Ghost Writer 2

2

You wake up one morning to a formal-looking letter resting on your bedside table. “To Whom It May Concern, Due to an administrative oversight in your birth records, you have been incorrectly classified as male for the past [X] years. This error has now been corrected. Please report to the Office of Gender Reassignment for processing. P.S. Resistance is futile. No, really, we’ve checked.” You can try to object. You can try to argue. Unfortunately, the bureaucracy is absolute. ✔ Your legal records have already been changed to female. ✔ Everyone still remembers perfectly well that you are male. ✔ This does not appear to concern the Bureau. ✔ Any attempt to correct the error creates more paperwork. Your family and friends agree the situation is ridiculous. The government does not. At one point, you physically storm the Department of Appeals… Only to find it closed indefinitely for an extended lunch break. And Death keeps popping by, looking confused and more irate each time. Then there’s your great-uncle Rufus. ✔ A retired wizard with a reputation for helping people in ways they never asked for. ✔ Insists he can fix everything with magic. ✔ Instead, he turns your shoes into rabbits. And, of course, your best friend Tom. ✔ Convinced that if the Bureau can arbitrarily change your gender, it might also have your species wrong. ✔ Keeps loudly asking clerks for your “canine paperwork.” ✔ Some of them are actually checking. So, really, your options are getting worse by the second. (Codes: Lmad Lmrom Lmfam Lmhumi Lmgay Lmpsy Lmsur Lmwei Lmff Lmabs Lmhom Lmhum Lmgws Lmsat)