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ladyspriteI never wanted to grow wings.
Even when it was just imaginary, just a what-if game we'd all play while we were sitting around and reading comic books - what super power would you choose, if you could? All my friends were crazy for flight, daydreaming about flapping or spearing or otherwise powering themselves through the air, but I never saw the appeal. It was just moving, wasn't it? No different from walking, other than the cool factor that not everyone else could do it. And besides, wings were gaudy, and flashy, and that.... just didn't suit me. No, what I wanted more than anything else was to be able to hide. Invisibility, camouflage, the power to cloud men's minds, I didn't care how - I just wanted to fade away.
All of those games changed after the 'phage showed up, though. Bacteriophage Plasmavirus chimeriae, they named it. In the course of a few months we went from worrying about avian-swine hybrid flu to worrying about avian-swine hybrid pets. And when it jumped species to humans, all hell broke loose. The adults were full of doom and gloom and fear of the apocalypse, but to tell the truth, most of us kids thought it was pretty cool. I mean, here was all our comic-book stuff coming to life, if we were just lucky enough to catch a weird variant cold and make DNA goulash with the right other species. Sure, we all knew theoretically that the odds were against us, and we'd heard the horror stories about poor people like Tomato Girl, but still. Caution and restraint have never been the hallmarks of youth.
The outbreak certainly had some interesting side effects. If nothing else, the volunteer pool at the aviary and zoo skyrocketed as folks tried to increase their chances of developing into something awesome. It happened to one zookeeper, who caught it from a leopard bite; it might happen to them, right? And sometimes it kind of did. My friend Beth didn't quite grow the wings she wanted, but if you look real close she's got tiny gold feathers all over her arms. I guess that's something.
Then there are the other wanna-be's. I heard there's one guy from our class who's been faithfully licking his laptop more or less nonstop since the outbreak was announced. No one's quite had the heart to tell him that plastic doesn't have DNA. It just goes to show that not all nerds are geniuses, I guess.
Anyway. Threats of death and destruction on one side; the world's most unpredictable thrill ride on the other. And where was I? Hiding, of course. It's what I do. Not in a closet or anything like that; just quietly being as invisible as possible in my everyday life. Sitting in the back of class, squishing down in my usual seat on the bus home, trying to make as few ripples as humanly possible. When my shoulders started to ache, I figured it was probably from all the hours I spent hunched over my desk, working on college application essays - somehow, in spite of the End of the World scenario, my parents stubbornly hung onto visions of me going to Rutgers next year. Heck, the fact that they hung onto visions of there being a Rutgers next year shows how delusional they were.
I ignored it at first, until my mom walked into the room one day while I was getting dressed for school. (Privacy? What privacy. Maybe now you'll start to understand why what I want more than anything is to never be noticed again.) I turned my back to her to pull my shirt the rest of the way on, and she gasped, and then marched me over to the mirror and made me twist and turn until I could see the purplish, bruise-like shadows under my skin, and the white nubby bumps starting to push forward between my shoulder blades and my spine.
I didn't go to school that day.
I still held out hope for a little while that it was something else - armor plating, maybe, or giraffe spots, or heck, even bone cancer (though mom told me I should be ashamed of saying that). But nope, the doctor said that it was a textbook case of wing emergence.
They itch like hell, now that I know they're there, but I'm not supposed to scratch at them. It could break the skin, and damage the membranes underneath. I've been scheduled for a bone density scan next week; apparently only ten percent of the 'phage victims who grow wings actually develop enough other avian traits to fly. I'm not supposed to wear tight shirts, in case they break through early, and I have to start a miserable series of upper-body physical therapy - apparently even if I can't fly with them, they'll overbalance me enough to wreck my shoulders and spine if I don't work up the strength and stamina to counter them.
I guess, whether I like it or not, I'm not going to be able to hide for much longer.....
Even when it was just imaginary, just a what-if game we'd all play while we were sitting around and reading comic books - what super power would you choose, if you could? All my friends were crazy for flight, daydreaming about flapping or spearing or otherwise powering themselves through the air, but I never saw the appeal. It was just moving, wasn't it? No different from walking, other than the cool factor that not everyone else could do it. And besides, wings were gaudy, and flashy, and that.... just didn't suit me. No, what I wanted more than anything else was to be able to hide. Invisibility, camouflage, the power to cloud men's minds, I didn't care how - I just wanted to fade away.
All of those games changed after the 'phage showed up, though. Bacteriophage Plasmavirus chimeriae, they named it. In the course of a few months we went from worrying about avian-swine hybrid flu to worrying about avian-swine hybrid pets. And when it jumped species to humans, all hell broke loose. The adults were full of doom and gloom and fear of the apocalypse, but to tell the truth, most of us kids thought it was pretty cool. I mean, here was all our comic-book stuff coming to life, if we were just lucky enough to catch a weird variant cold and make DNA goulash with the right other species. Sure, we all knew theoretically that the odds were against us, and we'd heard the horror stories about poor people like Tomato Girl, but still. Caution and restraint have never been the hallmarks of youth.
The outbreak certainly had some interesting side effects. If nothing else, the volunteer pool at the aviary and zoo skyrocketed as folks tried to increase their chances of developing into something awesome. It happened to one zookeeper, who caught it from a leopard bite; it might happen to them, right? And sometimes it kind of did. My friend Beth didn't quite grow the wings she wanted, but if you look real close she's got tiny gold feathers all over her arms. I guess that's something.
Then there are the other wanna-be's. I heard there's one guy from our class who's been faithfully licking his laptop more or less nonstop since the outbreak was announced. No one's quite had the heart to tell him that plastic doesn't have DNA. It just goes to show that not all nerds are geniuses, I guess.
Anyway. Threats of death and destruction on one side; the world's most unpredictable thrill ride on the other. And where was I? Hiding, of course. It's what I do. Not in a closet or anything like that; just quietly being as invisible as possible in my everyday life. Sitting in the back of class, squishing down in my usual seat on the bus home, trying to make as few ripples as humanly possible. When my shoulders started to ache, I figured it was probably from all the hours I spent hunched over my desk, working on college application essays - somehow, in spite of the End of the World scenario, my parents stubbornly hung onto visions of me going to Rutgers next year. Heck, the fact that they hung onto visions of there being a Rutgers next year shows how delusional they were.
I ignored it at first, until my mom walked into the room one day while I was getting dressed for school. (Privacy? What privacy. Maybe now you'll start to understand why what I want more than anything is to never be noticed again.) I turned my back to her to pull my shirt the rest of the way on, and she gasped, and then marched me over to the mirror and made me twist and turn until I could see the purplish, bruise-like shadows under my skin, and the white nubby bumps starting to push forward between my shoulder blades and my spine.
I didn't go to school that day.
I still held out hope for a little while that it was something else - armor plating, maybe, or giraffe spots, or heck, even bone cancer (though mom told me I should be ashamed of saying that). But nope, the doctor said that it was a textbook case of wing emergence.
They itch like hell, now that I know they're there, but I'm not supposed to scratch at them. It could break the skin, and damage the membranes underneath. I've been scheduled for a bone density scan next week; apparently only ten percent of the 'phage victims who grow wings actually develop enough other avian traits to fly. I'm not supposed to wear tight shirts, in case they break through early, and I have to start a miserable series of upper-body physical therapy - apparently even if I can't fly with them, they'll overbalance me enough to wreck my shoulders and spine if I don't work up the strength and stamina to counter them.
I guess, whether I like it or not, I'm not going to be able to hide for much longer.....
