A Classified Document
by Bek D. Corbin writing as Jezebel Jade
This story is dedicated to my friends on Fictionmania's Hyperboard, and the fellowship and inspiration they provide.
*Shoot Yourself After eading*
From the Brand Group at
Silver Lake, California: A Report on
the Nation of Janus and its Political and Economic Impact, with recommendations
for proactive solutions.
On July 23rd,
2043, Attis Projects, a group advertising itself as a resort developer,
announced that it had acquired the title to a group of five atolls in the South
Pacific, which it intended to isolate and fill in, forming a single crescent
shaped island of some 500 square miles. The stated purpose of this project was
to create a site for a new luxury resort. As this development would not have
inordinately imbalanced either the economy or the politics of the region, no
objections – other than a few token complaints from environmental groups- were
made. The developers tapped into a large pocket of high-pressure lava under the
atolls, in essence creating five artificial volcanoes. Carefully controlling
the flow of lava and volcanic ash, the developers created a ring of mountains
and hills that covered an area of 9,650 square miles or slightly larger than
the State of Hawaii. At this point, neighboring nations began to make rivaling
claims to the landmass, but the UN decided that Attis Projects’ title to the
new landmass was valid and binding. A material point was that new island was
still barren, and that Attis Projects claimed that ‘conditioning’ the soil as
to be fertile would cost in the area of 24 Billion American dollars. The
American State Department stated in no uncertain terms that they would never
loan that kind of money to a country that ‘nationalized’ the island.
Between 2044 and 2051, the
only comment worthy development was Attis Projects’ skillful use of gengineered
bacteria, fungi, mosses and nematodes to vitalize the landmass. Beginning in
2051, construction and landscaping began, and finished in 2053. On March 14th,
2053, five days before the alleged ‘Grand Opening’ of the resort, all officials
and personnel of Attis Projects disappeared. A group claiming to represent the
government of ‘the Nation of Janus’ came forward to announce the status of a
sovereign nation, and the dominion over the artificial island. Notarized
documents signed by the CEO of Attis Projects assigned complete ownership of
the landmass to the ‘Nation of Janus’. The Nation of Janus was announced to be
a Constitutional Monarchy under King Arthur and Queen Gloria, with an already
extant population of 20,000 subjects. King Arthur and Queen Gloria also
announced that they were, respectively, a Female to Male and a Male to Female
post-operative transsexuals. He also stated that the nation of Janus was
dedicated to being a ‘homeland for transgenderists of all varieties’, and
opened up ‘Janus’ to select immigration from all nations.
At this point, it is crucial
to understand that ‘the Nation of Janus’ is not a half-baked pipe dream
perpetrated by a gaggle of oddball idealists. First, immediately realizing that
‘Attis Projects’ was nothing more than a smokescreen for the leadership cabal
of ‘Janus’ (Attis was a Phrygian deity who was castrated and magically
transformed into goddess), the CIA began an immediate investigation of the
antecedents of the group. On the principle of ‘follow the money’, the CIA found
several persuasive, but inconclusive leads connecting Attis Projects funds to
money laundries used by Pacific Rim organized crime families. In the 7- year
period prior to Janus’ announcement of Statehood, the leaderships of three
Colombian Cartels, two Caribbean ‘Posses’, a ‘Mexican Mafia’ family, and the
327K Tong out of Singapore all mysteriously disappeared, and their followers
scattered. Their liquid assets, believed to be in the realm of roughly 3.7
Trillion American dollars, also disappeared, and are thought to be the operating
funds used by Janus.
Second, despite Attis’
declared intentions, Janus is not dependent on tourism; in its two years of
nationhood, Janus has developed a mature agricultural, light industrial, and
service economy. Its agriculture is largely aquatic, based mostly on shellfish
ranching and kelp harvesting. Besides being a food source for both humans and
livestock, the Januseans use kelp as a basis for a wood substitute, glucose
based plastics, and a fuel called Tetra-Nitrate Ethanol (or TNE). Its industry
is based mostly on ‘harvesting’ minerals from the submarine ‘stalactites’ that
form near submarine volcanic fissures; currently, Janus is the world’s third
largest producer of Osmium and Scandium. Their light industry eschews the
standard Factory model, and uses the Computer Guided Fabrication model
instead. Besides tourism, Janus has become a leader in CGI animation and comic
books, in a cultural boom echoing Japan’s lost ‘Golden Age of Anime and Manga’.
Also, in keeping with their official encouragement of Sexual Reassignment
Surgeries, Janus’ Medical and Pharmacological Industries are on a par with the
United States, Europe or Brazil, and the implanting of fertile and genetically
viable gonad rotifers is commonplace.
And Third, a detailed analysis
of Janus’ Constitution, body of legislation and government structure reveals
that their philosophy of law and governance is simple and straightforward. This
simplicity isn’t a sign of naivete or primitiveness, but rather a sophisticated
elegance that is the far side of complexity. Their system is flexible and
responsive to the needs of the populace, without falling prey to either the
‘Mob Rule’ or ‘Political Fashion’ syndromes.
These three factors- their
means of gaining funding, the maturity of their economic models, and the
sophistication of their political models- all point to a rule cabal operating
behind the scenes. Neither ‘King Arthur’, ‘Queen Gloria’, Prime Minister
Madeline Dumont, President of the Senate Andreas Menendez, nor Chief Justice
Akiko Kazamuri are the real powers at work in Janus. All these factors show
that Janus is the product of years, if not decades of deep, methodical and
deliberate planning. The infiltration and manipulation of the organized crime
groups for funding indicates the presence of a ruthless, sophisticated and
effective covert operations group. The economic and governmental structures
indicate an effective policy determining group working behind the scenes. Our
first and foremost question must be: What is their true agenda? Their stated
agenda of a ‘Transgender Homeland’ is obviously a politically correct
smokescreen. The only possible uses for such a smokescreen are to camouflage
their true purposes, and to attract desperate and gullible Transgenderists from
around the world, to act as a living shield for the Ruling Cabal.
Our group has determined
that, despite their use of a Constitutional Monarchy in their figureheads-
doubtless to allay fears of the First World- the Ruling Cabal is a Communist
cell, working to establish a Socialist nation, while undermining America in the
international markets and on the domestic political front.
First and most obviously,
there is their blatant encouragement of the deviant and subversive transsexual
lifestyle. By creating an idyllic South Pacific haven where this unnatural
travesty can seem to flourish, they undermine the Heterosexual, Patriarchal
paradigm that is the backbone of American society.
On the economic front, Janus
has insidiously entangled its financial and industrial bases with those of the
neighboring island nations. In less than two years, their neighbors have gone
from being hostile and suspicious to almost completely dependent on Janusean
manufactured goods, displacing American and Japanese manufactured goods in their
markets. This is obviously an attempt to displace the
American/European/Japanese balance of trade and influence in the region. We
suspect that from there, the Januseans will try to infiltrate the Australian,
New Zealand and Southeast Asian markets, with the same Economic and Political
objectives. More subtly, their development of Seafood dominant aquaculture,
Graphic Arts, Computer Guided Fabrication industry, their use of Tetra-Nitrate
Ethanol as a fuel, and their use of alternative electricity generation methods
(Wind, Solar, Wave, Tidal and Geothermal) are direct threats to the American
Beef, Entertainment, Manufacturing, and Petroleum industries. While there have
been no reports that Janus has offered to export TNE to Japan, the possibility
is a constant threat. Janus’ ways of doing business are a clear and present
threat to American Industry.
The Janusean models of
Accountability and Responsibility of the government to the electorate pose a
clear and present danger. If Janusean political methods infiltrate the American
political process, the disruption of the normal ebb and flow of power between
the two dominant political parties would bring chaos and destruction in the
American political arena.
And on a wider, social front,
the Janusean pharmaceutical industry has been using their neighboring nations
to test-market an array of ‘Smart Drugs’ that are proven to safely increase
learning potential, clear thinking, creativity, accurate recall, and prolonged
deep thought without the usual ‘my brain hurts’ reaction. The threat posed by
drugs that could produce an American populace that can achieve intelligent,
methodical, educated and independent economic and political decisions is too
great to ignore. Making these drugs illegal wouldn’t stop them from being smuggled
into the country, and would give them ‘outlaw glamour’. Anti-Smart Drug
advertising campaigns would be a waste of time and money. The opposite, a
vigorous campaign to ‘promote’ Smart Drugs, and effectively ‘cram them down the
public’s throat’ would be more effective, but would backfire once the masses
caught on.
The threat posed by the
nation of Janus must be expunged.
Normal overt methods are
counter-indicated. Beginning with Thailand, so far 27 nations, most of them
neighbors and trade-partners of Janus, have recognized Janus’ Sovereign Nation
status. Most recently, New Zealand has recognized Janus, and there is momentum
in the Australian parliament to recognize them.
Attempts to derail their
computer superstructure have failed. After planting the idea in the Hacker
community that ‘hacking the trannies would be cool’, the hackers did so without
disrupting the Janusean economy. The hackers have since given it up as a ‘lame
hack’.
Attempts to infiltrate agents
into Janus have so far been, with one exception, fruitless. The screening for
the ‘Second Wave’ of immigrants has turned back the vast majority of the CIA
agents sent in.
Our sole agent-in-place
indicates that use of Bioweapons would be counter-productive. Besides the
impressive Janusean Medical and Pharmaceutical industries, our agent reports
that the Janusean policy of Proactive Health Care would minimize the effect of
any disease vector that we could covertly introduce into their system. Any
pathogen powerful enough to significantly affect the Janusean main population
would probably be traced back to American CDC.
While Muslim extremists have
been very vocal about condemning Janus, so far the militants among them are
more interested in carrying on the Fatwah against the US. Attempts to steer
them against Janus would be counterproductive.
Given that these more subtle
methods are useless, we must go with the most direct and overt method, while
counting on the outrageousness of the move to create disbelief in the
international community. We propose a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Janus.
Obviously, a routine missile
attack is out of the question. Also, an ‘accident’ with an USAF bomber
‘transporting’ a warhead will not work. We must turn the blame for the
detonation against the Januseans themselves.
We propose that an ‘incident’
be created where the Nation of Janus appears to have been working on weapons of
mass destruction, which tragically accidentally detonated in their capitol city
and main population center of Alexandria.
The plan should be as simple
as possible, to minimize the chance of exposure. In brief, the plan is:
A: Recruit a member of the
American armed forces to infiltrate Janus. Given the cunning and familiarity
with the international criminal and intelligence communities shown by the Janusean
Intelligence Services, using CIA, FBI, DHS or NSA personnel is
contra-indicated. Since the Januseans routinely interfere with our attempts to
monitor them through spy satellites, this special agent should be trained in
Logistics, Surveying and Tactics. This special agent should be chosen for slightness
of build, strength of personal resolve, loyalty to America and lack of sympathy
for ‘Alternative Lifestyles’. The special agent will NOT be informed as to the
true objective of the mission, but will be told that he is to install a device
that will allow our spy satellites to observe Janus from orbit.
B: The special agent should
be given enough cosmetic surgery to ‘pass’ for an impoverished pre-operative
transsexual, while leaving the special agent enough of his masculine identity
to give him hopes for a return to his former life. The special agent will then
be given the identity of an existing American transsexual who has already been
accepted as a ‘Provisional’ immigrant to Janus.
C: The special agent will
then allow himself to be transported to Janus. The special agent should be
furnished with NO special equipment other than keys to open a secure box, and
be given only bare bones communications protocols. Under NO circumstances
should the special agent be told the identity of the agent in place.
D: The agent-in-place will be
informed of the coming of the special agent, and will be instructed to observe
the special agent for at least two weeks before making contact. The agent in
place will be given orders to give the special agent all assistance, but must
NOT be informed of the special agent’s mission. During the time when the
agent-in-place is giving assistance, he is NOT to communicate with the outside
world at any time.
E: The special agent will
first seek out a location where a nuclear device can be installed within the
city limits of Alexandria for optimum damage. Once that location has been
determined and secured, the special agent will scout out a place where an
unregistered CIA diesel sub can deliver the device undetected
F: When the delivery point
has been determined, the special agent will give the agent-inplace a message to
send to the United States setting the location, under the cover of a routine
sales request to a front import-export firm. A return message will set the date
and time of the delivery, under the cover of a response from the cover
identity’s family.
G: When the message setting
the coordinates of the delivery is received, select officials of the State
Department will be primed with ‘intelligence’ that Janus is working on weapons
of mass destruction. We will push for UN inspectors to examine Janusean
military and industrial facilities.
H: On the date set, an
unregistered CIA diesel submarine will deliver a nuclear device to the special
agent. The island’s bowl-like interior would act as a perfect medium, keeping
the force of the blast contained, so that adequate destruction can be achieved
with a minimal blast. We suggest a 25-megaton IB237-J device, as the warhead weighs
less than 40 pounds, and is radioactive enough to destroy the Janusean
population without completely invalidating the entire island or unnecessarily
endangering surrounding nations. The device should be encased in an unmarked
cowling, to prevent the special agent from learning its true nature. The CIA
operatives are NOT to be informed of the nature of the parcel that they are
delivering, and the device is to be transported in an unmarked secure box to
which on the special agent has the keys.
I: Once the device has been
delivered, the special agent will order the agent in place to resume his normal
activities. The special agent will then install the device at the firing
location, and activate the device. Both the special agent and the agent in
place are EXPENDIBLE, and their knowledge of the mission would make them an
embarrassment to the Administration. If at all possible, the device should be
triggered while the UN inspectors are in the capital, to optimize international
furor.
J: When the device is triggered,
‘Humanitarian Relief’ measures will immediately be dispatched. Care must be
taken that only barely enough resources should be available to these ‘Relief’
forces, so that it appears that the US was taken completely by surprise.
K: Once ‘Relief’ efforts are
established, American troops are to be deployed to ‘ensure their safety’. In
time, the presence of these troops will support American territorial claims to
the landmass.
SPECIAL NOTE: While it
shouldn’t be necessary to state, given the nature of this operation, it must be
understood that clearance as to the true means and ends of this operation is
STRICTLY NEED TO KNOW. All personnel directly connected with this operation are
to be primed with the ‘Counter- ECM’ story, or kept completely in the dark. All
paperwork regarding this operation, especially hard copies of this report, is
to be closely watched and DESTROYED the minute that the CIA sub leaves for Janus.
For purposes of ‘Plausible Deniability’, the President, the Director of the
CIA, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State and other high officials
are to be kept out of the loop.
In closing, I must say that
this is a move of last recourse, that should only be done in the name of
preserving our American way of life, and our sacred Christian honor.
Lemuel
J. J. Mayhume
Director
of Strategic Research for the Brand Group
##########
Major General Thomas C. Kincade
reviewed the report from Silver Lake, and then looked over at his colleagues
from the Navy and Marine Corps. “All right, a ‘recommendation’ from these guys
is as good as an order. And it’s not like the freakos don’t have it coming. But
how do we ‘recruit an agent’ who has to dress up like a broad, if he has to
–quote- ‘have a lack of sympathy for Alternative Lifestyles’ –unquote-?”
Rear Admiral Harvey ‘Ox’ Ochslund
snorted. “That’s easy! Go through the JAG files, and pull all the guys who
plead the ‘Guardsman’s’ Defense’ in repeated donnybrook cases. Of those, we
winnow out the guys who couldn’t pass for a broad in a blackout. Of those, have
some captain or commander interview them for an overseas undercover operation.
With the top five contenders, we ask them to play Mata Hari. If we word it
right, one of the five of ‘em will say yes. The others, we stick somewhere in
Greenland or the like, until the dust settles.”
Marine Corps Brigadier
General Newton ‘Ted’ Parris grunted and said, “Put Roger McClintock over at
Army JAG on the rooting through the files, and Don Winnock at Navy Intelligence
on whittling down the candidates to five. I’ll sell the drag show to the guys
that they come up with.”
“That’s real big of you, Ted.
Why you?”
Parris smiled snidely. “
‘Cause if there’s anything that the USMC knows how to do, it’s talk a man into
doing something stupid and make him feel like a hero for doin’ it.”
##########
Brigadier Parris looked over
the dossier at the young man seated across the desk from him. Second Lieutenant
Sherman R. McClintock sat rigidly at attention. The young man was barely a year
out of VMI, and still had a lot of that cadet super-seriousness. He was barely
an inch over the minimum requirement height for the Point, and slight of build.
His face was heart-shaped and fine featured, except for the thin lips and beak
of a nose. He had the kind of large blue eyes that drove fags wild.
“Lieutenant, do you have a
problem with homosexuals?”
“No sir, I don’t.”
“But according to your record
at Thurston Military Academy and Virginia Military Institute, you’ve been in
several dust-ups. There’s an implication that it was because you interpreted a
remark or two as gay passes.”
“Sir, I have no problems with
persons of the homosexual persuasion. That would make me unfit to serve.” Which
was Cadet-speak for ‘I hate fags, but the Regs say that I gotta put up with
‘em’.
“Hmm... McClintock.
Are you related to Lt. Colonel Roger McClintock?”
“Yessir. He’s my uncle. My
father is Colonel Arnold T. McClintock.” More good news. The McClintocks had
been producing Army officers for over eight generations. And they knew how to
deal with fags of all stripes. The boy’s size and face probably were like a red
flag to the undercover lip wrists. *Heh*. The only ‘sympathy’ that this boy
would probably show to any Homo would be a bullet to the back of the head.
“You have a very interesting
Spec sheet, McClintock. Rated as an expert in Logistics, Tactics, Strategy,
Combined Arms coordination, Liaison work, Intelligence gathering,
Counter-Intelligence, and Site Security. Familiarity with Navigation,
Orienteering, Forward Observation, Engineering, Surveying, Survival,
Electronics, Communications, Data processing, Field Medicine and Demolitions.
You are trained to operate fixed wing, rotor, and vectored thrust aircraft, GEVs,
tanks and landing craft. You speak, read and write, French, Spanish, German,
Arabic, Japanese, Latin and classical Greek. God’s teeth, son, did you take
every elective that the Institute had to offer?”
“No sir. There wasn’t enough
time, Sir.”
“Why?”
“Specialization is for
insects, Sir. You have to be prepared for whatever the enemy- or the Brass-
throws at you. Otherwise, good men that you’re responsible for get killed.”
Good answer. But then cadets
are known for having good answers and still screwing things up seven ways to
Sunday. Okay, now hit him with a question that they don’t have a textbook
answer for. “McClintock, what is discipline?”
“Sir! Discipline is the means
by which a soldier-”
“Son, I want what YOU think
discipline is, not what your instructors told you it is.”
“Discipline is the art of
remembering that discomfort is temporary, but failure is permanent.”
“Not bad! I gotta remember
that one. Okay, McClintock, let me ask you this- if I told you to step out into
my outer office and kiss Captain Hubert- he’s the one with the handlebar
mustache- square on the lips, would you?”
“By ‘told’ are you saying
that it was an order?”
“Yes.”
“Well Sir, then I’d do it.
I’d be trying to remember where I stowed my Listerine while I did it, but I’d
do it.”
“Well, it looks like you’re
as good as we’re gonna get. McClintock, I have to find a soldier to go on a
special mission. This mission will not only be in mufti, but even if you make
it back, you can never discuss it with anyone without direct prior permission
from me. You will discuss it with no one before you leave. Your performance of
this mission will not be recorded on your permanent record. Only a handful of
Top Brass will even know that you have done anything, and they won’t be
apprized of your name. It will take weeks of preparation, and you will be in a
difficult, even nauseating situation for weeks, if not months. It will require
you to do things that you will probably find personally offensive, if not
downright repulsive. There is a very real chance that you may wind up in a
foreign jail, or be killed. Once you get back you will receive no reward or
recognition. And all this is to accomplish something that will have little or
no immediate impact on the world situation. All I can tell you is that it may
prevent a minor matter from becoming a national crisis. I cannot order you to
take this mission. If you opt not to volunteer for this mission, it will not be
held against you in any way.”
“Sir! I respectfully request
permission to be accepted for this important mission, SIR!”
“Be very careful, Lieutenant.
Once I tell you ANY of the particulars, we cannot allow you to drop out from
this mission. As I told you, you will probably find what we’re going to ask you
to do rather disgusting.”
“Sir! I respectfully repeat
my request to be accepted for this mission, SIR!”
“Very well, Lieutenant, but
understand that if you back down from it mission now, you’ll be spending the
next five to ten years in the stockade.”
“Understood, SIR!”
“Okay. McClintock, what does
the name ‘Janus’ mean to you?”
“The two-faced Roman god of
beginnings and endings, god of doorways and- Oh, my god... That freak
artificial island that they turned into a refuge for gender-benders.”
“Yes. Now, are you sorry that
you volunteered, son?”
“No Sir! I was given fair
warning, and I am willing to proceed with this mission to the best of my
ability, Sir!”
“Good. Now it’s obvious to
anyone who takes even a lingering look at this place that the whole
‘Transgender Haven’ spiel is a load of crap. Nobody is going to spend billions
of dollars just to give a bunch of nancy-boys and bulldykes a nice place to
frolic with each other. There are only four reasons that anyone would use that
excuse: First, to provide a nice, politically correct, ‘feel-good’ excuse for
constructing an entire _island_ and developing industry and agriculture on it.
Second, to entice thousands gender bending dupes to act as a buffer between
whoever’s behind all of this and the rest of the world. Third, to create a
situation where normal, decent people will very actively NOT be looking at what
going on there. And fourth, it gives them a reason to have people suddenly just
drop out of nowhere. Since the Trannies going there routinely have cosmetic
surgery and change their names, the people behind all of this can more or less
replace ‘immigrants’ with their people at will. The people in their government
and economy can be almost anybody and we couldn’t say that they’re not who they
say they are. Almost 90% of the people in their power structure have absolutely
NO previous history. Obviously, these people need to be watched.”
“You want me to go in and spy
on them, sir? Isn’t that the CIA’s job?”
“The CIA has _tried_ to send
in agents. With the exception of ONE guy, they all got bounced out of the
country within 72 hours. One of the reasons that we’re sending someone almost
fresh out of VMI is that we think that the Intelligence community’s security
has been breached by the Januseans.”
“Spy satellites?”
General Parris swung a
computer screen around. “See this map? What can you tell about this map?”
“Well, it’s obviously a map
of the island, but it doesn’t look like a military or intelligence service
map.”
“We got it from the news
networks. It’s the most accurate map that we’ve been able to find. All the
geological surveys that were made of the island while it was under construction
mysteriously disappeared 24 hours before the Januseans declared their
independence. Another thing that happened is that every attempt to focus a spy
satellite camera on that landmass has failed. We think that they have some ECM
system that interferes with the satellites orientation systems every time that
they zero in on Janus.”
“You want me to find and
sabotage these ECM stations?”
“No. First, if you did that,
they’d just notice it and either fix or replace them in another area. And
they’d know that there was a saboteur on their island. Second, it won’t be
necessary. We have a device that will give our spy satellites undetectable
orientation cues that will allow them to focus on any point on the island. Your
job is to infiltrate the island, find a suitable spot in as close to the exact
center of their capitol city, Alexandria, and then find a place along the outer
shore where a submarine can deliver this device to you. You will install the
device, calibrate the coordinates of the location in the capital, and activate
the device.”
“Why not sneak in the device
in a diplomatic pouch?”
“The United States has not,
and will _never_ officially recognize the nation of Janus. We have no embassy
or consulate, or any diplomatic representative of any kind. So, no diplomatic
pouch.”
“I see. Will I be going in as
a Female-to-Male transsexual?”
“I’m afraid not. Our lone
agent-in-place reports that Female to Male Ts are watched significantly more
closely than Male-to-Female Ts, probably because they’re expecting just such a
move. And you’ll have to be able to move about unwatched.”
“This agent-in-place; why
can’t _he_ install the device?”
“Because he doesn’t have any
technical or surveying experience. That dingus has to be in just the right
place, or we might as well not bother. No, McClintock, I’m afraid that you’re
going to have to go in as a Male-to-Female T, for the simple reason that it’s
the last thing that they’ll expect.”
“Will I have to...” McClintock
gestured at his crotch.
“No, part of the whole
premise will be that you are pre-op who’s decided to do most of ‘her’
transitioning on Janus. You’ll have some cheap plastic surgery- nose job, lips,
boobs, butt implants- to make it look like you’re serious, but don’t worry. We
won’t have them do anything that can’t be fixed when you get back.”
“What about hormones and
retroviruses? Isn’t that part of the treatment?”
“Well, we’ll start you out on
hormones while you’re recovering from the plastic surgery, but since this
mission should only last three months- four tops- you shouldn’t worry about
that. And as for the retroviruses, well, those things are expensive, so you can
claim that you want to build up a nest egg before you start on those. Your
mission should be over before anyone starts answering questions.”
“But what excuse will I give
for returning to the States, after my mission is over?”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll
have months to work out something. If nothing else, we can say that your mother
is very sick and wants to see you one last time or something sappy like that.”
McClintock squirmed in his
seat a bit, but settled in and focused. “What will my cover be?”
“Good man.” Parris touched
his keyspace, and the map disappeared. Two pictures replaced it. The one on the
left was an average looking man in his mid twenties. The on the right was of
the same man, only with a cheap, tiny, ‘how can he breathe?’ nose job, obvious
cheek implants, large cellulose injected lips, too much makeup, a shaved chin
and a cloud of blonde curls around his head. “This is Frank a.k.a. ‘Eileen’ Dunbar.
He is a Richmond area Air Conditioning/Refrigeration repairman and- on the long
chance that you couldn’t guess- a Male to Female transsexual. He has been
accepted as a Provisional Immigrant to Janus. Besides being your height and
frame, Dunbar is an Air Conditioning/ Refrigeration technician. An AC repairman
is, just after telephone repairman, the best possible cover job for you. It
will give you an excuse to go tooling around the island unsupervised, it will
give you an excuse to have a vehicle, and you will have an reason to be on
roofs of the capitol. Also, there is very real demand for Air Conditioning techs
on Janus. Dunbar is scheduled to leave for Janus in seven weeks. That will give
you time to recover from your surgery and bone up on Air Conditioning repair.
Just as he shows up at the airport for the shuttle to Janus, he will be
detained incommunicado indefinitely, under the Spy Powers Act. You will replace
him. We’ll put somebody on him about a week before he leaves, just so that
there aren’t any stupid ‘Spy Movie’ complications. So, any more questions?”
McClintock took a pained look
at the faces on the screen. “Just one- do I have to be a blonde?”
“YES.”
##########
“Do you remember the communications
protocols?”
“Yessir.” McClintock mumbled
a bit through the over-inflated lips, and launched into a rote recitation of
the codes.
“What about the precise
altitude and clearance for the device?”
“Got it.” McClintock twitched
his back muscles; if only that idiot Dunbar hadn’t insisted on having a pair of
goddamn watermelons welded to his chest!
“The secure keys?”
“In a locket, behind a
picture of Dunbar’s mother.”
“How will you find our
agent-in-place?”
“I won’t- he’ll find me after
making sure that I’m not being watched or followed. When he’s sure, he’ll
approach me and say ‘how about a sweet drink for a sweet lady?’, to which I’ll
respond ‘what a sour line’. If there is anyone around, he will then leave and
re-approach me.”
Parris nodded. They’d been
over this a thousand times, but last minute check ups were a good way to cover
pre-jump jitters. McClintock was one of the good ones. It was a damn shame that
he’d have to be wasted on a suicide mission. But he _would_ get the job done,
and that was what was important.
Parris and McClintock watched
as the Army Intelligence officer assigned to ‘escort’ Eileen Dunbar left ‘her’
hotel room with the air of a prisoner being released. A few minutes later, two
DHS men came and quietly took a drugged Dunbar into custody, leaving the hotel
room unlocked. Then McClintock purposefully went into her room. A half-hour
later, a bellhop came to the room and helped ‘Miss Dunbar’ load her bags and
trunks onto a cart. McClintock strode after the cart in one of Dunbar’s
travelling outfits, with all the grace and confidence that six weeks of intense
training can give a man.
In the lobby, two more
‘emigrants’ were waiting with their luggage for their shuttle. They had met Dunbar
in the hotel’s bar two days ago, and had formed a traveler’s bond. This was the
crucial moment where the infiltration would pass or fail. ‘Roxanne’ Rodriguez,
a diminutive ‘Latina’ from Chicago was almost bouncing with excitement. “Ohhh,
MAN, I thought that this day would never GET here!”
Sylvia Warren, a lanky
African American from New York (actually, Syossett, New York, with a five year
stint on the Lower East Side), and the group’s self-appointed ‘sophisticate’
struck a pose in a white travelling suit that was very becoming to her dark chocolate
complexion and twirled a long dark strand of hair around a finger. “Oh yeah,
girls, just look at the expressions of disapproval on all those middle-class
middle-American faces, and drink it IN!”
Expressions of confusion
crossed both McClintock’s and Rodriguez’s faces. “Drink it in? _Why?_”
“ ‘Cause, after t’day, we’ll
NEVER havta see it again! Thank You, _Jesus_!”
McClintock smiled through the
bad injection job and Rodriguez giggled. Then Roxanne gave McClintock a look. McClintock
had a bad moment. They’d counted on the basic similarity of McClintock’s and Dunbar’s
faces, the obscuring effect of the plastic surgery and the general excitement
to insert McClintock into the group without being noticed. It has been hoped
that Rodriguez and Warren would lend McClintock an extra amount of credibility.
“Eileen, where’s Tommy? Isn’t he going to see you off to the airport?”
McClintock decided to brazen
it through. Dunbar fancied himself as a bit of a ‘southern belle’. McClintock
pursed his over plumped lips into a what he hoped was a seductive smile, draped
a hand on his over enhanced chest and purred in a bad magnolia drawl, “Well, I
_hate_ long awkward good-byes, so we said all our fare-thee-wells this mornin’.
Tommy’s still recuperatin’ in our room.”
Roxanne gave a
semi-scandalized giggle and Sylvia gave an approving “Oh, Yes!”
As they waited for the
shuttle, McClintock reviewed what he knew about the two. Rodriguez was a
trained pharmaceutical lab technician, and had ‘come out of the closet’ in high
school with predictable results. She fancied herself a good Catholic girl,
which should prove somewhat problematic given the lack of Roman Catholic
churches on Janus. Maybe there was some kind of regular shuttle to a Mission on
one of the neighboring islands. In marked contrast, Warren had been a bit of a
tough guy in high school, and had lied about taking art courses to his friends.
He had only come out of the closet three years ago. He was a trained Graphic
Artist, with good reviews on his Computer Graphics Imaging works. He had
applied for immigration twice, and had only been accepted because of a drop in
the number graphic artists among the applicants. This wasn’t a reflection on
Warren’s suitability or talent (or at least the Janusean Immigration Officials
claimed); just a matter of the overwhelming numbers of artists that normally
applied. Even so, McClintock suspected that Sylvia was going to be spending a
lot of time working kelp beds or waiting tables before a real job opened up.
Finally their shuttle
arrived, and they piled in next to what appeared to be two stocky men. The two
groups gave each other the polite smiles that you give to someone that you
think is absolutely nuts, but you aren’t in a position to cast asparagus. They
picked up two more groups of three (‘Male’ and ‘Female’ respectively) at other
hotels and the shuttle finally headed towards LAX.
At LAX, the group was given
the use of the VIP lounge, to the subdued dismay of a junior Congressman from
Ohio and a second string movie producer. More shuttles came in, disgorging more
émigrés, until there were 46 of them in the VIP lounge. About an hour and a
half after McClintock, Rodriguez and Warren got there, the quarterly shuttle
jet to Janus arrived and had to spend another hour being fueled and maintained.
Even so, when the jet was finally ready to take off there was the inevitable
last minute dash by a shuttle with six passengers that had gotten tied up in a
LA traffic snarl.
After all that waiting, the
collected huddled mass yearning to breathe free gave a deep breath of
relaxation as the jet cleared the runway and began its climb. The horror
stories of borderline psychotic homophobes shooting model rockets into jet
intakes or throwing molotov cocktails at the jets hadn’t done anyone’s nerves
any good.
Once everyone was back on the
plane after the layover in Hawaii, a pair wearing uniform blazers with the
crest of the nation of Janus on the breast stepped to the front of the cabin.
One was a tall Mediterranean looking man and the other was a perky looking
Asian woman. “Greetings, ” started the Mediterranean looking guy, “we are your
Immigration workers for this flight. My name is Reymondo DiRavenna.”
“And mine is Akiko Mitsuhari.
As you may have guessed, we are Transsexuals, even as all of you are. You’ve
all been pre-accepted, so we’ll do your orientation lecture during the flight.
It will still take several hours even after the layover, so why waste your
first heady few hours on Janus with a boring lecture? Don’t worry, there will
be an in-flight movie afterwards. Since everyone on this flight speaks English,
we will conduct this lecture in that language. English, Spanish, Chinese and
Arabic signs and texts are very common in Janus, but the official language is
Greek. This is mostly to stress the international nature of Janus, and to
promote a sense of our having a culture distinct from Western Commercial
Culture. If you don’t speak Greek, don’t worry; as we said before, the odds are
that someone around you speaks whatever is a language that you do understand.
And you will be given every opportunity to pick up the beautiful language of
Greek. This lecture is to give you an orientation to how things are run on Janus.
As you know, Janus is a very young nation, and most of the major nations don’t
recognize us. As a result, we expect a lot out of our citizens, both the
established and the newcomers.”
She went on to explain that Janus
was a high personal involvement country. While no one was allowed to immigrate
unless there was at least one job opening for someone of their skills, everyone
was expected to pull a ‘tax shift’ of two weeks when they first entered. She
explained that Janusean citizens had the option of paying their income taxes in
money, or of meeting their obligation through doing shifts of work that
directly benefited the commonweal, such as road work, street sweeping, kelp
harvesting or some other labor intensive job. As a rule, most Januseans were
either saving up for some medical work, or needed the capital for their
business, so only the most successful found it cost-effective not to meet their
tax burdens by doing a little weekend work for the country. She also went on to
say that while Janus was too young and small to have a criminal population (not
to mention the fact that career criminals found it almost impossible to get
past Immigration) there were Laws, Police and Jails on Janus. Even if you were
only in for a weekend for Drunk & Disorderly, prisoners were expected to
work to earn their keep- there was no lounging around on the tax-payers’ dime.
Reymondo and Akiko spent the
better part of two hours explaining the principles of Janusean society, but the
thing that really mattered to McClintock was the idea of ‘Big
Brothers/Sisters’. Newcomers were paired up with a citizen of the same sex. The
‘Big Sister’ would help the newcomer find their way around, find a place to
live (beyond the immigrants’ dormitory), and generally get used to the place.
It immediately occurred to McClintock that ‘Big Sister’ was also probably
checking the immigrants for infiltrators, journalists, and people too proud to
admit that maybe they made a mistake coming here.
The implication that some
might wind up regretting their decision must have been obvious. The next thing
that Reymondo and Akiko talked about was the fact that out of every quarterly
shift of 100 people (50 from the Americas and Western Europe, 50 from Eastern
Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia) at least 7 people, once as many as 13, went
back to their old lives. McClintock idly wondered if that bit was meant to
encourage last minute walkouts, or to lessen the stress of people leaving their
entire world behind by offering an option.
The lecture went on for two
hours, including Questions and Answers. Still, after Akiko and Reymondo wound
up, there was still quite a while before the shuttle jet landed at the airport
at Olympia. McClintock found the in-flight movie- a particularly puerile ‘chick
flick’- boring, so he got up and checked out the lounge. The lounge was small
and rather cramped. He ordered a beer, and actually got a real, honest- to- god
beer, instead of what airlines usually serve.
He was settling down to enjoy
the beer when the sight of a boy in a dress caught his eye. Given the nature of
the flight, a boy in a dress wasn’t that unusual; what was odd was that the boy
looked to be the ripe old age of 14 or 15. The kid was short, maybe five foot
nothing, slight, and had a bad case of acne. Under the acne, his face was very
much a boy’s face, except for a pair of large soulful blue eyes. His He was
wearing a thin, light blue sundress that just came down to the knees. The boy
sat down and ordered a soft drink.
A dark haired ‘man’ wearing
casual travel clothes beat McClintock to the punch. “Aren’t you a little young
to be on this flight, kid?”
The kid looked challengingly
in the FtM’s eyes and said, “Well then, you’d better call the flight attendant,
and have them turn the plane around, shouldn’t you?”
“Whoa, I’m not telling you to
get off the boat, kid! I just didn’t know that Janus accepted minors!”
“For the most part, they
don’t. They only take in transgendered kids who have been formally disowned by
their families.” The boy’s voice dropped a bit. “And it doesn’t hurt that the
Child Welfare authorities don’t want to have to deal with you, either.”
The FtM started to say
something comforting, but McClintock could tell that the boy didn’t want to be
comforted. So, he jumped into the conversation and steered the discussion away
from the boy personally. “So, are there many kids on Janus?”
“They told me that there are
about 300 teenagers on Janus. From 14 to 19, I think.”
“I’m amazed that the Juvenile
Authorities allow it.”
“Well, from what the
Immigration people told me, they don’t really _allow_ it. The Immigration
people don’t take kids unless we prove that we’re homeless or that our parents
have disowned up or sumthin’. The way that the guy I talked to put it, they
can’t afford to take anyone who ‘has a name’.”
“Yuck! Talk about a nasty
turn of phrase!”
“Well, what he meant was that
if we were in the system, that the US could say that this kid or that was
missing and that they were ‘harboring’ ‘em on Janus, there’d be a big stink.
Usually, they don’t ship us off with the adults, but the secret plane that they
take the kids in was full up, an’ I didn’t wanna wait another three months.”
“Hey, can’t blame y’there.
But, aren’t you worried about going to what after all is a foreign country,
with no one to watch out for you? I mean, nobody really knows that you’re going
to be there?”
“Hey, lady- I spent two years
livin’ on the streets of LA. After that, what can they do to me that hasn’t
already been done?”
“God! How did you get by?”
The boy’s blue eyes went
bleak and hard. “How do you _think_ I got by?”
Once again, McClintock steered
the conversation into safer waters. “So, do you have any plans for what you’ll
be doing on Janus?”
The boy shrugged. “From what
the Immigration Officer told me, I’ll pretty much be on my own, unless I link
up with a ‘Sponsor’. That’s what they call a kind of surrogate parent.”
The FtM decided to get back in the conversation. “Well
then, you don’t have anything to worry about! Your average T, FtM or MtF, has
all _kinds_ of frustrated paternal instincts!”
“Maybe-”, the boy returned
sourly. He bared his teeth in a non-snarl. His teeth spraddled in all
directions. Even in England, he’d be considered a dental nightmare. “-Maybe
not.”
That explained a lot to McClintock.
He reached out and laid a gentle hand on the boy’s jaw. “I’ve seen teeth like
that before. It usually happens because you’ve had two or more permanent teeth
knocked out while the other ones were coming in. Who hit you, honey?”
The boy flinched. “My Dad. He
hates ‘queers’. He said that he was gonna beat it outta me, even if he hadda
kill me t’do it.”
“Y’know, you aren’t that bad
looking, without the teeth and all. I assume that you’re going to get it
fixed?”
“Yeah. I read in a magazine
that they can correct stuff like this with that new bone molding technique that
they use instead of bone-shaving and implants.”
“Oooh. That’s _expensive_! Do
you have plans for how you’re going to make the money?”
“Nope. If you plan, then you
only see what you planned for. I’m just gonna take what comes my way, as it
comes.”
“Good Luck, kid. You’re going
to need it.” McClintock’s reading of the situation was that the boy-girl
desperately wanted someone to care about him, but he had been disappointed too
many times in the past. He’d had one casual stranger too many express concerns
for him, and then just wander off for one reason or another. Some just after
they saw the kid’s mouth for the first time. Ironically, the best way to get
the kid to warm up to you would probably just to be there and not either shoo
him off or smother him.
McClintock finished his beer
and returned to his seat. He spent most of the remainder of the trip trying to
care about the heroine of the rather turgid romance novel that ‘Eileen’ Dunbar
had brought along
##########
After several hours, the
shuttle began its final approach to Olympia International Airport, which was
just outside Olympia, Janus’ tourism center. Like most of the tourism-biased
townships, Olympia was situated on the Leeward side of the Outward Shore, the
side of the ring of artificial mountains that faced away from the Center
Lagoon.
Along with the adults,
Lindsey Thompson walked down the ladder from the shuttle and gaped at the lush
green mountains. Then she remembered her spraddle teeth and quickly shut her
mouth. Still, she took a deep breath. Janus. She was finally in a place where
she had a chance!
Pulling her wrap around her
and adjusting her carry-on strap, she hurried to the main airport terminal.
Unlike most airports, which bent over backwards to look ‘cutting edge and
modern’, the Olympia terminal was a two-story Victorian looking affair of
white-washed wood with lots of ‘gingerbread’ decoration. Inside the terminal,
the immigrants were guided into a large room, where they took a vow of
allegiance to Janus as a preliminary to being accepted as Provisional Citizens.
They were told that this ‘provisional’ status would last for six months, during
which time they could renounce their vow and return to their native country
without any repercussions. Then, one by one, they were paired off with their
‘big brother’ or ‘sister’.
Lindsey’s ‘Big Sister’ was an
attractive Hindi woman who looked to be about 35, wore a blue sari with gold
patterning, and lots of gold jewelry. She smiled and said in an unexpected
upper-crust British accent, “Hello, Lindsey, and welcome to Janus. My name is Sidhira,
and I’ll be your ‘Big Sister’ for your first few months here.”
Lindsey shook her hand. “Hi.
Ah, exactly what does being my ‘Big Sister’ mean?”
“Well, one of the reasons
that we’re taking it so slow with immigration is that we don’t want to repeat
the mistakes that America, Canada and Australia made. We can’t afford to have a
lot of people coming in here all crushed together, and stepping all over each
other trying to get ahead. So, we bring them in groups of a hundred, fifty from
the West, and fifty from the East. This lets newcomers get used to the place
and find their niche, without snarling up our rather delicate economy. Part of
getting newcomers used to Janus is having someone that you know, who can
explain things and make sure that you’re getting along all right.”
“Sort of like a Probation
Officer.”
“You haven’t committed any
crime, Lindsey. You’re just trying to live your life as you believe that it
should be. Who am _I_ to say that you shouldn’t?”
“Okay, I can handle that. So,
what now? The Immigration Officer that I spoke to didn’t say much about how
minors are treated on Janus. I got the impression that he didn’t want to make
too many promises.”
Sidhira smiled and said, “Ah,
FAQ #43. It would rank higher, but we don’t really get that many minors. Well,
if you thought that coming to Janus would get you out of going to school,
forget it! You’ll go to a school for minor in the capitol part-time.”
“Part-time?”
“Yes. Since our classes are
so much smaller to begin with, and we have so many volunteer teachers, and we
put so much money into instructional software, we only have three hours a day
of traditional sit-down classes. The rest is homework on your own time. We
don’t have a lot of patience for the American system of institutionalized
babysitting that they use for schools. But don’t think that you’ll have lots of
time for hanging around in the malls! At least until you are ‘adopted’ by a
Sponsor, you’ll be expected to earn your own keep and spending money with a
part-time job.”
“What kind of job?”
“Well, after the first few
weeks, you’ll be able to choose from whoever’s hiring, but it’s kind of
traditional that everyone- and I DO mean _everyone_ does at least two weeks in
the Skunk Works.”
“Skunk Works?”
“The Kelp Processing Plant
down by Barratarria. Kelp is a major product here on Janus, we use it all over
the place, but getting people to actually do the work in the plant is a chore.”
“The work’s that hard?”
“Not really, mostly a matter
of minding the machines, but it smells to high heaven. Why do you think they
call it the ‘Skunk Works’? On the bright side, if your nose can stand to get
used to it, the work isn’t that bad, and the pay’s good.”
“How good?”
“You’ll probably pay off your
living debt for the first month in the first week, and you’ll earn lots of
spending cash in the second. Of course, by then you’ll probably have been
adopted, and your Sponsor will take over the expense of raising you and giving
you an allowance. There’s a long waiting list for people who want to adopt a
kid.”
“Maybe,” Lindsey flashed her snaggle-toothed
smile. “Maybe not.”
Sidhira flinched, and her
manner became ever so slightly more distant, in a way that Lindsey was all too
familiar with.
They chatted a bit more as
they waited for Lindsey’s luggage to make it through Customs Inspection. Then Sidhira
took Lindsey out of the terminal, to one of the pedal cabstands. They had to
wait for a cab to return, but Lindsey was more than rewarded by getting a hunky
bronzed 17-something cab-boy. The only thing that kept her from grinning at him
like an idiot was the bitter fact of the condition of her mouth. She didn’t
care how stinky the ‘Skunk Works’ were; she’d work double shifts there in order
to get rid of the mangled buzzsaw that hid behind her lips!
It took the pedalcab a half
hour to pull up to an open train station that looked like something from the
turn of the 20th Century, where an honest-to-god steam locomotive
was waiting for the last stragglers. It turned out that the steam engine was
there mostly for the tourists, and they changed trains at a town called Selene.
The new train was a sleek, climate controlled maglev ultraspeed, that whipped
through the 40 mile- tunnel through the mountains that separated the Outer and
Inner Shores in less than 15 minutes.
As they were waiting for the
train to start, Lindsey asked, “So, how long have you lived on Janus, Sidhira?”
“Oh, years! You see, I’m a
First Waver. I was part of the workforce that conditioned the soil and built
the townships.”
“Really?”
“Don’t be that impressed.
There were 20,000 of us, and so far. There are only 900-odd of you Second
Wavers. Most of the people that you’re going to meet are First Wavers.”
“Okay, cool. But there’s a question that I’ve gotta ask-
where did you First Wavers _come from_? I mean, nobody knows were you people
came from! You just sort of dropped out of the sky!”
Sidhira sadly smiled and
shook her head. “Ah, FAQ #6. Okay, here’s what happened. Back at the turn of
the millennium, Transsexuals were just sort of crawling along, trailing behind
the Gays and Lesbians in the ‘Alternative Lifestyle’ movement, as it was called
back then. Part of their problem was that TSs were, for the most part, not a
real group, just a collection of individuals, most of who planned to drop out
as soon as they had their SRS. Another major problem was the fact that, even
with a better common understanding of Transsexualism, the bias against TSs was-
and still is- very fierce. So, with all the paranoia and denial that we have to
go through, a large portion are traumatized to near emotional crippling. As a
result, any Transsexual group that had an open admissions policy was riddled
with neurotics and flakes. It wasn’t a fluke that the average Transsexual group
was a Therapy group.
“Then a group of TSs in the
greater Chicago area got together and decided to form a mutual assistance
association. They helped each other in getting jobs, in starting up businesses,
and they pooled their money for financial projects. The major thing was that
membership in their group was strictly by invitation only. Since they weren’t a
program that accepted money from the government at any level, they were able to
restrict their membership to TSs who had their act together. Because they
insisted on members who were actually an _asset_ to the group, they prospered.
They caught a lot of flack from Liberal types who accused them of Elitism, but
the idea still caught on. By the mid- Teens, there were similar Transsexual
mutual support groups across the United States, Canada, the UK, the ANZAC
nations and most of Western Europe. By the mid-Twenties, there such groups in
almost every nation on the face of the Earth, and the Gays and Lesbians were
also pulling pretty much the same stunt.”
“If it was so successful, howcum
I never heard of it before? I mean, was it some kind of secret conspiracy?”
“Oh, No! It wasn’t a _secret_.
We just didn’t advertise it. And the mainstream has always preferred to ignore
what we ‘Alternative Lifestyle’ types do. At any rate, as a matter of course
these groups had started to form semi-formal ties with each other. By the
Thirties, cooperation among these groups was so regular that they started
calling themselves ‘The Association’. Despite the fact that they were becoming
so successful- or maybe _because_ of it, tolerance for TSs was steadily
declining. The more successfully that we could transition, the better we could
blend into the mainstream. That triggered the paranoia of a lot of people.
After all, as long as we were these pathetic, tragicomic misfits and losers who
were regulated more or less to poverty, we didn’t threaten anyone. But a
competent, cohesive group of financially active people who couldn’t be easily
tracked rather hits the ‘Secret Society’ reflex in a lot of people. So the
American/ European/ Japanese Power Elite started putting the putting the
squeeze on us. Nothing too overt, mind you- just the usual freezing out of
anyone that they thought was connected to us.
“We decided that we had three
options open to us- we could go completely underground. But how do you get
somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty thousand people to disappear and
resurface somewhere else? We could try to fight them- right, like _that_ would
work! Or, we could go somewhere else. But where? There isn’t a lot of unclaimed
wilderness lying around these days. And if we tried to settle in Orbit, we’d
push every paranoid button that the Power Elite has. Why do you think that
almost 75 years after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, there’s only the most basic
orbital installations up and running? The Power Elite doesn’t like the idea of
having rocks dropped on their heads from five miles up.”
“So, you all decided to build
this island from scratch?”
“Not really. We decided to
try all of the above. Building Janus is only one of several plans that the
Association of twenty years ago came up with. It’s one of the few that has
managed to work out.”
“Others worked? What are
they?”
Sidhira smiled enigmatically.
“Not mine to tell.”
“If the Association was so
successful, how did you get all twenty thousand members to give up their lives
to come to Janus?”
“Simple- we didn’t. The
twenty thousand First Wavers are a minority in the Association. There are still
roughly thirty thousand members living under cover back in the outside world.
You see, this way we haven’t put all our eggs in one basket. If the Janus
project falls on it’s face in, oh say, ten years, then the others will make
sure that we have somewhere to go. Don’t worry- you Second Wavers will also have
a place. If the Nation of Janus takes off, then the others can come live here
or stay where they are, as they see fit. And, in the meantime, the Power Elite
has the mysterious Nation of Janus to worry about, instead of a so-called
‘secret society’. People tend to worry about the wolf that they can see,
instead of the wolf they can’t see.”
“But why would this ‘Power
Elite’ be so wigged out by the Association?”
“Well, first and foremost,
the Association wasn’t _them_. They were successful and wealthy, and they
didn’t really want to become members of the Power Elite’s country club set.
Having a bunch of smart and capable operators who aren’t them around always
makes the Old Money crowd nervous. And secondly, one of the reasons that the
Association was so successful was that they weren’t afraid to upset applecarts.”
“Applecarts?”
“Lindsey, there are thousands
of really good business ideas and technologies that don’t get put into
operation because the people with the real money don’t want to risk that money in
a chancy deal. Also, new methods and technologies tend to upset existing
markets. Wall Street isn’t going to mess up an already existing good situation
by trying anything really new, just because it would actually help the common
people. But the Association wasn’t tied into that network of commitment, so we
were open to trying all kinds of new things. The Association made a lot of
money, and the Power Elite lost a lot of money. For instance, I was involved in
a project to ‘ranch’ lobsters and other shellfish in India. It was a great
idea, and got a lot of religiously acceptable protein to the Indian people. But
it cut into the market share of a Japanese fishing concern, so they dug up a
quack who said that our ‘ranching’ methods were ‘unclean. Business dropped off,
and a whole bunch of behind the scenes string pulling went on, and that
Japanese firm wound up owning the ranches. _Then_ miraculously, they found out
how to make the lobsters ‘clean’- actually, they just put ‘clean’ on the
packaging- and started selling them again. So, Our being Transsexuals was just
sort of the icing on the cake. You see, the Power Elite has two sets of rules-
one for the average person, regardless of nationality, and another for
themselves. Well, actually, the only real rule that they follow would be ‘If
you got away with it, then you were right’.”
Lindsey looked Sidhira over.
“Are you on the lam, or something?”
Sidhira laughed. “No, no-
just still a little bitter. But I have a new life now. But back to you-” Sidhira
went on to explain that Lindsey would be living in a ‘transients dormitory’,
sort of a hotel for Newcomers and for people in the capitol overnight; sort of
a subsidized no-frills hotel.
After a bit more of that, the
train pulled out of the tunnel, into the interior of the island. As the train
passed through a few townships, Lindsey noticed that the architecture of the
Inner Shore was different from the Outer Shore. The buildings and such that
she’d seen on the Outer Shore had an over-decorative, slightly precious quality
that she associated with places like Disneyland and other Southern California
theme parks. The buildings there went for ‘eccentric Victorian’, ‘idyllic
Shinto shrine’, ‘Ancient Greek’ or a couple of other looks. The buildings that
she was passing were a lot more pragmatic looking. Not as ugly or bleak as the
suburban ticky-tacky that she was used to, they just looked like people
actually lived or worked there, instead of a tourist resort.
Then the train pulled into
Alexandria. Then things got busy again. Sidhira got Lindsey’s stuff together
and hire one of those dinky little ‘city cars’ that you can hire by the hour.
As they drove through the city, Lindsey didn’t get a sense that she was in an
American city. There was something about the place that reminded her of the
better parts of European cities that she’d seen in movies and on TV. When the
‘city car’ stopped at a red light, Lindsey’s eye hit a round red mailbox and it
hit her- the mailbox and almost everything else that she’d seen was both well-made
and tastefully designed. In America, public things were either cheap or
patently artificial. The Januseans insisted that the country that they were
building was going to be a beautiful one; they imposed their taste on
everything around them, as she’d heard that the French did.
Even the Transients’ Dorm was
tastefully done, though it was obviously not designed to make the transients
willing to overstay their welcome. Sidhira checked her in at the front desk and
helped her get her stuff up to her room. The room was larger than one at a YMCA
would be, but only barely so. The bed was a futon that pulled up into a couch,
and the TV/computer unit was basically an oversized laptop that was hardwired
into the local data/entertainment web and was bolted to the desk. On the door
was a schematic that pointed out in five languages where the toilet, showers
and emergency exits were.
Adjusting Lindsey’s clothes
in the closet, Sidhira told Lindsey that they’d go shopping for school uniforms
and other new clothes tomorrow. “Most Newcomers can stay here for three months,
and then they’re expected to find a place of their own. Not that many take that
much time, but we think that it’s best to have that understood. As a minor, you
can stay here for as long as you need to be matched up with a Sponsor. It
shouldn’t take that long- we Januseans have strong maternal instincts.”
Maybe, Lindsey thought to
herself as she absently ran her tongue along the insides of her jagged teeth,
but I think that I’m gonna be here for a while. If she could only work
part-time, it was gonna take a while to get up the scratch to fix these teeth.
And who’s gonna take in a kid who makes you flinch every time she smiles?
The next day, Sidhira spent
most of the day helping Lindsey open up a bank account, exchanging her American
dollars for Janusean drachmas, and shopping for clothes. Lindsey was amazed at
how much credit the nation of Janus was advancing her.
“Don’t get too carried away,
Lindsey.” Sidhira warned. “This money is a _loan_, not a gift. Rampant debt may
be part of the American way of life, but it’s not part of the Janusean way of
life. You will be expected to repay that yourself. Your Sponsor isn’t liable
for the costs.”
Even with that caveat,
Lindsey went at the Alexandrian stores with a passion. For the first time in
her life, she could shop for girls’ clothes without worrying if anyone she knew
would see her! Lindsey thought that they should start in the lingerie
department, but Sidhira steered her to the Prosthetics department first.
Lindsey was amazed at the variety and realism of the breast forms on display.
Ignoring Lindsey’s blushes, Sidhira discussed her charges age, weight, frame
and complexion with the sales lady to decide which of the forms would suit her
best. As they whittled down the choices, Lindsey thought that she wanted
something a little larger, but Sidhira snorted and said, “Nonsense! The whole
point of these is to make you look more like a normal, healthy teenage girl,
not a drag queen. Remember, if you overdo it, you’re only calling attention to
the fact that you’re only wearing falsies or cheap implants.”
Lindsey remembered that blonde MtF that she’d talked with
on the plane. She’d had a good face and a nice figure, which she’d screwed up
with cheap surgery and obvious implants. She was practically walking around
with a big neon sign blinking ‘Cheap Surgery!’ Lindsey sighed and nodded. She
settled on a nice pair of B cups with largish areolas. As she held them, she
was amazed at how lifelike the forms were. Almost against her will, her eyes
strayed over to the counter where they were selling the ‘forms’ for FtMs. Did
they _really_ want to go around with things _that_ big stuffed into their
pants?
Next, Sidhira took Lindsey to
the shaper department. Again, Lindsey was struck by how much thought and
expertise the Januseans had put into something to help TSs adjust. The shaper
both restrained and padded to create an illusion of developing hips and waist,
but it did pinch, it was cool wearing, and it had easy releases, apparently for
bathroom emergencies. Whoever designed the thing had probably done some time in
its less-well designed competition.
Taking a look in the long
mirror, Lindsey did have to admit that wearing the forms and shaper under her
dress did make for a much more convincing image of a young girl just beginning
to fill out.
Janusean fashions were mostly
variations on standard tropical wear, though sarongs were apparently very in
this season. But there were two new things for girls that seemed to be particular
to Janus- faux Greek fashions called the ‘chiton’, sort of a one shouldered
shift, and the ‘peplos’, a draping dress that fastened at the shoulder and had
a light stole.
They also picked up a few
school uniforms for her. The school uniform consisted of a light blue pleated
jumper over a light white blouse with a ‘peter pan’ collar and black patent
leather loafers.
The next stop was a
hairdresser, where Lindsey’s dirty blonde hair was washed, lightened to a honey
blonde, and styled with extensions to a pageboy. With a touch of rouge on the
lips and some eyeliner to emphasize the eyes, Lindsey looked far more like the
teenage girl she was inside. IF she didn’t open her mouth.
After a lunch that was strong
on greens and seafood, Sidhira took Lindsey to a parlor that could only exist
on Janus. It was a laser hair removal/dermatology clinic. The dermatologist
spread a thin mask of one paste or gelatin after another, letting each sit for
about five minutes before peeling it off and replacing it with another. Then
with a thin layer of a transparent gel over Lindsey’s face, the dermatologist
carefully ran a laser over each inch of her face. Then the mask was peeled off
again, taking all the downy stubble and a lot of pre-clogging detria with it.
Then a medicated balm was smeared over it, easing the mild burning. The
dermatologist finished by recommending an anti-acre cream that would help
Lindsey’s complexion in the long run.
Lindsey felt much cleaner and
prettier as Sidhira took her to a light lunch of greens and seafood. But still,
she kept her mouth closed as much as possible.
After lunch, Sidhira took
Lindsey to the Sponsorship Bureau. Lindsey spent an hour filling our forms and
taking tests, so that she’d be matched up with a compatible Sponsor. Then she
was interviewed on camera. It reminded her of what they did at dating services,
or at least what she’d seen on TV. Lindsey decided that she’d rather take a
long time finding a Sponsor who’d really stick around, or even risk not getting
‘adopted’ at all, than put up with a bunch of flakes who’d waste her time with
first- and only- meetings. As the camera ran, she smiled broadly and kept
flashing her jagged teeth throughout the interview. If anything, she thought
that it was a shame that her trip to the dermatologist had done such a good
job; there’s nothing like acne to scare off the superficial.
The rest of the day was
occupied with taking care of boring but essential chores such as getting
Lindsey registered with the Labor Exchange, enrolling her at the Athenaeum High
School, and her first visits with her endocrinologist, dentist and
psychiatrist.
When 8 PM rolled around, Sidhira
took her back to the transient’s dorm. “Well kid, I want you to get to bed
early. If you thought that today was a handful, tomorrow you have your first
day at school and your first shift at the kelp processing plant.”
Lindsey gave Sidhira a pained
look. “Does it have to be the ‘Skunk Works’?”
“Yes. Besides helping out
with something that is basic to our lives here on Janus, and helping to pay
back some of the money that was loaned to you today, doing a couple of weeks
work in the Skunk Works is sort of a rite of passage. When it’s over, you can
honestly say that you pulled your own weight from the get-go.”
With that, Sidhira left.
Lindsey sat down rather dejectedly on her bed. Alone again, naturally. No, she
told herself, it isn’t that bad. This is reality. What did you expect? Did you
think that you were going to step off the plane into the arms of someone who’d
been waiting their whole life for you? At least here, I have a chance. It’ll
take a lot of work, but I can make it. If that ‘Skunk Works’ place is as hard
up for workers as Sidhira made it sound, then they must pay good money. If I
keep living here at this dorm, and don’t go crazy spending money on clothes,
maybe I can save up enough money to get these teeth fixed. Then maybe someone
will care.
It was only 8 o’clock, but
the three-hour time difference between Alexandria and Los Angeles made it seem
later. She slipped into the satiny nightgown that Sidhira had bought her and
smoothed it down. Oh, it was going to be hard, not splurging money on clothes.
But she’d have to.
##########
School, it turned out, was
school, was school. Being in a high school with transsexual teens from around
the world was still high school. And she was the New Kid. By the end of the
admittedly short school day, she rather regretted not waiting the three months
for the next secret flight of adolescents. While there were only six or so kids
on each flight, it seemed to create a bond between them. And she had been the
only kid on that flight. She was the odd girl out, with no one in the class who
really thought of her as a friend. Again.
This isolation kicked in the
‘porcupine’ reflex that Lindsey had built up to survive her father. But the
hunched posture and prickling glare that had allowed her to survive the slings
and arrows of her bullying father were like blood in the water in a
cosmopolitan high school. And Athenaeum High School’s number one shark was Vittoria.
Vittoria was sixteen and
absolutely gorgeous. She was lithe, curvy and had the advantage of fifteen
months of retrovirus therapy. She’d been raised in the slums of Rome, and had
the refined Italian sense style of a socialite and the vicious sense of humor
of a sewer rat. Her face was a masterpiece of the cosmetic surgeon’s art, which
was framed by a curling mass of midnight black hair that tumbled with artless
abandon around her shoulders. Her complexion was an unblemished olive, which
served as a setting for the dark luster of her eyes. She used her looks and
untrammeled confidence like a club. She even managed to get around the school’s
dress code, which was supposed to prevent the kind of clothing snobbery that
was so bad in America’s schools. Her ‘uniform’ was technically the right cut
and pattern, but it was skin tight. The skirt, which was supposed to end just
above the knee, barely covered her perky derrière. Her shoes, which were
supposed to be flats, had 2 & ½ inch spike heels.
To give Vittoria her due, she
had _not_ had an easy childhood. Besides being born poor and transgendered, Vittoria
had been the victim of a particularly nasty neighborhood girl named Elyssa who
delighted in tormenting him. Suffering does ennoble some people. Being
persecuted gives them compassion for the wronged and a sense of justice. For
others, it just teaches them how to hurt others. Vittoria was an avid student
of Elyssa’s methods.
Vittoria checked out
Lindsey’s hunched reaction to teasing and pegged her as the Perfect Victim.
Here was someone that she could torment seven ways to Sunday and the schmuck
would actually help. She had no friends, and even if she somehow got
that mess of a mouth fixed, her ‘porcupine’ reflex would keep her from making
any. With a little experimentation, Vittoria figured that she could play this
fool like a Stradivarius.
As strange as it may seem,
Lindsey found herself looking forward to taking the trolley from the High
School to the ‘Skunk Works’. While she was just a kid to the other plant
workers, at least she was seen as a kid who pulled her own weight. The Skunk
Works weren’t really that bad, at least not after your nose went off-line.
Besides the potent reek of kelp, there were several other olfactory battering
things going on as well- as well as processing the seaweed, the plant was
geared to integrate the processing with several other things as well. The
plant pumped seawater down a pipe to be heated by a pocket of lava under the
island. The seawater rose back to the surface as steam, which turned a turbine
for electricity, boiled kelp, decontaminated sewage, and a few other things
before it condensed into potable water. Some of the water was piped to the city
and townships for drinking, and some was pumped up to the hills. The treated
sewage was fermented for methane, which was burned for more electricity. The
remaining sewage was processed into a sludge that was used as fertilizer. The
Skunk Works was ugly, noisy, hot, and of course, smelled. But after a few of Vittoria’s
choice pranks, Lindsey found the quiet acceptance of the adult workers there
comforting. It helped that she recognized a few of the workers from the plane,
like the woman that she’d sat next to, and that woman with the unfortunate
plastic surgery. Having to work kept most of them from feeling that they had to
mother her, so she was able to relax and get to know them.
Even so, at the end of the
workday, she went back to the Transient’s Dorm alone.
The weekends were better.
Alexandria was a full-grown modern city, without sprawling all over the place,
as Los Angeles did. Her third weekend on Janus, she was checking out one of the
cooler gallerias, doing some window shopping before the movie started. She was
wearing a nice rose-colored chiton, looking rather pretty, and actually feeling
pretty good about herself as she browsed. Then she heard that voice.
It was, of course, Vittoria.
She was speaking Greek, Lindsey knew just enough Greek to recognize it, but not
enough to understand what she was saying. Lindsey turned around. There she was,
with a couple of her giggling lackeys. Vittoria was wearing the _same_
rose-colored chiton that Lindsey was, and looked a lot better in it.
Vittoria languidly crossed
her arms and said something snide in Greek. Again, Lindsey didn’t understand
what she was saying, but Vittoria’s delivery made it all too clear. Speaking AT
her, not TO her in Greek was one of Vittoria’s nastier gambits, reducing
Lindsey to an inarticulate barbarian.
Vittoria started to say
something else nasty, when another voice from off to the side interrupted her.
Lindsey turned around and saw that blonde woman that she’d met on the plane
from the US sitting there with two friends. The blonde woman- her name was
Ellen, no Eileen, she remembered from the Skunk Works, leaned back in
her chair and finished what she was saying. Again, Lindsey couldn’t follow
exactly what she was saying to Vittoria, but the tone said it all- she was
correcting Vittoria’s grammar.
Vittoria snapped something
back in Greek that obviously translated to ‘Mind you own business!’ Eileen just
smiled mildly and corrected her again. They went at it for a bit, with Vittoria
being nasty at Eileen, and Eileen just correcting her as she might a small
child. Eventually, Vittoria stalked off in a huff, her ‘friends’ in tow.
Barely managing to keep from
breaking out into a wide grin, Lindsey walked over to Eileen’s table. “Thanks.
She’s been on my case from my first day in school.”
“Hey, de nada- squashing
creeps like that is almost a public duty.”
Eileen’s lanky black friend
favored her with a broad smile. “Eileen, I didn’t know that you spoke Greek!”
“Sure! I’ve been berlitzing
Greek since the first day that I heard about Janus.”
Lindsey looked at them
uncertainly. “Would you mind if I, y’know, sat down?”
Eileen waved a gracious hand
at an empty seat. After Lindsey settled in, Eileen asked, “So, what does Miss
Thing back there have against you?”
Lindsey shrugged. “I think
that she’s just being bitchy for bitchiness’ sake. Don’t ask me _why_ she
thinks that she has to rub my nose in the fact that I’m not as feminine looking
as she is- all that I have to do is look around. I mean, will you _look_ at all
these people? I’ve never seen so many gorgeous people in one place before! I
feel like I’m on the set of a TV show!”
The little Latina nodded.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that. You can tell us Newcomers just by lookin’ at us.”
The black one, Sylvia, if
Lindsey remembered rightly, agreed. “I think it’s all those cosmetic surgery
places that are all over the place. Heck, I think that there’s one just around
the corner. But how can they support so many? I mean, unless your gonna do the
Michael Jackson thing, and keep having surgery after surgery. And who’s gonna
do THAT, after what happened to him?”
“Oh, my ‘Big Sister’, Sidhira
explained that. Those places don’t have full-time surgeons. They’re all
part-timers, who work at one of the local hospitals or in the pharmaceutical
companies. Those clinics just sort of ‘rent out chairs’ like hair salons do, so
the plastic surgeons can pick up a little money on the side. It seems that
there’s just enough business to keep them competitive and the prices down.”
Eileen looked around. “Still,
y’gotta admit, they’re artists! Around here, it isn’t the amount of alteration
that you’ve had done, it’s the _quality_ of the alterations! I wouldn’t be
surprised if they had a DeSfarza clinic here!”
A blank look came over
Lindsey. “DeSefaraza clinic? What’s that?”
Roxanne’s eyebrows went up.
“Where have you _been_, girl? The DeSfarza process is the absolute _latest_ is
Retrovirus therapy! The DeSfarza labs in Milan came up with a process that
would speed up the adaptation of a program of Retrovirus therapy by years! They
came up with a process that accelerates the cell replacement rate from seven
years to six weeks!”
Lindsey blanched. “Wouldn’t
there be... _complications_ with that?”
“Oh, there were in all the
previous attempts at forced adaptation- that’s what this kind of process is
generally known as, hon- but the DeSfarza process is a real breakthrough in the
level of control that it has. They can do all _kinds_ of things! They can make
you shrink, make you grow, alter your bone structure, change your ethnic
appearance, block allergies, remove genetic diseases, all kinds of things! But
the really big thing is the rejuvenatory possibilities!”
Eileen broke in. “
‘Rejuvenation’ means growing younger instead of older, Linds. But it isn’t as
big a deal as the media made it sound-”
“Oh! You mean that ‘Fountain
of Youth’ treatment that they were going on and on about on TV? That’s _REAL_?”
“It’s not a ‘fountain of
youth, no matter what you heard on the toob. What it does in a fully mature
adult is kick their cellular status to roughly what it was seven years before.
Which means, if you’re 90, then you get to relive the heady days of being 83.”
Sylvia butted in, “But didn’t
I hear that the younger you are, the weirder it gets?”
Roxanne shook her head. “Not
weirder, just more pronounced. You have to remember, that until you turn about
25, you’re still growing on certain levels. By resetting certain traits, the
body has to go back and ‘redo’ a lot of things over. The youngest person to
have the DeSfarza treatment, a 16-year old hemophiliac (that’s what you might
call a ‘bleeder’, Lindsey) was reverted to a preadolescent state. Hadda deal
with acne all over again.”
There was a general shudder
of horror at that prospect about the table.
Lindsey was intrigued. “So,
how much _are_ these DeSefarzya treatments?”
Roxanne leaned over and
patted her on the hand. “It starts out at twenty-five _thousand_, American,
for the basic treatment, and another five grand for each additional trait
affected.”