Gfoxx2

RIP Akira Toriyama. Sending you my energy for that big spirit bomb in the sky.

I ended up doing the same thing I always do when I’m upset. I retreated to my room and started sketching while listening to some video essay on a subject I knew nothing about in the background. The desk I’ve been provided isn’t exactly the most comfortable platform for my sketchbook. It’s a utilitarian modern sit/stand desk, with a physical crank to raise and lower it. I’d much prefer a proper angled drafting table, but I’d probably have to ask my parents to buy one for me and have it delivered.

Which… is not a bad idea, now that I think about it. I briefly consider sending off a text to Mom, but as I pull out my phone to shoot one off, I realize that she’d probably appreciate a phone call. After all, she’d want to hear about my first day at school, right? I like to think I have a good relationship with my parents, and any possible angst I may have had regarding my father’s death gave way to our new family dynamic years ago. I mean, he died when I was four years old, after all. I can’t even remember what his face looked like.

Anyway, while my mom wasn’t what you’d call a helicopter parent, she always wanted to be kept informed as to my school life. And my personal life, to be honest. She was one of the first I told when Lilly broke up with me, and she ended up taking me out for frozen yogurt to cheer me up, the same way she did all through my childhood whenever something bad happened.

So ultimately, I figure I’d better bite the bullet, and I hit the call button. It rings only a couple of times before I hear her voice.

“Hello?”

“Hey Mom. How’s it going?”

There’s the sound of some shuffling papers as she responds. “Jason! Hey kiddo, it’s going great! How about you?”

I’m suddenly struck by just how much I needed to hear her voice, which is compounded by the surreality of having seen her in person not three days ago. It’s been a hell of a Monday, I guess.

And while I find the term somewhat demeaning, I can’t argue the fact that I am a bit of a momma’s boy. Spending a big chunk of my childhood with her as the only adult in my life probably contributed to that more than I’m willing to admit out loud. 

By the time she and Enzo started dating, I was almost 11, and suddenly found myself taking care of a pair of brats from Enzo’s first marriage. And they latched on to my mom as a stabilizing figure quickly, which of course planted a seed of jealousy in me that I tried my hardest to starve of sunlight. Not that I disliked my brothers, mind you. To my total surprise, they took to me as an older brother figure almost as quickly as they took to my mom; before I knew it, they were both following me home from school most days. I don’t want to say they latched on to me, but they certainly seemed to hang around me often enough to be a bit annoying, a complaint my friends told me was totally normal for an older brother, much to my chagrin. But by the time our parents announced their engagement and subsequent merging of our households into one home two years later, I had basically already been thinking of them as family in all but a legal sense anyway.

But the fact that, even in this strange new reality, my mother’s voice has the same warm timbre I was used to… It really gets to me for some reason. For a moment, I feel the weight of today's trials lift from my shoulders, and almost begin to tear up.

“Great,” I say, doing my best to not let my voice waver, “I was just... getting settled into the new dorm. It’s… just past eight here, what is that? Five-ish for you?”

“Yeah, I’m actually still in the office. I’m working on this file that we got from… well, you don’t want to hear about all that anyway.”

Which is true. Despite harboring some aspirations of becoming a lawyer myself someday, I found Mom’s specialty of tax law to be boring even for the often dry and arcane legal profession. Not that I knew much about said profession, beyond what I picked up from being around my parents. That's what law school was for, after all. I still had at least a year to remain blissfully ignorant of that drudgery.

“So how was your first day? How do you like the new school?”

I consider her words for a moment. I know I’ll have to be careful in my approach here. “First day went fine enough,” I start, “though it’s certainly a change of pace from public school. I feel a little… out of place, you know?”

“Oh kiddo, you knew you were gonna be outnumbered,” she replies, immediately guessing correctly what I was trying to hide from her. “I did warn you. Being one of the only boys, and an unaltered one at that, is gonna turn some heads whether you like it or not.”

I notice the unfamiliar word immediately, and make a quick mental note of it. Unaltered. That's something I should probably look into after this call.

“Well, yeah, I guess, but I wasn’t ready for how much all the girls just stare at me," I reply, not even bothering to try to deflect. "It’s like they’re watching my every move, ya know?”

“Well that’s because they are, Jason,” she replies, failing to keep the exasperation out of her voice. “Look, they’re probably just intimidated. I don’t think you fully realize just how much girls your age worry about that kind of thing. You’re a handsome young man, and as soon as those girls work up the courage, they’ll start making their moves. I bet you’ll be beating them off with a stick.”

I have to admit, she’s not wrong in her prediction. In fact, one of them already had, but I’m not about to tell my mother about Mira. The more I can avoid thinking about that conversation, the better.

“If you don’t set proper boundaries with your classmates early, you’ll end up being harassed by them every day. I know you had that thing with Lilly, but... the sooner you start dating again, the easier it’s going to be for you to brush those girls off. I’m not saying you need to rush into anything, but it’s something to consider.”

“I guess, you’re probably right…” A part of me is almost shocked at just how blase she is about the subject. When I think about it, before the weirdness about this whole other reality business, my mother had expressed more or less the same advice previously. She got along fine with Lilly, but it didn’t seem to me like she was surprised or anything about our breakup, and she told me that it’d be only a matter of time before I found a nice girl who was better for me than Lilly ever was.

“Have you met any girls yet that you might like?”

I pause for a moment before answering. What kind of girl might I like? If I had to seriously consider it, I don't really know if I have a definitive answer. Before Lilly, I would have said the artsy type, but... that didn't really work out so well, did it? All I know is that I'm definitely not getting involved with any older girls any time soon.

I mean, the only girl that’s treated me like a regular human being so far is Freddie. Though it’s not like I considered her unattractive, per se. She's a little rough around the edges, sure, but I can't seem to get her sparkling emerald eyes and fluffy white hair out of my mind. While she was... broad, to put it diplomatically, I can't deny that she makes the boy's uniform work for her. And, I mean... there's something to be said about tall women. There's literally more woman there to love per woman. That's just geometry. But I don't know if I'd really consider her my type, not that I had much of an inkling what my type was. Everything else besides, we’ve only known each other for the better part of a day. Basically all I know so far is that she tried to look out for me, which I was very appreciative of, and that she eats burgers like they might try to run off her plate, which... is more of a mixed bag. I suppose I'd put her in the "definitely maybe" column.

I also briefly think back to Mira, despite my best efforts not to, and... I mean, leaving the whole "no ears" thing aside, I wouldn't want to touch her personality with a ten foot rhetorical pole. I don't exactly relish the idea that I'd likely be interacting with her on a regular basis, what with us sharing a dorm and all. That said, physically, I don't think I'd mind someone like her. Her sense of fashion, judging from her piercings and hair, tended towards the rebellious side of things, and there's certainly something alluring about that. She's cute, that much is for sure, and... man, those legs. Them thighs. Part of me wonders what she'd look like from behind...

...

I clear my throat and return to reality. “Mom," I say, the familiar heat of embarrassment returning to my face, "I barely even know anyone at school yet. I think it's a little too early to be thinking about that stuff.”

“Alright, well, if you ever need any advice, I’m always just a phone call away. So is Enzo, if you ever need some "guy talk." You know we both love you.”

I sigh, but respond regardless like the dutiful son I am. “Love you too, Mom.”

Ultimately, I was able to sweet talk her into ordering me a drafting desk, and after sending her a model after a bit of searching on my phone, she lets me know it ought to arrive Wednesday. I spend a few more minutes telling her about my day, deftly avoiding any mention of my strange existential crisis or the interview with Ashley, before we say our goodbyes.

After hanging up, as much as I’d like to finish the sketch of the academy I was working on, it suddenly occurs to me that I should look up that unfamiliar word my mother said. Unaltered. I pull out my laptop, a fairly beefy rig that Enzo bought me a couple years ago for my birthday. Outside of the consoles that I left with my brothers back in El Segundo, it was my main platform for gaming. And as much as I want to just drop into some battle royale game to distract myself, I instead look for my web browser. Strangely, while the desktop looks more or less the same as I left it, many of the icons have been changed, and the familiar button of my browser now resembles a wizard’s staff. When I click on it, it opens a program that I navigate with little difficulty, as it pretty much resembles the web browsers I was familiar with. I guess there’s only so many ways to make a GUI for the internet. 

It only takes a moment of searching to pull up a wiki page explaining something called humanoatavism, or Genetic Recursion Syndrome. According to the page, the treatment they invented to repair the failing human genome with animal DNA wasn’t entirely perfect. The virus, or whatever it was, that repairs the missing DNA can occasionally get confused; in this case, it tries to repair the DNA by copying the chromosomes that were already present. And unfortunately, that usually just ends up in a non-viable embryo.

But rarely, it would work. And the fetus that eventually formed would be completely absent of animal features, appearing as a completely normal human. The colloquial term for these is “unaltereds”, and in the scientific and medical communities they’re referred to as “genetic recursives”. Though apparently, there was also the term “atavists”, which was an older scientific term that's taken on a more derogatory meaning since the 70’s, and therefore has fallen out of favor. 

What strikes me as weird is that because the unaltered child still carries the virus that can repair DNA in their system, it’s not a condition that’s usually passed on from parent to child. Essentially, they are (we are, I guess?) a genetic anomaly that crops up at random, with a ratio of about one in every fifty thousand people having GRS. So… not all that often, but enough of them (us) are around that anyone in a decent sized city would see one every now and again.

There’s a whole section on the wiki of how unaltered people have historically been treated by society, largely in connections to various whack-job religious groups that consider them to be messianic in some way. There’s even a section about a famous cult which had some unaltered people in leadership positions, and how they predicted an apocalypse that never came to pass, which somehow resulted in them becoming even more fundamentalist and engaging in acts of open terrorism… 

Once the article starts to delve in some true crime stuff, I decide I’ve had enough and close the page. It’s all good information to have, I suppose, but now I’m starting to get really worried about the state of the world I’m stuck in. Despite what Mom said, I can't help but wonder if some of those wide eyed stares I’m getting are entirely because of my gender. I have a sinking feeling that my newly discovered genetic abnormality might be notable for cultural reasons beyond a simple visual distinction. Maybe if I’m careful how I phrase it, I can ask Ken and Freddie about how people see the unaltered.

Well, I guess that’s a question for tomorrow. Instead of dwelling on it, I go with my original impulse and launch a game and play. Maybe it’s not the healthiest coping mechanism, but shooting people online is a hell of a way to blow off some steam.