Nano

by Melody Mounier

  I wasn't really sure why I was doing this. It felt like a strange obsession.

  The encryption key on the nano I'd worked up for the job would unlock automatically after one year. Until then it couldn't be broken, not even by me, and would prevent further physical modification.

  The nano would transform the subject into a eighteen year old girl. Five foot even, 95 pounds, 34-17-33. Doing the waist so narrow required pushing the internal organs around a little, but women in the 19th century had gotten by with even smaller waistlines, and this one, encoded into the DNA, wouldn't require a corset.

  I'd never had transgendered inclinations before in my life. Strange now that I'd become so captivated by the idea. I told myself it was an experiment - I wouldn't really understand Natalie unless I spent some time in her shoes. But some part of me knew that to be a lie. The motivation was much harder to pin down. I felt like I wasn't really in control of what I was doing.

  All I knew was that for the past three months, every time I tried to put this project aside, it consumed me, and I thought about it compulsively. I justified going through with it, telling myself it was either that or go crazy resisting the urge.

  I never once considered, however, that perhaps my wanting desperately to go through with this was fuelled by anything other than personal motive.

  Long brown hair, olive skin, brown eyes. Small feet and hands. Full lips on a tiny face. The simulation looked pretty good.

  The nano included behavior modification as well. Highly submissive tendencies, shyness, an ingrained deferentiality to men, a highly keyed sex drive. Punching it up that high gave her the libido of a thirty year old woman or an 18 year old boy.

  I did a complete set of paperwork on her. She was a matriculating freshman at NYU, and I'd rented a tiny apartment for her in the East Village. She had a monthly stipend from her scholarship that would keep her in beans and rice, and not much else. Everything looked legal - sort of. Forging an identity from scratch always leaves holes. Anne-Marie La Fontaine died shortly after her birth, and it was concievable that this fact could be dug up.

  I'd fitted my nano-lab and apartment with DNA locks designed to deny access to Anne-Marie La Fontaine's particular DNA signature. Anne-Marie wouldn't be able to access either location until the locks deactivated a year from now. The lab would be rented out to Johnny Dentz, a friend in the business I sometimes did jobs with. My bank accounts were frozen for the same period. Sam Smith was taking a sabbatical in Asia and wouldn't be returning for some time.

  Chapter 5

  I awoke feeling like I had just run a marathon. Every muscle in my body ached.

  I was lying on my back on a gurney in a pool of sweat and mucous. The overhead flourescents drilled holes in my brain, and I covered my face with my arm.

  A small arm, drenched in sweat. With little tiny hairs. I remembered.

  I sat up groggily and swung my legs over the side of the gurney, feeling hung over and clumsy. My little bare legs dangled, my feet a good foot further from the floor than when I'd lain down before.

  Breasts. I cupped them with my tiny hands; they were soft and heavy and felt bizarre.

  I sat for a moment, fighting the temporary sense of vertigo all radical transformees felt. I let it pass, then slid off the gurney and planted my feet on the floor.

  Okay. Time to get this shit off of me. I walked gingerly to the shower.

  I turned on the water and let its hot steam wash off the considerable residue the nano had pushed through my sweat glands to the surface of my skin. Most of it was lying in a pool on the gurney, material discarded by the nano as being superfluous to its mission of reshaping me into something 80 pounds lighter. Tissue rendered into a fat-like substance, mixed with chemicals and hormones, enzymes created by the nano and discarded, the job done. I knew if I ran the stuff through an analyzer I'd find a lot of testosterone, broken down and rendered inviable, muscle proteins broken into small enough pieces to sweat out, and other biological detritus. The radical reshaping was done by the nano; my pituitary gland, now fed instructions from XX chromosomes, would regulate my body's hormones as if I were any other teenaged girl. Which, in fact, I was. Biologically I was indistinguishable from a born female, even upon the closest examination. The distinction was purely semantic.

  That's why what I just did to myself was very illegal. I was an unregistered nano-mod; a tax-evader's wet dream and Government's bane.

  My DNA now was so different from what it had been that there was no way to connect me with Sam Smith. You could tell that nano was present and active, under a microscope, but since it was now in maintenance mode, it would appear to be therapeutic nano - to manage my weight, or mood, or something else quite legal and unobjectionable.

  My hair had grown about eight inches in the two days I was comatose, and had turned from a grey-blond to nut brown. It would keep growing another ten inches over the next few days, then slow to normal growth rate. The nano was programmed to keep hair length down below the shoulder blades, so even if it cut it short the nano would kick back in, and my hair would return to the programmed length.

  Similarly, my physical strength was monitored my the nano. If I joined a gym and worked out every day for a year, I would end up without an ounce of extra muscle tone or strength. The nano would disassemble the new tissues as soon as my body developed them.

  Soon the floor of the shower was covered with sticky goo. I let it wash down the drain, turned the spigots off, and grabbed a towel. I dried myself as I stepped out in front of the sink and mirror.

  The sink was a foot higher than it had been before. I reached over it and used the towel to wipe off the steam, noting the way my breasts swayed forward as I did so.

  The girl staring back at me was Anne-Marie, all right. No way around it. I'd chosen a composite of several natural girls I'd nano-improved to make Anne-Marie. They had all been beautiful, but, of course, wanted perfection. I preferred using their pre-nano DNA as source material. The result of mixing the DNA from these sources was a healthy prettiness with a few flaws. I noted the freckling around my chest and on my cheeks, and my lopsided smile, with the practiced eye of a nano-surgeon. I liked what I saw, which was good, since I wasn't in a position to change it now.

  I dried off clumsily, my hands overreaching in the wrong places finding curves blocking the places they were accustomed to moving to. I brushed my hair inexpertly - I would need to comb it in a few days, I realized. Better get used to it.

  Now. I went back out to the lab, opened a closet and pulled out the brown paper bag containing the accoutrements of my new life. Shoes, panties and a sundress, and a purse.

  I slipped the panties - I'd perversely chosen a bright pink thong, to remind myself what was happening - over my ankles and pulled them up over my hips. The thong strap slipped between my buttocks and nestled comfortably there, while the elastic rode high on my flared hips, scooping low to expose my belly button.

  I pulled the sundress over my head and let its silk fall down the length of my body. The white fabric sat smoothly on my breasts, and the hem tickled my thighs.

  Okay, now the shoes. I'd chosen heels, I think just to piss myself off. I put these on and took a few steps forward, immediately regretting it as I swayed into a lab table. They were the only shoes I had here. Hmmn. A little practice was in order.

  I looked at the clock. 4:30 PM. I had a half hour before the night alarm would activate; since my DNA no longer matched the list of approved night visitors, that meant I had a half-hour before the alarm went off. I did a few runway walks to gain my footing, then gathered up my male clothing and effects and threw them in the small incinerator I kept to remove nano-waste. I stripped the sheets from the gurney and threw these in too, then turned the incinerator on.

  I activated the air-scrubbers, which would filter out the rest of the stray DNA.

  That done, I picked up my handbag, screwed up my courage, opened the lab door, walked through it, and shut it behind me.

  I turne
d and tried the door. Though unlocked, when I touched the handle I heard the lock engage, then disengage when I removed my hand. I knew that even using a stick or something to open it wouldn't work, since it worked on the presence of DNA in the room and touching combined.

  I turned around and leaned back against the lab door, breathing heavily.

  One long phase of my life was over, at least for the time being. Now I was someone else.

  Chapter 6

  The doorman glanced at me as I walked out of the lobby, but I sensed the look was more for the purpose of ogling me than anything else. He frightened me a little. I stepped out onto the street.

  Washington Street, where my lab was housed, was a daytime cocktail of dock workers, homeless and the stray office worker leaving for home early. I immediately felt vulnerable in my little white dress and heels. I clutched my bag and headed east on King Street, pretending not to hear the catcalls from the construction crew sitting on the back of a flatbed and smoking.

  Those first few minutes were hard. It wasn't until I'd reached 6th Avenue that I felt somewhat safe. I sank into a park bench on the wide median and let myself address the sudden emotions that two block walk had induced in me. I was shaking.

  I'd never been in a position before where talking back to a man was not only inadvisable, but dangerous. That scared me, but what scared me even more was the instinctive urge to go to them and submit to their questioning deferentially. This, I expected, was not what most women felt in these kinds of situations. Rather, I blamed the nano-conditioning I'd programmed. I'd experienced nano that made you strong, or confident, or a prick, or a saint, but never nano that made one want to submit oneself to the tender mercies of a bunch of assholes.

  The strange thing about it, of course, was that it felt completely natural. My brain was telling me those thugs should be shot with a firearm, but my body was telling me that they had every right to ogle me, to address me with the slurs they used. Or maybe...not that they had the right, but that it excited me.

  The thought of going back and submitting myself to their gaze, their words, their hands - stop it! I told myself. So, I thought. That's what Natalie feels. I never thought something as humiliating as that could be so arousing.

  I stood up again, blushing and confused and flushed. With a shock I realized my panties were damp.

  I continued moving east, through Soho, then northwards into the East Village. One thing I noted rather quickly was that my sense of fashion didn't fit at all. On a street awash in middys, pierced navels, leather pants and skirts, and boots, I looked like a stripped down version of a bodice-ripper novel. And a very short one at that.

  The novelty of being short didn't last long. I missed the luxury of being able to see further down the street than the backside of the guy in front of you, who really wasn't that big, just much bigger than you. I felt surrounded on all sides, like a little kid.

  Soon I made my way to the brownstone on East 6th Street, turned my key in the lock of the front door, and made my way up to the fifth floor apartment. The smell of Indian food from the shops downstairs permeated the building; a condition I would later discover to be permanent and often overwhelming.

  I got into my apartment. 200 square feet of blissful privacy, furnished by one Sam Smith. Thank you, Sam, I thought, as I locked the door. Already I felt the man I had been just a few days earlier was almost a stranger. He and I simply had no shared points of reference. He was strong, middle aged, wealthy, masculine; I was eighteen, tiny, fragile, and poor. Our instincts were different; our reactions to stimulus different - and now I was attracted to men, not women. The shock of these drastic changes was exhausting. I got onto the bed - the only piece of furniture that fit - and promptly fell asleep.

  Chapter 7

  I awoke to sunlight streaming through the windows. I lifted my head and looked around, discovered that I was still Anne-Marie, and that I was in my apartment, and that it was morning. I also found myself still dressed, though my dress was hiked up around my waist, the strap over my right shoulder had worked its way down, exposing my breast, and I was only wearing one heel. Not a decorous start to my new life, I thought wryly.

  I sat up, again feeling the strange sensation of flesh swaying on my chest, spun my legs off the bed and stood up.

  I felt much better. The way I had felt yesterday was like an extreme case of jet-lag, and I was glad to wake up clear-headed.

  I showered and dressed in some of the more up-to-date items I'd picked out before the transformation: jeans (cut with a narrow enough waist for me), a bright orange sleeveless tee with blue and white racing stripes down the flanks, a silver chain bracelet for my right wrist and a matching silver choker. I'd probably look out of place with no jewelry at all, and besides I liked the way they looked. Nikes too - I hadn't worn sneakers in some time, but I'd bought more fashionable wear to complement the more feminine clothing I preferred on a girl like me, and needed footgear to match. I figured I'd have to blend in with the college crowd. Besides, silk and chiffon doesn't last long, and as of now I didn't have the money to replace the things I'd bought.

  The sneakers were impossibly tiny, only about seven inches long, but my little feet slipped in like a hand in a glove. I laced them up.

  I stood and surveyed the results in the mirror. My hair had grown out overnight, down to below my shoulder blades, and I hadn't figured out what to do with it - there was so much. Otherwise the overall effect looked okay. By now I'd resigned myself to the fact that no matter how I dressed I'd look like a kid trying to be a grownup, so dressing like a kid at least seemed to fit.

  I sat back down on the bed and opened my purse. I counted out my cash - a little over seventy dollars to last me five days until the start of class, when I could pick up my scholarship check. I used to spend that much in a day.

  I headed out the door, onto the street, feeling very small and vulnerable as I made my way west through the normal crush of morning people. They were all so big, so wide, and so damned slow, I thought to myself.

  Though the ones who annoyed me the most were the men, because they dwarfed me, I found myself noticing things about them I'd never really noticed before, which, after some thought, I had to recognize as features I now found sexually attractive.

  Their muscles, for instance. Not the overdeveloped muscles of the occasional obvious bodybuilder, but the thick, well-toned muscles of a man who kept fit. The way even the muscles of their forearms were defined, easily identified as separate tissues, built to do heavy lifting. I found myself, as I walked west on East 5th street, following a man in black slacks and a tanktop, noting the differences between his broad shoulders and my tiny ones, his wrists, thicker than my forearms, his muscle definition creating a pattern of ripples and bulges, where the only bulges I sported gave me no physical advantage. I looked at my arms, thin, smooth; whatever muscles lying underneath could never be trained into the shapes I saw on this man's form, and all my strength could never withstand his slightest effort against me.

  And yet I knew this physical disadvantage served to make me attractive in turn; thinking about the contrast aroused me.

  I'd never been attracted to men, and hadn't built any nano-conditioning in to force me to feel this way - only to make me submit, to defer to men. I surmised that some of this was attributable to the inborn tendencies of the DNA I'd been fashioned from.

  At the corner of East 5th and Bowery, the man turned a corner, looking back at me, and smiled. He went on.

  I blushed furiously. Of course he knew I'd been following him, and I knew what kind of signals that sent in a city where women learned to never make eye contact with strangers. I rushed across the Bowery and made my down to the NYU campus.

  Chapter 8

  I learned quickly to keep my eyes to myself if I wanted to stay out of trouble. Fraternizing was safe for the other girls my age, but for me, and my inordinately keyed-up libido, it was practically begging for a fuck. After several hours of waiting in lines to register for
classes, I concluded that my wandering eye was being interpreted by the young men around me as an invitation to flirt, and while I was pleased that their interest was piqued, I really didn't have any idea how to keep flirtation safe, never mind how to progress after that, or even if I wanted to. Mostly it bugged me that I couldn't help myself. I found myself sucked into conversations, and because my nano-conditioning made me so agreeable, my natural deference was interpreted as sexual interest.

  Well, it was sexual interest - I was getting pretty horny - but I wasn't ready to find out how my submissive tendencies would manifest themselves in a bedroom with a young, inexperienced boy. I wasn't ready to be called the class slut yet either.

  So I took my lunch in a cafe up in Chelsea, where I could be assured that most of the men around me weren't interested in women, and I could admire them without fear. I tried to smoke, but it made me nauseous, and I decided now was as good a time as any to give that up. I settled for coffee and a salad, which filled me much faster than I thought it would. I pushed the plate away half-eaten. Maybe I could get away with ten bucks a day after all.

  I asked the waiter to bag the rest of the salad, which earned me a dirty look. But I got the bag. Screw you, wait-boy - I'm on a budget here.

  By late afternoon, I'd walked back to my new neighborhood, returned to my little room, and was sitting on my bed, feeling tired and a little lonely. One immediate consequence of my one-year experiment was that I was now friendless. I knew lots of people in the city, but none now knew me, and I couldn't approach them. I felt lonely, which was strange, because though I'd had many friends, I spent most of my time alone, and never tired of solitude. Now that solitude left me feeling cut off.

  I couldn't yet imagine making friends with people my own age. I had the brain and life experience of a forty year old, while my peers were now teenagers.

  Almost out of instinct, I picked up my cellphone - I didn't have a landline in the apartment - and dialed the Maynard's number. It wasn't something I thought about or planned, but now I felt an urge to talk to Natalie.