Whatever else is true, Vera did not call that evening. Putting in all the many changes required took the rest of that morning, and all afternoon. I even included the disease resistance, efficiency upgrades, and learning boost… though all of THAT would phase in over the course of the month following the major changes. It was interesting, though. Master PC successfully targeted her by the name Vera. It wasn’t her legal name yet. The state was not one which made changing all of that easy, but yet her choice defined her reality.

 

At least, it did with a bit of assistance.

 

I was getting better with the program. Figuring out what changes would affect what. All the secondary things. Tendons to support the muscles, bones to support the tendons. Vocal cords adjusted for a new target. Certain bits removed, others created. A million details changed, and no real way to know if I had missed a million others. No way to know just yet, but I sent an email to her letting her know that I’d remain on the task of keeping her tuned up if anything came up. When I hit apply, well before sundown, she occupied one of my slots despite not yet transforming.

 

Good to know. If I was going to be doing this a lot, my queue had limits. I applied a few of the things I found while digging around over to Lindsey and Tina. I applied a couple of others to myself, in reverse. A new efficiency upgrade went into the pile of defaults, one that affected bone marrow and blood.

 

When I eventually fell asleep that night, visions of dials and bars still danced in my head as I snuggled between the others. When I woke up in the morning, I found out it was apparently Tina’s turn to drain me of any overnight backup by means of swallowing my length entirely. It was a pleasant way to wake up, I could definitely get used to it. Was getting used to it, this was the second in a row and neither of them showed any indication of wanting to stop.

 

Sunday had no big plans. Never did. I decided to let the transformations go. They didn’t need course corrections from me. Sunday was usually laundry day and leveling up side character in the many games I played. Tina and Lindsey each had stuff online they needed to do, including shooting a couple of teaser pics for what Lindsey was about to start on her new identity. Later on, Lindsey even accepted a customer in her apartment next door… for five times the price she had been charging last week. Two customers, back to back, and had to turn down ten others. Neither lasted more than a couple minutes, and left with dazed smiles on their faces. Lindsey basically pounced me after each, needing to be actually satisfied herself.

 

She decided to double the prices again next time she opened appointments, and once she finished her transformations post those openings to much higher-scale kinds of places.

 

The girls decided to make a game of things. Lindsey had her customers, Tina was adamantly refusing to let me do my own laundry or clean my own apartment, both had pictures and posts, but whichever wasn’t busy was under my desk making the low-level game content much more difficult and rewarding. I got cussed out by a couple of teammates for being so distracted, I just told them I had a lot on my mind.

 

A thought occurred to me later that evening, as I stretched out and pondered the twists this life had taken. My new capabilities could help basically anyone who wanted to change almost anything about themselves. I just needed to figure out the mental things, but the physical? I might as well be the greatest plastic surgeon, endocrinologist, personal trainer, and nutritionist on Earth, simultaneously. The only practical limit was that I could only have twenty people going at once, but really, was that even a limit? I could kick start thyroids and boost metabolisms more easily than even the gaudiest late-night infomercial claim, then let nature do its own work. Absolutely reliable, 100% custom outcomes with perfect targeting.

 

There was nearly no limit to what it could mean for my future.

 

***

 

Monday, unfortunately, was back to the grind. The girls could do what they wanted, other than use the computer. Password locked with a 20-character phrase, two-factor hard token, virtual machine locked with a different 24-character password, hidden with an unassuming name in an entirely different part of the file system than the others… and the hard drive was full-disk encrypted. Unlike normal days the computer was also unplugged from the Internet entirely. This was a power I could absolutely not afford getting out.

 

That said, it was back to being Lindsey’s turn to wake me up (yay), Tina cooked (also yay), and traffic was normal on the way (boo). I got there a bit earlier than usual, which made the number of cars in the lot something of a shock. This was not a place that people were generally hyped up and ecstatic to get to in the mornings, when I got in ten minutes early it usually meant that I’d be alone in the office. Almost the entire executive lot was full, and a bunch of the middle managers.

 

Got into the workspace and got myself set up when my boss came in, looking somber. “Sir? What’s up?”

 

“Looks like we were a bit too good at what we do. You did the right thing.” He was shuffling towards his office.

 

“What do you mean? What’s going on?”

 

“I’ll tell you the same time I tell everyone else. Don’t pull up the network defense stuff today.”

 

That ominous sentence left me with a sense of dread for the next 30 minutes as others were streaming in. On a hunch, I saved every bit of non-proprietary data from my system (and a lot that was in a very, very gray area) to a personal thumb drive I carried. My desk didn’t have much personal stuff on it. Never did. The job was just… the job. Not like my apartment had much personal stuff in it, either, my existence was mostly virtual. Other people got the vibe, though. I could see others grabbing things from their desks. Personal references, stickers of paw prints and cartoony characters, speakers and chargers.

 

Nobody had much, but we were a team. They were cool. Heck, all of them were guildies in one game or another.

 

It turned out our fears were justified. The boss came out, and addressed the four of us. “I want to start off by saying nobody on the team did anything wrong. I’m going to give all of you the best letters of recommendation I can, but this entire section just got laid off. The decision was made yesterday evening.”

 

Diane, one of my teammates, interjected. “The entire section? All of their security? That doesn’t make sense! Heck, Chris just caught massive malware inbound this past week!”

 

“That’s… unfortunately the point. Chris, you did good. Too good. Caught Michaels red-handed with proof and packet capture. Looks like he’s better at politics than we are at network defense. Leadership, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that they need this section less than they need him.”

 

Shock and disgust from the group. Myself included. The job might not be the best, but it kept us going. Our boss wasn’t done. “Thanks to the nature of things, we’ve got today and tomorrow to clean up and clear out. Here’s my last set of instructions for all of you. Get your resumes ready. Get your data backed up. Retrieve every piece of gear your brought from home, I’ll inventory what needs to stay tomorrow afternoon and the rest is open season. Our contracts, mine included, have mandatory severance and unemployment, so there is that much. Nobody can prove anything remotely like wrongdoing or poor performance, so they can’t invoke those clauses. I will help you all as soon as I have finished what I need to. If you have networking sites, get them updated as well. If you don’t, make them, and we can form your network at first. I’ll get us all pizza for lunch with the last of our social budget, there’s a lot to do.”

 

I felt completely terrible. This was my fault, no matter what the boss said. Michaels probably knew what he was getting in the download I’d intercepted, and I cost him his shot at the kind of power and lifestyle Master PC could give. Without being able to tell who did it, he used his connections to punish us all. I had to help make this right… and I think I had a way to do it. I might not have been in on a particular bit of a particular fandom in this office, but I knew for fact all three others were. I could help.

 

The boss was in his office, the door closed. I gestured for the others to come to my crappy little desk. They did. “Okay everyone. Today kind of sucks, but I think it’s an opportunity. You three are all furries, we’re cool, but I have… call it a gift. An option. A choice, really.”

 

Brent, our network architecture guy, raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have to be mysterious about it. This have anything to do with why you were distracted yesterday?”

 

I nodded. “Kind of, yes. Okay, I see this asked a lot as a joke, but I’m being serious. If you could become your fursona right now, in our present world, would you do it? I know none of you have families to worry about. Just… bear with me for a moment and answer the question.”

 

Diane and Brent answered “yes” without hesitation. John took a moment longer, but also nodded.

 

“Okay. Here’s the deal. I can back this up with some better proof later, but we don’t have time for that. The contracts have noncompetes, but specify only major competitors in the same industry. I’m thinking we form a small business, just do our thing from an apartment building somewhere, but if you want to join up I can make your wish happen.”

 

John barked a short laugh. Appropriate, given what I knew of the paw prints on his particular computer. “If you had this kind of power, why the heck are you over here running firewalls for crap pay?”

 

“I only just got it, but look. First proof. You all know I’ve never worked out a day in my life, and you know I wear glasses. Well, wore glasses.” I raised my arm and flexed, the developing muscle there showing starkly in contrast to the beanpole nerd I had been. “I don’t have contacts on, either. If you all believe me, we’ll start up a remote work commune thing. Already got two others, not furries but people who wanted a change. You all can hit the cons with the best suits ever to have existed, too. Stream and game when we aren’t freelancing. You are all really good. I can make you even better. Now. If you’re in, I need to start preparing tonight. You have until we leave today to decide. Only rules are that it has to be a mammal and your hands have to stay functional, can’t do the full paws because I need you to still be able to do what you do. Okay, looks like my time to make the pitch is up. Still gotta pack, but make sure you pillage this place for anything that isn’t on an inventory form.”

 

We split, and got packing. Really, the packing itself didn’t take long. Neither did the pillaging. Everyone in the office knew what was what, we practically knew the server racks by first name to begin with. It’s a thing that you only get with good teams responsible for way too little equipment. To be honest, most of us were already keeping up with what we’d need to apply to other jobs, too. Even coordinating the time on Wednesday we’d all suddenly come up on the net as no longer working for the company.

 

This might attract unwanted attention to the now-critically-weakened defenses of the network. We might all also be just a hair vindictive.

 

Before the end of the day, I was holding three character reference sheets for three furry IT folks who were curious to see where this was going. Anthropomorphic representations of an Arctic Wolf, a Fox, and a Weasel. John’s Weasel was a woman, too. Good thing I had recent experience in making this work. I was not the most artistic person on the face of the planet, but they were enough. As long as I got everything in roughly the right state, I could tweak the rest after the initial process.

 

At home that evening, Lindsey and Tina had changed even more visibly than before. Both were… extremely eager to see me, to tell me just how much progress they had made. They had all of their pre-made content set. Lindsey had two more customers that day, even at her crazily-increased rates. We were saving… which was good. We would soon need to spend it.

 

After a couple of very satisfying orgasms (and giving them five or six, I lost count), then dinner, it was time to start getting the three transformations set up. Fur was… a challenge. So were the maws, especially when going to lengths to retain things like the ability to speak. Despite this, I had my presets good to go before long. The girls were looking for more customers, too, and for possible places for the idea I’d had. The two dovetailed really well. It just kind of went from being a paid service to a massive lifestyle shift. Given who they were recruiting, though? Huge step up.

 

Urban decay was a thing, really. There was legitimately an apartment building that was for sale close to the edge of town, though the price tag made my eyes absolutely water when they told me. Twenty units, each able to house two people (or four who were very comfortable with each other). The owner just hadn’t been able to fill enough to make it profitable… but I had an inkling that I would.