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Addendum: Nov. 6 2024

This was my debut as a furry writer, but for about three years now, it's sat on my FurAffinity and never been seen here on SF. Why? I've got ADHD and executive dysfunction's a bitch.

But now I'm posting it here, because... well, even if you're not an American furry, I'm sure you're aware of how bad things are over here right now. Long story short, if Project 2025 comes to pass, furries in my country may very well become criminals just for being who we are. I never expected this story to get so close to reality.

It's old writing, and I've grown a lot in the years since I posted this, but it's still got a special place in my heart.

I feel sick. Like, actually physically nauseous. And I want to do anything but write. But I feel like right now I have to.

I'm too angry and sad and goddamn disappointed to think up something new, so I'm just going to spend today migrating this story over to this site in the vain hope it can reach more people. Even if it only gets one view on every chapter, as long as one person sees it through to the end, that'll be enough for me.

Preface ~ Nov. 14 2021

About a year ago, the YouTube channel Unus Annus ended. For those unfamiliar with its content, the channel explored the theme of inevitable mortality, emphasizing the fact that because death would come for us all, we should make the most of our time. The channel's name, a phrase meaning "One Year" in Latin, was a promise to its viewers: After 365 days of daily uploads, the channel and all of its content would be deleted, so as to emphasize this point. Over the course of the channel's one year lifespan, its creators used it to do anything and everything they could think to do, often using the fact that the channel would eventually be deleted to their advantage by doing crazy or outlandish things that would have gotten any normal YouTube channel demonetized or marked for deletion (including, but not limited to, experiencing sensory deprivation chambers, milking goats, learning archery, and drinking their own filtered urine. There was a running joke among the fans that the creators were just using the channel to cross items off their bucket lists—which, despite being a joke, likely had a grain of truth to it).

When it began, the idea of deleting the entire channel was just a weird gimmick, started by two YouTubers who were a bit out there even in terms of, well, YouTubers, so most people didn't bat an eye. No one took it seriously. But by the end, when the full realization of the channel's purpose came full circle and their heavy handed message came crashing down on its fans, there were thousands of people begging the channel's creators to stop the clock. They didn't. Unus Annus no longer exists except in the memory of those that cherish it, but to those that do, the ending of the channel was a deeply emotional experience, a moving and cathartic event that got to me in a way I don't feel I'll ever truly be able to describe. I and so many others adored the channel and having something so important to you leave your life was indescribably heartbreaking.

But that message and that theme stuck with me, it impacted me deeply and made me realize what I really wanted to accomplish. I looked at all of the writing I had done over my life, dozens of unfinished stories; plots, ideas, themes, and concepts all gathering dust, and above them all one story stood out. I thought that if I had a year left to live, what would I do? I thought, if there were one story I had to write before I died, which one would it be?

So, I gave myself a year. From the exact date of Unus Annus's death, I gave myself 365 days to write and publish my story.

This is the result of that year.

Chapter 1: Eddie

Perspective: Eddie

The sound was deafening. The terrible, enraged yelling only grew louder as I stepped out of the black SUV and made my way toward the DARPA Virology Research Center, flanked on either side by armed guards as the crowd of protesters pushed in toward us, screaming their hate. The noise was so loud it hurt, physically hurt my ears. I kept my head down and walked quickly, half running to the automatic glass door. I could have sworn I saw flecks of spit scattered across the surface of the pane as it slid aside, the result of the shouting crowd projecting both their voices and their saliva. I had been coming to work this way for weeks.

I passed into the building and as the door slid closed behind me, the sound dulled. My ears rang. I shook my head and sighed.

Focus. Focus, Eddie. Time to go to work.

Stepping up to the inner door, I slid my ID into the scanner and waited for the lock to disengage. It did so with a loud chunk and I pulled open the heavy door, walking into the lab and leaving the guards outside, surrounding myself with the almost blindingly white walls and the sterile air. The door closed and then re-locked with the same heavy sound as before. Then, silence. In here, the yells from outside were entirely drowned out. It was always somewhat disorienting, going from so much noise to so much silence.

Jess was here early, as usual, bent over a microscope. Her ears twitched and rotated toward me, signaling she'd heard me come in before she looked up with a faint smile. I couldn't help but notice her fluffy white fox tail swish back and forth a few times as she saw me—I doubt she even noticed it.

"Morning, Eddie." she said quietly. I appreciated her keeping quiet, knowing my ears were still ringing after coming in from outside. After all, she had entered the same way.

I was about to return the greeting when the door opened again and I jumped at the noise, having already somewhat adjusted to the silence of the lab.

"Did you guys see that stupid sign outside?" Jason huffed as he strolled into the room.

He had to duck under the door to avoid hitting his antlers on the top of the doorframe. He made no attempt to be quiet, but then he never had before and he didn't have the extra sensitive hearing Jess and I did.

"Which stupid sign?" I sighed.

"'Earth is for Humans.'" he spat. "I swear, I lose IQ points just being near them."

Earth is for humans. That was the inane ideology that the anti-furry community passed for logic and reason these days. The phrase summed them up tidily in few words: Not merely illogical or flat out mouth-breathing stupid, but also terribly, ignorantly, stubbornly intolerant. Vitriolic at best, dangerous at worst. I peered through the window to glare at the crowd, some of them shouting until their faces were as red as their hats, unaware that we could no longer hear them.

"Some would say they have a right to be angry." Jess said, glancing up at him. He looked at her.

"2,445,000." she said. Jason's face fell. This was a number we all recognized, even before she'd finished rattling it off—one that had become ingrained in our minds, etched into our hearts forever; the number of people who had died, not from civil unrest, but directly from the virus itself. "2,445,000 deaths. Because of us, almost two and a half million people are dead. More every day. Most of them our people."

"Jess…" he said.

"Just get to work." she said, turning away from him and back to her microscope.

We knew there would be casualties, of course, but we never meant for there to be so many. Even if the virus had been developed and completed without a hitch, then deployed as planned, there would have been those who resisted the unsettling change happening around them. We'd only gotten as far as we did because we managed to convince the government that the project was intended as a viral agent that would help us create super soldiers with animalistic abilities, and to an extent that was true, but to those of us on the project it was always about something more. It was a matter of self-expression, having the incredible chance to give millions of people a life they could have only dreamed of. So, with all our skill and talent, all the effort and resources we could muster, we created a virus that could transform humans into the inhuman. We knew it would inspire hatred from the worst kind of people, but it would also inspire passion from the best. Big changes always do. To us, the virus wasn't about advancing scientific knowledge or pushing the boundaries of humanity. It wasn't about evolution. It was about revolution.

We were supposed to have the virus ready in a few more weeks, maybe another month or two at most, once we'd run enough tests and we were sure it worked, but then the accident had happened.

Jess had more reason than anyone to be aware of the disaster we had caused. She was patient zero. We never found out quite what went wrong, how the virus had gotten out into the public, but evidently we had slipped up somewhere. She came in one day complaining about headaches; That was how it started. We were still a ways away from human trials at that point, so we had no idea what it would look like if one of us was infected. It was damn near asymptomatic, completely untraceable next to the myriad of other diseases out there. For days, we had no idea it had even gotten out of the lab. Later stages of the unfinished virus caused worse headaches, mood swings, even phantom limb syndrome, causing the infected to feel like they had a tail or animal ears when in fact they were still human. Then it started transforming people; that's when shit really hit the fan.

The first strain of what people came to colloquially refer to as the Furry Virus was a global pandemic. It infected anyone regardless of age or sex, transforming them into anthropomorphic animal creatures (abbreviated as "anthros" by the furry community). Mass panic set in across the globe as people became inhuman, some beautiful, others terrifying.

The first strain was deadly in more ways than one. In less common cases, the transformation from human to anthro was imperfect and resulted in crippling illness as the infected person's body deformed, sometimes followed by a painful death. Even if these unlucky ones didn't die, they could still wind up with chronic conditions; everything from cardiovascular issues to paralysis, and even if there were no long term effects, the transformation was slow and painful at the very least. It took hours, sometimes days, for a host to reach full form, experiencing joint pain, migraines, and other unpleasant side effects as their bodies slowly rearranged themselves. The claws hurt coming in, but they were nothing next to the feeling of my spine elongating to form a tail or my entire skull shifting to create a snout. The ears were also less than pleasant, growing and morphing as they shifted up to the top of my head.

Of course, not long after it got out the virus gained popularity in the furry community, even with the less than pleasant side effects and a chance of slow and painful death. There were massive changes to the global economy as well. Fursuit makers either suddenly went out of business or changed with the times and began supplying the newly transformed anthros with "furgonomic" clothing; pants designed to accommodate a tail, or shirts worn by anthros with wings. Clothing had to be redesigned to be thinner and more breathable for those whose fur-clad bodies now produced far more heat than before, or thicker and more insulated for the reptilian anthros who were now cold-blooded.

Meanwhile, the conservatives threw a fit, but we always knew that would happen. The drastic changes brought about by the virus had essentially redefined life as we knew it. The result was widespread civil unrest, though the word "unrest" seemed inadequate to describe all that had happened in the last few months. There were protests and riots, even rumors of radical militant groups forming and a potential civil war. And all the while, we were in the lab, desperately trying to mitigate the damage and slow the spread of each outbreak that cropped up.

Eventually, we had to come forward; myself and the others, as the team of scientists who had developed and released the virus, admitting that it had still been in the initial testing phases when a lab accident caused the release. Of course we also fully admitted that we had always intended to release the virus. The world didn't take too kindly to that.

Despite the widespread reach of the first strain, not everyone was infected. The lethality of the virus had inhibited our goal and made it hard for every furry to be transformed, and many who did had died. With the strictly enforced quarantine measures, our virus hadn't reached nearly as many as we'd intended. But the second strain was yet to come.

——

The second strain was our secret project. The only reason we weren't all in prison for plotting to intentionally release the first strain was because we were the most qualified to find a vaccine, and we were working hard on finding a cure. But that was low priority next to the second strain.

The first strain's transformations were slow, painful, and sometimes deadly. The second strain would be sleeker. It was far more complex than the strain already out in the public. Most importantly, however, it also implemented a key trait which it shared with the first strain; a latent neural link that determined what anthro form a host would receive based on their brain chemistry. In layman's terms, it read their mind and transformed them into the animal form they most wanted to be, the one they most identified with. For this reason, some people also called it the "Spirit Animal Virus". This neural link was also enhanced if the host had a clear mental picture of their ideal form prior to their transformation—especially if the host had that form drawn out on paper. Essentially, while the virus turned average citizens into their anthropomorphic spirit animals, it transformed furries directly into the spitting image of their fursonas.

Even with the death toll, this made the virus extremely attractive to the furry fandom, and voluntary infection was a common problem during the first outbreak. The name Anthro-Con had become particularly cursed—once one of the largest furry conventions, this was now the name for the unsanctioned conventions that certain furries gathered at to meet with infected individuals and spread the virus among themselves. Many of these conventions were shut down by law enforcement, any participants placed under house arrest—or actual arrest—which was the only reliable way to enforce quarantine. As undeveloped as the first strain was, the effects of the virus were profound.

There were a few differences in the second strain. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, it would no longer be deadly. Ideally, the transition from human to anthro would be so efficient, so streamlined and smooth that the host barely felt anything at all. If everything went right, the new virus would be able to fully transform an infected host in mere seconds. But the best part about the second strain was the enhancement made to the neural link. The same part that let the virus know what animal you wanted to become now allowed it to only transform those that wanted it. To non-furries, the second strain would be completely benign, but to members of the fandom, it was transformative. This was what the virus was always meant to be. This was how it was supposed to be released into the world.

The first strain had forced the world to turn its eyes on the furry community, forever altered history, but it had also shaken up the worst kind of people, true enemies of the fandom who would rather die and kill than see others achieve their dreams. The first strain had drawn out the worst in humanity. The second strain would bring out the best in us.

——

I looked around at the development team gathered in the lab, the brightest minds of our fields, each of us taking the form of a specific animal. The group was made up of die-hard furries, each and every one of us. There was Jess Isabella, of course, whose doctorate in applied chemistry helped synthesize the initial formulas for the virus, and had wound up as a lovely blue-eyed arctic fox—Frost, to use her fursona name.

Jason Rodney, meanwhile, was sometimes annoying with how abrupt he could be, but he was fun to be around, even after he took the form of a red deer. His fursona name was Hex.

Then there's me, little old Eddie Edwin. I worked hard to get where I am, but I sure never thought I'd get this far. I never thought I'd see the chance to truly change the world, to alter the course of humanity—if you can really even call it that anymore, because I and so many people are no longer human. But then I never thought I'd be in this lab, desperately scrambling to complete a virus that would turn people into anthropomorphic animal beings.

Part of me agreed with Jason: They had the audacity to stand there and scream at us for trying to be who we are, to judge us for it? Which of us were the real animals? Call me cynical, fine. Paranoid? Maybe. But it was this attitude that had kept me alive.

I swept my long, fluffy, bright orange tail out of the way as the door to the hazmat room swung closed automatically, locking behind me. I actually almost flinched remembering how many times I'd gotten this new appendage stuck in random doors. Stuffing it into a hazmat suit was almost as annoying. We'd had to develop new hoods for the suits that would fit over our animal snouts, and Jason couldn't even wear a hazmat suit at all anymore with his antlers.

I waited for the decontamination procedures to finish and stepped into the room holding the virus itself. I looked around at the immaculate white walls, the test tubes and beakers and other equipment. This used to just be where I worked. Nowadays, it felt equal parts sanctuary; defending me from the angry hordes outside, and prison; condemning me here for what I'd done.

People had died. Many more than we ever expected or wanted to die. Hell, we'd never wanted anyone to die, but people always resist change. We knew there would be risks, but…

I shook my head. Focus. Focus, Eddie. This time, we would get it right.