The Kangaroo Reality

To begin with, you must know that Virtual Reality didn't work out as planned.

In fact, it went horribly wrong.

Everyone started out very excited about their over-sized virtual reality goggles strapped to their heads. Eventually, someone was able to port the technology into more normal sized glasses. Then, came contact lens. And then came the day of the great fusing.

No one is really sure quite what happened, but something went horribly wrong. By this point, basically everyone was using virtual reality contact lenses. So when they fused onto the corneas of the human population, on that day virtual reality became reality.

It didn't take long for folks to forget what life was like not being an animated avatar running through a pixelated world that became increasingly more lifelike after every update. In fact, people began to worry that if they had children who didn't have "reality" lenses fused onto their corneas, the parents would not be able to relate and connect with their offspring. The offspring would be unable to thrive, to live in less-real world beyond the lenses.

Genetic hacking took place. And thus the great evolution. All humans are born into virtual reality. They never knew what it looked like to not be interacting with a visual cacophony of "human" shapes -- as not all avatars are humans. People choose all sorts of bodies to exist in: classic heroes, debonair spies, anthropomorphic animals, aliens, beautiful models, etc.

And of course, you could switch your avatar in the beginning, but folks began to realize something, certain avatars were more successful in certain areas. No matter how smart you were, walking around as a blue, anthropomorphized donkey, just meant that you were never going to be trusted as a lawyer. So people began switching to appease their needs in terms of career paths, love lives, etc. 

Then came the great reveal. Some hacker managed to release a list of every single person's ever used avatar. Imagine, thinking that the beautiful woman you were sleeping with had spent half a decade prancing around as an animated donkey? Or that your trusted lawyer had spent the better portion of his time in college as a troll with small skulls strung around his neck? 

People wanted the truth. They wanted to know who they were interacting with. They were entitled to that information. No more hiding who you were or who you had been. The ability to choose your avatar would be frozen after the age of 18. You could play around all you wanted as a child, but once you became an adult, that was it. You had to pick, commit and accept whatever would come.

Of course, this worked until the rationing period.

There simply was not enough server space anymore to allow the type of infinite avatar switching that our parents and generations past had taken for granted. Parents would simply have to choose what avatar they thought would be best for their child, and this avatar would follow a prescripted growth algorithm. For example, if you parents selected a beautiful woman avatar, you would start out as an above average in cuteness baby girl and eventually grow into your destined shape.

But perhaps a child wouldn't like what their parents selected for them, as an insurance measure every new baby would be given two opportunities to change their avatar. (So that children could not grow up and sue their parents for destroying the future, etc.) The first opportunity to change could occur anytime between age 5 and age 17, but by age 18 a person had to commit to their avatar. This way they could still revert back to the avatar their parents chose for them if their childhood choice overstayed its welcome so-to-speak. If they did not like their pre-chosen avatar or their trial child avatar, then at age 18 they could take a risk and select a final avatar, but there would be no going back or changing after that (unless of course you had the right amount of money).

Then came the freezing, brought on by another hacker. This one more sadistic. What better way to cause decades of everlasting havoc, not just a moment of embarrassment, but permanent anguish for the lives affected, then to freeze the current generation of minors into whatever avatar they were in. Sure some would be happy, but how many would spend the rest of their lives trapped in a body that was not right for them?

The freezing occurred when I was ten years old. When I was living life as a purple anthropomorphic kangaroo. And now at 50 years old, I am still a purple anthropomorphic kangaroo. There is no amount of money that can save me since this was hacked code, not government policy. This has been and is my life.

My career choices are limited. "Furries" as we are called can't be in any profession that might influence children because spending your life as a cartoon animal is deviant. Nor can furries be in any profession that holds a significant amount of power (ie. governmental office, anything above assistant director, anything in the military, etc.). Furries can't be first responders or in the medical field. To be honest, the list of jobs that furries can have is much shorter.

And so I've been living my life this way, as a purple kangaroo. I don't go on many dates. I'm not actually interested in furries who actually wanted to be and enjoy being furries. And no one who isn't a furry wants to be with a furry. 

I have a few close friends who know the truth. People sometimes have sympathy for the folks in my generation that were frozen into the wrong avatar. Most people don't though. They say it's our own fault, we shouldn't have gone against the body our parents chose for us. It's a funny concept really, I have no idea what my real body even looks like. It must look better than this one though.

Since I was ten, and since kangaroos had been extinct for several centuries, I didn't even know that only female kangaroos have pouches. I'm not even the right sex, let alone the right species. Which of course, complicates my non-existent love life even more.

I suppose you know some of this already, since it's why I've come to see you today. How old are you? Twenty-five or so? God, you weren't even born yet when the freezing happened. I suppose some of all that was new information to you, surely the educational downloads don't still contain it.

See, I heard that you are able to splice and hack DNA. I brought all the money I've saved since that day forty years ago, because even as a kid I knew I didn't want to spend my life as a purple kangaroo. It was just a fun thing to do for awhile. I wasn't thrilled being the freckle-faced, red head my parents chose for me, but at least they had good intentions. Folks with that avatar are very successful as forensic accountants.

So here's all the money I've got for the operation. And I've read all the materials, signed all the waivers. I understand the risk. I simply can't live like this. If the procedure doesn't work...well, my back up plan will be short lived.

Go ahead doctor, remove my "reality" genes. Let me see myself with my own eyes, even if it means seeing the world in a way it's no longer meant to be seen. I can't possibly be more apart from humanity than I already am, but at least this way, I won't have to live apart from myself.

---

Of all the things I wasn't prepared to see, things I couldn't imagine seeing when my corneas were edited, it wasn't the truth that humans only have five fingers or that we are covered with endless amounts of little tiny hairs like fur all over our bodies. No, what I still can't wrap my mind around is what we did to the sky.

It was the middle of the 21st century when the sky turned gray from all the pollution. The morning blue was gone. The evening orange a memory frozen in photographs. Humans grew accustomed to the neutral sky tone, they rebelled when the designers tried to make the sky blue in the virtual reality world. But now, a millennium and a half later, after all our work to save the environment, to save the planet, we did it.

And I'm the only one who knows, who can see the beautiful blue sky soaring above us.