Oxicron

Oxicron was born with two genitals, male and female. His/Her parents wanted one of the organs removed (didn’t matter which), but the doctors said the hospital was not equipped to perform such an operation. Besides, they said, the parents needed the approval of the Ethics Board to get the procedure done. The Ethics Board decided that the choice was Oxicron’s to make when he/she came of age. The parents decided their child was a boy and decided to raise “him” as one. As a child, Oxicron was popular with both boys and girls, which “he” attributed to his attributes.

When Oxicron entered adolescence, strange things happened. “His” physical form shifted, and “he” became half-male on the left side and half-female on the right side from head to toe. His chest on the left side was hairy while on the right side she developed a supple breast. His left eye was a menacing red, while her right eye was a seductive green. His penis and her vagina became more pronounced.

Alarmed, Oxicron’s parents appealed to the Ethics Board for a resolution of their child’s sexual identity. However, when the case came up for hearing, Oxicron refused any intervention and chose to accept the way he/she was. At school, his/her classmates were also undergoing physical transformation – boys turning more masculine and girls more feminine. With masculinity came aggression and some boys wanted to test their newfound strength. They picked on the most vulnerable looking – Oxicron. Terrified Oxicron found all sorts of ways to avoid their clutches. One day his/her luck ran out and he/she was cornered in an empty classroom. That was when another strange thing happened. As the boys closed in on Oxicron, their legs felt wobbly, and their arms felt rubbery. When they backed off, they regained their strength. They charged Oxicron again and were turned into a puddle of jello. Spooked, they got as far away as they could from Oxicron. That day forward, they not only kept away from Oxicron, but also from other queer-in-the-making boys and girls.

Several summers later, Oxicron was in the city center enjoying a cone of ice cream on a sweltering day. A truck pulled up to him/her and the driver pointed a gun at him/her and commanded, “Hey you freak! Go home and cover your arms and legs. Nobody wants to see your fucking body parts.” As Oxicron looked at the man in disbelief, the truck caught fire and smoke engulfed the cab. The driver, his clothes on fire, jumped out of the truck crying “Help! Help!” Oxicron was among the people who pulled the driver away from the burning truck and doused the flames.

Oxicron was unsure whether he/she possessed supernatural powers or whether the strange incidents in his/her life were happenstance. He/She was afraid to find out. One day he/she watched a video of a TED talk given by a renowned anthropologist who was a professor in a well-known divinity school. The talk centered on religious practices in different parts of the world. The lecturer mentioned in passing a village in a remote island off the coast of Bali. The resident god in the village was a half-male, half-female deity whose enshrined image in the local temple depicted a human form whose left half from head to toe was male while the right half was female. Interestingly, the rock on which the image was embossed was so unique that a similar rock was found nowhere else on earth. Based on radiometric dating, geologists had estimated that the rock must have been part of a meteorite that fell to the earth millions of years ago.

His/her curiosity spiked, Oxicron saved up enough money to travel to see the hermaphrodite wonder in the other part of the world. To his/her surprise, the priest at the temple was a heterosexual male who lived with his wife and children in a tiny house behind the temple. Oxicron said to the priest, “your god is nothing like you or the people in the village. I find it odd that heterosexual men and women are worshipping a god who is neither male nor female, but an incredible combination of the two.” The priest looked confused by the question. He answered, “but he/she is a god. Gods come from a different world billions of miles away in a distant universe. How can we expect gods to be in the shape of our image?”

Oxicron returned home unsure if the priest had answered his/her question. But the priest’s response answered a different question for him/her: what to major in in college? He/She decided it would be astrophysics. He/She took courses in thermodynamics, galactic astronomy, and quantum mechanics, became keenly interested in space exploration, and followed the progress of any and all space ventures. Prominent in the news was a venture by SolarZ whose aim was to mine Suki, the largest asteroid orbiting Jupiter, for minerals. Their manned spacecraft had landed on Suki, but the astronauts had been unable to collect rock or dust samples due to weather conditions. When the weather cleared, the rovers went in different directions looking for mineral-rich soil samples. One of rovers got stuck behind a rock and the astronauts reprogrammed the rover to lift off and activated the optical sensors. After the rover took images of the rock’s surface, it scooped up samples of the rock. The captured images were transmitted to ground control while the rock samples were sent to a space station for analysis. The space station determined that the rock was between 2 and 2.5 billion years old. It was a mystery as to how the rock landed on the 4-billion-year-old Suki. The answer came from the multidimensional images. They revealed not a crusty rock but a gigantic slab of metal and rock with carvings on it. The carvings turned out to be that of human-like alien creatures. They were very tall, taller than the tallest human. Even the children appeared over 10 feet tall. All of them shared one distinct characteristic: They were half-male and half-female head to toe.

Strangely, Oxicron was neither perturbed nor elated by the news. He/she just felt relieved. He/She was not a freak after all. He/She did belong to a community – extinct or extant. He/She wondered if heterosexuals were queer in that world.

THE END

Bio: Balu Swami lives near Phoenix, AZ, USA. His works have appeared in online publications in the US and the UK. His main interests are folklore, fairy tales, and myths. Many of his stories explore the area where the paranormal intersects advanced science.

E-mail: Balu Swami

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