I took a deep breath of the fresh air, grateful once again to be outside in the forest. This truly was my happy place, but now it was time to clean up the wrecked bike I'd left on the hood of the van. As I turned, I caught a glimpse of my reflection on van's window and gasped in surprise. Obviously, I had been turned into a woman. Duh. The whole tits-and-no-dick thing gave that surprise away. But the face? Wow, was all I could think to say to myself as I stared at the reflection in the window. She's fucking gorgeous, I thought to myself as I raised one shaking hand to my face, watching the reflection do the same, feeling the warm fingers press against my cheek as she did the same. Shaking my head, blonde hair swirling around me, I tried to focus on my task at hand: cleaning up the bike.
"Fuck," I gasped out loud, staring at the bike. I mean, yeah, I'd seen it yesterday when I carried it off the mountain and back to the van, but somehow I hadn't actually processed it, you know? The frame was shattered into a few pieces, carbon fiber fragments heavily stained with blood on their jagged tips jutting in all directions. The wheels were bent, mangled, really, and the handlebar was twisted. If I'd seen anyone wreck a bike that bad, I'd have just called for the coroner and sent flowers to their mom. No point even checking for a pulse. It truly looked like it had fallen off a cliff, landed on rocks a hundred feet below, and killed someone in the process. Luckily, I was still here, but the bike proved how exceptional my survival really was.
I opened the back of the van, sliding the specialized compartment open where I stored the bike normally. It was one of my favorite parts of the custom van build, containing a small hose and a drain, letting me rinse off the dirt and mud of the ride and store the expensive bike in safety, ensuring nobody messed with it or tried to steal it. A standard S-Works Stumpjumper EVO was around $12,000 and mine had quite a lot of components upgraded even further over the years, probably topping out around $20k by the time I added it all up. It wasn't the kind of bike you leave on a trailer hitch in a parking lot, if you know what I mean. This time, I picked up the broken pieces of the bicycle and dumped them carelessly into the compartment, the thousands of dollars of hardware turned into unusable scrap.
Closing the van's rear door, I realized that my height must be different now, the top of the door seemed further away than normal, the handle at a different position than I normally grabbed. My brain wasn't working well enough to calculate the angle and tell me how many inches shorter than normal, but after some mental calculation, it spat out an answer. A lot. Yeah, thanks, brain. What the fuck kind of math was that, anyway? You're better than this.
Grumbling, I walked back around to the side of the van, pausing a moment to stare at my reflection once more. I am not a narcissist, I promised myself. Or at least I wasn't before this. Holy fuck, though. Can you blame me? I waved at the couple by the Jeep once more, climbing inside the van and pulling the door shut, locking it behind me as I collapsed into my work chair, trying to think of how to handle my situation.
"Okay, let's run through the basics. What? I am a stunningly beautiful blonde woman. How? Magic? Who the fuck knows. When? Last night, I guess? While I slept. Where? Here? There? On a mountainside? Who? The mystery woman, Fiona? I guess? Wow, I'm really fucking bad at this. That didn't help give me any amount of clarity or explanation. Shit, I'm a woman. What the fuck do I do now?"
I stood up, pacing back and forth in the van before grabbing a protein bar from a stack of food and sat back down, tearing into it as my stomach growled. "I mean, what does any exceptionally attractive woman in her presumably early 20s do? Start an OnlyFans? No, fuck that. I didn't get magically transformed into a woman in order to masturbate for strangers on the Internet. There's got to be more to this new life than that."
My phone dinged, an urgent message blasting past the usual "Do Not Disturb" filter, and I picked it up, curious to see what happened. The face and fingerprint identification failed to recognize me, which wasn't a big surprise in hindsight, so I unlocked it with the PIN and looked at the message.
Tim, we're willing to accept three weeks to rewrite the algorithm and fix the performance issues, but there is no margin for error on this. If you're unable to fix the performance issues, we reserve the right to terminate the contract and look for alternate consultants. I hope it won't come to that, we've enjoyed working with you so far, but my CEO wanted to impress upon you the seriousness with which we take this issue. 0.3% may not seem like much to you, but we have a fiduciary duty to our shareholders to maximize profits, and will not accept anything less than perfection. -Frank.
I rolled my eyes at the email. Frank, always with the drama. Just say it's important and ask me to do it. Loser. I sighed, taking off the hoodie as the van had grown warm, and spun my chair around, powering up my computer and bringing the monitors to life as I cracked my knuckles. Rewriting the core loop of my trading algorithm in assembly to fix the performance issue was going to be grueling work, but it's what the client wanted, so time to get on with it.
---
I yawned, stretching my arms over my head and heard a ripping sound, my breasts suddenly dropping and hanging free as the t-shirt's seam split up the side all of the way to my armpit. Fuck. Well, I guess I didn't like that shirt much anyway. I had made some progress, mostly getting started with a harness to drop the assembly into once it was written, but really struggled to get into the 'code flow' vibe that usually came so naturally to me. Each line of code felt forced, unnatural, and I blamed it on the near-death experience of the previous day. My phone dinged a small reminder, letting me know that it was nearly noon and I should eat lunch.
I pulled a Mountain House pouch from my collection of freeze-dried meals, microwaving the beef lasagna and stirring it. Okay, Tim. You can't just sit here in basketball shorts and a ripped t-shirt all day. At some point, you need to start making plans for the future. I took a bite, blowing on the meal, and winced. I normally wasn't picky, food was fuel. That's all it has ever been for me, just calories to make my brain spin and the wheels of my bike turn. But this body seemed to look at things differently, and it didn't appreciate the less-than-gourmet flavoring of the prepared meal. Still, I needed to eat, so eat I did.
With a sigh, I leaned back in my chair, staring at my bare legs, the gym shorts not covering as much as they should. I need clothes. And that means going to town. And that means people. Who will talk to me. And who in the fuck am I, anyway? Well, one problem at a time, right? First step is clothes. I pulled my phone back out, tapping a few queries into the search bar. I was closest to Oakridge, but it looked like they only had a few thrift stores. Bend was doable, maybe a two hour drive, and looked to have a lot of different options, including an REI. That worked, I could get plenty of new outdoor gear for this body, then escape back into the wilds.
The beginnings of a plan forming in my head, I powered my computer down and slid into the driver's seat of the van, pulling down the privacy screens that covered the front windows. I had to slide the seat quite a bit forward, adjusting the wheel and the mirrors, in order to reach everything. Also, fuck those flipflops. I can't drive in them well, barefoot works. I reached to buckle myself in, realizing at the last second I was still wearing the torn t-shirt. Oops. Wouldn't that be a sight, getting pulled over wearing just a shredded t-shirt. Might get me out of a ticket, though. I grabbed the hoodie, tossing the destroyed t-shirt into the passenger foot well and zipping the formless black fabric up over my curves, buckling my seat belt and starting the van's engine with a throaty rumble. I disengaged the parking brake, shifting the big van into drive, and eased it forward, turning it back onto the forest service road as the big 4x4 tires handled the unpaved terrain with ease. Off we go.