January 23rd, 2001
  12:59pm
  Dallas, Texas
  "Welcome back from lunch, guys. Hope it was a good one, at least better than that Quarter Pounder that I had." I politely stifled a huge burp, grimacing slightly and pursing my lips, letting the stinging gas hiss out through my nose as I exhaled. Man, what was wrong with that burger, I wondered. I actually felt nauseous, and after feeding on my favorite heart-attack-in-a-sack, I hoped it would not put me off my much-loved fodder in the future, like that green onion and ham rollup incident 10 years back. Believe me, you haven't seen it all until someone near you vomits up masticated red pig meat, mashed with pungent dark green tubular bits of onion stems, coagulating in grayish cream cheese based stomach acid. 10 years and counting, and I still can't look at a rollup on a plate, let alone touch it to my lips. Shudder.
  "If you think you had trouble staying awake this morning through the chapters on FPS, y'all ain't seen nothin' yet!" I quipped in my deepest western drawl, the one I reserve for my most northern students to make sure they got a little local color while staying in Dallas. It is the least I can do, since under Yankee occupation these days, Dallas has become a suburb of Chicago, all the self respecting Texans having fled to Mesquite and Fort Worth. Happily, these latter-day carpetbaggers seem more than content to establish their self-imposed isolation from each other and Mother Nature, behind the high walls and electric gates of their '1/4 acre lot, planned communities' in Plano and Richardson. And all the while congratulating themselves on becoming a part of a 'gen-yoo-wine' remnant of authentic western culture, with their boots-as-family-room-decor, and saddle topped poolside bar stools. Between my accent, my Lucchese boots, and my beloved 100X chocolate Stetson, I was about as close to a cowboy as my students were likely to get during their two week stay. Little did they know that they were looking at not only a horseman, but a man-horse as well! Not merely the cowboy, but the cowpony too. Ah, but sadly, that was a secret that they were unlikely to ever know. Or so I thought at that moment.
  "Lets look at chapter 26, and next we are going to turn our attention to the Scheduled Processing System, or SPS as we like to call it. SPS has changed a great deal in the last 20 years, from its original concept as a utility language running under the Umbrella, into its current camouflage of a report writer... blah... blah... blah..." I lectured on, trying not to drone, my mind entering automatic mode. Don't get me wrong. I love teaching this class, but after about 80 sets of students in the last 4 years, I had my patter down so well that I could sometimes let my forebrain take over, while my hindbrain considered other contemplations. Right now hindbrain was wondering what the hell was wrong with my stomach.
  The aforementioned organ was abusing me. I could actually feel and hear it, sloshing about in agitation in my abdomen, like a cantankerous organic Insinkerator, dutifully trying its damnedest to dispose of some plastic Coke cap stupidly washed down its throat. I slowly became aware that I had stopped talking, and was, as was everyone in the classroom, staring stupidly down at my crotch. More precisely, at the outline of the huge globes hanging down inside my right pant leg. In my stupor, I swore to myself that there hadn't been anything like that there last time I looked. It's probably a good thing that I habitually wear Levis' 517 stretch dress jeans. If I hadn't, the sudden outlined appearance of two baseball sized testicles dangling between my legs would have resulted in extreme pain, or a split pair of pants and extreme pain. As it was, the material was stretched to the limit, clearly outlining two spheres, one above the other, and leaving only such attributes as skin color and hairiness to the imagination.
  "Ahhoooooouuuuu..." escaped my lips softly, as my balls (yes they were indeed that, dictated by every measure my brain could interpret) gave up that dull ache that only a male can know and understand but can never accurately describe. I bent over and knocked-kneed my legs, searching for every last bit of room in my confinement. Everyone sat there silently as though stupefied, mouths and eyes agape, some brows furrowed with fear, some with shock, and others with humorous curiosity.
  Nancy, the class clown, cliched "Are you planning to play racquetball after class, or are you just glad to see me?"
  I looked up, the shock my mind was trying to cope with clearly visible on my face. My mouth hung open while I tried to comprehend what she had just said. I never had the chance to answer back before I doubled over in pain and hit the floor on hands and knees.
  Not searing agonizing pain, but rather a cramping, bent out of shape ache that clamped into my intestines and onto my crotch and made me wish I could fold in two. The grip of it made me grimace and hold my breath. Gradually, over the next 60 seconds or so, I could feel my penis swelling up. Now, I am not speaking of an erection. There was nothing erotic feeling about it at the time, and it is only in replaying the memory of that minute that my brain finds such enormous excitement in it. All my focus was locked onto my dick and balls. My nerves reported that it was getting longer and wider at the same time. There was also an electrically charged twitching in the skin above the root and all along its length, just like the prickling in a limb that has gone to sleep. That was maddening. But the stronger pain was being caused by the fact that my expanding stiffening cock was bent down my right leg with my already straining balls, and it wanted insistently to stand up along my abdomen. My pants were denying that need. The material outlined an elongating and thickening shaft slithering its way down my leg right next to the globes already trapped there.
  Rolling quickly to my back, I fumbled wildly for my belt and zipper, trying to get my pants open ASAP. I forgot my watching students in my self-centered world of throbbing alarm. Whipping my buckle open I yanked my waistband apart, making the zipper live up to its onomatopoetic name as it parted its teeth with protest. Sticking my thumbs into the band of my pants and the elastic of my black boxers, I wiggled across the floor trying to get them away from my crotch. I need not have struggled so hard for at the next thrust of my legs, the entire crotch of my pants seemed to vanish, taking with it my zipper, waist band, belt and favorite Montana Silversmiths belt buckle, all the way around to the pockets and their contents in back. My wallet, comb, change, nail clipper, everything, including the precious gift that Master had given me when he took ownership 2 years before. His Avatar that had for all that time ridden secretly in my left front pants pocket. All gone. Somewhere. Even the front of my shirt and half my tie disappeared. At the same instant, a rush of tingling energy, heat and electricity combined, crawled twitchingly towards my crotch making my skin jump and shiver like a low voltage shock. None of these facts interrupted my concentration on the events of the moment though. With a blast of exhaled breath that I was not aware that I was holding, I collapsed panting on my back on the floor.
  With its restraints suddenly dissolved, my penis whipped free. It arced upward through the air towards my face and hit my abdomen with a wet and meaty plop, and laid there, an impossibly huge and alien colored and shaped tube of flesh that did not belong to me. Yet my nerves testified that it did indeed. They swore under oath that this was my penis lying there. I could feel the ardent dampness of it, its startling weight; it's pulsating length all the way up my stomach. Simultaneously I could feel the irritating tickle of the hair from my abdomen brushing the top of the shaft and glans. There was no denying that this pink and black mottled tubular rod, as thick as my forearm and mushroom ended, was now mine, rooted as it was between my thighs. The skin of my scrotum however, was still pink and shiny, almost transparent in fact as it stretched heroically to its limits around its lately expanded contents. Apart from the sudden appearance of this pristine set of genitals and the obvious absence of some of my clothing, everything else about me seemed the same.
  The attention of my staring eyes was torn away from this sight by a loud thump from the back of the room. Pam was out of her chair and had backed up short against the supply cabinets, a look of near hysteria on here gaping face. I gaped back and shook my head in shock. Bruce vehemently whispered, "Jesus Christ". Everyone was standing and craning to see over the PC terminals. Every face I could see was distorted in a combination of astonishment first, some then overlaid with disgust, or fear, or concern depending on the person.
  Brian, silent introverted soft-spoken Brian, my least participative student sitting on the aisle in row 2, fell forward from his chair to his hands and finally contributed to the class. With a wrenching gag, he vomited his lunch onto the carpet. Even though I am not an empathic vomiter like my sister is, I rolled to my side and joined him.
  I can't bear throwing up. I have loathed it since I was a child and did it so often. I would rather be in pain than be sick to my stomach. And I don't mean the good kind of pain that I enjoy in a flogging or bondage session with Master either. I mean the real thing. But this time, as my lunch of Quarter Pounder with cheese and a small fry put in their final public appearance, my whole body was awash in relief. The sandwich, however, was something the worse for wear. It only has occurred to me these later days that I will never be bothered by vomiting again, for reasons that became clear with time.
  But once my stomach was emptied, the relief was so fresh and pure that I felt rejuvenated. It was as though my body had disposed of something dangerously toxic, and I had escaped an unrecognized hazard. I rolled and relaxed onto my back closing my eyes with a sigh and a cough to clear my throat, frowning only from the retched and acidic taste left in my mouth.
  Nancy was the first to speak. She came to my side and knelt by my head. She touched my forehead to test my temperature and in a concerned voice she asked, "Are you ok?" She pulled the strands of my disheveled ponytail off my face and out of my mouth.
  I looked up at her angelic concern and nodded. "I'm feeling better anyway" I answered, a tear, not of sadness but of physical strain from the violence of my abdominal contractions, dripped into my left ear. "Somebody see about Brian," I instructed.
  She tried to focus her attention on my face, but her eyes were inexorably pulled back to the sight of my prodigious penis. So was everyone else's, including mine. I swallowed hard and tried to clear my throat. Pushing with my elbows I levered my back up so that I could look down at my crotch. What I saw was so alien looking that I could not believe my own senses; alien, but not unfamiliar. I knew this dark dappled monster. I had seen it in my most vivid dreams. I even had a .JPG of it. It was my favorite horse cock. Last year an old friend on the Equine lovers mail group had sent me a photo of a stallions dropped and fully extended penis just before he was bred. For some reason, I had fallen in love with that picture. I had often enough seen other photos like it, and was familiar with the real living thing as well from my times on horseback. But this one spoke to me, so to speak. The colors of it, and its conformation were so handsome, and I had often stared at it hoping that when the day came and genetic manipulation would be a reality, that I would be blessed with a tool exactly like it. Weird, huh? And now, suddenly, there it was not only in front of me, but part of me. My mind did not even pause to ask unanswerable questions. Not yet anyway. There was no time for that, for further developments were beginning as we watched.
  There was a sharp tingling around my testicles. It was rather unpleasant to tell the truth, and I gritted my teeth in a grimace. I didn't like what I was feeling, and yet I didn't know what I could do about it. In pain I rolled oven on my stomach intending to get up, and I was immediately rewarded when the pain stopped. I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees and looked down between my arms. The first thing I noticed was that there was a small hole in the carpet tiles. The next thing of note was the further change between my legs.
  My new penis was no longer nakedly visible as it had been. Now in its place was a soft and pliable tube of skin, that attached itself to my abdomen from above where my navel used to be, which ran down to my crotch where it melded perfectly with the new skin of my scrotum. Much roomier than the old one, this new sac let its contents drop and sway smoothly back and forth bumping gently against my mid thighs. Staring at what were undeniably my genitals was not proof enough. I lifted my left hand off the floor and fearfully, I readily admit, I reached to touch them. Eyes and brains can play you false. Your hand may be temporarily fooled, but it will never lie. I felt the touch twice simultaneously, the personal confirmation of reality. My fingers felt warm, supple, living softness, wholly unlike any part of my so familiar body. My sheath felt gently probing manipulations through inexperienced nerve networks, which lent an effervescent energy to the sensation. Breathlessly I whispered, "Dear God. It's happening" and I gripped a handful of that skin and held on.
  For as long as I could remember, I had wanted to be a horse. Some of my earliest memories were of playing Cowboys and Indians with my friends on Westwood Drive in Flint, Michigan. Everyone wanted to be either of the game's namesakes, but not me. I wanted to be a horse; anybody's horse. A brave and noble servant of a cavalry peacemaker; or a fierce bareback Indian war pony, painted with sacred and protective colors to match my rider; or a tempestuous free mustang racing the wind across the grasslands, one hoof ahead of the humans trying to catch me (which they always did, much to the joy of the part of me who even to this day likes to be hobbled and harnessed). Or even the hard-working but unnoticed member of the stagecoach team, thundering down the Overland Trail on the way to golden lands in the west. As long as I had hooves, a mane, and a tail, I was happy to serve. As an adult, my childhood fantasies had taken a turn into reality, and 'pony play' as we call it had become one satisfying method of sexual and psychological self-expression.
  As a child, my deepest desires were to become an actual four-legged horse. All hooves, no digits. Four long legs, instead of 2. Gender hadn't really occurred to me then. I remember thinking in terms of stallion, but that was only because Trigger was one, and I was a one-child Trigger fan club. As I grew, and sexuality became a concern, stallion was the only possible option. No mare for this boy, I didn't care how pretty Buttermilk was. Somewhere along the line, I began to realize that I was unwilling to go all the way and be a four-on-the-floor. Two-would-do for me. I didn't want to lose my hands. They were just too... well, handy. And I was good at using them too. More importantly, my mind became my greatest possession, and the thought of trading it in for a species equivalent became the ultimate horror. As a result, my internal image changed to what I discovered was called anthropomorphic. I was very late in finding this out, and it was only after finding Master and His introducing me to mucking on Tapestries, that my understanding was completed. Just as I'd thought I was the only boy interested in other boys, so I had thought I was the only male mammalian bipedal hominid who knew he should have been a male mammalian bipedal equine. Then I found the TSA and the TSA List and I realized just how parochial my vision had been. My, how immature I still was at 49.
  Now, there I was holding in my hand a living symbol that wishes do come true. So why was I so damned terrified? My throat was so dry that my breathing rasped. I could feel my heart racing so fast that my head felt dizzy. My whole body was shaking and sweating with fright and I didn't know why. I could smell my own fear, a description that I had often read but never actually believed. I stank with it. It was pungently acidic and it burned my mucus membranes, and recognizing it for what it was made me almost panicky.
  As I type this in retrospect, I know exactly where my dread was entrenched: the change I lived and prayed for daily was happening. But exactly how far was it going to go? There were two sharply different possibilities. One, that I was about to become my most treasured dream, Equus Erectus Sapiens, the Wise Bipedal Horse. The cells of my being knew this shape, and needed little impetus to assume it. Or two, Equus Caballus, the common (please excuse the term) horse. Smart and resourceful, but hardly wise and innovative, and certainly handicapped physically. I was in terror of the unknown and the losses I stood to suffer.
  Pain brought my mind back into focus. Unconsciously I had been wrenching at the skin dangling from my abdomen, hurting myself by my own hand. My sheath was red and scratched from my own insentient attack. I sat up and back on my heels, kneeling on the floor, and tried to calm myself by reciting a mantra that I have often used in times of stress. "The true gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from goodwill and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self control is equal to all emergencies..." Equal to all emergencies. Here was one now, shrieking for attention, but was I self controlled enough to handle it?
  The sight of me kneeling in what was left of my pant legs and shirt, with my new-minted stallions genitals attached seamlessly to my belly and dangling low between my legs, was all that Brian and Pam could take. He grabbed his brief case and walk-ran out the door with Pam on his heels with one hand over her mouth to stifle her sobbing. Everything was happening so rapidly that I felt unable to think of what to do next.
  Nancy said quietly, "I'm calling 911," and stood up to leave. I grabbed her arm to stop her.
  "Unless the paramedics carry a paravet with them, that wo'nt do any good," I countered. "I know what is happening. I just don't know why or how this will end. But I am certain that by the time they get here, they won't find a man anymore. At least not a male human at any rate. And I'd rather not have to deal with them right now. Or anybody else for that matter. So if you guys don't mind, I'm canceling the rest of the class for today. I've got to be alone for a while to think this out..." I said, putting both hands on my head to steady it.
  As I was saying this, my head had begun to spin dizzily. As in vertigo, not around on my neck like Regan in The Exorcist. Suddenly I felt as if I was starving to death too. As if I hadn't eaten for days. I fell sideways off my knees and landed on my rump with a thump. Then there came again that rush of tingling energy, heat and electricity combined, crawling twitchingly towards my crotch, but this time across my butt from the top of the gluteal crease all the way to the steel ring in my perineum. I could feel my butt muscles jumping against the floor in galvanic reaction. This shock went for a much longer than the first one, perhaps 60 seconds or so, although it seemed like hours at the time. When it stopped at last, I was panting for breath and drenched with sweat everywhere. But the first thing I noticed was that I was in pain again, this time from my ass.
  I rolled sideways away from the hurt and onto my left hip, causing my large testicles to roll off my lap and bounce with a jerk. "Oh, man, this is getting too damned weird!" Bruce shouted pointing behind me. "What the hell is that?"
  I looked over my shoulder at my butt. At the top of my crack was attached an appendage of naked pink flesh about 12 inches long with a tapering stubby end. As I looked at it, it raised itself up and swung in my direction. I swallowed to wet my throat. "That's my tail," I told him. "Or rather it's going to be when the hair starts growing." I reached back to feel it, out of habit I guess. It felt as real as any part of me ever had, but I found that I couldn't move it voluntarily. I hoped that I would be able to eventually. It moved around with a mind of its own, swinging back and forth quite rapidly as if it was wagging happily. I noted that the skin covering the shape of my gluteus muscles was of a different texture than the rest of me. Larger pores were apparent, and the muscles themselves were bigger and differently shaped. I moved my hand from my tail stump down the right side of my ass. My tail whipped up as far as it could manage in a helpful manner. Under my tail, I could see that I now had a new anus as well. I have been called a horse's ass before. Now it appeared that I really was one, or rather, had one. The dusky roseate pucker of the sphincter muscle showed clearly at the base of my tail. It had moved out from between my cheeks and positioned itself much closer and more open than a human's -- like a horse's, in fact. It was also huge by comparison to my previous one. As a gay man, my favorite way making love is anal sex. Well, one of my favorite ways. Obviously there would never be a size problem in that regard after this.
  Looking beyond my butt I saw that more of the carpeting had dissolved or evaporated or whatever. My panic was subsiding as my curiosity began to increase. There is one absolute rule that I have learned as a career data processor: there is no such thing as a coincidence. Every time something strange or unexpected happens, there is a quantifiable reason why. Every effect has a cause, whether you want to admit it or not. This disappearing carpet and clothes trick was a good one, but it couldn't be magic. Even the changes to my body had to have an explanation. My mind tentatively decided that the missing material was not missing, but rather was the victim of mass conversion. There is no doubt that the changes that had happened to me had resulted in increased mass. As big as I liked to tell everyone my penis and testes had been, even in my active imagination they had been nowhere near as large as the massive genitals I was growing accustomed to now. The extra mass must have come from the objects I was in touch with at the time. "Don't anybody touch me. Stay away in case I'm contagious or dangerous or something. I think I'm absorbing material when the changes happen and I wouldn't want you to get hurt the next time. I'm ok right now, really," I said in a quavering voice. "I really just want to go and lie down for a while and think this out. I'm asking you to keep this a secret, as a favor. I don't think it will be for long in any case, but I've got to get hold of myself and try to prepare somehow for what's happening. I don't know what to tell you about the rest of the class. Just call the office tomorrow and they will tell you what to do." I stood up, and the legs of my pants slid down and bunched around my boots like some old time silent comedy jape. I looked so stupid standing there that if I had been less frightened I would have laughed out loud. As it was, I picked up my briefcase and walked unsteadily out of the room towards my class wing office, with my scrotum bouncing right and left against my thighs like some living tennis ball. My office was behind a badge secured door, and I knew I would have some privacy for a while, since mine was the only class in session that week.
  I flopped into my chair, hurt my tail, and jumped up again. Then I thought better of it anyway and lay on the floor to think. The only issues on my mind at the time were selfish thoughts such as, what is happening, and why, and how far is going to go. What will I be when the changes stop. The larger implications to my life, responsibilities, relationships, and to humanity, never even crossed my mind. Damn! This is not how I had imagined it was going to happen at all!
  No, no, now wait a minute. There was one thing that was exactly right; the order of the changes. Every story I had ever written, every dream I had ever slept, every masturbation session I had ever creamed, had always begun with these extensive changes to my cock and balls. Also, I had to remember that the structure, the color, the size and look of my genitals right then were also exactly as I had imagined them to be. Exactly. Right down to the all black shaft with the pink saddle shaped marking on the upper side just behind the glans ridge. Not only that, but the changes had always proceeded to a tail being next. What did that mean then? Anything? Nothing? I searched my memory to see what was 'supposed' to happen next. As I designed it, the changes proceeded steadily up my torso, and down my legs, with equal amounts of internal and external changes occurring simultaneously. The last changes were always my feet changing into hooves. I always saved the best for last, for having hooves on my legs had always been the most desirable physical change, the hottest fantasy, and the most frightening one.
  Again, what did it all mean? I felt a little better for realizing that I seemed to be living out my own paper wet dreams in the real world. If I was right, I knew where I was headed, and what I would be like when I got there. How long, I wondered, would it take? Now, there was a departure. The changes I had experienced were happening far more swiftly than I had allowed in my plans. I had always thought that for realism, a body couldn't simply change in a flash without some sort of unrealistic catalyst, such as the introduction of magic in the equation. I wanted it to happen for real so hard that I tended to reject anything the strayed too far from the realities of physics as we knew them.
  Sitting up, I looked at my watch. 1:10? That's all the time that had passed since lunch? I was struck with the thought of just how quickly a life and all that it encompasses can be changed. Thinking it out now, I realize that 10 minutes or so might as well be an eternity. Life can change from one heartbeat to the absence of the next. I was living my changes in tectonic slow motion by comparison.
  Shaking my head at my own narrow-mindedness, I began to feel the vast emptiness in my stomach and bowels again. Hunger so cavernous that I could feel the energy draining out of my body while I sat there. Closing my eyes I took a deep breath and let it out. Silently I repeated the invocation of my Master's love to center myself before the next shock would hit me. Only a moment later, everywhere that I had already changed began to prickle with energy again. It was almost more than I could stand, and I grunted with the effort of making myself endure it. It didn't hurt exactly. It was like a severe and ruthless tickling. Looking down at myself thru squinted eyes, I could see as well as feel my hair follicles go into frantic overproduction. As I watched, a girdle of chocolate brown began to spread across my abdomen and around my hips. The skin of my scrotum and sheath took on a softer look of creamy buff. The intense tickling on my tail stump told me without looking that its nakedness would soon be covered as well. My mind's eye told me what it would look like, and I resolved not to look until the change had completed, just to see if I was right. This was a long one too. A couple of minutes later at least, the process dwindled to a stop. This time, there didn't seem to be any missing material around me, but dear God was I hungry and exhausted. I almost crawled to my desk where I always kept a box of Wheat Thins for a healthier snack. It was a new box, and as I nearly ripped it apart to get inside, the delicious smell of them made my mouth salivate so much I actually drooled down my chin. I'm snacking on a few right now as I write this. I still love them.
  Well, I stuffed nearly the whole box down my throat before I began to feel any better. I decided that if I was going to get though this, I needed fuel, and plenty of it. My vision of myself was twenty-two hands in height, which is something like 7 feet, and that's a lot bigger than my original 5' 6" frame. If I didn't want to look like some equine scarecrow, I had to get some more input. Without leaving the building though, I had limited choices. The snack machine would provide some of course, and then there was the rest of my clothing if I could figure out how to go about consuming it. It seemed that all I needed to do was be touching something when the change hit, and it became a part of me.
  A part of me. I was suddenly struck with grief at the loss of Master's gift to me. I hadn't really lost it, it was a part of me somehow... but He had given it to me to care for in His absence, and now I would not be able to return it to Him should He ever require it. It had also become so much a part of my daily life that considering the idea of not being able to touch it, its comforting symbology in my pocket whenever I wanted to, was heartbreaking. After all, since early in 1999, it had not been away from my body more than a few feet, and usually it was in direct contact with me. I knew that it was a treasure of His, and I worried that His joy in my transformation would be degraded by its loss.
  But wait a second! If I were changing, wouldn't that mean that He would be too? After all, we both shared the desire to transform. We both mucked as anthro-stallions. We both wrote stories about it and waited in faith that genetic therapy would be available during our lifetimes that would grant our fondest desire. Wow! What a fantastic thought! I had to find out immediately. With shaking fingers, I dialed His number and waited impatiently. When I got His answering service, I sighed in disappointment. But at least I could alert Him to what was happening. At the beep, I rushingly explained my situation and asked Him to call me as soon as He got my message. I tried to make it sound like I was only excited and not worried at all, but I knew the shaking in my voice would tell Him otherwise. He always could read me like a book. I think somehow He knew me better than I did myself. He still does. It's almost psychic the way He sees into me.
  As I hung up the phone, I realized that I should have done something about food before I called Him. The unpleasant electricity had begun to build again. This time it seemed to center in my thighs, from my hips down to my knees. I wished I had a camera. Someone else should see it beside myself. The musculature and bone structure of my legs began to shift and flow in an almost liquid motion. The bones were lengthening certainly, but the size and shape of the muscles was the most drastic alteration. They grew massively thick from front to back, and yet somehow flatter in cross section. I gingerly pulled the remaining material of my pant legs upward, worried still about how selective this conversion could be in its choice of input. The cloth was jerked from my fingers and as I watched, it seemed as though it melted right into my skin. I felt a rush of energy as it happened, and decided that when this session was over, I would be better prepared with more offerings the next time. I could feel the carpet dissolving under my legs right down to the concrete floor, but there it stopped. I don't know why, but perhaps the fuel had to be somehow fibrous, or metallic, or even a product of living nature to start with before it was acceptable. Concrete is none of these after all. The result was what appeared to be the fully formed upper leg of a horse was attached at the knee to an otherwise human leg. Even the hair had grown in at the same time. I remember thinking, it's accelerating. I tried my new legs and discovered that I was already several inches taller. However, I found that I couldn't completely straighten out my legs anymore. The hip joint didn't seem to want to work that way. This made my worries of a total horse conversion come back, but then I remembered that all the furry pics of anthro-equines had that look of being very slightly stooped at the waist. These drawings, especially the ones by my muck-mate and old friend Steed, had helped form my self image, so the new change was probably right on target.
  In any case, I realized that what was happening was no more in my control than my body was when Master had it bound to the Maltese cross in the dungeon. Someone was making the decisions for me now. I was used to surrendering my will, body, and mind to Him. It became suddenly easier then to surrender to the fate that was controlling me at that moment.
  I walked cautiously to the snack machine, feeling like I was always going to topple forward. My center of gravity had shifted forward from where it used to be. Using money from the drawer of my desk, I selected things that I thought might give the most amount of energy rather than bulk. Apparently the carpet could provide all the bulk I might need. I practically poured 2 bags of Skittles into my stomach, and immediately felt better for it. Then I noticed the bags of trail mix. Wow, did they look delicious! I imagined I could suddenly smell them from inside the machine, and hastily dropped a few bags. Man, were they great! Especially the raisins. They were so sweet, they could have been candy themselves.
  Chewing with my mouth open because it was too full, it occurred to me that I hadn't seen my own tail yet. So I tried to look over my shoulder to see how it had turned out. I got two surprises at once then. It was beautiful, blond, and long. It swayed gently as I turned to try to see it. I still couldn't consciously move it so I tried to get a better look by bending over and looking between my legs. It hung there full and wonderful, longer than the tail I had Buck make for me. The hairs were just as coarse though, but it was so long and full that the coarseness wasn't even noticeable. I fell in love with my own tail. And while I stood there adoring it, my penis put in its next appearance. I had the perfect view of it, as it swelled my sheath and inched its way outward. It parted the pursed end and the head of it slid into view. This excited me even more and soon the entire length of it was exposed before my eyes. I decided that masturbation would be a very interesting experience, but that this was not the time for it.
  Standing back up, now with a black pole jutting out of my groin, I continued to dump edibles into my gut until I ran out of money. Going back to my office, I resolved to simply wait, and try to help the process instead of fight it. Almost as if reading my thoughts, the tingling began again, this time around my waist and lower back. Will, here comes your barrel boy, I thought to myself. But I was still scared, and the fear made my sexual excitement, and my penis, vanish like carpet under my butt. As before, the intense prickling took my breath away, or rather made me hold it in, as it proceeded very rapidly up my abs, across my pecs, and up my back. My spine seemed to creak and click as it lengthened, while my torso widened and bulked up in the shoulders. But the change didn't stop when I thought it should have. The upward motion ceased at my neck, but turned sideways and started down my arms. Here it comes, I thought. The question of whether you are going to be anthro or equine will soon be answered.
  The electricity seemed to rush faster down my arms than anywhere else it had touched, quickly consuming the remains of my shirt. As it went down, I could sense that my arms were getting much longer than they had been, and would probably hang well down to my knees or more when I stood up. When the change reached my hands, I held them out, stiff-fingered, to watch. They were shaking like leaves. With a cry of despair, I saw my fingernails all begin to turn black. I always had written that I would have deep black very shiny hooves, so I supposed that this was the beginning of my becoming a full-bodied horse. As I watched, my mind in anguish, my ring and little fingers lengthened and merged into one thick but jointed digit. Then my middle and index fingers did the same thing. The nails on each joined together in a continuous chitinous covering, and my thumb widened and lengthened until I had three digits on each hand, all the same length of about 4 inches. And there it stopped. I sobbed when I realized it was over, and I held my hands up to look closely at them.
  They did not look like I had written at all. I still had opposable thumbs, as it were, but I now had only two thick, and very strong looking, powerful fingers on each hand. The fact that all three digits were the same length imparted an alien looking symmetry to both hands. My arms were still plantigrade in form, although they looked much too long to fit the rest of me. There must be further changes in structure coming. I began to cry to think how close I had become to being trapped in my own living nightmare.
  It took a while, staring at my hands, to realize that I had seen them before. Another friend on the Equine list had sent me a drawing of his perfect horse. He didn't want to be one, preferring to be a fox instead. But his steed was anthro, and equine when he needed him to be. He could go about on all fours, pulling carts and doing the large labors that horses can do, but he could also stand upright and his forehooves were really very strong fingers with heavy, almost hoof-like, nails for use against the ground. I remembered admiring the ingenuity of his design, and had decided that I liked it better than my own of having completely human hands. Much more logical and evolutionarily correct. Evidently that one thought had changed my self-image enough for the change to cause it to become my own structure. I bowed my head in relief and wondered what other change I may have wrought but didn't recall at that time, for there was no denying now that I was changing to become my own idea of the ideal me.
  Emotionally wrung out, I sat on the floor and leaned back against the desk drawers to rest. I thought about my writings on the subject of head and hoof transformations. I envisioned the changes to my head and neck to happen when I was unconscious, so I didn't have a guess as to what to expect. But my lower legs and hooves on the other hand, had always been crampy and difficult to endure. Perhaps my change would only follow the order, and not the sensations I had described. All I could do was wait.
  I sat there for a long time, quite exhausted in mind and body. Nothing happened for a while, and I glanced at my watch. It was 2pm. Only one hour or so had passed, but my body said that I needed day's worth of sleep to recover. With a yawn, I decided to do a meditation to try to remain calm and focused. Counting breaths is my current favorite method, a simple technique taught to me by my Master and it consists of counting each breath silently, until I either lose count, or 'zone out' as I call it, a state of thought-less existence. I remember reaching 54, and the next thing I remember is opening my eyes to a terribly disoriented world. I think I must have fallen asleep since I didn't have the familiar unknown-passage-of-time feeling that a 'zone out' left me with. I couldn't see properly. Most of my stereoscopic vision was gone, giving everything a flat and distant look. Blinking my eyes to try to clear them, I looked down to try to focus on my legs, and discovered an enormous long something in my way. I didn't realize what it was, was completely confused by what I was seeing, and it wasn't until I shook my head and saw that thick thing swing about with my shaking head that I realized that I had missed the latest change. My neck and head had completed the change, and what I was experiencing was the vision characteristics of a horse's eye. My only stereoscopic vision field was directly in front of me and about 20 degrees to each side of my very long and broad muzzle. By directing my attention there, I could judge distance well enough. But anything in my peripheral vision, which covered a huge area of space around me, was flat looking. I didn't have any trouble with color or contrast, though, and that was a relief.
  I raised my hands to touch my face and missed it completely. I didn't reach up far enough. My neck was much longer than before, and that was an effect that I had never considered. Reaching up further, I was able to feel the warm moist air pouring from my lungs. My nostrils flared as great breaths of air seemed to flow in and out effortlessly. It occurred to me then that my interior organs had changed to match the needs of my external body. I wondered at the time how much of my body was still human, percentage-wise, besides my upright stance. If the inside conformed to my imagination also, and I had to assume that it did, my gastrointestinal tract would be a combination of human and equine, allowing me a wider choice of foods and drinks. But I had no idea about the rest of me, and hoped that whatever had changed me had thought through all the details that I had not. All I needed was to gain my change and lose my life because I never considered that a human heart would not survive long under the stresses of a large equine circulatory system.
  I used my long fingers to explore the size and shape of my head, from the flexible lips and typical equine teeth, up to the expressive ears at the top of my head. I cleared my throat with a cough and experimentally tried to speak. "A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H" I tried to speak each letter clearly and correctly. My voice sounded very raspy, and I had great difficulty with C, D, and F. I hoped that with practice I would recover all my powers of speech. Then I tried to sing. Happily, I could sound several octaves of notes clearly and with good quality, despite my vocal coarseness, but the timbre of the notes was much lower. I wondered what the guys at the chorus would think when they found they had a horse who used to sing tenor, and now sang both baritone and bass. Again, I hoped that with practice, I would get back to my favorite hobby soon, but I could just imagine the Mr. Ed jokes I would surely collect, if they could even get over the change to begin with.
  And for the first time, I began to consider what all this might mean to the rest of the world. As if I didn't have enough to worry about already, now all the questions I had ever speculated about, such as what my place in society would be, how I would be treated, and the question of human rights if I changed, came rushing back. It's easy to write yourself to an island somewhere, safe and isolated and removed from realistic concerns. But I knew with a sinking feeling that I would soon know the answers to all my questions, for it was certain that I could not stay in my office, alone, for the rest of my life. Unless it was very short; which remained a possibility, since I was not done changing as yet, or at least I hoped I wasn't. My still human lower legs looked ludicrous under my larger and pretty much horsed out upper body. What a freaky look that would be. The fact that I still had my cowboy boots and white socks on didn't help the image either. I thought then that I would rather be all horse than left like I was right then, but I needn't have worried, for the final stage of my change began at that moment in exactly the way I had imagined it would, with a severe and debilitating cramp in the arches of my feet that ran right up into my calves.
  I hissed in a breath and grabbed at my feet. I wasn't very coordinated with my fingers yet, and I had some trouble trying to rub the cramping muscles. The best I could do was to just hold on and grit through it.
  As I rocked back and forth on the floor, I heard the distinct click of the automatic security latch being relaxed, and the outer office door being pulled open. There were only 5 badges that could access that door successfully. I had one, Ken and Rahim, both in Europe teaching, had one each. That left Janice and Betty. "Cody?" I heard the distinct breathy sound of Betty's voice from the distant foyer. With a resolute sigh, I decided that there was no use hiding. I couldn't get away easily in my current condition. "Betty, I'm in my office," I called out slowly, surprised at the deepness of my voice and carefully trying to pronounce each word clearly. She came sweeping around the second corner with a worried look on her face. Betty is a slender and pretty blonde 40-something divorcee, given to tall hairstyles and colorful stylish clothes. Her pattern of speaking is reminiscent of that soft unobtrusiveness made iconic by Marilyn Monroe, as though she might have been a former screen idol now abandoned by Hollywood in their eternal search for the source of youth and money. Every sentence is delivered with an implied, though non-specific, undertone of sensuality, which makes every man and woman she meets for the first time leap to uncorroborated and opposing conclusions about her basic motivations. As you get to know her better, you realize that what you hear in her voice is simply her own distinctive delivery, and that your prejudiced ear should infer nothing more. She stopped six feet short of me when she caught sight of my appearance. Her eyes, unnaturally enlarged by her glasses to begin with, grew as round and broad as the unspoken O that her mouth tried but failed to speak. Even though I was sitting on the floor, my longer torso and neck brought my eyes nearly level with hers. I tried to smile and look non-threatening, not at all sure how my muzzled face would register in her minds eye. "It's me. It's Cody."
  She looked me over, her face so unchanged that I could not guess what her thoughts were. "Betty? It's really me, Cody," I repeated with a small smile.
  "They said you were sick," she breathed out softly.
  I looked down at myself. "Well, sort of I guess. I feel better than I did a while ago, but as you can see, I'm not quite myself at the moment, " I said trying to lighten the overwhelming atmosphere a bit.
  "Oh, Cody," she said, somehow expressing sorrow tinted with disapproval. "What happened?"
  With a shake of my head I answered, "I don't know. It started right after lunch, but I don't know why it is happening. I think I'm turning into a horse, at least in part." I didn't feel like sharing my certainties with her. My life as a devotee of transformation stories and art, and my deepest desire to see myself change, were secrets that few people around me knew. I decided to keep my suspicions unvoiced. I looked across to her again to find her face registering deep concern, but I could sense somehow that she was terrified. She kept her terror from overcoming her, but she couldn't bring herself to come any closer. Somehow I needed to reassure her and calm her fear.
  "I'm OK though. Really, I am. I've got a cramp in both feet and I don't think I can walk right now, but otherwise I feel as good as I ever have in my life," I said and finished with an embarrassing gravelly cough. "I'm Ok. Just a little hoarse, that's all." I tried to grin at her, wondering if my exposed teeth would make her think I was going to bite her instead.
  Betty stood there without comment. My attempt at humor had failed to make her smile; however, the more I talked I could see that she was relaxing her tense body language.
  "Thanks for coming over to find me. I was really scared for a while, and I felt that I needed privacy, but now I wish someone had been here with me," I said as I returned to rubbing my aching feet. Already I could tell from my touch that the soles were lengthening, while my toes were broadening and feeling tougher. We slipped into silence for a while. There was a sudden sharp pull at the back of my heel that bent my foot to an odd looking angle. I gritted my teeth in a grimace and grunted a pained objection. Betty jumped slightly. "What! What is it?" she shouted in a whisper.
  "My feet are changing. I think they're turning into horses hooves, and it hurts," I spoke through my clenched teeth.
  "I think you better to go to the hospital," she offered with tightly controlled calm. The hospital. Somehow that idea made my stomach lurch and feel sick again. There was no way that I was ready to contact officialdom, regardless of how humanitarian it might normally be considered. I have had what I consider a healthy skepticism of the benevolence of much of our government as well as private institutions. Our original Jeffersonian democratic ideals of 'government of the people, by the people, and for the people' too often seem to have been warped into 'of the people, by the aristocracy, for the government'. At that moment I was very worried about the reactions of the first, and the decisions of the second as they considered my possible impact on the third. I felt certain that few would see me as a harmless mystery, which I felt like, and many would perceive me as anything from a national security catastrophe to a financial, political, or nationalistic goldmine.
  "No. I don't think I need a hospital. Besides, it would have to be a veterinary one anyway," I added with a rueful smile. "I need to get my spare keys from my other office so I can get home. Could you help me get to the other building?" I suggested hopefully.
  Betty paled a bit, but too her credit, she asked "What could I possibly do to help you there? You're too heavy to carry."
  I nodded sadly. "True. I think all I need is a little extra balance control. My eyesight has changed, and my legs are untried, and they're still changing, but if you would just take my elbow and walk with me slowly for a little extra balance, I think we could make it," I said hopefully, trying not to let the pain in my legs show on my face. I decided that I needed to get away from the office and into my home where I could wait out the changes and see what would happen next.
  At that moment, I heard the wailing warble of a siren pulling into the lot below my window. I looked over at Betty with a worried expression. "Cody, I already called emergency services before I came over. Pam said you were really sick and needed an ambulance. That's probably it now," she said softly.
  Damn, was all I could think. "Betty, I don't want to see these people. Not here. Not yet. Help me get to my car, please?" I said, trying to look worried. At least that was what I wanted to look like, but I was not at all certain what a worried expression on a horse's face actually looked like. Before she could decide what to do, the security door clicked again. Right away I heard the recognizable tinny sound of a 2 way radio. Rattling around the corner came a police officer moving at a rapid pace. At least he was until he saw me. His round face didn't register anything of his inner thoughts. He stopped, glanced from me to Betty and then back at me, and pulled his handgun from its holster, pointing it in my direction.
  "Ma'am, can you quietly back away from it? Do you need medical assistance?"
  Betty looked over her shoulder. "Officer, you don't need a gun. He isn't dangerous," she said quietly.
  "Ma'am, please stand and quietly move towards me," he ordered.
  "What do you think I am going to do? Stampede or something?" I asked with a hint of sarcastic disgust. The officer gave no indication that he had even heard me and continued to stare levelly and seriously into my face.
  "Ma'am, I will say this only once more. Please stand and quietly move towards me," he ordered in a slightly louder voice.
  I shook my head in resolution. Now all the trouble begins, I thought. "Betty, you should just do what he says," I said and looked out the window. She stood up and turned to stand by the officer. I could see a helicopter flying north from the Love Field airport area. At first I thought it was going to land at the Lincoln Doubletree hotel, but instead it took up a hovering position over LBJ Freeway right in front of the building. My vision wasn't too good yet, but I didn't think it bore any logos or markings. It was just a white helicopter, like so many that I have seen flying in test patterns around Bell Textron helicopter assembly in Fort Worth. I felt that, somehow, its presence out my window was not a simple coincidence.
  The officer spoke into his shoulder mic. "The area is secure, and the subject is isolated. Send up the hazmat paramedics." To Betty he said, "Ma'am, I'm afraid that you'll have to stay here with me until the medics give you a clean bill of health. In fact, I can't leave either until they are certain that there are no medical issues from our exposure."
  Her wide eyes looked worried. "Exposure to what?" she breathed.
  "To me. He thinks I'm contagious," I snorted in disgust.
  The officer didn't actually frown. Some men can show their emotions without the twitch of a muscle. His body screamed frowning disapproval into my face.
  The security lock cliked again. This time our party grew by 7. They were all dressed in plastic environmental isolation suits, and looked like flimsy pseudo-astronauts. In spite of my usual optimism, and my current feeling of well being (disregarding the ache in my feet), a flush of cold fear washed from my nose to the tip of my tail when I saw that they were wheeling in a stretcher-like table on which there was a large clear plastic isolation tank. There was no doubt in my mind as to whom they meant to put inside it.
  The leader carried a silver briefcase, which he placed on the floor in front of the officer and from which he removed a clipboard and stylus. With no preamble, he began reading questions and making notations.
  He spoke calmly enough, but there was an undercurrent of urgency in his manner. "Have either of you come into direct contact with it?" he asked.
  Three faces registered disgust. Two faces looked disgusted by the concept of touching 'it' and 'it' was disgusted by the question. "No sir," the officer answered too emphatically. Betty just shook her head. A check mark was made. I shook my head too, and cleared my throat to speak, but the sound that came out was a whicker of distress. This surprised me very much and I wondered briefly about how other human expressions and reactions would translate in Equuish.
  "Has there been, and have you contacted any of its, liquid or solid bodily secretions?" he continued immediately.
  They both shook their heads at that, but Betty added, "He threw up in the room down the hall. Classroom B." The polltaker pointed to the first two suits behind him and wordlessly gestured them towards the door. They grabbed a box off the cart and strode purposefully into the hallway.
  "Have you at any time come within a 4 foot radius of it?" he asked next. They looked like a pair of guilty children waving their heads back and forth in response to a parent. My initial shock at having been relegated to object status was wearing off, and I began to get angry. I whuffle-snorted my disgust and said loudly "If it's OK with you, I have a name. Have had a name since before I was born. It's Cody. Cody Alan Haller. And you might have some small amount of concern for my somewhat unusual condition! Or do you prefer to subscribe to the hypocritical rather than Hippocratic oath?" My words ended with an angry sounding whinny! In spite of my irritation I felt a smile form on my lips at that sound, although I wasn't too sure what it would look like to them. Judging by the looks on their faces, they didn't see a smile. The officer's hand hovered close to his sidearm, and Betty just looked forlorn. The polltaker simply returned to his list without comment.
  The pain in both my legs interrupted his reading of the next question, and I whinnied again, but this time the sound contained a distinct note of anguish rather than anger. Lord of the Prairie Skies Above did they hurt! My own transformed characters always suffered this 'agony of de feet' as their final transformation began. Now here I was in the same state. I suspected before that what was happening to me was directly and specifically connected to the fondest and most longingly felt wish of my life: to be physically transformed and rectified to my mentally deep-seated image and identity. What I was feeling was exactly what I had visited on my creations and I was discovering that paybacks, indeed, were hell.
  Now, the concept of having hooves instead of feet is one of my most precious sexual fetishes and always has been. If I had to choose to change only one part of my body it would be to have digitigrade legs ending in large heavy fetlocked hooves. (Was that one or more than one part?) I wished it to the point that I have a pair of hoof boots, complete with heavy steel horseshoes, that I acquired on a business trip to Brisbane Australia from a website there called www.kaysers.com. With the addition of a pair of equine sport splint boots to my shins, and just a little imagination, I often transformed my legs visually. When I have my hooves on, my mind goes immediately into pony-space. There is no finer alternate reality than pony-space. But why oh why had I imagined that it would hurt to have my wish come true? Perhaps out of some perverted idea of cost versus gain, and that there would have to be a price someone would have to pay for the fulfillment of a wish. On the other hand, I have discovered over the last few years that I am more of a masochist than I originally thought, and have come to enjoy certain kinds of pain when it is the result of serving Master's needs or wishes. Whatever the psychology behind it, my body was beyond last minute rationalization and deeply into its final change.
  I gritted my teeth and stretched my legs out straight in front of me seeking relief from the cramp-like grip I was in. From the knee down I was still quite human looking, apart from the fact that the soles of my feet had slowly stretched until my toes and my heel were now about 16 inches apart. My shoe size would probably have been 19EEEEEEEEE. With a groan I futilely massaged my throbbing knees. Polltaker pulled 3 cameras from his box; a small video, a tiny 35mm, and a Polaroid. They began to document the final freeing of my inner self, and I was actually happy that they were doing it. It seemed to me a good idea to have some proof of who and what I had once been.
  Equally on each leg, the change could be seen moving from my lower thighs down to my knees. The skin, muscles and bones changed at the same time, with the fur trailing along about 2 inches behind the advancing modification line. It was quite silent, except for my own stentorian breathing and clicking teeth. There was no additional absorption of material. Apparently my meaty and muscular calves, one of my best human features, were providing all the needed raw material. As the change reached my heel, my legs snapped into the shape I had most admired; that distinctive reversed-S-shaped, many jointed look that a horse's legs sport. My heel was being altered to take its position as the point of hock bone. As the change proceeded, the elongated bones of my feet fused into slender splints. It felt exactly as if someone was forcefully sliding my foot and leg into a very tight costume of a shape that didn't match my leg very well. There was an overwhelming sense of pressure, which would be followed by short electrical sensations, and then familiarity and naturalness would become apparent to my mind.
  I stared with fascination as the change approached my ten pink and wiggly toes. For some reason, I flexed and wiggled them one last time, for old time sake I guess. The prospect of my imminent hooving cut right through my pain and went to my brain, which showed its pleasure by giving me an erection. That in itself was a wonderful event, but I would be able to see that many more times in the future so I never took my eyes of my legs. From there on down, my human metacarpals and phalanges produced the long and short pasterns, and finally the digits began to fuse into a coffin bone. Simultaneously the nails of each vanishing toe thickened and blackened, growing protectively about my foot to shield it from the ground and cushion my steps-to-be.
  The forming of my hooves and the growth of my very long and silky fetlocks came to an end at about the same moment, and I sat there in a state of physical ecstasy at what I had just witnessed. So turned on by the process was I that with the sudden cessation of the pain when my hoof tipped legs became complete, there was a rushing sound in my ears and with a great groan of passion I had an orgasm. Stallions produce large quantities of semen in comparison to men, and it appeared that my virgin orgasm was living up to my new nature. The stream squirted out of my penis with shocking force. I was totally unprepared for the power and volume of it, having only seen stallions' cuming while they were deeply imbedded in their mares. The stream flew into the air above my head and fell back down to hit my on my muzzle, chest and legs. So lost in the rapture was I that I simply closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath. Betty nearly jumped backwards 3 feet, and her face turned beet red. I had always believed that a stallion's orgasm would be a massive gratification, and how right I had been. They are one of a handful of non-human males who practice masturbation just for the fun of it, and now I knew why.
  I lay where I was and caught my breath. One of the suits came forward with a clear tube, obviously with the intent of collecting my seminal fluid. With a sigh I let him do his collecting. The other suits began to work with the isolation box, opening up the latches and sighing seals and preparing the portable electrical system. The polltaker motioned to two other suits and they started in my direction also. Here it comes, I thought to myself. They want to take me away somewhere. Well, I resolved that I would not be leaving quietly. So far, no one except Betty had even addressed me directly, and even now as they came towards me no one spoke to me. I decided to see if I could change that.
  "Alright now, I want to know who you people are and what you have in mind with that box," I said as I began to stand up slowly from where I had been sitting on the floor, pungent horse semen dripping from my fur and still exposed cock.
  They all stopped what they were doing to watch with surprise as I unfolded and stood up on my newly minted hind legs. It was a strange feeling. Actually, there were many strange feelings. For one, my large equine testicles dropped off my lap and bounced to rest against my thighs. That startled me. And then my stiff rod seemed to telescope down on itself and it disappeared inside me as if it had never been anywhere else. For another, my vision swam and swung around like a drunken cameraman at sea. My stomach lurched at that thought. And, I was certainly not prepared for how much taller I had become.
  As a man, I had been only 5'6" plus a little. I had often wondered what it would be like to be taller, and when I was young and size equated to masculinity, I had railed against the injustice of being the shortest kid on the block. Those days were behind me now. In maturity I realized that being short was perfect, for in my favorite Domination and submission games, when I had thought that I was a Dominant I wanted my 'boys' to be much bigger and stronger than me. Yet when I discovered that I was actually a better submissive, I wanted my Master to be the same: bigger and stronger than me. Good things cum -- er, mean come <G> in small packages!
  As I brought myself upright, I felt like Alice in the Court of the Queen of Hearts, rising and growing to tower above everyone else nearby. From my perspective it was as though they were all shrinking before my eyes, because I didn't 'feel' any different that I ever had. I ended up at about 17.2 hands tall at the 'withers', or shoulders in my case. That's roughly 6 feet, less a little, and then when I added my long neck and high ears, which tacked on another 2 feet plus, well by the time I was standing my ears were twitching against the ceiling tiles. I am actually longer than that when I lie down and stretch out my hind legs straight, but due to their digitigrade structure, and their tendency to bend at the joints when standing, I am not as tall upright.
  Regardless, I found it humorous to see them all standing there, a few mouths agape, staring up at my frowning face. I almost chuckled, but decided to keep it all very serious, and tried to fold my arms to keep the body language pertinent. As I mentioned, my arms had made some most interesting changes. While the joints were still based on human physiology and I retained rotational abilities at my shoulder and elbow, my humerus, ulna, and radius bones had lengthened a great deal for reasons that I did not understand at the time. Left to dangle, my three fingered hands hung down to my knees. Lifting them and crossing them before me lent me, I suspect, a far larger and more aggressive aspect than I really intended. However, at least I had engaged their full attention at last.
  The police officer was sweating heavily, his khaki shirt turning dark damp tan under his arms and around his neck despite the overly cool air conditioning. He actually took a step backwards, drew his revolver and took a firing stance as he watched me with a grimace. Polltaker blinked at me, turned and judged the box, and turned back to me. "Well, that's not going to be of any use, now is it," he commented dryly. It was obvious that I would not be fitting into that box. Not in one piece at any rate, I thought morbidly. With a wave of his hand they packed up the box and wheeled it away. Returning his attention to me, his eyes scrutinized me guardedly. "Officer," he said loudly while still watching me. "Put your weapon away immediately. There is no need of force here."
  Then to me he said "My orders are to remove you from this building and escort you to a place of safety. To be honest with you, the safety that I am referring to is not only yours, which I am charged with preserving, but also with the safety of the general public as well. I am empowered to use whatever means I determine to be necessary to carry out my orders. I believe that you will find that I am a reasonable man within the limits of my responsibilities. Do you have any other questions?" he asked straightforwardly.
  "You haven't answered my first one yet. Who are you people?" I asked again.
  "We are a special services unit of the CDC, currently attached to the Parkland Hospital viral immunology research laboratory. I am Dr. McKinney from Atlanta Georgia. These people are my research staff," he answered and then stopped to wait.
  "Ok. So then how did you know about me so fast?" I asked curiously.
  He looked at the clock behind my head. It read 2:10pm. "We got the first call from the police, describing a call from your office shortly after 1. The description of what was happening to you seemed," he searched for a word, "unusual enough to warrant an investigation. It's been over an hour since we got that call and the hospital is only 6 miles away by air. Aside from simple curiosity, we had already been alerted that you are neither the first nor the only instrumentality transformation. There have been a number of others around the country, although you are the only one we know of in Texas."
  My slack jaw probably revealed my overwhelming surprise. I was not alone! Others were changing as well! Oh, Master, I thought. No wonder You didn't answer the phone. Hooves can't push tiny buttons, and by now You are probably a horse as You always dreamed You would be. Dear Lord, what if He is trapped in the apartment? Or in His car! What if He is non-verbal? What if He is totally horse-ified!! I've got to get in contact with Him! I thought in agitation.
  "Do you have any report of a horse transformation in Atlanta? Perhaps like myself, or a complete conversion?" I said quickly.
  "No. But there has been a reported total transformation of a man to a colt on the east coast. Why? Do you expect that there will be? What makes you think that might be the case? Do you understand what is happening to you?" he threw at me rapidly.
  "Not exactly, but I have observed a few clues during my own change. Do you people know how this has happened to us?" I asked him suspiciously.
  "Let me be candid, Mr. Haller. This event is not only extraordinary, but it is physically unprecedented in medical history, and most of my colleagues will deny its possibility even in the face of your obvious reality. No, we do not know what is happening. For that reason, the vast lack of knowledge about this phenomenon, I'm asking you to cooperate with us voluntarily until we know more about your condition and its wider implications. In fact, I must ask you two also to cooperate. It's possible that this is some unknown contagious pathogen, perhaps viral by nature," he continued, addressing Betty and the officer.
  Betty asked worriedly "What about his students? When all this happened he was teaching a class. They have all left for their hotels now." It was the doctor's turn to look worried.
  "How many students were there?" he asked.
  "Eleven" I answered. "Only one of them actually touched me. I sent them away within minutes of my initial change."
  "We must contact them immediately. Do you know where they are staying?" he asked urgently.
  "No, The students make their own hotel arrangements in most cases. We usually recommend the Homewood Suites on Beltline, but they don't always take our advice," Betty offered. "What exactly are you afraid of anyway?" she asked.
  "There is a slight chance that the causative agent in Mr. Haller's modifications may be transmittable. I am concerned that any one he has been in close contact with may suffer the same way that he has," he said looking up at me curiously.
  Betty looked at me with her sad eyes and turned paler.
  "You don't mean that I might end up looking like that do you?" the officer asked anxiously, his voice crescendoed to a shout. His face, slick with fear, curled inward towards his nose as though he had smelled something repulsive, and he took an unconscious step backwards towards the hall.
  "Calm down, officer. Control yourself --" the doctor was saying, but the policeman began to hyperventilate.
  "Shit yeah, calm down. You can talk inside your fucking body rubber! This is bullshit! If you knew all this before why didn't you tell me before I came in here? Huh! Why!!" The officer was backing further towards the hall door while he shouted out his horror.
  "Officer," I raised my hands and took a catch step in his direction trying to catch my balance as my arms changed my center of gravity suddenly. "I don't think you need to worry because I think I know the reason why this happened to me and why it wont happen --" I said loudly but calmly. But he interrupted me in mid sentence.
  In a smooth movement he flipped open his holster guard, drew his firearm again, and pointed it towards me. "Shut up! Just shut the fuck up, you -- you freak!" he shouted.
  "Officer Cooke, put your gun away," the doctor ordered in a strong commanding voice that sounded as though he was used to being obeyed.
  Cooke looked at the others for support. "What if we just kill it? It can't infect us then, right?" He sounded nearly hysterical.
  "Whoa, man!" I hollered as the doctor stepped between the officer and me and I tried to step backwards. I wasn't ready for such a bold untried move, and I began to loose my balance and fall to the rear. Looking down at my hooves in agitation, I jerked my body around trying to catch myself. All I succeeded in doing was twisting so that I was falling forward instead of backward. Instinctively I put my hands out in front to catch myself. My arms became straight and as my fingers neared the floor, they sharply clamped together with a distinct click. I hit the floor hands first with a jarring thud that bobbed my head downwards between my arms, but I didn't fall any further. Betty gasped from behind me and I instinctively looked at her. Upside-down from between my legs. All four of them! I whipped my head upward, and with an easy twist of my long neck, I looked back over my shoulder. There I saw my broad back running horizontally towards the direction of my tail, which I will add seemed to be waving a friendly hello in my direction! Then I understood the seemingly disproportionate length of my arms. No, not arms alone, but forelegs! I'm a convertible! I can be either two or four legged as I choose! I thought with excitement and whickered happily; excitement that physically manifested itself in my nodding and bobbing head, my flashing tail, and with a rush of pleasure as I "dropped" as horsemen say. My penis put in a second appearance, and I found that it was much easier to extrude it in this position than it was when I was upright. It wasn't erect or anything, just ready to be if I wanted it to be. It dangled and swung beneath my abdomen, its bright pink saddle mark made more noticeable in contrast to the velvet blackness of the rest of the shaft and head. I stared at it in fascination, having an episode of deja vu.
  Betty gasped again, and turned her body away in deep embarrassment. I was feeling too wonderful to be embarrassed about anything, especially about my new body parts. But in deference I did try to retract my shaft as I had always heard that stallions could do at will. I didn't know how exactly, but slowly in response to my thought my shaft pulled upwards and condensed backwards inside its soft dark home, leaving only my swaying and beautiful sheath behind to guard the entrance. I watched it retract, still not quite certain how I was doing that, but on reflection, we never know how we walk on two legs either. We just do it.
  From that underside view though, I could see that bearing a rider would require some custom saddlery. Where a horse has a long and substantial barrel and the saddle girth strap is sufficiently long to adapt, by contrast my torso was still essentially human shaped from the abs up to my shoulders, albeit somewhat broader and longer. There was very little depth to my 'barrel'. While I was strong enough to support my own structure on 4 legs, I had the impression that I would need to develop much stronger upper body strength to comfortably and safely carry a rider. And I did want to carry my rider so much. Suddenly that rather new idea became an extremely important goal in my life. I backed around to face everyone, and smiled a smile that felt as though it was going to split my muzzle in two! At least I know that my teeth were showing, and my mind said I was grinning like an unreserved fool. I guess that that was more than the officer could handle. Unable to shoot me without shooting the doctor first, he turned and dashed for the lobby door and I was glad that he put that fine a point on it at least.
  "Officer Cooke!" Dr. McKinney shouted. "Stop where you are!" In a lower voice he said to the others, "Stop him," and three of the biggest ones quickly disappeared. I took an involuntary step towards the back door to the lobby thinking that I might be able to help, but I nearly tripped myself. I realized that I needed a bit of practice on four legs, which surprised me, as everything felt so natural and proper that I assumed that I came complete with all the proper instincts. I tried to analyze what leg to move and when, but gave up in confusion. So I tried to stare fixedly at the floor and desire to walk forward. That seemed to do it. I felt a sense of natural order and rhythm in my head somewhere, and I just let it do the driving while I acted as the look out against obstacles. In an odd way I felt as if I was riding a horse, not being one, but I wished I had paid more attention to the details of the movements of the horses that lived right over my back fence. I thought the job would have been easier. I wondered for a moment what in the world they would make of me.
  The doctor noticed my movement and came to a wrong conclusion. "Mr. Haller," he said firmly, "do not try to leave this area. I will restrain you if you attempt to leave." Visions of hobbles and bridles and bits and reins flashed through my brain. Since I had discovered my attraction to pony play, these things had become the keys to the joy of pony headspace. But I knew that in this context, they would hardly be the exciting toys of a bondage session, but rather the tools of an immobilization drama.
  I looked over my back at him, both ears flattened. "I've got 4 legs now instead of 2, I'm feeling very clumsy because I'm so big, I'm not sure how to walk, and I don't know how to open the door. Where do you think I'm going to go like this?" I'm afraid I snapped at him, and my tail switched in anger. I added a hefty snort and a toss of my mane for good measure. My patience was beginning to wear thin, unusual for me in normal circumstances. I have always been the personification of patience. But I had hundreds of questions to discover answers too, and all he could think of was holding me back. In his typical taciturn way, he did not respond to my outburst. One thing was certain though. I felt much more comfortable and stable on 4 legs than I had on 2, and decided that as much of my time as practical would be spent this way. I felt a flash of happy gratitude for the unexpected value of my new hand-y forehooves.
  I decided to stand upright again, so that I could regain the full advantages of my forehands if needed. I didn't have enough strength in my back to lever myself up from a four legged stance, so I sat my rump on the floor, back-walked my forelegs until my torso was nearly upright, lifted them off the ground easily and pushed my self up to a standing position. As I bent my elbow fully, I felt a snapping sensation in the length of my arm, like that of a rubber band, and my fingers were released from their clamped together arrangement. I smiled at the genius of this effect, realizing that the conversion of hands to forehooves was intended to be automatic based on the shape and position of my arms... er... legs. Perhaps my shoulders were involved as well since I felt the change from there down to my hands. Curiosity made me raise my arms to shoulder level and stick them out straight in front of me. With a satisfying click, my fore hooves reappeared, snapping my fingers tightly together and removing the strain of supporting my weight on 6 individual digits. With a little arm waving I discovered that my hooves were autonomic within a range of about a 75-degree departure from the right angle of my shoulder joint. This was going to make me have to prance with my front feet so as not to un-hoof myself in 4x4 mode, but since I loved watching a proud and prancing pony in a parade, I would have no trouble emulating that look.
  I took a short step into my cubicle and reached for the telephone. I picked up the handset quite easily in my 3-fingered grip. However, looking at the touch pad, I realized that my individual fingertips were now much too wide to easily press one button at a time. Opening my desk drawer, I tried to remove a pencil from the tray inside, and had some difficulty getting just one at a time. My fingers were not only larger, but with wide hoof like nails on each one, it made selecting small slippery objects problematic. Using both thumbs, and the obligatory tongue stuck out in concentrated effort, I was able to trap and remove a pencil by pressing its ends. There are some compromises to be made, I thought to myself with a glance at the worm pile of rubber bands, the porcupine of tacks, and the log jam of writing instruments lying in the rest of the tray, all smugly anticipating defeating me. The most forward pencil tray was only an inch wide, and I would not even be able to get one finger into that area. Pleased with myself still, I gripped the struggling pencil with the eraser pointing down and lifted the receiver again with the intention of calling Master. I had to find out if He was OK.
  "Mr. Haller, put the telephone down," I heard the doctor command sternly. I turned my head and found that I could look over the tops of the cubicles between us and down into the small reception area where he had first entered.
  With a frown I asked him "Why?"
  "We don't have any more time, Mr. Haller," he answered with a glance at his watch. "My orders are to remove you to safety ASAP, and we have now wasted far too much time in the process," he continued firmly.
  "Look, I'm not causing you any trouble here. You guys are the ones who are the problem. The longer this goes on the more I am convinced that neither you nor anyone else has anything to fear from my change or me. I'm not contagious or evil or possessed and anything. What you are looking at is simply the granting of a wish; or the answering of a prayer if you prefer. Whatever the means that was used, it was obviously totally focused on me," I said, trying to sound as firm and as certain as I could, despite my lack of complete confidence in what I was saying. "The way I look right now is exactly the way I have wanted to look since I don't know how long ago. Someone has blessed me and my life with this change, and it has nothing to do with you or anyone else..."
  "Regardless of your unproven beliefs," he interrupted loudly, "you must come with me until we can determine with certainty what has happened and how."
  "I'm not going anywhere until I contact my family and let them know what has happened and that I'm OK," and I punched the speed dial for Master's cell phone.
  "Mr. Haller! I will only say this once more. Put down the phone and come to me," he almost shouted.
  I began to slowly straighten my hind legs, increasing my height gradually until I was leaning easily above and over the wall, brushing the ceiling with my flattened ears, and frowning angrily down my muzzle, with its broadly flared nostrils, into his upturned face. "Or what? Are you going to shoot me or something too?" I shouted, and whinnied a long, very loud and angry punctuation mark.
  With a kick of my right hind hoof, I slammed the movable cubicle wall outward into the hall. It jammed satisfyingly with the wall across the way, and effectively blocked anyone from approaching me directly. I'm afraid all the noise and motion terrified Betty, for she jumped up with a shout and ran behind the group. Despite my usual passive nature, I was beginning to feel paranoia creeping up on me. What were these people capable of? What did they really have in mind for me once they got me sequestered somewhere, as they indicated were their 'orders'? Whose orders were they anyway? More urgently now I felt the need to contact someone sympathetic to my position, and Master has always been the first in mind.
  The doctor paused for a moment. Master's voice answered the phone, but it was only His recording. My attention was drawn to my Master's voice. I waited as patiently as I could for the tone, and then I rushingly told Him what had happened since my last message. "Master, this is Your pet again. Pony has completed his transformation, and You are sure to love the results! Got all the best in optional equipment and a choice of two or four on the floor. There are men here trying to take Your pet away into isolation somewhere, and they say they are from the CDC and Parkland Hospital, but I don't know exactly what their intentions are, and I think there are too many of them to fight off alone," I said quietly and urgently, hoping that I was not being overheard. My lapse into the first person pronouns while talking to Master indicated just how distressed I was. Then I remembered that it might be impossible to even speak to Master at all if He had changed too. "Oh God, pony hopes that You got Your wish too, but if You did Your pet is doomed to go with these people. Wish Your pet luck. Pony loves You and will see You as soon as he can," I finished, and slowly hung up the phone while I chewed on my lower lip. Then I punched the code for home.
  The first law of telecommunications reads that the probability of reaching the party you are calling is inversely proportional to the importance that you speak to them in real-time. My own voice, rather my original voice with its natural tenor range, answered the phone. With a sigh, I left my wife and son a message. "Hi, its me. Um... something has happened here at the office. I'm ok, so don't worry or anything, but I am going to Parkland Hospital with a group of doctors for observation. If you haven't heard on the news about the people around the country who have been changed physically, you will very soon. I am one of those people. My change will not surprise either of you as you know me well enough to appreciate it. Try not to worry. Easy for me to say, but try not to anyway. I will call you as soon as I can. Come to the hospital. I love you. See you soon," I said with a lump in my throat.
  Well, three of the four most important people in my life had at least been warned. My daughter would probably hear about it from her mother since I can never remember her number at college. Of the three of them, I guessed that my free spirited slightly bohemian daughter would be the most likely to understand and accept what had happened. My wife would not be surprised by what I looked like now since I have read her my transformation fiction, and she knows that the story Cody and her husband Cody are the same horse. My son, however. I am afraid that I stand on a very tall pedestal in his eyes, and even at age 21, he is quite naive in the ways of the world. This is my doing in fact, as I have been determined from his birth to raise a compassionate, empathic, and optimistic man for the new millennium. That has meant shielding him from some of the worst aspects of being a human male, and so he tends to be perhaps too idealistic, if that is possible.
  While I had been occupied, the doctor's team had approached the jammed wall and with their combined strength they were easily able to push it out of their way. I turned to face them weighing my options. I was now much, much larger then they, and I was sure that I was much stronger than any one of them, but would be hard pressed to fight off all three of them plus the doctor for long. I felt too unsteady on my new legs to be able to run down six flights of stairs, and I would never make it to the elevator alone. My hooves were heavy and would make formidable blunt weapons, and I could bite them fiercely too, but did I really want to hurt them? All my life I had been a pacifist. I had never struck out at another human being before, not even to spank my children, who blessedly never gave anyone a reason too spank them anyway. I believed in diplomacy and interactive problem solving. Had I altered that much inwardly that I could consider a fundamental change in my behavior patterns, I wondered? No. I had not. Indeed, the thought of attacking these small humans felt very wrong somehow. Despicable even. I don't know how to explain it, but I will describe what I felt as devotional pity. I mean I felt sorry for them, and at the same time I felt compelled to try to help them if I could. I remember that this feeling surprised me at the time, because it was a totally new one in my experience and I decided that it must have had its basis in the nature of my body changes and mental adjustments. I looked down my nose at them, lifted my ears forward, cocked my head sideways a bit trying to look disarmingly cute, like Darwin (Master's wonderful German Shepard) does, and smiled at them. This time no teeth to raise doubts in their minds. I could feel the corners of my mouth turn up, so I was sure it would look like a smile. They seemed taken aback and just stood and looked at me warily. But the doctor smiled back, cautiously, behind his clear faceplate.
  "I know what you are thinking Mr. Haller. But you are wrong. We are not from any so-called Area 51 team, and we're not part of any skunk works. We are simply cautious medical professionals, although I am attached indirectly to the military. I'm in the Air Force reserve," he added with a smile. I smiled back thinking fondly of Master and how wonderful He looked in His Naval officer's uniform. "To be frank, you scare me to death, Mr. Haller," he continued. "Rather, your implications scare me. You seem to put into question some fundamental scientific principles, not to mention the inherent differences of mankind and animals. But you also excite me to think of the possibilities. Suddenly, matter-to-matter conversion has occurred, and while we were watching! This is no magician's trick, but nothing less that the total real-time spatial reorganization of a living organism from one species to what appears to be a new one on the cellular level. Think of what that could mean if the technology were applied to the human body itself. We could be talking about the cure for all genetic disorders, and the repair of every malformation. Perhaps even the perfection and then enhancement of the human form," he said with the faint sound of wonder in his tone. I grinned wider, as he nearly quoted the thoughts of a literary creation of mine. "But, the most pressing immediate concern remains; to determine the nature of your impact on the human race. In short, are you benign, or malignant.
  "On consideration, I do not believe that there is a need for secrecy. The news of these changes has already made headlines. And the more I see you and observe those you have been in contact with, the more my instinct is that you pose no threat to anyone. But I would like proof of that, and if you will willingly come with me for testing, I will personally pledge to keep you safe and see to it that you are escorted home should my suspicions prove true. In the mean time, that shadow of doubt will keep what biohazard protocols we have in place." He sounded reasonable and logical to me. Also, I am indoctrinated to believe that promises made will be kept. The credo that I try to live my life by has grown to become as much a part of me as, as, as my tail. Master has taught me these words of John Walter Wayland: "The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; Who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; Who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; Who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; Who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; Whose deed follows his word; Who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own, and who appears well in any company; A man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe."
  We do our utmost to live up to them at all times. For the most part, I succeed. But the pursuit of perfection is eternal after all, and I am still in quest. I looked for a few moments into the Doctor's face. He was so swathed in plastic that I couldn't clearly see him and so had no signals that might help me. I have always been counted in the camp of those who believe in the essential goodness of man and that individuals will on their own do 'the right thing'. In the absence of obvious deceit, one must proceed on instinct alone. Mine told me to trust my training and this man. With a side nod and blink, I told him, "Ok. What's next?"
  "I want to medevac you away in the helicopter. Is there a roof access in this building?" he asked right off.
  I shrugged and shook my head. "I have no idea at all. But the parking deck behind the building is never used on the top level, and there is stair access to it from the third floor." While I was saying this, the missing team members returned to the room, escorting officer Cooke. He looked madder than a spurned mare and glared, not at me, but at Doctor McKinney, with undisguised hatred. The doctor turned to him and Betty. "I want you both to put on suits like mine. They are designed to isolate the wearer from all outside contact. In your cases, we will have to move you in a car since there won't be room in the helicopter for more than a few of us. Mr. Haller looks as though he will account for about half of its lift capacity all by himself." He looked at the communications team member. "Get the chopper down on the parking deck, and get the pilot out of range. You stay with me, and the rest of you get to the cars and pack it up. You don't have time for interviews, but tell whomever that I will issue a statement as soon as I can. I want to see you all in the ISO wing in 45 minutes." They finished buttoning up Betty and Cooke, and everyone left the 3 of us alone.
  I could see (and feel) the helicopter float between the buildings and proceed around the back. "You can watch from classroom D," I told them. He nodded, so I began to move carefully past them and towards the hall door. They had to give way, since the hall was not wide enough for the new me and anyone else. The doorknob was a piece of apple pie to open, but as I stooped to go thru it I lost my equilibrium and fell forward. My fore hooves snapped into existence with a sharp clack, and I found myself comfortably on all fours again. It felt so good and natural that I just stayed that way, since there was another door to get into D anyway. I walked down the hall, my head bobbing with the motion of my legs, my face plastered with an insane grin, flat teeth and all.
  When I got to the door, I realized I had a small problem, but I had to figure it out sooner or later, and sooner is my favorite time. I looked at the knob. How about using your mouth, I thought. Yuck! Look at all the hands that have been on that thing, and you never know where else they've been wandering. The Doctor tried to get to the door, but the hall was blocked by some big horse's ass. So I shifted my weight to 3 legs and pulled my right fore hoof off the floor and towards my chest. As it bent in two, I could feel the tightness in my hand lessening, and with a twitch, my fingers separated and I was able to open the door myself. I grinned wider than ever, if that was possible, and clicking back into flat fours, I strolled thru the door swishing my tail happily. The tinted glass on the outside wall showed an excellent view of the slowing rotors on the deck below. The pilot was walking away with one of the other police officers, pulling a pair of black gloves from each hand, one finger at a time.
  The doctor and his man were standing very close at either side of my head, watching the blades losing their inertia to drag. I could feel the heat radiating from their suits against my nose. I felt very calm having them that close for some reason, and so help me, I couldn't stop myself reaching my neck to the left to nuzzle the doctor. He turned and looked at me in mild surprise, and I blushed. At least my nose and ears got hot, and I had to whicker and nod my head to get over it. He grinned a little grin, and reached behind my ear and scratched my head. Oh, God, did that feel good. I felt my penis dropping out of my sheath, and blushed even more. I closed my eyes and shook my head slowly, thinking that I was stupid to be embarrassed considering what I was built like. I decided that the details of instinctual behavior and modesty for me would have to be worked out as I came to grips with myself and the rest of society.
  I ducked my head and turned about past the doctor and walked to the door, expecting that they would follow. They did. I walked down the inner hall to the back door into the elevator lobby where the stairs were also located. The doctor bustled ahead of me and stopped to face me. I pulled up short, and lifting an eyebrow, looked inquisitive. "I am going to call the elevator and make certain that the car is clear. Wait here for a minute," he said, gesturing with both hands that I was to stop where I was. I nodded an OK, and he pushed the door open. His man moved to the front of me, and stood in the doorway. He wasn't one of the bigger ones, and I could have easily pushed him out of my way, but I was OK with it all so far. Perhaps the knowledge that I had the power to do as I choose made letting them think they were in control so easy. I wondered if born horses have something of that same sense of cooperative appreciation for these frail creatures and allow themselves to be harnessed to mankind's purposes out of generosity. Man, what did I just say? I thought silently in amazement, shaking my head again.
  Standing still like that, I began to notice the difference in my weight. I still had a fairly human torso, nowhere near as heavy as a real horse, but regardless, my taller longer stature and musculature made me much heavier than I used to be, if only by dint of bulk. I was only 155 with my mane soaking wet before the change. Now I felt I must be somewhere in the high two hundreds. Looking at my huge thighs alone I thought that I might even have doubled my weight. Thinking of weight, I began to feel the sensation of pressure on my coffin bones, embedded inside their cushion of stretchy fibers within my hooves. And I instinctively lifted one hoof off the ground and stood on 3 to give it a rest. I had often seen working horses do this, and for some reason I had never guessed why. Dumb. I was surprised that I was feeling very tired in my new body though. But that was dumb too. After what had just happened to me and so quickly, I should have been surprised to even be awake.
  I yawned a huge curly tongued horse yawn, and the doctor's man smiled at me. "I bet you're really beat, hey boy?" he said in a friendly way. I snickered a whicker at that, and wanted to say, Who you callin' boy, mister? but in a very good humor, I just nodded deeply and yawned again.
  "Man, don't I know it," I said through another yawn. "I could sleep for a week."
  "Well, when we get you outta here, I'll see what can be done about that. Looks like we're ready," he said as the doctor beckoned from the elevator door.
  I walked into the hall, and stepped into the car, which did a quick weight adjustment when the sill got out of alignment. The elevator cars in the ICL building had always been luxuriously oversized. But with me in there, all that extra room seemed to disappear. I squatted my rump and pulled my fore legs in towards my crotch to take up less room. I didn't stand up since I would have to drop to get out the door again anyway. We arrived at the third floor, and exited towards the parking lot egress. As we got nearer to the helicopter, I began to have my doubts about whether I would even fit inside, let alone all four of the pilot and us. I rumped up to a 2-legged stance. "I don't like the look of this. It's pretty small, doc," I said with my hands on my hips.
  "It's rated at one thousand pounds of payload, so it won't be a lift problem. But you do seem a bit bulkier than I estimated," he said, sizing me up against the cabin.
  Inside, there were 2 pilots' seats, and a 2-passenger cabin with a small flat area behind it for cargo. His assistant went right to the door and reaching under the nearest seat he released it and lifted it out of the cabin. There still wasn't enough room for me, so the other one had to go too. Back on all fours, I found out that climbing into the cabin was amazingly easy. Just one leg at a time, and then I just thought to myself, Now, lay down right here. My legs folded up and sideways and I found myself comfortably lying on the floor, tail draped artistically across my rump and hind legs. "Where're you guys gonna ride?" I asked sweetly.
  "Up front," the doctor said, and slide the side door shut. He took the pilot's seat, and with my mouth hanging open, he revved up the rotors. He grinned over his shoulder at my dumbstruck face and said, "Air Force. Remember?" He was obviously having a great time as my stomach flattened from the assent. We were off. Somewhere. Parkland, I assumed. I assumed wrong.
  I was surprised at how loud the rotor noise was. With all the advancements in noise abatement technology, you would think that it wouldn't be so terribly thunderous. My ears folded back to try to block some of it, but you could still feel it thumping on your body, like a giant doctor palpating your chest. I couldn't cover my ears with my hands, since lying down on the floor put me in horse mode and I couldn't reach my ears effectively, so I just tried to ignore it and watch our progress.
  We rose into the air like The Great Glass Wonka-vator and began to tilt and accelerate south. I have flown in jetliners hundreds of times, and have a million and half Frequent Flyer miles from Northwest to prove it. But this was my first helicopter ride, and it felt totally unfamiliar. During the ascent, all I could think of was going up the hill on the Texas Titan at Six Flags, and I clenched my teeth waiting for the big drop on the other side of the hill. Fortunately for my new body, the drop never came. And I recalled someone's revelation that it's not the drop that kills you anyway. It's the sudden stop at the bottom.
  We arrowed down the North Dallas Toll way clearly observing IFR, which (I learned during my own pilot's training) stood for 'I Follow Roads'. I tried to look out the window, but only succeeded in leaving a large damp spot on the glass where I hit it with my nose. I turned my head sideways and found that I could concentrate with one eye on the view below. It was without depth, but I found I could disregard the input from my other eye and could see the ground very clearly, with an enormous field of view. However, it was like looking down on a topographical map from atop a ladder. I could not tell how high we were, and could only guess from the distorted elongations of the buildings below.
  The heavy northbound migration of downtown commuters had already begun, and it was only 3:15 according to the instrument clock. In a matter of minutes, we were vectoring in on the large Day-Glo 'H' of Parkland Hospital's helipad. The doctor pulled up in a hover about 50 feet above the pad, and held us there, while he had a conversation with the radio. It was short, but animated. I couldn't understand what he said, but the tone of his voice made it clear that he was furious. "We have been denied permission to land," he said to the air for our benefit. "There is some kind of disturbance on the ground level, which it appears that you are at the center of Mr. Haller. The hospital administrator says that there is a lobby full of people clamoring for your attention," he repeated from his headphone. "He says there are 2 television crews, a couple dozen activists from various pro and anti government factions, human and animal rights groups, several preachers and ministers and other assorted church people, the Dallas police department, and at least 3 women claiming to be your wife," he continued to shout above the din.
  "Claiming to be or is my wife," I bellowed.
  "How should I know!" he shouted back. I smiled a bit at his obvious irritation. This had to be the result of my telephone calls, and I suspected that it was Master's hand at work. My wife probably would not have thought about the implications beyond her own worry for my safety, especially since I hadn't filled her in on the illustrative details. But Master would know immediately how to raise the alarm. And if He didn't, then His steel trap of a mind would figure out the best course very quickly.
  "What now?" I asked innocently. The copter was already lifting and thumping away south over the anachronistic French provincial modernism that is the Dallas Infomart, and over I35-E. I felt somewhat better knowing that I was not unknown beyond the sliding doors of the passenger cabin. "We are going to land in a remote location and I will decide what to do next," Dr. McKinney shouted out of the corner of his mouth.
  The volume of his own voice must have hurt his ears inside the headpiece of his suit since he had to virtually scream to be heard through it and above the rotor pandemonium. A frown crossed my face. I did not like this turn of events at all. Suddenly, it became possible that I could disappear into the third dimension, while everyone below was busy watching the first and second.
  He continued on a south-southwest course, and soon Cedar Hill, lake Joe Pool, and Mountain Creek Lake rolled up over the horizon. Moments later we began to slow and descend towards what was unmistakably an airport. It looked deserted. Not only deserted, but abandoned. Its long runway jutting squarely out into the lake identified it clearly for me though. I had seen it many times from many window seats as I flew a few thousand feet overhead after departing DFW International. It was the old, decommissioned Dallas Naval Air Station, Hensley Airfield. Abandoned by the Military in the early 90's, it was slated for environmental cleanup and re-development, but it always seemed that someone was dragging their heels for one reason or another, and so far nothing had been started with the project.
  We throbbed lower and began to settle onto the end of a very short runway of about 100 feet in length, with a large faded red 17 stenciled under our skids.
  The engine whine fell off rapidly to a shushing sound as the rotors succumbed to air resistance. Both men exited the copter and stood out in front talking where I couldn't hear them. It was not warm outside by any means, but the cabin very abruptly became stuffy, close, oppressive, and generally undesirable. I tried to un-hoof my hand and open the door, only to discover that the inner handles had been removed.
  With a frown and disgusted snort, I shouted "Hey!" to get their attention. They probably couldn't hear me, considering the layers of Perspex and enviro-suit between us. That only made me more determined, and I shouted louder, with no better success. So I took a great breath, stretched out my neck, opened my mouth as wide as I could, and whinnied with all my strength and air supply. My head twisted back and forth with the effort, and I bellowed as long as I could. With a double take that told me that I had been forgotten, they paused and looked at me, and then went back to their conversation. My mouth dropped open in surprise, and I lay there looking stupid.
  I never would have take action when I was human, deferring to the authority that they represented. But something had changed in my mental makeup, and I decided that I was getting out of the cabin with or without their help. The most immediate exit point seemed to be through the window in the door. Pushing myself partially up, I un-hoofed my left foreleg, and clenching my fingers tightly I drew back my arm and struck straight at the window with the sharp edge of my finger hooves. They skittered along the glass leaving jagged scratches behind them, but the window remained intact. I struck at it again with more force this time, making the window clunk and wiggle. Apparently, the noise or the motion caught their attention, and they ran to the door. The doctor waggled his finger at me in a maddeningly patronizing way, and with a snort of disgust I drew my arm back for another strike. He opened the door instead, and we started speaking simultaneously. "Don't do --"
  "It's about damn time --"
  "-- that! That's government --"
  "-- you opened the stupid --"
  "-- property!" he shouted.
  "-- damn door!" I shouted.
  I started to shuffle my rump crabwise towards the door, but he put his hand on my butt to stop me. "No, no, please stay inside for now. We may not be here long," he ordered.
  After a brief pause for appearance, I snorted assent. "Leave the door open," I ordered in return. He nodded, and they moved away to be out of my hearing and continued their conversation. They didn't move away far enough. My new ears, larger, directional, and more sensitive, had no difficulty focusing in on the vocal vibrations escaping through the plastic of their suits.
  There was an argument going on. "-- no Sir, I disagree with you on this. The EXRAC facility is the perfect solution. It's secure, restricted, and anonymous. Not to mention convenient."
  "He'll never agree to that," the doctor said with a sideways glance towards me. "He is suspicious of us already, and even though he has co-operated so far, I think that would weaken his trust," he said turning back. I frowned and blinked in confusion. "I don't want that to happen. The last thing I want to do is resort to compulsion. Sergeant, have you ever been inside the EXRAC?" he asked. The sergeant shook his head. "It's a state of the art hyper-clean environment, not designed for the comfort of anyone, let alone a human subject. It was never intended to be used to study a man, although it has facilities to isolate and hold one. Lunar samples were isolated there. It's supposed to totally prevent bi-directional contamination. Its sterility is stark and unadulterated and its security is automatic and unrelenting," he added with a glance back at me. "And besides, I am more certain all the time that we have nothing to fear from his change, and great knowledge to be gained. The police reported that they have contacted his students. Like the two at his office they show no sign of being affected. We cannot be sure of the length of time between exposure and reorganization, but the reports from across the country seem to show that he and the others like him represent a carefully selected group, with some shared characteristic in common," he said with a glance at this watch. "Reports say that the changes were a world wide event and they started at the same time everywhere. One o'clock pm here. It's been 3 hours now, and there have been no more reported event starts, just a few continuing transformations that should be complete soon. My intuition tells me that all these precautions are superfluous." With that, he started to unbuckle the asymmetrical flap that covered the shoulder to ankle zipper of his suit.
  The sergeant grabbed the doctor by both wrists. "Captain, are you willing to bet your way of life on your intuition? Are you? Look at that miserable thing over there," he said with a sideways jerk of his head. "That used to be a man. That used to be one of us. Just like us. It's not anymore," he said vehemently.
  "He, sergeant, he, not it," the doctor corrected him.
  "Yeah, yeah, so it's obviously male. But is it a he? Do you understand me? What is it in the eyes of society and human law? That's the point I'm trying to make. Don't get me wrong. I've been with you on this from the start, and we both know where he rates on that scale. He's as human as anybody on earth. He's nicer than most of my buddies and has far more patience and faith than I would have. But I don't believe he will be recognized and accepted as such by most people."
  He turned and looked at me sadly. "He's still human on the inside. But he's a horse on the outside, and any history book will teach you that it's the outside of the man that counts when it comes to fitting in with the tribe. I think he's got a damn tough time ahead." He turned back before continuing. "And I don't want to join him in that struggle. Do you? What happens if we turn into something like that? You're a doctor, a flight surgeon. Do you think you're still going to be a doctor if you turn into something like him? Maybe a veterinarian, but you wouldn't have many two legged patients after that. Look at this hands for God's sake. Want to try to work with your instruments with six small hooves? All I'm saying is that regardless of your intuition, you have no proof. I'm not going to take that chance. I would rather die than look like that. Just consider what you're doing before you do it," he said as he let go. The doctor slowly and grudgingly refastened his suit.
  Without further discussion, they turned and walked towards me. "Mr. Haller, you can get out now."
  Gingerly I slid my rump towards the door again and backed out of the cabin. It wasn't hard, but it made me very nervous for some reason, and my tail whipped up and down in agitation. Once out on all fours, I had the uncontainable urge to shake my mane, flash my tail, and stomp my feet. I whinnied at the same time, and felt the cold air streaming off the lake blowing the stink of gasoline and petro-plastics off my body. I felt clean and bright in the chilly weather, the blue sky arching high and cloudless overhead. Cocking an eye heavenward, I wondered again why the sky looks so much higher in Texas than it did in Michigan. I snorted happily and pranced about on my hooves, so full of pride for some reason that my neck arched and my mane tossed with the intensity of it. I felt as though I needed to run. Run flat out across the broad airfield, just to see how fast I could go, and it took no little effort to stay there at their side. My happiness was contagious, I could see. Both of them had started grinning at my performance like little cowboys at their first calf scramble. After the depressing conversation I had eavesdropped on, it was good to see them smile.
  With a laugh the doctor began, "Mr. Haller, we are going inside now, and you need to come with us so we can get started."
  I looked around at the decaying hangers and crumbling Quonsets, the overgrown tarmac and tie downs. "What, here?" I asked in surprise. "What about Parkland?"
  "We will probably go back there in a few hours, but we can get started here. If you will just follow us please?" He headed west through the rampant dead brown Dallas Grass stalks, mere sepia-toned copies of last summers verdant originals. They rustled like Michigan corn stalks as they waded among them. I stayed in four-by-four mode and found I could walk almost silently through and above the tall weeds.
  They headed for a large hanger on the west side of the field. It looked to be in pretty good shape compared to the ones around it. As we got within its shadow, the large door rolled a few feet to the left, and a man in a very different type of bio-suit came out to greet the doctor. He shifted his clipboard to his left and they shook hands all around, excluding me, even when I unhooved my right hand and offered it. The two of them seemed to know each other well. "Carl, welcome back," he said amiably, but his openly fascinated gaze never left my face. "We just got your message about your arrival, but I think we're ready for you right now," he continued while still staring at me.
  Eventually he realized with embarrassment that he was still shaking the doctors hand, and dropped it with a self-conscious laugh. They were all staring at me now, and I decided that it was time I became one of the guys again. I proceeded to squat and then stand up on two legs, their necks craning back to watch my head rise above them.
  Um, Alfred, this is Sergeant Black, and this," he said with a nod towards me, "is Mr. Haller."
  I offered my hand again, smiled and said, "Hey, Al." Without thinking he took my hand automatically in his gloved one this time and shook it seriously. "Please, you guys can call me Cody. This Mr. Haller stuff is getting to be a bit too much," I continued with a grin.
  The doctor went on, "Alfred, there's some kind of hassle over at Parkland and so I thought we might be able to borrow Level Five for a little while. Do you still have the infirmary set up on two?" he asked. I looked dubiously at the rusty roof and the door, shaggy with coarse peeling paint, doubting that I even wanted to see level one of such a place, let alone the sub-basements.
  "Well, everything below three has been decommissioned and removed. But we're still working on three and up. Sick bay's still there, but the ISO is down to only 2 units, one of which is eveready, just like the bunny" he answered. "Come on inside." He waited by the door as we filed into the cold dampness of the cavernous building. The large door rolled back into place and latched resoundingly behind us.
  Alfred's clear boots squeaked softly across the floor ahead of us. The doctor walked along next to him, the difference in their suits clearly apparent. Where the doctor's suit was a large and baggy one-size-fits-nobody plastic bag with legs and sleeves, Al's was obviously tailored to fit his body. And it was clear that he was wearing only underwear beneath the fitted pants and shirt. His bright white T-shirt, briefs and socks were plainly visible, giving me the impression that I had acquired X-ray vision as a byproduct of my transformation. The only suit part with a generous amount of space was the helmeted headpiece. There was a small white cylinder fastened diagonally across his back, and the whole outfit imparted a 1940's classic sci-fi spacey-ness to his appearance. In the echoing stillness I could make out the sound of three sighing exhalations from my companions' breathing apparatus, and I wondered where the doctor's and sergeant's air bottles were. Under their bulky opaque shirts no doubt, I decided.
  Alfred stopped at an old night watchman's station on the wall, lifted the lid and took out the chained key. He inserted it into a keyhole on his clipboard. With a turn of the key, a metal plate on the floor, which I had taken for a piece of discarded corrugated roof, began to slide away from the wall almost silently. It revealed a spotlessly white section of floor beneath, which was so creamy white that it seemed to be lit from inside. After replacing the key, Alfred walked onto the white flooring, followed by the doctor. With a smile they beckoned to the sergeant and I to join them. As I stepped onto the plate, my right hoof skittered sideways just a bit, alarming me and jolting me back into four-on-the-floor mode. The flooring clunked dully as my forehooves hit it, revealing to my ears a hollowness below us. My head automatically dropped down between my hooves and I snuffled at the floor with my large nostrils, leaving phantom trails of condensation whose satin translucence slowly and calmly vanished, a trick that I longingly wished I could emulate. I stepped back until my fore end was on and aft end was off the newly exposed elevator floor, and looked up sharply at the doctor.
  "OK, Ok, so you're not from Area 51. I guess this must be Area 52! What's all this then?" I shouted, my agitation apparent as my forehoofs pranced a staccato flamenco on the softly reverberating floor. "A secret door in a grubby floor in a rundown hut on an abandoned airfield that only Buck Rodgers here can open with an ancient key in a low tech PDA! Somehow it doesn't smell as safe as good old Parkland Hospital! In fact this whole thing stinks!"
  The sergeant, who had been standing to my left, ran his large warm hand along the side of my neck and softly said, "Whoa, buddy. Easy now. Calm down," and I actually felt instantly calmer, although still somewhat cross. With an exaggerated nod that made my mane slap the other side of my neck, I leaned into his hand thinking to reassure and acknowledge him. He closed his fingers and gently scratched the hair roots of my mane. A quiver of contentment shivered through my body at his touch, but my alert mind was still highly focused on the doctor and Alfred.
  The sergeant was the one who answered me though, speaking quietly into the creaking silence. "This is kind of an odd place, that's true. And it all looks suspicious to you too. But right now it's the best place to get a little privacy so they can get you started on your new life. Nobody here wants to hurt you. They just need to run some tests to see what the state of your health is, and try to figure out if we are all about to join your herd," he said with a smile. My peripheral vision wrapped so far back alongside my head that I could see his gently smiling face even though I was focused on the pair in front of me.
  I shook my head slowly and sighed. "Look you guys. You've asked a hell of a lot from me today. You want my trust and cooperation," I ticked off my list by pawing the door with my right forehoof. "You want me to delay my own wishes to contact and reassure my family, you want to run tests on me to satisfy somebody's curiosity, and you wanted me to do it all based on faith alone; faith that you're honorable and trustworthy men, despite the fact that I've never known you and have absolutely nothing to base my faith on, other than my own gut feelings. I've tried to give you what you want, but you're asking too much. I'm having trouble controlling my fear. Do you know what a horse's reaction to most anxiety is? It's called the fight or flight response, and ever since this wonderful thing has happened to me, all I have been doing is dealing with those two choices by ruthlessly suppressing them with logic or faith. I am more than the man I was. I have new imperatives and reactions, now that so much of me is pure horse. The equine part of me is much more than skin deep. I didn't go through a simple brain transfer here. I've been melded and merged with an inarticulate and dutiful, yet perceptive and fiercely independent stallion. Right now, I feel like he and I are still separate creatures fighting for control of the same body, and in addition to dealing with you three, I am constantly trying to reassure and guide him, and hopefully integrate both of us into one being called Cody. I'm getting mentally fatigued and his instincts are getting very hard to control. You can't keep building these hurdles in front of me and expecting that I will automatically jump them, let alone clear them. Give me a break guys, or I'm going to lose my struggle and then you get to deal with him on his terms," I finished with a sigh. I stepped carefully onto the elevator, bringing the sergeant along with me.
  Alfred cleared his throat awkwardly. "Um, make sure you're all the way in the center of the floor. I'm going to take us down to level three now. It's real smooth and quiet," he said, trying to sound reassuring. "Portal access," he said loudly and clearly.
  "Portal waiting," a female voice responded from a speaker somewhere in the hanger.
  "Portal Level three," he commanded.
  "Portal security violation," she said calmly.
  Alfred grinned at me as I twisted my head about looking for the speakers. "Portal override," he continued.
  "Portal waiting," she repeated.
  "Portal October sub-orbital denomination," he said very carefully. And the floor began to sink silently and gently beneath my hooves.
  It was indeed smooth, and rather slow in fact. There was a massiveness implicit in that lack of speed, as though the current combined weight of the contents of the elevator was a miniscule fraction of what it had been engineered to support. It was otherwise a bare bones piece of equipment, about twelve by sixteen feet in dimension. No safety doors, in fact no walls to place them in. The only visible walls were those of the shaft itself. Smooth and creamy white like the floor, they moved past slowly on all sides. But they were so featureless that except for the subtle feeling of motion and their obvious growth upward around me, I was unable to see them slipping past. That might have had something to do with my new eyes, but I didn't think so. One thing I was coming to appreciate is that my equine eyesight was more highly sensitive to movement than my human eyes were. The slightest motion of anything in my field of view set off an urge in my brain to look at it immediately, but at the moment, I couldn't bother with our downward passage because my brain was receiving urgent signals that I had no idea how to interpret.
  Pressure. That was the essence of it. Internal pressure. But with the pressure, there was another sensation with which I was more experienced. I was dropping out of my sheath. Lowering my neck forward quickly, I looked back between my legs, and sure enough, about six inches of my dark penis was dangling below me, and more of its length was extending by the second. I was not erect by any means. In fact, the whole shaft bounced and swayed limply with the slightest movement of my body.
  "Uh, guys, I got a problem," I said superfluously, since their attention was already riveted on the same sight mine was. "I think I gotta pee," I added reflectively.
  "What do you mean, you think? Don't you know?" the doctor asked?
  I looked up partially at him with a surprised expression. "No, I don't as a matter of fact. I've not felt like this before. The last time I dropped I was hard as a poker, and I had a huge orgasm. But this time it's different, and there's pressure inside my abdomen, and all the male horses in the field behind my house look like this right before they piss a few gallons, so I think I gotta pee," I finished in a rush.
  "Can you hold it? We need a sample anyway," he asked urgently.
  I shook my head. "I don't even know how to pee yet, let alone how not to. I think the first has got to happen before the last can be learned," I answered, and looked back at my still dropping shaft. "But I think I've got a lesson coming real quick. There's not much more of me in there."
  "Portal hold," Al said to the air, and the elevator stopped its descent.
  "Portal level zero," he continued, and the floor began rising. But it was too late.
  "Uh oh," I said quietly. In a slow motion parody, I could feel my bladder open deep inside me, and its contents began to make a rustling sprint towards the exit. The pressure eased immediately as a clear golden stream of liquid wider than a pencil came shooting out of my penis. It felt so damned good, that with a sigh of pleasure I closed my eyes and pushed. The stream increased in volume and speed, hitting the hard surface of the elevator floor with enough power to make it splash all over my hooves and fetlocks. The sergeant's vinyl boots and pants were quickly dripping with redolent horse urine since he was still in place at my side. The doctor and Al fared better, having only their boot soles in a deepening yellow puddle. The upturned lip at the edge of the floor captured the liquid and kept it from raining down the dark shaft below.
  There was a lot of piss inside me and I was still pushing in ecstasy, when my tail flashed up high and fast above my back. My eyes flew wide and my head snapped up, a look of shock on my face. "Oh no," I groaned. I tried to stop pushing. No, really, I did. But it didn't work. I couldn't see what happened next, as from far behind my head and below my tail I sensed a relaxation of control. Then I heard a squishy crackle followed by a series of plopping splashes that sent mini-tsunamis racing forward around my hooves and towards the booted shores before me. In my embarrassment I felt the various sphincter muscles contract and reset, and cataloged the feeling away for future reference.
  The elevator stopped, and calmly reported, "Portal level zero. Portal waiting," into the acrid silence.
  I looked sheepishly at them all. They were just staring at their boots with an expression that wordlessly conveyed the sentiment known simply as "Yuck". We stood there a while, the hot amber liquid steaming up around our ankles in the cold air of the hanger.
  "I feel so funky," Alfred said quietly. He sighed and spoke to the air again, repeating the original sequence of commands, and we began descending for a second time. As we started back down, the corrugated steel of the hanger suddenly rattled and reverberated as a strong storm began to buffet the roof. We all looked up automatically and listened. The random creaking of the building merged quickly with a regular staccato drumming as the weather outside took a decidedly wet direction. The doctor commented, "Here comes the sleet they've been predicting all day. I'm glad we're on the ground."
  My attention was diverted back to the floor by an unexpected desire to examine my body products. I dropped my head low and inhaled the powerful scents swirling below me, and did not find them at all distasteful. Surprisingly, I could sense many things about myself in that inhalation in fact. I could tell that I was old enough to breed, and that my general health was excellent. I knew I was not eating properly, nor was I drinking enough. My body was deficient of something I could not name, but knew instinctively that it could be found in grain. The nutty sweet flavor of the type of grain that I needed was on my tongue, but I didn't know what it was called, never having tasted it before. My mouth began salivating as my stomach gave out a mighty rumble of hunger.
  Alfred misinterpreted the sound and moaned "Oh God. He's going to throw up." But the doctor answered, "No, not if he is as much a horse as I think he is." The three of us looked at him curiously. "Horses can't vomit," he answered our unspoken query. I didn't know that, and here I was one, mostly, a horse that is, and had thought my human self to be fairly knowledgeable about... myself. So, that morning it seems I had puked my last. But I hesitated to consider what would happen if I got a sick stomach in future. Great. Just great. Colic. That must be why colic is so common in equines with digestion problems. Eating begins a one-way path. Well, nothing is perfect I suppose. But all in all, I knew that I would much rather be a colicky equine than a pukey person.
  This time, the descent went smoothly. When we were about ten feet down, Alfred commanded, "Portal secure," and the door above us slid softly back into place over our heads sealing out the sounds of the storm. As it turned out, the whiteness of the floor and walls was partly due to the fact that they luminesced in the dark. I had no difficulty seeing my companions however, since my night vision seemed excellent.
  "Hey, guys, I'm really sorry about this mess," I said apologetically. "I've got a ways to go before I'm socially acceptable it seems."
  The doctor waved away my apology. "Don't worry about that. Alfred and his crew have had to deal with much worse, I am certain." I didn't believe it for a minute. Alfred had the look of a man whose life revolved around minutiae, and that a flyspeck would be out of place in the scheme of things here in his world within the world.
  Alfred spoke into his headset. "Hazmat team to shaft one level three," he said twice. There was no expression on his face, giving him a tightly controlled rather than blank or neutral visage. Perhaps I wasn't as fascinating now as I recently had been.
  Then, as a unit, my three companions brought their right hands to their helmeted ears and pushed the headsets further in. To hear better I supposed. No one said anything, and they all had that glazed look of sensory disconnection that has become so common in this cell phone age, while they concentrated on audio input to the exclusion of video. I couldn't hear what was being said, but in unison they all looked up and stared at me, sill listening intently. I grinned self-consciously. "What?" I asked, looking down at my forelegs and back up again. The doctor shook his head to ask me to wait a minute for an answer.
  I watched as the elevator floor passed a point where there were 4 large doors, one on each side of us. All were closed and stencil labeled "EXRAC2 L1" and then there was a compass direction indicating North, South, East or West. We proceeded downward.
  Finally the doctor, though still listening, began to fill me in. "There're many reports coming in from around the world now, about other people being changed into something or someone else," he said and paused to listen. "There is no apparent strategy to the change. It seems to be randomly selected individuals of both sexes, although the majority were male. Several dozen events have been noted. And they're not all horses like yourself." He paused again. "The changes seem to cover a broad range of real and mythological creatures. There's a wolf and a dog, a couple wolves actually, a silver and two black dragons, an enormous centaur, several people who appear to be vampires, some comic book figures, a guy who looks like a living Ken doll and others. Oh, and right here in Dallas there's another horse man, similar to you, but not identical. There's also a large feline here as well. Both have been seen outdoors, but no one knows where they are at the moment." More listening. Then he looked worried "There's a monstrous creature like the one in the Alien movies. There is a male Borg from Star Trek." Now he was staring directly into my eyes. "And there is a complete change of a man on the east coast into a fully formed, non-verbal colt." They all looked at me as though I knew something that they didn't. I didn't say anything, but quietly tried to see a pattern in what was happening.
  I suspected that these men, like most people in the world, would be totally unaware of the small subgroup of which I was a part, who desired, wished for, longed to be changed exactly as I had been. And by the descriptions of some of the other people's changes, I began to wonder if we, the changed, just might all know each other. The colt, the silver dragon, the horseman in Dallas, these could all be friends or admired acquaintances of mine, and members of that small group.
  "Have you heard anything about a large white rabbit, or a raccoon doctor, or a verbal horse in Atlanta?" I asked curiously.
  I got a suspicious sounding, "Why do you ask?" from the doctor.
  I shook my head and frowned in thought as we passed two more doors labeled EXRAC2 L2 East and West, and proceeded lower. "I've learned in my data processing career that there is no such thing as a meaningless coincidence, no matter how hard we wish there were. There is always a cause for every effect. It is no coincidence that in my case, I have prayed long and fervently to be the person, this being, that you see standing here now, and suddenly my prayers are answered. I can't believe that I was chosen at random to be made to look just like what I have wanted to look like, especially when you tell me there are others who have changed as well," I explained. "Therefore, there must be a common thread, even a relationship, among the total group of changelings."
  "You wanted this?" Alfred asked aghast.
  I grinned happily at his shocked surprise, and with a chuckle I answered, "You bet your sweet ass I did! I'm surprised at the actual way I turned out, but I can't tell you how pleased I am with it. Pleased, hell, I'm so excited I could die!"
  Turning to Alfred, the doctor said, "Well, we don't have to worry about finding some way to cure him then."
  "Cure me? Even if you think you know how, don't even try it. Besides, I ain't sick, doc. Well, maybe in the head," I said with a snicker. "Anyway, I'm suspicious that these people who changed and I have something important in common. It might be as simple as wanting it badly enough I guess, but I don't think so. If that's all it took, half the world or more would look like a few famous Hollywood stars by now. The changes you mentioned before all seem to be in the direction of becoming things other than human, and I know that that is not a very common fantasy. But I know quite a number of people all around the world that feel the same way that I do. The rabbit, raccoon and horse I mentioned might help prove some points. Those would be three email friends that I know for certain would want this too." I didn't mention that the horse would be my beloved Master. At that thought, another flash of sweaty worry rippled over my furry hide. "Did you get any names of these people yet?" I asked them.
  Shaking his head no, the doctor said, "Only one so far. The colt's name is Bob." The recognition must have shown clearly on me somehow. "You know this guy?" he asked.
  I nodded. "Yes, I'm willing to bet that I do. I'm sure of it. He and I both write stories about people in circumstances just like us right now. But until today, they have all been fantasies. I wonder if that's the common thread? We write stories."
  "Doesn't seem like much in common," the sergeant commented, and I had to agree. If being an author was the common thread, there would soon be some very large, interesting, and diverse literary guild meetings.
  Still, I had my suspicions. "May I get on the Internet from somewhere in here? I just want to check my email," I asked. We all looked to Alfred. He looked back at us, and seeing no objections from the other two men, he shrugged and nodded.
  The top of 3 doors began to appear in the wall, sliding quietly up along side our platform. They bore the labels EXRAC2 L3 North, East and West. We stopped smoothly and with a hiss of equalizing pressure, all three doors slid upward along the inside wall. The East and West doors opened on the end of long hallway like tunnels, lit by the same shadow less creamy white wall panels as the shaft had been, stretching away into the distance and unbroken by any doors that I could see. A group of figures dressed like Alfred was approaching us from the East tunnel, bringing a large enclosed cart on wheels with them. The North door opened into a very sizeable and well-appointed lobby space, which resembled that of a small hotel. There was comfortable furniture tastefully arranged around a central green space where a lush growth of tropical plants rose upwards into the several story atrium above. The floor appeared to be terrazzo, but in warm earth tones flecked with gold. The gentle sound of flowing water was coming from among the palms and blooming bromeliads. The same pure light gently flooded the space, leaving the impression that you were standing very close to a sunny window, despite the fact that we were some depth underground. There was a steady breeze blowing out of all three doors and down the shaft below us. At the far end of the lobby stood a long windowed counter below a wooden wall hung with stainless steel letters reading, "Exobiological Research and Containment Centre #2. Welcome." With a frost of paranoia chilling along my nerves, I mumbled in a low voice, "To my parlor said the spider to the fly," as I turned my head to look at the approaching group of people rhythmically squeaking up the hall.
  My tail flashed nervously and I stepped backwards a bit as I came unexpectedly nose to visor with a dark figure whose aspect broadcast a sinister aloofness, imparted no doubt by the fact that he was dressed from helmet to heel in charcoal opacity. A rumbling basso combination of a whicker and a whinny thrummed in my throat, in a confrontation display to this stranger to back off. It was perfectly clear to me, but just to make myself unambiguous to the equine- challenged, I stretched forward and pushed his chest with my nose and nodded with a snort when he stumbled back a few steps. As I pulled my head away, he swung his right arm forward in an attempt to slap my muzzle as punishment. He didn't connect, but I was instantly furious. I took a few prancing steps bouncing up and down on my fore hooves, took a deep breath and roaringly neighed in his face, ending with an angry shout of "Don't fuck with me buddy, I'm not in the mood!" at the top of my voice. My large hooves agitated the mess on the elevator floor, causing it to splash everywhere and making it spill over the edge of the floor and drip down the shaft.
  The sergeant, running his hand along my neck and under my chin, stepped quickly forward in front of me to confront the figure, but the doctor got there first. "Stand down, sergeant," he ordered. "What do you think you're doing? This is my patient under my personal care, and you would be wise to consult me prior to approaching him in any way," he addressed the dark figure calmly, but with that special force of conviction that the best doctors somehow acquire, which makes it very clear that they are the alpha being in whatever group they find themselves in.
  With a soft click, the voice of the Mr. Dark spoke through an amplifier. "Doctor, the authority in this situation has been superceded by the United States Government. This is a matter of national security, and you are hereby relieved of any further concern for this creature or the circumstances surrounding it. You will return to your currently approved assignment. Sergeant, you are dismissed and will report back to your regular duties." His voice switched off with a quiet snap reminiscent of the sound that one of the small padlocks that Master uses to restrain me makes when it snicks closed.
  "Oh no! That's it! I'm outta here. Al, get me back upstairs. I can't take any more of this," I shouted disgustedly. Nobody was listening to me, but Dr. McKinney ignored Dark's order also.
  "And who are you?" he asked quietly.
  The question went unanswered. Rather, Dark pointed to my mess and told the team, "Clean this up. Clean it all up. Wrap the hooves in plastic. Move the subject into ark number two, and dispose all waste containment level one," he fired off orders. The team unshipped hoses and absorbent mops and towels and began to suction up the mess below our feet. One of the workers moved in my direction with heavy plastic bags and a roll of clear packaging tape, obviously destined to cover my wet hooves. Before this got any further I decided to try to make another attempt to get back in control of my situation. I stood up. This always captured the attention of anyone nearby, and indeed all the newcomers stopped and stared. As my forehooves shifted from digitigrade mode, I crossed my arms over my chest. I was sure that my exasperated impatience with all that had happened to me was clearly reflected by my entire body. I cleared my throat with a basso rumble, and glanced down sharply at the figure carrying the bags, who froze in mid stride.
  I addressed my attention back to the dark one. "I don't know who you are, or who you think you are, and I don't much care either, but I came here co-operatively at the request of the doctor. As far as I'm concerned, he is the only one that I will allow near me. I don't like your imperious attitude, your orders, or your looks. At the moment, I'm debating my decision to co-operate with anyone. Don't push me," I told him levelly. After a startled pause, the cleanup crew returned their attention to their tasks, but I pointed to the guy with the bags. "You can put those back where they came from. Get me a basin of water to wash my feet in," I ordered, feeling some sense of control returning. He must have been used to taking orders, because he turned to do my bidding. But Mr. Dark was not to be thwarted so easily.
  He turned to the bagman and said with quiet menace, "You have your orders." The poor bagman looked bewildered, obviously torn between his duty to Dark's authority, and my attempted usurpation.
  "Well, he is not going to be able to carry them out without my help," I said with a heated glare, "and that's something that he is going to have trouble getting, because you're pissing me off!"
  The doctor raised his hand in front of me as a sign that I should cool my hooves. "Show me your authorization," he said simply. Dark reached in his pocket and drew out a plastic key card on a retracting line, and displayed it before himself. There was a small rectangle containing his photo, an embedded symbol of a caduceus held in an eagle's claw, and floating over that some text far too small for me to read. The border edge and back of the card were deep scarlet red, the color of blood. With a flash of some kind of insight I did not understand, I knew the doctor was suddenly very angry, even though I could not see his face. My ears flattened backwards in an empathic response and a low whicker escaped my throat.
  He turned to face me, and with a light touch on my arm he looked up into my face. "Mr. Haller, I am afraid he has the legal authority to issue these orders," he said simply. "And I am going to urge you to cooperate with him the way you have with me. He has the power to make decisions regarding everyone in this facility, including you as a civilian." I looked angrily at Dark, my sense of melodrama expecting to see him smugly gloating and bloated with power, but absent of his face, his attitude remained a mystery to me. I thought about the doctor's request, and tried to see myself submitting to his superior. I detest swaggering boasters, two of the prerequisite characteristics of bullies everywhere. With a great deal of difficulty, I tried to consider Dark from as unprejudiced a view as I could. He really hadn't done anything wrong I guess, discounting his lack of tact. So it came down to a question of trust. Somewhere in our short relationship, I had come to trust the sergeant and the doctor, and even curious little Alfred. But something about Dark raised my mane on end. Even my fetlocks were tingly with agitation, urging me to run away as fast as I could.
  "Doctor, there is only one condition of my cooperation. You can't leave me alone here. Neither of you," I said with a slow swing of my head to look down on the sergeant where he still stood at my left side. "You both made a promise to me before we came here, and I am going to hold you to it. You are the only ones who know who and where I am, and I will not disappear into this place that isn't even supposed to be here without a fight," I told them both levelly. My tail was flashing and snapping behind me like a gale warning flag in a force 10 squall.
  With a small smile the doctor told me, "I may not be able to trump his hand, but I can at least see the bid." He turned back to Dark, and produced his own card. It looked pretty much the same, except for the bright gold border and back. As if on cue, the sergeant produced its twin. "Agent Gage," the doctor began, "your authority clearance is higher than mine, but I am invoking my EMD level 1 in this case. Mr. Haller is my patient, and I will be staying here with him. Sergeant Black is my attaché, and I will require his presence as well." After a short pause, Agent Gage nodded.
  Turning back to me, the doctor smiled with satisfaction. Then he told me, "Cody, it really would be better for everyone if you would let them cover your feet and hands in plastic. The team is going to have enough trouble with the cleaning protocol on the elevator and shaft. They would appreciate it if we could minimize their further effort." He sounded reasonable and logical, and I never could resist that kind of argument. That's why I am a good programmer. I took my left hand out from under my right elbow, and spreading my fingers, it looked at them closely. They weren't pretty, damp and traced with what I will simply call particulate fecal matter. I was the only one who could smell it, and while to me the scent was full of detailed analytical information, to them it would undoubtedly carry only one fact of note to the human nose: stink would probably sum it up best. With a shrug and a nod, I held out my hands and they were each wrapped in plastic and taped shut around my forearm. With that, I lowered my torso and took a four-legged stance again, placing my forehooves on the floor of the hallway. The doctor tapped my right hock, and I shifted my weight and raised my right rear hoof for the bagging operation. Stepping that hoof to the floor he continued with the left one.
  I bent my head low and examined the bags carefully. I decided that I was going to be walking with all the caution that I could for fear of slipping in the plastic. The thought of falling and damaging my legs made me sweaty and nervous, and a whicker escaped my throat. Now that I had some time, I examined my legs more closely. My fore 'legs' were basically an elongated copy of my human arms and hands. Where a horse has both an elbow and a knee in his foreleg, I still had only an elbow that bent to the rear as before, and an extended set of wrist bones to replace everything from his cannon to his coffin. But my rear legs looked totally equine. Lifting my left leg, I was satisfied and gratified to see how it worked and moved. I could detect no difference in what I saw, than if I had been watching a native in the field behind the house; the hock point above the splint, the sesamoid below, undercapped with a perfectly normal looking pastern and hoof wall. I smiled and swished my tail happily. It was everything I had ever dreamed of. I closed my eyes and remembered one wonderful recurring dream that I often had, where I was sitting on my rump in the middle of the bedroom floor, polishing and buffing my rear hooves. Never again would I awake from that dream to the depth of despairing loss that always accompanied me for the rest of the day!
  Agent Gage interrupted my reverie. "Ark 2, doctor," was all he said.
  The doctor touched me just behind my chin groove. I had no halter on, nor would I have worn one in front of these men, but I instinctively knew that the doctor was leading me where the chinstrap would have been. And I found it normal and even comforting in a strange way to let him do so. I rolled my left eye back and blinked at him. "Have you had any experience with horses?" I asked him curiously.
  "Not since I was small. My grandfather had a farm where I played a lot. He had an old retired workhorse who became my steed in all my games. Good old Tom. He sure was a patient soul. How I cried when he died," he said nostalgically. I nodded my head with satisfaction.
  "Doctor, can I ask you a few questions?" I continued. He nodded."What's up with Gage? Don't you think he is just a bit full of himself? I mean, this place and all. Really. It's pretty Hollywood, you know. And he's right out of central casting."
  He nodded again. "Yes, I realize that. The facility is a hold over from the cold war, and I'm afraid Gage is stuck in a little time warp. I've heard of him before, and by all reports he is a good man, not unstable, just way too serious," he said with a mocking frown. "I think we caught him by surprise. Judging by the way he's dressed, he must have been in the high-energy plasma lab. Alfred is actually the center director, but Gage is a ranking officer and officially that puts him in charge in any declared emergency. Which this is, or did you already know that? In its defense though, this complex was built and rebuilt for specific research purposes, most of them growing out of perceived hazards on and off the earth. At the time they were deemed as real and present dangers, and it has served those purposes well. But like everything, it has come to the end of its usefulness. It's not even classified anymore, otherwise I couldn't have brought you here. It's being taken apart while we speak, and by this time next year it will be completely gone. I understand they are going to fill the upper fifty feet with concrete to seal it off for good. The rest of it will fill up with water from the lake once they turn off the pumps. Really, the only reason we are here is for the facilities and the privacy. And as soon as possible we will be leaving again."
  We had been walking slowly down the hall, I, carefully placing my hooves so that there were three on the floor at all times. As he was talking, I looked at the walls noticing that there were doors in the walls occasionally, but they fit flush and had no protruding handles. They were marked with small tags embedded in the wall and were simply labeled and numbered. We were passing one labeled 'L3E 4', when a door opened on the left side in front of us, and swung outward in waiting. Dr. McKinney pulled it further open, and waited while I walked through. The tag next to the opening read 'Ark 2 BSL-3'.
  Inside, it was split into two rooms. One, a glass windowed enclosure within the larger room itself, contained the standard equipment of a doctor's examination room, plus quite a few other pieces of equipment that I didn't recognize lined up along the inner walls, some of which were draped in opaque plastic. There was a large stainless steel ventilation hood enclosing a black stonework table in one corner, with several small pieces of steel equipment standing on the table. One was shaped sort of like a mushroom with a stem that widened at the base. The doctor pulled open the inner room. There was a noticeable breeze flowing inward, ruffling my mane and tail as I stood in the doorway. As we both started inside followed by the sergeant, I noted the red triple crescent biohazard symbol on the door above a notice painted on the surface. I paused a moment while I read 'Biosafety Level 3. Suitable for work with infectious agents which may cause a serious or potentially lethal disease as a result of exposure by the inhalation route.' While the others all lined up outside the windows and watched, the door closed behind us, popping my ears with the reduced pressure.
  What followed was boringly mundane. They took my body readings and measurements. My temperature was 101 measured rectally. They looked in my mouth and ears and nose. They listened to my chest in four and two-legged mode. They took x-rays of my body as best they could, but neither the machine nor the little cubby room in the back corner where it stood, were designed for large mammal examinations. They couldn't weigh me as I refused to try to get both my large hooves on the tiny square platform of the scale. They collected tail and mane and body hair by pulling them out at the root. Then saliva and blood samples, and they even swabbed one nostril and the back of my throat. With different swabs, of course.
  "Just so you know, I want urine, feces, and sperm samples as well, at the next opportunity," the doctor told me, leaving two small cups and a bedpan on the table for me. I could see that the cups would be filled to overflowing very quickly. They passed all the sealed samples to Alfred and he sent them off for testing I assumed.
  The doctor commented once, "I wish we had a veterinarian on staff." I grinned, nickered a chuckle, and decided that I was having too much fun despite a few nagging worries.
  Gage's voice came through a speaker saying, "There is a nationwide status check scheduled in 10 minutes. We will go to the conference room for the call, and your patient is to remain in the ark. I want both you and the sergeant to attend." I whickered my dislike of this turn of events.
  Reading me correctly, the doctor said "Trust me a little longer. While we're gone, you can use that keyboard over here to check your email. The display is outside the window, but you should be able to read it OK. The center is connected to the government backbone and you should be able to get into any website you need to. I'll sign on using my ID," he said as we walked over to the wall.
  I took a deep breath and let it out long and loud as an expression of my impatient patience. Sitting my rump on the floor, I unshipped my 6 fingers, and preceded to discover just how hard it is to type with your hooves on. I knew where all the keys were, no problem. Hitting just one of them at a time? Problem. My fingertips were too wide to type with speed and retain accuracy as well. It was actually easier to hold a pencil in my right hand and push the keys one at a time, and only use my left thumb for the caps shift.
  Logging onto AOL Anywhere, I checked the mailbox that only Master knows about. It was disturbingly empty. Switching to codypony, I was not surprised by the number of letters in that New Mail Box since I belong to too many email groups. Over 500 entries were stacked up in there, the vast majority coming from TSA. That didn't surprise me either. The change event, including my own, would be the hottest subject ever discussed on the list. The subject lines were everything from "My God look at me I'm a___ and ain't it great!", to "Dear God please Help me- this can't be happening". The subject lines of the TSA letters alone answered several, but not all, questions I had been pondering. I read many of them to get a cross section of what was going on, and joyously discovered that some of my most treasured friends, many of whom I had never actually met but felt very close too, had been wish blessed also. The general opinion was that it was the List itself that strung the common thread and catalyzed the event, but our benefactor and the method remained a mystery. I sighed. If true, that meant that Master had missed His wish fulfillment since He only enjoyed the List vicariously through His pet pony. The unfairness of such a limited scope was sobering, and I suffered a pang of angry remorse over those who, in this case, weren't in the right place at the right time.
  I decided to check in with everyone too, and I hunted and pecked and sent a short note titled "I'm OK, just a little horse, that's all" to TSA stating my condition, my attitude, and where I was currently located. I copied Master as well, and just as I sent it, the doctor returned. He came into the outer room with his upper zipper open and headgear flopping limply against his back. He looked like he was molting. Smiling broadly, he clicked a button on the wall beneath one window, and he reported lightly "We've been told that you are clean. Your own tests won't be done for a little while, but all they will show is your general health, not how or why this happened. It seems that the scope of the changes was limited to a small group of people who..."
  "Who all belong to the same e-mail list, yes, that's one of the possibilities I came up with too," I finished his thought for him. "How do you know I'm safe?" I asked as Agent Gage came back into the room, stripped of his shielding and dressed simply in green scrubs.
  He took up the answer. "Circumstantial evidence," he said disapprovingly. "That's all we've got. The change happened some five hours ago. In that time there have been no further changes, and there were lots of exposures. A few people were already in the hospital for other reasons and so were able to be tested rapidly for contagious agents, but nothing has been found. In fact, in every case, at least those that we can judge, the subject is perfectly healthy. Perfectly. Even those who had previously diagnosed problems. All cured," he continued thoughtfully.
  "Makes sense to me," I nodded. "We all got changed into our vision of who and what we really are. There's no way that anybody is going to imagine himself or herself as less than perfect, and anybody with an existing problem is going to consciously design that problem away."
  "Anyway, the emergency situation director has reduced the response posture to 1, and ordered your release," he said while he pressed a red lighted button. With a buzz the door latch released and the doctor pulled it open and stepped inside. The ventilators began to unwind into silence as he beckoned to me to come outside while he held the door open.
  Mousing on the computer was still something I could do easily, so I quickly clicked out of AOL Anywhere and clumped across the floor. That was the first time I had actually noticed the sound that my hooves made, and I shuddered with delight, and a pulse of pleasure throbbed inside my sheath. It was just another aspect of my equinity that I found pleasing and 'right'.
  You must forgive me, dearest reader, and understand that being a 'ponyboy' as a human, dressing in custom made tack, being hypnotically speechless, serving Master as a pony would to the limits of my physical corporality, had been at the center of my sexuality for a long time. Even my MUCK characters look just like this, and are undisguised images on me. I never had an orgasm, fantasy or real, for any reason anymore that did not involve the mental or visual image of a stallion ejaculating, and this had been going on for years. In a very real Pavlovian sense I found everything about my new body, from the sounds I made to the way I smelled to the way I moved, to be supercharged with intense sexual pleasure and, so, bound to manifest itself in my sympathetic groin.
  We call it ponyplay. But for those of us embedded in that world, the word 'play' is much too frivolous and trivial to use to define the strength of the need that drives us, and depth of the satisfaction we find there. And yet, the word accurately depicts the childlike delight that I know when I am experiencing its joys. It goes far beyond simple sex, and that is only one of its ultimate rewards. That is why there always, invariably, has been a theme of equine sexuality running through my posted stories, in obedience to the wisdom of the commandment "Write what you know."
  Dr. McKinney latched the door open, and I went and stood by the exit to the hallway. He was staring at the floor thoughtfully, his right arm tucked under his left, massaging the tip of his nose with his left thumb and forefinger. Agent Gage was throwing switches and powering down equipment in the other room.
  I cleared my throat with a nicker to get the doctors attention and asked, "Can you take me to my home in Rockwall?"
  He looked up at me while his memory replayed for analysis the sounds I had just made. "Hm, yes," he answered eventually. "But I have a proposition I want to discuss with you first.
  "I'm all ears, doctor," I said with a grin, and waggled them both frantically to prove it.
  He laughed, and putting his arm across my back to herd me forward said, "We'll talk about it on the way."