A New Beginning
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We’re entering a new age. The natural laws are blending and breaking in ways they have never done before. The pillars of knowledge shake before our very own eyes. What we once thought of only as a myth, is starting to fuse into reality itself...”
I walked to the lady in the desk, an anthropomorphic lioness with long brown hair and bright amber fur.
“Hi. How may I help you?” she said with a younger voice than what she looked like. Not that I was especially good at calculating age, even if the person wasn’t part animal.
“Hi. I have an appointment with Alice” she then took a good look at me, seeing only a teenager that had not taken a shower in a while and with a wild hair. Nothing extraordinary at all, but she smiled at me either way as if she already new something about me that I ignored.
“She’s busy at the moment with another volunteer” she said politely “She’ll receive you the moment she’s done with him. You can make yourself comfortable while you wait”
“Thanks” I said and then continued to sit on a nearby chair.
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As time slowly crept away, my mind began to wander into deep thoughts, as was usual for me in this kind of situations. My train of thoughts began with the scenery in front of me, a large reception desk. The curious thing about it was neither the size nor the decoration, although it was indeed big and very nicely decorated, but the people that were constantly coming in and out of the enormous double sliding doors towards all the different parts of the building. They were animals, going from the anthropomorphic ones to others with apparently no difference from what you might find in your local zoo, except they were smarter; cyborgs, as in persons with some kind of prosthesis or other mechanical enhancement; any strange combination of animals, human and robot that I could dare think of; and humans that could be counted with one hand, including me. Not that it had always been like that, there was a time when only humans walked down the street, only humans attended to school, only humans bought on a supermarket, then IRF came.
The International Research Fund was built as a way to promote pure scientific research and development, giving top equipment, space, technology and funds to anyone with enough brains to convince the IRF board, and then patenting all the results among the researchers and the IRF itself. Basically, it was a big enterprise that gathered all the ideas that the other companies didn’t find useful for themselves and put them in good use, following a strict ethical protocol and sharing all the income among all its workers, including the broken scientists that had come up with the ideas in the first place. It had been successful almost from its beginnings with a lot of capital, its international relations, its extremely accurate talent for business and a lot of crazy ideas from all the rejected, and somewhat mad, scientists in the world.
It had been IRF the one that had come up with the Passion Process, also known as the Transformational Process and named by its creator. No one knew exactly how the process worked or why it only affected a selected number of individuals, as the IRF kept everything regarding the project in secret. All that anyone knew was that you came in as a normal human and could come out with the beginnings of a series of changes that will gradually transform you into something else in a matter of days. The transformations were completely random, or so claimed IRF, and could go from a subtle change in skin pigmentation, to making a kid walk again after everyone else said it was impossible, to gaining animalistic characteristics and parts, to even becoming an imaginary creature such as a Pegasus or mermaid; without messing with the mind and changing who you are. Some claimed it was the discovery of the century, others said it was of the millennium, and ever since it was announced it has been offered for free to anyone willing to take it, as to research the process on a deeper level in order to make a better use of it in future treatments.
Just about then, a man stepped out of the elevator. I noticed that he had an envelope on his right hand and that his pupils were slits as he passed by me. He had a gloomy air around him that sent a chill down my spine despite my best attempts to ignore him.
“You can go up to meet her now” said the lioness, and then I stepped in the elevator.
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It was this door alright, or so said the piece of paper held in my hand. I put it away in a passing recycle bin and took a deep breath in preparation before entering through it.
The office was big compared to your standard office cubicle. Of course everything here in IRF had to be bigger than standard due to the kind of workers they had. Not that there weren’t any humans at all working in the building, but it was a well-known fact that IRF had the highest amount of transformed people in its ranks, and all its working spaces were adapted to meet all the requirements every single one of them would ever dream of, like a claw-resistant carpet, perches for the bird-types that weren’t comfortable on normal chairs, a continuous air flow for the ones with sensitive noses, windows coverings that could make the rooms as dark as night for persons with a nocturnal tendency and, of course, a large size in everything so that the big morphs could come and go without trouble.
Nevertheless, this place seemed fancier than the average I had seen on my way here. It was enveloped in the green and colors of plants and flowers that I had only seen on pictures of rainforests, and every single one of it was alive and growing in this well lit but small environment. There was even a fountain with a little marble fairy on a corner.
“You must be Spencer” a horse-lady with a rather showy gleaming crystal horn on her, I assumed, forehead said coming from my right. She was dressed in a tailored, it had to be tailored as it fitted her perfectly, black dress that was so common among working women nowadays. “I was expecting you” she said approaching me and then offering her furred hand “I’m Alice, but around here everyone calls me Gaia”
I took it “I prefer to be called S. If you don’t mind”
“Not at all,” she said and then we disengaged. “please, let’s have a seat” she said, pointing at the desk near the window.
“I take it your nickname comes from the Greek goddess of the earth,” I said as I sat on a synthetic leather chair with an orange flower growing from the armrest “and from the rather green decoration”
“You could say that,” she said sitting on the other side of the wooden and clumsily made desk, her tail swishing through a hole “I’ve always had a knack for plants”
Then silence came while Gaia took out some papers from a drawer and read them silently.
“Interesting” she finally said “Your tests show a probability of almost ninety five percent for Passion to take a positive effect on you”
I remembered that test that I had done two days before. It was designed as a means to determine more accurately in which person the Transformation Process would take effect, although it wasn’t a hundred percent failsafe. It was made as a means to reduce ‘causalities’, but mainly to cut out extra expenses to IRF. It consisted on physical, medical and psychological tests that were compared later on with others tests of individuals in which Passion had worked. It had been a surprise that I had gotten such a high probability.
“But its not a hundred percent” I said.
“Don’t worry about that,” she assured me “that five percent is a margin of error in the statistics due to the randomness of the process. I have no doubts that Passion will get to you” she smiled.
I would have laughed at the joke. After all, it’s called Passion when it only has helpful effects on someone, like taking off some age traits and curing diabetes, so she believed I wasn’t going to get changed. But nervousness had a strong grip on me. All I could do was nod at her.
“I don’t see a reason why you shouldn’t be able to take the procedure tomorrow with…”
“Couldn’t it be today?” I quickly asked.
She then looked at me, and I could see her nostrils swell just a little bit bigger. She smelled my emotions, like an open book through her ultra sensitive nose, little hormones, sweat and humidity that my body expelled and her senses could translate directly, almost like another language. People thought this was impossible or regarded is as a rumor, but I was certain she was doing it right there, before my eyes. Thankfully, I also knew that she would think I was feeling eagerness.
“I’m sorry,” she finally said to me and then activated a holographic screen. Top technology, very expensive and a little bit blurry because of all the light in the room, but it clearly showed a schedule of some sort “but all the facilities are busy until tomorrow…” my heart sank at that thought, and she noted it “I can manage to squeeze you in the first turn of the morning, if you want it”
“That would be nice” I said, still a little down by the news. She then moved some things on the projection.
“That would be all,” she said after she was done, and looked at me with friendly eyes “out of the record. I only want to ask you a rather personal question, if you don’t mind”
“Go ahead” I said.
“Why did you choose to take Passion?”
I smiled at sensing her curiosity “What better way to begin a change in my life?”
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“How did it go?” the guy’s raspy voice came from beneath his heavy raincoat and brown hat.
“Tomorrow morning,” I said, throwing the appointment plastic card to him “She ‘squeezed’ me in”
“She must have really liked you,” the man said as he smiled beneath those dark glasses and the scar near his lips “we know that the morning turns are completely full until next month.”
We were on a nice little building, in the worst neighborhood of downtown that anyone could have imagined. Bars and all kinds of exotic night clubs ran through every block of this god forsaken place, along with the normal liquor store and homeless. Of all the places, this was the most exclusive, the most expensive and the emptiest place of them all. There was no doubt in my mind that it only served as a house for all kind of illegal activities of the highest positioned people of the city.
As for the man right in front of me, he didn’t have the need for the entire disguise he was wearing at the moment. You could kill ten persons here and they would have had it cleaned in less than a minute, and only because of the corpses’ bad smell. This only made me think he must have one of the worst tastes in fashion ever. That was evident even to me, and I don’t even care about fashion. “Spit it out already,” I told him “what are you going to do to me?” he then took out a syringe of some sort.
I yelped at the sight of it, not being the sort that stands needles very well. “This,” he said “is a bio-signs sensor. It will allow us to know exactly what happens to your body as the process progress”
“Are you sure they won’t be able to detect it?” I said, more concerned of IRF than the needle right now.
“It’s nanobotic technology,” he said after I willingly let him have my arm and he began cleaning it “we have an advantage over them in this field”
I tried to remember why I was doing this as I allowed the strange object puncture my body.
I had left home for a while now. Not that it had ever been my home, but rather a house that helped to hold me and my parents from the outside world, and what an important job that was. We couldn’t stay in the same room for more than two minutes, I once counted them myself, before a lousy argument began among the three of us. My dad couldn’t handle it and eventually divorced my mom and moved as far away as he could. Then, after a rather sour discussion, I decided to run away. I don’t think my mom even noticed the difference as I hadn’t seen any sign with my face printed on them during all this time. I used the name S just in case someone erroneously thought I had a good family and they were probably searching for me and missed me. Like that witch had ever wanted to have me in the first place.
I began to reckon how I got here as the cold liquid entered my body while I looked the other way, clenching my teeth.
It was tougher on the streets than what I had originally thought of. With no money, no house and no food, I was officially a homeless teenager. I even remember that returning home had crossed my mind on several occasions, until the hat man came.
I really don’t know his name and don’t need it anyways. He had come to me one day and offered me a diner, the best one in my whole life, and a room to stay for the night with the only condition I took the Passion test. He even forged an approval of my parents for me to take the test, this was necessary both because, along with some other papers, if I passed I would go immediately through the process and IRF would aid me in changing my identity to suit my new form (If I changed at that degree), and because I was a minor.
I saw an opportunity here. I knew that many big companies were starting to break down and even going bankrupt thanks to IRF. They were desperate to take IRF down, and saw a chance when the Passion Process came. As was normal in any kind of discovery, the Transformation Process was being heavily criticized ever since it came out by everyone, the churches, the tree-huggers, the human rights. The only thing that had saved them was IRF’s ethical code, that had reached a loop of reason that had not been broken until now; the total control they had concerning the whole project as it may not be used in any immoral way, that’s why they kept everything in secret; and the constant support of the majority of governments, as IRF has a program that has helped the education all around the globe. Knowing this, it was only logical to think that this guy was from the competence and wanted more than to help a homeless, but I wouldn’t get nothing else from him unless I passed the test, which fortunately I did, and with honors.
I became his best buddy after that. He invited me to restaurants, bought me new clothes and everything I asked for, and even got me my own place. Everything I wanted would be mine, and I only had to do one thing, go through Passion.
I knew what he wanted and he knew what I wanted, so there were no secrets between us. I took advantage of this and sucked any valuable information I could get out of him, as information is always useful, and concluded that he wanted to use me as a means to get important research data at the same time as IRF and maybe something that could be used against them in a court.
And so, I willingly obeyed everything he told me, including standing the injection that had finished by now without me ever noticing it.
“That should do it” he said as he took away the empty thing “Now you only have to follow the process exactly as they told you and you’ll live like a king for the rest of your life”
“I can hardly wait” I said, rubbing my swollen skin.