This is a story I wrote last night on my iPod, and spent the last few hours editing. I was inspired by several pieces of art on FA that I found, drawn by Catmonkshiro for ArrowQuivershaft. It has nothing really to do with any of the art in particular, but I would credit the concept to them, since I have never done anything involving Avian TF's before. I dunno, I liked it enough that I might have to adopt a feathered 'sona...
Also note: I like this concept enough that I'll probably run with the 'verse a little bit, and see if I can't make something more interesting out of it (Not that this isn't already interesting).
At any rate, enjoy!
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My name is James Anders. I used to think that I was an insomniac. I would spend hours at night, tossing and turning in my bed. I would fall asleep for a few moments, jerk awake, and look at my alarm clock to realize it had been less than ten minutes. This would go on for days, until exhaustion dropped me into a deep, dreamless sleep. Only recently did I come to understand how mistaken I was about my condition.
During the times I dropped off to sleep, I slowly became aware of the fact that I was dreaming. Snippets of the dream would remain in my memory just long enough to verify their existence, but the content of these dreams was invariably lost. At first, I could remember nothing but the fact that I had been dreaming, but I eventually got the distinct impression that these dreams were always the same. This intrigued me, and for months on end I tried everything to try to remember, from dream journals to recording my voice during sleep to try to trigger memories. In the end, it was all to naught, and the pursuit of this dream was almost forgotten, although, like the dreams themselves, the pursuit always remained at the back of my mind.
College came, and I suddenly had much less trouble being exhausted before I went to sleep. Nights began to pass comfortably for me, in that I never even had the impression of a dream remaining in my mind. After a school year on a hectic schedule, I went home believing that my mysterious dreams were at an end.
In fact, the mystery waited for my first night home before immediately appearing again.
My eyes snapped open to the sound of klaxons sounding nearby. I reached for my iPod, only to have my hand nearly missed by the occupant of the top bunk as he vaulted out of his bed.
"All flights scramble, we are on high alert!"
The voice on the speakers drew my mind back to reality, and I catapulted myself from the bunk inches away from my partner. He was already in his basic jumpsuit, and was buckling on his sidearm when I jumped both legs into my own outfit. It was pretty basic, but with the hulls of the Defender class ships built like they were, any more equipment was just dead weight.
I pulled my sidearm from its home in the equipment vault across the hall, and turned to move toward the hangar just as my partner did the same.
We matched our paces until we reached the security airlock, where one of the superior officers quickly checked for valid ID. My partner was before me, so he spoke first.
"Jason Dawes, gunner," he said, verifying his words with a flick of his jumpsuit's badge.
For the first time since I had looked for my mp3 player on waking up, something seemed wrong. I had not known my partner's name until he said it. What was going on?
"Sir, identification?"
The more concerning issue was that I had to grope for my name.
"James..."
My eyes snapped open, and I found myself breathing heavily, sweating like I was in an oven. My hands shaking, I groped around my dark room for a light, finally resorted to pulling out my cell phone. With no idea where to find a notebook, and memories of my dream fresh in my mind, I had to do something. I opened a text message, and began to type out briefly what had happened.
I stared at the screen once I had finished. I read my own account through several times. The scene had been so vivid, and yet so nebulous. I knew what had happened in the dream, but I could not remember at all what anything had looked like. My mind could reconstruct the entire sequence of events in painstaking detail, but it could not tell me so much as the color of the weapons locker in the hall.
My heart rate slowed, until I was finally certain that I had remembered my dream. In a flash of inspiration, I deactivated my iPod's klaxon alarm, and lay back down on my normal, single decker bed.
No distractions; I would be ready if the dream came again. I knew it would not be for a while, as my adrenaline was still pumping, but...
The klaxons sounded, and I jerked from my bed. No thought of alarms on my mind, I pulled myself from my bunk using the supports of the second bunk. Jason was right behind me, leaping over my head completely from his bed. I barely gave him a second glance. I was more concerned with my own equipment. As I pulled on the green jumpsuit that functioned as my on-duty uniform, I gave it a once over. Just like Jason's, it had a nametag bearing an unfamiliar name and rank. I committed them both to memory as I pulled on the upper section of the suit. As I did, I noticed that the sleeves were secured along their length by weak snap buttons. They were done for the time being, and a quick glance at Jason revealed that he lacked this feature. The chest and legs of my jumpsuit both seemed loose on me, even after I secured the former with the zipper. Whatever the reason for these oddities, it mattered little in light of the scramble order.
I retrieved my sidearm and again found myself keeping pace just behind Jason as before. As soon as he had entered the hangar, I was ready.
"David Reynolds, senior pilot," I recited the name from the badge.
I was motioned forward into the hangar. I found myself moving on instinct, and had soon arrived with my gunner beside the Defender class ship. It was built low to the ground, barely large enough to allow room for a standing person inside, but its appearance was sleek, suggesting a metal bird of prey. Jason entered the gun bay at the front of the craft, and I quickly entered the cockpit from a rear bay door.
I tried to fight the sense or wrongness as I stepped in; after all, it had preceded my waking the last time. I could not help but be surprised at the cockpit, however. Rather than a board full of controls I didn't recognize, the cockpit was a room well wide and long enough for me to lay down spread eagle in any direction.
Spread eagle...
"Computer, initiate launch sequence." The words flowed as though I had said them every day of my life. I began to loosen my muscles for a reason I couldn't remember. Then the computer recognized me.
"Commander Reynolds, voice accepted. Applying flight preferences."
Several thin beams of light were projected from all sides of the cockpit for a moment, and I found myself standing with my arms spread out and my feet at shoulder's width. The beams moved until they were centered on me on all sides, and then they seemed to bend until I was cocooned in silvery light. The antigravity kicked in then, and I found myself suspended a few inches from the ground. I was suddenly rotated face down, and them brought to about the middle of the room's height.
"Setting pilot configuration Alpha-9."
I suddenly remembered why my suit was different.
With only the computer's announcement as warning, I began to feel m body changing within my uniform. First, it began to feel warmer. Discipline kept me from breaking my stance to gawk, but somehow I had memories that told me that a thin coat of downy feathers was beginning to grow on my skin, causing a feeling not unlike goose bumps. I admitted it to myself now; this was a dream. Still, I did not wake up, and found he changes spreading rapidly as I lay there suspended in midair.
My waking mind regarded all that happened with disbelieving wonder, but my memory of the dream world, hidden before in the fog of a sleep-starved mind, assured me that this was not the first time this had happened. This was how all the craft on this Carrier vessel worked. What better way to have pilots become more effective than by giving them a form used to flight, and using a motion capture chamber to project their movements onto their ship?
My rational mind calmed down as I realized that this was nothing out of the ordinary for my dream self. Meanwhile, the feathers had covered everything but my arms and legs, and I could feel them becoming harder, taking on a different texture and changing hue to a faded, yellowish orange. Both looked like bird talons, a fact that seems odd to me at first. I had never seen a bird with hands. My dream memories again reassured me; this form was a hybrid, and as such had both hands and wings. Wings... I couldn't wait to try those out.
Longer feathers had begun to grow in, forming a lair over the softer, downy feathers that had grown originally. At the same time, I could feel my anatomy beginning to change. Joints creaked and popped, and muscles moved and reformed as my body became more airworthy. While I could not feel the effect in zero gravity, my memories assured me that my body was becoming much lighter, bones developing air pockets and body slimming so that I could fly without the aid of additional equipment.
I wish I could see myself, but found I had memories of similar changes that I had watched, and I tried to remember what each feeling meant as it happened. By now, my underbelly had been covered in soft, tan feathers. On my chest, which had begun to fill the suit as it changed, there were several black feathers, forming a pattern that stood in contrast to its background. On my back, red-brown feathers had sprouted. As I thought through these memories, I sudden felt some discomfort behind me, until a long, beautiful tail grew behind me, finding the hole built specifically for that purpose without issue. In lieu of the ability to see myself, I thought until I located the muscles in charge of controlling the tail feathers and began to maneuver them around, marveling at how different it felt. Different, but amazing.
By now, my body had been almost full altered. Feathers covered everything except my arms and legs, and they had altered, losing fingers a toes while maneuvering the remaining ones into new positions and lengthening them into talons. A curious thought occurred to me; I could now grasp items in both my hands and my feet.
My face began to change. First, in between blinks, I could see that my eyes had changed. The darkness around me suddenly seemed much less dense, and I could see the silvery lines around me in startling clarity. As I looked at this, a sudden ache overtook the whole of my face. I worked my jaw for a moment, and felt it changing drastically. I was moving differently somehow; my beak was growing in, I realized. It felt backwards at first; my mouth was now in front of my face. Still, memories came to me, and as my beak finalized I found that I was comfortable moving it about. With a hooked, black beak in place of articulate lips, I was worried that I might not be able to express myself as much. I tried a few expressions, and found to my surprise that I could express myself just as well with a beak as with a mouth. The expressions looked completely different, but they communicated the same feelings.
Thinking through the change, I realized that I was almost done changing. Only one thing remained, and I flexed my arms in anticipation. My wings wasted no time growing in; they grew out, first connected to my arms, but extending away from my arm in an impressive wingspan. My sleeves could not contain them; the snap-away buttons were all released in a moment. I experimentally spread my wings to their full lengths. Because they were attached until my elbows, both arms and wings had some degree of independent movement, which would be helpful if I ever wanted to use one without interference from the other. Overall, the change had taken only a few seconds, but unfamiliarity made it seem like several minutes.
I was ready now, physically that is. Mentally, I was still freaking out. I had just changed into a hawk-man of some sort! It wasn't exactly something I did every day at college. In this dream world, however, I apparently did this as part of my job as a pilot.
Suddenly, a display panel started up directly on front of me. I found that turning my neck so I could look straight forward was now natural. I also found out that I knew exactly what all the displays were trying to communicate.
"You set?" Jason asked. His face was displayed to the right and below the main view panel. His normal, human face.
I nodded, then spoke to the computer. "Initiate takeoff sequence." There was a bit of what could best be described as an accent added to my voice, but it was still quite intelligible. I could hear the engines roar to life, and the ship lifted from the ground. With little more than an adjustment of my wings in my suspended state, I spun the ship to face the open airlock doors. I settled myself a moment, then set off towards the vast arena of space beyond. I could already see the periodic flashes that signified a space battle, and I would be in that fray before too long.
The flight was amazing. Our enemies, using crude spacecraft a century old, fought to maneuver around floating debris, and were useless against precisely aimed laser fire. I guided the ship expertly through the battle, setting up shots for Jason and avoiding enemy fire with ease. All it took was a turn of the wing, and we glided through the maze of debris without once taking a hit.
We were one of the last to reenter the hangar. My change from my half-hawk form to human was equally as enthralling as the experience had been in reverse. I was still snapping the buttons back into place for my sleeves as I exited the ship. Jason patted me on the back as we left.
"Good flying out there. I thought you might be rusty after a few empty months, but you flew as well as ever."
"Well, you know. Flying is natural in that form. Once you've done it for a while, the skills just never leave you." It was true, though I only had my dream memories to go by. The memories told me something else, though, something that I wanted to try.
"Say, I don't think I'll be getting back to sleep after this," I commented "We've got a few hours before our regular duties start. Want to join me for a spin in the flight chamber?"
"Why not? Maybe I'll learn some of your tricks; can't help my case for pilot at all."
I walked to the chamber as though I had done it every day of the voyage. If my memories of the dream were correct, that was very nearly correct. In fact, it seemed that I spent much of my time off duty in that chamber. After my experience in the Defender, I had no question as to why.
"I want to try one I found three days ago." We had arrived at the door to the chamber on our deck, and I tapped out a combination of characters on the keypad by the door. Once I finished typing my password in, the door opened, and revealed row upon row of simulation spheres. In these spheres, various people, some in hybrid form, and some even in full form, lay suspended in the same antigravity matrix that was used in the cockpit of my Defender.
I found a couple free spheres adjacent to each other, and quickly used the computer to synchronize them so that I would share the same simulation with Jason.
The two of us stepped into our spheres, and the antigrav matrix initialized immediately. I felt the wave of feathers beginning again, and it was not long before I had resumed my hawk form. Beside me, dressed in his own flight suit, Jason's form changed as well, until he had become a bald eagle.
The simulation began as soon as we were both changed. At first, it was an obvious projection. After a few moments, however, we were fully immersed in a new world. We stood together on a green plain, looking about at rolling hills and green forests, and feeling simulated gusts of warm air ruffling our feathers. I pointed at the top of a nearby mountain.
"The view is best from right up there," I said. "Not to mention, it gives us both a chance to spread our wings."
The flight I had charted was by no means a short one, but neither of us cared. We loved catching the currents of air in our wings, gliding effortlessly through the air high above the earth, and watching the world go by beneath us.
Once we arrived, I was completely taken aback. My recommendation of the view was merited completely. The view we had seen from the ground was completely dwarfed by the magnitude of beauty we saw from here. Even the thought that I wasn't really there could not spoil it for me. After all, we were looking at a real spot on Earth. We might not really be there, but we would be able to see the same view once our voyage had ended.
I knew the place was real, because I had been there in my waking life once, on a rock climbing venture with some fraternity guys. The view I saw then was not even comparable. As a hawk, my eyes were several orders of magnitude better than my human eyes. I could see the details of the landscape in impeccable detail. I could very nearly discern individual blades of grass hundreds of feet below me, and was able to track the movement of several creatures that also occupied the slopes.
"When we get back to Earth, I think I'll apply for a long-term change. There are so many places I actually want to be able to see like this," I admitted, nearly breathless from the view.
"I'm not sure I'd take it that far, but this is a view I would not mind seeing for real." Jason's gaze took in every detail, and his beak was cracked in an avian smile. "If I ever did go on a flying vacation, though, I would want you as my travel guide. You have impeccable taste in great views."
We spent almost an hour just taking in the sights, and spent our remaining time before active duty soaring lazily through the air. I had thought that my earlier comment about wanting to keep the form longer had been exclusively from my dream self, but I found myself agreeing more and more with the sentiment. If it was ever possible to take on such a form in my waking reality, I would be sorely tempted.
I woke, startled not from any occurrence in my dream, but from the fact that I had woken without warning, right in the middle of my flight. I looked at my clock; it was well past noon, thanks to me deactivating my alarm. I wouldn't call the day wasted, though. The vivid beauty and excitement of the dream stayed with me when I woke, and I longed to experience more. I found a notebook and set my pen down to write out what I had seen. Words seemed so worthless to describe the experience. Still, I could not risk losing the memory, especially if I was unable to return.
My story written, I went about my day. On my mind a question nagged; would I be returning to that strange world in my dreams? It was a question that would have to wait for the night. For now, I went about my life, unable to shake the daydreams of flight, andhoping I would live that vivid dream again.
