The Morning After
By Adrian Mailenna
This story is dedicated to Evette McKinney, to whom I wish the very best, regardless of what she wishes to me.
It is also dedicated to Max Blackrabbit, who, in his perfectly innocent, unknowing way, is largely responsible for introducing me to this whole furry mess to begin with. If you like this story, give him some credit. If you don't, it's entirely my fault.
It has been said that life is an immense practical joke by the general, at the expense of the particular. That's certainly been true in my case. I, Felix de Molay, am perhaps, one of the first Children of the Internet. My parents met on a mailing list way back when the Net was a relatively small group of university geeks who sat around exchanging computer services, data, bad jokes, and Dungeons and Dragons scenarios. Heinlein, Asimov, and that ever-present herald of the Digital Era, Neuromancer, were my first bedtime stories, and I was the first on the block to get a Macintosh when Steve Jobs made that epic announcement. I had no idea what it was, but it played Space Invaders, and that was good enough for me. This is the sort of thing that happens when you have technohippie parents. It is ironic, then, that the story of my existence, owing so much to rationalist scientific thought, is bound by what many would call pseudomystical babble.
Despite my upbringing as one of the digerati, I've always found the electronic medium a little lacking. I'm a very sensual person. It isn't enough to read the text: My greatest pleasure springs from the heavy feel of books in my hands, the soft rustle of paper as the pages turn beneath my fingers, or the delicate scent of an aged volume like the bouquet of a fine wine. Every book has a different scent, you know. The first prints of the Lord of the Rings trilogy have an exotic, cinnamony smell, while On the Road is deeper and earthier, almost like fresh-tilled earth. There's something almost erotic about writing letters and journals, something in the soft scratch of an elegant fountain-pen against the deliciously textured surface of fine linen paper, or in the gentle flow of words from your fingertips, immortalizing a tiny fraction of your soul in the process.
For as long as I can remember, I've been a bibliophile. When I was six, my parents gave me a first-print copy of Neuromancer. By the time I turned eight, I had filled two bookshelves with my volumes, saving every penny I could to find the next title and devour its contents, savoring the delightful sensations that it had to offer. By the time I was twelve, I knew every used-book dealer in town on a first-name basis. Daryl even kept a little shelf for books he thought I might like, and let me work for books through high school.
This, really, is where the joke begins. I don't know how the story got started that dogs don't like cats. They certainly liked this Cat. Ever since I was a little boy, I've never met a dog that didn't like me. Pit bulls that scared even their owners would run over to me and beg to play. This wasn't exactly a good thing, mind you. I grew up in a pretty yuppie neighborhood, and ninety-odd percent of the dogs were either shaved yapping rats or mops looking for handles. My problem, of course, is that the vast majority of these dogs are brick stupid. All domestic dogs descended from the wolf, you see, and, as a rule of thumb, the further you get from that basic model, the stupider and droolier you get. Multiply this by the twenty or so dogs on the block and you wind up with an awfully bad impression of canine-dom, whether you're named 'cat' or not. Let me tell you, it was a real pisser, walking around the neighborhood like the Pied Piper for a bunch of inbred drool factories.
But then one year, I visited a cousin of mine in Montana. He kept huskies. Delightful dogs, huskies are. They're intelligent, affectionate, and very wolfish. One of his bitches had pups that year, and he let me take one of them home. I wound up with Laika, a beautiful light-grey Siberian of sweet blue-eyed appearance and even sweeter temperament. She was the one dog I really liked, and seemed almost human sometimes. Most of the time, we'd be inseparable. She'd sit and watch as I read, did homework or whatever. We played for hours in the park. She even slept with me, crawling up on top of the covers, resting her head on my chest. On cold nights, she'd burrow underneath and sleep there, always waking me in the morning with a few pleasant slurps.
As I went through high school, I fell in and out of love repeatedly, averaging five or six semiserious romances a year, and six or seven breakups (don't ask how that happened). Sometimes, when I left on a date, I thought Laika looked almost jealous, but I filed it away as delusion.
I went to college, spent a year in the dorms, missed Laika, and got a nice two-bedroom apartment with one of my friends the next year, largely so I could bring her. I graduated somewhere in the upper-middle of the class with a master's in Biochem. I got a decent research position at one of the genelabs. It paid pretty well, and kept my book collection growing, but I wasn't exactly going to be driving around in an Aston Martin anytime soon.
It was a fulfilling job, but had its share of problems. Big cities attract more than their share of whackos, you see, and a lot of them wind up thinking that biotech is the cure for all their problems. The irritating thing is that most of them don't make interview appointments to ask their questions. They barge in and demand to speak with someone, or they wait outside and come up to you as you're getting into your car. We got PETA activists who thought that using animals for tests was immoral, and people who wanted genetic restructuring because they swore up and down the street that they were actually animals. Typically, you find people who think they're dogs or cats. Once in a while, you get a particularly bizarre one, like a three-toed sloth or a possum. And once, right after the news about the Human Genome Project broke, I got a nutjob who was convinced that I could actually engineer a sort of human-vulpine cross from scratch, like a foxish Lola Bunny. It had been a rough day, and I don't think I let him down half as gently as I probably should have. He didn't seem too dismayed, though. "It'll happen one day," he said. "You'll see." It sounded almost damning, like the infamous warning about the Ides of March.
…
But I'm digressing. About two months ago, I had a birthday. Curiously enough, it was Laika's, too. Strange coincidences. Kate, my college sweetheart and then-girlfriend took me out to dinner, and didn't seem to mind when I stopped on the way back to pick up a nice sirloin for my husky. We went back to my apartment and played with Laika for about twenty minutes, then left to my bedroom so I could 'unwrap presents'. Laika whined slightly when we closed the door on her, but quieted soon, understanding that I had to do it. See, Kate has an allergy to dog fur. She takes medication for it, but it's still best for her not to spend long periods in the same room with a dog around. It was quiet until about 3 AM, when one of the bolts in my bed snapped, sending Kate and me to the floor in a rather loudly giggling heap of skin, sheets, and leather. Interesting night.
The next day, Jeremy, one of my bookdealing friends, brought me a small stack of some particularly old texts that he had recently acquired, and thought that I might enjoy. They were really very nice, an old leather-bound Alice in Wonderland, a copy of Foucault's Pendulum, and a few other texts. One of them in particular caught my eye. It as an incredibly old-looking volume, and looked more like a journal or sketchbook than anything else, filled with weird diagrams and bizarre formulae that didn't equate and should never have even begun to approach the described effects. I asked Jeremy about it, but he said he'd never seen it before in his life. It probably doesn't matter anymore.
The flyleaf was in one of those Gothic, heavily decorated German typefaces, and mentioned something about Utility Magic. It sounded pretty interesting to me, so I got out some notepaper and started translating. As far as magic goes, I suppose it was pretty basic stuff - no daemonic rituals that I could find, no fireballs… none of the stock fantasy literature staples. But it was a lot more useful to me. What can you really do with a fireball anyways? You can't exactly blow up someone's house without the police coming around asking questions. What I had available was really more practical. Brightening a room without having to get up and turn the lights on, sealing up small cuts, prepping yourself for a day without going through the monotony of shaving and stuff… they're all incredibly useful, if minor.
If I really understood it, in retrospect, I would've burned the book the first day, qualms about bookburning as a cardinal sin not withstanding. Really, it's interesting. We live in a society where incredible amounts of power are being thrown around like children's toys. We play Counterstrike and Diablo II on computers reaching into the gigahertz range… and never understand how much power a gigahertz really is, or how many geniuses only thirty or forty years ago would've given their right arms for even half that. Cruising down the highway at sixty-five is nothing special; we do it every day. But a collision at even half that is like falling off a three-story building. And, like the man who drives around at seventy-five until an accident nearly destroys his life, I carried the book around with me without a thought to how much damage it might do.
I should really get back to explaining the joke, I think. I've rambled about my life enough now. One of the spells was particularly useful. It helped mend broken things, by rejoining parts.
Well, one night, I was working late in the lab, tinkering with one of my pet hypothesis. I'd brought Laika - it's against regulations, I know, but she's always been perfectly well behaved, and I needed the company. She was on a leash, anyways, and the boss had never minded, so long as she stayed out of the clean areas and out of people's ways.
Anyhow, I brought out one of my test subjects, a big German Shepard, for blood tests. He was a friendly guy, so it didn't take long to get him up on the table. I turned around to get a syringe… and… crash. By the time I turned around, he'd sent a centrifuge to the ground, courtesy of a certain wagging tail. Now, centrifuges are anything but cheap, and it was entirely too late to go scrounging for another one, so I put all the pieces into a fairly neat pile and dragged out my little spellbook for the fixit spell.
This, of course, would have to be the first time a dog ever did something that really screwed me up. Laika was circling, and had wound her leash around my legs. Right as I was about to finish my incantation, the German decided to jump up on me, knocking me over. I think I did a fair impression of Bruce Campbell as Ash there, badly flubbing the last few syllables. Pieces of centrifuge, broken lab equipment, and German Shepard went everywhere as the book exploded with a furious roar and a flash of light. I was knocked back into a doorframe, and everything went dark for a while.
The next part I'm not too clear about. I remember pain. I remember a lot of pain. My jaw felt like someone had wired it shut and was forcibly opening it again with a crowbar, exploding it into a rain of white-hot jagged glass edges. I remember my ears being smashed into the sides of my skull with sledgehammers and being pulled out anew on top of my head, and I remember my spine being stretched out, almost as if someone had tied my tailbone to the back end of a runaway locomotive. My skin felt like a million salt-tipped needles had been driven into it. My feet were crushed, and I felt sudden release as they burst my shoes. More than anything, though, I remember the scream. It was a newborn's first cry and a death rattle rolled into a horrible one, shrieking out of my throat and turning into a tortured howl before I realized it was mine.
…
I must've driven home in that fog of pain, because I remember crashing into bed and the blissful oblivion of sleep. The blinding stab of sunlight awakened me the next morning. Laika. Had I forgotten Laika? Panic set in, and I stumbled to the bathroom, rubbing the sleep from my eyes with soft-furred hands. Fur. I blinked a few times, staring at the unfamiliar face in the mirror. Mocha-brown eyes had replaced my familiar light-steel blues. Worse still, the average-but-still-distinctly-human lines of my face had given way to something distinctively canine, strongly reminiscent of the Shepard from the night before. Coal-black fur covered my face, fading to a dark ginger over my nose - my muzzle, rather - and throat. It framed my new, heavier, pointed teeth, and the long tongue that lolled out from between them. I could sense a tail emerging from the base of my spine, emerging through a tear in my jeans. I touched my cheek. Fur. The reality hit me like a ton of lead bricks, and the floor came surging up to reach me. Oh, cruelest of ironies… Born as Cat, and despising most dogs, I had become what I would least have desired.
When I came to, my eyes had returned to normal, though my face had remained the same, save for a shift to grey-and-white fur. Or at least that's what I thought for a moment. The face seemed gentler somehow, more feminine, with higher, elegant cheekbones. A delicate hand stroked my cheek, the face smiling slightly. "It's OK, Felix. You're safe, and you'll be just fine in a moment. It's me, Laika, and I'm going to take care of you until you get used to it.
"Buh ooh canh bh Lkh. Lkh eh." I tripped over the words, my mouth utterly alien. Gesturing, I tried to explain Laika's state as I last remembered her. My rescuer, however, only grinned, raising her chin so I could see the black silver-tagged collar that lay nestled in the silken fur. It had been loosened a few notches, but was definitely the same piece of material I had hung around her neck so many years before. As if to further prove her identity, she turned my head to one side, lapping at my cheek in the same way she had since she'd been a pup.
What could I do? I hugged her to me, soliciting a low, comforting murr. The other thing I got was a sudden revelation: Laika hadn't just become half-human, but a rather attractive half-human at that, with full, deliciously firm curves and a light, supple waist that fit perfectly in my arms. I don't think it helped as much as it sounds, though.
They say that a hug from someone who cares about you is one of the most powerful comforting forces in the world, and I'm extremely grateful to Laika for her being there, because I really don't think I'd have come out even as well as I did without her. After lying there for about twenty minutes and coming to a rather shaky grip on my situation, I managed to get up and fix a little breakfast. Stopping halfway through my routine to crack open a can of Alpo for Laika, I made a proteinous breakfast for two. Four eggs, three sausages and a warm buttered piece of toast later, I got up to help her with her fork. It's really surprising what you take for granted, being used to opposable thumbs and actual fingers.
With a delicious load of calories under my belt, I flopped down on the couch to take stock of what had happened to me. The simple fact was that I didn't even look remotely human anymore. Ignoble as it may sound, my safety was my first concern. Racist groups, particularly violent ones, tend to justify their acts by classifying their targets as sub-human, more monkey than man. How might they react to someone very obviously not even monkey, but part dog? I shuddered at the thought, and hurried to the lab. Health or no, a ten-gauge shotgun slug would kill me an awful lot faster than any disorders I'd picked up. If I could find some genetic basis to declare myself human, I might at least be able to get some governmental protection. It was Saturday, so I left Laika at the apartment and drove down myself. It's normally a five-minute drive, but I was scared shitless of being seen and spent nearly five times that weaving through back alleys and ducking into parking garages. Twice, the cops nearly saw me. Not good.
Fortunately, my retinas hadn't changed, and the locks let me in.
I drew a blood sample, and waited, doing what basic health tests I could. Even if they were completely useless, the likely situation, it made me feel better that they came back with a verdict of roughly good health. The results came in about an hour later, and my heart sank. Everything was completely wrong. I even had extra chromosomes, wielding an incredible seven over the usual complement of 23. They had shifted dramatically, growing from normal Xes to bizarre asterisk-shaped clumps of genetic material.
I had essentially lost my membership card in the human race; any rights, even life itself, were gifts. Insist as I might to my basic humanity, the visual and scientific evidence would coldly testify against me.
…
I drove home again, numbly, meandering through the maze of alleys like a rat in a twisted lab experiment. Once I got home, I tried to set a rough plan, getting a clipboard to start a checklist. Laika padded over and laid her head in my lap, as was her custom. It was a feeling at once comfortingly familiar and disturbingly arousing. A few minutes later, I realized that she was still very much naked, and I led her into my room to find something acceptable, until I could get her clothes of her own. Leaving her to choose, I called Kate. As my lover, she should be the first to know, and might be supportive, I thought. Having gotten somewhat used to my canine mouth, I asked her over.
"Kate? This is Felix. I need you to come over… you should know about this. There was an accident at the lab."
"Oh, no… Hon, are you hurt?"
"A bit. I think you should see it."
"Alright, love. I'll be over in ten."
I got a sheet from my bed, checking on Laika in the process. She was still trying different things (A feminine instinct, I guess), so I let her be. The sheet made a passing cloak; I didn't want Kate to be too shocked, and I definitely wanted her to be sitting when she got the news. Tea had soothed us both through rough spots before, so I made a pot of her favorite blend. Ten minutes later, as the warm scent of raspberry filled the air, the doorbell rang. That was surprising; even in nearly empty traffic, it typically took fifteen minutes to make the drive. She must've sped the entire way. Somehow, the thought comforted me. Even when your body's been mangled beyond recognition, you can barely speak, and even your DNA isn't entirely your own anymore, it's good to be cared about. I drew my makeshift cloak closer around me and opened the door, looking through its folds at her beautiful, worried face.
"Please, Kate. Come in. Sit down. Have some tea."
"Felix? Is that you? Are you alright?" She let me gently steer her over to the couch. "I've been worried… Please tell me it isn't that bad…" She sneezed. "Oh, do… I fogod do dake my ayergy medicihe." (Oh, no. I forgot to take my allergy medicine.) I've translated the rest of her visit to make it less painful.
I couldn't help but laugh slightly at the irony. Was it me? I really didn't know… to this day, I'm not sure. That's one of my little blessings (or curses, depending on how you look at it): I see the humor in almost everything. "Yes, love. It's me. Or at least I think it is. You'll see in a moment."
She sat nervously, pouring out a cup, sipping. A touch of fright crept into her voice. "Mhmmm… Raspberry. My favorite… You don't use this much, Felix. You're always making those Asian varieties. It's bad, isn't it?"
I nodded. It was true; I've always had some opposition to Western bastardizations of tea. "Well… Kate…" A pause hung in the air as I fished for the words I needed. "You know how I've been doing work with dogs?"
Her eyes grew suddenly. "One didn't attack you, did it? We need to get you to a doctor, then… give you rabies shots…"
"No, Kate. I've had the rabies shots. And everything else under the sun." I sighed. "It's a long story, really…"
She nodded me on, and my heart cracked. Even now, I wish there had been some easier way to break it to her. That had to be one of the most gut-wrenching moments of my life, up there with my Biochem 352 final and the day I heard that my first girlfriend had been hit and killed by a drunk driver.
"But what it ends with… is this." I raised my hands and slowly pulled my makeshift hood away.
There was a crash. The teacup had shattered against the table. Kate blinked at me, open mouthed. "Oh, Felix… You poor thing…" She stopped: more likely than not, she remembered my rather impish sense of humor. Or it could simply have been denial. "Wait a minute… How could this happen? You wouldn't test on yourself. What would you have been doing with that dog? It's not funny anymore, Felix. You can take the mask off now."
I shook my head slightly, taking her hands in mine, letting her feel the velvet-soft pads. Bringing them up to my face, I ran her fingers along the line of my jaw. "It's not a mask, Kate, as much as I wish it was. It's my face now, from now until the day I die, unless I can find a way to reverse it. I doubt I'll be able to."
Kate seemed on the verge of tears. "It can't be, Felix… It's impossible."
She was right, so I told her the whole convoluted story, taking her into my cloaked arms, nuzzling at her neck. "See, Kate, the day after you took me out for my birthday, Jeremy gave me this weird book. He had no idea what it was. Well, it turned out to be a book of basic magic." I breathed a sigh of relief as she turned around, scratching me behind the ears. "One of the spells was supposed to join things together. Anyhow, my test dog knocked over a centrifuge and I was trying to fix it when he jumped up on me… and… well…" I explained my findings in the lab.
By the end, she was sobbing into my shoulder, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, Felix… I just can't go on with it. I mean, I still care, really I do, but I can't do this." She looked at me, her big green eyes full of tears. "I could still be with you if you were hurt or scarred or something… but you're not even human anymore, Felix. You're not even human anymore."
…
The words bit like asps, and I tried to protest, but she stopped me with a kiss on the cheek. "It's for the best, Felix. We were all meant to bear certain burdens… and I just can't deal with this one." She was silent for a moment. "Maybe we can still be friends?"
I was about to answer, when Laika decided on an outfit. She'd found an old pair of jean-cutoffs about half a size too snug, and put on a red button-down shirt Kate had given me once. They clung to her sensuously, accenting her features like the last fleeting moments of a schoolboy fantasy. Bursting through the door, she spun a few times for my approval and struck a pose. "Heya, Felix. Hi, Kate! How's this look on me?"
Before I go further, I suppose I should give a short explanation of how this might've affected Kate. To begin, she's never been perfectly fond of Laika, partly because of her allergy, partly because Laika, being very affectionate, has the habit of jumping up on visitors - not good for Kate. My presence alone was probably already tearing her sinuses to pieces. Laika's presence probably made it worse. She's also been a touch jealous at times.
"Who's she?" Kate asked.
This, brings me to a pair of very important observations I've made. You'll see in a moment.
The first observation: Men… are stupid. I thought I'd told her about Laika, so I just came out and told her the (theoretically) obvious. "She… is what happens when Laika gets into the equation… my friend and companion of the past who-knows-how-many-years… lives with me. I thought you knew? Wakes me up beautifully, we go on walks…" You don't have to be Freud to see the bad subtexts there. To this day, I'm not sure what I was thinking. Probably the whole shock thing was starting to get to me.
The second observation: Women… are crazy. Something must've pushed her a little too far - the appearance of another humanoid canine, the misappropriation of her gift, a twinge of reflexive jealousy, or another allergic attack - because she exploded on me. "Maybe you don't need me after all," she hissed, "Seeing that I've already been replaced. Couldn't wait, could you, you horny little dog? Found someone else and changed her to be just like you, you freak? Couldn't wait to see if I'd still take you - wanted a little bit of cockbait right there?" If looks could kill, really, you'd be hearing this from a smoking crater in an apartment floor. There was that much malice in her voice.
I realized I hadn't explained about Laika, so I tried to explain, to calm Kate down.
"Don't even talk to me anymore, you… you… monster! You're going to be a circus sideshow the rest of your life, Felix. You hear me, a sideshow!" she shrieked, pulling her hand from mine. "And keep those filthy paws to yourself!" She stormed out, slamming the door. A portrait we'd had taken together fell off its place on the wall, the glass of the frame shattering into a million pieces.
Laika looked profoundly confused for a moment, then equally profoundly apologetic. "I'm sorry, Felix," she whimpered, her eyes begging forgiveness as she knelt before me. "I didn't know… I didn't mean it."
I didn't answer her. I was too crushed. I just curled up into a little ball there on the couch and cried my eyes out.
…
The next morning, I woke to a familiar lapping. For one beautiful moment, all was fine, and I was human again. For one beautiful moment, it had all been a horrid nightmare. But I opened my eyes, saw Laika's nobly-lined face, felt her luscious body curled around mine, and came crashing back to reality. I got up wordlessly, and Laika followed. "I made breakfast… please, speak to me, Felix… I didn't mean to wreck things between you and Kate…"
I still didn't feel like answering. We sat down and began eating in silence.
"Can you at least let me know if there's some way I can make it up to you?"
Deliberately, I set my fork down, looking at her. "Yes, Laika. You can bring her back." The sadness was boiling in me now, boiling to a barely-checked rage.
Her voice cracked. "You know I can't do that… she'd kill me on sight if she could…"
I glared. "I don't care right now."
She seemed on the verge of tears, begging me to take her back. "But I can't! I'd do it if I could, really, but I can't! I could try and take her place, if you'd let me, and I'd thank you with all my heart, but I can't do that! Would you let me, Felix? I'd do the very best I can…"
That did it; I exploded. "Take her place? Laika, I've been with her since my Freshman year! That's not something you can just replace, like a bad sparkplug!"
She cowered in her chair, ears drooping. "But I've been with you all my life. And longer than you were with Kate."
"Look, Laika, you're my dog! I can't do that! You're my dog! It'd be like dating a horse!" Gesturing wildly, I hit the edge of my plate, sending it shattering against the wall. "Hell, I don't even like dogs! I hate them! I hate myself like this!" I paused, building a head of steam. "I should never have gone to Montana to begin with. Then I wouldn't have started any of this. I wouldn't have found any exceptions, I wouldn't have wanted one, I wouldn't ask my cousin for a pup, I wouldn't have brought you home, and NONE of this would ever happen!"
Laika trembled, shaking as if each word were a separate knife into her heart. Tears streaming down her cheeks, matting the milky-white fur, she began unbuttoning her shirt, fumbling with the buttons. She took it off and folded it neatly, handing it to me. "Well… if that's how you feel…" She stood, sliding out of her shorts, handing them to me as well, and headed into the bedroom with the trudge of the condemned. Returning in a white bathrobe, she looked at me with teary eyes. "All I've ever wanted was to make you happy, Felix. If you don't want me… if it'll make you feel better at all… just drive me down to the vet, and maybe she'll put me to sleep. It'll be easier for everyone."
Touched by the trust she'd put in me, and the sheer power of her devotion, my rage spent itself. As slowly as I could, I got up, walking to my trembling husky, and clutched her tightly to myself. "No. I won't do that." I crouched slightly, kissing her on the cheek, tasting the salty tears, and inhaling her comforting, cinnamon scent. "I'm sorry for what I said. I didn't mean it… I was angry. I'm just having a hard time coping, Laika… I'm really sorry. I'll forgive you if you'll forgive me."
Liquid blue eyes studied me pensively, betrayed by a teasing glint of mischief lurking in their depths (And a certain tail wagging beneath my hand). For the first time since the ordeal began, my heart lifted, exhilarant at the realization of Laika's infinite devotion. My wonderfully irrepressible husky hadn't changed much at all. She stood on tiptoe, kissing me on the nose. "Deal." She paused for a moment. "I'd still like to try, though."
I struggled to keep from melting in the bliss. "Hmmm? Try?"
"To take Kate's place in your life."
"We'll see."
…
I went back into my blackbook and dug out my college roomie's phone number. He was a poli sci, so I figured that he'd know who could sort things out. He pointed me to the ACLU and PETA, "who would extend human rights to celery if they could figure out how," so I called them and argued back and forth for about an hour before they agreed that I could go down to one of their offices to confirm it. They said I could come over first thing Monday, which gave me the rest of the afternoon to really come to grips with my situation, and to play with Laika. After drawing a nice hot bath, I called a Chinese restaurant and had them deliver.
Besides tea, a good soak has to be one of the best ways to induce self-examination. The water bit into my skin as I slid into it, letting it seep into my fur, the heat washing over my body like a summer breeze. It felt good, and I leaned back, resting my head against the cool tiles. Images of the last few days tore through my mind. The crash of broken glass echoed through my skull, playing over and over as the Shepard, jumped up on me, changing my life with his playful gesture. I saw the book exploding, and felt the sudden rush of indescribable pain. Soft fur brushed over my fingertips, and the unforgiving hardness of bathroom tile slammed hard against my body. Laika grew from a friendly, demure dog to a beautiful, sensual… no. I couldn't think that way. That way laid madness.
I sat there, panting, for a few minutes, forcing myself to go further. Kate. More than anything else, I had lost Kate. Her words stung. You're not even human anymore, Felix. Almost physically hurt, I flinched, closing my eyes in pain. Don't even talk to me… you… you… monster! Fresh tears began to flow, dripping into the bathwater. And keep your filthy… paws to yourself! Sucking the thick, steamy air deep into my lungs, I roared, trying to blow my mind clear in the sweet oblivion of noise. You're not even human anymore…I looked over to the sink, saw myself in the mirror. I threw a heavy bottle of shampoo into it, and sank back into the water, so that not even the gentle musical tinkling of broken glass could invade my misery.
I got out of the bath about twenty minutes later. The towel took forever, so I just settled for wrapping my hand in it and using the blow-drier. That worked much better, and was something I really enjoyed, to tell you the truth. Warm air ruffling through fur isn't something you can really describe to someone who hasn't felt it. It's like… laying naked in soft grass with your lover, basking in that wonderful orgasmic afterglow as a warm breeze gently brushes over your skin. Explains why dogs like to stick their heads out the window when you're driving, doesn't it?
Ignoring the broken glass by the sink, I got my clothes and started dressing, threading my tail back through the tear it had caused. My head was throbbing, half from the pain, half from the sheer heat of the water. The doorbell rang, and a chill ran down my spine as I peered through the spyhole. How was I going to pay without showing myself to the delivery person?
I grabbed my wallet and stuffed enough money into an envelope to cover the meal and a generous tip, I slid it under the door. "Just leave the food there," I said. "The money's in the envelope."
The delivery guy was apparently pretty used to that.
Once he'd left, I opened the door and grabbed the food, setting it on the table and popping the Styrofoam containers open. I shoveled huge globs of food onto two plates and dove into one of them, wolfing down my meal with barely-checked appetite (if you'll pardon the pun). Laika came over and joined me, eating more delicately. "I cleaned up the picture-frame, Felix," she murmured, breaking the silence. "I thought it was dangerous."
I thought about that for a moment. "Yes, I suppose it was… Too many cuts waiting to happen. Too many cuts waiting to be reopened."
She nodded. "The picture's in our room if you need it."
There was a brief pause as I thought about the whole situation. "No. It's in my room." Laika looked confused, so I continued. "I'm not going to sleep with you, and I'm certainly not going to be put out of my own bed. After all, I'm out most of my genetic code, my humanity, and my girlfriend; the least I can keep is some familiar surroundings." She was about to say something, but I cut it off with a preemptive look. After I finished eating, I went back into my room, unmounted the picture from the frame, and went out to tape it back beside the door. It just looked right there, reminding me of what I'd lost.
"Work," Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote, "is the greatest cure for sorrow." I decided to test this theory, swept up the broken glass in the bathroom, and ordered a new mirror. That didn't take very long, so I sat in front of the computer and logged into my office, throwing myself in the wonderful oblivion of molecules and codons, of proteins and reactions and huge blocks of mind-numbing data. It took about an hour for me to realize that Laika was crouching behind me, watching over my shoulder as I worked. Just out of the familiarity of it all, I reached back and ruffled her behind the ears before going back to my data. Some things never change.
Some things do. "What do all those numbers and stuff mean?" she asked.
Explaining what you're doing always has the effect of reinforcing it in your own mind, so I've seldom minded it. This wasn't an exception, so I pulled a chair over to the table and began explaining. "This column of numbers here tells me what reactions different test subjects had, and this column tells me a lot of different breakdowns of what the first one means."
Somewhere along the line, I actually caught a mistake in a spreadsheet as I was explaining it to Laika. Suddenly, everything made that much more sense. It was still about as clear as sun-dried mud brick, but at least now, it was loosely-packed sun-dried mud brick. Between my own little bit of work and teaching Laika, the hours flew by.
As my little way of thanking her, I made bratwurst and veal for dinner - she'd always make a special effort to steal those leftovers, so I figured she'd like them. Learning to use a knife took her a little while, but she enjoyed it, asking for seconds and thirds and wiping her plate with bread when it was all gone. Afterwards, I brushed my teeth, helped her brush her teeth, and got out a blanket and pillow for her to sleep on the couch. "We're going to have to wake up early tomorrow, Laika. I want to get to the ACLU office before people start coming out."
She nodded, brushing her fingers through my hair. "You're sure you don't want me to sleep in your room, Felix? You've never shut me out before, not when you were alone."
I nodded. "Yes, Laika. Now go to bed."
She curled up on the couch, reaching up to turn out the lights. I heard her tossing around, trying to get comfortable, then quiet as she found something acceptable. As I lay there in the still blackness, I couldn't help but hear things I'd never noticed before - the quiet hum of the refrigerator, the low, rumbling purr of the traffic outside, or the distant singing of a nightingale. Laika was right; it didn't feel quite right without her there. I shut the feelings out, though, and let the quiet symphony of background noise lulled me to sleep.
The night wasn't easy, filled with unsettling dreams of delicious hours spent with Kate, who slipped away into the howling blackness, her words drawn out into a razor-sharp stiletto of sound, giving way to screaming masses throwing all manner of rocks and bottles at me. I flew kites on dreamy hills, and saw the fur growing from my hands. Shocked, I dropped the roll of string, and my kite went flying off into infinity. Woods grew up around me, and, try as I might, I could not find my way out…
…
I woke to Laika's gentle lapping. The familiarity didn't hurt as much. Grogging myself awake, I looked outside. It was still dark, and raining hard. That was good. It provided a convenient excuse for raincoats, which I used to cover her and myself as much as I could. After a fast breakfast, we walked down to the garage and left for the ACLU building. Naturally, it hadn't opened when we got there, so we waited by the door in the garage. Something bothered me, so I started talking to her about it.
"Laika… You heard Kate come in, didn't you?"
Her ears drooped. She probably didn't like this topic very much, and I wouldn't blame her. "Yes… I did."
I thought for a moment. "Did you know that she has an allergy to dog hair?"
"Yes…" She looked at me, her eyes about to water. "But I thought she'd taken her medication, like she always does when she comes to see you." A pause. "You can understand that, can't you?"
Slowly, I nodded, thinking it through. Kate had, after all. "Yes, Laika. I'm not angry over it. Don't worry. Things'll turn out, one way or the other."
We sat in the silent garage until the office opened to let us in.
…
It took longer than I expected to sort things out. None of the newbies were willing to touch the case. Volunteers called around different branches, trying to find someone willing to take the case. Nobody disputed that PETA wanted in, but nobody could figure out how to explain it to them. The "few minutes" they promised stretched into "an hour or so", and "an hour or so" stretched into "this afternoon". I called in sick to work, which really wasn't a lie - I was certainly in no shape to deal with the rigors of the job. Someone was nice enough to drive out and pick up lunch for us - they understood about us not being able to go out. As the hours rolled on, we got a few improvements. One volunteer got hold on a van with blackened windows that we could use, and another found discount alarms for the apartment, "in case of attack", he explained.
Somewhere around four in the afternoon, a lawyer came in to see me, and introduced himself as Gary Schlomann, sitting down at the desk. He represented, it seemed, an actual team of lawyers that the ACLU had scrambled for my case. I told him my story, trying to omit nothing - last time I forgot something minor, my life went upside down. Screwing it up again wasn't going to help.
"So… you're telling me… that you somehow *magically* got fused with this dog. And that miss Laika here…" he gestured, as if I didn't know who she was "got changed with you."
I nodded, but he kept on going, as if he were talking to himself. "No jury on earth is going to buy this… Especially your peers in the scientific community." My hopes fell. "Isn't there some way I could prove it?"
He shook his head. "Not unless you actually had the book. Having it disappear is just too convenient."
"So you're telling me we're out of luck?" I'd never thought of myself as pessimistic, but the runaround was getting to me now.
Mr. Schlomann ran his fingers down the lapel of his Armani. The damn thing probably cost more than I made in a good six months, and he was about to tell me I was hopeless. "I don't know. The ideal situation is that it never comes up at all. It isn't important how it happened. What's important is that it did happen, and that you didn't have a choice in the matter."
I sighed. This was running around in circles. "So you can file something, hope it doesn't come up, get me the best offer I can, and I can get back to leading as close to a normal life as possible?"
"There isn't," he continued, "Any real way we can just litigate and get you accepted. What we're probably going to have to do is start by establishing precedents, by seeing what happens that would be different from what might happen if you were still perfectly normal. We're rather fortunate that you were human at one point; we can say that, since human rights are theoretically unalienable, simply rearranging your genes doesn't change anything."
Laika spoke up; I think the whole impact of it had finally hit her. "What about me, Mr. Scholmann? Felix here has a leg to hop around on; he used to be human, at least. I think he still is, really. But what about me? I wasn't born human at all. They might call me some product or something. How can you take care of me, hmmm?"
He didn't have a convenient answer this time. "We'll do our best, Ms. Laika. That's all I can promise you."
Laika leaned into me, hugging, and started quietly crying on my shoulder.
"So there's nothing we can do right now."
"Oh, no. Nothing like that at all." He paused, for a moment, trying to come up with the easiest way to explain it. "Be seen in public as much as you can. Don't try to live like a hermit. The more people see you, the less threatening you become, and the easier this is going to be."
"Assuming I don't get shot first."
"Well, you're going to be put in a public spotlight in any case. Even if there isn't a case, the tabloids are going to pick up on this very quickly. I'd give them a week at longest. You run a much smaller risk if you act like you have nothing to hide and don't present yourself as a threat."
Closing time eventually came, and I drove home in the van, with Laika sitting quietly beside me. It was still raining.
…
The rain stopped by the next morning. Mr. Schlomann had told me to wait a few days for the legal team to fly in, so I left Laika with some money, the phone numbers of different delivery services, and the N64.
It was a long day. I walked into the lab as nonchalantly as I could, ignoring the stares, and worked until someone called Security on me. My retinas checked out, though, so they called in my boss, who was about as dumbfounded as Security. After about an hour of explanation, questioning, clarification, and "Look, boss, I don't know how it happened either. I honestly don't remember.", she arrived at the conclusion… that she couldn't take responsibility for a conclusion, and would have to let senior management figure it out. Until then, she said, I was on "extended reduced-pay leave." Basically, they were paying me to stay out of their offices until they could figure out how to fire me.
I cleaned out my desk and labspace, loading the different pieces of my life into the van. Coffee mugs, the little potted catnip plant I'd taken a fancy to, pictures, my candy stash, a long-forgotten petri dish acting as host to a bacterial culture about to enter the Space Age, all went into that anonymous cardboard box, to be loaded into the van. The drive home was pretty quiet. It was raining again.
A few days passed, and I got a call from my boss. I was being let go, she told me, for 'negligence of safety procedures'. I should have restrained the dog, etc etc etc. Mr. Schlomann & Co got started putting briefs together. They told me that I should read them, but I seldom did more than skim. After all, who but a lawyer can put together a six hundred page document and call it a brief?
The time flew by on wings of lead, as I holed up in the apartment as much as I could reasonably justify, ducking out to buy groceries, pick up mail, and little else. Laika got very good at Goldeneye. She also got restless; the long walks and park romps we'd enjoyed had become a thing of the past. "I need exercise, Felix…" she whined, "Sitting around in an apartment all the time isn't good for me." I tried to get out a little more, which helped somewhat.
People got lobbied, torts and huge sheaves of paper were FedEx'd around. It was all very confusing to me. As a geek, you see, the government exists out on the periphery, reaching in once in a while and saying, "No, you can't do that very interesting thing, because people will be angry." So for the most part, you shrug and move on to the next interesting thing, and never really pay much attention to how it works. It did not help me here.
I decided to throw myself back at my work, and ordered a few thousand dollars worth of lab equipment. About a week later, half of the room was covered in racks of glitteringly smooth glass. I didn't have access to the heavy equipment at work anymore, and couldn't afford anything near it, so I called in favors from friends at universities and managed to get some results by mail. Syringe after syringe of blood came out of me as I toiled for a reversal of my condition, but it didn't matter. Nothing I did helped at all. After my friends started getting annoyed with repeated requests and couldn't offer any advice themselves, I started to give up on it in all but name, quietly tinkering in pursuit of that impossible fiction, just to keep my hands busy.
As often happens with weird social shifts, special-interest groups sprung up pretty quickly. One of them was devoted to protecting me and generally caring for my needs, and sent food, books, and the occasional courier to take care of me. Another random group of whackos (I imagine including the guy who first 'warned' me about the whole possibility) suggested all sorts of things to Laika and me, from marriage proposals to invitations to orgies and all kinds of sadomasochistic horrors. Most of them got summarily thrown into the shredder, and the more reasonable ones were politely declined.
But, naturally, not all of them were positive. One of them, Humanity First, set up protests outside my building, claiming that I didn't have any right to live in human society. All sorts of racist groups, as I'd predicted, started their usual round of threats, protests, and rallies. More than once, I'd been shot at through a window as I passed by. One shot, zinged my ear, which hurt an awful lot and bled more, but wasn't actually dangerous, outside of its proximity to my head. It got horribly depressing.
I remember spending a lot of time in the bathtub, soaking my fears and worries away as best I could. My parents were very supportive, but I never figured out if it was because they were my parents, or if it was some remnant of that mellow all-accepting quality of Hippiedom. Maybe it was something in both. Dad came over to discuss philosophy an awful lot, and to shout out the window at the crowd of marchers. He almost emptied a coffeepot out on them once when Humanity First and NextStep, a group who thought we were the 'next step' in human evolution, got into a particularly annoying shouting match. The anti-war protester in him never died, I think, and it took all of Laika's kind spirit and persuasion to keep him from starting his own movement to get all the other protest groups tried for crimes against humanity (cananity?). Mom, on the other hand, sent lots of brownies, until she realized that I had a small problem with large quantities of chocolate, after which she started sending oatmeal raisin cookies, which, I suppose, was a better compromise.
My friends were a mixed bag. It was interesting, at least to me, that some of the most outwardly liberal were the first to go, while Jeremy was just incredibly apologetic, and some of the friends I'd thought the most conservative were actually the most accepting of all. One of them, I think, summed it up best: "Y'know... It's really not important to me. If you want me to make a big deal about the idea that you suddenly have an awful lot of body hair and some funky ears, hey, I'll do it. But to me, you're still the same Felix that bailed me out when Gary Thorne was coming to beat the crap out of me in fifth grade." That was touching.
The Chinese, it is said, have a curse, "May you live an interesting life." I must've offended at least one of that billion-and-change-member group of people, because mine got that way remarkably quickly.
In the next two months or so, there are four phases that really stick out for me. The first one was about a week after the news broke… The tabloids had churned through, with rumors and wild speculation… now it was time for the 'real' press. Vanity Fair dropped in, and was obnoxious to the point that I just showed them the door and threatened to call Security on them. The other glossies were about as bad. US News was rather polite about it, so I tried to do the best I could. The report wasn't perfectly fair, but it was more than I imagined. WIRED was just bizarre; I think they have an unnatural attraction to copyrights or something. Who am I to have a stance on it? I just make things happen, and the legal department takes care of the details. The Journal was very nice about it, and I don't think I could have asked for more. Laika sat for the interviews with me, answering the occasional question and teasing, but generally being quietly supportive. Spurred on by the press coverage, the mail came thicker and faster, ranging from Purina wanting an endorsement, which I didn't even dignify with an answer, to threats, handed to the police, to invitations to speak at some bizarre sci-fi offshoot conventions, which were politely declined.
If I thought I had dealt with crackpots before, I was wrong. I'd only scratched the surface. To this day, I am convinced that every crackpot who had ever approached me before decided that I had done it on purpose and wanted me to play with his genes now. After the first dozen, I just wrote up a form letter explaining that the process was highly intricate and reliant on extremely iffy conditions, and that I would not even consider it for less than some ungodly sum of money with at least seven zeroes before the decimal point. That shut them up nicely.
While I was out alone, taking a morning run one day (I ran with Laika in the evenings), I let my mind wander, not really paying attention to where I was going, and ended up in front of Kate's building. I felt a twitch of pain as I remembered that I wasn't welcome anymore, and looked up at her window for a while. I thought I saw the shades move just a touch, but it might have been the wind.
Hearings began, and the days settled quickly into a new, slightly-less-boring routine involving medical tests, interminable hours in court, and other minutia. I learned to deal with Laika's playfully flirtatious manner, and generally managed to keep things in some semblance of order. Somewhere along the line, I stopped thinking of her as 'Laika-my-dog-in-human-form", but more as 'Laika-the-person-suffering-with-me'. That revelation tumbled its disturbing way through my mind as I slept. The next evening, I roused Laika after she'd turned in. "You're sleeping in the bedroom now."
"Oh! You're letting me back in?" Her tail wagged eagerly at the thought.
"No. It's your room now. You're the lady, you get it. I'll take the couch."
Laika looked at me plaintively. "But it isn't the bed… I wanna be with you…"
To be honest, I would've liked her there, too, if I could've kept myself from actually feeling her. It felt oddly lonely without her there. She'd been a comforting presence in my room since I first brought her home… but I couldn't do that. I gave her a stern look, and she walked into the room.
She kept the door open. I could hear her sleeping in there, which helped a little.
The next phase was the violence. About a week after the worst of the publicity, a Klansman (or at least we think he was a Klansman) managed to sneak into the basement with a baseball bat when I was doing my laundry. Doesn't really matter if he was a Klansman or not; he wasn't in a hood or anything. He just fit that kind of bill, a rough-shorn middle-aged man in backwoods dress with lots of cross-type pins. You know the type. I noticed him, but thought he was just another tenant, until I felt the dull, heavy crunch in my arm. He was winding up for another swing when I turned and hit him in the jaw. Laika, who was sorting clothes over in the corner, rushed over and tried to hold him down. Five minutes or so later, he was gone, and I called for an ambulance. Things were not looking good. The shots through my window had been one thing; a visible supply of bricks had quickly put a stop to that, and most people just aren't very good shots. Outside of the nick in my ear, nothing ever came of it but an increasing familiarity with window-company bills and a few pocks in my ceiling. This one actually hurt me, and the stiffness in my arm reminded me for a long time.
There was a slight upside to my injury, though: getting babied by Laika. She brought me food, fluffed pillows, and generally wouldn't let me do anything but rest and do light computer work, hugging me comfortingly every few minutes. I also learned why they put those cones on dogs with casts. If you ever thought that a cast itched on skin, try it over skin that normally has fur on it. The feeling is worse than sitting on sandpaper. Laika and Dad had to hide all the heavy, blunt objects after they found me trying to smash the cast open one morning.
I bumped into Kate at the supermarket on accident. There were a lot of things I wanted to say to her, but the words wouldn't come. She must have felt the same way, because we just stood there in the ice cream isle for a few minutes, staring at each other in awkward silence. Eventually, we just mumbled 'hi' and parted ways.
One night, I dreamed. Scenes of running from white-hooded hordes faded into blackness, and melted away, leaving the thick scent of worry. I was back in Kate's arms. She was holding me close as I slept, whispering quiet soothing words, nuzzling that deliciously sensitive spot behind my right ear. "It's Ok… you're safe, Felix… You're safe."
"I thought… left," I mumbled, half asleep. "Why're you here?"
She hushed me and laughed a little, her voice soft and breathy. "You sounded like you could use it… And I missed sleeping with you… and I couldn't resist." She rolled over on top of me, pressing her face to my neck, inhaling deeply.
Inhaling. In fur.
I woke with a start, and found a bathrobed Laika sitting on the sheets, nuzzling as I'd imagined Kate. "Laika? What are you doing out here?"
"Just cuddling," she explained, resting against my chest, whimpering as she'd done before The Accident. "Missed sleeping with you. Didn't think you'd mind."
I was too tired to argue, so I let her, as long as there was as sheet between us. She took my arm and put it around her waist, dozing nicely, and I soon followed.
I got very used to her presence, and actually grew to enjoy it, particularly as we moved back into the bedroom a few nights later. That disturbed me, but Jeremy laughed it off when I brought it up a few days later. "Dude… Sheet or no sheet, you get to sleep every night with a drop-dead gorgeous woman who doesn't mind about your condition, and cares very much about you. I would shut up and enjoy it."
That took some getting used to. I started opening up a bit more to Laika, letting her be more a part of my life, bickering playfully from time to time.
"You two act like you're married sometimes," Dad remarked once.
…
About two week after that, I was sitting in my living room, nursing my broken arm, when Dad noticed that the groups of protesters had shrunk. The third phase had begun. I started to become Yesterday's News (TM), as people started learning that I was more or less harmless and just wanted to be left alone, and the case started winding down. People stopped crossing the street when I came near, and didn't mind introducing their children to me. Some even got kind of protective, almost as if they were proud to know me.
"Hey, Felix… How's it going? Fine? Cool… Any trouble with the fanboys lately? Let me know if I can help you out with something, a't?"
Or they'd get into friendly scruffles with me as we passed in the street. It took a while to get used to being rubbed behind the ears as a gesture of affection; you really can't do that to a human, and it's a very unique feeling. It's like… a hug, but not quite. It's like a stolen kiss from a high school sweetheart, lingering for a fleeting moment between classes, a sort of warm, innocent pleasure. Things like that take time to understand. I was starting to get the hang of washing fur out and drying it without knotting, and it wasn't as hard to go out to buy groceries and such anymore. Laika and I went out more often for entertainment and food. It still hurt, though, when I looked in the mirror, or when I looked up and saw the picture of Kate. Memories sting for a very, very long time.
To this day, I'm not sure if it got better or worse when Kate finally called and apologized for what she'd said. She asked if we could be friends again, and I told her I'd consider it, and that we'd have to see. Then she asked to talk to Laika. I hesitated, but gave the phone over, figuring that it'd be best.
"Kate told me to take care of you," she explained afterwards.
…
The fourth was much more distinct. I suppose it could really better be called an event than a phase. About two months after it all started, I took Laika out for dinner at one of my favorite pubs, as a sort of celebration for getting my cast off. I remember her treating it like a very big deal, getting a very elegant dress for it and spending an hour or so preparing. She looked great, and I had to deal with some good-natured ribbing from the guys. But that was fine.
I'm going to skip most of the details, but I'll say that after six or seven German lagers, I wasn't in any shape to drive, and the catcalls from the bar were rolling around my head rather perversely. Laika helped me into the apartment, laying me down on the couch, and stepped into the bedroom to change, but I snuck in as she was stepping out of her dress. Pressing up against her, I held her close, whispering. "So… would you like doggy-style, or do you prefer something else?"
She pushed me away gently, laughing. "You're drunk, Felix. Don't do anything you'd regret."
"I mean it, though… You're sweet, sexy, and you've been sleeping with me for the past month…" I kissed playfully at her neckfur. "And besides, I thought you wanted to fill Kate's shoes? You've done most of it… only a little left now."
She pushed me away, firmly enough to knock me back onto the bed. "I don't want to be Kate's replacement anymore, Felix. I've learned more than that." She turned away from me, crossing her arms over her chest. "I want you to like me because of who I am."
It took a few minutes for that to swim through my lagered mind. "Well, I love your loyalty, Laika… you've been with me forever… even when I didn't really deserve to have you." My train of thought derailed, and it took me a few minutes to put it back together. "I don't know where I'd be without you… and I really do think you're beautiful." I got back up and hugged her again, pressing my hips against hers. "And I really do want to know."
A slow lick along the edge of her ear turned her around again, and she looked up at me, her eyes glittering. "I actually don't know if I prefer it that way, Felix… Why don't you find out?"
She did. To tell the truth, so did I.
I remember going a little crazy that night, just from the whole feel and smell and taste of her, but, from her cute, yelping groans of delight, she didn't mind at all.
The warm first rays of sunshine woke me the next morning, finding my arms firmly wrapped around Laika's sleeping body, her soft-furred cheek resting on my shoulder. I didn't want to disturb her, so I just lay there, thinking. Suddenly, it didn't matter anymore. Cases could go settle themselves. Society marched on. I could get another job. I had food, a place to stay, and a beautiful woman in my arms. What more did I need?
I took down the pictures of Kate later that morning.
Finis. Deo gratias.
--- Copyright 2004 Adrian Mailenna. Personal use encouraged. All other rights reserved. http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/adrian_mailenna/www/