Jason was sixteen years old, and quite the enterpreneur. Although he hadn't finished high school, he was taking classes at the local community college through his state's post-secondary education program; even if it was just his generals, his mother had pointed out, that was still almost two years of college he wouldn't have to pay for. On top of all this, he ran a small computer-repair business out of his basement.
There weren't a lot of people in his town, just a couple thousand residents at the last census, but most of the families in the area had a computer, and a fair number of them weren't particularily good at maintaining them, so computer repairs ate up a lot of what little time Jason had left after his high school and college classes, leaving little time left for what people generally call "life." Not that he had much of a social life to begin with, but even so, he was busier than he really wanted to be. Still, the money was good by high-school standards, and Jason usually had plenty of energy to go around.
On this particular day, however, it was mostly gone. Jason had had midterms in all but two of his classes, had had to deal with a particularily spyware-ridden machine, and, on top of it all, had lost his lunch in the cafeteria garbage can. The nausea had subsided, at least for a while, but Jason was still feeling drained and slightly woozy. Typical stomach flu symptoms; it was, after all, that time of year. He stumbled into his house and hung up his jacket.
"You don't look so hot," his mother said, looking up from her paperwork. "Are you coming down with something?"
"Try 'already came down with,'" he groaned. "I threw up in school this morning; I think I must've caught the flu when I went down to pick up that computer yesterday. Their kid was barfing left and right." Still, he reasoned, it was worth it. Despite living in a larger city with several computer stores, the customer wanted prompter service than the larger stores provided, and had offered to pay a full professional rate for Jason to get his computer fixed in a timely fashion.
"Are you going to be all right, dear?" his mother asked. "Are you sure it's the flu? You don't think it's...something worse, do you?"
"Something worse" in this case was referring to an illness commonly known as "cat scratch fever." It was originally designed by an eco-terrorist group as a form of biological warfare, intended to "rid the Earth of the scourge of humanity" by turning people into animals. However, it was only released in a prototype form before the terrorists were caught, and didn't have quite the intended effect. Instead of turning people completely into animals, it turned them into anthropomorphic cats, hence the name. It also only affected about thirty-some percent of all infectees, leaving the rest with only the stomach flu-like symptoms that allowed it to spread unnoticed before doing its work. Moreover, it had a good chance of causing sex changes in its victims, although the rate was much higher for male transformees than for females.
But for the most part, it wasn't a concern for anybody who didn't live near one of the unlucky victims. Sure, Jason had had to watch a video on the subject in health class, and it was one of those "wouldn't it be scary if" things like cancer, AIDS, or ebola, but nobody in his school or the entire surrounding area had ever been a victim of cat scratch. And since nobody in the area had seen it happen, nobody really believed it could happen. To the residents of Jason's small town, cat scratch fever was something that happened to people in the big cities, or out on the coasts.
"Nah," he said. "Just the flu, that's all. As sick as their kid was, she would've been partly transformed if it'd been cat scratch."
His mother nodded. "I suppose so. You should get some rest, at any rate."
He smiled wearily. "That," he said, "is just what I'm going to do."