"I don't know," said Lizzie. "If they force you to do go with a guy it's discriminating, right? School can't do that."
"I guess so," said Erica, as she left. "So I don't really have to worry."
Lizzie thought. Had she done something wrong? She had made Erica this way because she couldn't decide between having a masculine brother and having a sister to do girl things with. Girl things like talking about cute boys and going shopping. Erica didn't like either of those! How had she messed up the program?
She turned on the computer and tried again. The program started--it seemed to recognize that she was the one at the keyboard. She pulled up Erica's profile and read it over carefully. Where was her mistake?
Lizzie found a box labelled "Command Line Interface". Taking a guess, she typed in a question. "What things does Erica consider girl things?" It seemed her guess was right, since the answer scrolled onto the screen. Most of the answers seemed okay, but shopping wasn't in there. So she modified the profile to say that Erica likes to go shopping with Lizzie--she wouldn't shop for girls' things herself, but is glad to help Lizzie do so.
Her next mistake was the cute boys. But she realized her mistake easily. Erica probably would talk about cute boys with Lizzie--but only to make Lizzie happy, not because she really likes cute boys. Lizzie found the orientation setting and changed Erica from lesbian to straight.
Finally she added to the profile, "Erica wants to go shopping with Lizzie and will come in to take her in one minute."
Strangely, as soon as Lizzie typed that, the words "one minute" changed, to "59 seconds," "58 seconds," as if counting down.
She saved the profile, turned off the machine, and waited. Soon Erica walked in again. She looked just the same as before. "So let's go to the mall!" she said. It was so nice to have a sister, who was also like a brother....
