Your wondering is cut short when the door to your cell opens and Lily is brought back in. "Mommy!" she giggles, rushing to hug you. "Mommy, they were all really nice, like you said!"
You smile, even though you're still a little dazed by the prospect of being a legal mother. "That's wonderful, Lily," you say. "And now that's all over with, so I can take care of you from now on."
She giggles again and hops up on the bed. "They asked me a lot of questions," she said. "They weren't very fun questions, but I told them the answers like I was supposed to. But they asked me a lot of things I didn't know."
You nod. "That's all right," you say. "Kids your age don't have to know all that stuff yet. They just wanted to see how much you knew."
"I know a lot!" she protests. "I just didn't know all the things with numbers and stuff that they asked."
"That's fine," you say. "You'll learn that eventually, when you're ready."
"But I'll have to go to school to learn that, right?" She looks at you, half-excited and half-nervous, a feeling you remember from when you were the one getting ready to start school.
"We'll see," you reply. "If we can find a good school for you, we'll do that, otherwise I might teach you myself."
"Oh," she says. "That might be fun. But how would I make friends if all the other kids were in school?"
"Oh, we'd find a way," you say. "But that's just if we can't find a good school for you. I'm sure there's one out there."
She smiles and sighs contentedly. "I'm glad we get to stay together, Mommy," she says, putting her head against your shoulder.
"Me too," you reply. This whole thing is terribly confusing for you, but you're glad that at least you can make Lily happy. Eventually you'll have to figure out her feelings on the idea of your becoming male again, but for now she's just happy to be with her "mother," and you can't think of a good reason to interrupt that.
Some time later, Lily has fallen asleep. You tuck her in, being careful not to wake her, and leave the cell - since your identity has been verified, you're free to come and go as you please. Jeanette is also out and about, apparently having finished his debriefing.
"Hey," he says. "Where's Lily?"
"She's asleep," you reply. "She passed the exams; they're convinced that the doctor's gone, and she's just a normal little girl. They let me have custody of her, so that's all taken care of. I just hope I can figure out what to tell her when we're ready to change back."
Jeanette sighs. "About that..."
Your heart sinks. "Yes?" you prompt, wondering what he has to tell you. Have they concluded that there is no way to change back? Did it turn out to be too difficult to re-engineer the doctor's discoveries?
He shrugs. "No, it's nothing as bad as you're thinking. It's just that I wouldn't get your hopes up for a quick and easy change-back if I were you. Like I said earlier, we still have the whole court proceedings and media circus to go through when word of this gets out. They'll probably bar the press from the courtroom, but things still have a way of filtering out to the media. Which means that over the next month or two, the country is probably going to find out that a mad scientist succeeded in turning humans into dinosaur-people, who remained intelligent. They'll also probably find out that the doctor's research is now in government hands, and you know how the public feels about anything they might classify as 'mad science.'"
"They're not goint to destroy the research, are they?" you ask.
He shakes his head. "I don't think so, no, but they might have to keep it out of action for a while, until this blows over. Which means that any re-engineering attempts might not even start for another six months or so. We'd just better pray that some celebrity manages to make an ass of themselves on camera to distract the public."
"Six months?" you yelp. He nods. "Or more. It all depends on when the higher-ups decide it's safe to start working on it without risking a public outcry; the last thing we want is some holier-than-thou senator deciding that there ought to be a law against nanotechnology. On the bright side, though, it sounds like you and Lily are going to come out of the estate division pretty well, since you have a kid to take care of and were the one responsible for taking down the doctor. Sounds like you might even get the compound, once they've sold off all the equipment in it."
Well, that ruins your mood pretty quickly. Not even the prospect of monetary reward could make six months in this body worth it. You had hoped to have this brief sojourn in womanhood over with in a couple of weeks, but it looks like you're going to be stuck this way a lot longer than you thought. On the other hand, it does give you time to figure out how to help Lily deal with your changing back. On the other other hand, though, it means that she'll have that much longer to get used to you being the way you are. Your life was a lot simpler a day ago.