Hope learns a new Trick

Sunday, October 29th 00:17:40

Getting up from the dog bed, Hope pads over to the side of the bed and checks Caleb’s sleeping form before leaping up onto the computer chair. They had seen Caleb operate the computer many times and had probably figured out the process to turn it on, but today was a lucky break. Caleb had simply put the computer to sleep, but paws…paws would have trouble operating the mouse and keyboard.

Hope placed its paws outstretched and concentrated. It had never made hands and fingers before, never duplicated a human, it was always too small and probably still was, but a partial transformation would work. Slowly, the paws elongated into greyish-brown tendrils before coalescing into a slightly miniature version of adult human hands. Flexing each finger in turn, Hope marveled at the increased dexterity and realized this opened up many more avenues of exploration.

Hitting a key woke the computer up and Hope double clicked on the weird multicolored ball symbol that was the ‘Internet Browser' and once that came up, clicked on the Wallpedia icon. It needed to study people more, seeing the Lady Doctor(Doc, Doctor San-chez?) from the lab this morning was a happy moment, except that meant the people were looking for them and Hope didn't want to go back. Worse, the dark suit man might hurt Caleb, because Caleb wouldn't understand and would try to protect them, but the dark suit man’s eyes, Hope had seen eyes like that before in the Big Water(Ocean?), those were… Shark eyes.

No, Hope had to keep Caleb away from them at all costs, and that meant getting big enough to disguise themselves as a human. Then, it could stay with Caleb, Caleb gave it everything it needed and it was thankful, maybe it could give Caleb what he needed. He had told Hope that he had been alone for many years and seeing his friends tonight with their partners had made Caleb sad, even if Hope was the only one who could tell…

Browsing the pages,Hope looked up pages on the Dog…breed(?) that they were duplicating and after seeing the maximum size charts, realizing if they grew too fast Caleb would get suspicious. Then switching over to human heights and weights it compared the two and realized the difference wouldn't be enough initially, it’d have to jump significantly in size, but maybe it would be possible to only mimic the outer parts initially? It had learned about mass and density while Caleb was watching a Space show on TEDTube and it might work…but who would it disguise itself as?

As the night rolled on Hope looked over human psychology, customs, appearances and basic knowledge about the City they lived in. When the first hints of light started to emanate through the curtains, Hope closed the browser and put the computer back to sleep. Reverting the hands back into paws, Hope jumped on the bed and curled up against Caleb's back and fell asleep.

About 15 minutes later, Caleb groggily got up, used the restroom then promptly went back to sleep.