Sarah, Malice, Jessica, Sophie, and Abby were very nervous when they entered the main office at school. Sarah and Malice had been "subtly" spreading the fact that there was going to be a party at their house while their parents were in Alaska, then there was an announcement over the school PA system asking for Abby and her friends to come to the office. Of course, when someone is called to the office in any school, that person automatically assumes that he/she is in trouble. It was more worrisome when Clara, Mayor of Animalia was waiting for them there, and led them into a private room. But what happened next was anything but troublesome, depending on how people interpreted it.
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"The Animalia Council has made several decisions on how the Games are going to be." Was the first thing that Clara said as soon as everyone was comfortable.
"Is that good?" Asked Malice, worried that she might have made Animalia's plight worse.
"That depends on what you think about what other people are saying about us." Answered Clara, green eyes twinkling slightly, because she was obviously pleased about something.
"So, what are they saying about us?" Asked Jessica.
As Clara explained it, after learning about computers and social media, she had developed a social webgroup for Animalia in general. One of the things that was done with it was a simple question: What do you think about Animalia in general? The very next day she was shocked at the response to it: over a million responses. Some were obviously perverted answers, while others were clearly philosophical, religious or otherwise.
Next she mentioned the Animalia Games, and again got over a million responses. While some were angry about the events being segregated, others more than understood the reasons why. Some people asked if there was going to be skimpy female uniforms, to which she replied, rather amusedly, that that would depend on their interpretation when the games started.
Then she made an inquiry about new products and services for Animalians, and again got a flood of responses. One, from the people of Olay, mentioned that they were working on a cream for Reptilian Animalians that would make skin shedding more tolerable for them. Some also advertised new kinds of teaching toys for the youngest Animalians, while others advertised new healthcare and grooming products, such as flavored teeth "whetstones (actually made of wood) for rodents, lagomorphs, and others with continually growing front teeth, or fur/body wash that would work on any skin surface, no matter their species, or bodybuilding supplements that were safe for herbivores, carnivores, or omnivores (separately, not all together)
There were other questions from other people in the country. For example, military types asked if Animalians would make good soldiers, to which Clara responded that "that was up to the preferences of individual Animalians, not Animalia as a whole. Others asked if it was possible to actually Join Animalia, to which Clara said that they were free to do so, even becoming "double dosers", as long as they were willing to fill out a maximum of fifty pages of paperwork. A surprising offer came from the Frozen Ark project, asking if the Animalia Virus could combine with the samples of endangered species DNA, to which she replied that the raw virus could do so as long as the DNA was still usable, and those transformed by the resulting virus would be capable of dealing with their new forms and follows the Edicts of Animalia. Some responses were from overseas and wanted to see the Animalia Virus in action. That was when she remembered one philosophical response to her first question: The culture of Animalia is a culture of tolerance. Then she got an idea.
Clara put up a post that said that the Animalia Games would be part of the first ever "International Animalia Convention: Building a Culture of Tolerance", hosted in Lyre, NV. After dinner and a bath, she found that responses totaled in the billions. Some were offering to help build the required buildings and stadium. Others, such as the President of the United States and the Pope, offered to give speeches at the event. Still others offered to fund practically everything about it. All in all, the idea for the IAC, as it would come to be known, would represent concepts such as "all races are created equal", "malice toward none and charity for all" and various other sayings about peace, acceptance, freedom, and tolerance. Among the events planned was:
-Music artists singing songs, old and modern, about the four concepts.
-A public demonstration of the Animalia Virus on a pair of animals from the four types of animals affected by the virus. The animals decided on were: a mated pair of english sheep, a male and female pair of Firebelly toads, a male and female pair of Gila monsters, and a mated pair of Hyacinth macaws.
-A panel of both the first animals and the first humans to be Uplifted by the Virus, including Samson, Clara Robby, and Sarah's parents.
-A display of new products and services for Animalians.
-Willing administration of the Animalia Virus, and discussing the changes afterward.
-The promised Animalia Games and Bodybuilding competition.
-A fashion show where Animalians show off new clothes made for their forms.
And so on and so on.
The reason Clara wanted to talk to Abby and her friends because they were to be on the panel talking about their changes by the virus, while Sophie was to talk about her friends being different from her, unless she became uplifted by next summer, when the IAC was planned to take place.