That fateful day I woke up, dizzy… and confused. This is not my bed. This is not my room.. I’m not where I should be! Where’s my home?
I panicked for a moment, and sat down in bed. A million thoughts got in my head. Did I party last night and fall asleep after shoving tons of booze into my body? Maybe I had decided to get high with some friends and the fly was a bit too strong?
It would serve me well, because I couldn’t remember anything that happened the previous night. Then I looked at my own arm and jumped in shock. It wasn’t my arm. It was covered in white feathers, and from my wrist and across all the back of my arm I saw what I could only interpret as wings. They were of a beautiful aquamarine green, with a bright yellow stripe dividing their color with my arm’s.
This had to be a dream. A very weird one. Sure, I was part of the furry fandom, and I wasn't the only person who would’ve dreamt of something like that, but it’s one thing to wish or dream for something, another for it to actually happen . I got out of bed, and could see that my body was completely different. I had claws on my hands and my feet, only three fingers per hand (and three toes per foot) and my legs… When I stood up I couldn’t do it with my legs “straight up”; I had digitigrade legs.
It was then when I heard a voice. It talked with what sounded like chirps and clicks, but strangely I could understand everything being said. “Hey bro! Are you up? You slept a lot today!”.
“Did I?”, I replied. Or better said, I tried to reply in English, but subconsciously I made the same kind of click and chirpy sounds.
“Oh, absolutely. We thought you would’ve been up hours ago. But we decided to let you sleep”.
While the voice was saying that, another creature of the same species I had transformed into came into my room. They were dark gray in color, with the arms, forehead and tail being bright red and the same yellow highlight I had. They were wearing what looked like a sort of black cloak with orange highlights and some thatch design in the borders.
He saw me and stopped. I got scared. He surely recognized me. I knew he was going to get angry for sleeping in his bed, or the bed of whoever usually sleeps here. Then he just said “What’s up with you? You look weird”.
I wasn’t interested in trying to accept an “adventure” that wasn’t mine. I figured out that if I tried to hide anything, they could find it and that would be worse for me. So I decided to be direct. “It’s because, well… I’m not whoever you think I am”.
“What do you mean, Kazui?”, he replied.
“That’s not my name… My name is John”.
Now he stared at me like I had funny paintings on my face. It didn’t last long, because he just replied “What do you mean?”.
I started explaining the best I could. I’m John, I’m 27 years old, I’m a human from Earth, I was born and raised in New York City, I made a living being an artist and somehow I forgot what happened last night and woke up here.
The Avali (that’s the name of this species, I came to learn later) looked at me and all he said was “Humans? Earth? New York City? Kazui, this was a very weird dream you had. Come on, we need your help in the docking bay. You can get your breakfast from the fridge”.
I tried to protest, but he left. Still confused and with a lingering headache, I walked to what looked like a closet. Now I could get a better look at my room. There were few to no sharp surfaces; the room looked like one of these futuristic white metal/plastic rooms that you see sometimes in fiction, with an aesthetic that reminded me a bit of the one from a video game console, the Playstation 5. Although in addition to the black and white, there were orange highlights in most stuff, from the walls to the doors. A lot of electronic devices and accessories had the same logo in them, what looked like three feathers crossed over with a circle. One of the small tables had a laptop, another table had a pot with some crystals, and another one had a pot with a plant I had never seen in my life, with purple leaves and some bright red flowers. The light governing the room was rather dim; things looked a bit darker than they should have.
Inside of the closet there were some cloaks like the one worn by the Avali who came to see me when I woke up, just in different colors. It was then that I noticed that the lights weren’t dim; it was my eyesight that was poor. I went to the laptop, and I could see it was locked, and it asked me for my password. The system wasn’t in English. It didn’t even have letters I recognized; everything looked like lines scratched on the screen. Strangely, though, I could understand the words. I couldn’t remember any of my passwords at that moment, so I left that for the time being.
After I had put on one of the cloaks, I walked out of the room. Everything looked so alien, yet so familiar. This black-white-orange aesthetic was present everywhere. Instinctively I walked through an aisle and reached the kitchen. In a way, it was like I knew my way. But I couldn’t remember anything. The Avali who had gone to my room was there, along with another one, who was white too, with blue feathers and forehead.
“You woke up!”, the new Avali exclaimed. “We decided to let you sleep after last night”.
“What happened last night?”, I asked.
“Oh come on Kazui”, the dark gray one said. “Are you going to tell me that you forgot already?”
“I told you, I’m not from here… I’m a human who was sent here somehow”.
“A human?”, the white and blue Avali inquired. “What’s that?”
“This isn’t funny anymore”, the grey one added.
I don’t know what my expression was, because both Avali looked at me in shock. Then the grey one just said “Wait. Are you serious?”.
“Yes, completely”.
“Okay, let me tell you. Your name is Kazui, you’re part of our pack since… always. On Friday you were on fire working with the new AI modules, programming them with our neural headset. When it was time to stop working you decided to go on and finish it. After some hours you just walked to bed, extremely exhausted, and woke up now.
The explanation made no sense to me, but I thought that these Avali had no reason to lie to me. Unless this was just an elaborate prank and I had passed out while relaxing on vrchat or something. Or maybe I was still high.
I explained to them everything that I could remember. I explained that Earth was a planet located in the Milky Way and that I was from there, working as an artist, etc. They looked confused. The gray one, whose name later I learned was Tikak, took his tablet and tried to find any instances of “Milky Way” among the existing record of discovered stars, and found nothing.
The blue one, whose name I learned was Ckakk, explained to me that the Milky Way didn’t exist, let alone any planets like Earth. Avali are a species that made space their second home, and their astronomy registries are really, really good. If they tell you that a galaxy or planet doesn’t exist, there are huge chances they’re right.
I went with Ckakk and Tikak to my “workplace”. The other Avali who was part of my pack was one with dark gray feathers, a white highlight and yellow/orange wings, forehead and tail. Her name was Baki and she was waiting for me to replace her. She patted my head -I felt a joy sensation that I hadn't felt in years- and started briefing me on what I had to do. I told her to go slow; I could barely understand anything. The other two Avali explained to her what happened, and she frowned and said “Oh damn it. I knew it was a bad idea to just let you be unsupervised with the neural link”.
When the other Avali asked her, she explained. The very likely reason why I lost my memories and had these insane dreams was because when I was using my neural connection to program the AI, at some point I was so mentally exhausted that I lowered my defenses, and the neural implant sent corrupted data that messed with my memories. This wasn’t dangerous; I was going to recover my usual memories and all my skills and everything in a day or two. But until then I was a blank slate, and my brain tried to fill the gap while I was asleep with an insane dream about me living on another planet and having a whole different life.
The explanation made sense, and being honest, I was feeling comfortable with these guys. Instinctively I knew they were my pack, my family. I was confused by my memories, but after some minutes with them my Avali instincts had kicked in and I was ready to trust them with my life. Baki was right too: Eventually I started regaining my usual memories. I’m a system manager and programmer; while I’m not the best one out there, I’m the best one from my pack, so I (and my sister) usually focus on the software part while my brothers focus on the hardware part. Our pack worked essentially by programming custom drones; we’d do the work, send them to our leaders and they’d send us credits and food in return.
Some days later I started forgetting about the insane dream I had. I still had some of that dream in my memories, but eventually they faded out and the only things I could remember was how humans looked and that I liked to do art for a living. And that humans hated each other for some reason. And I was okay with that. I was too busy focusing on my life as an Avali, to worry about a random dream that I had when a neural interface failed due to my own fault.
That won’t happen again, sis. I will stop working when it's time to do so. That way we’ll avoid going through the same again.
-The end -
