Nathan lived in a light green row house, tightly packed but four stories tall, a loft conversion poking out of it's dark tile roof. It had a fresh coat of paint, and long planters beneath every window, making it stand out on an already colourful street, brimming with a loud welcoming energy. And yet, Nathan just stood there, looking at it like a looming horror.
“Dude?” Little Jake whispered. Nathan didn’t even notice, too deep in his own thoughts. Jake grabbed a lump of fur, tugging it until Nathan shook out of it.
“I’m thinking.” Nathan lied, drumming his paw digits on the fence. “It's hard, I have no idea what to even say.”
“Won’t have to say anything. According to this, your family is still human, they are gonna take one look at your furry ass and…”
“Are you scanning my family?” Nathan snapped. Jake, realizing his faux pas, closed the program.
“Look, it's gonna be fine. You are gonna walk in, they are gonna see that you are a furry now, laugh at you, and then you are all gonna head off to the parade together.” Jake was getting louder, so loud that a passing pedestrian had top double-take, slowing before moving on. Thinking on his feet Nathan pulled away from his front yard, moved down an alleyway and into his backyard, sitting in a wooden noock his father and his uncle built a few years back.
The backyard was much longer than the front, and the awning they sat under was secluded away from the rest of the house, hidden behind tall sunflowers and a greenhouse. Yet, even here, Nathan could still make out the silhouettes of his family, running to and from the kitchen as their mother batted them away, the laughter faint but still there. Despite everything, despite the new eyes and ears and even the new perspective, Nathan could still identify who each silhouette was without trying.
After staring for a moment, and to finish it off Nathan whipped his phone out, called Jake's phone, and took a screenshot when Jake picked it up. Using the screenshot he created the illusion that he was on the phone with Jake, and sat the phone on his lap. It wasn’t the most convincing trick in the world, but it might at least fool anyone that saw them in passing or from a distance.
The walk over had done a number on Jake, the fear pumping blood around Nathan’s body, to anywhere but Jake. Shaking off the sleep, Jake cleared his throat and continued.
“Remember when your uncle came out?” Jake continued. “The one that built this thing? Because I do. It's just gonna be like that again, only this time your dad might not need less woodworking to establish everything is fine and normal.”
Nathan scrunched his face, his fingers drumming again. “What if it's not? What if they still reject me?” He asked.
“Then we undo all of this, and we go back to us sitting there in my basement with the vac and I dunno, you can turn me into a busty furry Jenna and you can fuck her into oblivion.” Jake felt Nathan's reactive cringe echo through their bodies, so heavy Nathan shifted on the bench, his ears flapping back. The mental image was so unappetizing it punished Jake, who dizzied at the thought. He shook it off again, sighing and continuing. “Or, maybe you could just turn me into a busty furry me, and you can fuck me into oblivion, and the next day we could order a few burgers and watch the Lord of the Rings. Or we could just eat burgers and watch Lord of the Rings. Or fuck it, we could teleport to Bora Bora and just chill.
“Look, I know you don’t wanna change them, and honestly this world is kooky enough as-is so I am kinda with you on that, but thats like only one thing we can do out of a billion. Power is in out hands, or paws even. I’ll be in there, with you, ready to pull you out at the first sign of danger.”
“It's not like that.” Nathan spoke at last. “You set that thing up to create minimum changes right? So that isn’t just a woman that's like my mom, she is my mom, and while I can undo all this shit I will always know she doesn’t like furries. Genie’s out the bottle. And before you say it no I’m not gonna use the vac to find out her response, put that fucking thing away.”
Jake, who had reflexively opened up the vac again, closed it again, refocusing on his friend with another sigh. Laying a tiny paw on his underwear, Jake continued.
“Well, if she does reject you it's gonna suck, but, and stick with me here, it also sucked when she wouldn’t get you an Xbox One when they came out, even when you had the money. But, you started talking to her, and you found out she was worried you were going to be on it all day, and become this hyper aggressive snark like the Patterson kids, or that you would become fat, et cetera, et cetera.
“So you explained how none of that was true, and promised that you would still keep up your GPA and work out more, that you would still be you, despite everything. Now look at you, regular xbox playing machine, and while you duid get a little fatter, and a little starkier, she still loves you and stuff.”
There was a moment of pause, as the thought lingered in the air between them, Nathan’s tail; just starting to wag.
“You said kooky.” Nathan laughed, breaking the tension.
“Alright, how else am I supposed to describe it? I am literally talking to you from your cocksheath. And I mean, you only know half of it. Look at the flag”
Nathan whipped his head to a flag waving just visible above the house of the nutjob next door. While he had seen the flag a thousand times that day it was so similar the changes went by unnoticed, hidden in plain sight. That flag, the US flag, only had forty-two stars.
Jake's little paws began rummaging in Nathan’s pants, pushing a map into Nathan’s view, which could only be described as a parody of the world. Around fifty nations and twenty micronations had butchered their way into familiar borders, and more countries were divided up like the UK’s Kingdoms, which now lacked Northern Ireland and had the addition of Cornwall. Nathan balked as he saw the Cascadian People’s Republic, and Federated Europe’s occupation of Pensacola, before bursting into laughter as he zoomed in on one the most egregious detail.
Somehow Oklahoma’s panhandle was even bigger, reaching across texas and onto the New Navajo Commonwealth.
“Now do you see?” Jake said. “If we fuck with things anymore we might create a coastal Oklahoma via panhandle. But thats okay. We can fix our problems without it, the old fashioned way, in this world or the old one, armed with whatever knowledge we gain from being here. I have a little reset screen minimized away, and our home reality is just a pawpress away.”
To emphasize this, little Jake’s gesticulation ended as he pressed his little paw into their now unified ballsack, sending a shiver of pleasure over the two of them. Little Jake shook his head, forcing himself back into control.
“Okay.” Nathan replied, switching his phone off, standing up at last. “I can do this.”
“Don’t you mean we?”