“I’m not sure if I envy you or not,” I finally said. “I mean, yes, there are some aspects of it I’d probably find appealing.”

She laughed. “Basically, you’d just like to run around naked without anyone knowing it.”

“Well, there is that,” I admitted. “But the sheer, well, permanence of it is kind of scary, and anyway you told me that the machine was destroyed.”

“It was.”

“So there’s no way I’d get a chance to try it myself anyway.”

“Don’t be so sure,” she said, and I was certain she’d had a wicked grin on her face, had she a face.

Saturday turned out to be a hot one, and I wondered why she’d wanted me to come by at high noon, a time when, as she always said, “civilized people are just barely rolling out of bed.” The door opened. “Good, you’re on time for once. See that bucket behind me?”

“How could I not?” I said.

“Come in, pick it up, take it into the back yard, and take your clothes off. I’ll be out there in a few minutes.”

It was a fairly ordinary bucket with an off-brand laundry-detergent label on it, but this wasn’t like any detergent I’d ever seen: it was brown, brackish stuff, a solution of barbecue-grill scrapings in, judging by the smell of it, ammonia. And it weighed a ton, or at least a lot more than the equivalent volume of Tide. I hefted the pail onto the patio and stripped to my shorts.

About three minutes later, out she came, a pair of rubber gloves suspended in the summer air. “The machine,” she said, “was used only to fuse the reagent.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we’re going to cover you with the same stuff, and see if there’s enough energy in the sun to bake it onto you temporarily.”

I whistled. “You mean someone dipped you in this crap?”

“I had to *swim* in it,” she grumbled. “Be grateful you’re not getting the whole ball of wax.”

One glove reached into the murky mixture, and the process of painting me out of visibility began. I rather imagined I looked like Sasquatch on a day pass, if Sasquatch had bothered to wear BVDs.

At the half-hour point, she announced, “This might actually work.”

“You think so?”

“Look down,” she said, and instead of the canonical ten toes, I seemed to have about three and a half.

“Now why would *those* go first?”

“You’re standing on the concrete. More heat.”

“Oh.”

Time passed. I continued to look down, and for the moment imagined that I was being dissolved by acid. I certainly felt like it. “And for God’s sake, lose the shorts. You look ridiculous.”

The gloves made short work of what was left, until finally nothing remained but genitalia hanging in the air. “I ought to leave you like that,” she teased, then swiped at the forlorn organ with the gunk, and eventually it, too, faded.

“How long does this last?” I asked, wondering why I hadn’t asked before.

“About three hours, or until your next shower, whichever comes first.”

“So what are we gonna do?”

The gloves came off. “I say we walk over to the mall and terrorize people.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“But don’t go walking through any sprinklers on the way.”

HOME

(From Doug G) Imagine for a moment, if you will:A young man meets an incredibly beautiful lady. They have the usual whirlwind romance, begin dating, get married, have a wonderful life, etc.Here’s the twist…10-15 years down the road of life, he finds out he’s been married to an android, and she’s not aware of her true nature. How does he convince her of this, once he gets over the shock himself?

(From Paul I) I can’t stop thinking of an entry in one of those “Nitpickers Guides for Trekkers” books. It’s that episode where Data meets his “mother” but she doesn’t know she’s an android, and she’s been programmed to shut down if anyone tries to tell her.Data wants to tell her, and the “Nitpicker” has a lot of fun with this: “Mom, I want to tell you something. You are an andr… Wake up Mom! That is better. Now, you are an andr… Mom! Wake up…” etc.

(From me, in reply to Doug) I like this, Doug! This scenario has brought to life a story idea of mine that basically died right after I wrote it. After I finish the Rashida story, and the Mystery Woman story, and the Just When You Think You’ve Seen It All story, and the Christina Carriere story (mind-swap gone wrong), I’ll get to work on it. The story I write that incorporates your scenario is “perishable,” though, so I’ll have to get to work on my backlog. Actually, I think I’ll put the android wife story after Rashida and the Mystery Woman but before the others. I don’t want to rush, but I do want to put something out there.

[As you can see, it didn't quite work out that way.]

(Doug) Feel free to bounce an idea or two off me, as I have a feel for how I think it should go. Perhaps there’s children involved (orphaned children that the couple adopted)…how would they react to finding out Mom’s a robot? Does anyone else know? Are there other android women out there?Perhaps as a strong convincing tool, our male character (let’s call him Hal) pops off the “little wife’s” (let’s call her Molly) hand and puts it on the table. As it’s wiggling around (perhaps under Molly’s control), Hal says, “How can you dispute this? You’re not a living being… you’re a collection of circuits and batteries!” Maybe Hal follows Molly around one day (seeing as how she sometimes takes off with little or no notice, and is gone for hours), suspecting she’s having an affair, and stumbles across the android lab where she was built. Perhaps Hal’s a police officer/detective/private investigator and curiosity gets the better of him. Of course, breaking into a high-tech lab such as our supposed android lab could pose a bit of a problem for Hal to breach it’s security…Any other ideas/comments/suggestions?

(me) Interesting, Doug. My idea was a continuation of the Y2K story idea. I didn’t know what to do after the power went out. I had in mind an android with an incomplete back story (”amnesia”; not true amnesia, since there nothing has happened for her to have forgotten) and so she doesn’t know she’s an android. She meets a guy, falls in love, gets married, and then 10 or 15 years down the road…

(me again) Doug, here’s the scenario I had in mind:Scientist and assistant (who is not the least bit science oriented) are hard at work on Y2K eve. Scientist is working on a project that’s a secret even to the assistant. When scientist is distracted, assistant skips out. He doesn’t want to be stuck working on the biggest party night of his life.Scientist begins AI program download into a waiting android. Midnight comes before download is complete. The next day the assistant finds out that the scientist was working on an android, downloading a AI personality program that was aborted by a power failure. The lab was empty when the power came back on the next day, and when the scientist returned to the lab, the android was gone.Meanwhile, somewhere across town, “Hal” is out for a walk and encounters a gorgeous woman with a bad case of amnesia. He figures she has nothing more than a bad hangover. In time they fall in love, get married, etc. Some years down the line, Hal is in a bar on a “boys night out” and overhears a very drunk guy lamenting that he didn’t stick around for what could have been a “groundbreaking” discovery. The guy describes what sounds like his wife (”Molly”) but the guy is talking about a fembot…

(Doug) Good backstory… perhaps we could flesh that out a bit more.I’ll put something together in the next few days and send it to you…let me know what you think.

(me) Doug: I just thought of another possible scenario for this story. How about if a young woman’s brain patterns are scanned and stored but the scanning procedure knocks her out. Meanwhile, unknown to her, the scan is loaded into an android, which goes online and is released before the young woman awakens. She is not aware that her brain has been copied into an android, and the android doesn not know that she is an android. This was the basic scenario to the first “Another You” story idea I posted at my Writings club.How about it, all? Anybody wanna give it a whack?

(Doug) That sounds reasonable…but, unfortunately, we’re awfully short-handed at work, and I’m having to work 6 days a week until we get back up to full capacity, so I won’t be turning out any stories for a while.I’ll make a copy of this, and piece something together when I have more spare time.

…and that, as they say, was that. The story was never written. I suppose that even though the Y2K angle is dated the story idea itself is still valid. One of these years I’ll get around to actually writing it.

Me: I’ve often wondered how we all got into this tobegin with. In my case it’s been a 20-year dream tofind something like an invisible girls website.

When I was 12 or 13 my best friend, who was a girl oneyear older than me, went south for the summer. I didn’t know how I was going to survive (she was my bestfriend, but I was crazy about her just the same). I did it by pretending that she wasn’t gone at all, she had only become invisible, and I was the only one who could see her. Obviously, the idea stuck.

How about you guys? What got you into this?

Paul Cwick: “What got me into this?” Oooh, what a loaded question! I could write a book on that, but I’ll try to keep it brief.

When I was a kid, I used to enjoy watching all the “Invisible Man” movies. For some reason, I found them much more fascinating than all the other Horror/Thriller movies made around the same time. I didn’t realize it then, but later on I realized that what I got off on was the ‘power’ aspect; to this day, that is still the aspect about the fantasy that I find most compelling.

Then one day, I saw the 1941 “Invisible Woman” and it totally blew me away. Not only because it featured a female character, but it was the first “Invisible” movie I’d seen with a sympathetic title character, that wasn’t a thriller and left a hint at the end that she had retained her invisibility powers (unlike all the other movies where the character either dies or takes a reagent, ending the invisibility.)

But it also left me with the STRANGEST feelings afterward; in the back of my kid mind, I kept thinking, “It’s not fair that a GIRL should get to be invisible!” This, despite the fact that there were DOZENS of movies already made with a male protagonist. I felt a bit uncomfortable and yes, threatened, by the idea of a female having such a unique power, and yet at the same time, I was fascinated by it. This ‘uneasiness’
(for lack of a better word) remained in my mind for years afterward, and I could never quite resolve it
until…

Until puberty hit, and then it was a whole new ballgame. Then this movie and other unusual fantasies began
to occur and recur to me, usually involving women who had become empowered by some supernatural or
preternatural means or other. Of all of these fantasies however, the “Invisible Woman” fantasy has proven to be the most potent and long-lasting for me. I also was very shy (still am, in fact) & unpopular in junior
high & high school, afraid to approach real-life GUHRLZ, so I began to rely more & more on my fantasies
just to keep my sanity. Needless to say, it wasn’t long before I began to fantasize about being seduced
by an invisible girl who was absolutely madly in love with me, and before long, all sorts of variations
of THAT theme began to occur to me as well.

In 1983, the new “Invisible Woman” TV-movie premiered, and I enjoyed it, even though I was disappointed
that it wasn’t picked up as a series. I also wished that it had a bit more of an ‘edge’ to it (anyone who has read my stories knows what I’m talking about!) than it did. But I liked it nonetheless and vid-taped it for repeated viewings.

Keep in mind that for all this time, I was CONVINCED that I was the only one on the face of the earth to fantasize about invisible women. I NEVER mentioned the subject to ANYONE, except for a couple of female friends of mine, who, when I told them, looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears!

Then about six months ago, I discovered the “Invisible Girl Webring” and through that, the Femmes Invisible web site. I was absolutely stunned beyond powers of description to discover that there were websites (with pictures, no less!) devoted the very same fantasy that I’d enjoyed for over 20 years, and that I apparently WASN’T the only one to fantasize about invisible women!

Needless to say, I logged in regularly after that, occasionally put in my two-cents’ worth here & there and
gradually watched this little cult fandom grow into the multi-club, multi-website phenomenon that it has become. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Scidram:I am a fan of many transformations of the female form (shrinking, growing, invisibility, age regression, animal transformations, etc.) There’s a certain fascination in first the helplessness one must go through when something has altered the body, and then the struggle one goes through to either regain themselves or live with the transformation.

Regarding invisibility, I was 12 when the TV-movie “The Invisible Woman” premiered, and certain scenes have stuck in my head ever since (Sandy stripping down when first becoming invisible, putting on pantyhose so her legs could be seen, and lifting up her shirt to show her uncle she was still invisible). Seeing her with the invisibility was attractive, and I was going through puberty, so it had an effect.

My interest was renewed when I learned I was not alone in my fascinations. All the artwork and stories on the web are great, and definitely erotic. And as for the new Levi’s ad, it is definitely one of the sexiest ads on TV.