"Ah," the Professor said. "Let's talk about the surgical method. You 
would have your external genitalia removed, and an artificial vagina 
formed using the nerve endings and structure of your current male 
organs. And... depending on whether or not you are currently 
undergoing hormonal therapy..." 


"I've been on an antiandrogen and estrogen/progesterone cocktail 
for the past three years," Ara said. 


"... ah, good." The Professor nodded excitedly. "In any case, you 
may have begun growth of breast tissue and shutdown of testicular 
function. But there are things that these procedures cannot change. 
Your bone structure remains male. Your facial structure as well. 
Voice and facial hair... genetics. All of these things remain male. At 
the end of your procedures, you may become close enough to 
physically female to avoid a sense of gender dysphoria, but none of 
this can make you as female as one that was born into that gender. 
And it cannot give you the one trait that is uniquely female among 
humans: the ability to bear children." 


"And you're saying?" Ara's voice cracked as she felt her world fall 


away. 


"I'm saying," the Professor said, "that if my theory is correct, the 
procedure | have developed works, you will become a flesh-and- 
blood woman, down to your very genes. Does that interest you?" 


Ara Fang lay on her cot in her dorm room and stared up through the 
skylight at the night sky. 


"There are risks," the professor had told her. "Very great ones." 
"More so than possibly dying on an operating table?" 


"Yes," the professor said, very frankly. "Quite simply, from a safety 
consideration, the traditional route of lifelong hormone therapy and 
gender reassignment surgery would be preferable. For instance, the 
working required would have a high energy requirement. We would, 
after all, be performing a working heavily Hued towards Ebony, with 
an extremely Tight Weave, bordering on Locked. That amount of 
EVE, allowed to get loose, could be catastrophic. Not to mention 
that the backlash would be severe. And there is the possibility that 
the working would be incomplete. Your body could end up... 
severely altered." 


"How badly?" 


"... extra arms. Double legs. Body parts in the wrong places. Partial 
sexual alteration in some body parts... others not so. Other, more 
severe teratogenic effects... many of them would be unsurvivable. In 
other cases, you may wish that you had not survived. And then there 
are the more esoteric risks. We are attempting to convince the 
universe that you are and always have been female. The universe 
may reject the paradox by ejecting you from its reality. Or, instead of 
turning you into a female, we may end up creating a new '‘you' that 
was always female, and in so doing, destroy the person you are 
now. Quite frankly, my dear, considering what could happen if you 
undergo the working, the dangers of a slipped knife or a bad 
reaction under anesthesia are preferable." 


"So greater risk equals greater reward?" 


"That depends on how highly you value the 'reward,' as you so put 
it. Whether you feel it is worth the significantly greater risk." 


Ara rolled off of her bed and turned on the lights. She slowly 
removed her clothing, pulled on her favorite pink-and-white 
bathrobe, and walked out the door and into the hallway. 


The bathrooms were down the hall from her room, and she stepped 
through the one with the circular symbol of a stick figure that had 
broad shoulders and didn't wear a stylized skirt. At this hour, as she 
had hoped, there was no one else in the bathroom. She walked in 
front of the sinks, removed her robe, and looked at herself in the 
mirror. 


She didn't like mirrors... didn't have any in her room. And looking at 
herself, she was reminded why. The person she saw in the mirror 
looked... wrong. Despite the small, budding breasts, in the process 
of forming after three long years on medicines that made her 
constantly sick and tired. Despite the long hair and the smooth, 
hairless face with the fuzz lasered off. Because there was still the 
narrow hips and the broader shoulders and the Adam's apple she 
hid under turtlenecks and tight scarves, and most of all, that thing 
between her legs. 


She reached up and touched her own face and the stranger in the 
mirror touched his. 


She reached out and touched the mirror, and the stranger extended 
his hand to touch his fingertips to hers. 


She picked up the bathrobe and put it back on and walked back to 
her dorm. 


She lay on the bed and stared up at the night sky until it turned into 
twilight, and then, at last, into the morning blue. 


"Your first step will be halting the hormonal therapy," the Professor 
explained. "We need to have your body as close to its original male 
form as possible." 


"That seems backwards," Ara said. "Shouldn't it be as close to 
female as possible?" 


"Boiled water freezes fastest," the Professor replied. 
"That isn't an answer." 


"No, but it's a decent analogy. What we need to do is hold your male 
and female possibilities together at once, then transfer the possibility 
from one to the other. And the more distinct your original male 
possibility is, the easier it will be to differentiate you from the new 
possibility being formed. This is important to maintain your sense of 
self during the transfer. To prevent loss of self-distinction." 


"How long?" 


"Until the procedure is ready to be performed," the Professor said. 
"One year and a day from now." 


And so Ara stopped taking the pills, and her breasts stopped 
growing, and her body hair got thicker, and she felt herself slipping 
backwards down the hill she'd spent so long climbing. 


Meanwhile, she and the Professor began going over the various 
components they would need for the working. "The most important 
thing," he said, "is a solid image of your desired form. Photos would 
work. Three-dimensional figures would be best." 


They went to the imaging laboratory and had photographs of her 
male body taken from every possible angle, and then they found 
someone who could Photoshop it into the body she'd always wanted 
to be. 


Ara immediately rejected the first set of images the artist sent back. 
"It's too perfect," she complained. 


"It looks fine to me," the Professor said. 


"Of course it does. This girl is gorgeous. She could be a model... a 
supermodel... an actress," Ara said. She held up the image of the 
thin-waisted, slender beauty with flawless, smooth skin, and shook 
her head. "This doesn't look like me at all. It doesn't feel... right.” 


They sent the suggestions back to the artist, and they sat together 
for an entire afternoon going through permutation after permutation, 
adding an imperfection here, correcting one there, going through 
face after face after body after body after possibility after possibility 
until, one day, a month after they'd first sent the request out, Ara 
looked at the person in the images and saw herself. 


Meanwhile, she underwent medical procedures of every kind. Every 
single millimeter of her current body was studied and recorded. After 
the photographs came the endoscope, then came the CAT scan, 
then came the MRIs, then the COLLICULUS imaging, then the 
genetic scans. Hundreds of thousands of images of herself from 
every possible angle, mapping every possible facet of a human 
body. 


And then came the day that the sculptor delivered the statue of what 
her new self would look like, and she sat down across from it for an 
entire night, just studying her new self. She reached out and 
touched the face of the closed-eyed thing of silicone and steel. One 
day, this is what | will be, she thought to herself. 


And then the day came that the Professor told her that it was time to 
go see a dwarf about a sword. 


"A sword, huh?" the short, stocky man with the giant beard said. 
"Not much call for one of those in this day and age." 


"Not much call for a blacksmith, either," the Professor pointed out. "I 
guess we were both born a few thousand years too late." 


"Speak for yourself. | pity those poor medieval swordsmiths who 
didn't know the difference between chromium steel and high 
carbon." The blacksmith laughed out loud and gestured to Ara, who 
stood in the entrance of the smithy, nervously looking around. 
"Who's the twink? Your new catamite?" 


"My test subject," the Professor said. "For the identity 
reassignment." 


"So that's the tranny, huh? Come over here, let me get a look at 


you. 


Ara felt the rage rise in her blood, but she walked over nonetheless 
and stared directly into the dwarf's eyes, cold and hard. The short 
man laughed out loud at that. "Yeah, | can see I've pissed you off a 
bit, huh? Good. | like a bit of spirit in my women." 


"The proper term," Ara said curtly, "is trans, or trans-woman, if you 
wish. If you wish to continue this business transaction, you will refer 
to me as such and apologize for the slur." 


"My apologies," the short man said, bowing his head politely. "I'll 
remember that for the future. I've been... apart from civilization.” 


"Heinrich's been living in these woods for the past... fifty years, 
now?" 


"Fifty-five," the short man said. "People freak me out. | don't 
understand how the hell you guys can stand living in a fucking city 
surrounded by millions of the things." The short, bearded man spit 
into the hot coals. 


"In any case, can you do it? Make the sword for us?" 
"| can. But I'm not going to. She's going to do it." 
"Me?" Ara squeaked, surprised. 


"Yeah, you. And you're also going to make the chalice, too." He 
gestured to the swords hanging from pegs on the walls of his stone 
smithy. "Sword. Symbolically male. Oriented towards fire. Chalice. 
Symbolically female. Oriented towards water. Do you get what's 
going on here?" 


"| think so. The sword and chalice are meant as symbols of my 
feminine and masculine aspects," Ara said, brows furrowing. "And | 
have to make them in order to create a strong sense of Sympathy 
between them for symbolic purposes." 


"Got it in one," the short man said. 


"Can she do it? Learn to make a sword in time for the ritual?" 


SCP-657: Death-predicting Man 


Item #: SCP-657 
Object Class: Safe 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-657 is to be kept ina 
room 8m x 8m at site 19 with a queen sized bed and any other 
reasonable furnishings as requested by SCP-657. 


SCP-657 is allowed to freely move about the grounds of site 19, so 
long as SCP-657 is accompanied by at least one staff member of at 
least level-2 security. Following experiment 657/076, SCP-657 is no 
longer allowed to leave his room. SCP-657 is to be allowed 
additional leeway with requests for entertainment following this loss 
of freedom in order to ensure the mental health of SCP-657. Two 
staff members of at least level-2 security are to be stationed at 
SCP-657's room in order to monitor SCP-657 and ensure that he 
does not leave. Staff members are to avoid physical contact with 
SCP-657 unless it becomes necessary to restrain him or for his own 
safety. 


SCP-657 is to be fed three meals per day, provided with a daily 
multivitamin, and given a supply of medication for the treatment of 
his arthritis. 


Description: SCP-657 appears to be a Caucasian male 
approximately fifty five years of age. SCP-657 is mostly bald, with a 
small amount of gray hair remaining. 1.75 meters in height, 77 
kilograms. Subject prefers to wear three-button business suits, 
generally charcoal gray or navy blue in color, as well as bowler hats. 
All medical tests indicate that SCP-657 is an ordinary human male in 
his fifties of reasonably good health. SCP-657 prefers to be 
addressed as "Gustav" or "Mr. Nobel", but will also respond to his 
SCP designation. 


SCP-657 displays the ability to predict the time of an individual's 


"It doesn't need to be a great sword,” the short man pointed out. "It 
only needs to be enough of a sword to serve as a symbol. And I'll 
help her with it. But she has to be here and help with the creation 
process." 


"If you can afford to take the time off of classes..." the Professor 
said dubiously. 


"One week. No longer. She comes back during Spring Break and 
pounds steel with me rather than partying down in Cancun or 
whatever." 


"All right," Ara said. "I'll see you in April, then." 
"Sounds good. There is, however, the matter of payment." 
"How much do you want?" the Professor asked. 


"Money's not an issue. | don't spend much out here, except for raw 
materials, and I've got a deal with the Coalition for ritual gear and 
such. What | want..." He turned to Ara and grinned lewdly. "Well, 
when Freya bargained with the dwarves for Brisingamen, she 
offered..." 


"HEINRICH!" the Professor shouted. 
"Fine! It was just a joke!" the short man said defensively. 
"It wasn't a very funny one!" 


"Fine, I'm sorry... but if you really want to make a deal..." The man 
stroked his beard and sighed. "Look, I'm generally happy living away 
from people. They kinda piss me off for the most part. But there are 
some things that | miss from the days when | lived in civilization..." 


And so, when Ara returned to the cabin in the woods that following 
Spring, she brought with her two bottles of Laphroaig Islay Single- 
Malt, and one of Balvenie 40. 


"Yeah, that's the stuff," Heinrich Guggenheim said, as he held the 
bottles up to the light, smiling. "Human beings are fucking assholes 


but sometimes they make something worth keeping." 


He put the bottles into his cabinet reverently, like a priest handling 
the consecrated Hosts, and then rolled out a sheet of butcher paper 
on his table made of roughly hewn logs, and began sketching out a 
design using a charcoal pencil. 


"Isn't this supposed to be my sword?" Ara asked. 
"Sure," Guggenheim said. 
"Then let me design it." 


She thought she saw him smile as he passed her the pencil and 
stepped back from the table. 


She sketched out a short sword, double-edged, slender and elegant, 
the lines evoking that of a Chinese jian, and then sketched in the 
ornate hilt and long tassel as well. "That part you'll have to find 
someone else to do," Guggenheim said. "I only do blades and 
sometimes hilts." 


"That's fine," Ara said. "I'll find a jeweler to do the rest." 
"Then let's get started." 


He began by showing her how to work the bellows to heat the coals 
on the forge, then had her working the big hammer to pound the 
ingot out into a long, narrow sword blank. Her first swing missed the 
anvil entirely and nearly smashed into her foot. "Careful there,” 
Heinrich warned. "You break your foot and you're going to waste the 
entire weekend." 


"This thing is too heavy. | can't swing it." 


"Then don't," Guggenheim said. "Just lift it up and let the weight do 
the rest." 


She lifted up the heavy steel tool and let it fall onto the anvil, hard. 
Guggenheim grinned as he struck the steel with his own hammer. 
Between the two of them, and a long, backbreaking day of hard 
labor, they eventually managed to form the steel into a long, 


bladelike shape. 


The week passed in much the same manner, with Guggenheim 
showing her how to heat the metal to the proper temperature. How 
to let the hammer do all the work of striking the steel. When to return 
the steel to the heat. He did most of the work, but made sure that 
she was involved in every step of the process. 


The week passed, and on the second-to-last day, Ara pricked her 
finger and let the blood droplets fall into the two casks of oil and 
water laid next to the forge, as Guggenheim heated the final sword 
to a red heat and plunged it first into the oil, then, as the flames rose 
around the blade, into the water, to quench the blade.