[Voice]

[espigeonage]

[It's 11 PM on a Sunday night and Julien is bored.]

Galu, network. Random request: tell me a story.

Any story! Tell me about something that happened to you, or the other you. Or a fairytale, a joke that requires setup, something you read about in the paper, something you want to happen or really, really don't. Let me guess which one it is. I can tell you one, or a poem, or play you something from a dystopian future.

Yeah, I got the password to the other me's smartphone. It's got a lot of weird nonhuman future-music on it, and a couple of movies that haven't come out here yet. Seems like the library's got corrupted somehow, but there's still stuff there.

Comments

[espigeonage]

Okay. Biologically... here I'm using it like the things you look at to see what an animal is. A human goes on two legs and has flat feet, very little hair, long grasping fingers, no tail, and a fleshy short face. A dog is on all fours and on its toes, has lots of hair everywhere, stubby clawed fingers, a tail, and its face can be long or short but is less fleshy.

Prosthetics are replacements for missing pieces. A peg leg is a prosthetic, but they also make more advanced ones.

[allformii_ko]

So it's because they're biologically?

[Yep.]

And... and you can have a weird leg if you're missing one?

[espigeonage]

Pretty much - it's that if you look at something with fur on all fours and a tail you're more likely to think of it as like a dog than like a human.

[yeah he isn't sure where he'd start with real explaining.]

And um... I meant more that a guy with just one normal leg is still human, he's not less human because of the weird new one.

[allformii_ko]

Ohhh.

...

But a human with feathers is weird.

[Yeah, she's kind of stuck on that one.]

[espigeonage]

Don't I know it. Pulses get like that sometimes.

[allformii_ko]

...

You mean like... I could get feathers too?

[espigeonage]

Maybe. 'S not impossible!

[allformii_ko]

[She looks downright offended at the idea.]

I don't want feathers! I'm a cat!

[espigeonage]

I don't think the pulses care much. So, a cat huh?

[allformii_ko]

[Poof! Once the smoke clears, a dark grey tabby can be seen.]

Uh-huh.

[espigeonage]

[Julien blinks his weird transparent inner eyelids.]

...I see.

So I guess the human thing was a pulse?

[allformii_ko]

I remembered I could look human first, so I kept trying it until one day I could.

[So. Yes? Probably?]

[espigeonage]

Huh. Convenient! I gotta say I'm kind of jealous of shapeshifters.

[allformii_ko]

I can't stay that way forever, though!

[espigeonage]

No? Why not?

[allformii_ko]

It gets hard to focus after a while, and then I change back.

[espigeonage]

So do you have to be focusing the whole time you uh look human?

[allformii_ko]

Uh-huh. That's how I change how I look. It doesn't work unless I think about it.

[espigeonage]

Cool! Though it does sound like it could be tiresome. So can you make yourself look like a different human? Or like a catgirl?

[allformii_ko]

Cat girl?

[She's already a girl and she's already a cat, what's the difference?]

I either look like a cat or a human. And I only look that way when I change.

[espigeonage]

Part human, part cat. People think they're cute.

All one or all the other?

[allformii_ko]

But I'm already cute.

[Obviously.]

Yeah. Just cat, or just looking human.

[espigeonage]

Hah... [He doesn't dislike cats particularly, but neither is he at all drawn to them.]

Still, it sounds useful. Uh... so, looking human, does that mean you can get things off shelves and stuff that cats can't?

[allformii_ko]

Uh-huh. And open doors and write and things like that.

[espigeonage]

Hm. Yeah, I'm a little jealous!