Trance had come to the hydroponics garden looking for Harper. They had to talk. Things on the Andromeda were getting too tense and had ceased to be enjoyable. If he knew what was good for him, he was going to have to learn to live with her new body, her new mind, and her new slant on history. In order to do that, they were going to have to work a few things out by talking.

Harper's anger manifest itself in his body language even before she realized what he was doing. He was sitting on the edge of one of the tree pots, hunched over like a squirrel eating a nut, carefully tearing sheets of white paper into little pieces which fluttered off in the artificial breeze of the garden like butterflies.

"What are you doing, Harper?" Trance asked in a calm voice.

"Look at this, freaking look at this." His voice was deeply annoyed and edging on frantic. His hair seemed even more spiked and his eyes danced in all directions.

Trance picked up one of the larger fragments of paper and tried to read it. She saw words, words printed in English, words like bruise, Beka, APPT, but not enough text to make out anything discernable.

"I'm sorry, Harper, is this disturbing news?"

"You bet your freaking ass it is. It's the latest of McJude's stories and I'm not in this one either."

"What?"

"You know, McJude, that writer who's been sending in those stories to Andromeda Uncovered. She writes all sorts of fun, sexy stuff. BUT is Seamus Zelazny Harper ever in them? N-O-O-O-O! While the rest of the crew gets to have all sorts of fun, I'm always conspicuous by my absence."

"If it makes any difference, I haven't been in them either." The golden woman tried to reassure him.

"You've only been around for three frigging weeks. She had a whole story with the OLD TRANCE and Tyr, for God's sake. Your old self got to have sex with Tyr!"

She watched as his eyes glazed over. There had to be some truth to the rumor that Harper had a major crush on Tyr. She knew Tyr thought of the engineer as a brother or perhaps a son; Harper's sexual fantasies about the Nietzschean were not going to happen.

Trance also realized that for an Internet writer like McJude, stories existed in the printed form only for a few minutes while her husband, Uber-Dylan, read them, adjusting the commas and edited out words that the spell and grammar check had missed. McJude's stories existed as electronic blips on disks. She knew Harper realized that too, but it is difficult to get any dramatic effect out of the act of electronic deletion.

"But you were in her stories, you were in that clean one. What was it called -- something about NEED."

"Frigging big deal. That's not even on Andromeda Uncovered. I got to hug Widow Twanky. Fall asleep on her breast. Do you know who Widow Twanky is?"

"I believe from reading the story that she was your elementary teacher. A person who reached out to you in the dust and dirt of a slave planet and started you on the path to that led to what you are today, chief engineer on the Andromeda Ascendant, High Guard warship. On a more symbolic note, Widow Twanky could also represent the need for a caring mother all humans seem to have. I know you don't remember your mother, but most men fantasize about a mother with large soft breasts who would accept them unconditionally, nourish them and foster. . . .

"Widow Twanky is a fucking drag queen."

"Yea, that too."

Trance walked over and took the remaining scraps of paper from Harper's hands. She held his hands in hers and tried to find the words that would comfort him.

"You were in that Christmas Story. Nicely dressed if I remember. Didn't Beka put her hand on your thigh."

"Yea, to stash her inedible ersatz lutefisk in the pocket of my cargo pants. I'm sorry, Trance, that is not my idea of sexual excitement."

Trance agreed. She remembered that in her former incarnation she had loved lutefisk. Suddenly she felt her stomach rumble. She tried to ignore it, concentrate on the matters at hand.

"Well, Harper, McJude writes crossover fiction. She's paired the crew of the Andromeda with characters from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. That Ares/Tyr arc took a long time to work out."

"Yea, but now Tyr has some other babe from the show. Why couldn't that pirate chick have come on to me? She is definitely my type, if you know what I mean. Tall, dark, with a bad attitude."

"I think you are fantasizing about Tyr again, Harper. Get over it, it's not in the future. I've been there; I ought to know. "

"Other writers make it happen. I get to fuck Tyr and Dylan. What's with this McJude anyway? Has she no imagination or what? I don't even get to fuck Evan, and he fucks everybody!"

"Not sheep."

"What are you saying about me, space girl?"

"I'm sure McJude has something special in store for you. Maybe she is going to pair you up with another character from Hercules? What about Xena? She's a hot number."

"Excuse me, I think Xena was that Wren babe that fucked Rommie. Even my Barbie doll A/I gets more action that me in McJude's stories." Harper rested his mouth and thought for a few seconds. "Come to think of it, she's made me as a heavy with Rommie, too. I'd like to see her make a better avatar with the crap spare parts on this ship. I think I did a damn good job on Rommie."

Trance didn't want to go there. The issues regarding Rommie, her anatomy, and the things she did with Dylan were more than she want to discuss this morning. Rommie seemed to be coping fine. Today the problem was Harper.

"There have to be other characters. Who else is in that show?"

"Yea, like Joxer, Salmonious,or Falafal. What do you think I am? What does she think I am? Even I am not THAT horny."

"What about that Autolycus guy, he's pretty hot?"

"Yea, he is." Trance watched as Harper's eyes seemed to brighten while thinking about the king of thieves. That fantasy should keep him going for a while. "Maybe I'll get to be with him."

"Or Gabrielle? How could we have forgotten her? I bet she's going to pair you up with Gabrielle."

"Like why should I be interested in a talkative little blonde girl with a hard body and an ambigous sexual orientation?" Harper looked up as he spoke that line. His description could have applied to her in her past life, or for that matter, with a gender change, to him.

Trance smiled softly and slipped the thin blue robe she was wearing off her shoulders. It fell in a puddle on the grass. Underneath she was naked.

"Holy freaking Toledo." The same amber shadows and golden highlights that accented her collar bone and cleavage continued to her navel and bikini line.

Trance's smile grew as she leaned over and unbuttoned loud Hawaiian shirt.

"You have a better body than Evan Hopewell. I hope you realize that, Harper."

"Yea, but he's friggin' old. He's even older than Dylan. I don't know what the chicks see in him."

She quickly unfastened his belt, slipping his cargo pants down around him. Her hand was quickly inside is boxers, reaching for his cock. Harper's eyes relayed the surprise that had taken even his voice away.

"Do you know what the best thing to come out of a cock is, Harper?" She asked as she quietly stroked.

"No…What?"

"The wrinkles?" She laughed and clamped her warm moist mouth on his organ. The communication was nonverbal. It is hard to talk with a cock in your mouth. Trance vaguely remembered past shared moments with Harper in secluded area of the ship. They mostly consisted of kissing and light petting. She had never had the nerve to take sex with Harper further and he was always reluctant.

Harper was breathing heavily as she pulled him onto the soft grass. You couldn't get a better location for sex than this: soft moist air, cool breeze, the smell of flowers, and the promise of fruit to slack the post-coital hunger. When she had made changes in the austere High Guard specification greenhouse Dylan had on the Andromeda, this was exactly what she had been thinking. She doubted if Harper had realized that she was fantasizing about him when she sat in the garden and talked to her plants.

There was no shyness now as Harper rolled on his back and adjusted her over his erect cock. Trance moved up and down on the shaft with the energy she had back when she was a little blonde purple girl with a tail. She wrapped her legs around his torso and held on tight as he rolled her over on her back. There were lots more positions to try. There was the hottub. There were those escape pods in zero gravity. There was an entire vast universe of Seamus Zelazny Harper, and as of this moment, it belonged to Trance Gemini. Nothing seemed ambiguous any more.

Harper rolled her on her stomach and ran his hands over her golden ass. She knew he would be fascinated at the scar where her tail once was. It was now covered by a tattoo of a white flower with a red heart shaped center. He kissed it softly, and ran his tongue lower. Trance was still tense, but this was definitely enjoyable. This was the future she had sought, and now had found.

It was good. "Thanks McJude," she mouthed.

March 2002

McJude
 

Back to Fanfic