Crick takes us to a conference room and offers us some coffee. Cindy and I both accept and, after we get settled, Crick pulls out the contract I had signed. She looks at me and asks, “So, did you ever really read this?” I shake my head and say, “I skimmed through it. My intelligence may be much higher now, but I still don’t know what all of the legal terms mean…”

Crick nods and says, “OK, let me explain the background of the experiment—of which you are ‘Subject Zero’.” She blows on her coffee a second, takes a sip and says, “MY objective in this is…was to find a process in which I can turn those men that wish to be women into full women. Obviously, that has the potential to be a very lucrative business for me. The foundational research that I needed to do this, cost about a hundred million dollars alone, though. I was able to get a good portion of that money together through private grants…spinning it as basic genetic research. I could not get everything I needed, though, so I had to ask the government. That is when a black-funded military organization appeared and I made a deal with the devil…”

She drinks some more coffee and continues, “The deal gave me access to large sums of money for my research, but, at a huge cost. Obviously, there were strings attached. I also had not fooled them; they realized my ultimate purpose in the research—genetic sex research, rather than just genetic research… They saw that I wanted to perform experiments that actually changed the DNA, more so than just explore the DNA. So, over time, as I got more and more results in my animal trials, they added on more and more ‘items’ to the list of things they wanted in the human trials.”

She pours herself more coffee. Then she says, “So, this is how all of that has affected you. In the beginning, I wanted to open the trial up to the transgender community; pick a good candidate from any number of lists that I have access to from several doctors that specialize in transitions. The military had other ideas, though. With their agenda—I will explain more about that in a minute—they wanted the subject to clearly NOT be transgendered. That is why I had to run those tests on you and set your baseline.”

Another sip of coffee and another pause later she continues, “So, you already know my ultimate goal in this—craft a process that will turn a male into a full female. Then fine-tune it to make it affordable and accessible—to make it into a business. The military, however added a litany of other ‘riders’ onto that. First, they wanted to be able to control certain aspects of the genetic change. In other words, not just fix the damaged Y-chromosome, turning it into the repaired X-chromosome, and let the change occur as it would have given that new set of genes. They wanted to be able to control the change—like hair or eye color, and the like. That is actually not as hard as it sounds—it is much easier than the gender-induced changes. I had a partner in the very beginnings of this project that was insistent that I use her to test out my capability to induce these cosmetic changes. I changed her hair color to red from black and her eyes to green from blue. It was easy—I just spliced the appropriate gene segments from Angela into her and induced the change—but only after I had had 100% success in doing similar changes on a series of animals in my trials.”

She pushes a button and Angela brings in a bunch of sandwiches and sodas. Angela sits down and Crick continues, “But that was not enough for the military. They wanted to see if I could control intelligence--they wanted to know if I could increase it in a subject to my level. Again, my partner insisted on being my ‘Guinea Girl’. I extracted the gene sequence from myself that I had identified as being the appropriate one for my intelligence and induced the change in my partner. It did not work, though. I had miscalculated where to snip the gene sequence by a couple of base pairs and what I induced instead of an increase in intelligence was a change in sexual-preference. My partner became like me—bi-sexual. To my surprise, the military was happy with this event. My partner was, obviously confused…and we wound up ending our close partnership, although we are still very good friends.”

She pauses a bit to take a bite of her sandwich, then she continues, “When it came time to identify a ‘Subject Zero’ for the sex transformation, the military wanted me to institute a preference transformation, as well. To show that my previous results were not just an irreproducible fluke. That is why there was that requirement in the subject’s eligibility. The military did not specify that the subject would have to go from a fully heterosexual male to a fully heterosexual female—so, I just decided to use my own DNA again, since I most familiar with it, to induce a change to a bisexual female. When I snipped the DNA this time, I included the base pairs that I left out the last time to prove to myself that the intelligence issue was within in my control, as well. Interestingly enough, the military had not stipulated this anymore…”

A few more bites of sandwich and she continues on, “And so, I had Angela work up a short list of candidates that we felt would be eligible for the trial-run. That is how you got on that list and were contacted. The rest is pretty much, as they say, history. Although I had had huge successes in the animal trials, I really had no idea how the human trial would work out. Some of it truly surprised me and well exceeded my—and the military’s—expectations. You are a very beautiful woman. The fact that you are now genetically-encoded to be bi-sexual and female-gendered has and will help you adjust to your new life. In fact, you will likely have more problems adjusting to your new intelligence status than to your new sex and gender. Being as intelligent as we are has a lot of draw-backs—as you have probably already noticed.”

She sits back and finishes her sandwich and eats a few chips. A sip of soda later, she asks, “So, do you have any questions?”

I had been paying close attention to everything she said. It is strange, I now have basically a total-recall ability. I can also process multiple things at once. As she was talking, I was both listening attentively and thinking about what she was saying. I go back through both of those streams. I look over at Cin…for the first time processing that her hair is the exact same shade of red as Angela’s. While that could be a coincidence, the fact that her eyes are the exact same shade of that rare, but beautiful emerald green that had originally drawn me to her, is no longer a coincidence. I quickly calculate the odds in my head… 346,112,135,475,345.35739000027457242 to one, to be exact, against it being a coincidence…

I look at Crick and state, rather than ask, “The former ‘partner’ you referred to was a life/sexual partner—not your business partner as I might have inferred from your intentionally vague language. It is clear to me that that partner was Cindy.” Cindy blanches and Crick says, “Very good, Reyna. I assume you calculated the odds of Cindy and Angela having the same hair and eyes and realized that, while there is no family relationship between them, there has to be a genetic one.” It, like mine, was a statement rather than a question. I nod anyway. Cindy starts to say something, but Crick gently waves her down and says, “Let’s let Reyna finish, please.”

I look at Cin as I say the next piece, "Dr. Crick is correct that I am having increasing difficulties adjusting to my intelligence. There was a threshold, probably as I exceed about 150, that it became exponentially more difficult to be ‘social’ as my IQ increased. Yet, I still have little to no problems relating to and with you. At the time I first realized this, I chalked it off as love. Now, I realize that that is very much part of it—but, also that you have had a lot of practice dealing with people like us—as Dr. Crick’s partner for three years.”

Crick nods and Cin quickly speaks up. She says in a low voice, but in the rapid-fire speech that I recognize as her being nervous, “When I convinced Dr. Crick…” She looks over at her and corrects herself, “…Frances, or Franny as I have always called her, anyway, when I convinced her to give me the serum to increase my intelligence—it was not because I wanted to be more intelligent, it was because I wanted to understand the love of my life better. I was fully and completely, and I thought irrevocably, homosexual—a tried and true lesbian. I had no desire to be anything else. So, when I suddenly switched to being bi—and it didn’t bother me, I was very confused. Since I am now genetically coded that way—like I was as a lesbian before—I just had to catch up with myself…and I am completely fine with it, now. It took surprisingly little time—as you yourself now know. It did not take you long to adjust from being completely heterosexual to being bi, right?” I just nod and let her continue, “The fact that I did not become a genius was not really a problem. I did not blame Franny at all. The fact that I was suddenly bi did not fundamentally bother me either. The reason that we broke up was because I met you and found that I love you unconditionally. Franny understood and so we remain very good friends…and can hopefully be more again…now that you understand some of this…”

The advantage of having this level of intelligence is that I approach things at a near pure logical level…sort of like I always understood Vulcans to be on Star Trek. I just say, “That is logical. So, you knew about all of this and coaxed me into the experiment to have your cake and eat it, too?” I ask this time, because while it is a logical conclusion, I quickly calculate that there are many other possibilities. She pales again and shakes her head.

Crick takes up the story again, “No, Rey, Cindy is innocent on that front. Actually, it was Angela’s idea—one that I found had a lot of win-wins to it. I felt bad about what I had unintentionally done to Cindy—something that Cindy had taught me…to have…feelings… I had a lot of money set aside from the grants as compensation for the subject of the first trial. I wanted Cindy to have the money, but there had to be a way to legally do it. Angela came up with the…scheme. It had to be carefully done, though, so that the grantors or the military did not find about it. I am not sure if the military figured it out, or not, but I have protections in place that we will discuss in a minute. Anyway, Angela contacted Cindy to see if she would go along with this, with the understanding that you had to volunteer—and that she could not say anything for both of your protection.”

Cindy speaks back up, “I was torn. We needed the money…badly… When Angela convinced me that, if you accepted the terms—and things turned out as hoped in the trial—you would be a full woman that would be very acceptable of her sex, gender, and sexual preference, I decided to let her contact you and see how you would react. Yes, I pushed you pretty hard in the direction of accepting, but I never demanded… And I would not have held it against you if you had not accepted. Something I made sure you knew before you did. You don’t know how hard it was for me to keep quiet. But—if the military knew; they would have locked you away as a guinea pig somewhere—to study. I would have likely gone to prison—or worse, become some sort of forced guinea pig myself…”

I nod and look at Crick. I raise an eyebrow and say, “So, now I know. This can’t have been part of the plan today.” Crick says, “No, but I knew there was a high probability that you would figure it out, though. That is why I built a clause into the contract that says you and Cindy have the option of becoming full members of the team after the trial is over. In order for you to do that, you would have to be read into all parts of the experiment and you would be safe from any knowledge after that—because you would be under the confidentiality clauses. As for the money—well, because of the way the contract was written, remember what I said about those lawyers and their requirements, what we did is technically not illegal. You did meet all of the pre-requisite requirements for the experiment. Neither the grantors nor the military ever stipulated we had to offer it to more than one person, nor how we chose the person from the eligible list. We started with a list of one and you accepted. Case closed. Now as for that clause…?”

EPILOGUE

Cindy and I have been full members of the team for 1.2325 years now. GenX is now a publically traded company and we have successfully transformed our first twenty paying customers from men into genetic women. The price is still out of the range of most people’s budget—One million for the base transformation and one hundred thousand for each targeted cosmetic enhancement, like a specific hair or eye color. That will come down as our patents finish clearing and we can get some of the materials produced commercially. After that we will open franchises and, through shear volume, hope to get the price of true transformation to be competitive with SRS—even beat it with time…

We continue to just ‘not be able to figure out’ how to turn homo- and bi-sexual soldiers into heterosexual ones… We are in danger of losing our military contract… Darn!

As for Cindy and I—she keeps reminding me of my humanity…how to stay in touch with my old emotions and feelings. We are very close with Franny and Angi, who are a couple (something I found out later, but should have been obvious)… Another thing that I find out is that Franny has a long list of male ‘friends’ that like ‘playing’ with a ‘harem’ of women…

Life is good!