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I sat in a chair with my arm outstretched, as a lab assistant drew some blood from it. He put a thin film bandage over it, and he assured me that it would be easy to pull off, and not hurt my fur. Ashley had already gotten hers, and was now sitting on a lab stool near my Dad, who was typing away at a computer.
Dad had pretty much completely changed now. Other than grumbling a bit at the annoyance of having to adjust to typing with pads on his fingers, he seemed to be adjusted well. It was so surreal to me that we were now all dog people. Something that would’ve seemed impossible a few months ago had now completely changed our lives. Yet looking at my family members their normal facial features were still there. As time went by though, would I get to where I never mentally thought of them as human anymore? Would I always picture them with a muzzle and snout?
With my little blood donation done, I was left to wait as Dad worked at the computer. I figured this would last a while, and found a more comfortable plastic chair compared to one of the stools near the lab counter, and pulled out the Switch. I’d been playing Stardew Valley for a while when I looked up and realized that Dad had left the room. Ashley still sat on a stool, her tail waving slightly back and forth.
“What do you think this is about?” she asked.
“I dunno. We’ve already changed - and I don’t see why we specifically would be needed when there are plenty of other anthros around.”
Ashley drummed her padded toes against the horizontal support going around the stool’s legs. She reached down, feeling at them.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
She was quiet for a few moments.
“I don’t know. I’m not feeling any better, not feeling any worse.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Why? Why would you be worried about me?”
“Because I’m your brother.”
“Because you’d feel guilty? Because you need an object of teasing?”
“Because I love you.”
No response. I resisted the very strong pull to go into a fit of depression. I wanted to be better. I wanted to care about others.
“Ashley, I do love you. I want to be a better brother. I want to be someone you can have support from, instead of feeling like I’m someone that makes life harder. Tell me how I can help you.”
“Stop teasing me,” she said dryly, and quietly. “Stop acting like everything I say is stupid. I don’t care if you aren’t into sports like I am, or if you think that the shows I watch aren’t ‘high art.’ Just stop acting like you’re better than me just because you’re older.”
That hurt.
“Okay,” I said, pushing down the desire to argue, to insist that she was over exaggerating, misinterpreting. That was not what she needed.
“I… I will make sure to not do that,” I said further. “I’m sorry that I haven’t at least mixed in some kindness with my teasing.”
“It’s just me being stupid. Not you.”
“No,” I said, “I know how you feel. It… it can be hard to see out of our ways of thinking. No matter what, we’re always going to be stuck in our own minds - in our own lives. We will never see what others think of us. Trust me when I say this Ashley - you are a great athlete. You are a great sister, and someone I will always want in my life.”
A slight smile appeared on her face, and I noticed her tail wag a little bit.
“Thank you.”
She folded her arms on the counter and put her face into them. She seemed to have difficulty resting her face with her snout protruding out. It was the little things like that that were the biggest bother.
I didn’t know how to feel as I went back to playing the Switch. I’d hoped that maybe she would’ve cracked a joke or something to soften the mood. But I left her alone. If I wanted her to feel better towards me, I needed to trust her when she wanted some space.
A pang of guilt hit me. I’d been focusing there on how I wanted her to feel towards me. No. I wanted that to be better, but what was most important was her. I needed to get outside myself, and be mindful of what she wanted. Yes.
Dad’s return to the room soon after was abrupt, as he quickly inserted his key card and swept through the door, briskly walking to the computer he’d been at. He clicked around through several sheets of a program he was in before I went back to focusing on my game.
After more time had passed, Dad’s activity stopped. There was no typing, or clicking. He scrolled up and down a jagged graph, and let out a long breath.
“What is it?” I asked.
He swiveled around in his chair. “Something… peculiar.”
My ears sagged down slightly. “Peculiar as in… bad?”
His own ears, now like mine and Ashley’s, fidgeted themselves. “I don’t know.”
“Can you explain it to me?” Ashley asked. “Is there a simple way for me to get a grip on what’s weird?”
“Yes,” Dad said, “actually, very simple. The short of it is… the virus is still very much active in you.”
“.... why?” I asked, my fur standing up.
“That, I can’t explain. Everything that’s happened this past month or so has had little foundation. No peer reviewed papers, no blind studies, nothing. All we’d had when we first were developing the viral therapy was the concern that it could lead to more cancer. Only some of us thought it could lead to stable… mutations. It was only on our minds because people were bringing up stuff like the frog DNA thing in Jurassic Park - how they felt that it was eerily similar. And to Mr. Crichton’s credit, he had done his research. There are unforeseen effects that can arise… we just never expected them to be so dramatic.”
“Well at least you weren’t using frog DNA,” I said.
“I… I do not want to consider what could’ve happened if we had gone with some other options. Dogs were simply in the higher percentile of options that were effective - plus they were more readily available around the world than some rarer creatures in Australia.”
“Could someone swap out the DNA for another animal,” Ashley asked, “and make someone into like a bird person?”
Dad stretched back in his chair. “A year ago, my answer would’ve been ‘it’s technically possible.’ Now, I am anxiously certain that someone will do it, and far more eventually. The problem is figuring out what is the lynchpin of all this, what set off the transformation, and how it could be manipulated. Other people are looking at this - other people are trying to find it in hopes of a cure.”
A canine whimper came from Ashley. “You… you aren’t searching for a cure anymore?”
Dad reassuringly scratched Ashley behind the ears. “We in the lab are working on it - and people all around the world are. Lately though I’ve been looking at some other things - things that could be important.”
“You mean what you were mentioning,” I said, “that the virus is still active inside of me and Ashley.”
“Yes. When I first started changing, I was doing very comprehensive tests on myself - as we’d done when you and Jackie were changing. But compared with pretty much all other tests results, where the graphed activity of the virus was trending downward…”
He turned his computer monitor towards us.
“The average viral activity remained constant,” Ashley said.
“Yes. If you note here,” he pointed to one of the lines displayed, “my line is still on average decreasing. The latest data from the both of you however, is still in the same activity range as it was when you were in the process of changing.”
“So what does it mean?” Ashley asked, “that we could keep changing? That we might be more resistant to a cure?”
“Yes to the latter maybe,” Dad said, “but not sure about the former. The virus is actively multiplying, steadily replacing itself. It did this to a smaller degree prior to symptoms developing. This we observed in all patients. It was unintentional, but hypothesized that it was further ‘guarding’ against future cancer growth. What we see here is different. This is stability at a much larger degree. Your bodies are not to the point where they are fighting against the virus, but the virus is also much stronger than it was in dormant cancer patients.”
“Hearing the words ‘the virus is stronger’ is very unpleasant,” I said.
“Remember though,” Dad explained, “that it is a virus in the purely technical sense, but it is more akin to a semi living machine. We completely engineered it. Calling it a virus may not even be very accurate, as it could also be described as bio-nano technology, what with all the complex DNA delivery systems and all.”
“So for now though,” Ashley said, “we’re okay, right?”
“The best I can figure,” Dad said, “I think that you two are different because it’s sourced from one of the oldest versions of the virus. So far, in our limited sample size, we’ve noticed that the likelihood of people changing from canis decreases as you look at the later versions of the virus. We realized overtime that aspects of the virus could be simplified and still be just as effective against the cancer.”
“And so you think there’s an association between that and our increased viral activity,” Ashley said.
“Exactly,” Dad smiled.
“There’s something I’m wondering though.”
Dad and Ashley glanced to me.
“Dad… you’ve been… tense lately. You think that something will go wrong with this, don’t you?”
“No entirely,” Dad said. “I… I am more afraid of you two… or really anyone that has this early stage of the virus being harmed. There are very few of you - or really us, Mom and I may retain increased activity too - that have this early version. I put all that remaining early information on a certain SD card.”
Uh oh. I’d forgotten that. I pulled it out of the Switch case, and Dad frowned and furrowed his brow. I really should’ve remembered to hide that. I slid it back into one of the game card slots, but Dad shook his head.
“At home,” he whispered. “We’ll decide then.”
Rather than putting the card back in the Switch case, I put it in my pants pocket - specifically the odd, and in my opinion mostly pointless tiny pocket some jeans had for some reason.
“Are people… listening?” Ashley whispered.
“I don’t know,” Dad said. “I am getting paranoid. There are people out there… people who I’ve disagreed with from my time at Generation. People who would like to strike at me right now with lawsuits for embezzling property from the company - but that could attract investigation to themselves as well.”
“So… you’re afraid they’ll also resort to… questionably legal choices?” I asked.
“Again,” Dad said, “I just don’t know. I’ve always been able to grapple scientific unknowns. They stay where they are. But humans are obnoxious creatures that try to mislead you. Try to play life like it’s a game.”
Dad got up, and paced the room.
“And that’s how everyone is treating this - like a game. They think that they are smart people - they have seen Jurassic Park and so they think ‘well I’m not making a dinosaur theme park, that’s just stupid. They fail to recognize the very real lesson in that story - that genetics is one of the most powerful tools that humanity has ever wielded. Something like gunpowder could move mountains, or blow people apart. But genetics… with genetics you can twist the very code of people and animals into a horrible mess. An idiot will cause horrible chaotic damage. A wise, good person can cure diseases. A wise, but wicked person could do some of the worst things imaginable.”
He turned around, back to us.
“I’m sorry, I’m rambling. There are a lot of conflicting thoughts in my head. But I’m confident in the fact that there are a lot of really good people out there. The world doesn’t just move in one direction, but every single one of us pulls it slightly in a new way. There may be people out there who want to misuse this extreme power - but others who will have more restraint.”
Dad looked at his watch.
“Mom is here to pick you up,” he said.
We started walking.
“But Dad,” I said, “what if all this, despite the best intentions of good people… what if it’s a Pandora’s Box?”
“Well,” he adjusted his clothes, “there’s always my favorite option - I’ll try to wrap it in a whole roll of duct tape.”
Previous: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44777657/
Next: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44879675/
First Part: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/43399487/
Join my discord server for canine furries and friends! : https://discord.gg/xGhR89y2mW
Dad had pretty much completely changed now. Other than grumbling a bit at the annoyance of having to adjust to typing with pads on his fingers, he seemed to be adjusted well. It was so surreal to me that we were now all dog people. Something that would’ve seemed impossible a few months ago had now completely changed our lives. Yet looking at my family members their normal facial features were still there. As time went by though, would I get to where I never mentally thought of them as human anymore? Would I always picture them with a muzzle and snout?
With my little blood donation done, I was left to wait as Dad worked at the computer. I figured this would last a while, and found a more comfortable plastic chair compared to one of the stools near the lab counter, and pulled out the Switch. I’d been playing Stardew Valley for a while when I looked up and realized that Dad had left the room. Ashley still sat on a stool, her tail waving slightly back and forth.
“What do you think this is about?” she asked.
“I dunno. We’ve already changed - and I don’t see why we specifically would be needed when there are plenty of other anthros around.”
Ashley drummed her padded toes against the horizontal support going around the stool’s legs. She reached down, feeling at them.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
She was quiet for a few moments.
“I don’t know. I’m not feeling any better, not feeling any worse.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Why? Why would you be worried about me?”
“Because I’m your brother.”
“Because you’d feel guilty? Because you need an object of teasing?”
“Because I love you.”
No response. I resisted the very strong pull to go into a fit of depression. I wanted to be better. I wanted to care about others.
“Ashley, I do love you. I want to be a better brother. I want to be someone you can have support from, instead of feeling like I’m someone that makes life harder. Tell me how I can help you.”
“Stop teasing me,” she said dryly, and quietly. “Stop acting like everything I say is stupid. I don’t care if you aren’t into sports like I am, or if you think that the shows I watch aren’t ‘high art.’ Just stop acting like you’re better than me just because you’re older.”
That hurt.
“Okay,” I said, pushing down the desire to argue, to insist that she was over exaggerating, misinterpreting. That was not what she needed.
“I… I will make sure to not do that,” I said further. “I’m sorry that I haven’t at least mixed in some kindness with my teasing.”
“It’s just me being stupid. Not you.”
“No,” I said, “I know how you feel. It… it can be hard to see out of our ways of thinking. No matter what, we’re always going to be stuck in our own minds - in our own lives. We will never see what others think of us. Trust me when I say this Ashley - you are a great athlete. You are a great sister, and someone I will always want in my life.”
A slight smile appeared on her face, and I noticed her tail wag a little bit.
“Thank you.”
She folded her arms on the counter and put her face into them. She seemed to have difficulty resting her face with her snout protruding out. It was the little things like that that were the biggest bother.
I didn’t know how to feel as I went back to playing the Switch. I’d hoped that maybe she would’ve cracked a joke or something to soften the mood. But I left her alone. If I wanted her to feel better towards me, I needed to trust her when she wanted some space.
A pang of guilt hit me. I’d been focusing there on how I wanted her to feel towards me. No. I wanted that to be better, but what was most important was her. I needed to get outside myself, and be mindful of what she wanted. Yes.
Dad’s return to the room soon after was abrupt, as he quickly inserted his key card and swept through the door, briskly walking to the computer he’d been at. He clicked around through several sheets of a program he was in before I went back to focusing on my game.
After more time had passed, Dad’s activity stopped. There was no typing, or clicking. He scrolled up and down a jagged graph, and let out a long breath.
“What is it?” I asked.
He swiveled around in his chair. “Something… peculiar.”
My ears sagged down slightly. “Peculiar as in… bad?”
His own ears, now like mine and Ashley’s, fidgeted themselves. “I don’t know.”
“Can you explain it to me?” Ashley asked. “Is there a simple way for me to get a grip on what’s weird?”
“Yes,” Dad said, “actually, very simple. The short of it is… the virus is still very much active in you.”
“.... why?” I asked, my fur standing up.
“That, I can’t explain. Everything that’s happened this past month or so has had little foundation. No peer reviewed papers, no blind studies, nothing. All we’d had when we first were developing the viral therapy was the concern that it could lead to more cancer. Only some of us thought it could lead to stable… mutations. It was only on our minds because people were bringing up stuff like the frog DNA thing in Jurassic Park - how they felt that it was eerily similar. And to Mr. Crichton’s credit, he had done his research. There are unforeseen effects that can arise… we just never expected them to be so dramatic.”
“Well at least you weren’t using frog DNA,” I said.
“I… I do not want to consider what could’ve happened if we had gone with some other options. Dogs were simply in the higher percentile of options that were effective - plus they were more readily available around the world than some rarer creatures in Australia.”
“Could someone swap out the DNA for another animal,” Ashley asked, “and make someone into like a bird person?”
Dad stretched back in his chair. “A year ago, my answer would’ve been ‘it’s technically possible.’ Now, I am anxiously certain that someone will do it, and far more eventually. The problem is figuring out what is the lynchpin of all this, what set off the transformation, and how it could be manipulated. Other people are looking at this - other people are trying to find it in hopes of a cure.”
A canine whimper came from Ashley. “You… you aren’t searching for a cure anymore?”
Dad reassuringly scratched Ashley behind the ears. “We in the lab are working on it - and people all around the world are. Lately though I’ve been looking at some other things - things that could be important.”
“You mean what you were mentioning,” I said, “that the virus is still active inside of me and Ashley.”
“Yes. When I first started changing, I was doing very comprehensive tests on myself - as we’d done when you and Jackie were changing. But compared with pretty much all other tests results, where the graphed activity of the virus was trending downward…”
He turned his computer monitor towards us.
“The average viral activity remained constant,” Ashley said.
“Yes. If you note here,” he pointed to one of the lines displayed, “my line is still on average decreasing. The latest data from the both of you however, is still in the same activity range as it was when you were in the process of changing.”
“So what does it mean?” Ashley asked, “that we could keep changing? That we might be more resistant to a cure?”
“Yes to the latter maybe,” Dad said, “but not sure about the former. The virus is actively multiplying, steadily replacing itself. It did this to a smaller degree prior to symptoms developing. This we observed in all patients. It was unintentional, but hypothesized that it was further ‘guarding’ against future cancer growth. What we see here is different. This is stability at a much larger degree. Your bodies are not to the point where they are fighting against the virus, but the virus is also much stronger than it was in dormant cancer patients.”
“Hearing the words ‘the virus is stronger’ is very unpleasant,” I said.
“Remember though,” Dad explained, “that it is a virus in the purely technical sense, but it is more akin to a semi living machine. We completely engineered it. Calling it a virus may not even be very accurate, as it could also be described as bio-nano technology, what with all the complex DNA delivery systems and all.”
“So for now though,” Ashley said, “we’re okay, right?”
“The best I can figure,” Dad said, “I think that you two are different because it’s sourced from one of the oldest versions of the virus. So far, in our limited sample size, we’ve noticed that the likelihood of people changing from canis decreases as you look at the later versions of the virus. We realized overtime that aspects of the virus could be simplified and still be just as effective against the cancer.”
“And so you think there’s an association between that and our increased viral activity,” Ashley said.
“Exactly,” Dad smiled.
“There’s something I’m wondering though.”
Dad and Ashley glanced to me.
“Dad… you’ve been… tense lately. You think that something will go wrong with this, don’t you?”
“No entirely,” Dad said. “I… I am more afraid of you two… or really anyone that has this early stage of the virus being harmed. There are very few of you - or really us, Mom and I may retain increased activity too - that have this early version. I put all that remaining early information on a certain SD card.”
Uh oh. I’d forgotten that. I pulled it out of the Switch case, and Dad frowned and furrowed his brow. I really should’ve remembered to hide that. I slid it back into one of the game card slots, but Dad shook his head.
“At home,” he whispered. “We’ll decide then.”
Rather than putting the card back in the Switch case, I put it in my pants pocket - specifically the odd, and in my opinion mostly pointless tiny pocket some jeans had for some reason.
“Are people… listening?” Ashley whispered.
“I don’t know,” Dad said. “I am getting paranoid. There are people out there… people who I’ve disagreed with from my time at Generation. People who would like to strike at me right now with lawsuits for embezzling property from the company - but that could attract investigation to themselves as well.”
“So… you’re afraid they’ll also resort to… questionably legal choices?” I asked.
“Again,” Dad said, “I just don’t know. I’ve always been able to grapple scientific unknowns. They stay where they are. But humans are obnoxious creatures that try to mislead you. Try to play life like it’s a game.”
Dad got up, and paced the room.
“And that’s how everyone is treating this - like a game. They think that they are smart people - they have seen Jurassic Park and so they think ‘well I’m not making a dinosaur theme park, that’s just stupid. They fail to recognize the very real lesson in that story - that genetics is one of the most powerful tools that humanity has ever wielded. Something like gunpowder could move mountains, or blow people apart. But genetics… with genetics you can twist the very code of people and animals into a horrible mess. An idiot will cause horrible chaotic damage. A wise, good person can cure diseases. A wise, but wicked person could do some of the worst things imaginable.”
He turned around, back to us.
“I’m sorry, I’m rambling. There are a lot of conflicting thoughts in my head. But I’m confident in the fact that there are a lot of really good people out there. The world doesn’t just move in one direction, but every single one of us pulls it slightly in a new way. There may be people out there who want to misuse this extreme power - but others who will have more restraint.”
Dad looked at his watch.
“Mom is here to pick you up,” he said.
We started walking.
“But Dad,” I said, “what if all this, despite the best intentions of good people… what if it’s a Pandora’s Box?”
“Well,” he adjusted his clothes, “there’s always my favorite option - I’ll try to wrap it in a whole roll of duct tape.”
Previous: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44777657/
Next: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44879675/
First Part: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/43399487/
Join my discord server for canine furries and friends! : https://discord.gg/xGhR89y2mW
Category Story / Transformation
Species Dog (Other)
Size 77 x 120px
File Size 54.3 kB
*The plot intensifies...*
I'd like to point out that life is a game, and that's exactly how people get rich. Ever play Monopoly?
I noticed a few little mistakes (likely from a rushed chapter). Just stuff like typing "of" instead of "for." Just in case you'd like to review the chapter again and fix those little things! 😛
By the way, I did a bit of thinking/research, and changing your DNA's structure to be somewhat like another creature's is technically possible if you could get the rest of the DNA to accept the changed cells! Can't wait until 2046 when they figure that out!!! 😉
I'd like to point out that life is a game, and that's exactly how people get rich. Ever play Monopoly?
I noticed a few little mistakes (likely from a rushed chapter). Just stuff like typing "of" instead of "for." Just in case you'd like to review the chapter again and fix those little things! 😛
By the way, I did a bit of thinking/research, and changing your DNA's structure to be somewhat like another creature's is technically possible if you could get the rest of the DNA to accept the changed cells! Can't wait until 2046 when they figure that out!!! 😉
I think that the waters get rather murky when talking about such advanced genetics. I consider actual human animal hybrids as depicted here to be a very unlikely thing to arise in the future - but if they do, obviously it would best be considered immoral trying to tamper with human DNA is such a profound way. On the other hand, people who had already changed you'd be obligated I think to be extremely kind to them in their circumstance, at least in the one I've described here.
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