“Have either of you tried one of those neural link VR setups yet?”
Your lunch group looked up at Ace incredulously. Those systems had been on the market for about a year now, but they were prohibitively expensive. Like, your company better have a good reason to shell out for one of them expensive. Gamers weren’t even splurging on them just yet. The ability to fully immerse one’s self in a virtual world with sight, touch, smell, and all of your other senses was a massive leap forward for the tech, but the hardware was still out of most people’s price range.
“Uh… No?” Kris looked up from their burger, “Unless IT’s been hiding one somewhere that you’re not telling us about.”
“Not exactly,” Ace gave a mischievous smile, “Have either of you been to the gene parlor recently?”
“No? Should we have?” You asked to keep the conversation flowing.
All of your eyes drifted across the food court to the pristine white gene parlor store front a few shops over. Man, living in the future was weird sometimes. Your office was across the street from the local mall, and its food court was a popular lunch spot when you didn’t feel like rushing down to the cafeteria. The mall was full of clothing shops, electronics boutiques, and all the same things that had been there for the last one hundred years. The only difference was that you now had a real honest to goodness self driving car taking you there now.
The world hadn’t turned into a chrome paradise or a cyberpunk hellscape all at once. Progress had been deep in some areas, and minuscule in others. You were still walking around with a smartphone and working a bland IT job in a generic office building. The future was just like the past, except when it wasn’t.
Society had finally perfected gene splicing. Cancer, alzheimers, and global pandemics were a thing of the past. Even glasses were mostly a fashion choice these days. The technology had become so ubiquitous that elective gene splicing had become trendy. Gene parlors like the one across the way were a convenient spot to rewrite who you were.
Blonds could become red heads. Men could become women. Furs could finally get that tail they always wanted. The only limit was your imagination. That, and having to wait a while for your body to stabilize before making any additional changes. It was still a little gauche to chase the fashion angle of gene splicing, but it was hard to deny how popular it was becoming. They truly were the modern equivalent of a mall ear piercing or tattoo.
“I hear that New You has started using VR in their pitch package,” Ace crumpled up his sandwich wrapper. He got up from the plastic table, “Come on, let’s go pretend we’re shopping for some new genes.”
Kris checked their watch, “Do we have enough time left on our lunch break?”
“Sure! We just won’t dally too long,” Ace grinned.
Ugh, you had a sinking suspicion you were about to sign up for a boatload of spam emails. Still, you were a little curious about fully immersive virtual reality. You quickly followed suit after him.
You had never been inside a “New You” before, but this gene parlor had the same atmosphere as the others you had poked your head into. It was vaguely like a glasses shop, only instead of looking for something new frames, you were shopping for a new anything. Their clerks clearly worked on commission and were just as over-eager.
“Welcome welcome!” A New You employee rushed over. He was a young man in a company polo shirt, “Shopping for a seasonal update? You’ve come to the right place!”
“Seasonal update?” Kris echoed.
“Why sure!” The clerk had a salesman’s grin despite his young appearance. “I usually add in a few percentage points of bear DNA around the holidays. It really helps deal with the chilly months. You can’t forget your ear muffs if the fur’s built in!”
It dawned on you that the clerk’s appearance was probably the result of who knows how many treatments. He could be a senior citizen for all you knew.
“Have any of you gotten your genes spliced yet? It’s a fairly straightforward procedure!” He continued the pitch. ‘Fairly’ was doing a lot of work there. There was a ton of paperwork, registering your new and old genome with the government, and reissuing of a half-dozen ID cards if your appearance changed passed certain thresholds.
“I got my eyes fixed in high school,” you volunteered. “They put me in a medical coma, injected me with some stuff, and I woke up with new peepers. Human ones. Dad wouldn’t let me spring for feline night vision at the time.”
Everyone gave a polite chuckle. Rich kids were always showing up to school with some new augmentation and causing a ruckus for a week.
Before the clerk could get spun up again, Ace stepped forward, “We actually heard that you’ve got a new preview system.”
“Ah yes,” the clerk gestured to a large monitor on the wall stylized like a mirror. It was one of the centerpieces of any gene parlor. A webcam would reflect a live feed of the store while applying a preview of any changes customers were considering. “The live CG renders were wonderful, but it’s hard to beat true virtual reality.”
“So… can we give it a go?” Ace beamed.
The clerk sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, “You’re just here to play with the new tech, aren’t you?”
Ace bounced on his heels a bit, “I mean, we might find something we like.”
He had all but dropped the sales pitch, “Fine. It’s a slow morning anyways. I’ll have to ask you to log out if I get an actual customer, alright?”
“Deal!” Ace beamed.
Sure enough, you had a clipboard worth of information to fill out before you could dabble in VR. Hatchi matchi, they wanted your email address, a phone number, your physical address, and a few other bits of personal information. You were so going to get flooded with spam. This was ostensibly a waver for the VR setup, but you had a feeling you were in for a small wave of junk mail trying to sell you on all sorts of elective mods.
The clerk took the paperwork and lead your group over to a trio of large chairs in the back. They looked a bit like the retro dome hair dryers at a salon. Only in this instance the part that went over your head was an expensive VR headset. They looked similar to the visors you had used in the past, but they had a few new glowing pressure points in the head mount that you assumed were for the neural link.
You couldn’t believe they owned more than one VR rig, but these group try outs were probably part of the pitch. You could lure in groups to try out new looks, and your potential customers would be able to get feedback from their friends in real time. Again, shopping for new genes with all the pomp of looking for a good pair of sunglasses.
You took a seat in the chair. The clerk was only half-interested in delivering their spiel at this point.
“You’ll automatically get logged out after twenty minutes. If you want to log out sooner, just mime lifting the visor up. There’s a phone on the table in VR you can use to call me if you have any questions.” He typed on the computer next to the VR stations, “Have fun.”
You slowly pulled down the headset over your face. Its screen was showing a pure white beam of light. You heard a beep as the headphones lined up against your ears. Some firm plastic pressed up against the base of your neck. The next thing you knew, your legs had suddenly fallen asleep.
Err, no, your everything fell asleep! Your body felt numb, and you weren’t quite sure you could move it! You felt a staticky pin prick feeling wash over your entire body and-
Then you were standing in the New You boutique again. You just popped into the room as if you had blinked and suddenly appeared there. There were several large mirrors in the room, a desk, and a couple sofas to lounge in. The New You branding was ubiquitous, and it took you a second to realize this wasn’t the storefront you had just been standing in.
You remembered being in a private consultation lounge like this when you got your eyes fixed. The room was a bit smaller than the show floor, but the decor had gotten knocked up a few notches. You assumed. Was wood paneling back in? It all felt so real. You began to question your reality and reach up to the visor when you noticed the windows on the far side of the consultation lounge. A pleasing star field passed by like a desktop screen saver. This was a virtual space alright.
“This is incredible!” Ace ran his hands over his body.
You had hardly noticed your coworkers appear beside you. Ace was standing there same as he ever was. Only he was wearing a pop culture t-shirt and blue jeans now.
You looked down at yourself. You were wearing one of your favorite button down shirts. Had the virtual environment read your mind and picked out your clothes for you? You ran your fingers along the garment curiously. You could feel the material underneath your fingers. Even the plastic buttons had the right texture to them.
“Check this out,” Kris grinned. They had rushed over to the desk in the room. It was had the aforementioned phone, some small instructional brochures, and curiously enough, a display of lavender incense. Kris was giving them a good sniff.
You could smell the virtual scent from across the room. This was remarkable! You crossed the room and gave the incense a proper sniff. The artificial smell was impressive, but you were more surprised how easy it was to navigate the virtual space without your inner ear complaining to you. You didn’t get any of the classic VR dizziness as you walked.
“This is so cool!” Ace joined the two of you.
You had to agree. You knew this tech was supposed to be immersive, but you weren’t ready for how real it all felt. You could still feel the fake leather of the chair you were sitting in back in real life if you concentrated hard enough, but the virtual feelings being layered on top of your senses felt just like the real thing.
Ace had wandered over to one of the room’s many mirrors at this point. Even in VR, New You apparently liked their preview displays. You could see a few floating holographic UI components appear as he approached. Huh, that sure beat a touch screen. Ace started tapping through the menus curiously.
“Let’s see what this does…” Ace mumbled.
Both you in Kris looked up. You were expecting to see some change in the mirror and were startled to watch Ace change right before your eyes in the actual room itself!Well, the actual virtual room.
The seat of Ace’s pants gained a tail hole. A moment later, his tailbone started to grow out and push through the new opening. It gained a bit of blond fur as it lengthened. The appendage took on the unmistakable appearance of a golden retriever tail as it started to wag excitedly back and forth.
“Check it out, I’m a dog-boy!” Ace’s enthusiasm matched the speed at which his tail wagged.
“Oh wow, can you feel that?” Kris ran over and tried brushing the tail.
“Yeah! Woah, this is so strange…!” Ace grinned, “I can feel the tail! Oh man, I’m so buying the first consumer model of these headsets.”
Kris looked up from Ace’s tail and into the mirror, “How are you supposed to sort through all these catalog options! There’s gotta be a million different tweaks you can make here!”
You wandered in front of the mirror with them. Sure enough, there were a dazzling number of options floating in front of the mirror.
“It’s easy,” Ace chuckled, “You just pick Fur Augmentations, Tail, Dog, Golden Retriever.”
Huh. Ace hadn’t struck you as the Fur curious type. The animal kingdom had all sorts of useful genes to provide. Some people didn’t stop at just a helpful feline night vision mod however. So called “Furs” took things a bit further. Nowadays it wasn’t too strange to see an anthropomorphic animal-person walking around downtown who had elected to swap our half their human genes. Maybe more. As gene splicing got better, society was having to answer some tricky questions about what actually constituted a person. Talking dogs who used to be human existed in a murky gray area at the moment.
“Yeah, but what if you don’t have something in mind?” Kris said, “It looks like a lot to browse.”
“Well you can always press Random?” Ace leaned forward to demonstrate. His finger made contact with the holographic button, and you immediately felt your body once again temporarily overwhelmed with static.
When your senses came back, you were startled by just how right they felt. Getting your eyes fixed was just some medical procedure you needed done. This was… You suddenly found yourself standing in a form that felt more like you than your real body ever had.
Your friends burst out laughing as Ace’s button press had applied the same random change to all three of you. You just stared up at your reflection. It was perfect. You felt flush as you realized you were already thinking about when you could schedule a gene modding appointment.