Butterflies

In John's case, as in most females, there was decidedly more neurons and dendrites when the first electronic slices started to form to show John's brain. Not too unusual for some men, but decidedly more than unusual in this case because of everything else.

It was the scans that shook everyone sitting in front of those CRT images that evening. John's Cerebral hemisphere or more importantly that corpus callosum was showing new growth. The corpus callosum is the fibrous tract connecting the left and right sides of the brain.

That tract was inherently larger in females. John's 200 million or so axons appeared to a number of surprised faces to have nearly doubled and in just a few days. An MRI was ordered and those magnetic resonance imaging results only confirmed the original diagnosis.

Another MRI was ordered on John's hypothalamus. Focus on this scan was those two areas decidedly different in males and females. Remarkably John's preoptic area as well as his suprachiasmatic nucleus were again and definitely judged female.

That would explain the headaches John was having one of the doctors noted. There was one other voice, coming from the back. A voice that caught everybody's attention then. That voice was from a noted Neuroscientist who read the shape of John's suprachiasmatic nucleus.

"That elongation is definitely a female's shape! A male's is shaped more like a sphere," she said with enough conviction to leave everyone without any doubt as she added, "my guess is your patient's cramps and his hormone level changes are most likely a result of this young man trying to have a period and since he is a young man, therein lies the difficulty."

There was a snicker from someone.

"You're not serious," Another voice said with another snicker. It was a man's voice and that snicker wasn't humorous. He sounded nervous.

"Obviously it's not a true menstruation but as you can see, both his estrogen and progesterone levels have peaked during the luteal phase. That's clearly in support of his pituitary hormones," That voice said as the others looked at the chart she was now pointing to.

"Could be an anomaly," another doctor argued, another male.

"It could be, but I'm guessing it's not based on all the other evidence. If it is his body trying to menstruate, his corpus luteum will produce progesterone in addition to estrogens for approximately the next 2 weeks. If it doesn't then I'll agree it's an anomaly," the first doctor argued and added, "although I'm willing to bet it does."

"That might explain the discharge we're seeing," Another voice spoke up.

"Discharge," the woman asked.

"Not urine nor semen but something decidedly liquid," that voice noted.

"It could. Have you seen any changes in his brain waves since this all started," the woman asked.

"Discharge," A male doctor asked before an answer came.

"Not menstrual, but clearly there is fluidity and again, it's not urinary," The doctor making the original comment added.

"On those brain waves? Actually yes. His neural firing during his last MRI showed a frenzy of brain activity in both sides of his amygdalae suggesting a strong emotional reaction. Almost a constant so far," a voice in the dark said.

"How interesting this is going to be," that woman's voice said.

"How so," a male voice asked.

"No erection, due to the high levels of estrogen, while he experiences an almost constant, albeit a slow, ejaculation," the woman answered.

"Ejaculation," the man said in shock trying to understand what the woman had just said.

"Ejaculation! It's the only thing his body can use to emulate his period," the doctor noted smiling as she added, "sort of like an on-going wet dream."

"Orgasms," someone asked.

"For seven days," another added with a touch of envy.

"Seven days of orgasms," another male said slightly in awe.

"He's going to be very sensitive," the female doctor noted and added, "and if this is his pattern it's going to be monthly."

Someone else asked her if she was serious, and she went on, "the suprachiasmatic nucleus is that portion of the brain that defines our circadian rhythms as well as our reproductive cycles. All you've got to do is look at the spikes - it's all there."

She smiled at the mystery she faced simply because this really was a mystery. She also kept a couple of other thoughts to herself. John, she mused, would be the first male that could fully and quite literally, understand what a female goes through month to month but for John it would be far more pleasurable than for a woman.

John was still under the effects of a light anesthesia when they tapped him into a disposable diaper and began monitoring his new "period". It was for his sake when the nurse did so although he wasn't fully aware of it till later.

John wasn't discharging anything like a female, but he was discharging uncontrollably and the problem was, the doctor noted to a CDC nurse when the diaper was ordered, "It's got to be a diaper because they just don't make a Kotex designed for males trying to be female."

John, the doctors also noted when they finally convened again, was decidedly more girl than boy. According to his latest scans and hormone levels, a girly girl as one of the doctors, a medical psychologist, put it.

If she was looking at a patient, she said, without knowing that patient was male and with those results, she'd expect to see mostly pinks, ribbons and bows with a strong above average taste for Barbie. It was clear, by the tone of her voice she didn't much care for girly girls the other two doctors decided as she talked of her results.

When those who didn't know that it was a male were told John was male they all agreed that he was definitely not 100% male. Perhaps, at best, half that. A hermaphrodite, someone suggested, most likely misdiagnosed at birth, given his newly forming attributes and those chemical structures.

Perhaps even something of a evolving hermaphrodite although that wasn't clear either because it wasn't clear where John was headed. In any event with his test concluded, it was noted that John, at the very least, could easily set the standards for a classic and budding young transsexual on a very aggressive hormone treatment. A transsexual on some very heavy doses of hormones besides.

One of the nurses, the one that tapped John into his first disposable, could have told them that, she mused, as she rolled John's ample hips towards her for a fresh diaper. There are some boys, she noted as she tapped John's second diaper closed, simply destined to become girls...

She paused, taped the diaper closed and smiled.

...if they were smart that is, she also mused as she patted the front of his diaper before lifting the sheet to cover him.

That was also the thoughts from the doctor brought in to consult on such things. She mentioned in her brief that she or one of her colleagues would most likely be performing a feminizing genitoplasty on this young man one day. As that doctor also noted, when she was told that the young woman she'd tested without knowing he was a young man.

"This young man could easily go either way although, if I were asked to make a recommendation, I'd suggests doing so in a dress. A dress only because it would be less stressful and more easily adaptive for him," the doctor noted.

Fortunately that wasn't said directly to John.

CDC contacted two leading hospitals for consultation and John again agreed to further test. The fact that his body was changing was most of the reason and, why that was so, was still unknown.

Although that doctor working for CDC and now in charge of this case believed it was somehow connected to that butterfly. She was looking at a fluff of skin taken from under John's arm at that moment.

"It doesn't look like skin or skin cells. Too dense and to hard!" She said to a colleague who was sharing that image.

That colleague agreed and yet it was skin, human and that too was noticed as he adjusted the electron microscope feeding that image. There were five other doctors hovering near that image within half an hour of that comment and again Helen got a call from her old advisor.

Dr. Patter, Helen's advisor, was an expert on butterflies, but he deferred to Helen's knowledge on the Swallowtail and he, along with Helen, met those other doctors in a conference room at CDC.

Helen referred back to her class notes as well as her field study notes to detail as much as was possible on what she knew about John's discovery.

A forensic pathologist and an expert on insect bites, was brought in to help identify, if possible, a physical contact with that Swallowtail. Helen helped when she noted a single minor passage that she had jotted down in her field book.

That was the notation she made when telling John to use a touch of an artificial female Swallowtail Pheromone. That pathologist, within ten minutes found a small almost invisible minor bump at the base of John's neck. A bump that hinted at something out of the ordinary and a biopsy was taken.

The pathologist found a sperm packet, called a spermatorphore, within John with remnants of Swallowtail sperm. Now that they knew what to look for, that Swallowtail had clearly passed on part of his altered genetic material, including a small amount of residual radiation. John's DNA was again being intensely viewed.

No one really knew what the evidence suggested but the "hints" of it were clear enough. A mutated Swallowtail had an encounter with John that day and somehow John, with new DNA coding, as impossible as that sounded, was now mutating in similar ways as a butterfly might.

When that mutation was firmly established John was classified "risk unknown" which is actually the highest risk classification for the government. That risk classification triggered other actions immediately. John's medical files at school were instantly taken under a secret judicial writ and that information was merged with the material already on file at CDC.

A chronology of symptoms and changes were roughed out in that conference room and John's metamorphism outlined. There was very little scientific information on John's transition, but there were enough doctors with enough disciplines to provide the path John was on from what was already known.

With the exception of how John might feel about such things he was, without anyone doubting it, becoming more girl than boy. It was also clear that trying to counter what was happening might not be medically sound or even feasible since it wasn't clear yet how those chemical mechanisms were actually working.

Problem was, as one doctor noted, changes were happening at the cellular level and everything that was happening was under instructions from John's own body. The consensus was leave John to become whatever it was he was becoming and in the meantime, keep that information and him quiet.

Ironically that meeting was in parallel to another just a few miles away in another building. That second meeting was being held at and by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Commission and while John's condition was of equal concern, almost, that wasn't their focus.

John was, at the very least, a publicity risk and very negative at best, and the issues were obvious if John-Q-Public came to believe that exposure to nuclear material might somehow turn men into women. There was no doubt that even a rumor of such a thing would put most men into a panic and kill whatever hope they had for atomic energy in the future.

Might not scare women all that much, someone noted with a chuckle, but the men in that room shuddered at the prospects, however ridiculous that might seem. What to do with John and the information surrounding him kept that meeting going till well into the next day.

The National Securities Act was finally cited, after an attorney for the justice department was called in. That attorney cited half a dozen passages within that Act that could be useful to their cause before the meeting broke up.

There was precedence for what was about to happen to John and what was about to happen was that John was going to be sequestered under legal authority as a potential national securities risk. Under that definition, they didn't need a writ of habeas corpus.

What kept those men in black suits at bay was simply John's good fortune that Dr. Prox and Helen were with John when they stepped into John's hospital room. The risk of public disclosure or exposure to what had happened to John was the only reason John was now under guard just hours after his warrant was issued and in protective custody.

There was another meeting held at the AERC with NSC attending.

Under the United States Secrecy Act, information pretraining to this case and disclosure of any information, now sequestered, once it was classified and it was now, would make it a federal offense were it disclosed. That meant that anyone doing so, did so at risk of federal indictment and prosecution.

That was at least one side of the conversation and while potentially threatening to most average people, Helen wasn't average. Helen cited her own notice of "intervention" as her own lawyer called it. She too had talked to an attorney with the ACLU.

Helen was a woman with balls one of the NSC agents noted with a snicker. This came after Helen gave them her own warning. There were forty seven packages of information on John, and what he was going through, sitting at forty seven separate locations. Most of those locations news agencies with "all" of the information.

Information, Helen noted, pulled together before it was or had been classified. Helen also noted that she had not been bound by that United States Secrecy Act when she mailed those out. Five of which, she also noted, were now outside of the U.S. and even it's formidable control.

There were also twelve people that Helen knew, she noted as well, who would call for the release of that information. That is if she or John did not physically appear to those same people within twenty four hours of this meeting. John was not about to be taken away to simply disappear, Helen warned.

It could be said within a few minutes of that conversation, that there was an impasse formed as both sides finished their posturing. Remarkably, it was Helen again that proposed a shift of balance, and to the surprise of those in the dark suits, that shift would be in the governments favor.

A slow calming fell over the room as Helen paused before talking again.

"Why not allow him simply to become the girl that he is becoming," She said in a matter of fact tone as she added, "that is clearly where this is heading."

It wasn't clear who spoke first urging her on, but it was clear that Helen now had their attention and enough time from that statement to note the rest. Helen had thought long and hard on this as she formed the words in her head first.

A transistioning transsexual, Helen noted, has a process clearly defined for how he or rather she, John, will ultimately emerge. That process covers both the physical, mental as well as the legal aspects of a transition and Helen noted that she would help handle John's awareness of this.

Moreover, once the government was satisfied, they could, under the United States Marshall's Service, provide both her and John the necessary identification changes to allow them out of this known and possibly hostile environment. Perhaps into another less known and obviously less hostile.

Helen was, of course, talking about the witness protection program or at least part of it. There were murmurs, nods and finally a consensus. A representative of the U.S. Marshall's Office was brought in and another meeting was held.

John, fortunately was recovering from his bout with an unknown flu type or so he was told by the CDC doctor. The guard, she noted, was simply to ensure there was no physical contact with anyone else till they were sure he was past infecting anyone else. They feared, she said, a possible pandemic.

Meanwhile, that Marshall they called in was both giving and taking information. The Witness Security Program was created by the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. It's original purpose meant for the protection of witnesses by way of relocation and new identification.

Fortunately, from the legal aspects it was already being administered by the United States Marshals Service as a division of the U.S. Department of Justice. It would be up to the United States Attorney General to make that final determination on behalf of John, but that was simply a technicality since it was the NSA that would be asking.

The real problem wasn't so much placing John and Helen under that protection act, but what to do with John when he was entered. He was male, going on female so the obvious choice would be to change his identity to female. Helen, of course, pushed for that as well.

Helen, as she sat there talking and listening, also realized with a startled awareness that she was in love. No one noticed that smile or if they did it's connection, but Helen felt the warmth spreading from inside as John's case and a solution was being mapped out.

Under the Marshals Service, John and his intended legal guardian, now Helen, would be relocated to a new city in a new state. The Marshal promised to bring back a list of those cities for Helen to review. It would be a small list because she wanted a college that included Lepidopterists in it's curriculum.

It was fortuitous as well that John's metamorphism would assist in this deception and, ironically, Helen's background would only add to it. Helen was orphaned at the age of seventeen when her parents were killed. There was no other family. Changing her history, slightly, and adding a sister would be easy.

The Marshal, attending, suggested she have a step sister ten years her junior and that would require changing only several databases. That would also put John, as Helen's step sister, at the tender age of seven when their parents died.

That would make John legally fourteen now to Helen's twenty five. Helen, would have a sister, but Helen wasn't thinking sister as she imagined John laying next to her in a new bed somewhere happily in a new home.

John would get a new name, identity and a solid history with enough authentic documentation to include a new Social Security card. Helen's identity would not need to change and her academic credentials would remain intact.

Housing and medical care, job training and employment would also be included if needed. There would be two levels or phases of funding with the first supporting John's transition and the second in support of their relocation till he and she were once again self-sufficient.

Unlike a true witness under the protection program, John would not have to break contact with his mother. His father, Helen mused, might be a different story. Helen knew that John's father was homophobic to a fault and already believed John gay. John's mother simply didn't care one way or the other.

Helen was wondering, to herself, what might happen were John simply to confirm his father's suspicions. It wasn't without a precedence she mused, since John was, in fact, more like a transsexual now. That would definitely have to be part of the discussions with John, she decided.

John was reaching the third day and his forth diaper of that day when Helen joined him wearing a surgical mask. John was still led to believe he was contagious, and while being diapered unnerved him, the fact that they were soiled at each change made it clear they were a necessary evil.

Helen also now knew John was wearing diapers and why, having calculated, with the CDC doctor's help, that John would have his 'period' for another two days at least.

"You don't need that mask," John said smiling. A mischievous smile Helen realized and with that realization she took a second to remove it.