Morning found you with dozens of soft skin spots all over your body, even on your face and scalp. You couldn’t call them pox because they were actually just patches of unblemished skin. It was like your skin was turning into that of a young child. The patches were growing as well. The spot on your leg was now 20 cm in diameter the other two patches found the previous night were 5 cm in diameter.
However, none of that really mattered in the big scheme. The original patch had spread to your chin. It was pretty obvious that before long your whole body would have this new soft skin, and there didn’t seem to be anything you could do about it. Your sister and Mother did not have any suggestions as to how to stop the spread. Mind you, your skin was now almost completely without spots or blemishes of any kind even where it was still your old course hairy skin.
At 18 you had been shaving for about 2 years. You had been described as a man child as you had a thick beard and needed to shave most days to look presentable. Now there was a stark contrast between your neck and chin where you didn’t need to shave and the rest of your face. Your neck still had whiskers but they were not as vigorous.
After documenting the changes to your skin, Stephanie took more blood samples then sent you away.
The first thing you did was shave. You did not like seeing the line on your face. After that you did a few little jobs but once more found yourself low on energy. You ended up spending a lot of the morning on your laptop, Googling skin care and blood cell types amongst other things. It was not very informative. Nothing you found matched what seemed to be happening to you.
You were almost scared to ask about the latest findings when the others appeared for lunch. In the end Stephanie volunteered "We didn't find any XY lymphocytes in the morning sample"
Feeling rather depressed you spent a little time outside but then made the mistake of sitting down in the lounge chair and reading.
This time it was Stephanie who woke you. It was only 5pm. You had been asleep for only 3 hours. That was enough time to make a noticeable difference to your appearance. The changes were up to your mouth, but then you had about half a dozen other patches on your face some of which were starting to coalesce.
You went to your room and stripped off. Probably 30% of the visible parts of your body were affected. You realised there was no stopping the changes. Probably best if they were over and done with. You still looked like yourself. However, when you combed your hair small patches came away from your scalp. The soft skin patches were shedding.
At dinner you Mother updated you on some of the other experiments she had been doing. She had somehow determined that whatever you had was not contagious. Cultures of your skin cells did not affect cultures of either her own or Stephanie’s cells. They did however transform a culture of your own XY skin cells. The XX cells somehow stopped multiplication of the XY cells in the culture while multiplying themselves. Stephanie and you Mother spent dinner speculating on what was happening. It was all scientific mumbo jumbo to you.