Ashley's mom, Taprobana, had retired from her stressful job as as spaceship pilot to undergo a complex series of hypnotic and drug treatments that regressed her mentality to that of a sixteen-year-old, along with hormonal and nanite treatments to regress her physical development to late adolescence. She had also had wings implanted and moved to the low-gravity colony on Mars so she could gratify her love of flight. She had spent the last twenty years with the physical and mental maturity and the hormonal balance of a sixteen-year-old, and planned--to the extent that a sixteen-year-old is capable of planning anything--to keep living that way for a long time to come.
Ashley had been putting off coming out to his Mom, but now it was time. There would be no point just sending her a message, as Taprobana had the self-centered worldview of an adolescent and it was difficult at the best of times to get her to pay much attention to the outside world. He would have to tell her to her face.
"Mom, remember that big change I was talking about?" he began, keeping himself concealed. "I went ahead and made it. I look really, really different now, so brace yourself."
He waited a couple of minutes and then activated the image channel. There was no point waiting for Taprobana's response to his initial sending, which would have taken several minutes.
"You're a minotaur dude, now? That's awesome! So are you still into guys now, or what?" Taprobana at her bubbliest.
"No, I like girls now." Ashley answered. Before the change he had wondered how it would affect his sexuality, but it turned out that he was as completely hetero as a guy as he had been as a girl. There was something about the whole male-female contrast, the idea of a sexual dyad, that was apparently necessary for him.
The two chatted for a while about Ashley's new life, Taprobana pointing out that there was a minotaur community on Mars with some unattached females, when Ashley remembered about Taprobana's new boyfriend. "So how are things with Gregory?"
"Pffft" replied Taprobana. "I am so over him. I am so over dudes. Uh, nothing personal, I mean, now that you're a dude. Dudes are awesome! But I'm with Carlotta now. She's so cool!" Taprobana stood up, turned around, dropped her pants and raised her wings to reveal the nude portrait of Carlotta tattooed on her left buttock. (In the world of 2516, the installation and the removal of tattoos was a matter of a few painless minutes.) Carlotta was a short, brown-skinned winged female with a couple of little goat-horns that looked a few years older than Taprobana, although only the gods knew what the real relationship between their ages was.
"She looks cute, Ma. I'm glad you're happy." And Ashley was sincerely happy for his mom. The happiness he had attained by making and following through with his own choice had made him more accepting of his mother's choice of a life path, as weird as it was dealing with her.