The portal glowed a bright blue, the wind rushing around it stirring up the notes I’d been preparing for finals. Through it stepped a man in a lab coat, golden blond hair tied back in a ponytail and goggles strapped firmly around his eyes. He took a look around my room as the portal closed behind him and the wind died down.

“...Time travel?” I hazarded a guess.

He took off his goggles and let his hair out of its bind, shaking his head to let the surprisingly healthy shoulder-length locks settle into place. Surprising, because underneath the goggles was a face that looked worn, more through stress than time but worn nonetheless. Tired bags, the kind that show up after many consecutive sleep-deprived nights, populated the underside of his teal eyes. 

“Alternate reality, but also time travel, yes,” the traveler responded.

“So you’re…”

“You, yes. Me. Whatever, you know how this stuff works, uh… what name did you end up choosing?”

“Amelia.”

He frowned. “How’d you come up with that one?”

“It’s what our parents would’ve gone with, and it fits. What’s yours?” I grunted.

“Haven’t changed it, so it’s your deadname.” The traveler scratched his five o’clock shadow, latex gloves making tiny snapping sounds as they got pulled by the hairs.

I paused for a second, then asked the question that immediately came to mind. “Are you here to convince me not to—”

“God no!” He interrupted, seemingly offended by the very notion, “I’m here on a much more noble mission.”

“To unite all of your alternate selves for the final battle against a great evil?”

He rolled his eyes at that. “No, to see what could have been. You’ve been playing too much D&D.”

I leaned back in my chair, which made a lot of worrying creaking noises as it accommodated my shifting weight. “Never was such a thing. Well, if you’re here to see an alternate self, there’s only one difference that immediately stands out to me, and I’m not too far along in being a girl, you know.”

The traveler sighed, and sat down on the edge of my bed, the bottom of his lab coat splaying out on the sheets. “Yeah, this is only slightly after the timeline divergence so that makes sense. I’ll be visiting older versions of you later, don’t worry.”

I leaned further into my chair, getting comfortable for what could very well be an uncomfortable conversation. “If it’s not too far along in the timeline split, then I’m not sure what I could tell you about. We have the same memories, right?”

He paused, then gestured assent. “Well, up until December of last year.”

I took a moment to think about what had happened that month. “Oh! That was when I went to the movie screening.”

“Rocky Horror, yeah? I skipped that one. Told them I had the flu.”

“Really? I thought you would’ve jumped at the chance to—”

“Dress up femme, right? I know! I should have, I totally should have,” they lamented, casting their eyes downwards, “but I got scared. What if they laughed? What if it didn’t fit? What if it did fit?”

I nodded in understanding. “But in the end, you know…”

“It was just too good an opportunity to pass up… for you.” They sighed, tired eyes somehow gaining yet more years. “Tell me, Amelia, what’s it like being a woman?”

I scratched at my own beard shadow, just barely able to feel the intruding hairs even after my morning shave. “I mean, I’m only recently out, so I don’t really have a lot of experience on that front. Also, I don’t see how it would be different from, well, you.”

The traveler shook their head. “It is different. You’re younger, but you managed to come to terms with your gender so much sooner than me. I have years more repression and denial weighing on me. All my gender-related panics nowadays are about the time I missed. You’ve got a future to look ahead to. I’ve got… less of it.”

“I feel pretty much the same way,” I replied with a grimace, “especially with how everything is so obvious when you look back, what with all the times people mistook me for a girl due to my long hair and I didn’t correct them. I could’ve definitely figured this out in high school, you know?”

“I know,” they sighed, “but… fuck, I really should have transitioned in college.” They hunched over, their blonde locks covering their face. Their fingers tightly interlaced one another, and if not for the latex gloves I might have seen their knuckles turn white. “So… I guess that’s why I’m here, to see what it would’ve been like.”

I blinked, unsure how exactly to respond. “I mean, life is… normal. I only got on HRT a couple weeks ago so there’s been no physical changes. Mostly I’m worried about finals, and ending another year romantically alone. Normal college stuff, same as you. Probably.”

“Yeah, same as me, mostly,” they confirmed, nodding.

I coughed conspicuously. “On that note actually, I know there are probably rules against this kind of information-sharing, but… who do I end up with? You know, in your timeline.”

The traveler tilted their head up to look at me. “No, it’s okay. I’m still single in my universe. Turns out I only ever managed to ask out lesbians.”

I looked away, blushing in embarrassment. “I uh, guess that makes sense.”

We stayed silent for a moment.

“And um, lottery numbers or the secrets to time travel…”

“That we made rules against sharing.”

“That’s… good! That’s smart.” I gave them a thumbs-up. God, why was I such a social disaster even around literally myself?

They looked off into the distance for a moment. “I mean, you’ll probably meet and make friends with different people starting from now, so even if I weren’t alone you’d probably end up with someone different.”

“I… yeah, that makes sense.” I looked down at my body, shapeless as it was in this purpose-chosen t-shirt. “So, um, I’m not sure what you hoped to see out of me, but I’m really just, well, you. I look like you did, sound like you did… sorry, I know this is supposed to be a grand journey of self-discovery, and I’m not making a great argument for why you ought to transition.”

“No!” The traveler cried, a pained look on their face. “This is… this is what I wanted to see. Just myself, but… as a girl.”

I stared at them, then looked away before reciting the line that had been spoken to me on several occasions. “If you want to be a girl, then you probably are one.”

They grinned in response, but the smile didn’t reach their eyes. “Yeah, I think I get that now. Well, I’ve seen what I needed to—”

“Uh, one last thing!”

“Yes?”

“Time machines exist!”

“Well, maybe not for you. Not to brag, but I’m a lead researcher on the team, and if I were openly trans when employment got discussed…”

I understood the implications. “Ah. Well, they theoretically exist, so they’ll probably get invented anyway—”

“Maybe not within your lifetime. It depends, you know, timeline split and all that…” They trailed off, and started twiddling their thumbs.

“Wow, you sure you’re not here to convince me to detransition?”

They sat up at that. “No. No way. Listen, I… I asked myself a while ago what I wanted: to be head researcher at some major university, or to be a girl. And…” They swallowed. “I…”

I made my way over to the cheap dorm room bed and sat down beside them. “I get it. I mean, of course I do, but—”

“I just want to be a girl,” the traveler admitted in a whisper, their quavering voice saying as much as the tears we could never let out did. They buried their face in their hands and let out a tiny whimper.

I leaned over and lifted my arms around them, then hesitated. “Uh, do you want…”

“Yes, please.”

I wrapped my arms around them and pulled them into a tight squeeze. I wasn’t sure what comforting words I should’ve said there, so I just stayed like that for a moment, hugging my alternate self, trying desperately to psychically communicate the idea that it’d be okay. After a long while, I felt the anxiety of the moment die down.

They spoke first. “Sorry for bothering you, Amelia. I guess I’ll be moving on now.” They stood up and punched some buttons on a device they pulled from the folds of their jacket.

“Wait!” I reached out and grabbed at a tail on their jacket. “Please, tell me. If... if I transition, does that mean then time machines don’t exist? Or at least get delayed?”

They turned around and looked me up and down, then pursed their lips. “You’re still studying physics, right?”

I nodded.

“Well, I don’t know what’ll happen in your future, but look: in a perfect world, people like me would not exist. Hell, in a perfect world, maybe time machines don’t exist. The first people to get their hands on this are going to be the military and the zaibatsus, and the world probably won’t be a better place for it… anyway. But you know what? In a perfect world, I’m pretty sure that you exist.” They grinned, the first time that night I’d seen them do so. 

“But, wouldn’t it be fundamentally selfish for me to pursue being trans at the cost of human progress?”

The traveler paused. “I’d say that transitioning definitely helps make human progress. My position on the karmic scale is a lot more tenuous. Besides, there’s no reason why being trans should hurt your research. Heck, maybe solving this gender stuff early helps prevent some of those late-night breakdowns.”

I stayed silent at that, and let go of my visitor’s coat. They stepped forward as the air around them grew a tint of blue and a humming sound filled the room.

“See you, Amelia.”

“See you too, Ms. Traveler.”

---

5 years later

The blue portal hummed and the air around it whined like a doberman in need of treats. Perfect timing, really, considering my girlfriend had just left. Out from the portal stepped a woman in need of a shave and a rest.