The interior of the mansion was simply unbelievable.
I'm not just talking about its sheer scale, the massive portraits of stern-looking noblemen adorning the walls, or the opulence displayed through the lavish use of gilt, gold, and baroque decorations. What struck me the most were the peculiar robots scattered throughout the place – a tall, imposing female robot donning an elegant uniform and an oddly designed cylindrical marching band hat, appearing completely disinterested without moving her lips, and a seductive maid robot dressed provocatively.
However, the most mind-boggling feature was yet to come. As Polly, the maid, led me to the sitting room (wearing only an apron, mind you), I noticed that the room was warmed and lit by a crackling fireplace... that turned out to be a hologram! It was so impeccably rendered, with the telltale lines indicating it was a hologram, similar to what you'd see on a Star Trek show. This technology surpassed even the holograms in Star Wars, which, let's face it, were not the pinnacle of space realism. But I wasn't about to start a Star Wars vs. Star Trek debate. There were more important things to focus on.
Once seated, I hesitated to move, feeling like any action might be considered a major faux pas. The carpet alone seemed too extravagant for me to stand upon.
Surveying the room, I noticed bookshelves filled with a fascinating assortment of books. Squinting, I tried to read their titles without defying Polly's instructions:
"An Account of the Battle of Fomalhaut in Riveting Detail"
"The Cosmic Forge: On Stars, Their Formation, Their Lives, Their Deaths"
"Lock Bayonets and Charge: The True History of the 95th Rifles in the Battles against the Tyrant"
"Metal Horrors! A Xenotaxonomy of the Spinward Menace"
"The Mathematics of Solar Sailing"
"Perchance, Prometheus: Articles of Voltic Engineering and Elementary Transmutative Chemistry"
"The War of the Worlds"
The last title caught my attention, and I couldn't resist getting up and hurrying over to it. But even the familiarity of "The War of the Worlds" left me perplexed. I picked up the book to find it was authored by H.G. Wells and someone named Scott Clerke. Intrigued, I opened it to the first page.
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man and machine, yet still constrained by the limitations of a pre-Industrious Revolution era. As men and women freed themselves from the shackles of capital and empire, they were scrutinized and studied, much like a man with a microscope observes the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
"Master?" A voice came from behind me, and I let out a startled scream, dropping the book like a scared girl – which was quite affirming for my gender identity, I must say.
I quickly turned around to see a slender, tall robot girl with blond hair, grayish skin, and a peculiar pair of spectacles – I couldn't tell if they were for necessity or style. Her outfit consisted of a black dress, and she wore a perpetual tiny frown on her unmoving lips. She confidently approached me as I stumbled over my words. "Um, yes, hello?"
"Hmm... your accent is different, just as old Cook mentioned," she said, her voice carrying a pure Southern drawl, as though straight out of the heart of the South. I nodded in acknowledgment as she pulled out a long, thin, needle-like device with a wooden handle. It looked similar to the medical instruments used by old-timey doctors for less-than-pleasant procedures. My anxiety spiked as she held the needle towards me, but instead of pain, it emitted frilly holograms, projecting various interfaces around her. She inspected them with a focused expression. "Hmm..."
"Uh... what's that?" I asked, pointing at the device.
"It's utterly fascinating," she responded, almost to herself.
"Are you a doctor?" I inquired nervously.
"Indeed, I am," she said firmly. "Jeanette Hope, though you should address me as Missus Hope, unless you want a good scolding." She placed her hand on my shoulder and gently guided me back into the chair I had initially occupied. "Now, remain very still." She then retrieved another needle from her belt pouch, a thicker and shorter one. "I don't reckon you want your brain tampered with twice in one day."
"Whoa, wait, I-" I tried to protest, but she had already stuck the needle into my ear. A sudden rush of cold coursed through my body, leaving me paralyzed in place. Jeanette withdrew the needle after a nerve-wracking five seconds, and I rubbed my ear in bewilderment. "What the hell was that!?"
"I ought to wash your mouth out with soap, young miss!" Jeanette exclaimed, playfully tapping my forehead with the blunt end of the needle. "Now, I assure you, you were perfectly safe. But the old master squirmed like a fish when I had to perform an interpolative lumen probe of his frontal and parietal lobes, and that messed up all my scans!" Her eyes glimmered mischievously. "So I thought I'd take advantage of your lack of knowledge to at least keep your head still."
I scowled at her. "You have the bedside manner of Pulaski."
"Who's Pulaski?" she asked, genuinely unaware.
"...okay, never mind, that was too harsh," I conceded, feeling a bit embarrassed. "The bedside manner of McCoy."
"Who's McCoy?" she inquired, still none the wiser.
In that moment, it dawned on me that I was going to be able to make countless pop culture references that no one around me would understand. Because this was real life, and I had to stop clinging to the idea that it was all just a dream.
I grinned and whispered, "This is going to be awesome."
Jeanette glared at me for a moment before refocusing on the topic at hand. "Sorry, getting carried away. So, did Polly inform you that you believe you're not the master, but someone else entirely?"
"She did," I confirmed. "And I'm starting to believe her too." I sat back down as Jeanette occupied the chair across from me, projecting a holographic display of my brain's interior with her device.
"This is your thinker," she said cheerfully, pointing to the glowing mass of nerves and neurons. "And this is the scan of the Young Master from his seventeenth birthday and his checkup." She indicated a second set of glowy lines. "Notice anything different?"
I looked back and forth between the two images. "Um...no?"
"Of course not! You're human; it's hard to spot these differences," Jeanette said with a grin. "But you see here, this clump of nerves? Entirely different. And these parts here and here. You're undergoing some changes in brain structures typically associated with memory storage." She pointed at different regions as she spoke. "Now, I can't tell exactly how it's been done, but I can tell that it's quite the switcheroo – like London and Paris swapped in a blink." She nodded. "What's more, we're seeing some recognizable structures that usually belong to individuals with different genders." She nodded again, her eyes filled with intrigue.
"Received sex?" I asked, tilting my head in curiosity.