Part 1 - The Day Job

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"Play Team Member"

Amy's eyes initially danced right over the bold text as she looked through the newspaper. If she'd paid any attention at all, she would have thought it was something to do with the theatre. Three quarters of the people living in this neighbourhood were university graduates, and most of the local businesses were the kind of thing that both catered to and employed people who thought they knew how to make the world work better.

Amy was all for changing the world, and her politics were just liberal enough to fit in with the middle class career makers. But she wasn't a graduate, her parents hadn't had the money to send her to college, and she'd blown the little inheritance her grandma left her on a Morpheus system. She was sure that in the long run, it would give her a lot more pleasure than a college degree, but it wasn't any help when it came to finding jobs.

Now she was looking through the classified ads on her lunch break, hoping that there would be something she was suited for one day. Preferably one day before this little coffee shop traded her in for someone younger and prettier. She was as helpful as she could be, and always friendly with the customers. But now she knew the manager, she was sure that it was only her augmented chest that had got her the job, and equally certain that once she reached her mid-twenties, he'd be eyeing up the high school dropouts again.

She folded up the paper quickly as an elderly dragon walked in. The spines down either side of his crest were starting to yellow, like they did every summer. But this time they looked faded, the colours less saturated. A couple of spines had broken off, brittle. She didn't want to mention it, but she could guess that his implant was starting to wear out. Another year, maybe two, and he'd return to his natural appearance, whatever that was.

"Double hazelnut, right?" she asked, putting her own worries to the back of her mind.

"You know me too well, kitty," the old reptile smiled. The fangs twisted his face into a shape that would have been unrecognisable as a sign of contentment if she wasn't already used to dragon body language, but Amy barely gave it a second thought. She knew that her own grin could seem just as menacing to a stranger.

Her hands moved on autopilot to fix the drink, while she scanned the shop in the mirror above the coffee machine. There were a few regulars in here she knew, about half of them still human. It made the crowd look a little strange, to so many of them in one place. Most places now, humanity was a default option that nobody would pick. It was a political statement, a sign of poverty, or the curse of the rare few whose bodies wouldn't accept the implant. In Amy's own lifetime, morpheogenesis had gone from an expensive luxury to the norm. When she'd bought her system, some of her old school friends had warned her she might be seen as some kind of freak; but these days a kid who didn't get one for their sixteenth birthday was an outcast, and the recipient of pity and mockery in equal measure.

She found herself wondering occasionally what her customers had originally looked like. What they would look like if the Morpheus systems shut down, and how many of them would recognise their closest friends. She was on the brink of the new age, she knew. Her tutors would still ask questions about someone's "real" appearance, as if their birth race or gender was more important than what they were now. And the kids in high school now probably wouldn't think about a person's natural appearance at all. To them, your face would be as real as your avatar on some internet forum. They changed species on a whim, and didn't care if they were recognised by anyone but their closest friends.

It was a good generation to be a philosopher in, she thought as she looked across the sea of people. Questions of identity resolved, and new ones opening up. Like was "kitty" an offensive term for a lynx? Some people seemed to think so, being offended that a stranger couldn't distinguish a majestic predator from a common housecat. But others saw themselves as part of a larger feline brotherhood and took the label with pride. Amy wasn't so sure about that, but she accepted whatever words people used to describe her as long as there was no malice behind them.

"Here you go," she flashed Mr Lincoln another cheery smile as the machine finally finished frothing his milk and brewing his coffee. She'd put in the effort a few years before and trained the muscles in her tail well enough that she could hold a tray on it, so she was able to pour the different layers into the mug as she was walking back over to the customer. He nodded with a twinkle in his eyes, and said something she didn't quite catch that was probably flattering.

That was the high point of her afternoon. There were other people she knew well enough to say hello to, but they were either busy on their phones or in a bad mood already, so only a dozen words passed between them save the drinks orders. It was a workday like any other, and Amy had no idea how much her life was about to change.

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