Dog Boy

31

He went back to the bedroom, and did not find Meagan there - and since she wasn't there, he did what he told them he wouldn't do, and got back working on his code. After several minutes of this, and the frustration being too much, he called it for the night. Meagan was right. He wasn't going to be able to crack this problem so easily.

Lucas also felt like a lot of his drive to work on it had evaporated. His son wanted to be a dog. It was a surreal thought - one that he'd never have imagined two months ago, but here it was. Lucas loved his children, but it was honestly hard for him to see them the same way. His brain had built up pattern recognition with their faces. It had no connection to the dog people that now were in their place.

Lucas immediately felt guilt again. He wanted to find the cure so that he could see their normal faces again - because he could not figure out how to love how they looked now. He contemplated how Matt and Ashley must feel. Their parents, their extended family... they no longer wished to look at them.

It was a very painful feeling, and Lucas felt too much shame to push it aside. He opened up their family photos on his computer. He looked at a picture of their visit to Olympic National Park several years ago, and looked intently at Matt and Ashley's faces.

Then he opened up two new photos. They were taken purely for the purposes of research, and looked mugshot like, depicting a teenage dog boy and a teenage dog girl, both looking very tired, and very afraid. They looked like drastically different.

Now Lucas felt unwilling to deal with the feeling any longer. He closed the photos, and began aimlessly scrolling social media. Here he could not escape canis, as numerous news articles advertised celebrities who had contracted the virus, supposed "cures" that actually caused serious harm, and even a few posts that felt decidedly speciesist.

Was that who Lucas wanted to be? If Matt and other people were intent on living their lives this way, was his son going to drift away from him? Would any future grandchildren kept away because "grandpa is speciesist"?

Amid these thoughts, Lucas stumbled on a picture that Matt had posted. It was a bit of a visual assault on his brain - it was difficult to adjust to seeing his children as dog people, but here in this picture, he saw even more canis individuals. Matt and his friends somewhere in their school, hanging out, smiling for a picture.

Matt was very different in this picture from the mugshot-esque one. He was happy. Looking deeper into it, Lucas could still see his son's face. It was muddled by the fur and the muzzle, but it was there.

He had to remind himself that despite the awful changes that had happened to his children, they were still alive. One of them was happy, trying to live a meaningful life despite what had happened. He needed to talk to Ashley. She needed desperate help. He was concerned about Matt, but much more concerned about her.

Lucas wasn't comfortable with Matt being so cheerful about this - but Ashley looking so defeated, so ready to give up... it pierced him deeply. What did he want? Did he really want his children to just hang perfectly neutral, not feel any emotion? Shouldn't he be happy for his son, that he'd found a way to get through this?

Try as he might, Lucas could not. It was just so unthinkable to him that someone could enjoy this - especially with what Lucas had experienced himself.

Lucas was so lost in thought, it wasn't till Meagan sat down on the bed that he realized she was in the room.

"Lucas."

"Yes?" he looked to her.

"Matt is angry at us, and feeling more and more distant. Ashley meanwhile is in a very dark place, where I'm concerned about her personal safety."