I paced. I had to make a decision.

Wanda’s return call had been clear. I could leave now, but the internship would be over. My slot in the program was explicitly intended for a female. By law, they had to extend their offer to the most highly qualified candidate, and that was me, but if I wasn’t interested, they could pass it along to their first alternate.

I fumed. I had worked hard for this opportunity. Weeks of interviews, months of waiting. This could make or break my career. It was quite literally the chance of a lifetime.

But at what cost? I had been willing to change my body. They could give me a different face, a different race, whatever they wanted, and I would not have quibbled. But gender? I mean, I had wondered what it would be like, of course, but I had never expected to be in the position to satisfy that curiosity.

What would that be like? Three months as a woman. Now that I considered it, that didn’t seem so long. Enough to get a taste, and then right back to myself. And if I didn’t like it, they would change me back right away. I’d lose the job, of course, but I stood to lose it right now. I could give it a week, then another week, and know I could back out whenever I felt like.

Of course, they might want me to stay on full time. I jabbed the help button, and Wanda’s face appeared immediately. “At the end of the internship, if they hire me... do I have to stay a woman?”

She rifled through the papers. “Looks like... well, it depends on the job. But most of the positions aren’t specified. So probably not?”

That was good enough for me. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

Wanda relaxed visibly. “Oh, thank God. Okay. Make your selection, and let me know if you have any questions. Good luck!”

And so there I was. Time to pick the girl I was going to become.

I swiped through all the options again, more slowly this time. They all appeared more or less European, though in hair color they ranged from Scandinavian blonde to Irish redhead, from light brown to dark, and even jet black. The lightest skinned was almost albino, the darkest a creamy latte.

I discovered that I could select “More details” and get a close-up. I saw blue eyes and brown, freckled skin and clear. They were all quite attractive, and yet in very different ways. This one had pouty lips and flirty eyes; that one looked wide-eyed and innocent.

Each one had a side panel of statistics. A tall, slim brunette was tagged as a sprinter, while the redhead was commended for long distance hiking. Another was recommended for cycling, one for swimming, and yet another was commended on her great flexibility.

There was a clothing option as well. By that point, I had narrowed my choices down to four, and all of them appeared on the screen at once. Each swipe changed their outfits. Jeans and a T-shirt. A business suit. A formal gown. A little black dress. Shorts and a tank top. Pajamas. A one-piece swimsuit. A bikini. Nothing at all.

In surprise, I swiped back to the bikinis. Did I just make all four images naked? I swiped back, and sure enough, all four were now completely nude. In another circumstance, I think I could have contrived to stare at them for a good long time, but something in me objected to treating them as sexual objects. Not when I was about to become one of them.

For that, I found I cared more about their faces than their bodies. I was trying to decide who to be, not who to be with. That realization made me reconsider my choices, and after some review, I found that none of the four finalists were really doing it for me. I scrolled through the others, and quickly found one that seemed to fit.

I loaded her profile. Looking at her, I felt a sense of kinship, almost. It was like she was someone I knew. She felt familiar and comfortable.

In my heart I think I had already chosen, but I went through the motions. She had curly hair that was arrayed around her head in big ringlets. They cascaded down her shoulders to the level of her shoulder blades. Another slider changed the style, and I saw her go from wearing it loose, to a ponytail, to pinned up in an elaborate style suitable for a night at the opera. I even saw what it looked like soaking wet, right out of the shower.

For the rest of my analysis, I switched to the ponytail. Her skin was neither too light or too dark. She had rather full lips and large, brown eyes with long lashes. Her cheeks were round with high cheekbones, and her nose was slightly upturned and quite cute. She was not a fashion model or an exotic dancer. She was a girl next door. I could picture her doing real things, like grocery shopping or curling up on a couch watching television.

I cycled through the outfits, and found that her body looked equally normal. She was on the short side, four inches above five feet, according to the statistics. Her legs were nicely shaped, with thighs that looked like they had a bit of muscle as well as shape. If nothing else, she looked great in a pair of jeans, which hugged her hips and butt nicely. In fact, her height may have accentuated the width of her hips. She might have walked past me on the street without me thinking it odd, but now that I was putting myself in her shoes, as it were, I remarked on how wide her hips were in comparison to the rest of her.

I scrolled through to the bikini, to get a sense of the rest of her. She had a slender waist above the hips, a nice flat stomach. Her arms were shapely, and her shoulders sloped down to reveal a long and rather beautiful neck. These features notwithstanding, my eyes were inevitably drawn to her breasts.

Some of my choices had been smaller and some larger. She was nicely proportional, I decided. The bikini was slight enough to reveal the inner slopes of her breasts, and the fabric hugged the flesh into a very pleasing shape. Steeling myself, I swiped to the last outfit, the birthday suit. Freed from fabric, her boobs hung naturally. I revised my original opinion — they were quite full enough to be going on with. From the curtain of hair to the boobs to the ass and legs, I had identified a very attractive woman.

Oddly, I was not aroused in the slightest. I could tell she was attractive, could even tell you why, but there was no stirring of desire. Perhaps my brain had already settled on this form as mine.

There was one last option I hadn’t tried. I pressed “Mirror,” and the picture disappeared. Instead, I saw a reflection of the room in which I was standing. But instead of myself reflected in the mirror, I saw her.

She was still not wearing a stitch. I swiped back a few outfits to the tank top and shorts. The figure on the screen copied the action. Her eyes looked where mine looked. She shifted her weight back and forth as I did, reached up her arms, turned from side to side copying me as she did so.

The illusion was so real that I reached up to touch my chest. I felt only my normal flatness, though my mirror image was pressing her breast. I shook my head. It was uncanny, but it had removed my last reservation. I actually liked the way I looked in this mirror, and it was past time to bring the reflection into reality.

I pressed select. I answered “Yes” to a few “Are you sure?” type questions, and even spoke the word aloud.

To my left, a drawer popped out of the wall, and I was instructed to place all my clothes into it. The screen had gone dark now, so I didn’t feel quite so exposed as I stripped off and put them inside. Once the last article had been set inside, the drawer closed. The screen informed me that there was a robe in the bathroom for my comfort and convenience.

And with that, the screen changed to a menu, offering me movies, television, music, books, news, weather, and a host of other options. I selected “progress,” and the archetypical progress bar appeared. “Conversion in progress: 0.09%”

I decided to put on the robe. I suspected this might take a while.