Illness

33. Illness
Rami
Sora
Faun
Hasae
Sci Fi/Gender Bender

Hasae ran her thin fingers through her raven-feather hair. She pulled at a few disobedient strands, watching herself in her vanity mirror. She had strong cheekbones and a thin mouth, bright, blood red eyes and high, thin eyebrows. With a pout, she piled her hair into a curl on the top of her head and stood. Picking up her rouge, she powdered her cheeks. A line of mascara. A hint of golden eye shadow. A quick appliqué of lipstick. It all matched her red Chinese dress, which was covered in golden dragons and tied up her small bust with golden toggles. With her tiny fingers, she slipped on her small heels. A quick double-check in the mirror and she was out the door, a small pocketbook on her hip.

The drive to Abargain Inc. was only ten minutes from her small apartment when traffic was bad, and she arrived in less than five. The elevator ride up to the eighteenth floor was only two minutes more. The small ding sounded in the glass elevator, and Hasae stepped out, her blood-red eyes flashing around the hallway.

“Well?” she barked, strutting out of the elevator and enthroning herself at her desk.

Rami stumbled forward, tripping over his own feet. Catching himself on her desk, he handed her a report in a black folder. He stepped back as Hasae snapped up the folder in her hands and devoured it with her hungry eyes.

Rami was a short man, barely older than Hasae’s 20 years, with short black hair and large, black eyes. He had an oval face with soft features, which stood out in contrast with the sharp white and black patterns on his suit. He rubbed his neck nervously and waited. Hasae threw down the folder and pursed her lips.

“Dammit,” she spat, drumming her lacquered nails on her glass desk.

“Sir?” Rami frowned. Hasae looked up from hooded eyelids. She’d forgotten the man was there.

“They haven’t fixed the damn machine,” Hasae waved her thin fingers at the folder, indicating he should pick it up and read it. Rami gathered the papers in his big hands and perused them thoughtfully.

“It says there have been improvements,” he explained hopefully.

“Improvements,” Hasae spat. “It’s not fixed.”

“No,” Rami agreed, setting down the folder. Hasae snatched it back off the desk and locked it in the marble filing cabinet behind her.

“What the Hell’s taking them so long,” she snarled, turning back to him.

“I’m sure I don’t know, Sir,” he bowed, anxious.

“It’s been a year, for the love of the Danaan,” Hasae cursed, burying her face in her hand. Rami sighed and sat in the cushioned visitor’s chair across from her.

“How long are we going to be stuck like this?” Hasae sighed, rubbed the bridge of her nose.

“I don’t know, Sir,” Rami sighed back, his hands clasped between his knees as he sat. Hasae opened one red eye and glared.

“I wish you would quit calling me ‘Sir,’” she muttered, looking out the window and staring at the other skyscrapers.

“Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir.” Hasae looked back at him from the corner of her eye.

“I wish I just thought you were being facetious,” she sighed, picked up her pocketbook. “Keep me updated, Rami.”

“Yes, Sir.” Rami could hear the click of Hasae’s heels as she swaggered back down the hallway.

Hasae had left a full fifteen minutes before, and Rami had seen the woman speed away like a demon. A year, thought Rami as he climbed into his Jag. They’d been this way for a year.

Rami’s own apartment was forty minutes away, and the distance afforded him ample time to digest his situation.

Rami was not actually a man.

Or, well, he hadn’t been.

And Hasae hadn’t been a woman.

Initially, they’d been Corporal Hasae Hawkbern and Private Rami Gabou. A high-ranking scientist and officer in Abargain’s company and his mousy, dumpy secretary. During a secret experiment in the basement of the Abargain Inc. building, the 27th Division’s scientists had entered a logarithm incorrectly, while Hasae had been checking the progress of the machinery outside of the safety glass. Back then, he’d been a slim, brooding man with bloody eyes and medium-length, tied back hair. He’d worn Armani suits and tasteful spectacles while doing the paperwork and checking the machinery. Rami had been a short, timid woman with short, thinning black hair and large, ebony eyes. She’d worn bright sweaters and dress slacks to work, and done the paperwork Corporal Hasae found distasteful.

But then, on that day that Hasae had been checking the warp-gate, it had started rattling with an inhuman shriek. Rami, seated at the control panel with the murmuring scientists, had overheard them use the word ‘implosion,’ and had run out of the room.

Behind her, the door had slammed shut, and as she’d reached Corporal Hasae, the machine had made a booming noise, rattling with sparks and showering them in some strange radiation. And when they’d woken up, they’d been the opposite gender.

Rami turned the final curve to his street and cut off the engine in the driveway.

Checking his bangs in the rearview mirror, he smoothed them down and got out of the car, careful not to slam the door too hard. Twelve steps to the doorway, and he pulled the silver keys out of his pocket and opened the brass door. The warm smell of ham rose up and brushed his nose.

“Rami?” a light, feminine voice echoed from the kitchen, and a dainty, blonde woman with pigtails and green eyes tiptoed around the corner, a pink apron tied around her waist.

“Hey, Sora.” Rami smiled, opened his arms.

“Rami!” Sora ran, jumped into Rami’s arms and kissed his cheek. Rami chuckled, let her lead him into the kitchen and seat him. Rami smiled at Sora’s efforts. Candles lined the table, illuminating the dinner Sora had prepared.

“To us,” Sora chuckled, lifting her glass, sloshing her red wine around.

“To us,” Rami agreed, bending her over for a kiss.

Sora blushed into the kiss, and then, with tinkling laughter, skipped away to her seat so that they could eat.

“You spoil me,” she grinned, cutting her food. Rami smiled.


Hasae sat in the Faux Beau, sipping white wine from her fluted glass. Next to her was her boyfriend of three months. He was a man modeled after Hasae’s own heart. Rich Armani suits, well-oiled hair. He worked out, sported nice muscles, which made Hasae ache to feel the thick cords under her arms again. She sighed, and Faun Vainwind looked up, concerned.

“Are you feeling okay?’” he asked, sidling over in his chair, moving closer to her. The heat from his arm and chest made the little hairs on her arms stand up, and it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. She pouted, pursed her lips.

“Fine,” she sighed, took another deep draught of her wine. Faun frowned, then smiled.

“Anxious girl,” he chuckled, reached into his pocket. “I guess you’ve found me out.” Hasae looked over, confused.

Faun withdrew a small black case, handed it to her.

“Open it,” he smiled, sliding out of his chair and going down on one knee. Hasae felt her fingers tremble, and she snapped open the black case. A glittering, opulent diamond ring shined back at her.

“You’re the only woman I’ve ever met who makes me smile,” Faun removed the ring, slid it onto her finger. “Please marry me.”

Hasae looked into his eyes, frozen in place. He was utterly sincere. And he was gorgeous. Even as a man, he would have admitted it, although then it would have meant
nothing: less than nothing.

“Yes,” the word sounded like glass grinding through her throat, but Faun didn’t notice. Hasae barely noticed, herself. Her finger shook with nerves, and Faun leapt up, gathered her in his arms, kissed her.

Hasae exited the elevator the next day, and Rami could hear the distinctive clicking of her heels. Sighing, he handed her the black folder: today’s reports on the warp-gate. It held identical results to yesterday’s. Little progress. Hasae closed it, filed it away. Then she sighed and broke out a bottle of vodka, poured them both a glass.

“Sir?” Rami took the glass, looked at it with confusion.

“I suppose it doesn’t quite matter, does it, Rami?” she downed the glass, poured herself another. Just then, Rami noticed the bright diamond adorning Hasae’s finger, and nearly dropped his glass.

“Sir?” he stuttered, pointing at her finger.

“We’re quite a pair, right?” she grinned, a glimmering remainder of her former body’s sarcasm and charm. “I recall one of the men saying you’d gone and found yourself a girl, and were shacking up with her, not two months after the accident.”

This time, Rami did drop the glass, not even bothered by the shattering fragments and the vodka soaking his shoes.

“Relax, Private,” Hasae blew out her breath, dug up another glass for Rami. The man sat in the chair and took the liquor without protest, downing it in one gulp and offering the empty vessel for another shot.

“I don’t know what kind of illness we have,” Hasae told him, looking him right in the eye, “but it appears permanent. You might as well go tell the boys down in research to stop wasting their time. And get our records fixed while you’re at it. Have mine changed to Corporal Hasae Vainwind, female, aged 20 years.”

“Yes, Sir,” Rami grinned, lifting up the glass for another drink. Hasae rolled her eyes.

“And you might want to pencil in a note about getting me some maternity leave, as well.”

The glass shattered on the tile with its mate, and Hasae could be heard all the way down in the 27th Division, roaring at her bumbling secretary.