Wings

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“Hey, I’m going to the library to do some research for my term papers. You want to come?” my brother Nathan asked one Saturday morning in October.

“Yeah,” I said, “I need to do some research too. Give me a second to grab my notebooks and stuff.”

A couple of minutes later, after telling Mom where we were going, we headed to the library in Nathan’s car. My mind should have been on my term papers and the references I needed to find to flesh them out, but I couldn’t help thinking about the weird machine that had appeared on the lawn at the library a few weeks ago, and how a bunch of people had been using it to transform each other. I desperately wanted to try it myself, to be something other and better than this uncomfortable wrong-fitting shape I’d worn for my first fifteen years, but Mom and Dad had forbidden me and Nathan from using the machine as soon as they heard about it.

I hoped I could at least see some people using it on the way into or out of the library.

We got there in just a few minutes, parked, and walked past a queue of people waiting to use the machine. It was about eight feet wide and tall and four deep, the same dark brown as the stones the library was built of, with a glowing Venn diagram in the center. Nobody happened to go in the machine or come out during the thirty seconds or so it took us to walk from Nathan’s car to the front door of the library, much to my disappointment, and I resigned myself to study and research for the next couple of hours.

When we’d found what we needed and were about to leave, Nathan surprised me.

“Hey. Do you want to check out that machine before we go? Mom and Dad don’t have to know.”

“Sure,” I said.

It didn’t surprise me that Nathan would disobey Mom and Dad when they weren’t around. Not at all. What surprised me a little was that he wanted to try being something else. He’d given me the impression of being completely at home in his body. He was a football player, a pretty good one, in great shape, and had never had a significant amount of acne, unlike me (or Dad, judging from his high school pictures). He was between girlfriends at the moment, but he’d gotten attention from girls starting from when Mom and Dad thought he was too young to date.

So we checked out our books, and I said, “We’d better put the books in the car. If we transform while holding them, they’re gonna turn into unintelligible nonsense.” I’d overheard rumors about the machine from people at school, though for some reason the news wasn’t saying anything about it.

“Yeah, although if you want any visible change, we’ve got to change back before we go home anyway. But I don’t want to spend the next hour or whatever hauling a stack of books around.”

So we put our books and notebooks in Nathan’s car, and our wallets and Nathan’s phone in the glove compartment. (I wasn’t allowed to have a cellphone yet.) Then we got in line behind an old black couple, in their seventies or eighties, who seemed to be accompanied by their son, judging from what I overheard of their conversation while we waited. The son looked young enough to be their grandson, and I guessed he’d already gotten a friend to rejuvenate him with the machine. The woman was using a walker, the type with a seat you can rest on while it’s parked.

“So what do you want me to turn you into?” I asked, stalling on telling Nathan what I wanted. I figured Nathan would hate me if I told him what I really wanted, but there were other things I wanted to try that would be more socially acceptable and maybe almost as enjoyable.

“I’ll tell you when we’re inside the booth,” he said.

Huh. Nathan wanted something he was ashamed to talk about in front of the other people waiting in line? My mind immediately jumped to several wrong conclusions, and I immediately hated myself assuming bad things about my brother when I knew I was at least as messed up in (probably) a different way. He didn’t press me for what I wanted, probably figuring I’d tell him once we were inside, too. And for a minute or two, I thought about doing just that; it seemed easier to put it off... but I found myself thinking more about the kind of thing I really wanted, and feeling disgusted with myself. And then I worried that if I put off telling Nathan until he put me on the spot, I might blurt out something that I’d regret. So I carefully rehearsed my words a couple of times and said:

“I want to try being a dragon.”

“Huh, I wouldn’t have figured. That seems pretty cool, but I don’t think a dragon will fit in that booth, will it?”

“Well, obviously not a huge dragon like Smaug. More like me-sized. Or a little bigger.” I didn’t really want to be bigger, but I thought Nathan might respect me more if I said that.

“You want to be able to fly?” the old couple’s son asked.

“Yeah, it would be nice.”

“You’d probably better be pretty small, then. I read about this guy who got his friend to change him into a person-sized griffin, but he couldn’t get off the ground — his wings weren’t strong enough for his weight. About the size of a bat or a songbird might work.”

“Thanks!” I said. “Yeah, that makes sense. As much as anything about these machines makes sense.”

The line moved erratically. Some people took just a minute or so in the Venn machine, some as much as ten minutes. The majority of them were just making each other younger, prettier, and healthier, but there were a couple of more interesting changes, like the couple who changed each other into otter-people or the girl who changed her husband or boyfriend into a baby tapir. When the people ahead of us reached the machine, the younger man put a coin in the slot and pressed the sun icon three times. A three-year change, according to what I’d heard — the longest the machine would allow.

“You want me to change you one at a time?” he asked his parents as the doors popped open. “Or do you feel comfortable changing each other?”

“I think I could learn to use it,” his mother said, “but I don’t want to be practicing on your father while he’s practicing on me. We might both wind up being animals or some such. You ought to do it, Luther.”

“All right. Ladies first.” His mother went in one booth and Luther went in the other, and they came out again less than two minutes later with her looking at least fifty years younger. I didn’t know what had happened to her walker, but it didn’t come out of the machine with her. Then another couple of minutes for him to rejuvenate his father, and it was mine and Nathan’s turn. While Nathan was putting a quarter in the machine and pressing the one-third slice of Earth icon, to program an eight-hour change, the young-old couple kissed and the people in line behind us applauded. I smiled at them and joined in.

“Come on,” Nathan said, and walked into the booth on the left. I hurried into the booth on the right, and the door closed behind me as soon as I was over the threshold. I saw Nathan through what seemed like a transparent wall between the booths — or a huge screen with better resolution than anything humans have got. Scattered around him were little bubbles with images of him changed in various ways: darker, lighter, skinnier, chubbier, more muscular, wearing different clothes. In a few of the smallest bubbles, he looked more radically different, more androgynous or with nonhuman features.

“Okay,” I said, “what was it you didn’t want to tell me out there?”

“I didn’t want somebody overhearing part of it and misunderstanding,” he said. “I want to know if it’s possible to cheat at football with this thing, and if so — hey! When I said ‘football’, most of the pictures of you vanished; I see some regular footballs, some versions of you beefed up in football uniforms, footballs with your face — stuff like that.”

“Don’t touch anything yet!” I said, alarmed. “You remember we talked about what I wanted. I won’t say it in case it starts bringing up versions of you that look like that. Anyway, you were saying?”

“Well, if it’s possible to cheat, I need to let Coach Duncan know so he can figure out a way to detect it and stop it.”

“I mean, I’m sure it must be. You just ask the machine to make your partner stronger and faster.” As I said “stronger and faster,” the slenderer, shorter, and chubbier versions of Nathan vanished, replaced by more of the extra-athletic ones, some like bodybuilders, some with leaner runner’s builds, most some balance between the two.

“Yeah, but can you do that while making me look the same, so nobody can tell there’s anything different except my performance? If so, I need to tell somebody so we can start looking for players who are doing that.”

“I don’t know how.” I didn’t know yet that your fingerprints and retina prints changed whenever somebody venned you into another human shape, even a very similar one. “I’ll try, though. Um — keep his appearance the same, but make him a little stronger and faster?”

The bubbles vanished and were replaced by a new set with a lot less variation from Nathan’s basic appearance. In most, though, I could see some slight difference. I finally found one that looked identical, as far as I could tell, and touched that bubble. Nathan’s appearance in the window or giant screen changed slightly, but I couldn’t quite tell how; it was very subtle.

Meanwhile, Nathan was saying, “A little dragon, about the size of a bat or a robin, with hollow bones,” and studying the screen in front of him. He finally reached out and touched one of the bubbles (which I couldn’t see from where I was) and said, “Are you ready?”

“Yeah, I think so. I should push my green button before you push yours — I don’t know if I’ll be able to push mine with my snout or claws after I change.”

“Right, go ahead.”

So I pushed the button, and then he reached out to push his, and everything changed. The booth expanded around me in an instant, seeming to get around thirty or forty times bigger. I was looking way up at Nathan, and at the now-open door, and my whole body felt different.

“Come on,” Nathan said, and exited his side of the machine. I was still taking stock of my new complement of limbs, flapping my wings gently and wiggling this leg, then that one, all four in turn. After a few seconds of that, I tried flapping my wings more vigorously, but though that got me off the ground for a moment, I plopped down again a moment later, bumping my snout. It didn’t hurt much. To free up the booth for the next person, I started walking toward the big open door, and after a first few clumsy steps, I got my stride and was across the threshold a few moments later.

Nathan was looking down at me, and so were the people who’d gotten in line behind us a few minutes earlier, a white couple in their mid-twenties and a couple of girls around my age, one Hispanic and one black. The black girl and the mid-twenties woman squeed over how cute I was, which made me feel good inside, and the black girl asked Nathan, “Can I pet him?”

“Ask him yourself, I guess. I hear when you turn people into animals they can still think like people.”

I tried to talk and made a kind of gurgling-hissing sound, which the girl thought was also extremely cute. I expressed my consent by walking toward her and nodding, then rubbing my snout against the side of her shoe. She bent down and rubbed my snout and then my back between my wings, which felt nice, though it wasn’t arousing or anything.

“You look like you’re having fun,” Nathan said with a bemused smile.

The mid-twenties guy was putting a coin in the slot and pressing some buttons, and the doors, which had closed behind me and Nathan as we emerged, opened again.

“Ready, Connie?” he asked.

“Just a minute,” his wife or girlfriend said. “I want to pet the dragon first.”

The black girl stood up and backed away, and I walked toward the other woman. The Hispanic girl was being standoffish — maybe she had a snake phobia or something. I let Connie pet me for a few seconds, then wiggled out from under her hand and started flapping my wings, trying to get off the ground. She stood there watching for a bit longer before going into the machine with her husband or boyfriend.

It took me several tries, under the watchful eyes of Nathan and the girls, but I finally managed to get up and stay aloft. My flight was pretty erratic at first, and I crashed a few times before I really got the hang of it, but fortunately from relatively low heights and into grass, shrubbery or flowerbeds rather than asphalt or concrete.

The first time that happened, I picked myself up and spluttered the dirt out of my face to find the black girl kneeling over me, looking concerned; Nathan was just a step behind her.

“Are you all right?” she asked. I experimentally flapped my wings and wiggled all my limbs, then nodded my head and gurgled. I was apparently pretty durable, and having a low mass meant that a fall from a moderate height would have low kinetic energy. After that, I tried to stay over the landscaped areas and away from the pavement until I got a little more experience and confidence.

Once he saw I was flying pretty consistently, Nathan called out to me: “I’m gonna go for a jog. Be back in a few.”

I landed in front of him, nodded my head and gurgled. He jogged over toward where he’d parked the car, and I took off again, following him as far as the car, where he got his phone and wallet out of the glove compartment before jogging off down the street. I didn’t follow further, but headed back toward where the girls were standing by the Venn machine. I kept practicing flying, overhearing some of the girls’ conversation but not a lot because of the wind rushing in my ears.

The couple that had gone in the machine took their sweet time figuring out what to change each other into, or finding the forms they wanted in the mazy interface, but eventually they came out looking like cyborgs, with one organic eye and one electronic eye each, and other metal or plastic parts showing here and there. The guy had no hair except for a half-goatee (he’d had no facial hair before) and the woman had hair (longer than before) only on the left side of her scalp, where her organic eye was; the right side seemed to be a curved LED screen with strange symbols and patterns constantly moving and shifting on it. I swooped down from the tree branch where I’d been resting to get a closer look at them, and the woman, Connie, said: “Oh, he’s flying!”

The black girl, whose name I’d learned was Jada, said, “Yeah, it took him a while to get the hang of having wings, but he’s doing all sorts of tricks now. — Oooh, look!”

Encouraged by her praise, I was doing a series of tight loops and barrel rolls over their heads. Cristina, Jada’s friend, said, “Hey, are you ready to go in the booth or do you want to let somebody else go first?” A few more people had arrived while the cyborgs were transforming each other and I was learning to fly.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Jada said, and they started setting up the machine. I flew a little further afield at that point, out of the library parking lot and over the yards of some houses near the library. I tried to avoid flying over the streets for more than a moment at a time — if I fell, I didn’t want to get run over by a car before I could take off again — or over the roofs of buildings, because if I fell there and got hurt, I could get stuck until the eight hours ran out and I turned back with no way to get down. There was a church not far south of the library that had a playground in the back yard, and there were kids playing there — they seemed to be around kindergarten or first grade. I buzzed them and enjoyed their exclamations of wonder. Some reached up and grabbed at me, but I stayed just out of reach. When the adults supervising them came over to see what the commotion was about, I took off again and flew back to the library; I didn’t want to miss meeting up with Nathan.

He came jogging back into the library parking lot while I was sitting and resting on the branch of an oak, and after looking at something on his phone — I later realized he’d been timing himself with the stopwatch app — he looked around. “Hey,” he said to some of the people in line, “anybody seen a little dragon, about this big?” He held his hands a few inches apart. I swooped down to land on his shoulder.

“You mean the one sitting on your shoulder?” one guy asked as Nathan startled and twisted his head to look at me.

“You about ready to change back?” Nathan asked.

I nodded. I’d have liked to stay that way a lot longer, but I knew we needed to get home before long. So Nathan got in line for the Venn machine, and I continued doing loops and barrel rolls until he got to the head of the line. He was doing something on his phone while he waited. I perched on his shoulder again while he set up them machine.

When I flew into the right-hand booth, I saw that the red and green buttons and the bubbles showing alternate versions of Nathan were down near the floor. I landed near them, but before I could push the red button with my claw, to cancel our transformations, Nathan must have pushed his red button. Suddenly I was back to my original human boy body, the buttons had vanished, and the doors had opened.

In the car on the way home, I asked Nathan, “So what did you figure out?”

“I timed myself on several one-block sprints and a longer jog, around ten blocks,” he said. “I was definitely faster on average, though not by much. I’m gonna talk to the coach about it. How about you? You were flying pretty well by the time I got back.”

I smiled at the memory. “Yeah, it took a while to get the hang of it, but it was really fun. I’d like to do it again sometime.”

“Maybe I’ll try it. A falcon, maybe. Not for a while, though. I don’t want to make Mom and Dad suspicious by going to the library more often than we normally would.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely not.” I laughed nervously.

I’d enjoyed flying, but I’d especially enjoyed the attention from Jada and Connie, and the other people who’d come to use the Venn machine while I was flying around the parking lot. Being squeed over as a cute little fabulous animal was markedly better than being ignored as an acne-scarred, scrawny boy. That raised the question of why I didn’t want to be a taller, more muscular guy, like most normal guys would. I couldn’t explain it, but it just didn’t appeal to me. Then I remembered the little kids I’d buzzed at the church playground and I thought of being a little girl, a toddler or preschooler, maybe with dragon-wings, and girls like Jada and Connie awwww’ing over me and getting all motherly, and that made me feel warm inside too, for just a moment before I remembered that I wouldn’t get a chance to use the Venn machine again for a good while, and when I did, I wouldn’t dare ask Nathan for anything like that.

When my friend Meredith Ramsey had come out as transgender, a few weeks earlier, and gotten her sister to use the machine to give her a girl body, both Dad and Nathan had said mean things about her. Mom, too, although not as bad. I’d known Meredith and her siblings for years, since we went to the same church and our parents were longtime friends. We went to different schools and lived in different neighborhoods, though, so we hadn’t been all that close until around the time I’m telling you about.

And Meredith’s change, and the revelation that the machine at the library could not only make old people young and turn people into animals, but could change people’s sex, had put a worm in my brain; I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I didn’t think I was trans, not like Meredith, but I couldn’t stop obsessing over what it would be like to have someone change me into a girl using the machine. Preferably a humanoid dragon-girl, but I’d take a human girl body too, just to see what it was like. Fat chance of getting Nathan to do it, or my parents letting me go to the library with anyone else, though.

That wasn’t the only thing I daydreamed about turning into, of course. My imagination ran wild in the weeks after the strange machine showed up. But I kept coming back to the possibility of being a girl, and hating myself for being gross and perverse.

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