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Categories:Fictional Worlds and Universes
Created by: BobH
First Appeared: "Genderwave: First Reports" on 23 November 2004
Description
Shimmering wall of undefined origin
From the first story:
�It started on June 21st - the summer solstice - shortly after noon
local time. That was when the shimmering wall appeared along a line
stretching from the top of the world down through the middle of the
Bering Strait all the way to the middle of Antarctica. Running from
one pole to the other and stretching from the top of the atmosphere
to the ocean bottom and through the deepest caverns known to man,
it seemed impossibly huge yet was only a few millimeters thick. To
the naked eye it looked like heat haze. No sooner had it appeared
than it spawned a second, identical wall. The first remained where
it was, but the second broke away from it, anchored to the poles as
it traversed the Earth westwards, rewriting the world as it went.�
When the moving wall touched a human being, they would become
instantly transformed into the opposite gender. At last, twenty
four hours after it started out, the moving wall of energy met
again with the standing wall it had left behind. As the two touched
so there was a quick burst of light which flashed around the planet
in an instant, and then both were gone. They vanished without
trace, showing no sign they had ever existed, but rewriting the
reality to fit the changed population, changing everything but the
victim�s memories.
Permissions
Open for new stories: Yes
Permission required: No
Permissions contact: Not Applicable
Questions contact: Unknown
Rules
As submitted by "guest"
-The G-wave took twenty four hours to circle the globe, which meant
it struck pretty much everywhere around the middle of the day their
local time. It first appeared on June 21st, 2004, at around noon
local time, running between the poles along a line through the
Bering Strait. Since the G-wave sprang into being just east of the
line, this means it actually hit everywhere on the *22nd*
-Names get instantly changed to match the new sex. Surnames also
change (you take your mother�s instead of your father, in case
they�re still alive).
-Once it touches the first countries (New Zealand, Australia), the
reports get out and there are major reactions across the world.
-The transformation works just once. If you go through the wall
again, it won�t affect you.
-The dead don�t get affected unless they�re parents and are
survived by a spouse.
-Unborn babies are transferred from the mother to the father. Where
a guy had impregnated several different women, those other babies
ended up being carried either by another male the former mother had
slept with or by someone who had slept around but never gotten
anyone pregnant.
A few additional rules as written by the author himself:
1) No one knows what caused the genderwave. By all means have your
characters speculate on what caused it - God, aliens, magic, mad
scientists, whatever - but there's no direct evidence for any of
these. The cause remains a mystery. This is why the categories for
this story include both 'sci-fi' and 'magical transformations'.
2) If you want to see where the Genderwave was at a given time use
a globe. The line of the supporting bracket doubles for the wave
just fine. Also, of course, if the wave took 24 hours to circle the
world then the slice of the planet between each pair of lines of
longitude on your globe shows the chunk of the Earth it passed over
in any given hour. The wave would have hit wherever you're starting
from just after noon. Count the lines heading east to see where
it's been, west to see where it's going. Yeah, I know this is only
a 'rule of thumb' that time zones don't accord exactly with lines
of longitude. Any fine tuning you want to do you'll need a
time-zone map for. And since the genderwave sweeps across areas at
noon local time, that means it's stationary relative to the sun, of
course, for what that's worth.
From my point of view, the main attraction of this particular
scenario is that thanks to global communication, much of the world
knows what's coming and so has time to react before they're
overwhelmed by it, and those reactions would probably vary vastly.
What would it *feel* like, knowing the entire world was changing,
that no one could do anything to stop it, and time was counting
down to the moment you and everyone you know is changed forever?
3) Transformation was instantaneous, but it always happened to
people where they stood. No one suddenly found themselves somewhere
else. Nor did they suddenly find themselves married to someone
else. The genderwave kept them in the same place there, too.
4) The naming thing, with family names descending along what had
been the matrilineal line, is probably going to be the most
difficult thing to keep straight, but the logic of the set-up kinda
falls apart without it. This means it's easier to use fictional
characters rather than real people unless you want to put in the
research. For instance, Bill Clinton would not become Mrs Rodham
unless Hillary's mother and her mother's mother are dead (I haven't
researched them - this is just an example off the top of my head).
Assuming Hillary's maternal Grandmother is her oldest matrilineal
relative, and assuming her maiden name was Jones, then Bill and
Hillary would now be Mr and Mrs Jones. Like I say, fictional
characters are easier.
5) The astonauts are mine, so please don't use them beyond maybe
mentioning them in passing. They were the *only* ones unaffected by
the genderwave. There were *no* other exceptions. This particular
universe arose out of me wanting to write a story where it's not
the protagonist who undergoes transformation but everyone else in
the world. I still intend to write that story one day. Anything
else introduced in this story is up for grabs, however. If, for
instance, you want to tell the story of those LA street gangs I
mentioned in passing, or the new agers, or whoever, please feel
free.
Links
Original Story, "Genderwave: First Reports" by BobH at FictionMania
originally posted by cj on 2016-02-16, 4 edits, entryid=9336
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