Story and Images by Mertail
Part 2: "Human" Resources
Tammy Rothschild had graduated from the local technical college
only five weeks prior. She’d
done very well in the office management course she’d taken and was
pleased to be able to give her notice at the dead end job she’d
worked in since high school. TransRepo
paid ever so much more and, in a few years time, she’d be able to work
her way up and make even more!!
Her first few days on the front desk were pretty normal. Aside from having to get another of the
office managers to cover for her whenever HR decided she needed to fill in yet
another form, it was pretty simple. The
fourth day, she and the other new hires were put through the Corporate
Introduction Session. It covered all
kinds of things that her diploma hadn’t covered such as evacuation drills
and shelter-in-place drills and where the emergency biosafe areas were. The trainers made much of the fact that,
though such events should never occur, the release of one of the biologically
active agents from the secure labs might happen. They needed to know what to do. Even if no one ever expected to actually have
to do it.
That all changed at the beginning of the next week. Tammy noticed a sudden increase in the phone
usage. There weren’t
any lines available in or out. She’d
never had that happen in her training but, since there was nothing she could
actually do about it, she decided to just monitor the situation and wait. Ten minutes later, the emergency alarms
started going off in her building. A
dispassionate voice announced that there had been a seal break in some lab or
another and that all employees were to proceed immediately to the nearest
biosafe area. Because Tammy believed the
trainers about how impossible this kind of thing was, she’d
never bothered to find where the nearest biosafe areas were. Fortunately, she merely had to follow the
handful of employees who were actually following the emergency
instructions. Many, of course, assumed
it a drill and tuned it out to keep working.
As Tammy passed under an overhead vent, she felt a strange tickle
in her throat but this quickly passed.
She made her way into the biosafe region just as the doors were
closing. She realized that this wasn’t
a drill. They didn’t
close the doors for a drill. Something
had gotten out.
Tammy waited with the others for nearly two hours before a trio
of suited people came to release them.
Each was scanned with some kind of strange device. When each person was declared clean, they
were allowed out of biosafe seclusion.
They were immediately escorted from the building and told to head
home. They’d be informed as
soon as TransRepo knew a bit more. They
were to stay at home, with pay, until TransRepo indicated otherwise. They were to keep a log of any strange
symptoms over the next few days, just in case.
The sensors, though, indicated they were not likely to have anything
show up. Not so the ones who stayed
behind to work. Each was in a strange
orange suit and were being herded towards the research area. There was a every chance that they’d
contracted something and would need close monitoring.
With a half a day before her commuter train home arrived, Tammy
was a little at a loss. A couple of the
other people from TransRepo suggested that they grab a quick lunch and see if
anything developed. After a leisurely
lunch, Tammy excused herself. She
decided to spend the rest of the day doing a bit of shopping. After all, she now had money to spend and her
sparse apartment could definitely use a few accent pieces.
By the time she made it home (she missed the first train but
managed to catch the second on half hour later), she was tired. She put it down to the extra walking all of
her shopping had required and the excitement of the day. Quickly preparing a light meal, she ate it
and then spent the evening playing with her French Poodle pup. She turned in early. There wasn’t anything on the
holovision and the puppy had been played out.
The next morning, she felt decidedly odd. She couldn’t place what was
wrong but she was sure something was wrong.
It wasn’t until her morning shower that she realized what was
bothering her. Her entire body from just
below her breasts to the soles of her feet were covered by a thin white
fur. She logged onto the reporting
program they were to use for reporting symptoms and, in a panic, wrote it
up. She expected some kind of response
and a quick one at that but, by noon, nothing seemed to have happened. The fur had continued to grow and, with
increasing concern, Tammy again reported the fur and its increased length. Surely they’d get back to her
now!!
By evening, though, a discrete knock came at her apartment
door. Must be one of the
neighbours. She did a quick check with
the security camera and was shocked to see a pair of hazard suited people
holding up a TransRepo ID to the camera.
She quickly let them in.
“Tammy Rothschild?” asked an electrically distorted female
voice.
“Uh, yes. I’m …”
“You have to come with us immediately!”
a male voice with the same electronic clipping insisted.
“Gerald! My dog!”
“That one?” the female figure pointed at the
poodle who was sleeping in her basket.
“Yes but I …”
“The dog needs to come, too.”
They scooped up the pup and tossed on of the suits at Tammy
ordering her to suit up. She quickly complied. What had she been exposed to? Something that would get the puppy sick,
too? This was too strange. Five minutes later, the trio carrying the pup
in an air sealed animal carrier, left the apartment. A team carrying a strange assortment of equipment
barged past them and began to do something in the apartment. Tammy didn’t ask and was
whisked downstairs and hustled into a waiting van so quickly that she forgot to
question what they were doing.
At TransRepo, the trio entered through a special garage
door. It had two sets of doors separated
by a short stretch of roadway. As soon
as they were inside, a cascade of strangely smelling water engulfed the van. They were then allowed into a deserted lower
parking garage. The van was driven up to
a door with rounded edges. This quickly
projected out until it made contact all around the van’s side door.
“Through the tunnel,” ordered the male voice. “Decontamination.”
Tammy didn’t question the order and soon found
herself by herself in a room.
“Plug the suit into the wall socket,”
a clearly computer synthesized voice ordered. When Tammy had complied, the computer ordered
her to the center of the room and to close her eyes. There was a painful flash of heat and Tammy
found herself naked in the center of the room.
A fine grey ash covered her entire body.
“Proceed into Containment,”
the voice announced as a hiss from a small door to her left indicated
where she was to go next.
Inside, there were comfortable hospital style clothing that
looked like the kind of thing doctors and nurses wore. She selected a set in her size and quickly
dressed.
The woman, her voice undistorted by the suit, appeared to her
right from a door exactly like the one she’d just passed
through.
“Sorry for all the melodrama.
I’m Lynda Fergins,” She extended a hand encased by a
rubber surgical glove.
“What’s happening?”
“You were exposed to an escaped cloud of nanites. We’ve already had one researcher start to
change and we’re trying to gather up any other employees who were similarly
exposed.”
“How do you know?”
“You’re growing fur.”
“Gerald?”
“He’s okay. We just had to make sure he wasn’t
carrying any nanites. We’ll
let him join you once we get to your room.”
“Okay. These nanites …
what do they do?”
“They were supposed to increase a dog’s
intelligence. Service Dog program.”
“Something happened in Nanite Containment,”
the male voice now had a face. “Sayid
Sisro. They were supposed to work on
female dogs. I was just reading the
latest. Seems they now are causing
transformations in women. They don’t
seem to recognize males of any kind as potential targets. Gerald’s in no danger
whatever. You, though, …”
he let his voice trail off.
“What kind of transformations?”
“Nothing’s been released yet. Just that they cause transformation in women.”
“Why didn’t the scanner find them before they
let me out?” demanded Tammy.
“One of the reasons you are in here,”
Lynda stated calmly. “They
shouldn’t have. Should have
rung off a dozen meters away. Instead,
nothing.”
“So what happens next?”
Tammy demanded.
“Well, until we can figure out how to kill them and stop
their effect, you’re stuck here. Company will make sure your bills are all
paid, of course. We know how hard it is
to find a good apartment.”
“Make yourself at home, “
Sayid stated as he opened a more normal looking door that led to a
fairly large room.
Tammy looked around. It
had a very modern entertainment system and a good computer. She tried her cellphone and wasn’t
surprised that she could get no signal.
Ah, well. There was always
eMail. A soft click behind her announced
the departure of the pair. Tammy tried
the door and wasn’t surprised to find it locked. She remembered the section in the Emergency
Procedures Talk about containment. She
may as well get comfortable.
She watched her favorite show, eMailed a friend or two to let
them know she was indisposed, and played her favorite computer game until
bedtime. With little else to do, she
turned in.
By morning, the white fur was longer and denser. It looked a lot like Gerald’s
fur. She decided to give herself a once
over. Before she could get any kind of a
start, a knock at the door followed by the opening of the door announced the
presence of a suited medical person. She
quickly did a series of measurements.
Height, weight, all kinds of dimensions.
She had Tammy stand in front of a graduated ruler attached to the
wall. Tammy frowned a bit. She didn’t remember that
being there from last time. Some of the
recorded measurements were wrong. She’d
just been to the doctor for her annual physical. She was 170cm not 190 cm and she couldn’t
have gained 5 kg in the week since the physical, could she. When she protested the values, the person
shook her head and told her in a muffled voice that it was part of the
transformation process.
Tammy wasn’t sure she should ask but curiosity
got the better of her. The medical
person had no real information but did write down the corporate Intranet
address where all of the latest findings were being recorded. After taking a number of samples, she
disappeared through the door. Tammy
decided she’d best check what was known.
A lot of the information was technical. Tammy had no idea what they were talking
about. There were only a few pages,
posted by six other women that even made sense to Tammy. They were employees who’d
been exposed to the nanites. They were
recording their changes. Tammy thought
that would likely be a good idea so she took up where she left off before the
arrival of the medical person.
She noticed that her feet were too long to fit into her shoes and
she started wearing the cloth booties provided.
Her thighs and calves seemed shorter, too. Just her waist and hips seemed to have
grown. That and her toenails seemed
thicker. Poking around on the links
provided by intranet and more than a little bored, she discovered the chat room
and spent the next few hours happily chatting with the others. Though there was an undercurrent of fear
because none of them had any idea what was happening to them and when it would
stop, most seemed pretty happy all things considered. Inevitably, the chat turned to their
changes. All seemed to be getting furry
in one place or another but not all at once and definitely not quickly. There was no regular pattern, either. Some, like Tammy, were growing furry from
mid-chest or hips down, others were covered by fine fur over most of their
bodies. All were getting smaller to some
extent. Some, like Tammy, had lost
nearly 20% of their weight before this ‘event’
had started. One woman, though,
was down to nearly half her original size.
Fur color didn’t seem to be consistent either. White, brown, black —
just about anything seemed to be possible.
About halfway through the chat, a picture of the original target
animal was released. Clearly, none of
them were colored anything like that German Shepherd. It was Tammy herself who realized what was
happening and she quickly fired off her observation to everyone else including
the team still trapped in the now ineffectual nanite confinement area. She noticed her fur was exactly like that of
her puppy. Once she mentioned that, it
didn’t take too long for the others to identify their
sources. Katerina Gromov and her husband
were hunters and had just returned from a hunt with their three Irish Setters
not a day before all this started. It was very likely she had a few hairs from
one of her gun dogs one her. Starr
Powell and her husband had been working with a Labrador Retriever the local rescue
dog organization had fostered to them.
Bridgette Raeside had a pet beagle at home with markings identical to
the fur she had sprouted over her whole body.
Rihanna Kilcardine at first had no idea where she’d been around a dog
until someone asked whether there had been any dogs running around her
place. There hadn’t but her daughter
raised standard poodles. Though the dogs
hadn’t been around her house, her daughter certainly had. She wondered just how much ‘dog
stuff’ would be needed. Mattie Geralds, from Finance, had no problems
identifying her source. They owned a
friendly mutt they were always playing with in the evening. She shook her head and commented that it was
impossible to get all the dog hair and dander off yourself. Willie Ultrik also
identified her source pretty quickly. She and her husband lived in a gated community
that was patrolled by security guards with Doberman Pinscher.
The next day saw the return of a silent medical person, no longer
in a hazmat suit, who didn’t identify herself. She performed a number of tests and
measurements and left without saying a word.
There was something unusual in the way she moved but Tammy couldn’t
quite put her finger on what was ‘off’. After she left, Tammy wondered what they were
hunting for with all of the measurements and felt about her body for anything
unusual. There was a small bump at the
end of her spine that she was sure hadn’t been there the day before. Her hips were thinning but she was definitely
taller through the waist than she had been.
The standard issue hospital gowns didn’t fit very well but
it was better than going about naked even if she was completely covered by fur
from mid-chest down.
Her toenails had grown out by the end of the day and had begun to
click on the hard floor whenever she walked.
They were definitely dog claws now.
In fact, when Gerald was returned just before supper, her toenails now
looked almost the same as Gerald’s claws only quite a bit larger. She was clearly adult while he was still a
very young puppy..
The next morning after the visit from the unidentified measurer,
Tammy again took stock of herself. It
was harder to stand upright as she had a distinct bulge at her waist and very
narrow hips. Her legs were definitely
dog-like. The tail, too, had grown. It was practically as long as her now
shortened legs. She wondered how she’d
get around if these strange changes continued.
Gerald was still fun to play with, though, he sometimes would
sniff her in places she’d rather he didn’t. It wasn’t that she was a
prude or anything (at least she didn’t think so), it was that she felt
strange being sniffed at her crotch. It
took several reprimands before Gerald finally left her alone and was content
just to play.
She needn’t have worried about getting
around. By the end of the day, the bulge
thinned on one axis and became longer in another. Two small bumps appeared as well. Though no biologist, Tammy was pretty sure
these were another pair of legs growing.
She told Ms. Measurer about them and their length and position was
efficiently noted before she left the room.
It was then that she finally figured out Ms. Measurer. It wasn’t a person. It did a decidedly non-human pause before
measuring the bumps positions and sizes.
It was some kind of robot.
Clearly they weren’t taking any chances of these nanite
thingies getting out of this quarantine zone.
She wondered whether she could walk well enough to find out where the ‘bot
went between measurements. After a few
seconds thought, she decided it really didn’t matter.
By that bedtime, the stubs had become fully formed puppy-sized
legs. As she lay down on her side on the
bed, she touched them and was surprised that they had feeling. They were definitely part of her though there
was more feeling the closer she felt to her own body. The paws were nearly insensate.
Overnight, her legs continued their inexorable growth. Her back legs (they’d been human legs
when this started) were now definitely like those of a standard poodle. The forelegs, though skinny, had definite
canine attributes as well. Throughout
the morning they continued their grown so that, by noon, they seemed fully
developed. Tammy found she could walk
clumsily with them and made her way into the washroom to look in the
mirror. Tammy found herself a standard
white poodle from chest to tail. Only
her breasts, arms and head had remained unchanged. She pushed the chairs into a corner. Her new quadrupedal stance made chairs
difficult to use.
She fell asleep on her side that evening, curled up in a manner
that was more like Gerald in his basket than a woman in bed. When she awoke in the morning, she discovered
Gerald was lying beside her canine belly.
He had one of her teats in his mouth and was suckling contentedly even
though she had no milk.
She petted her puppy absentmindedly and dragged her longer than
expected tongue across sharper than expected canines. She was struck by a horrible
realization. If she was dog-like enough
to seem like a mother to Gerald now, what was going to happen a year from
now. He’d be adult!! Would she go into heat? Worse yet, could he impregnate her? She could think of nothing worse. Her terrified shrieking awoke Gerald and soon
had a platoon of nurses and doctors in the room. She didn’t calm down until
they’d given her enough tranquilizer to knock her out entirely.
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