CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Doctored FootageSam was sitting on the edge of Jamie’s bed, head in her hands, while Jamie, sitting next to her, gently rubbed her back.

  “Oh my god,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Jamie.

  “Oh my god,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Jamie, again, nodding and smiling, nose crinkled.

  “‘I need to smell you?’ God, that is the creepiest, cringiest thing I’ve ever said in my life.”

  “As far as romantic speeches go, it’s not exactly ‘You had me at “Hello,”’ or ‘As you wish, Princess Buttercup.’”

  “But that’s the thing. I had a romantic speech all prepared in my head. I mean, the only thing stopping me was not being able to get close to you, physically. But then I thought: Really? Is that it? That doesn’t stop all the other wonderful things about you. About… I… honestly, I mean… it is absolutely stupid if that’s all it is, and it’s stupid for me not to admit it and I’ve wanted to tell you this for the longest time, and I never could figure out when and I almost did… I love you, Jamie. You know I do. Really. All that other stuff is just… details.”

  Jamie smiled, nodded, and pced her forehead against Sam’s.

  “Yeah, that speech would have been way better,” said Jamie. “Bet ya’ wish you had said that.”

  Sam couldn’t help but ugh.

  “Aw, Jamie, I’m so sorry.”

  “Apology accepted. I love you too. I have for a long time. I think I’ve been gringly obvious about it too.”

  “You have,” confirmed Sam. “But in all the sweet ways.” She turned to grab Jamie into a full hug, and Jamie shifted on the bed to return it. It was a good, long hug, and they both seemed to need it.

  “So, Sam,” Jamie started to ask.

  “Yeah, Jamie?”

  “Do I have time to shower before we do the sniff test, or is it more like a surprise inspection thing?”

  “You are never going to let me live that down, are you?”

  “I’m sorry, Sam, but it’s comedy gold. And I’m going to mine it till the vein is good and dry.”

  ***

  At Eine’s suggestion, Leia joined her in an experimental, clothes-on, semi-chaste spooning session on Leia’s bed. After a few awkward adjustments of ‘where does this arm go?’, and ‘am I getting hair in your mouth?’ and ‘we should really crank the AC way up, it’s hot in Merida,’ the two had settled into a Nash equilibrium with Leia as the big spoon, Eine as the little spoon. They had tried it the other way, but Leia had a little bit of a hangup with that, which she vowed to bring up with Sheri ter.

  “You’re fine with this?” asked Leia, concerned.

  “I’m more than fine with this,” sighed Eine, dreamily.

  “Because I’m not comfortable with anything more than this right now, you know that,” said Leia.

  “Don’t care. Blissing out. Happy.”

  “Yeah. Me too. I mean, weirdly so. Wasn’t expecting to. But, you know.”

  A moment passed.

  “So,” Leia mused. “I guess we just… y here?”

  “I’m not exactly an expert. I’ve never done this before. But, yeah, I think we just y here and collect warm fuzzies,” expined Eine. “Is there a manual? There should be a manual. Or at least an FAQ page.”

  “Everything you always wanted to know about retionships with your best friend who is transitioning while you yourself are on hormone repcement therapy but not to transition but to win fabulous cash and prizes, - asterisk - but were afraid to ask.”

  “R-ssh retionships-so-complicated-they-need-a-diagram.”

  “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and What The Hell, How Did You End Up All The Way In The Kuiper Belt?”

  “Ooh, Leia, that’s a good one.”

  “Thank you.”

  They lie there for another couple of moments.

  “So, Eine, do you have any pns for the beauty contest ssh talent show?”

  “I was going to solve a Rubix cube in under a minute. You have a better pn?”

  “I think so. But we’d need more help to pull it off.”

  ***

  “What’s this, Mara?” asked Rafael, holding up a six pack of beer.

  “It’s a six-pack of beer,” said Mara.

  Rafael narrowed his eyes.

  “Why are you giving me a six-pack of beer?”

  “Because I want to apologize for how I treated you, especially in the beginning. It was wrong and shitty in a way that I didn’t realize at the time.”

  There was a short beat, before Mara continued.

  “Flowers seemed inappropriate, considering.”

  Rafael tilted his head.

  “Oh. Thank you. Apology partially accepted.”

  “Partially?” Mara wasn’t expecting that reaction.

  “Partially. Because let me ask you this, after all this time you’ve spent around other people, all this time abroad, are you still pnning on voting for the ex-President this year? Hmm?”

  “I mean, yeah, why wouldn’t I?” said Mara. “I don’t see what politics has to do with it.”

  Rafael sighed and smirked.

  “Mara, I think one day you will see what politics has to do with it. And when that day comes, I’ll be ready to accept the other half of your apology.”

  “Hunh?”

  “What I’m saying is that you’re on the right path, but you’ve got a long way to go, Mara. But, hey, thanks for the beer.”

  “You’re welcome?” said Mara.

  Rafael closed the door to Video Vilge, and headed back to work, leaving Mara standing out there in the hallway, confused.

  ***

  “It’s going to be lonely here, without you, man,” said Gucci. “You’re sticking around till the end of the month, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Jacob, who was already starting to feel a little better and a lot calmer just knowing he wouldn’t have to wear dresses or take another estrogen shot in his life.

  There was a knock on their door. “Hey, it’s Victoria. Got a moment?”

  Gucci opened the door. “Yeah, c’mon in. Got some bad news.”

  “I heard,” said Victoria. “But congratutions, Jacob, for making it this far.”

  “Right,” Jacob got up from the chair and offered a handshake to Victoria. “Good game, good luck.”

  “You too, ma–”

  Victoria looked at the wall-mounted GenderBuzzer.

  “It’s okay,” said Gucci. “He-man’s back to he-mode.”

  “Actually, I was hoping to pick your brains on something. The hormones seem to be hitting us all differently, but you and Leia seem to have been hit the hardest. Mara and I are trying to figure out why it’s different for some of us.”

  “You should ask Eine, actually. Eine actually seems to like the hormones, for some reason,” said Gucci.

  “We did, and we figured out why Eine is doing well on hormones. Well, Eine knew why she was doing well and just told us.”

  “She did?” Jacob was surprised. “How’d she manage it?”

  “You should let her tell you, it’d be better coming from her. She’s a bit of an outlier.”

  “Ah,” said Gucci. “I think Erin called it Spiders Georg1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiders_Georg or something.”

  “Spiders Georg?”

  “There’s this one guy who lives in a cave eating millions of spiders, and that’s why there’s a statistic that says that the average human eats three spiders a year in our sleep. Hmm,” mused Gucci.”‘Estrogeorg.’”

  “Point is,” Victoria said, ignoring Gucci, “We’re hoping to meet with Dr. Vadekar ter today. Hopefully we can figure out what’s going on, but if you’ve got any insight?”

  “Ooh,” Gucci said. “You know what it might be? It might be like something’s blocking all the estrogen in your brain, like Bugs Bunny standing on a hose. But eventually, Bugs Bunny is going to wait until Daffy Duck looks down the hose to see what’s wrong. You might get hit with All The Girl, All At Once,”

  Victoria blinked.

  “Specifically, I was wondering if you, Jacob, had any insight, since the hormones did affect you.”

  “Not really. I just feel… shitty. Pretty much exactly as Dr. Vadekar said. What’s got me confused is Gucci.”

  “Me?” said Gucci.

  “Yes, you,” said Jacob. “You’ve always had a little edge of insanity around you… well, more than a little. But now you’re like… SuperGucci. Like Gucci to the tenth power.”

  “No,” said Gucci, shocked.

  “Gucci, I had to talk you out of doing your walk-on-coals trick for the talent contest.”

  “Oh, that’d be impressive. Yeah, Gucci, I didn’t know you knew how to walk on coals,” admitted Victoria.

  “Ancient Maori secret,” said Gucci. “Passed down from the cannibal that ate my great-grandfather to my grandmother to my father to me.”

  “Grandfather Old MacDonald?”

  “No, the one on my father’s side. Ole Patty Wobbleboots Guthrie. Fought in Tītokowaru's War2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C4%ABtokowaru%27s_War.”

  “Ignore her,” said Jacob. “Point is, she doesn’t know how to walk on coals. She tried to, one time at a 4th of July cookout. She dumped over the barbecue grill and tried to walk on them. Severe burns on her feet, her ass and the back of her legs. Had to y on her stomach for days after that.”

  “But it looked cool,” said Gucci. “And everyone back home talks about it to this day.”

  “They use it as a warning, Gucci.”

  “Right. Well, that was just my first idea anyway. My second one is much better. A puppet show!”

  “What?” asked Victoria.

  “A puppet show,” said Gucci.

  ***

  “So,” said Pranav, looking over some of Gucci’s paperwork in his office. “It seems your friends are very concerned about you. Say, do you prefer Ms. Guthrie or Mr. Guthrie? There’s no genderbuzzer here.”

  “If it’s all the same, I’d like to try out something new. How do you feel about ‘Goncho!’”

  “Okay, Goncho.”

  “No, you’re not saying it right. ‘Goncho!’ It’s pronounced with an excmation mark.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s short for ‘Goncharov3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goncharov_(meme).’”

  “Thank you, Goncho! I did not ask, but now I know,” said Pranav. “I guess let’s just get to it. How have you been feeling on the estrogen treatments?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a bit more, I don’t know. Like, a squirrel?”

  “A squirrel.”

  “You know, like a squirrel jumping from tree to tree, stopping, then looking around, but then scurrying, because there’s predators always out to get them. Dogs, foxes, owls, hawks, rgemouth bass–”

  “Largemouth bass?”

  “You’ve never seen a rgemouth bass eat a squirrel?”

  “Oh, sure, sure. Back when I was a kid my dad used to take me out all the time fishing for rgemouth bass using squirrels as bait,” said Pranav.

  Goncho! missed the sarcasm entirely.4Largemouth bass eating squirrels is actually a thing that happens and not something Goncho! was making up.

  “So yeah, I… kinda like that. Like, nervous and scared and it feels like everything’s going to come crashing in on me at any second but I’m loving it because it’s a hell of a ride!”

  “Right. Goncho! I’m going to be straight with you. You seem physically healthy. But I think that this is putting a psychological strain on you that might not be healthy in the long run. Let me ask you, how long were you pnning on staying in the contest?”

  “Well, I’ve been taking it day by day. Seeing how things unfold. But at this point, I’m pretty committed.”

  “Committed how?”

  “You know. Committed to the bit. Doing something as a joke to the point where it’s not just a joke anymore.”

  “You mean… you’re doing this because you think it’s funny?”

  “Well, no, at first, I thought it was funny. And then Bradley dropped out and then everyone started getting mopey and weird, and then Rafael dropped out and now Jacob, so it’s mostly, like, sad. But I’m gonna stick with it until it becomes funny again!”

  Pranav sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “So you’re potentially going to have your body mutited, and your brain scrambled… because you think it’ll be funny? “

  “Have I said something wrong?” Goncho! asked.

  ***

  “So,” said Sheri, looking over some of Gucci’s paperwork in her office. “It seems Dr. Vadekar is very concerned about you. Say, do you prefer Ms. Guthrie or Mr. Guthrie? There’s no genderbuzzer here.”

  “If it’s all the same, I’d like to try out something new. How do you feel about ‘Gugu?’”

  “Okay, Gugu.”

  “It’s short for ‘Guguze.’”

  Sheri narrowed her eyes.

  “Jude, why are you doing this?”

  “I told Dr. Vadekar. I’m committed to the bit.”

  “And why are you committed to the bit? What’s the… what’s the endgame here?”

  “Endgame?”

  “What’s the point?”

  Jude stopped for a second, really thinking about what to say to that.

  “There is no point. And that’s the point.”

  “Expin,” said the psychologist, in a tone of voice reserved for mothers of kids who have their hands caught in the cookie jar.

  “I mean, what’s the point of any of this? Not the contest. To… to life! We live in an existential nightmare. Civilization is rapidly falling through the cracks. All stability is a lie, there is no solid ground. We can’t even agree as a world on objective reality anymore, we have no shared values, no sense of unity, we are fractured and we are doing so at a time when the world is becoming more uninhabitable due to our own human stupidity. Being is pointless. Literally. There is no scorecard tallying up the points about whether we’ve lived a good life or a bad life. There is no meaning, no raison d’etre. And every time you try to make meaning, either as a collective group, or as an individual, the vast majority of the social order is actively choosing to tear that meaning down. In such a world, the only thing left is to embrace stupidity, to be ‘lol so random’ and to do things despite their stupidity. In such a world, the only reason left to do anything is ‘for the lulz’. ”

  Jude Guthrie looked Sheri straight in the eyes and said, “I have to commit myself to the bit. There’s nothing else left to commit myself to.”

  The lightbulb went off over Sheri’s head, and she made a note on her little yellow notepad.

  “I get it,” said Sheri.

  “You do?” said Jude.

  “You were such a mystery to me, Jude. I couldn’t figure out what was happening with you and the hormones. It was affecting you, but I thought it wasn’t making you lethargic, or unhappy. It was making you more erratic. But now, I think I get it.”

  “Really? You think maybe I’m some sort of weird… like xenogender or like, the hormones are affecting me because I don’t need estrogen or testosterone, that I need some sort of third thing? Like maybe I should just be injecting radioactive ooze in my veins? Let’s do it. Let’s get real weird with it!”

  “Jude, I have no clue what the hell your gender is, or if you even have one. What I forgot to account for is that you might not have come into this from a normal baseline.”

  “You were expecting a normal baseline? From me?”

  “Freud said - and I’m not a Freudian - but he reportedly said ‘anger turned inward is depression, anger turned sideways is wit.’ And you, you have a lot of anger built up, don’t you? Anger and depression.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Other than Jacob, how many close people do you have in your life?” Sheri leaned back, she knew she was on the right track.

  “Just Jacob, really.”

  “No family? No other friends from high school? No work buddies?”

  “Yeah, uh, mostly just Jacob. Because he gets me, you know?”

  “Or maybe, he’s the only one you can’t push away because he’s just so damn willing to see the best in people.”

  “What?”

  “You’re freaking people out, Jude. Freaking them out to push them away. And you’re doing it on purpose. And what would freak people out more than changing your gender for a joke?”

  Jude leaned back in the hammock and thought about that for a good long time.

  “Having Juggalo makeup tattooed permanently on my face? And then when asked about it, ciming to have no idea who the Insane Clown Posse is?”

  Sheri hit Jude with a throw pillow.

  “It wasn’t a challenge, Jude. It was a rhetorical question. You’re funny, you’re creative, you’re clever-like-a-fox, but you’re hurting yourself in an effort to isote yourself. Now, why you want to isote yourself, I don’t know. Childhood trauma? Instinctual misanthropy? Having your heart broken too many times by your heroes? Whatever it is, you’re doing it more than you were before.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying you were already overwhelmed and stressed out by life before you got here, and that you deal with it by doing things that will just add more stress. When you have those breast impnts, do you think life is going to get easier for you? You’re not committed to the bit, you’re trapped in it. It’s a vicious cycle.”

  “You think I should drop out.”

  “Yes. I don’t think you’re doing this for healthy reasons. And I think if you continue on this path, you are going to seriously harm yourself.”

  Jude leaned forward, clearly upset. “Wait. You’re going to kick me out of the competition?”

  Sheri thought about that, for more than a few moments.

  “It would probably be the best for you, but… no. Mostly because there’s a huge history of people gatekeeping and denying trans people medical care. Full of catch-22s and stupid requirements. You’ve already gone through the ‘real life test’, and you know how stupid that is. So if you say you want to continue, no matter how much I think you’re going to be hurting yourself if you continue, the standard has to be ‘clear and present danger’ not ‘I think you’re doing this for bad reasons, and you’re really going to regret it.’”

  “Oh,” said Jude. “Phew.”

  “But by the same token, Jude, look at me.” Sheri stared directly into Jude’s eyes. “I think you are doing this for bad reasons, and I think if you continue on this path, you are really going to regret it.”

  “Advice noted,” said Jude. “But as I said, I’m–”

  “–committed to the bit, yes.” Sheri sighed. “Don’t say I did not warn you. In fact, I’m putting it in writing. I officially warned you. I’m going to make you sign something to that effect ter today when I get it printed up.”

  Jude was perversely proud of that.

  ***

  One of the stagehands came by Diana’s room toting a rge cardboard package, clearly marked with Garden Market’s logo, on a hand truck. He stopped, double-checked the bel, then knocked on Diana’s door.

  “Hey, there’s a package for you, addressed to Jett Timbrell, care of Diana Fire?”

  “Ah yes! It arrived.” Diana opened the door, greedily taking the package. “Thanks,” she said to the stagehand, and just as quickly, headed back into her room, closed the door, and opened it.

  “Aha!” said Diana, and pulled out three stainless steel short machetes, and a tall unicycle kit. “Time to get to work.”

  ***

  “Do we have to get to work?” whined Eine. “Can’t we just stay like this for five more… hours?”

  Leia finally got up from the bed and stretched out.

  “C’mon, Eine. We’ve got a job to do. Well, sort of a job. Point is - you want to help Mom out with the rent, right? Some extra money in the pot might be the way to do it.”

  Leia headed over to her phone and called Mara.

  “Mara Kane, that’s my name, ask me again and I’ll tell you the same or lose twenty five dolrs, what’s up Leia?”

  “I want to do a confab session, see if the five of us can work together - not just on the talent portion, but also provide genuine feedback on the other parts of the show. Do you know a time we’re all avaible? Maybe in ninety minutes?”

  “Yeah, that sounds good to me,” said Mara. “I’ll see if we can book one of the conference rooms. I’ll get Victoria and Gucci… if she’s avaible.”

  “Everything okay with Gucci?”

  “Don’t know. She went to see Dr. Vadekar, but then went to see Sheri, and I don’t know what happened after that.”

  “Well if you see her, tell her to make her way to that conference room. Eine and I have to take a shower before we get there.”

  Eine’s ears perked up, and she grinned.

  “We have to take two showers. Sequentially,” Leia crified.

  Eine was crestfallen.

  “That… was a weird thing to crify,” said Mara. “Is everything alright?”

  “Yep! Great talking to you, see you in ninety minutes!” Leia quickly hung up the phone. “Right. Eine. You hop in the shower first, I’ll go second, then we’ll use the remaining time to get our stories straight about what we want to tell the others.”

  “What do you want to tell the others?” asked Eine, worried.

  “I don’t know. What about you?”

  “I kind of want to tell them that I’m a girl for real and that we’re figuring things out about whether we want to be besties or something else,” said Eine.

  “Great. That’s perfect,” said Leia. “Let’s go with that. Probationary joyfriends.”

  ***

  Jacob joined them, if only for moral support, but it was Gucci, Victoria, Mara, Eine, and Leia around the table.

  Victoria dimmed all the lights except for a bright overhead one, then rolled out a printed map of Merida onto the table with a sweeping flourish.

  “Ladies, we have three days until the pageant, so let’s synchronize watches.”

  Eine raised her hand.

  Victoria nodded, giving Eine the floor.

  “We’re not wearing watches.”

  “I’ve mainly just been using my phone,” Mara agreed.

  “Be honest,” said Leia. “You just wanted to have an excuse to gather a bunch of people around a conference table, roll out a big map, and say ‘synchronize watches.’”

  Victoria grinned. “And it was everything I dreamed of.”

  Gucci turned the lights back to normal, destroying the dramatic atmosphere.

  “Awww,” Victoria moaned.

  “Right,” said Leia. “Eine’s good with makeup. Eine, do you mind doing our makeup for the show?”

  “Not a problem,” nodded Eine, smiling.

  “Jacob, I was going to ask if you’d help out with the costumes.”

  “I’m pretty sure I can still do that.”

  “You can?”

  “Yeah, I mean, I’m not a contestant anymore, but I’m still, you know, generally here. Nothing in the rules says I can’t help out.” Jacob shrugged.

  Leia turned to Victoria. “Victoria, can you help with, you know, general stage presence and such? I’ve got a little of that from my stand-up, but this is an entirely different type of performing altogether.”

  “This is an entirely different type of performing,” said Gucci, who then looked around. “Oh, sorry, I thought you were doing the ‘Airpne!’ bit.”

  “So that leaves the talent portion.”

  Gucci started hopping up and down. “Puppet show, puppet show, please say puppet show…”

  Mara sighed, “Leia, please tell Gucci that even if we wanted to put on a puppet show, where are we going to find puppets that…”

  Gucci immediately left the room and ran down the hall, to the surprise of all. When she came back, she did so with a rge steamer trunk on wheels.

  “I made these st week when I couldn’t sleep,” expined Gucci, then opened the steamer trunk.

  “Oh my god,” said Mara.

  “Jesus,” said Victoria.

  “It’s like being able to meet your personal sleep paralysis demon when you’re wide awake,” said Eine.

  Not only were there puppets - well crafted puppets at that - but there were puppets in the likeness of Gucci, Jacob, Mara, Victoria, Leia, Eine, even Jamie and Erin.

  “How did you find the time to do all of this?”

  “As I said, I made these st week when I couldn’t sleep. Do you know how much you can get done when you don’t sleep for a week?” said Gucci.

  “Right. Now we just need a hook,” said Victoria.

  “Presumably to drag us off the stage,” said Leia.

  “Speaking of drag, what are we going to do about Diana?” asked Eine.

  Mara shrugged. “Watch our backs? I wouldn’t put it past her to do something catty and mean like sabotage our dresses or something like that, but I’m not going to worry too much about that. If it happens, it happens. Personally, I think when she goes low we–”

  Mara stopped. She thought about what she was going to say next.

  “When she goes low, we what?” asked Victoria.

  “Sorry. I just realized I was about to quote Michelle Obama, of all people. It… felt really awkward.”

  Leia frowned, and sat down on one of the chairs in the conference room. Deep in thought.

  “No. It can’t work. It would be too stupid.”

  Gucci’s ears perked up, and she grinned.

  “Too stupid, you say?”

  ***

  Three days ter, the prep work was in pce for the big challenge day. Erin had returned from vacation two days prior, so Jamie decided to take her and Rafael aside that day for a working breakfast.

  “So, Rafael. This is… well, you’ve been doing great so far. So have you, Erin.”

  Erin raised her eyebrow. “Jamie. Spit it out. I’m not sure Rafael can take the suspense.”

  Rafael shrugged. “I’m good with a little suspense. Do you have any more of those waffles? Ooh, or maybe some sausage patties? I’ve been starving since I’ve been back on testosterone.”

  “I think so. Check the back? But ter.” Jamie sighed. “Since I’m a participant today, I can’t really give you much direction from on-stage. And Erin, you’re gonna have to do all the heavy lifting as host. Look, something unexpected may happen. Something we didn’t pn for. I want you – both – to know you’re in the right chairs, and to trust your instincts.”

  Erin and Rafael looked at each other and rolled their eyes, ughing.

  “Jamie,” said Erin, holding out her hand for Jamie to take. “Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, you’re nervous about the pageant, aren’t you.”

  “What? Me? No! I’m a professional! I’ve been on stage for years.”

  “But the context is different,” Rafael said. “And that can make all the difference. Change one little detail and you have an entirely different picture, and it doesn’t feel right. Basic mise-en-scene.”

  “Okay, maybe I’m a little nervous,” admitted Jamie. “But… same idea. Even if I’m nervous, that doesn’t reflect on the both of you.”

  “Aw, Jamie, you big sweetie,” said Erin. She then expined to Rafael: “She was like this on Zimmel too. Wanted to make sure I got my big moment before she got hers.”

  Erin turned back to Jamie. “Jamie, it’s okay to be nervous sometimes.”

  “I don’t know. I feel like, you know, I should be more of a mentor to you two. This is the first big project for both of you and I feel like, you know, the elder entertainer.”

  “You may be the elder entertainer,” said Rafael. “But you’re a baby-trans. I accept your reassurance, but equally assured, Erin and I have your back, okay?”

  “Speaking of people who have your back, have you talked to Sam about this?” asked Erin.

  “I can’t, actually. Rules. Sam has to keep mum since she has information that she has to keep from me, lest it affect the outcome. I don’t even know who the judges are.”

  ***

  “Heyo!” said Larry Zimmel, meeting Sam at the front gate with his on-location crew. “Sam, nice to finally meet you in person. I mean, you were in the audience, but this is the first time we’ve met in person.”

  “Great to meet you in person, Larry. And you too, Max,”

  Maximilian Ruiz nodded. “Good to see you again, Ms. Culver.”

  “Say, have you been watching the show?” Larry asked. “I can understand if not - I have to imagine you and Jamie have been busy.”

  “Sorry, no,” said Sam. “I haven’t even had time to keep up with the news.”

  “Eeeh,” said Larry. “Well, that’s a mixed blessing. The President and the ex-President had their first debate a few nights ago.”

  “The President didn’t do well?”

  “At times it didn’t even seem like he was aware of his surroundings. It was like watching Dirk Dastardly curb-stomp Mr. Magoo. People are even calling for the President to drop out. Oh - changing the subject, we brought in a new announcer, this is Willie Louton.”

  A bck woman in her thirties waved, a little nervous. “Hey, I’m Willie. They brought me in about a month ago, before then I was mostly working with Matt Weimar, with Gap Year Productions doing freence stuff.”

  “Oh!” said Sam. “I thought I recognized you! I’m a big fan of ‘Show Switch’! Jamie and I watch it all the time. I mean, you’d expect - if there ever was a show targeted at the ‘game show producer’ demographic, it’s ‘Show Switch.’”

  “So, we have to sneak around a bit, but don’t worry, we’ll show you to your rooms. When we take off next week for our monthly break, you can use Video Vilge and the Casa as your HQ as you do your on-location sketches.”

  “Yeah, Chandra really worked out a heck of a deal for both of us. This is going to save both our companies a lot of money. Say, if you don’t mind me asking, how’s Jamie holding up? I heard about the…”

  Larry mimed someone throwing a brick.

  “Jamie’s better than I’ve ever seen her, actually. More Yiddish actually.”

  “More what?”

  Sam started to head towards the back entrance with the Zimmel Live cast and crew, expining Jamie’s return to her childhood dialect.

  ***

  “How do I look?” said Gucci.

  “Hold still, and stop talking, and you’ll look great,” said Eine, applying eyeshadow to Gucci. “Keep talking and moving and you’ll look like Robert Pattinson in the Batman movie.”

  “Hey, Leia, help zip me up?” said Mara. “I can’t quite reach the zipper.”

  “Why do they put the zippers in the back?” Leia said. “Hold still. I don’t want to cause a tear. I don’t know how expensive that dress was, but there’s a good chance that it was more expensive than my car.”

  “Well, not when you factor in the cost of insurance, fuel, and maintenance,” said Eine, while still focused on Gucci’s makeup. “The costs of fuel, insurance, and maintenance on a dress is negligible, of course.”

  Victoria, already made up and ready, was pacing back and forth in her heels, trying to go over her lines and choreography for the night.

  ***

  Diana, on the other hand, was already dressed, ready, and bringing her trunk of supplies to the backstage area. It was going to be her night. Everything was going to go her way.

  There was a difference, after all, between a drag show performer and busker, and a pageant contestant. Pageants are done to get a little sash, maybe a little tiara at the end.

  But Diana? Well, if she wasn’t good at entertaining, she didn’t eat.

  She was a pro, you see. And the only other ‘pro’ in the competition was a fucking game show host. The others were rank amateurs.

  Oh yes. She wouldn’t just beat Jamie and the competition. She’d humiliate them.

  ***

  Erin introduced the guest judges - Larry, Max, and Winnie, for the contest in front of the camera, while Jamie and the contestants waited for their cues.

  “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod” said Victoria, “They actually got celebrities to judge us. Real celebrities. I’ve never met a real celebrity before,” Victoria nodded.

  Jamie smiled slyly at Victoria.

  “Present company excepted,” Vic quickly corrected.

  “It’s okay. Game show hosts top out on the B-list. Larry hosted the Emmys, for crying out loud. Even I’m intimidated. But he’s a good guy. Any jokes he makes are going to be with you, not at you. I know from personal experience. Honestly, you have nothing to worry about. You’re not competing against Larry, you’re competing against me.”

  “Yeah, well, uh, you look nice. Did you get a haircut?”

  “I did! Thanks for noticing! My hair isn't really long enough for anything else, so I figured I’d go with a pixie cut. Maybe my hair’s a little too thin to pull it off, but I hope not.”

  “Looks good to me,” said Vic.

  Leia came up to Victoria and Jamie. “Say, Jamie, just, uh, I want you to know something before we do our talent bit.”

  “Oh?”

  “We’ve, uh, noticed your vocabury shifts.”

  “You mean the Yiddish slipping back into my vocabury.”

  “Yep. I want you to know - that did kind of inspire our talent show act. But in a good way.”

  “What, are you going to tell old Buddy Hackett jokes?”

  “Not quite. I just wanted you to know that… well… everything’s meant with love, okay? I think you would get that anyway, but I just wanted to make sure.”

  Jamie looked at Leia confused. “Okay. Just… be careful, alright. Remember - punch up, not punch down.”

  “Yeah, I still feel like an ass for all those jokes I made at your expense back when you… when your egg cracked. Not my finest moment.”

  Jamie dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “Water under the bridge, completely forgiven. The one thing that I didn’t expect, honestly, is how much everyone here - including myself - has… grown and changed and figured out themselves more. Who knew that Mara would be so open-minded? Or Vic, I see you repcing that false bravado with real confidence - and you should. Eine’s doing better, Rafael is… where he needs to be, honestly. It’s weird, I kinda feel like… den mother Jamie, seeing all of you change and grow.”

  “Pardon me, coming through!” said Diana, carrying her unicycle and machetes, nearly nicking Jamie in the process.

  “Whoa, Diana. Watch it!”

  Diana just moved on without an apology, taking her pce backstage.

  “And then some people just… don’t have enough character to have a character arc,” said Leia. “I mean, her boyfriend dumped her on national TV, and it doesn’t even register with her. I’ve never met anyone more self-absorbed.”

  “Too true,” said Jamie. “And I work in Hollywood.”

  A stagehand came by and told Jamie and the contestants to get ready for their cues.

  ***

  Erin once again listed the criteria the judges would use, did a bit of banter with the Larry Zimmel Live cast, and started the introductions. Naturally, Jamie came out first, wearing an aqua blue shimmering dress which came down only to her mid-thigh, and showed off both of her shoulders. She walked out confidently on some heeled sandals - the practice st month in the Galleria mall had paid off - and strutted down the walkway, to the microphone.

  “Hello everyone! Hello judges! My name is Jamie Howard, I’m a television producer from Santa Monica, California. My hobbies are cooking, traveling, and hosting game shows.”

  Even Sam had to admit, Jamie looked good. The makeup, the hair, the outfit. Even her legs were better than she expected.

  Rafael caught Sam’s blush and stifled his ugh - he had work to do.

  “Thank you, Jamie!” said Erin, as Jamie strutted confidently back down the catwalk and stood on her mark.

  Gucci was out next, sporting new hair extensions and wearing a dress with so many silver sequins that if her shoulders were to droop, it would blind cars outside and confuse several Russian spy satellites. Also - she had somehow gotten ahold of a sash, on which she had embroidered: “Miss Found Under A Rock 1997.”

  “Hello! My name is Judi Guthrie, but you can call me Gucci! I’m an entrepreneur from Bakersfield, California, and my favorite type of journalism, Foxy Shazam album, and muppet is Gonzo.”

  Next was Leia, in a cssic LBD5"Little Bck Dress". It, like her bck fts and panty hose, were designed for simplicity. It’s hard to mess up the basics, and Leia needed to keep her wits about her as she fought off both being mildly starstruck by Larry Zimmel and crew, as well as still dealing with the internal dysphoria. Still, once you’re on stage, you just have to power through and complete the set. And she knew how to fake that for at least five minutes at a time.

  “Hey. My name is Leia Harrison, from San Diego, California. I’m a computer science student at UCSD, and on the weekends I perform open-mic stand-up comedy.”

  Mara came out in a tied blue denim short-sleeve shirt, cowboy – well, cowgirl – hat, brown leather ankle boots with a slight heel and Daisy Duke shorts.

  “Howdy, I’m Mara Kane, I’m an entrepreneur from Orange County California. In my spare time I cook barbeque, watch football, and do some political activism in my spare time.”

  Next was Eine, wearing a blue twirler dress with yellow and white highlights, in the form of gears, Erlenmeyer fsks, Bohr model atoms and molecur diagrams. She had even gone so far as to order some real squishy prosthetic breasts - no more washcloths stuffed down the bra - and did a little spin in her Mary Janes when she arrived on her spot.

  “Hello. My name is Eine MacDonald. I’m a computer science student from San Diego, and I like tabletop rolepying games, figuring out Nash Equilibria, and bondage.”

  The judges, Jamie, Erin, and the crew broke out in ughter.

  “ELAINE!” yelled Leia, in shock.

  “What. What’d I say?”

  “Chemical!” said Leia, frantically. “She means organic and covalent bonds in chemistry.”

  Eine shrugged.

  “Well yeah, that’s cool too, I guess.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Leia muttered under her breath. Jamie reached over and patted Leia on the shoulder in sympathy.

  Victoria was out next, wearing a bck asymmetric cut-out split leg Maxi dress.

  “My name is Victoria Rubin, from Los Angeles. I’m an up and coming actor, pywright, and script writer.”

  Eine furrowed her brow, wondering why Vic didn’t mention pywriting or scriptwriting before, but decided not to say anything.

  Finally, Diana came out, dressed in an over-the-top orange ruffled dress and sparkling corset, resembling fmes. Rather than the standard makeup that the others had worn, Diana had gone full gm - ruby red lipstick, tons of blush, eyesh extenders, and glitter eyeshadow and deep, thick bck eyeliner.

  “Heeeeey! I’m Diana Timbrell, a.k.a. Diana Fire. I’m a party girl and professional entertainer from Venice Beach, California, and I’m going to rock your cocks off.”

  Max turned to Larry, and asked: “Did she say ‘socks’?”

  Winnie answered Max for Larry, with a frown. “No. No, she did not.”

  Standing next to the other five contestants, and Jamie, Diana’s over the top accouterments stood out like a sore thumb; so Rafael, following his gut, made sure to include Diana in the wide shot.

  Erin then once again took center stage. “Ladies, gentlemen, and other honored guests, your contestants!” She motioned to the lineup, and Jamie led the procession backstage, where Sam was waiting.

  “Okay. Next section is question-and-answer, you’ll not be allowed to hear each other’s answers, so if everyone but Jamie could come with me, we have a little green room setup for you. Jamie, you’re on in two.”

  Sam motioned for the contestants to head to a back room. Once there, Leia gred at Eine.

  “Bondage?” said Leia, incredulously.

  “I needed a third thing, and I thought talking about Minecraft would be embarrassing,” shrugged Eine.

  “And bondage wouldn’t?”

  “Not if I owned it.”

  Leia stopped… narrowed her eyes at Eine, scrunching up her face in scrutiny. Eine just looked back, grinning from ear to ear.

  “The estrogen made you way more confident, didn’t it?”

  “Yep. And I’m loving it.”

  “Honestly, I think the judges really liked it,” said Gucci.

  “It doesn’t matter Leia. Eine doesn’t have a chance,” said Diana. “I mean, look at how you’re all dressed. And Eine’s dress has equations on it. So pin, so drab. It’s like you totally misunderstood the assignment.”

  Victoria nodded, and, in her most condescending voice, said, “Yes, yes, Diana. We’ve all misunderstood the assignment. You’ve absolutely nailed what they’re looking for.”

  Diana put her hands on her hips and leaned forward. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Eine raised her hand. “Um, I’m not sure, Diana, but I think Victoria was being ironic. So the words aren’t her literal intention. I know, that trips me up sometimes, too.”

  ***

  “So Jamie,” asked Larry. “Here’s your question.”

  “Hold on one second,” said Jamie, standing in the middle of the stage, smiling. “You’re a celebrity asking a difficult question to a contestant on a stage. I’d be remiss if I didn’t note the situational irony. Go ahead.”

  Larry chuckled and read from the card he was given. “Here’s your question: ‘What does feminism mean to you, and how do you see it evolving in the future?’”

  “Ooh, that’s a toughie.”

  Sam couldn’t help but peek her head out from backstage, she was kind of curious how Jamie would answer this question too.

  “I think, ultimately, the key tenet of feminism is that gender should not be treated as a hierarchy. That is, that one’s gender should not determine one’s status or role in society. Not just the ‘radical idea that women are people’ but the idea that there’s no wrong way to be a woman. And consequently, there’s no wrong way to be a person.”

  “What I think might be the struggle over feminism over the next generation is avoiding the trap of creating more artificial hierarchy, than less. Of creating artificial divisions between and among women. It’s no wonder that those most interested in preserving a hierarchy with men at the top are the most interested in convincing people that some women are better than others.”

  Sam was really impressed with Jamie for that answer. And the judges seemed to be too.

  Of course, there has to be some allowance for the fact that these questions were designed for teenagers, and Jamie was in her mid-forties, but still. Sam thought it was very well answered.

  ***

  “So, Gucci,” asked Max. “How can individuals contribute to solving climate change on a personal level?”

  Gucci smiled, softly, closed her eyes for a second and smiled.

  “I know this isn’t the answer that you want to hear, but they can’t.”

  The room was silent.

  “Could… you eborate?” said Max, finally.

  “Certainly. At the end of the day, the amount of climate change we experience is determined by how much carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere. And while we could individually reduce our carbon footprint by, I don’t know, recycling or choosing to take a train instead of a car, governments really are the only ones who can put a cap on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Both democratic and totalitarian regimes have completely failed to do so, to a point where the damage is now irreversible and human extinction a near certainty. Even if every individual person behaved perfectly with regard to their own CO2 emissions, this wouldn’t be enough to have a measurable impact. We needed to curtail emissions and invest in infrastructure that would reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, but we didn’t, and now the opportunity has passed.”

  Once again, the room was stunned into silence.

  “That’s rather… pessimistic, no?” Larry finally muttered.

  “Well, that’s why I smoke a lot of weed. So that I can turn my mind off, and have a comfier seat on this handbasket we’re all in. Honestly, a few bong hits and even the end of the world is kinda funny when you think about it.”

  “Uh… thank you, Gucci,” said Max.

  ***

  “Mark Twain,” said Leia. “If I could have dinner with anyone from history? Absolutely, it’s gotta be Mark Twain.”

  “I mean, think about it - this is a man who really had his eyes open and the pulse of his time, and still found humor in the world, despite railing against the injustices in it. We think of him as a story writer, but what he was was a satirist.”

  “What would you ask him?” said Winnie.

  “How did you keep ughing, even when it was hard? How do you see the joy and the beauty in even the darkest part of the American experience? How, in short, do you make the most painful things the most funny?”

  ***

  “Mara,” asked Larry. “If you could make one w to change the world, what would it be?”

  “Wow. That’s a tough one,” said Mara. “Can you give me a moment?”

  “Just a moment,” said Larry. “There is a timer.”

  Mara thought.

  “This may seem flippant, but I always liked the old joke that politicians should wear logos for their sponsors, the way that Nascar drivers do. I mean, I don’t know if that would be my one w. I’m pretty politically active, and I have a lot of ws that I’d put in front of that one. On the other hand, I doubt you’d want to hear about my stance on free trade agreements. But I think the one thing everyone’s upset about is the idea that there’s just so much money going into political campaigns, and it seems like that matters more to the politicians than the people voting for them. I don’t know what to do about it, but I think that fixing it is something that everyone can get behind, red or blue, no?”

  ***

  “Eine.”

  “Yes, Mr. Zimmel?”

  “Here’s your question.”

  “Hit me.”

  “Do you believe that wealth inequality can ever be eliminated? Why or why not?”

  “Oooh, that’s a really good question. Do you have a whiteboard I can use?”

  “Eine,” Erin chided. “There’s a four minute time limit.”

  “Oh. Okay. Then I’ll just go over the cliff notes: basically, when you mean wealth inequality, there’s a difference between a strict zero-difference in equality, in that all participants have equal amounts, and an equity, in that participants have unequal amounts but are proportionally reasonable. Right now we have neither, obviously. So if you look at GINI coefficients for the past couple of decades, you see rising inequality in most industrialized nations that do not have a strong social democratic ptform and few welfare programs. The idea being of course that wealth tends to have a magnetic, consolidating effect due to economies of scale. Now, what Piketty has suggested in his seminal work ‘Capital in the 20th Century’, he proposed a wealth tax, imposed worldwide. I don’t know how feasible that is, but generally speaking you address wealth inequality by letting the free market consolidate money at the top and then tax the money at the top and redistribute it at the bottom. This would create a virtuous cycle that increases both economic growth and lowers the GINI coefficient. Of course, these policies are opposed by those who already benefit from this system which is why regutory capture remains a problem. To combat this, it is possible to implement a system resistant to regutory capture. One possible way is to perhaps establish a legistive body with limited but crucial power to stop legistion, essentially a veto power, determined not by election but by sortition - the drawing of random lots. This is the method used by the Ancient Greek democracies and we still use it today for some methods of our governance, specifically the commissioning of juries for trials and—”

  A buzzer cut Eine off.

  “But… I didn’t even get into the Prisoner’s Dilemma...”

  ***

  “Victoria,” Winnie asked. “What does success mean to you, and how will you know when you’ve achieved it?”

  “Honestly? I don’t want people to forget me. I don’t know if I’ll ever know if I achieve it. But… maybe I’m a little vain, I don’t know, but, I really feel like we only have a limited time on this Earth, and then after that we’re… only memories.”

  Victoria paused. “I think I’d like to be remembered. I think I’d like to be able to leave a mark on the world, one that said: ‘I was here. I existed. I was a part of this time and this pce, and my name was Victoria Rubin. Well, my other name, but, hell, you know what? Victoria? Victor? Vicky? Vic? I think there’s something… upsetting about the way we move on from loss and death. Not on a personal level, no, we still feel every ache and pain. But we don’t remember the people that came before us. We’re so busy with our day-to-day lives, doing the important things we need to do for survival, for comfort, for accim, for self-actualization… that we don’t remember those who came before us enough. I don’t like the idea of…”

  Victoria paused again. “No… I fear the idea that someday I’ll be forgotten. That not only some day will I die and no longer exist, but that I will have effectively never existed.”

  “That’s kind of profound, actually,” Larry said.

  “Is it? I don’t know. They got me on wacky hormone drugs, sometimes I don’t even know what I’m saying until I say it.”

  ***

  “Diana,” asked Max. “What is more important: ambition or kindness? And why?”

  “Oh, that’s easy. Ambition. Ambition is what drives progress and innovation. Without it, nothing great would ever be accomplished. I mean, kindness is nice to have, of course, but it doesn’t get things done.”

  “Really?” asked Max. It didn’t seem like the answer he was expecting.

  “I mean, isn’t ambition a kindness in its own way? By pursuing my ambitions, I inspire others to strive for greatness too. That’s ultimately a kindness to the world, don’t you think?”

  ***

  After the questions, there was a quick break for thirty minutes where everyone got set up for the talent portion. They decided that Jamie would go first, then the group of Eine, Leia, Mara, Victoria, and Gucci would go, and finally, Diana.

  “So, Jamie. What do you have for us?” asked Larry.

  “It’s nothing really. When I used to host ‘Rotten Eggs,’ one of the ways I got the young contestants comfortable and having fun was I would perform close-up magic tricks. Card tricks, a specialty. Here.”

  Jamie produced a pack of cards, sealed in cling wrap, and handed it to Larry. “Open ‘er up, take the deck out, check that it’s a normal deck, then hand the deck back to me, face down.”

  Larry fanned out the deck, showed it to the camera, and then handed it back to Jamie.

  What Larry didn’t see was that when Jamie took the deck, she already quickly swapped it out for a gimmicked one in her other hand.

  “Okay, let me just flip through - when you say stop, I’ll stop.”

  Jamie riffled through the cards, and when Larry said stop, it nded on the three of clubs. Of course, it was always going to be the three of clubs. With a gimmicked deck, it was trivially easy to force a card.

  “Right. Larry - do me a favor, take that sharpie pen and just sign your name on the top of the card? Show the card to the cameras, don’t let me see it, and put it back in the deck, anywhere you want, then give it a few shuffles, then hand me the deck.”

  Larry did so. And then Jamie put the cards down on the table, and said. “Okay, Larry, can you deal five cards face down on the table and then the sixth card face up?”

  “Alright. One. Two. Three. Four. Five… and the sixth one you said?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Larry flipped it up. It was the Jack of diamonds. Jamie grimaced. “Uh… where’s your signature?”

  “Yeah, uh, Jamie, that’s not my card.”

  “It’s not your card?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Eesh… Er… I’m rustier than I thought. Anyway, I have a backup talent. As you know, I’m a bit of a foodie, and… well I’ve been learning some of the cuisine, so I’ve gone ahead and made the three of you my homemade tamales as a backup.”

  A stagehand brought out three dishes for the judges.

  “I gotta tell you, this has to be one hell of a tamale if you want to make up for that trick,” said Larry.

  Jamie shrugged. “Tried my best to use local authentic spices and techniques.”

  Larry took his fork and knife and unwrapped the corn husk around the tamale. Almost immediately, he disgustedly threw the fork and knife down on the pte and shot Jamie a dirty look.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Larry took his fork and pulled a three of clubs from the corn husk, complete with his signature.

  Max took a bite of his tamale, swallowed, and then pointed to his tamale with his fork. “These are actually pretty good too, did you really cook these?”

  “Uh, yes, actually.”

  “It’s really good,” said Max. “I like it more than the magic trick. You should have led with it.”

  “Well, if I had led with the tamale with a pying card in it, you’d think I’m a horrible chef and it would have ruined the magic trick.”

  ***

  “So, Larry, Max, Winnie, the assembled crew and audience, we decided to work together to present something… a little different for the talent portion,” introduced Leia, while the other four started setting up the screen and all the props they would need.

  “Basically, each one of us had a little talent that would have been, well, a little meh,” Leia continued.

  “I can solve a Rubik’s cube in under sixty seconds,” said Eine.

  “And I can scramble a Rubik’s cube in under ten seconds!” said Gucci.

  “But working together we thought we’d do something that would not just showcase our talents but also tell you a little something about our time here. But in order to understand why we did what we did, you have to understand something about the show’s producer, co-host, and competition.”

  “As you know, most of us entered this contest as men, and being on the wrong hormones has been really tough for most of us. But two of us, it turns out, are trans women - Jamie and Eine.”

  Gucci stepped forward. “Wait. What? Eine, when were you going to tell me this?”

  “When it was funny,” said Eine. “And it is!” She grinned.

  “Eine’s gotten a little bit more confident… in… many ways… since she started on the right hormones. So has Jamie, I think, and one of the ways that has shown up is that she’s more comfortable in the natural speaking voice she learned from her Jewish grandparents in her youth. Which happens to contain a lot of Yiddish vocabury,” said Leia.

  “We’re calling it ‘ROGD: Rapid Onset Germanic Dialect,” expined Victoria. “And that inspired what you’re about to see.”

  Leia turned to the rest of the team. “Girls, we ready?”

  “As we’ll ever be,” said Mara.

  “Then cue the soundtrack and spotlight,” said Leia, rushing behind the curtain they had set up.

  A moment passed, and then there was some music. A recording of a single violin pying, quickly joined by a flute in a klezmer style. The two instruments pyed in Phrygian dominant scale, filled with trills and slides. It had a free, rubato feel as the tempo fluctuated slightly.

  And a felt puppet - unmistakably modeled on Jamie, and voiced by Victoria, popped up from behind the curtain.

  —

  “A reality TV show about gender. Sounds crazy, no? But here, in our little Casa in Merida, you might say, every one of us is a little transgender. Trying to adjust to strange, new hormones. Without flipping their lid.”

  “It isn’t easy. You may ask, ‘why do we stay here if it’s so painful?’”

  “Well, we stay because we’ve grown as people here.”

  “And how do we grow as people?”

  “That I can tell you in one word!”

  “TRANSITION!”

  —

  “Who had a show, to trans a bunch of cis men,

  Had a little breakdown, on national TV.

  And who had a big ol crazy revetion

  That he was meant to be a she.”

  “The Jamie, The Jamie! Transition!”

  “The Jamie, The Jamie! Transition!”

  At this point, a puppet shaped like Leia appeared on the stage, and took over the singing.

  “Who must wear a skirt, combined with proper leggings,

  Never use the deadnames, jump through all the hoops.

  And who are going against good medical advice,

  Pying crazy games for cash.”

  In unison, the Eine, Mara, Gucci, and Victoria puppets popped up and joined in.

  “Contestants! Contestants! Transition!”

  “Contestants! Contestants! Transition!”

  “They told us we were macho men,

  But we were all betrayed.

  They told us to take estrogen

  To make… us pretty.”

  “Erin’s like our den mother,

  Who keeps us all on track.

  Pranav and Sheri tell us to

  Drop out while we still can!”

  “The talent, The talent! Transition!”

  “The talent, The Jamie! Contestants! The Crew! Transition!”

  —

  Victoria moved back into prose, while the music continued in the background.

  “And in our little Casa Del Garden, we’ve always had our special types. For instance, Rafael, the new director.”

  (When the Rafael puppet popped up, Rafael literally had to bite into his hand, hard, to keep from ughing. He had no idea they made a puppet of him.)

  “Terryl, the old director,” and a puppet popped up with its arm in a sling.

  “And most important of all, our beloved host.”

  The Mara puppet, voiced by Mara, and the Erin puppet, voiced by Leia, popped up.

  “Erin, may I ask you a question?”

  “Certainly, Mara.”

  “Why did Standards and Practices approve this show?”

  “Ah, because they feel a kinship to us. Standards and Practices is where great ideas get neutered!”

  Chorus: “Guy guy guy guy. Guy guy guy guy. Guy guy guy guy, once I was a guy.”

  ***

  After the parody was over, the five took a joint curtsey, and braced for questions.

  “I don’t know what I was expecting,” said Larry. “Not that, certainly. But I loved it. So, who did what?”

  “Well, it was a team effort, but everyone contributed. Gucci here created the puppets, Victoria helped coordinate our acting and choreography, I wrote most of the modified lyrics, Eine helped us with this part - dresses and makeup - turns out she had been practicing for a while - and you’re going to have to pay my mom back for all that makeup you stole–”

  “I swear, it was only the free samples,” said Eine. “And that one bra that she was throwing out.”

  “–right,” Leia continued. “And I’d say Mara’s role was the most crucial.”

  “I paid for everything,” said Mara, smiling.

  “Well, great job, everyone,” said Larry. “Thank you so much, I really enjoyed it!”

  The team started giving each other high fives as Erin took center stage again.

  “Alright, well, we’ll clear all this away and get ready for our final talent act, Diana.”

  ***

  It was all perfect. Magic tricks? Puppet shows? Amateur hour. It was time for the showstopper. A routine practiced literally hundreds of times. Nearing a thousand. The machetes were weighted, the unicycle was tuned. Everything perfectly banced.

  Except for Diana.

  It started off well, and she could tell that the judges were honestly impressed, by the ‘oohs’ and ‘ah’s’ and the ‘are those real knives?’

  But then something was slightly off. She couldn’t figure it out at the moment. Wouldn’t figure it out until it was too te.

  The bancing, juggling act required precision and muscle memory. It required keeping one’s center of bance over a single spot, while concentrating on where the next bde was going to be at a precise moment in time, both positionally, and rotationally.

  But what Diana had not counted on was that her body was imbanced, as weight had shifted away from her upper body and towards her lower body. Lowering her center of gravity - and making it harder for her to adjust and bance on the high unicycle. Furthermore, her arm muscles were slightly atrophied. Not much. Not even perceptibly. Nobody noticed, except, sadly, for Sir Issac Newton.

  So when she reached out for the bde, she had simply not thrown it as high and as far as she expected to, and instead of it having completed three full rotations, it had only completed two and a half.

  She snatched the bde out of the air from the wrong end, and when a spray of blood rang out from the palm of her hand, she instinctively pulled back in shock, knocking her down off the unicycle and down to the floor.

  As a small blessing, the other two bdes nded harmlessly - even if one nded terrifyingly close to Erin’s foot, and another one embedded itself in the edge of the judges’ table.

  Immediately, the first aid tech appeared on the scene to tend to the wound, and Sam ran to get Pranav.

  Bruised, wounded, and worst of all, humiliated, Diana eschewed all pretense of professionalism and started screaming at the top of her lungs, ugly crying and sniffling.

  “They sabotaged my act! They… they did something to the knives, or to the unicycle or something! Victoria! Victoria did it. She did it before! She… she did this thing where she said there were clues.”

  “Jett,” said the first aider. “I need you to calm down and hold still.” He was pressing gauze to the wound, to try to slow the bleeding. “Dr. Vadekar is on his way, and we’re going to see if we need to take you to the hospital for stitches.”

  “I bet it was that little twink bitch that came up with the idea too! They’ve all become buddy-buddy here. I bet he’s fucking all of them.”

  Eine blinked.

  “Leia… I think she means me.”

  “She’d better not,” said Leia.

  “I never got what was so special about you trannies anyway, like you can’t fucking just fuck a guy, you’re so up your own ass you think you have to take hormones and get surgeries. Reality check, bitch, everyone just thinks you’re ridiculous for becoming a cunt, let alone installing one. Who’d want to be a smelly old cunt anyway. You’ve got to be fucked in the head.”

  By this time, Pranav had arrived, and had caught the st half of that conversation. And he was in no fucking mood.

  “JETT. Look at ME!”

  Jett’s head spun round.

  “If you want to save the full use of your hand, you are going to shut up, keep pressure on the wound, and come with me, we are going to drive you straight to the emergency room. NOW.”

  Pranav pointed at the first aider. “Can you come with us?”

  The first aider nodded.

  “Then let’s go.”

  Pranav held open the door, as the first aider guided Jett out to the staff vans. Before Pranav followed them, he turned back to look at Sam, Jamie, and Erin, and silently drew a hand across his throat, and threw a thumb back over his shoulder.

  ***

  Standings:Pyers Remaining: 5Prize Pot: 86,958**Cash-Out: 8,695.80 Zolodex Treatments: 2Estrogen Doses: 3 ContestantStatusWinningsPenaltiesCash-outTotalEine (Ethan)Active10500 1050Judi "Gucci"(Jude "Gooch")Active1000-5 995Leia (Leonard)Active10500 1050Mara (Oscar)Active250-5 245Victoria (Victor)Active650-105 545  JettEjected due to safety concerns:Month 2, Week 3100-107,905 7,995JacobCashed Out:Month 2, Week 340007,2977,697RafaelDisqualified*:Month 2, Week 1000 0BradleyCashed Out:Month 1, Week 3100-203,4213,501  * Rafael voluntarily disqualified.** Talent Show Challenge Winnings Have Not Yet Been Added To The Pot

  AnnouncementFirst off, I want to thank th3saurus for her amazing fan art:

  Special thanks for helping to edit this chapter go to:

  R.R. Rosecolourth3saurus ( for Guguze)Breefolkgayannabethcassie