CHAPTER 01
Rise and Shine, Imponign
#
I float in a dark ocean, not feeling, not seeing, not even thinking in any form that makes sense. The waters that engulf me — if it’s water at all — are neither warm nor cold against my being. The only notion I hold is that of a gentle, lethargic current, pulling me slowly — infinitely slow — across an expanse of indeterminable size. I have no sense of time. I don’t know if I’ve been here for a little or a while, nor when I got here, nor where I came here from. Perhaps I was always here. Somehow, I have a strange sense of assurance, I don’t know who or what from — a promise that I am surely on my way to my destination. Slowly, peacefully, for some time… for none at all… nearly there… not at all…
I feel a prick upon my fingertip.
“What is a fingertip?” I ask. “I ask?” I ask. Who do I ask, myself? I don’t even know who I am.
Another prick.
…
Then two more. They do not stop. The sensations grow in frequency and intensity until a sharp static outlines an arm… my arm. The phenomenon of… becoming something continues until I am aware that I have an elbow, a shoulder, ribs, and a neck.
All the while sound, distant and low, vibrates around me as if it is coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It grows in volume, becoming clearer, and my consciousness grows with it.
Within the milky blackness, I see a marble of something other… something other… other to the void… light is what it’s called! I see light! It expands, and becomes brighter, overcoming the blackness in all directions. With it, unbidden images flash before me — a tree branch swaying in the wind; a table on which sits a coffee mug full of crayons, the ceramic smeared with paste; an angry dog trying to leap over a chainlink fence but coming a foot short.
I smell fresh leaves and copper-scented water from a backyard faucet; the smell of a well-stacked burger from Lenny’s; the sickeningly sweet odor of a familiar cleaning chemical.
I now have a full abdomen, legs, a face. The sound becomes even louder — painfully loud — and it hones in until I’m receiving it through tingling ears. The light is everywhere. It has overcome the darkness completely. My eyes burn. My ears ache. My skin stings. My taste and smell are bombarded by every olfactory sense they’re capable of experiencing all at the same time! The agonizing bliss of it all intensifies exponentially in a crescendo of sensation that I cannot determine to be torture or delight!
The feeling of fur under my palm! The taste of beetroot! The throb of a grazed knee! The awe of watching a thunderbolt strike a nearby utility pole!
Light! Sound! Touch!
Pain! Pleasure! Dread! Relief!
Order! Chao–
“Rise and shine, Imponign!”
The inconceivable sensation of becoming halts abruptly. It trembles. Then, it begins to reorder itself into a structure of logic and coherence. All in a pure instant.
My eyes flutter as they try to adjust to my surroundings. My eyelids feel as if they’re made out of boot rubber. I see a room filled with sterile lights and large, complicated-looking machines. The word hospital comes to mind. Before me are two figures. I cannot make out their features, my eyes are still trying to adjust, but their silhouettes are distinctly feminine. Yet, one is far taller and slightly more robust than the other. I seem to be standing with them but inclined slightly backward. I’m strapped into some sort of strange pod-like device. I became aware of the feeling of cool gel padding pressing against my naked backside. My restraints are squishy soft, translucent, and blue. But despite their malleable appearance, they offer no stretch.
I attempt to say something, probably to ask the two figures where I am. The sound that leaves my stiff mouth and untrained tongue sounds more like, “Whe’erm ah-yer uhm?”
The tall figure on my left gives a half-sincere chuckle. “Quick on the uptake, this one,” she says. “Trying to talk already.” As my vision focuses, I can make out an older woman’s face — weathered, sharp, and intelligent-looking. She looks pleased. “What’s the percentage, Taabia?”
“Eighty-eight percent alike her archive, Doctor Noonus,” replies the other woman quickly. She’s much younger, perhaps mid-twenties, and only comes up to the older woman’s shoulder. Her face is angular but youthful, with pale caramel skin that darkens around the nose, cheeks, and eyes. Her face is framed by wavy bark-brown hair reaching down to under the breast. Despite her thick eyebrows and shadowy eyesockets, she appears quite amiable.
Both women wear identical high-collared white coats with a six-buttoned breast.
I try to speak again. This time with a little more success. “Wheh-er am aie? Hoo aer yew?” I realize my voice sounds feminine too. Apparently, I’m a girl! Is there I reason that should feel… Cihangir travesti incorrect?
“All your questions in due time, Imponign,” Doctor Noonus says. “As soon as we know we don’t have to throw you out.”
“Wha!?” I exclaim.
Noonus seems impressed with my quick response and jots something down on a slim device with a gray, featureless stylus. “Nice and sharp,” she comments with a grin, amused at my distress. “Of course, tossing you in the atomizer is the last thing we’d want to have to do — these corpora are expensive, you know?” She stretches out her stylus arm toward my chest and flicks my nipple playfully with the frigid steel instrument. The feeling is exceptionally discomforting and I try to swat her hand away only to remember that my arms are strapped securely into my pod. My violated nipple seems to tingle more than it should, even once her stylus has returned to its pad.
With a stiff neck, I tilt my head forward, looking down to determine the cause of my irritation. I’m not sure what I expected to see. I have no recollection of what my body should look like, but every part of my being screams that it’s not supposed to look like this — my breasts are small, soft, and delicate. They feature disproportionately large and puffy areolas. They point outward from my sleek, faintly ribbed torso. Below them I discover my stomach — toned at the top near my ribs but loses definition toward my navel, creating a small paunch at my waist. My skin is milky pale and ever so slightly freckled.
But it’s what’s below my waist that causes me the real surprise. I thought I was a girl. Then why do I see what I see between those thighs?
“Something the matter?” Noonus grins.
I know she knows what’s going on here. I know she’s toying with me, but my confusion is too great not to humor her. “W–Wha… is tha-teh?” I murmur ineloquently.
“Why, that’s your indicator dear.” Just as she did with my nipple, she lowers her stylus to the tiny appendage and taps the tip of it. It’s not much thicker than the stylus and hardly a third of its length. “Every Imponign has one.”
I continue to stare at it, racking my brain as it’s still trying to organize itself, searching for the word.
“P–Penis!” I exclaim softly.
“We’re not allowed to call them that anymore,” the young woman, Taabia, says from the side. Her voice is low but sweet, but the manner with which she speaks comes off as a little clinical. “If you do, you can get in trouble, especially if a Dominant Caste hears you.
“W–What’s a… ‘Dominant Caste’?” I ask as I finally get my tongue under control.
“Like Dr. Noonus,” she says, clarifying nothing.
“What does that mean–” I’m cut short when Noonus flicks my overly sensitive “indicator” with her stylus. I yelp and try to press my thighs together to protect my genitalia from another attack, but my legs are secured too tightly.
“That’s more than enough questions for now. We still need to make sure we don’t have to atomize you.”
Noonus nods to Taabia, who tampers with something on the housing of my pod. I feel the pressure ease off of my ankles, wrists, hips, and shoulders as my restraints slither into the pod’s padding. The grip of the gel padding on my skin keeps me from sliding out.
“Take care with your legs,” warns Taabia. “This is your first time using them.” Then she steps forward and offers me her hand to help me out. I lift my hand to meet hers, my whole arm shaking. My movements are jittery and every tiny movement I make requires active, careful, conscious thought. With her hand in mine, I pivot forward, nearly toppling out of the pod onto my face. Taabia struggles to keep us both on our feet. I now discover that the two of us are about the same size. It would’ve made much more sense for the larger Dr. Noonus to have helped me out.
Leaning against Taabia, who does her best to provide me with stable support, I figure out how to operate my legs. They are clumsy, and my bare feet slap against the tiles with each compensatory step. Eventually, I seem to find my balance, and though my knees point inward trembling violently, and I have to occasionally flail an arm out to counterbalance, Taabia is able to let go and have me stand on my own.
Now with a good view of the room, I realize that the space is filled with lines of pods identical to mine, their inhabitants obscured by a thick panel of frosted glass. What I previously thought was the opposite wall turns out to be a row of these pods, beyond which exist who knows how many more. I can just make out a few faces, peaceful and still. How long have they been like this? How long was I?
“Motor skills seem to me adapting quick enough,” Noonus says, watching me closely as I try to keep myself upright and off the ground. “Now, we have tests to run. Try to keep pace, Imponign.”
#
I walk awkwardly behind Noonus. Every now and Cihangir travestileri then I need to clutch Taabia’s forearm, who walks close by my side, to prevent a pathetic fall. We walk along rows of pods until we reach a door that opens automatically by sliding into the wall. We continue down a long hallway, passing multiple branching passages and doors. Eventually, we stop. With her stylus, Noonus taps on a digital sign next to a door. “What does it say, Imponign?”
I squint at the symbols, trying to remember what they mean. “Eh– An–Analysis Ch–Cham-ber?” I manage with some difficulty.
“Good, your occipital lobe seems to be connecting up quite nicely.” She presses her palm against a panel on the door and it quickly slides open. She gestures for me to step in.
The three of us walk into a room with two more doors. “You go through that one,” Taabia instructs me tenderly, pointing at the left door. She then leaves my side to join Noonus and the two disappear behind the door on the right. I walk up to my door. As if it were triggered just by my looking at it, the door slides open, beckoning me to step into the darkness beyond. Hesitantly, I walk through.
The room is pitch black so I cannot make out its limits. I pause, not eager to step out of the light of the doorway, but the door slides shut behind me. There is a moment of nothing but darkness, and I feel my anxiety rise, but soft, strangely comforting lights glow to life on the floor, creating a dotted path through the darkness.
The lights lead up to a circular light-emitting platform. I step up on it and the light trail fades away behind me until all that is left is me and my glowing platform. Then, far off in the darkness, I single red dot glows.
“Please face the red light,” I hear Taabia’s voice over some unseen speaker. I do as she says.
The platform casts soft white light up at me, illuminating clearly the features of my body for what must be cameras as they map every millimeter of my body. About three of them circle me in the darkness. I know they are there because their large lenses reflect my delicate figure amidst the blackness. I have no idea why one wouldn’t suffice, but that mystery currently holds the lowest priority on my long and ever-growing list of questions.
“Imaging complete,” Taabia says. The darkness is cut by multiple rectangles of light as huge screens activate, displaying the ultra-high-definition images the cameras just captured. I see myself properly and in my entirety for the first time.
I am a small, fragile-looking thing. My arms are thin and smooth, and my legs are pleasingly thick at the thighs before narrowing down to petite feet. My hair is silky brown and falls, unstyled, to just below my narrow shoulders. My softly freckled face — while I’m pleased with its attractiveness — feels undeniable as if it is not my own. I have kind, marine-blue eyes, and a straight and narrow nose with a slightly convex bridge. My mouth is long with thin lips. I probably have a pretty smile, but I can’t manage one right now. My butt, while alluring in shape thanks to my wide hips, is a little on the thin side.
The features that demand the most of my attention are, of course, the items between my legs. Below an unkempt bush of dark-brown pubic hair, the appendage I’m supposed to refer to as my indicator rests upon a sparsely haired sack, both of which are pigmented slightly darker than the rest of my fair body, especially at the foreskin which just exceeds the tip of the flaccid appendage. Strangely, this little package seems to be the only part of my body that feels like it is supposed to belong to me.
Another dotted path leads to a break in the darkness to my right. A doorway through which more of that cold sterile light floods in. “IMPN-372229, please proceed to the next area.”
Is that my name?
I step off the platform and walk across the shadows to the doorway. The room I step into is of an expansive cubic design. It’s bright and evenly lit, though I can’t make out any light sources. Perhaps the walls, floor, and ceiling themselves are emitting the light. When I turn around, I see the door through which I’d come has closed, leaving no seam.
“Please stand at the center of the room,” Taabia says over another speaker. A rim of blue light pulses on the ground. I walk over to the marker skeptically. Something about this room makes me feel uneasy. Once standing within the blue, the light shifts to a deep red without explanation.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
A moment of silence, then, “Avoid the threats at all costs.” Before I have a chance to ask questions or object, two twin doorways appear about thirty meters away. They lead into darkness. I feel the fine hairs on my neck heckle just before two huge… what are they…? perhaps men, step in onto the bright floor of my cube. Both are easily twice the size of me, well built, and wear Travesti cihangir black one-piece uniforms that cover the entirety of their muscular bodies, including their faces. Each hulk holds a long staff with foam-padded ends in their blocky hands. My heart begins to pound.
“Avoid the threats at all costs,” Taabia repeats just before the two invaders break into a charging sprint toward me. In an instant, my fear turns into a horrendous, primal dread. My mind screams at me to move, to run, to escape these beasts, but something locks me in place, like a deer caught in a car’s headlights or a rabbit startled by the crack of a bullet. My body absolutely refuses to listen to my mind!
They are within ten meters of me!
I have no conscious control of my body! All I can do is stand, wide-eyed and terrified as the size of my attackers become even more apparent.
Five meters!
As if triggered by some internal, biological instinct, my legs give out from under me, and I collapse — softly, elegantly, as if my body is well-accustomed to the protocol — onto my back, surrendering myself completely to the mercy of these brutes.
I close my eyes…
I wait for a blow to come, or to feel a vice-like grip take hold of an arm or a fistful of hair. But there is nothing. I hear a pleasant-sounding chime play. I peek one eye open to see the two men standing casually over my crumpled body. I tilt my head and see the circle of light I had found myself unable to leave has turned from red to green.
“Fight-or-flight response has been successfully overridden. IMPN-372229 has displayed appropriate Imponign threat-response behavior,” Taabia recites neutrally.
Towering over me, one of the men holds down a hand. Mine is still trembling as I take hold of it. I’m only able to wrap my hand around his middle and index finger. He presses his thumb down, gently but firmly on the back of my palm, and lifts me to my feet with literally no effort at all.
“T–Thank you,” I quaver.
“Don’t be, that was only the first test,” he replies, his rumbling voice sounding genuinely compassionate.
“Avoid the threats at all costs,” Taabia says for the third time.
“Truly, this time,” I hear Noonus say in the background, a little too far from the microphone.
The two men, now right in front of me, adopt an offensive stance, wielding their staffs with both hands. Before I can make an appeal to the kind giant who helped me up, he jabs me in the shoulder with the foam end of his staff. Though he hardly tries, the force causes me to stumble back and fall onto the floor with a slap as my bare ass makes contact with the smooth floor. The two men shuffle toward me, reclosing the distance. I feel my body seizing up again. The other man strikes me this time, right between my perky breasts. The force pushes me back so that I roll over my head and land on all fours.
“Come on, move,” the man who helped me up says under his breath.
“They’re testing your athletics, Impo,” says the other. Then he swings at me, hitting me in the ribs, and knocking the air out of my lungs. I roll twice over before again landing on my hands and knees. Now knowing that these men mean me no true harm, my body seems willing to listen to me when I demand that it move. So this time, when one of them steps forward to deliver a jab to my face, I roll preemptively and elude the foam bludgeon. Both men give me a subtle nod of approval. I’m surprised by my swiftness — only about fifteen minutes ago I was hardly able to walk.
Again, a staff comes for me, a high swing aimed to come down vertically upon my back, but I’m able to push myself backward, out of range. The foam collides with a windy thump upon the floor before me. This time, the man gives me a single, deliberate nod, indicating that they can no longer go so easy on me. Now back on my feet, I steel myself and take a ready stance. For the next five or so minutes, I am pursued across all four corners of the room. I am pleased by how nimble and light my body is. I can change direction quickly, and swiftly regain my feet once I’ve been knocked down. As the test goes on, however, I find my stamina waning, something my attackers seem immune to. My response time drops exponentially until I’m being tagged and thrown around by nearly every attempted strike. When I drop flat on my front, my nipples and belly pressed flat against the cool floor and it is clear that I’m defeated, I hear the same chime from before.
“IMPN-372229 has demonstrated an endurance score of seventy-four percent and an exceptional agility score of ninety percent,” Taabia announces.
Panting madly and slick with sweat, I press myself up. The two men, their job now complete, walk back to the doors from which they entered.
“Please proceed to the final room,” Taabia instructs. On cue, another door opens on the opposite wall to the first. I groan as I stagger toward my next trail.
This room is small and dimly lit, though I can still make out its limits. Near the middle is a reclined chair with a headrest and footrest. It causes me to remember what a dentist is. A large curved screen wraps around the chair. At the moment, the screen is off.
“Take a seat, please.”