The Reset

"This is not a test. This is your Emergency Broadcast System announcing the Quadrennial Reset. Beginning at 22:00 Unified American Time, upper level cloud bursts will dispense Reset Gas. At the appointed time, sirens will sound. Shortly to follow, Reset capsules will be released causing a sound like thunder. Do not be alarmed. Remain calm, return to your homes, and take government issued precautions for your safety during the Reset. If you are opting out of this Quadrennial Reset, secure your gas mask, and do not leave the quarantine area. All citizens should remain in their homes for the duration of the Reset. Emergency services will be on priority calls until 06:00 Unified American Time. Praise be to the Unified America and Glory to the Eternal Generation."

The message repeated in Spanish. The same droning female voice repeated the whole thing over again after that. Carson shifted uncomfortably in the check out line. The man in front of him was buying an entire shopping cart full of bottled water, earning him some concerned look from the checkout girl. The man thanked her and scurried away, looking over his shoulder as if someone might follow. Carson put his basket of food on the belt and smiled. The girl mindlessly unloaded the basket and scanned each item. The announcement box hung right above her station. Carson wondered how many times she'd heard the warning in the past month. "Does that bother you?"

She followed his gesture up to the red box underneath the speaker. It was labeled extensively with warnings and government serial numbers. The girl shook her head, "It's startling, sometimes. They don't do it on a schedule. It's some kind of random timer. Are you getting reset?"

"Yeah, first time."

"Oh, well you're in for a ride." The woman finished scanning and rang up the total. As she pulled out the receipt, she wrote down her number. "In case you feel like trying out the new stuff and need a partner. I've reset three times."

Carson didn't know what to say. "Uh...thanks." He quickly gathered his shopping and headed out.

The past two weeks had been surreal. Of all the bizarre madness, the garage sales intrigued him the most. Entire communities organized massive sales and swaps more similar to music festivals than the lonely efforts at cleaning out an attic. Carson had not participated. He thought all of it was overblown and had no trouble voicing his opinion to anyone who would listen. Most people responded in the same patronizing manner that an adult would agree with a child's assertions of growing up to be a superhero. His next door neighbor, Emily, was the only person who had come to share his views. As he trudged up the third flight of stairs and emerged into the floor garden, he was pleased to find Emily sitting in the small area of sun reading a book.

She looked up as he approached, "Hiya. Cooling's out again."

"Ah, hell, this close to the Reset? Will they get it fixed in time?" Carson didn't like the idea of going through the night with no cooling.

"They've got the robots working on it," Emily answered, vaguely gesturing in the direction of the cooling units. "I think they can keep working even after the Reset starts. Did you get bananas? I've always heard you want a lot of bananas on hand."

Carson blushed slightly. He had not put any thought into what he was buying because he did not think of it as a special occasion. "No bananas. Regular ol' food packets. The guy in front of me bought like sixteen gallons of water."

"Oh yeah, they're talking about those guys on the news. Apparently it's not new. Every reset people think that the whole world is going to fall apart. As if they paid attention to any of those kinds of things any other day out of the four years."

"So you don't think the world is going to end?"

"It's the fifteenth Reset. I think we'll be fine." She watched him move to his apartment door and open it with the clattering of too many keys. "Do you have any plans for tonight?"

He tossed the bags inside his door and turned back to her, "Plans? No. Figured I'd take a sleeping pill."

"You're going to try to sleep through it?" She laughed. "They actively tell you not to do that. Like, they put it on signs and buttons and stuff. You wind up disoriented."

He was already sick of talking about the Reset. "Watch an old movie then. Something to keep my mind off it."

"Come on, Carson. I agree it shouldn't be turned into this overly commercialized holiday, but you can't pretend it's not happening."

Crossing his arms somewhat defiantly, he asked, "What about you? Do you have some big plans for the evening?"

"They're having a party down the hall. I've been told there will be hats and privacy curtains. Which is all I've ever wanted from a party." She smiled at him. "Anyone's invited. We could go together if you wanted."

Carson didn't know what to say. They'd lived beside one another for two years and become good friends, but never once had Emily shown the slightly inclination to go to a party with him. They often wound up at the same place or even gone out to the bars together, but never together. Carson had not fawned after her like a love sick teenager, but he had often fallen asleep wondering what it would be like to have her beside him. They'd spent many nights sitting in the floor garden talking, sometimes with others, but more often only the two of them. That she would invite him to go to a party on the night of the Reset bothered him more than it should. "Not sure...not sure I want to be around people. Most of the floor is on their second Reset, so they're kind of, I dunno, used to the idea. But look, I'll think about it."

He fumbled back through his door and closed it behind him. Immediately, the stale heat of a broken air system greeted him. He grabbed the shopping bags and went to his small kitchen. Outside of the sink window, he saw one of the small repair bots whirring around the cooling unit attached to the side of the building. The little bot chirped at him before displaying, "REMINDER: RESET BEINGS IN 8 HOURS."

***

"Welcome home, Carson." The apartment interface greeted him as he returned to the living room. "As a courtesy reminder, the Reset will commence in seven hours, forty one minutes. Notification from building interface: Cooling systems are currently inoperable. Repairs are under way. I hope you are having a pleasant day. How many I be of assistance?"

"News," he grumbled as he plopped down on the couch.

The video screen suddenly grew brilliant with light as the image coalesced. "...we look to the clock once again as another four years winds down. Later on, we're going to have some retrospectives from some of our own staff, but in the meantime we have Edgar Yates with us. Edgar is the head of the Third District Reset Protocols Board, and he's here to talk with us a little about the history of the reset. Hello, Edgar and welcome."

"A pleasure to be here, Tom," the man replied. Edgar had a quality Carson did not often see. Edgar was old. "We're looking forward to another successful Reset."

"I'm sure you're looking forward to it most of all."

Edgar chuckled slightly. His face looked sallow and weary. His body had the unhealthy paunch of a man overworked and overstressed. "I've enjoyed my time on the Board, but I am eager to see a successful Reset that I can take part in."

The anchor nodded politely and shifted his notes. "Alright then, well, it's been another four years. We have a brand new crop about to go through their first Reset. Many of them were born after the Resets began so why don't you remind us how it all got started."

"Right. The Reset process was developed by Martin Heinrich almost seventy years ago while doing research on reversing the aging process. For a long time his research worked around the idea of turning off or somehow neutralizing factors which promoted the destruction of DNA. Over time, he learned about more and more environmental factors producing a 'hard coding' effect, so to speak, in our DNA making cells reproduce a little worse each time. Some great minds made a lot of progress in those areas, but Heinrich stumbled across a different idea. He thought that if he could start the body over, like rebooting an interface, then all those other problems would go away. Heinrich developed serums capable of activating latent genes, which spun into more extreme work that could shut down your current expressed genes entirely and activate others in their place. Of course, we've all seen the monuments to the research Heinrich did, and we're very grateful for those sacrifices. Early on the process was very dangerous, but then a colleague of Heinrich's had a new thought. Ben Oliver came up with the idea behind the gender switch. If the body could be tricked into 'believing' it should be the opposite gender from an absolute basic level, then it would reconfigure almost every gene and thus reset the body's clock on aging."

Tom nodded throughout the rehearsed speech. He'd heard it a dozen times that day. "That sounds pretty simple, but I'm guessing it was a lot more complicated."

"Oh yes. We try to boil it down to something the lay person can grasp, but the chemistry that goes into all of this is some of the most advanced work humanity has done. And now we've started to refine it even further. Next Reset we're going to have "feature" pills where you can take a pill before Reset for a desired trait. So if someone wants to wind up with red hair, then they take a pill and the next morning they'll be a ginger."

"Fantastic, I know my partner, and I will be excited to try those out." He shifted his notes once again. "Now, what about the protests we've seen cropping up lately? Can you comment on any of that?"

"Sure, Tom. Our youngest generation going through the Reset this time is the first generation born after Resets began. We did have the upper end of that bell curve go through last time, but this is three full years worth of births who are now of age. Many of them have never even seen someone who looks like me, let alone what you and I saw before Resets began. I remember my grandmother lived until a hundred and thirty two, and she looked absolutely ghastly by the end. And that's something they don't understand, what real age looks like. They see me or the others who sit out a Reset or two and think we're ancient."

"Is that what drives a lot of these protests? Just a lack of understanding of what they're objecting to?"

"It's part of it, but there are many reasons. You have the conspiracy theorists, those are a small group. But look, we expect a lot from our younger generations. In four years, they're moved into society and fully integrated. Somewhere in that time, a Reset happens, and we change everything about them. First Reset is always troubling because they've become attached to what they look like in the mirror and don't appreciate the fluidity of human existence now. I want to remind everyone we have open counseling year round for first timers."

"Good stuff, and you should be seeing that information on your screen at the moment, localized to your dwelling area. Now, Edgar, one last thing I wanted to ask you about." The anchor reached under his desk and pulled out several masks. He displayed them across the desk. Each was of a different animal, designed to cover the top half of the face. "The sales of these items have skyrocketed as a movement has picked up around so called Masked Reset parties. Is this something people should be concerned about? Many of our viewers have seen these on people as threatening or as an attempt to organize some kind of violence during the Reset."

"Well, Tom, we've done a lot of research on this kind of stuff, and we've found that the masks can actually be helpful during the Reset. Having something to focus on that you can identify yourself by can offset some of the disphoric problems some people get during the reset. As far as the parties go, I think they're fine as long as everyone is being safe. Know where you're going, go with someone you know, and be sure to keep track of the time so you're not in a precarious position when the sirens start going off."

Carson stretched out on his couch. "Screen off." The room went dark. He was sick of thinking about it, sick of hearing about it, and especially sick of waiting. The heat in his apartment made his eyes heavy. He tried to think of anything else as he drifted off to sleep.

***

Carson woke to the sound of cheers and loud music coming from outside. He checked the time and grumbled. He'd slept most of the afternoon. The cooling had not been fixed yet, and his clothes stuck to him with sweat. Languidly getting to his feet, he told the Interface to turn on music and start the shower. The cold water refreshed and perked him up considerably. For a very brief moment, he forgot about the Reset entirely. The Interface reminded him, announcing the hour mark. Leaving the shower, he dried off and picked out some loose fitting clothing. As the minutes ticked by, he started to rely on the educational videos more and more. Tight, restricting clothing could be dangerous as the body changed.

"Someone is at the door," the Interface announced. "Face obscured. Displaying camera."

Carson looked at the screen projected onto his bathroom mirror. A rather alarming image of a woman in a bunny mask looked back. Carson pulled on a pair of gym shorts and went to answer the door.

"Hiya," Emily chirped from behind her mask. "I brought bananas!" She held up a small bag containing bananas, several bottles of water, and a spare fox mask. "Can I come in?"

Carson sputtered for a moment, but stood aside. Emily wore a bikini that did very little to hide her feminine features. "Um...why are..is there a pool somewhere?"

"What? Oh, no, I figured it was my last night with this body. Why not show it off? Is that what you're wearing? You look like you found everything in a big and tall discount bin."

Carson's cheeks reddened. "I wasn't actually planning on going anywhere."

If Emily was surprised or disappointed by this statement, she did nothing to show it. "Cool." She made her way to the kitchen and put down the bag of supplies, taking out the fox mask and handing it out to Carson. "Wear this. Supposed to help keep you from going crazy and forgetting who you are or something. Also, they kind of look neat don't you think? Like one of those old horror movies." She shoved it in his hand and didn't wait for him to respond. She walked back into the living room, letting her ass sway for him. He'd lusted after her many times, but never seen her so scantily dressed. "I hear the cooling should be on any minute. They've been saying that for hours so it must be getting pretty close now."

"Emily, I don't want to be rude, but I was kind of planning on doing this myself," Carson blurted out. With each minute ticking by, his anxiety grew.

"That's not going to happen. I've already skipped a big party for you, so I'm not going anywhere."

"Skipped it for me? Why?"

"Cause you're so dumb. I've been waiting a full year for you to ask me out. Just, 'Hey Em, let's go have a drink,' and then I could have taken it from there, but nooooo. You kept on being your moody self, obsessed with the Reset and never paying attention to the woman fawning over you day in and day out. I mean, breaking that cooling system was hard, and there's apparently been a run on bananas."

"You broke the cooling system?"

She grinned sheepishly. "Maybe? I wanted to be sure I'd see you today. Usually when it goes out, you hang out in the garden for the fresh air."

"Emily, I had no idea."

"Of course you didn't, stupid."

Carson didn't want to confess he'd fantasized about her for months, but felt he needed to express it somehow. "I've often thought about you...that way. I never thought you were interested."

"I guess we're both really bad at social cues. So I've decided to be more direct. Took a lot of courage to come over here dressed like this you know. I mean, my tits are falling out, but I figured hell, if he doesn't notice them now, it won't matter in a few hours anyway."

He sat down on the couch beside her. "I feel like I should say I'm sorry."

"Oh, fuck it."

Emily leaned in and kissed him. He was shocked, but overwhelmed by her warmth. Her soft lips pushed against his, and she smelled of fresh berries. His hands naturally went to her hips as she climbed on top of him, their kisses growing more passionate. Carson's cock swelled, very poorly hidden underneath the loose shorts, but he didn't care. His hands moved down to grope Emily's round bottom, digging his fingers into the pliable flesh with long awaited relief. She gave herself to him to easily after being frustratingly apart for so long. His mind fixated on bitterness of it. How much time had they wasted being overly polite while hiding their feelings? How many nights could she have actually been in his bed, his arms wrapped around her? She untied the bikini top and let her breasts fall into view. He groaned as his hand moved up her side to feel her breast. Carson couldn't believe his luck. He'd been going out of his mind with anxiety about the Reset and now his neighbor was straddling him while topless and wearing a bunny mask. He reached up to remove it, but she stopped him.

The first siren interrupted them, a warning signaling fifteen minutes before the start of the Reset. He'd lost track of time. Emily smiled. "Guess we better hurry if you want to have sex with this body." She grabbed the other mask and handed it to him. "Put this on."

He followed her instructions, putting the fox mask on his head. It pinched slightly, but otherwise fit surprisingly well. While he did that, Emily went to her knees between his legs and pulled down his shorts. His cock bobbed out, jutting up stiff and erect as her cool breath grazed the inside of his thigh. She took him in her hand, wrapping her fingers around his shaft with slow deliberateness. She tugged gently as she lowered her head closer. It all seemed surreal, as if he were still dreaming. The lower half of her face was obscured, leaving only the masked part with her beautiful eyes looking up at him as she opened her lips and slipped his cock in her mouth. Warmth enveloped him, making his lower half squirm involuntarily. Her tongue circled his cock head, teasing the ridge and driving him wild with pleasure. He couldn't wait much longer.

His hands went to her shoulders and pulled her up. As she moved, she deftly shed the bottom of her bikini while Carson pulled away the rest of his clothes. He caught a glimpse of her bare pussy just before she sat on his thighs, pushing his cock up against her flat stomach. She smiled and leaned forward to kiss him, the two masks making the grating sound of plastic crunching against itself. She could feel his heartbeat pounding not only in his chest, but throbbing in his manhood as it pressed insistently against her stomach. As she moved, she felt not only the wet trail of her own saliva, but the sticky residue of precum. Carson's hands went back to her bare ass, squeezing the soft tissue with utter satisfaction. He pushed up, raising her hips so his dick could move down. She felt the head of his cock slide along her wet lips, and she shuddered slightly in his grip.

A second siren, two short bursts, filled the air. The music and talking outside grew louder as the excitement built, but Carson barely noticed. Emily consumed his entire world. She quickly positioned his cock at the right angle and let him lower her slowly onto his length. She gasped as he pushed her apart, and he moaned as the warm, wet passage enveloped him. His mouth lowered to her breasts, leaving a trail of kisses until his tongue found her nipple and swirled around it. Her hand clutched at the back of his head as she started rocking her hips forward. They kissed again, letting their hands roam over each other's body, admiring each nook and crevice as they fucked. She felt him throbbing more and more intensely inside of her. She moved faster in response. His hands stopped moving around and grabbed her hips forcefully. He tried to slow her, but she was chasing her own pleasure. His cock throbbed one last time, and he cried out as cum erupted from the tip, spraying deep inside her. Carson's sudden orgasm threw her over the edge. Her body ground against him as she convulsed in pleasure. Rope after rope of cum spewed into her, each time making her quiver anew.