromosomal gender reassignment the regeneration of teeth and promise of advancing treatments for hearing and sight loss, while welcome, added to an overall public anxiety that science might be outpacing ethics. Calls for curbs and limits as well as wild stories about the mixing of species and enhancement of wild animals added a certain menace that was exploited during election campaigns. However, little beyond expanding current regulations to cover new technologies occurred as breakthroughs continued to accumulate.

Chapter Three
Maputo, Mozambique

“Didn’t you used to be Jorge’s brother?”

Violeta was afraid to answer but eventually nodded that this was true. A dark complexion, almond shaped eyes that gleamed, high cheekbones and a slender nose as well as dark hair that didn’t require relaxers to lay down her back and shoulders, Violeta was a bit skinny but pretty like a porcelain doll.

“You return a college graduate and a beautiful woman,” Rui told her. A fortuitous transition had rendered her attractive but standing out was uncomfortable in this moment. Still, she summoned the courage to tell him, “I was just your friend’s little brother. You barely paid any notice of me. Now you perceive me as desirable.”

Surprised by the frankness of her words, Rui was initially at a loss for how to respond, finally saying, “Yes, you are appealing to me now. Is that so bad?”

“No, but it makes things awkward, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t see why,” he insisted. “You went away to become the person you needed to be, and I find this new woman interesting. It is only awkward if you choose to make it so.”

“Others also knew me before,” Violeta insisted. “Maputo may be the capital but Mozambique is not progressive about these things. If you are known to have an interest in a transgender woman your friends and colleagues will disparage you for being less than a man. You may lash out and become violent towards me.”

“Yes, I knew you before, and you knew me. Have I ever been violent to a woman, girl or anybody?”

Violeta conceded that even before becoming a woman he had never seen or heard of Rui resorting to violence. In fact, she shared having noticed that he was kind to his mother and was aware that he had once returned a lost purse without taking or accepting anything in return. “So, am I ineligible to be in your company?” he asked while feigning preparation to leave the room.

Stepping closer to him she said, “Please go home and shower. Put on fresh clothes but no cologne or strong scented hair tonic. I will prepare a supper and we will see.”

Rui smiled and put out a hand to shake. It was Violeta who came closer to embrace him. Soon they kissed and then kissed with more passion.