The park seemed to go out of it's way to create the illusion that the anthros were totally cut off from civilization. The back wall of the building was purposely camouflaged, and if not for the electric fence, the land appeared to be totally undeveloped.
Appeared was the key word, when they were on the job, the staff who had to interact with the guests made it a point to blend in. Even if this meant going around in the nude while in the fur. In all her now revealed six months of being here, Hannah hadn't once seen a staff member enter or leave the park's inclosure. But she had certainly run into them on quite a few occasions.
She remembered one male wolf morph had broken his leg while hunting (contrary to what some people thought, being a predator was a risky endeavor those prey animals had some nasty kicks!), and not a few minutes later a team of all husky morphs, still showing off in the fur but now deck in medical equipment were on the site. They cast and bandaged him, and carried him off on a medical stretcher. The wolf was back among them in a moon later (it was harder and harder to Hannah to think of it as a 'month'). It was amazing how thoughts about the outside world had a habit of 'vanishing' the longer one stayed here along with losing tract of dates.
Hannah knew there were no jeeps or helicopters in the park, but she knew they huskies couldn't have gotten to the site so fast in relation to where it happened to the back building. Hannah had begun to theorize that perhaps the park had taken a page from Walt Disney's book and the emergency staff had a set of tunnels running right under the feet of the half-human animals who were their mostly paying customers.
What added to this theory was that the anthro staff who showed up seemingly out of the blue with ground flesh for predators who were either in the learning how to hunt stage, or still getting over the idea of where that hamburger in the super market came from. Though Hannah wondered if that meat was kept in a fridge or was killed by the staff themselves. One of Hannah's friends -had- told her they had seen fresh blood on the claws of a staff member offering some meat to a wolverine still getting the hang of being a predator.
Visiting the lady's salt-lick that mourning and engaging in the normal gossip and chatter with her few fellow doe and other lady animals ( and the daily debate on weather they should share their secret spot with the ex-males who planned on rejoining their former team when their vacation ended). They had a minor welcoming for their newest sister morph the wild pig morph who had entered the park that day, and while not transgendered, she had hit the random button and needed to be assured she was not any way fat, nor ugly (which she was not). Ironically the un-TGed female cow morph who had joined the park three months ago had chosen her form and was incredibly proud of her species choice and her figure that rivaled Hannah's and was able to help the pig woman the most along.
Hannah wondered if the men had a similar tradition they put the new bear morph through, but had never bothered to find out.
Hannah had some mild entertainment that day when a couple of the stags still trying to court her decided that a different method was in order and began to engage in fighting contests to prove which one of them was most worthy of her. And while Hannah knew they were still just wanting a one night fling, and were being just the lecherous idiots they always were. She couldn't bring herself to think of this contest they were doing effectively in her honor was wrong! Hannah supposed she shouldn't have been -so- shocked, after all, if the foxes were finding semi-spoiled meat attractive to their pallets. Why should Hannah be opposed to stags dueling it out for her? She remembered clearly that the park had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that the guests didn't suffer from heat cycles and lost their reason. But even without the inflation of hormones: animal instincts now mixed with human ones, and they were all technically naked.
Hannah entertained the conspiracy notion that perhaps the park management, to further their plans for radically genetically altered humans to be accepted into society, that set up a giant love nest for their guests that would produce a child who had no human form to be returned to. Hannah dismissed it. The berries would not have been in this park if that was the case. But like any conspiracy theory it nagged at her in spite of it being soundly defeated by logic.
Hannah remembered how a male mongoose morph was sworn that the electric fence was a clear indication they were ultimately going to be put on display when this place was turned into a zoo, or they were being conditioned as slaves for normal people. He and his friends hung out on the part of the park the most far away from the back building. Hannah would admit, he and his friends were friendly, and hadn't done one act of violence once, but they were just well, weird. Hannah laughed out loud. Weird? She was a human male, who after accepting a free vacation had been genetically modified into a busty curvy sexy female half-human deer doe as an novelty, and after getting over the emotion shock, had decided she was too used to being 'Hannah' to go back to being Harry. Who was she to call anyone 'weird?' It wasn't that she considered this her 'true' form, or 'destine' form, or 'how she was supposed to be', she had just gone to a lot of trouble to become Hannah and didn't want to go back to the trouble of becoming Harry. ... It wasn't like her quest to find a significant other had increased or decreased in luck.
She shook her head, she was NOT going to dwell on Sam, she was not! The former girl had a family waiting for him, she had come here to explore a new form and point of view, not for a new life like it seemed a good deal of the park goers were getting for themselves.
And she wasn't going to accept sex from one of these so-called studs just because he had proven to be the best at knocking over the other so-called studs. But Hannah did know, if it wasn't for the fact she -knew- these types weren't into a life long commitment while she was, and if she ended up with fawns that they'd abandon her . . . . she'd find it logical and acceptable to be with one. It was only her intelligence as a sentient being that kept her from calmly agreeing to the unspoken idea.
Monty, the mongoose mentioned before, insisted that the instincts were going to slowly become strong and stronger until they had nothing that resembled a Super Ego and they would nothing more than intelligent animals. Hannah on the other hand chalked it up to the simple fact that the human mind could get used to anything and could adapt to almost anything. The fact found her new voice now natural with her old one like a dream and had gone from mortified to perfectly calm about the lack of bathrooms just drove the point home.
Another of Monty's seemingly endless, but always without fail shallow points was that the introduction itself said "Guests are monitored via sophisticated tracking devices." And Monty pointed out, when were these tracking devices installed? And where? Hannah -would- grant him that point. And Monty's "possibility" (he insisted that his ideas weren't theories but possibilities) that they were installed in their sleep actually had Hannah acting like a complete doe for a couple nights afraid to go to sleep. One of Monty's friends suggested that THEY (meaning of course the park staff) were likely using the same tracking devices that THEY (meaning the pseudo government group who had faked the moon landing and killed JFK and blew up the twin towers) had implanted in their heads during dental check ups.
The most relatively sane theory that Monty's group that birthed on the subject was that the black box technology that had mutated them had also 'put' said tracking devices inside them.
Hannah so hoped that none of Monty's theories were true, because she didn't like the idea of the task of spreading the truth laying on the shoulders of an illogical paranoid.
Hannah herself figured that while there wasn't a single camera or mic to be found by any of her enhanced senses, it wasn't impossible that they were there, though of course this bought up her own question if whoever was monitoring them for life threatening injuries were also being a voyeur. Hannah shivered at the possibility but not nearly as badly as she knew she should have.
While Monty and his motley crew's ideas were mishmash of paranoid speculation, Hannah knew there were answered question about the park. Juanita had given her a lot of answers. But at the same time given her a few questions too. Juanita's group clearly wanted people like Hannah to test the waters first. And while it was ultimately just a theme of the park, Hannah realized after talking with Jackie how they were cut off from any of news of what was going on in the outside world.
Hannah's support group and Monty's crew weren't the only groups in the park, though the majority remained independent or couples, one other major group was a pair of hound dogs who acted basically as a new group to the few people who bothered to listen by gleaning information from who had just arrived. Jackie had missed them totally by chance.
While Hannah was -never- going to accept Monty's ideas, ever, she was beginning to see a bit more of the logic that went into this place after talking with Juanita (a woman who was as sure that rain was wet that she SHOULD half her DNA altered to that of an animal not because of any personal choice or preference but because it -felt- right according to her). Being kept isolated in the park like this, away from civilization for the most part save for the huskies just behind the scenes, it was hard for people -not- to get used to their new forms and ultimately find it more trouble to get used to their human form again than to simply keep their new one if the law allowed it.
It was a wonder more people didn't bellyache about not having their favorite CD player with them or their designers shoes with them that they had bought just for this vacation. It was another part of the 'being part of nature' motif that the park enforced as it's novelty. At least all their property was kept safe and in storage until their free vacation ended.
There was this one guy who had visited the park on five separate week long visits during Hannah's six months here, each time as a different animal species, and once as a different gender, clearly being a thrill seeker and taking each in stride. He had said that none of his property had been misplaced or damaged in the mean time.
Another thing Hannah had been the first to realize was just -how- isolated those in the park were from the outside world, communication with the outside was pretty much nonexistent. Hannah hoped the park had the decency to inform someone if a relative died, but so had no way to know one way or the other.
She remembered a fox family of four (mom, dad, son, daughter), who had stayed for two months who she had gotten to know quiet well. The son had broken down into fits and tantrums when he realized he wouldn't be able to play World of Warcraft on a hotel computer like he had been planning on doing the entire time, and was sure his group of player friends on-line will have kicked him out of their group by the time he got out. If he reacted that badly about it, maybe it was a good thing that he was getting some 'cold turkey' time.
Hannah knew she wasn't as concerned as she should have been about not being able to recognize a normal human woman in clothing after six months of being surrounded by naked half-animals, but she shrugged it as off as simple human adaption again and knowledge that wasn't being used regularly being pushed to the back burner.
Hannah certainly had a lot on her mind dealing with the park as it was. Shortly before Keith had arrived, Hannah had to help a transgendered former male now female who was totally freaked out that she was now attracted to females. It had set in stone Hannah's theory that those who flipped genders flipped interest too. It had taken Hannah forever to calm her down, and tell her that she'd be the same human male she had been on the outside when her vacation was over. The problem was that her boyfriend hadn't chosen the 'random' button and the two of them suddenly found to their horror they were not attracted to each other in 'that way.' Hannah had given them her word that she'd never, EVER tell their families about this, fearing that that their families would see this as a 'cure.'
Thank heaven that Hannah had been able to point out that this was a chance for them to remind each other what they loved about each other besides physical attraction. Who would have thought it would have turned out to be a heavier precursor to Laurie and Jasmine. Hannah was just glade the couple had left more confident in their relationship than they had before. That was no longer an option for Laurie and Jasmine however, not anymore.
Hannah was finally knocked out of her mid-mourning inflections when she noticed one of the bucks who was fighting in the little 'tournament.'
"Sam?!" She said in a shrill voice. Confusion hit her like a freight train, and she did her best to keep her common sense in command of the situation before jumping into another unhealthy selfish fantasy about him and her and him breaking up with his loved ones.
Stepping away from the latest buck he had just clashed antlers with (a collage boy who thought he was king of the world both outside and inside the park), Sam waved at her and talked to her, much to the resentment from the other bucks.
"Hannah. When I saw this stupid get together, and saw you were the grand prize, I figured that you'd want someone to win who wasn't about to mount you, consider me your safety policy."
"Oh." Hannah said simply being silent for a few seconds before saying, "You really didn't have to. It's not like I was going to sleep with the winner anyway." And the bucks became more determined to win a night with her body.
"Are you sure?"
"Of course, I have free will. We may look the part but that still doesn't make us animals." She decided to leave out that there hadn't been a single rape in the history of the park as far as she knew least some of the more caveman bucks got ideas.
"I say again Hannah, are you sure? I know that saying this to a woman is usually asking for a swift death, I should know, but I still want to be your friend."
He was right, Hannah did feel a bit violent at hearing those words, must be a human instinct exclusive to females. Or so went the stereotype at least.
".... thank you.." She said as politely as she could. "But you don't need to take part in this macho contest. It's not like I'm going to go into a trance and have sex with the winner just cause."
"I know I should trust your judgment, and you have a lot more experience at this park than me. But it's still better to be safe than sorry. I'm not a green extremist: but you know genetic engineering, in particular instant gene therapy on human beings like us is a science that has -not- been around that long. I won't waste your time blabbing statistics that could have a dozen other factors, but from how I treated you last time. I wonder how many instincts they had to leave in to keep people from going insane within new forms and how many are left hiding under the surface. Not to mention we're the big beta group, it's our unofficial job to ferret out bugs in the designs."
Hannah prayed that Sam wasn't becoming another Monty, but unlike Monty, what Sam was saying was really making a chilling amount of sense.
"Don't worry." She started to say 'I'm still me', but realized that was a self defeating argument in her case at this point. "I'm in control of myself like everyone else here. "I'm a doe now, but that hasn't meant me submitting to the first male I see."
"You said 'now', so you're going to wait to see if the company's lobbying groups can get to have people keep their genetic modification outside the park?"
Hannah decided it was in good manners not to blab Juanita's life to Sam so she said simply, "Yes." This got some cheers from the empty headed bucks.
"Hannah, don't think that changes species is going to make you more happy, nor is it going to make your life any better. My husband calls me gullible at times, but I actually believed the introduction when it said that they could safely mutate your DNA into a half animal. I made the mistake of thinking that the 'random' button didn't apply to gender too. I was hoping for a new experience, I just didn't realize how new it was going to be. It is NOT my place to tell you how to live your life, and it is NOT my place to tell you what to do with yourself. Just be sure that you're staying Hannah the half-doe for the right reasons."
"Hey! Jerk!" Said the buck he had stopped fighting with. He charged and stabbed Sam from behind, knocking him down.
Hannah opened her mouth to scream bloody murder. Surprisingly, there were many, -many- cries of foul play and 'not fair' from the gaggles of males were very fast to expel the rival buck from their competition. He staggered off mumbling about 'alls fair in love and war.'
"You okay?" She asked Sam.
"Just past the skin, nothing to worry about." He grunted. The fact the buck had been a low number pointer had reduced the damage as well. Sam wasn't as angry he figured he'd be, maybe men didn't react to violence with violence always after all.
All the same, Hannah was shocked as Sam just got back up, and automatically advanced to the 'next round' as his opponent had been disqualified for 'cheating.'
Hannah shook her head slightly, maybe there -was- something in male DNA that made them feel they needed to prove they were indestructible. Then again, she had always stuck to the background as a male.
She already knew she was going to follow through with Juanita on her offer, since it ran utterly parallel to Hannah's own original plans with becoming part of the park staff to help other accidental TGed half-animals, even if she'd have to take formal courses as her new species. Even if Juanita did have the ulterior motive of Hannah being a figure head, she hadn't tried to lie her way around it, nor had she seriously pressured Hannah for it.
However. Hannah seriously wanted to use the other half of the year vacation she had won within anthro park. While Jackie and others had won a month or a few, Hannah a small number had won much longer vacation times. Hannah figured it was again park of the staff testing out the visitors. Though if these parks were ultimately a spear head by the rich and powerful for others to clear the way so they could live out their fantasies among normal humans, Hannah wondered why they emphasized the 'out in nature' or rather, 'out with nature' so much. As much as she wanted to put her computer talents to work again... she psychical started...
"Oh sh*t." She murmured, and looked at her hands. Apes had hands that were built for grasping and ultimately manipulating, other animals didn't have this trait so much. She realized she was going to have to learn to type all over again with these larger black armored fingers. Out here in the 'wild' and 'away' from civilization, the thought had never once crossed her mind.
"Heh." She allowed herself a small laugh, maybe -that- was the reason for the lack of everything except themselves and their fur? So those who decided they wanted to stay this way didn't think about the down sides -besides- the natural human fear of things that were different? The practical aspect of it?
All the same, she wasn't going to back out of her decision, she was Hannah, weather instincts or just being used to it and she had a responsibility to her fellow park goers. Still, she found herself a lot more sober at the idea. "Looks like I'll be taking more than just psychology courses next year."
++++
Laurie wondered how long it would be before she'd be able to let Jason go, and was able to focus her attention properly on Jasmine. She did -not- let her daughter see her crying over the loss of her husband, that would only make Jasmine feel terrible about herself and as much as Laurie wanted her husband back, she wasn't about to destroy someone to get him back. Not now, not ever.
With the light shinning down on her through the tree top onto the top of the burrow she and her daughter shared, Laurie looked like straight of a painting of forlorn love.
Crying herself out, bleeding it out, Laurie calmed herself. While this was her vacation and she could do what she wanted, so still had to think about Jasmine. Like any teenage daughter, as her mother Laurie needed to make sure she didn't do anything stupid.
Speak of the devil, Jasmine soon appeared with Mike in tow, the two teenagers having missed Laurie's private wake for Jason.
Trying her best to be a good host, Laurie offered the aged meat she had set aside for herself and Jasmine and the three foxes down the flesh that no human in western culture with a job would have touched.
Laurie could guess very easily that Mike had accepted easily what Jasmine used to be, otherwise Jasmine would be here in tears and Laurie would have soon been out for revenge on Mike.
However, eating and chatting about meaningless things, Mike finally dropped the bomb shell. On the outside, not only wasn't he young (Laurie could have seen that one coming a mile away) but he was hopelessly disfigured (that one Laurie wouldn't have seen coming in a million years).
It did explain how Mike had become alpha of his pack of foxes (though she knew those terms really didn't apply to foxes). It was likely that Mike had a life time of experience that the other vixens and foxes didn't have that he was able to so easily establish himself as their leader without any real trouble or objection. Heck, even the few park visitors foxes who were kids (always with their families) looked up to him. Of course quite a few families suffered from culture shock at for some was basically a glorified nudist colony. Finding out that you had to spend your entire vacation there period and as your chosen species under the park's conditions, lead to some nasty confrontations with the park staff who entered the park that ended rather quickly. Behold the dark power of the fine print. It was always there. Those families did their best to live in a separate neck of the woods, trying futility to come with clothing from the surrounding materials.
That when Mike said how he didn't want to be a burden to Jasmine on the outside, and why he wanted to stay as a fox morph, since the changes were intertwined with each other.
That hit Laurie like a thunder bolt.
She hadn't considered, hadn't even thought that maybe, the transformations were package deals.
She fully remembered her promise to Hannah that Laurie would be a human being on the outside looking out for her friend as Hannah came out of the park as a half-animal.
She also knew that if Jasmine was to keep being what was effectively herself now, she'd be have to keep her fur and tail. This was rather sobering for Laurie. In three weeks time or more depending on how long they chose to stay, this would -all- come to a head.
Jasmine blurted out what Laurie knew what was coming, and knew she should have -seen- coming as Jasmine, hoped against hope to use Jason's authority to convince her mother to let them stay furry using the tone of voice and attitude that Jason had used. Laurie felt herself boil inside slightly, she would have none of it.
And thus Jasmine got a very firm taste of what it -meant- to be a teenage daughter and that Laurie hadn't been joking when Laurie said Laurie would be the decision maker, not Jasmine. She figured it out when she started trying to intensely argue her point to her mother and was told politely but firmly to be quiet and found herself shutting up fast.
Laurie sighed, feeling a headache coming on. This was not good. This was not good at all. She had no intention what so ever of breaking her promise to Hannah in this life time.
She also knew it would be cruel to make Jasmine be someone she had given up on. Heck, Laurie hadn't even considered the possibility that maybe that the changes to age and gender were hot wired into the anthro forms and weren't separate transformations.
Then there was Mike, "I figured after I left the park, I wouldn't keep this form, I'd go back to being fifty, and I'd go back to what I was. Even if it was just a fantasy, I wanted to enjoy some time with an untwisted body and be able to enjoy my elder years with some good memories.... but... but now that I've met Jasmine... I, I have something to -live- for, something to live another lifetime for!"
Laurie knew that even if there was a way for Jasmine to exist outside the park as a human, Mike was a totally different story. Asking him to become his old self now would be the same as asking Jasmine to be Jason again.
That was when another logical question about the park's technology came into play. What was to keep it from becoming a way for the rich to become a new ageless upper class? She had once read a science fiction novel about a man who had transfered his mind (not his brain) into an android body, and fought to try and keep his legal identity. However, people didn't want him to be able to keep it since his technology would basically mean that anyone who could afford it could live forever. Laurie shivered. In a way, this was bigger than herself and her daughter.
But that was in the future, assuming the laws to let this technology become public even passed. And who was to say what part of this technology they were even going to allow! Of course that was hoping that people like Mike and Jasmine could slip through the cracks before the door was closed.
Laurie knew there was only one way she could keep her promise to Hannah, and for her own part at least, allow her daughter to be happy. Even if Jasmine could be Jasmine without the tail, she'd then be incompatible with Mike who couldn't go back if he could help it now that he had tasted happiness like this, and while the horny teenagers might not have been thinking of that now, Laurie knew they would eventually.
Laurie sighed, fighting the headache, dammit, Jasmine was proving to be a teenage through and through all right, she was giving her mother migraines.
Laurie foresaw that soon she and her daughter would be different species. She hugged her baby whispering kind nothing to her.
+++++
A month, one month here, and two days later Jacqueline found herself getting laid as a female and and in love with a half-panther boy who had flipped genders just like her. Was life supposed to change so fast?
"How can people fall in love so fast?!" She thought to herself not realizing she had spoken out loud.
"I don't know either." Said Keith having come back from relieving himself.
Keith found that indeed did have a cover for his manhood, it had simply been open before. And after staying only five days in the park, he knew it was far too risky to have it the other way, having something like that in the open and vulnerable was asking for trouble. Plus there was that Jackie pointed out that their joints were tailor made to so they stand on two feet or go about on all fours with equal grace.
Jackie and Keith had no idea weather this applied to the other park goers too, and hadn't bothered yet to remember to ask them about it.
One thing Jackie was finding was that she was quickly getting used to the idea of killing non-intelligent animals for her mourning meal. Then again, she had had bacon and eggs each morning for years, so she supposed she should have been able to handle it, or had no right to call herself an omnivore, okay, now she was carnivore, but that was besides the point.
How much of her was still a human brain? It was a medical fact that males and females did have different brain shapes, and animals and humans decided have very much different brain shapes. So how much of the housing of her awareness was still the same? It hit Jackie that likely... very little. She wondered if her brain was now that of a extremely evolved cat now rather than a human brain inside that of an animal's. Absently swishing her tail back and forth, Jackie wondered how many things she was doing differently without even thinking about it, or noticing for that matter.
She still had some primate DNA in her, after all, she was going on two feet, or rather in this case GO on two feet, she only had two nipples opposed to six like a normal feline would, she was standing erect, and she had breasts, something other animals had only when they were nursing, humans as far as she knew were the only species with this trait. (Sorry boys looking for six breasted alien women, not likely to happen at all.)
The truth of the matter was, she was so fixated on becoming female, she hadn't even thought that much about her change in species. Goes to show what people consider important huh? If the berries did fail, would she give birth to a single child, or a litter? Would they grow like primates do, or like cats?
Keith meanwhile, knew he was going to have to tell Jackie how he was in his fifties, or at least, Cathy was in her fifties, on the outside. Then again, he had no clue if Jackie had any age difference outside or not. Or for that matter tell Jackie how he had only been here three more days than her, and she was looking to him as if he was an expert.
He looked at her figure with her nearly shoulder length black hair flowing in the wind, her transformation created muscles, her breasts that chest muscles held in place so erect, like Bast herself having return from the sands of time and found himself getting excited again. After fifty years as a woman, the experience as a male was going to take a very long time to get used to.
Still, Keith had to tell her, if this relationship was going where he thought it was going, it was best to get all their secrets out now, rather than have them eat them alive from the inside.
Thankfully Keith had time to figure out the best way to tell her, even if that life was totally in the past it was still part of what made him who he was. Both knew it was hunting time, because they were hungry. A time that BOTH cats now looked foreword to with glee. The thrill of the hunt, and the delight of the kill, Jackie no longer felt any shape at the idea of killing a non sentient animal for food. While she was struggling for the moment of killing a complete animal version of someone who she was friends with, there were still plenty of other animals in the part to chose from that could give her a good chase. Jackie knew this feeling wasn't human in the slightest, but the truth was, in the heat of it, she couldn't care.
Getting down to all fours, the two half-cats hunted like the beasts they were.