Nate wasn’t quite sure what to expect of the other donkeys. Honestly right now his attention was mostly on keeping his pants up. Mr. Smith didn’t say much as he led Nate to an elevator in the back of the building.
The very back of the building. The HR department had a very open floor plan, and Nate could feel people’s eyes on him as he wagged across the floor. Mr. Smith wasn’t giving him enough time to figure out what to do about his tail, and it refused to hold still as he scurried across the building. It must have been exceedingly obvious that Nate was a new donkey.
Owen certainly knew how to get Nate flustered at this point.
Nate swished his hips nervously as the HR rep called the elevator. No matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to get his tail to stay under his pants. He thought having a belt might help, but that just kept making the back of his pants sag down even further.
“Get in,” Mr. Smith gestured when the elevator arrived. He didn’t seem to care to comment on Nate’s indecent explosive. He boarded after Nate and then tapped a button labeled “B”.
B…? What kind of floor was that? Nate expected the elevator to move up, but instead it descended into the Earth. Oh! It was a basement floor. Right. He should have known that.
The elevator dinged, and Nate immediately caught a whiff of sweaty fur. Mr. Smith didn’t say anything about it, and simply walked a few feet onto the floor.
It wasn’t like the other parts of the building. The walls weren’t furnished, and there were exposed pipes moving through the ceiling. This must have been a service floor for the bui- Holy crap.
Standing in the middle of the hallway was a large bipedal donkey. Nate couldn't take his eyes off of it. He was expecting a man with donkey traits, but instead he looked like a donkey with a few human touches. He had a long equine muzzle, two massive ears, and a pair of deep brown eyes that lacked any sign of intelligence. Even his neck was a bit thicker than a human's. The beast man wore a pale gray jumpsuit that was only a shade or two lighter than his fur. He had a pure black mane... and he appeared to be holding a pipe wrench?
He was working on some of the overhead plumping in the corridor. This must have been the tall model Nate had seen on Mr. Smith’s display. He looked just shy of seven feet tall, and had limbs that were a bit longer than any human should have had. His tail swished back and forth softly as he hummed a gentle tune.
Owen had altered Nate’s reality so that office buildings just had donkeys working in them now. Nate’s head spun a bit at the realization. Was this donkey invented by the Chronivac whole cloth, or did Owen subject the entire building staff to the same fate as him?
Most importantly: Was this Donkey Number Five? Maybe this wouldn’t be too bad. Nate wouldn’t mind the extra height, and he seemed happy enough.
His ears perked at the approaching sound of footsteps. “Haw! Oh, hello there Mr. Smith!” He tugged the wrench off the pipe and stood up straight. Nate could see a bead of sweat drip down his forehead.
This was the source of the musky smell.
“Hello Forty Six. Do you know if Five is around?” Mr. Smith glanced down the hall. “We’ve got a new hire that needs training.” He gestured to Nate.
Forty six!? This company had almost… they had at least forty six donkeys? That felt like a lot.
The donkey examined Nate for a moment. Then he scratched his chin, “I think Five’s helping supervise the unloading of that new shipment the warehouse donks are hauling in today.” He tilted his head, “Would you like me to call him here sir?”
“Please.” Mr. Smith nodded.
“Please what?” The donkey blinked.
“…please call Five here.” Mr. Smith rolled his eyes.
“Haw! Yessir!” The donkey turned to clop off.
As the donkey turned to leave, Nate saw a glint of plastic on his ear. Mr. Smith clearly noticed.
“Like I told you, we’ve got to number you all.” He tugged in his ear lobe, “Their break room’s over here. Come on.”
Nate was led into a sizable side room. It had a sofa, a water cooler, and a few rows of lockers. There was a TV in the corner that currently wasn’t playing anything. On a desk by the sofa sat a small pile of dusty neglected laptops. Surprisingly enough, there was a VR headset sitting on top of the laptops that wasn’t showing a hint of dust. VR games must be the preferred way of unwinding here? His old boss was right, they did spoil their donkeys.
“Wow, this looks surprisingly… normal.” Nate paced a bit.
Mr. Smith didn’t respond to the comment. He appeared to be scrolling through emails on his phone.
Eventually Nate heard the sound of hooves clopping. He stood anxiously by the door. This was it. He was about to be looking in a walking mirror of his future self. He took a deep breath, bracing himself for whatever his new reality had in store for him.
Instead, two donkeys walked into the break room. One of them was limping a bit and using the other donkey’s shoulder to support some of his weight.
Both donkeys had the same gray fur and black hair. Whoever had created this profiles didn’t seem to care about adding any sort of room for personality or expression with these profiles.
So which one of these was Five?
The limping donkey was the generic one. He was about six feet tall, and was… average. His muzzle was squared off. His muscles weren’t particularly large, and his mane wasn’t unusually short or long.
“Haw, I’m going to go sit down.” He brayed, gesturing towards the sofa. When he noticed Mr. Smith, his ears perked, “…and watch some of those mandatory corporate training videos sir!”
“Go on.” The other donkey patted his back, letting him limp over on his own.
The generic donkey tried to wave hello to Mr. Smith, but was still a bit wobbly. He plopped down on the sofa and then leaned over towards the desk. He grabbed the VR headset and started to slide it on top of his head.
Oh. It was a corporate headset. Of course.
He immediately seemed pretty checked out. The donkey’s muzzle was hanging open, and his ears were giving the occasional twitch underneath the headset’s straps.
The generic donkey looked… fine? Err, his leg was sore, but he didn’t have any physical traits Nate would object to. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about blending in with a bunch of other identical donkey men.
“What can I help you with today Mr. Smith?” the last donkey spoke up.
He was of the short variety. He was about five feet tall and- Jeez, they really did just adjust the sliders to “tall and skinny” and “short and fat”, didn’t they?
His jumpsuit was of the same design as the other two donkeys, but it was showing a noticeable potbelly. His arms were thick, but he still seemed in shape enough for manual labor. He struck Nate as a donkey version of a plumber stereotype.
Dangling from his ear was an embossed red plastic tag. The white paint on the writing had almost completely chipped away, but Nate could easily make out the number. There was only one of them after all.
“Hello Five,” Mr. Smith finally looked up from his phone. “Trouble down in the warehouse today?”
Mr. Smith had turned him into one of the fat donkeys!?
Five shook his long muzzle, “Sixty Two just sprained his leg unloading a pallet, that’s all. He should be fine tomorrow.” He glanced over at Nate, “What’s this about a new guy?”
“Haw, hello.” Nate held a hand up. Oh man, oh man. Maybe- Maybe there was some slight variation to things? Oh man, this couldn’t be what he was turning into…!
“This is Donkey One Seventeen.” Mr. Smith checked his phone, “Please show him the-“
Nate finally snapped out of his staring, “No, this is Five.” He pointed at the beast’s ear tag.
Five let out an amused guffaw, “Kid, you’re One Seventeen.” He held out a hand, “Nice go meet you.”
Nate shook the donkey’s hand. Then he looked down. His “hand” if you could call it that only had three fingers. They ended in blunt hoof-like caps, and were otherwise covered in fur. Nate couldn’t imagine doing… anything delicate or detailed with those clumsy looking things.
“Sorry.” Nate gulped, “I’m-“
“New. Got it.” He gave Nate a big bucktooth grin, “I still can’t believe our numbers have gotten so high.” Five turned to Mr. Smith, “I’ll get him a uniform and start him on something easy. You got his tag?”
Mr. Smith reached into his pocket, pulling out a small purple piece of plastic. Embossed with crisp clear lettering was “117”.
“Thank you sir.” Five plucked it out of Mr. Smith's hand. The donkey turned to Nate, “We cycle through a bunch of different colors. If there’s only one or two of us in a room, it’s not so hard to keep us straight.”
Five ran his hoof cap over the tag, “You wanna step outside Mr. Smith? The tagging machine hurts like a mule kick, and I bet the kid still knows some swear words.”
“It’s fine.” He shrugged.
Five looked over his shoulder to some archaic looking stamping machine in the corner. “Come on newbie.”
Holy hell! Was he supposed to put his ear in that!? Oh no no no…!
Nate’s watch buzzed again. Five stopped. He looked down in his hoof and realized he wasn’t holding the tag anymore.
“Did you… bring his tag Mr. Smith?” Five asked again. He sounded more than a little confused.
Nate suddenly felt a weight on his ear lobe. He reached up, feeling a dangling piece of plastic hanging from his right ear. The tag had been thoroughly stamped onto his ear, but he only felt a small tingle around the base of the tag.
“Oh, we’re testing a new setting on the Chronivac.” Mr. Smith said distractedly. He was still scrolling through his emails.
Five’s ears shot up. “Hee haw! Really? If so, you just made a bunch of donkeys very happy sir!” He looked over, noticing Nate’s “117” tag for the first time.
Nate stole a glance at his watch. The display read, ”New Accessory: Paper Corp ID Tag.” For the briefest moment afterwards, a second display popped up.
”You’re welcome beast.”
So Owen was still keeping tabs on him! Man, that tagging press must have really hurt to come under his definition of keeping him from harm. Or… maybe the Chronivac was just being nice? Nate didn’t know how AIs worked. They seemed like magic to him.
“Haw, well you’ll still need a uniform.” Five gestured, “This way please.”