How the Q/A session ended will forever be a mystery for Shinji. Even with his life hanging on the line, he couldn’t recall how he got to the interview room he and Amraani were assigned to. He had never felt this elated in his life.

If paradise exists, it certainly feels like this.

The idea was circling round and round in his brain. They decided Shinji would go first. The interview was thorough. The interviewer, an old man, probably in late fifties, asked questions about everything. The new work, expectations about married life with another man much like himself, worries about tactical support from the council, judicial concerns, etc.

When he got to asking for Shinji’s impressions on the work responsibilities awaiting him, Shinji expressed his admiration for the preparation already done. He then brought up a list of tasks he considered necessary to execute before the remainder of the department he would head was setup. He used the interviewer’s access to a computerized assistant and drew architectural modifications necessary to protect the building from subatomic exotic particles. His instructions, descriptions, and remarks quickly got the interviewer full of admiration.

Shinji saw it and harrumphed. I’m not called a genius because I am easy on the eyes. He quickly extinguished the proud thought. In half an hour, they had done all this and more, but they hadn’t done any talking about Amraani directly. Suddenly, Rowling the interviewer shot straight at Shinji.

“You are very much in love with Amraani McAuliffe, I see!?” Shinji’s surprise and his struggles to fight back his embarrassment amused Rowling. He smiled his excuses.

“I tend to do this to see the true feelings of my interviewees. It’s good news for both of you. Loving one another gives extra-strength to withstand life. Even more so in your case. Living as a he-female, and in secrecy to boot, will be very hard work. Having the support of Dr McAuliffe will be immeasurably good for you.”

“What makes you think we are in love?”

“I will use an old expression. It’s written on your face."

"It takes close observation to see it, but it’s there in the way your eyes follow him around. You seem to stop breathing when he is close. You are smart, but somehow your intellect slows down when he is talking to you."

"A lay man wouldn’t have noticed, but I also saw how he moves around you, trying to take out obstacles before you meet them. His protectiveness. And his jealousy. All along the symposium, whenever he could, he made sure you didn’t meet people he supposed you would appreciate a little too much. How he was the only one to notice you didn’t feel well during the Q/A session and followed you outside, only to be able to accompany you to the medical center. How he fought the personnel there so he could stay until he was sure you were okay and waking up. ”

The more Rowling talked, the closer Shinji came to crying. The emotional mix of long-borne desperation, frustration, desire, love, and pain that plagued him since he met Amraani, five years ago, finally was disappearing.

“Hey, don’t cry! Unless it’s for finding solace or from happiness.”

“I wouldn’t cry.”

Shinji replied with jaws tightening close and lagoon-blue eyes shining a little too brightly. Rowling didn’t miss the hint of disdain Shinji displayed for tears and expressions of uncontrollable emotion. He took notes, warning Shinji he was calling in Amraani for the couple’s interview. He would continue with Amraani’s individual one later.

When they got together, Amraani took Shinji’s hands in his as he sat intimately close on the plush sofa. As Shinji tried to protest the romantic/affectionate gesture, Amraani looked hurt and frustrated. 

“I think we need to get used to the skin contact in public if this life together is to work, Shinji. If you can’t bear with me keeping your hands in mine, how are we ever going to convince perfect strangers we love each other?”

That got Shinji’s head back in the game. No matter what, this shrewd plan, blowing smoke to the face of the entire country, had to work or he will never taste the happiness he had wished for all his life. Forgotten on the other side of the room, Rowling clinically examined the way they resolved their differences of opinion. How they solved internal conflicts was after all the main reason those interviews and dates during the three-day trial were setup. Detecting real-life communication problems was the way to avoid crashing the program before the end of its first year.

And this crash would no doubt be a much-mediatized nightmare.

They made plans with the interviewer regarding the dates they wanted to go to during the three-day trial. Talking about moving in with Amraani and about setting up house together brought a new round of colors to the would-be spouses’ faces. Shinji and Amraani learnt of their new identity in greater detail.

They were to become the Masson. Zaadeem Friedrich Masson and Fiji Mary Ise-Masson. Rowling informed them that if they decided to go through with the marriage, they could claim to have been married much earlier than the others, since they knew each other already very much.

They were also to use the trial period to make up the background stories behind their relationships, write their vows, and find the couple’s new housing. The ceremonies would be scheduled the morning of the fourth day. Since councilmen would serve as civil officers and witnesses for them all , time slots were setup and signing up for one required the couple to be present. The latest to register as a couple was 6pm on the third day of the trial.

Any couple who didn’t register by this time was automatically considered as resigning from the program unless previously notified otherwise. The couples were to head straight to the medical center after their ceremony.

As they were at this point of the briefing, Shinji excused himself for the men’s room. He found one close by and hurried through his business. He didn’t want to waste any minute he could legitimately, guilt-free, spend with Amraani.

He sighed. Mocks! How seriously did they mess up with the feminization process? I don’t recognize myself. I am behaving like a midinette. I can’t stop smiling.

He knew. He could feel it. The facial expression he repeatedly failed to wipe away since morning. That happy-till-crazy grin he had plastered on his face, here in this context, was giving him away as a gadshma. He stopped a moment in the lobby-like room to Rowling meeting space, trying to muster some self-control around Amraani.

Back inside, Rowling kept up with the briefing themes. He reminded them to use the dating/marriage trial period to tour the city and think about choosing a house. The best way to plan it would be reducing the list of potential houses as they dated. When they signed up for a marriage time slot, they would write their goodbye letters to their families and they moved/ordered the move of their personal belongings through the Eternal Glory law firm.

It was part a support system set up to back up the Glorians, the husbands and their he-wives. The law firm dealt with any legal issues involving the members of the program. They couldn’t risk exposing their new identities, but at their current lodging were all of things they couldn’t just up and throw away.

“Councilman Bravies already said it, but I have to insist once more. Please do come back to talk to someone, me, an attendant, or anybody else on the executive committee should anything seem wrong. The earlier we get all of you the right match, the earlier you can go back out into the world. For now, that’s all! We meet again in four days. After the post-marriage medical visit.”

        In the middle of their first day of trial, they decided to write their goodbye letters and headed for the executive secretary's annex office. The fancy name designated the backup organization that covered up the tracks of the Eternal Glory Program. The lawyers and other agents it employed had friends in every possible branch of the public administration and were privileged clients of numerous private ones. If you could name an administration, they had a friend there.

The welcome was VIP. The couple was quickly assigned a support team comprised of a lawyer, a notary, bodyguards, and a few assistants of various talents who seemed to deal with orders efficiently. The couple described the background stories they came up with. They provided details about the imaginary first meeting, dates’ particulars, family histories, etc...

By the time Shinji and Amraani were done, the support team guaranteed them they had an impressive amount of details to work with, in recreating their past. Fiji-Mary and Zaadeem’s life trails were going to be easy to implement, and the result very realistic.

Installed in the comfortable office suite, Amraani and Shinji wrote electromagnetic mails next. EM-mail was the kind of mail that auto-delivered itself. One wrote on magnetic paper, paid post service, electromagnetically imprinted the gravitation-suppressive stamp on the paper, and the paper would drift up, gliding to its destination without any other effort on your part. Its invention gave birth to a whole new branch of aeronautics and postal inspection services.

The two friends tended resignation letters right and left to clubs, scientific societies, a few private companies that paid big contract money, and universities. The last one gave Shinji pause.

He really liked the quiet, warm-weathered, coastal town Boreau, Nageria. He had even elected to make it his hometown. Now, he had to resign from his new city council’s position and sell his newly renovated townhouse and home lab. He would also miss the university that kept his brain relatively busy. It was a nice intellectual playground and was the only place on Earth where he had felt more or less alive. Having both parents succeed greatly in the entertainment business, he grew to like the peace and quiet of bucolic places and he sought it whenever possible.

Amraani, though, raved about the bigger cities where he could drown his free time in the nightlife. Amraani always had the chic for always finishing early any assignments and ending up with too much free time on his hands . This time too, he was already choosing the contents of his I-found-Nirvana-I’m-okay-so-don’t-look-for-me-I-will-call-you-often biophone messages to his family when they realized, they already wrote the message. They just had never considered mailing it. The research their welcoming personnel of the conference made them participate in as part of the welcome package. Writing and recording a goodbye letter to test the ability of individuals to pay attention to each other in the family unit.

“Do your family and those around know you enough to differentiate if you were writing those letters freely or doing it under pressure? Any pressure?”

That was the main research objective they provided and Shinji had found it bizarre that such research was conducted in a situation when they came to debate of national security matters at the highest level. It had seemed ominous to him, but his curiosity about the possible intellectual challenges he would face during the symposium –let’s be honest, the prospect of not seeing Amraani after coming this far- had sealed the deal.

The experts had told them. “You know your loved ones and household mates well. They also probably know you better than anyone else. Please do make those missives convincing!”

Shinji didn’t have any relatives left alive. The people close enough to worry about him would be his university colleagues, but they barely knew the off-campus Shinji-Patrick. Hence, Shinji reviewed the biophone message on file and sent it, as is, to the university’s executive secretary. He retired to the sofa in the main office room for tea and waited for the one he was chancing all his life on.

He was looking at the gorgeous port-and-sea view for a while, when he felt caressing arms on his shoulders then around him, pulling him close. He resisted his first impulse to shake the individual’s affection, unaccustomed to the faint domineering feel transuding through the embrace, and turned to meet the beautiful blue flecked, silver-gray eyes of Amraani. There was worry and desire fighting reserve and self-control.

“Why are you looking out at life with such sadness?” He asked.

When Shinji searched for the right words to express his thoughts, Amraani continued

“Do you regret being matched with me? Would you rather have someone else?”

Shinji didn’t miss the pain in his eyes. Reassure him quickly! Came the mental order. He put his hand above Amraani’s heart.

“It’s not that! I just wonder how you feel about all this. Being stuck with me in this program. I never thought you could look at me like you just did. With worry I didn’t like you."

"With lust." Shinji blushed.

"You only ever associated with women. They fall at your feet like flies. And you seemed to really enjoy that.” He paused briefly.

“Despite my more feminine aura, owed to my being a he-female now, I’m still not a woman. I can’t bear you children. I’m still a man. Inside, I’m still the same old, somewhat awkward Shinji-Patrick Onodera. The one from our Waiijin Quantum Physics Undergraduate program.”

Amraani released a deep breath Shinji hadn’t realized he held. A flicker of something he couldn’t identify passed through the steady gaze.

“I don’t consider myself stuck with you, if that’s what worries you. I have wanted you with me. Always. Even when I was away from Boreau. That’s why I always made sure we stayed in touch. That’s why I always forced myself into your life, biocalling you at all hours of the day and night. Making sure whoever entered your life knew they couldn’t kick me out. That they better count on my being there forever.”

Shinji saw affection and jealousy burn higher from Amraani briefly. His heart warmed with joy and an impossibly happy smile settled across his expression. And Shinji kissed him.

Amraani, hugging him closer, tighter, kissed him back matching the offering, feelings for feelings and fever for fever. Plundering his mouth. Making the surroundings fade away. Shinji let his hands wandered into the silky honey-blonde mane.

I can’t ever be satiated of the feel of that hair.