The seemingly endless number of medical personnel streaming in and out of the room turned out to be quite brief, though intense. In just a few minutes, they had performed countless tests and measurements on both Karen & myself, scanned and photographed us from all angles, set lighting, cameras and all sorts of monitoring equipment into place, then as quickly as they arrived, suddenly, Karen & I were alone, for the first time.
"What do you think is happening?" I asked her, worriedly.
"No Idea, but I guess it qualifies as 'interesting'?" She responded.
"Oh wow, I forgot about that. I was thinking that the whole 'women's studies' thing was enough to satisfy the wish for something interesting to happen."
We both remained silent for a minute or so, then Karen broke our introspection by lifting my hands up and showing them to me again. "Notice anything different?" she enquired.
Now that we were alone, I took a moment to examine them much closer. The first thing that stood out to me was how soft they looked. I'm no lumberjack, but my hands were never this soft before. My gaze switched to the other hand, passing by Karen's hand, then in a moment of understanding I began to compare her hands to mine.
The fingers were the same, the nails identical. The skin was slightly paler than hers, but close. She had tiny hairs on the back of her hands and forearms, but I didn't seem to have any at all below the elbow. Above the elbow, I was just as hairy as I usually was. "They look a lot like your hands," I pronounced after my mind began to accept the fact.
"Yeah, from what I can see, they are identical." At this she placed her right hand against my left, palms touching, fingers spread and showed that they were now the exact same size.
Just this morning, an hour or so ago, my hands had been significantly bigger than hers. It was one of the things I used to tease her about, because I could hold a basket ball in one hand, whilst hers were way too small to do so. Now, it seemed that I was in the same boat.
I was still contemplating how I would go through life with Karen's hands, when she dropped a nuclear sized bombshell, which shocked me to the core.
"I think," she began with uncharacteristic hesitancy, "I think you are turning into some sort of clone of me."
Looking back to our hands, processing her statement, I suddenly began to feel unwell again. As I stared at my hands, I noticed that the hair on my upper arms had begun to withdraw into the skin. At the same time, my arms were losing mass and becoming softer, paler, exactly like hers.
Perhaps I was already weak from the transformation process, but before I could grasp what was happening fully, I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness for the second time that morning.
