Chapter 1
Violet could remember her youth, always being known by nicknames and aliases that somehow got shortened down to simply ‘Vee’, because that just felt more right. Her birth name had always seemed to saddle her with a sense of omnipotence, of weighty foreboding that grew in discomfort the older she got. Eventually in her twenties she’d realised that it wasn’t the name that was the problem, more so the whole gender it embodied, it was all just Wrong. So she’d taken the steps to change it, to correct that error.
Reaching her thirties she’d settled, life had started to make sense. Being born in the 1980’s and growing older through the 90’s and early 2000’s she’d watched the world seem to bloom with hope and understanding, as a bewildering kaleidoscope of new technologies exploded, each bringing more and wilder possibilities and dreams. As a fervent fan of science fiction in her teens that love had taken to the cyberpunk ethos and aesthetic as she found her true self finally, the majesty and magic of universes where things she dreamed of could be cured more completely than in the mundane day to day enraptured her imagination. And new technologies and developments in the 2010s and into the 2020’s fed further and further into this, with leading biohackers growing beyond adding software tech to microchips, and becoming outright bioengineers that could replace limbs with controlled mechanical ones indistinguishable to the operator from the real thing, in function if not in the aesthetics due to the additions needed to translate brain impulses to control the limb
It had seemed like the future was heading towards brightness. But then in the late 2010s totalitarianism began to rise it’s ugly hateful face from the bloodied soil of the past, and with the new interconnectedness and its own ruthless pursuit of wealth and power funnelling into the wealthy and powerful it took a stranglehold on the populus without them even realising, via social engineering on a global scale. Revolutions were quashed with outright democracy, whilst the people they sought to help chanted for the oppressors. And unfortunately with this new regime the leap into the shiny cyberpunk bliss of the not-far-off future stagnated with active holding back of development
One thing that had steered Violet’s life and brain through all this in the Best way was her relationship with a partner she never deserved in her own mind. For nearly 8 years they were inseparable even when apart, and when finally living together everything felt Right. Not perfect because both were worldly aware, but Right. Until a horrific night 6 months into living together in 2019 when a suspected intoxicated & believed off duty police officer ran a red light, the resulting wreckage leaving Violet deaf in her now missing left ear and half deaf in her right. But they were trifles next to the damage done by the death and disappearance of her partner. No prosecutions were ever brought for it. For nearly 6 months Violet had to be force fed each day, she barely moved let alone spoke, any noises were the snarls of a gravely wounded animal. Eventually after over a year she started to function, but gone was the almost careless joy and calm she’d had. Her gaze had always seemed to have an intensity that even friends could find uncomfortable, but now it had become downright unsettling. Those few that knew her in her teens could see the stark similarities between then and now, but the now was more haunting, and deeply unsettling to see. Still she’d managed in a few years prior to make some exceedingly good close friendships, and many of those people stuck by her, looked after her and accepted her unnerving new visage. All of those had been members of her ‘sanctum’, the most trusted friends who knew most of her secrets.
Because another thing Violet had learnt about herself in her late twenties, another fact that simply clicked into who the real her was, was that she wasn’t human. Of course at the time she had a human body, much altered to be closer to how it Should have been from birth, but it was never fully Right. Because she knew she should be part feline, a catgirl. Most catgirls in culture at the time were portrayed as meek servants to their “master”. Violet was Not one of those. She had learnt through introspection that she herself was Wild, and should’ve been a hybrid of snow leopard and human. She’d discovered, and with her partner’s love and support embraced, her feline nature, and all the growls, meows and purrring that entailed. She’d figured out that she should’ve had the ear, eyes, tail, claws and teeth of a snow leopard, but alas had been cheated of them by flawed genetics again. Inevitably this side of her was what kept her alive after the death and disappearance of her partner, the feline survival instincts overruling her termination drive, it kept her living, but far from Alive.
The world however hadn’t stopped for all of that. In spring 2020, whilst Violet was just coming out of being a husk the first truly global pandemic in decades struck the world, and the aftermath was the catalyst for totalitarian takeover with the changes to work and living being ripe for the domination of the masses, with the separation needed to lower the curve of infection combining with social engineering on a Industrial and worldwide level, the population was both connected to each other and thanks to misplaced patriotism equally willing to listen to the words feeding the blame away from themselves onto Others.
By late 2021 when the second pandemic struck, the powers were in place, the control of the government was complete, and no one protested when the lockdowns started again.
One of Violet's closest friends, from the sanctum and one who’d stuck with the remains of her afterwards was also at the forefront of biohacking in its emergence, and in the first lockdown had progressed to bioengineering on a small scale. By the second lockdown they had been stepping up the sizing of their work, and towards the time when the lockdowns were relaxed they’d made a breakthrough, fueled in no small part by the continued concern for their damaged and broken friend.
The breakthrough needed Violet to be there in person, so on a bright late summer day in mid 2022 Violet made her way to their studio….
‘It’s too bright for me out here, as usual’ thought Violet as she got out her vehicle ‘and too quiet’, that last thought causing a hitch in her long stride, and a sigh leading to a mumbled “it's always too quiet” as she approached her friends vaguely hidden studio door. Since the first pandemic her and most her friends had slipped through the cracks under the ever-watchful government and had joined the ranks of the ‘grey’ people, the people who didn’t cause them many issues, but weren’t useful to them so were left alone. Only if one of these ‘greys’ did something to draw attention, or got caught in one of their outlawed professions would the Enforcement Police come. If they followed the permanent social distancing rules and curfews they could avoid detection. This was how Violet and her friends lived, each finding their own ways to stay alive, Violet herself from repairing and rebuilding old internal combustion vehicles for greys and the black market wealthy, with internal combustion being not fully outlawed (too many Very wealthy owned now priceless artwork cars) but deeply frowned upon by the lawful in their newly perfected, and extortionately leased or financed, hydrogen electric vehicles. But Violet and her other close friend kept a few of the old internal combustion vehicles going, her friend having a much more legitimate business and a far more lucrative clientele for their far superior work than the more tolerably heath robinson approach of Violet herself.
It was with some thoughts of these vehicles, and the barest hint of curiosity that she entered the code to start the door video call and her friend answered with an energetic “Vee you’re here finally! You’re going to LOVE this!!”
