I just kept staring at her: my eyes were glued to her face.

Jack? Really? My old friend Jack, the sporty, happy-go-luck guy? He was this girl?

“Hello?” she asked. “Are you listening to me?”

I shook myself. “Yes, I am,” I said.

“I said, how do you know my name? Do I know you from somewhere?” She paused, and then continued, “No, that wouldn’t make sense, either, how would you have recognised me anyway? I don’t look like myself at all.”

I gulped. “No, I think you’ll find that you do look like yourself,” I replied. “Very much so, in fact.”

She frowned. “What does that even mean?”

I locked eyes with her. “Why… Why don’t we go sit down?” I shakily said, motioning towards the fountain in the middle of the plaza. “It’s kind of a long story, and you probably need to be sitting down for this.”

She nodded, still frowning, and followed me to the fountain; after spending a few moments marvelling at her appearance, reflected in the water, she sat down on the edge beside me.

We sat there for a long time, in silence, just staring off into the distance, while I was trying to gather my thoughts. Where would I even begin in trying to explain to someone that they’re trans? Especially my old friend Jack. I’d known him – or, rather, her – all my life, and yet I didn’t know how to broach the subject. Where a simple, plain explanation would have sufficed for most people – “You’re actually a girl, I’m going to help you deal with it” – I had to approach this with care and caution.

I took a deep breath. “Alright,” I said. “Okay.”

And then I froze again. I didn’t know how to even start.

Luckily, my friend broke the ice for me.

“You said you have an idea as to why I’m a girl, right?” she asked.

I nodded gravely. “Yeah, I do.”

There was a long, awkward pause, before she asked again: “So, what is it?”

I turned my head to look at her: she was actually quite pretty, though not beautiful in a conventional sense, which surprised me – Jack always had a certain ‘type’ of girl she liked, and it was a far cry from what she looked like right now. Huh.

Again, I took a deep breath.

“Have you read the instructions that came with the game?” I asked. “Carefully, I mean.”

“Of course I have,” she nodded. “Plug the machine into the wall, synchronise it with the app on your cell phone, adjust the settings if needed, and when you’re ready to play, put on the helmet and flick the switch.” She shrugged. “Easy enough.”

I groaned. “No, that’s the quick start guide. I was asking if you’ve read the manual.”

“Oh, that. Nope, didn’t bother,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “It’s like, thirty pages.”

“More like ten,” I replied. “And half of that is legal stuff and disclaimers that don’t really matter.”

“Still. If there was anything really important in there, I’m sure Ed will tell me when we meet up. He always has a good brain for this stuff.”

“While you’re a complete meathead,” I said with a smirk.

She crossed her arms in front of her and looked at me defiantly. “And proud of it. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a nerd; my best friend is a nerd. Ed, I mean.”

“Oh, so Ed’s not just a friend, but your best friend?” I asked, suddenly curious.

“He is,” she nodded. “He’s really cool actually, really good with all sorts of technical stuff. Helped me out a lot with studies and things; if it wasn’t for him, I would’ve been kicked out of my soccer team a long time ago.”

I blinked in surprise. “Really?”

“Really, got to keep my grades up, otherwise I can’t play.” She paused. “Not that I ever told him that, I don’t want him to think I’m just using him as a tutor. I actually enjoy being with him.”

“That’s… really nice of you,” I whispered.

Jack looked at me. “Wait, are you okay?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well…” she said. “You look like you’re about to cry.”

Was I? I guess I’d been really moved by her words. By how much she actually cared about me.

“I’m okay, just… give me a sec,” I replied.

I quickly wiped my eyes on my sleeve, and splashed a bit of water from the fountain on my face, then turned to face Jack again. “Alright, so,” I said. “To go back to what I said, there’s a bit in the manual about how the system determines the appearance you get to have in-game.”

“Oh, that,” she said. “Yeah, I remember reading something about it on the Internet, in the developer diaries. Something about brain scans and stuff, right?”

“Right,” I nodded. “The system actually scans your brain – it’s a remarkable bit of technology, actually, developed from some high-end medical stuff if I’m not mistaken – and determines what your in-game avatar will look like.”

“Yeah, but it’s clearly busted,” Jack said. “After all, it gave me a girl’s body.”

“Well, the developers were very specific in how they described this thing,” I continued. “This isn’t going to be an exact quote since I’m just remembering off the top of my head, but ‘The Brainplug Machine will give you your ideal body.’ Or something like that.”

Jack nodded. “Alright. But, like I said, it’s definitely not working. I’m not a girl, I’m a man.”

I took a deep breath. “Are you?” I asked.

She frowned. “What’s that mean? Of course I am.”

Alright, this is going to take some explaining. “Well, you see,” I said. “There’s this thing, called gender identity. You can think of it as your… Mental gender. Sort of. For most people, it matches their outward gender, but not everyone is like that.”

“Yeah, trans people have a different gender identity than expected,” she said. Then, when she saw me looking at her in surprise, she tilted her head to the side. “What?” she asked. “Are you surprised I know that? I may be a meathead, but I’m not that dumb, thank you very much.”

I stared at her for a couple seconds, then blinked and shook my head. “Yeah, okay. So, my theory is that when the Brainplug Machine scans your brain, it somehow detects your gender identity, not the gender you were assigned at birth. And then gives you your ideal body, based on that.” I looked at her, and spoke the next words very carefully: “It gives you a body matching your actual gender.”

There was a long moment of silence as we looked at each other; I could almost see the gears spinning in her mind. Then, finally, she spoke.

“So what, you’re saying I’m trans? That I’m actually a girl?” she asked, her voice shaking.

I nodded. “Yes, that is precisely what I’m saying.”

She stared at me for a few seconds, then laughed. “No, come on, that’s completely absurd,” she said. “I would’ve noticed it before now. Like, yeah, I’ve often thought about what it would be like to be a girl, but–”

“Everyone does that, it’s a completely normal thing to do,” I completed her sentence, cutting her off.

She looked at me wide-eyed. “Wh– But– How did you do that?” she stammered.

I smiled sadly. “If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that, I would be a really rich girl,” I said.

“Yeah, but…” she began to say, and then stopped. She raised her eyes to the sky, deep in thought, and continued, “But that doesn’t prove anything! I’ve never felt the urge to dress up as a kid. Yeah, maybe once or twice… Or a few… But also, I like sports! There!” she said, giving me a defiant stare.

“Lots of girls like sports,” I objected. “Liking sports doesn’t make you a man.”

“So… What? Are you some kind of expert?” she almost shouted. “Well, riddle me this, can you even point to a trans person who has a male body in real life but a girl body here in game?” she said with finality.

“I can,” I said calmly.

She blinked in surprise. “Wait, you can?”

I nodded and then slowly, deliberately, pointed at myself.

“No, wait,” she said. “Hold on. Stop.”

“Yes?” I asked.

“You’re saying you’re trans? And you have a male body out of here?”

“It’s not really a male body, since it’s my body and I’m a girl,” I said. “But yes. I was assigned male at birth, as it were.”

“So that would mean…” she said, pointing at herself.

I nodded. “Yup.”

Suddenly, she seemed to deflate. All the strength went out of her body, and I had to hold her up or she would’ve fallen backwards into the fountain.

“…Fuck.”

I smiled wryly. “Welcome, sister. It kinda sucks here. My name is Ellen, I’ll be your guide.”

She numbly looked up at me. “Nice to meet you, Ellen. I’m Jack. But you already know that, don’t you?” She paused. “Wait, how do you know that?”

I took a deep breath: there was no way out of this.

“When we were five, we went exploring, and you ripped your pants on a fence trying to vault over it,” I said. “You were afraid of going home like that, you thought your mom would punish you, so I brought you over to my house and made some tea while my mom stitched up your pants.”

“What…?” she said, but I forged onwards.

“We were twelve, and I accidentally bricked one of the school’s computers. You took the blame, you cried your eyes out in front of the teacher, saying it had been you, but you didn’t mean to do it, you were not good with tech stuff. In the end, the teacher let us off.”

Her eyes had become as wide as saucers. One more.

“At age sixteen, you signed up for the soccer team. You were scared, didn’t think you were good enough, didn’t want to show up for try-outs. But I talked to you, reassured you, said that if someone would make the cut, that would be you.” I paused, and smiled. “And you did. And we got drunk to celebrate, breaking into my dad’s stash. We got an earful for that.”

I stopped talking, and just looked at her.

“…Ed?” she said.

“Ellen,” I replied. “Hi, Jack.”

She stared at me for a few seconds, then suddenly stood up.

“I’m sorry, I… I gotta go,” she said, and she started gesturing in front of her, to bring up the in-game menu.

“Jack, wait–” I began to say, but it was too late.

She shimmered, and disappeared into thin air.