Consciousness came with a start, but not in the jolt-awake-from-a-nightmare sense. I was simply awake again...sort of. Not really. The first red rays of sunlight filtered in through the cracks of my eyelids, and my thoughts felt like molasses; my head was throbbing. What had I been doing last night? Had Gil finally cajoled me into going out and partying?

No, no...he insisted that it wasn't that kind of party, I remembered, and I wasn't lightweight or dedicated enough to get blackout drunk on whatever cheap beer they were serving up to go with pizza and first-person shooters. I wouldn't have been at the kind of party where I'd be unable to remember it afterward, and I didn't remember being at any other kind of party, so I couldn't have been at a party. But I was with someone...multiple people? ...And a rat?

This was the damnedest thing. My thoughts were slow and my memory was slower - but not fuzzy and disjointed from an exhausting day or late night, or the parties I wouldn't have been at. My brain was just grinding slowly away on piecing everything together, while all around me the world was screaming by at the breakneck speed of one second per second.

Coffee. Coffee would help. I preferred tea for my evening relaxation, but in the morning, you need coffee for that raw caffeine jolt. I would find the coffeemaker. Just as soon as my limbs responded.

My body was, somehow, even more sluggish than my mind. The limbs moved strangely - at full strength, but in slow motion. Glacially, I rolled onto my stomach, then rose to my hands and knees, sliding my legs off the bed like drifting continents. The time it took to stand on my feet should have felt like a Herculean effort, but it was more like an invisible tractor dragging my limbs along; slow, deliberate, puttering, and graceless. I took a single step forward...and ground to a halt.

Time was dilating around me like I was entering a black hole. The dawn was accelerating, until the sunlight flickered like in a time-lapse nature film. None of my limbs would move another micron; I was frozen in the last stage of the step, my left leg trailing as I came to rest on my right foot. The throbbing in my head pulsed out what seemed like a steady metronomic beat, but anyone outside the black hole must've heard a decelerating series of faint clicks...

A figure in white flickered across my field of vision, like water damage on an old silent film. I could only catch the briefest glimpses before it was somewhere else. Had I been drugged, or was I being haunted, too, on top of slowly losing my mind at the event horizon?

Then a touch, quick and juddering but firm, like seismic tremors...

And then there was a lurch in my whole perception, as if my very existence was halted for a moment, and then accelerated. Was I having a heart attack? ...In a black hole? While being haunted? God damn it, Gil, why did you put these ideas in my head? Well, he'd only gotten me on the heart attack specifically; the synthesis of the mystery elements into the (non-)proverbial spectral black-hole coronary was on me.

But I was thinking again, thinking clearly - and the lurching snapped back and the world slowed to something resembling normal speed. And then came a second lurch, and a second snap-back, and a third...

"Ye gods," said Emma, softly wheezing, "that right there is a lot of torque."

Energy and movement returned to me, and my brain began working overtime to fill in the blanks. I half-tripped coming out of my single step, skipped forward, landed on the ball of my foot, and pivoted toward the sound of her voice, coming face-to-face with...a disembodied head on a dresser. Now it all came back to me: the library, the lab, the accident, the flight back the dorm, the girl in the mirror...

The girl in the mirror, right now, looking back at me.

I stared into the glass, past Emma's head, at myself. A familiar unfamiliar reflection greeted me: a girl with silver-white hair, fabric "skin," and a big brass blade turning lazily behind her. And no clothes on.

"Well," Emma said, her gaze travelling as far down my body as possible without tilting her head, "I guess that answers that question."

I leapt back with a yelp, away from the dresser and toward the bathroom, but I stumbled backwards, unused to the weight of the key on my back. And, as whatever malevolent luck-god was now presiding over my life would have it, I backed right into Tammy, coming the other way with a pile of clothing in her lap. I caught myself on the doorjamb and avoided toppling us both onto the tile, but it didn't make things much less embarrassing.

I whirled around with a mortified "Sorry!" Then her surprised expression reminded me, and I shot my hands down to cover up - and brought an arm back up when I realized that I now had two parts to cover. And then experienced a full-body cringe over the single most embarassing moment in my life.

Tammy, for her part, gave me a funny look for a minute, but quickly recovered her composure. "Stu," she asked, "what's going on? Why are you naked?" Her eyes narrowed. "Emma...?"

"Hey, don't look at me," my decapitated classmate called from behind me. "She was like that when I got here."

I sighed, feeling my embarrassment intensify. I wished I could still blush, just for catharsis. "I couldn't sleep, because I had to see myself," I said. "And when I'd had a look in the mirror, the only thing I wanted was to go to sleep."

Tammy nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, I bet. And that's why your clothes were just lying on the bathroom floor?"

"Um, yeah."

She sighed. "Well, unlike my roommates, I haven't had to repeatedly ask you not to, so I'll spare you the lecture. But what was all that fuss about just now?"

"I had to wind her up," Emma said, picking herself up off the dresser and coming over. "Then she freaked out on me, then you showed up."

They both looked at me. "I-" I stammered, "I realized I was, um, naked, and, yeah, I freaked out. That about covers it."

Emma eyed me curiously. "You didn't realize it in the fifteen-plus minutes you were just standing there mid-step?"

I shook my head. "It was hard to think. It took forever to remember stuff, and everything was moving super-fast around m-wait, fifteen minutes!?"

She whistled. "So the world speeds up from your perspective as you run down? Wild. And yeah, thereabouts. What was it for you?"

"I, uh, don't know," I murmured. "I wasn't counting. It was just...surreal. And..." And scary, I wanted to say - but the experience wasn't really as scary as my confusion over it and the ideas my agitated mind conjured up. I thought I should feel more freaked-out over it, but with hindsight and without chemicals overtaking reason, I couldn't honestly say it was as bad as all that.

Tammy put a comforting hand on my arm. "You okay there?"

I sighed and nodded. "Y-yeah. It was just freaky experiencing it without knowing what was happening. I mean, this is all still crazy, but at least I can process it, now that things aren't happening a hundred times too fast for my brain."

"Well, it's over for now," she said. "But seriously, get freaking dressed already."

I grimaced, the embarrassment returning. "Uh, yeah, right. Th-thanks for picking these up," I said, reaching out to her for the only clothes I had available. She handed them over, then got a mischievous expression on her face.

"Y'know," she said, "you don't have to wear these, if you don't want to. The Little Divas have damn near an entire costuming department between them; we could find something more to your taste, if you want."

I frowned. "Um...you want me to wear your roommates' clothes...?"

Emma cocked an eyebrow. "You sure you're not just taking an opportunity for petty revenge?"

Tammy considered that for a moment, her caudal fin twitching. "...Not just. Besides, they'd never notice." She looked a bit embarrassed to admit it, but shrugged it off. "You don't have to, I just figured you might want a choice. I'd let you borrow mine, but I they wouldn't fit you."

Honestly, I hadn't thought about it until now. Last night was so utterly overwhelming - confusing and shocking and impossible to comprehend - that I'd hardly thought about the clothes I ended up in when the change took me. I had a rough impression, but I hadn't thought much about how they made me feel. Even now, holding the dress up for examination, it didn't seem overly frilly or anything; just a simple, understated black dress tailored around my winding key. I certainly didn't hate it.

But I wasn't eager to be wearing women's clothing, either. I was still struggling to even process this, let alone form definite opinions on something this tangential, but I could imagine feeling self-conscious about going around in a dress, even one this plain and modest - and even if I accepted this body as "me" in any sense other than that it was the one I was currently inhabiting (which I didn't,) I didn't see why I should have to re-orient my entire "style" around it.

Well, I didn't really think I had a "style;" I pretty much wore whatever, as long as it was comfortable and more or less fit what people expected of me. But...wouldn't that basically be what I had been wearing? What constitutes "fitting" apparel for a...a clockwork machine-doll-thing in the shape of a young woman? Would people find it weird to see this going around in jeans and a T-shirt? But-

No, this was ridiculous. People were going to find me weird in any case, and the college didn't have a dress code anyway. And I really just wanted something loose and comfortable that I didn't have to think about. "I guess," I replied. "All I really want is a pair of jeans and a shirt."

Emma frowned. "Aw, you're no fun."

"Back off, it's her-his call," Tammy said. "Um...okay, Alicia's probably around your size; that's her side of the room." She gestured over to the bed I'd slept in, near the window. Great, I thought, the one with the heavy perfume. I'd probably end up infused with it by the end of the day...especially with this fabric "skin." But it was better than having no alternatives, I supposed.

I went to Alicia's side of the dresser and stood there, reluctant to start rifling through some random girl's things. After a moment, Tammy joined me. "C'mon," she said. "Like I said, these two have enough clothing for a whole orphanage, and we'll put them back when we've gotten you some other clothes. Besides, you've got underwear; we'll just be borrowing a top and some pants."

She started opening the drawers, skipping the top one (which she couldn't see into anyway.) Meanwhile, I took "my" clothes from her and tossed them on the bed, then dug out the panties and slipped them on after a moment of hesitation; even with "nothing" down there, going commando would be too awkward.

A minute or so later, Tammy held up some kind of shirt. "I figured they'd have these," she said, handing it to me. "Here, give it a try. I don't know what we're gonna do about tops for you in the fut-uh, for the time being, but this you can button around that key, and it's about as neutral as you're gonna get."

I took it. It was a button-up shirt (blouse? I had no idea...) in pale lemon-yellow - cut for a woman, but fairly plain otherwise, except that the buttons were down the back, like the dress. Was this a thing, then? It rang a vague bell, but I'd never looked into this stuff much. But it was just the thing for my predicament. Shrugging, I slipped it on and spent a moment straightening it, then another minute fumbling with the buttons, fastening all but the pair nearest to my key. The fabric was a bit stiff, but it'd work.

"You know," Emma said, "there are other options. Like, something backless, or maybe a bandeau top, if you could get it to sit comfortably over the shaft?" There was a bit of mischief in her voice, and I was sure she saw this as and opportunity to play dress-up with me. I gritted my teeth, but didn't say anything. The latter term didn't conjure up any specific images for me, although I could probably work it out, but the teasing tone told me everything I needed to know.

"Yeah, I'll let Stu make the decisions here," Tammy said, heading that off before it could go anywhere. "For now, let's just get dressed and then-" There was a growl, and after a moment we realized it was her stomach. "-and then go get some freakin' breakfast," she finished. "I don't know if the change has anything to do with it, but I'm starving."

She found a pair of pants and handed them to me - faded jeans, the pale blue denim pairing nicely with the color of the top. I pulled them on, zipped them up, and fastened the button, then frowned. "These are, uh, a little tight."

She failed to suppress a chuckle. "Sorry, Stu, it's just how they do these things. We can look for a looser fit later, but they're actually supposed to be like that."

It didn't take a theoretical physicist to understand that they were supposed to flatter the wearer's lower half, and practicality was secondary at best. But seriously, how was I supposed to fit my wallet, or keys, or cell-

I stopped short, realizing that I'd had all of these with me in the lab last night, and I had no idea what happened to them. "Shit!" I hissed. "My wallet...!"

Tammy nodded, only half-understanding what I was worried about. "Yeah, that's just gonna cut off the circulation, in those pants," she said. "Or, uh, I guess maybe not. But...here." She went to the bed and dug through the pile of clothes, handing something to me. "Looks like that was provided for."

It was a black leather purse, in a simple, clean style that matched the dress. I popped the clasp and opened it, breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of my essentials. My wallet had changed to match the purse, but thankfully the contents were untouched. Had this been with me the whole time? I hadn't noticed it, but I had had other things on my mind.

I shook off the thoughts of last night and sat down to put on the stockings. Note to self: put socks on first, I thought; at least with pants this snug. The cuffs bunched up so tight that it would've cut off the circulation, had that still been applicable. (Now, it was just uncomfortable pressure against the metal shell that gave the leg shape.) I put on the shoes, and got up to take stock. Oddly enough, I did feel better wearing something closer to my usual outfit.

"Right," Tammy said, "that's fine until we get you some other clothes. Emma, I already showered; go ahead and freshen up and borrow whatever, and let's get going. I need food yesterday."