I’m sure I’ll run out of steam on these Octransfur prompts at some point, but I’m still making some progress! The 10th prompt was “Fall”. That brought to mind all sorts of bird or bat transformations I’m probably not that well equipped for. Autumn changes also may have worked... but it’s still a little toasty in my neck of the woods. I may have stretched this theme out a bit, but hopefully it’s a fun one all the same!

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Octransfur Day 10: Fall

The GeneCo offices often felt like a miniature Noah’s Arc. After decades of trying, and a nice hefty NASA grant, the company had finally cracked the code on the human genome. It was trivial to give one’s genes a nice freshen up, wipe away any lingering hereditary issues, and introduce some new perks from the animal kingdom while you were at it.

James always had lousy night vision. When his manager mentioned they were looking for someone willing to test out their new coyote package, he decided to give it a shot. He was already naturally blond after all.

He was in an induced coma for all the big changes. Furry ears, a nice new tail, and a new set of peppers. The tail was endlessly fun to wag, but oddly enough it was the new eyes that took the most getting used to.

Coyotes were predators. He had a much larger field of vision than before, and everything was just unbelievably sharp. Any text in front of him was practically screaming to be read. Every ad he walked by jumped out in a nice bland malaise of sharp low-contrast grays. He could still make out some colors (and had some ultraviolet thrown in as a bonus), but his world felt a bit more muted than before.

It was a small price to pay for actually being able to drive at night. Once he got his car modded to have a place for a tail, he was a happy camper. James was back to work with his generic IT support role before he knew it. Now his weeks were just broken up with the occasional checkup to see if he’d grown any new fur.

It was a pretty common story throughout his office. (The gene therapy and the winter coat.) James worked pretty closely with a jaguar, a wolf, and an iguana. The last one was the most interesting case. Their office’s secretary would be slow to return emails if the AC got cranked down too low. People generally worked through the odd quirk or two. Everything was still only a few degrees away from mundane.

Then people started barking and meowing at one another.

James almost missed the first time he said something in canine. He leaned over to his canine coworker and intended to whisper something so only the wolf would hear. Canine ears were pretty incredibly sensitive, he wouldn’t have to speak up much. Instead, James simply let out a quiet, “Arf woof, ruff!”

His coworker got a hearty laugh at his comment. The tiger-man across from the table just tilted their head, “Come again?”

“Arf woof- Oh, was I… barking?” James laughed nervously and explained the joke.

It was definitely the sort of development the scientists wanted to hear more about. Trouble was, you generally needed a researcher in the same genus to understand what the heck people were saying. Still, they got a bunch of canines together, herded some cats, and found a few researchers willing to hear out to the rodent and mustelid populations.

James was ran through so many panel discussions that he started noticing some familiar faces around the cafeteria. Cliques formed, and before they knew it all the canines were sitting together, all the cats were off in one corner, and teams were getting a lot of unexpected transfer requests.

It was a little disruptive, but the new fox on James’ team was a quick learner. James mostly kept his head down and focused on keeping the servers running. The next thing he knew, there was a dalmatian greeting people on his floor.

Then things started getting weird. James woke up one morning and realized he was thinking in barks and growls. His train of thought had entirely shifted over to his canine speech. It didn’t seem that distressing.

Then he went to lunch.

The raccoon behind the cash register chittered something.

“Arf ruff?” James asked.

The raccoon furrowed their brow.

“Grr?” James shot back. He glanced over at the falcon behind him in line. “Woof arf?”

“Scree!” They flapped their wings.

“Arf!” James barked something apologetic and headed over towards the self checkout.

He skipped the cafeteria and made it back to his floor. Had he… forgotten how English worked? The familiar chorus of barks from his coworkers him made James immediately feel more at ease as he scurried to his desk.

James slipped his tail into his office chair and started gnawing on his chicken strips. He scrolled through his emails and saw an urgent looking one from GenCo HR. Apparently his floor wasn’t the only one that had adopted a pack mentality. All their remote sites were immediately ordered to not congregate too many people of the same species together.

Their scientists suddenly had a lot of new data to work with. They published plenty of papers on group dynamics, the malleability of language centers, and err, potential leads on future preventative measures.

Meanwhile their corporate headquarters continued to be dominated by a variety of cliques. IT was all canines, Marketing were all felines, and Logistics was the domain of the birds. They could all send coherent emails, and honestly James work was a lot more productive without so many meetings.

Eventually their situation was picked up by the public at large. There were all sorts of congressional hearings and government inquiries scheduled. The media had a field day of course. Someone barking nervously into a TV camera made for great b-roll. Their stock price was at an all time low for a company that had literally cured cancer. Gone were the breathless headlines about their miniature Noah’s Arc. GeneCo’s fall from grace was quickly becoming a modern day Tower of Babel.