56 Cold Comfort
I stared in shock. “Why shouldn’t there be a way back?”
“Marsh,” he said, gently, “I don’t think you’ve thought this through. What exactly happened to us, here?”
“Well, they must have gone back in time and interfered with our conceptions so that a different sperm…” Then I remembered. “Oh. You mean that even if we find the experimenters, all they could do would be to interfere again and we would wind up different from what we are now.”
“Exactly. The chances of going back to what we were are pretty much miniscule. It makes much more sense simply to accept it. Now,” he added hurriedly, “I’m not saying give up. That’s what a lot of these guys think I mean. Some of them just come here to commiserate. But it’s better, I think, to see this as just another change that happens. Imagine that you were in an auto accident or something, and needed reconstructive surgery. Now I don’t know what you used to look like, but you’re very attractive now.”
Allie cleared her throat, warningly.
Dan laughed. “I’m not flirting, Als. I’m just being honest.”
She laughed. “I know.” Then she turned to me. “You can even get some positives out of this, Marsh. If it weren’t for the experiment and the Strangers, Dan and I wouldn’t have met. Trying for a different result now is taking a real chance.”
“And in fact,” Dan added, “I think that there’s sort of an object lesson here. That guitarist. In the new reality, he apparently never came to Piques, or maybe didn’t learn to play or to play as well. Nobody knows what happened to him, and I understand Vicky’s been looking. We could wind up like him, and I don’t think that’s something that any of us want.”
Vicky and I exchanged glances. When we were dating, she often used to believe that she knew what I was thinking, and usually she was wrong, but this time I was pretty sure that she did know. After a moment, she nodded to indicate that she approved of what I intended. “Um… I have some important additional information for you,” I told Dan and Allie.
“Yes?”
“It’s kind of personal, and I’ve maybe told more people than I should have, but I think you need to know this. Only… I don’t want it to be public knowledge.”
“We won’t spread it around,” Allie assured me.
“I mean, not even,” and I nodded my head toward the others in the room, “them.”
Dan’s eyes followed my gesture, and nodded. “Why don’t we get some fresh air?”
A minute later, the four of us had made our excuses and were walking in the brisk night air outside of Christie Hall. I had donned a heavier sweater this time, but found myself still shivering, with my arms wrapped around myself. Vicky, I noticed, was in much the same situation. Dan and Allie, on the other hand, had their arms around each other, and seemed to be handling the cold just fine.
We had reached the middle of the adjoining quadrangle before Dan prompted me. “So… what is this ‘important information’ you have?”
“I know what happened to the guitarist.”
“You do? How?”
I smirked and caught Vicky’s eye before continuing. “Well, we’re kind of close. There’s probably nobody who knew him better than I.”
I glanced at Vicky again, but she looked more annoyed than amused. “Marsh, just tell them.” Then she turned to the two of them and told them herself. “Marsh was the guitarist. The experiment turned him into a girl, and ‘she’ didn’t learn to play the guitar. That’s why he wasn’t in the concert.”
The news had its effect, although I think I could have gotten a better reaction if Vicky hadn’t interfered. “Wait. You were…?” Allie started even as Dan sputtered, “Turned him into…?”
“Hold it.” Dan let go of Allie and held up his hands in surprise. “Wait. Are you saying that you changed sex?”
“I don’t look much like a guy anymore, do I?” I asked, striking a dramatic pose.
“But that’s… ” Dan said before interrupting himself. “I don’t believe it. How did I miss this? Logically, half of the Strangers should have changed sex, and yet you’re the first one I’ve heard of who did.”
“For all you know, half of them did,” Vicky suggested, “You didn’t know that Marsh had until he– I mean, she, told you.”
“Yeah, I know, I know. But somehow I can’t believe that none of them would have said something. Hmm. Let’s think about this.”
“And can we please keep walking while we do?” Vicky pleaded. “It’s kind of cold out here.”
“My dorm is just ahead,” Allie said.
“OK, so let’s think of the possibilities,” Dan said as we walked.
“Well, the first is that half of the Strangers did change sex and nobody wants to admit it,” I said.
“Right. I think that there are some problems with that idea, but let’s list them all, first. An obvious second is that for some reason, sex changes are unlikely in this experiment.”
“Well, there are some biological factors which can influence sex selection. According to my Human Bio prof, timing and Ph balance and a few other things can make a difference.”
“So that’s explained?”
“I don’t know. I sort of had the impression that it just tilted the odds. So it might be 60% likely that you would have a boy under certain conditions.”
We had reached Allie’s dorm by this point, and being inside was a real relief. I had never appreciated how my old size had insulated me against the cold. Seeing how Vicky had been shivering just now, I wondered if I had been insensitive to her about the cold. Then I realized that we had only dated during warm months, so the subject wouldn’t have come up. Maybe I was just looking for reasons to beat myself up.
“Oh, Cindy!” Allie said, as she ushered us into a typical freshman dorm room, with two beds. “This is Marsh and Vicky, and you know Dan.”
“Sure, hi.”
We exchanged greetings and then Allie added, “Cindy, we need to have sort of a private discussion for a bit. Would you mind…?”
Cindy shrugged. “No problem. I can hang out in the lounge for a few. How much time do you need?”
We looked at each other, and Dan suggested, “how about fifteen minutes?”
“Fine.”
“You’re taking this rather in stride,” I observed to Dan, after Cindy had left. “I expected you to be weirded out by me or something.”
“Well I am, a bit. I mean…”
“So I’m really the exception. Yeah, I understand about not wanting to throw the dice, and maybe get an even worse result. But I would love to throw the dice again, and again, until I wind up male again.”
“So it really does matter if we can find Professor Davis,” Vicky added.
“If that’s even his name,” I added. “There’s a Professor Davidson in the department, too. Could he be the one?”
“Davidson’s a solid state guy, Marsh,” Allie commented. “According to my brother, we wouldn’t have anything to do with this kind of work.”
“But it was a good thought, Marsh,” Dan said kindly. “We’ve just already been through the whole department and came up empty, and of course we stopped, since it didn’t seem to matter. Your case is a bit different, though. Give me a sec. I think I’m just a bit off-balance, here. I mean, I feel really stupid for not expecting something like this, and I have to believe that if something like that had happened to me, I wouldn’t be as calm as you seem to be.”
I laughed. “You should have seen me when I realized what had happened to me. Calm is not the word that applied. I’ve been living with this for a while now, and as long as I know there’s a way back I’ll be fine.” I held up my hand to ward off his objection. “And I know that I probably can’t go back to what I was, exactly. I just want to be a guy again. That should be possible, right?”
He started to answer, but Allie tugged on his arm and the two of them whispered back and forth for a short while, while Vicky and I looked at each other. Surely that shouldn’t have been such a difficult question?
Finally, Dan faced us and answered. “I don’t honestly know, Marsh. We’ve been so focused on learning to accept this and move on. I can see that’s not so simple for you. But the problem is, we haven’t been able to find Professor Davis, and we don’t know if it would even do any good. There’s all kinds of traps inherent in a time travel manipulation – at least all the stories say so. Assuming that this is the first time it’s ever be done, there might not have been any past lessons to rely on, and they could well have wiped out all the research needed for it. So even if you managed to find him, he might have no idea of the experiment any more.”
“But didn’t you say that the lack of upperclassmen suggests that something might have happened two years ago on campus? Wouldn’t the most likely explanation be that he ran the same experiment then?”
“Maybe. And it probably got a lot of attention on campus, and gained him some kind of a bad rep, but not bad enough to get the administration to hide him. That does make sense.”
“So… have you tried asking a junior or senior about it?”
“Not yet,” he admitted. “As I say, we’ve been focused elsewhere. But you’re right – you really do need more answers. Asking an upperclassman seems like an easy and obvious place to start. Why don’t you look into that, and tell us what you find out at the next meeting?”
I nodded. At the very least, I could ask Nikki. I was tempted to ask Jay as well; could his reactions to the time travel idea have had anything to do with something that had happened two years ago?
Sorry. This chapter seems like you had to get from point A to point B and so you just wrote the chapter. Once again I have an issue with how easily he tells someone. For chapters and chapters it is this huge panic, and now he just tells them.
And the level of cluelessness is awfully high.
One thing that struck me a long time ago is, how come, even with all of these others, we still don’t have any more info on the instructions. We had Marsh saying he didn’t pay it any attention, but surely Vicki or one of these others would have. And they would have kept the papers etc., which would have had to disappear.
Another problem I am having is that your tensions are warring against each other. On the one hand we have Marsh becoming much more comfortable as a female; both consciously in some aspects (we never hear any complaints about makeup, high heels, etc), and subconsciously in many more (he is comfortable kissing Jared, he is attracted to Jeremy, he is attracted to babies, he has finally experienced sexual turn on in a feminine sense, he is (off stage) having more girl talks). On the other we have what would have been a huge tension in the beginning of the book (can I get back) only finally now coming up as an issue… at the very time when he is, essentially, beginning not to care. Indeed, as a reader, I am beginning to hope in the opposite direction, especially after he crossed the line with Jared and Jeremy.
One might have hoped that the issue with Vicki would have raised the tension there but, for me at least, it hasn’t. First of all, it is new: previously we were worried about Lee Anne. Secondly, he had already broken up with her and ‘getting back together’ is nowhere near as powerful a tension as finding and connecting with ones girlfriend or (much more powerfully) ones wife. It wasn’t Vicki he was dreaming of in chapter one, so why should I care about her now? She isn’t a *new* love interest either.
And I don’t actually *like* Vicki. I couldn’t tell you exactly why, altho the baby conversation was a big negative for me.
Except Tina and Chad, all people Marsh has told (about her sex-change) knew the experiment. And it’s reasonable for Marsh to tell each of them.
– Nikki has helped Marsh so much, become a close friend of Marsh, and Nikki guessed it by herself.
– Vicky is a close friend of Marsh, and Marsh was eagerly to talk to someone who remembers the old “him”.
– Dan seems to be a good thinker, so Marsh shares her information to help Dan thinks, which might eventually help Marsh herself.
I don’t see any problem here.
Ah. I saw it as an emotional thing, not something reasoned out like this. If it was this rational, the very first people he should have told were his parents.
“If it was this rational, the very first people he should have told were his parents.”
REALLY? Maybe your experience is different, but that doesn’t jibe with mine, or what I know of any teenager I’ve met. If you have an issue that’s confusing, embarrassing, unbelievable, and you’re not sure what to do about, the LAST people you’d tell are your parents. Or anyone with authority over you, who’s likely to take over the situation and make your decisions for you. Quick way to wind up in a straight jacket. Doesn’t work from a rational OR emotional viewpoint.
I am not saying that I don’t understand why he didn’t tell his parents, only that it wasn’t ‘rational’.
Indeed, all of your reasons were emotional, not rational. Why would your parents make decisions for you? Because they are adults with more experience and, in many ways, more power; more likely to be taken seriously by the police, administration, etc.
Your reason all reflect the typical teenage angst, and are perfectly sound, just perfectly irrational.
And, as someone who works in the Emergency room I can tell that, when the rubber really, seriously hits the road, the parents are very, very often the first person called by the child/teen. Tell Mom you had sex with your girlfriend? Never. Tell her that you have just broken your femur and they think you might lose your leg? MOTHER!!!
However, for me, the very last person I would tell that I had just lost my manhood would be a girl I cared about. The very, very last… unless she was my wife. And even that would be very, very hard.
Oh, BTW. The thing left out of the theories discussed is the whole ‘how come I still have my memories’ thing. Somehow some link must exist, to pass those memories. Especially as it happened to one after another as far as people.
I have a different theory, myself, and am relatively unimpressed with some of the logic.
Oh, and the other thing that is left out is the whole *travel in time to prevent the experiment from happening* concept. Standard stuff.
The second most rational person to tell would have been Jay.
Yes, the memories are a big problem. Any rational theory involving time travel would prohibit them. But they’re SO convenient to story telling that most fiction invents technobabble to explain it – all of it pretty silly. I’ve been ignoring the issue, hoping the experiment will turn out to be something other than time travel and we’ll be spared that.
Yes, quite. I have spent reams of bytes talking with Russ about how the book has already excluded any possibility of Time Travel. One additional datum, that I hadn’t thought of until now, is that they appeared one after another.
If changing someone changed the timeline, then the old timeline would be gone, *poof*. And if not, if they were still there… then what did they remember? Did they interview any of these people after they changed?
The original instructions to Marsh told him to ‘keep notes’ or some such. That indicates that they had some expectation of reversing whatever t hey had done… or interviewing people after they had done it.
You know what would be super fun? To do a time travel thing and have *everybody* remember their old memories!! Chaos!!
Just to be clear on this point – Von’s idea that time travel is excluded by the fact that Tina still exists and is recognizable is not one that I agree with, as the same logic would essentially invalidate the plot of nearly every SF time travel story ever written.
Ha! Name one! Caveat: Major Author.
I must have missed the bit about Tina; have to read back through the comments. However, the “plot of nearly every SF time travel story ever written” IS invalid. See: http://www.mjyoung.net/time/index.htm It doesn’t stop me from enjoying them, as long as my nose isn’t rubbed in the questionable logic, as in the 2001 version of The Time Machine.
For Take a Lemon, I’m hoping for memory imprints – taken from an alternate Marsh under the “Many Worlds” theory – imprinted on THIS Marsh. Who was always female.
One? How about:
Poul Anderson’s Time Wars,
Asimov’s The End of Eternity,
Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder,
Michael Chrichton’s Timeline,
David Gerrold’s The Man Who Folded Himself,
Robert Heinlein’s The Door Into Summer.
Each of these has the basic premise that making one change leaves most other things basically unchanged. And I stopped listing them after I reached the H’s
Actually no. Especially End of Eternity, which is a classic. the whole point of the eternity organization is that they are protected from the changes that would occur when the change is made.
And in none of these particular books do we have a change of sex of one sibling failing to affect the genetic identity of the next sibling… which would automatically and without fail happen.
Scott is right, of course. Long live technobabble!
Yes, alternate worlds. IMO it would save this plot completely. It is a little complex, but I think it works. And it would mean that both Marshall and Marsha still exist somewhere.
Hey, Scott, thx for the page reference.
Scott, just to be clear, my theory, which isn’t really a time travel theory but merely a statement of mathmatical and biological fact; is that
1)any event which would affect the production of sperm: including timing, frequency, and quality of ejaculations, temperature of scrotum and testes, nutrition, etc. Would, invariably, result in the production and ejaculation of sperm which are different genetically for all ejaculations after this event.
2) The birth of a girl rather than a boy is such an event; including it’s myriad consequent events: crying at different times, psychological differences in the male and in the male/female relationship, etc.
Ergo:
3) The entity we (Marshall) knows as ‘Tina’ would, at a minimum, have been as different from ‘his’ Tina as Vicky(1) is from Vicky(2) or, more probably, as Marsha is from Marshall.
Irrelevant. A girl being born instead of a boy need not require the production of different sperm – just a difference in which of the many produced in that one ejaculation reached the egg first. You will have to do much better than that to declare your speculation as anything stronger than a pure speculation.
>>Need not require
??
::Would of necessity, biologically and mathematically.
I am not speculating, I am stating a mathematical and biological fact.
To repeat: any change in the the mechanics of sperm production, especially the combination of multiple events over the years between Marshas birth and Tinas conception, would have necessity produced a set of sperm at the time of that conception, which were all different, genetically, from those which were present at the time of Tina(1)’s conception.
Thus there is precisely zero (or, to be more accurate, 1×10-27) chance that Tina(1) would be genetically identical to Tina(2).
(Rereading your comment, are you really trying to say that, having had a girl rather than a boy, the sex life (number, timing and quality of ejaculations), nutrition, and scrotal temperature etc. of the father would, under any conceivable circumstances, remain the exact same for the entire period between birth and conception?)
Re-re-reading your answer I realize perhaps I have not communicated (I will be interested in Scotts reaction). What I am saying is that, barring a conscious metaphysical entities intervention, if the sperm produced at the conception of Tina(1) were {A,B,C…}, those involved in the conception of Tina(2) would be {a, b, c…} with the overlap between them being the null set. None of the sperm, genetically speaking, present at the ejaculation resulting in the conception of Tina(1) would even be present at the ejaculation resulting in the conception of Tina(2).
If this were not the case, then in some small minority of cases, two fraternal siblings, born years apart, would, genetically, be identical twins. Everything that I have ever read suggests that science knows that this is never the case. Ergo my math.
Now, in the case of alternate universes, or the above metaphysical entity, all bets are off. I think alternate universes is the best solution to this, and all, time travel dilemma(s). I also happen to like the ‘branching river’ hypothesis, which is not often mentioned (not that that would help here).
On another twist; have you noticed how many of the recent movies/series involving time travel issues (Early edition, that one where the detective kept going back to the same time) involve some kind of ‘purpose’? Again, the metaphysical entity raises his head. Or should I say His head?
And, Scott, what do you think of the problem that all of these ‘time travelers’ did not appear at the same time? That would involve one time line (Marshall) sending people, progressively, into another timeline. Or, possibly, it would involve their making a whole series of changes which were, for them, simultaneous, and yet had effects, in the other timeline, which were asynchronous.
And, by definition, the experimenters could not exist here. Let us say that experimenter A dealt with Marshall. In this timeline, there was no Marshall, so, in this timeline, he did not deal with Marshall. Now, he could have dealt with Marsha! So you would have the interesting item of an experimenter who changed a girl into guy, confronted with a guy who had been changed into a girl, and who blames him for it!
BTW. Re-re-re-reading your post: I am not claiming that it is the mere winning of the race by Marsha sperm vs Marshalls sperm that causes the change!! I am saying it is all of the cascading results… the different hours of nursing or feeding, pooping at different times, crying at different times, different psychological reactions by both parents, different hormonal reactions by the mother, different activities that one performs with each kind of child involving different times etc.
It is simply impossible that the sex life of a couple after the birth of a girl would be exactly and in all ways the same as the sex life of a couple following the birth of a boy. Indeed, even the birth itself would have been different, as each birth of each different child is. The female hormones produce a different effect in the body of the mother than the male hormones did.
The changes produced by this difference would have been innumerable, and many would have a direct effect of future sperm production.
Minor addition near the middle of this one to follow up on the change to the previous one.
sigh.
I was looking forward to the midnight search, almost getting caught, etc.