Since Caleb was at football practice and Mom and Dad had told us they’d be back late and we should fix our own supper, Sophia and I didn’t waste any time. Less than an hour later, we were standing in front of the new machine (the old one still had chain-link fencing around it). There was a sign posted next to it:

“Mynatt County Health Department does not recommend the use of this machine. This machine is under surveillance; attempts to coerce others into the machine, or use the machine for purposes of fraud, will be prosecuted under criminal statutes.”

“I guess they decided there wasn’t any point in trying to fence this one off,” I said, looking around to see if I could spot the cameras.

“Yeah,” Sophia said. “How do you start it?”

I pushed the button at the center of the Venn diagram and put a penny in the slot, then selected the icon with the one-third wedge of the Earth, which we’d heard would make the transformation last eight hours. The doors opened, and I set down the jar with holes in the lid we’d used to catch lightning bugs earlier in the year; just before leaving home, we’d dug up an earthworm from the back flower bed and put it in the jar.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said. The door didn’t close behind the worm.

“For science!” Sophia exclaimed, and went into the other booth. It instantly closed behind her before I could follow, but the door to the booth with the worm jar didn’t close. I went over and looked into that booth, but didn’t go inside or even lean my head in; I saw at an angle the screen or window Andrew had described, and Sophia standing in the other booth, looking perplexed.

“Can you hear me?” I called.

“Yeah. I don’t see any pictures of the worm or the jar either one, like Andrew said he saw pictures of alternate Evans.”

“Try talking — saying what you want it to change into.”

“Mouse... lightning bug... preying mantis... rubber bait worm... no, I’m still not getting any pictures.”

“Do you see any other buttons?”

“There’s a green button and a red button. That’s all.”

“Uh... try the green one?”

“Nothing’s happening.”

“Give it a minute or so, I guess... but I don’t think it’s going to do anything.”

“Let me see if there are any hidden buttons.” She started touching the screen wall in various places, then the other walls; I lost sight of her as she wasn’t always visible from my awkward angle. Finally she gave up and pressed the red button; her door opened.

About then, a straight couple in their mid-twenties walked up to the machine.

“You kids just starting or just finished?” the guy asked.

“We’re doing an experiment,” Sophia said, and I added: “And we got a negative result. We’ll let you use it... Just a minute.” I dragged Sophia out of her booth and retrieved the earthworm jar from the other side. As soon as I removed the jar, the doors closed.

“Who did you change into a worm?” the guy asked, looking morbidly fascinated.

“Nobody,” I said. “We were testing if the machine would work on animals, and it’s still a worm — the machine wouldn’t even give us the option to change it into something.”

“Yeah,” Sophia said. “We independently verified some other scientists' results. I’m going to write a paper for school about it.” That was news to me; was she making up something to justify what we were doing, or had she just decided to do a paper on the machines?

“Good for you,” the woman beamed. “Let’s go, honey,” and she pushed the center of the Venn diagram to get the money slot.

“So,” I said to Sophia as they pushed the Earth button and went in, “if you want to write a paper for school about these things, you’ll need to do more than one experiment, right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “And I’ll need to do a review of the, um, prior literature on the subject.”

“So,” I said, “I’ll let you use me as your experimental subject as long as you change me into a fifteen-year-old girl at the end of each series of experiments.”

She looked at me speculatively for a moment. “Deal,” she said, and we shook on it.

So we waited another minute or two and then the booths opened again, and a couple of anthropomorphic cats came out. The girl was nearly human, with cat ears and a tail, but the guy was a lot more catlike, with fur, claws, whiskers, and vertical pupils. They immediately started arguing about what cat-people were supposed to look like as they walked to their car.

I put another penny in the machine and pressed the sun icon; then, on a whim, I pushed it again and again — I would have kept pressing it if it hadn’t disappeared after the third press. Three years, maybe? I’d take it. “Okay,” I said, “I think you’d better just turn me into a girl now so we can be home before Mom and Dad and Caleb. We can do experiments on the weekend.”

“If Mom and Dad ever let us near the library again after this,” she said. “You’ll be in more trouble for being a girl than we would be for coming home late.”

“Do you want me to tweak you a little too, while we’re in there?” I asked.

“Maybe next time,” she said. “I’ll wait and see how long you get grounded for before I let you change me.”

“It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” I said. “Come on.”

The door closed moments after I entered, and I saw Sophia through the screen or window looking down at the interface in front of her. I couldn’t see what she was seeing, of course; I saw a bunch of circles with pictures of Sophia in them. In some she was older, or younger, or darker-skinned, or chubby or athletic, or simply wearing different clothes. I was careful not to touch them, although I could have done so without mishap as long as I didn’t then press the green button.

“I don’t see any pictures of you as a girl,” she said. “How — oh, it suddenly brought up a bunch of girl pictures when I said that.”

“Try to pick the one that looks the most like me,” I said, “even if it’s not the prettiest, as long as it looks feminine enough. I want people to know I’m me.”

“Okay,” she said, reaching out and touching the screen before her, and then looking up at me. “Oh! You already — I thought I had to press the green button to make you actually transform? How does it feel?”

“What? Oh, no, you haven’t changed me yet. What do I look like to you?”

“A girl just slightly shorter than you were. Same hair and eyes and skin, not much different besides being a girl, clothes similar but different — your T-shirt’s blue and looks newer, and your jeans are tailored for a girl. And the little bubbles with small pictures are showing variations of that girl you.”

“Yeah, that whole window-screen is going to look like what it would change me into if you pressed the green button now. Don’t do it yet, please. Is the girl you see just as overweight as I am now?”

“Uh, yeah, almost.”

“Okay, look for a picture that’s skinnier, but without being too different in the face, okay? Except I’d like to get rid of the acne if you can do that without making me unrecognizable.”

“All right...”

She touched one bubble and then studied the new ones that replaced it. “Hmm. This one looks better, but... is shorter okay? And you’re gonna have different clothes.”

“As long as it’s not, like, dwarfism? A few inches shorter would be fine.”

She touched another bubble and another, and then said, “I think this one looks good. You ready?”

“I trust your judgment,” I said, and an instant later I felt different.

Better.

Wonderful.

The green button on my side started disappearing, waning like the moon going from full to new over the course of about a minute, until it finally vanished and the doors opened. I was bouncing in place while I waited, looking down at myself and wanting to touch myself but knowing Sophia was right there looking through the window at me in awe. I did run my fingers over my face, not finding any pimples or blackheads.

I rushed out, grabbing Sophia as she emerged in the biggest hug I’d given anybody since I was a little kid. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” I squeed. I realized I was crying, and wiped the tears away as I let her go and stepped back.

“Wow,” she said, looking at me. “I think you’re shorter than me now?”

I’d been short for my age as a boy, barely taller than Sophia despite being a year older. “Yeah, I think so. You didn’t give me heels, did you?” I looked down. Sneakers, similar to the ones I’d been wearing but in pastel green and yellow. My outfit was not that different from what I’d worn before, jeans and a T-shirt, but my old, ratty church camp T-shirt had been replaced by a light green shirt with swirling abstract designs in a range of purples and pinks. The neckline was lower than on a boy’s shirt, though not enough to show cleavage.

“Hmm,” I said. “Maybe we can go again, and you can just pick ones that look the same physically but with different clothes until you find a nice outfit?”

“I’d like to,” she said, “but we need to get home.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Walking home as a girl was simultaneously wonderful and nerve-wracking. It was wonderful to feel the way my body moved, the way my hips swung and my breasts wobbled slightly in the bra the machine had outfitted me with. It fit perfectly, but I knew it wouldn’t have any kind of tag indicating its size. Everything felt so right.

And yet I knew I might be facing the worst hours of my life when Mom and Dad came home. Dad was going to freak out, and Mom would be more reasonable only by comparison. Caleb wouldn’t like it, either, I was pretty sure, but I thought I could handle Caleb okay if it were just him.

Tomorrow at school probably wouldn’t be much fun, either...

Sophia thankfully distracted me from the dark turn my thoughts were taking by saying, “So, um, have you decided on a girl name yet?”

“Meredith,” I said, savoring the sound of it. I’d never said it out loud before.

Sophia smiled. “That’s a pretty name. But... don’t take it the wrong way if I only call you Meredith when Mom and Dad aren’t around, okay?”

That hurt a little, but I understood. “Yeah, that makes sense. No sense in both of us getting grounded for months, if we can help it.”

“They’re gonna figure out I helped you,” she pointed out.

“Not necessarily,” I said. “Do you want me to cover for you?”

“How?”

“I’ll tell them I got somebody else to change me... I don’t know... somebody from school, somebody they don’t know.”

She shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m not gonna ask you to lie for me. They’re gonna find out I’m using the machine if I manage to do this science project like I want to, anyway.”

Before long, we were home. Neither the van nor Caleb’s car were in the driveway, only Dad’s car, which had been there when we got home.

“I’m hungry,” Sophia said. “I’m going to start fixing supper. But if you want to go to the bathroom and check out your new body, go ahead.”

“I won’t be long,” I promised. I went into the hall bathroom that I shared with Caleb and Sophia and looked at myself in the mirror.

I could still recognize myself easily enough; my eyes, skin and hair were the same colors and my facial features looked kind of like my old ones, though without the acne or acne scars, but I was a lot slenderer, and that was definitely a girl’s face. My breasts were modest, but they were the right size for that girlish torso. I took off my T-shirt and got a better look for a few moments, but didn’t take off my bra or jeans just then. When I did, it was going to take a while, and I needed to help Sophia with supper.

We were about halfway through eating when Caleb came home from football practice.

“Hi, Sophia,” he said. “Who’s your friend?”

She looked a question at me, and I said: “Hi, Caleb. I’m Tyler, but I’m going by Meredith now.”

“What the fuck?” he blurted. He’d picked up the habit of swearing from his buddies on the football team, and he tried not to swear at home because Mom and Dad always tore into him for it, but I didn’t blame him just then. “You used that machine, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh. Do you —” He glanced at Sophia and seemed to think twice about what he was going to say. “Never mind. I... this is just too weird. I’m gonna go to my room.”

He didn’t come out of his room again for a good while.

We’d finished supper, put away the leftovers, and almost finished loading the dishwasher when Mom and Dad came home.

“Did you find anything cool?” Sophia said, walking into the living room as soon as we heard the front door open. I stayed in the kitchen and kept loading the dishwasher, but I could hear them talking.

“Yeah, we got a first edition Dr. Seuss and several mid-seventies issues of Life,” Dad said. Mom and Dad run a home business where they buy underpriced books and antiques at thrift stores, estate sales, yard sales and so forth and sell them on eBay or Amazon. “And we bought groceries on the way home. Tell Tyler and Caleb to help bring them in. Did you get all your homework done?”

“Yeah,” Sophia said. “Tyler helped me with the participles.”

I put the last plate in the dishwasher, then straightened my shoulders and turned around. Time to face the music.

Going into the living room was a momentary anticlimax, because Mom and Dad weren’t there; they must have gone on into the spare bedroom where they kept most of the stuff they had for sale. I continued through the front door to the van and grabbed two bags of groceries.

Coming back toward the front door, I passed Caleb and Sophia coming out to get a load. “Good luck, bro,” Caleb muttered. “You’re gonna need it,” which was better than the way he’d reacted earlier. Maybe I’d misjudged him? And then I walked in the door and was face to face with Mom and Dad.

“Excuse me,” Mom said. “I don’t think we’ve met. I appreciate you helping us with the groceries, but Sophia’s not supposed to invite friends over when we’re not here —”

“Hi, Mom and Dad. It’s me, Tyler.”

Both of them stared at me wordlessly for a long moment, and I broke the silence by saying: “What about if I go put this stuff in the freezer before it melts?”

“What did you — you used that machine, didn’t you?” Mom said. “I thought they’d fenced it off.”

“There’s a —” I began, but Dad finally found his missing words, and roared:

“Why would you do such a thing? Even using that thing at all, but much less — was that deliberate, or an accident? After it killed that poor idiot —”

“She’s not dead,” I started, and he yelled “Don’t interrupt!”

“Justin,” Mom said, “let’s finish putting the groceries away and then have a family council.”

Dad took a deep breath and then another, and said: “Fine.”

When I started heading for the kitchen, I realized that Caleb and Sophia had come in behind me and heard most of my exchange with Mom and Dad. I put the frozen okra and Lima beans in the freezer and the other stuff in the pantry, and went back for another load. Less than five minutes later, we were all sitting around the living room, and Dad said: “All right. Explain what happened and why.”

I nerved myself and said, “I went to the library after Sophia and I had finished our homework, and used the new machine to change into a girl. And I —”

“How did you get past the fence?” Dad interrupted.

“There’s a new machine, about ten feet from the one they fenced off. It’s still accessible, but they put up a camera, I guess so people couldn’t use it to pretend to be somebody else and take all the money out of their bank account or something.”

“Who else changed with you?” Mom asked. “Andrew said you can only use it in pairs, right?”

“It takes two people to use it,” Sophia put in, “but they don’t both have to change. One person can change one other person or two people can change each other, and Tyler didn’t change me. And we tested it on a worm, but —”

“Never mind the worm,” Dad said. “Tyler, why would you do such a thing?”

This was it. Back before the machines appeared, when I’d thought about maybe telling Mom and Dad and Caleb and Sophia about this someday, probably after I was eighteen and not living at home anymore, I’d figured I would lead up to it gradually, reminding them about incidents from my childhood that I later looked back on and realized were clues I might be trans, and then telling them how I found out being transgender was a thing, and how I gradually suspected I might be, and figured out I probably was... but at this point, when they’d already seen me as a girl, there was no point in that. “I’m transgender,” I said, and waited for the inevitable explosion.

Dad started to bluster something incoherent, but Mom put a hand on his knee and managed to calm him down enough for her to say, “What makes you think that?”

So then I went into the childhood incidents and all the other stuff I’d originally planned to lead into it with. I couldn’t get very far without Mom or Dad commenting on those incidents, in some cases saying they didn’t remember them, in others saying they didn’t see why that proved I was really a girl.

For instance: “Your father probably overreacted to you playing dolls with Sophia,” Mom said, “but it’s normal and okay for you to humor your little sister when she asked you to play with her. You were just being a good brother.”

“He was almost ten!” Dad said — it wasn’t quite loud enough for me to say “yelled.”

So that went on for a while, and the tea I’d drunk with supper caught up with me, and I said, “I need to use the restroom.”

“Come right back,” Dad said.

I got up to go and Sophia called: “Wait!”

“What is it?” I asked, turning.

She got up and came over to me, whispering in my ear: “Wipe front to back.”

“Thanks,” I said.

When I got back, Mom and Dad had been looking stuff up on his laptop and her tablet, and Mom said: “It says here that a lot of people who think they’re transgender are really suffering from depression or some other mental problem. Are you feeling depressed, Tyler? You know you can talk to us about that.”

Yeah, Mom, you’re really making me glad I told you. “I was,” I said. “Not as bad as a lot of trans kids, but sometimes, off and on... not anymore, though. Not since I got the right body.”

“You can’t assume this has fixed your depression,” Mom pointed out, “especially when it’s just been a couple of hours and you said your depression was intermittent.” She was right for once, but I wanted to argue with her anyway. “I think the machine causes some kind of temporary euphoria — at least I hope it’s temporary. The way Andrew and Evan were acting Saturday...”

“I’ve hardly found anything reliable about that machine,” Dad said, sounding even more frustrated than he’d been all evening. “I keep turning up obvious pieces of fiction — most of them indecent —” (I could tell he was trying to avoid saying “porn”) “— that don’t match what you’ve said about it, and some things that might be reports of people using a machine like the ones at our library, but might be stories written in a more journalistic style.”

“What search terms are you using? I haven’t seen any general agreement on what to call them, but a lot of people are calling them ‘Venn machines,’ or ‘transformation booths,’ or ‘trust booths.’”

“I get ‘transformation booth,’” Mom said, “but why ‘Venn machine’ or ‘trust booth’?”

“Because it’s got a big Venn diagram on the front,” Sophia said, and I added: “And because you have to trust the other person to turn you into what you asked them to, and they have to trust you to change them how they want, or not change them if they don’t want it.”

“I wonder if the intersecting circles mean the same thing to the people that built them as they do to us,” Sophia mused, “and if so, what are the three sets?”

People will tell you that the three sets are people you trust, people who trust you, and people who are trustworthy, as if that’s Gospel truth. But nobody really knows. That’s a plausible theory, but there are others; my favorite is that they’re people who are mature and in their right mind (people the machine will allow to use it), people with the courage to change, and people with at least one friend they trust. And maybe, for the machine’s creators, interlocking circles symbolize something completely unrelated to set theory.

“We don’t know anything about those machines,” Dad said as he typed in some of those search terms, “who made them, or how they put them up where they did without anybody noticing, or how they work. But we do know they’re not safe — that sometimes they turn people into inanimate objects instead of giving them a different human body! That could have happened to you, Tyler! We could have lost you!”

“It’s not that bad,” I said. “The changes wear off after a while —”

“When is this going to wear off?” Mom asked.

“Three years. I pressed the sun button three times.”

“Three years!” Dad exclaimed in horror, and Sophia added: “We don’t know for sure. We just know that people who pressed the Earth button once changed back after a day, and most people figure the moon and sun buttons mean a month or a year.”

“And it wears off even if you change into something inanimate?” Mom asked skeptically, and I told them about the guy in Iowa who’d turned into a gaming minifig for a day and was none the worse for wear when he changed back.

Dad added “Fort Dodge, Iowa” to his search terms, and I think Mom did too, because they were soon engrossed in reading. Us kids didn’t say anything. Sophia reached over and squeezed my hand, and I squeezed hers back.

Finally Dad looked up from his laptop and said, “Not only do transformations into inanimate objects wear off after a certain time, but you can turn someone back immediately just by putting them back in the machine by themselves. So since the main risk we were worried about isn’t an issue... I think we should use the machine to change Tyler back. What do you think, Erin?”

My heart sank.

“I’d like to do a little more research,” Mom said. “But probably so. Tomorrow before school, or more likely later tonight.”

“Please,” I said, horror-struck. “Don’t make me change back!”

“You can’t,” Sophia suddenly spoke up. “Remember that sign outside the booth, Tyler? It said it was illegal to force somebody to go in the booth and change.”

“Not for a parent to undo a change their child made without permission,” Dad said. “That wouldn’t make sense. Besides, the city or county couldn’t have passed an ordinance about it that fast, right?”

“The city council meets on Tuesdays,” Mom said, “but they have to announce a proposed new ordinance at least two weeks before the meeting where it’s voted on to let members of the public comment on it. The county commission has similar rules. When did the new machine appear?”

“Sometime Monday,” Caleb volunteered. That was the first thing he’d said. “Some seniors I know got changed Monday after school and came to school with new bodies Tuesday. Some of them were back to normal today, others were still looking different.”

“So whatever they’re proposing, it can’t be in effect yet,” Dad said. “I’ll check if there’s a proposed ordinance on the city or county website. Erin, what about if you keep looking up stuff about people who changed into inanimate objects. I’m going to the city’s website...”

He couldn’t find anything relevant there, or on the county or local newspaper’s site. Eventually, from some documents that were leaked a few years later, we found out that the Federal government had quietly advised local and state governments not to pass special laws relating to the Venn machines yet, not until more was known about them, but to prosecute crimes involving them under ordinary statutes of assault (forcing someone into a booth) or fraud (impersonating someone or disguising yourself to escape prosecution for a crime). The public process of debating new laws would just draw more attention to the machines and get more people to use them, so the theory went.

After Mom and Dad had been silently reading for a couple of minutes, Caleb said, “May I be excused? I hadn’t finished my homework — I only got home from practice less than an hour ago.”

“Sure,” Dad said, “go ahead. Tyler and Sophia, you stay here,” he added as I opened my mouth but before I could say anything.

So we sat there waiting for them to do their research and decide if it was safe to force me to change back, and also what our punishment should be. After what seemed like a long time, Mom said: “Justin, let’s talk about this in private. Tyler and Sophia, stay here.”

“Good idea,” Dad said, and they went down the hall to their bedroom.

“What do you think they’re going to do?” Sophia asked.

“Probably ground us both for a while,” I said, “and force me to change back. Do you really think the sheriff’s deputies are going to arrest Dad for forcing me to change back? It would be nice, but it’s not going to happen, not around here. I should have thought this through.” I slumped back into the sofa, and Sophia squeezed my hand again.

“Do you regret it?”

“No. Yes... I don’t know. I thought I was probably trans before, but now I’m absolutely sure, and being a boy again is going to hurt worse than it ever did before. I might have to go back to being a boy until I’m eighteen, but I know where I’m going at the crack of dawn on my eighteenth birthday.”

We fell silent again until Mom and Dad came back.

“Tyler,” Mom said, “remember how when you were little, and misbehaved in public, we wouldn’t punish you much until we came home?”

“Yeah...” I wasn’t quite sure where she was going with that.

“We’re not going to make a public spectacle of dragging you into that machine,” Dad said. “But if you don’t agree to go in quietly and let it change you back, you will experience consequences.

“Sophia, you’re grounded for one month. Tyler, you’re grounded for one month plus one day for every day you keep that body. You know the rules: no video games, no TV or movies, no Internet except for school research, no having friends over or going over to their houses. There’s another rule that’s going to apply to both of you well after you’re not grounded anymore — you can’t go to the library without one of us or Caleb accompanying you.”

I was mentally working through that. I could stay a girl as long as I liked if I was willing to stay grounded for that long — plus a month after I broke down and agreed to change back into a boy, if I ever did. I could live without video games or movies if I got to be a girl. Not having contact with Andrew outside of school, or my online friends basically ever... that would be harder, but I was determined to put up with it as long as necessary. Until I was eighteen, probably.

“In addition, Tyler,” Mom added, “we’re going to be finding you a counselor to help you with your depression. I wish you’d told us about that sooner. We want to help you.”

But you don’t understand me well enough to do it, I thought. I just nodded. “I understand.”

“So are you ready to go over there now and change back?” Dad asked. “You’ll only be grounded for a month that way.”

“No, sir,” I said. “I’m willing to stay grounded until I’m eighteen. That’s how strongly I feel about being a girl.”

I thought he’d get angry, but he looked... devastated.

“You can change your mind any time,” Mom said. “We’ll run you over to the library whenever you say the word. Please, Tyler, think about what you’re doing.”

“I will,” I said, biting back my instinctive response.

I went to bed a little later, brushing my teeth (even that felt a little different; the shape of my teeth and mouth had changed in subtle ways), peeing again, changing from my jeans and T-shirt into sweat pants and a different T-shirt. I wanted to get a proper girly nightgown at some point, but this would do for now. Just before I left the bathroom, I wondered if the machine had given me a layer of makeup or something along with those clothes (and the bra, which had no equivalent in the items of clothing I was wearing before); I rubbed at my cheeks and lips and didn’t smear anything, so I guessed I didn’t need to clean anything off before bed. I’d have to get Sophia to teach me about that sometime.

Soon I was in bed, but my thoughts were racing too much to sleep for a while. I was alternating between being overjoyed at how right my body felt now, and moping over Mom and Dad’s reactions. I groaned when I realized that with all the interruptions and arguments, I’d never gotten around to telling them my new name — not that they’d agree to call me by it any time soon. But I firmly reminded myself that it could be a lot worse. They might have kicked me out at the first mention of my being transgender, or beaten me up, or sent me to a military boarding school or a conversion camp. I’d met people online who’d had all those things happen to them. I wasn’t 100% sure the last couple weren’t still on the table, but somehow I didn’t think it was very likely. They’d want to deal with this “problem” in-house.

---