The Zoo

The man scanned though the satellite feeds. The room was dark, cold and noisy. One of the displays caught his eye. With the press of a few buttons he changed the display setting as to have one giant display of what had caught his eye. The display showed a boy, about 12-13 years of age climbing the fence into the zoo. Pressing a few more buttons, the screen displayed the words 'neural analyzer'. Over the speakers, the boy’s thoughts came through. Smiling, very impressed with what this technology allowed him to do, he listened in. After several minutes of watching the boy and listening to his thoughts, he tapped a communications panel on his chair.

“Dr. I believe I have a new candidate for you”

***

It was a cool autumn night, Paul had been planing this for weeks. Making sure to dress warmly, he had snuck out of the house. The walls around the zoo were surprisingly easily to climb. He was thankful for those track and field drills and practices he had taken part in at school over the past year and a half. Within seconds he was 'in'. He knew what animal he wanted to see, the river otters. He had always like otters. Unfortunately when the zoo was open, he didn’t get much time to see them because of the crowds.

The zoo was quite large so it took him a while to get to the otter pond. On several occasions he had to hide from the guards, but since he had been planning this for some time he new exactly what to do.

Arriving at the pond, he looked around very carefully, making sure the coast was clear. And stood there watching the otters for nearly 20 minutes. It was then that a crazy idea came over him,

“If I was careful I could climb over this and maybe get one of them to come over to me and I could pet him”. Quickly reaching a decision, he climbed over the fence

The mud and rocks on the side of the pond was very slippery, and Paul’s footing was very lose. When he knelled down to try to coax one of the otters to the side of the pond, he slipped and fell in to the pond. The pond was fairly deep, so he was lucky enough not to hit anything, but the water was cold. He knew what he had to get out of it quickly before he started to suffer from hypothermia. As if sensing his distress, several otters started swimming around him quickly, which slightly warmed up the water around him. Taking advantage of the situation, he petted a few of them, they definitely seemed to enjoy it. One of them even rolled on its belly and let him rub it, something that it definitely enjoyed.

Finally, he knew he had to get out of there and slowly he climbed out of the water on all fours as to have as much balance as possible. As he was slowly walking towards the wall, the chill of the air combined with the fact he was soaked, him feel very cold, so cold that he didn’t notice that he had scratched himself on something that was on the ground and that he was bleeding slightly.

Suddenly feeling a tingling in both his hands, he stood up on his knees to look at them. What he saw shocked him. His fingers were webbed, much like those of an otter, and he had small claws at the end of each finger.

“What the heck is going on” he said as he stared at his hands.

The tingling sensation returned, spreading to his arms. He watched in horror as coarse black fur covered his hands, and as brown fur began to sprout on his arms. His hands changed shape, and were now looking exactly like otter paws. Within a matter of seconds his arms were covered with long brown fur. Looking at the changes he shock his head in disbelief and said

“I have to get out of here”. Just as he began to climb the fence to get out of the otter habitat, the tingling returned, this time on his face, chest and rear end. Long, brown fur grew all over his face, his ears shrunk, and became much more round in size then moved to the top of his head. His face grew out into the shape of a muzzle. Whiskers grew out from the sides of his muzzle, and his nose became small and black. His eyes decreased in size slightly and became black. Feeling incredibly itchy on his chest, he removed his shirt and coat to see long beige fur spreading across his chest. Touching it, it felt incredibly soft, like an otters. Feeling a pulling sensation in his rear, he heard his jeans rip, and a large tail that was nearly as long as his body pushed it’s way out of his pants and hung between his legs. The tingling again subsided and Paul thought whatever was happening to him was done.

Starting at him self, he was fascinated by his appearance and by what had happened to him. He was not sure what to think.

“this is impossible. It’s like I’m turning into an otter.” Before he could finish the thought he began to change again. Saying

“No!” he began to rapidly shrink and fell

“into” his clothes. A few seconds later he crawled out of his clothes, he looked just like a normal otter, and there was sign of humanity in him at all.

With all the fur he now had, he no longer felt cold. He pondered on how he was supposed to explain this to his parents and how he was supposed to get home. Picking up a strange scent and hearing a strange sound, Paul looked to his right to see a man in a suit standing next to him. He tried to say,

“Who are you? Where did you come from?” but he could only make otter sounds. The man reached down picked him up and injected him with something that made everything go blurry and made him lose consciousness, in his last second before passing out he could have sworn he saw his human self standing there smiling at him.

Waking up, Paul opened his eyes. He was lying on a bed in a white room with a large mirror across from the foot of the bed. There was nothing else in the room, all of the walls were white and it was very quiet. Looking at himself in the mirror, he couldn’t help but being happy with what he saw. He was a very handsome otter. Instinctively sniffing around the room, all he could smell was disinfectant. He had no idea of where he was, he guessed that he could be in a hospital room. He wanted out of the room, jumping of the bed, he clawed at the door to the room, but no one answered. He was about to give up hope, when he heard a noise come from the mirror. Climbing back on the bed, he saw that the mirror has vanished. He could now see a small room with several people inside of it.

One of the men, who was dressed in what looked like a doctor’s coat stepped forward. He began to speak.

“Ah, hello Paul I see that you are awake.” He told him a story that was very much like the story he told Anna. When he mentioned the replacement, Paul began chittering. The man continued,

“I’m sure you want to know why we are doing this”. Turning to his colleagues he discussed something then resumed talking.

“We didn’t feel the need to tell our previous… ‘Clients’ why we are doing this, but since you can no longer speak it’s doubtful you’ll ever be able to tell anyone. We have recently discovered how to turn people into animals. Mostly at random we have transformed a large number of people into a large variety of species, and replaced them with clones of themselves. Those clones replace them and go back to their lives. In fact if you’ll look at the view screen you’ll see your replacement is doing quite well”. He pushed a few buttons and a screen came down from the ceiling, on it Paul saw a display of his front deck. He saw his human self-standing on it talking to his mother. He could even hear his replacement talking, his voice and the way he talked sounded exactly the same as he had sounded and talked before becoming an otter.

As quickly as it had lowered, the screen raised back into the ceiling. The man continued

“You need not concern yourself with human matters anymore though. Soon you will be transported to a natural habitat where you can live out your life in your current form. Don’t worry, we will allow you to keep your memories, were not barbarians.” As he finished that sentence he pressed a button which returned the mirror to its former state. The room filled with an odd smelling gas and everything went blurry and Paul passed out.

Ventilation systems removed the gas from the room, and two people entered. On of them picked up Paul, and placed him into a crate similar to a cat carrier. Walking into the dark room with the man watching the satellite feeds.

“We have about 5 hours until he wakes up, where should we drop him off sir?” he asked the man.

“I’m reading a large colony of otters at the following co-ordinates, drop him off there”

“yes sir!” he responded.

***

Waking up, the world stopped spinning and everything came back into focus. Paul had no idea where he was, it didn’t take him long to realize he was still an otter. Instinctively sniffing the air he could smell other otters and he found himself wanting to be with them. Thinking of home he worried about what his replacement was going to do. Realizing that there was nothing he could do about he decided he had to accept his fate. He was no longer human, and human concerns had to be let go. Walking towards to source of where he smelled the other otters he saw a beautiful river with dozens of them playing and swimming. Sliding down the bank of the river on his belly he dove into the water and joined them.

**

The man who dropped Paul off had returned to base, and entered the room.

“The delivery went well sir, by now he should be awake. I’m sure he’ll be very happy there”.

“Excellent, things are going exactly according to plan. Were you able to contain the escapee in from section 78?” The man asked.

“Yes sir”.

“Very well then, I believe it is time to implement stage 2”