Viral

Mike bounced his legs nervously. He hated waiting, especially in a doctor's office. Not only because of the threat of some grave diagnosis hastily scrawled on a chart lurking on the other side of the door, but also because of the room itself. Examination rooms were not designed for social sitting. Chairs were shoved into corners in favor of the exam table, but even it was off center to provide the doctor room to move around. The room operated on the axis of a moving individual with tools and cabinets positioned to accommodate efficiency rather than aesthetic. The result was a space where no person could be comfortable even if it weren't about their health.

Through the crack at the bottom of the door, Mike could see the shadows of people moving up and down the corridor. More than once, someone lingered in front of his door causing him to stop moving and hold his breath, only to continue on down the hall and give him a short reprieve of relief that was immediately replaced by more dread. Should it take this long? If it were something simple, they would just move me out quickly to get someone else in here and leave them waiting. The doctor is probably busy and behind schedule. How do you schedule any of this out at all? Thirty minutes per appointment, maybe, but what if someone takes thirty five or what if someone shows up ten minutes late or what about the walk ins. This place must be a nightmare to organize.

The door clicked, and his doctor stepped in. Mike awkwardly rose halfway out of his chair before being waved at to sit down. Doctor Ross grabbed a wheeled stool and slid it over to the cabinet a few inches from Mike. While he the intent was to create a calm bedside manner, Mike did not enjoy the feeling of being trapped between the doctor and the wall behind him. Nor did he enjoy being that close to an ostensible stranger. Ross dropped a chart on the counter beside him and flipped it open. Despite his anxieties, Mike quite liked his doctor and appreciated the man's frankness, but he often wondered how anyone could work in medicine for so long without going mad. Ross's hair had turned steely grey in his late forties, and the dark circles under his eyes never left. On previous visits, Ross had come back into the room with a cheerful smile and quick conversation. He'd never once before sat down. Usually, he would lean against the door, have a quick conversation about blood pressure or exercise, and send Mike off with a handshake. Mike knew from the other man's slumped shoulders and furrowed brow that this was not a usual visit.

"Alright, Mike, we've gotten your blood work done. Sorry you had to wait, but we had to run an extra confirmation basically," Ross turned away from the chart and squared himself across from Mike. "I have some news. It will be upsetting be upsetting to hear. You've tested positive for Neru-Bach. Do you know what that is?"

Mike's mouth went dry. A ringing started in his ears. He nodded his head. "Yes."

"Ok," Ross said quietly. "First thing we need to cover is that at your age and fitness, we have no reason to believe that you'll be in any danger. If you would prefer, we can admit you and monitor you over night. Based on your current health, we don't think that would be a real necessity. And usually, people want to do this in private in their own home, that kind of thing. We offer counseling as well. We have a trained psychiatrist who specializes in cases of Neru-Bach. We'll give you her information, and I highly suggest you speak with her. There's also —"

"When?" Mike asked. His eyes were wide, and his face had drained of color. His hands clutched his knees, trying to rub away the sweaty, greasy feeling on his palms. "When will it happen?"

"Ah, yes." The doctor glanced at the chart while letting out a long sigh. "You've started exhibiting the early signs, those feelings of low fever and fatigue that brought you to see us. If we ignored it, the process could take anywhere from two to six weeks, but that's not how we treat this. Waiting for it to happen naturally puts a strain on your nervous system and circulatory system. Instead, we provide you with a medication that hastens the process and basically get it done and over with. This medication has a window, after which it's no longer effective. We're working on your time table at the moment, that takes an extra test they're running right now, but you're not going to have long. Tonight or tomorrow night at the latest."

Mike spoke slowly, "So, I take a pill and go to sleep tonight. Tomorrow morning, I wake up a woman. And I just go about my day, like normal?" The hostility in his voice was poorly masked.

Ross sighed again and took off his glasses. "You know what, Mike, you've been my patient since you were eighteen. We have rules that tell us what we're supposed to say during this, but fuck it. This sucks. It is an unavoidable challenge to your entire sense of self. We've had patients just lose it before their change. I don't blame them when they do. Everybody copes differently. The fact that this thing even exists is insane. Some guy in a lab is poking around with RNA strand coding and thirty years later we can have our entire identities Etch-a-sketched overnight. If you want to rage and go on a bender and burn your life down, I think that's a perfectly rational response. I'm supposed to coddle you and offer all these support services, half of which don't have a fucking clue what you're gonna experience. Our whole goddamn society has reorganized around the possibility that at some random point in time a man might grow tits, and I'm supposed to sell that to you as par for the course. So yeah, it sucks."

Mike tried to smile, but his lips merely twitched. "I think I preferred the coddling, actually."

Ross laughed. "That's just the first part. It's strange to think about, but the hard part is getting you through it. That's the real job of the medical profession, to get you to the other side because on the other side, you're a normal, functioning member of society. The mind is remarkably resilient. Yours will be completely rewritten, and you'll come out the other side a woman. I know it's shit to hear at the moment, but this diseases gives plenty for what it takes. Neru-Bach resets your biological clock back to that of nineteen year old. Psyche evaluations of Neru-Bach patients six months post diagnosis show individuals who have never been happier. The earliest cases have been studied their entire lives, and many of them are still living. Survivors retain youth for longer, a sense of purpose and well-being for longer, and a satisfaction with life longer. As bad as you might feel going into tonight, you rise up tomorrow with something the rest of us will never feel."

"Are you telling me to look on the bright side?"

"Do you know anything about Neru and Bach? Brilliant men who never quite got it right. They were trying to reverse aging. Or, at least reverse the cellular damage caused by time. They succeeded, but not how they wanted. You get to redo the last fifteen years, and who wouldn't want that."

Mike could feel the panic building in his chest, "Anyone who wanted to stay the same."

***

The pills rattled in the cheap plastic bag as he stepped into his apartment. They'd given him several prescriptions with an unending list of "if you feel this then take that" but the problem was that he felt nothing. From the moment he'd heard the diagnosis, numbness began to creep over him. He was waiting for something to shock him out of it. The looks from the nurse as he left the hospital didn't bother him. The nervous glance from the pharmacist followed by a string of unwanted advice about medication bounced off of him. He thought of calling his relatives and warning them or at least notifying them, but he didn't know what he would say.

"Hey, Mike, are you alright?"

"Oh god, Peter, I forgot about you," Mike said to his roommate. The two had not been living together all that long. Peter was an old friend from college who was in the process of moving to the city, but awaiting a house renovation and staying in Mike's spare bedroom for the interim seven weeks.

"I'm often forgettable," Peter said as he walked over to the kitchen. "Did you not go to work today?"

Mike's gaze fixed on the three red dots on Peter's inner arm. The Neru-Bach virus didn't always result in a transformation. In cases where the virus was resisted, a distinctive pattern of dots appeared on either or both forearms. Some people thought of them as badges of honor or testaments to a man's virility. Mike had learned earlier that day that they were simply a type of scar. "No, I took a sick day. What about you? Not one of your days in the office?"

Peter dropped an empty bowl in the sink. "Not physically, anyway. I've been in conference calls all morning. I will say they're not so bad when you're in pajamas. So, do you have a cold or something?" Mike found himself looking at Peter in a way he'd never thought he would. Mike tried to decide if he would soon find Peter attractive. Peter, unlike Mike, was rakishly handsome and still as fit as he had been in college. Mike had no doubts of these objective facts. With a close cut beard, shaggy, brown hair usually styled into a wave pattern, and a decent sense of dress, Peter was the epitome of the handsome young bachelor. Mike had never envied those qualities or begrudged his friend for having them, but he'd also never bothered to think much about them. After the mornings news, he seemed unable to ignore that Peter looked better in an old grey t-shirt and pajama bottoms than Mike had ever looked in his life. Peter smiled awkwardly, "Mike? The fuck are you looking at me like that for?"

Mike blinked, his stupor passing, "I'm a little out of it."

"Did they dope you up?"

"No, they diagnosed me with Neru-Bach." Mike felt a great pressure leave his chest for a moment. It felt nice to tell someone after walking around in a dark cloud for hours. He saw the smile fading from Peter's face, and the weight returned.

"Holy shit, like...a positive?"

Mike felt his throat drying again. He wet his lips before he spoke, "Yeah, they gave me some stuff for tonight. Tonight is when...it's when it happens." The two men both moved their gaze to a spot on the floor between them and stared at it silently for a whole minute. "I'm sorry about this. I'm sure this isn't something you wanted going on while you were staying."

"What? Come on, man —" Peter hung briefly on the word, "Don't be ridiculous. Shit, I can just get a hotel room if you would like me to go. I know how fucked up your head is right now."

"Do you?" Mike responded harshly.

Peter nodded. "I tested at eighteen. They didn't have the differential test back then. We didn't know if I'd change or not until I didn't. So I went through this part at least. It fucking sucked. If there's anything I can do, just let me know."

"Like what?"

The question surprised Peter. "I don't know. Like, if you need something to...eat? I'm not exactly sure what happens."

"Me either," Mike replied quietly. "They gave me some sleeping pills. I think I take those and wake up tomorrow...different." They went back to staring at the same spot again. "Anyway, I think I'm gonna go zone out. Try not to think about it. Maybe play video games all day or something. Who knows if I'll even like them tomorrow."

"That doesn't happen," Peter corrected him. "To be honest, when I was diagnosed, I kind of obsessed about it for years. Wasn't until year three of college that I really let it go. I was paranoid that it was just in remission or something and I might wake up one day without my dick...er, sorry. But, I learned all about how it affects you, and you don't change your interests or anything like that. You sometimes swap sexual preference, but that's only like fifty fifty. Temperament changes a little, but mostly it's just anatomical and chemical."

Mike nodded. Each time someone blurted out a fact about what was happening to him, his mind ground to a halt. "Good to know. I'll see you later, I guess." Without another word, he grabbed the sack of medication and went to his room.

***

Mike took a deep breath as he leaned against his closed bedroom door. He kicked off his shoes and undressed. Looking in his closet, he didn't know what he should wear. Not once before had he needed to consider what was appropriate attire for his own house. He grabbed the loosest clothes he could find and went over to his desk. His room, much like the rest of the apartment, was spartan in nature. For a guy in his thirties, he still lived remarkably like one in his twenties. He kept his clothes on racks in the closet and had no need otherwise for a dresser. The majority of the room's space was devoted to the king sized bed, a purchase he'd splurged on when he moved in to the already excessively priced apartment. A slim table held a computer and several unkempt stacks of papers. The computer's monitor stood up prominently from the desk and above that, mounted to the wall, was a large television screen. Mike had laid out the room as his private, minimalist sanctum. The walls were painted grey and blue and he'd redone the floors with a dark cherry wood so that the entire room was calm and soothing.

He dropped into the leather chair and turned his attention to his keyboard. His fingers flew over the keys rapidly as the screen in front of him and the two smaller ones to either side displayed window after window. He started with the name "Neru-Bach" and expanded out from there. He read and read until his eyes watered. When he was at the end of a thread on an obscure community support site, he finally stopped. His head ached either from strain or from the virus itself. With a few keystrokes, the windows of information all disappeared. He sighed and leaned back in his chair. The sound of the guest shower turning on caught his attention. Perhaps Peter was going out for a while. Mike didn't know if the solitude would be welcome or not. He decided to go back to the original plan. Working quickly, he turned on the television, and it started playing old cartoons. His computer whirred and familiar opening tones of a Civilization game emanated from his speakers. He fired up the game and was soon lost in a pleasant absence of thought.

A few hours ticked by until Mike finally got hungry. He turned off his game and went to the kitchen to get something to eat. On the kitchen counter, he found a note from Peter, "Gone out for a bit. Call if you need something." Mike didn't like to be noticed or thought of at all. He realized at the sight of Peter's note that the more people he told the more people would start to concentrate on him. Everyone he'd seen that day had treated him like he was impermanent, a thing to be monitored until it had resolved and then could be dismissed again, like a volcano on the verge of eruption to be followed by a period of lengthy dormancy. The realization brought a new sense of purpose. Why wait?

Mike went back to his room and grabbed the bag of pills. After sifting through to find the right one, he tossed the others aside and went to sit on his bed. He read aloud the instructions on the bottle, "Take first tablet to initiate the transition phase. If phase has not started within six hours, take second tablet." He opened the bottle and immediately wondered why they'd given him such a large bottle for two small pills. He poured one out into his hand, carefully closed the bottle, and set it beside him. The other pill he held in the palm of his hand, marveling at the insignificant appearance of such a powerful drug. His hand started to shake. "Like they said, the worst part is the waiting." He tossed the pill into his mouth and swallowed.

He considered taking the sleeping pills, but his entire body felt on pins and needles. Even with a sedative he doubted he could sleep. In one of the many threads he'd glossed over, he recalled someone advising a hot bath or shower. The heat allowed the blood flow to increase while simultaneously washing away a lot of the sweat that comes with the process. After cleaning away the pills he didn't need, he went to his bathroom and cranked up the shower until steam billowed out. Undressing himself, he took a look at his body. He was surprised to feel regret of all things. He'd done so little with his pasty, weak form. Then he noticed his nipples. The normally small brown dots had already changed. The areola had spread and lightened in hue. He brought his hand up to touch the newly pink area and jerked it away as his touch felt like he'd jammed his nipple in a light socket. Over sensitivity was an early symptom.

Turning his attention to the primary feature of loss, he grabbed hold of his testicles and let his thumb move over his shrunken cock. The sudden onset of impotence had been the final straw that sent him to the doctor. He'd known the whole time what it meant for a man his age coupled with his other symptoms, but he'd refused to believe. He gave the familiar organ a final squeeze and stepped into the shower. The hot water almost scalded his skin. He danced awkwardly as he adjusted the knobs until a hot stream of water cascaded down on him. The steam made his skin itch, and as the water raked against him, he understood why. His body hair washed off like loose dirt. The dark strands of hair from his chest and pubic region fell away as if they were nothing. While his touch had been almost excruciating on his nipple, the water felt warm and pleasant. Curious, he touched them again, but the sensitivity had changed. It was no longer abrasive, but inviting. He could also feel a bud of fat accumulating behind the nipple as his breasts continued to grow.

Why does this suddenly seem normal? He stopped teasing and pulling at his swollen nipples. He massaged his growing breasts with the full palm of his hand. The rapidity of growth surprised him though he knew it would occur. In seconds, he had gone from being a flat chested boy to having two heavy B cups on his chest. They feel so nice. Is this what all girls feel like or just...ones like me? He turned around so that the stream of water poured down his back. Immediately he felt something different. For his whole life, water had run down his body in a particular pattern. It was something so familiar that it went entirely unnoticed, but now, he could feel the tickle of water as it failed to curve with the shape of his growing ass. Reaching behind him, he pulled at the now supple cheeks, admiring the feel of the firm, yet pliant flesh. It feels so good. He shook from side to side and felt the flesh behind him wobble slightly. He giggled. My voice? Already? Mike realized he'd entirely lost track of time. Peeking out of the curtain, he could barely seek across the bathroom due to a thick cloud of steam.

He turned back to the water and it rushed down between his legs. He gasped. His fingers followed the stream and gently touched the new lips between his legs. Curious, he slid his finger between the puffy, smooth lips and felt a shiver of pleasure as he caressed his own pussy. With a deep and content sigh, Mike turned the water off and stepped out of the shower. As he wiped away the steam from the mirror, Mike grew aware that he had not been so calm and comfortable in his own skin at any earlier point in his life. As the condensation wiped away, he saw the new version of himself. He was the same height, but his shoulders and cheeks had narrowed. His hips had widened to accommodate his new bouncy ass. Two C cup, teardrop shaped breasts jutted out from an otherwise smooth and firm torso. He wasn't even too dissatisfied with his current haircut. It was boyish and needed changing, but he could pass with it as a pixie cut for now. He smiled, and the woman in the mirror smiled back. I can't go by Mike or Michael any more. Michelle will have to do for now.