For a few moments, I was nearly washed away on a tidal wave of memories, all competing for my attention. I supposed that only the “different” memories and emerged before, but now that I was female all the memories were just a bit different.

I thought back to my fifth birthday party. It had been Transformers themed... except no, it hadn’t. It was Lilo and Stitch themed. I remember loving Lilo at that age. She was cute and feisty and just like me.

Saying that felt normal and strange, all at the same time.

I met my roommate later on that day. Her name was Melanie and she was the best. We immediately became inseparable. We stayed up way later than we should have, learning every last detail of each other’s lives. (I was learning about myself too, since in many cases I was calling up memories for the first time.)

We met other girls in the dorm, Sara and Rachel and Emmaline and Wanda. We met guys too, Eric and Jim and the two Mikes and Benjamin. Suddenly, I had a network of friends, close friends and extended friends and friends of friends.

We went out dancing. We ate at diners at midnight. We drove to the Krispy Kreme factory to get fresh donuts. And yes, we went to class and studied and generally did our college thing.

I visited home about once a month, in October and at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I got to meet my brother Marty, too — I had spoken to him on the phone before, but never actually met him in person. We were a happy family having a happy family holiday.

After New Years, though, I started to ask myself how long I intended to live this life. The longer I spent like this, the harder it would be to go back. Just the thought of Fat Brian, of being that again, was abhorrent. But did I really want to stay Alice forever?

First and foremost, I was a girl now. Yes, certain things I had gotten used to. I could dress myself, and do my makeup, and generally make my body do the same sorts of things my male body could. Some days it felt completely normal; others, I had such a strong sense of dysmorphia that I could barely stand to let anyone see me. Melanie thought I was just having standard body issues, and sympathized. She told me how hot I was. She made sure I knew I was not fat. She did everything right, just for the wrong sort of body issues.

I knew I wasn’t fat — I had been fat, and this wasn’t it. I wasn’t comfortable with being hot, and I had to admit that I probably was. Guys routinely checked me out. At first I felt disgusted, then disdainful, then self-conscious and anxious. Finally I just got used to it, although depending on the guy it would still creep me out some.

Physically, there were moments that my body was just a hassle. Periods were the most obvious example. First my boobs would ache, then my uterus would start complaining. After about a week of that there was the blood itself, with all the accompanying smells and hygiene products. By the time it was over, I had only two weeks before the whole damn thing started over again.

And that’s when everything was functioning normally. I was horrified at getting a yeast infection. The doctor visit told me what was going on, but I got a routine pelvic exam to go with it. That was the first time anything at all had gone up my vagina, and the experience felt demeaning and degrading, not to mention painful.

I had never really understood microaggressions, not as a white male, but being female I got a crash course. The infuriating thing was how hard they were to address. If someone had come right out and said that my opinion wasn’t valid because I was a woman, I could speak up about it, and expect to get support. But what should I do when I kept getting interrupted, and no one else seemed to notice? What do I do in a group project when I mention an idea, and it makes no impact, but when a guy mentions the same thing later on, everyone jumps on board? Bringing it up made me sound petty and shrewish, two things I quickly discovered that no one wants in a girl. Do I say something anyway, damn the reputation? Or do I grin and bear it?

Melanie and I had lots of conversations about this. We were two dawning feminists, and I only occasionally felt guilty about my masculine background as we naively tried to find a solution for centuries of gender inequality. To be honest, the sense of righteous indignation at the treatment of women was welcome in a way — before, I had so few things to be righteously indignant about. But which was greater, that sense of being on the “right” side, or my frustration at the bad treatment? Because I had a quick solution to the latter, even if it applied only to me.

Ultimately, I decided to talk to Evelyn about it. I dug out the key from the bottom of my purse, and on the way back from a late night bathroom trip, I entered Debug Mode.

My slippers and robe felt incongruous, compared to the majesty of my surroundings. I stopped in the lobby to stare up at my new life story.

“Alice Parkland

“Alice was born in 1999, the younger of two children. In school she played volleyball, while making excellent grades. She is now in her second semester at Georgetown University, majoring in English.

She has undergone two completed changes, and is currently contemplating whether to finalize her third.”

I stepped up the stairs. Despite what I thought of as a late hour, Evelyn was as fresh and alert as ever.

“Hello Alice! How are you adjusting?”

“I’m not sure.” I sat down in the chair, unbidden, and began to speak. “Some days I love it, you know? It feels like the best and most normal thing in the world. I have friends now, and we laugh together, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been. But other times, I look back on what I was, and I miss it, and suddenly the way I am now feels wrong. Like, I’m an impostor, like I’m some kind of pervert pretending to be what they’re not. I’m just so torn, and I don’t know what to do.”

Evelyn listened intently as I spoke. She indicated my hand. “What color is your ring now?”

“Blue.” I sighed. “I know, I could move it to green, and then Alice would come to the front. But I’m worried if I do that, I’ll lose myself.”

“Let me show you something,” Evelyn said. And she moved her left hand in a certain way. I blinked. “What was that about?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute. Now, what’s your name?”

“Alice Parkland.”

“Age?”

“Nineteen. I just had my birthday in December.”

“Gender?”

I wrinkled my forehead. “I’m sorry, what?”

Evelyn smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, I just have to ask. Gender?”

“Female.” Duh.

“And where do you live?”

“I’m in a dorm, Reynolds Hall, on the Georgetown campus.

“Do you remember the day you moved in?”

I nodded. “Sure. My mom drove me down.”

“And what about the day before that. You were at home in Philadelphia, I would imagine. What happened that day?”

“I... uh... I don’t remember.”

“And your 18th birthday. Did you do anything fun with your friends?”

I was stumped. “Yeah, I guess I did.” I shook my head to clear it. “I can’t remember that either.”

Evelyn made another odd gesture. “Now do you understand?”

“What just happened? For a minute there, I couldn’t remember anything that happened before last August.”

Evelyn nodded. “Exactly. And during that time, did you feel different in any way?”

“Yeah!” I said with some asperity. “I had amnesia.”

“Before that. Did you notice when I took away your memory?”

I thought back. “You waved your hand, but I didn’t know what that was. No, I didn’t notice.” She had asked me questions, and I had answered, though. Confidently. Based on the last few months alone, I was Alice, pure and simple.

But at the same time, I had been myself, too. Everything felt normal. I was me, and I was Alice, because me was Alice. Pardon my grammar.

“I think I see now. I might have access to a different set of memories, but the self that is accessing those memories is still me, and what I choose to do with them is me as well.”

“Precisely. Debug Mode cannot change you. I know you feel like you’ve changed, but you really haven’t. The part of you that is you alone, your soul as it were, is untouched. All we can do is to give you different experiences, to help you find the right set of circumstances that would allow the innate you to behave a certain way.”

I considered this for a moment. “So that means that the original me... that is, Brian... he was never going to be able to find happiness, as a man.”

She shook her head sadly. “Precedents are always chosen to invoke minimal change. The extremity of this particular Precedent is proof that it was the only way.” She took a deep breath. “As a boy, you were taught to bottle in your emotions. Don’t cry, take it like a man. You dealt with your problems by trying to hide from them, and that cut you off from other people. You never developed good social skills. When by some chance you made a friend, you clung on so hard that it put many of them off, except for those just as lonely as you.”

Her words stung, all the more so for the truth I could hear in them.

She went on. “As a girl, however, you were allowed to express your emotions. Encouraged, even. You made more and better friends early on in your life, which built up skills that have carried you into young adulthood. Only as a woman are you an emotionally healthy person, and only as an emotionally healthy person can you have what you asked for. Friends, relationships, a soulmate.”

I fingered the ring. I knew what I needed to do, but still I hesitated. “I’m scared,” I told Evelyn.

“The fact that you can say that,” she said, leaning across the desk to lay a hand on mine, “is proof of how much you have grown.”

She was right. I thought about Fat Brian. Sure, he had enjoyed playing board games, but why? Was it anything more than a rigid method of the social interaction he so craved? He had friends, sure, but what did he know about them? They were opponents, people to discuss rules with, a way to pass the time, but nothing more.

Sad Brian didn’t even have that. He was isolated from nearly all human contact, except for the occasional weekend get-together with Sean, and Sean’s other friends. He had never really connected with any of them, in large part because of his depression. Yes, depression — I could see that now, how he felt trapped in his life. There were things holding him back, certainly, but most of the cage was self-imposed.

And then there was Junkie Brian. He had gotten so good at hiding from his problems that he barely thought he had any. But then again, he wasn’t actually hiding, was he? He was just unaware that the problem had found him and claimed him and did not want to let him go.

Suddenly, I did not want to be any of them anymore. I didn’t want to be Brian at all. I was Alice. She was a good person, a better person than I ever thought I could be, and I had no wish to let that life go.

I twisted the ring on my finger, and the stone shifted to green.

I expected a sudden rush of memory, like I had experienced originally, but it did not happen. In fact, at first I felt no different than I had before. No, something had changed, but what was it?

Evelyn simply watched me, waiting, smiling ever so slightly What was it she saw? I almost asked her, but even as the question got to my lips, I figured it out.

I was no longer afraid. All of the anxiety had faded along with the old Brian memories. The memories were still there, but muted. All the color and emotion had drained out of them, until they were nothing more than stories. They might as well have happened to another person. In fact, they had — they had happened to someone far different than me.

I considered my body. Before, I had always had a sort of discomfort about it. It’s like the feeling of driving a borrowed car. No matter how good a driver you are, no matter how you get used to it, the car never loses the sense of not quite belonging to you.

But now, that body felt perfectly natural. Yes, I had boobs and butt and a vagina. I had long hair and a high voice and long nails, all the trimmings of femininity. But so what? I had two arms and two legs, lungs that breathed in air and eyes that saw. I remembered being a little girl and running has hard as I could, falling down and getting up to run some more.

Men, I understood, held the female body in a strange kind of reverence. To them, it was the object of attraction. The focus of their attention on it was sexual, and that colored the way they thought about the women who wore those bodies.

But it was also the body I ate with, slept with, pooped with, ran with and everything else. Yes,, one of the things I could do and be was sexual in nature — I remembered with a start that I had already had sex, back in high school — but that wasn’t everything. I was multi-purpose. Ultimately, it was just a part of me.

That realization gave me a sense of comfort I had not known I was lacking. I felt whole for the first time since I had become Alice, possibly the first time in my life.

I fingered the ring again, and Evelyn spoke. “Not right now. Think about it for a while.” I nodded and took my hand away. I needed to understand everything I had gained, before I considered taking away the past that had brought me there. “Ready to go back?” Evelyn asked.

“One question first. I had asked for my soulmate, but I don’t think I’ve found him yet.” My eyes widened. I had said “him.” It just came out, but that would give me some food for thought.

“You asked to find your soulmate. And you will. You are on the path, inevitably. Of course, it’s still up to you to recognize him, and to figure out what to do when you meet.” She grinned. “But I have faith.” And with that, she dissolved, taking the office with her, and leaving me in the hall outside my door.