We were nearing our destination and it was driving me insane.

The mountains gave way to desert. We were back in flat, empty lands that stretched out endlessly on all sides. The road had few curves, so my job was mostly just holding my car straight. I found that it constantly wanted to drift to the left, so my right arm was growing tired faster than the left.

There was another border crossing, which Sagitta completed using my other boot. She was less rude about it this time.

Finally, Sagitta spoke up. “Attune’s stability is lower than the rest of your world. So we could face multiple attacks while we’re there. I should probably figure out what we’ve got left.”

She unbuckled her seatbelt and pulled the duffle bag onto her lap, then unzipped it and looked through the contents.

“Like this key. What’s it unlock?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” I replied. “I found it in the woods when I was a kid.”

She whistled. “Oh, that’s good. Not much defense against robots, though. The plush is a childhood toy, I imagine? The watch, a gift from a relative?”

I nodded.

“What about this stuff?” She held up the pins.

“They represent the five most loyal servants of Lilith in Lilith’s Mansion,” I explained.

“Bosses?” she asked. I nodded again. and she nodded back. “Good, good. What about the umbrella?”

She gestured to the seat behind her. The parasol was the only thing that didn’t fit into the bag.

“Protects me from the sun.”

She cracked open the case of Climb. “A brief connection with someone you admire.” Then she held the memory card close to her face. “What the Hell is this thing?”

“It has a bunch of old saves on it,” I explained.

“Huh? So the card itself doesn’t mean anything?”

I shook my head. “Not really, just the data on it.”

She scrunched her face. “Data’s just data. There’s nothing sentimental about it. This thing’s useless to me. What about this sketch?”

My fingers tensed on the steering wheel. “Oh, that’s a character from a book I like. Amber from Hazia Lost.”

“What’s it about?” Sagitta asked.

I figured it was best to keep it vague. “It’s young adult book about a princess named Amber. When she’s an infant, her parents come into conflict with a witch, and she places a curse over the land and demands that the king and queen give her Amber. Instead the king and queen give the princess to a fairy who hides her away and the witch turns the king and queen to stone. And when the Amber grows up she finds out what happened and tries to figure out how to undo the curse and save her kingdom.”

Sagitta frowned down at the sketch. “That doesn’t really give me a good sense of what this will do. What does the story mean to you?”

“It’s just a really good book.”

Sagitta sighed. “Come on, you’ve got to give me more than that. You commissioned a sketch of this character. You framed it. I saw you kept it on your coffee table. She has to be really important to you.”

There was no wiggling out of this. “Look, just forget about it. It was stupid of me to bring it.”

“Abner, what are you hiding from me?” She sounded serious.

As I spoke, it felt like someone was gripping my throat. “The fairy who hides away Amber does it by turning her into a boy. She’s raised that way until she finds out the truth and ends up being changed back.”

Sagitta dropped the sketch as if it were a moldy piece of bread. “Eww, seriously? You use a children’s book for your fantasies? That is disgusting.”

“It’s not sexual,” I protested, once again wounding more whiny than I intended. “I just really want to be a girl.” 

“Why, then?” Sagitta asked. “What does it matter? Your body is perfectly healthy, it’s not like you’re disabled or anything. What difference does a slightly different body make? What difference does slightly different clothes make?”

“Because girls are better than guys,” I shouted.

I realized I was voicing words that had existed in the back of my mind for ages. Thoughts that I had been unwilling to think because they defied everything I had been taught about gender equality. But now that I said it, it felt correct. Tears began to obscure my vision and I pulled over to the side of the road and gradually came to a stop.

“Like, objectively, girls are better. Girls can do everything guys can do, but they can also do so much more. They can be strong and smart and everything, but they also get to be pretty. Girls get to wear dresses and makeup, but they can still wear guy clothes if they want. They can have their hair long or—” I gestured to Sagitta’s hair “—they can shave it off and still look better than literally every guy.”

I stared down at my lap. A drop of snot fell from my nose onto my leg.

“I know men oppress women,” I continued, “but that doesn’t diminish women or make men any better. It’s still better to be a girl. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t see it. Maybe everyone does. Maybe that’s why men oppress women, because deep down they all know that they’re inferior and can’t bear to face that fact.”

I fell silent, sniffing in a half-hearted attempt to keep more snot from escaping. I waited for Sagitta to tell me how disgusting I was and I knew that I deserved it. Now that I’d spoken the truth out loud, it seemed strange that she should ever want to speak to me. Or any man. I wondered why all the women of the world didn’t go off to live on their own, and have little to do with men as possible. They must have been tricked, I thought. Fooled by the men in the world into thinking that men could ever in any way be desirable.

I don’t still feel that way, obviously, I was just upset. Some people prefer to be men for whatever reason and if that makes them happy, that’s the most important thing. I don’t need to understand it.

Finally, Sagitta spoke. Her voice was soft and showed no signs of her earlier disgust. “Abner, maybe we should talk about this a little—” She was interrupted by the beeping of her RSB.

I looked up and wiped the snot from my face with my hand as she pulled it out of her bag. “Shit.” She twisted around to grab my parasol from the back seat, then threw open her door, dropping the parasol and duffle bag on the ground outside before climbing out herself.

I joined her, and the two of us began to scan the area, looking for signs of another robot. Two or three tense minutes passed. I walked around to join her on the passenger side of the car.

“Was it another false alarm?” I asked.

Just then there was a flash across my vision. A beam of light that left an afterimage like the ones fired by the small robots. It had appeared in between me and Sagitta, just inches from her face.

As one, we turned, trying to see the source of the attack. There was nothing anywhere in the vast desert before save for the occasional brush.

“Is it invisible?” I asked.

“It’s a sniper,” she replied. I squinted and caught sight of a tiny speck in the distance behind us.

She crouched down, picking up the parasol and I crouched next to her. She opened it, holding it before us like a shield.

“Umbrella that protects Abner from the light, it’s time to protect us from a much brighter light.”

Nothing happened. There was another flash of light which burned a half-circle into the edge of my parasol.

“Why isn’t it working?” Sagitta asked.

I tore open the duffel bag and dug through it, trying to figure out what Sagitta could use to protect us. Maybe the watch could freeze time? Maybe Climb could help her close the distance between us and the robot?

“Do any of those bosses have long-ranged attacks?” Sagitta asked.

“No, Lilith’s Mansion is a sidescroller. It would be frustrating if the bosses could hit you when you’re off screen.”

Then it hit me. In Lilith’s Mansion you couldn’t attack or be attacked by enemies who were off screen, but there were games in which you could. I dug out the memory card.

“I told you. That’s useless,” Sagitta said.

“You have to try,” I replied. “My Eternal Tower progress is on that. I have, like, a billion Rub Scrolls. They completely clear a floor of enemies, even if they aren’t on screen.”

Sagitta’s eyes were wide. It was clear she was frightened, which only served to make me more frightened. She nodded and accepted the card.

“Game save with way too many hours on it, all that effort Abner put into you, to create a detailed recording of his unique experience, please let me draw upon it and pull one of his items into the real world,” she said, sounding uncertain.

Suddenly the memory card was no longer in her hand, in its place was a scroll. Or less a scroll than a rolled-up sheet of yellow paper with a few tears and nicks along the edges.

Another hole appeared in the parasol.

“You just unroll it,” I said.

She did so. As soon as it was completely unfurled, it turned gray and crumbled into ash, further staining Sagitta’s shirt.

There was the distant sound of thunder.

“Did it work?” she asked.

“I think so,” I replied. “If you use it while there are enemies on screen little lightning bolts hit them.”

She stood, looking out over the desert.

“I think it’s gone.”

We got back into the car and started driving. Both of us were silent for nearly an hour until we passed a sign informing us that we were nearing Attune.

“What does the parasol mean to you?” Sagitta asked.

She was sitting with the handle held between her knees, examining the holes burnt into it. In my panic to survive to sniper robot, I had forgotten about my earlier breakdown, but now it felt like I was about to relive it.

“It protects me from the sun,” I said.

“No it doesn’t,” she replied. “At least, that’s not the reason why you care about it.”

Hiding the truth felt like too much effort.

“It makes me feel feminine. Parasols are old-fashioned, but when they were popular they were a women’s thing. But sometimes men in anime carry paper parasols. It’s a way for me to do something that feels feminine in public and if anyone sees me they just think I’m eccentric.

“I don’t know, the way I look in dresses and stuff grosses me out, but when I carry my parasol I think I look pretty cool, and I guess it just makes me feel a tiny bit closer to being who I want to be.”

Sagitta didn’t say anything. The silence made me even more nervous so I decided to keep talking.

“I know you think it’s a sex thing, and I guess part of it is. But maybe that’s just because the only way I could ever enjoy sex is if I were a girl. And maybe I read stories about girls forcing their boyfriends to dress as girls because I want to feel like if I were a girl, that someone would still want me. That someone might even prefer me that way.”

She remained silent.

“And it’s driving me crazy knowing that you have the power to make me into a girl and that you won’t. When you’re gone, I don’t know how I’m going to be able to go back to my old life knowing that I missed that chance forever.”

“Okay,” she said, finally. “I’ll do it.”

I glanced at her, looking for some sign that she was lying.

“You will?” I asked cautiously. I feared I was about to take another blow to my psyche.

“Yeah, I will.” She spoke quietly. Her expression was neither compassionate nor hostile. “I’ll probably regret it later, but right now I don't think I could leave you without doing it.”

My heart began to pound. Suddenly I was full of energy, excitement, hope, terror all at once. I wanted to know what had convinced her but I was afraid to say too much. It felt like she might change her mind in an instant.

“Thank you. Thank you so much,” was all I said.

We continued driving the last few miles to Attune. It seemed like an ordinary small city. We passed a food processing plant, a couple of mechanics, a bait shop. I’m not sure where anyone fished around here. Using my phone, I navigated us to the coordinates the RSB had given us. It was at an intersection surrounded by four buildings. Two were large, abandoned buildings, with white paint peeling off the sides, the third was a house with dozens of toys littering the front yard, and the final one was a newer-looking building with no visible windows.

I grabbed the duffel bag as we hopped out of the car.

“So we should probably take care of you first,” she said.

I stiffened. It was already happening? With clumsy hands I unzipped the duffel bag and started to pull out the sketch.

“Not that,” Sagitta said. “I think this will be more appropriate.” She waved the parasol.

I nodded and returned the sketch to the bag. “Okay. So how do we do this?”

She opened the parasol and held it out. I took hold of the handle, but she kept her grip so that we were both holding it.
    “Parasol that makes my friend a little closer to the person she wants to be, it’s time to finish the job and make her completely who she wants to be.”

I closed my eyes. I’m not sure why, it felt like a reflex. There was a tingling all over my body, like the sensation that happens just after someone lightly draws a finger over my skin. Then there was a tugging and pushing. Like the feeling of taking a bit of skin between your fingers and pulling it out, only it was pulled out much further than should have been possible and seemed to stay when the tugging ended. Parts that had always been connected were suddenly in two different places.

When I sensed that it was done, I opened my eyes. Sagitta was now as tall as me and staring at me with a mixture of surprise and fascination. The parasol was gone and we were both covered in ash.

“That was really weird to watch,” she said.

“It was really weird to experience,” I replied. My words quickly turned into laughter as I heard the sound of my newly high-pitched voice.

I rushed over to the car’s side mirror and examined myself as best I could. I had never really liked to imagine myself as a female version of myself. At least not consciously. Maybe I subconsciously knew it was what I really wanted, but my disgust with myself kept me from realizing it. Because the parasol’s power was based on what I’d put into it. And the results, certainly, were not disappointing. I was me.

After that there was a lot of me shouting “Yes,” and “Thank you,” and “I look amazing,” and I may even have told her that I loved her. She just smiled. Her expression was that of someone who had done something kind for someone who desperately wanted help, not that of someone who had been badgered into indulging someone’s whims.

Eventually, she interrupted my exploration of my new body. “We should probably take care of the instability issue before we’re attacked again.”

“Oh, right,” I replied, remembering why we were here. “Where do you think the source is?”

“I mean, it’s got to be that building, right?” she said, pointing to the new-looking one.

We made our way over to it, and began a trek around. It was long and rectangular, taking up the length of an entire block. We quickly discovered that there were no windows or doors, just solid white walls.

When we reached our starting point again, we stared up at the blank wall. I reached into the duffel bag and pulled out the key, handing it to Sagitta.

“Mysterious key that my friend found, here is your lock, it’s time to open it,” she announced, shoving the key into the wall. A small hole appeared around the key, widening until it was wide enough for us to pass through. The key then crumbled to ash.

You know when you remove the tiles from a ceiling and you can see a complicated mess of pipes and cables and ducts? That was what the entirety of the inside of this building looked like. The walls, the ceiling, even much of the floor was pipes and cables and railings and ducts. The only place that seemed safe to step was a metal path that led forward. The place was dimly lit by recessed lights nestled in various spots throughout the mess.

We made our way to an elevator, but not a normal elevator. It was like one of those elevators you see in anime. The ones that are wide and open and have railings instead of walls and travel downward at an angle. Sagitta found the controls and activated it, sending us descending to a lower level at an agonizingly slow pace.

When we finally reached the bottom we found that the floors, still metal, were free of the mess we had seen before. The walls were now lined with computers, those really old refrigerator-sized computers with blinking lights and spinning reels. It seemed like the room should be hot with all of them working at once, but the temperature was comfortably cool. We stepped forward down a hallway of these computers until we reached the end. The two rows of computers met at a single desk with a slightly-newer-but-still-profoundly-old computer. Its monitor had a cursor blinking in neon green.

Sagitta poked the eject button on the tower and a floppy disc popped out. Not the later chunky kind, but the really old wobbly kind. It was black and had a label on it that read, in letters styled to look like they were bleeding, The Infernal Code. Below that was a small logo that read “Henceforth Games.”

“Oh, this explains so much,” Sagitta said.

“Explains what?” I asked.

She ignored me and reached into her bag, pulling out the RSB and a headset with a microphone. She put this on her head, then plugged it into the RSB with what appeared to be an ordinary auxiliary cable.

“Hey, Brinks. I found The Infernal Code.”

She paused, apparently listening to a response, then laughed.

“Right? Can you get me an extraction? I have got a story for you.”

A moment later, an oval of swirly blue light appeared in the air before her.

“Ciao,” she said, then stepped through. The light disappeared a moment later.

I stood there for a few seconds, trying to process what I had just experienced.

“Who’s Brinks?” I asked the room.

After that, I found my way back to my car and made the long trip home. Then I took a couple of days to myself, just trying to think through everything.

So that’s why I’ve missed so much work, and why I’m a girl now. Do you want me to go back to my regular schedule or did you change things up while I was gone?