The Transformation
By Matt S.
3/4/08

I had been suffering from these pounding headaches since I went to this party about a month ago. Ever since then that thumping bass line from the last song of the night had bored into my skull and couldn’t escape. What I couldn’t get is why it was still there. I mean, headaches aren’t supposed to last that long, right? Anyway, that day I got up, head throbbing, and went through my routine, shower, get dressed, brush my teeth, all of that. I sat down at my breakfast table with my box of corn flakes and milk and began reading the newspaper. For some reason my headaches seem to fade when I read it, but I don’t know why. I flipped through my usual. I looked at the sports and the movies. I couldn’t watch either because of my headaches. I was going through the classifieds, since I had been looking for a car about 3 weeks. My old one was literally falling apart at the seams, and I thought that this would be a good time to start looking. I had just passed by an ad for a 1998 Honda Civic when a Service Ad caught my eye. It read:
‘Plagued by Chronic Headaches? Come in for a free examination and a revolutionary new treatment!’
Naturally at first I thought it was a load of bull. Someone had come up with a get rich quick scheme, and was hoping some idiot would come in to get treated, and instead get some quack to sell him placebos for $300.
“I pass.” I said loudly.

I went to work that day feeling worse than I did the day before. For some reason the fluorescent lights in my office felt more piercing and bright than usual. I didn’t get a lot done that morning, and decided to go to lunch early.
“Stan? I’m going to take an early lunch okay?”
“Whatever,”
Said my boss from behind his newspaper.
As I drove around looking for someplace to eat, I contemplated that advertisement.
“Free!” it had read.
“Well, if it’s free, then why not?” I said to myself. I turned around and headed straight for the printed address.

When I got to the place, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I stepped out and saw a nice square white building. No markings on it as far as I could tell, apart from the building number on the side. I walked into the place, expecting some cheap $75 a month rental dump, but it was surprisingly clean on the inside.
Maybe I was wrong about this place,
I said to myself. I saw a desk with an attractive young woman behind it. She was maybe 20, 22 years old, had medium length brownish hair, and glasses. I approached her, but she didn’t see me. I looked around and saw a bell. I tapped it. *DING!*. That certainly got her attention.
“Oh!”
She exclaimed.
“Oh! I’m sorry ma’am; I didn’t mean to startle you!”
I said, as startled as she was.
“That’s quite all right, sir.”
She said.
“Uh, I um, came about uh, your ad in the paper.”
I stammered.
“Oh, well then, if you’ll just sign your name in, I will direct you to the doctor as soon as possible.”
I signed in, then went to the waiting area and took a seat. It was kind of strange, because normally at a doctors office there are more people around, but as far as I could tell, I was the only one there. Soon the young woman popped her head in from around a corner.
“Sir?”
The young woman asked.
“Yes?”
I replied.
“Could you follow me please?”
“Oh, alright.”

I was lead down a hallway with pictures on the walls, they were beautiful, and I didn’t notice how long the walk was until I nearly bumped into the woman who was leading me.
“If you’ll just take a seat on that table right over there, the doctor will be with you shortly.”
She said.
I walked into the room. There was a lone examination table in the large room with a single light over it. I should’ve been more suspicious, but at the time I just cared about getting rid of those damned headaches. My footsteps echoed around the room as I went to the table. I could feel a migraine coming on, so I laid down and shut my eyes so I wouldn’t get nauseous. Before I knew it, I dozed off. When I woke up, I felt a bit better, but my head still hurt a little. But soon that was the least of my worries. I was going to get up and get a drink of water from the fountain, but I couldn’t move. I tried to move my arms, but they were tethered down. My legs were tethered too. I was suddenly filled with this sense of dread, a feeling that I should have known something like this was going to happen, but I was too naive to believe it. The door to the large room opened, and in walked a man cloaked by the blinding light. I wanted to cry out to let someone know that I was in mortal fear, but my words were choked up inside my throat. It was as if I was paralyzed, unable to escape whatever was going to happen to me. I heard a hiss, and the man put a mask up to my face. I wanted to scream, but the gas was too quick, because then I blacked out.

I awoke with a start, then shut my eyes again as I thought
‘Was it all just a dream? Was it all in my head?’
It wasn’t. Nothing in the world could have prepared me for what I would soon discover. My head hurt. Not like my headaches though, instead it felt like a large bruise was on the top of my head. And as I reached up to touch it, I uttered a pain-filled
“Aah...”
And in a flash I knew what was off about the way I felt. I noticed my voice had a hollow, metallic quality to it, almost digital sounding. I opened my eyes. I noticed gauges and displays in my field of vision, but no matter which way I turned, they stayed in my field of view. Everything had a green tint to it, too. I reached up and touched my head.

*CLANK*

My head sounded like when you accidentally hit an air vent. ‘My hands!’ I suddenly thought. I looked at them. They were like metal gloves except for I now only had 8 fingers with a small claw at each fingertip. Each finger and joint mimicked the human hand perfectly, or as perfectly as a 4 fingered robotic paw could, and they made a high pitched whizzing noise when I moved them. I apprehensively raised my new metal head and shoulders to gaze at what used to be my feet and legs. My new legs highly resembled a pair of cat legs. I moved both of my robotic legs back and forth, and flexed each of my metal toes, each accompanied by a whir or whiz of its own. In a split second, I knew what that doctor had done to me.

I had been turned into a robot! An anthropomorphic cat robot!

I looked at my arms again and discovered my wrists could spin around all the way. I then tried to rotate my head, and discovered that my back now had a cat-like articulated mechanical tail that would have been attached to the base of my spine. When I touched it, a small plug with the word ‘Charge’ on it came out. I touched my tail again, and the plug made a whizzing noise and disappeared back into it. Obviously, by this point my fear had given way to curiosity, and I sat up, and looked at my torso. It wasn’t too much to say I looked like a robot out of a science fiction movie. My waist looked like a large T, with my legs connected on both sides, so it would be easier for me to kneel, or something. And my chest was shaped similarly to a fairly well built man, with pectoral and abdominal muscles present, but not dominating the overall form.

I raised my metal hands and felt my head. The sides of my head no longer had ears, but then I felt the top of my head, and sure enough there were a pair of cat-like ears on it. I crossed my digital eyes and noticed that instead of just a nose, I had a short metal muzzle with a nose on it. I uncrossed my eyes, looked around the table and noticed that I was no longer restrained in any way, except for a wide brown leather collar. I unbuckled it from my neck and looked at it. While turning it around, I noticed a small curved metal plate attached to it, not unlike my grandfathers’ Korean War dog-tags with two words on it: Number 26...

I put the collar back on, since it was the only thing I had to wear. I turned and sat on the edge of the table and wondered what else had happened while I was unconscious. I wondered what day it was and how much time had gone by. I had been concentrating on this for a moment, when I heard a ping, like when a cell phone gets a text message, and noticed that within my field of vision there was a small screen that had
‘08/21/2008’
Displayed on it.
“Oh my God,”
I said in my metal voice,
“I’ve been here for almost 6 months? But, it feels like I fell asleep ten minutes ago!”

I pondered this fact for a number of moments, and decided to give myself another once-over. After a while, and after I was sure I had seen every part of my new robotic body, I decided to see how easily I could walk. With a quick whir I hopped off the table and attempted to balance on my robotic feline legs. I nearly fell about 3 times, but I eventually got the hang of balancing, and soon I was jogging around the room easily, whirring and whizzing the whole time. I got tired of running, so I decided to see if there was a light switch nearby or better yet, a mirror so I could get a better look at my new metal face and body. Somehow I found a switch, flicked it on, and all these bright lights came on.
“Well, that’s a start!”
I said aloud. I looked around a bit, and soon spotted a sink and a full-length mirror. I approached it slowly, and finally got to see my new metallic body in the light. It was exhilarating! My robot eyes were green! My ‘metal skin’ was a sleek gray with hints of silver here and there. My ears could move back and forth just like my cats! It was amazing! But then, I thought about something else. I was happy that I had become a cat robot, but at the same time, I was filled with sadness that I would never see my familiar old human face again. My hazel eyes, my sandy brown hair, even my glasses, I would never see them again. I wanted to collapse at that very moment and just cry, but hey, robots can’t cry, remember? I sat down by the sink and thought for a moment.
“What will the world think of me?”
I said out loud in my digital voice,
“Will my family still love me? And what about my job, and my friends? Everything I knew before is probably gone.”
I just sat there, and felt sorry for myself for a very long time. I didn’t know how long I had sat there, but soon I heard a beep that I somehow knew meant my batteries were running low. With a couple of whizzes, I got up, touched my tail and plugged myself into an electrical outlet near the sink, then sat back down. As I waited for myself to recharge I decided to go ahead, try to face the world, and damn the consequences. My outsides may have been changed, but I knew that I was still myself! And that was all that mattered.

The End
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GUH.
I'm tired of coming up with stuff to add to this like, 5 months after the story was first posted!
Whatever. Enjoy the robot TF, y'all!