He ran his pointer finger around the ring, sending a distress signal to his testosterone implant near the center of his right butt cheek, and then to the Rhiz.

First, nothing happened. He’d never used the ring before; perhaps the connection between silver and implant had been severed.

Then, a tiny projector, no larger than a grain of rice, rose out of the ring, like a periscope from a submarine.

Do I really want to be tethered to a bunch of queer people that I have nothing in common with? he’d wondered long ago in the doctor’s office. The doctor was asking if he wanted an implant accessory with direct access to the Rhiz, and he’d said no, but his parents had said yes.

With the testosterone implant newly inserted in his butt, he’d shut himself away in his parents’ house for one year so no one would have to see him in such an imperfect state, ravenous some days, yelling at his parents for keeping old photos around, checking his dick/clit size in the mirror, ordering expensive packing underwear from Thailand, wondering why he couldn’t cry anymore, dreaming up horribly juicy lines for soap operas because he was living inside one—except nothing ever happened, aside from the cleaning lady coming and wondering what the hell he was doing in his parents’ house, ghosting on his college friends who knew him as Brittany, failing to find any books or music or TV that contained any trans person who was remotely un-pitiable, watching the world push him closer to his own destruction, a world that had no bright or lustrous offerings for his new being.

Now the Operatrix appeared in a hazy hologram. Blithe could make out an embossed leather belt, but the rest was a blur of pixelated motion.

“Damn, the desert is interrupting the signal,” the Operatrix said with an authentic West Texas accent.

“Okay, I’m not exactly suicidal, but I think I will be if I stay here, as earnest as this place is.”

Blithe spoke timidly because of course he was ashamed of being trans and ashamed of being ashamed of being trans.

“Indeed,” the Operatrix said, almost flirtatiously, and without the bureaucratic emphasis one would expect of a crisis operator. “Honey, there’s only one thing more pressing than trans folks not dying, and that’s living. Let’s get you sorted. I’ve been waiting for your summons.”

Blithe wanted to belong to the family of queer folks, and yet he’d never really allowed himself to be trans outside of his own private, wordless understanding. He lived his life as if something monstrous was waiting at the edge of this lineage.

“Waiting for me?”

“Yes, you’ve been hexed. Which is not actually a bad thing. Let’s first start with the Rhiz.” The Operatrix came over to the bed and hovered next to Blithe. “The Rhiz is a network of intercommunication and exchange. Queers of the world have long rejected the family unit as the primary organizing force for society and have always found ways to operate according to the ways of our guides, the great, ancient fungal goddexes.”