Alysson deMerel's Fiction

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And Forgiveness May Sometime Follow

"Arthur James William Dean, you have been found guilty of murder in the first degree, a particularly terrible crime made more terrible by your callous and wanton disregard for the humanity of your victim. It is with regret that I am unable to make your sentence more severe than I do. In this, I already exact the maximum penalty for your crime.

"It is the sentence of this court that your life energies be used to replace the life that you wantonly destroyed. You will be taken from here to the State Resurrection Centre where your body and animant will be reduced and used to reincarnate your victim, one Emily Jessica Maybury, and your personal essence be expunged from the Resurrection Database.

"It is the direction of this court that you be instructed in the detail of the procedure to be used upon you. It is also the direction of this court that you be denied any pain relief during the execution of the procedure. And may God have mercy on your soul."

He quailed to the very core of his being. He already knew the broad outline of what they’d do to him. His only solace was that once the execution reached that critical point, he would cease to be aware of anything more.

His unresisting self was removed from the court. Resistance was, indeed, both futile and impossible. His body was no longer his to command, the prison collar saw to that. From the neck down, he was aware of his body, but it was being worked by the Central Justice Computer. He was a marionette in the hands of a master puppeteer.

He walked down the corridor, out of the door and into the waiting prison van.

The judge noted in his journal that the only saving grace was that the victim was one of the more than ninety nine percent of the female population sterile from birth. At thirty-five, she was still childless.

The State Resurrection Centre, the culmination of centuries of research. Here the essences of all of the state’s precious human cargo were recorded. Since the wars that had ripped the fabric of civilisation apart, humanity had gone into both ascendancy and decline.

The decimation of the world’s population, and the shattering of the global ecosystem had forced Mankind to become more ingenious in order to survive. Old territorial, social and theological barriers had come crashing down, and Mankind was united against its common enemy - extinction.

The horrors of the chemical, biological and nuclear holocaust had also left their mark. Only one in a thousand women was fertile, rather more males were potent. The population continued to decline, even given the precious care that society lavished on those blessed with the power of reproduction.

Strangely, though, it seemed to be not simply a genetic defect, nor yet merely a direct product of those ancient poisons, but some strange mental configuration that meant fertility or sterility.

It became imperative that the answer be found. A side benefit of the research into this fertility problem was the discovery of the triple nature of the human organism.

Three parts were seen to comprise a human:

The Corpus, the physical body, a delicately balanced biochemical machine.

The Animant, the ‘life force’ enabling the body to live and develop. A fragile and ephemeral thing.

The Essence, the spirit of the body’s occupant, containing the mind of the person, and almost indestructible.

The discovery that it was possible to record the genetic and essence data for any human meant that is was now possible, in theory, to resurrect any person. With one restriction. A living body was required to house the resurrectee, since the Animant was the one component not given to duplication.

Arthur Dean was finding out about how these things worked, prior to being used as the subject of yet another affirmation of this knowledge. The clinician’s contempt for the thing he was lecturing to was clear in his every movement and look, venom dripping from his very words.

"So, we find that without the Animant, the Corpus cannot support the Essence of a living being. The Essence can exist in the absence of the two, but will either disperse or can be recorded at any time. Recording is simply a copying of the Essence.

"The Animant and the Essence are bound together inextricably in a person. It is impossible to remove the essence without destroying the Animant, nor is it possible to remove the Animant without death ensuing. It is, however possible to over-write one essence with another.

"Since the principles were first discovered, it has been found that the physical configuration of a human is determined by a combination of the genetic information carried in the living cells, and the Essence which inhabits the body.

"By use of gene-therapy and retro-forming micro engineering, it is possible to convert any living body into the genetic twin of any other - without killing the subject. By then overwriting the essence with that matching the genetic donor, it is possible to create an exact duplicate of the original donor, to the molecular level.

"The genetic records are made, as you know, at the age of twenty, and the resurrectee will be returned to life at approximately that age, since the ageing process is almost exclusively genetically determined. The essence recordings are updated at intervals determined by the individual. We are lucky that your victim had been updated the morning before you abducted her. She will only lose the horror that you subjected her to.

"This is, essentially, the procedure that you will undergo. Not only the process of genetic re-alignment is painful in the extreme, but there is some indication that the process of being overwritten is a source of intense agony for the overwritten essence. In the pain of your own death lies the resurrection of your victim.

"There are ways to alleviate this, but you will not be offered that option. I regret that it is impossible for me to make the process more painful to you. We will begin."

Dean was placed in the genetic control sarcophagus, an intricate mechanism of strange and aesthetic design. The machine made its connections to the body in its care. The prison collar, now superfluous, was removed.

Fluids containing both specialised nanites and the gene-forming virus were introduced into his blood stream. As soon as they entered his circulatory system he felt pain. The virus, modifying his genetic material caused him hallucinations, aches, pains and fever. He was sick, he thought, with a virus more deadly to him than any used during the Holocaust Wars.

Days and weeks passed, and Dean was fed images of the changes to his body as they occurred. The intensely homophobic male, the epitome of aggressive masculinity cringed to see his well-muscled body softening and shrinking.

Through the agony of the biochemical changes, he saw his body hair disappear, rejected by his body and sloughed like a snakeskin. The hair shed from his body was removed by the machines. In horror, he watched his maleness diminish. The shock of the changes to his pelvis was only evident to him afterward, since his mind rebelled under the torture of his bones restructuring themselves inside him. He became aware, as that specific pain receded, that his hips were now enormous. Other changes occurred to his shape as he shrank to the size of the small woman he had used to death.

He would have wept when he watched his deep chest shrink, his ribs changing shape. Then the ignominy of watching beautiful female breasts sprout where he had only had hair before.

His penis and testicles shrank, and then, with an exquisite pain specific to that change alone, disappeared, to be replaced by the usual female arrangement.

His hard-featured face blurred. He watched in horror as his brown eyes paled and became a vivid blue. His nose, axe-like since puberty, shrank, becoming a button that he would have, and had, found so attractive, once. His hair, previously a wheat-golden blonde, replaced with raven black.

The strong arms with wide, dextrous hands shrank, to be replaced by the refined hands of a woman, with nails already long and manicured. His powerful legs went the same way, his feet going from a men’s size eleven to a lady’s size five.

His eyebrows changed, his ears shrank. He noticed that his ears were now pierced. Indeed, as he watched his navel become small and neat, he realised that it, too, was pierced.

The last thing to change, as if by way of a final flourish by the infernal machine, was his missing pubic hair. The golden mat he had known for years was replaced by a soft, black down.

In horror, he was able to look at himself. He was, he realised, quite beautiful. No, he was intoxicatingly beautiful. He would, if the machine had permitted him, have cried.

They had turned him into a woman.

His only consolation was that, once the overwriting process had taken place, he would be dead. Oblivious. Gone forever, and unable to feel the horror of what his body had become.

He was removed from the sarcophagus. Still weak from the transformation, he was once more subject to the prison collar.

He recovered. He cried each night, and was assailed by strange emotions and mood swings. He also experienced the one basic thing that would prove beyond any doubt of his own that his body was now female. Curse Eve! He had a period.

Yes! HE! HE was not going to roll over and be a woman!

At last his body was fit enough to undergo the final transformation.

Sat in a couch in yet another laboratory, he underwent the overwrite.

A helmet was placed over his head. He felt the micro probes entering his skull. The prison collar, now redundant, was removed.

He felt a warm tingling, it became heat, then hot, then burning pain. Unable to cry out, he screamed in his mind. He felt a presence in his mind, and then came a red oblivion.

His memories replayed before his consciousness. He assumed that his mind was unravelling, to be replaced by another, alien, female mind. He saw, from his own standpoint, his birth, his childhood, everything. He watched his many small crimes played on the screen of recollection. He saw again the woman he had killed so callously, the gratuitous violence of his torturing her to death. He was, he realised, insanely jealous of her life. She represented everything he was not. Everything. He watched his trial, sentence, and the carrying out of his sentence, even to his reviewing his memories.

He felt once more the presence. A living warmth, like the kiss of an angel.

"So, Arthur, we meet once more…"

"Wh... Who are you?"

"Your victim. Your saviour. Your judge, jury and executioner, Arthur."

"B-b-b-but who are you?"

"Don’t you remember, Arthur?"

He saw the mutilated remains of her body. The body he had so recently come to wear.

"Did you have a name? I never asked…"

"Yes, Arthur, I’m called Emily Maybury, but you may call me Emma, all of my friends do, you know."

"But I’m not your friend. I killed you."

He had finally admitted it. He knew that this person knew his most intimate thoughts. He knew that there was no way of lying, not to himself, not any more.

"Yes, and now you’ve given me my new home. One that is younger and fitter than the one you took from me. There is a message for you."

"What? From whom?"

"From your ultimate judge. You will remain alive within me, aware but isolated. If you truly repent your crime, then forgiveness may sometime follow. I must go, now. I will never speak to you again. For my own sake, I will not remember any of what has now transpired, nor what you did to bring us to this strait. Goodbye, Arthur."

A tiny, still voice resounded in the silence of his mind. The voice of conscience, once mute, now given free reign.

"Arthur, you murdered her, a gentle, loving creature who did you never any harm. You shall live within her…and forgiveness may sometime follow."

His vision cleared. He could feel everything, see everything. He could hear the thoughts of Emily Maybury, but she was unaware of his existence.

Her husband brought her clothes. They kissed and Arthur was sickened, even more so when he realised what his body was feeling: sexual attraction for this, this man! He would never accept it! Arthur was a man! How dare they!

That night when Emma and her husband renewed their marriage vows, he was revolted, sickened, horrified and nauseated by their lovemaking. Again and again, and while she was awake, so was he.

Night after night they shared their passion while Arthur, the unwilling watcher was forced to submit to the revolting activities his traitorous body so thoroughly rejoiced in. Arthur was raped repeatedly, while the body he inhabited, and the mind that controlled it enjoyed the wonderful lovemaking.

Then one night there was a change. A new life had been created inside his womb. He screamed his silent scream that his body had betrayed him so totally. Then, without volition, he saw the miracle for itself. At last, he understood the enormity of his crime, and realised the final irony of his prison.

He begged for forgiveness, and when the voice didn’t return, and oblivion continued to be denied him, he began to cry out, a terrible soul-sick lament.

As he languished in his fleshly prison, he came to realise that he had begun to cherish the tiny new life inside his body. He came to realise that his male identity had blurred, and that he had begun to love both Emma Maybury, and her handsome husband. He decided that the sex was no longer an invasion.

Arthur even tried to cooperate with Emma next time she was with their husband. Arthur opened his mind to the emotions they were feeling. The pleasure was more intense than ever before, and this time he was part of that pleasure. Arthur regained awareness knowing the true love between husband and wife. And in that love he saw the promise of forgiveness.

For the first time in his miserable existence, Arthur prayed. Arthur prayed not for forgiveness, for that was yet beyond hope. No, he prayed for love and compassion. He prayed for Emma, her husband and her tiny child.

He was still praying when the foetus became definitely female.

His heart’s prayer was cut off as his essence was dragged into the warm darkness of the womb his former body now owned.

Emma’s tiny daughter briefly dreamed of having once been someone called Arthur, just before the River Styx bathed her unformed mind in it’s blessed amniotic waters of forgetfulness.