Year zero - 5. The Beach

Alter: Kadence

Local Network World: 0008/0098

Dates: 19/06/2025

Power

Olivia had slept on Kade’s couch. They’d agreed to spend the rest of the weekend together in Kade’s World to try and help Kade learn to find weak points. Kade hadn’t had the heart to tell Olivia that the literal second she’d stepped through one at the ferry terminal she’d been able to sense them. As they’d looked around for a way back to Edenglassie after lunch, Kade had started to suspect she might be better at finding them than Olivia was. By her count, they’d passed three before Olivia managed to pick up on a single Rift.

“Did you want a coffee?” Kade directed the question at her bleary-eyed doppelgänger.

“No, I’m good. Makes me jittery these days.” Olivia yawned, sitting up on her elbows.

“Oh.” Kade shrugged, mildly surprised. She typically had a full tablespoon of instant coffee and felt basically nothing. “No problem.” While Kade made herself a coffee, Olivia lethargically got to her feet and - stumbling a little - made her way into Kade’s room. Kade could hear the sliding door to her closet whine as it opened. Her eyes narrowed as she heard the rustling of clothes and the clacking of coat hangers being moved and removed. “Liv? What’re you doing in there?” She called out.

“Helping you!” Came the distracted, slightly muffled reply. Kade finished making her coffee, leaning against the bench and holding the mug with both hands. She took a tentative sip, recoiling at the heat. She set it down and crossed her arms, waiting for it to either cool, or for Olivia to finish doing whatever it was she was doing; whichever came first. She jolted slightly as her phone vibrated lightly on the bench next to her, looking over at it suspiciously before reaching for it. She pressed the notification and smiled to herself as it opened to the random couple of memes Dawn had sent her.

So, being deliberately vague about this because it’s funnier that way, I’m currently hanging out with a random girl I just met who stayed the night in my apartment.

As your best friend, I demand elaboration.

I can’t right now - I’m so sorry - but the next time we catch up properly I think we’re probably going to have a lot to cover.

At least tell me whether this is a U-Haul scenario?

Kade laughed quietly to herself.

Emphatically not. Somehow weirder.

At a certain point, cryptic just becomes rude, you realise?

Trust me. This will be worth the wait for an actual conversation about it.

I am so very intrigued

“Okay,” Olivia huffed, finally emerging from Kade’s bedroom with an armful of clothes: “You have bullshit options, but you should wear this,” she held up one of the few skirts Kade had ordered online. It was a long jean-skirt, falling to below the knee with a modest slit in the front. The resulting shake of Kade’s head was largely involuntary. Fear-based.

“Like outside?” She asked. Olivia nodded.

“Like…outside. With a tank top…maybe an over-shirt?” Olivia dumped the jean-skirt on the couch, holding up a black tank top and an oversized green and black button-up flannel shirt.

“I can’t.”

“Oh, you absolutely can. This is as good a start as any. It’s low-key, basic…a little gay. It’ll work fine.”

“Liv, a few days ago I was telling this guy he could call me by whatever pronouns he wanted, and you’re telling me to go out in public wearing a skirt?” Olivia paused, clearly trying to look like she was pretending to consider the question. She capped off the pantomime by cocking her hip and resting a wrist on it, before raising the other hand to pinch her chin, affecting a ‘deep in thought’ look.

“I think…yes. That’s exactly what I’m telling you.” Kade rolled her eyes so hard that she was momentarily concerned she might dislocate a cornea.

“Get absolutely fucked.”

“Oh, I do. Regularly. And if you would like to at like…any point, moving forward, you may want to consider working on your confidence and being less of a little bitch about this kind of thing. Like seriously. Enough with the ‘plausible deniability’ outfits.”

“Liv, I - “

“ - Just put it on, Kade. Put it on, and if you want to take it off I won’t say another word.”

“Fucking fine,” Kade huffed, stomping over to grab the clothes before retreating to the bathroom, muttering something about forced feminisation. She slowly got changed, avoiding the mirror as she did so. She left the underwear she was already wearing on beneath the outfit - just a padded sports bra and boxers - and then leaned over the vanity, gripping it with both hands so hard that her knuckles went white. Kade was terrified. Because this wasn’t the first time she had tried this. Because the last time - a week before starting HRT - had amplified her dysphoria so badly she had spent the entire rest of the day in bed, staring blankly at the wall and catastrophising over the fear of never getting to look like anything more than a man in a dress. After a few seconds she managed to force herself to look up at her reflection. She paused. Her eyes narrowed. She took a step back so she could get a better look. She winced as she forced herself up onto her toes so more of the skirt showed in the reflection. She pulled her hair back, leaving curly strands framing either side of her face, before dropping it and combing it back out with her fingers, leaving it where it sat just above her shoulders. “It’s…me.” She whispered to herself.

Kade couldn’t remember a time when she’d been alone in the mirror. There had always been her - looking - and a guy who everyone saw when they looked at her - Kieran - staring back at her. But this time, Kieran wasn’t looking back at her. She could see echoes of him…the stubble - slowly getting patchier and thinner from laser treatments - and the overall shape of her face. But her cheeks were fuller and softer and her lips seemed a little less thin. The stubble she could shave. He wasn’t there. It was just Her.

Pulling her hair back and clipping it away from her face, she grabbed for the shaving gel. She noticed her hands were shaking a little as she massaged it into her cheeks and chin and upper lip. She caught herself smiling as she moved the razor towards her face. Her reflection never smiled. As much as she didn’t want to, she forced herself to stop - to keep a straight face - and started shaving: with and then against the grain; cheek, then chin, then up and around the corners of her mouth. She winced as she slowly, carefully, dragged the razor upwards against the coarse hair on her upper lip, trying to get as close to perfectly smooth as she could manage but painfully - predictably - tearing the skin in multiple places. This time - for the first time - she barely cared.

When she was done, she patted her face dry with a towel. It was physically difficult for her to look away from the mirror. She was staring at herself…at her smile; the smooth, pale pink skin of her cheeks; the little dimple at the left corner of her mouth. It was like she was seeing herself for the first time. She was, literally, seeing herself for the first time.

She ran through the makeup routine she referred to as ‘base face’: tinted moisturiser, then blush, blue eyeliner along the waterline and mauve eyeshadow over her eyelids, then setting spray. Then flapping her hands in front of her face to dry the spray a little. Then lipgloss.

It wasn’t perfect. Her critical eye wouldn’t let her delude herself. Her makeup skills were functional at best. She could still see a slight shadow of stubble-in-waiting along her upper lip and chin. Her face, objectively, was the same as it had been the day before. But…there was a certain threshold that must have been reached: something that led her brain to interpret the person in the mirror as a woman with a fairly innocuous beard shadow as opposed to a man wearing makeup. Kade wanted to scream…she didn’t know how to contain the feelings of relief, and excitement, and joy:

“Olivia!” She called out with urgency. She heard movement. Slowly the door opened. Slowly she turned toward the opening door, a nervous half-smile on her face. She almost struck a pose, but ended up just standing there, arms limply at her sides. Olivia raised an eyebrow, smirking at her knowingly.

“Still want to take it off?” She asked.

“Never.” Kade gushed excitedly.

As they continued getting ready to leave, Kade noticed Olivia sporting a self-satisfied little half-smile and found herself wondering if she had done this for other girls before, or if she was just drawing on memories from her own transition. Kade wondered how it would feel from the other side: being the experienced trans girl who seemed to have all the answers. She couldn’t even visualise that scenario.

“Y’see, the thing is…you’re worrying as if you’re still the person you were when you started HRT,” Olivia mused. “But you’re not that girl. Not physically, not psychologically. Change is happening, which means…scary as it is, you have to keep pace with it. You need to keep trying things, even things that failed previously. It sucks. It’s work. It’s spoons. But eventually it’s worth it.” Olivia concluded.

“Well I guess you’d know better than I do.” Kade admitted. She still felt nervous as they left the house. She felt as if she didn’t know what to do with her hands. She kept clasping them together, and twisting her - now defunct - wedding and engagement rings around, just to have something to do with her fingers. But for possibly the first time, she also felt a sense of excitement, presenting in a way that she actually felt…almost good about. The two of them slowly made their way down the single flight of stairs and into the underground carpark, Olivia letting Kade lead her to her car.

“Want me to drive?” Olivia asked.

“Y’know, it’s phrased like a question, and yet…” Kade rolled her eyes at her.

“Keys?” Olivia held up her hand. Kade reluctantly threw her the keys to her car. They moved around to their respective doors. “It’s cute.” Olivia commented. Kade looked down at the little blue Kia Picanto and shrugged, pulling the passenger door open and getting inside.

“This is some ‘passenger princess’ bullshit, just by the way.” Kade glared across at Olivia. “I’m perfectly capable of driving my own car.”

“I feel like you need to read the room, here,” Olivia smirked. “We clearly have a certain dynamic, and you’ll feel better if you just…y’know…lean into it.”

“Oh yeah? And what dynamic is that?”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” Olivia muttered. Before Kade could respond, she continued: “So, yesterday, were you starting to pick up on any weak points?” Kade sighed before nodding.

“A few.”

“That’s a good start.” Olivia said.

“Currently…there’s one in the corner of the car park, over there.” Kade pointed towards the far end of the space. Olivia frowned.

“Yeah, you’re right. I didn’t clock that.”

“I can feel one in the next street over…one in the construction site a couple of houses down…” Kade listed off.

“Are you sure? I can’t feel them.”

“I can kind of…visualise them a little? I can feel where they are and when I think about them, if I know the place, it makes a picture in my mind.”

“Kira can do that, too.”

“Who?”

“One of our Alters. She’s got a much better sense for Rifts than I do.” Olivia paused, before starting to smile. “So it sounds like you’re a natural at this.”

“Is that good?”

“Well, it makes my job a lot easier, I’ll say that much. I think maybe we should try something different.”

“Like what?”

“Do you trust me?”

“Uh…not particularly? We barely know each other.”

“I was right about the skirt, wasn’t I?”

“I guess.”

“So trust me, then. The preliminary data points in that direction.”

Otherwhere

Olivia had decided that they should drive out to a quiet beach she liked. She refused to explain why. The drive took a little over an hour, which Olivia spent telling Kade about the other Alters. Kadence’s primary takeaway was that Olivia seemed to dislike the one called ‘Ari’, but that as far as Kade could tell there wasn’t any particular reason behind it. She kept this observation to herself.

As they arrived, Kade recognised the location immediately. She had been there before, a number of times. Olivia had explained that, in her world, the area was just south of ‘Redland Bay’. In Kade’s world, it formed part of a sleepy sprawl of coastal suburbia called Mädchen Bay, stretching southward in little clusters of civilisation between Edenglassie and The Crescent. Which apparently, in Olivia’s world, was called the ‘Gold Coast’. Kade was starting to have opinions on which world was better at naming things, but she decided to also keep these to herself, too.

“I know this beach.” Kade said as they got out of the car.

“Oh really?”

“Yeah. I’d sometimes take the train down here, sit in the dunes and write. It was always so quiet.”

“Because of course we both did that.” Olivia rolled her eyes. “I should have realised.”

“What kind of stuff do you write?”

“Poetry, mostly. You?”

“Short stories. Little bits and pieces.” Kade shrugged. “So what’s the plan, anyway?”

“Well I’m thinking, because you’re already, clearly so good with weak points…why don’t we try the other thing?”

“The other thing?”

“Yeah. When we first met, in that…other place? I want you to try making another one.”

“I don’t know how I did it. I don’t even know if I did it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Come with me.” Olivia led Kade through the carpark and down to the path astride the beach. Kade smiled to herself as they walked. To the left of them was a ramshackle fence made of thick wooden cylinders with wire mesh strung between them. It divided the path from the thicket of brush and scrub at the edge of the dunes. They quickly found the little path - just bolted down slats of wood in the sand nestled into a gap in the fence - and made their way down to the beach. As ever, it was deserted. They kept walking down to where the sand started to get damp and solid beneath their feet, still a good distance from the surf.

“Here?”

“As good a place as any.” Olivia nodded. “Let’s start small, see if you can create one on demand. I guess like…close your eyes and think of England?”

“You’re stupid.” Kade snorted, shaking her head before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. In the end, she decided to do exactly that. She ran through her memories for somewhere specific and recognisable. She ended up picking Coventry Cathedral. Completely lost on how to attempt it, she just pictured it in her minds’ eye and thought about being there; tried to will herself to be there. “This isn’t going to…” she trailed off as she opened her eyes. “…work.” She finished the sentence with a long, surprised exhale. Surrounding her were familiar tan-and-brown stone block walls and towers. She could feel its boundedness: could feel how small this world was. From somewhere deep within herself she could intuitively feel it as a bubble of a place that only stretched as far as her intent had constructed it. Somewhere, beyond the walls, this world abruptly ended. Somehow, it made her feel safe. Emotionally, it spoke to weighted blankets and sensory deprivation. Manageable. Limited and limiting. All hers.

Slowly she paced around the slightly unevenly cobbled flooring, open to the elements via the absence of the roof, destroyed by German bombs in the Second World War. The detail was beyond photographic: it didn’t simply look like she remembered: it felt like it. As if it was not simply a snapshot of her memory of it, but a memory she had travelled back to. She wandered her way to one of the walls - an intricate web of stonework that at one point would have presumably held a series of stained glass vignettes, tracing her fingers gently across the rock. She shivered a little, not sure what she had been expecting. Certainly not the resistance of perfectly tangible, believable stone.

“Wow, okay. Strong start,” Olivia murmured, joining her and walking around in a little circle.

“That was…easy,” Kade murmured, considering: “Hey, I wanna try something. I’m going to leave, and think really hard about that Temple you showed me.”

“The one in Brisbane?”

“Yes.”

“You think you can jump between places? Worlds even?”

“When I came out of the…what are we calling these?”

“It’s your power, what do you want to call them?”

“I don’t know.” Kade thought about it for a moment. “Otherwheres?” Olivia indicated for her to continue. “So when I came out of the Otherwhere, I ended up somewhere different than when I went in. I want to test that.”

“Okay, but let me go first. We don’t know how long these things…y’know…exist, without you in them.” Kade nodded. She watched Olivia briefly look around, locating a weak point, before taking a deep breath and wringing her hands out a little, as if trying to shake out nervous energy. “Okay. If I die? Fuck you for making this stupid fucking suggest - “ Kade smiled to herself as the end of Olivia’s sentence was cut off as she vanished into thin air. Kade followed, taking a deep breath and focussing on her memory of the Pagoda. She didn’t bother closing her eyes this time, marvelling as Coventry Cathedral simply blurred out of focus around her.

“Well, then.” She raised both eyebrows as the world came back into focus, revealing the ornately carved building, surrounded by foliage and statues and fountains. She could instantly feel the difference between the boundedness of the Otherwhere and the fullness of Olivia’s world; the lack of fixed endpoint or horizon.

“You can teleport,” Olivia grinned.

“I mean, it’s not that.”

“How is it not? It’s just teleporting with a transit stop. I can’t wait to tell Kira about this. Okay, Let’s get back to the beach.”

“Wait, do you want to get some food first?”

“Sure, why not? What do you feel like?”

“I dunno, Banh Mi, maybe?

“Sure, we could do that,” Olivia nodded. They started to make their way towards where the Parklands met a long street of cafe’s, restaurants and bars. After quickly stopping by a Vietnamese cafe, Kade pulled them into an empty service passage between two of the nearby restaurants and created an entry to another Otherwhere. As reality came into focus Olivia groaned.

“Like it?” Kade held out her arms, doing a quick spin. Surrounding them was empty road stretching off into the distance in a straight line in both directions, tousled by the occasional hill and trough. On either side were vast swathes of flat, scrubby hinterland, cut through with a few small, slowly flowing creeks. Off in the distance was a jagged outcropping of snow-capped mountains, stretching skywards. “Mount Ruapehu,” Kade nodded as she watched Olivia’s eye drift over it.

“You’re just showing off, now.”

“Would you not be?” Kade asked. Olivia shook her head, conceding the point. “Do you remember this, though?”

“Of course. New Zealand. The whole…Desert Road saga. We were so sick that day.”

“Yeah, from that bad calamari the night we arrived in Auckland? And then we had to do Rotorua with food poisoning?” Kade shuddered, remembering the way the generalised, constant thrum of nausea in her gut had disharmonised with the smell of sulphur. “Not the best.”

“Yeah, and Mum forgot to check the petrol, so we wound up almost breaking down out here.”

“It’s so weird seeing someone else remembering my memories.” Kade observed, watching Olivia’s eyes glaze over as the recollection washed over her.

“Yeah. Alters, man. Having all this shared life experience and still somehow working out to be pretty different people? Hard to get your head around.” Kade nodded. She and Olivia sat down by the side of the road to eat, recounting details of the trip for awhile before falling silent to finish their Banh Mi’s. “I wonder what else you can do with it,” Olivia mused.

“We take requests.” Kade managed through the tail-end of a mouthful of bread and pork.

“How about a specific memory, not just a place?”

“Did you have one in mind?” Kade got to her feet, dusting crumbs off her skirt.

“How about a memory of the beach. When you used to go there to write.”

“Sure, I can give it a go.” Kade nodded. “Should we just leave the trash here? I guess it’s gonna get blinked out of existence anyhow. Assuming that’s how it works?”

“One way or another it’s degradable,” Olivia shrugged. “Either metaphysically or like…it’s…paper?”

“Okay,” Kade balled up the Banh Mi bag, dropping it on the asphalt and wandering towards the closest weak point: “Think beachy thoughts.” She held out her arm like she was holding a door open for Olivia. As Olivia disappeared through the Rift, Kade joined her on the other side. They were back in almost the exact spot they’d originally been in. A confused seagull that had been a little too close to ground zero staggered its way into flight, looking back at them over its shoulder as it made its getaway.

“Shit. I guess someone finally noticed.” Olivia frowned, before turning to Kade. “Shall we?”

“Sure.’ Kade closed her eyes, concentrating on the memory. It had been a long time ago. She had been twenty at the time. The memory was hazy, but as she focussed more on it she drew it into sharper relief in her minds eye. She remembered taking the train down to Mädchen Bay in the afternoon. She had walked down the same path to the beach that she and Olivia had used earlier. She remembered taking off her shoes as she reached the beach; feeling the warm sand slipping between her toes. The sun getting low in the sky and the wind slowly getting cooler against her skin, she had sat in amongst the dunes. She remembered how hurt she’d been that afternoon; how completely alone she’d felt, as if the weight of the first twenty years of her life had just caved in on her all at once. She hadn’t known why she felt that way. That day hadn’t been qualitatively different from any other day. Nothing specific had happened leading up to it. She would later identify the feeling as a kind of ‘dysphoria attack’; an intermittent state of mind where the dissonance between who she was pretending to be and who she actually was got to be too much to simply ignore, or rationalise into the ether, or sublimate with distractions. Where the wrongness she felt on the inside began to be reflected everywhere she looked and in everything she interacted with on the outside. At a certain point, dissociation would take over; the colour would drain from the world, the volume would shift downward on her emotions and she would be…she’d be the thing that she used to define as ‘okay’, but which was actually, in retrospect, more like being ‘less present in her own life’. Kade sighed, forcing herself back into the specifics of the memory. She’d had one of her many barely used notebooks, and she’d opened it up and started writing as she watched the sunset. Writing what she was always writing about when she was twenty: stories about the angst and trauma and pain of a girl called Annabelle. Kade opened her eyes. For a moment she didn’t think it had worked. But then she looked back over her shoulder and saw him - her? - sitting there, writing.

“I think I remember this night.” Kade heard Olivia whisper, her voice barely louder than the surf. “I mean, it could be any of a bunch of nights, but it feels…it feels like it was this one. I remember not being able to think of anything to write. I remember just sitting there, watching the surf. Kade, I think this is the night I decided to transition.”

“Seriously?” Kade spun around. “Is this too much, or…?” Olivia shook her head.

“No. Good memory. Good.” She paused before asking: “What were you writing about that night?”

“I used to write a lot about this girl. I’d realised by this point that she was just a version of me I wished was, like…” Kade paused. Olivia had stopped listening. Her eyes were wide and her expression was unreadable. She was looking past Kade. Kade turned to follow her eyeline. Blurry - shimmering with what looked like static - was another figure, sitting in the sand, holding a hand up near her ear. Holding a phone.

The Bay. It's sunset now. Pretty. How's Darwin?

The figure said, voice crackling with static. Kade’s brow furrowed. She immediately recognised the words as dialogue. There was a long pause.

Crowded. Noisy. Annoying.

Pause.

Wouldn’t necessarily make me wrong.

Pause.

I don't think everyone sucks. I like you a little.

“What the fuck…?” Olivia rasped, her eyes not leaving the staticky figure.

“I…it’s what I was writing.”

“That’s…that’s her voice. How are you doing this?”

“I’m not, I mean…I don’t know?” Kade tried to assure her, reading desperation and panic in Olivia’s voice.

“I have to get out of here,” Olivia hissed, lunging for the nearest weak-point and disappearing into thin air. Kade stared at the figure in the sand a moment longer. Watching her play out one half of a conversation she’d written Anna having that night.

“What the fuck,” she muttered, before following after Olivia.

Vibe-Mind

“Liv! Olivia, stop!” Kade called after her. Following her through the weak point, Kade had found herself in Brisbane, back at the Pagoda. She assumed Olivia hadn’t had time to think of anywhere better to go and had just backtracked. She jogged to catch up to Olivia, walking rapidly away from her.

“Go home, Kade.” Olivia said over her shoulder.

“No, tell me what’s wrong,”

“Nothing’s wrong, just leave me alone.”

“Clearly something’s wrong.”

“I’m telling you: Go home. Go back to the beach, get your car, and go home.”

“Not until you tell me what’s - " Olivia turned, cutting her off with a frustrated growl. Kade could see tears in her eyes and her mouth was twisted into an angry snarl.

“ - What’s wrong is that this whole thing was a huge fucking mistake. I see that now. Look at you, you’re useless to us. This pathetic, indecisive mess who waited a literal lifetime to get her shit together because…what, misery and dissociation were more comfortable alternatives to taking a single…fucking…risk? No wonder Sara cut you out like a goddamn tumour. You’re a fucking coward and an idiot and we’re better off without you. You’re not up to being there for yourself, let alone being there for us in this fight, now leave me the fuck alone.”

Kade felt hot blood flushing into her cheeks, and the beginnings of tension forming in her temples, the intensity punctuated with a throbbing heartbeat she could hear in her ears. She felt her stomach begin to churn, and nausea rising in her diaphragm like she might throw up. She could feel eyes on them…the few people in and around the Pagoda had frozen, looking over at them. Kade suddenly felt aggressively exposed and on the verge of tears.

“No problem,” she whispered, blinking away into an Otherwhere.