There was a surge of energy rippling out from the machine, like soft static, and a mechanical hum accompanied with the skipping scratch of a HDD. For a moment the world seemed to grind to a halt, shudder and shake, and jolt as random objects transformed with a pop. One object, a water bottle, stretched out into a longer bottle, but it also merged with the nightstand it was placed upon. It began to make a sound like it was being repeatedly hit against the surface, while another bottle undergoing the same changes flung out from the nightstand, ejected from it.
Then, a moment later, reality just snapped back to normal, and everything was still again.
“What did you do?” Nathan asked. Jake shrugged.
“I just went into the ‘normalize’ section and flipped on the basic settings. Looks like we are living in a kinkier version of reality, ‘one where we can exist,’ according to the Vac, ‘and our sexual wants and behaviors are more acceptable.’”
Nathan clambered over the bed and looked out the window, facing into the street. A neighbour was mowing the lawn, and another was welcoming guests at the door. Through a window a teenager was writing something at his desk with his headset in, and in the distance a plane flew overhead. It was sunny, and still early morning, and everything seemed dull to a fault.
“I can’t see.” Little Jake said. Nathan pulled away from the window, looked at Jake through the reflection in the mirror. At this point he was just a head poking out of the sheath.
“Well, do you want me to just put my cock on the windowsill? Might be able to see then.” They laughed, which gave Nathan a new sensation. With his cock free, unsupported by his hands or his thighs, he could feel it’s every ministration, more aware of it than ever as Jake settled into the pouch. “Seriously though, it all looks pretty normal I guess.”
“Check on the TV downstairs, we should have a few hours left before Mom gets home.”
Jake endured the jostling, but the low angle on life as his body moved about the house was a little confusing, so he retreated back into the sheath. Inside it was almost therapeutic, the thumps of Nathan’s feet paws like the listing and waving of the ocean. He almost fell asleep, until Nathan pulled the hood back as he started scanning through the channels.
The main headline on the local news, besides the usual politics, was of the Spring Festival parade later on that day, and the glimpses of the preparations did reveal a few bits of warped reality. Brands had slightly different names, a few objects had slightly different shapes, all pretty normal, until they started going over the floats. It was only sneak peaks, but every now and then there was the glimpse of a crewman that was less than human, or a centaur pulling something along, but always in the background. Frustrating, they flipped on.
A few channels in and a neko was hosting a cooking show, followed by nothing until they started getting into the cable channels. One movie had two wolves chatting, and rerun of a nineties sitcom had a cow as the wise-and-sassy friend, waving a cloven finger as the audience burst into laughter. Meanwhile, Jake noticed that the channels seemed to have been reorganized, which was strange but ultimately harmless.
Things really changed when going through the history channels, which were all organized into a block ascending around the 201st channel. After catching glimpses of furry images in some antiques they landed on a TV channel dedicated to furry history, which had a panel of multi-species, multi-ethnic hosts debating the impact of furry transformation legalization in certain states in recent years. Looking at the digital guide the next few shows focused on famous furries, furries in the Second World War, and a movie docudrama starting later that night about the first furries in the nineteen tens.
The two friends exchanged a look at one another. They really had just warped one hundred years of human history, just to make their fetish that little bit more palatable. It was both silly and horrifying.
“You know, I also have an unbirth fetish,” Nathan said, “I wonder how far back we would have to go to make that possible.”
“I am currently your cock,” Jake replied, “I doubt unbirth is impossible.”
They flipped through the channels at random for a few moments, discovering a few more tidbits here and there. Furries were just the most common form of people referred to as ‘differently-bodied individuals’ in polite society, and ‘mutants,’ ‘monsters,’ ‘mutes,’ and ‘mutts’ in less polite society. Nekos were the most common but often the least noticed, monster-girls the most common ‘advanced’ mutts outside America, and they all had different communities, colonies, cultures, and levels of integration. They even had their own sports, sporting leagues, and their own olympics held every six years and always avoiding the main Summer and Winter Olympics by at least a year.
There was a lot of talk about kink, but always peripheral talk, framed through an almost medical lense, and centered on the mutts, the mutts they saw all with a mild kinkiness to the way they dressed. There was, however, the odd prejudicial jibe, embedded in the ways non-mutts talked, buried in the familiar dog whistles.
It was all a lot to learn, and way too much to take in, especially for Jake. He was starting to regret capitulating, and wanted to return the world to what it was, and himself back to his old skin.
Nathan, meanwhile, was entranced by the TV, trying to find more of himself and lingering on a war movie. The first thing he saw was a deer woman, like the one from his dreams, walking through a burning village with a bundle in its arms, until she was gunned down by a soldier, only for that soldier to be burned alive by another soldier with a flamethrower. Not only was it strange to see a deer-woman on grainy nineteen seventies film, adjacent to such horror, but as the rescue helicopters flew the thump of the blades darted around the room, bouncing between surround sound speakers.
Nathan’s ears spun left and right, following the sound as best they could, but moving so fast they started to get sore. He hit a few random numbers on the remote, bringing him back to history documentaries on a black history channel, turning the volume down to let his ears recover.
“Well, at least I can still vote.” Nathan joked. Jake snapped his head up to the screen, which was running footage of the march on the Washington Mall. Jake let out a half-hearted laugh, unable to focus on the TV anymore.
“Are you alright?” Nathan asked, prodding Jake again. Jake nodded, looking at his own tiny paws as they slid out of the sheath. It was all getting a little too real, but it made him recentre his anger on his friend, on the man that did this to him. He still had power here, and still had his plots.
“Just struggling to take it all in. Doesn’t feel real.”
“Same. Maybe once we get out there it’ll feel better?” Nathan replied with a pleading look. “Talk to my folks? You can always undo it when it's done.”
Jake nodded, shaking off the confusion. For some reason it was getting harder to focus on his plots, the thoughts retreating away from him.
“Sure, but get dressed first.”
Nathan was bulkier than the old him, but his old clothes still fit. He wondered for a moment if they had been changed, until he found his underwear, which made them both laugh hysterically. To accommodate his tail, the reality change had put a fly in the back, with a tieable cord going over the base of the tail. Nathan struggled with them, but eventually managed to get them up.
“You look Nice.” Jake said from his fly.
“We look nice.” Nathan relied, the two sharing a smile.
With that Jake slid from sight, in the warmth and darkness of his friend’s underwear, in the warmth and darkness of his sheath. He kept awake, focusing on trying to figure out what was going on through the jostling and the echo. When the darkness intensified, he knew he was finally covered in jeans.
Nathan admired himself in the mirror for a while, looking at the furry new him with an ever-broadening smile. The chub he was used to was gone, replaced with tone and fur, and a face that was both cute and handsome. Unlike a dog there was no debate over his expression, it was all very human, just through an animalistic shape. He slipped on his jacket, and rucksack, pulled out a toothy grin, and shone with a sudden self awareness.
“I felt that!” Jake's voice muffled through the denim. There was a deep thump of blood that stiffened him, Nathan aroused by his own reflection. “Try not to dive too deep into your ego.”
Nathan looked at his groin, so used to looking at Jake through the mirror it was jarring not to see him looking back. What was also a bit of a shock was that his friend was actually creating a very mild package, just the sexy hint of a bulge.
“Hey, hey,” Jake said, “c’mon now, don’t wanna cum in here. Pocket the vac and let's get going.”
Nathan pocketed the laptop in his bag and started heading for the door, only to pause while fiddling with Jake’s keys, as Jake once again spoke up.
“One last thing. Mind going through the back?”
Nathan raised his brow.
“Just, don’t want my neighbours seeing this, even with the world the way it is. There is a side-street, you just have to jump over the fence.”
“No,” Nathan sighed, “I’m not about to do that.”
Nathan stepped out onto the front steps of his friends house, locked the door and slid the key into his pocket. His heart was in his throat, and his dick was staging a feeble rebellion, but as he stood there, under the sun, he felt pretty good. He had a decent chunk of cash, a new look, and a whole day to explore both. There was the business of going home and coming out, and he did have money for a cab, but going via bus felt like getting a tour of this new world.
He was also shoeless, so it might be prudent just heading back. He began testing how it helt, walking across the path until a bend, then strolling across the grass. Jake noticed the change in texture, grumbled, but he found his grumbling harder and harder. The rhythmic thumping of legs, the encompassing coiness of the loins, and the general lack of sensory input soon push him towards sleep. He was tired after all, and he didn’t get enough sleep.