The Phenomenon - Ch.5 - Day 16, 6:30pm (Patreon)

"It was strange," Cheryl said as she ate. "Very strange. But at the same time, almost everyone was making an effort to treat it like a normal day?"

It was Monday evening and today was her first day back to work since the phenomenon. Me and Kevin were still waiting on the news to find out when schools and colleges would open up, but with most businesses starting to re-open it felt like things were taking the first small steps towards normal life again.

Cheryl continued, "First off we all basically had to identify ourselves when we got there? Then there was a bit of a kerfuffle when some of us explained that we weren't going by those old names any more. I wasn't the only one, there were three more just in my department. There's a lot of stuff still up in the air in terms of ID but apart from a few arguments, management gave in and let us go with whatever names we wanted."

She added with a grin, "I think a big part of that was because the boss was one of the ones changing her name and pronouns. And believe me, that was wild. Seeing this cute hot little redhead in a skirt identify herself as our C.E.O. then turn around and tell us all not to call her 'Mister Caruthers' anymore? She announced she was going by Miss Caruthers now, or we could just call her Tammy."

I grinned too, "That's kind of cool. And I'm glad you didn't get any flack from work."

"Thanks Callie," she smiled back at me then continued to eat.

It was weird but since she'd announced her new name and pronouns and stuff, it was really hard to keep seeing her as one of my parents. Like she'd almost started to act more like a girl my age. Which she was, I mean almost every adult in the world was now a girl my age. But mom still acted like mom. Cheryl was acting less like my dad and more like a sister or a friend.

Kevin mumbled something about being happy for Cheryl then continued picking at his food, while mom didn't say anything at all.

My brother was still fighting it, still insisting he was a guy. Kevin had been spending a lot of his time locked in his bedroom lately. Since Cheryl came out and changed her name, basically. And when my brother wasn't crying, he acted quiet and sullen.

I knew the wild emotions probably weren't helping him any either. He'd become a lot more emotional since the change, despite how much he tried to fight it and act manly and everything. I tried talking to him over the weekend about it, I offered to help if I could, but he refused to discuss it.

And mom was almost worse. She actually seemed less emotional lately. She just stayed quiet and acted numb. She still made dinner and did her regular mom-stuff, but it was more like she was just going through the motions. Like her whole world had fallen apart and she was just doing the same routine stuff as a way to cling to what was left of normal.

It made me feel sort of guilty at times. I was happy I'd changed, I embraced it right from the start. As a closeted trans girl it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Obviously I recognized that what was great for me sucked for a lot of other people, and I felt bad for them, but it didn't diminish my own happiness.

And now I could sort of see that in Cheryl too. Once she stopped clinging to her masc act she seemed to be a lot happier and more relaxed. She could appreciate mom and Kevin and other people like them were still suffering, but that didn't mean me and Cheryl had to suffer too.

I still hadn't had the chance to actually talk with her about that. I needed some time alone when I knew mom and Kevin wouldn't be around to overhear. The best chance would have been after Cheryl first announced her new name and mom and Kevin both left the dinner table, but I didn't want to jump on Cheryl with questions and stuff right away.

For now I just kept quiet as the four of us ate dinner. The TV was on the news again as usual, I'd been tuning it out but finally started paying attention as it showed a stock image of a generic college.

"...going ahead with plans to re-open all schools, colleges, and universities. Monday October fourth will kick off the start of the new school year, just one month late. Some questions remain on the subject of student identities, but the government has promised new guidelines will be available by the end of next week."

The image shifted to the other news-girl who segued into the next story, "The identification question has run into a new hurdle as more reports suggest the number of former-men now wishing to identify as women has reached as high as twenty-five percent. That's up from the fifteen percent reported just last week. Government officials refuse to comment, but some experts suggest that figure may continue to rise. We asked an independent expert to weigh in on the topic."

The TV cut to another girl, and according to the caption his name was Richard and he was a psychologist and an 'expert' in gender studies. Richard talked a lot and used a lot of big words but I wasn't impressed. Most of what he said sounded like typical transmisic talking points, which was pretty fucking ironic coming out of a cute young woman named 'Richard'.

I tuned it out and focused on my food, but I couldn't help think about what the anchor-girl said earlier. Twenty-five percent of guys were starting to identify as women now. That was way higher than any estimate I'd ever seen when it came to what percentage of the population was trans. If that was true, then it basically implied that some of those people were were actually cis guys now starting to identify as female. And that left me feeling uneasy. 

It meant there was a possibility that Cheryl wasn't trans after all, that maybe her coming-out a few days ago was something else entirely. I remembered what she said at the time, about giving in and accepting it. She said up till then she'd been fighting it, trying to hang on to being a father and husband and a man.

That's not how I felt at all. I was relieved and excited the moment I woke up the very first day. Same with all the trans girls I knew online. We weren't fighting anything. About the only challenge I had was getting my family to accept my new name and pronouns without actually admitting I was trans and wanted this all along.

On Friday I was happy for Cheryl, I thought she was like me and finally coming out of the closet, more or less. Now I felt uneasy and uncomfortable as I wondered if maybe the phenomenon changed more than people's bodies.

The news finally moved on to something that didn't involve transmisic assholes, so I tuned back in to what the TV people were talking about now.

"...scientist claims that there are solutions to the looming population crisis. Government officials refuse to comment but unnamed sources suggest increased funding is being channelled into alternative reproductive science."

As usual they talked to another 'independent expert'. Science wasn't my thing but I recognized a few buzzwords the expert threw out. She cited research that had already been done in the past few years. Apparently it was possible to somehow get stem cells to become sperm cells or something like that, and they could do that even if the stem cells came from a woman. So at least in theory, there was a way to get sperm out of a woman. Then at that point they could use in vitro fertilization, which was a well-known technique that was already in use all over the place. 

The expert cautioned this solution might still be years away, but considering most of the human race was no older than nineteen she seemed pretty confident we'd have the problem solved long before it became an actual crisis. The other thing she mentioned was the technique couldn't come up with Y chromosomes since it was using female cells. So basically she was saying that there'd be a way to make more sperm and keep the human race alive, but even with this process there still wouldn't be any more men being born.

On the one hand all that stuff was kind of sobering to hear, like to actually think that nine months after the phenomenon happened there wouldn't be any more babies being born. I thought about how schools would start to run out of students as the kids born this year would be the last generation, at least until the scientists got their stem cell thing to work.

On the other hand it made me feel glad to know there were options and we weren't all going to die off in seven or eight decades. Even if it took five or ten years like that expert said, there'd eventually be a way for people to get pregnant again. The expert even made it sound almost romantic, like ignoring all the science and stuff, she talked about how two women could become parents together, with one donating the stem cells that would become sperm and the other providing the eggs.

Then it hit me, someone probably already thought about this stuff as a way for lesbian couples to have children together but there was never any funding for research because nobody ever fucking cared about queer people. Now that the only option going forward was lesbian couples, it was suddenly an issue everybody in the world cared about.

I also realized there'd be a big surge in research on women's health issues now too, which would be nice.

The phenomenon fucked up a lot of stuff, but at least there'd be something positive out of it.

The TV was back to the news-girls again. They were still talking about reproductive stuff but they had frowny-faces so I knew it was bad news. 

"...unconfirmed, but the leaked report suggests that the phenomenon is to blame. Once again government officials refuse to comment, but at least one fertility clinic has confirmed its clients' stored sperm is no longer viable. If true, this new information would help explain the urgency behind the call for research into alternative reproductive sciences."

"Huh," I commented. "So no men, and no frozen sperm either. Which means no chance of any more men in the future."

Mom frowned at me and said in an uptight tone, "No chance of any more people at all, Callie."

I shook my head, "That's not true. That other person said they already have ways of doing it with two women. She said it'll only take five to ten years and they'll have all the details figured out."

Mom just clenched her jaw and shook her head slowly. 

Then I realized, 'doing it with two women' was the wrong way for me to phrase that. I just pushed all mom's homomisic buttons. Except I almost didn't care anymore. It's not like there were going to be any more hetero couples. And I couldn't help wondering how long it would take for people like mom to accept that.

Like I wasn't going to suggest mom go out and start dating girls, but I wasn't happy about how fast she rejected her husband, long before Cheryl embraced her new life.

And the reality now was pretty simple. Almost everyone looked like girls, so you either dated someone who looked like a girl or you dated nobody. So I wasn't going to have much patience for someone like mom who chose to stay homomisic or lesbomisic after all this.