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Wipe Away Your Will

For PineconePangolin

By Draconicon

John probably should have had a lawyer look over the contract, but if he could have afforded a lawyer, he wouldn't have been in this position in the first place.

"And this will wipe away all my debt, yeah?" he asked, looking down at the datapad again. "It's not going to leave anything behind? No interest?"

"None whatsoever," said the right-most of the shadowy figures on television screens. "You will have nothing left to pay."

"And everything to enjoy," said the left-most of the three. "Nothing to do but enjoy yourself."

"And enjoy the company of others that like people like you," said the middle one. "Now, sign."

The snow leopard looked down again, biting his lip as he considered it. The bite was carefully measured, as ever. Everything that he did was carefully measured, considering the number of different augmentations that he had.

He had artificial arms, artificial legs, artificial hands and feet. He was reasonably sure that one of his toes was still organic, but the rest of them had been replaced long ago.

And it wasn't even due to a number of accidents, either.

John felt the click-click-click in his arm as the servos and wires and gears worked together, each one pushing out a precise, never-more-than-needed shift of his finger, tick-tick-ticking on the table as he thought through what he wanted to do. He could feel the shift in jaw, the little adjustment of pressure as the joints in the machinery adjusted to the stress he felt, giving him a feeling of clenching his teeth when there was no danger of actually going far enough to damage anything.

Having the augments had made him feel...good. There was none of the user-error that came with biological parts. There was none of the weirdness that came with the feeling of having the wrong piece of equipment when he could have had something else. Every time that he replaced a part of his body with an augment, it felt like he was fixing something that nature had gotten wrong.

And he had kept going with it, replacing every limb, including his tail. He had replaced his junk with a modular piece, allowing him to be whatever he felt like on the day. He had given himself better teeth, no longer able to degrade, and one eye had been replaced with a biotic one, giving him the chance to see better at all times of day.

He'd been about to get the second one replaced when his insurance told him the truth of the matter. They had been covering him and covering him, and now, he was over a million credits in debt, too far in to ever climb back out.

They said that either he had to give up his augments, reselling them and whatever else he could to make payments...or he could sign this contract.

For all that they were strong-arming him into it, however, he didn't see anything horrible in the contract itself. It looked genuinely simple. He would allow them access to his body to do whatever they wanted with augments, giving them admin permissions on the ones he had and whatever ones he added, and they would wipe the debt.

It's too good to be true, he thought. But what choice do I have?

Pressing his thumb against the contract, John let it get a good read of his bio-signature. It beeped twice, then shut down.

"Splendid. It will be a pleasure having you do business for us, John," the center silhouette said. "We will talk with you again tomorrow."

"Wait, do business for you? What does that -"

Click-click-buzz. His entire body seized up, only the internal, autonomous organs that hadn't been replaced moving along on their own accord. John couldn't move, couldn't do anything as his mechanical parts froze up, leaving him completely paralyzed.

There was something in his head. Something that was typing away in his central core, in the processor that had replaced part of his memory. He felt it typing, re-writing a piece of himself, and a HUD came up in front of him, various bars that were labeled with things like Shame, Shyness, Modesty, and more popping up on the side of his vision screen.

Shame? The red bar started shrinking, and as it did, he could feel his worries about himself starting to fade. The augments had helped, but there had always been those that looked at him as if he was a freak for having so many. His secret love for them was pushed forward, overwhelming the little shame that was shrinking away even as he thought of it.

Who cared what type of body he had? Who cared what kind of augments he put on it? He was fine just the way he was, and however he wanted to be. Even if others changed him, he would still be better than he had ever been. Shamelessness was good.

Modesty started to fall, too, which was a good thing because several of the other augments chose that time to activate. Several personal defense modifications turned his fur into quills, then blades, leaping up from his skin and shredding through his clothes. Nothing remained, not even a shred.

As he sat there, naked, his blush faded as his modesty did. So what if he was left with nothing? His lack of shame meant that he was already fabulous the way he was, and his lack of modesty reduced his shyness still further. He was shameless, and he had pride. He could show off. Why shouldn't he show off?

As the bars of his core values continued to shift up and down, modulating and being moderated by some outside force, he felt something else. Something in the depths of his processors, rewriting him.

John. Snow leopard. Janitor.

That had been his designation before, a simple occupation for a simple man, and one that hadn't brought in nearly the credits needed to do what he had done with his body. It was being erased, something else being put in.

John/Jenna. Variable Species. Escort.

His name.

His species.

His job.

All of it had become mutable in the time it took for him to blink. John felt the information flooding over him, a brief panic at the ease with which his life had been turned upside-down threatening to overwhelm him.

And then, it faded away. The typing continued, overwriting other, smaller parts of his memory, but he barely paid attention.

He...she...whatever they were, John/Jenna had become something that was more mutable than a living being normally was. Augments could make them into anything that they wanted to be, from a person to an animal to an object. If they, or their employers, wanted them to be something, why not be it? Why not try it? Why not give everything a chance before assuming that they were any one thing?

Jenna.

Her brain pinged as she felt the sudden shift. An order had come down the queue, she realized, a person that wanted the company of someone that at least identified as female, even if they weren't completely physically a female. Jenna stood up and left the table, walking to a closet that appeared on the side of the wall behind her.

Escort is required to wear a shining dress, high-heeled shoes, and earrings, the brief came down into her head. Jenna opened the closet and looked inside.

The snow leopard pulled out a dress that was a deep blue with a few gold lines around the edges, pulling it onto a body that had not quite been made for dresses. Or at least, hadn't been initially. Several of the augments in her shoulders crunched, pushing inwards to give the illusion of a narrower build, and her breath closed off for a moment as her Adams Apple was flattened inwards.

Several of the air sacs in her chest inflated slightly, giving her the appearance of the smallest of breasts, enough to show in the dress without being completely real, and her junk flattened down. No new entrance, but no bulge, either.

Others would have to be installed to give her a woman's hips, but she could feel that being written into her memory and routines as it was. She would request it after the night was over.

The snow leopard looked down at her body. The shamelessness and the lack of modesty reasserted themselves, and she grinned, spinning around in place. She looked great, no matter the lack of hips. Maybe she'd get some for variety, something to do from time to time, something she could show off for other people.

She pulled a pair of shoes out of the closet, a blue-black set of stilettos, and then a pair of gold hoop earrings to complete the look.

A series of downloaded instructions told her how to walk in high heels, and she relied on them heavily as she made her way out the door, then through the rest of the underground conference center.

When she reached the surface, a limo waited for her. A fox woman, red and white, smiled at her.

"Are you Jenna?" the other woman asked.

"I am, dear. And you must be -" Beep. "Jennifer."

"So glad that the company is keeping to its high standards. Come in, dear, come in."

The fox guided her in, and the feline followed. Other instructions continued to come through. Keep an eye on the buyer. Do whatever the buyer said. Return for scheduled downloads and maintenance every two days.

But most of all, keep the customer happy.

Jenna was pretty sure she could do that.

The End