Shipping Clerk Ch. 01

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Day One: Same Job, New Andy:

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Andy Grumman stepped out of the car at the curb, looked both ways, took in a deep breath, and sighed heavily as the car drove away. Work was his sanctuary, his safe zone, but it didn't feel that way today. He shrugged his backpack over the shoulder of his blue polo shirt with the Stotts Trucking logo on the front and headed in.

"Hopefully, no one will notice," he thought to himself.

Gary, the nightshift security guard, was at the front desk as usual. Most days, Andy enjoyed loitering in the sunny atrium chatting with Gary because he often had funny stories to tell, especially on a Monday morning. But today, he just nodded and smiled as he picked up the stack of truck manifests from Gary's inbox. Gary nodded and smiled back, then asked the question that Andy was dreading, "New hairdo? I like it."

"Umm, yeah, felt like time for a change," Andy replied, subconsciously stroking the strawberry blonde ponytail on his left shoulder. His noncommittal response completely dodged the fact that nobody grows 14 inches of hair over the weekend. Nor does their hair usually go from brown to strawberry blonde without a little help from a hair salon.

Gary watched him with a concerned expression as he quickly hustled away. A few minutes later, Marjorie Wilson came in the door. "Hey Marj, how was your weekend?" Gary asked cheerfully.

"Fine, Gary, how was yours?" she replied.

"Quiet and boring. Here in the security business, we like it that way," he replied, chuckling. The two of them had almost the exact same conversation every Monday for years and they both enjoyed the joke. Then Gary's demeanor suddenly turned serious, and he leaned forward, speaking in a quiet, concerned voice.

"Hey Marj, check on Andy for me, I think he may have had a bit of trouble over the weekend. You know that new virus going around, the shape-shifter virus? I think it got him. But he seemed a bit off about it, so I didn't ask questions. You're friends with him, though, so maybe you can check in on him?"

Marjorie nodded thoughtfully; concern etched on her face. Everyone knew that Andy needed a little help, but stubbornly refused all offers of assistance. He had worked at the company for part-time almost 5 years now, but he was usually out in the warehouse, so the women in Finance didn't really know him very well. To them, he had always been that pleasant, quiet boy who came into the business office to get paperwork from time to time.

After finishing his degree, he applied for a full-time job and worked in the shipping department under Marjorie. He was unaware of it, but the CEO had her eye on him and was considering assigning him greater responsibilities. Marjorie had been tasked with getting to know him and evaluating his suitability for promotion. So far, she was impressed with his knowledge and work ethic, but was concerned about his meek demeanor.

As she approached her cubicle in the Shipping Department, Marj could see Andy hunched over his desk sorting through the weekend truck manifests. The hair was definitely new. Marjorie knew that it was a very common side effect of the shape-shifter virus that was spreading rapidly. The S-virus, also known as the "shifter virus", was spread solely through sexual contact.

"Somebody had a hot weekend," she thought. The shifter virus gave some carriers the ability to change genders. The first shift was often accompanied by a dramatic change in certain physical traits.

When a shifter changed genders for the first time, their physical characteristics often adopted what they considered a more idealized form. Andy's ideal woman clearly had thick, shoulder-length hair. As a result, his hair had lengthened to match. It had also gone from a muddy brown color to strawberry blonde. Changes in hair color and texture were another common side effect.

Marj didn't say anything as she dropped her bags and settled into her cubicle across from Andy. She was thinking furiously. As far as she knew, people with the S-virus weren't able to shift genders unless they chose to do so and were comfortable in the form of the opposite sex. That's why only about one in eight carriers of the virus actually became "active shifters". So, Andy was clearly able to become a woman if he wanted to. But apparently, he didn't. It must mean that he was comfortable with being a woman, just not comfortable being seen as a woman. That had to be the answer!

"Hey, Andy, did you do something with your hair? Is that a wig? Why are you wearing a wig? Holy crap, you're a shifter aren't you? Hey, gals! Andy, tell us what happened, dish-dish! Was it at that concert you went to? What was she like, was she hot..."

While Marjorie was dithering about how to handle the situation carefully, events abruptly spiraled out of her control.

"Dammit!" Marjorie muttered, rising from her seat. "So much for sensitivity!

"All right, ladies, that's enough! Andy clearly doesn't want to talk about it." Marjorie said as she hustled three of her coworkers away from Andy's cubicle. Then she turned to check on him.

He had turned back toward his desk and was staring downward fixedly, his face burning bright.

Marjorie placed a motherly hand on his shoulder and leaned forward so she could speak quietly in his ear. "Whatever you do, sweetie, do NOT cut that beautiful hair. I think every woman in the department would cry ten thousand tears if that happened. When you're ready to talk, you let me know."

She gently pat-patted Andy on the shoulder and returned to her cube.

Andy reached back and pulled his new ponytail over his shoulder, stroking it softly. Andy would never, ever cut this hair. It was the exact hair his mother had when he was a child. She passed when he was 14. The final round of the 10-year X-virus pandemic had been brutal to certain demographic groups. Men over the age of fifty had been nearly eliminated. Just as importantly, the lingering genetic damage among the survivors had caused long-term health problems.

Most people were infertile. The minority of fertile women remaining were encouraged to have as many children as possible. Andy's mother did her best, but, in the end, it wasn't good enough. She had died while trying to save her 7th child. One day his pregnant mother had bussed him on the cheek as she ushered him out the door on his way to school. When he came home, the house was empty, the door was open, and it was cold inside. A trail of blood spots led from the kitchen to the back stoop. She never returned from the hospital. So no; Andy was never cutting this hair. It was his mother's hair, and he was keeping it forever!

Gradually, Andy's breathing returned to normal, and he realized that he was performing a panic-attack breathing exercise. Now conscious of what he was doing, he continued the exercise until he was calm. Then he picked up the small portrait of his 5-year-old daughter Abby, gave her a kiss, and went back to work. These manifests weren't going to sort themselves.

At first, he had been startled by all the attention. He wasn't used to that, and it had frightened him a little bit. He'd gotten accustomed to keeping his head down over his work and not drawing attention to himself, because he had a deeply-rooted belief that "attention is always bad." In his few weeks in the Shipping Department, he worked hard to avoid attention by accomplishing every task with a minimum of fuss.

About halfway through the morning, Marilyn Stotts, the tall, authoritative, and well-dressed CFO of Stotts Trucking, stopped by his cubicle.

"Andy, you are not in trouble... My office now," she told him before pivoting away on her only-God-knows-how-expensive stilettos.

Andy quickly jumped up and followed her to her office. The Carmel Corp manifests were all wrong, and he felt that he had finally gotten it right. He was sure that she needed to ask him about it. Carmel Corp was a major client, and Andy needed to keep them happy.

As he followed Ms. Stotts, he could feel and hear the curious glances and whispers coming from the women in his department. Other than Andy, the entire Finance Department was composed of women, most of whom were older, matronly women. In his mind, they were all authority figures because, well, that's how things are these days. Most positions of authority in Andy's life had been filled with older women because of the X-virus's effect on men. Not only had men suffered the highest mortality rates during the pandemic, but the surviving men generally died of old age in their early to mid-50's. Andy's predecessor, Dan Waterman, had retired a month prior to Andy moving into the shipping department. He passed away less than a month later. He was only 48 years old.

Once they were in her office, Marilyn asked Andy to close the door and take a seat. Andy took the request as a command and quickly complied. Clearly, the Carmel Corp paperwork was more important than he realized.

Marilyn looked at him speculatively for a few uncomfortable moments, then asked, "Andy, I'm told you are a shifter now. Judging by your hair, I assume it means that you have become an active shifter?"

Andy nodded silently. "Was this what she wanted to talk about?" he wondered. Then when he realized she was looking for a more detailed response, he offered, "Umm, yes, ma'am... Ms. Stotts, I became a shifter over the weekend."

He didn't continue with any details and Ms. Stotts doesn't press him about it. The shifter virus is exclusively spread via sexual contact. The longer and hotter the sexual experience, the more likely that there will be a solid transmission. That's why it's not transmittable through one-sided oral sex. It's also the reason why sex work rarely spreads the virus. So, it was clear that Andy had met someone at the concert Friday, and they had hot, steamy sex. Which, as his superior, meant that it was clearly none of her business. That didn't mean she wasn't interested. She would have to have someone less senior get him to spill the details. Maybe she could have Marjorie do it...

"Andy, the reason I asked you to come in here is to remind you that Stotts Trucking is fully committed to inclusiveness and acceptance of all genders, including your new gender as an active shifter. You are an active shifter, correct?"

Andy nodded. He wasn't sure what to say. He certainly wasn't going to be able to hide it! He really wanted to, but... well... it was futile. And he wasn't getting a haircut!

"And you shift to a female form at night when you sleep?"

Andy nodded again.

"And this morning, you shifted back to your male form before you came to work?"

Andy nodded again.

"After this meeting, please go to HR and inform them that your gender needs to be changed to "FS++". You will still need to go for a medical exam at the clinic in order to make it official, though. Do you know what "FS++" means?"

"Umm, yes, Ma'am, I did my research on it yesterday; it means that I'm an active shifter whose base form is female."

"Good, does that bother you? My understanding is that 90% of active shifters have female as their base form, so it's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Umm, no, Ma'am, I understand... umm, pretty much the same thing."

"Just for the record, Andy, I'm a carrier of the S-virus, too. Katheryn and I hired a consultant about a month ago. It was fun but, unfortunately, I only ended up with an inactive case. That means I can't shift at all, and my gender has now been changed to "FS". Speak to the HR manager about what it means for you if you have any questions, all right?"

"Yes, Ma'am!" Andy was pleased by how warm and accommodating Ms. Stotts was being. He had been really worried about acceptance this morning, but it seemed like everything was going to be all right!

"Good, good. Please understand, Andy, that we here at Stotts Trucking don't play games with right and wrong. If it's right, it's right, if it's wrong, it's wrong. It's right there on the wall," she said, gesturing at a plaque on the wall. "Father was like that, and so are we. Supporting a person changing genders is the right thing to do. That means that we support you personally, come hell or high water. Do you understand that?"

Andy nodded enthusiastically. This was turning out way better than expected! "Yes, Ma'am!"

"Good, because I'm tired of you declining Girls' Lunch Out. You've been here in Finance for three weeks now, and each and every Monday, you sit there at your workstation and eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of going out to lunch with us."

Andy cringed, and his face blanched a little bit.

"Now that takes a lot of work," thought Marilyn because Andy was already very pale-skinned. In fact, his skin color had lightened along with his hair and was now almost porcelain. She also thought that he must make a truly lovely girl when he was in his female form.

However... she was bit shocked at the intensity of his reaction. "Is there a reason why you don't want to go to Girls' Lunch Out with us?" she asked sharply.

Andy replied, "Umm, I may not have the budget for that?"

At this unexpected response, Marilyn's eyes narrowed. She leaned forward over her desk and her tone became even sharper. "Am I not paying you enough? My understanding is that we gave you a significant pay raise when we moved you from the warehouse to Shipping. Aren't both of your spouses highly paid professionals? Why do you not have fifteen dollars to buy lunch?"

"No, no," Andy replied, a bit panicky. "Everything is fine. The pay is more than generous, I'm just... I just... I have a budget, you see, and umm, I figured that since I'm a guy, you wouldn't want..."

Marilyn sat back in her chair, giving Andy a speculative look. He was lying to her. He was hiding something. That was annoying. Marilyn Stotts did not like secrets. "Never mind, I will cover your tab; you will attend Girls' Lunch Out with us. You should have been coming with us all along. We just call it Girls' Lunch Out because most of us are women. Danny used to come with us before he... became ill. Now that you're female, you have no excuses."

It was not a request, it was a command. In the modern world, due to the paucity of older men, most authority figures are women. Andy had grown up in a world in which the majority of the people controlling his life were mature women, and he had no intention of disobeying this one. Still, maybe he could get out of it?

"Well, I mean, right now, I'm male..." Andy began to dissemble...

"Yes, yes you are, but you shift back to female when you fall asleep, right?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"I know it's confusing, this proliferation of genders and pronouns, etc. Last I heard, we have 12 federally approved genders. But officially, under the government's new classification system, you are a female shifter. You are capable of assuming a male form, but nobody cares. It doesn't matter. At night, when you fall asleep, you assume a female form. Therefore, you are female. As far as I am concerned, you are now "one of the girls". More specifically, you are one of my girls, and your happiness and well-being are my responsibility. Do I make myself clear?" she asked him in a non-nonsense tone of voice.

Andy nodded vigorously. He didn't know why, but the words "one of the girls" hit him hard and gave him a little thrill. He had always envied the positive treatment that young, attractive girls received as a matter of course. Friendly smiles, open doors, and so on. It was especially pronounced regarding fertile women. People dropped everything to assist them.

On one occasion, Andy had even seen a man killed for elbowing a pregnant woman out of the way. Andy was waiting in line at a convenience store. A pregnant woman rushed in, grabbed something, and cut in line. A man knocked her aside angrily, striking her in the stomach with his elbow. The man in front of Andy hadn't even hesitated. It was a simple jab. Left fist, straight forward, no subtlety. But it was delivered with conviction and authority straight to the elbower's occipital lobe. Andy was pretty sure that the guy was still alive when he hit the floor, but that was a mere technicality. Or maybe it was the fact that his attacker dropped to his knees, straddling the prone man, and delivered three more to the side of his unconscious head. Then he simply stood up, calmly told the pregnant girl to stop screaming, and walked out the door to wait for the police.

Andy was profoundly shocked by the sudden violence. One minute, the man in front of him was an ordinary guy on his way to work. Then, in an instant, he became a killer. All it took to turn him savage was the sight of a pregnant woman being elbowed in the stomach. Andy wasn't sure what happened to the man after that, but he doubted that the guy was even punished.

Women were valuable. Fertile women were precious; they were protected. Andy was now - technically, if he chose to be, a fertile woman. He had no interest in this fate, but it was true.

Being a guy was more difficult in his opinion, due to the intense competitiveness of modern campus life. There was an elite layer of fertile males at the top of the social ladder. They rose to the top based on merit and personality, driven by the educational system's unrelenting focus on athletic and academic competition. Although Andy was also among the minority of fertile males, he would never be one of the top dogs. He just didn't have it in him. Not to mention that many families spent tens of thousands of dollars a year on tutors and sports training camps to give their boys an edge. The stakes were high, and the consequences of failure were... meh, mediocre. Andy was an orphan, a foster care kid, he was never going to receive this level of parental investment.

Part of it was stature. At 5'8", with a somewhat stocky build, Andy wasn't far from average for a man. But he didn't have the innate competitiveness and toughness of spirit that drove a guy to the top of the male social pyramid. Instead, Andy had always focused on being helpful and cooperative. He felt that was best. It was why he ended up studying logistics in college. People needed stuff, and Andy made sure they got it. Watching the inter-city land freighters roll out of the parking lot at the end of the day made him feel good about himself. People were getting their stuff, and Andy helped make it happen.

College had been a struggle for Andy. He wasn't an elite male, so he wasn't going to receive the kind of scholarships and other benefits showered on them. No, Andy had to struggle. He had to fight for it. He worked his way through college. It took him six years of working part-time here at the Stotts Trucking warehouse, but he made it. Freshly minted logistics degree in hand, he finally had the confidence to apply for an office job. Finally, his life was on track!

But when he got here, he realized that he had overlooked one thing... he had no breasts, he had no vagina. Almost everyone else here in the Finance Department was female. It was another fact of modern life. White collar jobs were primarily female. It had nothing to do with discrimination, of course. It was just a natural repercussion of the plague years. The X-virus's final round was particularly devastating to older men. The world lost over 85% of men over the age of 50. "The future is female, because there isn't anyone else left to lead", was even a political slogan at the time. So, Andy worked hard, struggled mightily, and... discovered that he wasn't quite the right fit.

Everyone was welcoming, everyone was kind, and everyone was supportive. Andy had eaten more fudge squares and cookies in his first week here than in his entire life. But Andy still felt out of place. So, he did what he always did. He retreated into himself, kept his head down, worked hard, and hoped for the best. It had worked before, and it would work again.