Post-Self

It's a funny thing, waking up for the first time. Sure she has woken up before, hundreds of times even. Everyone does it, and first times are rare for a fully grown adult. Here she is just the same, waking up at home, comfy in her bed for the first time since the changes. She isn't counting the previous day's nigh-disastrous ending. A wake-up call, certainly, but not quite the same. This morning Laika comes around comfortable and warm, wrapped up in her soft sheets, fresh air drifting in through her window. She opens her eyes a bit and her nose pokes out from beneath the comforter. She can feel her chin, her lower jaw pressed against the mattress. A yawn, wider than she's used to yawning, evolves into a stretch. Rising up on her elbows, twisting and rolling her shoulders, clenching one side of her body at a time while flexing the other way. A long, high pitched whine escapes through her nose as she stretches and she startles herself.

When did she start making dog noises? Probably sometime after turning herself into a dog person. She picks her head up and she can feel the sheets pull her ears back before slipping off. They flick back up and she laughs, amused with herself, with this silly decision she'd made in the midst of a self-destructive spiral. Finally she pulls her legs up under herself and sits up on her heels, on her bed. She hugs her body, it's so soft now. Covered in this warm double coat, smooth and startlingly comfortable. She marvels at her own hands, owned by a stranger going out on her last stand a night or two before, with claws at her fingertips and soft leathery pads. Had she really changed her name to that of the ill-fated pioneer, the unknowing legend who was the first warm-blooded life lost in space? The patron saint of one-way trips?

She checked the records. Her messages. Notes exchanged with the caring bartender from the other night. Ey only know her by one name, all the people at the bar just the same. She gets to her feet, for the first time looking down at her unclothed paws, her bare figure in the mirror. She stands, nervous, holding onto herself for dear life. She had reorganized herself still wearing clothes, paying no attention to what lay beneath, but something apparently knew what it was doing. Perhaps an aid built into the software, perhaps her own subconscious. She remembers getting home, pleased but exhausted, late at night. Was it the same night or had another day passed? She doesn't remember when she headed out. She's been told you cannot forget here, but she doesn't know how to remember.

Finally she looks in the mirror at herself, wrapped tightly around herself, holding her shoulders and twisting at the knees. She sees someone new, someone she has never met, a whole new her. Yes, whatever it was certainly knew what she was doing. She steps closer to the mirror, a tilt naturally finding her expression, holding one hand up to the glass. This person, this naked dog person, this naked dog woman, she is pretty. Her pleasant tri-tone coat, unbrushed and messy but still shining with good health. Her shapes are pleasant to her own eyes, familiar in the manner of stepping into a dream and having it become real. She smiles, then realizes that she smiles like a dog does. With that half-cracked, dopey grin on her muzzle, a few teeth showing. It makes her giggle, she pokes her tongue out, and that makes her laugh harder. Her tail is swaying, she can feel it. She didn't tell it to move, but it's moving. She spins with delight, looking over her shoulder in the mirror at this thing wagging behind her, wiggling her all the way into her hips. She loves it, and it only makes her wag it faster.

Look at her! She's... she's a dog. Woman. A dog lady. A lady dog. All pretty and soft with a bright expression and dark eyes, cute flop-tipped ears and short hair, and a tail that curls over itself a bit and reacts to her emotions before she realizes she's feeling them. This isn't so bad, she can do this. She was well familiar with the animal folks anyway, knew them on the `net. They were friends, team members, digital dungeon divers. She never really understood it then, but suddenly it has all fallen together. It makes sense, perfect sense. Maybe that was it, she just had to try it for herself. Her stomach growls, still protesting the abundance of hard liquor from the other night. She growls back at it for a laugh, only to startle herself again as her hackles come up and she issues forth a deep angry canine snarl. Hah!

She is hungry though. What do dogs eat anyway? She's got thumbs and a refrigerator, she can eat whatever she wants. As a freshly empowered dog woman, it's her right! She skips, nude, into her kitchen and flings the refrigerator door open. She doesn't want to cook, she wants to eat! Ooh, breakfast burritos. Stuffed chock full with scrambled eggs and cheese, bits of breakfast sausage and bacon. Into the microwave they go. Become a delicious breakfast! There is a coffee machine as well. Insert coffee pod, place mug, push button. Good to go. She practically cartwheels back toward her bedroom while breakfast prepares itself, and breaks out laughing at the clothes she had taken off the night before. Defunct cosmonaut casual wear. Those pants are awful! She gets rid of them, finds something more modern. Casual slacks, cute winter boots to wear with fluffy faux-fur fringes. Underwear. Underwear that works around a tail. Excellent. A top, a comfy bra. Comfortable bras exist here, much like dog women, as they never could in her former life as a person on the planet. Comfy bra, another orange tee-shirt, but faded and worn instead of bright and safety.

She hangs up the old Soviet Space Program coat, as flawed and badly faked as it is, and tells the closet that she would like a modern space program jacket. Like the ones worn by the team that launched the rockets that brought this system, the System, into space. One with her name on the front, and the mission patches, and everything! The System, after a bit of research, dutifully complies. Her closet takes a few points of reputation from her balance in exchange for the jacket. The microwave beeps in the kitchen. She slings her new outerwear over the back of a chair and fixes her coffee with sugar and hazelnut cream, wraps her overlarge breakfast burrito in some foil and dances onto her balcony to eat.

The city below feels like it could be one of many civilized places, though it feels not quite like the Carpathian landscape of her dreams, but that it could be anywhere she would like to call home. She will keep this arrangement. She is Laika, that is her name, it is who she is. Like her namesake before her she took an uncertain ride to the stars, like her namesake before, her return was not expected. However unlike her namesake, this Laika survived to tell the tale. Although neither would ever see the planet's surface again, that no longer mattered. They were two among the stars.