“I do not keep it in THIS room, of course. Your uniform will be a very sensitive piece of equipment, Gray One. I would not expect you to know all of our safety procedures right from the outset, but I imagine someone with your skill set would appreciate a clean work station.” What the heck is he talking about? You were sold to this old creep to be a household servant, not some sort of hazmat worker. You doubt he’s in the mood for arguing, however.
“Please come with me,” he continues, “our extruder is almost done warming up.” You awkwardly toddle behind Mr. Veradux as he leads you down the hallway. In the solitude of your mind, you despise how pretending to be a passive drone requires not asking any of a dozen questions you have right now. It also means you’re obligated not to shield your crotch while walking around naked, but that’s a problem you’ve yet to fully mentally unpack. Your owner’s path leads you up a stairwell; two, three, four floors pass by you. Your tiny child body can barely muster the stamina to march up these brushed steel stairs. There’s a priority if you ever want to escape anything; cardio.
You hear the machine long before you see it. The low roar of industrial motors greets you as you approach a metal door in a hallway of white-painted concrete walls. This feels less like a mansion and more like another school- or a prison, for that matter.
Mr. Veradux approaches a keypad and glances at you. “Gray One, please do not look while I am inputting the password.” You lower your head, even though he’s covering the keypad with his off-hand anyways. “There, done. It is not that I do not trust you, it is that I have rivals who can and WILL extract my secrets from you if they can.” There is a beep of confirmation, and a sudden rush of air as the metal door swings open.
Your curiosity is not yet sated, because beyond the door is nothing but an airlock. You and your master wait in silence for a good few minutes while the two of you are hosed down with disinfectant mist. He dons a surgical mask, goggles and gloves, yet he doesn’t seem to have any such personal protective equipment for you yet.
Once you’re within the extruder room… the first thing which comes to mind is how soft the charcoal-colored floor is under your feet. The closest normal thing to walking in this room would be the padding in a kid’s gymnastics playroom, but the cushioned floor you’re standing on is way too soft and yielding for any acrobatics. Mr. Veradux, ever dignified, slows down and steps carefully rather than risk looking silly in front of his servant. The sounds of machines chugging away are muted by the padded walls and ceiling and floor, yet there’s no mistaking the bulletproof glass tube in the middle of the room for anything else- that’s your destination.
“We will be custom-fitting you to your uniform, Gray One. Consider yourself fortunate! You get to be on the cutting edge of tools and protective gear.” With a single button press, Mr. Veradux retracts the tube into the floor. “Step inside, Gray One.”
Well, he gave you the order. You pad across the squeaky, squishy floor and stand in the circle. Your trembling is probably giving you away, but you’re far past caring when you’re jumping right into the fire like this.
“Relax,” your master says. Clear, syrupy fluid begins to flood your tube. “Breathe. Resisting will cause you more injury than simply going with the flow.” A clinging chill creeps into the atmosphere. Your skin shows goosebumps, your breath catches in your chest. Clear ooze creeps up past your head, but you take your master’s advice and breathe… and you actually can! Some half-lucid memory of your old life- “perfluorocarbons”, liquid which carries oxygen almost as well as thin air. This doesn’t seem like straight oxygen, though, as a wave of numbness causes your muscles to lax. The last few bubbles of plain old air escape your mouth as you giggle. Floating in here isn’t so bad…
CRACKLE.
You feel something sharp lance into the back of your neck. With no ability to sense pain at the moment, the intrusion means as little to you as pushing a tack into a bulletin board. Something slightly more firm presses against the skin on the back of your neck, soon followed by an odd… slithering sensation inside your body, starting over your spine but eventually spreading to your limbs. You try moving your arms to get a better look, but the distorted, refracted image of Mr. Veradux makes a reassuring hand gesture from outside of the tank. He gives a reminder- simply go with the flow. Pinpricks of warmth begin to touch inside you wherever the slithering goes.
Nothing could make you nervous right now, not even the sound of something being screwed into a port in the back of your head. Once whatever it is reaches a contact point, your nerves seem “alive” again, not yet feeling pain yet still able to feel the world around you. A second, more aggressive drilling sensation enters the base of your spine right above your buttocks, accompanied by large ripples in the perfluorocarbon tank. Suddenly your coccyx seems… longer? That can’t be right…
You finally catch sight of the mechanical limbs sticking things into your body as they reach for your hands. One by one, your soft human fingernails simply fall away with minimal effort from the machine, not even a single drop of blood shed. The tips of your fingers receive what looks like… red press-on nails? No, press-ons don’t have sharp prongs which socket into your skin, nor do they have sensation in them the moment they touch whatever is slithering inside you. You would have missed the same thing happening to your toenails if you didn’t look down out of curiosity.
Shouldn’t you be… scared? Maybe not. This is a surgical procedure, not some bloody madman sawing your limbs off. The tank makes it feel very official, or maybe it’s just the drugs. When a clamp holds your head still while a set of deadly fangs gets capped over your teeth, all you can think of is faith that all of these alterations have a purpose. The new teeth are a bit bulky and the canines give you a slight overbite, but they just feel right somehow.
You don’t know how you feel about the new ocular lenses rapidly approaching your eyes, but you don’t have much of a choice at this rate. Doing your best to ignore the… slicing… you focus on what feels like an odd tattoo being drawn on your back. Whatever it is, it is connecting to the network inside your body with an electric tingle. You didn’t notice your arms and legs going limp a while ago, but your neck going limp was harder to ignore. It isn’t even five minutes before a second, thicker set of slithering sensations anchor themselves within your body, returning control over your limbs. Every movement seems stronger, somehow, more forceful.
Eventually your vision returns, though it isn’t how you remember it. Everything is even blurrier than it already was for a moment, but it is soon perfectly clear even through the “water” and with sharper colors. Your hands have tough, pink paw pads on their palms, and paw beans on each fingertip. Bending your legs enough to see the soles of your feet takes some coordination, but the same pads are on the balls and heels of your soles too. Wait a minute, that gray shadow right under your skin, inside your fingers… are your bones chromed or something? No, it can’t be, a metal shell right on your bones is a stupid idea. Some sort of… enamel? You’re just a kid, it’s not your job to know these things.
Your train of thought is derailed by a series of stabbing sensations in your temples. A rainbow gradient of color streams across your vision, followed by red rectangles rapidly darting in random directions.
HESTIA SYSTEMS v. 0.91
PLEASE WAIT, SYSTEM PROCESSING
WELCOME [Gray One]
ORIENTATION IN PROGRESS
What? Where? Is that inside your eyes? If you focus, you can feel the electric tingling behind your eye sockets. Oh, that’s- that’s artificial nerves! The sheer strangeness of the whole situation is making your ears flatten out of sheer frustration.
Your… ears… you weren’t able to swivel them with just your ear muscles alone before, could you? Were your ears so tall or pointy, or anywhere near the top of your head? Finally allowed to move your hands freely, you paw at the spots where your human ears once were, only feeling a pair of silvery discs in their place. Your new ears are just as obviously artificial, with a pair of wireless headphones integrated right into the eardrums.
CAUTION: TAMPERING WITH IMPANTS BEFORE FULL INTEGRATION MAY CAUSE INJURY OR SUBOPTIMAL PERFORMANCE
Okay, okay! What a pushy pair of retinas you have, flashing warning messages in the corner of your eye. A long series of prickling sensations on your skin are the last major change you feel, a sudden growth of short ginger fur sprouting up all over your body like so much grass in a prairie. Even in the distorted light of this tube of goo, you can still see the stripes and gentle gradient of color in your new fur as it grows in, leaving white “mittens” on your paws. A sudden sensitivity appears on your cheeks and forehead as a set of whiskers form on you. Suddenly, the weight and viscosity of the perfluorocarbons is starting to become disorienting…
BASIC ORIENTATION COMPLETE: REQUESTING RELEASE
Glugging and chugging noises announce the world of goo draining away from you. The tube recedes back into the floor, leaving you collapsing onto your hands and knees, disoriented.
Mr. Veradux claps gently. “Congratulations, Gray One. How does your glorious new body feel?”
You retch and spit up a thin stream of perfluorocarbons on the padded floor.
“Hmm, but what else?”
Deep breath… “Weird, Mr. Veradux. I- this one feels weird.” Your voice has changed drastically. Why do you suddenly have a vaguely New York accent? “Everything is just slightly off.” A ginger striped blur zips past you, and it takes a moment to realize that’s your tail.
“Take a look in the mirror, Gray One, it may help.” He flips a floor length mirror around to face you, and you stand up to get a better look at yourself.
Leaping librarians, you’re a catboi! You already knew that, but it didn’t sink in until you actually saw it. Vertical slit pupils stare back at you from the mirror. Your long eyelashes and cute little fangs make you appear less predatory than a cat would normally be. It should be embarrassing, except…
You feel good. You feel REALLY good. Maybe it’s all the upgrades, but now you’re bursting with energy! You clasp your hands in front of your lap and tilt your head innocently, tail flicking form side to side. “Nya,” you say as you test out your new voice. “Rowr.”
There’s that smirk… “You like it, then?”
“I LOVE it!” you balance on one foot and raise your paw in the classic “lucky cat” pose. “Gray One loves it! Is this the uniform you were talking about, Mr. Veradux?”
A raised eyebrow… “No, Gray One. As I said, we custom-fit you to the uniform. We intend to employ cats, so you became a cat. Shall we fit you into your suit, then?”
You grin and bounce on your feet. “Yes! Uh, Gray One would like that very much!”
With no further words or warnings, Mr. Veradux snaps his fingers.
With a creaking and a squealing, the padded floor begins to ripple under your feet. “Meow?” you say, looking down to watch the curious phenomenon. A huge mound of the rubbery substance pools up into a round creche, then suddenly POPS out into the shape of a form-fitting catsuit! Your new uniform bounces and wobbles as it unfolds to its full size.
“So, I just put it on?”, you ask.
“No. As promised, you will be fitted into your suit.”
You have no idea what your master is talking about until you feel something wrap around your ankles! The gray and black bodysuit has sprung to life and is clinging on to you with a tight grip! Your panicking attempt to back away from the suit ends with you tripping over the squishy floor and fall over backwards, giving the suit the perfect chance to begin swallowing you feet-first. Your paws are quickly encased in a pair of soft gray booties with spongy black soles. They fit tightly and squeakily over your toes, leaving five tiny bumps visible. You flex your toes, extending your cat claws through the socks… and when you retract them, the holes seal up as if they were never there.
“The latest in self-sealing safety gear. Nearly impossible to sabotage. Go ahead and try, please!”
Frightened by your new “friend”, you release the claws on your hands and rake at what looks like a thin rubber suit. It’s like trying to saw through a tube of super glue. Whenever it looks like you’re making progress on the gray rubber creeping up your legs, the substance simply flows around your cutting tools.
“Mr. Veradux, help!”
“Of course.” He lifts you to your feet and stretches the suit out so it can flow over your hips easier. “No sense in trying to put on pants while sitting down.”
There is a sudden slurping noise as your cyborg tail is sucked into the suit’s tail sleeve! Once you’re inside the garment makes no attempt to arrest your movements- it knows it’s going to win without fighting dirty. Another slurp draws your fuzzy white penis and testicles into a small, tight pouch between your legs. The uniform is especially thick and padded around the thighs and belly, painting over any boring human features and leaving you with a smooth tummy. Right above your suit’s black belly spot is an odd insignia- a yellow line and a red line, slightly jagged. It feels familiar somehow.
You resign yourself to defeat with a smile as you willingly place your arms in the sleeves. The black “gloves” at the ends of the sleeves are just mittens, but you can still fit your claws through them- perhaps this makes them “murder mittens”. One last stretch pulls the snug little hood over your head, framing your face over your chin and above your eyebrows, leaving just enough space for your whiskers to stick out. The hood even has pockets for your kitty ears!
You marvel at your finished body. Why is this so strangely comfy? “Is this everything, Mr. Veradux?”
“Not quite. Please allow me to show you your work schedule for the foreseeable future.”
With one final swoop, the man places a pink holographic visor over your face, held on by magnets right over the metal caps on the sides of your head. A slow pulse of light washes over your vision, accompanied by sweet whispering in your earpieces. A quick glance in the mirror shows that your cybereyes have little pink hearts for pupils. Oh no…
“Oh yes, Gray One. This is not you being singled out for punishment. This is simply… a safely precaution. It is a large world out there, and we can’t have you getting hurt when ignoring orders. Isn’t that right?”
You step forward and curtsey without even thinking of it.” “Yes, Mr. Veradux.”