“I’m here to offer you a job in the government as the female, married, technical director of the central government’s newly created subatomic research laboratory. I hope you find it a step up from being the chief researcher in an university lab, no matter how well celebrated it is.”

Shinji’s mind reeled from the flux of information the man’s words brought to his conscience. Memories of an already-built, gigantic, advanced, research institute, ready to enter in function filled his intellect. Data regarding its operations and capabilities immediately rearranged itself in Shinji’s brain and there was nothing he could do to stop the rush. He rode it, wincing as his hangover got new pain fuel. He also felt himself becoming aware of his offered job’s responsibilities as well as payment package. When the data’s unfolding rush finally stopped, Shinji’s genial mind started wondering about the implications of the man’s words on his personal life and his research.

He was now a he-female, soon to be a he-wife to another expert in this Eternal Glory Program. His husband, if he chose to follow through with the plan, would be part of the program. A husband, another man like himself. They would live together as a couple for the general public’s sake. Thinking about his home back in Boreau triggered the access of a data block. He staggered, face ashen. He had received among other homemaking tips, data on how to disguise himself as a beautiful and successful woman. Shinji paled further.

Then he roared, "Jenkins!!! What did you do to me? Are my jewels...?? Jenkins!!!" 

"Please calm down, Dr Onodera! Nothing happened to your..." And Jenkins averted his eyes as Shinji pulled on his pants to verify the integrity of his genitals. Jenkins heard him sigh deeply and turned back to look at him.

Shinji muttered. “I know now why I felt those prickles times and again ever since I met you in Nageria.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why female?” Shinji said louder this time, his expression aghast.

“Because of a long-lost prophecy that forces the government to never put women in position of power, despite the recurrent and insistent civil movements to do so. We need women who are not women to fill these positions.”

“What prophecy?” His voice dropped lower and a brow raised suspiciously.

“You will have more details in the upcoming session with the High Constitutional Council. It’s in an hour. They are ready to answer all of your questions. Have some breakfast and ask this monitor to design clothing adapted to your new build.”

“You are just dodging my question. I told you to be direct and explain things. How can a prophecy sway the Council into changing my physical appearance to a woman’s? How can words this unreliable make them transform me into a female, a married woman to boot, just for the public eye?”

Jenkins’ expression suddenly carried a quiet sadness. He stalled briefly before replying “Dr Onodera. I am sorry you have to go through this. There is no other way for you to be saved.” Did he see calm resolution on Jenkins’ face next?

Shinji sensed he wouldn’t get anything else out of the administrator. “Is breakfast in the same room?”

“Yes. You also keep your accommodation until you make a decision about the position. Don’t forget to bring your symposium’s attaché-case. You still need it for the upcoming meeting. Is there anything else I can do for you before I leave to prepare for the session?”

“I will see you there.”

Sollen Jenkins looked at him with serene confidence another second and then lost all facial expressions. Shinji watched the clone’s biological components automatically walking back to the flying monitor. When they reached it, they morphed back into a part that mingled with the monitor again.

He stood there a moment, his head spinning from the small data packs bursting left and right in his mind whenever he thought of one or another aspect of this life they were proposing him. Abruptly, he sat back in the comfy recliner they put by the foot of the bed. He reviewed once again the explanation describing the Eternal Glory Prophecy.

“That is why they want to make me into a girl? For this ridiculous thing?!”

He almost shouted his disappointment and frustration. “Let’s take a bath and go tell them where they can put this ludicrous plan."

He hastened his feet to the bathroom, fuming and sad at the same time. “Let’s say misericord and withgod to this farce of a body.” He skidded to a halt in front of the mirror and undressed.

“Thank you, councilmen. At least, my privates are still here. And no breasts!” Shinji’s deep sigh of gratefulness echoed on the bathroom’s walls. The chest was still the same, but he had hips.

“Hips!!!” His brain’s tutor –he decided he would call the data bursts as such- supplied him immediately with images of dressing styles that hid them if he so wanted. The remaining of the body shape was still manly enough to pass for a man whenever he needed. Muscles, physical strength, everything else was his body, except his face that had changed greatly.

The face was perfectly oval instead of round. A beautifully carved chin gave him a delicate and vulnerable expression. The jaw line was less powerful. The pink lips made for a tantalizing mouth closer to the heart shape than his usual ones. The cheekbones were slightly higher and delicately shaped. The petite straight nose invited pinching. The jet black brows were made of finer hair than his head’s silky ebony-black one. Its structure hailed of his Japanese ancestors. Only his almond-shaped, lagoon-blue eyes were still the same.

Even to whoever knew him very well, this being was an he-female, a perfectly alluring man or a drop dead gorgeous woman depending on the clothing and the makeup. The strange and stunning being in the mirror was definitely not him. She reminded Shinji of someone, but Shinji couldn’t put a name on the face in his memories.

Better take that bath and see what I can get to wash down those painkillers I’m overdue to take. Time is awasting.

Shinji went through the motions of readying the almost-unknown body in much longer time than usual. As he still was under the Scottish bath, he froze.

This face, this appearance is almost the same as the woman Amraani made love with in the men’s room back then.

That’s all it took for Shinji to feel his heart starting to pound active an erection. He groaned.

“Just what I need. I haven’t masturbated thinking of Amraani for more than a year.” Still, he couldn’t stop himself from imagining the same things he did in the past. By the time he was done, a new perspective had come to him.

This joke of a body, this ridiculous plan may somehow benefit me if I play my cards right. Renewed resolution to show up at this extra session of the symposium got him accelerating his preparation.

When he left his room, he rushed past a very attractive man. The man seemed to be coming toward his suite. He caught and held Shinji’s eyes when they passed each other and Shinji’s heart did the same stopping-racing-to-beat thing it does whenever Shinji is around Amraani. However, Shinji didn’t know this hunk and was in a hurry, so he kept walking on. The man kept watching intently, but Shinji walked past him, saluting briefly and breaking eye-contact.

I never thought I would meet someone with such an intense look. Reminds me of Amraani’s.

Amraani watched Shinji leaving with intense cloud-gray eyes. He really didn’t recognize me. I was sure he, of all people, would recognize me right away. This could work. That crazy plan those geezers cooked up. He muttered as he followed Shinji down to the dining room. A twinge of sadness blazed lightning-fast across his face, quickly replaced by his usual confident/arrogant smile.

Down in the dining room, breakfast was a silent affair. There were fewer people in the room now than during the symposium and nobody that Shinji knew or recognized as participant of the symposium, or even as one of the attendants who worked with them the previous days. As he left the dining room, an attendant at the door came up to him and called him by name. The young man guided Shinji through a maze of hallways and buildings’ wings to a conference room where approximately forty people sat. There was Jenkins and all of the councilmen, a few attendants and thirteen other people carrying their symposium’s custom made attaché-case. Shinji didn’t know any of them, but figured they must have been changed during the night as he did. It was anyone’s guess to figure who made the cut. Here again silence and tension reigned. The meeting was called to order shortly afterwards.

Jenkins started the opening speech by thanking the participants of the Eternal Glory Program. He congratulated the chosen ones and gave the schedule of the opening meeting. Shinji only half-listened to him, his mind focusing on trying to guess if Amraani was one of the chosen. If he did, who among these unknown experts was his Amraani? When Jenkins was done, the Eldest took the stand.

The Eldest is the leader of the High Constitutional Council. Seeing him getting to the stand, his gait firm and confident, his shiny, wavy, healthy dark brown hair bouncing on his shoulders, the old age sure wasn’t the reason he was called the Eldest. He got to the stand and started his speech.

“Greetings and again, congratulations to all of you experts present in this room. You are here because this nation needs you. You all woke up this morning in different bodies and with an offer of work from the central government of this country. All along this week of discussions related to this nation’s core problems, you have shown outstanding capabilities for innovation, courage, smartness, human relationship management, and so much more. You proved yourselves research-savvy, dedicated to your current work, and still opened to the world and the people around you."

"You all are exactly what this country needs right here, right now."

"In the flow of its history, there have been numerous occasions when the lifeblood of this nation was called to arms to protect the nation. And this is exactly what you will be doing as you participate in the Eternal Glory program. You will protect the Great Jarusha Nation. In the data burst documentation you received during the transference, you learned about the Tablets that were extracted from the archaeological site in Ire Valley. They contain clear, concise orders to never let women occupy positions of power in the country. They corroborate what we all have always known, but could never prove."

"If such a time comes to pass that women become high officials and dignitaries of this country, it will collapse and the end of this world will surely happen quickly. Oral tradition passed down from the ancestors to this day always forbade the access of women to such positions. However, in the past decades, people voiced and manifested discontent with the state of matters. And we, the central government and the general population, started to adopt the ludicrous concept to such a degree, it is becoming harder and harder to repress the insistent demands of those feminists."

"They put the eternal glory, we as a nation want, in danger. They will extinguish the eternal glory our ancestors wanted for us. Our ancestors went to painstaking efforts to send us this message across time. By oral tradition and by creating the Ire Valleys Eternal Glory Tablets. If we give into the feminists’ demands, the country will assuredly be destroyed one day soon. The Ire Valley’s Tablets prove it. If we don’t obey the ancestors, we implode and destroy ourselves just as surely."

"You want this nation to live happily, to grow stronger, and perennially exist in glory.:

"And this High Council exists for the sole purpose of thinking ahead for the nation, to prepare it for anything to come, good or bad, to give it the means of its survival regardless of the cost."

"You are scientists, engineers, craftsmen, artists, media producers, warriors. You are strong enough to become women and still stay men. To the public, you will be women. To us and the ancestors, who see us, protect us, and bless us, in this present day as they did in the past, you are and will always be men."

"You are the strength of the great Jarusha nation. You are the success and the survival this High Constitutional Council has planned for the nation. On your honor and your pride as men, save this nation!”

The small assembly erupted in cheers. All were clapping for the sensible address of the Eldest. They only stopped when Jenkins got back to the stand and quietly asked for silence. Shinji couldn’t stop laughing inwardly at the incredibly cunning address. He looked around trying to gauge the others’ true reactions and just as he thought, the smiles hid shrewd understanding of the true words behind the speech. Fleeting glances held cupidity.

Yes, this world is really as wretched as I thought it was.

Shinji couldn’t completely and quickly hide his displeasure and the look Jenkins was leveling on the assembly, told him the Secretary of the high council also didn’t look exactly pleased with the plan. But, Sollen Jenkins being himself, the sullen expression so quickly left his eyes Shinji dreaming it wouldn’t be far-fetched.

“Do any of you have a question before we head into the attribution of relationships and the active preparation for your new positions?”

Most experts raised their hands. One of them got the okay.

“How did we get chosen for one group or the other?”

“All of you experts present can already guess who pertains to which group in this program. Those of you who became he-females were chosen for the roles according to your bone structure and genetic make-up. Yours were likely to make the feminization easier to carry out. The rest became husbands in the program and got different faces as to make a clean break between their lives in and out of the program.

Another hand shot up.

“I am Peter Beasley, TV producer. You say this position is for married women. Granted, you made us women, partly at least. Where do we get those ‘husbands’ of yours?” The curvaceous, plus-size brunette with shoulder-length hair, who talked had a delicious barytone voice.

“The matches will be announced in a moment. Then you will have three days to see if there is any incompatibilities between the parties. If there is, we will reassess the couple in question and reattribute you to other people in the program, or call in one of the backups.”