Pawprints Ch. 1

I landed abruptly, but not painfully. Kind of like going down a flight of stairs and thinking there’s another stair when you get to the bottom. After my heart stopped racing, I looked around to get my bearings. I was standing in front of what seemed to be an awfully large log cabin; no, not a cabin, a manor. It was made entirely out of logs (oak, possibly?), save for the roof, which was of normal grey shingles. Windows were splattered randomly about the sides of the house. I could see fine curtains hanging from the inside.

My first thought was What a grand house. My second: Where the heck am I? I remembered the man in grey. He had snapped his fingers, and all of a sudden I was flying through the air. Then I was here, in front of this house. Had he taken me through a portal to another world? I had read about such things, but never dreamed it possible.

“No,” said a voice behind me. I jumped and swung around, my heart racing again. I saw a woman dressed in a gray business suit much like the last man I saw, save for the skimpy skirt and heels. She was also carrying a clipboard.

“What?” I asked.

“No, you didn’t go through a portal,” she said simply.

I gaped at her for a moment. “You read my mind?”

“No, I didn’t. You were speaking out loud,” she said.

“Oh…” I said, slightly embarrassed at my stupidity. A few moments passed when neither of us said anything, then I said, “Where am I, then?”

“You are standing in front of the House of Electives. It’s where all our selections go while they stay with us.”

“Uh…”

“You’re Spirit, right?” she said quickly, reading off her clipboard.

“Yeah, but why was I…?” I started.

She marked something off on her clipboard. “Good, you’re the last one. Go on inside, you’ll need to meet the others.”

“What othe- AHH!” she had started pushing me through the door into the house.

Inside the house was just as beautiful as the outside. There were elegant leather couches gathered around a grand stone fireplace at the center of the house. The kitchen contained a stainless-steel sink, stove, and sink, and an intricately carved table with matching chairs. There was a spiral staircase leading upstairs; to the bedrooms, I guessed. There were also some other rooms, like an office and a few bathrooms complete with marble showers and bathtubs.

The lady led me into the room with the fireplace (a fire was raging inside in, even though it was summertime). I saw there were several people sitting on the couches, looking rather bored, though one girl with wavy dark brown hair had managed to take contentment in sleeping. A line of drool went down her face.

The woman put her hands on my shoulders from behind me and said in a strong and strangely sweet voice, “Boys and girls, this is Spirit. She’s going to be joining us in our little experiment, ok?”

I felt like a little kid being introduced to some new classmates by an over-excited teacher. I gave a small wave and said an awkward “Hi.”

Mixed mumbles of greeting came from the group of teens. The woman let go of me and motioned for me to sit down in the only spare spot left in the room.

I sat next to a brown-haired boy and a girl with dark blonde hair. I suddenly noticed that someone was waving at me from across the room. It was Rially, one of my friends from home. Why was she here?

I was brought back to reality by the woman, who was now standing in front of the fireplace. “Now, let’s go around and say our names so we can know everyone.”

A scruffy-haired boy with light brown hair started off. “I’m Benjamin,” he said. I’m just guessing he was from England. Next came the sleeping girl, who was woken up by a swift poke in the ribs.

“Wha- uh? Oh. I’m Sarai,” she mumbled.

“Sammy,” said a smiley girl with a wave.

“Michael,” said the grey-eyed boy sitting next to me.

“Uh… Spirit,” I said uncertainly.

“I’m Katrina,” the long-haired girl said.

“And I’m Rially,” said my black-haired friend.

“Great!” said the woman. “Now you can all go upstairs and…”

“Hold on a minute!” said Sarai accusingly. “I’ve got some questions for you and whoever you’re working for!”

“Yeah, me too!” piped up Katrina.

In an instant the room was filled with noise as everyone told the lady they had questions. The woman waited for the room to quiet before saying anything.

“I’ll answer all your questions. We do not keep secrets from our subjects,” she said, suddenly losing her usual peppiness.

“Who are you?” Sarai asked quickly.

“I am Ms. Smith.”

“Why haven’t we heard of this government before?” asked Michael. I could have slapped myself for not thinking of this question myself.

“We prefer to keep, how do you say, ‘underground’?” answered Ms. Smith. “This is a research organization designed for discovering technology breakthroughs. Some of the research we’ve done we prefer to keep to… uh… ourselves.”

I suddenly thought of the man in my kitchen who had simply snapped his fingers to bring me here. Was this an example of their secret knowledge?  Why had he brought me here? Why were we all here?

“Why are we all here?” I asked, voicing my thought.

Ms. Smith smiled mysteriously, as if waiting for one of us to ask that question. She cleared her throat dramatically before beginning.

“A few years ago our scientists had a spectacular breakthrough in altering animal genetics. We were able to change fur color, eye color, pretty much anything about the animal’s coloring with the simple use of little nanobots. But soon afterwards we were able to change leg length, tail length, and sorts like that. Soon we had made rats with two-foot long tails and rabbits with super-sized feet. We had all our researchers on this project, trying to get further and further.”

She paused for a moment, possibly for a suspense effect. For whatever reason, it was working. She had the full attention of every person in the room.

“Soon enough we had another breakthrough, this one possibly the biggest of all. We could completely change one species into another. Rats became rabbits; rabbits became rats. We moved onto bigger animals like dogs and cats. It worked on them too. It worked on any animal we wanted. But we wanted to perform the ultimate experiment. We wanted to change humans into animals.”

I almost knew what was coming next. Oh shit… I thought.

“You are the human experiments,” Ms. Smith concluded.

For a few moments everything was still, as if time itself had stopped. Then all the teens, including me, were running for the door in a mad rush to escape. However, when we reached the door, we found it to be locked and bolted from the outside.

“You can’t leave now. Besides, it wouldn’t do you any good,” said Ms. Smith calmly.

“What do you mean?” asked Benjamin.

“Yeah, what’re you talking about?” echoed Sammy.

“The moment you entered the house the nanobots entered your system. We programmed them to detect a certain person’s genetics and enter their body. That way we wouldn’t have a dog nanobot mixed with a rabbit nanobot in the same body.”

Everyone was still crowded around the door, as if merely wishing would open it.

“Don’t worry, you won’t turn into an animal you don’t like,” continued Ms. Smith. “We did some background research on each of you and found you each have something called a fursona. You will change into that.”

“As if that’ll make us feel any better about being turned into animals,” glared Sarai. Everyone mumbled in agreement.

“You can sulk all you want, but it won’t change anything,” said Ms. Smith. “I suggest you all go upstairs to your rooms and think things through. And don’t think about escaping through the windows either. The glass is unbreakable and you can’t open them.”

Everyone went upstairs and found their room (a name was hung up on the door). My own room consisted of a queen sized bed with about ten pillows on it, an oak dresser, a full body mirror, and a nightstand with a table lamp on it. I guessed everyone else’s rooms were almost the same as mine.

I looked through the drawers of the dresser and found, to my surprise, that all my clothes were in there. Geez, what next? I thought. I ran up to the bed, leaped up into the air, and came down on it with a soft ‘whoosh’-ing sound. I cuddled my Stitch plushie, which had also been brought here and set on the bed.

What now? I asked myself. Do we all just stay here and watch our humanity slip away? Will it be painful? I hope not. How fast will it be? Will I wake up in the morning as my blue wolfdog fursona? I shuddered at the thought.

“Well…” I sat up on the bed and looked at Stitch, as if talking to him. “As long as I’m being held in this house against mine and everyone else’s will and changing into a wolfdog as we speak, at least it’s a nice house.” I chuckled, trying to make myself see the bright side of this. But I couldn’t help but notice the slightest note of fear creep into my laughter as I changed into my pajamas and got into bed. I was awake far into the night, wondering what was to become of me. To become of us.