"Maybe . . . maybe in a little while? Please?" Samuel asked. Wanting to keep her attention. "I liked you the way you were."
"So you don't like me now? We're not friends anymore?" She whimpered.
The other baby furs began to gather concerned, seeing one of their number crying.
"No no no! I do still like you!"
"Oh. Okay!" Jessica always had her devious streak, and he almost wondered if she was trying to play him, but Jessica as she was now didn't seem like she COULD purposely trick him. All the same, Samuel had been using bottled water, not trusting the baby furs hadn't put some of the water from their squirt guns into the water supply.
"I'll be right back! Don't go anywhere!" She said as if he could, and she ran off, she came back a while later with a kid friend camping tent, that she unfolded and sat down inside to happily watch Samuel's house from the edge of the lullaby's music. She smiled at him, and picked up her toy phone again and told him over his cell phone, "I can wait . . . until you're ready to play."
A number of baby furs began to join Jessica in her game of pitching play tents and waiting outside Samuel's house. Including a baby buffalo, a baby tiger, and a baby fur macaques who Samuel was SURE was a friend from work.
Yet another strangeness Samuel had begin to notice, was the plants in his yard the baby furs had managed to touch or just talk with as children tend to do with things that can't speak back, or sprinkle with the water from their squirt guns. They hadn't withered at all, they were still perfectly healthy, opening and closing as the sun rose or set.
It was the same pattern over and over, whatever changed by them, either by their touch, their water toys, or their laughter, was made so a world populated by furry toddlers having a good time with each other weren't going to fall prey what things that any sane or rational human being knew would happen to toddlers in a place with no adults.
Yet another things Samuel noticed from his house looking through the various windows, was while they looked like toddlers, they didn't act like 'true' toddlers, well, in the sense they weren't saying 'Mine!' like it was a holy word and any rough housing he saw remained safe and consensual.
More like some ideal version of them. From the top floor of his house, he saw a group finger painting painting an impressively sized mural, with all the coordination you'd expect from a group of early pre-schoolers, but SOMEHOW still making something that looked absolutely adorable.
They even washed themselves in a nearby in city river that had no right what so ever to be so clean, and washed off the paint (or just licked it off, Samuel had a guess it was editable), and their diapers dried as soon as they were out of the water.
At this point: if Samuel saw a bear wanter into town, he was certain that merely being near the baby furs, or hearing that laughter that changed people, would make it turn docile and simply turn around and go back to its woods. And if he looked under a microcope, he was SURE he'd seen cartoonish smiling bacteria.
One addition thing he did notice however, was that the baby fur police officers still carried their side arms, even if they were now brightly colored squirt guns. A big husky baby fur, that Samuel was sure was Old Flint, the gun shop owner missing one eye (though he now had two eyes again), and a few who he figured must have been his hunting club, had actually gone around town, splattering and squirting and spraying everything in their path through town, making it more and more resemble a childhood toy land perfectly scaled to their size than the town Samuel had grown up in. More and more like HE was in the infection in THEIR world, and not the other way around.
From where he stood at the highest part of his house, he saw that the town at this point was basically theres, there were even baby fur 'soldiers' 'guarding' the edge of the town, who had originally been sent to contain or capture the baby furs, but were now batting for the other team.
He'd seen a number leaving town down the roads, some coming back with new baby furs, some not. But it wasn't coordinated, in the least. It was more like some kids going off to explore than any elaborate attempt to spread the change.
The one that truly sent Samuel's head spinning was a number of baby furs sitting in the transformed church, and a baby fur anthro lion wearing a cross 'reading' from the bible, or at least a happy pre-school picture book version of it.
And then the baby lion priest afterwards playing patty cake with a baby fur bear wearing the Star of David, and a baby fur ibex wearing a different holy symbol.
Samuel kept talking with Jessica. Trying to find something to reason with her.
"You said you wanna stay like how you were born?" Jessica asked, in a toddler's childish imitation of cagy.
"Yes, that's what I said."
"Then why don't you want to come out and play?"
"Because then I wouldn't be!"
"No silly! Then you would be!" She giggled, thankfully the power of her laughter didn't translate over electronics, and the lullabies drowned them out between her and his windows. "You were born a baby, and you'll be a baby again, so you'll be how you were born."
"Jessica, if this is so great, then why are some of your 'new friends' unhappy?"
"Oh! I forgot! When I was getting my tent, I met Ziggy, and we talked-"
"Who is Ziggy?"
"His says he's a sick-cole-low-gest. He's this cute white cat. Uh, helps others who are confused about themselves. After he got to play, he was curious why some of our new friends weren't being happy, so he talked to them, letting them lie on his couch and everything . . . he said they were having trouble being happy, because it was hard for them to be happy."
"Doesn't that mean this isn't fun for everyone!"
"Wait! Wait! Let me think! Hm! Oh! I got it! How did he say it? He said that when they were human, it'd been forever since they'd been happy. Isn't that really sad? So when they felt happy, they didn't know what they were feeling, and that scared and con-fus-ed 'em. They'd been so UNhappy so long that they didn't understand what it was to be happy! Ziggy said they were mostly 'paper pushers' why would people push papers around all day? Or 'in-sure-ance' sails-men, sailing doesn't sound unhappy to me, but Ziggy said they said that's what they were before. One said he'd been thinking about jumping off a building before he got to play, but he didn't have wings, so it's kinda silly he'd want to do that. But he says he doesn't want to anymore anyway."
"You're saying." Samuel said bewildered. "The baby fur, er, your new friends, who seemed more aware, I mean unhappy, were that way, because their lives had been so empty, they couldn't COMPREHEND they were feeling happiness?"
"Not in so many big words, but I think that's what Ziggy said."It's been so long since they've been happy, that being happy scares them, confuses 'em. They don't know wadda make out of bein' happy."
"Jessica . . . how can I REALLY be happy if I know I was FORCED to be that way?"
"If you had blue hair, would you not be Sammy anymore? Would you be Joe, would you not be you?"
"... I'd still be me."
"If you had purple scales instead of skin, would you suddenly like zucchini?"
"No." She remembered that much at least.
"If you had orange eyes, would you not like the color red anymore?"
" . . . I'd still like the color red."
"And if you were twelve feet tall . . . would you not like jingle bells anymore?"
Samuel blushed as she mentioned his favorite christmas song. "I'd . . . I would still like it."
"And when you were sad that . . . you great-grand . . . went away . . . you were still Sammy right?"
"... I was."
"And when you were happy, you're still Sammy aren't you?"
Samuel didn't answer. He couldn't look at her pleading eyes anymore today.
He spent days like that. Each day, Jessica talked over the phone of new friends she had made, but she still wanted Samuel to come out and join her and play too, so they could be his friends too.
One of the furs actually had a white board brought out and began a tally of how many days Samuel was lasting.
Samuel wondered . . . how much longer was his generator going to hold out? How long could HE hold out? Before his water and food ran out, and he'd have to take gifts from the infected, tainted by whatever 'magic' had changed them, and his own transformation into one of them wouldn't be far behind.
He turned on his radio, listening for messages, getting reports that amounted to 'keep calm, we have everything under control' with no real information. And yesterday, one of them had begun playing nothing but 'Kidz Bop' followed by infantile voices saying how fun today was and how the DJ hoped everyone listening would have a fun day too. The station being formally renamed 'ABC-FUNZ!'
And that night, as the sun went down, he saw on the horizon, a rainbow colored smilie face.
He doubted even the baby furs knew how far they'd spread, they appeared to have no real command structure, that hadn't already existed before they were changed. The mayor of Franklin was still mayor, wearing a cartoonish 'Mayor' Sash as he went about town, telling the police and others what a great job they were doing, rather than talking about changing more humans.
And the generator . . . was beginning to run out.
He also saw the ones who had been crying and scared before, now playing hop-scotch with the others, smiling now.
Maybe he SHOULD just join Jessica, play with her. Maybe he'd retain enough himself to care . . . but they all cared already. To become human again! But . . . they were all so happy . . . was it right to take that happiness away from them? It had been FORCED on them . . . but if they were happy now . . . wouldn't HE be the one forcing them then if he found a way to change them back? Ugh!
If this was the future of the world, would people ever accomplish anything ever again? . . . Samuel was struck by the odd mental image of baby furs on mares in cartoonish space suits, turning the dead red planet into a garden with their touch alone.
But, would there be any NEW generations to come? Or would only this generation remain? Immortal toddlers through out eternity inhabiting the planet, immortal and unhurtable, their numbers never rising or lowering.
Maybe the answers he wanted COULD only be found from within. But from what Jessica said, those who mentally resisted were the clinically depressed or suicidal, the very feelings that made Samuel's life worth living were the things that lessened his own chances of resisting. If it was resistance . . . . Ugh! Everyone couldn't have just accepted this pure, simple happiness of their own will, could've they?
The generator was failing. If was changed, could he really turn it into a perpetual motion machine with just a touch?
It was all a gamble. But was better than nothing.