Jon mostly managed to stay away from hydrants and squirrels on the way to the park. He felt downtrodden that only his brother Benjamin seemed to recognize him as (partially) human, and that even Benjamin seemed unfazed that he would soon be taking his brother out for walks on leashes and feeding him dog food instead of playing video games with him or bickering about who was Mom's favorite sharing advice with him about how to get girls. Why was it that everyone else seemed fine with idea that Jon should just go ahead and live like he was Benji's pet? Was he really that insignificant as a human? Were his future goals and past triumphs so minor and generic that it wouldn't matter if he never achieved them? Did Benji really not have any understanding of why he would be acting so depressed? Was that fence-post really the best place to get laid if you haven't yet been spayed or neutered? Uh, nevermind.
They finally made it to the park with olfactory messages bombarding Jonathan's nasal cavities all the way there. His darkening nose was like a news feed. Trying to ignore it all was starting to take a tremendous amount of his mental effort. When they finally made it into the park, he just stood there and sniffed the air for like thirty seconds. Twenty humans (five old, eight young, seven middle-aged), five dogs (three neutered males, one spayed female, one intact female), three cats, and more squirrels and birds than he could count. From some of the squirrels, he could smell fear--from the dogs, excitement! He wished HE could be chasing the squirrels. But he knew he couldn't let that happen, not again at least.
"Well, here we are, Jon," said Benji to his new pet (uh, to his brother). "Isn't it nice out today? Aren't you glad we got to do this today?"
Jon stayed silent for another moment and wiggled his nose. He snapped out of his trance enough to answer. "Um, yeah, I guess so. Hey, Benji, does the park smell, I don't know, really crowded or jumbled or busy to you today?"
Benji sniffed the air, pretending he thought Jonathan might be talking about normal human-detectable smells. "Nope. I don't smell anything." It was a lie; he COULD smell some normal park smells like flowers and fresh cut grass, but he wanted to make things even more inexplicable for Jon on his way to dogdom, and maybe get him thinking and talking even more about his urges so he might give into them. "What, does the park smell bad or something? We can head on down the street if the sewer lines exploded again."
"No, it's just ... I can smell ... like -- Oh, who am I kidding, Benji, I can smell EVERYTHING! Dogs, cats, squirrels, people fifty yards away, YOU, Mr. Iago's cantina down the street. Nobody should be able to smell all of this, Benji. It's ... not normal, is it?"
"Well, it's normal if your wiggly wet nose is anything to go by. Sorry, Jonathan, I know you didn't ask for this, but you might have to learn to deal with smelling a lot more than the rest of us can if we can't get rid of that fancy new sniffer. I can be patient and follow you for a while if you need to go check out some scents."
"Grrrrrrrrrrrr ... What, are you CRAZY? You think I--? Oh, sorry, Benji, I know you're just trying to help. This is pretty weird for the both of us, eh? But remember, every time I follow my dog instincts, I seem to turn a little bit more into a dog. We've decided I've got to hold out so I don't turn all the way into one, right? You want me to stop changing and maybe go back the other way, d-d-don't you?"
Benjamin was really starting to feel guilty that Jon was getting so torn up about this. He legitimately thought that Jon might eventually come around to ENJOY turning into a dog. I mean, come on, they get to run in the park, play with frisbees and squirrels and maybe other dogs, take walks and sleep around all day, go out on the town without stressing over clothes, they even get to pee wherever they want. Benji thought he would be a good owner, too; he was tired of their sibling rivalry and thought maybe he would actually have a friendlier and more active relationship with his brother if they both got accustomed to one of them being the family dog. But if Benjamin was the one who thought a dog's life wouldn't be so bad in the long run, maybe he had made a mistake turning his brother into the pet.
"Sure, buddy," answered Benjamin with the sappiest fake genuineness he could muster. There was no way he could tell the truth now. He could change Jonathan back, but he wouldn't be willing to face him about what he had already done with the Chronivac in the first place. He'd be more likely to turn his and Jonathan's awareness off tomorrow so everyone would think his dog body was normal and Jon would stop mourning the loss of his human form. "Do whatever you need to do to stay human, if that's what you really want. We don't have to check out smells. You can come with me. I think I'm going to go talk to that pretty girl over there."
The beautiful young woman in a pink scrunchie and blue miniskirt seemed to be walking a dog of her own, an adorable little jewel-collared corgi. Benjamin thought maybe meeting another dog might help Jonathan start to loosen up a bit. Also, he thought the corgi's owner was smoking hot. The two pet-owners introduced each other and started commenting on each others pets.
"Ooooh, your bloodhound is beautiful," said the female, whose name had turned out to be Tina. "How long have you had him?"
"Oh, um, a few years now, I guess?" answered Benjamin uncertainly. 'A bloodhound, eh?' he thought silently. 'Nice large-breed, scent-hound, not too shaggy, ridiculously good senses even among dogs. That explains why his sense of smell is increasing so quickly, why he doesn't seem to be getting very much smaller, and why his expanding coat is staying so short. Also explains the insanely large ears.'
"Would it be OK if I pet him?" Tina asked. Jonathan frantically shook his head no. "He can be a bit touchy sometimes," said Benji. The more they kept talking, and the more overtly they started flirting, the more bored and invisible John felt. Normally Jon would have thought she was pretty hot, too, but for some reason the women at this park just weren't doing it for him today. He chalked it up to his worry and continued to sit in silence. The corgi was sniffing him, which he was trying his best to ignore. With nothing else to focus on, he started absentmindedly started sniffing the park bench everyone was standing beside. The number of smells wafting from there was getting just too intense to ignore and seemed to have multiplied since he got here. He could pick ten, twenty, maybe even thirty individual people who had been sitting on this bench that he could identify, plus animals who had been on or around it, including dogs who had peed on its legs. He was detecting food and drinks that had been spilled there, and birds (mostly pigeons) who had come to eat that food up. As he kept sniffing, more and more smells started to pop up here and there, until he was pretty sure he was smelling residues of people and things which hadn't even been there in the past two weeks.
Benji noticed Jon was getting into his chance to discreetly explore the different new kinds of scents he was learning to detect, just like he'd hoped that he would. It wasn't even discrete anymore: Jon was eagerly sniffing his surroundings now just like any other dog at the park. He could tell his brother was still trying to resist doing something urgent, but whatever he was holding back on, it definitely wasn't sniffing the bench. His brothers snout started getting even a little longer, and his cheeks got a little more wrinkled. Benji realized he was starting to lose track of what Tina was talking about and dived back into the conversation.