Josh stood in shock for a few moments, staggered from what he had seen. He took a step toward Coral's room to continue the conversation, but stopped himself. She clearly wasn't in the mood for talk at this time and he still had unpacking to do.
He propped the door to his room open, and began shoveling his carefully-packed boxes into a pile, all the while looking for the important one. Clothes, electronics, sheets, clothes again, console...Ah-hah! Computer! He placed it nearby the desk he'd brought in earlier, tearing open its top to set it up. He'd already planned out the wiring to ensure he'd have a viable connection, though he did briefly consider feigning ignorance to ask her about internet access, and hopefully strike up a second conversation.
Waiting for his machine to start up, Josh considered the possibilities.
Gene cosmetics had been a huge hit, especially in urban areas such as this. For a few grand, an individual could get spliced with predetermined templates to do anything from modifying hair or eye color, to shifting their skin into unnatural hues, even going so far as to mimic physical aspects of animals. The technology was originally developed to cure or mitigate crippling genetic conditions, but it turns out that the cosmetics industry could reach a far more broad audience with a lot more wealth to donate.
For a time, people thought any form of bio mod was unacceptable. Nowadays, those sorts tend to be isolated cases. Still, there is a general unease around Anthros, which are individuals that have been spliced with the genes of a non-human creature. Unlike the skin or eye mods, animal splices render the individual impotent, and often reduces the effective lifespan of the individual. What's worse, these sorts of mods cannot be undone, since they often strip old genetics to force dependency on the new. The long-term effects on the body have not been shown to be promising, as the first generations of Anthros have started to reach their upper age limit. Digitigrade limbs happen to have a shorter lifespan than the human limbs they've replaced, and such Anthros tend to require at least a cane by their 50s.
One other term used in hushed tones when speaking about extreme body-modding was Nons, short for non-humans. These were individuals that modified themselves so severely, they ceased to have a humanoid physique. Massively distorted head shapes and quadrupedal movement by necessity were the most common attributes associated to Nons, but perhaps a legless snake tail would also count?
To speak that term publicly was taboo, since it had been the Anthro-bashing term for a few decades before it was considered a expression of hate by the justice system. It was no longer strictly synonymous to Anthro, but since non-humans were so rare, it's assumed you're using it for the other definition.
The computer finally finished booting up, so Josh started searching for anything that could help him learn more about his roommate. He first started looking for what kind of mods she must've taken, but he couldn't find anything that even remotely got to her level. The only snake tails he could find were small ones. Well, 2-3 feet isn't small, but it's definitely not the at-least-15-foot monstrosity that was carrying Coral around. Similarly, he couldn't find any sales on snake heads that were quite so animalistic as Coral had. There were unhinging jaws, both frontal and rear fangs, and even a forked tongue, but the image shown containing all snake mods was pretty much human in shape. There was something of a snout with the removal of the nose, but Coral was indistinguishable from a big snake if she opted not to talk.
Josh looked into some searches, because surely there was someone out there that wanted what Coral had. Unfortunately, his results were poor. Each time someone asked, the general response seemed to be that it was truly impossible. Apparently, snake mods in specific have too flat a head shape to contain an unmodified brain, and the laws are very strict on potentially lobotomizing a customer. What's more, since snakes contain their organ system through a good portion of their "tail," asking for a true snake tail would be akin to asking for a centaur. Centaur attempts had been a notorious blockade to the field, as scientists struggled to eliminate one organ system while still growing the other to feed a body-and-a-half. Most of the attempts met with an agonizing existence followed by death a few days later.
Therefore, what did he see? Inorganic mods existed, but they were woefully behind and out of style compared to bio mods. Custom jobs had harsh government oversight, and they were prohibitively expensive. Judging by the apartment she's living in, there was no way she'd be rich enough to afford custom work that broke new ground, nor could she afford to advance inorganic mods to make a massive tail attachment that flawlessly blended with her scale pattern.
Josh tried to search some more, but nothing was coming up and he got a bit distracted by some of the sites. He had actually moved into the city because he wanted better access to bio mods; his old town didn't have the population or wealth to sustain a mod shop. He hadn't really cared what he'd get, but on more than one occasion, he had considered going all-in and trying to become a non-human. He was sure the price was too steep, but it didn't hurt to set a goal. He probably should learn more about the impacts of such a choice before he dove off that cliff.
He shut his computer down and started clearing out the other boxes, then chose to go to sleep for the night. Perhaps he'd be able to pick his roommate's brain a bit more tomorrow.