Olivia Joins The Herd

7-34-5981 Federation Calendar.
Texalon Sector, Arlantis IV. Northwestern hemisphere.

As she sat in the back of the cattle car listening to the other girls sobbing and mooing, Olivia Stone wondered who had it worse. Most of the girls crammed into the hold of this stinking drone truck had been born as ignorant beasts. Dumb animals that spent their days unaware that their lives were shit only to be anthrotized into a humanoid form and endowed with enough intelligence and neuroegramatic indoctrination to know that their lives are shit.

Olivia had had a life. Family, friends, a boyfriend with whom things were getting serious. She had a good job as a massage therapist and was taking courses to become a stylist. Olivia had dreamed of having the best salon on Shirewood II where people would travel from across the whole sector to be beautified by Olivia's expertise.

That was before her mother had gone and started making and selling GlowDust out of their kitchen. Because she was over eighteen, the planetary enforcers who made the bust assumed that Olivia was complicit. Olivia tried everything to convince the processors that she was innocent, that she had tried to get her mother to stop, but all that did was incriminate Olivia in the eyes of the law. "If you had known that your mother was cooking a dangerous, controlled substance, then why didn't you report her to the authorities?"

"She is my mom." Olivia said, tears streaming down the young lady's eyes as she testified to the A.I. investigator. "I don't have anyone else."

"We have sufficient evidence to make a determination. Olivia Stone, you are guilty of producing and distributing a controlled substance. The sentence is anthrotization. All of your rights as a human being are hereby revoked. You are to be genetically reworked into a form more suitable to your status as an animal, at which point you will be sold for your market value. Case dismissed."

Olivia tried not to think about the way they violently ripped her clothes off and threw her in the bio-forge. Olivia still shuddered in disgust and horror whenever she reached up and touched the horns that now grew from her head.
From a distance or to a casual passerby, Olivia would have still appeared human. On closer inspection one could see that the horns and tail are real and that the patches of fur on her forearms and calves were not sleeves. Same human eyes, same human face, same human thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and dreams. None of that mattered. As far as the law was concerned, she was just a cow.

"Let's move it!" A gruff voice called out as Olivia felt herself being pulled by her nose ring. As if drawn by a magnet, the septum piercing the enforcers had implanted in her nose after her transformation pulled her towards the truck's exit. Judging by the moans and moos coming from the other bovines, Olivia was not alone in her pain.