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They told the people a “purposed organism” was this: some artificial DNA, taboo already encoded in before put in some cells. They’ll wait for it to grow in a “bioreactor”, as it was told, and someone might ask them to produce an image of one. What comes up is not but a schematic — “It’s confidential, really.” And the asker would have to leave satisfied and the other, in his white vestments, would retreat under the surface.
He’d be in an elevator, watching as the hundredth red light marking a few meter's length shines through its glass doors as it descends. He’d walk the sterile halls, his gait in strides across the long stretches; stretches of cells on either side, all the way down. Sometimes the cells would be full, one man to each. One might be with his head to the glass wall, utterly hopeless. Another would be banging his fist, hoping it'd all come down. Another would sit and watch, being new to it all. He’d watch the man in white hold a silvery card up to the machine beside the door, then disappearing behind it and no longer heard through its thick steel. With sore legs and arms after the monotonous procedure of opening heavy doors, he arrived, waved to his colleagues, said “Go bring out the next one.”
Bearing guns, two came to the cell. The wall lowered and one of them gestured at him, the prisoner. “What are you going to do to me?” he asked mousily. They said nothing but gestured again. A third, this one in those same white vestments as before, stood behind them. “Not them, but I.” he said. He felt naked before the rest of the prisoners being without a mask, going with the guards who pincered him. They went in silence through the grid of corridors. The guards looked forward, shoulders set and guns primed in their grip while the prisoner looked down at his hands swinging uselessly by his sides. Later, two doors. The first was as wide as the wall, then slowly unfolding to reveal a large, square room. The white-coat enters the back of the chamber through the second. In his plain orange robes, he squeaked out another question, “What will he do to me?”
And the man adorning a heavy mask of gold disregarded this, saying “Strip down.” So he did, though reluctant but not waiting long enough to warrant another blow to the back from the butt of a stock. With his uniform behind him, he entered on shaking legs. He looked upward to a large, reflective surface and knew immediately that this was not merely a mirror. The mirror looked at him too, scowling down, silently judging his absolute nudity. A voice from no seeable source reverberated in the room, the one same as the white-coat’s,
“Please know that this isn’t personal. At least, not on my behalf.”
“What is not personal? Please,”
“You and your conspiring against the House. To me, I could not care less what goes on up there but money is a not a fickle thing.”
He quaked and shivered in the coldness of the room, “I… I have not done anything.”
The one behind the mirror waited for the chamber to reseal noisily as it did. “Don’t do that,” he was without inflection, “don’t put up an act, it’s far too late. You are already without your clothes.”
Another voice comes through, “So, what’s it going to be this time?”
“I-I don’t-”
“Not you, you dullard.” he sneered.
“Just the basic.” said his colleague, “Pipe cleaner, white slugcat.”
“We already have enough of those, don’t we?”
“Well, what do you suppose we do instead?”
“There's been a demand for vultures recently.”
“He doesn’t deserve that. He’s worth only as much as a pipe cleaner.”
“Oops, we forgot to turn the microphone off.”
“Nevermind it, it’s not like he’ll be able to tell anyone.”
And together they made unseen smirks and chuckled inwardly at the man as naked in his self as his visage, stripped of all nobility. Upon hearing a little of the laughter he thought to shake his fist or scream but did not but come down to his knees, shrinking into himself, shuffling towards a far corner. The way he went reminded them of what would become of him. Taking a quiet delight in watching such a thing only lasted so long before they itched to take delight in another.
“Alright, press it.”
A hissing, like pressurized air being released. He looked up to see nothing at all. Soon, the hissing stopped, and there was no sound but the thoughts in his head going on about all things he could have done differently. If he had severed his ties with that congregate when he noticed something was off, he’d not be with orange garbs but his regal attire. If only he had recognized how vindictive the people of Five Pebble’s could be he would not have mingled amongst the ranks of those who opposed the council. He lamented this, but was suddenly pulled out from his mind to the foreign scent then permeating the air. It smelled mild; this is nothing to worry about. Should it have been a gas he would have held his breath until invariably succumbing. But, no, the hissing was from another set of giant doors shifting, he assured himself. He smelled some more.
A coldness ran under the shudder that came down his neck. His heart skipped a beat, palpitated. He doubled over himself. He cried out, “What’s happening?” No response came to him. Soon, a convulsing was within him. First, it was a little sensation in his stomach, then rampantly spreading throughout his torso. He felt as if his organs were being pulled on and reorganized, grabbed and shoved into some other spot to be repurposed. With his shaking touch he could feel his heart beating so fast he imagined it ceasing altogether. Then, he could feel no longer as the convulsing had climbed up into his arms. Straining to force out another vain word he realized his voice had gone with his ability to touch. The grunting and whining stopped when the convulsing had then crawled up his throat and invaded his head, his brain pounding against the cranium with the beat of his heart. By then, he could think not one thought, his internal voice and all capacity for reason subdued. He tried to get up, but couldn’t. He crawled around some, towards the middle of the room, and collapsed back down to all fours by the spasming in his legs. Every muscle was contracting, every tissue shifting in some way. He saw what manifested from this writhing in his body. He saw with his vision growing blurry and seeing double. He looked at himself and saw not his own body but something else in which his mind was trapped in, damned to agony in a new cell, the prison of this body estranging from him.
On his back, then, he brought his hands to view. In doing so he had used the last of the energy left in his reserves to heave his aching arms. There seen were patches of smooth whiteness shimmering in the copious sweat drenching him. The pain pervading every part of his body forced him to relinquish his hold over his arms and he laid there, sprawled out, hoping it would all send him to unconsciousness soon. The senses were fading, but his awareness not. The fingers were twitching and curling, the legs jerking and kicking. Fingers joined together, unable to come apart, and the legs became locked in arched positions. Through his dampened hearing he heard a little of a muffled snapping in the limbs and loud squelching from the abdomen. Instinctively, he wailed out, his oscillating pitch unrecognizable to him. His cries soon became quelled along with the insufferable pain as it gave way to another sensation. It was a warm sensation, unlike the burning from his skin to his bones. He was relieved, his panting put to rest. The pain had grown past the terminal, then overturning to its opposite. There was a radiating pleasure coursing with the throbbing blood in his dilated veins. Groans turned over to moans.
He could move his limbs, stifled as they were. Looking over himself, he saw the arches of his feet elongating. The knees could not come unbent — he was becoming digitigrade. As the arches grew so did the toes, fusing together into three large digits each, the smaller toes stretching forward to become symmetrical with the rest. He watched all of this over the snout obfuscating the lower of his vision. Three fingers come to feel the little protrusion on the face. A little wonderment came unto him, though the question unable to be consciously spelled out. How could he have not noticed until then, the shifting of his own face? It did not matter, for all he could hope for was that it wouldn’t all be over with too soon. He opened his jaw as wide as the stiffness in his face would allow him and handled his maw with a slimy hand, feeling sharp teeth. This did not feel like one touching their own body. Still, he enjoyed touching himself. It was novel, he was infatuated with changing. Patches of slick white skin strewn between the skin of his old self. He moved down himself, feeling the changes in texture with his senses returned to him. Eventually his paws of hands had come upon a pulsing. Between the wrenching and the jerking in every part he had not the attention to notice that his penis was erect. But, he saw it then, with vision sharper than ever, his penis twitching with every pulse. So, he grasped it. With every squeezing clench in his groin did his penis grow a little girthier, a little longer. He was masturbating to the unendurable pain turned unendurable pleasure.
It tapered towards the tip, the penis. He felt this as he went along his entire length with rapid strokes. He felt how pliable it was, supple in his tight grip. Another kind of pressure, on the other side of the waist, had interrupted his masturbation. He felt the need to stand up and so did on his soles turned paws, heels far from the floor. He did so without letting his penis free of his grip. Looking behind, he saw what this pressure that demanded to grow freely was: a nub of a tail. There was no effort to balance himself and so he fell forward. With the tail over him he could look over himself and see that it was pulling on him, writhing and wriggling as it reached up. In but a moment it was already the length of his diminished legs, still growing thicker. Laying on his side and with what little capacity to focus had returned to him, he could curl it inward to feel. He could sink his hand in and see that it was as supple as his penis. He stroked himself to this, the feeling of becoming loose and lithe. In his legs, too, the tightness had given way to looseness, having been entirely enveloped in the whiteness. Then, as the last of the color of his old skin left, orgasm was on him. Viscous strings of semen shot up and fell on his body. Even after his hand was removed was his penis still ejaculating, the amount of cum never reducing with each passing clench in his prehensile penis. He howled, his feral voice trilling.
After so long did the orgasm recede, his sleek torso laden with the ejaculate. At last, the squelching and twisting and little cracks subsided, and he felt at ease in his new body. He stood again and could balance thanks to the tail as wide as his hips at the base and longer than the legs in length. Looking around, curiously, he saw that the mirror was further away. The room had become larger. Looking below, some hair on the floor; all that remained of the self he no longer called his own. This self was nothing but an irrelevant memory, fading to obscurity. Turning his nose up, he sniffed the air with his slugcat nose and smelled subtle hints he could never before. Then, like an itch, an urge to groom himself was in him. He licked his hand and rubbed it on his long ear. He wondered a little. He wondered what he might have been in his past life. He wondered without his own voice in his head telling him words for he could not think with the voice he no longer had. He scooped the semen off his chest and gulped it down quickly.
“Looks healthy to me.”
“Nothing ever goes wrong, anyway.”
He understood these words. He knew that they were talking about him but no longer felt humiliated for he was no longer naked, but liberated. He was free to be nothing more than a creature, unfettered by the trifles of man. He scurried around the chamber on all fours, the act of doing so coming naturally to him, shaking off the soreness pervading his body as he went aimlessly. They, behind the mirror, studied this behavior, taking scrupulous notes. Yet, there was nothing noteworthy of his behavior, him being just as mindless as the rest of the slugcats to come from this chamber.
“I’m not fond of watching someone transform into a purposed organism.”
“Why so?”
“I just don’t understand it, why they all would be agonizing just to suddenly start sexually stimulating themselves.”
“Well, I like it.”