NOVEL WEB What’s in the box?
The park looked empty. No mysterious woman to be seen I thought as I walked around aimlessly. As I was walking around another person walked up beside me and I heard Alice’s voice.
“Before we talk give me your datapad that contact card the detective transferred to your datapad had a trojan horse with a tracker on it,” Alice said as I handed her the datapad.
I saw her tapping something into the screen and transferring some files from her own pad. After a few minutes of typing, she smiled and said “We can speak now and should have some privacy for the rest of the day. Hopefully, they won’t catch on that they are following an empty transit pod around the city.”
I followed her to a small bench under a tree and sat down. “So, who are you?” I said.
“Ever hear of a hacker from about 5 years ago who hacked the interior minister's datapad and leaked all the bribes he was taking to the press? That was me.”
“I thought that was a guy. All the pictures going around when they were looking for suspects showed a man.”
“Well, I thought I was a guy myself at the time so that’s kind of understandable,” Alice shrugged.
“Wait. Your trans?” I said in astonishment.
“Yep, after everything went down, I managed to secure travel to somewhere off-world where people are a lot more friendly to people like me.”
“So why did you come back?”
“The general election is next month, and I want to make sure they lose their culture war against people like us. If we can dig up some dirt on them this close to the election it might be enough to topple this hateful administration.”
“So where do I come in?”
“I need someone on the inside and the security consultancy you work for is the same one the government outsources all their work to. Anyway, I don’t need an answer now. Have a think about it. I’ve put my details on your datapad if you have an answer or want to ask more questions just send me a message.”
“What’s in it for me if I accept your offer? After all the authorities will probably hunt me down the same way as they did you. My life would be ruined, and I’d end up in prison.”
“I can arrange to get you off-world, somewhere you’d be safe to be yourself without worrying about transphobic police and thugs on the streets.”
My head was spinning with thoughts. Could I trust Alice? Was it possible I could get off-world and go somewhere safe? This planet was slowly killing me, and I needed more than what was possible here. Alice’s offer was intoxicating, but I needed time to think as I wasn’t sure I trusted her. “I need to think about it,” I said.
“Take your time, we have plenty of time for you to decide,” Alice replied. “I almost forgot to give you this.” She handed me a small box.
“What’s in the box?”
“A surprise,” she said as she walked away.
I played with the box in my hands as I walked back to my apartment. What could it possibly be I thought. As soon as I got through the door, I opened the box. It was a bracelet. On the bracelet were two buttons one was a power button and the other a pairing button to connect with my datapad. Some sort of electronic bracelet I thought, I wonder what it does. I pressed the power button, and it started pulsing blue to show that it was in pairing mode. I looked on my datapad and found a new device with the name ‘bio-molecular regulation bracelet’ I clicked the button and paired it to my datapad. I hope this thing has a manual as I have never even heard of anything remotely like this even existing. Sure enough, the first option on the device’s menu was a help option so I clicked it and at that point, my jaw dropped when I saw a page about sex hormone regulation.
HRT for trans people was almost impossible to get on my planet and even if you could get it the technology had barely progressed from what was available on 20th-century Earth. It mostly consisted of testosterone blockers and estrogen administered by nano-spray and regular blood tests that needed to be analysed by complex machinery at a doctor's surgery. In my hand though was a device that would regularly analyse your blood, synthesise any hormones or drugs it required from your own blood and keep everything in user-specified levels. I had never even heard of technology like this being available anywhere and Alice handed it to me like it was a cheap trinket. There is even more to this woman than she had told me. Looking at the manual showed the bracelet had other functions too. It also could produce false data for biometric security scanners and a whole host of other interesting options that I decided to check out later. Although I was super tempted to try the bracelet on, I was super nervous, so I decided to put it on the table for now.
---
By evening I was so exhausted by my life being thrown upside down by the events of the last 24 hours I decided to order myself a pizza and a least try to relax. Luckily, my local pizza company was super-efficient, and their little delivery robot arrived only half an hour later. While I tucked into my pizza and tried to find a movie to watch on the available streaming services, I could not stop myself from looking at the bracelet. In the end, I thought fuck it! I had wanted HRT since the day I knew it existed and anyway by the time it changes my body enough to be noticeable to anyone else I will either be somewhere safer than this rock or spending the rest of my life in solitary confinement in prison for treason.
Once I placed the bracelet over my wrist, I was amazed as it shrunk till it was tight against my skin. I felt pinpricks and then I heard my datapad’s notification sound. I looked at the datapad and saw a status message appear:
Bracelet status: Analysing blood and taking DNA samples. This bracelet will now be locked to the current wearer. ** WARNING ** This bracelet will now self-destruct if it is worn by anyone but the current wearer.
After a few minutes, another message another message appeared on the screen:
Bracelet status: Bracelet is now configured and ready to use.
With that, I looked at the sex hormone regulation and saw an option labelled ‘Transfem default options’. That looked like a good place to start so I selected it and a message appeared on the screen confirming my selection. After that, everything was a bit anti-climactic. I did not feel any different from before. Reassuringly though the screen showed that the bracelet was busy synthesizing estrogen and a testosterone blocker from the chemicals in my blood.
I spent the rest of the evening watching terrible movies on the television in my apartment till I drifted off to sleep on the sofa.
---
I woke up early Sunday morning and could not get back to sleep again. I thought felt different, but I think that was probably all in my head. I looked at myself in the mirror and I looked the same. You are being silly I told myself. I knew full well it would take a long time for any changes to be visible. I wanted something to be visible though, something to prove this weird bracelet was doing something to my body. After yesterday the day was quiet and ended up no different to any other Sunday. Nothing happened and before I knew it was time to go to bed.