Chris wasn’t where he thought he would be in his life now, he had graduated from university and expected to find a job in his field within a few weeks or maybe six months at the most. He hadn’t granulated at the top of his class, but he had a B+ range. Now almost six years after graduation and closer to 30 then 25 he sat in a small cubicle of a call center. He really didn’t like the job, but it paid for him to live in his small apartment, his food, his car and some luxuries but he still wasn’t where he thought he would be. He had no girlfriend yet alone a wife, something which his mother kept asking him about.
“I am sorry Sir, but that is really all the government will pay for your land.” Answered Chris as he spoke over the phone to an older man who had to sell his farm which had been in the family since the 1800s, he knew this because he kept bringing it up. “I am sorry, but it doesn’t matter, the Monster Relocation Act requires you to move to one of the cities within one of the settlement areas.”
Chris was getting tired of saying those words, after the government failed to keep the monster virus contained at first, public pressure began to build. People where afraid that newly turned monsters could spread the virus even after the CDC and private universities released studies saying that it wasn’t the case. People began to attack monsters, monsters where thrown out of business and multiple religious and political leaders pushed through the Monster Relocation Act.
The act was simple, everyone who transformed into a monster would go to one of the transformation center, once they transformed they would then have to live in one of the now three dozen relocation centers spread out across the nation. While the law had passed with wording that those in the new areas would be treated equally to those who are not monsters and that all their rights minus the freedom of movement outside of the centers would be honored.
Personally, he understood why some monsters had to be relocated, centaurs couldn’t live in apartment buildings and minotaur’s couldn’t ride in elevators. Merpeople couldn’t drive a car and so on. Still there was no reason why someone who got cat ears and a tail to be forced to move. So what if some monsters had to were special cloths or even no cloths if they could live in the human world with ease, they should be allowed to stay in his view but the law was the law.
Chris shook his head, that law wouldn’t last he was sure. It had been struck down multiple times in the courts and was on the way to the Supreme Court, if that didn’t kill it the number of people who where now monsters would. According to the news the current Monster count of the nation sat at over 20 million people and rising, that was about the same as the five largest cities population and all those monsters had the vote. Some of the more religious leaders and the politicians who followed them actually tried to push to have the right to vote stripped away from them, saying they weren’t human anymore. Some even pushed to have them all killed. Luckily that had been shut down with force.
Finally with his day done he left and headed home. The next morning, he woke up and instantly began to throw up. With fear in his heart he went to the doctor and a quick test confirmed, he had the Monster flu…now his world would change again.