Butterfly Affect

First Waves Day +12

 

    He felt quite tense as he walked towards his destination. His fingers tapped on the front of his shoulder strap bag. What would the meeting be like? Some nerds in a basement, working stuff out in front of a corkboard with pins and threads? A secret ploy by the government to kidnap him and study his change? Extraterrestrial aliens in disguise that had caused whatever had happened to humanity?

    ...Maybe he shouldn’t have gone on a B-movie bender this morning.

    So it seemed that just like his roommate, he had absolutely no idea what kind of meeting this was. As he finally walked up to the pretty normal apartment building the address apparently pointed to, he sighed with relief, knowing that at the very least it seemed he wasn’t going to be recruited into a MLM scheme or something.

 

    He rang the doorbell and waited. The door cracked open and long, insect-like legs came crawling out.

    Four beady eyes looked at him from the other side, and then the door fully opened. In the entrance stood a menacing-looking spider woman, her head adorned with a fringe of hair swept to the side. She was wearing a black leather jacket covered in colorful pins. “Hello there, and who might you be?” the woman asked, her chelicerae flapping at each vowel.

    He tried to wrack his brain together to produce the answer, but the sight in front of him paralyzed him in fear. He was awful with strangers, especially ones that looked... literally predatory. In his panic, he switched to his customer service voice. “How can I help you?”

    The spider woman looked at him for a moment and guffawed. “I thought you were the one looking for help?”

    He paused. “Oh, yes, yes, sorry…“

    “It’s alright, I get it, these are trying times and you’re nervous meeting strangers. I’m Ariel, she/her.” She lifted a claw off the floor and presented it to him for a shake. He froze, and she dropped it back down before presenting her actual hand, unfortunately to the same result. “What about you?”

    Something got stuck in his throat again. All he had to do was say the name written on his employee card at work, but his mind wouldn’t let him. “...I am — went — I go by AnxietyBug online.” At least his handle explained why he struggled over silly things sometimes.

    Ariel looked him over. “Alright then Buggie, make yourself at home. I promise I won’t bite, and you know that’s saying something when it comes from an arachnid. The others are in the living room.”

 

    She accompanied him. As he entered, he quickly went over the crowd in the room and he felt his shoulders clench at how many they were and how little space there was. There was a kangaroo man seated on the sofa wearing a sleeveless shirt, large denim shorts and bandages for socks, a sheep woman with a grim expression on her face who wore heavy makeup, had shaved her wool into a strap top and was taking puffs out of an e-cig, and a large elephant man wearing a hoodie that seemed as intent on making himself small as he was.

    Wait… If this was a meeting of people who had gotten a gender change… Was the kangaroo a she, and so on and so forth? Was Ariel a man? But Ariel wasn’t a man’s name…

    “Got another one,” the spider woman(?) said with her same feminine voice as usual. “Everyone, this is Buggie; Buggie,” she pointed to the kangaroo, “this here’s Lucas, he/him,” her finger turned to the sheep woman, “Joshee, fae/faer, and all three of us are the organisers of this hangout. The person in the corner is another anxiety pile like you.”

    He felt pressured to wave and did so. The elephant didn’t return the gesture.

    “Buggie! Who told you of us?” Lucas asked, jumping to his feet.

    “I don’t — I don’t know. My roommate heard about you.”

    “Alrighty then, take a seat. We’ve still got a good fifteen minutes before we start, how about a card game to pass the time?” Lucas pulled out a classic 52 from a nearby shelf, unwrapped the rubberband keeping them together and shuffled the cards.   

    He didn’t know how to say no, so he sat down with Ariel, and Lucas dealt some cards to the three of them. “President, you know President, right?”

    As they started playing, Joshee piped up, scrolling through news on faer phone. “There we go, first hate crime murder of a Morph, courtesy of the land of the free on the other side of the ocean.”

    The room fell silent, the only sound being the cards getting piled onto the table. It looked like Ariel wanted to say something, but she kept her thought to herself.

    “Didn’t take these crazy evangelist fuckers long,” fae added at the lack of reaction. “But, on the bright side, I’ll take a near total collapse of the fossil fuel industry.”

    “...The Waves did that?” he asked.

    “Seems so, at least the media says,” Joshee replied. “The pumps got completely overrun by plants or something. Telling you, some alien out there must've caused the Waves, no way that shit was random.”

    “Well obviously, you don't get those results without some kind of intent,” Lucas butted in. The kangaroo man suddenly took note of his terrified expression. “Doing okay, Buggie?”

    The cards shook in his hands. He couldn’t believe what he had just heard. “I-It’s not random?”

    Ariel gently looked him down with all four of her eyes and placed a claw on his shoulder. “Oh, sweetie…”

    His vision was blurring, his heart was beating faster and faster. That meant there was a plan, a design behind the body he had gotten? But why a woman’s body then? That made no sense, he was a man!

    He opened his bag and pulled out a sports bottle his roommate had lent him. Inside was the drink he couldn’t get enough of anymore. He sipped some of it until he managed to get a handle on his mind back. He didn’t want to panic. Not outside of his home. Not again.

    Joshee brought in a leopard woman in a frilly pink dress. Had he missed the doorbell ringing? “How about we just start now? I don’t think Ariel’s apartment’s gonna hold more than six people anyway.”

    Lucas and Ariel nodded.

 

    Everyone squeezed together on various chairs found in the apartment. The three organizers were sitting on the couch, while he, the elephant and the leopard were each in a chair. Ariel had brought snacks and put them on the table. Not that he could eat any of them.

    “Alright, last round of names and pronouns; if you’re not comfortable, you can use a nickname,” Lucas started. “I’m Lucas, he/him, and I’m a transgender man.” He wondered what that word meant.

    “Joshee, call me Jo, fae/faer. Very exceptionally you can use they if that’s easier, but I’ll growl. Agender.” Another word he didn’t recognize.

    “Ariel, and I’ll be your she/her host spider tonight! Trans and proud, baby.” More questions popped to his mind. Trans and proud, that was like gay pride stuff, right? So Ariel was a gay crossdresser, or a drag queen?

    The elephant came next. He stood up, tugging at his clothes. “Mathilda. My friends called me Mat.” So the elephant was a girl…

    His turn came. He stayed on his seat. “I’m AnxietyBug… Well, no, I’m not AnxietyBug, that’s just what I go by online, but…”

    “It’s okay Buggie, you only give your name if you want to,” Ariel reaffirmed.

    Struggling to get any further words out, an awkward silence passed, and Ariel gestured for the leopard woman to talk. She too stood up, holding her hands together. “I’m… I used to be Felix, but I always preferred Felicia. I’ve considered whether I was trans before, and… I’d come to the conclusion I wasn’t, but now I think I’d made a mistake. Please, treat me like a normal woman.”

    Ariel stood up and gave Felicia a long friendly embrace.

    “Well then,” Lucas piped up and turned towards him and Mathilda, “did you two spot a pattern yet?”

    Neither responded for a long while, until Mathilda spoke. “We’re all transgender, aren’t we?”

    That word again.

    “Do you think that’s it too, Buggie?” Lucas stared at him and beckoned him to answer his question. 

    He pulled out his bottle again and took a few gulps, then put it back in his bag with a sigh. “W-well… That’s the point of the meeting, that we all got gender-changed?”

    “Your sex got changed, not your gender,” Ariel piped in.

    He tilted his head. “That’s not the same thing?”

    “Oh, you precious sweetheart.”

    “Your sex is what the doctors wrote on your birth certificate when you were too young to tell them to fuck off. Your gender is what you really are deep down,” Joshee explained.

    “That’s… That’s not the same thing?” he repeated, a twinge of melancholy in his voice. He curled up on his seat and hugged his knees.

    “...Woman this, woman that…” Mat started, turning their back away from the room. “I’ve never felt like one. My cousin came out two years ago. I thought I was just annoyed at sexism. I could’ve looked into it sooner. I should’ve.”

    Felicia threw Mat a kindred glance. “I thought I was a man that just enjoyed crossdressing as a hobby… but the Waves gave us bodies from the gender we want to be, then?” she asked the organizers.

    “From the gender we are,” Lucas corrected.

    “But I’m not…” he muttered. “It’s not… allowed…”

    Joshee bent forward to grab an amuse-bouche. “Says who?”

    “I don’t know…”

    Ariel approached and placed a claw on his shoulder again. “Do you want to be a woman?”

    That was a question he didn’t have an answer to. Why would someone wish for that? What difference would it make? What was the point? Man or woman, the two were the same in the end, what did it even change? “Why would I want that?”

    “That ain’t the question.” Joshee said. “We don’t know why you’d want to be a woman. We’re just asking you if that’s the case or not.”

    ...Did he want to be a woman?

    It didn’t make logical sense.

    But he did.

    “What would that even change?” he asked.

    “Everything, nothing. Depends on the point of view.” Lucas said. “There was nothing I couldn’t do as a woman I suddenly can as a dude. But that’s not what matters. What matters is that being a woman wasn’t me. Being a woman meant not being myself. I didn’t choose to be a man, it’s just what I am anyway. You don’t ask yourself whether you’re right or left-handed, do you?”

    “Speak for yourself,” Joshee said, spinning a toothpick in each of faer hands. “It’s specifically because gender is bullshit that I chose to be who I am. Fuck genetics, fuck God, fuck how my ‘mind’ feels, I’m non-binary because that’s what I’m deliberately choosing to be. I’m in control of who I want to be and I am what I’m choosing to be. Society says I’m supposed to be a dude, I tell them fuck you I choose who I am and it’s something neither boy nor girl, only me.”

    His head was spinning. Was it a choice? Was it not?

    Did it matter?

    His lip trembled. He didn’t want this. He didn’t feel ready for this. “I-If I don’t want that…” He muttered, feeling more and more unsure with each word.

    “Then you can probably get on testosterone, get top surgery if you want, and resume your life as a man,” Ariel stated firmly, staring him down.

    “N-no…” he whispered weakly. The idea completely distressed him. Why did it distress him? Why did the idea of going back to being a man… sound so existentially painful?

    The answer was metaphorically staring him in the face. There was only one logical explanation. Only one explanation that fit the facts, that confirmed people only got new bodies they wanted, that matched the ideas he had just heard. He was a woman.

    And he hadn’t even known it until now.

    “But, but I’m not — I wasn’t born a woman… I’m not a real woman, I just want to be one…”

    Ariel wrapped him up in the embrace of her many legs. “You walked into my apartment not even knowing you wanted to be a woman. Not even knowing that was an option. You’ve literally had the will of the Waves or whatever turn you into a cute butterfly girl. And this is what you have a hangup on? That you’re not a woman enough? You can learn to be one, if that’s what you want. Nobody knows how to drive a bike the moment they first step on one. A biker in training is still a biker.”

    Buggie exploded into tears. She hadn’t cried since she was a little boy. At some point her body had become incapable of it. She felt like something had blocked her emotions from existing, and tonight, the lid had popped off. It all came flooding out at once.