Interlude 1 - Shattered Sense of Self
“What did you want to say, son?” My father said across the table, finishing the vat-grown, private chef cooked dinner that he had curated for the night.
“I want to be a girl!” I said, with a proud look on my face, before diving back into the potatoes on my plate.
There was a pause in the room. Father looked to Mother with a look I now understand as a mix of annoyance, disappointment and trying to pass off the responsibility of questioning me.
“A girl? Why?” My mom asked.
“Because I don’t like being a boy!” I said, matter of factly.
“Why don’t you like being a boy?”
“...It doesn’t feel good.” I shrank in my seat a little at that.
“Oh honey…well, there are things out there that can help you with that if you’d like?”
“Dear, don’t indulge him in this. It’s like the obsession with the sea he has. It’s not going to allow him to inherit the city. It’s just a phase. It will pass. He’s young, he’s not even ten.” A stern refusal.
“Oh come on, darling, that’s your son. Surely, we can help him through this phase and then when he doesn’t like it he can be back to being our son.” She said with a faux-pleading voice.
I sat there, not fully understanding the depth of what I was hearing at the time. Just a phase? I didn’t feel comfortable in my body. Was that a thing that happened to everyone that just passed by?
“YOU WROTE MALE FOR ME ON MY COLLEGE APPLICATION AND USED MY DEADNAME?!” I shouted at my father from across the room.
“That was the name I gave you when you were born, and you have tarnished it with these flights of fancy of yours!”
“Flights of- GAH!” I screamed out, tears streaming from my eyes, “Great, just great. I can’t even be myself.”
“You can. You can be my son. You can be my heir. Or you can go to college, get a degree in whatever you want, and then never speak to your mother or I ever again.”
“What?!”
“You heard me.”
“You’d really be that fucking petty about this?” I slammed the table with both of my hands to punctuate my point.
“If petty is what gets my son back, then I will be as petty as necessary,” He said with a serious stare.
“Fine. I’ll say goodbye to mom. I won’t have to deal with your bullshit at college, you fucking bigot,” I snarled, storming out of the room and down the hall. I reached my room, opened the door, and slammed it behind me, before collapsing to the floor with my back against the closed door, and fully broke down into sobs.
“Mr. Matthew Adams?” My Bio I teacher called out. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair before speaking up.
“M-Macy. Macy Adams,” I said meekly. The teacher paused for a moment and wrote something on the paper.
“Got it. Thank you for the correction.” I could already see the looks of a couple other students who saw my weakness. I wanted to crawl out of my skin and leave this place. I didn’t feel right. Not in the dysphoria way, but very much in the anxiety attack kind of way. Dad really fucked me over by paying off the school to not allow me to change my name for the first year.
After class, a couple students followed behind me, a couple corpo spawn who were probably taking the class as a gen ed, two boys and a girl who had her arm linked with one of the boys.
“So, what’s the big New Detroit heir doing dressing up and going out to college like this? I thought you’d be taking business classes, or maybe being pampered by your loyal subjects,"sneered the boy who was not connected at the hip to the girl.
“I’m…training to be a marine biologist.” I said quietly.
“Marine biologist? What do you need that for? The sea’s been dead for a long time. Why not lean into business? You got the bloodline for it,” The girl said with a vitriolic snark.
“I…I should go.”
“Come on, at least answer my girl’s question,” The playboy corpo said, giving a little tug at the girl’s arm, before inching forward with a bit of malice.
“I…I…” I began to shake and tear up. They didn’t see me as the girl I was inside. They saw me as a crossdressing heir to a city that I didn’t care for.
“Matthew Adams.”
That’s not who I am.
“You have tarnished it with your flights of fancy!”
My dreams are not flights of fancy.
“It’s just a phase.”
It’s not a phase.
“It’s just a phase.”
It’s not a phase!
“It’s just a phase.”
It’s me! Why can’t I just be ME! WHY CAN’T BEING ME BE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT?!
Why can’t I be me?
Is being me something that breaks some law of reality that cannot be broken?
Is my worth in this world based on my value to the people who rule it? If so…I am nothing.
But I don’t feel like nothing. I don’t want to be nothing.
It’s just a phase.
But I feel like I am…every day that I go against what I have been told since I was a young child.
Footsteps come, and there’s a voice I can’t make out.
The scene fades to black.