220 36937 article Path: ix.netcom.com!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.mid.net!news.ksu.ksu.edu!s30.slip.ksu.edu!user From: foxglov@ksu.ksu.edu (Hanover the Feral) Newsgroups: alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die Subject: The Fox Files, Part One: sum mutatis Date: Mon, 09 Oct 1995 11:47:38 -0700 Organization: The Jihad to Destroy B*rn*y Lines: 447 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: s15.slip.ksu.edu X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0 "His discretion, I am sure, cannot carry his valour, for the goose carries not the fox." _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, V, i. the story... -- Nineteen years ago something happened. I was born. There was no great cataclysmic echo heralding that birth, nor did any visions, omens, or mystical events of that nature occur. At least, none that I am aware of. All that happened on that day was that a new life came unto the planet Earth, on the continent of North America, in the state known as Kansas. That life was, surprisingly enough, human. Time passed...(for the sake of the story, 16 years worth of time.) Eventually my family moved to Topeka, where I went to high school, still appearing for all the world to be a generally well-adjusted, blond-haired, blue-eyed, anemic-looking WASP, as normal as anyone would suspect. And one day, that all changed abruptly. It was, as I remember it, a Friday, clear skies, grass a little damp from the rain. I was walking to my car, getting ready to go home after staying late after school. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a short, nondescript man in a gray suitjacket and slacks standing by the wall of the school, stooping slightly. I noticed his gaze as I walked out of the building, how he seemed to be watching me as I walked by. I glanced over, and he immediately averted his gaze. I kept walking, other things on my mind, thinking nothing of him. I reached the parking lot and looked about. No one was around, only things I could see were cars. What happened there is still a blur, mainly because it happened so fast. There was a stab in my side, a feeling of dizziness, whirling about to see the syringe sticking out of my abdomen, and then looking up to see...that little man standing next to me with his thumb on the plunger. Grinning. and then blackness. "nnn...mmmnn...mmrrrrr...rrwha?" I heard this sound as I began to wake up and struggled to concentrate. What was going on? What happened? Where was I? A voice, I had just heard a voice. Whose voice was it? Wait... It's my voice. No, couldn't be, that voice was higher, more nasal, and resonated more. My voice didn't sound at all like that. I opened my eyes. Big white blur. Great. Something in the way...what is that? I was looking at some weird black dot in the middle of the white blur, couldn't make it out. Gradually my eyes came into focus, still staring at the black dot, still wondering. Wait, again. Looks like...nah, couldn't be. Oh yeah, it was. It was a little black nose, perched on the end of a muzzle, about four inches away from my eyes. Yes folks, I get jabbed in the side, knocked out and taken god knows where, and now, I had a friggin' Muzzle. This was too much for me to deal with. I yelled out to no one in particular, that 8-word phrase made cliché by a multitude of cheezy sci-fi flicks and novelettes; "What the hell did you do to me?!" A startled 'Eep!' sounded off to my right, and I turned my head to see what it was. Sure enough, it was the little man from before. Only now, instead of a gray suit, he had on The Dumbest looking lab coat on that I had ever seen. White, with tails that nearly reached the floor on his hunched-over frame. I got a better look at him. He stood only about five feet tall, but not totally upright, so his head was only about 4'6" off the floor. Spear bald, with thick-lensed glasses perched on his wide nose. He grinned widely and peered at me, his hands clapping expectantly. I vaguely remember hearing something during the next few minutes, but I wasn't paying much attention. My mind was more or less focused on my surroundings, which seemed... Here's where it gets weird again. My eyesight wasn't yet perfectly clear... yet everything, the sight, the sound, the smell, all seemed so *vivid,* it overwhelmed me. I had trouble focusing on anything else for the time being, what with my ears (which I now realized were on top of my head) detecting every little scratch and rustle in the room, and my nose pulling in even the slightest hints of scent, the room in all its drabness nearly overloaded my mind. I shook my head and looked down my front. I was still wearing what I had on when I was kidnapped, my Animaniacs logo T-shirt, plaid shorts, and high-top basketball shoes. I squinted at my legs and started again. "Hey! I'm still Blond!" I shouted again, again breaking the little man's train of thought, as I realized he had been talking to me all this time. He shot me an annoyed look, and then blinked and peered at me more closely, realizing what I had just said. "Oh! Hoo hoo hoo! Whoops! Looks like I may have missed that part! I'll just have to go back and fix it later! Hoo hoo hoo..." God what a dippy laugh. A dippy laugh and a dorky lab coat. I froze. Wait a sec...if I had a muzzle and was covered with fur, does that mean I'd also have... I looked down past my waist. Yup. I had a tail, flicking against the table as if in response, with the same...*blond* hair on it, just longer. I shuddered, thinking of all the 'bleach' jokes I'd likely be the receiving end of. My mind was racing by this time. All the raw stimulation in the last few minutes was reaching the point where I couldn't bear it anymore. This little twerp not only kidnapped me and was holding me against my will, he somehow turned me into this..._thing_, whatever it was. What else could I do? I shouted. "Now wait a minute! You're not a part of some top-secret military plot to create a new breed of half-human super-soldiers are you?!" Nice to know my flair for the conspiratorial was still working. Didn't seem to impress him much, however. He had been pacing the room and suddenly stopped, turned and chuckled at me. "Hoo hoo...oh, nothing as silly as the dumb ol' government or its Army! No no no! You're going to be part of something soooo much bigger and better! Hoo hoo hoo! And the bestest thing of all: It's *who* you'll be helping! You're going to make him soooo happy!!" I blinked a few times. This did not sound good. "So...who is it that I'm going to make 'soooo' happy?" He bounced in the air and clapped his hands excitedly. "Thought you'd never ask!" He then ran over to the table and turned a crank on the side. The table started to turn on its axis, until I was facing the wall behind me. High above was a framed picture...the face of a bloated purple foam rubber dinosaur. "Barney?! You're doing all this for *BARNEY*?!!?" "And who else? He's my biggest and bestest friend in the whoooole world and he needs my help! And now *you're* going to help, too, yes yes yes!!" Joyous. Just when I thought things couldn't get any weirder, I find out I'm the intended servant for a stupid kiddie TV plushtoy who danced funny. "See here, what am I supposed to do for Barney? What does he need?" The little man stopped bouncing around and got all serious. "Well, for some reason, not everyone loves Barney as much as I do. In fact, some actually say they hate Barney!" He stamped his foot on the tiled floor, now fuming. "I just don't understand why! Barney is no nice and cute and huggable...why don't they all just love him like he loves them? I just get sooo frus-tra-ted..." He ran over to the side of the table and stared at me. "Some have even started to band together, these Barney-haters. They're calling themselves the Jihad Against Barney. They want to hurt my big happy friend! They even want to see him *DIE!*" Hm, I thought. Sounds like this Jihad is made up of a few sharp minds. Up until this day, I had always thought of Barney as just another ignorant television icon, with way too much merchandizing. The little man shook his finger at me and grinned maniacally. "You! You're going to help Barney by fighting the Jihad! You're going to crush them before they get any stronger, and before they have a chance to hurt Barney!" Yeah, right. I was going to help out some polyester dinosaur, who was beginning to sound more and more like a twisted, deceitful Evil. This little man, while annoying and twerpy as can be, still held all the cards, and I was still chained to the table, so I figured it wouldn't be too smart to rock the boat just yet. There was still more I wanted to know. I strained my neck to look up at my arms, which like everything else, looked almost entirely foreign to me. They were about the same size as my arms had been, and to my relief, still had five fingers apiece. I made a fist with my right hand to look closer. I was without nails, replaced by claws that had stuck out before, but retracted as I looked at them, somehow reacting along with my thoughts. I then turned to my left hand and had another surprise. (They just kept on coming.) For what I could see, it was essentially of the same appearance as my right arm, but part of my hand and forearm was obscured. A mass of metal plating and wires was clamped around the top of my hand, with my fingers free. A joint complementing my wrist connected this to another plate that curved around the top of my forearm, ending in a metal loop halfway between my wrist and elbow, holding it in place. As if this whole incident wasn't Outer Limits enough, this...Glove I guess, was impregnated with circuitry of a sort I'd only seen in cheap B-grade sci-fi flicks, tiny buttons and switches everywhere, some glowing slightly. The metal making up most of it was of a sort I'd not seen before. Gleaming silver in color, somehow it seemed stronger yet lighter than any metal I'd seen. Forcing myself to stay calm, I turned once again to the little man. He obviously made the Glove, and could tell me what it was for. What to call him, though? I considered Frankenstein, but decided nah, too obvious. "Hey Mengele," I yelled at him, jerking my head upward at my left arm. "What's this Glove for?" Once again, his demeanor switched entirely, this time from pseudo-mad scientist-type to a gleeful Barney-loving childlike person. He chuckled to himself, then began: "Hee hee, it's not a Glove, silly! It's a Glov!" Hm. I didn't see the point. What was the difference? "Well, it's just The very thing, that made all this, all of You possible! It's what will make you strong enough to take on the entire force of Barney- haters and crush them all! Hee hee! As you can see, it's a computer wired directly into you, holding..." "What?!" I interrupted him suddenly. "You mean this thing is *attached* to me? As in *implanted* in my arm?" He pouted slightly at having been interrupted yet again, then smiled. "Of course it is! How else do you think I'd be able to completely change your cellular makeup and hold it as you are now if I didn't wire the computer that holds all the data to make the change possible directly into you? You'd break up entirely if it wasn't there!" I winced noticeably, feeling my left arm go limp within the restraint. Ewww...I didn't even like getting Shots, but this thing was going to be like 30 needles, all penetrating at once. I wondered, for good? Was I able to take the Glove off? "OK, I think I understand...but do I have to wear it all the time?" "Ho ho, no! Only when you're as you are now, a fox. You can take it off whenever you want! Can't have you running around unable to look like a normal human being all the time, can we? Hee hee..." A _fox_, that's what I was. That little detail had been my next question. As I pondered that thought, the little man came waltzing over to the table and lowered the head, so that I lay parallel to the floor, and pressed a button on the Glove. The yell for him to stop got stuck in my throat as I witnessed a blue spark shoot from the Glove and rapidly move up my arm, spreading into a huge electric field around my whole body. I jerked my head back down as my vision started to blur again and my head went hazy again. Staring wide-eyed but unable to see clearly, I saw the table underneath me between my legs, which seemed...even more blurry than the table...then break entirely apart into tiny pieces like a swarm of flies once clustered around a bush suddenly taking flight...then blackness... and light. Apparently the experience hadn't lasted long. My eyes came into focus once again, still staring at my legs, only this time they weren't furred like before, they were as I remembered them, from 17 years of being human. Naked ape ergo sum, still clothed exactly the same as I had been, and realizing that I had just witnessed my cellular disintegration, then having been reintegrated as I had been before this bizarre day. I looked to my left side and saw the little scientist, wearing heavy rubber gloves and holding my Glove in his hands, grinning. It was unattached from my arm, and I could see where the clamps on the armpiece and around the palm came open and off. "See? See?" he started up again. "You can stay human on your own. Any other way, you need to wear this!" Oh, that made perfect sense. I was so lucky to have this joker for tech support. "So what's it made of? That metal..." "Oh, yes! The metal! I added that part myself, my very own idea, hoo hoo! It's indestructible, lightweight, and will let you blend right in with those nasty ol' Jihaddi, because I stole the supply straight from what they use to make their weapons! They call it Owsenite." "Owsenite? Never heard of it." "Hee hee, no reason why you should! It's not even from this world, they say. It's funny, I can't hold it in my hands without it burning me. I have to wear these gloves to hold anything made of it." What logic, I thought. Perfect material to make something for me, the unwilling subject, who not only has to hold but Wear, out of. Nice that he thought of everything. Funny, I didn't seem to have any problems while I had it on, it was just weird. He then busied himself with reattaching the Glove. I thought it would hurt, but as he fastened the clamps around my hand and forearm, I don't remember feeling any pain. He then pressed a button and I reexperienced the electric light show and vertigo, only this time I reawoke as in the beginning, staring down at my nose. Questions answered, I began to reflect on this whole episode. Sure, it was probably the most ridiculous conception anyone could ever have imagined, but it *happened*. I was no longer just a human being, I was a cybernetically wired-up vulpine human. Nifty. The doc said he could reconfigure the Glove to correct the blond problem. So, maybe I could figure out how to make it facilitate other changes, make me something *else*. More nifty. Hold a sec, what was I thinking? When I came in this room, I was completely in shock and freaked out by it all, now I was talking to myself like I actually *enjoyed* this. Simply looking around and breathing the air was an experience no normal human being had ever experienced as I could now, enhanced to include the attributes normally reserved for the animals, most of which probably weren't smart enough to realize what a natural advantage they had been given by birth. Humans before me had written down all the supposed experiences through hypothetical animal minds, but they didn't, they *couldn't*, know exactly for themselves if what they wrote was valid at all. I knew. I had it All now. This little guy, with his disgusting cookie-cutter personality and mindless servitude to a plush toy, had not only given me all this power for my own use, he had apparently awakened something that was dormant in my own psyche, something other than the normal human thoughts and impulses of everyday life. I realized they had been with me all along, just pushed under by petty worries and fixations. Other than human. Feral. And as these thoughts flashed through in half the time it takes to read about their nature, I grinned a wide grin, my lips turning upward into a sneer. So this little man thought he could use me as a willing tool and I'd follow him thick and thin, huh? We'll just see about this... "Um, thanks for all this, you've been nice and all, but um, could you let me out of these restraints? I'm getting kind of stiff over here." The little man giggled nervously and trotted to the table side. "Oh, now, can't have that, can we?" He then unhooked my wrists, and I sat up as he unhooked my ankles. "Now," he said, "we're going to be friends, you and I! You're going to help me and my bestest friend Barney soooo much, you are!" I swung my legs over so I was sitting on the table's edge, face to face with the little man. "I was wondering about one more thing: Why me?" "Oh, ho ho, wasn't about who you were, not to make you mad. It was where you were! I came here to Kansas to find someone to be the special fighter for Barney!" I raised an eyebrow. "To Kansas? Why?" He grinned and pointed his finger at me. "You know why! It's just only the bestest reason in the world! Everyone knows that you Kansans are just the stuuuupendously in love with Barney! Barney himself told me to come to Topeka to find someone like you, and here you are!" I jumped down off the table and looked down at the little man. Oh, he's making this easy, he is. All down to insulting the intelligence of everyone who lives in the same State I live in. "I see. You were sure I'd be willing to help out, because I love Barney so much, me being from Kansas and all. Hmmm..." As he nodded in his candy-apple euphoria, I leaned down until I was nose to nose with him, and looked him straight in the eye, past those lenses, boring a hole right up through his shriveled optic nerve to the vision center of his brain, making me appear crystal clear in his mind before I spoke. "I don't think so." In one swift motion, I grabbed him with my Glov'd hand and raised him up off the floor, then slammed him against the wall. I only thought of this Asinine, Audacious, Barney-loving Twit who had kidnapped Me, the bystander up until now and made me part of some devious plot to kill those who were smart enough to realize what I had missed, that Barney was not out to 'love' anyone or anything, nor was he to be loved himself. In fact, given what I now knew, Barney represented a threat to life as I knew it, and needed to be DESTROYED. Destroyed...as the word entered my thoughts, something happened. Again, totally unexpected, and as if in answer to the word. Destroyed...as I held the man against the wall, a blue spark erupted from the Glov and danced around it. The man's head jerked once, his cry muffled by my palm as he writhed. Destroyed...instead of enveloping me as it did before, the field grew around the little man. I witnessed him stop writhing and go limp. His form started to break apart and whirl about as mine had within the field. Destroyed...as I watched, the man ceased to be anything coherent physically. The field winked out of existence, and a heap of dust fell through my fingers, along with the man's clothes and lab coat. It was all that was left. "I killed him." I heard myself talking to myself out loud. Turning and looking at the room, I had the nagging urge to get the hell out of Dodge. I had no desire to stay in the room where I had been brought against my will, altered to serve an ignorant magenta lump, and now, had just killed another human being. A stupid and useless one, true, but he once was alive. I found the door and rushed out. It opened up into a staircase, then a tiny house crammed full of Barney toys and paraphernalia. Stopping only long enough to slash a few on my way out, I located the front door, and slammed it on the way out. Once outside, I looked to see if I could recognize anything. It was in a shadowed area outside the house, with no one else around. Off to my right, in the distance, I could see the Kansas River and a bridge over it. I grinned to myself. I hadn't even left town, only a short walk back to my car, which I hoped was still in the parking lot at school. Glancing downward I realized something else: I hadn't taken the Glov off, and I was still walking around as a fox! This wasn't good. I slipped behind the house, hoping no one had seen me, but on the dark street, I didn't think anyone had. I puzzled at the Glov. How did it really work? All that techie crap made sense only in theory; now I had to work the fool thing. I located the button the little man had pressed. I took a deep breath and pushed it. In vertigo, I nearly passed out and landed on my nose, but the switch passed smoothly, and the Glov unhooked itself when it was done. I slipped it off, mumbling to myself. Where to go from here? What now? What is this Jihad the man was talking about? Will I ever get to use the Glov again, or do I even want to, given what it was intended for, what I was intended for? I shook my head and trudged back to my car. Couldn't worry about that stuff now. Right then I needed only to get back to my car and get home. I carried the Glov gingerly, keeping it away from the eyes of nosy passersby. "Time will tell the rest." -finis- ****Hanover the Feral (NYAR!), Praetor of the Jihad to Destroy B'Harnii**** Maenad of the Holy Albino, Cursed Earth Division /~~~}---------------------------------------------------------------------- /__/_____ Admiral J. FoxGlov, TRES Corps, Alpha Sqaud Leader O \_____}------------------------------------------------------------------ <_______ FoxGlov I, Archbishop, Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Motion ==O |_______}--------------------------------------------------------------- <____ The Lady Morgenna's Familiar, Child of the House of Eternal Night O__/_____}------------------------------------------------------------------ \ | JFoxGlov on FurryMUCK/IRC | Brother to the Mystic Mongoose \ \ Upstart Majahid, bane of spongies, king of illiterature \__}---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Ye-eah. Well, it's been fun, friend, but we've got to get back to Planet Reality now." - Yakko Warner to Baloney ******** Email me about TRES Corps membership: foxglov@ksu.ksu.edu ********* TRES Corps Web page now online!