Eternal Fugitive

A Slice of Life Story About a Boring Person's Mundane Life Becoming Mildly More Interesting

_{Poorly Written and Pretentiously Pseudo-Philosophic Post-Transformation Furry Cringe}

Chapter 10: Encephalon's Puppet

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Overview over the whole story:

Post-transformation slice of life.
A young man in modern day Germany mysteriously and suddenly gets turned into an Avali and now has to live with it. Both a lot and surprisingly little changes in his daily life.
The narrative focuses on post-transformation (the actual transformation itself isn't even described) and follows him through initially dealing with his new body, its senses and needs, and, later on, "normal" daily life.
A handful of other people also transformed into various beings and society is unusually uncaring and accommodating.

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Excerpt from this chapter:

[Dr. Petruccelli] placed a comforting hand on my knee. "Think of it like this: You're now human-software running on avali-hardware. Without getting too philosophical: We, our personalities, are the sum of our memories and formative experiences; you still have all of those, you still have all your memories, all the skills you've learned.
Of course, neurochemistry also plays a pivotal important role. For example: You're a young man, I'm sure you have first hand experience with how your hormones can alter your behavior. And, as a woman, I can only attest similar experiences. But that's where you now differ.
Your brain will react to certain inputs in a completely different way than a human's. Dopamine, or whatever your brain uses now, may be released for completely different stimuli. Reflexes and instincts are probably also completely different; you may enjoy different activities now.
Perhaps you may now greatly enjoy chasing after objects moving away from you. Perhaps you'll now enjoy meats you previously found repulsive. Perhaps you'll find a greater interest in music. And I've already seen that you arranged your bed to have a cushy pit to sleep in, like a nest."

Thinking back, I realized that I had gradually and subconsciously rearranged the bed's blanket and pillow such that they formed a small pit to lay in.

She gave my knee a reassuring rub and smiled. "But regardless of what may be the case, you're still you and I'm confident you'll mange. Everything will be alright."

"Thank you," I replied after contemplating for a while, "but that now makes me worry about pack loss."

"I also wouldn't worry about that!" she announced with strange confidence, "for two reasons.
Firstly: You still have all your memories and experiences from being a human, and being alone as a human. So, in a way, you have already overcome pack loss.
And secondly: From what we know about other posthumans so far, The Metamorphosis is unlikely to have given you a ticket for crippling depression."

She chuckled. I chuckled, too.

"Though," she continued, her chair softly groaned as she leaned back and folded her hands, "maybe you'll be more socially active or start seeking closer connections to people than you're used to, just to quench that instinctual desire for a pack. But I can only speculate on that."

I produced a soft and pensive whine.
"And what about flight? Surely, I won't just be able to..." I was genuinely curious. The idea of just out of nowhere being able to fly still felt too unreal.

"Well, counter question: How long did it take for you to learn to walk again, with the tail for keeping balance? How long did it take for you to learn to control all your ears like that? And how long did it take for you to learn echolocation?"

"Öhhh..." [I grunted and thought,] "I really 'just did', didn't I?"

"Exactly!" she triumphantly exclaimed, "that's all instincts and reflexes! I'd wager a day or three of practice and it'll come just as natural as using your tail for balance or using sound to see!"

"Huh... makes sense," I conceded [while thinking,] "I guess, despite all thinking of us as higher beings, ultimately, we're all just our brains' puppets..."

She gave an approving nod.

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Word count: I aim for each chapter to have around 5000 words.
Schedule: I intend to publish a chapter on the first Saturday of every month. New chapters will be published once they're finished. (Hopefully at least every other month.)
Tags will be identical for every post.

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Notice:

Eternal Fugitive will be the only TF-content I intend on creating for the foreseeable future.
If you're here from my other art and dislike this sort of content, feel free to ignore this (however, I'm happy if you give it a read regardless).
If you're here only for TF-content, I'm sorry but you won't find anything more than this story in my gallery (however, maybe you'll enjoy my usual art regardless).

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Maximilian Schröder and the story of Eternal Fugitive were created by me.
Avali species created by RyuujinZERO.
All further credits on the final page of the file.