Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ Second Coming ❯ The Case of John Thomson ( Chapter 1 )

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NEON

GENESIS

EVANGELION

 

Second Coming

 

Chapter One: The Case of John Thomson

 

This story begins with an end, if you will allow me to wax poetic for a moment, or use a pun; whichever way you view the previous statement.

To be specific, it begins with my end, the me that once was, the me that I began my existence as (as far as I know, that is). I didn't see it coming, as is the case with most people, so I'm led to believe.

The me that was was a thirty-two year old man by the name of Jonathan (Jack) Allan Thomson, firefighter by trade and rally racing enthusiast on the side. Rallying was only one of my hobbies, among which I also counted anime and manga entertainment, and so on; I mention rallying because, sadly, it played a part in my end.

I've attended dozens of races as a spectator, and I had planned to one day volunteer as a marshal, or better yet, participate as either a driver or navigator. I won't get that chance now, but that's beside the point. For those who are unfamiliar with the sport, rally racing takes place on public roads that have been closed to traffic for the event. Cars are sent down the course one at a time, racing against the clock, trying to make the best time from one end to the other; repeat anywhere from ten to thirty times over the course of a weekend, and a road rally is what you have.

Spectators are welcome on most rallies, and attend in throngs; in some countries, rallying is the most popular sport there is, and it is not unheard of to have upwards of half a million people turn out for a single race. Having said that, spectators know (because it is beaten into them repeatedly by warning signs, banners, and taped-off areas, not to mention video and personal accounts of unfortunate accidents) that there are some places you just don't stand on a rally stage. One of the areas, for example, is the outside of a curve. If a car were to lose control entering the curve, it could wipe out dozens of people like bowling pins with total ease - and it has happened before.

I had picked out what I was sure was a splendid viewing point in the particular stage I was watching that day. I was up on a small hill that overlooked a slight dogleg bend in the road, which climbed up an incline as well. The hill and the dogleg allowed me to shoot pictures and video from two different angles, as the cars went past. Technically, I was on the outside of a curve, but I was at least 60 yards away from the road, and uphill to boot - even the course marshals considered it a safe place to be.

It was dusty and dry that day, and every time a car passed, a monstrous cloud of gravel dust would float up and obscure the entire area for a few seconds. It also managed to gum up the auto-focus function on the lens of my still camera. I spent a lot of time trying to polish the lenses clean with the edge of my T-shirt, and/or blow into the mechanism with my breath to try to dislodge the tiny bits of sand that were jamming up the works.

All this is why, at one point, I was standing in front of my tripod, head bent down, messing with the focusing ring of the camera, which was jerkily fighting against the dust particles. A car had passed a few seconds before - but long enough since that the dust cloud after it had settled down. As cars were released every 60 seconds from the start gate, I figured I had some time I could take advantage of, before the next car came by, to clean my gear.

The marshals' whistle caught me off guard, signaling the next car was approaching. I looked up as I heard the roar of the engine through the forest, and blinked, shocked to see the car was much closer than I'd anticipated - and out of control, having already left the road, cleared the ditch, and mounted the hill, climbing its slope at an odd angle.

"Look out!" the marshal nearby yelled, running in the opposite direction, as did many of the others near me. I intended to, too; I'd long ago decided I'd rather sacrifice $1000 of photo gear to a hurtling behemoth than my own flesh and blood.

Again, as I said, I intended to flee.

If intents were all we needed in life, my story would be nowhere as interesting as what you're about to read.

I turned to run, but my brain dumbly forgot about the tripod in the way, which I tripped over, sending myself sprawling to the ground. Oddly enough, I didn't actually touch down on the grass; the first (and last) sensation I had was of a car bumper making contact with my entire body, from lower trunk all the way to the back of my neck.

 

The next thing I knew, I was opening my eyes groggily.

Somewhere on the periphery of perception, I recalled vaguely a strange dream, involving me and another talking about my demise and what to do about it, but the gist of it wasn't there at the moment and, paradoxically, would come to me later, rather than fading away as most dreams do.

I felt like I was surrounded in cotton, or that my entire body was 'asleep' and not yet caught up to my mind's level of alertness. Motor impulses were sluggish and lethargic; I tried to lift my head and found it heavy and taking much more effort than it should.

I became aware of a pricking sensation in my left hand, and had experienced that enough times in my first aid training to know it was an intravenous line inserted into the veins of the back of my hand. So from that I could assume I was in some kind of medical care, likely a hospital.

Slowly, other things began to report in. A BP cuff was wrapped around my other arm, deflated yet still snug. And I could feel strange pinching sensations in a number of places, which I would find out soon enough were the adhesive electrode pads for the EKG machine, monitoring my heart rate.

I pulled in a deep breath, or tried to - and realized there was a plastic tube in my throat. I'd been intubated. The tube ran from a fitting just outside my lips, down my windpipe, all the way to the point where the branch began that separated my natural breathing tract into two, going off to each lung. Attached to this (on the other end, the one outside my mouth) was an oxygen line, but that was immaterial right now - I had a gag reflex which was rapidly coming back awake, and having a plastic pipe shoved down my throat was really messing with it.

I flailed about for a bit, trying to will my sluggish arms to reach up and yank the ET tube out, but my limbs were late reporting for duty, and all I could do was thrash about a little. After a few moments, I found that I could somehow suspend the supposedly involuntary choking reflex in my throat, and lay there breathing mechanically through the tube.

My sense of smell was horribly distorted by the interruption of my normal breathing processes, but I definitely recognized the scent of a sterile environment - a hospital. Or perhaps my brain filled that in, assuming it after having all this other evidence that I was under a doctor's care. In any case, my world was now coming into focus, and I could tell that it was, in fact, a hospital room of some sort.

Windows from the twelve-foot-high ceiling down to the two-foot level were to my left. The window ledge was like a shelf or bench, for things to be placed on or people to sit, I guessed. The wall across from me had a cork board and a white board, the former with some pinned-up notes, the latter with some scribbled information - presumably tracking notes about my condition, if my recollection of hospitals proved right. A hallway went off to the right at the foot of my bed, no doubt a short distance towards the washroom and then the door to the rest of the hospital. Beside me to my immediate right were a host of machines, their alarms turned off, watching silent sentinel over my condition.

Being the inquisitive type, and a caregiver myself, I found the strength to turn my head and try to sneak a peek at one or more of the monitors, to see what my situation was like. The sensations I got in response were weird, and what I saw indicated what I'd consider normal vitals for someone just waking up. What confused me was the odd reflection I got from the shiny, stainless-steel surface of the IV pole, standing upright beside me. It was horribly distorted due to the fact it was a pole and not a mirror, but I could see enough of my face to know something wasn't right.

I looked down at myself and gasped - or would have, if I hadn't been subject to a tube down my throat. The amount of space I was taking up in the bed versus how big I knew I was in real life was a lot smaller, unless a gargantuan bed had been acquired to make me lose my sense of scale. But that wasn't the biggest concern on my mind.

The tented-up section of bedsheets just a few inches south of my chin was.

My body was finally starting to catch up with me, and I could feel a lot of things that were confirming what I was now seeing with my own eyes, but my brain didn't want to believe either. I willed my arms to come up and, slowly, deliberately, lift the sheet high enough that I could see myself under the covers.

At long last, the process was complete - slowed either by my body's lethargic wakeup, my tense trepidation, or both - and I finally confirmed visually what I'd been fearing.

Yup.

I've got breasts.

Not very big, but as someone who never had any of any size before, they were big enough, thank you very much.

The visual exam of my body continued, my brain filing away for later review how diminutive my form was. I became aware of a tube between my legs - I'd been catheterized, to carry away, well, urine - and another check under the sheets (and past my breasts) confirmed that I'd changed down that way too.

Okay, deep breath - oh, right, belay that, I said to myself, trying to calm myself down and humor myself at the same time. Relax. There has to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.

It was then that, as I said earlier, bits and pieces of the dream began returning to me. I vaguely remembered standing around while crews worked feverishly on someone lying on the grass. I wanted to help, but somehow I knew it was futile. As the memory drew slowly into focus, I realized that it was me - Jack - lying on the ground, bloodied, with both legs bent at impossible angles.

"We are not ready for you," someone said beside me, in the dream.

I turned to look at him and saw a young man with grayish-silver hair and red eyes, who looked at me with a warm smile.

"What do you mean?" I asked the vaguely familiar person.

"It was not your time to come join us. Your time on this plane is incomplete. However, if you choose, you may join us now anyway."

Somehow I knew this was the brink of the afterlife. I turned to look at the scene before me, marshals and spectators and others hunched over my badly broken body, and I said, "It doesn't look like I could make it."

"Oh, this has ended," my companion nodded towards the scene, speaking quite definitively. "To use a term you are familiar with, 'injuries incompatible with life' have occurred."

"So how would I go on?" I asked curiously.

"In another life," came the answer, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Do I get to pick?" I mused aloud, despite the unbelievable concept of it all.

"I'm afraid not," the man smiled widely, "though I do think you might enjoy it, given time."

"And my other option is to just fade away and pass on over?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," he nodded. "If you want to do that, just take my hand."

I turned to look at him again. Still that smile on his pale, white skin, his red eyes, impossibly sharply contrasting the rest of his being, still somehow showing signs of warmth and friendship to me. He had his hand extended out casually towards me.

"And if I want to do the other?"

"Just take a step," he said, nodding evenly. "Just move on. I won't be offended."

I looked down at his hand, and then back up at his face, trying to pin down why he looked so familiar. My options are to go to the afterlife, where they don't want me yet, or return to Earth in a new life, but not having any choice in the path I end up taking. Mulling that over, I asked myself, How's that any different than anything else in life? I never got to make any choices before.

Checking my companion's face again resulted in the same unwavering expression, as if he'd said all he needed to say, and the rest was up to me.

Did I do everything I wanted to in life? I asked myself. It was a question I couldn't be sure I'd ever be able to answer.

Do I deserve to pass on yet? I wondered. I looked to the fellow beside me; the fact he was offering me the choice probably meant that was the case.

All the while, despite the implication that neither choice would be wrong, I had the feeling that I had reason to dislike him. I couldn't place it, but something made me uneasy.

Shaking my head a little, I heard myself say, "Sorry, not right now," and turn and step towards the scene unfolding before us on the hillside.

 

I jerked awake once again, apparently having drifted off in the hospital bed during my revelation. My body caught up with my brain much quicker this time, and reminded me of the discoveries I'd made.

So I'm.. female? I wondered. I lifted my left arm up with considerable effort and held it in front of me, finding the typical paper and plastic hospital bracelet.

 

THOMSON, JILLIAN | DOB 09/11/01 | O-

 

Jillian? I wondered. Born on 9/11?

Obviously I'd been put into a different body, in a different time frame. The rally I'd been attending when I was swatted down so mercilessly took place on May 25, 2005. Judging by my size and shape, and mental acuity, I was not 4 years old, so this was not still 2005.

I appeared to be a very young teenager, judging by my dimensions. That would put the time frame around 2014 or 2015 or so.

I couldn't find a calendar or clock nearby handy, so I turned my focus on the notes and stuff on the wall across from me. It didn't dawn on me that I was seeing everything fine without the aid of glasses or contact lenses, which as Jack I absolutely required just to function, but I would figure that out later.

The white board was, as I guessed earlier, notes to and from various caregivers about my condition and schedule. If the days of the week were any indication, it was Tuesday, and I had just been sponge-bathed two days before. My vitals were measured several times daily, all seeming normal for a teenager of either sex - based on my previous experiences being a caregiver myself.

THOMSON, J was on the white board It was then that I noted not only was my last name still the same, but my first initial too. I wondered if my middle name, if I indeed had one, was some feminine A-name like Alicia or Alison.

The cork board was full of stuff relating to general health and wellness, typical brochures and crap, so it was of no use. I turned my attention back to the white board and examined some of the more cryptic notes that had been jotted down. "M++" was one of the ones that caught my attention the most, noted only once, after an EKG taken on Monday. What did that mean? Male? Most likely waking up soon? Messed up?

All three fit, I said to myself wryly, allowing a faint smile. Well, the first one only in mind at this point. I don't know why I wasn't freaking out, screaming and crying, curled up in a ball in the corner, at the first sight of the feminine form I'd been put into. Maybe I was still sedated quite well and would flip later on once it wore off.

It's not so bad, I found myself declaring with a shrug. I was alive, I had all my parts - speaking on a strictly human level, not as a guy - and nothing seemed broken, mangled, or scarred for life.

Hey, wait a minute, I realized. If I'm not injured, what the hell am I doing in the hospital in the first place?

I took another look under the covers, moving a lot quicker now, and noticed a very faint scar on each leg, from mid-thigh to mid-shin, on the inside part of each limb. They were almost indistinguishable, but now that I was awake and concentrating, I could 'feel' them, much as I could still feel my burned arm years later during weather changes.

Not any more, I realized, looking towards my right forearm. No such injury existed on little Jill's body. That was Jack who had been hurt that way, and Jack was gone. And Jill apparently had her own issues, I realized, looking back down at my legs.

It finally dawned on me that I hadn't finished the thought that had started this whole thing off - I still didn't know what I really looked like. Naturally, no mirrors, full-length or otherwise, were placed, or within easy reach, in the hospital room. I was catheterized, so there was no bedpan to look into - and if there had be, it would surely have been modern polycarbonate plastic, not stainless steel, in any case. So I had no reflective surfaces to use, anywhere.

Looking into the IV pole or other parts of the steel-and-chrome supports for the machinery wasn't going to help me, and glancing towards the windows, it was daylight out, so my reflection wouldn't--

Oh, wow, I cut off my own thoughts, finally cluing in to the fact that the world outside was there and ready to shed a little light on some of my situation. The thing I could see most clearly was the CN Tower, and, at its base, the SkyDome (to hell with the Rogers Center re-naming). So I realized I was in Toronto.

It'd been so long since I'd been in my hometown, I'd forgotten the names of the hospitals, never mind where they were, so I had no idea which one was near the Tower. Besides, I tried to tell myself, this is a different world. It might not even have the same layout.

I was still woefully under-informed. I knew I was a young girl, in the early stages of the 21st century, but didn't know what year, let alone what day, and I still had no inkling of my own appearance. My self-image was a messy, grey blob in my mind, shifting from Jack to nothingness to any number of anime girls to all sorts of other things.

Not to mention I hadn't heard my own voice yet - but then again, it would be messed up for a while anyway, considering I had a tube down my throat for God knows how long, meaning my vocal cords hadn't been exercised.

There was a clunk from down the hallway, and I glanced up at the white board, suspecting it was 3PM - the next empty time slot on the board in which vital signs hadn't yet been written today. Soft, muted footsteps of nurse's shoes squicked down the short corridor, and she came in, putting on her stethoscope. When she saw I was awake, the middle-aged, blonde-haired woman blinked, stopped short, and said, "Oh my."

I nodded a little, tried to smile around the tube, and lifted a hand in a half-hearted wave. She blinked and stepped forward, reaching down for something beside me and clicking it two or three times. "It's good to see you back with us," she said, pressing on another control and lifting the head of the bed up. My spine reminded me of its disuse by complaining of the movement, but I told it to shut up and just winced a little as I was bent gently at the waist.

"Is that hurting you?" the nurse asked.

I shook my head and gestured for her to keep bringing the head end up, which she did, until she got it to a point she was satisfied with. I would have preferred to be sitting even further forward, but I wasn't the one flying the plane, apparently.

The first control must have been the call button, for another nurse arrived momentarily. The first one said to the new arrival, "Guess who's up and with us today."

"Oh my!" the brunette unknowingly echoed her comrade's sentiment. "Welcome back. How are you feeling?"

I shrugged a little and gestured to the tube plugging up my mouth. They both nodded, and the blonde nurse said, "I don't know how you're keeping from ripping that out yourself. Donna, do you think we can dee-see the tube?"

"I don't see why not," the other nurse, evidently Donna, decided. "You going to do it?"

"Sure," the first nurse said, leaning over me and pulling on the tape that was fixing the plastic device in place around my mouth. "This'll just sting for a second."

I sat there patiently, trying not to flinch too much at the sensation of the tape pulling at my skin. I realized with amusement that at least it wasn't pulling any facial hair out - nor would I ever have to worry about that again.

"Okay. We're going to take a deep breath, and on three, exhale it out while I pull the tube out. Okay?" the first nurse said.

I nodded and inhaled as deeply as my smaller lungs would allow.

"Good, and one, two, and.."

"Haaaaaaahh," I blurted out, helping expel the tube and inadvertently drooling down my hospital gown in the process.

"Whoops," nurse Donna said, pulling some Kleenex out of a dispenser on the table and dabbing at my chin and chest.

"Very good," the other nurse said. I now had time to glance at her name tag and see it said Nancy, but the rest of it was really small text and puzzled me. It seemed like a really long department name, and I didn't catch enough of it to figure out what it was.

"Do you feel like you're going to be sick?" Donna asked.

I paused a second, then shook my head. "Don't think so," I croaked. There it was: Even hoarsely, I was at least an octave or two higher than I'd been, and Jack's voice was no deep basso profundo in the first place.

"You've been out for quite some time," Nancy said, setting the messy ET tube down somewhere out of my sight. "Almost five months."

"What.. happened?" I said, still struggling to get my voice box to cooperate.

"You were in a bad accident," Donna said softly. "But you pulled through just fine." I could tell there was something left unsaid, as Nancy glanced over at Donna warily at that moment, and Donna shook her head.

"My legs were hurt," I said, partly a question.

"Indeed they were," Nancy supplied, apparently her turn to fill me in. "But we're quite confident you'll walk again."

She busied herself with taking my vital signs while I tried to figure out how to word the next question. "I don't remember much," I half-lied to explain the query I was about to make. "What year is it?"

"2015," came Donna's reply, as Nancy was busy taking my blood pressure. "It's May."

"I couldn't tell from the dates written on the white board," I explained.

Donna nodded. "May 5th, sweetie. It's a Tuesday."

I nodded, mainly to give myself time to let that sink in. Damn. I missed Luke Skywalker Day. Then I asked, "What does em-plus-plus stand for?" while gesturing to the white board

Both nurses looked at one another for a long moment, and then Donna said, "We'll have the doctor come explain some things to you shortly." Nancy went back to finishing up my vitals.

Oh, hell, I panicked slightly. Now what's that mean? Most likely dying? Might go Mental?

They finished up, and said they'd send the doctor in. As they were going, Donna said, "Welcome back, Jillian."

I nodded and mentally corrected her to 'Jill'. I don't know why, but I felt the shorter form suited me better.

"Shit.. I forgot to ask for a mirror," I mumbled two minutes later. My voice was returning slowly, or at least I presumed it was - it was sounding more feminine and less like a cat trying to gargle a frog. I sat there some more, tilting my head forward enough that I could see I had reddish hair, somewhat long - longer than a boy's haircut, but not tremendously long, like down-the-back length.

Putting my head in that position meant I was staring down at my breasts again, and as I watched them rise and fall with my breathing, I wondered, How am I supposed to live as a girl? Do I have any innate feminine sense or what? Or am I going to be walking around gawkily and showing off to everyone that I'm not really Jill?

Momentarily, the door opened again with the same clunking noise, but a man's shoe was heard on the tile floor. He - being the doctor - came around the corner and said, "Aha, I heard someone was back among us again."

"Hi," I mumbled.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, doing his own cursory examination of my vitals and condition, more to act like he was doing his job than anything else.

"Like I've been asleep for five months," I quipped. At least my sense of humor transferred over.

"You probably don't remember it, but you've been awake a couple of times," he commented. "Not for very long and not too lucidly, but anyway." He finished pretending to check up on my vitals and sat on the edge of the bed, folding his hands on his knee, leaning towards me. "Let's talk."

"Okay," I said, trying not to sound like a scared little girl.

"Do you remember anything about the accident?"

I shook my head. I didn't want to assume it was similar to what'd happened to Jack, to be proven wrong, and then have to answer to where I'd come up with those particular memories.

He explained, "Your parents' car was hit on the 401 highway when it broke down. You were trapped in the car for two and a half hours while the firemen cut you out."

Firefighters, and they cut the car away from me, not cut me out, I wanted to correct him. But I just nodded.

"I'm afraid I have some bad news.. about your parents."

I looked up at him, curiously. Then I realized that at the age of 14, well, 13 and change, I wouldn't be driving, not even as a learner, especially on the 401. I tried to muster up some sorrow for the people I'd never known.

"Your father was killed instantly.. your mother survived for a couple of days, but her injuries were too great. I'm very sorry."

I hung my head again, mainly to prevent him from seeing the improper reaction I was having. A normal child would be bawling at the loss of her entire family. I'd never known them in the first place. I frowned, grateful for the longish mass of red hair that was covering my face. Would 'M++' have something to do with a foster home, then?

How the hell is this a good outcome? I wanted to ask the man from my afterlife-dream.

"Perhaps this is a little much to take right now," the doctor said, beginning to stand. "I'm going to let you alone and have some food ordered up for you. Once you've eaten and had time to think I can come back."

I had to seize the chance or the curiosity would kill me. "Wait," I blurted out.

"Yes?" he asked.

"What does M++ mean?" I asked, pointing to the white board

He turned to look at it, and frowned slightly, in the way that I assumed meant either Donna or Nancy was going to get a reaming for putting it on the white board at all. He seemed to consider something for a minute, and then turned partway to me and said, "It stands for Marduk."

"What? What's that?" I said curiously.

"Some testing," he explained, "for the Marduk Institute. I'll discuss it with you later."

I shrugged and let him depart, which he did swiftly at that point. I puzzled over the word 'Marduk' and why it sounded so familiar. It sounded like something out of Star Trek, or perhaps an anime..

I blinked when I made the connection.

Marduk.

Marduk Institute.

I'm fourteen years old.

In the year 2015.

 

I hung my head again. "Now I think I'm gonna be sick," I mumbled.

 

The food came as promised, and I chewed at the toasted ham and cheese sandwich unenthusiastically. It felt good to have some food that didn't come through a plastic bag in solution, but my stomach was still doing somersaults, as it had been since the doctor left.

He didn't come back that afternoon either, as he'd said he would. Either I scared him asking about Marduk or he had to check with higher-ups first. Maybe he had to report directly to Ritsuko Akagi or Gendo Ikari himself.

Maybe it's a coincidence, I tried to tell myself. Think about it, it's an anime. You can't be living in an anime.

That was countered swiftly with the fact that I shouldn't be lying there at all, never mind having breasts and a vagina.

As the sun set, the light outside faded and darkened the room. I reached up and turned on the over-bed lamp, throwing the room into fluorescence.

"Shit!" I cursed. "I forgot to ask for a mirror again!" It's funny how little things can come and hit you in the strangest times.

However, I soon realized that once the sun had set completely, I would have a nice dark window brightly lit on my side, acting as a big mirror of sorts, showing me an imperfect reflection, but adequate enough for what I needed nevertheless.

I busied myself for the next few minutes with fiddling with the bed controls to get the head end up high enough for my preference. Once that was done, I figured it was dark enough, and turned to look.

"Good God," I whispered. "I look like a real-life Noriko Takaya."

Well, not really. Just the hairstyle and the fact I was female. I had no Oriental features about me at all, but still, the similarity was there if you squinted hard. I'd probably be able to do a passable version of the Gunbuster heroine during cosplay or Halloween, if I ever had the chance or inclination.

My straight, red hair was slightly longer than shoulder-length, but only barely enough to brush my scapulae. The face was smooth and rounded, yet slender, with two brilliant blue eyes peering out at the world. Slim shoulders gave way to slender arms and hands, again, looking rather feminine.

I blinked as I realized that my forehead and the scalp behind my neck, as well as the places around my chest and trunk, were covered with electrodes for EKG/EEGs. Wires led from some of them to the machines to my side. I was surprised they were monitoring me around the clock. Maybe they can read my thoughts?

"Shut up," I chastised myself with disgust. You're going to have to be rational if you expect to be a good pilot.

Part of me wanted to point out I should see if I could make it as a girl before I evaluated my Evangelion piloting skills.

 

Why are you so accepting of this, anyway? I wondered later that night, gazing at my reflection. Conventional wisdom - or at least, the stories that're out there, leads one to believe that you should be sitting in the corner, huddling in a ball and freaking out.

Maybe it has to do with that dream. I looked down at myself and jerked up and down, back and forth in the bed, about the only motion I could make due to the arresting nature of the equipment attached to me. The result was comical, of course, and typical.

I'm not feeling too out-of-sorts, I decided, giving myself a poke. Maybe that has to do with being laid up in here and drugged and all.

My mind raced back to the dream again, or whatever it was. The commentary by my host came back to me, where he said I didn't have a choice, but I would probably grow to like things.

You sick pervert, I frowned, but somehow I got the impression he wasn't meaning the gender swap.

Another thought came to me, this one from my own thoughts during that dream. I remember distinctly deciding that I couldn't complain about what was dealt me, because there was nothing I could do about it - and that had been the way everyone who had ever lived had to take things.

I looked down at myself again.

I'm alive, I decided. I'm in good health, or at least, under a doctor's care so I'm progressing towards good health. Studying my new body, I challenged myself, Give me any reason I shouldn't just learn to accept my new life.

I thought on it for a long second.

I thought so, I nodded, allowing myself a slight smile.

 

I woke up when the sunlight spilled through the window into my room and across my face. It was early in the morning, and little was moving in the world I could see outside my window.

In my old reality, I hadn't been back to Toronto for ages. I looked down at the cables and connections I had, and shrugged a little.

"Here we go," I muttered, and braced myself against the mattress, pushing and turning so that I could swing my legs over the edge of the bed.

It took some fiddling, but I was able to unfurl the hoses and cables to allow me some movement. The floor felt cold as I touched down for the first time. Geez, I was short. Well, shorter than I was used to (five foot ten, as Jack), but probably average height for a teenaged girl.

Cautiously taking a couple of steps, I found that my balance was fairly co-ordinated, despite the different layout of my new form. I had to chalk that up to being in it for a while already, even though immobile, but that shouldn't have made a difference in any case. I'd soon learn to stop questioning the impossibilities that were happening to me, but for the time being, those thoughts were going through my head.

Reaching my goal, I stood with a hand against the window to steady myself, and watched the sun rise over the city I once - and apparently now again - called home. Sunlight glittered on Lake Ontario, as well as the glass fronts of a number of buildings in the downtown core and beyond. There was some kind of splendor in what I was seeing, though it could have just been my happiness in being alive at all.

What are you going to do? I asked myself. This close to the window, I could see my reflection no matter what time of day it was. I studied Jill's features, looking over her small yet well-defined face. It still felt like I was looking at someone else, but in time, as I had decided the night before, I figured I would come to accept my new self.

To reiterate, for those who couldn't follow my stream-of-consciousness writing above: Why wasn't I freaking out over my situation? To be honest, why would I? I had a life again, even if it was radically different than my old one. I was more concerned about the possibility of being involved with the Evangelion project than with functioning in Jill's stead. I'd watched Eva. Everyone got seriously fucked up in that story. I had no doubts that, if I were to get involved, that would be my fate too.

The whole issue of knowing things that were to happen in the Eva timeline which I shouldn't know as a participant hadn't yet crossed my mind. So far, I didn't even know if the Marduk reference the doctor had made was even really tied to Evangelion at all. For all I knew, Marduk could be the name of a clinic specializing in orthopedic rehabilitative surgery.

However, I realized as I looked down at my legs, supporting me quite finely, it appeared I was recuperating nicely. Maybe rehab wouldn't be required.

Maybe I'll get it anyway, in the form of fitness training while I learn to pilot, I found myself unable to help thinking. I shook my head and sighed, resting my forehead against the window. I really should stop doing that, I scolded myself.

"You really shouldn't be doing that," came a voice. I whipped around to see the doctor entering the room.

"I'm fine," I countered. "I just wanted to see the view."

"Please, back to bed," the doctor insisted. "You've been asleep far too long to be just up and about right away."

I plodded back to the bed, careful to not tangle up or otherwise mess up all my connections and attachments. The doctor made some fussing and messing around, placing me exactly as he wanted me, and then started to run a set of vitals.

"So what constitutes a clean bill of health?" I asked. "I really do feel okay."

"You may have a false sense of energy from reviving," he told me. "We really need to start out small. You could exhaust yourself much quicker than you expect."

"So you're saying I'm a guest for a while longer."

"I'm afraid so, young lady," he nodded, reading off the BP and jotting it down. "The good news is, all your vital signs are stabilizing nicely."

"Good," I agreed.

"I do have some concerns, though, about your emotional state."

Uh-oh. "Such as?"

"Well, far be it from me to tell you how to grieve, but you are taking the loss of your parents much more calmly than one would be expected to."

I sat there, trying to figure out how to respond. "I.. find it hard to remember them," I said, lacing the truth into my lie. "I didn't want to say anything because I don't want you to keep me here any longer than I need to be, but I don't have much memory before waking up here."

He frowned and jotted down some notes again. "Nothing at all?"

I just shrugged. "I figure it might come back to me in time. I hope," I added, playing the part as well as I could.

"But you remember who you are," he fished.

"Jillian Thomson, age 14, born and raised here," I said, taking a huge risk in the last four words. Actually, with everything past my last name, truth be told, if I'd been thinking straight at the time.

He nodded briefly, thinking about his next comment. "Think back to the accident. Do you remember any of it at all?"

I shut my eyes. It wasn't hard at all to imagine how it must have been; I'd been a regular traveler on the 400-series highways in my old life, and a firefighter-rescuer after I left Toronto, so piecing those two together lent me enough info to envision a small car chugging to a stop on the shoulder. Soon enough, an inattentive driver, doing anywhere from 120 to 160 kilometers per hour - nobody, and I mean nobody, observes the posted speed limit in southern Ontario - would slam into the little compact, crushing it to half its size and sending it careening either off the guard rail or into traffic. It would be a wonder that I wasn't killed instantly myself, likely being in the back seat and thus ripe for slaughter considering the damage the car would have sustained. The apparent injuries I'd suffered now seemed to make sense; Jillian's legs would have instantly tensed up if she'd seen the accident about to happen, to no benefit or detriment; the space between her seat and her mother's or father's reduced to zero in an instant, the laws of physics requiring something to give, and the human body being the most frail structure in the equation..

"I can imagine what it was like, but I can't remember it specifically," I said softly, telling the truth.

The doctor breathed out deeply. "Perhaps that's for the best, for now," he answered. "Your mind might be shielding you from what took place. That's a natural reaction."

What did happen? I wanted to ask. The medic in me wondered who was injured how badly, and how difficult was the extrication, and so on. The human in me wondered whose seat I'd been behind, and did it make a difference - would they have lasted longer or less if I'd been sitting on the other side of the car?

I looked up as I realized the doctor had said something. "You can ask me any questions you like," he'd said. For a moment, I wondered if I'd been saying those things out loud, but I realized in fact he'd just been a keen observer of my introspective pause.

Instead of bringing up any of those things, I'm sure I surprised him when I said, "Tell me about Marduk."

I got the feeling that if he'd been wearing glasses, he'd've taken them off and polished them in a lengthy display, in an attempt to pause and collect his thoughts. Or allow for the readers/viewers to collect theirs, if this had been someone's idea of a tale to tell, some cel and paint story played out on a DVD for mass sale or distribution except where prohibited by law.

"The Marduk Institute is an organization which tests children for their skills, and intellectual prowess; things like that," he began. "It's a random test of five percent of all those within a certain age bracket who get an EEG. Because you were comatose from your accident, you underwent EEG monitoring, and because you're 13, you fell within the parameters of the testing."

"And I'm gifted or something?" I played dumb for now.

"Of sorts," he answered slowly. "To be perfectly honest, I myself am not exactly sure what Marduk does with the children they accept. But I'm led to believe that it's certainly something special."

I cracked a smile, and a joke, playing along with the conversation. "Am I an X-man, or girl, or whatever now?"

Interestingly enough, he got the reference. It didn't occur to me until later that if I'd been alive in my old identity in 2015, he and I would be much the same age, and thus he was of my generation and probably had read the X-Men comics as well. "I don't think it's quite that spectacular," he smiled. "Whatever it is, there will be people here from a partner group to the Institute tomorrow, to speak with you."

For some reason, I don't know why, I paled at that thought. Would it be NERV, Section Two? "Tomorrow? Here?"

He nodded. "As soon as they heard you were awake, they wanted to meet with you straight away. Frankly, I was able to put them off a day so you could have today to collect yourself; as I said earlier, I still think you need time to cope."

I knew what he meant. In his eyes, I still wasn't firing on all cylinders, and he probably pushed back as much as his career would allow him, but the 'Marduk' folks relented only as much as they'd planned to allow in the first place. Odds are they got everything they wanted, even if the doctor didn't realize it.

"What am I supposed to say to them?" I asked, now not so much playing along with a sense of ignorance as being truly curious.

He shook his head. "I'm afraid I have no idea. Their motives or involvement I'm not quite awarded knowledge of.. put it another way, they're not part of the path to recovery this hospital had planned for you to take."

"They're.. overriding your authority?" I fished, taking a moment to find the right way to phrase it.

"I'm afraid I don't know what to tell you to expect, Miss Thomson," he said. "It's out of my hands."

 

We made a deal; he had a full set of X-rays done on my legs to check their stability (with lots of metal and plastic bits in them to beef up the damaged goods, I'd find out) and a CAT scan to assess my brain, and he'd let me have the run of my room, providing I'd cut it out if my legs started to hurt or feel weak or funny in any way. That worked for me, so I spent a large portion of the afternoon pacing the hallway between my bed and the ensuite bathroom, alternating between exercising myself and worrying about the day to come.

My legs were feeling all right, truth be told. The odd sensations were actually because I was used to being able to crack and click my joints as Jack, and instead, as Jill, the complete reconstructive surgery had put everything back to spec, so to speak, disallowing for any play in which cracking or clicking or what-have-you could be accomplished.

The upside of being able to walk around was that they de-catheterized me to allow it. The downside was, I was still getting tons of intravenous fluid, so I still had a full bladder all the time. By the time mid-afternoon rolled around, I'd experienced my fifth or sixth time sitting on the toilet as a girl. Easy way to practice, I guess, I quipped to myself, learning quickly how to adjust my personal hygiene practice for that particular bathroom chore.

Before supper rolled around, I paged a nurse and asked if I could get a laptop or something to mess around on the Internet. That was denied, she said, by doctor's orders; but I could have a TV. So I accepted that, and a small wireless display was brought in and set up on my over-bed table.

Doctor's orders. Right, I mused as I flipped randomly through channels. More likely 'Marduk' orders - after I'd asked for a computer, it dawned on me they probably wouldn't have allowed a phone, either, so that I couldn't use either medium to go out and talk to people about my situation. I don't know why I felt it was so cloak-and-daggery type of secrecy, but it smacked of something a group like NERV would do. At least with a TV, all the information was a one-way street - I couldn't send anything out that might disrupt their plans.

I happened across Discovery Channel, of all things, and was mildly pleased to find it still existed. My luck kept up as one of their flagship programs was indeed available, a disaster documentary, and the episode coming up at the top of the hour was to retell the events of Second Impact.

So I sat there, attentively watching as the computer-generated graphics illustrated the cover story of a meteor smacking into Antarctica and vaporizing the ice shelf, causing the tsunamis that devastated countless coastal towns and cities and settlements all over the world. As I watched the show, it occurred to me that I'd have to really keep a close watch on what I said and how I acted about certain things, things which I shouldn't have foreknowledge of.

Maybe it won't happen the way you 'remember' it, I mused. That was distinctly a possibility. The fact I'd been selected as one of the Children, or supposedly so, already derailed the entire plot of the series. Unless my time here was to be extra short, and I was either to be vaporized in Nevada or turned into paste at the hands of Eva 01, out of Shinji's control. I tried to shove those thoughts out of my mind and think of other things.

Interestingly enough, from all I could glean from the media I had access to, what I knew as 9/11 didn't happen. The World Trade Centers in New York City were still standing, though abandoned, as the first seven floors were now underwater - along with the rest of lower Manhattan. Then again.. a year before that in this reality, 3 billion lives were lost.. not just 3000 like in 9/11, I realized. Then, and only then, did I fully realize that my new birthday coincided with that horrible memory from my past life, very likely just a frank coincidence.

Supper came - a turkey sandwich or something - and I munched on it while I chewed over the life that laid out before me. Everything hinged, I presumed, on what tomorrow was like. Either I'd become an Evangelion pilot - or just a candidate perhaps, that hadn't even occurred to me - or, I wouldn't, and then what? Would I simply grow up a ward of the province, become a young woman and live out a mundane life in the bowels of the center of the universe known as Toronto?

No. Clearly I had to be here to be involved in the Eva Project somehow. Maybe 'Marduk' didn't just recruit pilots. Perhaps I'd be working alongside Maya Ibuki and the like. I shuddered, thinking of that, as I didn't want to be sitting there helplessly watching all my colleagues Tangifying and be powerless to do anything, as Ibuki was.

Maybe, Jill, I said, trying to refer to myself by my new name as much as possible, you shouldn't worry about what you can't control, and just let whatever happens tomorrow, happen. Grab a ladder and get over it. There's so much more you could be focusing on right now. My head dipped to look at my chest. Like these.

My breasts hadn't really been in the forefront of my mind much, except when I bumped them against something, or brushed them with my arm, or what have you. Now, looking down at them, I felt myself growing very conscious of the two masses of flesh, and how they hung off me and insisted on moving with every little twitch my torso made.

"Listen," I murmured, thinking of Homer Simpson for a minute, "you two and I are going to have to live with one another, so why don't we all get along. I promise to take care of you if you promise not to make my life a living hell."

Perhaps I was on some kind of drug still for my medical treatment. I giggled madly at the thought that I was addressing my bosom, and was happy that I didn't hear a voice answer me back.

I think I can get this female thing to work, I decided, shifting a little in the bed and finally taking stock of my body's differences. It can't be that hard. Two legs, two arms, a head; same general layout. I'm just used to driving a stick shift.

Another giggling fit came from that horrible pun, and I drew my knees up to hug them to me for some reason. I don't know why I was reacting the way I did; maybe it was my subconscious' way of dealing with the changes in my form. It's not like I'd longed to be a girl, or had any intense sexual desire to check myself out 'in that way', as one might think from all the stories that float around the Internet in that genre. To me, at that particular instant, being Jill was just.. being Jill. So I had boobs and no penis. At least half the population's in the same boat. Granted, not all of them had the chance to see it from both sides, dropping half their age (and two-thirds their weight) in the process. But still, there was no point in belaboring the issue. Evidently I was going to be using this form for the foreseeable future, and whether I wanted it or not, it was mine.

It's not like something snapped, or a switch was flipped, or anything like that, either. As time went on, I had to adapt and adjust to being female. But it wasn't as hard as the countless stories on the net and elsewhere would have you believe. Like I said, I was still a human. It wasn't that hard to handle.

Anyway, I watched TV, finding an anime channel and joyously soaking up as much as it had to offer. Some shows were old favorites and others were new things I'd never heard of before, but would become among my most liked, filling the hole of the anime which I was about to live, starting in the morning.

 

I called for the nurse when I woke up the next day.

"What can I do for you, sweetie?" Nancy asked, apparently back on shift again.

"I want to take a shower," I said, gesturing to the BP cuff, IV, and all the other crap.

"I don't know about that," she warned me, shaking her head. "But we might be able to wash your hair."

I shrugged. "I guess that'll have to do," I said. It was the goal I wanted to achieve, anyway - never having had long hair before, I was starting to get agitated at how greasy and unclean it felt after at least three days without cleansing. Actually, if I'd thought about it, it probably had gone much longer than that, but I hadn't been awake for the rest of it.

I was wheeled into the bathroom in a wheelchair and allowed to sit in a special chair erected in the shower stall, while Nancy directed the hand-held shower head over my scalp. A towel protected me from getting my hospital gown wet, and together (because I was being stubborn and wanting to participate, truth be told), we lathered up my locks.

"You have such beautiful red hair," the nurse exclaimed at one point. "It's a very radiant color."

"Thanks," I said, blushing a little. I was unused to being told anything, positive or negative, about any particular feature of my looks.

"Are you going to keep it this long?"

"Think so," I nodded. It hadn't occurred to me before then that I could have had it cut short, like a guy, like I was used to. But my mind's eye view of myself had already been set, and it involved having shoulder-length hair like Noriko Takaya from Gunbuster, and I figured that if my brain was willing to see me that way, I'd at least have to give it a try.

"I hear you're getting some visitors today," the nurse said.

"Yeah," I nodded, as we both scrubbed shampoo deep into my scalp. "I didn't think it would be appropriate to be all gungey when they showed up."

She laughed. "You're fine, child," she smirked. "You're quite a beautiful young lady."

Again I blushed, but this time I didn't answer. Despite my concerted effort to adapt to becoming Jill, that particular compliment wasn't one I'd been readying myself to hear any time soon.

So eventually my hair became clean and rinsed, and wrapped up in a towel, as women and others with long hair seem wont to do. Since we were already in the shower stall, I persuaded the nurse to at least let me sponge myself clean, if not get fully into the shower and rinse down. It was an experience, though it would pale with the first time I would have a real shower. In any case, after I was fully cleaned, I came out to a freshly made bed, the cleaner having taken the chance to come through while I was up.

"I understand they'll be here sometime after nine," Nancy said. "I'll have your breakfast sent up right away so you can get it out of the way."

"Thank you," I said, feeling hungry. I knew my metabolism would demand less food and/or smaller portions, but for lunch I was hoping I could score a double cheeseburger somehow. I would kill for a good metric buttload of calories.

As Nancy turned to go, I caught a glimpse of her name tag, and finally saw the rest of the text beneath her name, which I'd missed in my stupor two days before. It was 1st Cranial Nerve Dept. Of course, I said to myself.

The gods must have been smiling on me when breakfast was arranged, for I managed to luck out and score French toast, one of my favorites. Syrup and butter galore, along with a couple strips of bacon, damn near made my day. I was starting to feel human again now that my taste buds had been rewarded handsomely.

Just after nine-thirty, two men and a woman came into the room; the men in dark suits, the woman in some kind of skirt suit covered by a doctor's coat. She was a brunette, and Caucasian - no Dr. Ritsuko Akagi for me. The MIBs were likely Section Two, I figured.

"Miss Jillian Amber Thomson," the woman read from my chart, looking up at me. I nodded, internally chuckling that I had been right about my new middle name's first letter.

"I am Dr. Wendy Andrews. These are Agents Shirobu and Gregory." She gestured to the men beside her. "We are here on behalf of the Marduk Institute."

Play along, play along, I urged myself, nodding again. "Good morning," I smiled faintly. "The doctor said you'd be coming."

"What did he tell you?" she asked.

I decided to stick to what I'd done with the doctor. "That I'm special somehow," I began. "Gifted, or top percentile something or other, stuff like that."

She gave a little smile and said, "It's not exactly like that, Miss Thomson. You are special, but not precisely in that way."

I resisted bringing the X-men joke back for another round. "What do you mean?" I said, again playing dumb.

One of the men - Shirobu, the Japanese one - handed over a thin grey 8x10 book. On the cover in Times New Roman font, it read, Welcome to Nerv.

I hoped I wasn't blanching as the doctor went on. "You have special ability that makes you highly desirable by this agency," she explained. "You would be working with several people your age, under a common supervisor."

Yeah.. Rei, Asuka, Shinji, and Misato, I realized, my head swimming now that I actually held the proof in my hands.

"Miss Thomson?"

I looked up, snapping out of it. She was waiting for me to say something, so I shrugged and said, "What would I be doing?"

"It's all contained in the introductory manual," she said, nodding her head towards the book in my hands. "You will understand once you read it."

It dawned on me that it wasn't an offer, not that I would have declined it anyway. They weren't there to say 'come to NERV if you want', they were saying 'you are coming with us to NERV'.

"Show her," Dr. Andrews said, speaking to Agent Gregory. He extracted a device out of his blazer pocket - something which looked like a Play Station Portable, but more advanced - and flicked it on, setting it on the over-bed table.

I watched the screen as a purplish-blue figure resolved, first in wireframe, then overlaid with a "real" shot from a video camera. The Gainax animation team, while splendid in their own right, did no justice to this world's real-life version of Shogouki. The creature was somehow beautiful and frightening all at once. The entire cage was a beehive of activity, and I tried to place or recognize anyone I could spot in the frame, but the screen resolution was too small to tell definitively.

The display winked off, and I realized Gregory had picked it back up and put it away again. Dr. Andrews said, "This is the artificial life form Evangelion. You will be its pilot."

Not likely, I wanted to counter. Sho's Shinji's. I'll probably get 03. "That.. that thing is piloted?" I said, again, playing dumb. "What do you need things like that for?" I just wanted to see how she'd react.

"To defend us against the Angels," she said plainly.

Okay, that was kind of anticlimactic. "Angels? Like the things with wings, and harps, and..?"

"Not an angel. An Angel," she said, actually pronouncing it in a fashion that implied the capitalization, if you get my drift. "These are creatures that are intent on ending humankind."

"Wow," I understated. I'd been having fun with this so far, but I ran out of things to say pretty quickly. "So this thing.. this Evangelion.. is there only one? Or am I going to have teammates or something?"

I'd tried to make a weak reference to the five-person teams that seemed to fill Japanese entertainment at one point. She didn't bite, if she recognized it at all. "There's more than one. They are being made in places all over the world - Japan, Germany, the US.. This one-" she gestured to Gregory's pocket, where he'd put the video player "-is in Tokyo, Japan."

I nodded, as if confirming my suspicions. I realized I'd have to do a lot of bullshitting and playing dumb for a while.

"You won't be headed to Japan quite yet, though," she said. "The North American base of operations you're destined for is in Nevada."

"Area 51?" I smirked, though I was rewarded with a trio of frowns. Apparently they'd heard that one before. Then again, maybe they hadn't, seeing as how I was the Fourth Child, or so I believed - perhaps no one else had been recruited to Second Branch yet.

"Be ready to leave tomorrow," the doctor told me, reaching forward to tap the book. "Read this. And when you're done, read it again."

"I don't have any clothes," I pointed out. "And the doctor here wanted to--"

"Your medical concerns will be addressed in Nevada," she cut me off. "And everything else will be seen to as needed."

They filed out, leaving me with my swirling thoughts and the book. I sat there stunned for a few moments, even though virtually everything had happened as I'd expected so far.

I lifted the cover of the book, hearing the glued paper crackle as it was opened for the first time. Inside, tucked in a pocket, was an ID card bearing the NERV-UN logo (not the leafed one, the plain white text), some bar codes and MICR numbers, and my name and a place for my photo, at this point blank. Also inside the cover was a page indicating that the manual was my personal copy, issued to Jillian Amber Thomson, serial number 0004-681-21, designate Fourth Child.

"Holy shit," I whispered. "This is really happening."