Archive of Our Own ^beta

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War-Prince Escafil remains an enigmatic figure in the history of Andalite technology. The lead scientist on the development of the device that bears his name. In interviews buried in the depths of archives with both his colleagues and Escafil himself before his death, a picture of the scientist emerges. Did you ever find it funny that Escafil conceptualized and aggressively developed a technology that many still question the use of, but that solves all our problems perfectly?

My name is Allarin, and I appear to be an Andalite.

Among the few universals that xeno-sociology posits after centuries of researching hundreds of alien species is that all gendered species have a few members who identify as a sex other than the one they have been assigned as birth, except of course, for us Andalites for whom those mistakes have never been made. The biological and psychological abnormalities present in other sentient species simply do not appear in our own proud and perfected people.

The fact those mistakes have never been made does not preclude the fact that this is not my body. Not my large hooves. Not the heaviness of my tail blade. Not the configuration of my genitalia. None of this is who I'm supposed to be. I want to be a scientist—the traditional female occupations—and when I told Mother about my ambition, she simply mentioned that gender roles are changing, and just as the Yeerk war has brought females to the military, our sciences still need the best and the brightest too, even if they are male. She cites Escafil, lead of the development team that created the iconic genetic reconfiguring technology. He was successful, renowned throughout the galaxy, and he was male.

How do you tell your mother, that's not the point? The point is only partially that males can become scientists and females can become soldiers. The greater point is that Allarin-Macaron-Sirinul as a male Andalite simply does not make sense, and as such, males in the sciences really are not relevant to her interests.

Besides, have you ever noticed how fervently Escafil worked on a device that while in development appeared to have no immediate military or cultural uses? It took him twenty years to gain the right to develop his technology on official time, and before then, it consumed his off hours. And have you noticed, the eccentricity of Escafil. Geniuses always have a reputation to uphold, but those habits, those peculiarities of Escafil have always echoed in me. He walked funny, like his hooves were too big for his frame, and his balance quite off. Then there's the story of Escafil's blade, buried so deep in the archives, I thought I would need electorate-level access just to contemplate the file's existence.

During the process of testing genetic reconfiguration, a question came up: What of injuries to the original body? One might suppose this would be an easy question to test. Create a minor cut on a non essential part of the body, morph something and morph back. What Escafil did was shave his tailblade down until it was about the size of an Andalite female's, to the horror of those watching. Then he morphed to a Kafit bird, and demorphed, his tail restored to a size typical of male Andalites. An interesting example, if one considers the myriad of other ways he could have tested the morphing technologies capacity to restore the original body. A few brave witnesses have even implied that Escafil seemed disappointed in the restoration.

He also talked in interviews about how the morphing technology was not just an advantage in the war against the Yeerks—although any significant development in Andalite science and technology post-Seerow was always a potential military development—but how morphing could be used in medicine for the treatment of both physical and psychological afflictions. What psychological afflictions those might be always seem to get lost or scrambled in the data transmissions.

Circumstantial evidence, I know. But it's compelled me, ever since I realized that I should have been female. Have you ever thought about the fact that Escafil worked so hard to create a device that solves our problems perfectly? Have you ever wondered if maybe that line, about how among all sentient species only Andalites never experience dissonance between their gendered bodies and their minds, is just a lie?

Of course you have.

I met you, my friend, my shorm, when we were in school together. I saw myself in you. The way you swaggered and tried to wear your blade bigger than it looked. The way you sighed at those delicate hands of yours. We made that connection, sensing that we shared a similar problem even if the concept of transgenderedness only entered our language after we made contact with alien species.

And I propose a solution. We use the morphing technology to acquire each other. If anyone makes an inquiry, this is simply for practice, of course. You may have times while performing xeno-ethnological observations where a male body would be most useful for you, as I have times where the use of more delicate hands, such as the ones your current body possesses, would be a benefit.

If there was, to say, an almost alien-like dissonance that gets resolved as a result of this morphing experience, that would perhaps be an unrelated side benefit that we would not need to mention to our Prince. We could consider this an experiment, whether the feelings of gender dysphoria experienced by alien species could be relieved through the use of Escafil's device, a blue box easily held in the palm of a hand.

Imagine aliens, morphing. That would be the day.

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"Lyds," I keep telling her, when it's late at night and she's hunched over her computer, staring at a blank screen. "There's no one in the galaxy who can write just by staring." All she does then is sigh and shake her head. I've been in this human morph for ten years now, and I still sometimes have no idea what makes humans fight so hard. In this, I still believe Yeerks to be more sensible. But then, I suppose she has more eyes upon her than any other nothlit.

My name is famous. Doesn't matter if you're a chaser, a hater, one of them, or one of us, my name stands at the forefront of the BBT movement, or Blue Box Transitioning movement.

I was among the first, you see, to officially transition through morphing. First in the United States, third in the world, and it only took twenty years of activism by transsexual people and their allies since the Andalites first allowed humans to access morphing technology before morphing for sex reassignment was added as an acceptable reason to morph under a clause for 'permanent non-reconstructive cosmetic enhancement.' Rumor has it that in exchange for the expansion of morph privileges, we gave the Andalites the highly-secret technology behind the Fruit Roll-Up.

The question I get asked the most is a simple-sounding yes or no one that gets asked in so many tones: Was it worth it?

I get it from other people who do not fit into the sex assigned to them at birth, who want an opinion of whether going through BBT will be worth all the inevitable hassles. Of course, yes or no is a highly individual decision. It worked for me, mostly. Unpleasant memories linger, yes, but I'm a woman. "Fully-functional" the doctor said upon examination of my body. I menstruate. Theoretically, I could bear a child. As far as pure anatomical results go, becoming a nothlit will make you indistinguishable from cissexual people.

If you identify as a binary male or female, it's worth looking into. If you're somewhere else on that spectrum, no luck. They watch for any straying outside the boundaries of male or female.

Be prepared for invasions of privacy, for loopholes of consent required to get the DNA required for morphing. It helps if you have supportive relatives. Parents and siblings are best, but cousins will do, and any non-nothlit friends work if no one else is available.

I get it from the social and moral guardians as well. Generally, the same people who see no problem with "encouraging" their gay and lesbian children to undergo morphing once they find that the queerness won't just "go away" still adamantly see no reason to let trans people use the morphing technology to live as their identified sex. They say that now that we're able to blend in with "normal" people, there's nothing stopping us from corrupting their children.

If their logic is followed, BBT is only useful for a sex change if the person involved does not want it. Otherwise morphing is "wrong" and "unnatural," unless it's themselves or their children who are suffering what would otherwise be permanent afflictions, and then they're fine with it.

I get it from those active in the LGBAQ community. Depending on who you ask, we have experienced a "slight falling out" or a "messy break-up" or a "mutually agreed-upon separation" over activism concerning BBT. They seek to prevent the misuse of BBT against cissexual gays and lesbians (the bisexuals and asexuals are out of luck, I guess) who do not want to transition, and for that end, sometimes propose legislation that makes it more difficult for everyone to morph. We're not enemies or anything, but the always-present distinction between sexual orientation and gender identity just became more obvious with the advent of BBT.

I get it from the curious, who aren't trans, or gay, or who object to BBT and who don't necessarily care about any of the issues. They just wonder. "Are you sad that you'll always be stuck in that one body?" Why they don't ask those who are natively unable to morph because of allergies or issues of reconfiguring their original DNA? Or the Yeerks who choose when they come of age to morph into human bodies instead of living in a pool environment or choosing an non-sentient animal? Or even the people who morph permanently for the hundreds of other reasons why that can exist. Changing sex isn't the only reason someone is a nothlit—unable to morph or permanently in morph—or affected by nothlit issues just the one that seems to capture the public imagination.

I get it from the politicians I write to almost constantly, of almost all political viewpoints. In their mind, the problems of those trans people were solved with the treaty that made sex reassignment by morphing legal and available (if one is wealthy enough and fits comfortably into a masculine or feminine identity). So why would we petition for requirement that all doctors train and become proficient in standard medical procedures, so that us and others who can't morph aren't "out of luck" when we get injured or sick. Why would we object to having our fingerprints and DNA always on file with the FBI, when we ourselves cannot get access to the medical history behind that DNA? Why might some of us want permanent access to hormones, or transition through surgery, or to have our bodies as we choose them, even if we may not confine ourselves to one binary? Why might we still want to have our bodies instead of giving ourselves a new set of DNA? Why would we want to be treated like sentient beings? Why anything?

I get it from myself sometimes too, still, mostly in the middle of the night confounded by writer's block and a protest in the morning. Physically, I have no scars from the BBT, but in my nightmares, I'm still naked and cold in the therapist's office, bare for them all to see. I could have opted for sedation, but being unclothed and unconscious while three men wait outside the room watching me? I chose to stay awake. At least then I would know for sure the extent of the violation of my privacy.

It's only two hours, but some two hours can be longer than a century.

Yet I'm here. I can't undo this, even if I could regain some part of my male body, even if I wanted to regain some part of my male body. I can't say I've never had second thoughts, but I've never regretted it.

There are good things too. I draw my most honest relationships from the nothlit community, my friends, my partner Crystal, all these people that I would never think of giving up, just to have been born a woman. Equally important: I couldn't live as a man. I'm free in this body, more free than anyone who hasn't been here can imagine. Free of a haze of testosterone, mostly free of worries that someone might notice that I'm not a "real" woman and that I "invite" violence because of that perception. I live as the sex I've always known myself to be, and I have a purpose now, serving as a writer and activist within the nothlit community.

So, is it worth it?

That's not a question I can answer for anyone but myself. It's not a question I ask all that often anymore. I do have others though, that I want to ask, and answer, as often as I can.

What can we do to reduce the costs—the social and emotional ones, not just the financial ones—of BBT for those who choose it? And what can we do so that BBT is a choice for people who need to change their bodies, not the only choice?

Chapter Text

I must confess, you're not the first nothlit guy I've dated. Well, Nicky never called himself a nothlit because he never wanted to get stuck in one body, but he had the brain waves telling him he was all boy and an original body that didn't match. Anyway, it didn't work out between us, though I still hang out with him and his wife occasionally. He's holding a Labor Day cookout, and I'm invited to bring a guest. Want to come?

Look, Jess, baby, I know how it looks, and I'm not sure the truth is going to be much better. But you've got to believe me. I'm telling you this right now, because I believe in us, baby, and I don't want to lie any more.

That woman you saw walking out of my apartment yesterday morning, that wasn't my 'little something on the side' and I know you're too much of a lady to stand for being anyone's second-place. That woman is me. When I'm on the clock, I'm Nichole. That's the name I go to work with. That's what's connected to my driver's license, my social security, and my birth certificate.

But I really am Nicholas. You've got to believe that. It might just be two short hours at a time, and I might not be ready to get stuck in that body and deal with all that nothlit crap, like making sure the government has copies of my morph DNA on file, and suddenly having to get in touch with my male friends in high-school to get hold of their consent to use a body, and then you can't ever use the morphing ability to heal. And even before that, you've got to go to therapy and get a letter from doctors who've got no clue about how gender identity works.

And please, just sit and listen, honey. Hear me out.

I first got the ability to morph from a car accident when I was nine. They brought out an ancient beagle named Cassie as my "low risk morph acquisition" Don't know why I remember the name of the dog, 'cause it seems like 99% of the safe morphs they bring out at hospitals are named after those Animorphs that saved the world in the early 2000s, and Cassie's the only one still around, even though she looks more like my grandma now than the kick-ass guerrilla fighter she was. And if you think that anyone who looked like she did would be allowed to change into anything more powerful than an arthritic dog today, you'd be crazy.

And you know the rule for morphing as a civilian without the doctors babysitting you? It's "don't." Not that that stops anyone who's got a head on their shoulders and doesn't follow the big guys around like zombies. I'm not one of those brainless ones, so you know it was a matter of time, especially because even before I started growing boobs, I knew being a girl just wasn't right for me.

I think I was twelve though, that I first experimented with morphing. It was at my friend Emily's house. Her parents were out for the afternoon, and she, our friend Yvette, and I had all gotten the Cassie morph. We also had other morphs, from the boys we chased at the playground. We giggled all while we were morphing. Then we did what we planned: practiced kissing. Girl-boy, and boy-boy combinations, all while laughing about how naughty we were. And how weird it felt to be boys. Or they were. I was just too shocked by how not-weird it felt. Like, "Oh. This is what I'm supposed to be."

We demorphed back into our girl bodies an hour and half later, just before Emily's mom was going to get home, and they were still going on about how nasty it felt. And I just wanted to tell them so much to be quiet, but I couldn't cause I wasn't ready to admit what happened to me. We all played the Kissing Game a few more times, which was fine, because I kind of liked kissing Yvette when I was a boy. And then one afternoon when I suggested it, they both just shook their heads.

"We're sooo over that." They said together, and that was the end of us all becoming boys.

Nicholas was officially "born" on the night of my thirteenth birthday. While my parents were busy cleaning up downstairs and my little sister was busy finishing off the ice cream, I morphed into Nicholas by myself for the first time, and gave him that name. I didn't need to do anything else, because he was me. Nichole was the one I had to invent and make up so no one would guess that Nicholas was really inside me.

I went out as Nicholas, hung around at the Mc D's and the park shooting hoops with the other guys. Only for two-hours at a time. Started acquiring more DNA, so Nicholas could grow up as Nichole grew up, because being a hormonal teenage boy for the rest of my life wasn't what I had in mind either. I might not be Nichole, but I grew up at her pace, and when she went to college, I wanted Nicholas to fit in on campus too, even if the transgender support group only welcomed nothlits or planned nothlits. And I wasn't gonna stop morphing, no way, no how.

But I needed people like me, so I went underground, joined this group of Recmorphers (people who morph recreationally) called the Dorians. We all go out to events using our morphed bodies, and there's one basic rule, adapted from the infamous army one: Don't ask, don't tell. Whatever your original body is like, male, female, intersexed, pretty, ugly, fat, thin, abled, disabled, young, old, black, white, yellow, or brown, it doesn't matter, so don't make an issue of it.

But we still peek sometimes while we morphed and demorphed, so you always kind of knew who was crossing over and how and we kind of banded together. First it was Adam, Nina, and Sean who also gender-crossed for serious, and then we picked up Melissa, Kristopher, Erica, Noelle, Simon, Dante, and maybe a dozen more people and formed our own little group. We weren't activists or anything, but we'd party all night, and sometimes if one of us was dealing with one of those times when they needed to stay with someone who'd understand that this gender-play stuff wasn't just a night out, we'd provide a shoulder or a bed.

Mostly though, it was about the parties. The two or three years I spent with the Dorians pass by in a blur now. Party all night, get drunk, get high on a combination of ecstasy and the DNA that make up my adult Nicholas. Then get home about four in the morning, sleep for four hours, and then get up and get ready to work as Nichole at ten. I took jobs and left them just before I got fired, and I dated women for a few moths—always as Nicholas—until the time came where I had to either confess or dump them. And there was never a question of which one I'd choose. Until you.

You were the light of heaven in that grocery store, and I admit, I timed my visits to when I know you'd be working the check stands. And when you wrote that note on my receipt demanding that I meet you at Zeke's the next night at eight, I practically danced my way through the automatic doors.

We had it good these past four months, didn't we, Jess? The nights out, and the nights in back at your place. I treat you right, and I promise that I always will. I know you were suspicious that I never took you to my place, and I know you never believed for a second that it was because I was such a slob. How could you, when I am so meticulous about my appearance? But you know, I want to take you back to my place, and not have to worry that you'll see Nichole's small work wardrobe, or the make-up and perfume I use in order to "pass" as her. I'm so used to Nicholas, that being Nichole takes work. I want to spend the night with you sleeping next to me, and without worrying about whether I can get up every two-hours to demorph without you finding out.

Let's make this clear. I'm not gay and I'm not a lesbian. I don't date as Nichole, and I've never had sex as her. I promise that you'll never have to make love to Nichole. And I don't see men when I'm back in Nicholas's body, and I swear I've been 100% faithful to you. It's you and me baby. I don't know what the future will bring, and I don't know whether you'll want to stay with me baby, but I do know, I want to take this chance with you. I can't go on without knowing that we at least tried.

I'm not sure what the next step will be, if I'll come clean and become an official nothlit or if I go underground and get an ID with Nicholas so I can start living as myself full time, either with all the morphing, or just becoming a covert nothlit. My parents. I'm not out to them at all, but I'd have to deal with that too. You've got to understand, I'm not doing this lightly.

Let's start over, nothing hidden between us. My name is Nicky, short for Nicholas and Nichole.

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Aftran describes zirself as 'just another genderfucked grrly-boi trying to get by' and 'a former prisoner of the blue box'--both a play on zir born-sex of male and the device used to obtain the morphing ability which zie paid dearly to use. Zie lives in Seattle as a registered estreen, or professional artistic morpher. The following is zir story, as told to Patrick Gallagher, photographer for the Eternal Revolutions exhibition, where Aftran served as one of his models, and is himself a nothlit man.

You can call me Aftran, I guess. I used it a bit online...you know...before all this happened. Yeah, it's a Yeerk name. I'm not a Yeerk, but I always did like their notion of gender. We learned a bit about them in our xeno-biology chapter just before I dropped out. Wrote a five page paper on them, got a B+, best grade I ever got in high-school.

Yeerks don't get born with a gender, their identities come from whatever host they take, or species they morph. And yeah you get the ones with long lines of male or female hosts, but there's also ones who switch around and define themselves by what they look like in the present. I thought I was like the flexible Yeerks. It made sense. And Aftran was held up as the famous "good Yeerk" so I decided to name my self for her, if only for the irony of it all.

I'm not a Yeerk, but I like the idea of getting to choose gender instead of having it forced on me. That's why I've been fascinated by morphing since I was little. I know my family didn't like the idea. Uncle David said that it stopped real people doctors from learning real people skills. And yeah, morphing's good and easy here, and was standard back in St. Louis, and with enough money you might've been able to get it in Cape Girardeau if your situation was bad enough, so even when the news talks about the latest ailment cured by morphing, we always knew that was for those other folks.

But my brothers and I, we'd drop down to the woods outside our house and play Animorph. And Bryan would always be Jake, and Mike would be Marco, and so that left me with one of the other four. I always chose Tobias, since they made me prance around on all fours if I was Ax. And while I liked Rachel and Cassie, I knew my brothers would dress me up and beat me if I ever said I wanted to be one of them. But, secretly, I liked Cassie best; she was good at morphing. I thought I was like her, born to morph, even if my look and life belonged more to Tobias. And sometimes, when I was alone, I did dress-up like her or Rachel. And it felt kind of right.

Anyway, I first thought about morphing, seriously morphing, when I was 14. The high-school I went to let students use the internet for about an hour after school. I found my first nothlit community by chance. All these people who changed from boy to girl or girl to boy, and I thought that made a whole lot of sense, but I didn't believe that people would willingly stay that way. No offense intended, Mr. Gallagher.

I joined that forum and asked around about a way to get the morphing ability to do boy-girl-boy-girl to in various configuration to infinity, but you can imagine they weren't hospitable. Said it was illegal and dangerous. Never stopped me. My life was freaking dangerous, as it was. Uncle David got real bad with the bourbon, and Mom had a pretty nasty boyfriend, plus I was already so queer there was no way I could get into the closet, even in the middle of the nowhere.

Hunting for a way to morph became my escape. Like a scavenger hunt. No one posts publicly, but in e-mail or messages before yet another forum banned me, people'd send me links, and then I got one from this guy named Johann in Seattle. Said he was an artist, had this great idea for a piece involving hermaphrodites. The deal sounded pretty sweet, one way ticket from St. Louis to Seattle—away from this place, the morphing ability, a place to say, and commissions from the work he sold.

I see the red flags, when I look back at it now. But I was sixteen, stupid, and desperate for a way out. Once the school year ended, I packed my bags, left a note to Mom saying: Off to chase my dream. Don't worry about me. Didn't tell her anything else about where I was going, or what I was doing.

But life, 2500 miles away from anyone who'd give a flying fuck about me, wasn't as easy as I'd thought. First night I got off the plane, Johann took me to his place and showed me his "plan" for getting me the morphing ability. I got took to the emergency room that night barely conscious and barely breathing as I acquired the cat they kept on hand for quick morphings. If anything kept me alive that night, it was that 'at last' feeling. At last I could morph.

I took DNA from one of Johann's girls. Yeah, he had a bunch of us, like four or five at any given time. Some were queer like me, but others were runaways who just wanted a roof over their head and food in the stomach, and others who were desperate for some scrap of affection, even if it came from someone like Johann. Maybe one other started from a boy mold. I thought that was why he kept his eye on me, to make sure one of his male DNA sources didn't leave.

Yeah, Johann did pornos with us. Sex and money and drugs, and I don't like girls at all, but I didn't really have a choice, and sometimes men too, and with them, I didn't have a choice at all. I was a freak, an addict, underaged too. Johann threatened to find me if I ran away, beat me so hard that I wouldn't have time to morph the broken bits back together. Think I almost did that a few times, sometimes death would have been better than another day with him, but the morphing, the morphing always sustained me.

I was good at it, in the ways his other "hermaphrodites" weren't. I could do it fast, and I could control what changed and what didn't. That's why he kept threatening me even as the others mostly came and went. And I had other morphs too. Had that cat from the hospital. Had a fly I acquired before I smooshed it. Had his pitbull Kasey, a mean fucking dog, trained by Johann to be that way, but meant by God or Mother Nature or Darwin or whoever to be the sweetest thing in the world. When I could escape I'd wander around the hill a bit, stopping outside cafes and wagging my tail, collecting pets and adoration from the random-passer-by.

I was in my dog morph when I first heard about you and your project, Mr. Gallagher. The Stranger wrote about your work with registered estreens—those people who had the talent for morphing—you had a studio and gallery showings, and grants from public art organizations. I think it clicked for me, then. How fucked up everything was with Johann, and maybe how I could get my life right again.

Like the old days, I went to a place with public internet and spent my hour there e-mailing you. Finding out bits and pieces of your background. Estreen photographer, ever since they approved the use of morphing for government funded projects. I learned you were a nothlit, female to male, that you had your blue box shit back when I was only one. You were even a member on some of those forums I used to hang out at. Your project required consent forms from your models. You fucking cared that your models were legally adults. You were everything Johann wasn't.

So I hoped I could be estreen enough for you. I'd never been so nervous in my life, writing that e-mail and waiting for your response. Hoping Johann wouldn't find out and carry through on his threat before I could get this for me. We met for a half-hour that night at the library. You didn't know it, but no matter how that meeting went, I couldn't have gone back. Dumb, but no dumber than any other mistake in my fucked-up life.

I told you about myself, a little bit. Teen runaway from Missouri. Nineteen now. Always been fascinated by morphing. Got it from the hospital after an accident. I had a knack, so maybe I could model for you.

You had that project in mind. My project. You told me it was technically demanding. I'd have to control one morph and then suddenly switch to another morph and control that one as well. You also told me, I'd have to be able to erase the boundaries between male and female while I modeled, that it would require, at the very least, the ability to be natural in that body.

I was born for that job. I'd been living that gender-stuff since Bryan first put me in a dress and I didn't know that I was being laughed at yet. Course I didn't know if I could fuck with my plumbing while parading around with human-sized swan wings and still look natural, well as natural as a girl face with a painted on beard looks. But I knew for damn sure that I could learn. And I did. Best damn muse you ever had.

I get by. Got a room in a crappy apartment I share with one of Johann's old girls who escaped, but it's a fucking roof over my head. I smoke a bit. Who doesn't? But the hard shit that fucked me up; that's done with. I pick up jobs here and there, plus my work as a model. The community college pays me 40 bucks and lunch to pose naked for a three hour life drawing class. That plus a job making burgers at the drive-through pays rent and buys beer.

Plus, I'm registered estreen now, so I get e-mails from other artists looking for a morph muse, and inquiries about whether I do live entertainment and I bet more will come after your show opens. Should I come male, female, or some combination, do you think? Maybe some combination, like that evocative photo you took when the lights were low and we were just shooting the shit about how you got a grant for our project from an alien organization of all places. I had my genderfucked parts just fine, but none of those animal parts. That one's going in the final exhibit; it's me. Also...when you write the commentary about me, use those funky third-person pronouns. They fit. Oh, and be nice about it. Tell 'em I'm your favorite muse. That I've fucking escaped that blue box.