The person in the mirror was on the smaller side, lightly built, with shoulder-length black hair. This was not really that bad, but the face was clearly delicate and feminine, and even under the folds of the hospital gown, Jon could see a couple of lumps that rose and fell in time with his breathing. His eyes...her eyes went wide, and she let out a shriek.
"WHAT'S GOING ON HERE!?" she screeched, grabbing the woman by the shoulders and nearly falling off the table. "WHY AM I A GIRL!? TELL ME!"
The woman helped her back onto the table, lifting her into a sitting position, then sighed. "I'll tell you," she said. "But you're not going to like it. Tell me, what's the last thing you remember before waking up here?"
Jon managed to stop hyperventilating long enough to answer. "A-a really b-bad dream about getting h-h-hit by a...a truck."
The woman nodded. "Well, in case you haven't figured it out by now, that wasn't a dream. I found you on the edge of my property, downstream from the bridge."
"B-but why am I...?" Jon couldn't believe how soft and feminine her new voice was.
"I'm getting to that," she replied. "Let me introduce myself. My name is Anne Larue, and I'm an electronics engineer and artificial intelligence researcher. When I found you, you were far beyond my meager first-aid skills. But lucky for you, I had this." She patted a nearby piece of laboratory equipment, which looked like some sort of absurd wizard's staff; a long metal rod with a half-circle metal frame on top, which rotated slightly at her touch, and some sort of electronics array moving on a track along the frame. "It's the second most advanced thing I've ever made; it's a brain scanner. Using this, I saved your brain state before the paramedics got there."
"B-but my body," Jon stammered, "why is it..." She was beginning to realize what this woman might be getting at, but she didn't want to believe it, even if she could.
Anne sighed. "Don't you get it?" she asked. "Do I really have to come out and say it? Fine. Kid, 'your body' is dead. You were completely beyond saving when the ambulance got here, and the only reason you're here is because I backed you up and restored you into something I had available."
"You don't m-mean..." Jon couldn't bring herself to say it, but she knew what was coming, as unbelievable as it seemed.
Anne sat down on a nearby chair. "Let me tell you a story, kid," she said. "See, once upon a time, there was this strange little girl whose life-long dream was to create a new form of intelligent life. So she went to college, got a couple of degrees, and found that everybody in her field was busy training toy cars to solve mazes or making assembly-line equipment work around broken parts until they were fixed. And she hated it."
Jon almost wanted to interrupt, but couldn't quite decide that she wanted the answer any faster. Ms. Larue continued. "So the girl inherited the family farm, sold everything she didn't need and could bear to part with, and got a day job doing embedded systems for automobiles. And then she got on the Internet, and got in touch with some nanotechnology experts, and started designing something with all the key advantages that had made human life successful. A complex, adaptable brain. A flexible framework for environmental manipulation. The ability to develop into a complete being, starting from a very simple structure and a set of condensed instructions. The ability to incorporate donated genetic material into a combined new model produced in an internal manufacturing environment, to allow for differentiation and acquisition and propagation of survival traits. Fantastic stuff, and elegantly implemented, too. Everything ready except for the brain. Then some poor bastard came along and happened to be desperately in need of a new body..."
"Then you're saying I'm a..." Jon trailed off; she just couldn't bring herself to say it. But Ms. Larue nodded, and Jon burst into tears. A robot. She had been transplanted into an artificial body. The older woman walked over and put an arm around her shoulder.
"See, I knew that I couldn't get something perfect in one try," Anne said. It was a little while later, when Jon had regained at least a bit of her composure. "And I didn't have the money for more than a couple failures. But then I realized that nature hadn't done it in one try, either. Adding the ability to acquire traits from outside sources in subsequent generations, combined with the principles of natural selection, would ensure that my new species would improve generationally."
"Does that mean I-?" Jon was sipping a mug of cocoa, surprised to find that everything, from taste on down to body temperature, was perceived the same as in her old body. The only differences were due to her now-female form. "I mean, I can't really..."
"You can conceive and bear children, yes," Ms. Larue said. "Though only you can say whether you'd want to. It actually should be able to work with any donor of genetic material; the conversion software is very powerful. But I wouldn't try testing that."
"I won't," Jon replied. "I won't. But...if this body can restructure itself to 'mature' and grow, like you said, couldn't I at least become male?"
"If you were in control of it, sure. Problem is, your brain - your old one - is running in emulation on the 'brain' of your new body. It was the only way to getyou back up again in anything approaching a timely fashion." She smiled. "I mean, if I'd had that kind of time, I could have restructured the body myself. But as far as your brain knows, this is just a normal human body with a few different bits than you're used to. All the non-brain systems are basically running on autopilot and reporting like human equivalents. So you'll mature and function basically like any other human being."
Jon groaned. Why did it have to be like this?
"Now, granted," Anne continued, "your new brain can re-wire itself exactly likea human brain, so it's possible that it will eventually convert your brain over to native format. If it does that, you could be able to access the blocked abilities. But...that could take years."
