Tim was grateful to have Mindy and Callie helping him out whenever they could. But unlike him, they were both still "normal" enough that they could easily go back to work, so there were only so many hours in the day that they could come by. Which was why he currently found himself standing in his living room, staring at a notification on his computer screen: "IMPORTANT - An update on your application to the U.S. Bureau of Restoration (13 min ago)". And there was nothing he could do about it.
In the week that had passed since he'd been saddled with this useless body, he'd never been as frustrated as he was right now. He could almost feel the way that his hands should be balled up into fists right now, but that just reminded him further of what he'd lost. To remember that he only had himself to blame for the way he'd ended up only made it hurt more. In his mind, he was about to slap himself in the face, but of course nothing happened. It wasn't just the stupid costume he'd chosen to wear, it was somehow even his fault that he couldn't imagine a more ambulatory version of a living fir tree. If he had just-
He snapped out of that train of thought when he saw something move - and felt it. And it came just as he was imagining himself throwing his phantom arms out in anger. Could it be...? He tried making the same motion again, and again there was a ripple through his leaves, stronger than what any gust of wind could produce. He'd been so caught up in the despair of losing his four limbs, he hadn't stopped to really think about the fact that he'd gained thousands more of them. And if he could move them... even just a tiny bit... then maybe he could learn to control them?
There was no time like the present to try. It would be hours before anyone else came in here, and he had to know what that email said. The suspense was wearing on him. He figured it had to be the date and time of his appointment, and that was all he really wanted - a countdown to the end of all this and the return of normal. Scooching his pot forward, carefully, he pushed himself right up to the edge of the computer desk. All he had to do was figure out how to hit the button on that mouse, and his burning question would be answered.
But he had another question to answer first - how? The tiny little branches that stuck out from his body at every conceivable angle were nothing like arms, let alone hands or fingers. With brute force, he could make a bunch of them shake and twitch, but he was going to need a lot more control than that. He ran his imaginary "arm" downward a little more slowly this time, watching dozens of them unfurl from one neat row after another, like they were doing the wave at a concert. He could feel each one, but control them individually? That would be like making a single hair stand up on the back of his neck.
This was not the body he was used to, though. It was playing by an entirely different set of rules. He could feel those twigs bend as if he was covered from head to toe in thousands of fingers. That mental image was somehow not as disturbing as the reality. But, he had to admit to himself, he was never going to make sense of it that way. If he was going to learn how to move in this form, he had to stop thinking of it as a human body. There were no easy equivalents - none of the motor skills he'd mastered when he was a toddler were going to help him here.
It took a lot of focus and a lot of trial-and-error, but slowly he started to narrow down the group of branches that stuck out from the rest whenever he made a pushing motion, from dozens to a handful to just one. Then it was a matter of figuring out which one was the right one - no amount of force he could apply was going to make these twigs stretch out from the rest of his body by more than an inch or two. He paid no attention to the slowly advancing clock in the corner of the computer screen - he knew this was going to take a long time to get right, and didn't need a reminder of just how long. But by the time he was ready to start trying to reach the mouse and open that all-important message, he couldn't avert his eyes from the timestamp that now read "2 hrs ago".
The first time he tried to click the mouse, he found that none of his branches were close enough to reach it. Shuffling a little closer to that side of the desk, he tried again - and his needles fell on the mouse button with a light tap, nowhere near the force he'd have to have to press the button down. All he succeeded in doing was making the cursor jump a few pixels over - which reminded him that he still needed to move the cursor into the right spot first. That was a slow process, but it turned out to be an easier task than he expected, since it called for light, barely noticeable touches rather than a hard press.
When the little arrow icon was finally looming over the right link, he tried the button again. It was nerve-wracking - too much force, and he'd knock the mouse out of its proper placement and have to start all over again. Not enough force, and that probably meant he would never be able to click it no matter how hard he tried. This one's for all the marbles, he thought to himself, and thrust that one little twig downward as hard and fast as it would go.
Click.
It worked! And he was all ready to celebrate the fact that he was no longer practically paralyzed when his line of sight fell back onto the screen. "Oops! We're noticing some unusual activity on your device," a pop-up message said. "Check the box below to verify that you are human."
Tim rolled his eyes at that - which made a little rattling noise now as the little black dots that stood in for pupils made a circuit of the translucent white globes. Somebody was going to have to come up with another way to phrase that. On second thought, though, the message bucked him up with a defiant confidence. He was a human being. A temporarily embarrassed human being, perhaps. But he was not going to let any of this change who he was as a person. And if he could successfully click that check-box, that, in some silly way, would prove it.
He was getting a little better at the maneuver each time he tried it. It took him only a minute or two this time to get the mouse in the right spot again and then throw the hammer down. When he finally did, he was fully expecting the system to still be suspicious of his movements. Right now, he dreaded the thought of being made to click all the pictures of fire hydrants. But thankfully, it let him through without any further harassment.
As soon as the email opened up on his screen, Tim started scanning feverishly through the wall of text. "You have been assigned to the closest temporary Restoration Facility in your area, which is currently being set up at Lincoln Avenue Community Center"... "Accommodations will be provided for those who are unable to travel to the appointment on their own"... These were all details that he could worry about later. What he needed to know, what had motivated him to spend the past few hours learning how to make do with a body he hated, was how much longer he was going to be stuck like this. He kept reading.
At the very bottom of the screen, it read, "Please note that you have been assigned the earliest possible appointment based on the information provided on your application. We will not be able to consider requests for an earlier placement under any circumstances. Your scheduled appointment cannot be changed or transferred to another applicant. Your appointment time is:"
The text cut off right there. He was one flick of the scroll wheel away from the words that would define the course of his next few... weeks? By now, that didn't seem like such an insurmountable challenge. His needles couldn't really gain traction on the surface like a normal finger would, but what he did was enough to pull the wheel toward himself by one notch. His eyes darted back to the screen.
"Your appointment time is: FRIDAY, JANUARY 10 at 11:45 AM."
And he felt like he was ready to collapse on the floor again.