Chris was calm as he came out of the public library in Lyre after his interview with the members of the present Animalia Ambassadoria team. Al had been polite and helpful to let him explain things as best that he could, and he privately had to admit that a lot of it wasn't easy for him to understand. He'd generally been among the sorts of groups that would be intrigued by Animalians and willing to convert for reasons that didn't relate to becoming younger or healing some long-standing injury or major disease and he'd generally looked at becoming a Pitt Bull Animalian. Becoming a different type of Animalian, and one based off a Miocene carnivore that seemed to bridge the proverbial gap between dogs and bears, had never been on his agenda, but then, the cost of conversion wasn't the cheapest of things and he couldn't turn down an offer that would make his costs easier. As he walked a long, he thought back on his own conversion and a lot of what he'd learned as part of the offer.
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"So... you want me to become an animal that is a cross between a bear and a dog?" Chris asked as he looked over the papers that had been laid before him.
He was presently seated in one of the conference/meeting rooms at Horizon Labs. It was actually where various members that had been part of earlier Horizon Projects had initially met before their conversions. Project Cenozoic seemed to fit within that and was an expansion of earlier projects that had worked with "bringing back" post Mesozoic Era mammals. But much of what they'd done with these animals had been limited to animals from the Pleistocene and which had at least extant "cousins" living. For while there were no real Dire Wolves in the wild, they were seen as being close to other large Canids. The lineage that produced Smilodon had gone extinct but were still cats around the world. And the Wooly Mammoth was felt to be taxonomically close to the Asian Elephant. It was where Horizon had been partnering with other companies and other countries on the project but had then run into various other problems.
The idea for recreating the Mammoth Steppe fell with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the west had pulled out resources and experience to work there. The Russian government might want it as a PR stunt but lacked the actual scientific expertise and technology to actually pull it off. That had then led to the project being resumed to set up a preserve in western Canada, and just to the east of the Canadian Rockies. That project had been expected to be big and expensive and would go forward in setting up an "Ice Age" colony once enough progress had been made to bring the Wooly Mammoth back, but then, just as some of the hopes for at least setting up the colony for Animalians in that region was about to set up a ground breaking ceremony, the US government changed and attacked the Canadian government. The Canadians fired back, and Horizon lost millions as the project was effectively cancelled, and tariff concerns then made it unlikely that those that had volunteered for conversion as part of that colony would do so now.
Chris had also seen some commentary about that being moved to Alaska, but there, a combination of local tribal interests, the economic interests of other corporations, particularly those related to the oil industry, and some ecological concerns from Horizon made that option unlikely. At present, the parts of Alaska that might have the flat space for steppes didn't have the grasses for it, and even with global warming, the snowfall was still enough to cause many of the same sorts of climatic problems that were thought to have contributed to the extinction of the Wooly Mammoth through much of its historic range at the end of the Pleistocene Period. From what Chris gathered from these news reports, it was unlikely that any new colony would be established for the next four years and that costs within the existing Animalian colonies was likely to go up, and leaving more people on their own, which was part of the present set up was. Which was where things came back to him.
He'd followed a lot of the news and projects Horizon ran with but knew that he wasn't going to meet many of the criteria that brought the price of conversion down, and he hadn't been old enough to make that sort of decision on his own during the "Year of the Dog," when canine conversions were cheaper. From there, he sent periodic emails over the years on specific deals that might be offered, particularly after he became old enough to make that conversion choice on his own. And his work managing a small ranch in Sioux County, Nebraska didn't bring in a lot of money. The land that his parents owned, and he helped manage was reasonably valuable in terms of acreage but provided no direct monetary value unless they agreed to sell to someone, which they had no plans to do. More recently, he'd gotten an email from Horizon that included an offer, and after checks with phone numbers and everything else over the phone as well, that'd brought him here, and looking at the printed pages of information on an animal marked as "Amphicyon Ingens: The Bear-Dog."
"Not a "cross" between a bear and a dog, but one of a great many species that had the features of both," Doctor Stein commented. "Amphicyon... the Bear-Dog... is actually its own kind predator. And actually, among the first true Carnivorans to reach large sizes. The first that appeared were in the Eocene and they lasted up until the end of the Miocene."
"The first...?" Chris wondered.
"I'd wish we had a paleontologist on hand that's focused more on the Cenozoic era," Doctor Stein said slowly and scratched the back of his head, "but the first carnivorous mammals to attain dominance on Earth were not members of the order Carnivora. And while the order's name does relate to eating meat, a lot of the taxonomic placement has more to do with their teeth and specifically the carnassial teeth and their placement. The predatory animals that occupied the apex predator niches prior to the rise of the Carnivorans were largely Creodonts that appeared in the Paleocene and slowly vanished in different places in different times. In North America and Europe this was into the Oligocene Period. In Asia and Africa, this was into the late Miocene."
"Sounds like a lot of different times..." Chris said slowly.
"And I'm afraid paleontology is a bit outside my field of expertise, so I can't say with any authority as to why," Doctor Stein nodded, "but the decline of one does coincide with the rise of Bear-Dogs... the Amphicyonids. And Amphicyon Ingens is among one of the larger representatives of this group and is also one that evolved in the US. The first fossils of it were actually found in your part of Nebraska."
"Cool... I guess," Chris blinked, as that was something he didn't know.
He looked over the papers and the pictures that were made of artist's renditions of these Bear-Dogs. He was surprised to find that by the details they had. That the Bear-Dogs became one of the dominant predators throughout where they roamed, hunting many of the same sorts of prehistoric animals that their predecessors did and outsmarted other rivals that weren't Creodonts. He was also surprised by the report that they also did not leave any descendants and that neither dogs nor bears were descended from them. But the artists renditions looked good, and Chris eventually did agree.
"I guess I can go along with all this..." Chris said to Doctor Stein slowly, "how long will I have stay here to adjust... as I don't think you have any Bear-Dog Animalians at present."
"You would be the first," Doctor Stein answered, "and if you'll agree, the last set of papers is the agreement papers. You'd sign where it says "customer," and then date afterward."
Chris looked through the rest and noted that it was something of a legal agreement. He would be accepting a greatly reduced financial cost, which was a benefit to him, but that he would also be accepting that he'd be giving up his choice in what kind of Animalian to be and that he understood that. He understood things fairly well and lifted up his pen to sign where he was indicated to do so.
"As for how long you'd be staying in Lyre-Animalia, that'd be more up to how you adjust," Doctor Stein spoke, "we will try to see that some of the Bear, Wolf, and Lion Animalians can help you adjust to things..."
"Lion?" Chris wondered.
"Amphicyon Ingens can be big, but it isn't the biggest Amphycyonid," Doctor Stein answered while Chris finished signing, "that species, however, is European and would carry some of the tariff costs that Horizon doesn't want to get caught up. Though... you would be close to the larger sizes that we could expect from an Amphicyon Animalian. But you would be of comparable size to some of the Lion Animalians. Maybe a bit bigger... So, you would be working with some of the Lion Animalians to help test strength and other abilities and measure how strong some of the instinctual urges are. A lot of that may be up to you. If you adjust quickly, you could be on your way back to Nebraska in no more than a week. If some things go longer, then you could be here longer. It's all part of the science..."
"I see," Chriss commented and handed Doctor Stein the signed papers. He glanced back at the others for a moment and noted they were all facts and information.
"You're perfectly free to keep the guide information if you like," Doctor Stein offered, "It may help..."
Chriss shrugged and collected them. He had a folder full of other papers that related to the offer and everything else. Information on Amphicyon Ingens would add to it, though, he also figured that much like with the Dinotopians, that in becoming a Cenozoic mammal that had no living descendants, he would also be providing a better guess for scientists on what Bear-Dogs looked like while alive. Particularly when, from what Doctor Stein had said, the animal didn't actually live in an ice age where a body could be found frozen. Once everything was collected, he turned to the Horizon scientist and followed him out.
They moved along and went down a flight of stairs before coming back to the main hallways and the conversion room. For the moment there was nothing there by the door as Doctor Stein opened it, though Chris thought he saw the doctor put his hand into his pocket. He heard a soft "click" after, and figured that a button to call in a nurse or someone had been pressed.
"You can leave your folder out here in the hall," Doctor Stein spoke, "I can look over them while you're going through the conversion. You can take it in with you, if you're worried about things like personal information being stolen... Though, you will have to be careful."
"Careful?" Chris wondered.
"We've had a couple of cases where a new Animalian ended up destroying some of their paperwork by accident in the process of their conversion," Doctor Stein answered, "either they tear it up, slip on it, or things of that nature. A couple might have been stained by... other things... as the new Animalian comes to love their transformation as it progresses."
Chris gulped a bit, but he kept his folder with him.
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"And I suppose he had a right to sound a bit embarrassed with all that," Chris thought to himself as he walked along.
He had enjoyed his transformation, and parts of it did feel very good. Thankfully, he'd managed to retain enough control that nothing ended up getting on the folder or the papers within it. But the growth in his musculature was impressive and it did fit with the comparison to a lion or bear, in that he wasn't anywhere near close to as lithe as the Dog Animalians, be they based off of Domestic Dogs or Wolves. But a lot of his torso length also fit more with the Dog Animalians than with the Bear Animalians, and the plantigrade feet also carried some effect like that related to the point that Doctor Stein had raised on Bear-Dogs seeming to combine certain features that were closer to both Dogs and Bears than any feline.
When he emerged from the room in a new set of clothes and with his folder, he did meet a Lion Animalian who had been waiting for him. They were about the same size, but the only thing that was "cat-like" on Chris' new form was his tail. Even there though, Chris also found he lacked the precise control over his tail that the Lion Animalian had. He could wag it, but the movement seemed to be closer to how dogs wagged their tails than some of the precise movements that cats could make.
"And it makes me stand out," Chris mused to himself as he walked along, "and some of the instincts aren't too bad... Though... I get the sense that I probably won't be running down deer anytime soon... and I'm not sure where some of the urges to eat rhinos comes from... I mean, even if Animalia allowed predation on other Animalians, the Rhinoceros Animalians look a bit too big for even this new muscular bod... Maybe there were actually ancestors of modern rhinos in the Miocene that were smaller than their modern descendants that Bear-Dogs fed on..."