Well, since I already posted the 'spiritual successor' to this story, I figured I'd clear up some questions by posting this one.
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Why I'm a Raccoon
It has now been many years since my initial change, so occasionally I am surprised when someone asks me how I came to be a talking raccoon that works an office job for an IT firm in New York. I'd like to say that it is particularly interesting, but in fact it is a rather short tale.
Like most respectable IT workers, I started out very low on the chain of command. That worked fine for me. As long as one was careful during the work day, he could essentially go anywhere he wanted on the internet, provided he was smart enough to get by the department's secured network.
Unfortunately, it was not until after my own attempt that I figured out why no one else was doing it.
I was sure that I would have no trouble getting through network security. I programmed a setup that would essentially do all the work for me, uploaded it to my Droid, and set it up so that it would run as soon as the device was connected to the computer.
Unbeknownst to me, there was a fox two cubicals over that had tried almost exactly the same thing.
Everything seemed to be going just fine at first. It was one of the times of the day when I didn't have much to do, so I could personally keep track in case anything went wrong with the program as it ran.
It ran just fine until it started setting up an encrypted portion of the Internet in which it could run undetected. At that point a screen, which I knew had nothing to do with my program, popped up with a message.
"Network intrusion detected. Executing anti-hacking protocal ANIM~N.TF"
I had never heard of this being a protocal, nor had I ever seen anything like that file name on any of the drives. I immediately moved to try to abort the operation, but my fingers wouldn't fall right on the keys. My thumbs didn't even seem to want to land on the space bar right, and a quick inspection showed why. Instead of a thumb, I had an extra finger on each hand. That wasn't all; my hands had also started turning black, and they quickly sped through the process in front of my eyes.
To that day I had never seen an office computer that could produce physical changes in the user, so I was understandably spooked. I tried to roll my chair back and find someone who could help me figure out what was happening. It would have helped if my feet would have been on the ground, or even had or been possible for me to touch the ground with my feet while sitting.
Instead, I discovered that I had become a great deal shorter, and was now dangling my feet a good foot above the carpeted office floor. My pants touched the floor, but even after living for a good while as a raccoon, I have yet to find a way to push away from a desk with empty pant legs.
My legs were just the first things to shrink. In little more than a second, my torso, head, and arms had also shrunken down, and, for a few moments, I could see my shirt sticking up above me, collar like the mouth of a cave, before it collapsed and left me swimming in my own clothing.
My shrunken stature quickly produced another problem. I had become a good deal lighter already, and my clothes were no less heavy than they had been a moment before. The weight of my pants alone was now sufficient to tip me over the edge of my office chair and send me dropping to the carpet. I landed, shocked, on all fours, and had just a moment to look around before my shirt again dropped on top of me. I heard an odd chattering sound as I pulled it off so I could move again, and I realized right after I had done it that the chattering had been my own vocalization of my frustrations. I clasped my hands to my mouth just in time to roughly collide with my growing muzzle and follow it out along the path of it's growth.
I stared for a moment at the black furred muzzle and cold, wet nose before I felt itching running down my neck and up my head, from directly around my new muzzle. I itched with my newly repurposed paws, scratching my stomach, back, and head, or rather trying to do all three with only two paws.
I felt my ears moving at this point, and was somewhat annoyed to realize that I had no free hands to scratch at them with. Strangely, however, in an almost automatic action, I stopped scratching with either hand, dropped to my haunches, and started scratching in the general area of my ears with one of my hind feet. It felt so good that I actually continued scratching after my ears had relocated.
What finally brought me around was the sensation of something popping out behind me. Looking back, I saw the rapidly growing length of a ringed tail, which didn't stop until it was almost the length of the entire rest of my body.
That was the last of the major changes, but one minor one remained, that I still debate the necessity of today. As I stood up on my hind legs to examine myself, my stomach popped out a little bit, making me look like a chubby little raccoon that all of the female employees would want to hug.
I managed to climb back up on my chair, just in time to see my monitor go to sleep. It served my purposes well enough, though. I got a pretty good impression of what I looked like now. I still couldn't see very well, though, so I climbed over onto the desk. I bumped the mouse in the way up, but that just made me get a little original and use my webcam to see what I looked like.
I was essentially a normal raccoon, with black paws, grey back, and creamy stomach fur. The bandit's mask that now grew in my face fur was wide, and it almost made my dark eyes disappear in the middle. Lastly, I had become slightly "better rounded" than I had been before, but it somehow did not interfere with my coonish acrobatics. I chittered again, just to see if I could, and was not disapointed. I was completely changed into a raccoon.
At this point I was absolutely flabbergasted. I didn't know how to react. It was quite a change, going from human to raccon in probably a little less than a minute. What happened next was possibly even more concerning.
My boss peaked around the wall of my cubicle and saw me standing on top of my desk. I saw him on my webcam, and turned to face him.
"Good to see that the change went well," he commented.
"You did this to me?" I asked. This revealed another thing I had not known before. I could still talk alhough my voice now had a strange churr behind it.
"It would be more correct to say that you did this to yourself," he responded. "If you had paid attention when signing the contract, you would have noticed that there is a strict 'no bypass' policy on the network security."
"So?" I churred loudly in anger. "That doesn't give you the right to turn me into an animal!"
"I'm afraid that was also in your contract," he noted. "If you're signing on for a job somewhere, I suggest looking the employment contract over more closely. That said, I'm more than happy to keep you on. Your productivity shouldn't be hindered too much. A little refresher on typing with your paws might be in order, but as long as you keep yourself active andr productive, we should be able to keep you on."
For the moment, there was really nothing I could say to object. I doubted my chances of finding another job that would pay a raccon, so my options were limited.
Later on we came to an agreement that, if I was ever promoted to a lower management position, or if I ever wished to find another job, they would turn me back. Just a year ago I got the management position, but by then I had decided that being a raccoon wasn't so bad. I guess it could be more convenient for me to be human (if I had any sort of social life), but for my purposes, I can find about anything I need to eat just by rummaging around wherever I happen to be, and I sort of enjoy the attention I get from customers and fellow employees. It ended up not being too bad of a deal, I guess. At any rate the option of changing back is still open to me at any time, so I'll enjoy myself for a while more, and turn back when the time is right.
