Then things hit even closer to home, a few people in our hometown started getting hit.
A guy named Mike Thomason at my workplace fell victim along with his wife in October 2014. I remember the day he showed people around the water cooler his P rash and looked wild eyed as he wondered what would happen to him and his spouse. People asked him when and where they got "zapped", but he said they had no idea how it happened. A few people asked if any news outlets had contacted him, or if he had contacted them. He said he called GNN and others but the media were really only reporting the more widespread or unusual changes now, but he should call back with what he and his wife turned into. Also the local TV and newspaper were still abuzz with the 27 people who were at a wedding last month and have since had their faces relocate to their groins.
Over the next few weeks Mike slowly started changing. It was subtle and hard to notice, but eventually it became clear he was shrinking. After a couple weeks Mike was only about 4 feet tall. He also lost a lot of his secondary sex characteristics like his beard, his deep voice and his muscular build. He wasn't becoming feminine, just less masculine. He looked to be something between a man and a woman. His small size and lack of sex characteristics made him almost look like an adult who had missed puberty.
He also of course still ACTED very much like he was still his old fully male self. He got himself a typical macho male buzz haircut at the barber each month. He even dressed in male style clothing he custom ordered online for his smaller size. It was very hard to take him seriously at first, a small high voiced uh person acting like a burly manly man. Mike talked about trucks and fishing and all the macho crap he had always blathered about before. Only now it seemed more like an act.
HR put out work that discrimination against anyone "programmed" was STRICTLY forbidden. And with good reason, a couple of programming victims had sued former employers for MILLIONS under anti-discrimination laws.
People also wondered what had happened to Mike's wife. He had mentioned she had a rash too when he got one, but we never heard more because he never really talked about it and he certainly never went back to the news people. That question too was answered indirectly the following summer when Mike put up a vacation photo on his computer desktop. He had mentioned before leaving that he and his family were going to San Diego.
The vacation photo showed Mike and his family posing in front of shell beach. Behind Mike there was a 12 year old boy and a 14 year old girl that TOWERED over him. (They were Mike's son and daughter that we recognized from all Mike's previous family photos)
Finally, the photo also had a very large muscular man standing behind Mike and his kids smiling widely. The enormous man took up most of the frame and dwarfed Mike's kids and Mike himself. In fact, it looked like Mike only came up to the top of the guy's chiseled six pack abs! To anyone unfamiliar with the history behind the photo, it might look odd to see a huge muscular male posing with Mike and his children. But everyone in the office knew the strange new man had to be Mike's wife! My god! Whatever masculinity Mike had lost his wife picked up 50 times over!
After I saw that photo I stopped to wonder what it must be like for Mike. He went from a 6 foot tall manly man to having the physical body of an underdeveloped woman! His wife was now an enormous body builder. She was a full on MAN! And based on the bulge in the swim trunks Mike's wife had, she was more man now than he ever was. Usually the programmers just tweaked with your naughty bits, this was a full gender change, body and all. I imagine their sex life must be quite unusual if they still had one. I know mentally Mike was the same but surely his new de-masculinized body messed up his "mojo". It's sad to say too, but the bulge on Mike's trunks in the photo was as underwhelming as his unmanly physique suggested. On top of that, Mike's body looked physically pre-pubescent almost; did he still have sexual urges?
And along those lines, surely Mike's wife must be feeling some new "urges" from her new Apollo physique. I wondered if Mike's wife was taking to being a big man better than he was taking being a whatever he was. She had on a very male outfit. Was it a practical decision to contain her new (and enormous) penis, or was she comfortable wearing men's clothes all the time now? I can't imagine Mike's wife custom orders oversized dresses for her new 6 foot + body builder body. She would look even more ridiculous than he does! If Mike's wife dressed male has she started ACTING male? What if his wife had also given in to her new body's urges and started having sex with other WOMEN? How would that make him feel as a "man"?
Hell even his kids looked down at him now, at least physically. How the hell did he maintain that tough guy persona around the office? I wondered if he still acted like his old self around his wife and kids, or if he only maintained it here at work?
I then thought about his kids. What would it be like having to explain to people this big muscle guy behind me is my mom and this little undeveloped guy next to him is my dad?
Society was getting ever more complex.
