"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. "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 wood.

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 were 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," Adam paused to draw a deep breath, "Since I was a teenager, this was my dream," Adam motioned around the room. "Living out in the woods, away from that dirty, painful society. I hated people. I couldn't stand them, they were two-faced, liars, greedy, and just... fools. And you know what the worst part was? I was one of them! As much as I tried to suppress it, tried not to commit the same fallacies, I couldn't help myself! It was just human nature, it had to be, I told myself. And slowly, the idea formed in my head that the solution was, to not be human. I still had a lingering affection for animals, left over from my childhood. My favorite happened to be the red fox.

"I was a member of the online subculture called the Furry Fandom. This is back when the Link was just the Internet." Adam chuckled, "I used dial-up when I first stumbled upon the Fandom- it was that long ago. See, the Fandom artfully combined the best of humans and animals. It took the human bipedal structure and digitigrade hands, feet, and opposable thumbs," Adam held up and wiggled his thumbs to demonstrate, "and applied it to animals. They called them, 'anthropomorphic animals'. The part that attracted me the most was the idea that I could become one of these creatures, who had all the great things about animals combined with the few good things about the human body. Since writing just came naturally to me, I wrote all sorts of stories about it. They were all really idealized and I hardly finished any of them, but it was my escape. It was my way out.

"It's actually though the Fandom that I met my wife, Lydia. We met at a Convention in Medera while in college, and married three years later. What made us so attracted to each other is that we had a shared vision: to not be human. For me, it was merely a dream. Something to fantasize about. For her, it was her life goal."

Adam picked up his mug again and sat back. Memories that had been long suppressed flowed back through his head. Her warm and comforting touch, the way her voice at the end of each day of office work made it all worth it, and the late night tumbles in the hay came back like the way he could still quote the movies he watched as a kid, even though it had been years since he watched them. They were burned in by repetition.

"She was, as you likely already know, a bio-engineer. She was... something of a prodigy with it, the way she loved her subject matter. See the thing that drove her, was the idea that one day, she could actually transform a living human into a living anthropomorphic animal. What you see here, I am, her greatest achievement. So to honor her achievement, I chose to live. I am her living legacy. I chose not to take her life's goal with me into an early grave. She gave me this body- she gave me what I had dreamed of for years." Adam sighed unevenly, the crushing weight of those memories had him very close to tears.

"But, as you know, she died when she tried to... undergo the same changes I had. Something..." Adam paused and swallowed, "went wrong in the process... the technicians told me the machine had miscalculated something. She... never woke up, even after attempting to revert the changes..."

Adam paused to collect himself again. The officer and his aide were respectfully silent.

"It took a week to get myself back on my feet. But I was alone. Nothing mattered anymore, not without her there. I had no chance of meeting another like her. There would be no one else who could take over in Lydia's absence. I tried just adjusting back into the single life... it just didn't work. I was only half there, my other half was missing. I couldn't carry on any more in my work, that's why I resigned my position and just collected pension. I couldn't pull myself back together. Friends tried to help, but the releif was only... temporary. The worst part of everything was going out in public. I completely underestimated how fearful humans are... of the things they don't understand..."

Adam paused again and wiped his moist eyes. The officer and his aide tried not to notice, either by staring into the fire or at the floor.

"I tried therapy. Group therapy, to get me comfortable around humans again. It didn't really work. I couldn't function among humans anymore. I ended up selling my condo and my car, and bought this land out here. I had this house and the furniture built for me with the money I made from selling off my investments. I figured I'd go live that dream I had, about living in solitude in the woods. Winters are harsh, and the only releif from the chill is the fire here, but sometimes I need fresh water. I've had to dig myself out three times in one day, the snow fell so fast..." Adam chuckled. "But... I have no one to share it with. I'm the only one."

"I got everything I ever wanted, everything I dreamed of, with this house and this forest and this body. But... it didn't take me long to realize that what I had, living with Lydia in that condo, working to keep the bills paid, the gas tanks topped off, and the stomachs full, was all I ever needed. I can't tell you how much I miss those years now."