It was a calm, slightly-chilly fall afternoon as the military transport jeep bumped along the old disused woodland trail. Riding inside were just two men: a young driver, who wore a plain uniform with just two bars on his shoulders, and the passenger, an older officer, with many more bars on his shoulder and a few metal awards pinned on his left chest. They came to a stop at a bend in the road not unlike the many others they had just traversed and stepped out.

"You sure this's the place, Corporal?" the officer asked.

"Quite sure, sir."

"Then where to?"

"That way, sir."

And they set off into the woods.


"Sure hope he's around, came a long way for this..." the officer said as he trudged through the layer of leaves littered on the woodland floor.

"Agreed, sir."

A few minutes later, their journey brought them to a steep incline in the forest floor. From here they could smell wood burning, as if there were a campfire nearby.

"That his place?"

"Yessir."

They climbed the hill and came upon a small dwelling and a fire pit, the source of the smell earlier. The fire itself was merely grey embers- it had likely been burning the previous evening. The dwelling was dug into the hillside. It had been constructed out of modern materials, but blended well with the forestry. From the front there were two paned glass windows, and visible on top of the low roof were several skylights.

The officer straightened his cap, ensured his medals were all facing outward, and walked up to the door. Right before he could raise his hand to knock, someone's voice came from inside.

"Yes, what is it?"

"I am Colonel Mark Saunders, of the Air Force. Is this the residence of Mister Adam Hale?"

Silence for a few seconds, no more than 10.

Then the door was suddenly open, and before he could react, the officer found himself looking down the barrel of a large-caliber handgun.

As if it wasn't strange to have a woodland hermit threaten you with such an advanced piece of technology, the being holding it was much stranger.

It was a fox, that is, a very tall fox that stood on two legs, and had digitigrade hands, with which he held his weapon very tightly. He was wearing khaki shorts held up by a simple belt, and was not wearing a shirt. The orange fur on his chest and face brought out the bright forest green of his eyes, which were currently focused intently on the men who had disturbed his peace. He wasn't any taller than the man at his door, though compared to the officer, who had spent years behind a desk, the fox was much more in shape.

"...where did you learn that name?" he demanded, in a low voice, bordering on a canine growl. His cheeks were pulled back in a snarl, and his tail bristled.

Taken completely off guard, the officer took a second to recompose, cleared his throat, and replied, "We've... known. It was our policy not to attempt to contact you unless it was extremely important."

The fox's eyes and his grip on his weapon softened a bit, but he didn't lower either of them. "Yeah? What could you possibly want from me? Let me guess, you want me to fight? Be some super-warrior? Your answer is no. Absolutely not. If the world ends tomorrow, all the better for me. Saves me the trouble of killing myself."

After some silence in which the officer didn't respond, the fox prompted him again. "Well? What do you want?"

He took a deep breath, then the officer replied, "We want your DNA. We..."

"NO," the fox's voice raged, his eyes burned. "You are NOT making more of me. No way in hell. I'd throw myself into a volcano so you couldn't retrieve my body. So is there anything else you want out of me? I have NOTHING to give you, and nothing more to say."

The officer waited for the fox to finish, then calmly replied.

"That isn't what we plan to do. I know you've been gone years, but we haven't yet developed cloning or any sort of system to synthesize any complex organism. Mister Hale, you are the only known example of what you are. We haven't even attempted to replicate you, because the calculated risk is far too high, far too costly, and the probability of success is trillions to one. Mister Hale, you are a scientific miracle..."

It was that phrase, a 'scientific miracle' that set off a stream of a hundred mental images through the fox's consciousness. He lowered his gaze and his weapon, and stared off into the reds, oranges, and yellows of the forest's leaves. For the first time in a while, he thought about the incident. He thought about Lydia.


--------One year prior to today--------


"This is what you wanted, isn't it? This is what you wanted to be?"

Adam sat back against the rock and looked through the canopy of the trees at the autumn sky. He thought about his response to the question the little voice in his head had posed. It was true, since the age of fifteen he had always dreamed and fantasized about going back to nature in a more animal form, getting away from humans, dropping out of the rat race and finding peace in the beauty of the forests.

The house had just been finished, the fire pit dug out, the furniture had just arrived yesterday, custom made with openings in the chair backs to accommodate his tail, all paid for with what remained of his personal savings. It was his return to nature, setting out to do what he'd wanted all his life, to live simply, and be self-sustaining. No more job, no more money, no more of the human world. He should feel liberated.

But then again... he didn't have anyone to share it with.

"No, this isn't what I wanted," is the reply he finally came up with. His gaze fell from the sky back down to the ground in front of him. And he started to cry.

--------Fifteen months prior to today--------

Adam handed his brother the keys.

"I'm leaving this place to you, Matthew. I don't have a use for it anymore."

"I understand. You remember my mobile number, yes? Recite it back to me."

"546-942-8731"

"Good. You need me, don't hesitate. Even if it's in the middle of the workday or some stupid hour of the night, I'll come find you, all right?"

Adam suddenly felt quite calm and warm, knowing his brother still looked out for him. Matthew was three years his elder- just enough space that their sibling rivalry was minimum, but their age difference was small enough that they could easily relate to issues in their respective lives. Matthew was a little shorter than Adam, had the same squared off jaw Adam used to have, same broad forehead, same chunky stature, but had wavy brown hair with splashes of red where Adam's used to be perfectly straight and a much lighter brown with splashes of blond.

"Yeah, I got it."

"Or at the very least, arrange for someone to come get you."

They were standing out in front of the upscale condominium complex where Adam and Lydia had shared a three-room apartment on the third floor. It was late on an early summer evening. The only sounds were the crickets, and the droning of vehicles on the distant highway.

"It's been good talking with you man. Glad you got your car sold and such. And hey... I said this once, I'll say it again," he put his arm on his younger brother's furred shoulders, "No matter what you are, doesn't make you any less my brother. So don't think it's any burden to call on me, all right? I'll enjoy seeing you again. And there's always the spare bedroom at my place. You'll always have a place to stay if you need one."

Adam nodded slowly, "...yeah. Thanks for that..."

Matthew pulled Adam into a full embrace and slapped him lightly on the back a few times. Adam returned the parting gesture.

Matthew settled into the driver's seat of his luxury sedan, and Adam followed into the passenger seat. Matthew guided it onto the main road and headed for the highway.

"We need to take Route 127 South then Route 597 West to get to Del Monte Reservation, right?"

"Yeah, that's correct."

--------Eighteen months prior to today--------

He shook the doctor's hand with a grim embrace, thanked him for his services, paid his bill at the desk, and walked out of the psychological clinic to his vehicle. He settled in and stared at the dash for a minute.

Even the best of them couldn't help him. Repeated intensive therapy sessions made some immediate progress, but when he tried to apply it in the real world, he fell apart. He just couldn't interact with normal people anymore, he couldn't stand their stares, their mutterings, their treatment of him as something inferior. It was like the old gay and lesbian rights movement, and before that, the civil rights movement, and before that, women's suffrage...

Adam sighed. "Nothing changes," he muttered to himself.

He decided to visit Lydia again. He pulled out of the lot and headed towards the cemetery on the edge of town. He figured he'd dig the snow out around her marker and make sure the luminary was still lit.

--------Two years prior to today--------

"This is what you wanted, isn't it? This is what you wanted to be?"

Adam looked incredulously at the sight before his eyes. There's no way... no way she really finished this. But he blinked, pinched himself, counted his fingers, and made sure he wasn't dreaming, and when he looked back up, it was still there. She really had created it. A machine capable of the proper DNA modification, neural reprogramming, bodily modification, and numerous other processes necessary to take a living human and transform it into a living anthropomorphic creature, blending the bipedal structure of the human form with the bodily qualities of a given animal. It resembled an operating table, though it was contoured to fit a bipedal body. Hovering above it, folded away in an idle state, were a dozen robotic arms, each with a different tool on the end, which Adam guessed performed the actual modifications. Around the walls of the room were several terminals, occupied by lab assistants who were apparently working, but still glanced at Adam every so often, as if the 'work' was just a show of being busy.

And standing there telling him this was his friend of seven years and wife of four, Lydia. She beamed at him, ecstatic at his stunned reaction. She was a redhead, with blue eyes like the sky. Currently she wore a lab suit, proper attire for the medical research facility at which she was the head scientist. Adam was still dressed in his usual workday suit and tie.

"You... how long...?"

"Three years, darling. We had most of the tools we needed, we just took the time to repurpose them for this. Creating the runtime was the hardest part... you have no idea how hard it was to not tell you I was making this for you."

Adam dropped his messenger bag and embraced her tight. When he let go to look her in the eye again, he was beyond misty eyed, tears of happiness flowed down his face. It doesn't get any better than this, he thought to himself.

"It's ready... but are you?" she asked.

Adam thought about it. This would mean he would go forth from there forever changed. The idea of that change scared him a little, because of the unknown consequences. But consequences be damned, he wasn't going to let that stop him. What would change? Might get a few odd stares now and then, but eventually he'd get used to it. People around the office would eventually get used to it. When he acquired enough savings, he'd sell all his shares in the company, and he would build a house in the woods for himself and Lydia. It would be their escape, their way out of the world. Their return to nature.

What was stopping him? Fear? This is no time for fear, Adam thought to himself. No looking back.

He nodded. "I'm ready."


--------24 hours later--------

Adam woke up in the same room in which he had fallen asleep. He was still strapped to the same operating table. And he felt like he got hit by a truck. Anesthesia really sucked sometimes.

Before he had gone under Adam had arranged himself a weeklong vacation from work. When you're the CEO of your own information security consulting firm, you can do stuff like that at the drop of a hat.

But even under the haze of anesthesia he could feel the changes. The first thing he experienced was an odd wet feeling on his nose. He tried to reach up to try and rub it, but couldn't yet move his strapped down arm.

Next were his ears. Since they were farther up his skull, it was exceedingly strange having to operate a new muscle group to move them. The equipment around the room made high-pitched sounds inaudible to any human but perfectly audible to him. Whining fans in the terminals that wouldn't have concerned him before were now as loud as someone having a conversation next to him.

His new tail was strapped down so he couldn't move it, but he flexed the muscle groups tentatively. The tail was the most alien thing about his new state. It was an entirely new structure for his body, and an entirely foreign object for his neural system. Eons ago evolution had stripped humanity's evolutionary ancestor of their tails, and the genetic code for operating them had also been lost to the ages. It had taken Lydia's team a year to effectively reverse engineer and port the genetic code from a close evolutionary cousin, the Rhesus monkey, and cross it with the functionality of a fox's tail to be integrated into the machine's runtime.

The lab assistants were now removing the shackles, and they inclined the operating table so that now Adam was in a sitting position. The anesthesia was fading now, and his vision started to become clearer. He now realized Lydia was beside him, leaning over to look into his eyes. She looked concerned.

"I'm alive," Adam managed to mumble. Lydia sighed in relief and hugged him. "I'm so glad," she whispered in his ear. Adam hugged her back.

How much better can it get, he thought.

Turns out, it actually could get a whole lot worse.


--------Present Day--------

"...Mister Hale?"

Adam crashed back into reality. He realized the officer had finished speaking, and was looking at him expectantly.

"You.. wanted what again?"

"Your DNA, Mister Hale. We wish to contribute your genome to the United Nations Commission on Bio-Preservation."

"And they're doing what with it?"

"Preserving it, archiving it, and sequencing it. As unique as you are, Mister Hale, they would very much like to study your genome."

"Yeah? What interest does the Air Force have in my genome?"

"The Air Force has no interest in studying your genome. I represent the Air Force as a liaison between yourself and the Commission, who has requested that we contact you to acquire a sample of your genome."

These guys just didn't understand.

"Look, let me tell you a little story," Adam switched on the safety of his weapon and pocketed it. He opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated, before saying, "How about you come inside?"

The officer was surprised at this offer, but he was actually curious what sort of dwelling this was. He motioned for his aide to follow them inside.

The small entryway gave way to a living room centered around a fireplace. Fittingly, the room smelled of the deciduous hardwood Adam used for the fire.

Adam emerged from the hallway, bringing three mugs of hot apple cider. Conveniently before they had arrived Adam had been warming this batch up for himself.

He settled into his usual chair, and the men took the couch. He took a few sips of cider. It was a great batch, he thought. Gotta remember to collect apples from that grove in the northeast next year. The apples aren't as plentiful but are better quality than the ones from the grove in the west.

He put the mug down and leaned forward. He just hoped he wouldn't break down midway through his story.

"Let me tell you my story from my perspective, not just what you read on my dossier...."