To Be a Woman by Piers Anthony

was given full support, equivalent to what it could have had in a laboratory. Now I had to eat and drink, not regular food but the nutritive base to be relayed to the baby. The process was sealed off from my vagina so that I could continue having sex with Banner, but his interest declined, as he feared disturbing the baby. I did not argue the case; this was natural.
    Gestation was the normal nine months, and progress was closely monitored. My belly expanded to house the growing baby; I looked pregnant, as indeed I was. I reveled in the awkwardness of it. The townsfolk noticed, of course, and congratulated me. They knew it was hardly as simple as conceiving by my husband, but evidently preferred to think of it that way, and of course it was his baby.
    When the time came I went to the local hospital for the birthing. This too was normal; I was able to slowly expel the baby in the conventional manner.
    It was a boy. Banner wanted him named after me, and I wanted him named after him, so we compromised: his initial, my letters. Bela. Bela Tompkins. Twenty two inches long, six and three quarter pounds heavy, crying lustily. I took him to my breast, now piped with formula milk, and nursed him. Actually the first day was a preparatory formula, needed to start his digestive process, but that hardly mattered to us.
    Sheer happiness was not a programmed emotion for me, but I surely experienced it as I nursed my son. I had virtually completed the process of becoming a woman in fact as well as in law.
    In due course I went home with Bela, and we functioned as thoroughly normal first-time parents. We had to fit sex in almost covertly between feedings and diaper changes, and I lost a good deal of memory-processing time. I loved it.
    It was another joy to go shopping with Bela. The women I met ooohed and aaahed encouragingly, and Bela clearly liked the attention.
    Aunt Mona visited, and held the baby, and he liked her. That was good, because she was his genetic mother. If anything happened to me...
    And that of course was part of it. I wanted Banner to have somewhere to go, and Bela to have a loving home, regardless of my existence. I hoped to raise Bela to adulthood, completing my womanly role, but I knew how tenuous my existence as a conscious person was.
    In fact I had something in mind that would put it all in peril.
    “No, Elasa!” Banner exclaimed in pain when I told him. “You sued and won your personhood to avoid this.”
    “So I could be a complete woman,” I agreed. “And I am, almost. But I realized that there is one more thing I need to do.”
    “To give it up?”
    “To give the secret of machine consciousness to the world,” I clarified. “I owe it to myself and to the world. I can't be truly complete until I share.”
    “But the chances are at least even that you'll lose it, and nobody will gain.”
    “But if it works, not only will I remain conscious, they will be able to make other women, and maybe men too, and other machines that are aware. It would be the breakthrough of the century, maybe the millennium. The potential gain is huge, the potential loss small.”
    “Not to me!”
    I put my hand on his arm. “Banner, please.”
    He could not resist me, even in this. He made no secret of his fear, but he did it. Under duress, as he put it.
    Mona came to babysit Bela, who was now four months old, and we went as a group of four to the Femdroid laboratory, as we had arranged. They were of course very glad to see us.
    “The procedure should take about an hour,” the technician said. “We will disassemble you, record each part, and reassemble you exactly as before. Then we will study the records to obtain the mechanism.”
    The mechanism of consciousness. I hoped it would be that simple, but feared the worst. “I am ready,” I said bravely. I was frightened, an unfamiliar emotion, but determined to see this through. With luck I would survive it and all would be well.
    Actually it was just my head they would