Flipping

By Forest Handford

Born on a space station, Samir Zeka was raised Muslim, observes a Halal diet, fasts during Ramadan, and prays 5 times every day. An introvert, he mostly stuck to his work, his home, his family, and his church community, until the day he decided to push beyond his comfort zone and attend a party that would forever change his life. Intending to look his best for the party, Samir searched his neural link “mesh” for random looks until he came across one that suited him. After some fine-tuning, he “flipped” to the persona of Samantha, a late 30s East Asian, cat-eared woman with shoulder-length purple hair. At the party, Samantha meets Anna, someone who will change Samantha’s perceptions of herself and transform both of their lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Perceptions Press
• Release date: Jun 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781777236045

Forest Handford

Forest Handford is a fire artist from Berlin, MA. Forest works as an Engineering Manager at Affectiva. While not at work, she's bringing her family on wacky adventures. Her website is EastCoastGames.com where she publishes video and writings about various topics. She recently founded VoteSquared.org, the site for rating politicians. Forest is currently working on publishing a novel called Cyber Revolution about gender equity in tech and how tech companies can fight against bad governments.

Book preview

Flipping

It cost him nothing, but it cost her everything.

Flipping

It cost him nothing, but it cost her everything.

By

Forest J. Handford

Published by

Stephanie Castle Publications

An imprint of

Castle Carrington Publishing

Victoria, BC, CANADA

2020

Flipping

It cost him nothing, but it cost her everything.

Copyright ©Forest J. Handford, 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, and recording or otherwise, now known or hereafter invented without the express prior written permission of the author, except for brief passages quoted by a reviewer in a newspaper or magazine. To perform any of the above is an infringement of copyright law.

This book is a work of fiction. All the characters are from the author’s imagination and no similarity to real people should be drawn or implied. All events in this book are also fiction.

If this book does not have a cover and is on sale, please do not purchase it as it has been reported as destroyed and the author as well as the publisher will receive no money for its sale

ISBN: 978-1-7772360-2-1 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-7772360-3-8 (Kindle electronic book)

ISBN: 978-1-7772360-4-5 (Smashwords electronic book)

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Please do not copy or reproduce. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Published in Canada by

Stephanie Castle Publications

an imprint of

Castle Carrington Publishing

Victoria, BC

Canada

This book is dedicated to my daughter Cassie. Cassie you are so wonderful, and I am blessed to have you in my life.

Don’t let other people’s views hold you back from being who you are.

I love you, always and forever.

Contents

One: Encounter

Two: Dinner

Three: EVA

Four: Dinner Parties

Five: Morning Person

Six: Packing

Seven: Chaos

Eight: Heartburn

Nine: The Default World

Ten: Parents

Eleven: The Popovs

Twelve: Iftar

Thirteen: Work

Fourteen: Resumption

Fifteen: Commitment

Sixteen: Revelation

Seventeen: Transphobia

Eighteen: Protest

Nineteen: Contact

Afterword

About the Author

I wouldn’t change myself at all. Being transgender makes me who I am: a strong person, a confident person. Being transgender gives me my personality.

Jazz Jennings

One: Encounter

SC-82:3:7 Friday, 7:40 pm

THE FOLLOWING IS AN ABRIDGED TRANSCRIPT FROM THE MESH OF CITIZEN ZEKA. IT INCLUDES THE THOUGHTS, INSIGHTS, AND SPEECH COLLECTED BY THE MESH’S NEURAL LINK. DISTRIBUTING THIS TRANSCRIPT WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE OWNER IS ILLEGAL. INVESTIGATION OF UNAUTHORIZED DISTRIBUTION IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE ORION ARM LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES AND IS PUNISHABLE BY FINES UP TO 750,000 CREDITS AND A LOCALIZED MEMORY WIPE.

Finally done with work, the week’s stress and frustration behind him, Samir needed a change of pace. He was an introvert by nature, but tonight he wanted to throw his fear of crowds to the wind. It would take time scrolling through his options to find the perfect look. He was so bored with male looks. For work, he always stuck to a conservative intellectual look. But this was a party! He could go crazy or at least try to. At the very least, he could shed his day life of safety and stagnation to be somebody else.

Samir selected to randomize all but gender. Of the several gender options, he picked female. The first look was older, mid-60s. It had the darkest of skin tones, purple hair, green eyes, and the most stereotypical poncho and sombrero outfit that the system could possibly have created. He hated it.

Randomizing again caused a late teenage, full-bodied, Irish-pale skin, brown hair, yellow cat eyes, shepherdess look to appear. He sighed. It was better but still not right.

The next randomization showed as middle-aged, long gray haired, fully white-eyed, leopard skinned, in a Japanese-style sailor uniform. Everything seemed wrong, except maybe the outfit.

Randomizing again caused a late-20s, yellow dyed pixie-cut, east Asian, buxom, red-eyed, cat-eared body wearing a cartoon princess dress. Samir looked at it for a bit. Something about it caught his attention. It wasn’t perfect. Random never was. People almost only went out flipped to Random on dares, as pranks, or for Rando-parties. This was not that kind of party!

He switched the eyes to match his real eyes. People always seemed to love his blue eyes. There were very few people, his mother included, who could always identify him by his eyes. Of course, there was no way his mother would be at this party! If she were there, he’d literally die of a heart attack on the spot with his understanding of the universe completely shattered.

The sailor uniform he saw earlier was perfect! He tried to find it again and discovered there were several from which to choose. Apparently, each section of Japan had their own style. The Okinawa uniform was what he had seen before: but, looking at the options, he decided to go with the Tokyo-style.

The age was fine. It was a decade younger than he was. He was on the fence about the cat ears. He rarely went for inhuman looks: but, based on the anime he’d seen, he felt maybe the ears would work. He certainly wouldn’t be called out as a Fakezy with them. Before deciding on the ears, he switched the hair to long and black. It looked nice, but too subdued for a party. He switched to shoulder-length purple with bangs. That was it! The ears worked now, and it was perfect. After flipping to the new look, he reviewed it thoroughly. It was the perfect look for the party!

Now, she (formerly he) needed shoes, a voice, and a name. For the name, she entered Samantha. It was a party, so she wanted to look good, but also wanted to walk comfortably and possibly dance, so she went with a low wedge. Samantha tuned her voice to an alto range.

She said, Hello, test, la la la la.

It was always hard to tell how the voice sounded to others without recording it, but it seemed good enough. She was ready to go.

Outside her apartment, she took a quick walk to the tube. Destination? it asked.

The TGIF party.

The tube sealed and began to move as it announced, Heading to the closest exit for the Farpoint Club from your calendar for the TGIF party. Arrival will be in approximately 3 minutes. Please enjoy the ride.

Samantha sat, wondering if she would recognize anyone at the party. The invite came from a college acquaintance named Marley. Samantha hadn’t seen Marley in at least five years. In college, Marley was known as the prankster who once rigged all the privies to blast the college’s fight song whenever someone entered and closed the door. Apparently, it had been easy to trace the prank back to Marley, but it took days to fix all the privies. Most people avoided them until it was resolved. Marley certainly wouldn’t recognize Samantha as-is. Like most people, Samantha had her privacy settings on so that nobody, but the police, could get her real identity information. Marley might have flipped, and even if ze hadn’t, five years was a long time.

As the sedan slowed, the tube announced, Now arriving. Thank you for riding. Your account has had 16.2 credits deducted. To get to your final destination turn left and walk 100 meters.

After turning and starting to walk down the corridor, she could see there was a crowd and knew that must be for the party. She took a deep breath: she could do this! They were people, just like her, nothing to fret over. She didn’t have anything else to do that night, or even the next day. If she walked away, she would regret it. She took one step after another, carefully entering the crowd. After what felt like an eternity, she arrived at the entrance. Above it was a glowing sign with the letters TGIF. Under the event title, in smaller lettering, it said Farpoint Club. Yup, this was the place. She almost laughed out loud as she pondered how she would have reacted if she were actually at the wrong place. Perhaps, if it had been the wrong place, she would have an excuse to leave.

Samantha closed her eyes for a moment willing herself to be an extrovert, just for this one night. She walked inside. Once through, she was buffeted by a stream of music, which might qualify as old school dubstep. It was very bright inside. There were glowing things everywhere. Several people were wearing various types of lights. The ceiling was pulsating colors matching the beat of the music. There were laser lights between the crowd and ceiling, which changed color while moving with the music. She considered the impact the lighting would have on her eyes but knew her mesh could protect her even from bright direct flashes.

She was a little overwhelmed. She needed to get comfortable with the new surroundings. Food—that would calm her. It would also give her something to do with her hands and an excuse for not dancing, not that anyone would ask her to dance.

As Samantha went in search of food, the first room she entered was filled with what appeared to be flowers. She was sure they were not real flowers though. They grew and shrunk at a rate no plant she knew of could come close to. While she knew some plants were bioluminescent, she knew of none that displayed multiple colors. Perhaps these were a biological experiment. She soon discovered that when someone paid attention to a given plant, it grew as if the person’s gaze was fueling it. The plant would reach the ceiling and then spread its limbs along the ceiling. A plant that was ignored slowly shrunk. When it shrank to only a handful of centimeters, the plant would begin to wilt. While a neglected plant didn’t appear like it could be revived, it also didn’t appear to be dead. No matter how small and shriveled a plant was, when it got attention again, it would revive and grow.

Samantha was not a biologist and she wondered what to make of the plants. She experimented with them by looking at them, looking away, closing her eyes, closing one eye, and covering her eyes. It was hard to monitor a plant and pay it no attention. She tried some tricks with her mesh but could not find a way to look at it without it knowing she was looking.

The next room she entered was made entirely of red bouncy surfaces. There were no stairs into or out of the room, so she had no idea how the floors were even possible. The material she carefully felt beneath her feet couldn’t possibly fit in such little space. She didn’t know the building limitations within commercial parts of the station but being able to take space from the tenant below seemed impossible. Even if a tenant were amenable to it, her limited understanding of the station’s design would make it impossible.

After taking a few steps into the room, it was clear she would need to remove her shoes to get through, preferably before she was knocked over. Other people had done the same. Further into the room, some people were jumping as high as they could, which caused the people near them to have balance issues.

Samantha quickly sat down and removed her shoes. She walked to the side, assuming it would be more stable there. She was able to avoid the most maniacal of the jumpers and, finally, reached the other side. She got her shoes back on just as she reached the end of the room. The next room was less chaotic and even had almost normal lighting. The music that was playing throughout the club remained but there was no blinking, flashing, or pulsing lights.

In this room were several 3D digital displays of structures with captions beneath them. Most of the structures appeared to be wooden. Some changed color and shape. The caption listed the artist and, in some cases, the artists. Each display was named. Some had the word effigy in lower case letters after the name. Some of the displays slowly rotated. Most could be interacted with to get better views. She noticed someone near the end of the room with a drink. There must be a bar near them, she realized.

A few rooms from the entrance, overlooking a giant rectangular pool, she found a table covered with appetizers. The food was delightfully normal. She wanted something simple on which to concentrate while she adjusted to the atmosphere. There was also a bar. She grabbed a small plate and put shrimp and spring rolls on it. With food in hand, she got in line to speak with one of the bartenders. When it was her turn, the bartender, who had they/them pronouns in their public profile, asked, What can I get you, miss?

Samantha blushed; loving being called miss for the first time. When they raised their eyebrows, she regained her composure and said, Cranberry juice with a splash of grenadine and no ice, please.

Sure. Want a cherry in that?

Samantha nodded affirmatively.

When the bartender handed