Dreams are built out of the ineffable. They are the subconscious process by which our brain reys its most precious thoughts. Taking our secrets, secrets that are sometimes even unknown to the dreamer, and forcing them to interact with abstractions of the world around us. Ultimately though, dreams themselves often become part of the ineffable which they try so desperately to show.

  Alex knew this, at least he thought he did. He began to catalogue and journal his dreams, divine something from their mangled visions. But his dreams were nothing, they were just fantasy and whimsy. The journal he kept on his phone, a series of notes dating back nearly a decade, containing just about every dream he's ever had. He didn't organize them besides by date but he probably should. Sort them by where they take pce, people that show up in them, events that take pce, superpowers he might have. But to do so would force Alex from a dream he has been living his whole life.

  The previous year Alex found himself graduating from college, something he, for a long time, thought he would never do. He had been in and out of school for the better part of six years, much longer than a typical student. Much of those breaks were caused from a financial concern from both Alex and his parents who were trying to help him pay for his csses. Taking rge gaps, months between csses to try to rebuild the minimum thousands of dolrs needed to take a few csses.

  Alex initially refused to take out loans. In Highschool he had pushed himself into exhaustion studying his ass off to get valedictorian and get a full ride to whatever school he wanted. Alex failed nearly all his csses his junior year due to intense burnout and illness, destroying any chance he might have at being valedictorian, but he thought he might still be able to salvage a schorship of some kind. He pushed himself into extracurricurs, National Honor Society, swimming, cross country, anything that he could do to push his application over the edge. When schools began sending out their acceptance letters and schorships Alex received very little. His dream school, University of Chicago did indeed send him an acceptance letter, but he would be paying way more than he ever could have imagined in tuition fees. Perhaps against his better judgment he decided to attend, and took out a few loans to help pay for his freshman year.

  Halfway through his second semester the reality of fifteen-thousand dolrs of student loans began to set in, at that rate he would be near sixty-thousand in debt by graduation. So Alex juggled multiple jobs through his second year before taking an extended leave of absence trying to make as much money as possible to eliminate his loans.

  And so six years ter and cutting his debt to a still insane but seemingly more manageable, eleven-thousand, Alex finally graduated with a degree in Environmental Science. Alex had a long passion with biology and the world around him, and wanted to discover everything the natural sciences had to offer.

  In the year since graduation Alex has worked alongside one of his professors, taking samples of the Chicago river for various bacteria and viruses. Not particurly riveting work but it was important and Alex was gd to be a part of it.

  He lived in a fairly modern apartment building just off of 55th st. It was a small pce, only about four hundred square feet, but for just himself it was so far working as intended. He wasn’t dating anyone at the moment, the time just didn’t feel right. Alex had had a girlfriend the previous year, but they split amicably after she wanted to move out of Chicago. He tried to keep in touch but she rarely replied.

  And so most nights he was alone, lost in his thoughts. Few hobbies to attend to, a few years old sketchbook y on his desk but only had anything in the first few pages. He didn’t read much either, or loiter on his phone. He now mostly just moved through life at a steady pace, not really aware of what is going on around him. Lost in a maise. It was like a dream in a sense, like moving through water, having no control of your own, just dredged along.

  ***

  Alex had a dream st night. He'd been having a lot of vivid dreams tely but this one in particur stood out to him.

  She just sat there, in the middle of his living room. Naked and in the fetal position. She had long dirty blonde hair just past her shoulders. It was messy but in an intentional way. Made her look slightly wild and new to the world. Her skin was clean, there was a natural glow of beauty and energy, a youthful aura permeating off of her. It was warm and inviting like she was calling Alex to come closer. When he closed his eyes Alex could see her so perfectly all her features, preserved like a statue of a young goddess. Yet when he tries to discern more details, her form fades into abstraction, just an idea of beauty.The girl was familiar to him in some way, it took a moment but he eventually figured it out. She was Alex. At least that's what the dream's logic told him. Wiped clean of the masculinity that formed him, existing forever in this moment of feminine bliss.

  Around the living room was the rest of his family, they were discussing an upcoming event with extended family that was to be held at a church. Alex frowned at this. It was a subtle frown that left no wrinkles, as if this body was incapable of imperfections. His mom said they could avoid going as she knew it might not be safe for Alex and he would be severely uncomfortable the whole time. But to not go, they would need to tell the rest of the family about Alex. She didn’t eborate any further; they all knew what she meant. He never got to speak. The dream faded before Alex could make a decision.

  The dream was far too memorable and surreal to mean nothing but at the same time, what it implied was simply insane, and Alex refused to believe it. Alex definitely enjoyed the way the dream depicted him, but he also liked himself perfectly fine. He was the epitome of mediocrity, and Alex liked that about himself, never drawing unnecessary attention. Alex didn't like being the focus of people's attention, preferring to stay off to himself; it was a simple but effective way to move through life. The dream however made him begin to re-evaluate. The thoughts that the dream tried to push were not exclusive. Alex pushed them all aside, he wanted to remain ignorant a little longer.

  The b was slow that day, they were waiting for results to be processed by a computer which as usual was taking a long time. Scientific software was an ironic part of the scientific world. While science continues to progress and push the world to new heights, the software many bs rely on remains stuck on decades old software and sometimes even older hardware. It was a fact that always amused Alex, some programmers spent potentially years of their life on this niche software only for its company to die and the crucial software quickly finds itself falling into disrepair. Perhaps he found it retable in a sense. His own programming and hardware stuck on outdated systems, hopefully one day they'll receive their updates.

  At lunch Alex sat next to his coworker, a fellow b tech named Charlie. His thoughts remained trapped on the dream he had.

  "Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you were a girl?" Alex asked him.

  "Why would I ever have thought that?" Charlie said.

  "I don't know, doesn't everybody?" Alex said. He gazed down at his lunch, a sandwich and a few baby carrots.

  "No, not really. At least as far as I'm aware," Charlie told Alex. "Why would you want to be a girl? That sounds miserable. I quite like my body the way it is, thank you very much."

  This was not the answer Alex was hoping for and it just made his life infinitely more difficult. He thought for a moment of a way to rephrase the question, a way to get the response he wanted to hear.

  "Sure, totally, that makes sense. But let's say that there was a way that you could be a girl, for a day, once that day was up, back to your normal body. Would you do that?" Alex asked.

  "Maybe, I guess. It just doesn't sound enjoyable. Although I'm sure I could find ways to make it enjoyable, I'd have a whole day after all," Charlie responded, a sly grin spread across his face.

  "Gross man! I don't want to hear that." Alex tells him.

  "What? Are you seriously telling me you wouldn't take a little exploratory journey?"

  "I mean I guess, technically. But not like that, come on," Alex tried to dismiss the question but does find his mind pause on the possible thought for a moment.

  "What's up with all these questions anyway?" Charlie asked. "Our conversations usually get pretty out there but this is new."

  "I'm not entirely sure myself. I had a dream st night," Alex paused. His mind began cycling through the dream as well as numerous others. "I was a girl in it. And as I'm thinking about it I realize it was far from the first. There must be dozens of dreams like it."

  "Woah, woah, woah, slow down. What are you talking about?" Charlie said. "So what if you're a chick in a few dreams. I'm sure if you comb through every single dream everyone's ever had, a few of them are going to get a little funky in the gender department, that's dreams, they’re weird. No need to re-evaluate your entire life."

  There we go, Alex thought. That wasn't exactly what Alex was looking to hear, but it served enough of the same purpose either way. He was perfectly normal and he could stop thinking about such crazy things.

  "Yeah you're right. You know how into my dreams I get.” Alex segued away to a new topic. “You really should try dream journaling too, it's a really enjoyable experience," Alex told Charlie, his anxieties now temporarily cooled.

  "Well if it winds me up as much as it does you maybe I shouldn't" Charlie joked.

  The rest of lunch passed and their conversation continued forward and eventually returned to the usual discussions of work and the b results.

  After work Alex returned back to his apartment after a lengthy bus ride. Usually he liked to walk back home, it was good exercise and was only about a twenty-five minute walk. But Alex found himself abnormally tired that evening and took the bus which somehow added ten minutes to his fare.

  Alex had intended to take a nap before heating up his dinner but his exhaustion that was upon him only moments ago had vanished leaving Alex fully awake and almost jittery. He sat down at his desk and turned on his computer. The machine clicked and whirred as the lights flicked on. He pulled open the search bar and thought for a minute before typing something in.

  Dream analysis. He scrolled through before finding his way into a forum full of people posting and analyzing each other's dreams. Alex searched through some of the posted dreams, looking for any simirities to his own. He stumbled upon one, posted there years ago by a now deleted account.

  "So, the weirdest dream just happened to me the other night. I was driving down the street with my friends but something was off about me. You know how in dreams you just kind of know what something is even if it very clearly isn't that thing. Like say you're in your old High School and you know it's your High School despite the fact that it very clearly is not and is just an amalgamation of pces giving the illusion of your High School. Well anyway it was like that, my body seemed to be that of a woman's. Yet it was supposed to be me. Now I'm a straight dude so I don't know what's going on with this but as strange as it was, it was also I don’t know, fun? So anyway, we were driving and then we’re in a restaurant getting food and then that's it, I wake up. I don't think I've ever had a dream where I was a girl before, so what could it mean?"

  The dream had a vague familiarity to it, it ticked simir boxes to his own and if he was remembering correctly he had a simir dream years ago where he was just casually with his friends as a girl. Alex began scrolling the comments for their answers. The comment's answers ranged from talking about toxic masculinity to gender identity. Those ter comments caught his attention. One of them read "You ever think you might be trans?". Alex saw multiple mentions of this "transness". He scrolled a bit more and eventually found a comment from the poster, an update that seemed to have been posted a few weeks ter. "LOL, yea turns out y’all were right, I'm probably trans".

  Alex had heard vague mentions of trans people before but was not familiar enough to really know what they were. He opened up a new tab and typed in trans people. The Wikipedia page was the first link and he clicked on it. What resulted next was a multi-hour rabbit hole that led Alex through some of the strangest yet oddly retable things he had ever experienced. People talking about their indifference or outright hatred of their bodies, yearning for something different, niche memes about sharks and spinning clothes, side by side photos of allegedly the same person years apart looking completely different, younger, happier, and strangely, lots of eggs.

  Alex didn't eat that night. He fell asleep in his computer chair, at some point he must have woken up, because in the morning he was ying burrowed beneath his bnkets on his bed. For the next few weeks Alex followed a simir pattern of work, research, sleep. Although at some points you could hardly call what he was doing sleep. He would y in his bed staring into the ceiling, disgusted with himself.

  It seemingly came out of nowhere, Alex had never experienced such strong visceral emotions before started learning about trans people. Apparently it isn't uncommon for this to happen, you grow and learn to cope with the dysphoria in your own way, learn to ignore it, push it aside to the point where you can forget about it. But then you learn about it, it's infectious, an info-hazard, the mere knowing of it contaminates you like a pgue. Except the thing is it's always been there, just lying dormant. The things you thought you were indifferent to, your hair, your skin, hands, face, voice, all become the things you hate most about yourself. And it was certainly true for Alex.

  He called in to work that day, he couldn't leave his bed, it was too hard. He couldn't be seen not like this, not while his body was so... wrong. His mind spiraled, being flooded by memories.

  When Alex was in pre-school there was a rack of costumes that they would py in. Alex himself didn't usually participate, choosing to stick to the toys. There was a boy in his css, Tim, he thinks was his name. It had been so many years that the memory had degraded and Alex was uncertain of the finer details. But Tim frequented the costumes and one day he had put on one of the princess dresses. This angered Alex, he wasn't sure why but he held a grudge against the boy for quite some time after.

  In 8th grade Alex had a cssmate who liked to draw. She usually spent more time sketching than paying attention to the lessons of the day. At the end of css one day the girl came up to Alex with a paper she had been drawing on during css. Depicted on it were three girls, except they weren't girls, not really. The girl had decided to take Alex and two of his other cssmates and draw gender-bent versions of themselves. Alex had never heard of such a thing before but the drawing was very nice, and quite fttering.

  Alex was raised in a religious family, went to church every Sunday, went to Catholic school, got confirmed. Alex himself was not ever very religious, he mostly went along with it to pcate his parents and family. Before falling asleep there were many nights where Alex sat by the foot of his bed staring out his window out into the starry abyss. While his eyes were lost his mind was busy praying, something Alex never did except for in these occasions. Alex would sit there praying to any thing that would listen, that he would forever believe in them if he woke up the next morning as a girl. Alex had somehow completely forgotten he had done that. He spent years repeating this prayer. It was ultimately why Alex stopped believing in religion altogether, no just god would have allowed Alex to suffer the way he has.

  Charlie had called him at some point. There was a voice message left by him. Alex didn't want to listen to it. He needed more time. More time to process everything. He had everything he wanted in life, his dream job, friends, an apartment in the city, money. So why was he still unhappy? Why was this one thing consuming his every thought?

  Alex called a therapist that afternoon. He knew he needed to do something, but simply thinking into the void was clearly not helping. He made an appointment for the following week. Hopeful.

  When the day came, Alex cautiously but optimistically, waited in the lobby for the therapist to come and fetch him. It took a while of searching but Alex had found a therapist who specialized in gender issues, and who themselves cimed to be transgender. Alex didn't believe it of course, she looked too perfect to have once maybe been like him. It just wasn't possible to change that much, no matter what the internet or some photos liked to cim.

  A few minutes ter a dy popped through a door.

  "Alex?" She said, looking between him and the only other person waiting. Alex winced slightly then stood and walked over to her. "I'm Dr. Wilms,"

  She reached her hand out to shake Alex's hand, and he shook it gently. They wound their way through the hallways and into a cozy looking room filled with pillows and dim lit candles. She closed the door behind them.

  "I hear you're having some gender problems, is that right?" She asks him.

  "Yea I think so," Alex said.

  "I put it on the form but you left it bnk but I'd like to double check before we get too far into it, just in case. Do you have any preferred name you'd rather go by or pronouns? It's strictly confidential here so don't worry if that's your concern," Dr. Williams was calm and polite.

  "Hmm," Alex paused, shocked, as a name had instantly shot to the front of his mind, whether he knew it or not he had clearly thought about this quite a bit before.

  "Serena, please," Serena said.

  "Well Serena, It's a pleasure to meet you!"

  Pasta-Gal