Butterflies

John's skin glistened and looked so smooth to the touch, and would have been, were Helen bold enough to do so. She would die for that sort of skin, she mused. She would have loved to touch it, as well, but she didn't dare. John was, after all, a male and a student. For Helen those were two very large taboos. Taboo first because of their individual status, the other because of Helen's gender preferences in partners.

John had his own thoughts in that same distance and time. More between the forest and school and some of it over those panties he wore. Of course they were not really panties if you ignored his father's opinions on such things. They were Hannes "His Way" and while they might look like panties, and were silky nylon, the company clearly said they were for men.

Which, according to his father, didn't make it so. Besides, his father had said in that knowing tone, Hannes only made panties for women as far as he was concerned. Which all came out one morning when John walked from the shower back to his room during a visit. His mother understood what they were, but his father - never! Men's underpants do not glisten nor shine, nor shimmer, he said flatly.

That had been his old girlfriend's comments the day she bought those panties for him. Girls nowadays were wearing cotton underwear and boys, some boys, nylon. She smiled over that and before long, thanks to that girl's gift and a light touch of encouragement, John was also smiling over that.

He had only worn those panties dating her before then, and only then because when he did so she rewarded him in such glorious and sensuous ways. She loved the feel of nylon on him, and because he was wearing them when she noted that, so did he. Hannes, he had joked, was "Her Way" and when she had "Her Way" those panties had easily become "His Way".

His father, on the other hand, made it clear that anything that didn't have ugly slits in the front were panties. Slits were there for a guy to reach into before doing his duty. If you had to pull your pants down to do that duty then they were panties. "Guys only pull their underpants down to sit and do their other duty!" His father had said.

Although, in an odd irony, John's father had made it very clear that it might be ok for John to wear such things. Even OK to sit for all of his duties, since he was skipping about catching butterflies. Guys that catch butterflies are most often those same guys that don't mind pulling their pants down to do their duty. Or so his father also said.

John remembered those comments as he searched his underwear drawer. His own shorts, those cotton ones, were suddenly feeling far too harsh that morning when he set them in place. He bought cheap soap for his laundry and blamed that harshness on the soap. He also blamed the pain in his joints on the flu. He wore the white silky nylon Hannes "His Way" when he slipped into his jeans.

By that afternoon John felt lousy, and headed for the school's nursing office.

A fever of 101 was high but not extreme, the nurse said, as she too wrote down the flu on John's chart. She also confirmed his age again wondering over his nearly pre-pubescence body from his neck down. She too thought he was slightly too pretty for a boy, and most likely a late bloomer besides, as she handed John a "what to do when you've got the flu" sheet of paper fresh off the printer.

John was already doing what was written, he decided, as he paid his five dollars co-pay, and tossed the instruction sheet into the trash outside. That morning was the worse of it anyway as he woke to a damp bed sheet. A very gross very damp bed sheet, he thought to himself. He noted, only casually, what looked like fine grained sand and those few remaining hairs he'd shed during the night.

What was forming, in a biological sense, was a type of chrysalis, or at least, as close as a human might come to making a chrysalis. John's body, in fact, was attempting to emulate a butterfly each night and each morning, since John was human, was shedding that covering off.

John was actually losing skin cells bathed in a kind of salt that was being fluffed off from John's own epidermal. Those upper epidermal cells were being joined by way of a silky like mucus before hardening and once John's body was protected it began altering itself or trying to.

John was also attempting to do what was only done in the first twelve weeks of gestation for a human fetus. He was doing what babies do in a mother's womb, as his body attempted to answer a signal it wasn't suppose to be getting any longer or ever for that matter. A metamorphosis of a sort and most of the reasons his body ached in places that had hinted at the flu.

We are conceived without a sex or, put another way, with all of the material for both sexes or either sex if you prefer. We evolve first with all of the material to make us female or male, and without that signal from our chromosomes or, more specifically, that "Y" that gets attached to the male's, we will simply continue on as females.

Before that signal the genital systems are identical or defined another way - neutral. With that chemical signal given changes begin and testicles form. From those testicles comes the stuff that men are truly made of. The rest is simply our bodies answering all of those instructions that make us into what we will ultimately become.

Occasionally those signals get mixed and, in this case, John's were mixing again under a new design driven by a new mandate.

If John was still that early fetus there would still be gonads which can become ovaries, cervix and fallopian tubes or, as in his case, testicles. Were he still a fetus that phallus could become either a clitoris or penis and those genital folds either a labia or scrotum. Since John had that "Y" chromosome he'd made the transition to male by his third month in his mother's womb. When his testicles formed they in turn completed that masculine process.

Since John was to be born male those gonads developed into testicles and those testicles began producing the male hormone testosterone. That testosterone led to the development of his penis, scrotum and the internal tubular system that would later carry his sperm.

Another hormone, also produced by the testicles acted as an inhabiter and called the anti-mullerian hormone or AMH. AMH inhibits the development of a uterus and vagina. That inhabiter had all but disappeared by now with John's body under new instructions.

What was happening now, and because John's body was trying to metamorphose his body from male to female he was going to be something for science to consider. John's body was attempting to reverse most everything that John had been through as a fetus and nearly over that same 'relatively short' amount of time. A nearly impossible task given the circumstances, but it didn't lesson the effort his body gave. Mass was moving, shifting, changing and that redistribution of fatty tissue and muscle cells was rapid and constant.

It was constant and becoming relentless, in those first few days. So too even John's hair. His hair, the hair on his head, once growing at one sixteenth of an inch per day, was now nearly a half inch in twenty four hours, and he only noticed that because his hand went further along the pony tail he wore before the rubber band was added on to hold it together.

His body hair had also changed as well. He thought it was growing lighter as it did in the Summer which was coming closer. John noticed that on the forth day. Although, as he thought more about it, he remembered it wasn't quite Summer yet.

An alarm went off then and what to do about it was on his mind as he walked to class. You simply don't lose that much body hair unless something is wrong, although it didn't seem like that much hair when he finally did notice.

Which wasn't all of what was causing his alarm. His pants hanging slightly more lose at the waist and his belt at it's first hole as well but now more snug at his hips. Not much more snug, but noticeable given it was his own body in his own favorite jeans that no longer felt like his favorite.

He forced himself to eat a bit more and was drinking constantly given what he perceived as his "illness". Thinking he had the flu was the only reason he didn't run back to the nurse in a full panic.

He also noticed, but only in passing and just for a second, that his elbows now struck his sides more as he walked. That was odd since they hadn't before. In John's case it was those tendons and muscles causing that. It wasn't simply fatty or muscle tissue changing, but tendons as well, and from behind more than a few guys at school noticed.

Some muscles were tightening, some growing more loose. Just a slight tightening of his tendons on one side and a bit loser on the other was all that it took to draw his elbows in. A purposeful design in women so that arms hanging at the sides did so properly. Properly over jutting hips if you were a girl that is. In this case his hips began to enlarge and for the same reason as a girl's in spite of John's gender.

It would have also seemed odd for the two young men walking behind John who admired the girl they thought they were admiring as they did so. They looked, but with that casualness almost all males share in recognizing someone of the opposite sex. Their thoughts would have been far different had they known who they were watching walking before them.

More fatty tissue had formed around John's thighs, both inside and out, and his bottom was shifting slightly from his waist at the back. Fatty tissue, designed to cushion a woman's bottom, was now being added to cushion John's bottom as well.

That was what the guys had noticed first. Not much as it happens, but his pants fit slightly differently as did those so called men's panties he now wore again. They had gathered on those thighs sooner than before or so it seemed.

John's lips, as well, had also gathered a few more fatty cells and puckered a tiny bit more that day. All of this relatively small as changes go. Nothing dramatic and not noticed when John faced the mirror, but, again, it was constant. Slowly, and unfortunately ceaseless. Ceaseless but slowly.

So slowly that those individual changes didn't show individually, but taken together as a whole, there were enough changes to show overall. Finally John's pores had tightened, smoothing his body and face and to a casual observer it was decidedly becoming a girl's face.

That was what Helen noted as she greeted him and the rest of his class in Biology that morning. John was looking very female or so she mused, and why that was so wasn't clear, but she liked that look. She liked those lips as well and wished, to herself, that he wore something kissable. Something with a bit more shimmer and perhaps a little color in it. Helen shook her head to clear it because she wanted desperately to kiss those lips as she began her days lesson.

There were those, according to a dear friend of Helen's, who found being bi-sexual an advantage. Until that morning Helen hadn't. Although that thought stayed with Helen for most of that morning. She had never thought of being with a male till now, although not fully male, she mused.

John would look so lovely in something Summery, silky and flowing, she also mused, as she sat behind her desk. She fought to concentrate on her lesson while she in turn moved her knees together slowly.

It hadn't gone well, that class, because Helen wasn't thinking of that class as she sat in her office correcting papers before calling it a day and that was when her day changed. Helen got the call from her own mentor, Dr. Patter, that evening. An emergency he'd said and it related to that butterfly she had given him to study. Helen was alarmed when he told her why, and John too, soon after that call from Helen.

John was greeted by two men in white environmental suits after he realized he wasn't dreaming over that banging on his door. That butterfly Helen had mounted was now in a container marked "nuclear material" as was that small oak case she used. At John's room they carried yellow suitcases in, and there were clicks from the Geiger counter as they began their work. Helen stood there with an understanding look at John's confusion.

"John, what were you wearing on the day you found those butterflies?" Helen asked from the door and from behind a paper mask behind the two men in those suits.

John told her, then the men in the white suits, before actually showing them. Fortunately and with the exception of one minor spike from the collar of his shirt, everything was within "high" norms. His shirt went with those two men in a thick plastic bag marked with the nuclear hazards logo and the panic ended as quickly as it began.

John's panic ended, but his fear was still there. Although his fear changed from shock to surprise after finding out that the butterfly they'd found, and the one he most likely touched, was radioactive. It wasn't much, but enough to alert the authorities who took an interest in such things. Wind patterns were discussed out of ear shot, and checked, and a source for that radiation guessed at within hours.

John was requested, at CDC's expense and the schools permission, to undergo test. As a routine, they had taken a blood test. Nothing serious or heavy duty, and simply a precaution to which John quickly agreed. If John had taken on some of that radiation it was more than likely equal to a normal X-Ray, nothing more, they said. There was no reason to be alarmed they also said.

As it happens it wasn't even that much of a level, radiation wise, and John, after being poked, prodded and scanned was released. John was released after those few tests, and the butterfly in question was now seven hundred feet below the desert. As were those others those Geiger counters found within minutes after Helen showed them where the first had been laying.

John also met Dr. Prox as he was dressing at the end of his test. She was with the Center For Disease Control or CDC and an expert in radiation poisoning and while everything appeared normal, Dr. Prox wanted to be absolutely sure. She hadn't liked the notion of John's so called "flu".

Dr. Prox wanted to do a full and more complete physical that following day. John agreed again, and instantly, since his flu like symptoms hinted at something other than the flu. Radiation, John knew, caused the body to shed hair. Why Dr. Prox wanted to know if he was on any sort of hormone treatment wasn't clear. That came when she read his new blood test, but it was suggestive, and he worried over that for most of his dreams that night.

John had left, albeit with some difficulty, a sperm sample. Only it wasn't sperm in his dreams because he was a girl this time. He was a girl, he dreamed, and rather than chasing butterflies he was simply running in a field full of them.

John was in a yellow Summer dress of see through chiffon over a light nylon lining of white and his father was hollering, off in the distance, that those panties he was wearing were really girl's panties. Helen was running alongside telling him to ignore his father and that he looked good in her clothes. All that he needed, Helen said between breaths in that dream, was a bra if he was going to run around in something so pretty.

John woke with mixed emotions that morning and concern as he padded his way to his shower. His breast did hurt slightly he noted stepping under the warm water which, he mused, was the cause of such an odd dream. His shower hinted at why he'd dreamed of a bra, as he ran his soapy hands down his chest. He slowed at the nipples and stopped when the little mounds ended.

Aside from the fact his chest was smooth and hairless there were now two nearly perfect little breast. Not breast per se but buds that hinted at breast. Dr. Prox's comments about hormones came back to him as he stood sideways in front of his mirror. That question of hers suggested that Dr. Prox also knew something. He was now guessing at that same thing.

His breast, and they were breast, were perhaps half a "B" cup if that, but still more than you'd see on a guy or him just a week ago, and that brought focus to his hips and thighs. His shape reminded him of a girl not far from puberty and that unnerved him. Not fully a girl's shape yet, but definitely not that of a boy's either. Oddly enough it didn't scare him as much as he'd thought it might, and wondered over that as he thought it. He only dressed then because he was running out of time and again wore the panties and this time for the sake of wearing panties. He wore his tee-shirt and jeans again, but they were decidedly more feminine than before, as his jeans flowed outward below a narrow waist to fill over his hips. There was a hint of breast that were now just pushing at the cotton of his tee.

Some guys like girls that don't look all that much like girls, or put another way, some guys like guys that don't look much like guys either. The guy in the guard's uniform, that guard that held the CDC door open for John, smiled as he did so. He smiled then and continued smiling all the while watching that young thing moving across the floor. For this man it wouldn't have mattered either way which gender John was.

The test took eleven hours and the questions were endless as John wondered through the mysteries of medical science and his history. Oddly enough the technician, in the far reaches of that same building, reading the results of his second blood test with the doctor, could find nothing out of the ordinary and she noted that right off.

That last comment, the one right after that, was what made the doctor laugh so hard.

That technician, by the way, hadn't met nor seen John as she stood with the doctor. She had simply run some normal test on some normal blood. John, she said, and that was an odd name for a girl, was extremely healthy for a young female. She also guessed, based on her readings, that the girl, given the level and mix of hormones, was near the age of ten or so.

That comment, for obvious reason, made Dr. Prox frown and smile, then laugh within seconds of that remark. It was those chemical traces, as spikes on his blood gases, that interested her.

More so when she got a call from one of CDC's entomologist who was doing skin sample studies of John. They'd been taking skin samples, scrapings, every hour on the hour on John and there was an anomaly with those earlier samples.

"It appears to be human skin but it's formed a kind of structure not too unlike a chrysalis," That technician noted. It was the combinations of comments that caused Dr. Prox to call her boss and it was her boss that brought up the file under John's name.

That man, a long time employee of the CDC, read John's file. Alarms, in his own brain, were going off as he did so. There was too many little things that all led to something bigger, he mused before typing again. A series of passwords were entered and a code was given. That code changed things instantly. It changed things throughout all of the CDC computer systems, and John's file became "Classified, Secret, Level 1, Eyes Only".

Questions arose for that entire day. It would be the same following that battery of psychological test. Those test were conducted by three different doctors. One at first, who then called in the other two. The second two had not met nor seen John either which was also on purpose. However, according to all three, John's thought processes were definitely female and, in fact, more so even than most females.

It wasn't simply his thoughts that were changing as the small biopsy needle was pulled carefully from a stainless steel casing that was used to tap into John's spine. John's brain chemistry, they discovered, was not male even slightly. Scans also confirmed that.