ThuggLite

She shook her head. "Oh, no - I was born female. But when I changed, and I had to come to terms with it..." She got that uneasily nostalgic look again. "I was young enough that I never got strongly attached to sex as a component of my identity before it no longer applied. But that only goes so far when everyone else thinks of it that way - and when you still look like what you really aren't, to them." "That...must've been hard," I said; I was still confused, but I could spare a little sympathy. Navigating that transitionary phase was awkward for everybody, but especially if you were different from everyone else... "It was," she said. "For years, I wondered whether I was really a 'her,' or just an 'it.' I was initially attracted to intelligence research since I thought I might feel less out-of-place, but...most researchers are human, and most humans struggle to get past human preconceptions. But it did put me in touch with other machine intelligences, and it gave me more