"I'll accept part of your offer" Alice said. "I'll be more than happy to watch over those those kids that need a good home."
"You don't want to become a member?" Hanna asked.
"Whether I want to or not is irrelevant" Alice said. "Members of the brotherhood are descendants of the M'barrduu tribe. As such the members can not be transformed by the medallion. One of the tests to become a member is to see if the prospective member can be transformed using the medallion. I was transformed so I can not become a member of the brotherhood."
"I'm glad to hear you say that" Hanna said. "Though I wasn't offering membership into the brotherhood."
"What were you offering then?" Alice asked.
"I want you to become a member of our staff here" Hanna said.
"Isn't all the staff here members of the brotherhood?" Alice asked.
"Not at all" Hanna said. "In fact the only ones that are members of the brotherhood are Dr. Wheeler and myself. Everyone else here are just regular people who want to help those that have been transformed."
"Oh" Alice said. "I just assumed that everyone here was a member of the brotherhood. I would be happy to work here. I am confused about something though. You had said that your predecessor was transformed into a doll during our first meeting and that she was female. Yet just now you had said that your predecessor was male."
"I can see where your confusion came from" Hanna said. "I should have been more specific. Frank was my predecessor in the brotherhood. The other one was my predecessor here at this center."
Just then Alice caught sight of a doll on a shelf behind Hanna's desk. The doll looked very familiar to her. It's been a long time since she had seen her but she remembered what she looked like. "Your predecessor here was Dana wasn't she" she said.
"I didn't want to tell you but yes, Dana was my predecessor here" Hanna said. "The administrators decided that she needed to be punished for abusing the technology we have available here. So they transformed her into a doll."
"You said that she was aware before" Alice said.
"That's what the administrators told me when they handed her to me" Hanna said. "I have no idea if she is aware or not. I suspect that she is though."
"Oh Dana, why did you abuse the technology?" Alice asked. "There is something else. How was Frank able to give me and Dana our memories?"
"I'm not sure about that" Hanna said. "My guess is that he was able to retrieve your memories from the bodies. How he then transferred them to you is something I don't know. He shouldn't have been able to from what you described. Unless the device he had stopped time long enough for him to get you to a center and transfer your memories to you."
"There are devices that can stop time?" Alice asked shocked.
"Yes there are" Hanna said. "Though those devices are extremely rare. It has something to do with the stability of some of the components."
"How many are there?" Alice asked.
"As far as I know there are only five of them in existence" Hanna said. "Now back to my offer. You accept taking in some of the transformed kids until homes can be found for them and become a member of our staff here. Am I correct?"
"Yes, that's correct" Alice said.
"Ok then" Hanna said. "I'll show you and Kathy around."
Hanna gave them a tour of the center. Alice was impressed by how large the center was. Not only did it hold exam rooms but there was an emergency room for those transformations that have gone wrong. Next was a play area for the younger children. Hanna explained that this would be where Kathy would be while Alice was working here. There was one girl who seemed fearful and stayed apart from everyone.
When Hanna noticed the direction Alice was looking she said quietly "Poor girl. She was a twelve year old boy but her father decided to transform her. He made her female and five years old. He then molested her for several days before her friends had realized something was wrong. When the police showed up he destroyed the amulet he had used to transform her. That act made it so she could not be transformed again no matter what device was used. She's stuck as a girl even though it was something she never wanted. In fact she's the reason that I went out of town and part of the reason that
I offered you what I did."
"That is horrible" Alice said. "What happened to her father?"
"Right now he's in jail on a two million dollar bond" Hanna said.
"That's where he belongs" Alice said. "Is there anything I can do?"
"I'm glad you feel that way" Hanna said. "There is something you can do. She's going to need a voice in court. I was hoping that you would be that voice. Also, maybe you can get her to come out of her shell a bit."
"I'd be happy to be her voice in court" Alice said.
"Thank you Alice" Hanna said. "We'll finish the tour and then you can come back and talk with her. Kathy, if you'd like you can stay here and play with the other kids."
"I'll stay here" Kathy said.
"Ok" Hanna said. "Miss Punnit will be back shortly."
As they walked away to continue the tour Alice asked "What's the girls name?"
"She insists that we call her Joseph" Hanna said. "That was her name. I have her down as Josephine in my paper work. If you can get her to accept the fact that she's a girl now that will go a long way in helping her. There's only so much that our therapists can do as long as she insists on hanging on to her old life."
"I'll do what I can" Alice said.
They finished up the tour with the school area for the older kids and the rooms for the boys and girls. When they got back to the play area Alice went over to Josephine and sat down beside her.
"What do you want?" Josephine asked.
"I just wanted to say hi and talk" Alice said.
"Oh great, another shrink" Josephine said rolling her eyes. "I'm getting tired of you people saying I have to get used to this."
"I'm not a shrink" Alice said. "I'm just a mother who knows what being transformed is like."
"You weren't stuck in a body you didn't want" Josephine said.
"Actually I have been" Alice said. "You see when I was younger a friend of mine had shown me a medallion. He had said that it could transform people. I didn't believe him so he had me meet him in a cabin. He had told me to bring my girlfriend and he brought his."
"So you were a boy?" Josephine interrupted.
"Yes I was" Alice said.
"Why did you stay a girl?" Josephine asked.
"Just listen and I'll get to it" Alice said. "My friend had brought some dice that he had carved and suggested that we roll to see who we would transform into. I was paired with his girlfriend Alice Punnit and he was paired with my girlfriend Dana Serwinsky."
"What was your and your friend's names?" Josephine interrupted again.
"Mine was Bobby McQuery and my friend's was Winston Goldstein" Alice said. "Now let me finish please. As I was saying, I was paired with Alice and Winston was paired with Dana. Alice had us go into the showers and strip. She handed me her clothes and I handed her mine. I used the medallion and her clothes to transform into her. She used my clothes and the medallion to transform into me. Winston and Dana did the same thing. A counselor had burst into the cabin at that
time and ushered us out. We didn't get much time to get together again and when we did it was in large groups. We had started calling ourselves by who we had transformed into even in private. Well one day Bobby, Winston, and some other boys found a beehive and started pestering it. Well you can imagine that the bees weren't happy about that and started to sting them. Bobby, Winston, and another boy ran to the lake and jumped in. They weren't paying attention and they
jumped in the part with weeds which we had been warned about. All three of them got tangled in the weeds and drowned." At this point tears started to roll down her cheeks but she continued. "Dana and I knew that we couldn't go back to our former selves as they had recovered their bodies. We decided to live our new lives the best we could and to get the medallion back. As you could imagine we
couldn't tell anyone that it was really Alice and Dana who had drowned in different bodies. We were able to eventually adjust to our new lives and then a strange guy came along and gave us our memories that we had been missing. After that I had forgotten about it until recently."
"Are you happy being a girl?" Josephine asked.
"Well I won't lie to you and say that I'm totally happy" Alice said. "If we hadn't transformed all of us might still be alive. But I am happy being a girl. I have five wonderful daughters. Three of them had been teenage boys less than a year ago. Two of them decided to make themselves young girls and one of them became my daughter when she did. The other one was an accident. Her boyfriend and her swapped bodies."
"Have they adjusted to being girls?" Josephine asked.
"Yes they have" Alice said.
"Bet none of them were transformed by their father for the purpose of molesting them" Josephine said.
"No they weren't and that was a horrible thing he did to you" Alice said.
"I'm a boy" Josephine said balling up her fists and hitting the ground. "They put me in with the girls when I'm suppose to be in with the boys. The shrinks say that it's to help me adjust. I don't want to adjust. I want my body back."
"I am sorry that you're in this situation" Alice said. "It sucks that you're stuck as a girl and you didn't want that."
"I am not a girl" Josephine said.
"On the inside you're a boy" Alice said. "But like it or not, you are a girl on the outside."
"Are you going to tell me that I need to become a girl on the inside too?" Josephine asked in a mocking tone.
"No I won't say that" Alice said. "What I will tell you is that you are a girl on the outside. You need to accept that fact and live as best you can."
"How can I?" Josephine asked. "My father changed me into a little girl to molest me. You can't know what it's like to be a little girl and be molested."
At Josephine's words a memory surfaced in Alice's memories. "I do know what it's like" she said. "One of my uncles would molest me when ever I saw him. It took me awhile to trust another male. Winston was my first boyfriend."
"What happened to your uncle?" Josephine asked.
"He was killed in an auto accident" Alice said. "It was just after I had told my parents what he had been doing. So I do have some idea of what you're going through Josephine."
"My name is Joseph, not Josephine" Josephine said.
"When I look at you I see a girl" Alice said. "So I'll call you Josephine. That is a girl's name. Would you call me Bobby?"
"Well no" Josephine said. "But you willingly transformed."
"I never expected it to work" Alice said. "I never wanted to become a girl but it happened. I had a choice to make when I found out that I wouldn't be able to change back. I could have whined about my situation or I could have made the best of it and lived my life the best I could. I choose the latter option. Now you have a choice Josephine. Are you going to whine or are you going to live your life the best that you can?"
"Well I guess I don't have much of a choice" Josephine said. "I'll make the best of my situation. I don't like it but it's my life now."
"That's a good choice" Alice said. "Now if you would allow me I'd like to call you Josie instead of Josephine."
"You can call me Josie" Josephine said. "Though only you. Everyone else has to call me Josephine since I'm a girl now."
"It's a deal" Alice said.
Josephine hugged Alice at that point and said "I'm glad that I have someone to talk to about this."
"I think you could talk to the other kids here about your transformation" Alice said. "I just don't think many of them will understand being molested."
"Could you be my mom?" Josephine asked.
"We'll see about that" Alice said.